The Mark of the Vampire Queen (40 page)

She couldn't change back. Whether it was the effect of the serum on her Fey blood that Brian had not factored in, or the stress of turning him when he was already well on the other side of the Veil, she'd lost her ability to return to the form she knew he loved so much.

“Don't be daft, my lady.” He processed her thoughts and his own, separating them instantly. The shot of adrenaline at being alive had carried him far enough to dispatch Carnal, but no further. He cursed how weary his body was, how he could do little more than touch her face, grip her hand, but he marveled at this new hyperclarity of his mind, as if he could process a hundred thoughts at once. He wondered if it was that way for all of them and wryly reflected there might be some truth to the vampire sense of mental superiority. “I love you in any form. All of them are beautiful. I remember a night in a forest when I gladly would have taken you like this. You denied me.”

“I would have killed you. This form is not gentle when roused.”

“I think I can handle it now. I'm invincible.”

“You look ready to conquer the world.” Despite the dry tone, she hesitated, her long talons hovering. He captured her closed hand, took it to his face and turned into it, kissing her palm while her lethal claws curled into his hair.

“You'll regain your strength in three days,” she said unsteadily. “Or rather, a fledgling vampire's strength. Right now your body is regenerating for a vampire's unique physical attributes. Once you get that strength, Mason will teach you how to make the most of it, manage it. How to feed, how often. How to use the mind link, though as a servant you already have the basics of that. But I think, because you already had psychic ability, that Mason will be a good teacher of how to take greater advantage of that. Gideon is going to help, too.”

Jacob shoved past the muzziness that was hatefully trying to draw him into a doze. “How? By pushing me into a murderous rage to test my control?”

She wasn't able to keep the humor from her eyes this time. “I've rarely seen you in a murderous rage. That seems more his area than yours.”

“And what are you talking about? Where are you going?” He circled her wrist with both of his hands, as if he could hold her there, when he knew she could shake him off like a clumsy infant. Which at the moment he was.

“I don't know yet.” Her lips twisted ironically. “Which is good, since I no longer have the ability to keep you out of my head. But I can't stay among you like this. Whether or not the Council comes after me, Belizar is right. They won't accept me like this, not as their queen. Even if times change, it will take time. Right now, in their minds, the line is ended. No more royalty in the vampire ranks. I'll go where I'm safe, never fear.”

“I'll go with you.”

“No.” She shook her head. “You need time to think. This is a whole new world for you, Jacob, and the punishment for making a vampire out of a servant is only against the maker. With Mason's backing, you'll be accepted. He'll find you a place in the Middle East, or you could even go to Lady Daniela's territory. You need time to figure out your place in your new world.”

“I've always known my place.” He said it with heat. “It's with you.”

The blaze of anger in his blue eyes shot longing through her. He was
alive
. So alive. She wanted to devour him. Hold him to her breast forever. “You stand a better chance with Mason.”

If they did hunt her, she couldn't bear seeing him harmed, isolated, ostracized. If she was killed, she didn't want him seeing it. The anguish he would feel…She would feel it. Making it that much worse as she was shot from the sky like a poached eagle. Them trussing her lifeless body, hauling it back to Brian's lab to be cut up like a piece of meat.

“No.” He sat up then, seized both of her wrists.

She closed her eyes. Despite the seriousness of the moment, she teased him softly with his own words, from what seemed a long time ago, when he had thoughts he didn't want her to hear. “I forgot you could do that.”

“You won't leave without me, my lady.” Jacob glanced behind him at a quiet step. Mason approaching again, his eyes locked on his lady's.

“He can't stop me forever. There's nowhere you can go that I won't follow.”

“Think, Jacob. Please, for my sake”—
for one breath, just one heartbeat
—“don't think of me. Think of yourself. Learn from Mason. If you don't, you'll not live long as a vampire. I need to know you're alive and well. That's all I want.”

“Like hell.” Did she think he couldn't feel the ache of her loneliness already? She'd never needed many around her, but those she chose, she chose carefully, loved fiercely. In less than two years, they'd all been taken from her. She would shut down, retreat from the world, let the animal part take her over as she lived in some cave. She'd willingly forget what it was to be humanoid because reverting to animal instinct would be easier. That way when they hunted her down and killed her, she would only have an animal's confusion about what was happening. She wouldn't be tortured by the anguished remembrance of why.

“Yang-Sun, my old teacher, told me a person who loses everything is being given a new beginning by the gods. This is what's best.” She freed one hand to trace his lips, then realized she couldn't without cutting him. Her face crumpled.

That doesn't matter. Kiss me, my lady. Please.

“I can't.” She couldn't stay another moment or her heart would disintegrate into pieces. She had to let him go.
Good-bye, Jacob.

“No!” Though he tried to hold on, she wrested away, tears gathering in her eyes again, and launched herself.

“My lady…” He tried to struggle up, staggered. When Mason came to his aid, he threw him off with a snarl, managing it himself. As he watched her wing away, a dark shadow against the predawn sky, he swallowed over jagged glass.

“My lady.”

I release you from my service. Be happy.

“Son of a bitch,” he swore, glaring at Mason as the man drew close again. The amber eyes were sympathetic, but implacable.

“Come. We need to get you inside.”

It hadn't occurred to him, but now Jacob realized he was getting warmer. A great deal warmer. Uncomfortably so, warning him of the dawn. He would never feel a sunrise again, but knowing he could never feel his lady's touch eclipsed that loss, made it insignificant.

No, he
would
see her again. He would learn the damn lessons, learn everything he needed to protect her, use his new strengths to do that, and to find her again. He had to. Not just because he loved her so much life wasn't worth living without her, but because she needed him in a way she'd never needed anyone since she'd matured into her adult vampire abilities.

She'd not only lost the ability to shapeshift into human form. She'd sacrificed her vampire blood to save his life. When the dawn came, she wouldn't have to go to ground. Jacob had become a vampire, and she'd transformed fully into a Fey creature.

Because of their link, or his new abilities mixed with his own natural ones, he'd picked it up from those last subconscious thoughts. While she was still immortal, she only possessed the strength and quickness commensurate to the musculature she bore. The way a lion or tiger had power. She was fast, but not so fast she couldn't be followed with the eye. If the vampire world learned that, she'd be as vulnerable to them as…a human. She was not strong enough to stand against even one of the lower echelon. It was possible even a human's tranquilizer dart could take her down.

She might or might not have her unknown scope of magical Fey abilities to aid her, but in her mind she'd doubted it. Without that, Jacob knew even among the Fey she'd be considered little better than their lowest caste. An untouchable.

She was his lady, his to protect. His to love. He was not going to lose her.

Four Months Later

H
E'D
been in the Appalachians for two weeks now, hiking deeper and deeper beyond the touch of human civilization. The last evidence of human existence had been twenty miles ago, the remains of a camp for recreational hikers. By day he pitched his tent, made with special fiber to screen out light. By night he moved with silent, deadly grace through the wood, not even detected by the forest creatures until he was right upon them. He could place a hand on a deer's flank, feel the soft coarseness of her hair, smell her scent before she darted away, startled, crashing through the night. One evening he'd emerged from a creek where he'd been bathing to find a wolf pack surveying his small camp. He'd snarled, baring fangs. They'd snarled back. But then they turned and loped on.

Tonight, he'd been traveling for several hours before the moon managed to rise above the cloud cover. As he squatted by a stream, he dropped his head on his shoulders, enjoying the feel of the darkness, the way the breeze lifted his hair. The sounds of the night. The stars.

He'd noticed them before of course, but until his lady, he'd always been more of a daylight person. Now he knew the constellations, the phases of the moon, and studied with interest the way shadows moved over the silver face of the symbol of feminine power and mystery. He'd realized the night wind was actually silent. It was what it passed through that gave it a voice.

After months of nearly being driven mad by his own burning impatience, a calm had finally settled over him. She was near.

Do you really think you can hide from me, my lady? I know you've been close for several days now. Staying just out of my sight.

During the time he'd had to endure his full transition to a vampire form, sometimes they'd had to chain him to hold him. Chains that no fledgling should be able to break he shattered within three nights. So they doubled them, strengthened them. As he fought the bloodlust, he knew what was tearing at his vitals was not a hunger for blood, but for her. Knowing she had no one to protect her. Robbed of the great strength she had.

Handicapped. Like him, she would be adapting to her new form, its capabilities. Only he was adapting to a strength and quickness far beyond a mortal's. She was adjusting to far less of those qualities than what she'd always known. Alone.

He'd had the company of Mason, Gideon, Mr. Ingram and all the resources at their disposal. She was a fugitive.

He did everything Mason told him he needed to learn and more. But there were things he could not rush. The ability to control the bloodlust only came with the full transformation and maturing of the systems in his body. Gideon made it clear he'd stake him if he tried to leave before then. Mason, while a little less vitriolic, had also made it clear he wouldn't be permitted to leave until he wasn't a danger to innocents.

“Once the transformation is complete, it will not completely rule you,” Mason had said. “But even during the first decade it's tempting at times of great stress or anger to let it take control. You must fight it whenever it arises until you are certain you can control it. You need that discipline even more than a normal fledgling, for your power is exponentially greater than one.”

That anomaly had disturbed Mason enough that he talked Jacob into allowing Brian to study him to help them understand what had happened. Brian was amazed to discover that somehow Lyssa had given Jacob over a thousand years of matured vampire powers when she converted him. Strength, quickness, compulsion.

He would have traded some of that strength for his lady's experience at reading minds over a great distance. While the ability to communicate with a human or vampire whose blood he'd taken was a common vampire skill, the ability to maintain the clarity of that communication over great distances was apparently something a vampire acquired with practice, not as part of conversion. A week after her departure, Jacob had panicked upon rising, for he could no longer discern her thoughts in his mind. While his precognitive ability had helped him adapt to the skill quickly as a servant, he hadn't realized how much of it was guided by Lyssa's own abilities.

He could feel her. Locate her generally. But he couldn't hear her thoughts. Only a jumble, a puzzle of words, as if the signal was scrambled. Mason and Gideon both thought that was for the best. That it would make the passage of time easier. Instead, he kept waking from nightmares in which she was locked in a coffin, screaming his name while he was unable to hear her.

He had no interest in vampire politics or finding a place in vampire society. He knew where his place was. To help him elasticize the frayed wire of his patience, waiting for the damnable transformation to complete so he wouldn't be tempted to drain innocent Girl Scouts, he made the decision to let Brian study him to his heart's content, in return for a vital favor.

As a result, in addition to his carefully rationed store of blood packed in his cooler backpack, he carried something even more important. All he needed to use it was his lady.

When he tracked her to the Appalachians with Mason's help and had Elijah drive him there, he began to read her thoughts again, once he was close enough. But she was elusive, so that he only heard snippets. Sharp, brittle pieces of thoughts, quick syllables cut off. Sometimes there was a stillness to her mind, so full of nothingness it was like she had found a way to compress it and make it tangible, keeping everything else crowded out of her brain.

During one part of the drive, he'd felt her fear. A blast of fury followed by physical exertion. As if she was running…being chased. Knowing he was too far away to do anything to help her, he'd only been able to sit there in the second seat, frozen with rage, wanting to rend, to tear…fighting for control as the sound of Elijah's blood pumping through his heart nearly drove him to madness.

Now that he was in the forest, narrowing the distance between them, he still sometimes broke into a swift run on his treks at night, trying to get even closer. He felt her restlessness. Aching want. Sometimes tiredness. Once or twice even illness, when it seemed she tried a food that wasn't the best source of prey.

He began to feel her physical reactions. The way water moved smoothly down her throat as she swallowed it from a flowing creek. Leaves fluttering against her skin as she curled up in the most dense part of a tree to sleep.

She was so close. She'd been watching him for several days now. He could have tried to see her, find her, but he had to be patient. The humanoid part of her kept her staying close. The instinctual part, the creature, was mistrustful, uncertain whether he was friend or foe. As he'd feared, she'd allowed that part of her to take over a significant part of her reasoning functions.

Because she was close, he could wait, be still and silent. The nature of a vampire was not to rush. He understood it now. He could be patient, not only because he had time, but because there was nothing beyond his reach to acquire. The gift he wanted was her trust.

Tonight would be the night. He was sure of it. There was a stillness in him that was far from empty. It was filled with everything.

“You seek the aberration among us.”

Jacob's head snapped around. He came to his feet in a lithe, quick move as the man stepped out of the shadows of the forest on the other side of the creek.

Not a man. Not exactly. A Fey male.

Jacob had never seen a member of the Fey other than his lady and the depictions in the books given to her by her mother centuries before.

All of them were associated with an element. Like his lady, this one was a creature of the earth. His wings reminded Jacob of the brown leaves that drifted to the ground in fall, the edges curled. The delicate inner web of veins was like gold thread against the smooth silk of the brown. His long black hair did not completely cover the point of his right ear, which was curved back. He was tall and lean, his face elegant and chiseled, reminding Jacob somewhat of Mason. The aura of magical power told Jacob not only was he facing a man of some class distinction, but a Fey who had nothing to fear from Jacob's speed, quickness and power.

“The Fey can completely kick our asses any day of the week,” Brian had told him. “They consider us beneath their notice most of the time. An irritant. However, what's odd is your lady's Fey form is unknown to us and possibly to the Fey themselves. Quite frankly the two species, vampire and Fey, have never been able to procreate, before or since Lady Lyssa's parents.”

Irritant or not, Jacob wasn't going to let the insult pass. “I seek my lady. The Lady Elyssa Amaterasu Yamato Wentworth, Queen of the Far East Clan. Daughter of a Fey lord and a vampire princess. I seek no aberration.”

The man cocked his head, his eyes gleaming like almond-shaped moonstones.

“She has wandered this area for a week or so now. I have chosen not to drive her out as my kind have in other territories she's passed through.”

Jacob took a step forward, anger flashing through him.
Feelings of fear, pursuit…
“She should be welcome anywhere.”

The Fey ignored that. “She is liked by our little ones. Our pixie fairies are our more simple brethren, but their hearts are pure and playful. They will not tolerate proximity to anything that is not good. Well, except chocolate.” A faint smile touched his lips. “I do not suppose you brought any with you.”

Jacob shook his head, nonplussed. “Pity,” the Fey male said. “They will likely wreak mischief with your belongings as a result. If they had not championed her, I would have killed her.”

Then he was gone into the forest again, just like that. As if he'd never been, his words hanging in the air like a warning.

Jacob stood silently, watching the movement of the trees where he'd disappeared. He wondered how many Fey lands he'd passed over unmolested the past two weeks. Lands his lady had been driven out of as if she were unwelcome vermin. A queen.

Control, Jacob.
He remembered Mason's admonishment, though he didn't think the vampire lord would argue with his desire to go back through those same areas and pluck wings off the Fey as if they were oversized flies.

Moments of great emotion will be the worst…

Then the anger was gone. Everything was gone except his awareness of what was in this clearing. She was behind him.

He knew it, because her proximity was like the brush of hands on his mind, moving outward onto his nape, his back. How he'd missed that touch. Even her touch as a Mistress. The mark of her nails, her hands restraining him. The vulnerable woman lying beneath him, her body open to him.

She would not vanish on him this time. She would be there.

Please, God.

As he completed the turn, he stopped and gazed upon the one thing he'd wanted and needed to see more than anything else over the past four months.

She sat in a tree, her wings at half-mast, gazing at him out of her luminescent dark eyes tinged with red, her fangs curving under her chin. She blinked at him. The tail curled once around the branch, the excess flicking slowly from side to side.

The desire to touch her was so strong he had to fight it down like the bloodlust. He stood there, his hands clenched, counting, waiting, regaining control. She watched him curiously. Wary.

“My lady? Are you there?”

Her brow winged up and she cocked her head. A questioning croon came to her mouth. Rasping. The noise seemed to puzzle her, as if she'd meant to form words.

“My lady.” Jacob controlled the compulsion to leap on her then and there and hold her fast. He wanted her to trust him. He didn't want to have to overpower her, even though he knew he might be being a fool. He'd missed her so much. There was no way to describe how much in words. It was all about feeling, and he was nearly choked with it now.

Mason had been surprised the serpentine mark on his back had not disappeared, for in the past the third mark had disappeared on the small handful of servants who had been illegally turned. Jacob's had simply turned more silver. It hadn't surprised him in the least.

“Are you hungry?”

Squatting carefully, he removed three of the strips of meat from his pack and laid them on the ground. When he looked up at her, she was studying them. As she raised her gaze to him, he felt her reaction. Contempt.

Not a scavenger.

His lady was definitely in there. While he bit back a smile, it drew tears to his eyes.

“I've dreamed of you, my lady. Have you dreamed of me? Do you dream of your servant, or have you forgotten me? Tried to forget me?”

Her eyes shifted back and forth. She was blinking, shaking her head, and she put a talon to her forehead, scraped. “Buzzing,” she rasped. “Music. Sweet.”

Her voice was so rusty from disuse, it made his own throat close up in pain.

“My lady.” She stayed in her tree though she tensed as Jacob rose, came to the trunk and put his hand on the bark, splaying his fingers. Her eyes rested on his hand, moved up his arm to his face. Lingered on his lips.

Not…serve me. No longer. Not call…my lady.

“I couldn't imagine anyone who has seen you daring to call you anything else, my lady. And I am your servant.” His voice took on an edge of possessive command. “As you are my lady.”

His eyes marked the shudder that ran through her as she responded to it. Oh, she was definitely in there. It made him remember the night she'd allowed him to master her. Wanted him to master her.

Jacob had thought waiting for four months would drive him to insanity. Suddenly four more minutes seemed more than he could bear.

As if she sensed his mood, she shifted, got her haunches under her. Was he mistaken, or was that the light of challenge in her eyes?

“Come down here.” His eyes glinted. “Or I'll show off and come up.”