Storywitch's "Book of Shadows"

In my Vampire Queen series, Lady Lyssa had a servant before Jacob, a monk named Thomas. They had an unusual relationship, in that she honored his vow of celibacy throughout his service to her, except for one night where she boldly demanded he prove his loyalty to her was equal to his loyalty to God. When this was mentioned in the books, several of you asked for a vignette that visited that night between them. Therefore, per your request, here is Part One. There will likely be three parts to this vignette, posted at two week intervals. Hope you enjoy this, and happy Valentine’s Day. Don’t forget, for those waiting for Brendan and Chloe’s story, Branded Sanctuary releases at Ellora’s Cave tomorrow!

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Thomas circled the chamber for what felt like the hundredth time. He’d prepared her bed as he did every night. He’d turned back the cotton sheets the way she liked, arranged her pillows, and cut one perfect white rose, the bud not quite open, to lay on the linens. Though it was something she required, tonight it seemed as if he did it by his own will, for his own purposes. His fingers lingered on the petals as he imagined trailing the bud between her breasts, down a silken abdomen…

He swore, something he rarely did, but the moment seemed to call for it. He attended her in the evenings when she first rose, and she often laid out her schedule for the nighttime hours while choosing her clothing, calling for his assistance to lace a corset or tie a garter. He’d seen her naked plenty of times. He helped her bathe, after all, pouring water over that slim back, massaging oils into her skin. He washed her dark hair, a web of temptation all its own, the way it fell in twists and curls down to her flare of her hips, teasing the crease between her bare buttocks.

She was a descendant of Lilith, of Jezebel, of every woman who knew exactly how to use such beauty to confound a man’s mind. Despite the fact it was a more enlightened time, almost 1852, there were still some of his monastic brethren in England who considered women Satan’s agents, either deliberately or through female weakness for sin. But he didn’t. Even after a year in the service of a vampire queen.

That year had brought him far from the monastery, geographically at least. Her decision to leave Europe for the young United States of America had been surprising, but she’d felt the position was strategic. It spoke to her desire to see the European vampires take a new, more enlightened view of their relationship with the human world. She’d purchased this plantation house outside of Atlanta, and, though they hadn’t been able to stay here as often as she liked, she’d at least managed to get a prolific rose garden. She never lived anywhere she couldn’t have roses. A quirk that always reminded him of the vulnerability of the woman beneath the queen’s exterior.

Turning away from the bed, he moved to the fire, added another log. She didn’t really get cold, but she liked warmth, the way it pressed against her skin like a lover’s touch. He didn’t give himself to such sensual poetry, of course. She’d told him that once, and he’d remembered it. Such words were thorns she drove into his flesh, tormenting him, goading his resolve.

He was an intelligent man. She’d told him his brilliant mind was why she’d brought him into her service, and possibly his intellect was the reason he’d been drawn to it. However, though he’d left his monastery to serve her, he had not set aside his vows as a monk. His brothers might consider him no longer one of them, but his oath had been made to God, not to them.

Because he was an intelligent man, he’d been able to look beyond his fear of his own weak impulses to the mind of the woman he served. It put his to shame, particularly when it came to calculation, testing a man’s mettle. Lady Lyssa needed a full servant, and the past year had been a never-ending audition for it. Yes, she’d tested his resolve to honor his vow of celibacy, and though the woman in her had taken pleasure and amusement in it, her intent had been far more serious and politic. And because he’d understood that, he’d stayed.

Though she’d tempted him mercilessly in those first three months, there was some invisible cessation point where her taunts became almost affectionate barbs, no longer such a test of his will. Though his soul had breathed a sigh of relief, it had been rocked back on its heels by one simple command, given two months ago.

I am ready to give you the third mark, Thomas. It will make you my full servant, your soul bound to me forever. Before I do that, you will take the Ritual of Binding to a vampire queen. And you will lie with me, to prove your loyalty to me can exist in the same heart that holds your loyalty to God. I will ask it of you only once, but your heart and body must be given to me freely, like the rest of you. If you cannot do that, then I will release you to return to your monastery. She’d paused then, those green eyes vibrant, but she wasn’t done. She was thorough, his lady, and never left any stone unturned.

And on that night, I will also demand to hear what you have never spoken. Why you have chosen to serve me.

Even though she could read his mind, she knew that forcing a man to say such a thing to a listening ear made it far more binding and concrete, not just nebulous wisps of thought, like clouds scudding away.

She’d not been willing to negotiate or argue her terms. In their travels, they had debated many things, even argued heatedly like two scholars. But there was a tone that entered her voice when she assumed her queen’s mantle, and it had been there at that moment. Those jade eyes had been cool and remote, making it clear there was either acquiescence or departure. And both would be permanent. Forever.

Had she known he would need two months to decide to stay or run? The thought made him chastise himself. Why did he think of it that way in his mind? If he hadn’t been able to reconcile himself to this moment, he would have left, not run away. He’d come into this relationship with his eyes open.

She was not like other vampires he knew, and he’d met many since their paths had crossed. Any other vampire mistress would have demanded this act long before tonight, because sexual demands of servants were closely integrated into all aspects of the vampire world. However, part of it was his lady had spent her year up to her slim neck in conflict. Addressing the guerilla tactics of what he feared eventually would become outright war between the vampires. There’d been plenty of vicious brutality and bloodshed going on in the shadows of the oblivious human world, but he already knew they were minor moves on the chessboard for what might come. His lady had a vision for the future, and he could see the knowledge in her eyes, what the cost would ultimately be. She would face it unflinchingly, as she did everything else.

But he believed there was another reason she hadn’t pushed it before now. Respect. She respected him. When he’d come into her service, she’d needed his intellect, his companionship. The reasons he’d found himself here were complicated and simple at once, as much intuition and gut as reasoned thinking. He knew he was an oddity, a monk who wished to be a monk, yet serve God in a way that seemed inconsistent with those vows. She was a vampire equally as unique in her world. Another thing that drew them together.

At the beginning, she’d made him a first marked servant, the geographical locater for his protection from the other vampires they might encounter. It was a sigil of her service. Then, as his duties became more involved, he took the second mark, so she could speak in his mind, and he in hers, though of course he did not have the same free access to her thoughts as she did to his. He had told himself it did not concern him. After all, God could be in his mind at any time, so it would be an additional test, to ensure that everything in Thomas’s mind reflected his devotion to His will.

While he knew his order would scoff at such things, she never did. Nor did she do anything to reassure him what he was doing was right. She left it entirely between him and God…though everything else was subject to her will.

His faith was predicated by the belief that other men were ordained to know better than he what God demanded—priests, cardinals, the Pope himself. The Bible spoke of sins and betrayed faith. Thomas knew all that, but he could not deny what his heart had told him, the first time he had met her.

She’d been seeking an ancient manuscript, a history of the Crusades. Specifically, a reference to a knight who had fought in it. The reference had been obscure and vague, no way to tell if it was the man she sought. Even so, Thomas remembered the way she’d placed her fingers on the line of text, her eyes closing, her mouth softening in a way he had not seen since. However, it had been a blinding light into her soul, showing him who she was, this mysterious, dangerous and powerful woman, like no other he’d met.

After that, she’d engaged him in a lively dialogue about the other histories and texts he had. She spent three days there, apparently just to increase her knowledge by testing his. When she got ready to leave, he knew what she was. She told him she would take him into her service, if he went willingly. He’d been at the monastery nearly twenty years, yet it took him only one night to decide to leave it, as if all his training and preparation had been for her eventual arrival.

His place was at her side, not as an abandonment of his faith, but as a reinforcement of it. He’d been sure of it, had rarely doubted it. Tonight, however, that belief would be tested as it had not been before, because it was the first time his service to her would so definitively trespass on promises given to Another.

He usually laid out a filmy silken gown for her slumber, one that clearly showed her body beneath it. It was her preferred nightwear, a woman of no shame when it came to her sexual beauty. Tonight, though, she’d told him to lay out only a robe.

“It’s all I’ll need tonight,” she’d said. She’d mentioned it in a careless offhand way as they’d been doing quarterstaff training. She’d spent time in Japan learning the intricate staff work, and in turn she’d trained Thomas so he could spar with her, though she of course had to slow her movements. He’d missed a step, and gotten his knuckles wrapped for his trouble.

Not by a flicker did she acknowledge the significance of her words, but he’d felt the impact beyond his smarting knuckles. It had seared through his gut and lower, in parts not even given the relief of his hand for nearly twenty years, let alone the heated silk of a woman’s body.

Would he shame himself like a boy? Surely not, for she’d tested him so often this past year that restraint should be second nature. But there was a keen difference between her honeyed words, her casual touches, and being bare together by the light of this fire, his body between her legs, his cock… Ah, God help him, he hadn’t thought so much about his cock over two decades as he had in the past two months. All monks figured out ways to get past the involuntary urges, accept and eventually quell the desires that came in the middle of the night, the churning need of the male body to spend. To deny it made one stronger for God’s service, that energy channeled into prayer and service. Tonight, he was going to channel it into its animal purpose, and as the moment grew closer, he was growing more desperate to understand if he was acting on his desires or God’s.

Realizing his pacing was wearing a hole in the Persian rug, he dropped to his knees on the stone near the fire, putting his head near enough to the heat to feel the burn through his hair. Dear Father, I have prayed about this so much. I believe it is Your Will that I serve her, to the extent you will overlook this one night, but forgive me, I do not know if an overly developed intellect masquerades as divination of Your Purpose, to have what my man’s greedy soul might want…

He could remain her secondmark servant. After all, he served her well in that capacity. But he’d known his destiny was to be far more to her. As her thirdmark servant he could help her in ways he would never be able to do as a secondmark, giving her strength and support she would need in the days ahead. No one else in her retinue was as close to her, understood her mind the way he did. That was not a boast – it was a tricky, dangerous path every day, something that drove his conflict to even deeper levels when he saw he had a knack for it that no one else did. She knew it, too. Why else would God have brought him into her life?

He knew what others of his order would say. The Devil was equally as capable of bringing such influences into a man’s life. But he’d long ago faced the truth—that every choice and decision lay in a man’s heart. No other man or institution could bear the responsibility or blame for it. There was no one between him and God on this. He had to follow what his own soul told him to do.

“Thomas.”

He hadn’t heard her come in, so deep had been his contemplation. Or perhaps she’d chosen to move as a vampire, so silent that no man could see her when she did not wish to be seen. He lifted his head, tilted it so he could find her in the corner of his gaze, though for the first time in their relationship, he found it too difficult to look at her directly. “My lady.”

Her gaze passed over the bed, lingering on the rose. “White, the color of death. Or of endings. Is this your answer?”

“No, my lady. But I am…” She would not tolerate prevarication. He could not assuage his soul by justifying his actions to her. So he stopped before he started. He made himself get to his feet, turn and face her, meet her jade gaze. “No, my lady. White can also be the color of beginnings. Or a reflection of your fair skin.”

“So it can. Though a monk should hardly be considering a woman’s fair skin.”

“Well, the night seems to call for a certain amount of gallantry.”

A faint smile touched her lips, but he was absurdly touched by the seriousness of her gaze, an acknowledgment of what this might cost him. She would not mock or tease him tonight, not that way. Pulling the sticks from her hair, she let it tumble down her shoulders, all the way to her hips. That glory of ebony silk would soon be filling his hands. It was much easier to resist when he knew it was not his to touch. Now, when it would be required, it was almost impossible not to feel it already sliding over his palms.

If he unleashed this longing growing in his breast, would he ever leash it back again? Could he serve them both?

“You’ve never been nervous in my presence. Even when you understood what I was. You are different from most monks. You fence my sharpest wit like an expert swordsman, you endure my subtle taunts with a resigned smile and a dry humor that makes me laugh, when nothing else can. I’m in your mind, I’ve seen you quell your desire, the way you quell hunger or any other natural impulse. You have more discipline than any human I have ever met. But you’re nervous now, aren’t you?”

No use denying it. “Yes, my lady. I am.”

“I like it.” She leaned in the door frame, accentuating her hips in the men’s trousers she’d donned for her practice, pants that hugged her body indecently. But nothing about her had ever seemed indecent to him. She seemed above such rules.

“Did you talk to your God?”

“He is Your God as well, my lady. But yes.”

“Hmm. If you have spoken to him, made what peace you are going to, then we leave Him outside this door.” Turning, she closed it with a significant click, shot the bolt home, then gave him a glance, filled with that sensual power and yet amusement that could be tender and merciless at once. “That leaves just you and me, doesn’t it?”

Thomas wondered. He couldn’t imagine even God denying Himself the pleasure of seeing what would happen next in this energy-charged room that suddenly seemed much warmer. God have mercy on my soul.

Her lips curved. She’d heard the thought.

Ask Him for mercy, Thomas. Because I shall give you none. Not until dawn.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 11th, 2010 at 1:50 pm and is filed under General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.