Chapter 373 - In Transit part 10

Like most vampyres, Nora did not dream during the deathlike torpor that claimed her kind during the daylight hours. Once the sun's brassy light flashed over the horizon, a powerful languor overtook her, and she had to seek her bed immediately or drop where she was standing. There was no transitional stage when the death-sleep overtook her. She did not drowse. There was no period of thoughtful reflection. Her mind simply shut off, and she did not stir again until the sun had rolled over the edge of the world and dropped off into the dark. Then, just as suddenly, she snapped awake, usually with a sharp intake of breath. Often, she found that her hands had come up in a defensive posture of their own volition, fingers curled into claws. But she dreamed that evening, the evening following the attack. It seemed the dreams ran through her unconscious mind, like red thread through black cloth, the entire day through.

Unfortunately, they weren't her dreams.

She dreamed of a lush green world, and primitive peoples as beautiful in form as the first man and woman in Eden must have been. These were lean tawny men and women, dressed in leather and braided grass, their bodies strong, their faces free of guile and greed. They lived on the fruits of the land and the meat they could kill with their crude bows and spears. They lived fast and loved hard and died young, but their lives were so very intense, so very immediate and sensual, and everything in their world was a wonderful mystery.

She dreamed she was a man, which was a curious thing in itself. To be so large and powerful and confident, with such strong and simple desires! Her desires, she found, were so much more straightforward as a man, not nuanced as the needs of women tend to be. She needed food, sex, entertainment. That was nearly the extent of it. Fulfillment was the respect of her peers, and her skills as a craftsman and hunter. She did not worry so much of the social niceties or the deficiencies of her character. The man she had become was so much more practical than the creature she was in that other universe, which she knew to be the waking world. She knew she was dreaming, but she did not resist it, did not resist being this man or living in his world. It was something of a relief, to be honest, as if a heavy yoke had slipped from her shoulders for a little while.

There were wives and children, friends and lovers, and then… and then a darkness came. An Enemy. An ancient, evil, insatiable thing that stole all of it away from her: that wild green vivid world, the wives, the children. She was cast out of the light, exiled from that wondrous Eden, banished into a cold dark eternal wasteland. There were bright spots in that sterile waste, souls that blazed across the sky like shooting stars, but mostly it was just darkness, a lonely never-ending darkness.

She woke with blood-tears on her cheeks and the names of those she'd lost trembling from her lips, as if she meant to call them back to her.

"Those names," her maker said, standing by the grate across the room. "How do you know them?"

"I dreamt them," she said. She was groggy, disoriented. She sat up and looked at her hands, felt of her breasts to confirm she was a woman again. And then she looked at Lord Venport, her father in darkness, her bridegroom in eternity, and said, "You are Gon! That is your real name! Gon of the River Tribe, and… oh my goodness! So old! So very old!"

"Get out of my mind!" he shouted, and she recoiled from him in surprise.

For a moment, they stared at one another without speaking, Nora shocked and hurt, her maker furious. She had seen him angry before, angry enough to kill, but this was the first time since she became his acolyte that she had been the object of that fury.

He glared at her as if there were a part of him that wished to destroy her, eyes narrowed to slits, nostrils flaring, and then he relaxed. Lowering his shoulders, blinking those burning eyes, he turned away from her.

"I'm sorry," he said, looking into the fire. "I did not mean to shout at you."

She wanted to go to him, make amends somehow, but she was too frightened to move. She had never seen such fury in his eyes! Not even in battle.

"Mortal men believe that it is the physical world that is permanent," the vampire said haltingly. He picked up the poker, stabbed at the burning logs. "This is why they ascribe such value to things like gold and land. But that is only because their lives are so short. For creatures like ourselves, the long-lived and the eternal, it is our memories, our identity, that are enduring. I have seen continents rise and fall, mountains crumble to dust, the birth and death of countless human dynasties. Only my memories stand, my sense of self, my true identity. I would have shared them all with you. Eventually. When I could bear it. When I could trust you. But you could not wait."

"I'm sorry," she said. "I did not mean to pry into your thoughts. I was dreaming. It was an accident."

"Was it?" he asked, looking over his shoulder at her.

She was not certain.

"I does not matter, I suppose," he sighed, staring pensively into the fire. "I was going to Share with you soon. What does it matter if it is now or tomorrow, by blood or by dream? Time is all but meaningless to me. But I wanted to make a gift of it to you. As a token of my faith."

Anguished, she scurried from the bed to him. "Please, Gon, forgive me," she sobbed, throwing herself at his feet. "I don't know if I did it purposely or by accident, but I'd do anything to take it back! Please, I beg you!" She clung to his legs, staring up at him pleadingly.

He took her wrists and pulled her up to him. Gently. Without rancor. "There is nothing to forgive, my love," he said. He enfolded her in his arms, breathed his words against her cheek. "I stole your life, and now you've stolen mine. Whose sin is the greater?"

How terribly his words pained her! She would rather he be furious with her, that he bluster and storm, perhaps even punish her for what she had done, for she knew just how awfully she had wounded him. She knew it by the memories she had stolen from him, through the connection they now shared. She had taken his freedom, burdened him with her care, and now she had taken his life. But there was nothing she could do about it now, no way to undo it, just acknowledge it and move on, and that is what she intended to do. That is what she believed they both would do.

But they did not.

He did not.

Despite his forgiveness, he drew away from her after that. He was cautious of her, much more reserved than he had been before. She felt that he had put up a kind of invisible wall between them, and she did not know how to surmount it. She could breech that wall by force if she wanted. She sensed she had the power to do it. Her telepathic abilities were growing exponentially. She could force her way past his psychic barriers, enter his mind and read his thoughts, perhaps even impose her will upon him, but she knew such a thing would be an unforgiveable trespass. And when she tried to broach the subject, draw him into a discussion about his remoteness, he offered her only reassurances and platitudes.

It was terribly frustrating.

She felt now that she knew him more intimately than any woman had ever known a man. She had been inside his head, shared his thoughts. She could recall at will the memories she had taken from his mind, experience them as if they were her own. Yet, at the same time, he had closed himself off from her, withdrawing emotionally if not intellectually, holding her apart when she needed to be close. They still slept together, and even on occasion made love, but he was guarded, almost to the point of paranoia, as if he constantly suspected she was peeking into his thoughts.

He spent more and more time alone, on the prowl in London, hunting down the renegades. He rarely allowed her to join him in these hunts, saying they were too dangerous for her now. His enemies had joined forces, he claimed, determined to resist him. Sometimes he returned injured, and she looked after him until his wounds had mended. Only once did he ask her to come with him to the city. On that particular occasion, he needed her help recovering his hand, which had been torn from his arm during an especially vicious battle. It was just a search and recovery mission, nothing very exciting, but she was happy enough to go along.

"How many are left?" she asked as she helped him look for the hand. They were in another filthy alley, digging through heaps of garbage together. He thought her psychic abilities might help him locate his lost appendage. She could have told him her powers didn't work that way, but it had been so long since he'd asked for her help she didn't want to spoil the fun.

"The renegades?" he asked.

"No, silly, hands," she teased.

"Not many," he chuckled, using his foot to turn over a crate. "Less than a dozen, I'd say. Most have fled the city. Word has gotten out that I mean to rid London of its vampyre infestation. They've chosen the better part of valor."

"So they've escaped punishment."

"It matters not. I did not come here to destroy my own kind. The London hives had grown too brazen. They threatened the secrecy of our race. If I have scattered them to the winds, made them a little more cautious, then I have accomplished my mission. The less bloodshed the--"

"Here it is!" Nora said, holding up his hand. "A rat was gnawing on it."

"Did you destroy the rat? If it has ingested any of the Blood…"

"Yes," she admitted, looking rather embarrassed. "I fed on it, I'm afraid. Can the Blood transform animals into immortal creatures as well?"

"Rarely," he said, taking the hand from her. "But it has been known to happen. We must always take care that no lesser creature ingests our living blood. Imagine London overrun by vampyre rats!"

"I'd rather not," Nora shuddered. She was terrified of rodents when she was a mortal woman. They were more hors d'oeuvre than d'horreur now, but she still found the creatures repulsive.

He placed the tattered flesh of his wrist against his stump. Nora watched, fascinated, as hundreds of glistening filaments rose up from his forearm, stitching the two pieces together again. Within moments, his hand was reattached to his body. He flexed his fingers with a smile.

"There. Good as new!"

If only the Blood could mend broken hearts as easily as it mended flesh.