years I’ve learned how to maximize the information I glean from a creature’s blood. It’s all about the pace, you see. One must not rush. Or be too greedy.”
“No.” Matthew had expected that Benjamin would violate his mind, but it was impossible not to react instinctively against the intrusion. He scrambled against the chair. One forearm snapped. Then the other.
“If you break the same bones over and over, they never heal. Think about that, Matthew, before you try to escape from me again. It’s futile. And I can drive spikes between your tibia and fibula to prove it.”
Benjamin’s sharp nail scored Matthew’s skin. The blood welled to the surface, cold and wet.
“Before we are done, Matthew, I will know everything about you and your witch. Given enough time—and vampires have plenty of that—I will be able to witness every touch you’ve bestowed upon her. I will know what brings her pleasure as well as pain. I will know the power she wields and the secrets of her body. Her vulnerabilities will be as open to me as if her soul were a book.” Benjamin stroked Matthew’s skin, gradually increasing the circulation to his neck. “I could smell her fear in the Bodleian, of course, but now I want to understand it. So afraid, yet so remarkably brave. It will be thrilling to break her.”
Hearts cannot be broken, Matthew reminded himself.
“As I learn about your mate, I will discover so much about you as well,” Benjamin continued.
“There is no better way to know a man than to understand his woman. I learned that from Philippe, as well.”
The gears in Matthew’s brain clinked and clunked. Some awful truth was fighting to make itself known.
“Was Philippe able to tell you about the time he and I spent together during the war? It didn’t go according to my plans. Philippe spoiled so many of them when he visited the witch in the camp—an old Gypsy woman,” Benjamin explained. “Someone tipped him off to my presence, and as usual Philippe took matters into his own hands. The witch stole most of his thoughts, scrambled the rest like eggs, and then hanged herself. It was a setback, to be sure. He had always had such an orderly mind. I had been looking forward to exploring it, in all its complex beauty.”
Matthew’s roar of protest came out as a croak, but the screaming in his head went on and on. This he had not expected.
It had been Benjamin—his son—who had tortured Philippe during the war and not some Nazi functionary.
Benjamin struck Matthew across the face, breaking his cheekbone.
“Quiet. I am telling you a bedtime story.” Benjamin’s fingers pressed into the broken bones of Matthew’s face, playing them like an instrument whose only music was pain. “By the time the commander at Auschwitz released Philippe into my custody, it was too late. After the witch there was only one coherent thing left in that once brilliant mind: Ysabeau. She can be surprisingly sensual, I discovered, for someone so cold.”
As much as Matthew wanted to stop his ears against the words, there was no way to do so.
“Philippe hated his own weakness, but he could not let her go,” Benjamin continued. “Even in the midst of his madness, weeping like a baby, he thought of Ysabeau—all the while knowing I was sharing in his pleasure.” Benjamin smiled, displaying his sharp teeth. “But that’s enough family talk for now. Prepare yourself, Matthew. This is going to hurt.”
36
On the plane home, Gallowglass had warned Marcus that something unexpected had happened to me at the Bodleian.
“You will find Diana . . . altered,” Gallowglass said carefully into the phone.
Altered. It was an apt description for a creature who was composed of knots, cords, chains, wings, seals, weapons, and now, words and a tree. I didn’t know what that made me, but it was a far cry from what I had been before.
Even though he’d been warned of the change, Marcus was visibly shocked when I climbed out of the car at Sept-Tours. Phoebe accepted my metamorphosis with greater equanimity, as she did most things.
“No questions, Marcus,” Hamish said, taking my elbow. He’d seen on the plane what questions did to me. No disguising spell could hide the way my eyes went milky white and displayed letters and symbols at even the hint of a query, more letters appearing on my forearms and the backs of my hands.
I expressed silent thanks that my children would never know me any different and would therefore