The Vampire Queen's Servant(41)

So he kept up the tune while he cleaned her up, hoping it was providing comfort to them both. He eased her out of her clothes and tucked soft blankets around her. Sitting on the edge of the mattress, he removed the compress and slid an arm under her back, folding her up against his shoulder. Her forehead rested on it as he very gently unpinned her hair and brushed it out, knowing she'd feel more comfortable with it tended. Then he lowered her back to the pillow and replaced the hot compress.

"Was it Carnal that brought this on, my lady? This was not like the last time."

"No. This is new." She kept her eyes closed, though her lips twisted wryly. "I won't say he didn't contribute."

Jacob picked up one of her hands and began to massage between her thumb and forefinger, carefully kneading the pressure point.

Some of the tension in her shoulders eased, the pounding mallets lessening in force. Lyssa cracked open her eyes. "Oh. That helps."

"Acupressure. It's good to know we're not so different in some things."

Lyssa looked at his hands, tan and strong, at the calluses she would never have. At the contrast of her pale skin, paler than he'd ever have unless he was out of the sun long enough to lose the pigment. "You did this with Thomas."

"He taught it to me." He nodded. "My lady, if it doesn't cause you more pain, will you at least tell me how you came to… send Thomas away? I know it's somehow related to your sickness. And his."

Lyssa closed her eyes again. Jacob did deserve to know. More important, he needed to know. There'd been something different about Carnal tonight. He was always a mocking son of a bitch, but she'd sensed something brewing in him, a kind of suppressed excitement. Like a boy dying to tell someone a secret, but savoring the smugness of knowing what someone else didn't. Whatever it was, or even if it was just her imagination distorted by her current state, Jacob deserved to have enough knowledge to protect himself against her enemies.

She took deep breaths, absorbing the touch of his hands as much as the compresses, letting the pain wash over her without resistance, hoping it would soon ebb.

"When I was married," she began softly, "it would have been better if I'd had a female servant, but we tend to do better with servants of the opposite sex. But Thomas was a quiet, scholarly man. He was a monk when he became my servant. I exempted him from the sexual ways a servant is expected to submit to his Mistress."

She felt his mind absorb that. As he remembered some of the images from earlier in the night, his visions made a lazy stir in her blood despite her current state. Then she recalled the point of the conversation and her reaction chilled.

"Rex didn't understand it. He'd thought of so many twisted things to do to a man who'd taken a vow of celibacy. My husband was not an easy vampire, not ever. He and Thomas did not get along well, and over time it got worse."

Because Thomas knew he was a sociopathic monster, Jacob thought, then winced as her eyes opened, reminding him his thoughts were no longer guarded. But she kept on without comment.

"I encouraged Thomas to take a short sabbatical to his monastery in Madrid. For all his love and loyalty to me, which I did not credit as I should have, he needed a place from which to draw energy for the nourishment of his own soul. That was the place for Thomas. 'It's just a piece of land, a pile of stone,' he'd say to me. But I knew his heart. I kept encouraging him to go, take some time. Things were well in hand here. No pending threats on our borders, though I suppose I forgot to look within as well as without."

Her fingers closed into balls on her abdomen, and Jacob moved his massaging touch back there, loosening them. He knew he should tell her to rest, but he couldn't ignore his gut, which told him understanding all the pieces to this puzzle were critical to caring for his Mistress. He didn't know how much time he had.

Enough, Jacob. Be easy on that. This will pass.

Lyssa had no way of knowing if he believed she was telling him the truth. The easing of his brow helped reassure her, however, as if drawing him into her illusion gave her confidence, making the lie forgivable and possibly even truth. She would have enough time, damn it. Because nothing else was acceptable. She had to get through the Council Gathering. Once she did that, it would be five years before there would be any close scrutiny on her or her Region.

"Thomas understood, as I have been trying to teach you, that you don't interfere between vampires. We don't view you like children, from whom we will suffer interruption. You are tools, instruments serving as extensions of our will. Thomas, having lived as a monastic, understood better than most the concept of obedient service. He was well suited to the way of life of a human servant." She paused, her fingers whispering along his leg, crooked on the bed as he traded the now cold compress for another hot one.

"Your pardon, my lady." Reluctantly he left her to refill the basin with more hot water.

"You are not," she murmured.

Jacob lifted his gaze to the mirror. Too late, he remembered her reflection would not be there, though his stricken look was, revealing his reaction to her words before he could mask it. The mirror was one-sided, the way she was saying he must accept their relationship to be.

He pushed that away and came back to her to set the next compress while her fingers slid down to play with his bare ankle under the jeans' cuff. He took it as a good sign she was caressing him, though he noticed she wasn't succumbing to sleep the way she had after the first attack he'd witnessed. Perhaps the change in symptoms had made the sedative effect of the powder less effective.

She sighed. "Physical violence was part of our marriage, a part Thomas did not understand and abhorred. But he held his tongue for I bid him to do so, even as Rex became more and more erratic, trying to make our relationship into something it could never be. Then one night Rex tore out my rosebushes in a fit of rage. Thomas came upon me in the garden, trying to replant them." She pressed her lips together, obviously struggling with the memory. "I was crying. I suppose I'd gotten a little frayed on the edges as well."

Reaching out, Jacob cupped her face, drawing her gaze to his face. "My lady."

She shook her head. "My mother died at five hundred, Jacob. Vampires do die for reasons other than murder by staking or cutting off their heads. Immortality is a gift, but it also has its drawbacks. As mortals pass over the threshold of old age, most eventually get past fear and resistance to the idea of death. This acceptance grows with the years, for they see so many cycles… life, death, growth, change. They start to see how things remain the same even as the faces change. Because of that, they become less interested in keeping pace with the world. They want to be quiet, to rotate on the axis they've always known, knowing when Death is ready it will come and they will find renewal then."

She touched the compress on her head. "As you pointed out, we have things in common with humans. We can lose interest in life, in seeking change and growth, only we do not die. Unless a vampire figures out how to get past that phase—think of it as a midlife crisis—he loses his sense of meaning. Things stop having lasting value, for you feel as though you've seen and done it all. While you don't acknowledge it directly as such, your immortality becomes a curse, a prison during that time. You rattle those bars or obscure their presence with a haze of excess. Violence, cruelty and lust for power are drugs of choice for the powerful and purposeless. Quick rushes that don't last, and like drugs, you need more and more fixes. More and more excess, as you rail against the fate that you feel has you in thrall."

Jacob watched her gaze drift to the fire. "We call it the Ennui. It is the greatest risk vampires face as they pass the fourth-century mark. Many don't live to see five. They meet the sunrise. Or they are murdered by one of us or human hunters like your brother, because they choose more destructive ways to deal with it. My mother chose to meet the sun. I hadn't seen her in fifty years when she did that."

He tightened his hand on the side of her throat, and she gave him an indulgent look, but there was sorrow under the attempt to shrug off his sentimentality.

"Vampires are predators, and kind is not a word to describe us. But predators can be fair, consistent, and have a reliable integrity. They are not incapable of compassion. Rex was… susceptible to excess. He viewed humans differently than I did, did not appreciate your diversity and value except as it served his needs. Many of my kind are like that, but perhaps there was a little more of an edge to his feelings on the matter. I noticed it, it bothered me, but it never went far enough to be more than an irritation between us. But as the world wore on him, that weakness began to become his strength, and it did not stop with humans. Cruel, manipulative games that involved lesser vampires as well as humans absorbed him like a teenager hooked on the worst of the violent computer games. I tried to minimize the damage, keep him under control."

She kept the focus on herself, made herself his most challenging sparring partner. Jacob remembered Thomas's words, but he hadn't had this information to fill in the blanks. He felt the deceptively fragile network of bones and muscle beneath his hand, the line of her throat. When the delicate edge of her jaw brushed the base of his hand so she could rest the side of her face there, he felt an impotent anger at the destination toward which her words were driving them. Her bones would heal, yes. But they could break. Over and over and over. The nervous system of humans and vampires was another common denominator between the two species. Pain was pain.