Page 34 of The Vampire Queen's Servant (Vampire Queen 1)

***

"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 cr

azy 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.

Pushing away the thought and shoving open the door, she viewed the room he used when she didn't command his company in her bed.

She hadn't come in here since he'd moved in. Seeing his few clothes hung in the closet, she put the letters on the dresser so she could run her fingers over the items, like the blue shirt he'd be wearing for the dinner. In the dresser she found neatly folded socks, underwear, spare belt, a few T-shirts and pairs of jeans. It made her chest hurt. But she stood there, the top drawer open, laying her palm on the T-shirt he'd last worn to work in the yard. It had a design from some kind of rock band on it, maybe a concert he'd attended, or maybe just something he'd picked up from a secondhand store. Most of his clothes, while in good shape and well-fitted, seemed likely to have been gotten that way. She ran her fingertips over the jeans, the pockets and front seam, the upper leg, thinking of how his body felt under the worn denim.

When she turned toward the bed, she stopped, nonplussed to find she'd picked up the T-shirt and was holding it in her hand. She brought it to her face and almost moaned as the cool softness of the fabric enveloped her throbbing forehead, her nose and lips buried in the cloth.

Rex had told her about Thomas. Lyssa had not felt well when she rose just before sunset that day. As Rex watched her, something in his eyes crawled into her stomach, making the nausea worse. Vampires never felt sick, but she didn't have energy to spare to worry about that, because he was in one of his erratic, pacing moods. She knew she needed to be alert, needed to appear calm and steady, to handle whatever brutal mischief he might foment. But she was so tired.

It had been a few months since she'd sent Thomas to the monastery. She'd visited him several times there, and she wanted him back. Wanted to stay with him or bring him back. It was time. Rex could stay or go, but she was bringing back her servant.

When Rex started talking about Carnal, she was in no mood to bear it. She retorted as she had countless times before. Carnal was simply using him, wanting to advance himself on Rex's power.

"He told me you'd say something like that. " Rex stared at her. She remembered a time when the dark eyes on either side of that aquiline nose had been provocative and mesmerizing to her. "You try to poison me against him. But I'm smarter than you. You tried to poison my heart, but I've done it to you first. And to your pious monk. "

She laid her brush down, stared at him. "What are you talking about?"

"You haven't been visiting your monk's mind lately. He's been very naughty. " Rex grinned, propping an arm on the windowsill. He was distracted, watching for the sun to set through the crack. He and Carnal would go out tonight and she would be blissfully alone for the evening, but at the moment she needed his mind here.

"Rex, what are you talking about?"

But she thought she knew. On one of her visits, Thomas had tried to make her smile. Told her of a dream he'd had of a young girl brings ing him a bouquet of wildflowers, begging for his help. Her brother was dying and had asked for the Last Rites. "You must come, Father. Right now. Please. . . "

"In my dream, my lady, I went to her room, though I tried to explain I was not a priest. There was no brother there. She put her back against the door and removed her blouse. She had beautiful black hair, generous hips, a full bosom . . . "

"Ah, this is sounding nothing like your skinny Mistress, my monk. "

Thomas had smiled, taken her hand. "I could not resist her in my dreams, my lady. . She knew me, took me places I have not been in a while. I awoke here. It has been a long time since I'd had such a dream. "

Rex was talking. "There's an herb with a white and gold flower, one of those long names no one can pronounce. It acts like a hallucinogen. Carnal told me of it. He has a great deal of wisdom for such a young vampire. Of course, I think he keeps questionable company. He likes to play with vampire hunters. But he doesn't know how I used the knowledge he gave me. That's between you and me. "

On her last visit, Thomas had not felt well. A flu bug, so she'd not fed from him as she had during times past. She was getting her blood elsewhere of course, but they'd both wanted the connection, the reminder of the bond they shared that must sustain them over a distance. That last time, she'd felt his hot forehead and simply held his hand, sitting in the garden at the monastery, talking about things they enjoyed, not talking about things too painful to discuss. When she'd left, she told him she was going to bring him home, even if she had to throw Rex out.

"You fed from him, didn't you?" Rex turned from the window, studied her. "Each time you go to see that human you love more than me, you feed from him, while you have denied me your blood as well as your body since the night he tried to take my life. Well, you may go to him, die together. "

She thought her heart had been ripped out the night Rex had allowed Carnal to rape her. But whenever a person thought she'd been scarred to the depths of her soul, there were even deeper wells to plumb.

If he'd only poisoned her, perhaps she wouldn't have done what she did. After what he'd allowed Carnal to do, she knew there was nothing left of the love between them. But Thomas. . . He'd taken Thomas from her, made Thomas suffer only for the crime of loving her too much. She hadn't deserved Thomas, but Thomas deserved justice.

A quiet calm had stolen over her, and she'd known it was time. In fact, since the night in the dungeon, it had been a countdown, and perhaps the nausea in her stomach was just the timer going off, telling her. She'd risen up from the chair, taken two steps. . . A moment later, there was just a body on the floor, a crushed heart in her hand. Rex's empty eyes stared at her in disbelief as she drew back the curtains and stood back, watching the last of him turn to ash on a carpet she would burn.

---