Blood Marriage (47 page)

"
Domine exaudi orationem meam
." The priest's words boomed out across the kitchen yard, echoing off the castle walls. Elizabeth could understand none of what he was saying, but the fire surged, burning brighter and higher with each word.

Sword ready, Bergen joined Nicholas, trapping the shop girl between them. The silver sword sliced silently through the air. The shop girl launched itself skyward and the sword caught no more than the hem of its dress. The sound of fabric rending was barely audible above Vlad's words. Taunting laughter rang off the walls of the castle as it shot upward, then stopped and hovered just out of reach, alternately flicking its tongue at the two men below and hissing at the priest near the pyre.

In the distance, the shrill neighing of the horses grew louder. Horrible faces formed and melted away in the pyre's raging inferno. Vlad's voice continued to ring out across the night and the wind picked up, changing direction. 

"Cover your mouth and nose!" someone yelled. 

Acrid smoke, the stench of burned flesh, the searing heat of the raging inferno, and the hellish reek of sulfur surged over the kitchen yard in one violent gust. 

Then the wind died as quickly as it had come, leaving behind an evil fog, thick and suffocating. Elizabeth's eyes stung, filling with tears. Gagging, she tugged at the kitchen apron that was her skirt, lifting it to cover her nose and mouth. 

Vlad's voice was choked and muted, but he didn't stop speaking. Around her others coughed and gasped. Above her unearthly laughter trilled.

The shop girl? Or Lucy. 

Elizabeth looked up, but the moon and heavens had been snuffed out by the smoke. Squinting hard, she could make out the forms of two men on the ground beside the castle wall, though she couldn't be certain which was Nicholas and which Bergen. Both had been dressed in black, their shirts torn and bloodied. Of matching height and with their dark hair curling at their collars in twin fashion, even as the smoke thinned, she could not tell who was who. But what the thinning smoke did reveal made her gasp. The shop girl floated above the two men, a stake in each hand, skirts undulating wraith-black against the brimstone fog. 

As one, the men bent their knees and launched themselves into the air. Silver glinted in one man's hand as he leapt to the top of the kitchen wall and from there to the roof. The other man followed, not a breath behind. The sword. Hadn't Bergen been holding the sword? Was he still, or had he given it to Nicholas?

Off to Elizabeth's side something thudded into the pyre sending sparks whirling putrid yellow out into the smoky fog.

"Get yours on the fire," Fielding's voice was muffled as if something covered his mouth.

Lennie's hoarse answer was punctuated by the thumps and slaps of a struggle. "I would if the damn thing would let go." 

Someone grunted. A second thud sent a new explosion of sparks shooting off the pyre. In the distance the horses whinnied, but it was a closer sound, a throaty purr, that made Elizabeth go suddenly cold.

"Time to come with me, little blood cow." 

Upside down, Lucy's charred head descended from the sky between Elizabeth and the duke, little tufts of hair hanging down from it in ragged clumps. Cat green eyes bored into Elizabeth.
Don't look.
But it was too late. She was lost, caught in the will-robbing depths of those hypnotic orbs.

"Damned rude house guest," the duke said and boxed his fist into Lucy's charred ear. The ear dropped off and fell to the ground as the impact of the blow sent the creature spinning like a windmill. Lucy shrieked in outrage. One of its wildly revolving legs struck Elizabeth's shoulder sending her to reeling backward. The sudden pain of the blow cleared her mind, freeing her.

"Run!" the duke shouted. 

"Run, child!" echoed Vlad.

Elizabeth fled in blind panic, realizing too late she'd run toward the mountainous inferno of the funeral pyre. She skidded to a stop a pace short of its low wall and the searing heat drove her back. Straight into Lucy's arms. Charred hands seized her wrists. Her arms were jerked up over her head and her feet left the ground.

"Elizab--!" Nicholas's panicked roar from the castle roof was cut short. 

She shot up into the air. Then was yanked ground-ward again with such force, she feared she'd be torn apart. The paunchy little detective's arms were wrapped tight around her waist. Father Vlad and Lennie were holding onto the detective, each by a leg and the duke clung fast to the man's coat tail.

Above her, Lucy wailed. Several of her remaining fingers snapped off and rained down on Elizabeth and her defenders. Released, Elizabeth plunged back to the ground, landing in an awkward jumble atop her four rescuers. She rolled off the men and came to her feet facing the castle, her back to the heat of the fire. Her eyes searched the castle roof.

"Please no," she whispered. "Not Nicholas." 

The fog had thinned, though not enough to allow Elizabeth to distinguish which of the two men on the roof was her husband. One man faced the shop girl, sword in hand, his tall frame silhouetted against the stone backdrop of a chimney. The demon stepped over the second man where he lay on the roof, arms and legs splayed wide, a stake protruding from his chest. 

Please let it be Bergen, Elizabeth prayed. And was ashamed of herself. But Vlad had said Bergen had survived being staked before. The doctor was fully vampire. 

Nicholas was not. 

The shop girl crept across the rooftop, twirling the remaining stake in its hand, taunting the man with the sword. He held his bent-knee stance, waiting.

Elizabeth studied his silhouette, looking for any clue to his identity. A few yards in front of her Vlad, Lennie, and Fielding struggled to disentangle themselves from one another. The duke had wandered over to one side, drunkenly swaying in rhythm with their efforts. 

Elizabeth held her breath, praying the sword-wielding man was Nicholas and that he would survive. Intent on the roof, it was a moment before she realized the pyre heat at her back was gone, replaced by an ominous chill.

"My troublesome little blood cow." Lucy's thickly accented tones caressed the back of Elizabeth's neck. "Shall I prove myself a generous mistress? Shall I wait and let you watch your husband die before we go?" 

Fielding lay on his belly on the ground with his head turned toward her, apparently paralyzed with horror. Vlad and Lennie had also ceased struggling and sat beside him on the ground facing her. Their expressions confirmed Lucy's fangs hovered at her neck. Elizabeth felt the tip of the creature's tongue rasp along her pulse. 

On the castle roof, the shop girl jabbed its stake at the man. He struck at it with the sword. The blade sank deep into its hip, embedding into the bone. A high-pitched wail cut across the clearing fog. The man yanked the sword free and raised it to strike again. 

"Se-ba-stian," Lucy's seductive call curled out across the courtyard. The man paused, his attention arrested, drawn to the people below.

Elizabeth caught the blur of something as it flew toward her. Instinctively she ducked, falling to her knees. Richard Devlin, drunken Duke of Marlbourne, went barreling over her, ramming Lucy head first in the chest like a crazed billy goat. 

The demon’s feet left the ground and it sailed over the edge of the stone oval into the raging inferno. Marlbourne's momentum threatened to send him in after it, but Vlad and Lennie had come to their feet. They lunged in unison, snatching the back of the duke's coat and dragging him clear. Flames roared and the fire exploded. Waves of scorching heat forced Elizabeth and the men back. The putrid smell of rotted burning flesh and brimstone filled the air.

"Lu-cre-tia!" Bergen's shout was one of heart-wrenching longing.

Elizabeth's attention flew to the roof. Bergen? 

The shop girl struck the sword from the doctor's hand. It skittered across the roof, coming to rest against the staked man. Nicholas. His body twitched at the impact and was still again. Elizabeth felt her heart would explode.

Bergen stood statue-still on the roof before the chimney, staring into the funeral pyre where his wife's body lay burning. When the shop girl crept forward, he didn't even look at it. It rammed the stake deep into his heart, pinning him to the stone chimney. His eyes remained on Lucretia's burning body until they closed in death.

The shop girl limped back to where Nicholas lay, blood pouring from the wound in its hip. Laughing, it reached for the sword, but before its fingers could touch it, Nicholas moved. Silver flashed, arcing through the air. The shop girl's laughter died in a gurgle of blood. Its head rolled from its shoulders, skipped down the roof and dropped to the ground below. Its body bumped over the roof tiles in a long bloody line after it, falling to land with a heavy thunk and a skitter of rubble near the head. 

Using the sword as a staff, Nicholas battled to his feet, the stake still embedded in his heart. He stumbled a few steps in Bergen's direction, then stopped and faced the courtyard. He reached out toward Elizabeth. 

The sword slipped from his hand. His knees buckled and he fell forward, driving the stake deeper into his heart. He rolled off the roof, crashing limp and lifeless to the courtyard below. 

For the space of several heartbeats, the sword hung rocking on the roof where he'd dropped it, its hilt at Bergen's feet, its tip pointing downward to Nicholas's body. Then it slid down the roof and over the edge, landing tip first, upright in the dirt near Nicholas's head. 

The last of the cloud of smoke cleared. The moon and the stars reappeared. The sword gleamed bright, a silver headstone in the moonlight. 

Elizabeth screamed. And ran. Her hands wrapped the hilt. She yanked the sword from the soft earth and raised it over her head like a dagger.

"No! Elizabeth!" Vlad yelled.

"What is she doing?" Lennie's tone made it clear he thought she'd gone mad.

Elizabeth heard the pounding of the men's feet as they raced up behind her. But there was no time. The shop girl had found its head and replaced it, rejoining neck to shoulders were they'd been cleaved apart. It had crawled on its belly to Nicholas and pushed itself up on its elbows. Wicked fangs gaped wide beneath a smashed nose and split forehead as the creature reached for Elizabeth's husband. 

They prefer vampire bodies, empty of souls
, Vlad had said.

"You won't have him!" Elizabeth brought the sword down with the full force of her grief and despair. It drove deep into the shop girl's back, piercing its heart.

"Elizabeth?" Father Vlad was beside her, his voice both alarmed and gentle. He tried to pull her away. 

Elizabeth tightened her grip on the sword hilt. And twisted it.

Chapter Forty-Seven

Elizabeth pulled the curtains tight against the dawn as Vlad and Lennie laid Nicholas's body on the bed. A few feet away the connecting door to her mother's former room stood open. Beyond that door the duke and Detective Fielding spoke in low voices while they settled Doctor Bergen into bed. Though their words were indistinguishable, she knew what they were discussing. No one had said it in front of her, but the truth was obvious to all.

Both Nicholas and Bergen had been staked through the heart. Both appeared dead. Yet from the moment they'd removed the stake that pierced the doctor's heart and carried him from the roof, he'd begun changing. By the time Vlad finished reciting the final prayers over the funeral pyre and the runners had gathered the horses and hitched the wagon, Bergen's skin color was returning to its usual healthy glow. Though the doctor hadn't moved or breathed during the long bumpy ride home in the wagon bed, it was clear he was healing. 

That was not the case with Nicholas. Her husband remained as pale and cold -- as dead -- as when Vlad had pulled the stake from his heart. And with each minute that passed, Elizabeth felt as if that stake was driving deeper and deeper into her own heart.

"How long before we know?" Elizabeth asked, her hands still clutching the edges of the curtains.

Behind her, Vlad sighed. "I don't know. If he is truly gone, there should be prayers."

"No!" Elizabeth turned from the window. "No prayers. That is how Lucretia was lost." 

She regretted her words instantly. The priest's face changed, old grief replacing his usual serenity. She went to him and put her hand on his arm. "Forgive me, Vlad. I did not mean..."

His smile was warm, if sad. "No prayers for now." He patted her hand.

"Thank you." She went to stand beside the bed.

Nicholas lay on one side of the large four-poster, a sheet spread under him to protect the coverlet. Beneath the grime of funeral pyre ash, lines exposing skin nearly as white as the sheet ran down his face and neck -- the tracks of Elizabeth's tears. She'd ridden home beside him in the wagon bed, stroking his soot-covered hair, weeping, watching for any sign he might awaken. There'd been none. 

"You should bathe and eat something, then sleep, child." Vlad glanced at the half-filled tub waiting near the fireplace. The bath, drawn last night and never used, would be ice cold.

"It's light outside," the old priest said. "The servants will leave their rooms soon. I'll have a footman bring food and fill a tub for you in another room. There is nothing to be done here, but wait. I'll remain with Nicholas and Sebastian."

Elizabeth reached out to the priest and he folded her into his arms. "Thank you, Father," she said. "You care for Sebastian. I must stay with my husband."

"I'll send the footman with food and hot water to warm this bath then." His robes whispered as he left the room.

Elizabeth stood beside the bed looking down on the still form of her husband. How many times had she done this? Fought through a blur of tears to study her beloved dead, to commit their faces to memory, knowing how hard it would be in a few months, a few years, to recreate in her mind their smile, the line of their jaw, the color of their eyes. She could barely remember her father's face. She'd studied her brothers with greater care; yet still their images blurred with time. Would it be the same with Nicholas? Desperation, the need to memorize every detail of his too-still features, clawed at her. She pushed it away.