Lucien's Khamsin (6 page)

Lucien nodded. While she had been so engrossed in devouring her meal, a guard had brought the prince a large goblet. As he watched her, he sipped from the goblet, relishing its contents as greatly as she did her vittles.

“What’s your name, wench?” he asked, tilting the goblet to drain it.

She looked away for there was little doubt what the goblet held. “Khamsin,” she said.

“That is Arabic, is it not?” he inquired, setting aside the goblet.

She cocked one shoulder. “I don’t know. The people at the orphanage gave it to me.”

“And where was this?”

“Aboard an old cruise ship,” she said. “It was docked a mile off the shore of what used to be Florida.”

“Ah,” he said. “I know the one you mean—the
Queen Mary II
. How long were you there?”

She glanced down at her dirty fingernails, winced, and then tucked her hands under her thighs to hide them. “I have no memories of any other place so I must have been very young when I was taken there. I could have been born there for all I know.”

“I would put your age at—what?—thirty-two, thirty-three?” At her shrug, he said, “The Great War was over thirty years ago. Perhaps you were taken there then.”

She nodded. “I have often thought so but no one could say for sure.”

“When did you leave?”

“Six years ago,” she told him. “I hid in a supply ship under a tarpaulin. Now, I wish I’d stayed.”

“Things weren’t as bad on the ship as what you found on land,” he said.

“We couldn’t weigh anchor and they had lost all reserve power long before I was old enough to know what that meant. But two of the swimming pools had been turned into hydroponics gardens so we had fresh vegetables almost year round. Another pool had been turned into a chicken coop so we had eggs and the occasional chicken stew when one of the birds died. Soup and bread was the main fare but it wasn’t bad. The crews from the supply ships ventured all along the eastern seaboard and brought back what they found—clothing, canned and boxed goods, water—anything that hadn’t been contaminated. They made runs nearly every day.”

“The supply ships were sailing vessels?” he asked, curious.

“There wasn’t any fuel for motorboats,” she replied. “They were brave men and sometimes we lost a few to the Revenants.” She glanced up at him then away.

“And now you are here.”

She lowered her head again. “Aye, now I’m here.”

There was a long moment of silence then the prince stood, drawing Khamsin’s gaze to him.

“Well, what will it be? Would you prefer marinade or would a plain white sauce do?” he inquired, his head cocked to one side.

She frowned. “I don’t understand.”

He crossed his arms over his chest and looked at her sternly. “We can’t just spit you over the fire without something to tenderize your flesh, wench,” he said. “Personally, I prefer marinade but Petros is partial to white sauce. Oh, and do you have a preference of how we should carve you up? We do that while you are alive so…”

Khamsin’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open. She began shivering uncontrollably and when he started toward her, her eyes rolled up in her head and she pitched sideways, unconscious.

Chapter Four

Petros came through the opened door in time to see the blur of his friend flowing toward the woman. Before she could hit the floor, she was in Lucien’s arms.

“Too much food?” Petros asked.

“Too much tomfoolery,” Lucien snapped as he swung Khamsin up against his chest. “Make yourself useful and straighten the damned sheets.”

“They stink,” Petros said, wrinkling his nose.

Lucien narrowed his eyes. “Then strip them, fool! I can’t stand here all night with her in my arms.”

“She couldn’t weigh much,” Petros commented. He glanced around at his friend. “She was right about the conditions in the pens. I detected a rank odor when I went to fetch her but paid little attention to it. That was a mistake, Lucien, and I apologize for my lack of consideration for the herd. We’re minus a couple of guards, by the way.”

Lucien grunted. “What are you doing about the conditions?”

“I’ve set some of the human men to patching the holes in the women’s huts. They can do theirs tomorrow. As for the food, I’ve had the cooks sent back to the kitchens and they are preparing edible repasts. Clothing? Well, that’s something we’ll have to look into. I learned two of the women can hand sew.”

“If the conditions were that bad, how come you ignored it, Petros?”

“It won’t happen again,” Petros said, knowing no excuses would be good enough to wipe the anger from Lucien’s face.

“It had better not,” Lucien said, shifting Khamsin’s weight against him.

“I don’t know what to do about the lice.”

Lucien’s lips parted. “Lice? They have lice?” He looked down at the woman and frowned.

“She doesn’t have them but as for the others, they have head lice, crabs, and unless I miss my guess, fleas, too.” Before Lucien could explode, Petros promised he would “see to it”.

The sheets were off the bed and bundled. Petros went to the door and handed them to the guard. He looked around. “Where are your clean ones?”

“How the hell would I know?” Lucien snapped. Once more, he shifted Khamsin against him. “By the Abyss but for a small woman, she’s damned heavy!”

Realizing no comment was needed Petros left the room, went across the hall and stripped the covers from a guest room bed. He brought them back and began making the bed more efficiently than Lucien would have imagined him capable.

“You’ll make someone a good househusband one day, old friend,” Lucien teased.

Petros sniffed but remained silent as he stuffed the plump pillows into their cases. “You can lay her down now,” he said, not looking around. “Unless you’ve grown fond of cradling her as though she was a china doll.”

Lucien grinned. “I intend to cuddle with her, that’s for a certainty.”

As the prince laid Khamsin down gently, he sat beside her and pushed a stray lock of hair from her cheek.

“She looks so much like Magdalena,” Petros said.

Lucien looked up at him. “There is a resemblance, aye, but not so much that it bothers me as much as it seems to bother you.”

Petros stiffened. “We made a vow not to speak of my…”

“It’s all right, Pet,” Lucien said. “We both loved her. We both lost her. Now, we have only one another.”

Khamsin groaned lightly and reached up a hand to press at her forehead. Her eyes fluttered open and when she saw the two men hovering over her, her face turned chalk-white.

“We really don’t eat humans, wench,” Lucien said quickly. “I was trying to be silly, to put you at ease, but I guess I made matters worse.”

“You told her we eat humans?” Petros gasped, his eyes flared wide. “What if that gets out, Lucien? They won’t come meekly to the abattoir if that happens! We’ll have to drag them there and you know how messy that can get!”

Khamsin saw the merry twinkle in Petros eyes and knew he was teasing her, too. She gave him a tremulous smile but flinched as Lucien’s hand covered hers.

“Despite the impression you have of Modartha Keep, this is not the way it will remain. We do not hurt the humans from whom we take blood,” Lucien told her. “We use modern medical equipment no different from the blood banks before the Great War.”

“A needle in a forearm vein isn’t as much fun as slurping it from the jugular, but one does what one must,” Petros said with a sigh. “And we don’t eat humans.”

“Nor does my coven drain dry any of the herd,” Lucien stated. “We need you to survive. Killing you would defeat the purpose, don’t you agree?”

Relaxing despite the uncertainty that lurked in her breast, Khamsin put up a hand to clutch the bodice of her gown. The Revenants were staring her, looking down at her so intently she could almost feel their gazes touching her. She felt defenseless lying there like a dish on a serving table.

“I can see she has all kinds of strange notions about us, my Prince,” Petros said. “Why don’t I leave so you can tell her the truth of the matter?”

Lucien nodded. His head no longer throbbed with agony, but there was pain still clustered over his right eye. Absently, he put his fingers there to rub in a small circle.

“You have migraines?” Khamsin asked. She flicked her eyes to the door where Lord Petros had exited, quietly shutting the portal behind him.

“For the last several hundred years or so,” Lucien replied.

“I have them, too,” she admitted.

“They can be a bitch, aye?”

She smiled slightly. “Aye, they can.”

“Okay,” he said, crooking his knee so he could turn to face her. “Tell me what you think you know of Revenants.”

Khamsin could feel the heat of his body close to her thigh and wanted to move further away. Almost as soon as the thought entered her mind, she frowned.

“No,” he said, reading her mind. “We are not cold-blooded creatures. We have warm blood coursing through our veins. We breathe air. Hell, we can even fart and Petros is known for his stinkers.”

“But you are undead,” she protested.

Lucien shrugged. “True, but there are varying degrees of undead, wench.”

“But vampires are…”

“Ah, yes, the legendary vampire,” Lucien said with a sigh. “Those evil bloodsuckers who lie in their coffins during the day and prowl the night in search of victims.” He laughed. “The only things Revenants have in common with the stereotypical vampire are that we drink blood, sleep during the daylight hours since the sun tends to make us lethargic, and we, too, can shape shift. We don’t burn to a cinder if sunlight touches us but we don’t like the stuff. And Revenants have been around longer than the legends of vampires have existed. I imagine it was a Revenant in a foul mood who began the tale of the vampire. Sometimes a wicked humor can get us into trouble as you discovered a bit ago.”

“But you are undead,” she said again. “You aren’t human.”

“I was human long ago. Do you want to know how I came to be a Revenant?” he countered.

Khamsin nodded slowly.

“A beautiful woman Revenant took my blood and made me one of her kind. I was near death anyway so it was a blessing to some extent, although I’ve often cursed her for having saved me.”

“You can make other Revenants? That part is true then?” she asked and envisioned an eternal lifetime of swilling blood. She nearly gagged at the thought.

“I can, but I have done so only once,” he answered. “I doubt I ever will again. Aye, that part is true.”

She nervously twisted at the fabric clutched in her fist. “You weren’t going to turn me?”

Lucien cocked a dark brow. “Wench, I was going to fuck you and I would have had I been up to it.”

Khamsin blushed. Her heart had yet to cease pounding violently in her chest. “You were going to rape me,” she said, her chin trembling.

“No,” he denied. “It wouldn’t have been rape.”

She met his look defiantly. “Taking a woman against her will is rape,” she said.

He smiled. “Who said it would have been against your will?”

Anger twisted Khamsin’s pretty lips. “If a woman doesn’t want you to lay hands to her it is rape. You might have mesmerized me into lying acquiescent but it would still have been against my wishes!”

“Mesmerized,” he repeated. “Aye, I could have done that, but I wouldn’t have needed to. All I needed to do is this.”

Before she could move away, he laid his hand against her cheek and held it there.

Khamsin felt the tingle of his palm against her flesh. Almost instantly, she felt a leap in her lower belly and the area between her legs grew heavy and wet.

“Stop it! You are hypnotizing me,” she accused, but seemed incapable of pulling away.

Lucien shook his head. “I am doing nothing. It is my touch that is increasing the testosterone levels within your body. You are absorbing a heavy dose of it through your flesh.”

“Then don’t do it,” she pleaded, her eyes filling with tears for she was experiencing a wild desire to have this man touch her in ways no man ever had.

“I have no control over it, wench,” he told her. “It is part of what I became when I was turned hundreds of years ago.”

“I don’t want you to touch me!” she cried.

Lucien removed his hand. The sight of her tears hurt him and he looked away. “It wouldn’t have been rape,” he said.

Khamsin wanted to argue with him but she kept her mouth shut. She knew men who overpowered women through whatever means at their disposal always justified their actions to themselves—even when those actions were vile and dehumanizing to the woman.

“I would not have hurt you or degraded you,” Lucien defended.

“Rape is rape,” she said.

Lucien was silent for a long time. He was staring at the dark wood of the armoire across the room and remembering when he had built it.

“I was a carpenter,” he said at last. “One of the best craftsmen in the whole of our state. Rich men from all over our country came to commission furniture pieces from me.”