To Curse the Darkness (6 page)

Georgia shrugged. “I found the fact that he brought just the one strange enough on its own. As I recall, he used not to go anywhere without a complete entourage. And that this single servant was not
Invitus
—that, too, struck me as being odd. Why bring a single slave when he could have commanded a battalion of warriors to attend him? It seems most unlike him.”

“Exactly.”

Georgia eyed him curiously. “You sound very certain of something. Do you believe you know the answer to these questions?”

“Yes.” Conrad's lips stretched in a horrid parody of a smile. “And, unfortunately, I find myself in agreement with Brockwell. It seems Sojinnyara's announcement tonight was indeed premature. I fear the plague has not been entirely eradicated after all.”

“What? You don't think that Brockwell…? Conrad, are you certain?”

“I would not have taken such care in how I killed him otherwise, nor would I be taking all these precautions now. Yes, my dear, I'm certain of it.”

“So then his ill temper tonight? And all those deaths Drew mentioned?”

Conrad sighed. “Were a result of his illness, yes. I believe when we look into the matter, we will discover that the population of his House has been diminished to a very great extent.”

“But why?”

“It is likely that, in an attempt to prolong his own life, he has killed off not just those who angered him, but also anyone strong enough to challenge him, as well as those whose blood he might have hoped would sustain him.”

“That would include his
Invitus
, I suppose?”

“I'm sure they were the first to go.”

“And when did you realize all of this?”

Conrad's lips twisted into a grimace of distaste. “Not until it was almost too late. I was sadly remiss. That mad gleam in his eyes should have alerted me much sooner, for I have seen that look too many times over the years. That, combined with his reckless behavior, was enough to leave me suspicious. However, it wasn't until he was dead and the scent of his blood reached my nose that I was absolutely certain. For that, too, is something I have become acquainted with.”

“His blood?” Georgia gasped. “Oh, Conrad, no! You did not drink it?”

Conrad glared at her. “What is wrong with you? Were you not here to observe that I did not? As I just said, I took great care in how I killed him. Although, to be honest, it was a very close thing. The bloodlust…” He shook his head. “No matter what logic and prudence dictate, the beast is not always best pleased at being denied. It hungered for a taste of him. It still does.”

“Oh. Well.” Georgia shrugged. “That's all right then. As long as you're safe. And, in light of everything that's happened, I am doubly pleased that you chose to intervene. Please allow me to retract my earlier complaints and to thank you once again.”

Conrad smiled wryly at her. “You're very welcome,
ciccia
. But I deserve no thanks. It was the least I could do to protect you from the consequences of my own reckless actions. You warned me, but I refused to listen. If I had not insisted on your being present here tonight, your life would not have been threatened in the first place.”

“Not at all,” she murmured, sinking gracefully into a deep curtsey. “It is my lord's prerogative to command me.” She shot a mischievous glance in his direction as she added, “Although, in the future, he might occasionally consider taking someone else's advice.”

“Indeed he might.”

Satisfied that all was as well as it could be, Georgia headed for the door. “I will go now and see about setting up another room so that we might continue our meeting elsewhere. We'll have to tell everyone what happened, I suppose.”

“No! Not a word. You're to say nothing about this to anyone—do you understand? No one must know.”

That stopped Georgia in her tracks. “Conrad… If the plague has not been eradicated, as we all believed, that means we're still at risk of infection. Surely the council has a right to be informed?”

“And what would you say to them?” Conrad demanded. “Would you tell them the truth? Would you tell them that, contrary to all of our previous assumptions, it's possible there are some among us who may live for decades after being infected with the disease? That, given the right set of circumstances, it's conceivable one might be ill and yet avoid detection—perhaps for centuries?”

“Is that truly what you think?”

“What I think is that I have not a prayer of seeing my vote pass tonight—or possibly ever—once I've admitted to a room full of
Invitus
that in order to survive this disease for more than a handful of days, one must in fact be made
Invitus
and one must have bred an army of other
Invitus
upon which one might feed.”

“I see.”

“Do you? Do you see how, even in death, Brockwell might yet contrive to defeat our plans? Do you see how this chance to effect change may yet be wrested from my grasp? How long I have waited for this moment. Am I to turn away from it—now, when at long last this goal, this victory, is so close at hand? This may be the only opportunity we will get to do this. I cannot let it pass. I
will
end this cult. There will be no new
Invitus
made, no more lives destroyed, no more pain and suffering. That all ends. Here. Today. With us.”

Georgia nodded, touched by his passion, his conviction.

“It's for this reason that no one can learn of this. It must be kept within our immediate circle—and even that must be kept very small.”

“And the disease? What of that? What if it claims more victims?”

“It won't.”

“Conrad…you can't be sure of that.”

“Of course I can. Whatever words we choose to use—eradicated, almost eradicated—that doesn't change the reality. You heard what Sojinnyara said, did you not? We will continue to be vigilant. We will keep an eye out for any new occurrences, and I will deal with any that come up. But I will keep an especially close eyes on our friends on the council.”

“Is it too much to hope that Brockwell was the last?”

“Not at all. That's very much what I'm hoping for.”

“And what of his family—what's left of them—will you at least inform them?”

“Yes, of course. It's most unfortunate, but they must be apprised. We will need to speak with each of them, in fact, in order to determine whether anyone else has been infected. Those who are must be dealt with swiftly, before they can infect anyone else. However, I am hopeful there will at least be a few we need not kill.”

“Yes, we must hope that is the case! For it will be most difficult to explain if you have to kill off his entire nest. It will seem quite out of character.”

“It will indeed,” Conrad agreed, looking tired and worn. “Once I've dealt with any who've been afflicted, I will compel the survivors to silence. That should be the end of the subject.”

“Very well.” Georgia stiffened her spine and once more headed for the door. “Then it seems there's nothing else to be said. After I've arranged for a new room to be readied for us, I will check in with our guests and make sure that they have everything they need.”

“Georgia,” Conrad called after her. “I meant what I said earlier—about my reasons for wanting you here tonight. It was important to me that I had you by my side as I began the process of dismantling this hated system.”

She paused in the doorway and glanced back at him. “I know.” Violent and impossible though he might be, he was also loyal to a fault. She could have done worse in a sire. She could have done worse in a friend.

“Of course, I had no idea about Brockwell. It was never my intention to put your life in danger. And, again, I apologize.”

“There's no need, my love. No one could have anticipated this happening, and I am convinced no one could have acted more quickly to eliminate the threat. You have saved my life, and not for the first time. Once again, I am in your debt.”

A sad smile lifted Conrad's lips. “As I am in yours. Forever.”

Chapter Four

San Francisco

Present Day

“
Bonjour,
chérie
,” Armand murmured as he smoothed his hand across the top of the gravestone. He took a moment to remove the dead flowers from the vases that flanked the stone, tossing them aside and replacing them with the fresh ones he'd brought. “I bet you did not expect to see me here again so soon, eh?”

He usually only visited Desert Rose's final resting place once a year, on the anniversary of her death…which he now realized was also the anniversary of her children's birth. How ironic was that? He shook his head at his own willful stupidity. After forty years of marking the date, he should have made the connection much sooner. He should have seen the resemblance…no, he
had
seen the resemblance, last October, when Julie, wearing her mother's clothes, had dressed as a hippie to attend the costume party Conrad had thrown in honor of the twins' birthday. Armand had noted the striking resemblance between the two women and immediately discounted it as nothing more than a painful coincidence.

“Can you see her,
chérie,
from wherever you are? Oh, I hope that you can. I hope you're up there somewhere, watching over your children, and that you know how beautiful your daughter is, how wonderful, how very like her mama…”

It all seemed so obvious now. Julie's obsession with Desert Rose, her stubborn refusal to give up any of her belongings—everything that had annoyed him. It was not because she was spoiled or selfish or any of the other insults he'd hurled at her. It was because she'd been attempting to hold onto the only reminders she had of the mother she'd never known. Even Conrad's loss of control when Armand had attempted to keep Julie from going into the party—looking not just like a hippie, but like her own mother's ghost—now made sense.

How long have you known?
Conrad had demanded, and Armand had never thought once to inquire what he'd meant. He'd known
nothing
. He still knew very little, come to think of it. But, at the time, he'd been so frightened—and so relieved when Damian had intervened to save his life—that it had driven any other thought from his head.

And there was something else that had finally been explained—the strange hold Damian had on the twins.

Armand had never understood it. But why wouldn't the twins share a special bond with the man who'd helped raise them? It was only natural that they should feel that way.

And that might have been the deepest cut of all.

The fact that Conrad had chosen Damian—someone who hadn't even known Desert Rose—to raise her children, instead of Armand, who had both known and loved her… Well, if Armand had ever needed definitive proof of Conrad's lack of trust in him, that need was now satisfied.

“I'm sorry,” Armand murmured as he lowered himself to sit cross-legged at the end of the grave. He stared pensively at the gravestone with its still-cryptic inscription:
With my life
. He'd never understood what that meant. Maybe one day soon he would. No doubt that too would prove to be something painfully obvious. “You must be very disappointed with me. I've made a mess of everything again, haven't I?”

The list of his failures with regard to Desert Rose was impressive. It was Armand who'd seen her first. Before Conrad had caught so much as a glimpse of her, Armand had already fallen just a little bit in love with her. But he'd let her go without a fight once his sire had expressed an interest.

It was Armand who'd let her run away in fright the night she'd learned monsters were real. He could have followed her when she'd run from the scene. He
should
have done so, for Conrad had ordered him to. He could have assuaged her fears, assured her that at least two of the monsters loved her and would never cause her harm.

Instead, unnerved by his own attraction to her and terrified of Conrad's jealous reaction if he ever learned of it, Armand had let her run—and then had spent the next two months helping to pick up the pieces of Conrad's broken heart.

It was also Armand who'd convinced Conrad to take her back. At the time that had seemed the perfect cure for everyone's unhappiness. It hadn't taken more than a couple of days, however, for Armand to realize that, this time around, it was
he
who was jealous.

So when he found her in the salon, stealing petty cash from his desk, he'd pretended to believe her when she told him Conrad said she could take it. When she begged him to let her leave, he'd kissed her goodbye and unlocked the door.

To be fair, he hadn't known then that she'd only just been turned. He hadn't realized how vulnerable she was, how horribly at risk. He hadn't known about her pregnancy, about the babies she'd been carrying—apparently no one had known about that. Still, he'd let her go and then spent several more months watching Conrad lose his mind to worry and grief. Conrad, whom he'd also loved, who'd been nothing but kind to him, and whom Armand had constantly betrayed.

Eight months later, it had been Armand to whom Desert Rose had appealed for help. On the day she died, she'd sent him a note begging him to meet her in the park, and for once he hadn't responded right away. He'd decided to look before leaping. He'd pondered the decision, tried to think things through. After all, he'd acted on impulse every other time with her, and look where that had gotten them! How was he to have known that doing the opposite now would be the biggest mistake of all?

Had he acted otherwise on any of those occasions, how differently all their lives might have turned out. Perhaps Desert Rose would not have died. Perhaps Conrad would not have been repeatedly torn apart with grief. Perhaps Julie would not have had to grow up without a mother. Or, then again, perhaps Julie would not have existed at all.

He'd rushed into action when he should have taken time to reflect, and then he'd hesitated when he should have rushed. If only he'd set out earlier to meet Desert Rose in the park on that fateful evening. But he'd been so concerned with Conrad's emotions, so reluctant to be the conduit through which she might be allowed back into his life, only to break his heart again.

“It seems I made similar mistakes with you both,” he told the gravestone ruefully. Why had it never occurred to him that both women might have had motives he could not even imagine? He'd thought them both fickle, thought them both selfish and spoiled. In reality, all three of those adjectives could be better used to describe him!

He'd vacillated in his affections. He'd acted on his own selfish motives. He'd longed for the days when he had been Conrad's favorite, when he'd been the spoiled recipient of most of his sire's attention.

At least tonight he'd finally done something right, doing for the daughter what he'd failed to do for her mother: arriving in time when her life was threatened, rather than too late. He was under no illusion that he'd actually saved Julie's life, of course. He hadn't. He'd merely protected her for the few minutes that were necessary, delaying Georgia until Conrad could intervene—and even then he would likely have failed without assistance from both Christian and Nighthawk. But tonight's success, small though it was, only served to highlight the extreme gravity of his earlier mistakes.

Forty years ago, having finally made up his mind to meet with Desert Rose—if only to tell her he would not, once again, ease the way for her to reconnect with Conrad—he'd arrived too late. The park was empty. The tang of blood still hanging in the evening air should have alerted him to what had happened. Perhaps it had. Perhaps, on some level, he'd known. He certainly hadn't wanted to believe it, however. It wasn't until hours later, when Conrad returned to the house, shocked and grieving, that the truth had finally sunk in: her blood was on Armand's hands. By delaying as long as he had, he'd as good as killed Desert Rose.

Which was exactly why it should have been he—not Damian—who'd been tasked with the job of helping to raise her orphaned children, to have been their “Uncle Armand” as he'd once teasingly called himself. He smiled wryly now, remembering Julie's horrified reaction.

It's not a joke. You really could be my uncle!

How little he'd understood what she meant. It would have been a fitting punishment to have been burdened with watching them grow up orphaned, to have been reminded every moment of every day just what he'd cost them, to have been forced to answer their questions when they asked about their mother, to have dried their tears when the unfairness of life overwhelmed them. He'd have deserved it, yes. But obviously, Conrad had wanted better for his children.

That left Armand still deserving of punishment. Perhaps tonight fate had finally found a way to even the scales.

He hadn't lied when he said he wished he'd arrived home later than he did. Not because he wished her dead—that was an absurd accusation. He was certain that, even without his intervention, Julie would still have been safe. Thankfully, she'd had more than enough heroes watching out for her tonight. But if Armand had not been there, if fate had not forced Conrad's hand, Armand had no doubt his sire would have been more than happy to continue keeping the truth about the twins' birth a secret from him.

Armand would have been happy with that too—very happy to have been allowed to live the rest of his life without ever being forced to realize, not just how much he'd failed everyone he loved, but also how very far beyond his touch Julie was, how hopelessly out of his league.

It really didn't matter how much he loved her—or how much he loved Conrad. If either of them ever learned the truth about all the mistakes Armand had made, they would both despise him.

* * * * *

Conrad was in the garden, lost in reverie, when Julie found him. “Grandfather?” she said hesitantly. “May I talk to you?”

He turned to smile at her. “Of course, my dear.” The expression on his face, so loving and sorrowful, was heart-wrenching. “I'm sure you must still have a lot of questions.”

Julie nodded, feeling his grief roll over her like a giant wave. She did have questions. She had a list of them, in fact. But the ones that most concerned her were probably not the ones he was expecting. All her life Conrad had seemed invincible, a bulwark of strength, a constant source of support. In the past few months, watching him interact with others within the nest, it had become clear to her that he provided that same sense of security, of being cared for and protected—no matter what—to everyone in the family.

“What is it you would like to know?”

What she most wanted to know was the reason for the cracks she could sense beneath his surface. She'd seen him deal with difficult situations before. She'd seen him weak and injured after he'd been taken captive. She'd seen him worried or heartsick on a number of occasions over the years. But she'd never seen him like this. For the first time in her life, he seemed on the verge of breaking. There had to be a reason for that.

“Let's talk about Georgia,” she suggested a few minutes later, when they were seated together on the garden bench. “Tell me how the two of you met.”

She nestled against him as he spoke. The night had turned cooler and the fog was moving in, but she basked in the warmth that radiated from him, and through that connection she saw everything. It all played out in her mind's eye as though she'd actually been there, as though his thoughts had a vibration and her brain had somehow learned to read and translate them as one would a code. Everything he said and everything he left unsaid was laid bare, and she knew then that she had not been mistaken. At heart, he was still every bit as strong as she'd suspected, still as steady and comforting as she remembered. But those cracks were real, and they were widening.

He'd suffered so much over the course of his inconceivably long life, and Georgia had played a critical role in easing so much of that suffering. It shouldn't surprise anyone that if there was anything capable of breaking him, it was the thought of having to kill the very woman he had always credited with saving his life.

“I still don't understand about this disease,” Julie said. “I mean, to start with, I don't even know what it's called.”

“It's had several names over the years. Most of us refer to it simply as the blood plague. To those who invented it, however, it was mostly known as the bishop's solution, or
Vesco Inedia
, which roughly translated means ‘to eat to the point of starvation'—a fairly accurate description of the fate that awaited those who were afflicted.”

“Why is that?”

“The disease interferes with the body's ability to receive nourishment—leading to weakness, uncontrollable hunger and, eventually, madness. Typically, those infected took to preying upon others of our kind. It's an instinctive response, which, under other circumstances, would seem entirely reasonable. After all, at times when we are weak or injured, vampire blood often acts as a restorative.”

“But not in this case?”

“No. In the case of this it did nothing but serve to spread the disease faster, as was no doubt intended.”

“And is it always fatal?”

Conrad nodded. “Yes. Always. That was its purpose, after all. It was engineered as a way to destroy us.
Ad maledicam tenebris
: to curse the darkness. It would hardly have been effective had it been something we could overcome.”

“And by ‘darkness' I assume you mean vampires?”

“Indeed. It was not just a commentary on the supposed state of our souls, you know. At that time, the night was much darker than it is today. There was no light to be had, other than that which was fueled by flame. As fire is a particular weakness of ours, we kept much more to the shadows than we do in this modern age. Hence, to many humans, we were Darkness personified. We represented all the dangers that lurked unseen.”