With trembling fingers he touched her face, a light caress, then bent to kiss her soft mouth. With an oath, he spun around and left the room. The safeguards were the strongest he knew, locking her in, everyone and everything out.
The storm raged outside, as furious and turbulent as his soul. He took three running steps and launched himself into the sky, hurtling toward the” village. The winds whirled and screamed around him. The house he sought was no more than a small shack. He stood at the door, his face a mask of torment.
Edgar Hummer opened the door silently, stood aside to allow him entrance. “Mikhail.” The voice was gentle. Edgar Hummer was eighty-three years old. Most of his years had been spent in the service of the Lord. He considered himself deeply privileged to be counted among Mikhail Dubrinsky’s few real friends.
Mikhail filled the small room with his presence, his power. He was agitated, deeply disturbed. He paced restlessly, the storm outside increasing in fury, in strength.
Edgar settled himself in his chair, lit his pipe, and waited. He had never seen Mikhail anything but completely calm, without emotion. This was a dangerous man, a man Edgar had never even glimpsed.
Mikhail slammed a fist against the rock fireplace, creating a fine network of lines across the stones. “I nearly killed a woman tonight.” He confessed it harshly, his dark eyes wounded. “You told me God made us for a purpose, that we were created by him. I am more beast than man, Edgar, and I cannot continue to delude myself. I would seek eternal rest, but even that is denied to me. Assassins stalk my people. I have no right to leave them until I know they are protected. Now my woman is in danger, not only from me but from my enemies.”
Edgar puffed at his pipe calmly. “You said ‘my woman.’ You love this woman?”
Mikhail waved a dismissing hand. “She is mine.” It was a statement, a decree. How could he say love? It was an insipid word for what he felt. She was purity. Goodness. Compassion. Everything that he was not.
Edgar nodded. “You’re in love with her.”
Mikhail scowled darkly. “I need. I hunger. I want. That is my life.” He said it in torment, as if he could make it true.
“Then why do you feel such pain, Mikhail? You wanted her; maybe you needed her. I presume you took her. You hungered; I presume you fed. Why should you feel pain?”
“You know it is wrong to take the blood of women for whom we feel other appetites.”
“You have said you have not felt sexual need in centuries. That you cannot feel at all,” Edgar reminded him softly.
“I feel for her,” Mikhail confessed, his dark eyes alive with pain. “I want her every moment of the day. I need her. God, I have to have her. Not only her body, but also her blood. I am addicted to the taste. I crave her, all of her, yet it is forbidden.”
“But you did it anyway?”
“I almost killed her.”
“But you didn’t. She still lives. She cannot be the first time you fed too deeply. Did the others cause you pain?”
Mikhail turned away. “You do not understand. It was the way it happened, what I did afterward. I feared it from the moment I first heard her voice.”
“If it never happened before, why did you fear it?”
Mikhail hung his head, his fingers curling into fists. “Because I wanted her, I could not bear to give her up. I wanted her to know me, know the worst. See all of me. I wanted to bind her to me so she could never leave my side.”
“She is human.”
“Yes. She has abilities, a mental link to me. Compassion. She walks in beauty. I told myself I would not do this thing, that it was wrong, but I knew I would.”
“And knowing you would do something you believe is wrong, you still did it. You must have had a good reason.”
“Selfishness. Did you not hear me? I, I, I. Everything for myself. I found a reason to continue my existence and I took what did not belong to me and still, even now, talking to you, I know I will not give her up.”