The Passion (6 page)

Tessa crossed herself awkwardly with her right hand, then closed both hands around the hilt of the knife. She could do this. She had spent her entire adult life preparing for this moment.

She fixed her eyes on the smooth swel of his breast muscle, the gentle rise and fal of each breath, the firm outline of ribs beneath, the satiny sheath of skin. She raised the knife, and saw the blade shake, pulse, throb in rhythm with her heart. A glint of moonlight on steel, the warmth, the almost living warmth, of hard pale ash wood beneath her fingers.

She raised it high—
not a man
—and plunged it deep.

There
. Splitting skin, crackling bone, tearing muscle.

She felt the impact jar her shoulder muscles as her mark struck home—
yes! the heart, surely the heart!

—
and she staggered backward, shocked by the force of it, as at almost the same moment his blue eyes flew open and his howl of rage and pain fil ed the room.

Oh, it was a thing of horror, that cry; it seemed to pierce the very fabric of the sky and, spiraling downward, suck in al the coldness of space, echoing al the agony of misspent souls, breaking upon the confines of the suddenly smal chamber like shards of glass upon a marble floor. It chil ed Tessa's blood. It stopped the beat of her heart. And when she saw his eyes, sharp clear blue in the moonlight, dilated with pain, blurred with confusion, her breath stopped, too.
Not a man, not a man
…

She took one more step backward, and then she was against the wal .

He lunged naked from the bed into an upright position and, swaying a little on his feet, he grasped the handle of the knife that protruded from his chest and pul ed it out with a howl of pain. Blood sprayed in an arc with the movement, spattering Tessa's hair and face and white nightdress.

She didn't blink. She didn't breathe. She knew she was going to die.

He cursed at her and flung the bloody blade away.

He tried to grab for her, missed, staggered. Half turning, as though to reach for the bel pul , he stumbled into a marble table and overturned it, sending pin-dishes, porcelains and candlesticks crashing down. He tried to catch himself against the curtains and brought them, bil owing and blood-splattered, to the floor.

By this time there were distant sounds of alarm from belowstairs, as his first great roar of pain had been enough to wake the dead. He flung himself toward the door, a red wet fist pressed against the seeping wound in his chest and his face twisted with agony.

He reached it, slamming home the bolt with the weight of al of his body just as a pounding began on the panel and the voice of his valet could be heard crying, "Monsieur! Monsieur, are you quite wel ?"

"Leave me!" he commanded hoarsely. His mouth was close to the door, but the effort required to shout those two words was visible. He pushed away from the door, leaving a bloody streak upon the pale silk that covered it, and his eyes, dark with rage and pain, found her again.

There was nothing beautiful about him now. His magnificent hair was tangled and damp with blood and sweat, his lips colorless, his fine features distorted. In his nakedness, smeared with blood and sheened with perspiration, he looked like a demon fresh-risen from hel . No vestiges of the Renaissance angel to which she had at first compared him remained, and she was glad—and she was terrified.

"You cursed human trol op!" he swore through teeth clenched with pain. "You should die for this, you treacherous female viper. I should slice up your liver and serve it to dogs. I should—"

He sucked in his breath against a spasm of pain. He pressed his fist tighter against the bleeding wound, squeezing his eyes closed, and caught himself against the wal as his knees began to buckle.

Die, die, please die
. She knew she hadn't the courage to even whisper the words, though they sounded so loud in her head she was afraid at first she had shouted them. But she had not spoken aloud, and he did not die.

He lifted his head, eyes stil tightly closed, and parted his lips as though to better get his breath.

The hand that was splayed against the wal for support tightened, then lost its strength and Tessa thought,
Yes, die, please
… But instead of him col apsing on the floor as she had expected the pain that twisted his face seemed to transform into an intense concentration, and then—yes, there was no mistake—to relax into one long, slow inhalation of quiet pleasure.

The anguish that tightened his muscles released its hold in a visible wave of laxity that smoothed first the corded tendons of his neck, then the bunched ligaments of shoulders, arms, abdomen, hips.

Thighs lengthened, calves strengthened, knotted hands opened. His head was thrown back, his arms upraised as though to embrace a miracle. And a miracle was exactly what it was.

Tessa, sinking to her knees, saw it in the air first, smel ed it, tasted it, felt it deep in the pit of her stomach, in her bones; no, in her soul. Afterward she would not be able to describe it, or even remember it in ful . She knew only the feeling of ecstasy that swel ed within her, the great and wondrous certainty that she was witnessing something beyond al human imagination.

Was she terrified? Yes, in the sense that al creatures are held in terrified awe of that which reminds them of their own insignificance. But no thread of horror penetrated her raptured paralysis, no finger of dread. This was magnificent, this was beautiful. She could not be afraid.

There was a tingling of light, a dancing of energy, a pure and powerful radiance that held him in its grip yet seemed to emanate from him; a swel ing whirlwind of power that seemed to suck the very essence of life from air and light and to transform it into something greater than it had ever been before.

There was an explosion of color and soundless delight, and what once was human was no longer.

The wolf came down on four paws, shook itself with a rippling of satiny pale mink-colored fur, and looked straight at Tessa. It was a magnificent creature, as large as a man if not larger, with a blaze of white gold arrowing from its temple. Its eyes .were ice blue, and there was a bleeding wound near its sternum which stained the pale fur dark.

She could see its sides bel owing in and out with quick harsh breaths in the way of an animal in pain.

It lowered its head and curled its lip over sharp canine teeth. It moved toward her, a low growl reverberating throughout the room. Tessa knew then to be afraid, but it was too late. He sprang at her.

The blow knocked her sideways and onto the floor so hard that she lost her breath, her lungs expanding and contracting uselessly for several endless, agonizing seconds while the room spun around her. When she regained her senses she was flat on her back on the floor, the heavy weight of his two forepaws pinning her down, his hot breath searing her face. Saliva dripped from his bared teeth onto her throat, and blood from his wound dampened the thin muslin that covered her breast.

The rumble of his anger was her death knel as she looked up into the eyes of this wolf and saw hunger there.

His lips curled back, and with a great snarling, tearing sound he lunged at her throat. Tessa had no time to scream or to even think of doing so. She waited for the sharp teeth to sink into her flesh, for blood to spurt and breath to die, and then—nothing happened.

His eyes were an inch or less from her own. The hot juices of his mouth wet her throat, and perhaps there was pressure there, tooth or muzzle. But then she saw the most peculiar thing of al the incredible things she had seen this night. His muscles stiffened, and into his eyes there came a moment of what was clearly decision. The instinct of the beast waged war with the higher processes of denial, and reason won. She felt his muscles trembling with the effort of self-constraint, but he backed away from her.

He let her live.

He took another few steps backward, breathing hard, sides heaving. Then he col apsed upon the floor.

Tessa lay where he had left her, dragging in little gasps of air that sounded like sobs in the suddenly stil room, shaking, wondering, trying to grow accustomed to the fact that she was alive when in fact she should have been dead.

As should he.

Panic struck her like a cold blade when she looked over at him. He was stil , quiet; even the fur had lost its sheen. A seeping crimson stain matted his fur and spread upon the pale carpet beneath him. Her breath caught in her throat as she looked at him, and then faintly, indistinctly, she saw the rise and fal of his chest.

Tessa got her hands and knees beneath her and crawled to him. Desperately she tried to stanch the flow of blood with her hand. She stroked his thick coarse fur. It felt cool, and his breath was faint.

When she gently lifted his head into her lap, he was limp and unresponsive. She bent low over him, rocking back and forth. "Don't die," she whispered.

"Oh, God save us, please don't die."

That was when she knew she had been wrong. Al along, she had been terribly wrong.

Chapter Three

Tessa left the room only briefly, flying down the stairs in her nightgown with just the moonlight and her memory to guide her steps. She reached the butler's pantry and tore through the shelves of supplies, fil ing her arms with soft towels, gauze bandages, camphor and laudanum. She snatched a kettle from the kitchen and, grabbing her skirts above her knees, ran up the stairs again, taking them two at a time.

An intruder had entered the room in her absence.

It was Gault, the master's valet. He wore a red tapestry dressing gown and no slippers, and his dark curly hair was loose over his shoulders. Until that moment Tessa had not realized that his hair was easily as long as the master's.

He had lifted the limp body of the wolf from the rug on which he lay bleeding and placed him on the bed, and he was bending over the prone figure when Tessa entered. She dumped her supplies on a table and rushed at him with nothing but the copper teakettle for a weapon.

"Get away from him!" she cried. "No one gave you permission to enter!"

He turned on her, dark eyes blazing. "Nor you, I'll wager! What have you done, you foolish girl?"

She hesitated a few feet from him, kettle upraised to strike, chest heaving with emotion and exertion. His eyes swept the room, from the bloody knife in the corner to the medicine on the table to her stained hands and nightgown, and the narrowing of his eyes told her he had no difficulty in discerning the truth.

And the truth did not reflect wel on her.

For just a moment, there was a tremor in her resolve. He straightened, steely anger darkening his face, and he took a step toward her. But she stood her ground, tightening her grip upon the teakettle, setting her jaw.

"He bolted the door against you," she reminded him.

"He won't be happy to know you're here."

She saw a flicker of uncertainty cross his eyes.

Clearly, he was accustomed to his master's eccentricities, particularly where those of the opposite sex were concerned, and he was not quite as sure of the appropriate response to this situation as he would like to be. He scowled. "I don't know what games you were playing, but it is to your very good fortune that his wound is minor. Obviously, it's not my place to decide your punishment."

She swal owed hard but maintained his gaze and the strength of her voice. "Nor is it your place to interfere. Leave now and I may not tel him you were here."

She thought for a moment that he might refuse. He glanced at the stil , limp form of the huge wolf on the bed, and the sight of it was evidently nothing remarkable to him. Then he looked at her.

"He'll need blood broth," he advised matter-of-factly,

"and plenty of it."

For a moment she wavered. "Blood—broth?"

"Fresh chicken or goat. Fortify it with sugar and brandy and warm it to drink. His wound must be cleaned…"

He moved toward the bed, but Tessa stopped him with a sharp "I can do that."

He gave her a look that was eloquent in its contempt and skepticism. "If I thought you could do any more harm, I'd tear your throat out with my own hands," he told her, in a voice just as flat and detached as the one he had used to advise her about the blood broth. "As it is, I wil attend him in the morning. You are a very, very lucky little human."

It occurred to Tessa for the first time as he departed that Gault might be of the same remarkable species as his master. The possibility held no especial interest for her. After al she had experienced that night, nothing could startle her ever again.

She bolted the door after him, quickly added more coal to the stove, then put the kettle on to boil.

Armed with gauze and camphor, fil ed with trepidation, Tessa approached the wolf. His eyes were open to narrow slits, but glazed and unfocused. They showed no reaction as she came near, to her great relief. She knelt beside the bed, cautiously extending a hand to part the blood-stiff fur around the wound. It had stopped bleeding, for which she fervently thanked God. But then she stopped and stared. What once had been an ugly gash was now pink, puckered flesh, lacking only a needle's breadth from being knitted and whole. The wound was almost completely healed.

A sound issued from his throat, a growl or a moan, and he moved restlessly. Tessa quickly backed away. The pace of his breathing had increased, and it frightened her. "What?" she whispered frantical y.