Incarnation (23 page)

“Fear is the essence of what it means to be human,” Lady Blanche said. “They come into the world screaming, as often as not they leave it the same way and in between . . .” The curtain of her hair fell across the young man as she bent over him. “In between they live in terror of their own inevitable deaths. Everything they do—their loves, their wars, their pretensions to being something more than sacks of bile and blood—all of it
is just a means of distracting themselves from their inevitable fate.”

She lifted her head and looked at the crowd again. “One could almost feel sorry for them, don’t you think?”

Before anyone could respond, Lady Blanche turned back again. She spared a last smile for the young lord and then she struck. Her talons, as they appeared to my stunned gaze, grasped his shoulders as her fangs sank deep into his throat. At once, blood spurted across his chest, into her hair, and onto the stone table. His back arched and for an instant I saw a flash of the ecstasy that I had witnessed in the acolytes. But it was gone before he drew another breath. His mouth opened, screaming, as she rose and fell and rose again, sinking into him over and over, tearing at his throat, his arms, his chest.

Horrified, I tried to move forward, thinking to somehow stop her only to find that I could not move at all. Felix had a fierce grip on me, but the crowd itself prevented me from taking a step. I remained rooted in place as though my feet had been set in the slate beneath them. Helpless, all I could do was watch.

Even then she was not satisfied. She paused just long enough to caress him before sinking her fangs deep into the softer flesh below his belly and sucking hard. The young lord bucked wildly. His screams echoed off the walls of the chamber until there seemed nothing else left in the world save terror and blood and death.

He did die, of course. No one could have survived what she did to him. His lifeblood spurted out of him and what was not drunk thirstily ran across the floor, pooling in small depressions and sinking into the ground between the slabs of slate. When
it was finally over, the stone table held only a drained husk, gray and empty where youth and life had been before.

Lady Blanche raised her head. Her face, so pale usually, was crimson. So, too, her hair, her neck, her once-white gown, all dyed the deadly hue of blood. She stretched her arms to the splattered ceiling and cried out,
“Sangra eterna! Forta eterna! Vampira eterna!”

As though in a delirium, the vampires fell to their knees, crawling over the floor, licking up the trails of blood flowing across it. The boldest among them sucked at the sides of the stone table.

Abruptly, I was able to move again. I stumbled a step or two with no idea of where to go or what to do. I was sick with horror and more. Terror such as I had never known filled me, not in the least because some part of what I was wanted to join the others drinking Lady Blanche’s leavings.

But another part wanted to launch myself at her and tear her limb from limb, destroying her in vengeance for what she had done to a human even as the vampire in me fed on her and took her power for my own.

At the touch of a hand on my arm, I whirled, fangs sliding free, ready to do whatever I must to defend myself. But it was only Felix—sad, brave Felix looked as ashen as I felt.

“Come,” he said, no more but it was enough. I took his hand, cold as my own. Together, we fled.

CHAPTER 17

W
e got as far as the door to the club before I stopped and pulled Felix around to face me. I was trembling with shock and revulsion, yet I had to understand what had just happened and what it would mean for all of us.

“What madness is this? Why would she do such a thing?”

Felix’s eyes were dark pools of horror. “Not madness, sound reason. It is one thing to feed on a willing acolyte, but the blood of an unwilling human, someone in the grip of terror fighting for his life, contains far more power.”

Disgust welled up in me. I struggled not to think of the blood I had consumed. It had been given willingly, even eagerly, but out of a desire to become one of those who had crowded around the stone table, cheering the slaughter of a helpless human.

“Enough power to enable her to become queen in her own right, able to control all the others as Mordred did?”

“Not with one such feeding. She will need more.”

“More?” Harley’s fate to be repeated over and over? The prospect was revolting in the extreme, but young men and women of good birth could not begin vanishing without someone noticing and asking what was happening. The balance
that had allowed vampires and humans to coexist for so long could not possibly hold up in the face of such monstrous crimes. Lady Blanche would be assuring that war was not only inevitable but also imminent.

“At first I really thought she wanted to use you to bring Mordred back because she still dreams of being his consort,” Felix said. He looked inexpressibly sad, as though his romantic soul had been betrayed along with the dashing of all his hopes. “But after this, it is clear that she has decided she wants power for herself, more power even than Mordred has ever possessed, and she is determined to do whatever she must to obtain it.”

As though it had just occurred to him, Felix added, “Which means that having set on this course, she cannot risk Mordred returning before she is strong enough to confront him. If she even begins to suspect what you are—” He broke off, as though the rest was too terrible to contemplate.

I could not afford to be so squeamish. “If she discovers that I am a halfling, what then?”

Reluctantly, he said, “Your human side would give her more of the power she has acquired from that poor young man, but in combination with your vampire side . . . Vampires share blood from time to time but only in small amounts as an act of intimacy. There is a reason why it is forbidden to feed on one another. It is widely believed that such a feeding would transfer the power of one vampire to another and more. It would give access to the power of the vampire who had transformed the one being fed upon. Given the duality of your nature and who incarnated you, feeding on you could make Lady Blanche the most powerful vampire the world has ever known.”

How long, I wondered, would it be before that occurred to her? Presuming that it had not done so already.

“I cannot stay here, but what of you? Is there someplace of safety where you can—?”

Felix was shaking his head before I finished. “I’ve been a very good toady and with any luck I will be able to convince her that I tried to stop you. I will tell her that you have returned to Whitby.”

“She won’t believe you. She will go after my family—” The thought of Amanda on the stone table terrified me. But it was rage, not fear, that roared in my ears and threatened to erase all reason.

Felix’s soft yet firm voice drew me back. “She will go after you, Lucy, and she’ll have you if you don’t leave now.” As he spoke, he opened the door and pushed me through it. “Find Mordred. He is the only hope for any of us.”

Before I could reply, the others began returning from the subterranean chamber. I heard their raucous, triumphant voices, harsh with the lust for blood that Blanche’s exhibition had fed but far from satisfied. In another moment, they would see me. Try though I might, I could not hope to hide my revulsion from them or from Lady Blanche.

“Go,” Felix said. He pulled the door shut as he turned to face them.

He had the best of intentions and I did not doubt his courage, but I could not count on him being able to deceive anyone for very long. With that uppermost in mind, I sped down the passage and out onto Fleet Street, only to come to a halt suddenly in the rain-darkened night. Sleek, feral shapes paced around the pedestal that held the griffin statue.
Wolves
. The same pack I had seen before. I recognized their leader—the largest of them all, golden-eyed, his body rippling with muscle. As I watched, he threw back his head and howled. The eerie
sound echoed down the narrow street, bouncing off the stone walls before finally fading away into the darkness.

A frisson of fear moved down my spine. Driven by an entirely human instinct, I retreated step by step without taking my eyes from him. Tendrils of fog drifted on the fetid air. Mist rose from dank puddles that smelled of the acid sky. Behind shuttered windows, I glimpsed a face peering through a crack, gone as quickly as it appeared. A bolt fell across a door. A light was snuffed out.

When I was a child, I had a book that fascinated me more than any other. It consisted of semitransparent pages that could be laid one over the other to show “the Progress of Man,” as it was called. Beginning with the image of humble huts clustered beside a river, it advanced by seemingly inevitable steps to depict a thriving city. The book, as all good children’s books of the time, was intended to both inform and encourage. But, of course, it could also be flipped backward, creating a cautionary tale of mistaken assumptions and the price of hubris.

All that flitted through my mind on the dark street as the wolves howled and time itself seemed to peel away until nothing was left save a world in which fear ruled and hope was as faint as the farthest star scarcely glimpsed above.

The alpha wolf and his pack made no attempt to go after me, but remained standing vigil at the passage between the Bagatelle and the outside world. They, at least, knew what they were about, whereas I felt a little jolt of surprise when I found that I had made my way to the front of the Serjeant’s Inn. Relief followed quickly and propelled me forward.

The black-robed barristers were likely snoring in their beds, but a light still shone in the window beside the low, arched
door. As I approached, the door was flung open and a woman stepped out. She wore a beaded evening gown of shimmering taupe silk cut low to reveal her lovely shoulders and the curve of her breasts. A collar of diamonds adorned her throat with matching bands at each of her wrists. Her appearance on a dark London street in front of a shuttered inn was incongruous, to say the least. So was the battered lantern that she held in one hand. Lifting it, she gestured to me urgently.

“Hurry!”

Without pausing to wonder who she was or why she would be willing to help me, I did as she said. The moment I entered the inn, she slammed the door shut, thrusting an iron bar down to hold it secure. As the bar fell into place, she leaned over and extinguished the light in the window. Still holding the lantern, she said, “Follow me.”

I had a quicksilver impression of a woman of mature years yet still remarkably beautiful with a cascade of ebony hair, vivid violet eyes, and skin that would have been pale as my own if not for the blush of life evident in her cheeks. She moved with swift grace and did not look back.

We left the great room smelling of ale, wood smoke, and sawdust and descended a narrow, winding stone staircase into a basement. As I hurried to keep up, I called after her, “I am looking for Nicolas di Orsini. I must get word to his brother, Marco.”

I might as well not have spoken for the woman did not respond in any way. She continued until we were well within the interior of the inn. Stopping, she pointed to a spot on the slate floor.

“Stand there.”

Perplexed, I complied. At once, she set the lantern down
and drew a small pouch from a pocket tucked away in her bodice. Having poured the contents into her palm, she began to sprinkle them out onto the floor.

“What are you doing?” I asked.

She ignored me and continued to trace the arc of a circle around where I stood, outlining it in what I saw was salt. When she was done, she straightened, returned the empty pouch to her bodice, and picked up the lantern. Without a glance at me, she turned to go. Apparently, I was to be left in the dark both figuratively and literally.

“Wait! Who are you? Why are you helping me?”

She hesitated, clearly still reluctant to engage me in any conversation. Finally, she said, “Are you truly so ignorant, Miss Weston?”

“You know who I am?”

In a tone that could have put frost on a fire, she said, “To my regret. I also know
what
you are. Stay within the circle. Someone will come for you when it is safe.”

“I cannot stay here. I must find Marco—”

Abruptly, she turned and stared at me with such fury that I was taken aback. What could I possibly have done to earn her wrath?

“Haven’t you harmed my son enough? Must you cause him yet more trouble?”