Первородные: Восхождение

CHAPTER TWELVE

ONCE THE FRENCH soldiers recovered from the initial surprise of the attack, it hadn’t taken them long to gain the upper hand. Rebekah could tell that the werewolves were cunning, using their knowledge of the wild environs to their advantage, and laying one ambush after another. Their plan was clever, but it hadn’t been enough to overcome the larger, well-organized, and better-armed French soldiers. By the time the sun rose red as blood, the wolves had melted back into the countryside.

When the sounds of ringing metal and bursting gunpowder were finally silent, Felix was called away from his guard of Rebekah. He was needed, he explained tersely through the door of her tent, to command the men in the aftermath of the battle, and to supervise the care of the wounded. Still mulling over the discoveries from Eric’s room, it took some time for Rebekah to realize the full implications of Felix’s new responsibilities. What he described was the role of a commander, not a second-in-command. And if Felix was in charge of the army this morning, it meant Eric was not.

She knew her brothers would say it was for the best. Eric’s knowledge of vampires was dangerous, and normally Rebekah would have agreed without a second thought. There was even a possibility that he specifically knew about the Originals, and had been sent from Europe to find them. It was feasible that their father had sent spies to the New World to locate them—even if he’d probably want to save the honor of slaughtering them for himself.

If Eric had met some glorious end in a battle with “rebels,” she should be grateful that he had saved her the effort of killing him herself. And yet, every time Rebekah considered the possibility that Eric Moquet was dead, her throat felt tight.

She kept picturing his strong hands and his smiling eyes. She could not believe that he wished her harm. If only she could ask him about the room, her heart insisted that he would be able to explain. She could see all of the might-have-beens so clearly that it would be too cruel for the universe to simply take them away from her.

Besides...she had to learn if he truly had a wife back in Paris.

She ventured out of her tent in search of information. It was a ghastly scene outside, and the enticing smell of blood was almost overwhelming. The damage was mostly contained to the outskirts of the army encampment, but the battle had been devastating. Structures had been knocked down, trampled, and burned. The prison hut was nothing but ashes. By Rebekah’s count, not many soldiers had been lost, but dozens were wounded, and some might yet die—the thought whetting her appetite. It had been days since she had fed—almost a week. She knew she should have drained the wagoner’s wife as well, and she regretted that oversight now. It was almost impossible to prevent her fangs from extending.

It would be worse in the makeshift infirmary, she knew, but there was nowhere else she could go to get answers. If Eric was alive he would be there, and if he was close to death she might not get another chance.

The infirmary tent was hot, airless, and absolutely rancid inside. Blood was everywhere, so mingled with the scent of every other bodily fluid imaginable that Rebekah didn’t know whether to feel hunger or nausea. When she caught sight of all the fresh and bleeding wounds, hunger won out.

Rebekah held a scented handkerchief to her mouth and searched for Eric. It was surprisingly difficult to recognize any individual man: They blurred together into a squirming mass of flesh and pain. They complained and screamed and prayed and laughed, and none of them looked like anyone she had ever met before, in spite of the fact that she’d seen them all at one point or another.

She did recognize the chief medic, a burly, short-haired man who looked more like a butcher. He looked careworn and harried, and his jaw was set in grim determination. She called out to ask for his help, but he couldn’t hear her or pretended not to. She watched him for a moment as he moved from one patient to the next, barking orders to his assistants and keeping his weary gaze on wounds rather than faces.

Rebekah guessed that Eric would probably be somewhere apart from the enlisted men, even in a section of his own. Some parts of the long, low tent were curtained off, but anxious-looking men with bloodshot eyes and bloodstained hands shooed her away whenever she approached. No one seemed to have time to reassure or even answer her, but at least no one cared why she was there.

Finally, she found Eric in his own private corner. The breath rushed out of her lungs and for a moment she felt almost weak with unexpected relief. She hadn’t let herself think about how very much she had wanted to find him alive.

Eric’s warm hazel eyes were unfocused, and his forehead was wrapped with a dingy-looking bandage. “Marion,” he whispered as she approached his cot. “Enfin, mon ange.”

Rebekah jerked back at his words. So the woman in the locket had been his wife after all. A contented smile played on his lips, and that he thought she was another woman was a stake to her heart. “Je ne suis pas ta femme,” she told him coldly, taking a step back from his bed.

Eric’s pupils swam, then focused. “No,” he agreed, his voice rasping hoarsely. “Not my Marion. You are a different kind of angel entirely. I’m glad it’s you who is here with me now.” The intelligent part of her wanted to be skeptical, but he seemed too weak and confused to lie deliberately.

Besides, he had thought she was an angel. It was ironic, certainly, but it was also the sort of compliment that could go to a woman’s head. It also meant he had been so badly wounded that he thought he might die, and that brought the taste of her fear right back into her mouth. “Were you badly hurt?” she asked, almost afraid to know the answer.

“A scratch,” he claimed with as much dignity as he could muster. “Maybe a few scratches, actually, and some bumps and a nasty kick from a panicking horse.” He smiled with charming self-deprecation. “I will heal, is what I mean to say. The doctors have given me laudanum, but I think your presence for just these few minutes has done more to improve my condition than all of their arts.”

After a moment’s indecision, Rebekah found a nearby stool and pulled it to his bedside. “Tell me about this angel, then—about Marion,” she urged, taking his hand and pressing it between hers. If her company was a balm to him, then he would have it. Besides, asking about his wife could turn out to be the best way to learn his other secrets, such as why he’d collected such a frightening mass of occult objects.

Eric winced as he turned his head so that his gaze could find her again. “Your hair is a little darker, but you looked like her, standing there,” he explained with painstaking slowness. “I thought she had come to take me away.”

“Back to France?” Rebekah asked, uncertain of what he was trying to tell her. Humans were so breakable, so fragile. A few angry werewolves later, and this formidable leader of men could barely form a coherent sentence. She had never given much thought to Eric’s vulnerability before, and she found the whole idea quite upsetting. She tried to push it from her mind, to converse as if he were not lying in a hospital bed. “Is she waiting for you there?”

Eric’s lips twisted in a bitter smile. “I don’t think she waits for me anywhere,” he said quietly. “I have studied and searched, and all I can believe by now is that death was the end for her. A cart horse bolted and struck her in the road, a pointless, random accident that need never have happened. And yet in that one trivial moment she went from existing to not. It seemed impossible that someone so full of life could be extinguished so utterly. I never would have believed before then that the world might simply take her from me in the blink of an eye.”

“Death,” Rebekah sighed, relieved. The woman in the portrait was dead—that was so much better than what she had thought. Then another word he had uttered caught her attention. “Studied? You’ve studied...death?”

He coughed, and she half jumped from her seat, ready to demand the doctor come at once. But the cough subsided quickly, and she sat back down. “I’ve studied the dark arts,” he grunted. “Death and those who claim to have conquered it. Whether it’s true that some people walk the earth forever, untouched by mortality.” He paused to catch his breath, then went on, “There are wealthy, powerful men in Europe who have devoted their lives and fortunes to learning the truth of such stories, and they saw promise in me. One such man sent me here to chase these tales. He thinks that the end of death itself has come to the New World, and I am someone who wants to believe that death can be ended.”

The end of death. Was that what she was? How many thousands had died to sustain her eternal life? But she was glad that one thing was clear: The clutter of destruction in his tent wasn’t an obsession after all. It was only an assignment. “Did he tell you more than that?” she asked, trying to keep her tone conversational, hoping it wasn’t her father who had sent Eric. “I would not know where to begin to look for ‘the end of death,’” she prompted.

He smiled again, the corners of his mouth crinkling in that way that always made her want to smile as well. “You are too modest,” he disagreed. “I think you could find anything you set your mind to. I am only a curious widower....I can hardly believe my luck that my employer invested such faith in me. He would have done better to choose someone as spirited and tenacious as you are.”

She smiled automatically at his flattery, but behind it her mind worked in steady, relentless turns. That was it, then. Eric had taken an interest in eternal life, and it had led him almost innocently to a position as her nemesis. The whole thing was, just as she had hoped, a misunderstanding. In a way.

Still, Elijah would want to know about this immediately, and she had a duty to her family that went far deeper than any feelings she might have developed for Eric. The way he smiled up at her, the pressure of his strong hand beneath hers, the admiring light in his eyes...none of that could matter more than their safety. If Mikael was involved with the local military, she had to warn her brothers, no matter what unwelcome decisions they might make based on that information. Even if Eric was blameless.

“Your ring is beautiful,” he said suddenly, and she startled to see him gazing intently at the hand that still pressed his own. “That sort of stone is rare in the colonies, is it not?”

Rarer than he knew, but one of the few in existence was in his tent and she could not possibly explain the presence of its twin on her finger.

She shifted her hand so that just a sliver of the stone was visible and half of the metalwork around it was hidden. Perhaps he only thought it looked faintly familiar, or perhaps he hadn’t even connected it with the one he possessed. After all, he’d sustained some sort of head wound, and obviously had been given generous amounts of laudanum. He wasn’t thinking clearly.

She pulled her hand gently from his and folded it in her lap. “A trinket,” she answered airily. “A gift from my mother when I was a girl. I think it’s a piece of glass—she never said.”

Eric paused with the tip of his tongue resting on his lower lip, as if he was trying to think of how to keep her by his side. She found herself longing to be drawn out, to be seen and touched. She imagined the feel and taste of his mouth against hers. But the pain or the drugs had dulled his usually sharp mind, and the silence stretched out between them. The groans and whimpers of the injured men around them filled her ears, seeming to grow louder until she could no longer stand it.

“You must be tired.” She realized it abruptly, jumping to her feet and smoothing the sheet that covered Eric’s strong, lean torso. “I came to see that you were well, but I should not have strained you by talking so long.”

“It is no strain to speak with you,” he disagreed, and his hands clutched at the sheet, as if they were searching for hers. “You must visit me again. Your company will improve my health faster than any doctor.”

Rebekah’s answering smile was immediate and genuine, in spite of her endless questions and misgivings. The one thing that she knew to be true was that she felt at home with Eric, and that he felt the same. The happy, loving, normal life she had always longed for lay before her on a folding cot in a stinking infirmary, surrounded by men who might die. And yet, he might have been sent by her father to murder her. Rebekah expected nothing less from cruel fate.

She always chose the wrong man at the wrong time. She would fall in love, making it too late to undo her mistake. “I will return,” she agreed, not knowing if she spoke the truth. She stood and shook out her skirt, trying not to notice the way he watched the motion of her hands. “Rest now.”

Then she strode from the tent, ignoring the groans of the wounded men as she went. She was no visiting angel who would sit by their bedsides as they lay dying. She was death herself, and she had business of her own to attend to.