Night Fires by Karen Harbaugh

Author:Karen Harbaugh
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780440334668
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2003-12-02T00:00:00+00:00

Corday watched her staring at him, barely noticing Père Dumont's hasty escort of his fellow priest from the room. “You know?” she said, her voice disbelieving.

He stood, then drew up a chair near the sofa on which she lay and straddled the chair, resting his hands and chin on the low back, and gazing at her. She looked no different from how any lovely young woman might. Her skin was pale, her eyes dark and unlined, and her hair richly waving dark. Her lips were pale, more pale than they had been when they had made love, and he could well believe that she was ill from her appearance alone, if not from her still-shaking hands and trembling voice. She had been like this when he had discovered her in the château and exposed the room to sunlight. Then there had been her strength, her swiftness, and the very clear indentations on his dagger's scabbard that were definitely not made with human teeth. The old legends he had heard on his travels had come to him before when he had looked at the marks on his dagger's sheath, and he remembered them again now. Everything she displayed matched.

So his mind and logic told him. Belief . . . that was more difficult to come by. He pushed aside his emotions and focused on the information at hand. He shook his head. “I am not one to believe in anything, Simone. But what else is there to explain you, other than the tales I have heard from far lands?”

She gazed at him warily. “But I could be a madwoman. I could only think I am a vampire.”

“Yes, I considered that,” he said, then laughed when she looked offended. “Indeed, I considered the fact that I myself might be mad. Did I not say so from time to time?”

“I thought you were joking.”

He sobered. “Only half joking, ma petite. Sometimes I think I must indeed be mad to do what I do, and the devil knows I come by it naturally.” A wave of fatigue came over him at the thought of his occupation, and he looked at his hands that had killed so many men, he did not remember the number. But he had felt as a youth that he was fit for nothing else.

She said nothing, only watching him, listening. He became aware of her hand resting on his knee, as if she wished to give him comfort. He did not remember if anyone had listened to him in all of his life since he was a youth or given him comfort. His shoulders tensed, and he made them relax. He let her hand stay where it was.

“But I did not become what I am and survive without cataloguing the facts or by ignoring the most possible explanation for these facts, however improbable,” he continued. “I therefore considered the possibility, and did not dismiss it, not entirely.” Not entirely. The idea existed, and he wanted a natural explanation for it. There was no such thing as the supernatural, after all.

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