Susan Squires - [Companion Vampires 0] by The Burning

Author:The Burning [Burning, The]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Fourteen

Stephan stood in the woods above Maitlands Abbey, a deeper shadow in the night. The wind through the trees around him shushed in whispers he could not quite understand. The bark of the great birch he leaned against was smooth against his back. What he didn’t understand was why he was about to translocate himself into the fourth-floor nursery below him. Kilkenny would be here anytime, perhaps with others. The time to test himself was nearly at hand. He would die or find redemption. Stephan couldn’t stay at the tavern anymore, the most obvious place for Kilkenny to find him. But he could spend his nights at the hunting lodge. Surely the one who had escaped would start his search there. It was isolated, a perfect place to battle to the death, away from human eyes. He was sure no one would go within a mile of the place with all the whispered stories circulating in the villages round about. Days he could spend in Miss Van Helsing’s cave. He had a plan. He should be focused on his mission.

Yet here he was, in the dark and the rising wind, staring at a nursery, knowing he would go. Van Helsing might know he was there. But the weasel couldn’t stop him. If he accosted Stephan, why, it was just a matter of raising his Companion and drawing the compulsion and Van Helsing would remember nothing. The man had a remarkably weak mind.

Weak? Who was weak? Weak enough to stand here, knowing what he would do.

Why had this slip of a girl gotten so far under his skin?

He clenched his teeth. He was not one to shirk the truth. It was because she knew him. She knew what he was and she was not appalled. She knew everything about him. Well, except for his experience with the Daughters, and that was just as well. She . . . forgave him. He did not deserve forgiveness, but she gave it anyway, naturally.

She was strong enough even for that. She had tried to bandage his wounds, at great personal cost. She was strong enough to try to save him today, from what? A few hours in a cell?

Ah . . . she knew his weaknesses. And she thought Van Helsing might know them, as well. There was a time when he would have wanted to kill anyone who knew the few ways to best him. Strangely enough, with her, it seemed a comfort that someone knew.

And understood. The thought astounded him. Still, she was an outcast, like he was. She had special abilities that made her different as he did. She was hated, as he was. Part of her ability was to see the good in people, even after she knew the worst. And she knew the worst of him. Would she recognize that as a fabulous advantage?

It was he who was weak. He felt something for her. He wasn’t sure what. Friendship? It wasn’t the all-consuming passion he had felt for Beatrix for nearly seven hundred years.

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