The Companion - Time For Eternity Part 22

Get out of this room. Right now! The pain in her head became excruciating.

He strode across the room, gla.s.s in hand. "I think you should join the others at the warehouse for the next few days until I can get you out of here."

"I wouldn't tell Robespierre and Madame Croute who is behind the escapes, if that's what you think. They're vile, and whatever you are, you're at least trying to save people's lives."

"Go and pack. I'll send Gaston-"

"I want to know what you are." She took his wrist in one hand and felt the electric jolt.

No, Francoise, no!

"You don't want to know anything about me." His face went hard. He looked down at her hand on his wrist.

And then it began. Everything started moving very slowly. His other hand on his gla.s.s was clenched too hard, as though he didn't know his own strength. The gla.s.s shattered, sending tinkling shards to the carpet. His palm was cut in several places. Blood welled.

Instinctively she reached out to him.

"No!" he shouted at the same time as that voice inside her screamed, No!

She s.n.a.t.c.hed back her hand as he pushed her away. Falling, she stared at the blood welling in his palm.

Relief coursed through her. She didn't understand why. The pain in her head subsided. She was still bursting full. Something writhed and struggled within her. She felt herself dividing inside as though she'd broken, just like the gla.s.s.

One became truly two.

We did it! It didn't happen the way it did before.

Francoise tried to breathe. The voice was stronger than ever, and more separate. It wasn't hers. She felt that now. And that was shocking.

"I'm sorry," he said. Then he frowned. "Is that a sc.r.a.pe on your palm?"

"I fell at the prison tonight."

He stared at her abraded skin and blanched. "My G.o.d, girl, you might have ..."

She couldn't take her eyes from his hand for some reason. As she watched, the cuts sealed themselves. She gasped. "W-what is that?"

We still aren't safe from infection. We just bought time. He glanced to his palm. The cuts turned to red weals. He took a breath. "That is part of my disease," he said. His voice was shaky. "And you were very nearly infected."

He used the same word as the voice inside her head. Infection. Was everyone going mad?

Do you want to be like him, you little s.h.i.+t? Leave the room. Now. He's a monster.

A monster? Truly? When he saved children from the guillotine? She felt a waver of uncertainty in that other inside her. Francoise didn't talk like that. "Buying time."

"You little s.h.i.+t." That proved the voice wasn't her. No one else talked like that either. She struggled to her feet. He made no move to help her, but went to the bell pull and rang for a servant.

In some part of her, certainty locked back down. It doesn't matter that his character isn't what I thought. You must still protect yourself. He'll infect you, if not today, then tomorrow. I don't like it any better than you do, but it's self-defense.

You've got to kill him. He'll probably infect others too, if that makes you feel better about what you have to do.

Kill him? She couldn't kill anyone. Especially not Henri.

Her head began to ache again. Jean appeared at the door.

"Please bring a basin of water, some soap, and some rags."

Jean's eyes widened. But all he said was, "Very good, your grace."

Francoise sat in one of the wing chairs, a war going on inside her with stabbing pains that made her want to shriek out loud.

Go out to the stable. The bag. You need the bag.

Her throat was closing. She was so full. She had to stop this-whatever was happening to her. She held her head. "I won't kill,"

she whispered as she rocked back and forth.

"What did you say? Are you all right?"

"I ..." She choked. "I must go." She pushed up and out the door, leaving him frowning after her. She couldn't think anything except that she wanted the pain to stop.

Dear G.o.d, he'd nearly infected her. Henri rubbed his mouth. What would he have done? Watched her die as her body rejected the Companion? He stared at his face in the mirror above the fireplace. A vampire 's face. Only when he called the power to translocate and the field grew too dense to allow light to escape did his reflection disappear.

He could not have let her die. He would have given her his blood to grant her immunity.

The realization struck him like a physical blow.

That would violate the prime Rule of his kind. If one made vampires and they made vampires, where would it end except in a war with humanity and not enough blood for too many vampires?

But he would have done it, Rules or no.

He ... cared for her as he had not cared for anyone in centuries, no matter that he saved them from the guillotine, or dug wells to keep them from sickening from bad water.

He would have committed the ultimate sin for her.

Did that mean he loved her?

He was never going to find out. It would also have been the ultimate sin against her. No woman wanted to be a monster. She would have reviled him for it. He couldn't risk another accident. Already she knew too much about him. So he'd keep her at a distance, insist the whole was her imagination, send her off at the end of the week. He was not to be trusted.

Go to the stable. The voice rode the pain, inexorable. It was stronger than she was now. She began to run, back through the kitchen where Jean was getting rags, and out into the warm night, across the stones of the mews to the stables. Pull open the stable door.

Gasping, Francoise stumbled to her knees in front of the hay bale behind which she had hidden the leather satchel.

We haven't any choice. The voice sounded as though it were panting too. Francoise could hear the desperation, the doubt underneath the order. But the stabbing pains didn't stop.

Francoise moaned and fumbled at the strange, toothed-metal closure. The mouth of the satchel gaped like a hungry beast. Inside the sword gleamed. The soft purple and pink bottles lurked beneath it. "No. In the name of G.o.d, no," she gasped as tears streamed down her face. She must find a way to refuse this wicked voice. "I'm not strong enough to decapitate him anyway."

That took the voice aback. There was a pause. True. I'd forgotten how weak and deaf and blind I was. Another pause.

Okay, okay. There must be another way. I don't want to kill him either. But we can't have him coming after you if you walk away.

The pain eased up a tiny bit. "He doesn't love me. He won't come after me."

Don't bet eternity on it now that it turns out he's got some morals. The voice was grim. All right. You'll drug him and leave him. Right now. Tonight. And he'll hate you for it, so he won't let you near him ever again. Deal? The pain eased down so she could think again. Yes. She had to leave Henri. He'd never love her. She wouldn't be kept as a mistress. She had no future with him, much as that sent despair was.h.i.+ng over her.

What she would do without a position or a way to earn her living, she didn't know. But what did it matter, without Henri? "You have a bargain."

Hide it in your skirts. Run!

Choking and coughing as though her throat were full, Francoise stumbled back to the house. She made it all the way to the library without meeting anyone.

In front of the door, the voice said, Stop. Now calm yourself. Breathe.

She managed to swallow. A breath. Two. Three. Slower. She wiped at her eyes.

Better.

The door to the library opened. Jean came out with a wooden box from the desk.

From inside the room Avignon called, "Bury it in the park. No one touches the gla.s.s."

"Yes, your grace."

She entered the room. Avignon looked up from his hands and knees. A very unduclike position. He was scrubbing the carpet with a rag and a basin. Francoise blinked in surprise.

Even the voice seemed taken aback. He's trying not to infect anyone ... s.h.i.+t. I really was wrong about him.

Avignon got to his feet and wiped his hands on the rag, frowning. "Are you all right?" He tried on a tiny, tentative smile. "It was just a little blood." He seemed shaken, though.

Right. A little blood. And a little parasite inside it that changes you forever.

"I'm better," she said. Her voice seemed far away. The pain in her head was gone, but she knew the voice could bring it back at any moment. She fingered the soft bottle she held at her side in the folds of her skirts. She was listening to a voice in her head as though it were a separate person altogether. She was truly mad.

Or maybe you're Joan of Arc. Get him talking. Pour him a drink.

"Do ... do you want to explain?" Francoise asked Henri. She wanted an explanation.

He'll never tell you. It's a big, bad secret.

"And don't try telling me it's my imagination," Francoise added.

He stared down at the rag in his hand, apparently torn. He took a slow breath and looked up at her, his eyes still questioning himself. "I have a disease in my blood."

One way of putting it.

"And the healing?" She realized she'd seen it earlier when his face was blistered.

"An effect of the disease, along with the sensitivity to light."

Half-truths.

"What about the red eyes?"

"A pigment that reflects the light. Like animals' eyes at night."

Oh, that's good. No confessions forthcoming. So let's do the deed and blow this joint.

Francoise pressed her lips together. She'd give him another chance for the real explanation. "Hardly believable, but clever. Now about the whirling blackness that makes you disappear with your charges?"

He looked away. There was no way to explain that. "What do you want of me?"

Francoise stared at him, his question unlocking a thousand conflicting thoughts. The voice wanted him out of her life permanently.

But she wanted to feel his arms around her, hear his heart beat, smell the exotic scent of him, and hear him tell her that he treasured her above all others. She wanted him to kiss her.

You are so far gone, girl. We better get out of here p.r.o.nto. The weight of the soft bottle in her right hand seemed to triple.

Make him a drink.

The very fact that she wanted him to kiss her meant the voice was right. She had to leave him now. Tonight. "I don't know what I want," Francoise said in a small voice. "Maybe the truth. Maybe I just want a drink." She turned to the sideboard that held the cut-gla.s.s brandy decanter. Out of the corner of her eyes, she saw him lean his elbow on the mantel and put one boot on the andirons in a pose grown familiar over the last days. He stared into the cold firebox. With her back turned, she took the soft purple bottle and pressed on the top. One side flipped up.

"It's time to get you down to the warehouse. The Maiden Voyage leaves for England in four days. You'll be on a barge to meet it in three. Jennings will take care of you until then."

"Is that where you keep them? The ones you rescue?" She squeezed.

More. He's not human.

"Yes. There are rooms fitted out behind the back wall."

She poured more into the drink. If the drug could kill him, the voice would not have been after her about using the sword. She glanced behind her, but he was still staring into the grate. He was going to hate her. The next moments would be the last time she saw him. She slid the purple bottle behind a Sevres vase and poured brandy into the gla.s.s. It made a big drink. She poured a small one for herself.

Holding her breath, she took the two gla.s.ses and turned. He was so beautiful, standing there. And he had been kind to her.

More than kind.

Do it. Or I swear to drive you really crazy.

She put her mouth into some kind of smile and held out his gla.s.s. "You do good work then." She was going to hate herself for this as much as he would hate her.

He took it. "Never enough. Never. You've seen the prison."

She tried to breathe. He took the gla.s.s and downed it in several gulps. "But it has to be done," he continued. "And my condition makes me ideally suited ..."

He trailed off, his mouth pressed into a grim line, and shook his head. He set his gla.s.s on the mantel. Francoise realized she was trembling. When would it take effect? What would he do if he realized what she'd done?

He took a breath as though to say something else, blinked rapidly a couple of times. His gaze slid to the gla.s.s on the mantel and then to Francoise. His eyes hardened. He looked around the room. She could see his eyes were swimming. He caught sight of the soft purple bottle peeking from behind the vase on the sideboard and pushed past her.

"You little fool," he whispered. "Where did you get laudanum in this strength?" His steps slowed. He practically fell against the sideboard as he grabbed for the bottle, his eyes questioning. "What ... ?"