Sanctifying Grace (Resurrection) (11 page)

I had materialised in between Roman and his main course. I felt his teeth graze my neck as he jerked his head away with lightning speed. I could also feel another part of his anatomy, which had clearly been gearing itself up for dessert, pressing against my stomach, until it, too, was hastily removed.

The woman behind me was rather alarmed to discover a naked woman squashed against her so tightly I could feel her suspenders against the back of my thighs and a certain hairiness tickling my bottom.

She screamed, and I screamed, and Roman hissed like a startled cat, then there was shouting from a short distance away, and as usual, it was dark and I was naked.

Roman reacted in an instant. He violently shoved me sideways and I fell to the ground with a squeak of indignation and surprise, scraping my knees on the gravel. Roman ignored me, concentrating on the shocked woman, rapidly enthralling her. I picked tiny stones out of the skin on my knees and grumpily wondered why he hadn’t done that in the first place. She was limp and unresponsive when he picked her up and flung her over his shoulder, and I hoped he hadn’t done anything more serious to her, but before I could ask him, my lover shot out an iron hand and hauled me to my feet.

‘Ow!’ My voice was loud in the darkness. ‘What do you –’

‘Shut up.’ His was menacingly quiet and very grim. I shut up. The shouting was getting closer and I realised it might possibly have something to do with us. The first spike of alarm pierced my mind and when Roman shot me a bleak look, I knew there was trouble brewing. Whoever said I was slow to catch on…

Roman ran, dragging me along in his wake, a swift sleek yacht towing a little rowboat. By the time he had taken five paces
, I was stumbling along, unable to keep up; he was incredibly fast and he had shoes on. I would have given a lot to be wearing shoes right now.

He stopped and I couldn’t help another squeal when he picked me up and slung me over his other shoulder. He carried on running.

The breath whooshed out of me as my stomach hit the heavily muscled shelf of his shoulder, and I bounced painfully, head down, bum up, the blood rushing to my brain as he moved with astonishing speed. His sheer strength terrified me; the weight of two grown women appeared to have no effect on him. The ground careened past, scant inches from my eyes, first rushing gravel, then dirt track, and I fought not to be sick. I scrunched my eyes shut to block the sight, but I wasn’t sure if it made things any better, so I opened them again, trying to lift my head sideways to find a point of reference that wasn’t moving.

The river
. I could see the water to my right and lights on the opposite bank, but they rapidly disappeared behind us as Roman continued to put more distance between us and whoever had been shouting. I couldn’t hear them anymore; all I heard was my own laboured breathing, the wind in my ears, and the gurgle and suck of moving water.

We came to an abrupt halt and my cheek smacked into the small of his back.

I grunted.

‘Shush.’

I did as I was told, reluctantly, because I wanted him to put me down, and I grimaced but stayed silent, trusting him to know what he was doing. I held what little breath I had as I, too, listened intently. Roman didn’t need to hold his – he didn’t appear to have breathed at all in the last few minutes. Eventually, he tipped to the side and I slid clumsily off his shoulder and crumpled to the dirt. He gently lowered the other woman to the ground, smoothing her skirt modestly over her legs. I remembered the feel of suspenders and pubic hair, and was too grossed out to feel cross. Cross would come later, when I was fully clothed and knew exactly what was going on. For now, Roman exuded menace and there must be a very good reason he was on high alert.

I sat up, my gravel-pocked knees tucked into my chest, trying to catch some air and relieve the ache in my stomach. I wrapped my arms around my legs and stared at the vampire. He seemed satisfied and he dropped down to Defcon 3
; I gathered we weren’t completely in the clear but were in no immediate danger.

I was most definitely aware of my unclothed skin and already aching body, and now that the threat, whatever it was, had diminished it was time to get angry.

Roman beat me to it.

‘You certainly know how to choose your moment,’ he snarled.

‘Huh! You know full well I don’t get a choice in when or where,’ I retorted, scrambling to my feet.

‘Sometimes I wonder,’ he muttered, sotto voce.

‘Sorry if I spoilt your fun,’ I spat back, sarcasm dripping from every word.

‘It wasn’t fun. I was about to feed.’

‘So that’s what you call it,
feeding
? It looked like you intended to do a whole lot more!’

‘What if I did?’
he demanded. ‘It’s been twenty-five years. That’s a long time with just my hand for company.’

I gasped at his crudeness. It was so un-Roman.

We stared at each other, me resentful and Roman defiant, until he once more took charge of the situation.

‘We must cut across the fields and come to my house from the back,’ he said. ‘Once you are safely inside
, I will return the lady to her own home. Here, take my jacket.’ He was all solicitous and courteous. I narrowed my eyes at him, wanting to tell him where he could stick his jacket, but common sense and goose-bumps overrode temper and I snatched it out of his hands, stabbing my arms through the sleeves. It reached to my knees and I was glad it covered me: it wasn’t easy having an argument when you were the only one butt naked.

‘Do you want me to carry you?’

‘I can walk.’

He looked pointedly at my unshod feet
, but didn’t say anything further, just picked up the other woman and cradled her in his arms.

I knew I was wearing my sulkiest expression
, but there was nothing I could do about it. I tried for neutral but my lips narrowed into a thin, straight line of their own accord, and my eyebrows insisted on a frown.

I turned away from him and stomped along the river bank.

‘Wrong way,’ he called, and, mustering whatever dignity I could find, I whirled around and strode past him, ignoring the sharp little stones under my feet and the squelch as I trod in something I didn’t want to think about. He followed behind, wisely not saying a word until it was time to leave the river and strike out across the fields. 

I stalked in front of him occasionally looking back and shooting him glowering glances until the house where I had killed Wilfred came into sight.

I stopped, not wanting to go any further. I was a murderer returning to the scene of the crime and I wished I was anywhere but here.

‘Here’s a key. Go inside and lock the door behind you. Don’t open it to anyone.’

‘Not even you?’ I couldn’t refrain from sarcasm, even now.

‘I won’t need to use the door.’

Of course he wouldn’t. Silly me.

‘Go,’ he commanded. ‘I need to return the lady before she is missed.’

He disappeared into the night, leaving me standing alone, staring at the house in the distance.

I hated him
. I couldn’t believe he would bring me back to the very spot where I had taken another man’s life, to the very same house.

I walked slowly to the wall which enclosed the garden, replaying every second of my flight from the bedroom to the kitchen, remembering the feel of the blade in my hand as it parted Wilfred’s flesh. I recalled the blood: its scent and colour and the sheer quantity of it. And Wil’s eyes as he died.

I couldn’t go in, not by myself, and maybe not ever. I would wait for Roman to return, ask him to find me some clothes, and then – I had no idea what I would do next.

I hitched my backside onto the wall and waited, considering my options. I could remain on my little piece of wall until I went back to my own time, but that could be many hours, or d
ays. I could leave, but I had nowhere I could go. Then I ran out of options. So I waited, and waited, and eventually Roman returned, in a much better humour than when he had left, and I could guess why: men are always grumpy when they’re hungry. Roman had recently fed.

‘You drank from her didn’t you?’ I accused.

‘No point in letting her go to waste.’

‘Did you do anything else?’ I just couldn’t leave it be. I sounded like a nagging wife with a big, green monster sitting on my shoulder, urging me on.

‘I prefer my women conscious.’

‘Who is she?’

‘No one.’

‘She must be someone.’

‘No one you could possibly know.’

‘Have you fed from her before?’

‘Does it matter?’

‘Yes. No. I don’t know.’

He sat beside me on the dry stone wall.

‘Eryres, you know what I am, and what I need to do to survive.’ He was calm but I could tell his patience was thin. How many times had he told me this?

‘But do you have to enjoy it so much?’ My voice was plaintive and more than a little whiney.

‘Yes, I do and I’m not going to apologise for that.’ He paused, gathering his thoughts. ‘Grace, I have been returning to Brecon almost every March and staying until May. It has taken me a long time to realise you appear to me in the same month as it is in your own time. When you were here last it was March, was it not?’ I nodded. ‘And it was also March in your time?’ I nodded again. ‘I have returned each March for twenty years to wait for you. And whilst I wait, I have to feed. You know this. You also know I am a healthy male.’ He grinned at me, his teeth gleaming in the darkness, reflecting the dim light from a crescent moon. ‘I return for you, but you must learn not to expect too much of me. When you are here I will mate – make love – with no other, but when you are not here,’ he shrugged. ‘The decades are long.’

I understood and told him so, but from my point of view it had only been a couple of weeks and I found that concept hard to deal with.

‘Now, why didn’t you obey me and go inside the house? I do not ask you to do this for no reason. Come inside.’ He scanned the fields, using eyes and ears, but found nothing to alarm him. I wondered why he was so jumpy. He took hold of my hand and slipped gracefully off the wall. I stayed firmly put, remembering my reasons for not wanting to enter Roman’s house.

‘Come,’ he repeated, a slight urgency in his tone.

I shivered, but whether it was from the vampire’s unaccustomed nervousness or the cold March air, I couldn’t tell. I sighed, knowing I had to broach the subject, Wilfred’s death weighing heavily on my mind, and I had to know how Roman felt about what I had done. After all, he’d had hopes for the man.

‘I killed someone in there.’

‘I know.’

‘Do you hate me for it?’

‘Why should I? You did what needed to be done. Rather more messily than I would have, but…’

‘You know why I did it?’

‘I found the letters on the floor. I assumed it was you who dropped them?’ I nodded. ‘Why didn’t you leave Wilfred to me?’

‘I couldn’t. He found me reading them, then he threatened to kill me and chased me into the kitchen. I stabbed him as he was trying to strangle me.’

‘Ah.’

‘What about that Charles person Wilfred was writing to?’

Roman gazed at me steadily.

‘Oh, I see.’ Charles was now an ex-Charles. I had assumed so, but I needed to check. ‘Was he the only one Wil told?’

‘I cannot be totally sure, but I think so, yes.’

There was silence for a while as I remembered the bloody scene inside the house.

‘It’s done, Grace. You have nothing to reproach yourself for. He would have killed you, but instead, you killed him.’ He shrugged that Gaelic shrug he did so well. ‘Would you prefer it if you had died and he had lived?’

‘No, but –’

‘Accept what you did was necessary for your survival and put it behind you.’

‘It’s okay for you, you’re used to killing,’ I protested, perhaps a little unfairly. 

‘I have killed, yes,’ he admitted, ‘but I am not
used
to it. I do not like doing it, but I do what I have to do.’

‘Don’t you feel any guilt at all?’

‘No. You forget that my life before I became a vampire was as a centurion. I was a man who was trained to fight, to bear arms, from an early age. I was trained to kill.’

I looked away, trying not to cry.

‘Let it go, Eryres. You have accepted it here,’ he touched the skin above my heart, ‘you know in your heart you had no choice, but you have not accepted it here.’ He touched the same finger to my forehead. ‘The part of you that says you should feel remorse and guilt and grief when you take another’s life, however justified, has not yet learnt to remain silent. Ignore it. I have.’

‘But…’

‘Grace, we are not so different, you and I. You, too, have killed without a second thought when you were forced to do so.’ He stroked my cheek and said wistfully, ‘You would have made a very good vampire.’

I jerked my face away from him, annoyed at his words, recognising the truth behind them. I
had
accepted Wilfred’s death for what it was, self-defence, and I wasn’t as distressed about what I had done as I felt I should be. Did that make me any less human?