Innocent Blood(43)

The loathsome Sanguinist woman, Nadia, had marched her back into the darkness and secured her in this coach. The chain was locked into a hasp at waist height, the links of silver so short that she was forced to stand while the room rocked around her.

Steps away, Nadia watched her, as patient as a fox watching a rabbit den.

Elizabeth twisted her arms, trying to find a more comfortable position. The silver manacles burned in a ring of fire around her wrists, but she was more at ease here than in the dining car, where the single open curtain had allowed in a stream of sunlight. She had not showed how much it had seared her eyes whenever she looked at the woman and soldier, refusing to reveal weakness before these two humans.

As the train trundled on, she set her feet farther apart to keep from being knocked about by the rocking. She would adapt. The modern world had many powerful objects, and she would master them. She would not let fear of them rule her.

With her hands pressed against the wall, she savored the warmth of the sun-heated steel against her palms. She imagined the sun blazing strong and bright outside, crossing a blue sky with sharp white clouds. She had not seen such sights for centuries, barely remembered what they looked like. Strigoi could not stand the sun, as Sanguinists could. She missed the day, with its heat and life and growing things. She remembered her gardens, the bright flowers, the healing herbs she once grew.

But was she willing to give up her freedom as a strigoi in order to see the sky again, to convert to the pious life of a Sanguinist?

Never.

She rubbed her warmed hands together and pressed them against her cold cheeks. Even if she tried to convert, she suspected God would know that her heart was black, and the blessed wine would strike her dead.

She had agreed to help the Sanguinists, but her promise had been given under threat of death. She had no intention of keeping her word if presented with a better chance at survival. An oath sworn on pain of death was not binding.

She owed them nothing.

As if hearing her thoughts, Nadia glared at her. Once Elizabeth was free, she would make the tall woman pay for her insolence. But for now she sensed that Nadia would be a difficult captor to escape. The woman plainly loathed her, and she seemed dedicated to Rhun—although more like a fellow knight, not like a woman devoted to a man.

The same could not be said of the human woman.

Dr. Erin Granger.

Elizabeth had easily spotted the telling pink scars on the other’s neck. A strigoi had fed upon her recently and suffered her to live. A rare enough event, and certainly no ordinary strigoi would have left such careful marks. Those punctures spoke of control and care. From the awkward manner in which the woman and Rhun sat and did not speak, she suspected that Rhun had fallen again, fed again.

But in this instance, he had not killed the woman, nor turned her into a monster.

Elizabeth remembered how Erin’s heart had sped when Rhun first entered the car. She recognized the anguish that poured from the woman’s voice when she saw his wounds and spoke his name. This human seemed intertwined with Rhun in a deeper manner than the blood bond of feeding should foster.

Jealousy flared hot and venomous.

Rhun belongs to me and me alone.

Elizabeth had paid dearly for that love and refused to share it.

She thought back to that night, of Rhun in her arms, of their unspoken love for each other finally being expressed in the heat of lips, of the press of flesh, the soft words of love. She knew what was happening was forbidden a priest, but little did she know how much such laws chained the beast that truly lurked inside Rhun. Once broken, that face finally showed its fangs, its darker lusts, and tore her from her old life and into one of eternal night.

And now it seemed Rhun had loosed that same beast upon another woman, another whom he plainly cared for.

In that attraction, Elizabeth also saw possibility. Given a chance, she would use their feelings for each other against them, to destroy them both.

But for now, she must content herself with waiting. She must go along with Bernard’s group, but she held little trust in the cardinal. Not now, and certainly not during her mortal life. Back then, she had striven to warn Rhun against Bernard, sensing the depths of secrets hidden inside his heartless, sanctimonious chest.

In the neighboring car, her keen ears picked out her name being spoken.

“We cannot risk losing her,” Cardinal Bernard said. “We must know where she is at all times.”

The young monk named Christian answered. “Don’t worry. I’ve already taken measures to assure that. I will keep her on a short leash.”

Another spoke with the thick tongue of the Germans, marking him as Brother Leopold. “I will see about getting more coffee.”

Light footsteps left the table, heading to the coach at the front, where food was being prepared and where she could faintly make out another human heartbeat, another servant to this horde.