Blood Deep (15 page)

If Miranda Bond had the power to destroy the society that the queens had created and ruled over, Serena did not doubt the queens would want her dead.

“There is something else I must tell you.” Eve poured herself a demitasse cup of the strongly scented black coffee. She lounged back and sipped it.

Serena approached her mother. Eve reached out for her hand. “Now, you must not worry about this, child—”

“What,” Serena demanded. But she then saw a flash of fear in Eve’s eyes. What had her mother frightened?

“Lukos has escaped his prison. He has returned to the mortal world. To England, in fact. Both he and the vampire Zayan escaped.”

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“Lukos has returned!” Serena cried. Jonathon and Drake were standing beside her chair and she saw their faces. They had known of this. They’d known but had not told her. But how had they discovered it? Then she guessed. Drake had been sired, as a vampire, by Lukos. He must have sensed Lukos’s escape.

Eve hugged Serena. “Denby insists that you must return to England to hunt them.”

Jonathon growled, “Impossible. Althea has a new baby, and Serena is going to deliver at any time. They can’t hunt rogue vampires. And we have to protect them.”

Serena straightened. “We must go. We must find Miranda Bond.”

Yannick spoke, his voice deep, firm, and authoritative, “There is too great a risk.”

Eve stood, her beautiful silk gown swirling around her. “And if you do not hunt Lukos and Zayan, Althea and Serena could be at great risk. They could be destroyed. The queens will use magic, combined with yours, to send you at once. Gentlemen, do you not understand that you have no choice?”

7

The Castle

She was beyond caring about safety.

Miranda pulled back the shade and leaned beside Lukos to take in the sight. Flames fluttered around upraised torches. Plumes of smoke rose in the black sky. The light fell upon Mr. James Ryder, casting lines of reddish gold along his beaver hat, his mocking grin, and his hands at the reins of a large black horse.

How had he ridden ahead of them? Then Miranda remembered—she had sent them in the wrong direction at first, while the vampires had been fighting. They had only turned around while she’d slept, which had given Ryder an hour or so to ride ahead. She hadn’t thought he would be so determined to pursue her.

But he’d told her he had to destroy her.

The horses shied in the face of fire, and whether the vampires controlled the coachman or not, he pulled on the reins and brought the horses to a rapid stop.

She was flung forward, but Lukos caught her.

“They’ll burn us all alive in here,” Miranda gasped. The sweet smell of smoke grew stronger; the mob was approaching their carriage. Panic begin to claw inside her.

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“We won’t stay inside, sweeting,” Zayan pointed out.

How could both he and Lukos look so calm? Though if he really had been a Roman general, Zayan had survived for two thousand years.

“Where can we run to? They’ll capture us and kill us if we run outside.” She could not understand why she felt this sense of belonging with Lukos and Zayan, along with the need to plan escape together.

“You forget that we aren’t ordinary vampires,” Lukos said, grinning.

As though vampires could ever be ordinary. But she understood what they meant as they conjured a deep blue glow within the carriage, a darker one than the lights that had preceded their sensual play. Cooling and fresh, like the breeze over a deep lake, the light filled the carriage, then radiated out.

At once the fires were quenched.

Zayan flashed her a reassuring smile. “There, angel. A simpleton of a vampire slayer is no match for us.”

Miranda stared at Lukos. He could have used his magic to destroy Mr. Ryder at the inn. Why hadn’t he? Why had he spared a vampire slayer’s life?

Outside the carriage, the shouts of frightened men rose around them. Mr. Ryder had lured a group of men out here to destroy vampires, and now they’d seen magic.

“What in the bloody hell happened? Did you see a blue light?”

“Yer imagination. The wind put out our torches.”

“After they were doused in oil? Bloody impossible!”

“Go for the carriage! Tear it to pieces!”

A roar was taken up. Peering through the window, Miranda saw the torches wave, along with pitchforks, clubs, and shovels.

The mob swarmed toward the carriage. A flash of light blinded her, and a roar flooded her ears. She was jerked back from the BLOOD DEEP / 121

window, but the pistol ball slammed into the wooden side of the carriage.

“I’m going to bloody destroy them,” Lukos snarled.

Miranda jerked toward him. “No, you can’t!” She grabbed for his wrists. Her fingers closed around his long, elegant fingers. She knew he could have flung her off if he wanted.

He didn’t.

But she couldn’t stop Zayan with her hands clinging to Lukos’s wrists. She watched helplessly as Zayan gave a casual wave of his hand. One careless gesture of his long fingers and a red mist surrounded them. It seeped into the carriage.

She heard coughing and sputtering outside. She released Lukos and leaned to the window, letting her eyes look just over the sill.

The men surrounding them were clutching their throats, gasping for breath.

“What are you doing to them?”

“They will collapse and sleep—they will awaken unharmed.”

What about the slayer?
Lukos’s voice sang in her head.
I’ll
kill him for you, Miranda.

“No, I can’t ask you to kill someone for me.”

He intends you harm. He intends to kill you.

“Even then, even then, I won’t do it!” she cried. Her sin was that she gave life back—as ironic and stupid as that was. She would be a proper martyr and die for that before she would ever command that a man’s life be taken.

Around the carriage, the men gathered by Mr. Ryder were falling to their knees. Some had collapsed with their faces in the dirt. Was Zayan lying? She saw the flanks of the black horse.

The beast turned. Mr. Ryder was slumped on its back, fighting for breath just like the other men. Swirling around them, like clutching fingers, was the thick crimson fog.

Ryder’s eyes locked on hers. At least she thought they had.

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And he reached out, as though driven by his hatred of her to find strength to get to her.

The crimson fog began to retreat, and Miranda could see Ryder, hanging off the side of the horse, clinging with weak hands to the reins. His body tilted—

He fell to the ground.

Blackthorne’s castle perched atop a rocky outcrop that soared above dense forest. A gray stone tower thrust out of white mist like a clenched fist. From its top, two tall stone turrets reached toward the stars that twinkled in the black sky. Dark trees massed at its base, and a road was carved out between the shadowy branches.

Miranda peered out of the window.
If you are there, Lord
Blackthorne, run for your life.

She hated herself for bringing doom to him. She might belong with vampires and demons, but Blackthorne did not deserve to die.

She’d fallen in love with him through his wonderful, lyrical, passionate letters. How could she be bringing such danger to a man she loved?

Could Lukos and Zayan read her thoughts—her most private thoughts? Fear that they were privy to her plea to Blackthorne made her head jerk up. Lukos’s mirror-like eyes met hers. A wicked grin showed his fangs, and he cocked his head.

The oddest look crossed his face; it was as though he was waiting on her invitation. He wanted her, she could recognize his lust, but he wasn’t simply getting up and taking what he wanted.

Shivering, she shook her head. She was furious. They might say she belonged with them, but she didn’t. She
didn’t.
They were demons at the core, willing to kill and destroy. She could never be like that.

Miranda hugged her chest with her arms, and with a shrug, Lukos turned his attention to the window. That amazed her.

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Why would he leave her alone when he wanted her? Both he and Zayan were now behaving like well-mannered gentlemen.

Fingers of cloud slid across the first turret of the castle, an imposing construction of tooled gray stone. She had read gothic novels, the horrid novels. Blackthorne’s castle looked like the sort of eerie mausoleum that would be filled with ghosts and should be forever tainted by evil deeds.

She shook off the fancy. It was a fortified home, a place of refuge. People had, no doubt, died in it, both violently and not, but it was Blackthorne’s home, and it should have been his sanctuary. And she was taking that from him by bringing vampires.

The carriage rattled relentlessly onward, taking her demonic escorts to Blackthorne’s refuge. Rumors about Blackthorne had swirled through the London ballrooms, passed behind the fans of experienced matrons, beautiful widows, and unmarried ladies who skirted the very edges of propriety.

“They say that he no longer comes to town because he was so hideously wounded,” the women would whisper. “He knows no lady will love him—he is terrifying to behold—so he hides in his castle. And since he knows he can never have a bride, he has embraced the darkest, most scandalous erotic practices. . . .”

“Orgies involving dozens of women.”

“A dungeon filled with shackles in which he would imprison maidens of the nearby village. He would take their innocence and pay their families for their silence, and the girls would never return home. . . .”

Staring at the castle through the jiggling window, Miranda could almost believe the foolish rumors. But she didn’t. The matrons were angered that Blackthorne eschewed London society, and the
haute volée
adored nasty, titillating gossip. Surely such a madman would reveal himself in his letters. But what she had seen in his letters was a man who longed to have someone to talk to. Someone to treat him as human . . .

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She had understood what he’d felt.

“So you intend to marry the man who keeps this place?” Elegantly sprawling across the seat opposite, Lukos grinned. His hair streamed down along his face, coasting over his high cheekbones. The lock of black with the white streak brushed across his sculpted lips, making him look more of a fallen angel than a brutal demon.

She’d hoped to. She couldn’t hope for that anymore. She looked to Lukos and remembered feeling bold and daring just hours ago, when she’d—she’d sat on top of him. Now, she felt empty and forlorn. Even though her heart pattered at his handsome face and his teasing tone, she now remembered exactly what he was: a demon. Her stomach was her barometer here, and it felt full of knots. “Please don’t hurt Lord Blackthorne,”

she whispered. “He doesn’t deserve to be killed just because . . .

because I decided to come here.”

“You ask me to willingly spare a strong, healthy meal?” The grin widened and her stomach gave a great dip, but in the next moment, Lukos’s smile faded. His expression became one of weariness. “Sweetheart, he will fight us. He will not just welcome us into his home. We will have to force our way in.”

“But why?” she cried. “Why do you have to come here? Can’t you take the carriage and continue? Isn’t that enough?”

“Not any longer.” Lukos’s deep growl rumbled over her.

She turned to Zayan, who sat imperiously beside her. His face was set with the stillness of a statue, lips drawn into a hard line, ruthlessness in his silvery eyes. Even in the close confines of the carriage, it was as though he were looking over the sea of his troops to the battlefield.

Miranda reached for the door. The forest sloped away on either side from the narrow, winding dirt road. She could run through the trees. The vampires would chase her, but it would buy her time to think of some way to protect—

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The door handle suddenly grew burning hot. With a squeal, she pulled her hand away.

Zayan’s lip curled in impatience. “I don’t have time to let you flee. We need to have the castle under our control before dawn.”

“But why? You must know you can’t keep it.” She squared her shoulders, infuriated by the amused quirk of Lukos’s lips.

“You will be attacked by more people than the mob that came with torches—people who will fight with every weapon they have. You will end up being destroyed.”

Warmth curled over her cheek, cupping its curve. It was like the brush of a man’s finger, but nothing was there. It was magic conjured by Zayan, and she sat rigidly, fighting the way her skin heated at the phantom caress. Her fingers still hurt from the heat Zayan had unleashed on the door handle, and she would not let his magic defeat her will.

The carriage creaked up the path. Stones scuttled out from the wheels. The horses strained to make ground.

“You don’t belong with Blackthorne,” Zayan said. “You belong with me, Miranda.”

Lukos stretched his long limbs. She saw the graceful movement of the wolf in the way he almost shook out his legs. “No, sweetheart, you will belong to me.” A feral gleam came to his eyes as he looked to Zayan. “I intend to claim her, Roman, and I’ll rip out your throat to do it.”

The soft magic stroking of her cheek ceased.

She glanced out the window again. The rough path had left the trees behind and had opened out onto the rocky hill. The turrets of the castle seemed to be hanging over them. Its bulk blotted out the stars.

“Rip out my throat, dog?” Zayan snarled in return. “I could blast you into dust where you sit.”

The castle wall loomed ahead, the gates thrown open.

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Blackthorne told her that he could leave his door wide open at night and no one would walk in. Every one feared him—the entire village, and most of England.
No one can see past disfigurement,
he’d written.
They see scars and think the man inside
is scarred. Scarred, healed badly, and ruined forever.

She had to do something before they crossed through the gate.

“Stop!” she screamed.