Just One Sip by Katie MacAlister & Jennifer Ashley & Minda Webber

Author:Katie MacAlister & Jennifer Ashley & Minda Webber [Webber, Katie MacAlister, Jennifer Ashley, Minda]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Tags: Vampires, Romance, Fantasy, Fiction, Love stories, Occult & Supernatural, Occult fiction, Love stories; American, Large type books, Short Stories
ISBN: 9781597226134
Publisher: Wheeler Pub Inc
Published: 2007-09-15T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seven

Sebastian reached me before I hit the floor, shouldering aside the revenants and Sally as they asked questions about what was happening.

"I will see to her," Sebastian said to Sally as she ignored the closed door and followed us into his bedroom.

"She is my charge," Sally started to say, but Sebastian cut her off, waving her out of the room.

"She is mine now. I will let no harm befall her."

To my great surprise, Sally just looked at him for a few seconds, nodded, then left without even glancing toward me. I felt oddly bereft… for the space of time it took for Sebastian to lay me on the bed.

"Why did you not tell me, Beloved?" he asked, his fingers gently brushing a strand of hair back from my cheek.

I turned my face so I wouldn't have to see the pity in his eyes. He didn't like that, gently but irresolutely forcing me to meet his gaze.

"It was not your brother who was burned at the stake for his father's sins, was it?"

"No," I said, choking on the word, desperately pushing back the memories.

Sebastian slid behind me, cradling me against his chest. I fought the temptation for a moment, but he offered too much of a sanctuary to resist.

"I have not asked you how you became a tattu because I felt you would tell me when you trusted me," he said. I turned in his arms, holding him tight as I buried my head in his neck. Tears, hot and thick, squeezed out of my tightly shut eyes. Desperate to escape my own torturous mind, I merged with him, falling into the blackness that filled him. "Do you wish now to tell me how that came about?"

Images flashed through my mind—a gray-haired man bent over a flame, muttering obscure alchemical spells as he poured one liquid into another; another gray-haired man, flinching as the first swore eternal vengeance for his betrayal; the flash and pomp of Elizabeth's court; the snow and sleet of endless icy winters in Prague; the smell of smoke as it curled up around me, stealing from me not only my breath, but my very life.

"Your father threatened another?" Sebastian's voice was soft and caressing, his presence calming the panic within me. I didn't want to answer his questions, didn't want to think back on that part of my life, but I knew I would have to sometime soon if I wanted him to understand me.

"Edward Kelley befriended a scholar named John Dee early in his life. Dee helped him with much of the alchemical work he later used to parlay favors and money from various monarchs and patrons. But Dee realized that Kelley was little more than a con artist and broke off relations with him. Kelley had some success with carmot, but never fully understood its properties, and soon Dee's fame eclipsed his. He swore vengeance, claiming Dee stole his ideas and his alchemical formulas, going so far as to invoke a curse on Dee."

Sebastian's hands stroked my back.

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