Chapter 22
Chapter Twenty-Two
“Genevieve.”
The voice pulled her out of the nightmare of darkness and blood. She flinched away from the hand on her shoulder before she placed the voice. “Kendrick?”
“Yes. Bad dream?”
“Old nightmare.” One that broke into intangible shadows upon waking. Sometimes not remembering proved more frightening than the dream itself. An intangible spectre of fear, lurking just out of reach. Genevieve unclenched her hands from the bedclothes. “I’m sorry.”
“What have you to apologize for?” he asked. The question must have been rhetorical, because he continued. “May I touch you?”
She nodded, and as his hand stroked down her back, the tension drained away. “Is it still daylight?” she murmured without opening her eyes. Even through the terror the nightmare had conjured, she still felt exhausted and lethargic.
“Midafternoon, by my reckoning,” Kendrick said, his voice low and raspy.
“We’re married.”
“Mm-hmm.” The sound carried amusement in it.
“Will you tell me your story? About yourself?” she whispered, opening her eyes a sliver. She found his face in the darkness, so close to hers. Maybe it would chase away the lingering shadows. “I like a good tale, too. Are you Saxon? Briton? Celt? Where do you hail from?”
His gaze turned inward. “My name is—was—Cyneric. Old English, they call it now. I have no Norsemen in my line that I know of, though I speak it the way it used to be. You could call me Saxon, I believe, though mayhap there was Briton in my blood. The particulars—the peoples, the year, the region—I don’t remember.
They come and go in snatches and images in my mind, sometimes so vivid, I think I could find the spot where the dun in which I grew to manhood used to be.
But so much has changed… Thirty-odd years under the sun is a blink compared to centuries in the dark. ”
Her hand seized compulsively in the fabric of his shirt.
“As to how I was turned, there was a battle,” he said slowly, as if he had to pull the memory out of deep sleep.
“I was no one of consequence, but I had trained as a fighter. It seemed important at the time, and very fraught. A man came to our king and offered him soldiers who would fall and rise again, a sure bulwark against the threat that harried our borders. Those who were true and loyal in their purpose would get back up and fight on, no matter their injuries.”
“Codswallop,” she murmured.
The corner of his mouth turned up. “The greatest fighters drank a bloody brew and went out to do what we did best: vanquish enemies. Many did fall, and we did rise and turn the tide. At least I think we did.” He sighed.
“But we were no longer a part of that sunlit world. Our new master commanded us to come away with him—an indomitable force for hire. We were forced to abandon home and kin to their fate. But mayhap we spared them monsters in their midst. I don’t know.
But our new master had overreached himself; there were too many of us for him to control.
It wasn’t long before one of us killed him.
Then I began to wander from hearth fire to hearth fire. I like a good tale.” He smiled.
“Who was he? Another vampire?”
“I can’t remember. I think not. I remember his blood being hot when it spilled. Some magician, perhaps, who delved too far into what should never have been.”
“And you were alone?”
“Not always, but many of those from the same warrior band got themselves killed,” Kendrick said.
“It was…hard, in those days. You were either killed or cast out of human settlements when they discovered what you were, and there were few refuges from the daylight. Or you were used by those who wanted your powers. But it was a long time ago.”
“Nearly a thousand years,” she whispered.
“Or longer. Before the coming of the conqueror. I remember that,” he said, with a quick, flashing smile. “But after the Romans. I did not learn Latin until I learned to read.”
“And when was that?”
“At an abbey.”
“What were you doing at an abbey?”
He thought about it. “I helped defend it. They needed help fending off attacks.”
“From Norsemen?”
“I assume.” He was silent for a moment. “Sometimes I believe it has all disappeared, but then with a turn of phrase or a standing stone, my memory flickers to life with fragments and images, and all the words come pouring back to me. Put a sword in my grasp and my hand remembers, even though which battles I fought in or commanders I fought under has faded with time.” The corner of his mouth turned up.
“But stories—stories I’ve heard repeated over the centuries—those, I remember.
Those linger in my mind like a bell rung, the sound echoing through the years. ”
“And you still read new stories,” Genevieve realized.
“Mmm. I like to read. Even when life begins to wear on me, something new still exists within the pages.”
“And the stories are about humans.”
“Well, I have read a book about a scientist’s monster, and a fairy tale about a mermaid, but by and large, yes,” Kendrick said, the corners of his mouth turning up.
“They’re written by humans, I mean. Told by humans.
” She pushed herself up on an elbow so she could look Kendrick in the face.
Her sleep-drugged brain was trying to make connections.
She wet her lips and tried to explain. “Vampires do not paint because all the colors we see are via candle flame and moonlight. We do not make music because we hide ourselves away in shadows and silence. We tell stories, but not often, and we do not invent new ones. We are divorced from humanity. The breach of death is between us.”
Kendrick nodded.
She continued. “But those who listen to music, to stories, and who see the art that others create—I believe it helps us cling to who we were, to our humanity. When we stop recalling our past, stop listening to human living voices, that is when vampires begin to lose themselves to the rot of cruelty or base instinct.”
“And Rupert started forcibly isolating the bulk of the London vampire population twenty years ago,” Kendrick murmured.
“Along with his laissez-faire method of policing the actions of the cruel. And recidivism has mounted among the young. You may have stumbled upon something, Genevieve.” He ran his hand through her hair. “That’s brilliant.”
“Otherwise, how would you be fine, and vampires under a hundred are losing their grip and killing indiscriminately?” she pointed out.
“Among other things, poor impulse control around craving blood. But you are right.”
Tiredness tried to swamp her, but she yawned determinedly. “How do you fix that?”
“Feeding regularly so the craving doesn’t outpace your ability to control, mixed with carefully monitored periods of fasting so you learn what you can endure and increase your tolerance. Do you need to sleep more, my heart’s gleam?”
She shook her head. “I tried to feed as often as I could because I was around the children, but I always hated it, and I hated having to do it.”
“Why?”
She mumbled into his shirt, “Stealing from people. Being a parasite.”
His hand stroked through her hair. “Then come to me when you are hungry, Jenny. I’ll feed you.”
She lifted her heavy head. “How will that work?”
“If I’ve fed recently enough, you’ll receive sustenance just like from any other.” He stroked a hand up and down her back. “I won’t mind.”
She protested, “It doesn’t solve the larger problem. What do others do?”
“You assume others have the same inhibitions,” he pointed out. “It’s something you get used to.”
“What if they don’t?” she said mulishly.
He grinned at her. “So impatient. We don’t have to eat the whole elephant at once. Be content with small bites. We will get there eventually. Ideally, your maker would teach you all this when you are turned, but I don’t think any of you young ones have had good teachers in anything.”
“No. Not at all. No one ever taught me,” she whispered. “They only hobbled me.”
Kendrick’s gaze darkened. His eyes flickered from her hand on his chest to her face, but to her relief, he did not ask. He simply said, “You know I would end your tormentor in a moment if you wished it.”
“We’re trying to start a new way for the Ossuary. As much as I would like to see Laurent dead, that wouldn’t be wise. He’s not the problem, really. It’s the blood bond that’s the problem.”
He raised an eyebrow. “How so?”
“Well, so many vampires are still chained by their blood bonds, like Elspeth. It still exists, for all that he isn’t ordering her around by it right now. He still could, and all his previous loathsome edicts stand. Is there a way to break it?”
“Time, or making a vampire yourself.”
“That’s all?” she mumbled, dropping her head to his shoulder again.
“All that I have heard.” His thumb rubbed down her arm comfortingly. “Sleep a bit, my dear heart. You’re not used to being awake.”
“I used to love the late afternoon,” she murmured, her gaze moving to the small ribbons of light that the curtains could not fully block.
“The way the world looked with a patina of gold. I’d come home from school and do lessons at the table in my father’s study as he spoke to university students and grilled them on their vocabulary.
” The days had been full of light and language, and the nights full of stories. Stories and love.
Her eyes fluttered closed.
“They only hobbled me.”
“I always hated it and hated having to do it.”
The words rang in Kendrick’s head long after Genevieve had subsided into a doze again, and he realized that what he saw as two separate things—her hatred of drinking blood, the only thing that could sustain them, and her traumatic and painful beginning as a vampire—were probably linked far more closely than he would have liked.
Whatever it was, her body remembered, and her mind did not. He recalled the way she had frozen when he had first confronted her outside his Ossuary rooms. An unexpected, unseen hold had sent her into a panic.