“I killed her,” was all Nicholas said.

“I know that,” said LaCroix, as patiently as he could manage.  “I was there, remember?”  He stepped closer and laid a richly gloved hand gently on Nicholas’s shoulder.  That the said shoulder was striped with weals he ignored.  The pressure, though slight, should have been a significant aggravation—yet Nicholas made no complaint.

LaCroix bent close.  “Was she as delicious as I thought?” he whispered.

Nicholas jerked away.

“Ah, Nicholas, my son, my son,” misquoted his master, “you are a pretty piece of work—one of which I am actually absurdly proud, most of the time—but you make a fool of yourself as well as of me when you languish over a dead whore, however high born and lovely.  You should relish her death, and the blood which sustains you.”  He bent low again to murmur in a shell-like ear, “How many times have I told you?  Drink and be done, and go on to the next, and do not look back.”  He straightened.  “That is the lesson.  Learn it.”  LaCroix squeezed the lacerated shoulder painfully hard.  “It is a lesson I have tried to teach you all too many times before.”  Lifting his hand, the fine embroidered leather of his glove now smeared with blood, he grabbed Nicholas’s chin and turned his face forcibly back until their eyes met.  “What do you have to say for yourself?” he demanded.

“Why did you kill him?”

LaCroix turned his head.  The corpse lay behind them on the floor.  “I killed him to stop him.  Obviously.”

“He was only obeying my orders.”

“You should never have issued them,” LaCroix declared.  He released his hold, noticed the blood on his glove, and—with a moue of distaste—tore both off his hands, tucking them into his belt.  Then he leaned over to pick up the whip where it had fallen from the dead man’s hand to the stone-paved floor.

A sob did then, finally, escape Nicholas.  “Flog me yourself, then,” he whispered.  “Please.”

“Don’t be a fool,” said LaCroix, almost absently.  He lifted the whip, looked at Nicholas’s back with a puzzled expression, and then ran the thongs through his fingers.  He jerked back at the sudden sting, and flung it across the room, where it thudded off the wall to the floor.  “Garlic!” he snarled, and rounded on Nicholas.  “You had the whip soaked in garlic!”  He bent and sniffed Nicholas’s back.  Yes, under the sweet scent of blood he could tell the taint.

“Did I say ‘fool’?” LaCroix snapped.  He went over and yanked on the manacles holding Nicholas’s hands high and, when the metal held and the stone did not yield, returned to the servant’s body to search it for the keys.

He caught Nicholas in his arms as he sagged down, eyes shut and teeth clenched against the pain.  “I did say ‘fool’, didn’t I?” he whispered hoarsely, and hoisted Nicholas up, one arm sliding under his legs.  The other arm, round the shoulders, must agonize the weals; but that he chose to ignore.  His protégé, his apprentice, his son … his Nicholas … should know the consequences of his foolery.  Perhaps then the lesson would be learned all the better.

His ears caught the faintest sound.  Despite himself, Nicholas could not quite remain silent, though the mewl was choked off almost immediately.  LaCroix stifled a little smile:  yes, perhaps the lesson would, for once, stick fast in Nicholas’s fair and stubborn head.

He stepped over the corpse carefully, so as not to trip; and then carried his … son … upstairs from the cold dank depths.  It was the darkest hour of a moonless night; and all mortals were asleep or dead, the torches doused.  Only a vampire’s vision could guide his steps true—and LaCroix was a true vampire.  As they passed through the hall unheard, he saw Nicholas’s eyes open and fix on his face; but nothing was said.  LaCroix bore him up the winding, unlit stair to their bed chamber and laid him prone on the bed.

For a moment, now that there was no chance of waking anyone, LaCroix thought Nicholas might speak.  However, he did not; but merely shifted slightly so as to keep his eyes on his master

LaCroix went across to the chest, over which was laid an embroidered cloth.  There, he poured water from the ewer into the bowl; taking up a linen towel, he wetted it and returned.

Nicholas half-raised himself on one elbow and turned his head to ask, “What are you doing?”

LaCroix did not bother to answer, but pressed him back down—at which Nicholas winced—and told him to lie still.  He then began to wipe off the blood, and with it the garlic, until Nicholas’s back was white and clean, except for the red weals.  Then, even as LaCroix examined him closely for missed areas, the skin began to close.  “Ah,” said LaCroix, being sure to pat him firmly on the back to drive home the lesson before the healing was complete.  Then he got up and returned the stained cloth to the bowl.

“I suppose I should thank you for that,” Nicholas murmured wryly.

“It would be appropriate,” replied LaCroix in dry tones.  “It is usual, after all, for the master to be served by his protégé not the other way round.  Then again, if one considers the word, it should mean that you are under my protection, should it not?  Even if it means that I am compelled, once again, to protect you from yourself.”

Nicholas swivelled up to a sitting position on the side of the bed and observed LaCroix rinse out the cloth in the water, then carry the bowl through to the garde-robe.  There followed a sloshing sound, after which he returned and placed the bowl back on the chest.  The damp, rinsed cloth he dumped inside.  “You didn’t need to do that,” Nicholas said.

“Was I to leave it for the servants to find?” asked LaCroix ironically.  “Or trust you to think of it yourself?  Right now—”  He turned, with a frown.  “—I have to say that I do not trust you at all.  Not with your own safety, nor with my own.”  He crossed the room, grabbed Nicholas under the chin, and drew him up to his feet.  “I called you ‘fool’, and I repeat that.  You injure me when you injure yourself; you put yourself in peril, and I am endangered also.”

“What danger?” asked Nicholas indignantly.  “I deemed the penance justified; and I won’t deny that there was minor injury and pain—which was the point, after all!—but I was hardly in actual danger!”

“If you ask me,” said LaCroix viciously, “you actually enjoy your suffering.  You relish your pain.  The more so since you believe you were never in danger.  No!”  He raised a denying hand as Nicholas seemed about to reply.  “Don’t bother to argue.  You revelled in paying your ‘penance’, as you put it.  And all,” he added contemptuously, “for the sake of a mortal girl who met her just and fair fate at the point of your fangs … as it should be.  What are mortals for, after all?”

“What are vampires for?” asked Nicholas.  His tone almost made it an innocent question; but he lifted his chin in clear defiance.

LaCroix merely snorted.

“We take,” Nicholas accused, “but give back nothing.  The world is none the better for our existence.”

“Oh, not this again,” LaCroix said wearily.

“You cannot answer me,” said Nicholas.  “Which means I am right, and you know it.  We are guilty, for we prey on innocence.”

“You are wrong,” said LaCroix simply, “and I can’t be bothered.”  He grasped Nicholas’s upper arm firmly and steered him out of the bed chamber.

“Where are we going?”

“Down,” said LaCroix flatly.  He did not speak again until they were back in the lower cellar.  “You are going to clean up your mess,” he said with distaste.  “Dispose of that detritus.”  He pointed to the corpse.  “Wipe up the blood.  And destroy that infernal whip.”

Nicholas looked at the body.  “You didn’t need to kill him,” he said again.  “He was only obeying my orders:  his will could have been overridden easily if you had chosen so.”

“Well, I did not,” said LaCroix shortly.  He glowered across at the manacles.  “Do you know how I felt, seeing you bloody and limp?  I’d thrash you myself just for that … if it weren’t what you beg for.”

“Go ahead,” said Nicholas.

“As I said:  what you beg for,” retorted LaCroix, “and for all the wrong reasons.  If,” he added contemptuously, “‘reason’ has anything to do with the nonsense in your head.”  He let go Nicholas’s arm.  “What on earth possessed you to use a whip soaked in garlic?”

“It keeps the stripes from healing,” Nicholas replied.  It was a statement of the obvious, said with a measure of puzzlement.

“Even a mortal will heal eventually,” said LaCroix harshly, “unless they die under the lash.  You will not die, of course; but, as long as the garlic remains in the wound, you will not heal either.  Do you not realize what that means?  How long would you hang here in chains, your flesh corroding, even rotting if the whip bite deep enough?”

“You say so,” said Nick flatly.  “So I’m supposed to thank you for saving me, I suppose.  That’s more or less always where we end up, isn’t it?”

“You should thank me, yes; but I know you too well to imagine that you will,” LaCroix said bitterly.  “I dare say you think expressing gratitude a show of weakness?”  He shook his head.  “You are my protégé, Nicholas:  a simple ‘thank you’ is not weakness; it is courtesy.”

Even under the smell of blood, the garlic reek of the whip was sharp.  Nicholas looked across the room, where it had fallen by the wall, and bit his lip.

“I’ll be upstairs when you have done.”

Nicholas met his master’s eyes.  “I’ll come to you.”