Page 32 of The Vampire Queen's Servant (Vampire Queen 1)

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.

"He became infatuated with a young man at the turn of the century. Cecil Miles, an innocuous name for one who would never be more than a New York banking clerk, or would not have been except he stumbled on Rex feeding in an alley. Rex turned and saw Cecil standing there, completely fascinated. He became his new playmate. It was as if their meeting was fated by an evil sprite, for Cecil had an unhealthy fascination with pain and suffering. Rex nurtured his burgeoning bloodlust to keep him company in places I refused to go. He petitioned to make Cecil a vampire, and it was permitted. I should have opposed it. "

She drew away now and rose from the bed, letting the compress drop away. Moving to the chair by the fire, she sank into it, turning partly away from him. While Jacob was glad for evidence the attack was receding, he could see the weariness in her. He moved to her side, knelt by the chair.

"Cecil learned quickly, but. . . You remember what I said?"

Jacob nodded. "That made vampires are more bloodthirsty, less disciplined. "

"He was. . . What was that word you used? A sociopath as a mortal. By his cleverness and Rex's influence, after only a hundred years he acquired himself a small territory in Mexico. Not an influential one. We are not complete fools. But it will not be enough. He will always want more. "

"Carnal. "

She nodded. "It was Rex's pet name for him. At a certain point, it was what he preferred to be called. I'm not so sure if whatever it was that made Rex more susceptible to the Ennui and his own weaknesses enhanced Carnal's bloodlust. Transferred in the blood during the siring. "

She shook her head. "Cecil wanted to be fully in control of Rex, and he realized I was his greatest obstacle in that. Over time he guided Rex more and more toward the things where I had to run interference, increasing Rex's frustration and mistrust of me. Carnal also exacerbated the sickness in Rex's mind, feeding it with more and more creative entertainments, which I am selfishly glad I did not know much about. " Her lip curled. "I didn't act any differently from a wife married to a serial killer or a pedophile, who denies to herself what is happening. I deserved the punishment of Thomas's loss, but Thomas certainly didn't. "

When Jacob reached out, she shook her head, a sharp movement.

"The night it happened, we had a dinner party planned for midnight. I was dressed in a black dress I think you would have liked. " An image of her appeared in his mind briefly, standing in this room, putting on her earrings, showing him the low-slung back of the dress, the short skirt with a fringed hem that drew the eye to the exposed lengths of her thighs.

"I like it, " he responded, though he couldn't smile.

"I burned it after that night, but it was one of my favorite dresses. " Grim humor passed through her gaze. "Rex and I had fought earlier. It doesn't matter about what. It was meaningless. He came to our room, asked my forgiveness. Touched my face and asked if I would bring some cut roses to the dinner table because they always added such a lovely touch of color to the meal. " She swallowed. "When I went to the back garden, I discovered he'd torn them all out of the ground. Only then did I realize why his hands had smelled of the earth.

"Thomas came to find me, " she said after a brief pause. "Rex knew I cultivated those roses in honor of my father. But I think I was crying because I knew that was going to be the end, that I could tolerate no more. Then it got worse. "

She fell silent. Jacob curled his hand on the chair arm, wanting to touch her, offer comfort. Turning her head to look at him, she reached out, touched his face, ran her fingers over his lips. He swayed as images unfolded in his mind, a sensation disconcertingly like a television flipping on. It obscured his vision as he struggled to manage reality against the flashback she'd chosen to show him graphically.

Thomas stroked her hair, then picked up one of the broken branches. "We will make it all right, my lady. I'll go get a shovel. "

The pictures apparently were not adequate, however, for the images kept rolling 'through his mind as she narrated the event which had sealed Thomas's fate.

"Something alerted me. It took a cursed few precious seconds to pick up on the strained tone of his voice, the delicate way he'd picked up the branch, as if it were made of glass and he was afraid his grip would break it. I found the knife later in the kitchen. Imagined him picking it up and slicing off the end of that branch to a pointed angle with one cut, as if he'd been born a samurai. My monk who regularly cut his hands on small steak knives. "

Whether it was the power of the images or she was intentionally letting him inside her mind further than he'd expected, Jacob felt the fear she'd felt then. Not for herself, but for Thomas. Her narration ended, and there were only the images, a movie he knew was not going to end well.

***

She didn't bother with the door. She ran toward the house, her gaze on the upper level where the bedroom was, where she knew Rex would have been standing, watching, waiting for her reaction. Anticipating the bitter enjoyment of her pain, her struggle to put the rosebushes in the ground. She leaped, soaring. Vampires could not fly, but like squirrels they were capable of catapulting themselves remarkable distances.

Jacob felt his own stomach lurch with the unfamiliar sensation, flinched as she didn't slow down for the master bedroom window but went through it, a priceless stained glass art de

piction of the dragon and St. George. It exploded around her, cutting her skin. He realized she'd never had it recrafted. It was a curtained picture window, one of the few non-stained glass windows in her home.

Thomas had reached the bedroom a single handful of seconds earlier, probably knowing he had little time before she'd realize his intent. Rex had not expected anything. Thomas was already driving the branch of thorns with its sharpened end toward his back.

The vampire spun just before she came through the window, perhaps sensing Thomas's rage-driven attack. The rosebush stake sliced through the shirt and into his skin but went high, shooting upward and tearing muscle rather than stabbing through it.

Lyssa slammed into Thomas. As he was catapulted into the wall by the impact, she took the blow in the face that Rex had intended for Thomas's chest, had the monk had been there a bare second before.

Lyssa spun, grappled with her husband, and they crashed into the bed frame, shattering it and tangling them both in the covers.

"No, " she was saying. "No. "

She was adamant, fierce. Pleading, but not for Thomas's life, Jacob realized. That wasn't in question. She would not permit Rex that transgression. She was pleading for him not to force the conflict between them to a point of no return.

Rex backed off, his fangs bared, his shirt bloody, the wound visible under the torn fabric. Even now it was mending. Lyssa watched him warily, her body tense and ready, moving to keep herself between him and the dazed Thomas, struggling to get to his feet.

"I will send him away, Rex. But you cannot kill him. I won't permit it. " "Your loyalty is to him?" Rex snarled. "He intended to murder me. "

"You've been trying to murder my soul for so long it knows not how to draw a deep breath anymore, " she said in a terrible voice. "You don't see me piteously whining about it, the way you are about a mere human's scratch. "

Fury flashed through his eyes, but now she straightened, her expression assuming that dispassionate calm Jacob already knew well. "Thomas, " she said without taking her attention from Rex.

"Go and pack. You'll go to your monastery in Madrid until I bid you return. "

"Never, " Rex spat. "He shall never return. Because I will hunt him the moment your back is turned and kill him. Torture him slowly and let you feel every moment of his pain. You'll have to kill me. Show everyone your pathetic weakness, that you would choose a human over your husband. "

Lyssa studied him for a long moment. Jacob wondered what thoughts were going through her, for that was something her vision did not reveal. Thomas had made it to his feet, was holding his ribs, his spectacles gone. His hands were shaking, but the fury was still in his eyes. He was even insane enough to dart a quick look around for the sharpened branch, though his face fell when he saw it had rolled under the bed behind Rex.

Lyssa took a step forward, drawing Rex's attention. "A human can't last long under torture. Is that what you want? A blink of distraction, followed by the quick grunt of a snapped neck, the gurgle of a heart being ripped out? Wouldn't you prefer the sweetness of my cries? That's what this is always about, isn't it?"

"My lady, no. " Thomas stepped forward, and her hand shot up, pointed like the finger of God toward the door.

"Get out of my sight, servant. I will not permit your death, but I will not tolerate an attack on my husband. Your punishment is banishment. Go, " she snapped. "Obey me. " She looked toward him, and Jacob saw the crumpling of Thomas's expression as she dealt him a mortal blow with her thoughts. You've brought this upon me. If you have any love for me at all, you'll go before you make it more than I can bear.

He stumbled from the room as she shrugged out of her sexy sequined dress as casually as she might before preparing for a shower. Stripping off underwear, tossing it aside so she was completely naked, completely vulnerable. Rex, his eyes already alight with anticipation in a way that elicited nausea in Jacob's belly, drew a bullwhip from a baroque armoire. It was the type of whip Jacob had seen used on elephants in the circus.

"Thomas. " She stopped her servant at the door, her voice as cool and remote as ever. "Remember to contact our dinner guests on your way out and let them know we will reschedule. "

The vision evaporated, snapped off like a television, her mind closing the door before he could see more. His mind could imagine it too well, however. Thomas's heart had broken that day. Jacob knew it, because he'd seen it in the man's eyes whenever he'd even hinted at what had driven him from his Mistress's service. The wound her words created had not been the shattering blow, however. Jacob suspected it had been her screams coming through the walls as he stood in the servants' quarters, folding socks, placing shirts in a suitcase with his trembling hands.

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