The Burning (6 page)

There was no happy exit from this tangled experiment he had made. Now Beatrix would leave him. Asharti, too. That did not matter. What he cared about was Beatrix. He looked at her dark, innocent eyes, now drenched in pain and decision
.

And it came to him
—
an epiphany that wrote the story of a bleak future in his heart with acid ink. Beatrix was bound to go. She was an innocent, who loved him when her view of the world was narrow, and he could fill all her ideas of love. But first loves didn’t last. She had outgrown him
.

Beatrix stood in the doorway, mustering her courage to tell him. She did not yet know that she was bound to stop loving him, even though he would never stop loving her. “We’re leaving, Stephan. Both of us. I just came to let you know.”

He nodded. “I understand.” He held himself tight against the pain. There was hope for peace in her heart, if not in his. He had to try to help her to that peace. “You will come to hate me before you forgive me. At least I hope you can forgive me. But first, be sure to forgive yourself.”

“She has nothing to forgive herself.” Asharti’s sharp voice came from behind them. Beatrix turned abruptly. Asharti was dressed for traveling
.

“You didn’t trust me to say good-bye?” Beatrix asked
.

“I didn’t trust him, sister.” She motioned to Stephan. “Let us go now.”

“Be your own person, Beatrix,” Stephan whispered. “If you need me, I’ll come.”

“Bea will not need you.” Asharti sneered. “I’ll teach her what she needs to know.”

Beatrix stood, paralyzed, staring at him. Her eyes filled
.

“Come, sister,” Asharti barked. Beatrix turned. Time stopped. Stephan wanted to stop her, but what use? She didn’t love him. He had no right to ask her to love him. He was old and soiled. She was fresh, with a thousand lifetimes ahead of her to experience the love she did not share with him
.

Asharti stretched out her hand. Already her eyes were reddening. Beatrix walked to her. Asharti grasped her hand. Beatrix took a long breath. Stephan could see her call her Companion. Bile surged into his throat. He had no right to sully Beatrix with his love. She had outgrown him
.

A whirling darkness enveloped the two young women. And then they were gone
.

Stephan looked around him, not sure where he was or how he had gotten here. The town lights winked through the trees directly below him. Love was not for him. He had loved Beatrix for what? Seven hundred years? Give or take. Long after she had forgotten him. And eleven years ago he had pardoned Asharti for her crime of trying to take over the world through Napoleon when Beatrix asked it of him. But he had exiled Asharti inadvertently to the one place she could get the power she craved. That was his crime. During her exile, she had made an army of vampires and taken over North Africa. It was by luck alone that she was stopped before she could rule the world and turn humans into cattle, bred for their blood.

Now, perhaps, he could atone for his crimes. He had
trained to become Rubius’s killer, And he would kill Asharti’s leavings if he could. He might die. He did not care except that then his failure would leave the world infected with made vampires making other vampires, until there were no humans left to slake a vampire’s thirst. But if he accomplished his task, then . . .

A woman’s scream cut the night. It came from nearby. He knew what might provoke such a scream. Stephan slid quickly through the trees toward the sound.

It was still nearly a mile up to her cave. Ann moved quietly through the darkness. This part of the path wound up behind the village. The lights of the tavern were directly below her. She was never afraid, alone at night in the woods. Not anymore. The townspeople gave her a wide berth. There were no wolves this far south, and the scurry of small creatures did not frighten her. She had far more to be frightened of than a rabbit or a roebuck.

So she hardly noticed the stealthy rustle in the bushes beside the path until, coming round a corner, she was on them. She stopped stock-still. A figure in a rough peasant skirt and blouse lay sprawled on the wet leaf floor of the forest. It was a woman, her breast white and shuddering with hardly won breath. A figure crouched over her, his face nuzzled in her neck, a man by the bulk of him. For a split second Ann thought she was witnessing a lover’s tryst, but something about the woman’s staring eyes and the way her limbs were all askew told of something far less natural afoot.

The man lifted his head.

Ann gasped. The man’s eyes glowed . . . red. It was not reflected light, for where was the source on such a dark night? He had
red
eyes and his canines were elongated. His mouth dripped with darkness. Ann recognized the smell of blood. She put her hand to her mouth.

The man lunged up, straight at her. Ann screamed. She couldn’t let such a creature touch her! Fear washed over her. She turned and ran, feeling him reach out for her. She picked up her skirts and tore down the path, praying to God she would not fall. She could hear him behind her, feel his breath. It was as if he trembled in the air around her, vibrating in her chest along with her fear. She heard a growl and a heavy thud. A tree root grabbed her foot. She went down, turning in her fall to face the expected attacker.

There was no one there. But some way behind her, two men rose from the forest floor facing each other in a crouch, half attack, half defense. One was the man she had seen. His eyes were no longer red. No canines showed as he drew back his lips in a snarl. His skin was pale, his hair a light, straight brown. He was lean. The muscles on his forearms revealed by his rolled shirtsleeves were stringy. But he was still a monster. He hissed at his opponent.

Where had that one come from? He must have tackled the monster who pursued her. The man straightened and she saw that he was big, his shoulders broad, his hair a dark mass curling to his shoulders. Well dressed. His eyes looked black in the darkness. At least they were not red. Some part of her realized that he was handsome, perhaps classically so at first glance, but then one had to reevaluate. His cheekbones were high. His nose was a little prominent beneath a broad forehead, his lips . . . Ahhh, lips said so much about a man. These were full, but drawn down in a grim line. The commas etched around them made him look hard. Those deep lines kept his face from being the kind you would see upon a statue. All this was an impression in a single moment of fright and relief.

“What do you want?” her attacker hissed to the tall man.

“You know what.” The voice of her savior was a deep rumble in his chest. He spoke with a faintly guttural accent, but it wasn’t German. Could he be a match for the monster?

“You are the Harrier.” The man hurled it as an accusation. What did he mean?

At that, the tall man stood straight. He did not confirm or deny the charge. “I am your destiny,” he said. His voice was implacable, his demeanor sure.

Ann shuddered. Such words
should
be nothing more than melodramatic. But Ann could not imagine anything colder or more certain. If the monster could be dispatched, this man would do it. But then the big man’s gaze strayed from his enemy to her, riveted itself upon her face in the shadows.

“Not tonight, you aren’t,” the monster crowed, even as a darkness whirled up from the forest floor and engulfed him. Her rescuer jerked his attention back to his enemy and lunged. But it was too late. The darkness dissipated and the creature was . . . gone. Nothing. No trace. She stood, paralyzed in shock, mouth half open and eyes wide.

The only man left on the path cursed. “Hell and damnation!” He turned on Ann. With an effort she managed to shift her gaze from the place that no longer held the monster to her rescuer’s face. The guilt and old knowledge, the remorse she saw in his expression touched her. How could a man live with such emotions flickering inside him? What thoughts tormented him? She should thank him. Even as she hesitated, a mask descended over that rugged face. Emotion drained away. He seemed to collect himself and grow . . . distant. It was disconcerting.

A groan rose faintly from a spot down the path.

Dear God! The injured woman! She hurried past the man who saved her to crouch beside the figure on the ground. The young woman’s breast was heaving, gasping for air. Her eyes stared up in terror; her hands twitched ineffectually at her side. What to do? Two puncture wounds on her neck trailed twin rivulets of blood. A rattle sounded in her throat. Ann wanted to take the girl’s head between her hands, but she dared not.

“Breathe!” she shouted at her. “Breathe!”

Her command still hung in the air as the girl’s last breath sighed away. The stare turned glassy. Ann let out a small sound of shock or despair. She recognized the girl. It was Molly who worked in the tavern. No better than she should be, Uncle Thaddeus had said, but no one deserved this. Ann felt the stranger’s presence above her. Somewhere she heard shouts. She turned up toward him. “She’s . . . dead.”

He said nothing, but looked up, behind Ann.

Ann turned and saw a crowd of men carrying flaming torches, pistols or cudgels at the ready, coming up the path from the tavern below.

“You there!” Squire Fladgate, the doughy justice of the peace, called. “Stand where you are. Who screamed?”

“I did,” Ann said, mustering what composure she could.

The crowd of men in work clothes clustered around Ann and the body of the girl, and the stranger. Their faces were demonic in the flickering torchlight as they stared at Molly. “The Van Helsing chit has done it now,” a voice from the center of the pack called.

The squire eased his bulk onto his knees. “We thought it was Molly who screamed. She was working at the tap one minute, and the next minute . . .” He touched his fingers to the girl’s throat, then shook his head. “She’s dead.”

“I alays know’d the Van Helsing girl was a killer, the mad ones alays are.” This was Mrs. Bennigan. She had reason to hate Ann. In the disturbing onset of her powers Ann had blurted out the woman’s infidelities when Mrs. Bennigan was shaking her for knocking over a tin of nails in the ironmonger’s store.

“Mad? She’s a witch pure and simple, and she killed Molly!” Ahhh. Mr. Warple. He had his reasons for hating Ann, too. By the time Mr. Warple brushed against her she no longer blurted things out. But he must have seen in her eyes that she knew he suffocated his sick wife with a pillow when
he couldn’t stand her moaning anymore. Ann didn’t blame him. She knew he did it to spare his wife the pain, as much as to escape the yoke of her sickness. She knew too that he suffered every day for it. But that didn’t make him love her for knowing it.

“Hanging’s too good for her.”

“Oughta be burned!”

The voices clamored around her. All of them wished her dead or gone. Ann shrank back. They mustn’t touch her! She had to get out of here! “It wasn’t me,” she whispered. “I didn’t kill her, I swear.” But her voice was lost in the shouting. Angry faces closed in around her. She could hardly get her breath.

“You might hear her out.” The commanding voice from behind her silenced them as if the man had waved a wand.

Eyes shifted from her to the stranger and back again. She looked up. A hard look had come over the stranger’s face to replace the pain and remorse. That was even more frightening.

“Tell them,” he ordered.

And somehow, she did. “There . . . there was a man leaning over Molly as I came up the path. I . . . I surprised him. He looked up.” Would they believe what she had seen? “I think . . . I think he was biting her.”

“Nonsense,” Fladgate said. “I see no man.” He heaved himself up awkwardly. “And these bites could not have caused her death. See? They bleed but a little.”

“You’ll find her drained of blood, I think, if you examine her,” the stranger said.

Ann stared at the stranger. Drained of blood? She turned back to Molly. Yes! Dear Lord, her flesh had sunk as though the capillaries that supported it were . . . empty.

“It’s her. The witch did that. Who else could?”

“She did it with her evil eye.”

From the rear of the crowd came a commotion. Uncle
Thaddeus pushed his way to the front, gasping. “Uncle,” she cried, and clasped her hands to her breast to keep from gathering him in her arms. “You shouldn’t be here. You don’t look well.” His face was gray.

“I won’t let you harass her, Fladgate,” he gasped, his hand to his chest.

“We don’t need your help, Brockweir.”

“Then why did you come to Maitlands?”

“Because Molly was missing, man, and we thought your ward might know something about it. Your ward turned out to be missing, too. Quite a coincidence. Now we find it wasn’t coincidence at all. Your niece committed a murder,” the magistrate decreed.

The crowd yelled in agreement.

“No she didn’t.”

The cries were halted in mid-yell. The stranger’s voice had that effect; oddly compelling. An uneasy silence fell over the men.

Fladgate cleared his throat. “And what have you to say to the matter?”

The man stepped up behind Ann, though he did not touch her. She could feel his body, threateningly close. “I witnessed the whole. She tells the truth.”

“Where’s this man, then?” one of the men in the front row of the mob challenged.

“He ran off that way.” The stranger pointed down the path.

“Whyn’t you stop him?” The man who challenged was the worse for drink.

“The girl was still alive. It seemed wrong to leave her.” He was lying. He hadn’t cared about Molly, but Ann certainly did not want to point that out.

“So you are saying that this killer just disappeared?”

“You have two eyewitnesses to corroborate that fact,” the stranger said.

And Squire Fladgate accepted it. Ann couldn’t believe it. They had waited for years for an excuse to commit her or worse, and here it was. Yet the squire backed down. He didn’t ask who the stranger was, none of them did. They didn’t ask how he came to be there. They knew she liked to walk in the woods at night. The whole town talked about her idiosyncrasies. But shouldn’t they be curious about a stranger?