And they joined frequently. He could never get enough of the feel of her body in his hands or of tangling his gift with hers until they both shuddered with waves of pleasure and exhaustion.
"But you have no obligation to me," she said. "After training is complete, there are no laws to tie the new ones to their makers."
He grasped the back of her hair. "Why would I ever leave you?"
She smiled.
Each night was as full and interesting as the last. He found out quickly that Jessenia enjoyed the company of most mortals, and she was often involved in intrigues similar to that of the night he'd met her. He shook his head in wonder when she told him more details of how she'd seen the two assassins in a tavern, and she'd seen Lady Elizabeth's face. Afterward, she made friends with the men easily, and then bet them five sovereigns that the lady would back down.
Jessenia was a good judge of character.
She and Robert traveled through France and Italy, meeting new people and sometimes staying in villages or towns for months at a time if the place pleased them. Once, Robert even helped a local constable solve a series of murders-involving young girls. Robert followed the smell of blood to a chapel and found the body of a girl in a secret space beneath the altar. He read the mind of the priest and found a mad predator hiding behind a serene face.
The constable paid Robert well for his help. Jessenia and Robert earned some money in these intrigues, but normally they simply took it from their feeding victims-and then would leave behind memories of a robbery.
As time passed, Robert took over this element of their existence, and he always managed to keep them adequately stocked with money.
Jessenia spoke a number of languages fluently. In the early days, Robert knew only French and a bit of Spanish, but as his telepathy increased, he learned how to draw meaning from words by reading minds. Soon he spoke fluent Italian.
He did think back now and then upon Thomas Howard and Lady Elizabeth and how he had abandoned his position-abandoned the house with the gates wide open after Jessenia had put his guards to sleep.
But that seemed a different life.
"It was different," she told him. "But you are still yourself. Your years as a soldier, of serving the duke, of pitying his wife… these made you into who you are."
"And what made you into who you are?" he asked.
She turned away from him, something she rarely did. "I invented myself."
He did not press further.
After twenty years together, she began introducing him to other vampires, and this offered him more new experiences. He found out that she set up several message posts in every country, and she would stop occasionally to pick up letters.
As with people, he enjoyed the company of some vampires more than others. His least favorite was an elderly German scholar-turned late in life-named Adalrik. Robert found Adalrik to be decent and kind, with a solid old house outside of Hamburg. But he and Jessenia spent several months at the house one summer, and Robert had almost nothing to do for the entire visit. Jessenia could read and write several languages, including Latin, and she tended to get lost for hours in Adalrik's library. Robert could barely read English and had no interest in learning anything else. But her concern for Robert's pleasure always took precedent, and she soon assured him they would move on.
In Italy, however, over the years they stayed numerous times at a villa near Florence with a lovely woman named Cristina and her maker, Demetrio, and Robert did not grow so restless there. Demetrio was an artist from the Renaissance. He was full of good conversation, yet he always treated Robert like a social equal. Cristina was a kind hostess, and they were both clearly fond of Jessenia.
Unfortunately, after being turned, Demetrio had developed a discomfort with unfamiliar places, and he rarely left the villa except to hunt.
"It happens sometimes," Jessenia told Robert quietly. "Demetrio's maker was gentle, but he had a difficult time adjusting to the change. I've heard if the experience is traumatic, and the new vampire recovers for months in one familiar place, he or she may come to fear open spaces or places unknown."
Robert felt pity for Demetrio.
Still, the four of them drank red wine on the terrace and played at dice games and told stories to each other. Their times together were always pleasant.
But Robert's favorite visits always took place in a manor outside of Harfleur in France that belonged to a near-ancient crusader, Angelo Travare. He and Robert had a good deal in common and enjoyed each other's company. Although he, too, could be prone toward scholarly nonsense, his penchants tended to change upon whom he was with, and he played the old soldier in Robert's presence. Once Angelo decided to travel with them, and the three of them spent the better part of a year touring Spain. But Angelo was sometimes given to deep melancholy, and Robert often sensed the man was lonely-very lonely. Traveling with Robert and Jessenia did not alleviate this but rather made it worse.
"You two are good to me," he said one night. "But you only see each other. You only need each other."
Robert could not deny this, and the next night, Angelo left them to head back for France.
Three hundred years slipped by, and Robert found some pleasure, some wonder, in every single night. He and Jessenia traveled through Portugal and then Greece. They spent years in Austria and then Poland, and later found delight in Prague. They explored forests and beaches and mountains. Sometimes they found inns-or even rented rooms-for a longer stay. Sometimes they slept in abandoned hovels. Sometimes Robert camouflaged a black canvas tent in the forest, and he made them their own shelter for the day. Jessenia never questioned his decisions or his abilities, and he never once failed her.
The best thing about traveling in this slow, exploratory fashion was that after a hundred years, they simply went back to England and started all over again… and everything was different.
At the turn of the nineteenth century, they heard that Angelo had finally created a surrogate son for himself, a Scot named John McCrugger. Robert was glad to hear the news. Now Angelo would not be so lonely.
But he did not think long on this, as he was too lost in the bliss of his own constant companion, his lively sprite, Jessenia.
He believed their love and their journeys would go on forever.
Then, in 1820, everything began to change.
They had just crossed the border from Switzerland into northern Italy, and Jessenia stopped at one of her message outposts to see if she had any letters waiting. She did.
"Oh, look," Jessenia said with a smile. "It's from Demetrio. Let's find an inn, and I'll read you the news."
A half hour later, they were sitting at a table, making plans whether to take rooms or travel on the next night, when Jessenia opened the letter, and her expression changed. Her smile faded and her mouth began to tremble.
"What is it?" Robert asked in alarm. He had never seen her like this.
Her hand was shaking as she held on to the letter.
"Jessenia! What's wrong?"
"Angelo…" She was trying to speak and kept failing. Robert could not read Italian, so he waited.
"Angelo has broken the laws… several of them," she managed to say. "He made a second son, a Welsh noble, two years ago, and then a third one, French, only a year after. Demetrio says the Welsh one has no telepathic ability at all, and the French one is feral and cannot be trained."
Robert fell back in his chair. "That cannot be right. Is this something Demetrio heard or saw? I cannot think… Angelo would never…"
Three new vampires in the span of eighteen years?
"We have to go to Harfleur," Jessenia said. "We should leave tonight."
This was a journey without joy. Robert kept turning the possibilities over and over in his mind, but he could not think of how these last two vampires could feed without killing. Why would Angelo, the oldest among them, break laws set up for the protection of them all?