The Vampire Dimitri

occurred here. In fact,” she added, spearing him with her eyes, “I do believe I was rather instrumental in them. I did say please, did I not?”

The door opened and Rubey stood there. “Dimitri, your carriage has arrived.”

What the hell had taken so long?

Dimitri didn’t join Miss Woodmore in the carriage. He wasn’t that much of a fool.

Instead he sent her back to Blackmont Hall with a relieved Tren handling the reins. Then he glared at the far-too-fascinated Rubey and induced her to loan him her vehicle.

He had a particular visit to make.

The fact that it was yet another gray, foggy day in London only added to the ease with which he alighted from the carriage in front of Lenning’s Tannery and ducked under the wooden awning that stretched in front of the antiquarian bookstore.

For a moment he hesitated, peering through the window, aware of the sun’s rays filtering through the fog and teasing the back of his neck between hat and collar. The shop seemed dark and empty, and he was suddenly terrified that Wayren had gone.

But when he pushed on the door, it opened and he stepped in.

Drawing in a deep breath of peaceful, musty air, Dimitri closed the door behind him. The place was silent and the only illumination came from a distant corner of the shop. It was a soft, orange-yellow glow that displayed the dust motes he’d just stirred with his entrance.

For some reason, he felt odd about disturbing the silence and calling for the shopkeeper. Or perhaps he feared that she wasn’t there, and that he would have to continue to face his confusion and frustration on his own.

When he heard the soft scuff of a foot on the floor, followed by the whisper of fabric over the ground, Dimitri’s heart leaped and he turned.

Wayren appeared from around a corner. Interestingly enough, she didn’t emerge from the area with the light, but from one of the more shadowy ones. Today, she was empty-handed and without her spectacles.

“And so here you are,” she said, eyeing him steadily.

Dimitri nodded. His mouth didn’t seem able to move, nor his brain to form the words he needed to speak. He didn’t know what to say—how to ask.

She waited. Peace and serenity emanated from her, along with the indefinable scent of something warm and comforting.

“You were there,” he said at last. “You…stopped me.”

She continued to watch him with those peaceful eyes. “You stopped yourself, Dimitri of Corvindale.”

He shook his head, the black bubble of uncertainty spreading like tar inside him. “If you hadn’t appeared in my mind…I would have killed her. I would have taken and taken, I would have drained her to death.” It had been the flash of a vision, clear as if she’d been standing in front of him, that had erupted in his mind as he fed on Maia. That peaceful face with the serene blue-gray eyes had broken through the red-tinged world of need and pleasure, easing the desperation. Giving him a reprieve.

“As I said, you stopped yourself. I did nothing.”

“But you did show yourself to me.”

She raised her brows with a noncommittal expression, and he realized that he would get no confirmation from her. She seemed to know whereof he spoke, but that was the most she would give. I can do nothing for you, she’d said once.

She had done something.

But it hadn’t been enough. Where had she been when he was first faced with the choice from Lucifer? Why hadn’t she stopped him then?

Wayren was looking at him, almost as if she could read what was in his mind. “You had the choice then, Dimitri. You made the decision of your own free will.”

“I was weak. He took advantage of my weakness,” Dimitri replied. But even to him, the words sounded hollow. Even then, he’d known there was something wrong. Something evil. He’d hesitated, yes, but then he’d allowed himself to be tricked, manipulated in a moment of desperation. For all he knew, Meg might have lived anyway. For all he knew, Luce had known it then, as well.

“Aye, Dimitri. He did. That is what the Fiend does.” Despite her words, Wayren watched him with a calm, peaceful expression. “He makes it easy to see his way. He takes advantage.”

Just as I did.

The image of Maia’s face, slack with pleasure, filled with her own sort of peace, slid into Dimitri’s mind. He shoved it away.

It was too late. He’d lied when he told Maia nothing had changed.

Everything had changed.

“And so now all of my years of self-denial are for naught,” he said. “It’s over.”

She looked at him searchingly. “Is that so?”

“Of course it’s so,” he replied, more angrily than he’d ever spoken to her. “How can I expect to break the covenant, to distance myself from the devil, if I act like the demon he turned me into? If I take from people, feed on them, pull their very life from them, how can I ever become human again?”

“So you’ve fed on a mortal, for the first time in decades, and you believe that action has destroyed your chance to be released from the Fiend? Oh, yes, I can see that a century of self-denial has already gotten you so very close to your desire.”

He glared at her mutely. She was looking at him with a sort of arch expression that he’d never seen before. “You don’t understand,” he said tightly. “I fed from a person. I drank her blood. I…” His voice trailed off as saliva filled his mouth. Even now, he could hardly control the physical reaction of his long-denied body. He could still taste it. Feel the energy, the life flowing through him. “It’s a violation. A sin.”

“But has denying yourself done anything but make you a cold, hard, empty shell? Hardly a person at all.”

To his shock and eternal mortification, Dimitri felt a stinging in his eyes. He pinched the bridge of his nose fiercely before any tears could form. “My…dislike of social engagement has nothing to do with the problem at hand.

I’ve never been…particularly social.”

“Have you read the story I gave you?” Wayren asked.

Dimitri frowned, blinking hard. “The fairy tale about the beast? A bit of it. I found nothing of relevance.”

“Indeed?”

Impatience flooded him, and he made a sharp, frustrated gesture with his hand. “I’m sorry to have bothered you.

I thought…” He shook his head sharply, pressing his lips together.

“Dimitri of Corvindale,” Wayren said. Her voice had gentled. “If you want to become truly human again—no longer bound to the Fiend—first you must allow yourself to live again. To feel again.”

“I feel,” he snarled.

“Do you? Or do you snarl and growl—as you’ve done here, today—and then run in the opposite direction when ever something begins to soften your heart?”

“Earls don’t run,” he snapped, but something shifted deep inside him.

She smiled at him. “No, not this one. Instead you lock yourself away within a barricade of stone walls so that none can touch you, so that you can keep yourself from feeling anything.”

It was safer that way. Easier. Less complicated. “I lock myself away so I can study,” he said. But even to him, the words sounded false. “I don’t like to be bothered.”

Wayren gave him a sad, soft smile. “But that’s why men are here. To be bothered. To feel. To live. To love. And…to be loved. That is what makes you different from every other creature. And that is what makes man ultimately more powerful than the Fiend. Do you not see? He’s taken your soul, and with it, he’s taken your very humanity. The very part that could save you.”

His belly twisted tightly and his head throbbed. Maia’s face filtered into his memory, then was supplanted by Meg. And Lerina. He shook his head, but at the same time, something small and warm moved in his chest.