Revenant (28 page)

Quinton scowled at Carlos. “What’s wrong with you?”

Carlos swayed in his seat. His voice was low and barely audible when he replied. “Mortality. By a quirk of blood, I seem to be temporarily . . . human again.” All remaining color drained from his face and his eyes rolled back a moment before he collapsed across the sofa, unconscious.

I felt the edge of the same blurry nothingness pulling over me, too, and fought against it, unwilling to leave Quinton alone.

Quinton stared, appalled, between Carlos and me, his mouth
open in protest. “No . . .” He fixed on me with a beseeching expression. “You didn’t. . . . Say you didn’t.”

I tried to speak, but my voice failed and I had to nod, falling over the edge of irresistible unconsciousness as I felt him clutch my shoulders and let out a cry of despair.

The day and night faded to bad dreams and I woke up in the bright, warm morning, disoriented to find myself in bed instead of still on the sofa in the salon. Quinton was sitting on a chair near the bed, watching me. I felt more groggy than seemed reasonable until I remembered that I was operating about a quart low on blood—which will make anyone a bit slower than normal.

I hauled myself up in bed to sit leaning against the wall and take a look at my watch. “Ugh, why am I still in bed at ten a.m.?”

“Staying up until three a.m. can have that effect,” Quinton said. “How are you?”

“Confused.”

“About . . . ?”

“Why you’re sitting over there like I have a highly contagious disease.”

“I admit to being a little nervous.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know what happens next.”

“Next? I think the plan was to figure out what the bad guys are up to and then blow town before they take another shot at any of us.”

“OK. Now I’m the one who’s confused.”

“About what?”

Quinton hesitated. “Last night . . . I had the strong impression . . . that you . . . had let Carlos bite you. Maybe more . . .”

I stared at him with my mouth hanging open, blinking like a stunned owl. “Oh. . . . Uh . . . That’s not quite how it went.”

“But—”

I put up one hand to stop him from saying more. “No, no. Just listen. This is difficult. Amélia told me—not as such, but let’s just go with that in lieu of a longer explanation—anyhow, she told me that Carlos needed help and passed on the impression that the situation was desperate. So I raced out of here—as I’m sure you remember—and up to the Carmo Convent. Those are the ruins—”

“The church ruins you can see from Rossio, or from the castle if you face west,” Quinton said.

“Yes,” I agreed, nodding. “Those ruins. It wasn’t an easy or pleasant job, but I found him there. He was dying.”

“He’s the undead. How could he be dying?”

I gave him a stern look. “Don’t split semantic hairs with me right now. The upshot is that whatever it is that passes for life in him was almost gone. And I didn’t stop to think about the ramifications or complications of the situation—I didn’t even consider that we need him if we’re going to figure out what your father and the Kostní Mágové are up to and stop them. It didn’t occur to me. I just did what I could to keep a friend from dying.”

“You let him bite you.”

“No. I pretty much had to force him. But that was all—just . . . blood. And something happened that I have no explanation for—and I’m sure Carlos doesn’t, either—but whatever it was, it changed his state of existence, at least temporarily. This thing seems to have been a one-way expression only. I’m not affected, except to be a bit anemic. From something Carlos told me while we were trying to get out of the ruins, he’s not a vampire in the same mode as, say, Cameron is. He may not even function quite the same way, but for whatever reason, I’m not blood-bound or turning into a vampire or
anything dramatic or treacherous like that. I’m still just me, running about a quart low, but otherwise fine.”

“Quite fine, from what I see.”

We both turned our startled attention to the bedroom doorway where Carlos stood, backlit by the morning sun through the sitting room windows. I couldn’t see his face in the glare, but the light cutting his silhouette made him appear reed-thin.

Quinton jumped up from his chair and stood between us, and it occurred to me that I was still sitting up in bed with only a sheet lying loose across my legs. I considered pulling it up over my exposed breasts and then thought it was not only too late, but a ridiculous gesture, given the company.

Carlos turned his gaze aside. “I beg your pardon. I knocked, but no one replied.” He took a step into the room and turned deliberately to look only at Quinton, giving me a clear view of his profile, but putting his back to the rest of the room. He looked less filthy, tattered, and exhausted than the last time I’d seen him, but still tired and less kempt than I was used to. His voice and presence still left an impression on the Grey, but with less intensity, as if his paranormal volume had been turned down. “I believe we left a conversation unfinished last night,” he said.

Quinton scowled at him. “You’re up.”

“Indeed.”

“In daylight.”

“It comes as a surprise to me, as well. Do you wish to discuss the phenomenon right now?”

Quinton thought about it. “No.”

“Good. We have many other things to talk about.” He turned and left the bedroom.

I slipped out of the bed and snatched up Quinton’s nearest shirt on the way to the bathroom. An uncomfortable tension buzzed in my chest and I felt a little light-headed. I hoped nothing unpleasant was about to erupt between Quinton and Carlos.

Throughout my shower, the vibrating discomfort in my chest continued, easing a little, but not entirely going away. I got dressed, annoyed that my jeans were still unwashed and too filthy to put on, so I was stuck once again in a dress that had only the saving grace of pockets. I saw no sign of Quinton in the room, but the sitting room door was now closed, and even through the thick plastered walls I could hear a murmur of male voices.

I’m a snoop by nature and I couldn’t resist putting my ear to the old-fashioned keyhole to discover what they were saying.

“. . . My girlfriend!”

“Your wife, more properly. But the relationship does not make her your property and I did nothing to influence her. If you imagine that I would, you do her considerable insult and no less to me.”

“I know what the effects of surviving a vampire’s bite are.”

Carlos laughed and this time it shook the floor. “You know nothing. Most of those who give us blood go their way with no more effect upon them than a slight euphoria. Those who succumb to the Bliss bear a mark—that is how we know them. I assume you’ve searched every inch of her body looking for it. . . .”

Quinton said nothing.

“You found nothing because there is nothing to find. She is not my thrall. I have no call upon her beyond our mutual respect.”

It was very quiet, and I thought they’d left, but in a moment, Quinton spoke again.

“You said it was risky—what she did for you. But if you respect her, why did you let her do it? Why didn’t you stop?”

“I did stop, though I admit it was difficult. In extremity and offered rescue, it was hard to temper the drive to survive with the knowledge that her life lay in my hands. And I did not ‘let her’ save me. Blaine made that decision for herself. You made that decision once for me, also. Did you think I would forget that you didn’t leave me to die in a fire?”

“That was Cameron’s doing.”

“Not alone. You don’t credit the breadth of your own compassion.”

Quinton scoffed. “For vampires? Your lot nearly killed me a dozen times.”

“Not ‘my lot,’ but all the others, and for her. It’s what makes you a terrible spy—you feel and cannot resist acting on that empathy—and it makes you her perfect mate. But it allows you to know—or to imagine—
too
much, which is why you want to kill me for touching her,” Carlos added with a chuckle.

“That’s not true. . . .” The rattling discomfort in my chest fell apart.

“It is. But, as I am useful, you have no choice but to tolerate my presence a little longer. I know what your father wants.”

“An invisible company of invincible, undead spies—a whole department’s worth of Sergeyevs to bring Europe down. I know.”

“For how long?”

“I only really put it together last night. Harper saw my dad’s project in action yesterday and we all saw the boxes at the bone church. Harper recognized the master bone mage from last night—we saw him just before that . . . drachen thing fell apart down the hill yesterday. It was just like the one at the bone church. The ossuaries that have been vandalized, the places my father has been, and what we all saw two nights ago . . . I knew there was some
piece of information I had that made it all fit, made my suspicions true, but I hadn’t been able to tease it up to the surface. Now I know. That organ . . . the bones . . . You said at the time that you knew the man who made it. You said that you knew this bone mage when he was an apprentice and how would you if you didn’t study under the same master? It all comes together. The Kostní Mágové promised my father the secret of packing ghosts and monsters into boxes so they can be moved around like furniture and that’s what he wants, but there’s something else that has to come first—something they want and have convinced my father he wants, too—something that will burn Europe to the ground. You know what that is.”

“They must have their apocalypse—their dead in legions unburied, an endless sea of bones. O Inferno Dragão will give them that. And then, we all die.”

TWENTY-ONE

I
gave them a chance to leave before I emerged from the bedroom and went downstairs, assuming they’d be in the salon, which proved to be empty. Quinton was in the kitchen with Rafa, asking her questions.

“Where?” he said.

“In the Alentejo. The olive trees were all that was left. I’m sorry. . . .” She stopped speaking when she saw me.
“Bom dia, Senhora Blaine.”

“Good morning, Rafa. How are you?”

“I am very well, thank you. It is good to see Dom Carlos as he should be.”

“Where is he?” I asked.

“In the garden.”

Carlos in a garden in the daylight. This I needed to see. I started to go, then turned back. “Rafa, where did Dom Carlos sleep last night?”

She frowned. “In his bed. Where else should he sleep?”

“I mean where in the house. The cellar?”

She shook her head. “No. In the master’s chamber on the second floor. I had to take him there myself.”

“How did you lift him? He must weigh more than two hundred pounds.”

She blushed. “Avó helped me. He is light as a child with her hand on him.”

“And where is she now?”

“Oh, I think she won’t come for some time. It was very hard for her to bear him up after all that happened.”

There seemed to be more questions opened than answered, but I let them go and nodded to her, thanking her and starting for the door to the back garden.

“Oh, the key!” she cried. “Take the key.”

That was interesting: The garden apparently didn’t lie in her time frame of the house. I took the key off a hook by the door and went out.

In the modern daylight, the garden was shabbier than it had seemed the night before. Jasmine climbed up broken trellises against the house walls, growing from pots that had seen much better days. Three dwarf orange trees set in a shallow V were dusty and seemed in need of attention while the bougainvillea had overgrown the wall and was encroaching on the tiles around a fountain mounted to the surface. The pool and fountain were dry, the tiles and plaster cracked and chipping here and there. Carlos sat on the rim of the empty pool and squinted upward at the sun through the dusty leaves of an orange tree. A shaft of light struck blue highlights off his hair and warmed his skin with a ruddy glow across one cheekbone. It was like seeing some young relative of the Carlos I knew, one who hadn’t yet gained bitter knowledge and a taste for blood and power.

“You’re not supposed to look directly at the sun,” I said.

“I am also not supposed to be alive and sitting in my own garden. It’s run-down—I shall chastise the management company for that—but as I am somewhat run-down myself, I shan’t be too harsh on them.”

“I’m afraid I overheard part of your conversation with Quinton.”

“I know it. As, I suspect, does he. But we each pretend the other does not and thus we save our foolish male pride.”

“Why aren’t I attached to you, blood-bound, because of what I did?”

“Always direct, Blaine.”

“Why should I be otherwise?”

He replied with nothing but an ironically raised eyebrow.

“Come on, man of mystery. Tell me.”

“I’ve already told you. I am not blood-bound to another because I did not die of the Bliss—of the blood addiction. I Became, my blood poured onto the ground to feed something else. While I can—or could before this change—create blood kindred, it must be carefully and deliberately done. You gave me your blood. I gave nothing back—or at least nothing that I intended.”

“There’s still something more to this. . . .”

“Yes, but I cannot tell you what it is. I don’t know. I think I know what I’ve received from you, but what may have passed
to
you, is unknown. But it isn’t the blood tie, nor any form of control. You are not in thrall to me. Although it might be interesting if you were. . . .”

I rolled my eyes. “Please.”

He smiled a perfectly ordinary smile, the sun showing every bone-white scar where the glass of the church window had cut him, and finding tiny wrinkles around the corners of his eyes and mouth that darkness had never revealed. The smile faded quickly; then he shook himself and stood. “Let us not bait your beloved any longer. We should go inside and speak of dragons.”

He put his right hand out in a courtly, old-world gesture and I, laughing at it, put my left hand onto his, aligning our fingers.

For a second, our hands were one oddly shaped construction of four overly long fingers and two opposed thumbs that sprouted from both our wrists like the overlap of conjoined twins. I gasped and flinched, yanking my hand up and back without thinking.