1 Blood Price (19 page)

“I don’t wish to hurry your decision,” she’d said dryly. “But I’m getting chilled and I’d like to know if I should scream.”

He’d intended to convince her he was only a dream but he found he couldn’t.

They had almost a year of nights together.

 

“A convent?” Henry raised himself up on one elbow, disentangling a long strand of ebony hair from around the back of his neck. “If you’ll forgive me saying so,
bella
, I don’t think you’d enjoy convent life.”

“I’m not making a joke, Enrico. I go with the Benedictine Sisters tomorrow after early Mass.”

For a moment, Henry couldn’t speak. The thought of his Ginevra locked away from the world struck him as close to a physical blow. “Why?” he managed at last.

She sat up, wrapping her arms around her knees. “I had a choice, the Sisters or Giuseppe Lemmo.” Her lips pursed as though she tasted something sour. “The convent seemed the better course.”

“But why choose at all?”

She smiled and shook her head. “In your years out of the world you have forgotten a few things, my love. My father wishes me for Signore Lemmo, but he will graciously allow me to go to God if only to get his overly educated daughter out of his house.” Her voice grew serious and she stroked a finger down the length of Henry’s bare chest. “He fears the Inquisition, Enrico. Fears that I will bring the Papal Hounds down upon the family.” Her lips twisted. “Or that he will be forced to denounce me.”

Henry stared at her in astonishment. “The Inquisition? But you’ve done nothing. . . .”

Both her eyebrows rose. “I am lying with you and for some, even not knowing what you are, that would be enough. If they knew that I willingly give myself to an Angel of Darkness . . . ” She turned her wrist so that the small puncture wound became visible. “. . . burning would be too good for me.” A finger laid against his lips stopped him when he tried to speak. “Yes, yes, no one knows but I am also a woman who dares to use her mind and that is enough for these times. If my husband had died and left me rich or if I had borne a son to carry on his name. . . .” Her shoulder’s lifted and fell. “Unfortunately . . .”

He caught up her hand. “You have another choice.”

“No.” She sighed. The breath quavered as she released it. “I have thought long and hard on this, Enrico, and I cannot take your path. It is my need to live as I am that places me in danger now, I simply could not exist behind the masks you must wear to survive.”

It was the truth and he knew it, but that made it no easier to bear. “When I was changed . . .”

“When you were changed,” she interrupted, “from what you have told me, the passion was so great it left no room for rational thought, no room to consider what would happen after. Although I am fond of passion,” her hand slid down between his legs, “I cannot lose myself in it.”

He pushed her back onto the pillow, trapping her beneath him. “This doesn’t have to end.”

She laughed. “I know you. Enrico.” Her eyes half closed and she thrust her hips up against him. “Could you do
this
with a nun?”

After a moment of shock, he laughed as well and bent his mouth to hers. “If you are sure,” he murmured against her lips.

“I am. If I must give up my freedom, better to God than to man.”

All he could do was respect her decision.

It hurt to lose her, but in the months that followed the hurt eased and it was enough to know that the Sisters kept her safe. Although he thought of leaving, Henry lingered in Venice, not wanting to cut the final tie.

Chance alone brought him news that the Sisters had not been able to keep her safe enough. Hushed whispers overheard in a dark café said the Hounds had come for Ginevra Treschi, taken her right from the convent, said she had been consorting with the devil, said they were going to make an example of her. She had been with them three weeks.

Three weeks with fire and iron and pain.

He wanted to storm their citadel like Christ at the gates of hell, but he forced himself to contain his rage. He could not save her if he threw himself into the Inquisitor’s embrace.

If anything remained of her to be saved.

They had taken over a wing of the Doge’s palace—the Doge being more than willing to cooperate with Rome. The smell of death rolled through the halls like fog and the blood scent left a trail so thick a mortal could have followed it.

He found her hanging as they’d left her. Her wrists had been tightly bound behind her back, a coarse rope threaded through the lashing and used to hoist her into the air. Heavy iron weights hung from her burned ankles. They had obviously begun with flogging and had added greater and more painful persuasions over time. She had been dead only a few hours.

 

“. . . confessed to having relations with the devil, was forgiven, and gave her soul up to God.” He rubbed his fingers in his beard. “Very satisfactory all around. Shall we return the body to the Sisters or to her family?”

The older Dominican shrugged. “I cannot see that it makes any difference, she. . . . Who are you?”

Henry smiled. “I am vengeance,” he said, closing the door behind him and bolting it.

“Vengeance.” Henry sighed and wiped damp palms on his jeans. The Papal Hounds had died in terror, begging for their lives, but it hadn’t brought Ginevra back. Nothing hac., until Vicki had prodded at the memories. She was as real in her own world as Ginevra had been and unless he was very careful, she was about to become as real in his.

He’d wanted this, hadn’t he? Someone to trust. Someone who could see beneath the masks.

He turned again to face his reflection in the mirror. The others, men and women whose lives he’d entered over the years since Ginevra, had never touched him like this.

“Keep her at a distance,” he warned himself. “At least until the demon is defeated.” His reflection looked dubious and he sighed. “I only hope I’m up to it.”

“Fitzroy, what is this shit?”

“Henry, please, not Fitzroy.” He saved the file and shut off the computer. “And this shit,” he told her, straightening, “is my new book.”

“Your what?” Vicki asked, pushing her glasses up her nose. She’d followed him from the door of the condo into the tiny office even though he’d requested that she wait a minute in the living room. If he was going back to close his coffin, she had to see it. “You actually read this stuff?”

Henry sighed, pulled a paperback off the shelf above the desk, and handed it to her. “No. I actually write the stuff. ”

“Oh.” Across the cover of the book, a partially unclothed young woman was being passionately yet discreetly embraced by an entirely unclothed young man. The cover copy announced the date of the romance as “the late 1800s” but both characters had distinctly out of period hair and makeup. Cursive lavender script delineated both the title and the author’s name;
Destiny’s Master
by Elizabeth Fitzroy.

“Elizabeth Fitzroy?” Vicki asked, returning the book.

Henry slid it back on the shelf, rolled the chair out from the desk, and stood, smiling sardonically. “Why
not
Elizabeth Fitzroy? She certainly had as much right to the name as I do.”

The prefix “Fitz” was a bastard’s name and was given to acknowledged accidental children. The “roy” identified the father as the king. “You didn’t agree with the divorce?”

The smile twisted further. “I was always a loyal subject of the king, my father.” He paused and frowned as though trying to remember. He sounded less mocking when he started speaking again. “I liked her Gracious Majesty Queen Catherine. She was kind to a very confused little boy who’d been dumped into a situation he didn’t understand and he didn’t ever much care for. Mary, the Princess Royal, who could have ignored me or done worse, accepted me as her brother.” His voice picked up an edge. “I did not like Elizabeth’s mother and the feeling was most definitely mutual. Given that all parties concerned have now passed to their eternal reward; no, I did not agree with the divorce.”

Vicki glanced back at the shelf of paperbacks as Henry politely but inexorably ushered her out of his office. “I suppose you’ve got a lot of material to use for plots,” she muttered dubiously.

“I do,” Henry agreed, wondering why some people had less trouble handling the idea of a vampire than they did a romance writer.

“I suppose you can get even with any number of people in your past this way.” Of all the strange scenarios Vicki had imagined occurring during this evening’s conference with the over four century old, vampiric, bastard son of Henry VIII, none had included discovering that he was a writer of—
What was the term ?—
bodice rippers.

He grinned and shook his head. “If you’re thinking of my relatives, I got even with most of them. I’m still alive. But that’s not why I write. I’m good at it, I make a very good living doing it, and most of the time I enjoy it.” He waved her to the couch and sat down at the opposite end. “I could exist from feeding to feeding—and I have—but I infinitely prefer living in comfort than in some rat-infested mausoleum.”

“But if you’ve been around for so long,” Vicki wondered, settling down into the same corner she’d vacated early that morning, “why aren’t you rich?”

“Rich?”

Vicki found his throaty chuckle very attractive and also found herself speculating about. . . . A mental smack brought her wandering mind back to the business at hand.

“Oh, sure,” he continued, “I could’ve bought IBM for pennies in nineteen-oh-whenever, but who knew? I’m a vampire, I’m not clairvoyant. Now,” he picked a piece of lint off his jeans, “may I ask you a question?”

“Be my guest.”

“Why did you believe what I told you?”

“Because I saw the demon and you had no logical reason to lie to me.” There was no need to tell him about the dream—or vision—in the church. It hadn’t had much to do with her decision anyway.

“That’s it?”

“I’m an uncomplicated sort of a person. Now,” she mimicked his tone, “enough about us. How
do
we catch a demon?”

Very well,
Henry agreed silently.
If that’s how you want it, enough about us.

“We don’t. I do.” He inclined his head toward her end of the couch. “You catch the man or woman calling it up.”

“Fine.” Tackling the source made perfect sense to Vicki and the farther she could stay from that repulsive bit of darkness the happier she’d be. She perched her right foot on her left knee and clasped both hands around the ankle. “How come you’re so sure we’re dealing with a single person, not a coven or a cult?”

“Focused desire is a large part of what pulls the demon through and most groups just can’t achieve the necessary single-mindedness.” He shrugged. “Given the success rate, the odds are good it’s just one person.”

She mirrored his shrug. “Then we go with the odds. Any distinguishing characteristics I should look for?”

Henry stretched his arm out and drummed his fingers against the upholstery. “If you’re asking does a certain type of person call up demons, no. Well,” he frowned as he reconsidered, “in a way, yes. Without exception, they’re people looking for an easy answer, a way to get what they want without working for it.”

“You just described a way of life for millions of people,” Vicki told him dryly. “Could you be a little more specific?”