The Vampire Queen's Servant(44)

She caught his other arm and hurled him—there was no other word for the explosion of strength that sent him hurtling toward the incorporeal entrance to this chamber. He closed his eyes, expecting to hit a door. A grunt left him instead as he hit the bedroom floor. The floor of her bedroom on the plane of reality he knew.

When he rolled, trying to regain his feet, he found he was alone with no access to her lower chamber.

"Son of a bitch…" He managed it through clenched teeth, cradling his arm. He didn't know whether to curse her or himself and he did both liberally, hoping she was hearing every word he had to say. There was too much pain roiling through him to sense whether she was there or not.

"Ah, Jesus." He pressed his forehead to the carpet.

When she allows it…

She hadn't allowed it. Somehow, perhaps because of her illness, she'd been completely unaware he'd been able to walk into her mind, and he'd been unable to resist. Wanting to know, to understand answers she hadn't been ready to offer him. That he'd just told her he wouldn't push her to get. Rationalizing it, he'd figured it would be easier to get them this way, where she wouldn't need to talk about them. But that was hindsight. He hadn't thought at all, just walked through that portal between their minds, fascinated by the ability to use it, feeling that his feelings toward her gave him permission.

Earlier tonight, she'd opened to him, held him close as he made love to her. Touched his face. Everything they'd shared, her smiles at him, the touch of her lips, her body, the pensive look as she remembered things no one should have to remember. Playing in the fountain, letting him put his arm around her as he would a lover… It meant something to him. He'd assigned a significance to it that didn't figure on the vampire meter of trust at all.

You forget your place, Jacob.

I thought it was at your side. Your back. Wherever you need me, even if it's hip deep in the quagmire of your fucking psychotic mind.

But it wasn't her voice he heard, only the recollection of her statement and his current response to it. There were no shadows now. He felt her nowhere within him, though the link between them ached like a wound needing the pressure of a bandage.

There was a trembling low in his gut, an element of shock he recognized, and not just from the pain in his arm. He'd never been deliberately hurt by someone he cared about, not physically in the way a mortal enemy would have tried to hurt him. It wasn't just a moment of passion. She'd waited a key moment before she did it, made sure she had his attention so he'd know she'd fully intended to do what she did.

He'd never been treated as a slave. Hadn't that been his thought earlier? She was introducing him to a lot of firsts tonight. So where did that leave him? He couldn't think about it now. He'd do something wrong, something he'd regret later.

She wanted distance. Away from her was the last place he'd wanted to be only minutes before. Now if he didn't get some air he thought he'd try to stake her himself.

Fucking bitch. Broke my fucking arm.

Struggling to one knee, he wondered if he could hitch a ride to the emergency room.





* * *


"You know, for somebody who isn't in Mrs. Wentworth's employ, I seem to be ferrying you around a lot," Mr. Ingram observed, looking down at the Danish Jacob had bought him from the emergency room vending machines. Feeling a moment of wistfulness, he bit into it.

"Does eating month-old pastry always make you choke up like a little old lady watching greeting card commercials?"

Boy was in a foul mood, but he was paying attention, Ingram noted. The kid watched everybody too close, and didn't know when to leave well enough alone. Probably why he was here. They'd given him some ice to help the pain, but they were backed up, and it would be a while before X-ray could take him.

"Makes me think about my wife, giving me hell for eating this kind of junk."

"You have a wife?" Jacob glanced toward him, brow furrowed. "But—"

"No." Elijah shook his head. "We were only together long enough to produce a baby and then she ran off. Died young of a life she shouldn't have got herself into. Must be genetic, because the boy's tryin' like hell to do the same." He sighed. "But sometimes in my mind I like to paint life the way I wish it could have been. A wife to grow old with. Someone I'd have missed something awful if I'd lost her to cancer or a heart attack. So every time I have something like this, I imagine her old like me, fussing at me about cholesterol or my weight. The way you see people who love each other do. Not a big and flashy first-romance thing, just something you settle down into nice and easy as breathing. As long as you got your breathing, you got the chance to be anything. Without the breathing, it's pretty much over."

Jacob snorted. "And you looked at me like I was crazy when you picked me up."

"I'm just imagining the way it could have been with a good woman," Elijah pointed out. "You're sitting over there obsessing about the one who snapped your arm like it was a matchstick. Maybe you'd be better off letting that one go and making up one, like me."

Jacob leaned his head back against the wall, closed his eyes. "I'm tired," he said. "Haven't slept normal hours of late. Maybe I am fucking crazy."

Mr. Ingram made a noncommittal noise. Silence ensued for a few minutes between them.

"Lady's bad sick, isn't she?"

Jacob opened one eye, turned his head without lifting it from the wall. "Yeah," he said.

Elijah nodded. "You know, I had an uncle, come home from the war in a wheelchair. He'd gone off all shiny and strong, everyone's hero. Comes back, okay at first, just quiet. Watching all of us, the way we all watched him. Then he turned into the meanest son of a bitch you'd ever want to meet. Drove off his wife, his kids… Ain't no complex psychology to it if you're paying attention. He'd always been invincible to his way of thinking. All of a sudden all the things he felt like people depended on him for were slipping away and he couldn't control it. Couldn't take care of his family no more. Every time he tried to be or do what he used to, something would happen. An infection, a new pain, or he got too tired and couldn't follow through on it."

Jacob lifted his head from the wall then. Ingram took another bite of the pastry, thinking. Swallowed before he continued. Patted at his lips with the napkin.

"People treated him different, thinking because he was a cripple that gave them liberties no one should have without asking. Strangers assumed it was okay to lift him in the truck like a sack of potatoes. Women came up at the church picnic to dump his catheter bottle because his wife or mother said it was okay. Don't need to ask him. It's hard for a man to lose everything he thought made him a man. Don't seem fair for him to have all this potential to serve and then have it taken away. Can't imagine how to reinvent himself. Then he's got everyone acting like he don't have to be treated like a man anymore."

The boy's gaze was steady, but the thoughts were there, running through his head like shit through a goose. Elijah could see it clear enough. He didn't know exactly what had happened between Jacob and the vampire lady. He might just be talking off his head, comparing what happened to one mortal man to what was going on with a woman who claimed to be an ancient vampire, but the boy was free to ignore the thoughts. Mr. Ingram didn't claim to influence no one's will. He certainly didn't have the type of hold Mrs. Wentworth seemed to have on this crazy boy.

Jacob rose abruptly. "We're going to the pharmacy across the street. I'll get a splint and some tape. I don't have time to wait, and if I can't show you how to tape up broken bones after I've seen Gideon do it a hundred times, then I deserve to have it grow back crooked. You don't have to take me back to her. I can hitch."

"I'll get you home, son."





* * *


After Jacob left, the house had the silence of a tomb and the desolation that came with it. Lyssa, rubbing her forehead, kneading at her neck, moved aimlessly out of her bedroom. Going to her study, she found the day's mail she'd not yet gone through. Jacob had left it in neat stacks as he'd done each day, properly sorted and processed.

She'd told him not to open personal correspondence, whereas he was welcome to open any correspondence from vampires in her Region, invoices from vendors, checks from business interests, things like that. So her eyes focused immediately on the two letters he'd set out separately from the things he'd already handled.

One was from Lord Mason, postmarked from Saudi Arabia. The other was from the monastery in Madrid. Since she paid for all the repairs to the structure and owned the land on which it rested to ensure it would forever remain a sanctuary for Thomas's spirit, she periodically received direct correspondence from Father Gonzalez on various mundane issues. Still, she chose to pick it up with Mason's letter and take them both with her as she moved back out into the hallway. She wasn't really sure of her destination until she arrived at the servants' quarters. Bran moved at her side, his body reassuringly pressed against her thigh. Curling her fingers in his hair, she held onto him to keep herself steady. Colors were still too bright. She suspected she'd tipped over the peak of this particular episode, but things weren't returning to normal as quickly as they had in the past. She had to believe they would, though. Any other answer was unacceptable.

Her head was pounding again, and the hammer seemed to be wielded by the image of Jacob's face as she broke his arm, the feel of the bone giving so easily beneath her touch. Yet perversely she sought to be as close to him as possible by standing here outside of his room. For some reason she was hesitating as if she were an interloper in her own house.