Free The Hunger by Susan Squires Page B

don’t want salvation?” How did Asharti dare challenge Stephan and why did he allow it? He seemed to indulge Asharti as he would never indulge her .
    “When you are as old as I am you will begin to value the Vow and Mirso Monastery.”
    “As old as you are,” Asharti snorted, lifting her finely arched brows. “You are not old.” They sat in the solarium at the top of the castle, the precious glass of its windows no longer used to let in the sun, but to paint the walls with a starscape of shining fragments. Stephan liked to give lessons there, as though the proximity of the universe could enlarge their souls .
    “More than a thousand years,” he said then held up a finger to Asharti’s protestation. “I was born when the Carpathian Mountains were called Dacia. We were part of the Roman Empire. The yoke of Rome was hard, yet the Romans dragged us out of tribal warfare and brutality.” His eyes glazed as he journeyed to another time, another place. “I thought I would never tire of drinking the blood , feeling the life shoot down my veins. Now I take comfort in the fact that someday I can join the monks who chant and starve their Companion until their needs are small, their powers diminished, their pain and memories gone. It keeps us sane, in a way, to know there is a last protection in taking the Vow.”
    Beatrix shuddered, unable to imagine anything more horrible. “How does it protect?”
    Stephan stared out at the stars. “Because it cannot be renounced, it protects us from ourselves. Once taken, it is secure. We are secure.”
    “Of course you can renounce it. All you have to do is leave,” Asharti protested. Beatrix could feel her sister’s anger. Asharti hated to be checked, even by Elders she did not know .
    Stephan suppressed what looked to be a smile. “Only in death, my pet.”
    “You said it was nearly impossible to commit suicide,” Beatrix observed, wary .
    “And so it is. The Companion’s urge to life is strong, even if one can inflict enough damage to one’s own body to die.”
    Beatrix shuddered. Stephan said actual separation of the head was necessary to kill a vampire — decapitation — something their Companion could not repair. “Then . . .”
    “I was talking about homicide,” he said, in that calm voice he reserved for the most brutal facts about their life .
    “They would kill one of their own?” Asharti asked, outraged. “I would kill them!”
    “Yes, they would,” he said, ignoring her second comment. “If one can renounce the Vow, then what protection is it?”
    “How do you know so much about this Vow if no one who takes it can leave the Monastery?” Asharti asked with narrowed eyes .
    “I was born in Mirso, to a refugee who arrived big with child. I grew up serving Rubius.” He took a breath. “One day Rubius told me I must go out into the world to experience life before I could return. He cast me out. I was reluctant to leave my prison, but once the doors were open I did everything, experienced everything; kindness, brutality, intellectual exhilaration, sexual depravity . . . all of it.” His brown eyes stared at the cold stars. “And slowly, everything palled. When you have done it all over and over again until you can predict the failure of your hopes down to the last detail, what is left?”
    Beatrix shivered. “You are not like that now. What changed?” she whispered .
    He forced a smile. “You two gave me an interest in life again.”
    Asharti eyed him as though he was lying to her in a way she could not quite comprehend. Beatrix opened her eyes wide as the burden of his statement settled on her shoulders .
    “So,” Stephan said briskly, “I am invested in your learning. And that brings us to practicum, lovelies.” Stephan rose. “Tomorrow night, I shall show you how to translocate. And to take blood without ripping throats, Bea, and without draining your victims, Asharti.”
    “I like the last drop.” Asharti’s expression was bold