Sanctifying Grace (Resurrection) (17 page)

He plunged into me, faster and harder, and I moved with him in the age-old dance. I threw my head back, exposing my throat to his gaze; I could do a little teasing of my own.

Then he stopped and held me firm: unmoving, tormenting me. I couldn’t take the delight anymore and I collapsed onto him, my head on his shoulder, calling him all the names I could think of. He laughed at me, a rich chuckling from deep within his chest. The sound reverberated through me and I felt it right to my very core.

He held me still for as long as it took
, then he lifted me to the tip of his shaft and the dance began again. I was ready for him this time. I so desperately needed release. When the pressure and pleasure was insufferable, and I felt how close he was to his own orgasm, I didn’t give him the opportunity to stop again. There was only one thing I could think of doing that would put an end to this intolerable tension: I bit him.

My little, blunt teeth would not penetrate his skin but I gave him an almighty nip, nevertheless. It was so unexpected he cried out, and as I tried to sink my teeth deeper into his flesh, he finally lost all control and pumped into me, hard and fast, and I came as he sank his own keen canines into my neck. The dual points opened a vein and he sucked strongly at my blood
; the pleasure from those small wounds was equal to the pleasure of the orgasm that surged through me.

He gave one more mighty thrust, and yelled as he reached his own climax, throbbing and jerking, sending his seed deep inside me.

We held together for long minutes, rocked by the intensity of our lovemaking, then he slithered out and I climbed off his lap and plopped to the floor. I was exhausted, both physically and mentally, my body nothing but a sack of quivering jelly, my mind empty and floating.

I sprawled on the ground, too spent to move, and Roman lay down next to me. He licked my neck, gathering up the last droplets of blood from the little wounds, and ran his tongue over his lips.

‘Mmm, you taste good. All over.’

I smiled weakly. ‘So do you.’

I saw with dismay that he was half erect, and if I gave him only a tiny bit of encouragement, I knew he would be ready to go again. I didn’t think I would be capable of making love for at least a fortnight.

He held me as I slept the rest of the day away. At some point
, he dressed me, but I had no recollection of it. I don’t know if he rested in that vampire way of his, or if he stayed alert and watchful in these strange surroundings. The Raglan Castle I knew was a tourist attraction and would probably have had a visitor or two by now. This version was deserted, but I suspected Roman did not feel especially safe here.

When darkness fell
, he woke me with a kiss and I surprised myself by succumbing to his advances yet again. Afterwards, he stamped out the fire, careful to ensure it was dead, and led the way out of the cellars.

We made it back to his house in Brecon in the early hours of the morning. I was surprised he hadn’t wanted to travel further afield, knowing I was not tied to the area, as we had both surmised, but he seemed anxious to return to the town. Perhaps he had left things there he wanted to collect: money, maybe.

They had broken in through the French doors and had ransacked the study. Looking for evidence of his whereabouts, I guessed. Maybe that’s how they had tracked me to the other house, that and the dogs.

Roman shrugged, unperturbed by the mess.

‘They would have found little of value,’ he said. ‘And if they had, it would no longer matter.’

No it wouldn’t, I silently agreed. They are all dead. I shivered at the memory of Powell’s demise.

He ran a hot bath and insisted I get in. ‘The moat was not that clean,’ he said.

I took his point, and considering what had occurred in the cellars and the long journey back to Brecon, I assumed I could do with a good scrub. Roman had to help, of course, so more water ended up on the floor than in the tub.

‘I am going to find us both some food, and then you should rest. There is something I want you to see, but it has to be in daylight.

Baffled, I tried to persuade him to tell me more, but he simply gave me a Mona Lisa smile and went off on his errands.

When I awoke, the first thing I noticed was that dawn was not far off, and the next thing was Roman sitting in a chair, watching me.

I stretched luxuriously, feeling muscles sliding slickly over bones, doing what they were supposed to do, when they were asked to do it. No fuss, just obedience. There was a slight twinge from my recently healed collar bone, but otherwise I was strong and vital and blissfully pain free. Even the two cigarette burns didn’t bother me much. I couldn’t remember the last time I felt so good and I revelled in it, not knowing how long it would last.

‘Hungry?’

I shook my head: the food he had stolen last night had been more than enough for two, and I had eaten most all of it.

Roman, unusually, was a ball of pent up impatience and I wanted to know what he was all het up about, and why he had insisted we return to Brecon. We could have gone anywhere, but he wanted to bring me back here.

‘Ok
ay, spill,’ I commanded.

‘Oh, no. Not so easy. I have a surprise for you, but you need to get dressed first. Wear something warm.’

I pulled on a pair of ladies trousers and a cashmere jumper, then Roman handed me a sheepskin jacket and a pair of leather boots.

‘It’s not that cold out, is it?’

‘Wait and see,’ was all he would say and gave me a secret little smile. ‘Just put them on.’

Mystified, I did as I was asked, then he whisked me down the stairs and out of the house so fast I couldn’t catch my breath.

Once outside, he clamped a hand over my eyes.

‘What
are
you doing?’ I asked. I couldn’t help giggling: he was like a small boy on Christmas morning.

‘I don’t want you to see it yet. Keep your eyes closed.’

I took a couple of tentative steps, cautiously feeling my way with my feet, then Roman became impatient.

‘Trust me,’ he said and scooped me into his arms. ‘But keep your eyes closed.’

I was tempted to peek, of course, but I didn’t want to spoil his surprise, so I kept them screwed shut and hoped to God his idea of a nice surprise matched mine.

It was only moments before he put me down again and I swayed slightly as I found my balance. I could smell freshly mown grass and hear sheep bleating off to my left.

‘You can open them,’ he said.

I didn’t believe what I was seeing!

It was a plane. A bi-plane. Red and yellow and white, gleaming newly in the early morning sunshine.

‘Like it?’

I couldn’t speak. I knew, without being told, the value of the gift he was giving me: I was going to fly again. I stood immobile and thunderstruck, examining the beautiful, gorgeous, wonderful piece of freedom in front of me, with tears pouring down my cheeks.

Slowly, so slowly in case it turned out to be a mirage and disappeared like heat haze in front of my eyes, I walked towards her, marvelling at her sheer beauty.

It was a Waco YFM and a new one at that, because if I remembered rightly these models were only produced around 1934 and 1935, before being manufactured again in the 1980s.

I had never flown one, only having ever flown mono-planes. I had never actually been in a bi-plane
, but the concept was no different. I hoped.

I stroked one of
the lower wings, the metal cold and smooth under my admiring hand, and studied the impressive propeller. I thought my flying days were over, that I would never again experience the freedom and the sheer joy of being in the air. I was in love.

Screaming. I remember screaming. All that long way down, which was only several hundred feet, but felt like miles.

I shouldn’t have been so confident. I had been certain I could fly the Waco. The physics of flight were the same, weren’t they? In spite of the controls and dials being manual (not a digital display in sight), the concept was no different.

We had taken off into the wind. I was in the rear cockpit, flying the aircraft, Roman in the front, his first ever flight. He had waited for me to show him the wonders of being sky-borne. Neither of us had factored a crash into the equation.

The cross winds over the Beacons had been my undoing, catching the aircraft in a savage gust, in spite of the gentle breeze at ground level. The peaks, thrusting up more than a thousand feet above ambient ground level, could often cause their own weather patterns, localised but nasty. These mountains had ever been deceptive.

My unfamiliarity with the idiosyncrasies of this type of craft and the sudden wind gusting across the saddle between Pen Y Fan and the ridge had unbalanced the plane and my inexperience with the controls had sealed our fate.

The really stupid thing was, I knew all about that wind, sweeping in from the north, channelling through the peaks between Fan y Big and Crybyn before pouring down the Neuadd valley, hitting the wall of rock on the other side and being forced upwards to scream across the saddle. Stupid. Just stupid.

We spiralled, nose first, earth-bound and there was nothing I could do to pull us up out of the spin.

I remember crying ‘I love you!’ and ‘I’m sorry’, seconds before the ground rushed up to meet us and I remember Roman’s horrified, stricken expression as he tried to defy the incredible G force and scramble out of the forward cockpit to reach me.

Then I was back in my own time, my screams following me through the decades and echoing in my ears.

Lettuce’s hand was clamped firmly over my mouth and my yell of fear and horror died in my throat. Then the headache struck with all the speed and viciousness of a viper. I slumped down into my wheelchair. My brain was filled with acid, burning through the soft tissue behind my eyes, clamping around my skull, winding tighter and tighter until the bone felt as though it would surely crack like an egg.

I must have passed out, but not for long. When I came to
, I was still in the conservatory with Lettuce kneeling beside me, rubbing the crook of my elbow.

‘Good,’ she sai
d, her voice all velvet and ice-cream. ‘You’re back. I have given you a morphine injection: not enough to kill the pain completely, but enough to dull it without rendering you unconscious. How do you feel?’

Her false concern failed to touch me, but I was nevertheless grateful for the analgesic. My head was pounding in time to my pulse, which was throbbing and beating faster and more erratically than I would have liked. The pain was a sharp spike lancing through my skull
, but at least it was bearable. Everything appeared distant and not quite real, like the fuzzy feeling you get when you’re drunk; I was viewing my world through fog and cotton wool, my senses dulled and slowed by the effects of the drug. But at least I was conscious and had most of my wits somewhere about me, even if they were operating at half speed.

I swallowed, my mouth and throat sand-dune dry. Lettuce held my glass of cola to my lips and I drank in deep, spluttering gulps. Afterwards
, I was nauseous, but that, too, was down to the morphine.

Then I turned horror filled eyes on my one-time enemy and whispered a question – the only question that mattered.

‘Roman?’

‘Tell me.’

‘Plane crash.’ The words were slurred, though they sounded fine in my mind before they reached my mouth. My speech was worse and I dreaded to think what further damage my journey into the past had done to my brain.

‘Just now?’

I nodded, a slow old-lady nod.

‘Well, well, well. I never thought I would see it for myself.’ Lettuce appeared totally unconcerned. ‘You are fine, obviously. Roman said you dematerialised seconds before the plane hit the deck. He, of course, was unable to perform that little trick, but once he realised you didn’t need rescuing, he jumped, with only feet to spare, apparently. He was lucky not to have been engulfed by the explosion, but then, luck had nothing to do with it. Even for a va -’ she stopped and listened, then lowered her voice even further so I found it hard to hear. ‘Even for one of us, he is fast and it was h
is speed which saved him.’

I blew out a breath I didn’t know I was holding and closed my eyes with relief. I opened them again as the other woman continued to talk.

‘I never thought I would actually see you on one of your…’ she searched for a suitable word, ‘trances. Let’s call them trances because that’s what they appear to be from the onlooker’s perspective.’

Her head swivelled towards the door, swift as a hawk spotting a vole. ‘We’ll talk later,’ she promised, or was that a threat? ‘Ianto is coming.’

I hated that meal. I hated having to have my food cut up for me and fed to me in small spoonfuls, because now my left arm was being singularly uncooperative. I hated being weak and helpless in front of anyone, but showing this to Lettuce was anathema to me. Lettuce, sorry,
Leticia
, was everything I wasn’t: beautiful, quick, controlled, forever young, and with her whole very, very long life in front of her.