One With the Darkness (34 page)

No! She mustn’t drain Jergan. And yet the seductive song of blood hummed in her veins.

She wrenched away, panting. Jergan gently drew her back. “No,” she gasped. “I have enough.” It was all she could do to turn away.

He examined her face, nodded once, and let her settle into his embrace. She could feel the healing speed. Pain
mingled with a furious tingle. She looked into his face. He was pale underneath the smudges of dirt and the blood. And there was an expression on his face she wasn’t certain she had ever seen there. It was unmixed with puzzlement or doubt. It seemed soft but … sure. Could it be…?

It couldn’t. She couldn’t think that. “All you all right? I … I hope I didn’t take too much.”

“I’m fine.” He swallowed. He was lying. But it was a beloved lie because he said it for her. She dozed. She didn’t know how long.

When her eyelids fluttered open, her thoughts were clearer. Her Companion sang once more in her veins in a steady chorus. Jergan, above her, was dozing fitfully. Good. He needed strength. She felt guilty for taking blood from a wounded man. He had given her blood so they might escape. She knew that. But he had done it without fear. He had trusted her to take only what she needed. He had made himself vulnerable to her.

She wanted to spend the rest of her life with this man. All the centuries. It was a crime against nature that he wasn’t vampire. If he were, she would break the Rule of one to a city. Regret seeped into her.

It felt familiar, as though she had always known regret.

What had the voice inside her said? Donnatella. Already she thought of the voice as Donnatella. Her and yet not her. She racked her brain. She had been so woozy from the drugs. The voice said she lived a life of regret because of the mistake. And the mistake occurred when she saw how wounded he was from the arena and didn’t break the Rules.
I almost do, or you almost do, when you see how wounded he is after he fights in the arena.

What could it mean? He was wounded, but it was clear he would live, if she could get his wounds stitched and, of course, if they managed to escape Caesar’s wrath. It … it
had something to do with breaking the Rules, but he wasn’t vampire. She needn’t worry about living more than one to a city.

The regret was that he wasn’t vampire.

The realization hit her like a blow. Breaking the Rules meant breaking the
cardinal
Rule of her kind. Donnatella wished she had made Jergan vampire.

It made Livia gasp in dismay. One couldn’t make vampires. If one made vampires every time one fell in love and those one made did the same, the world would be littered with vampires and the tenuous balance her kind had with humans would be lost.

She would be outcast from the vampire world.

Aren’t you outcast now? When was it you last saw one of them?

Was that Donnatella? Or was it just her inner self, arguing for what she wanted more than anything to do?

It didn’t matter what she wanted. Jergan had never said he would stay with her longer than to see her plot through to its end. She couldn’t let a single soft expression on his face lure her into thinking anything else. Even if he did feel something for her, it wouldn’t last. It wasn’t as though she hadn’t had human lovers before. But she kept her secrets from them. She had learned that early. If they found out what she was, either they were horrified or slowly the differences between human and vampire weighed on the relationship until it collapsed in on itself.

Jergan knew. And he accepted her. There was no reason she couldn’t have an interlude with him. But she didn’t want just an interlude. That was why Donnatella had come back. Donnatella wanted forever.

She couldn’t have forever. Jergan accepted her, but he would never agree to become vampire himself. To lose
the sun, and drink human blood? To risk the madness of eternity?

If he wouldn’t agree, the only recourse was subterfuge. She could infect him with the Companion without telling him. Just bite her lip and kiss his wound, and it was done.

Hardly honorable. And he would hate her for it. The only conceivable reason to make him vampire without telling him would be if he were dying. In that case she would endure his subsequent hatred in order to save him.

But he wasn’t dying. He would recover from these wounds, if he could get care. She couldn’t make him vampire without telling him.

But something inside her was vibrating like a plucked lute string with anxiety. Was this the moment Donnatella had warned her of? How could it be? It took three days to make a vampire after the human had been infected with the Companion. Three torturous days filled with fever during which a human must get the immunity to the parasite from constant infusions of a vampire’s blood. She couldn’t have him sick and weak for three days, unable to escape Caligula.

In Donnatella’s experience, Chaerea had killed Caligula. Things were turning out differently this time. Jergan wasn’t wounded unto death, and Caligula wasn’t dead at all. He was a viper still ready to take Jergan from her. Some tiny part of her was relieved that this couldn’t be the moment when she had to choose between living a lifetime of regret and breaking the cardinal Rule, only to risk Jergan’s hatred of her for violating him in order to save him.

Above her, Jergan opened his eyes. He blinked twice, looked at her. Then she felt his body tense.

“What’s wrong?” he asked, suddenly alert.

Was he that attuned to her moods? She shook her head. “Only that the plot will never come to fruition. Caligula is still in power. I’m not sure there is anywhere beyond his reach, even if we get out of this cell.”

Yes, there is.

That was definitely not her thought. Had the pain subsided enough to let Donnatella back? She could use some advice, even the cryptic kind.
Donnatella?
But there was no answer.

Actually, even the tingling was subsiding. She slid a hand out of her makeshift shroud. The skin was red and tender, but there were no blisters.

Jergan reached for her hand, examined it. He smiled and kissed the palm. Then he lifted the sheet. He nodded, grinning. “I don’t think I will ever get over my amazement at the healing. I wish I could do the same.”

“Believe me, I wish you could, too.” She pushed herself up to stand above him.

“Your feeling of life has returned.”

She nodded and offered her hand. He took it and she pulled him up. “Now let’s see if I have enough power to translocate us out of here.”

He loomed over her, wavering, as she pulled the sheet under her arm and tucked it securely in around her breasts. Then she slid an arm around his waist, pulling his naked body against her. “I probably cannot take us very far. Can you walk?”

He set his mouth grimly. “Yes. They will search the city when they find us gone, and probably the road north to Tuscany, too. Maybe all roads. Where can we go to ground?”

You know. I told you where.

Donnatella. “We have unfinished business at the villa. We must see what’s behind that garden wall.”

Something large and iron clanked.

They looked at each other.

Many voices echoed down the stone hallway outside their cell.

“If you can do this thing, now might be a good time,” Jergan whispered into her hair.

“Brace yourself for the pain.”

She held him firmly to her side.
Companion!
she thought.
Give me power.

The familiar throb of instantaneous power did not answer. There was a sluggish surge up her veins. The cell went red, but it was not a deep, powerful burgundy. It was cerise at best. A wave of panic flooded her.

“You say she is truly horrible to look at?” The voice was Caesar’s. It held a small boy’s relish for the grotesque, cast through a muddle of wine and excess from his banquet.

“Yes, my imperial lord, so the guards say.” Chaerea.

“Then by all means, let us have a look at her.”

The crowd approached. The tramp of many boots on stone echoed.

“Companion!” now she called aloud.
Please.

The turgid power pushed up. She chanced a glance down. Blackness swirled slowly at their knees. She would need more than that to take them both out of here. She set up a little song of wanting in her mind.
Power, please, Companion. Power. We are one. Dig deep. Power, power, please.
Please!

The blackness was at their hips. Just a little more.

“He fought well, did he not, Cassius? I was surprised. If we let him heal, perhaps he can fight again. I’d like to see him have regular service in the arena.”

Livia pushed the panic down. She could not listen. She could not look at the faces that were even now appearing
outside the cell door. Caligula, petulant and smug, Chaerea, impassive, and Asiaticus, with his usual remote silver serenity.

In another moment it would be too late. She created an image in her mind of reaching down, into the pit of her stomach, and grabbing everything she had, everything she was. “Companion!” she shrieked.

The world snapped to scarlet. Blackness snaked up around them and the cell disappeared even as she heard Jergan’s shout of pain.

19

S
HE’D BEEN TRYING
for her villa. It was perhaps a mile, maybe less, from the stone arena that Stratius Taurus had built seventy years ago. But she was lucky to get them outside the arena walls. They popped into space in the darkness cast by the triumphal arch. Jergan sagged against the stone, cradling his side. She glanced around. The moon was a sliver setting low in the sky. Caesar had come to the arena this late just to see a badly burned woman. The man was not human, at least not a sane human.

A pang of regret that she could not rid the empire of him flashed through her. Her plans lay in a shambles. Her fellow conspirators and friends were in prison. All would soon be dead if they were not already. Lucius was dead. She could only hope her servants would make it to Tuscany. She and Jergan would be hunted.

All her hopes were lost.

Except one. She glanced up to Jergan. She couldn’t put him through another translocation.

Besides, you need to save your power.

Donnatella’s voice was getting stronger again. She was probably waiting inside Livia just to control her. But Livia was getting stronger, too. She pulled Jergan upright. “We must go.”

He straightened, though it was obviously painful. He
held his side. But he nodded with some semblance of crispness and looked around.

This area of public buildings near the arena was almost deserted this late at night. Good thing. A naked, bleeding man would attract attention. Caligula and company would be coming out of the arena shortly. They’d try to guess which way she and Jergan had gone.

They would expect her to avoid the Palatine Hill, crowned with the palaces of emperors and senators because the air was better there. Caligula’s palace was there next to the Temple of Jupiter. He had incorporated a vestibule of the temple into its structure. He was that sure he was a god himself. No one would expect her to go right by his palace.

She started up the hill, keeping to the side under the line of cypress trees that lined the street, her arm around Jergan’s waist for support. She pulled his arm over her shoulders, as though they were just a pair of lovers wending their way home after a tryst among the temples. They were at the top of the hill when she heard the distant commotion behind them at the arena. She dared not turn to look. But even Jergan must have heard it, for he quickened his pace.

They struggled by Caligula’s palace, and the house where Augustus had been born. By the time she and Jergan got to the ruins of her villa, she was half-supporting him. Good thing it was not daylight, or their pursuers would be able to simply follow the trail of blood. Would they ever believe that Livia and Jergan would return to the very place they had been captured?

Venus and Vulcan, she hoped not.

Her strength had been increasing all the way home, along with the full feeling she’d had since the night she bought Jergan. Soon she would be back to nearly normal
strength, thanks to Jergan’s offering. She’d need blood again tomorrow, from someone besides Jergan, but that could wait. First there had to be a tomorrow worth living for.

“Stay here,” she said, laying him on a chaise in the audience room of her villa. “I’m going to see what’s behind that garden wall.”

Take him with you!
Donnatella apparently felt ready to make another appearance.
And take a lantern.

“Not without me,” Jergan panted as though he could hear Donnatella. He pushed himself upright. The man had courage to spare.

“Wait while I get a lantern.” She hurried away, hoping it had not been broken in the fight. In her bedroom, the lantern stood on the floor in the corner where they had left it. She saw well in the dark, but Donnatella apparently knew she would need more. Dared she trust something or someone that was trying to control her?

“Steady yourself,” she muttered. “It’s only a lantern. What harm can that do?”

Quickly! Can’t you hurry?

“I’m doing the best I can,” she said as she ran back into the audience room.

“What?” Jergan muttered.

“It’s Donnatella. As I get stronger, she does, too.” Livia waited for him to call her crazy, but he didn’t. He set his jaw and she pulled him up. Together they staggered to the back of the villa.

The pungent scent of olive trees hung in the cool January air, along with the smell of the rosemary and sage bushes. The fall of vine over the rock wall ahead seemed to draw her.

“This is the place,” she said to Jergan as they stood in front of it.

Yes!
Donnatella hissed inside her. Whatever Donnatella wanted her to do, it lay behind this vine and this wall. And whatever it was, Donnatella thought it could save her from Caesar.

Livia pulled the vines aside. They were thick with years of growth, green still in January, but without a sign yet of the purple cascade of flowers that would come in the next month or so.