Blood Rites by Elaine Bergstrom Read Free Book Online Page B

been sewn, the floors and woodwork sparkled.
    Hillary, clearly unaccustomed to being up so late, said good night immediately. Helen was about to do the same when Paul thrust a glass into her hand, spilling some of its wine on her skirt. She went into the kitchen to dab water on the stain and Phil followed her, politely keeping his distance. “Don’t go just yet, Helen Wells. Enjoy the silence first.”
    “The silence?”
    “I saw how you looked when you came into the café tonight, like you were standing under an icy waterfall. Take a break from the burden the Austras have thrust upon you. Forget your work and all their lessons. Be young for a while. Be irresponsible.”
    For the first time that night, Helen glimpsed the man Philippe Dutiel had once been and she smiled. “I suppose you’re good at that.”
    “Good! I used to be a master of irresponsibility. Then I acquired a daughter. Thank God her disease isn’t contagious.” He drained his glass and poured another, walked into the next room and sat on a chair arm.
    He looked at Helen standing in the kitchen doorway, at her disapproving expression. “You’re a lot like Hillary, you know. No wonder she’s so infatuated that she talks about you constantly. I think she just wants to be an adult too soon while you’re trying to be a thousand years old.”
    Helen put her glass next to the sink. “I think I’d better leave,” she said coldly and started to walk past him.
    He grabbed her wrist and she stopped midstride. “Let me go!” Helen ordered, strengthening her words with a simple mental command. Neither worked. Instead, he pressed her against the wall and kissed her. She wanted to push him away but pity stopped her, then something more, much more.
    She saw herself through his eyes, felt his mind open to her. He was awake. He knew what she was, yet he wanted to give. So perfectly right; so clearly what human partners were for.
    Half-formed instincts warned her to leave. There were other possibilities and any would be better than this man. She didn’t want to share his bitterness, to devour his pain.
    “If you must go at least do me the honor of staying for one more drink,” he said and smiled.
    She rested a hand on the side of his face. She wanted him—blood, need, soul. As she kissed him again, she sensed the joy deep within him buried beneath losses far more complex than his arm. She would touch that joy and make it surface; this would be the gift she left him tonight. As she knelt beside him, she tried to convince herself that she need do no more than she had done before.
    “No tricks, Helen Wells,” he said. “Just promise me that.”
    He kissed her again and she was rocked by a passion whose purity astonished her. Every carefully ordered vision she had given the others would only be a distraction now. She devoured his need for her and found it inexplicably growing. At last, convinced that she would destroy him completely if she continued, she pulled away. He looked less damaged than puzzled by her sudden recoil.
    “Enough,” she whispered when he asked what was wrong. His blood seemed too potent, a heady addictive drink she could consume until there was no life in him left to give.

    Well after midnight, she left Phil sleeping in his bed and padded through the four small rooms of his cottage, reveling in the efficiency of her new night vision as she roamed through the dark. Hillary slept in a narrow room off the kitchen. A woman’s photograph was tacked onto the wall above her bed. A crucifix hung beside it as if this juxtaposition could give rest to her mother’s soul. Hillary moaned in her sleep and mumbled something in Portuguese. As Helen had done with her cousins not so long ago, she moved to Hillary’s bedside, intending to give a consoling brush of her hand on the girl’s back, a calming mental touch. At the last moment, she pulled back, not wanting to startle the girl, but let the mental bond form.
    And folded slowly to the floor,