Incarnation (34 page)

Mordred leaned back against the settee, crossed one leg over the other, and appeared thoughtful. “Well, I certainly wouldn’t kill him, if that’s what you’re asking. A few days and he’ll be right as rain.” As though to confirm this, he turned to the Irishman. “You don’t have any sort of liver condition, do you? I only ask because that could delay your recovery.”

Stoker only just managed to shake his head. “Uh . . . no . . . not that I know of, but—”

Mordred stood. He put his hands together with the air of a man who has done a satisfying bit of business. “Good, then it’s settled. Just think of it as fodder for the creative mind. Your competitors—and don’t fool yourself, they’re already scribbling
away aiming to outdo you—will be awestruck, and your publisher—I hesitate to imagine the paroxysm of delight that will afflict that happy man when he sees your next creation.”

Far more gently, Marco said, “It’s really up to you, Bram. If you say no, we’ll find an alternative.”

Unhappily, but with more courage than most could have mustered, the Irishman said, “No, we won’t, there isn’t any time. Like it or not, it’s up to me.” As that sunk in, he added, “I’ve spent most of my life studying the hidden world. I’ve had plenty of fantasies about experiencing it but never dared to take a step off the straight and narrow. I’d say this is my chance.”

Even Mordred appeared affected by this testament to humility and self-sacrifice. A bit awkwardly, he said, “It doesn’t actually hurt, you know. At least not after the fangs are in. They emit a neuropathic compound that increases blood flow. Quickens the process, as it were, and it will all be over in a matter of minutes.”

I thought of what I had witnessed with the supplicants and what I had experienced myself. Apparently, there was more than one way for a vampire to feed, some far less stimulating and intimate than others.

Stoker seemed as reassured as it was possible for a man to be under those circumstances. He fumbled to loosen his shirt collar, then looked around uncertain of what to do next.

“Just stand right there,” Mordred said. “Keep your attention on that splendid portrait of Dr. Dee. He had an extraordinary mind, you know. In another age, he truly would have been a magus, but he’d gotten a whiff of the new rationality and it affected him greatly. Elizabeth thought the world of him. She was always seeking his advice—”

Stoker did as he said, staring rather desperately at the portrait, which I fancied had taken on something of a look of dismay. Mordred moved behind him, bent his head, and—

What shall I say of what followed? It was quick, as Mordred had promised. But even a minute or two is an eternity when the lifeblood is being drained from one’s body by an immortal being of the netherworld. Stoker stiffened as the fangs went in, his eyes wide and stunned. Instinctively, he tried to raise a hand to his throat, but Mordred pushed it away easily. In a gesture I can only think of as intended to reassure, his fingers intertwined with Stoker’s, steadying him. A few carmine drops appeared on the collar of the Irishman’s shirt. I heard a sucking sound . . .

The rest I would rather not think of. Compared to what I had seen at the Bagatelle, it was nothing at all, but it stirred memories of the far more intense encounter I had experienced. Reliving that, especially in Marco’s presence, was strangely disturbing.

When it was over, Mordred helped Stoker to the settee and sat him down gently. I was prepared with ointment and a bandage, but the latter was not needed, the bite marks were that contained. Elegant really, although I admit that is an odd word for them.

Marco brought Stoker a tumbler of whiskey and stood close to hand as the Irishman managed a few tentative sips. His color revived but only a little and he still seemed disoriented.

“I’m taking him upstairs,” Marco said. “He can rest in one of the bedrooms.”

At the library door, he hesitated, clearly uncertain about leaving me alone with Mordred, but I mustered a confident smile and sent him on his way.

When we was gone, I turned to the being who had ripped me from my human existence and plunged me into a maelstrom of deadly danger. Mordred was far from fully restored but he looked considerably better. Moreover, his mood appeared to be excellent.

“I shouldn’t feel quite this jubilant,” he said, “not given what we’re still facing. But my relief at getting out of that hellhole has made a huge difference in my outlook. Not even Blanche’s misbehavior changes that.”

As he spoke, he glanced at the books on a nearby shelf. I thought his eye lingered on the work by Dr. Dee that Marco had shown me, but he passed by without touching it. Still, it was enough to recall for me what Dee had written about him.

“Thus did he who I fear above all the rest explain the coming of his kind and the terrible bargain he made for what he claimed was his love of this realm . . .”

Was it that terrible bargain that had so inured Mordred to suffering, even his own? Or was such seeming callousness simply the result of a too-long life in which all experience, even the most profound, becomes mere repetition?

“Misbehavior? Is that how you characterize her murder of Harley Langworthe, not to mention the war she’s about to start?”

He waved a hand negligently. “I forget how human you still are. It’s extraordinary really. Do you know only a Slayer’s bloodline can produce a halfling? The compromises that have to be made at the most fundamental cellular level shouldn’t even be possible.”

Nor should the compromises made by the mind and the spirit, but I saw no point in mentioning that to him. Even so, his detachment provoked me.

“You sound as though you share de Vere’s interests. Is that how he was able to capture you? Did he play on your curiosity? Or perhaps it was to your vanity that he appealed.”

Mordred had stiffened at his captor’s name. With what I can only describe as a kingly look of disdain, he said, “Do not mention that man to me.”

“Why? We have to talk about him at some point and this may be our best opportunity. Or would you prefer that Marco be present?”

I knew the answer before I asked. Vampire he was and a ruler as well, one rapidly returning to himself, but he was not about to discuss what had happened with de Vere in front of a man who was in some way his rival.

My encounters with Mordred on the moor at Whitby and later when he drew me from the grave had awakened me to passion in a way that not all my young girl’s dreams could have done. By comparison, the feelings I had nurtured for Marco were innocent and unformed. But no more. Now I looked upon him with full awareness of what such yearning meant and where it could—even should—lead.

“De Vere,” Mordred said, “is more of a monster than I could ever aspire to be. Moreover, he is extremely clever. He knows how to hunt his prey, how to bide his time patiently, and how to find the weakness that will give him the opportunity he needs.”

“What weakness did he find in you?” Try though I did, I could not imagine how a human, even one equipped with a vampire’s heart, could have overcome a being of Mordred’s experience and power.

He hesitated long enough that I thought he did not intend
to answer before he said, “The same to which so many fall prey. I loved not wisely but too well.”

I remembered what else was written in Dee’s book and felt a surge of sympathy for him. “You still think of Morgaine.”

“Most surely, but it is not of her I speak. In an existence as long as my own, there was always bound to be another.” He smiled faintly. “If nothing else, I am consistent.” At my puzzled look, he said, “I had gone to her tomb in Westminster. De Vere found me there. Do you know, they put her in next to Mary? Not her sister, the Scots queen. Elizabeth loathed that stupid woman, absolutely despised her, not in the least for being forced to order her execution. Now they lie there side by side in their separate tombs, Elizabeth and her headless foe. Although, come to think of it, they would have put Mary’s head in with her, wouldn’t they?”

“I suppose . . .” Queen Elizabeth, the Virgin Queen, she who never married but who had ruled her realm with skill and wisdom, guiding its first infant steps from a bankrupt backwater country to the empire it would become.

“You loved Elizabeth Tudor?” Was such a thing even possible and if it was, had she known? Could she have returned his affections? What dealings had the two of them had? My mind reeled at the implications.

Mordred stared at the far wall where Dee’s portrait hung, but I was certain that he did not see the good doctor. Rather he appeared to gaze upon a landscape far removed in time, if not in space.

“I think that at first I loved the idea of her, but as I came to know the actual woman . . . Let us just say that the greatest sorrow of my life has been having to stand by while she
aged and died, knowing that I could have saved her so easily.”

“You would have incarnated her?” The idea was shocking in some ways—a vampire queen of England? Yet surely it had been within his power.

His emphatic nod left no doubt. “In an instant, if she had agreed. But she refused again and again. Something about having to live out her own destiny. The particulars fail me, nor do they matter. What does is that my feelings for her lingered long after her death. I fell into the habit of visiting her from time to time. When the abbey isn’t thronged with tourists, it’s a very restful place to sit and think. Unfortunately, de Vere must have used that to predict where and when I would be at her tomb. Such was the extent of my preoccupation that he was able to take me unawares.”

“I see. . . .”

He raised a brow. “Do you really? I certainly didn’t until I was in that disgusting cell with all the time in the world to contemplate my folly. But no doubt your tame protector told you everything. You know, of course, that Elizabeth was the second Slayer after Morgaine and that her blood, too, is in you?”

My mother had claimed a connection to the family of Anne Boleyn but I had never paid it any mind, being little impressed with such things. However, Mordred had, wittingly or not, raised a possibility that interested me a great deal.

“The next Slayer will come of the same line?”

“Eventually, centuries hence.” He cast me a sharp look. “But the line is running rather thin, dear girl. If your sweet sister doesn’t marry and have children . . .” He paused, then added, “Or if you don’t.”

It was not that I had failed to think of Amanda since
leaving her. Her safety and that of all my family remained a great concern. But what was that Mordred had added?

“Me?” Cautiously, I said, “I had the impression that vampires do not have progeny in the conventional fashion.” Not that I had inquired into the process, but hadn’t Felix said that all the vampires in Britain had been created by Mordred?

“We don’t, which is probably another reason why we don’t age. Children seem terribly wearying. However, you aren’t precisely a vampire, are you?”

“Apparently not, but you would know far more about that than I.”

He peered into one of the casks the society members had brought, lifted out a vial, sniffed the contents, and made a face. Putting it back, he said, “Indeed. Your link to Morgaine and Elizabeth gave me reasonable assurances that you would be able to find me, for no one is so well equipped to hunt down a vampire as is a Slayer or the next best thing to. You stand between two worlds, two species, and if the legends are to be believed, you can bring ruin to one or the other.”

“I thought only vampires are at risk from a halfling.”

“That’s not entirely clear, it could go either way. But destruction is mentioned prominently.”

I understood the desperation that had driven him to such a fateful course of action, but I still had to hope that nothing was predestined. “You made it possible for humans and vampires to coexist all this time. Why can’t we just go back to that?”

“It is my hope that we can, but the threat of a halfling hanging over us may make that difficult for some.”

What was he saying? That my usefulness was swiftly coming to an end and that for the greater good I would need to be destroyed. Or—

“Are you suggesting that it is possible for me to become entirely human again?” Until that moment, I had not considered that there was any chance of regaining what he had taken from me. But his talk of children—my children—made me dare to think otherwise.

His gaze narrowed. “Would you go back, if you could? Become again what you once were?”

I had no answer for him, not then, but I did have an overwhelming need to be certain of what I thought I understood. “Are you saying that what you did to me is reversible?”

“Theoretically. I don’t claim to know the particulars of how it could be done, but if that was your choice, I would do what I could to help you achieve it.”

In the back of my mind, I realized that in offering his assistance he was coming as close as he could to apologizing for what he had done. But that made little impression on me. I was filled with sudden confusion and, it must be said, resentment.

“You would do that once I’ve served my purpose?”

He frowned but did not deny it. “One doesn’t rule as a king for centuries without using anything or anyone that comes to hand. I am no more guilty of that than was Elizabeth or for that matter, Arthur.”

The father who had spurned him for the choice Mordred himself made to save England.