The Vampire Queen's Servant(40)

He'd stand by her, no matter what she did to him.

But even as he had the thought, he remembered what Gideon used to tell him. Fate didn't like being dared.



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Chapter Twenty-two





When he came, so did Lyssa, once again surprising her with how responsive her body was to him. Particularly in her current state. The demons pounding on the inside of her head had been driven back by the tender lovemaking he'd initiated. When she took control, needing the sense of holding the reins to tilt her world back to the correct axis, they returned like a building storm, their strength increasing the harder and faster she rode him, so even when the orgasm convulsed her body, she had to shut her eyes against the pain.

They dressed in silence. She didn't search his mind, but she sensed his quiet acceptance of her mood, such that he respected her silence, helped her with her clothes that now felt unbearably damp and uncomfortable. When he got her settled on the bike, he pressed his hand briefly over one of hers resting at his hip before he started the engine. He took them home via forest paths and sleeping neighborhoods, putting them on the main roads only briefly before he reached her drive.

By the time he stopped the motorcycle by the fingerprint reader, she was dizzy. She managed to put her thumb up to it, though her body jerked, alarmingly.

He was watching her closely, but she had no energy to spare as she settled back on the bike, pressing her cheek to his back again. Somehow that helped ease the pain roaring through her head, as if he possessed a magnetism opposite to her own that helped open the blood vessels.

He stopped by the kitchen entrance. When Bran bounded out of the darkness followed by his brothers and sisters, she raised a hand to fend off his usual rambunctious attack, but Jacob intervened.

"Bran, no." His tone was sharp, authoritative. The dog stopped in midbound, backing off.

Jacob took her outstretched hand, concerned by the quiver in it as he helped her off the bike. "My lady, are you well? What can I do?"

"Yes." Her voice was muted. Too labored to project. "It was beautiful, Jacob. So perfect. I'm sorry."

"Sorry for—"

Before he could finish the thought, she spun away from him and hunched over, a shudder rolling through her slight frame. When he closed his hands on her shoulders, his palms partially touching her bare skin below the short sleeves, he found she was burning hot to the touch. She began to vomit into the grass, bright red blood, the force of the expulsion yanking her forward. When she cried out, his heart lurched in alarm.

Filled with pain for her, as well as questions he wanted to demand she answer, he held her until she finished. When she did, she was quivering in his arms, weak as any time he'd yet seen her.

"My lady." He pressed his hand over her feverish brow. Her shaking hands rose, clamped down on his to hold it there, either to ease the pain or give her the comparative coolness of his palm, he didn't know. Her veins were beating violently, a migraine like he'd never felt before. "Don't speak, my lady. I'll get you to bed. Just hold on."





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Thomas had a form of autoimmune blood disease that had mutated in his altered servant's body, accelerating quickly with no hope of cure. Had Thomas known he was giving Jacob yet another invaluable lesson when Jacob had become his primary caregiver during those last terrible months? There'd been no doctor to call, no hospital to visit. Not even a diagnosis of the ailment because it hadn't been logged by modern medicine and never would be, as long as vampires and their servants remained the shadowy stuff of fiction and nightmares. As he had then, Jacob fell back on remedies and first aid he knew, as well as simple things the monks at the monastery had taught him. He wasn't certain if they would work, but that wasn't the main concern hammering in his mind now.

Though the symptoms between his lady and the monk were very different, Jacob had no doubt they were somehow connected. The cold fear in his vitals told him what he could not ignore or drown out any longer. She was dying. Whatever this ailment was, it was going to kill her in the end. The awareness of it was in her eyes, the same way it had been in Thomas's. In fact, now that he'd given a name to the hollow sickness in his gut, he recalled that awareness had been there all along, in many of the things she'd said or done, the silences she'd maintained, the looks she'd given him. Even the way she touched him, as if she wanted to savor each sensation to the fullest. Vampires were sensual creatures, so he'd overlooked the significance of her exceptional desire to dwell on the experience of a single touch, the beauty of one finite moment.

He'd been angry at her bluntly stated refusal to give him the third mark. He'd uncharitably thought it was more of her tests, holding a carrot just beyond his nose. Seeing now what he hadn't wanted to see, he realized she thought she was saving his life.

With a third mark, if the vampire dies, the servant dies with her…

A goddess had the full picture of the journey, its goals and obstacles, in a way a mortal did not. Faith was required to follow her lead. As she'd admitted with no apology, vampires in their stunning arrogance imposed the same relationship on their human servants. But she was a woman as well as a vampire queen, and he wanted her to know she didn't have to play at omnipotence to command his loyalty. He'd have done anything at this moment to ease her agony, given anything for the truth to be a lie.

"The pain… it went away during…" Her voice was a whisper as he laid her on her bed. She'd had him take her to her hidden bedchamber. "But afterward. It was like a flood. So beautiful. I ruined it."

"Ssshh. You did nothing of the kind. I should have paid closer attention. It was my fault."

"See. Told you. I ruined it."

Another shudder racked her. After giving her the vial of medicine he carried, holding her chin to steady her as she took it down, he turned up the gas logs, for now she was shivering, her skin gone from fire to ice. Reluctantly, he went into the bathroom to get what he needed.

So many things about her were human. So many were not. When he'd helped her across the driveway, since she'd initially refused to be carried, a convulsion had seized her. Her hand had flown out, striking the side of the Mercedes, her personal car. It had put a dent deep in the side that tore the metal, cutting her skin. The wound had healed to a thin scar almost before he got her a towel.

How could nothing else hurt her, but this disease take such a toll? He wished like hell for Thomas. The monk's scholarly mind would have put two and two together and figured out the correlation between the two diseases, ways to slow or ease it. Thomas could have done that for himself, but Jacob had sensed the monk was doing only what was necessary to be around long enough to prepare Jacob to serve his Mistress. Without the connection to Lyssa and no hope of it ever being reinstated, Thomas simply hadn't the will to live. On all other subjects, Thomas had filled him in on every detail he could recall. But on the series of events that had given him the terminal disease, he'd said little, not even how he'd contracted it. He'd just noted brusquely it had to do with Rex's punishment and why his Mistress had to shun him.

Jacob wrung out the cloth in the first of the two basins he brought to the bed. The steaming water burned his hands as he laid it on her forehead. "I need to know what this is, my lady. Let me help you."

"I've told you—"

"With respect, I believe the time is past for that." He met her gaze, frustrated by the shuttered look behind the pain. "I have no leverage, no way of compelling you to heed my request. But Thomas trusted me. I think you trust me, too, no matter how uncomfortable that makes you. I insist on knowing, and that's that. I know giving me the third mark will not only help with the issue of trust, it will help me anticipate your state of mind and health better. You can draw strength from mine whenever you have need, even from a distance."

"It's also a death sentence. Much shorter than you'd get as a mortal. Bran would outlive you."

Her confirmation of it made something twist agonizingly in his chest, but he inclined his head. "I'm aware of that."

Her eyes closed. "Why would I be worth such a sacrifice, Jacob? Does it have anything to do with me, or is it that insufferable code of honor you gratify?"

"Both, my lady. And the sex alone is worth dying for."

"Jacob, this is not a joke." If her head was not about to explode, he suspected she would have screamed it. As it was, she choked it out as a snarl. He cupped her face, his thumb stroking, reassuring.

"Sshh, my lady. Sshh. Aye, it's not. What must I do to convince you that you're worth it to me, my lady?"

"It's not worth it to me, Jacob. Please, stop. Just… cease."

When she turned her face back into the pillow, shutting him out, her body quivering with pain, he knew he had to let it go. For now.

He began to hum, a soft Gaelic tune. After his parents' death, he'd had to get accustomed to the idea that he would never again feel his mother's hand touch his brow before he went to sleep at night. During those first months he'd often wake in the dark of the night, feeling afraid and alone. As if their mother had left her maternal alarm clock implanted in his body, Gideon would rouse. Jacob would hear the soft shift of his body in the other twin bed, the rustle of pajamas, and feel such relief when his older brother came and sat on the edge of his own bed. He'd rest a hand on Jacob's leg and sing the songs of their mother's people off tune, the soothing tones of a boy's voice too fast changing to a man's.