The Vampire Queen's Servant (37 page)

"You have a wife?"
Jacob glanced toward him, brow furrowed. "But—"

"No." Elijah shook his
head. "We were only together long enough to produce a baby and then she
ran off. Died young of a life she shouldn't have got herself into. Must be
genetic, because the boy's tryin' like hell to do the same." He sighed.
"But sometimes in my mind I like to paint life the way I wish it could
have been. A wife to grow old with. Someone I'd have missed something awful if
I'd lost her to cancer or a heart attack. So every time I have something like
this, I imagine her old like me, fussing at me about cholesterol or my weight.
The way you see people who love each other do. Not a big and flashy
first-romance thing, just something you settle down into nice and easy as
breathing. As long as you got your breathing, you got the chance to be
anything. Without the breathing, it's pretty much over."

Jacob snorted. "And you
looked at
me
like I was crazy when you picked me up."

"I'm just imagining the way
it could have been with a good woman," Elijah pointed out. "You're
sitting over there obsessing about the one who snapped your arm like it was a
matchstick. Maybe you'd be better off letting that one go and making up one,
like me."

Jacob leaned his head back
against the wall, closed his eyes. "I'm tired," he said.
"Haven't slept normal hours of late. Maybe I am fucking crazy."

Mr. Ingram made a noncommittal
noise. Silence ensued for a few minutes between them.

"Lady's bad sick, isn't
she?"

Jacob opened one eye, turned his
head without lifting it from the wall. "Yeah," he said.

Elijah nodded. "You know, I
had an uncle, come home from the war in a wheelchair. He'd gone off all shiny
and strong, everyone's hero. Comes back, okay at first, just quiet. Watching
all of us, the way we all watched him. Then he turned into the meanest son of a
bitch you'd ever want to meet. Drove off his wife, his kids… Ain't no complex
psychology to it if you're paying attention. He'd always been invincible to his
way of thinking. All of a sudden all the things he felt like people depended on
him for were slipping away and he couldn't control it. Couldn't take care of
his family no more. Every time he tried to be or do what he used to, something
would happen. An infection, a new pain, or he got too tired and couldn't follow
through on it."

Jacob lifted his head from the
wall then. Ingram took another bite of the pastry, thinking. Swallowed before
he continued. Patted at his lips with the napkin.

"People treated him
different, thinking because he was a cripple that gave them liberties no one
should have without asking. Strangers assumed it was okay to lift him in the truck
like a sack of potatoes. Women came up at the church picnic to dump his
catheter bottle because his wife or mother said it was okay. Don't need to ask
him. It's hard for a man to lose everything he thought made him a man. Don't
seem fair for him to have all this potential to serve and then have it taken
away. Can't imagine how to reinvent himself. Then he's got everyone acting like
he don't have to be treated like a man anymore."

The boy's gaze was steady, but
the thoughts were there, running through his head like shit through a goose.
Elijah could see it clear enough. He didn't know exactly what had happened
between Jacob and the vampire lady. He might just be talking off his head,
comparing what happened to one mortal man to what was going on with a woman who
claimed to be an ancient vampire, but the boy was free to ignore the thoughts.
Mr. Ingram didn't claim to influence no one's will. He certainly didn't have
the type of hold Mrs. Wentworth seemed to have on this crazy boy.

Jacob rose abruptly. "We're
going to the pharmacy across the street. I'll get a splint and some tape. I
don't have time to wait, and if I can't show you how to tape up broken bones
after I've seen Gideon do it a hundred times, then I deserve to have it grow
back crooked. You don't have to take me back to her. I can hitch."

"I'll get you home,
son."

After Jacob left, the house had
the silence of a tomb and the desolation that came with it. Lyssa, rubbing her
forehead, kneading at her neck, moved aimlessly out of her bedroom. Going to
her study, she found the day's mail she'd not yet gone through. Jacob had left
it in neat stacks as he'd done each day, properly sorted and processed.

She'd told him not to open
personal correspondence, whereas he was welcome to open any correspondence from
vampires in her Region, invoices from vendors, checks from business interests,
things like that. So her eyes focused immediately on the two letters he'd set
out separately from the things he'd already handled.

One was from Lord Mason,
postmarked from Saudi Arabia. The other was from the monastery in Madrid. Since
she paid for all the repairs to the structure and owned the land on which it
rested to ensure it would forever remain a sanctuary for Thomas's spirit, she
periodically received direct correspondence from Father Gonzalez on various
mundane issues. Still, she chose to pick it up with Mason's letter and take
them both with her as she moved back out into the hallway. She wasn't really
sure of her destination until she arrived at the servants' quarters. Bran moved
at her side, his body reassuringly pressed against her thigh. Curling her
fingers in his hair, she held onto him to keep herself steady. Colors were
still too bright. She suspected she'd tipped over the peak of this particular
episode, but things weren't returning to normal as quickly as they had in the
past. She had to believe they would, though. Any other answer was unacceptable.

Her head was pounding again, and
the hammer seemed to be wielded by the image of Jacob's face as she broke his
arm, the feel of the bone giving so easily beneath her touch. Yet perversely
she sought to be as close to him as possible by standing here outside of his
room. For some reason she was hesitating as if she were an interloper in her
own house.

Pushing away the thought and
shoving open the door, she viewed the room he used when she didn't command his
company in her bed.

She hadn't come in here since
he'd moved in. Seeing his few clothes hung in the closet, she put the letters
on the dresser so she could run her fingers over the items, like the blue shirt
he'd be wearing for the dinner. In the dresser she found neatly folded socks,
underwear, spare belt, a few T-shirts and pairs of jeans. It made her chest
hurt. But she stood there, the top drawer open, laying her palm on the T-shirt
he'd last worn to work in the yard. It had a design from some kind of rock band
on it, maybe a concert he'd attended, or maybe just something he'd picked up
from a secondhand store. Most of his clothes, while in good shape and well-fitted,
seemed likely to have been gotten that way. She ran her fingertips over the
jeans, the pockets and front seam, the upper leg, thinking of how his body felt
under the worn denim.

When she turned toward the bed,
she stopped, nonplussed to find she'd picked up the T-shirt and was holding it
in her hand. She brought it to her face and almost moaned as the cool softness
of the fabric enveloped her throbbing forehead, her nose and lips buried in the
cloth.

Rex had told her about Thomas.
Lyssa had not felt well when she rose just before sunset that day. As Rex
watched her, something in his eyes crawled into her stomach, making the nausea
worse. Vampires never felt sick, but she didn't have energy to spare to worry
about that, because he was in one of his erratic, pacing moods. She knew she
needed to be alert, needed to appear calm and steady, to handle whatever brutal
mischief he might foment. But she was so tired.

It had been a few months since
she'd sent Thomas to the monastery. She'd visited him several times there, and
she wanted him back. Wanted to stay with him or bring him back. It was time.
Rex could stay or go, but she was bringing back her servant.

When Rex started talking about
Carnal, she was in no mood to bear it. She retorted as she had countless times
before. Carnal was simply using him, wanting to advance himself on Rex's power.

"He told me you'd say
something like that." Rex stared at her. She remembered a time when the
dark eyes on either side of that aquiline nose had been provocative and
mesmerizing to her. "You try to poison me against him. But I'm smarter
than you. You tried to poison my heart, but I've done it to you first. And to
your pious monk."

She laid her brush down, stared
at him. "What are you talking about?"

"You haven't been visiting
your monk's mind lately. He's been very naughty." Rex grinned, propping an
arm on the windowsill. He was distracted, watching for the sun to set through
the crack. He and Carnal would go out tonight and she would be blissfully alone
for the evening, but at the moment she needed his mind here.

"Rex, what are you talking
about?"

But she thought she knew. On one
of her visits, Thomas had tried to make her smile. Told her of a dream he'd had
of a young girl brings ing him a bouquet of wildflowers, begging for his help.
Her brother was dying and had asked for the Last Rites. "You must come,
Father. Right now. Please…"

"
In my dream, my lady,
I went to her room, though I tried to explain I was not a priest. There was no
brother there. She put her back against the door and removed her blouse. She
had beautiful black hair, generous hips, a full bosom
..."

"Ah, this is sounding
nothing like your skinny Mistress, my monk."

Thomas had smiled, taken her
hand. "I could not resist her in my dreams, my lady.. She knew me, took me
places I have not been in a while. I awoke here. It has been a long time since
I'd had such a dream."

Rex was talking. "There's
an herb with a white and gold flower, one of those long names no one can
pronounce. It acts like a hallucinogen. Carnal told me of it. He has a great
deal of wisdom for such a young vampire. Of course, I think he keeps
questionable company. He likes to play with vampire hunters. But he doesn't
know how I used the knowledge he gave me. That's between you and me."

On her last visit, Thomas had
not felt well. A flu bug, so she'd not fed from him as she had during times
past. She was getting her blood elsewhere of course, but they'd both wanted the
connection, the reminder of the bond they shared that must sustain them over a
distance. That last time, she'd felt his hot forehead and simply held his hand,
sitting in the garden at the monastery, talking about things they enjoyed, not
talking about things too painful to discuss. When she'd left, she told him she
was going to bring him home, even if she had to throw Rex out.

"You fed from him, didn't
you?" Rex turned from the window, studied her. "Each time you go to
see that human you love more than me, you feed from him, while you have denied
me your blood as well as your body since the night he tried to take my life.
Well, you may go to him, die together."

She thought her heart had been
ripped out the night Rex had allowed Carnal to rape her. But whenever a person
thought she'd been scarred to the depths of her soul, there were even deeper
wells to plumb.

If he'd only poisoned her,
perhaps she wouldn't have done what she did. After what he'd allowed Carnal to
do, she knew there was nothing left of the love between them. But Thomas… He'd
taken Thomas from her, made Thomas suffer only for the crime of loving her too
much. She hadn't deserved Thomas, but Thomas deserved justice.

A quiet calm had stolen over
her, and she'd known it was time. In fact, since the night in the dungeon, it
had been a countdown, and perhaps the nausea in her stomach was just the timer
going off, telling her. She'd risen up from the chair, taken two steps…

A moment later, there was just a
body on the floor, a crushed heart in her hand. Rex's empty eyes stared at her
in disbelief as she drew back the curtains and stood back, watching the last of
him turn to ash on a carpet she would burn.