Devil at Midnight (30 page)

As uncomfortable with her thanks as he was with his arousal, he pulled his gaze away and his thoughts together. He noticed her tent was untouched by the dripping weather, just as she and her horse had been.

“Would you like a glass of wine?” she inquired.

Again he shook his head, wondering if he should take heart at being able to say no. Surely she was capable of forcing him to any action she chose. He swallowed as he met her eyes.

“I am able to force you,” she said. “But I will not.”

His mind took a moment to absorb the significance of her words. He had not been mistaken. She could read his thoughts, and yet she seemed not to be aware of Grace in them. That was a puzzle he did not dare mull too hard over, lest the minstrel discover what he would rather not have her know.

When he spoke, his voice was hoarser than he wanted it to be. “You are admitting you are a witch.”

She was silent. Golden lights that did not quite match the flickering candles flashed in her eyes. Christian had the unnerving sensation that he was falling into her irises. The feeling stopped when she dropped her eyelashes.

“Forgive me,” she said. “Old habits. You are harder to thrall than some, and so something in me must try. Your guards are ... different.” She looked up at him again, her eyes simply eyes this time. He did not have a chance to sort out what she might mean. “I am not a witch. I belong to a race of creatures called
upyr
. I am the queen of all our kind who live in cities.”

“The queen,” he repeated, because he still was not following. “Of the
upyr.”

“Sometimes soldiers call us death angels. We have been known to put an end to those left wounded on battlefields.”

“Forgive me, Mistress Wei, if I do not take you for an angel.”

His candor might have been unwise, but a smile tugged the corners of her mouth upward. “No,” she agreed, “I am no angel, but if I dropped my glamour, you would understand why they thought I was.”

“Why are you telling me this?”

Her smile remained, though a hint of sadness entered her eyes. “Your father came to me. He believes me a witch as well. I suppose that is the monster your church puts most frequently in your minds. Gregori was under the impression that by sleeping with your men, I imbued them with extra power; true, as far as it goes. He proposed a deal. If I gave
his
men that power, he would pit them against yours in some contest. Once you were—and I quote—‘suitably humbled,’ he would turn you over to me for a night, to do with as I pleased.”

A number of responses warred inside him, not the least of which related to his father’s utter disregard for his safety. Overwhelmed, he found himself blinking rapidly.

“Did you accept his offer?” he asked.

Nim Wei closed the distance between them, her hands landing gently on his pounding chest. Her touch was cooler than it should have been, not that he had the presence of mind to do more than register the fact.

“I did not accept,” she said firmly. “It is your friendship I wish to court—more than friendship, if it comes to that. That is why I am laying my cards so frankly on the table. I can open new worlds to you, Christian, can offer you power and security you scarcely know how to conceive of. Never again would you have to worry for the safety of those who rely on you. Never again would you be helpless to protect them. Once I change you into what I am, it would be the simplest matter for you to crush threats like your father.”

Christian had not thought his heart could beat faster. Nim Wei was a devil at midnight, whispering temptations into his ear. A peculiar sort of terror filled him, not so much for her as for the darkness he had always known lay inside himself. This was his oldest desire. From the first of his brothers’ deaths to the day he recognized what his father was, this had been what he wanted.

How large a step was it from killer-for-hire to patricide?

“I do not understand what you are saying,” he rasped numbly.

Her hands slid from his chest as she took two steps back from him. By some mysterious process, the tight wrappings of her gown allowed her to move freely.

“Watch,” she said. “See the nature that could be yours.”

He watched, and she began to glow. At first, she simply looked a little paler, but soon the shimmering radiance was unmistakable. It shone through her skin, through her clothes, until her very bones appeared to burn with the white gold light. The effect was like a halo, and she the dark-haired angel who stood within. Christian knew his mouth had fallen open with awe.

“Not an angel,” she said softly. “An immortal blood-drinker.”

He shuddered with sudden understanding. “That is why the men rubbed their necks. You bit them!”

She inclined her head, her features so lovely, so perfect his heart should have been breaking. “The neck is among our favorite spots to feed.”

“How do you make yourself glow like that?”

“I always glow. The trick lies in hiding it.” She seemed pleased by his interest, though Christian was not certain his questions sprang from anything more than shock. He jerked when her glow snapped off. Apparently, hiding her light was not difficult for her.

“I can recover from almost any wound I suffer,” she continued, “a power I am able to share with mortals to a certain extent. The healing oil I gave William was infused with my blood.”

She bent to the chessboard and plucked off a pawn, which she displayed to Christian cradled in her palm. The piece was polished bronze. One by one she curled her white fingers over it. She did not wince as she compressed the fist she had made. A crunching noise issued from her grip. Christian expected the pawn to be broken, but when her fingers opened, nothing remained in her palm except a little heap of brown dust. Even after all he had witnessed, Christian could not contain his sharp intake of breath.

“As you can see, I am very strong. You have surmised already that I can read minds and influence humans. I am better at that than most
upyr
, but we all have a gift for it. I will never grow old, never be less beautiful than I am. I can run faster than my horses, and could leap across the Coliseum in one bound. I absorb knowledge very quickly: languages, music, whatever interests me. All these gifts I am prepared to lay at your feet.”

Christian’s head was spinning, believing and refusing to at the same time.

“Why?” he asked. “Why me?”

She almost came to him. Her muscles tightened to do it and then relaxed. Her arms fell to her sides instead, her right hand swiping the remnants of the pulverized bronze chess piece on her silk-covered hip.

“You are what I love,” she said. “The kind of human. The kind of man. You live life as fiercely as I do, but you rule your passions. You would not waste the opportunity I am offering you.”

“You drink blood.”

Nim Wei’s expression grew more guarded. “Yes.”

“You cannot live without it.”

“Not for very long.”

Christian bit his lip. The minstrel could have been a painted statue, standing there so still with her dark gaze fixed carefully on his face. He realized he had wanted her to deny the facts of her existence, that he would have preferred she make this terrible temptation less horrific.

“I am not a godly man,” he burst out, “but even I believe saying yes to you would damn me!”

She flinched back as if he had struck her, this woman who did not move unless she wished to. Her stone white cheeks drained paler.

“Forgive me,” he said, fearing he was not in control of his tongue even as he tried to undo his misstep. “Mistress Wei, I am sure you mean to do me honor, but you would turn me into a fiend.”

She laughed, a short, harsh sound that ended with her spinning halfway away from him. Her mouth struggled for a moment before smoothing into a perfect bow that showed nothing.

“You are entitled to your beliefs, of course,” she said coolly. “That I think them provincial is only meaningful to me.”

“My soul is dark enough,” he said more gently. “I simply—”

Her hand snapped up and something hit his body: a cool, rippling force like invisible water. The energy coiled around his throat. For a heartbeat, his vocal cords would not move. When he recovered enough to speak, he had the sense not to try.

“Say no more,” she commanded, her tone full-fledged icy now. “I comprehend your attitude perfectly. My gift is far too tainted to offer a paragon such as you.”

He certainly had the urge to deny this, but he feared she would just silence him again. With his lips pressed tightly together, he bowed to her, as deeply and respectfully as he could. The skin along his spine was twitching, his scalp and palms prickling with cold sweat. He wanted to dry his hands on his hose, but knew he had better not. She let him retreat, let him fumble out the black tent flap and into the dripping night.

He could breathe then, but the fresh pine-scented air was not much comfort. Nor did he feel better as he forced his quivering legs to carry him away. The ground was matted with needles from the tall fir trees, making it less of a morass. Maybe he would be grateful for that later.

Grace had been right. Nim Wei was not human. She was something worse than they had imagined, and what she wanted from Christian was no less than his soul. Too late, he realized he should have stalled her, should have pretended he might say yes.

In refusing, he had fallen into a deeper pit than before.

 

 

N
im Wei’s aura boiled around her like stinging wasps. Was this to be her life forever? Rejected by her maker? By Edmund? By Vincenzo, if it came to that? The human scholar had loved her, but not enough to be changed.

No one she loved truly loved her back.

Her right middle finger snapped from the force with which she was fisting it. The pain cleared her head. She relaxed her hands, pulled the joint straight, and did her best not to grimace as the bone crackled whole again.

She breathed deeply in and out until her heart rate calmed to what would have been slow for a strong human.

She was making too much of this. She did not love Christian. She merely found him interesting. On the other hand, why should she tolerate his disrespect? Who was he to act morally superior to her? He killed for money—and would have killed for less. She had known that since her first wander through his head.

Her toes were curling among her cushions, so she forced them to relax as well. Still, her long hair writhed in the angry wind of her energy. She ran her palms along it until every lock was smooth. Aware that revenge would also make her feel better, she contemplated it. Her pulse slowed more. She was queen. She was beauty and power personified.

She knew how to respect herself even if some did not.

 

 

G
ee willikers,” Grace exclaimed when Christian finished telling her what had happened. ”I should have guessed she was a vampire. I mean, a person has to be a little crazy to believe it, but still!”

Christian shifted on the fallen log he was sitting on, its dampness making Grace thankful for her ghostly state. While the next watch was eating breakfast, she and Christian had walked away from camp. It was misty but not raining, the water simply dripping off the tall trees. Still at the weather’s mercy, Christian mopped off the latest splash that had hit his face.

“I do not know this word:
vampire
. Mistress Wei called herself
upyr.”

“Upyr
. Vampire. I know Bram Stoker hasn’t been born yet, but what’s the difference if they’ve got fangs?”

“She did not have fangs. And why are you speaking of people who have not been born?”

Grace waved her hand. “Never mind that now. If she’s biting people, she must have those special incisors. She probably didn’t flash them because she thought it would spoil her attempt to seduce you into evil. She
is
afraid of the sun, and she
did
try to impose her will on you when you stared into her eyes. You shouldn’t do that anymore, by the way. It gives vampires extra power over you.”

“You seem ... excited by all this,” Christian said disapprovingly.

Grace stopped walking back and forth in front of him. She supposed she was a little bouncy, but didn’t he understand how crazy cool this was? Grace was pretty sure she would have been excited even when she was a scared human.

“She’s a vampire,
Christian.
That’s like discovering fairies are real.”

“Or ghosts?” he suggested wryly. “Or perhaps angels?”

Grace’s brain gave a little hiccup. She’d almost forgotten her angel again.

“Right,” she said. “But lots of people believe in ghosts, while most folks think vampires are made up. We could stake her in her sleep, maybe—except I can’t hold one, and her magic keeps everyone else away.” She rubbed her chin thoughtfully. “Maybe we could find a bunch of garlic and try to poison her with that. This is Italy, after all.”

Christian made a dubious expression. “Garlic?”

“All the stories from my, um, town say they don’t like it, though I guess that could be a myth. Your friend Michael wears a cross around his neck, and the minstrel still succeeded in attracting him.” She met Christian’s perplexed eyes. She had to admit she got a kick out of knowing more about this than him. “The symbols of Christianity are supposed to repel vampires. And silver bullets. Or maybe that’s werewolves. Geez, I wonder if they’re real, too.”

“Pray you, let us not borrow trouble,” Christian advised.

Grace’s thoughts were jumping all over the place with exhilaration, but she saw his point. With a conscious effort, she reined in her attention. “You said she couldn’t read about me from inside your mind.”

“It appears not,” he said. “Thank the Almighty.”

Grace thought this was lucky, too, but strange ... unless she and Nim Wei had repelling power over each other.