I nodded. Whatever he would say had happened in another lifetime and to another woman. How much could it hurt me now?
I suppose that he heard that thought because he answered it with a bitter smile.
He continued: “Raymond was born healthy and strong. He resembled your father, and we had every hope that he would be as strapping as that great warrior, who, after all, had withstood mating with a fairy queen. We believed that with time, and with our guidance, our son would make the transition to immortality. But when he was three years old, a plague swept through the land, and he contracted it. Even with your superior knowledge of herbs and cures, you were not able to save him. You could not live with that, and so after one year of despair and self- recrimination, you tricked your sister into revealing the ingredients for a deadly potion that would kill one who had the blood of the immortals, and you drank it. You did not give me the option of taking it with you.”
“And you?”
“I was already powerful when we met. Your blood flowing through me was apparently the last component I required to live on eternally, or at least for as long as I have.”
Those had been my words; they had tumbled from my own lips, and I could hear their echo. I started to shake, doubling over, trying to hold back the tears. I wrapped my arms around my belly as if to protect the mortal child inside, so that I would not lose him too.
The Count, on the other hand, was unmoved. “Forgive me if I cannot share your grief, Mina. I lived it for many years, while you, with your selfish actions, escaped it rather quickly. At this point, it has been completely wrung from me. And do forgive me if I seem a little angry with both myself and with you at finding us once again faced with a similar challenge.”
He stood in front of me and took my hands in his, exposing my face and defying my anguish with his eyes. “Mina, what do you want?” Each word felt like a blow to me. I had come here to ask him what I should-must-do, but he was not going to give me any instruction or direction or offer comfort.
“No, I will not offer you comfort. I have offered you comfort and every other sort of gift over many lifetimes, and I have found no reward in it. It is up to you now to decide your path.”
The words were even more deafening and insistent than when he had uttered them aloud. I shut my eyes against him and reminded myself that I had power in this situation.
“Yes, Mina, that is what I have been trying to tell you. You have
“You cannot shut me out,” he said, but the mere fact that he had to say it aloud made me think that, with effort, I could shield my thoughts from him and divorce myself from his influence so that I could think. I opened my eyes to see that he was searching my face with the same curiosity of any man.
“Until yesterday, I wanted nothing but you,” I said. “But what I want is no longer as significant as what I must do for the child. I was an unusual child, a misfit rejected by my own parents. Now you tell me that though you and I are of the immortals, my son is mortal and carries the blood and the frequency of his father. What will that make him?”
He was much quicker to know my own mind than I was. He dropped my hands. “You want to tell Harker about his child. Is that correct?”
“I do not want to, but I believe that I must,” I said.
There was one moment when I felt at peace for having discerned and confessed what I felt that I must do, one moment when I believed that he understood my plight and would help me through it. But in the next instant, I saw in his face that that was not to be.
“Well, then, let us make haste,” he said angrily. “We do not want to keep you from him. Let us settle this business once and for all.”
He glared at me for an interminable amount of time, but even with my new confidence, I could not read him. I could feel his anger, but, because of his greater power and because he wished it so, his thoughts were his own and not to be shared.
Without the Count uttering a word, a steward appeared with two heavy cloaks, handed them to the Count, and then left the room. The Count wrapped one around himself and tossed the other to me. I felt energy swirl around him, some force that he seemed to gather at his command. I could not see it, but I could feel it as surely as I could feel my own body, and it threw me off balance as I tried to put the cloak around me. The room and its furnishings went blurry as time seemed to speed up. In a whirl of movements, he had wrapped the cape around me and wrapped me in his arms. My body went limp, overpowered by his greater force-not any physical strength he was using but the very power of his being, that great stream of energy that he had summoned from somewhere deep in the universe.
Quickly I succumbed to the excitement of being in this strange, overwhelming aura. I wondered if this mad energy would be harmful to the baby, and in a split second heard him answer with a resounding
Part Eight
LONDON
Chapter Seventeen
Nothing in his demeanor invited questions, and, besides, he disappeared, so I did as he said, entering a steamy bath scented with lavender, and tried to let the water suppress my anxiety. I had no idea how he had arranged this midnight meeting with Jonathan, but I trusted, perhaps foolishly, that he would not let any harm come to me. Jonathan, for his part, would surely not want any harm to come to me once he knew that I carried his child, even if he was certain now that I was another of the creatures he had learned to fear. I did not welcome this mission, but I also did not think that I should keep the pregnancy from the child’s father, if only because the boy would grow up and discover his true identity, and surely hate me for it.
