Blood Red (20 page)

He reached down to help her tug.

“Couldn’t Zayan have engaged a gardener?” she muttered as together they wrenched the sodden wool free.

“It’s entirely possible Zayan did but drank the poor sod’s blood.”

“I suppose he would do that to his servants, wouldn’t he?” She frowned and worried her lip as she hoisted her skirts out of the mud. “Though I’ve heard no gossip about disappearing servants.”

She gripped two fistfuls of her skirts, still carrying the handle of her valise.

He reached for it. “Allow me.”

Althea jerked her head up, grave concern in her eyes. “What of you? You still live at your estates. Do
you
bite your servants?”

“I expect Zayan feeds far from home—he has the ability to travel great distances when he changes shape. I merely try to be discreet.”

She paused at the edge of the woods. Beyond the screen of trees, rain slashed down. “I know nothing about you. The way you live. How you survive as a vampire.”

He grasped her hand, threading his fingers between hers to hold securely. A low, slippery hill marked the start of the unkempt lawns. “Watch your step.”

But she gamely sprinted down, pulling him along. His boot soles slipped and slid, as did hers, but she scrambled down with surprising grace. He blinked away the water dripping from his eyelashes.

She tipped her face up to him and droplets danced on her curving cheeks. Her wet lips tempted as she innocently licked the rain away. “I’ve been so caught up in those dreams and in being seduced by you and Bastien, I haven’t asked the questions I should.”

But then she turned without asking him another question and began stalking across the sloping lawn to the quiet white mausoleum. He turned and followed. Never in his existence, both mortal and immortal, had he found himself spun in so many circles by a woman.

She twisted back as she skidded over the grass. “I want to know how you escaped imprisonment. We racked our brains to understand how you broke Zayan’s controlling spell.

Which, of course, we knew you did, since the Earl of Brookshire was known to be rusticating at Blood Red by Sharon Page ©2006 Advance Reader Copy www.SharonPage.com 98

his estate in the country. And since no one spoke of a long, mysterious absence, you must have escaped soon after you were imprisoned. Did someone help you? Someone who knew the incantation?”

Yannick caught up and took hold of her elbow as they reached the wide stone steps, dotted with large puddles. Soaked and heavy with the rain, her red hair finally tumbled free of her hastily jabbed-in pins and spilled from beneath her bonnet.

“Bother,” she groaned.

He caught his breath as she shook out the waist-length mass. He couldn’t answer her question, so he threw out some of his own. “Your father must have planned to approach me once he had resurrected my brother. Did he hope to coerce me to help him destroy Zayan?”

“Yes, and then Father planned to capture you. I didn’t—couldn’t—I wouldn’t have done that.” She blushed. “But who helped you escape?” she persisted, perhaps to change the subject.

“Another vampire?” She grabbed the door handle and pulled, but the door didn’t budge. As hard as she could, she shook it.

He leaned over her, bracing his hand against the door. “He planned to stake my brother and me, didn’t he?”

“Well, he planned that of course. But we—he—wouldn’t do that now.”

“How very considerate of you, my dear.” He laid his other hand on her shoulder and felt her body tense and jump slightly.

“I can open that door,” she promised stubbornly. “I have a lock pick in my valise.”

“Bolted from the inside, I expect. Allow me.” He drew her back and sent a bolt of white fire through the crack between the oak door and the stone wall. A light clang sounded as the blast of power sheared the drawn bolt. He pulled the enormous door open.

“Impressive,” she said grudgingly and he laughed. “But what about Bastien?”

“In there.”

“No, why did you not free your brother once you were free?”

A cold, brutal memory rose:
because my brother had stuck a knife up under my ribs and
made me a vampire?
No, it hadn’t been anger or resentment that kept him from freeing Bastien.

He gave his jaded shrug. “I did not have the ability to free him. Just as you did, I had to search for that bloody incantation. And I didn’t want you to release him, Althea. I knew your father wouldn’t be able to control him.”

The black interior of the mausoleum stretched before him. Marble tombs stood in neat rows.

Much sooner than he’d expected he saw the smooth surface of the wall—then the faint crack of a door. There was another room and from whatever lay beyond its door, he detected voices.

Althea’s hands gripped his hips through his sodden trousers. How could even her lightest touch act with such magic?

“How did you escape, then, if you did not use the spell?”

“I made a bargain with a devil and the devil always exacts a price. But I didn’t have a soul to barter with.” He shouldn’t have revealed even that much, Yannick realized, but Althea’s touch seemed to bring the truth to his lips. He stepped over the threshold and reached back for her.

“And now the adventure truly begins,” he promised.

Blood Red by Sharon Page ©2006 Advance Reader Copy www.SharonPage.com 99

Althea stood in a mausoleum in the pitch dark. Despite her claim to courage, she felt a cold chill shoot up her spine—she’d never been completely without light in a crypt before. Suddenly her imagination conjured monsters in the shadows.

She normally felt fear when hunting the undead. The key was never to give in to it. And Yannick’s arm about her waist gave her a flood of reassuring intimacy.

With no moonlight, she couldn’t see. Fathomless black stretched around her and she had no sense of the size of the room or even of what stood directly in front of her. She didn’t dare take a step. Only the fact she stood on her two feet let her know which direction was up and which was down. The eerie blindness left her disorientated and she found herself stumbling even as she stood still.

What do you see?
She spoke in his mind, afraid Zayan would detect even the faintest whisper.

You will see soon, love. Do you smell the smoke?

Yes.
The memory of Bastien’s tomb rose in her mind. Of the sarcophagi filled with ash. Of the chiseled letters that forever preserved the name of the eight-year-old vampire.
“Oh, God, is
he burning Bastien?”

You’d have tossed up your dinner if he was, Althea. No, it is just a fire to warm. Which will
give light.

But where is the fire?
She moved out away from his arm and turned a full circle. Shouldn’t she see some hint of light? Yannick had drawn the door closed behind them and she couldn’t even detect the position of the double heavy oak doors, even though she’d walked through them just moments before.

“There is a room beyond this one. Well-sealed, it appears,” he murmured behind her.

Without his touch, she was at a complete loss and she turned toward the sound of his voice, the only landmark she had. The scent of the smoke, rich and cloying, set her head spinning. She groped for him. Her heart dropped to her toes as she felt only air.
Don’t move from where you
stand
, urged an inner voice—or was it his voice in her head? But panic gripped her and she did take a step. Then another. Her boot collided into solid stone and her hands bumped the smooth cool surface of a tomb.

She bit down to swallow a scream.
What is wrong with you
, she chided herself.
How can
you be afraid of a sarcophagus? How many hundreds of tombs have you seen?

She swallowed more of that sweet smoke and felt her heart thud even faster. It must be incense and it appeared to affect the beating of her heart.

Blood Red by Sharon Page ©2006 Advance Reader Copy www.SharonPage.com 100

Don’t go stumbling about in the dark.
Yannick’s hands settled on her waist.
Now we will go
forward, toward the door. Just move as I direct with my hands.

He propelled her forward and she allowed herself to move at his direction. Once again she was putting all her trust in Yannick—in a vampire.

She couldn’t smell the usual stale odors of a crypt. Instead, that thick, heavy smoke filled her senses. Now she could see the door because curling fingers of smoke slithered out from minute cracks.

Are you still able to speak in Bastien’s mind?
She asked him.

Do you know that when you speak in my thoughts you have the most delectable, sensual
voice I’ve ever heard?

That startled.
What?

Pressed tight against her, he shifted his hips, drawing the hard ridge in his trousers across her skirted bottom.
Every time you speak in my mind like that I want you so much it hurts.

He rocked forward, his rhythm unmistakable.

This—
His brother was at risk. They were in the mausoleum of the most powerful vampire she’d ever encountered. Hardly the time to feel lust. But she did. Like a live thing, desire uncoiled deep in her belly with twinges of agonizing weakness. His hard cock jutting into her was a delight.

No,
she repeated with conviction,
this really isn’t the time.

But her words had no effect as his hands slid up her ribcage toward her breasts. She was sodden and still chilled, dripping like a drowned rat. They both carried the wretched aroma of wet wool and even the exotic, spicy smell of the wafting smoke couldn’t obliterate that entirely.

She took a deep breath. He smelled wet. Wet hair. Wet skin. All musky and male.

Bastien—

She forced her traitorous thoughts to endangered Bastien
. Can you speak to him? Hear
him?

Not since we reached the start of the woods behind the house
. Hot, demanding lips attached to her neck, above the sodden ribbons of her bonnet.

For heaven’s sake, Yannick! Can you tell if he is…is still alive.

He is definitely alive. I just heard him moan.

Moan! He must be in pain?
She reached forward.
Where is that bloody door?

I can assure you he is in agony. And here, my sweet, is the door.

An undercurrent ran beneath his words, one as dangerous as the undertow of surging tides.

He knew something she did not, and, of course, he would not deign to share it with her.

He left her to attend to the door, and she wrapped her arms around herself. Zayan could have stood at her side and she wouldn’t have been the wiser. How she hated this…this blindness. This weakness.

Surrounded by the dark, she listened for the creak of a door, the groan of hinges, but the door swung open without sound. A golden glow spilled out, along with billows of the intense smoke. Drawing it into her lungs, Althea felt a spurt of wetness between her thighs. A burning heat ignited in her quim.

Her fingers strayed down and began to press through her skirts at the vee between her Blood Red by Sharon Page ©2006 Advance Reader Copy www.SharonPage.com 101

thighs.

Are you ready?

No, she was mad with lust and shouldn’t move an inch until she conquered this ridiculous need. She had to force her fingers away from her nether regions.

Accustomed to the light now, she saw Yannick by the side of the door, an amused smile playing on his handsome face. Plastered down by the rain, his pale, silvery hair looked dark, which made him look almost a stranger. His wet trousers molded to his thighs and outlined his large, obvious erection. She swallowed to ease her tight throat. Almost transparent, his shirt cradled the broad muscles of his chest and stuck to the ripples of his abdomen. His dark, erect nipples poked against the fabric.

You may as well be shirtless
, she observed in shock. But her body wasn’t the least startled, and that extra heartbeat in her quim pounded urgently.

I should have insisted you wore white, sweet maiden.

She glanced down and realized her pelisse clung to her just as suggestively. But it was serviceable brown wool and not at all enticing.

At least warmth swept out through the open door.

Will they see us? Hear us?
Vampires had such enhanced senses.
S—smell us?

For the moment, I believe they are too…distracted to sense even the alluring perfume of an
aroused virgin.
He pulled her to him, until her body pressed as tightly to his as his wet clothes.

Oh yes. She yearned for this. Arching up on tiptoe, she pushed her cunny against his bulge.

She caught hold of his shirt and tried to draw him back…to where? There must be a coffin somewhere…and they could lie back against that while she tugged those wet trousers off—

Sex against a coffin?

What was happening to her?

It was Yannick. He possessed the power to turn her into a sex-mad creature with no control.

She ached to stay draped around him. Her right leg was wrapped about his booted calves and her arms clenched tight around his back, but she forced herself to let go.

Before I go in, I am arming myself.
She unfastened the ties of her bonnet and wrenched the wet thing off her head. It would only hamper her aim. Then she lowered to the ground and on her knees, opened and searched her valise. Two stakes she tucked into her bodice, the sharp ends poking between her breasts. She spread her hinged bow on the floor, pulling the arms until they clicked into place. The bow might be small but it used levers to provide advantage. There wasn’t much light, and loading the bolt into the crossbow by feel proved a challenge. The tip of the bolt pricked her fingertip and she sucked it. No blood at least. No fresh scent to alert a vampire.