Note: Please see Prologue for warning, copyright and disclaimer information.
A Walk
Cormac paused to talk to the matre'd for a moment, then guided me out. As we went outside he asked, "Would you care to take a walk?"
"Either you're going to have to start teaching me German or talking in English," I told him. "This is getting annoying."
"Perhaps," he murmured.
I shook my head. "I guess I'll have to buy a pocket dictionary."
"I have one back in the room," he said softly.
"You would," I replied, remembering how thorough he'd been as a human.
"I do. Would you like to walk with me?" He asked again.
"Yeah," I answered. "It will give me a chance to walk off some of my frustrations."
"That too," he agreed. "I believe the fresh air would do us good."
"Clear the stench of the undead from my nostrils," I mumbled, not expecting him to hear me. I needed to get away from that nagging feeling I had whenever vamps were too close for comfort.
He looked down at me. "You're walking with one."
"Or maybe not." I'd be having that feeling as long as I was around Cormac, wouldn't I? I glanced at his face, but he didn't seem overly irritated with my remark.
We walked left from the restaurant, not hurrying. The street was fairly busy as we strolled the four blocks to the park. Near the street there were quite a few people sitting on benches, but as we moved further away from the road, the park was deserted.
A dimly lit path led our way over small bridges that spanned a winding brook. The moonlight danced off a small pond to our right. The setting was almost too perfect, too romantic.
Cormac's sigh broke the silence. "Getting back to your conversation with Kate, and what she believes me to have been doing these last few years," he said softly, "still defending myself, and remembering that night…."
I looked everywhere but at him. I still wasn't sure I liked knowing that he remembered our being together that way.
"You were—are the last woman I was—have been with in any sort of physical manner." He seemed uncomfortable, unable to decide on the present or past tense while explaining this to me.
Why was he telling me this? As much as I liked hearing that he hadn't actually screwed any of the women that Kate had tried to make me think he had, it really wasn't any of my business. Did he expect me to be happy about it? Okay, so I was happy about it, but what exactly did he want me to say? Did he want me to admit that he was the last man I'd voluntarily slept with?
"Again," I said, not looking at him, "that's none of my business. What you choose to do with yourself is—has not been my concern for a long time." God, now he had me doing it.
"How are the shoes working out?" he asked, once again changing the subject.
I shrugged. "I can walk in them." Honestly, they hurt; I was definitely not used to wearing heels.
"We can sit down and rest your feet if you'd like," he offered, gesturing toward a nearby bench.
"Sure," I agreed. He led me over and I sat down, not quite sure what to do with the hem of the dress.
"Hold it up slightly," he suggested.
I shot him a questioning look. "Cross-dress much?"
He sat down on the bench with me, not close enough to crowd me, but still too close for my comfort. Who was I kidding? I hadn't been comfortable since I'd learned he was still alive, or rather undead.
"As I said," he reminded me, "you don't spend that much time with all of the women that I have and not pick up a few pointers."
"You spent twenty years with all these women, and—" I stopped my words abruptly. "No, I so do not want to go there," I muttered angrily to myself. He had no reason to lie to me about his sex life or lack of it.
"You must understand, Eliza," he explained patiently, "with my memories of my life, I also lost my memories of love, and lust."
I decided to keep my mouth shut so I wouldn't say something I'd regret. I bent down to furtively adjust the heel of my left shoe, hoping to take the pressure off of a blister I felt forming.
Cormac leaned forward to see what I was doing. "Are the straps bothering you?"
"No, no," I said quickly, too quickly.
"Are you sure?"
I looked down and pulled on the back of the shoe. "The heel a little," I admitted reluctantly.
He stood and crouched in front of me, lifting my foot gently in his hand to examine the shoe for a moment. He slowly reached under my skirt to the back of my knee and untied the laces that held the shoe on. Then he unwound them from my calf, pulled the shoe off gently and set it beside him on the path. To my stunned amazement, he started rubbing my foot, easing the ache out of the muscles. I stared down at him, feeling his cold hands on my skin and lost for a moment in memories of Baltimore. I wanted to reach out and touch his face to see if it still felt the same.
What the hell was he trying to do to me? I didn't get how he could shoot past all of the barriers I'd put up against ever feeling these things again. In twenty years I'd never willingly let a man get as close to me as he'd been tonight, and I'd never once regretted the loss, especially after Luther's 'punishment' in Burlington. Now Mac just had to touch me once and I wanted more from him, much more.
I tried not to show what I was feeling, but despite my efforts my foot tensed up. He rubbed a little harder for a moment, then looked up at me.
"Relax a little bit, will you?" he said impatiently.
"Yeah." Like I could with his cold hands on my skin and the tingle at the base of my spine that told me a Kindred was entirely too close to me.
His hands froze on my foot. "Would you rather I stopped?"
Why did he always ask me things like that? Hell, yes, I wanted him to stop, but there was a part of me that wanted him to continue rubbing my foot and more. There was no way I would tell him that, he already knew too much about me for my own peace of mind.
"If we're not going to be on our feet all night," I told him finally, "my feet are fine. You don't have to do that."
"If the shoe is bothering you, you don't have to wear them," he suggested.
"I think the dress would drag if I didn't." His hands were making shivers to run up my legs and I ignored the sensation as much as I could, trying to concentrate on the vamp vibes he was giving off instead. It didn't help.
"Pick it up a little bit." His hands started rubbing my foot again, making the shivers worse.
"I don't think they let you barefoot into clubs," I said wryly.
"Who said we were going to a club?"
"You talked about going to 488 with Jurgen," I reminded him.
"Who said we were going?" He had a half smile on his face as if he were teasing me.
I smiled in return. "I hate to say I assumed."
"We don't have to."
I hated to ask this, but, "Do you have something else in mind?"
"We have all night," he told me, his soft voice sending gooseflesh down my arms.
Mentally shaking my reaction off, I said, "You just sounded like you had something in mind."
"No, just spending time, relaxing." With that he increased the pressure of his hands on my foot as if he could force me to relax. "The other portion of this mission was to get to know each other again."
"Yeah, it was, wasn't it," I murmured. I wished he hadn't reminded me of that.
"Would you prefer to go to the club now?" he asked. "Or back to the chantry?"
I shrugged. "I guess it doesn't matter." We were going to be together anyway, did it really matter what we were doing?
"See where the wall fell?" he added.
"That would be interesting," I admitted. It was almost unbelievable that I had this opportunity to see where the Berlin Wall had been. I'd never even thought about travelling the world and seeing the sights before, and of course now my contract didn't normally allow for it. "Had the wall fallen when you were here before?"
"It had," he told me, still rubbing the tension from my foot, "but we did not have opportunity to visit."
"You were here with Dougal." Somehow, I had put the thought of Cormac's sire completely out of my mind. I really had to stop doing that; I needed to remember that Mac was a monster now, and that things could never be the same between us again.
"Yes."
I forced myself to shake off thoughts of what might have been. "Do you wanna go see the wall?"
"It is up to you, really," he said softly. "I've traveled somewhat, you have not. What would you like to go see?"
"I'd prefer that over the club," I told him with an apologetic smile. "I'm not much of a partier. Well, not that kind of party, anyway." My idea of a party involved sharp objects and dead vamps.
"Well then," he asked, looking down, "would you like me to put your shoe back on or take the other one off?"
"Why don't I just take the other one off?" I said, reaching beneath the dress for the tie behind my knee, but Cormac's hands were there first.
His fingers brushed my skin as he undid the tie and unwound the straps from my calf. He removed the shoe and gently put my feet down on the ground. He stood holding my shoes and held his hand out to me. I tried to be cool about it, but still I hesitated before I put my hand in his.
When I was back on my bare feet, he handed me my shoes. I took them with my left hand, leaving my right still held in his. I reached down and picked up the skirt of my dress to hold it out of the way while I walked. It was a little awkward, with the purse string around my left wrist and holding the straps of the shoes and the skirt with the same hand, but it worked.
Mac led the way back to the streets, avoiding the path. The cool grass felt good on my feet, and I realized that I hadn't walked barefoot across a lawn in many years, too many to try and count. He talked softly about the brightness of the stars and the moonlight, but he'd always done things like that. I used to think of him as my Irish warrior with the heart of a poet.
We made our way to the street and I noticed that the crowd had thinned to the point that we were nearly alone. As we walked back toward the restaurant, the mouth of an alley opened on our right, one I hadn't noticed on the way to the park. Cormac surprised me by stopping to look down it.
"What is it?" I asked him, concerned by the sudden stillness of his face.
"I have seen this alley in my dreams," he said softly.
I looked down the alley, but it turned about twenty yards from us and I couldn't see the end. There was light litter scattered on the floor of the alley, and it looked just like almost every other alley I'd ever seen. "You've dreamed about this alley?"
"Yes." His voice was low and thoughtful, as if he were troubled by something.
"Have you ever been in this alley?" I asked him. "Something weird with you and Dougal?"
"No." He let go of my hand and took a couple of steps closer to the alley. "Stay here," he told me firmly. "Protect yourself."
"From what?" I looked around, but didn't see anything that could possibly be a threat. A tall blond woman stood on the street a block away from us, but my senses told me she was human, certainly nothing to be concerned about.
"Just please," he asked, his tone a cross between annoyance and pleading.
"You want me to stay here while you go down there?"
"Yes," he answered, relieved that I understood so easily.
I didn't think he'd be relieved for long. "I don't think so," I told him. He needed someone to watch his back and I was the only one here.
Cormac turned back and took a step toward me, looking at me very pointedly. "Eliza, please," he asked impatiently. "Just stay here."
Something about the alley bothered him, some kind of danger to me that I didn't understand. After a moment I sighed. "You've got five minutes," I told him firmly. I wouldn't give him anything more than that before I came after him.
He nodded and turned, walking down the alley. I saw the flicker of light as he lit a cigarette. I shook my head wryly; one would think that since he didn't really breathe any more, he'd have quit that damn habit when he'd been embraced.
I took a step into the alley, hoping to keep an eye on him. I didn't like letting him go down there alone, and didn't understand why it had been so important to him that I stay out of the alley. I heard a noise behind me and turned to see that the woman I'd seen standing down the street had joined me in mouth of the alley. She was staring at me intently, a knowing look on her face that raised the hair on the back of my neck.
"Can I help you?" I said, thinking that she probably wouldn't understand me.
"Looking for your master?" she asked in heavily accented English.
"Excuse me?" I didn't get any funny vibes from the woman; she seemed completely human to me. Could she read my aura in some way? Did she know about Kindred and ghouls?
She lifted a large piece of wood over her shoulder. She must have had it behind her because I hadn't seen it until then. I took a cautious step away from her, knowing that this couldn't be good.
"We don't tolerate those of your kind," she told me with righteous anger. "We will destroy your evil."
Suddenly it was as if she was wrapped in magic, it's the only way I can explain it. She felt like a cross between a fairy and a witch, with a little True Faith thrown in for good measure. She swung the wood at me but I sidestepped it easily, dropping the shoes to the alley floor.
"Look," I said patiently, hoping to talk my way out of this, "I don't have a master. I'm on your side in all this, I hate the vamps as much as you do." I used a trick I'd learned from Kate to make myself more agile, knowing that I'd need it before this encounter was over.
I was gambling to use my blood that way and I knew it. I was already weak from doing the same thing in the fight I'd had with the Garou a few nights ago and using more blood to heal the gash on my shoulder, but I knew that I had seriously underestimated the woman as a threat and I had to do something. Still, I didn't want to hurt her if I could help it, she seemed very human to me, even with the eerie golden aura.
"I'm not a fool," she cried angrily, her accent making it difficult for me to understand her. "You're just a tool of your master, as much of a monster as he is. My friends will kill him, and I'll kill you." She swung the wood again, but using blood had made me slower than I'd anticipated and I couldn't move out of the way fast enough.
I lifted my left arm to block the blow and was stunned at the agony that shot through me when the wood made contact. Normally I can take a much harder hit than your average human and walk away without even a bruise, but I'd been hit by werewolves in big-furry form and not felt this much pain. I fell against the wall behind me, surprised by the strength of her attack.
The woman swung again and I barely ducked out of the way to stumble past her toward the other side of the alley. The board shattered on the side of the building, and pieces of brick crumbled to the ground. I cradled my arm against my chest and stared at the woman in shock, trying to figure out exactly what she was.
It occurred to me in that moment that the woman might actually kill me. I could find death in that nameless alley in Berlin, an end to the nightmare I'd survived all those long and lonely years since I'd left Baltimore. Mac would take care of Corrine and I could have peace at last. All I had to do was stand there and let her finish me off.
Out of nowhere, Cormac was there. He smashed the woman in the head with his elbow, knocking her back against the wall. He pointed both of his pistols in her face and said something low in German. The woman bit out a harsh reply and swung at him.
Before I could move to stop him, he fired both weapons at her. One shot missed to explode in the wall behind her but the other hit the center of her chest. She sagged back against the wall and fell to the ground, dead. The smell of burning flesh filled the alley.
"Let's go," Cormac commanded briskly, still holding his guns on her and backing toward the mouth of the alley.
I stared at the woman's body while I moved away, stunned at the finality of her death. She was only defending her race, a race that neither Cormac nor I belonged to. Who were we to end her life like that? A part of me wished that he'd been delayed a minute longer, that she had been able to kill me like the monster she'd named me.
A larger part of me longed to be like her, to die honorably for my beliefs, but it was much too late for that now. What had I done at the first pressure to stop hunting? Not only had I stopped, I'd betrayed the cause to help the enemy.
"Do you want your shoes?" Cormac asked me as he put his guns away.
I shook my head numbly. "They weren't the most comfortable anyway, let's just get out of here." I didn't want to see the woman's body again. I needed to get as far away from the smell of burning flesh and the truth of her words as I could.
As we hurried away I knew she'd been right, I was a monster. For years I'd tried to make myself think that I wasn't by killing vamps and hating them almost as much as I hated myself. That didn't change what I was, though. I looked like a ghoul to the woman because in reality, that's what I was.
No matter how hard I tried, I could never get rid of the vampire blood inside of me. True, I didn't have a master like most ghouls, but I still had the same blood they did. I could use it just like a Kindred ghoul could, to make myself stronger, or faster. And it never went away, either; if I used it, my body just made more of it, something a real ghoul could never do.
Within a few minutes we were back at the restaurant parking lot. When our car was brought around, I saw him slip the valet a hundred-dollar bill as he said something to him urgently in German. We got into the car and drove away.
Right away, he asked, "Friend of yours?" He still seemed pissed, but I didn't understand why. He'd killed the good guy, hadn't he?
"Like I have friends here," I said harshly. "I don't know who she was." I could feel myself shaking, but couldn't seem to stop. I didn't know if I'd been scared by the blow the woman struck me, or thrown by seeing Cormac kill her without a second thought.
"Do you know what she was?" he asked a little calmer.
"Someone that wanted to kill me would be my best guess," I told him as a shiver ran through me. "Human." My arm ached badly, so badly that I knew it must be broken. I concentrated for a moment on healing the injury, but it didn't work as much as it should have, and made me even more tired.
"Not quite," he corrected me.
I shrugged. "She was human enough for me." Human enough that I hadn't wanted to kill her. My arm felt a little better, but the pain was still very bad. How the hell could she have hit me that hard?
"She was something I've never seen before," he said thoughtfully.
"People don't normally just walk up to me on the street and decide I need to die," I said impatiently. I was tired and weak from lack of blood, and I get cranky when I'm tired. "She was a slayer of some sort."
"Yes," he murmured wryly, "I gathered that. There were more of them down in the alley."
I shot a quick look at his profile. "And they didn't see you?" I knew I shouldn't have let him go down there alone.
"No, I didn't stick around long enough for them to," he told me.
"Good thing." I told myself that I didn't want to see him destroyed because if he were I'd have a hard time getting home. I almost laughed out loud at the obvious lie. I knew I had to calm down before I got hysterical.
"So, would you still care to go see the wall?" he asked, relaxing for the first time since he'd sat down behind the wheel.
At that I did laugh, mostly because I was glad to still be alive. I ran my hand through my hair and was startled to realize that I was still shaking. I hadn't wanted to kill her because she was human, but that certainly wouldn't have stopped her from killing me. Would I have been able to defend myself if Cormac hadn't stepped in? In my weakened condition, injured as I was, I knew I couldn't have lasted long.
I laid my hand on my leg to try and hide it's trembling. "I don't care."
Cormac reached over and put his hand on mine. His skin almost felt warm, my hands were that cold. He held it lightly at first and when I didn't pull away, he took a firmer grip.
I took several deep shaky breaths to try and calm my wild thoughts, but it didn't help. I had come close to dying tonight, closer than I had in a long time.
"Would you care to head back to the chantry and change clothes?" he asked softly.
"That's probably a good idea," I told him. "It's hard to be battle ready in an evening gown."
He shot me a quick look. "I didn't have in mind hunting for them."
I hadn't even thought about doing that until he mentioned it, but even so I didn't think it was a good idea. "I think they were hunting for us."
"Perhaps that club is our best bet this evening," he suggested. "Either that or the chantry."
"I think I'd prefer the chantry," I replied, adding under my breath, "as much as I hate that place." Sure, the palace was breathtaking, but that many vamps in one place made me itch to plant my stakes where they'd do the most good. Well, for me anyway.
"They found us out for a nice quiet walk," he murmured, "gallivanting about the city might be just as bad."
"I'm a little jumpy," I confessed. "I don't know if I want to be with a bunch of people."
"I understand," he told me, taking a firmer grip on my hand.
I told myself I should pull away, but I couldn't make myself to do it. Instead, I squeezed his hand slightly in return. Why should I keep pulling away from him? What made him any more of a monster than I was? He'd at least been forced into this existence, at least he'd had years as a human. I was born this way; I'd been damned from the moment of conception. I've never been normal and never would be. Didn't that make him less of a monster than I was?
We rode in silence back to the chantry. The same ghoul who'd brought the car around for us earlier drove it away again. We went inside but before we had gone more than half way across the entry hall, Eduardo approached us.
He talked with Cormac in Spanish for several minutes, and it looked to me like Mac didn't like whatever he was saying. I felt like telling Eduardo to give it up; when Mac set his mind on something, either for or against it, there was no shaking him. The only thing that kept me quiet was the certainty they were talking about me; they had both glanced my way several times during the conversation.
Cormac waited until Eduardo disappeared into the depths of the palace before he started walking toward our rooms.
"What was that whole thing about?" I asked in a hushed voice. Now that Eduardo was gone, I cradled my wounded arm against my chest.
"Your witty repartee at the restaurant," he told me.
"What would that be?" I'd said a lot of things during dinner that could have pissed the elder Tremere off.
"It appears that most ghouls at least around here are rather more…." He paused, looking for a tactful term to use.
"They're puppies," I finished for him, not caring about niceties.
"Yes," he agreed. "They are fed from regularly."
Even the thought made my skin crawl. "Oh, yay. And that has what to do with us?"
He glanced over at me. "Your sparkling comeback when you were told what Wolfgang was propositioning."
My eyebrows shot up. "You mean what I whispered to you in your ear?" I kept forgetting that I was hanging around monsters with excellent hearing.
"Yes, close enough."
"You Kindred have this habit of overlistening," I muttered darkly.
"Mmm, I believe we have Jurgen to thank for this."
I knew there was a reason I didn't like him, as if I needed another besides his vampness. "So, what, that puts you in hot water?" That was the last thing I wanted. It wasn't Cormac's fault that I hated all Kindred. Well, almost all Kindred, I couldn't quite bring myself to hate him, no matter how hard I tried to.
"A little bit, yes," he admitted as we turned down the hallway to our room.
"How much is a little?" Basically, I wanted to know if we had to fight our way out of the chantry.
"Ah, that remains to be seen." He looked a little uncomfortable so I decided not to push the question. "However, given the events of just now, I plan on leaving tomorrow."
"Good idea." I walked ahead of him into the room, feeling exhausted and wanting nothing more than to be left alone. I crossed to the dresser and put down the small purse, turning away from the mirror and the guilt and shame I saw in my eyes.
Cormac took off his coat and looked my way. "Will you be okay if I take care of some business for a while?"
"Yeah." What, did he think I was afraid to be alone?
"Stay here, be good," he told me, adding, "don't hide too many stakes."
"Yeah," I replied with a weak chuckle. My arm still ached badly and without thinking, I fingered the spot where the wood had hit, feeling carefully to see if it was still broken.
"Are you sure you're all right?" he asked, noticing my movements. "Your arm?"
I shrugged, not wanting to admit how bad it was. "It hurts. It'll get better," I assured him.
"How badly?"
"It just hurts," I repeated, hoping he would just drop the subject.
He didn't. "Broken?"
I glanced at him and flexed my arm. It had been broken at first, but I think the healing in the car had taken care of that. "I don't think so, I can move it."
He relaxed a little, making me aware that he'd waited tensely for my reply. "You might want to draw yourself a hot bath and relax."
"Yeah," I said wryly, "like I could relax here." Surrounded by vamps and locked in a room alone. Ri-ight.
"Well, I think I'll take one when I get back." He took his cell phone from his jacket pocket and turned toward the door.
I closed my eyes at the thought of him soaking wet and naked in the next room. "I bet that will be real relaxing," I muttered sarcastically.
"I promise I'll mind myself," he said as he left the room. I heard him lock the door behind him, but it only made me feel caged in.
A bath, he'd said. Well, it did sound good, and it might relax me after all, if I could stay awake long enough to take one. I went into the bathroom and turned on the water. Digging around in the carry on bag I found that Corrine had thoughtfully packed the bath oil she knew I liked. I opened the top and inhaled the fragrance, hoping to wipe away the smell of the alley from my mind.
I poured a generous amount into the bath and checked to make sure the temperature was hot enough. I felt chilled to the bone and hoped that the water would warm me up. The dress had been difficult to get on, and it was even harder to get off one handed, but somehow I managed. I made sure there was a large towel nearby and climbed into the tub.
The heat and aroma of the water worked to relax me somewhat. I tried to keep the arm out of the water knowing that what I really needed was to put ice on it. When Mac came back, I'd have to ask him to get some for me. I didn't like the idea of letting him know that I was hurt, but ice would help the pain. I didn't understand why it wasn't healed already.
When I realized that I was falling asleep in the tub, I pulled the plug and got out. I dried off and wrapped the oversized towel around my body. I went into the bedroom with a brush and a stake to sit down on the edge of the bed. I put the stake in the drawer beside me and started to brush my hair.
My arm still hurt very badly, and I knew I couldn't function like that. If I used blood to heal, I'd be really out of it, but I knew I'd at least be adequate tomorrow night. And I should be safe in the chantry, right? Mac would be back soon and he'd take care of me. Without a second thought, I concentrated on healing my arm.
Exhaustion and pain ate at my consciousness, and I told myself that I would just lie down for a minute. I fell back against the pillow and cradled my bruised arm against my chest. I'd get up soon to get dressed and make a bed in the corner of the room, really I would.
I was asleep an instant later.