Jarod wondered how much the humans knew.
“They’ll be fine. We had everything ready, just in case.”
“Good thing we did.”
Lucien nodded. “I’d planned on coming back at night. I’d hoped
we would have more time. But ‘expect the best, prepare for the worst,’
that’s what I always say.”
“You’ve said that for twelve thousand years?”
Lucien shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe five. Ten tops.” He
pointed at the truck. “Let’s go. The sooner we get home, the sooner
we can get Lilith straightened out. Not to mention Aanu.”
Jarod had no idea what he could do to “straighten out” someone
who’d been reduced to a bag of bleached bones. Sighing he followed
Lucien to the truck.
Six
He worried most about Lilith, perhaps because he was certain he
could help her in some way, even if he didn’t know exactly how. Aanu’s
bones seemed hopeless, irrelevant. And his own condition, after the
bloodletting on the helicopter, was more immediate than either of the
others.
Still, he ignored the overwhelming exhaustion and forced himself
to keep his eyes open as Lucien transported him from a warehouse
near the outskirts of New York City to the hallway outside Lilith’s
bedroom.
“I’ll be back with Lilith,” Lucien said, then disappeared.
He reappeared only seconds later, kneeling next to the crate that
held Lilith’s sleeping body. Effortlessly, he pushed it over the threshold
into the bedroom, leaving it next to the bed.
“You’re going to leave her in there?” Jarod asked.
Lucien shrugged. “Doesn’t make much difference. She’ll get out
when she wakes up.”
Jarod chewed the inside of his cheek, considering. Just as Lucien
was almost out the door, he said, “No. I want her out of the box and on
the bed.”
Lucien stopped, looking back with his eyebrows raised. Only then
did Jarod realize he’d basically issued an order.
“May I ask why?” Lucien asked mildly.
“Her condition concerns me. I want to hook up an IV before she
wakes up.”
“You think it’ll help?”
“If I can figure out what the hell I’m doing and what the hell’s
wrong with her, yes, I think it’ll help.”
Lucien nodded. “Fair enough.”
He peeled the top off the crate, popping the nails as easily as if
they were thumbtacks. Then, gently, he lifted Lilith, settled her onto the
bed.
“Thank you,” Jarod said.
Lucien nodded. “I’m going to get Sasha and William.” He pointed
at the makeshift blanket-bag on the floor—Aanu’s bones. He was trem
bling again, but he drew his hand back quickly, making it clear he wanted
to hide his state. “Take care of Aanu,” he said.
He disappeared before Jarod could ask what the hell he was supposed
to do with “Aanu.” Sighing, he knelt next to the bag and opened
the sagging mouth to look inside
“Oh, my God.”
As quickly as possible, he hauled the bag down the hallway to one
of his better-equipped hospital rooms. There, he emptied the contents
onto the bed. It came out in a clump. Connective tissue had begun to
regenerate between the bones, attaching them to each other again.
Unfortunately, they’d been piled together in a mish-mash in the makeshift
bag.
Carefully, Jarod began to separate the jumbled remains. Small,
square bones—he couldn’t tell if they were metatarsals or metacar-
pals—had fused to one arm’s ulna. The other end of the ulna was
connected to the mandible, protruding from the chin. Vertebrae studded
a clavicle like a necklace, glued to it with fresh, pink tissue.
“What a mess,” he muttered, and grabbed a scalpel.
A few minutes later, when Lucien found him, he had separated
about half of the incorrectly reconnected bones and set them aside,
careful to keep them a few inches away from each other.
“So you figured it out?” Lucien said.
Jarod glanced at the proto-vampire. He was leaning in the doorway,
his expression uncomfortably smug. “More or less,” Jarod muttered.
He gently separated a collection of phalanges—which actually
seemed to be in the right order—and set them down next to the other
hand bones he’d already sorted. He hadn’t yet separated them into left
and right hands. “Was this regeneration triggered by the exposure to
air?”
“Yes. That’s why there was no air in the cave. I should have
realized there wouldn’t be before I dragged you in there.”
Jarod barely registered the almost-apology. “At a guess, I’d say
the more oxygen the better, to regenerate the cells.”
“Probably.”
He slipped a tibia free from a mass of bones and tissue at the
bottom of the bag, where the bones had settled and become severely
confused. “I need a hyperbaric chamber. Can you get me one?”
“How much?”
“Fifty grand, at least.”
“Buy it. I’ll make sure the funds are there.”
Two hours later, the bones were arranged in careful order on the
bed. The entire time he’d been working, Jarod had been thinking about
what might happen over the next few days, as Aanu’s healing progressed.
Would he regrow his brain, with all the knowledge it had previously
held? How could a sophisticated consciousness possibly regenerate
from bones that had been bleached dry for countless hundreds—
even thousands—of years?
It boggled Jarod’s mind. Gave him a headache, even. And he
couldn’t afford to waste time on speculation. There was still Lilith to
think of.
He left Aanu to his own devices and went to tend to his other
patient. The hyperbaric chamber wouldn’t arrive until sunset tomorrow,
by which time he figured he could rustle up enough vampire help
to get it set up and running.
Lilith seemed well enough, as far as he could judge while she was
still in her daytime Sleep. He looked at his watch. Still a few hours until
dusk. Time enough to do what he wanted to do.
He’d given her IVs before, to assuage her hunger, blood ready to
pump into her veins as soon as the sun set. He set up equipment to do
the same thing tonight, with one small change.
He had plenty of blood in storage—part of a supply he kept current
by channeling several pints a week from a half-dozen local blood
banks—but as one of a very few humans living in a colony of vampires,
Jarod considered it prudent to keep a supply of his own blood
fresh and ready, in case one of the natives got overenthusiastic. He
checked his supplies, and set two pints of it aside for Lilith’s morning
meal.
Whatever was wrong with Lilith, whatever Ialdaboth had done to
her to keep her loyal, his own blood seemed to alleviate the effect.
Perhaps it would need to be fresh to work, but this was definitely worth
trying. Maybe his stored blood could counter her symptoms long enough
for him to rest and for his hemoglobin levels to return to normal. In the
meantime, he still had enough left to give himself a transfusion if necessary.
With his work finished, exhaustion finally caught up with him. He
could barely keep his eyes open as he made a few, final notes in Lilith’s
file. He scribbled his initials under them and laid the file aside, then sat
next to Lilith on the bed. Gently, he ran a strand of her pale hair through
his fingers.
“We’ll get this to work,” he said. “Don’t worry.”
Her still, waxy face remained unmoving. He smiled and kissed
her lips, surprised to find they held a vague warmth. Then, with no
energy left to carry him down the hallway to his own room, he stretched
out next to her and fell asleep.
Night came, but Lilith did not awaken. Her sleep rose from the
depths to tremble on the verge of wakefulness, but she couldn’t swim
those last few inches to the surface. She was vaguely aware of the
presence of night, of blood flowing into her veins from the needle in the
bend of her elbow, and of a warm weight next to her on the bed. But
she couldn’t open her eyes, couldn’t move. Couldn’t wake up. Not
quite.
Who was in bed with her? Who did she know who was stupid
enough to lie next to a vampire at dusk? The answer came to her
immediately—Jarod.
And it was his blood moving into her veins. She recognized the
difference, a flavor of sorts, as it began to pump through her. Then she
lost the thread that had drawn her nearly to consciousness, and sank
once more into Sleep.
To her surprise, she could feel him there, too. A vague sense of
his presence that became gradually clearer. He slept, as well, and their
minds seemed to call to each other on that plane, bound by shared
blood.
Lilith.
You shouldn’t have brought me back. She couldn’t help the
despair—it bubbled up unbidden from some deep place within.
Why?
You don’t know what I am.
Show me.
If I do . . . If I do you’ll never love me.
Show me.
The despair thickened and darkened around her, and suddenly
she felt Ialdaboth’s presence within it. It was part of the conditioning,
that despair, part of what had made her so totally his, until Lorelei’s
interference had made it possible for her to question. It would, undoubtedly,
not be the last obstacle.
But in another way, it was real. If Jarod knew who she had been,
what she had done, how could he possibly accept her? How could he
look at her again with desire, as he had on the plane?
That’s my problem. His presence radiated gentleness. Show me.
There were no secrets here. She let it all go.
She had been born Catherine Gibson in 1760, in the Virginia Colony.
By the time the Revolutionary War started, she had very little to depend
upon but herself. Following the armies from battle to battle, giving
soldiers pleasure where she could, she eked out a barely acceptable
existence.
Then she’d met the vampire. She couldn’t even remember his
name, wasn’t sure he’d ever told her. He’d been among the soldiers,
taking blood where he could, often from injured soldiers on the battlefield,
where their deaths would be unremarkable. Even then, misguided
as she was, she’d recognized the smell of evil. She’d decided it didn’t
matter.
He’d offered her gold for sex, which seemed like a good exchange.
But the sex had become brutal, and he’d Turned her in the
process, unasked but not entirely unwilling.
Not the rest. This much alone was too much.
Some part of her, distant, felt Jarod moving beside her. He was
still asleep, caught in unconsciousness with her, but he put his arm
around her.
There, in the darkness, where they were both together, he said,
Tell me. You feed on my blood. I have a right to know.
The vampire had liked her. She had been a bitter woman, stripped
of every comfort. Her mother had been a prostitute, her father a thief
who’d eventually beaten the mother of his child to death.
“Would you kill him?” the vampire had asked her. “Would you kill
your father, and anyone else who might belong to your family? Do you
know if you have brothers or sisters?”
“Do I care?” she’d replied bitterly. “If they are spawn of his
flesh, they deserve to die.”
As I deserve to die. I deserved it then and I deserve it even
more now.
Hush. Jarod’s presence comforted her, then urged her to go on.
The vampire had told her there would be a great reward for her, a
place for her in a community of vampires where she would be loved
and accepted. All she had to do was kill her father. She had done it, and
reveled too much in the killing. He’d had a wife she’d happily slaughtered,
too.
And the vampire took her to Ialdaboth.
A hundred years of initiation. A hundred years of brainwashing,
of committing the most hideous acts, killing humans, children,
other vampires. Whatever I was told, without question. It’s a testing
period, and I passed.
Pictures passed through her mind, memories of atrocities she’d
committed. Since her rejection of Ialdaboth she’d tried to push them
away, into places where she couldn’t find them, wouldn’t have to feel
themselves out in vivid color for her mind’s eye to see.
And for Jarod to see, as well.
Inside, she wept. Whether she would awaken to find tears on her
face, she didn’t know, but here in this place of strange consciousness,
her body shuddered and spasmed with horrible weeping.
Do you see? You can never leave me, because of what you’ve
done. Ialdaboth’s voice. Not his actual presence, but his voice, ingrained
in her mind with the hundred years of indoctrination and, after
that, the hundred years of loyal service. No one there can ever truly
accept you. They all know you can’t really change.
Despair clung to her like tar, dragged her down. She could sink
Let her go! Jarod’s voice, his thought-voice, shocking her out of
the black despair by its intensity. Just let her the hell go!
It’s not really him, Lilith responded automatically. It’s just his
voice, left behind in my head
And suddenly she was awake, staring up at the ceiling of her
bedroom in the Underground. Next to her, Jarod also gasped awake,
his arms clutching at her, pulling her close. She pressed her face into
his chest. Here, in the world of light and consciousness, there were no
tears.
Seven
“It can’t be that easy. He can’t be gone.” She watched Jarod’s
hands moving down her arm, his gentle fingers as he pulled the IV
needle free. He was Dr. Greene now, the touch quiet but impersonal.
He curled the tips of his fingers into the bend of her elbow, feeling the
vague pulse there as she spoke.
He turned his attention to her face, lifting one of her eyelids to
peer at her pupils. “Your blood carries markers
from Ialdaboth, because
one of his children Changed you. I think the collision between
that blood and mine, which carries markers from Lucien, canceled out
some aspect of the brainwashing.”
“How?”
He looked into her other eye. “Beats the hell out of me. Most of
this vampire shit makes no damned sense.”
She laughed a little. He touched the pulse at her throat. It felt
more like a caress, and there was warmth in his eyes.
“It isn’t over,” he said. “It’ll be a process, and you just got it
underway.”
“A battle.” She should have known that. Ialdaboth wouldn’t give
her up without a fight. A fight she’d brought right to the Underground’s
door.
“Julian should have killed me,” she said. “It would have been
safer.”
He cupped her cheek, looking into her eyes with concern. “If
Julian wants you here, then there’s a reason. Trust him.” He bent toward
her, brushing her lips with his. “I do.”
He made sure she was comfortable, then left her. Her heart lurched
as she watched him walk out the door. Why was he so good to her?
There was such warmth in his eyes when he looked at her. It was too
much to hope that he might actually care about her, especially after
what he’d seen, what she’d shown him. He was just concerned for
her, as her doctor.
She had to leave. If she stayed here, she would endanger everyone.
Perhaps Jarod most of all, because he was so often close to her.
What happened to her didn’t matter, so long as this place was protected.
Sitting up in the bed, she swung her legs out from under the covers,
touched her feet to the floor. She could still feel the brush of his lips
against hers, their gentle warmth. She regretted that she would never
get a chance to explore their mutual attraction any further.
Maybe she should leave him a note. But, in the end, she decided
against it.
Getting out of the Underground proved more complicated than
she’d expected. When she’d infiltrated the place before, she’d had
Ialdaboth’s abilities on her side. Now she had only her own. While
formidable, they paled next to her erstwhile master’s.
So she wandered the corridors, following the flow of strange,
vampiric magic, going toward the places where the magic waned and