Death's Mistress (Dorina Basarab, #2)(131)

“Uh, so. Why did you kill Elyas again?”

She raised those lovely eyes from the stake to mine. “I’m sorry. Did you want him?” she asked politely.

“Not particularly, no.”

“I don’t blame you. He wasn’t much of a challenge.”

“Unlike Geminus?”

“Oh, no. He would have been interesting, but he wasn’t expecting it, you see. They rarely do.”

No, I didn’t suppose so. I was standing in front of her, watching Anthony’s blood drip from her hands, and I was still having a hard time picturing her as the murderer. Her scent was off, but she looked the same as always: sweetly innocent and beautiful enough to turn heads.

And then she plunged the stake back into Anthony’s chest, and it became a little easier.

He did scream that time—a pathetic, mewling sound that had me grabbing Christine’s wrist before I thought about it. But she only crouched there, looking at me inquiringly. “Uh. You can’t kill him,” I said weakly, after a short hesitation.

Her head tilted curiously. “Why not?”

My mind raced, trying to come up with a reason, any reason, to save Anthony. It was a little difficult since I didn’t know why she wanted him dead in the first place. And then a voice spoke calmly behind me. “His death energy would bring down the ceiling on our heads. We would all die.”

Christine frowned, and let go of the stake. She slowly rose to her feet, bloody hands smoothing her crumpled skirt. “Louis-Cesare.”

“Christine.”

I glanced between the two of them. Louis-Cesare looked vaguely sick, regarding the tableau with a terrible sadness. But he did not look shocked.

He did not look surprised.

“What the hell?” I demanded, standing up.

He glanced at me and hesitated. But then his spine stiffened and he answered, “When I made Christine, it was as I told you. She had been drained of most of her magic, and with it, her life. She was close to death—so close, in fact, that I did not know if the process would take.” He paused to lick his lips. “When she awoke, it became rapidly obvious that . . . there was something wrong. She was lucid enough. She knew me, but she was . . . troubled.”

“Troubled as in . . .”

“She was violent. Disturbed. I put her to sleep, hoping it was merely the trauma of what she had been through. But the next night, when I went to check on her, she was gone. I tracked her to the abbey where she had been a novice and where she had once been whipped. I found it burned to the ground, and the abbess . . .”

I suddenly remembered a vision of a burned-out building, piles of ash and a desiccated corpse, as delicate and fragile as an insect’s exoskeleton. “Christine?”

He nodded, swallowing. “Others had been fed upon. I tracked Christine for miles, and finally found her with a group of pilgrims. Or . . . what remained of them.”

“Oh, gods.” That was Anthony. I wasn’t sure if it was a cry of pain, or because he was slowly reaching the same conclusion I was.

“She hasn’t done anything like that since,” Louis-Cesare said quickly, seeing the dawning horror in my eyes. “I kept watch over her, and she is easily enough restrained. Her power is minimal; she is only a danger to humans and she is not allowed—”

“Minimal?” Anthony coughed, a harsh, wet sound. “She’s a goddamned first-level master. I should know!”

Christine casually put a delicate little patent leather shoe through his chest. I heard ribs crunch, and he cursed. “You do not wish to kill him, Christine. Remember?” Louis-Cesare said sharply.

“Oh. Oh, yes. I’m sorry.” She meekly withdrew the foot, leaving Anthony writhing on the floor.

I stood there, feeling dizzy. “She’s a revenant,” I said numbly. Louis-Cesare didn’t confirm it, but he didn’t deny it either. He just stared at me, his face blank and pale like that of a man about to face the gallows.

Or like a man who had sired a monster.

It didn’t happen often, but occasionally a young master would feed off the same person too many times in close succession, thereby passing on the metaphysical virus that was at the core of vampirism. But because the feedings weren’t intended to be a Change, the master’s blood wasn’t also shared with the child. And thereby the link that power created was missing.

Revenants also occurred when something went wrong with the Change, either because of a mistake on the master’s part or because of a problem with the subject selected—generally illness or age. If the subject was weak, the link formed was as well, and never provided the control needed to steer the new vampire’s development.

However they were created, the newborn revenant was a problem from the start. They craved that connection with their master and the power it should have brought them. Without it, they went mad with hunger, attacking everything in sight, blindly searching for something they would never find.

Occasionally, one would survive for a few months, maybe as long as a year if he was in a relatively isolated place, like a mountain range with plenty of hiding places. But I’d never heard of one lasting longer than that. Certainly not long enough to rise in power. It had never even occurred to me—or to anyone I suspected—that a revenant could rise in power.

I guess the assumption always was that they were flawed mentally, so they must be flawed physically as well. And that was often true. The pale, hunchbacked, salivating vamp of legend, with fangs too large for his mouth and an unquenchable lust for blood, possibly came from sightings of revenants.