Beyond the Night (4 page)

“Mrs. Mirya will have the back bedroom.” Puckett motioned to the door. “I'll send a maid with fresh linens and water.”

“Thank you, Puckett.”

“And of course, there will be callers. We've set up refreshments in the dining room, miss. Since Lady Augustine was not a direct relative, it wasn't necessary to provide a full-on dinner, but we have tea and sherry, cakes, sandwiches, and biscuits.”

Senna nodded her approval. What did she know of funeral customs? Callers. People she'd known. People who were Lady Augustine's oldest friends. Mourners from the funeral. Curious gossips.

“Of course. It was a terrible loss,” she murmured, opening her bedroom door and motioning Mirya inside.

“Oh, no,” Mirya protested. “Not there. The devil lives in there.”

“I live in there,” Senna corrected, keeping her tone even. “I just want to see if you sense anything in that room.”

Mirya edged over the threshold. She felt darkness encroaching, and a palpable sense of evil. She felt oppressed as if someone were pushing on her chest.

“You should take another room,” she said finally.

“Why?”

“There is evil here, and death.”

Senna gave her a skeptical look. “I do believe you will say that about everything connected with me now. Tell me what you sense about Dominick.”

“He is not here.”

“I think that's obvious.”

“He is not anywhere.”

“How is that possible?”

Mirya gave her a long, opaque stare. “In England.”

“
Not
in England?”

Mirya shook her head. “The Others, they are here. Dangerous. Waiting. For you.”

“What do you mean, for me?”

“For you,” Mirya repeated cryptically. “For the child. The Eternal Ruler.” She moved to the door. “You will see.” And with that, she closed the door.

Senna leapt and thrust it open to see Mirya disappearing into her designated bedroom.

Waiting for me. And a child? The Eternal Ruler?

Senna touched her belly. She still felt nothing there, not a bump, a curve, a quickening, or a feeling. Maybe it was better that way. When Dominick came, which he would, it would all make sense.

She tried to deny the longing she felt for the shroud and her bed of death in the secret room, the need to burrow into the dank, hot burial dirt and just close out everything else. It wasn't her: reveling in death, lusting for blood, impassively violent.

Except it was; she barely had the thought of escaping to the secret room when she was there, digging into the dirt, making a cavity for her body, drawing up the shroud, breathing the fetid air deep and heavily into her consciousness.

It felt right. It was just what she needed—always being aware that Mirya was lurking. Mirya would not stay still in a guest room. Mirya would prowl, take the temperature of the house and its occupants, come to conclusions; once Senna gained her trust again, she'd ultimately share.

She has powers different than mine,
Senna thought as she settled in.
She'll discover things I need to know, she'll help me the way she used to, and together we'll figure it out.

Senna was awakened by the feeling that something was out of place. She bolted upright, every sense tingling.

She didn't think, just flew into her room, out the door, and across the hallway to Lady Augustine's room.

Mirya stood by the bed, eyes closed, her hands stretched out over the mattress.

“What are you doing here?”

Mirya turned, her eyes hooded. “I am listening.”

Senna felt like stamping her foot at that cryptic response. “And what do you hear?”

Mirya swept her with a dispassionate glance. “That there are vampires among us.”

“I'm happy to know that,” Senna retorted.

“She does not rest.”

“She was only buried today.”

“He will return.”

“Who?”

Mirya shook her head. “I can tell you no more.”

Senna felt herself seizing, her vampire impulses warring with her need to keep Mirya on her side.
“Who?”

“No more.”

Senna blocked her. way combatively, the vampire in her stiff with impatience. “Mirya—”

And Mirya sensed it. “So you'll kill me here, will you?”

Senna stroked Mirya's neck. “It's tempting.”

“It is now your nature.”

Senna recoiled. “No!” But the flashing urge to kill rose like a wave.

She pushed Mirya away violently. By the damned, what was she thinking? She needed Mirya. She needed—

The doorbell pealed, startling her. She had lost track of where she was, who she was. She had to think for a moment who would be coming here now Lady Augustine was gone.

She shook herself. The mourners. She had to receive them. She was Lady Augustine's prostrate ward.

And she needed Mirya. The Mirya who would see her as the Senna she used to be, but advise her as the creature she'd become.

I'll make her see me as the needy, impoverished scammer I used to be.

She stared into Mirya's moist eyes, insinuating her thoughts into Mirya's consciousness, fighting a taut resistance as Mirya comprehended Senna's will.

I am the girl you helped, gave succor, taught to survive on the streets. I am she and you are you and nothing has changed. I am Senna, orphan of the streets. You are you, with your magic and with your knowledge you will make yourself helpful to the me I am who is not known to you.

Over and over, she pounded that thought into Mirya's resistant consciousness, gauging by her eyes the moment her comprehension changed and she accepted Senna's thoughts.

“The mourners have come,” Senna murmured. “I need you by my side.”

Mirya opened the door. “Many are here. Friends known to you. Strangers. Enemies. Be careful.”

Perfect.

Senna moved to the stairs. Already too many callers had crowded in, and Puckett was maneuvering them into the parlor and toward the food laid out in the dining room.

She took a deep breath. “Mirya?”

Mirya fell in behind her as she descended the steps and grasped the outstretched hands and expressions of sympathy that greeted her as Lady Augustine's ward.

She hardly remembered those months she'd been in Lady Augustine's hands, when all she had to think about was clothes and parties and good times.

And vampires.

And suspicious Peter, who had vowed to expose her.

She couldn't remember the mourners' names. The rooms were crowded now, the throbbing of a normal heartbeat multiplied by the number of guests, who were wholly unaware of the danger among them.

The rooms reeked of perfume, sweat, and pulsating blood just beneath the skin.

“Oh, my dear—” Yet another sympathetic dowager coming up behind her, as she stood greeting guests just inside the door.

“Thank you so much,” she murmured. “Thank you for coming.” Or: “Yes, I miss her,” feeling like a hypocritical monster, having fed on Lady Augustine's blood and body. “Please come in. Yes, it will be different without her.”

And then there were the questions about Peter. “He disappeared,” she told them. “No one can find him. . . . No, we don't know where he is. . . . No, we haven't a clue what happened, why he didn't attend the funeral. I'm heartsick, I assure you.”

She wasn't worried about Peter. Peter had to be dead. But Charles—where was Charles?

Puckett passed around sherry and biscuits when the influx of guests seemed to have slowed down, when they had all crowded into the dining room and were feeding and drinking, talking about Lady Augustine and gossiping about the other guests.

Senna wandered among them, wishing they would leave because the temptation of their throbbing bodies was almost too much to bear.

No!
She flogged herself mentally even as she felt her hands constricting, her palate contracting, her whole body readying to feed in the midst of all that glorious pulsating human flesh.

Too dangerous to her when she was still ruled by ungovernable impulses and emotions and had no control over the waves of red lust. She had to get them out, all of them, at that instant. She whirled to see Mirya watching her with those teary, knowing eyes, as though the compulsion was wearing off.

A quick mental block—
I am not what you think
—and Senna turned away abruptly. Obviously, Mirya was still leery of her.

She was beginning to feel frantic.
Get out, get out, get out.
No one moved. They all were so engaged in eating and exchanging memories of Lady Augustine, she couldn't compel them as a crowd.

She saw Puckett, bearing a tray he held precariously above his shoulders as he wove his way into the parlor.

She willed herself through the crowd until she could tug impatiently at his sleeve.

“I'm exhausted, Puckett. It's too much today. Would you . . . ?”

“I understand, miss. I'll attend to it.” He handed off the tray and began, subtly, gently, to move the crowd toward the door.

He was expert at it. Slowly, patiently, even those reluctant to leave he guided toward the front door.

Senna positioned herself in the dining room as the crowd cleared, to finally have room to breathe, and to try to contain the warring impulses within her.

Mirya edged over to stand quietly by her side.

Suddenly a cascade of whispers swept through the remaining guests.

Senna started. Everyone froze. The sound grew louder.

Now what?

The hostess must always be welcoming. She pushed herself toward the front door, Mirya behind her. And stopped short as she understood what her guests were saying.

It's Peter. Look—it's Peter . . .

Peter? Senna stopped short.

He will return,
Mirya had said. And there he was, standing in the doorway, battered and barely alive, filthy as the grave, dressed in rags and bloody, his face as mottled and scarred as any monster's, leaning on a cane and surveying the remaining crowd until his searing gaze settled on Senna.

She flinched. Every impulse for blood died. His hatred came at her in waves. He'd come to salvage what he could of his mother's legacy, and he meant to kill her in the process.

He walked toward her slowly, parting the crowd, which was still looking at him in horror.

“Senna.” His voice was rusty. Blood was splattered over his clothes, his face, his hands, dripping from the crack on the side of his head that she had put there when she'd swung a rock at him during the bloodbath that should have killed him.

“Peter.” Her voice sounded constricted.

“How could it happen that I missed my own mother's funeral?”

She heard the knife edge of rage in that question. She knew she couldn't slough it off when everyone in attendance had been asking the same thing.

She should have made up some story then, but she hadn't expected Peter would reappear, given the bludgeoning he'd taken.

All she could do was go on the offensive.

She moved toward him. “Peter! My gracious—
where
have you been? You went missing and no one knew where you were. And those injuries . . . what happened to you?”

She held out her hands as if to offer help, and she could tell by his expression he was seething. “Do you remember?”

“I remember,” he gritted out.

“In the hospital, were you? Did you leave before the doctors gave you permission?”

He made a threatening move toward her.

“Peter, really, I'm only trying to help. Where
were
you?”

He was so close now that the crowd started edging away from the fetid stench, the clotting blood, the nauseating dirt, his ugly death's head.

Senna turned and called over her shoulder, “Puckett!”

Like magic, he appeared by her side. “Yes, miss.” He took Peter's elbow, his face impassive. “Come, Mr. Peter. You're home now. We'll take care of him,” he assured those who'd remained nearby.

Peter had no choice. She had manipulated it so that if he retaliated, there would be witnesses, and every gossipy account would praise her patience and loving concern.

Getting him out of the parlor and away from the small crowd of remaining and too curious guests did not solve her problem.

She began the subtle shuffle of the few last guests to the door. “Forgive us. Forgive Peter. Something awful obviously happened, and we need to find out what wreaked such havoc on him.”

Her words were hardly palliative. Everyone would talk. The gossip would fly. They might be shunned for a week, a month, or longer, depending on how Peter's condition and her response to him were perceived.

Probably for the worst. Society liked nothing more than to pity and eviscerate at the same time. She needed to invent an unassailable story to account for Peter's return in such a condition.