Blood Wicked (7 page)

“I’ve already searched through here. What exactly are we looking for this time?”

Heath glanced up. Julian frowned at the counter, his lip curled in distaste.

“I want to know what Mrs. Holt is. What she wants. And who really is making magic potions in this chemist’s. There have got to be some answers to be found here. Let’s go to the back.”

Vivienne had been instructed to seduce him.
Why?
If he kept thinking about the mystery behind it, he wouldn’t slip and think about letting Vivienne kiss him, touch him, then finally, when he was about to howl with desire, mount him—

Hades.

A dingy curtain concealed a set of narrow, crooked stairs. Heath moved up them so swiftly, the steps had no time to creak. He found himself in the room in which the apothecary prepared medicines. On one side, a wooden counter ran the length of the tight space. Bowls and pestles littered the work-table. Faint light crept around the curtains and glistened on the surface, revealing stains, powder residue, and slick things that had long dried. Astringent scents filled Heath’s nose, along with the heavy smell of rotting flesh. There were barrels along the wall beneath the lowest shelves.

“Body parts,” he muttered.

“Christ Jesus!” Julian’s shout had Heath spinning on his heel. “They weren’t there before.”

As he spat out the words, Julian jumped back. A stack of enormous jars swayed, tottered, and Heath jumped over the table to reach them—

His hand caught them and steadied the pile. Eyeballs sloshed in a yellowish fluid. Julian pointed to the counter and grinned sheepishly.
“Those
weren’t there last night either.”

Heath noted a tag attached to one. DRIED ELEPHANT PENIS, it read. “Poor buggers.”

A stack of books rested at the end of the counter. Heath looked at the first, a treatise on herbs and plants for medical treatments. The next two were texts on human anatomy. Normal, acceptable books for a place that sold cures.

“There are three bedchambers beyond this room,” Julian explained. “The largest is at the back and is the only one being used. The other two are empty.”

“Many chemists are more successful than this one appears to be,” Heath mused. “Most raise families within their shops.” There was something wrong, something missing.… “Stairs.”

“Over there,” Julian said.

“No. I mean there should be stairs up to another floor. These narrow stores all have three floors. We’re only on the second, and I saw no stairs that led upward. So they must be hidden.”

He began tracing his way along the walls, tapping, until his fist made a hollow sound. The plaster appeared unbroken. So how did the door to the stairs open? Magic, obviously. With a spell he didn’t know. So he raised his boot and slammed it through plaster and laths.

Julian jumped. “Hades, I thought we were supposed to be quiet.”

Ignoring the younger vampire, Heath kicked a hole large
enough to climb through. He found himself on the landing of another narrow stair. There was no sound, only the soft flutter of bits of plaster settling. Then he charged upstairs. The stair opened onto a room that took up the entire floor, decorated like a gentleman’s study with an ornate desk of black wood and large leather chairs.

It took only moments to know the room was devoid of demons or apothecaries. Heath searched the desk first. He ripped open drawers and found them also empty—except for the last, which held a heavy seal. He turned and lifted it to look at the pattern.

He knew the design well. It was a thick cross decorated with curves and loops. The sight of it shot his thoughts back into his past. He remembered the flame of a campfire, howls of wolves, and the barking of frightened dogs. A man wearing furs lifted a brand from flame, and the raised cross had glowed red.

Heath remembered searing pain, the stench of his own burning flesh, as his sire’s servant had branded him while the ancient vampire placed the curse on his head.

“What is it?” Julian asked.

“Nothing.”

Now he knew how Mrs. Holt had known who he was. The vampire who used this room was his sire. Nikolai, the five-hundred-year-old vampire who had made him, who’d cursed him.

What was Vivienne’s part in this? As her payment for her medicine, was she supposed to unleash the demon in him?

Night had settled by the time his lordship bothered to come downstairs. Vivienne knew from stories that vampires had to stay out of the light and sleep in the day. But they slept in coffins. And vampires did not really exist.

She watched him with pursed lips as he prowled into Sarah’s room, all long legs and mobile shoulders. He appeared oblivious
to the anger stewing inside her, the arrogant wretch. He was dressed in trousers and a shirt, but he moved on bare feet. Silent, graceful, stealthy.

He paused at the end of the bed and studied Sarah with his head cocked. He took a deep breath as though he scented something in the air.

Vivienne opened her mouth, but he spoke first. “Does she normally sleep so much?”

And with one question, he probed the deep fears boiling inside her. “She has never slept a whole day before. She must have been very tired—”

“She must be getting weaker and the medicine isn’t helping. That’s what you fear.”

She watched, hands fisted, as he approached Sarah. She flinched as he touched Sarah’s throat with two fingers until she realized he was checking the pulse.

“If I try to help your daughter, it will mean she will have to drink my blood. Are you willing to let me do that?”

“N-no. That’s preposterous—” She stopped. Doctors had come and had bled Sarah. And it had done nothing. “You licked my wound and it went away. Is that what would happen if Sarah drinks your blood?”

“It’s not as simple as that. I can’t feed her enough at one time to banish whatever this illness is. Not without taking the risk that I turn her into a vampire. I assume that’s not the future you envision for your daughter?”

“No!”

“Then we start slowly. A little at a time. She will build a tolerance. We should know in a few days if it is working.”

A few days. “And do you intend to keep me a prisoner all that time?”

“I intend to keep you with me, Miss Dare. Until we find my brother.”

He might call himself a vampire, but he was as pigheaded a
man as any of her protectors had been. But she couldn’t fight now. Or even protest her innocence. If believing she knew his brother kept him here to help Sarah, she’d hold her tongue. “That name you called me. Succubus. What does it mean?”

She had prided herself on the library she built, for she wanted Sarah to be well read. But none of her books defined that word.

He had been studying Sarah. He looked at Vivienne. “There is a way to prove what you are, Miss Dare. But it will mean you won’t be making love to anyone—in your dreams or out.”

“Your dream can’t have been the same as mine,” she challenged. “That’s impossible.”

A slow grin spread. “You dropped to your knees before me in Hyde Park.” He spoke softly so Sarah could not hear. “You sucked my cock until I was on the brink of climax. And what did I do then?”

She flushed. “You lifted me up to my feet and knelt before me and—”

“You see. The same dream. Was your climax as good in your dream as it was in mine?”

But he had left her then and drawn a blade out of the waistband of his trousers. A long, thin knife. He drew it along his wrist, leaving a dribble of blood.

The sight of it brought back vile memories. Her mother’s—Rose’s—blood dripping from her nose after she had taken a man’s blow. Vivienne shivered. Every maternal instinct screamed for her to protect Sarah. And to resist this man who had invaded her house, who was battering her defenses with something far stronger than violence.
Hope
.

With shaky fingers she touched her healed cheek. She had to try this. Was his promise any more far fetched than the crone’s medicine? Yet Sarah looked so small and defenseless. Was she betraying her daughter? With a heart heavy as lead, she asked quietly, “Should I wake her?”

He shook his head. He tipped his hand to smooth the line of his wrist and send the blood oozing faster. “No. All I need to do is touch the blood to her lips. She will take over from there.” Another rueful smile played over his mouth. “Like a babe at the breast.”

But as he lowered his powerful body to sit on the edge of her daughter’s bed and flicked back his sleeve, Vivienne ran to the fireplace and grasped the poker. In her mind’s eye, she could see the leather apron–clad butcher flying through the alley. This would hardly stop Heath.

But it was something.

Heath murmured to Sarah. Vivienne couldn’t hear the words, but his tone was soothing. She found her grip loosening on her weapon. She shook sense into her head and held it hard. There had been
gentlemen
—cads and scoundrels who had pursued her to get close to Sarah. She was not naive.

Heath held his wrist to Sarah’s lips. “N—” Vivienne began in protest, but to her amazement, Sarah fastened her lips to his wound. Her daughter’s eyes were still shut, but she drank fiercely. Suddenly Sarah’s hand shot out from the covers and gripped Heath’s arm to hold him there.

Heath motioned Vivienne to come to him. Holding the poker, she did.

“See how strong her grip is. Is it always like that?”

“Heavens, no.” Vivienne’s tongue felt thick and clumsy. “She is always so weak.”

“This is a good sign then.” He looked up at her. His auburn hair fell across his face, disheveled, red as flame. The sympathy, the hope in his strange, reflective silver eyes stunned her. She was a stranger to him. Why should he care about Sarah’s fate, about hers?

And if he thought she had hurt his brother, why did he look at her so gently?

Transfixed, she watched Sarah drink. It should horrify her,
but pink began to bloom in Sarah’s cheeks. It had been months since Sarah’s skin had been anything but ashen.

“That’s enough, little love,” Heath whispered.

Her daughter’s eyes flew open, desperate and angry, and she clung to him harder.

“No, Sarah,” Vivienne tried, “you must stop—”

But Sarah ignored her. Heath spoke strange words.
“Arnum aria enta.”

It sounded like Latin, but nothing Vivienne recognized. Sarah dropped away from his wrist and fell back onto the bed. Her eyes were closed. But her skin, instead of looking parchment thin, actually glowed.

“Is—is she all right?” Guilt and fear were a crushing weight on her heart.

“She needs to sleep. She has to digest whatever it is in my magical blood that heals.” He stood, reminding Vivienne of his size. His head brushed the tasseled trim of Sarah’s bed canopy.

“She looks so much better.” She hugged that hope to her heart, desperate not to lose an ounce of it. Before her tear-blurred eyes, Sarah’s face looked as pretty as it once had, instead of haggard and ill. Then her tears spilled. “The medicine never did that to her.”

His sensual mouth twisted sardonically. “I suspect the medicine was only intended to keep her barely alive. Not to cure her.”

“But why? I paid the price.” She gaped at him before she thought to brush away her tears.

His gaze fixed on her wet cheeks. “And if Sarah was cured you would stop paying the price. A succubus steals part of a man’s soul each time she beds him. Mrs. Holt didn’t want you to stop.”

“I am not a succubus. I do not steal men’s souls. If anything, men have taken
mine.
”

“I don’t believe that.” He looked around. “You care too much for Sarah to have no soul. I think, if anything, men made your soul stronger.”

That was utter madness. And she was about to throw fierce words at him, when he smiled lazily. He grasped the poker and tugged it out of her hand.

“A woman with a weapon is always a dangerous thing. You know, there is a way to prove whether you are a succubus or not.” He ran a considering hand over his jaw. “For the details, there is a book I must consult.”

“Then go and look at it. And leave me alone.” She stopped. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“Of course you did,” he said softly. “Now, you will have to get dressed. The men I’ve employed can watch the house, and I assume you have your servants watch over Sarah.”

She glared at him. “I’m not leaving my daughter.”

“Yes, you are—for a few hours. I have to go out. I want to get that book. Then I need to find my brother, and I need to find out who has been using you to drain the souls of England’s peers.”

Vivienne could not even count all the dangerous things she had done within the last day. And now she was walking into a dark house with a well-built, muscular gentleman who called himself a vampire. She had no weapon, nor anyone to protect her. Servants surrounded her, but they were in his employ.

He had helped Sarah.

Heath had given her a miracle. And for that alone, she knew she had to do what he asked.

The door thudded to a close behind her, the heavy sound echoing in the massive foyer of his town house. She froze at the sound, her hands clutching the sides of her cloak.

“What is wrong, Miss Dare?” Moonlight spilled in from a
skylight, glancing across his face like a sword’s blade. In the bluish glow, his eyes were silver. Unearthly. “There’s nothing to fear in my foyer.”

Oh yes there is. You
. “Why did you help my daughter when you believe I am capable of murder? When you suspect—wrongly—that I made your brother disappear?”

“Your crimes are not your daughter’s crimes.”

“Do you intend to let me go home to her?”

“I want to find my brother.” He watched her carefully. “However, I don’t plan to take revenge. Revenge is a bloody useless thing to want and a dangerous thing to pursue.”

She refused to show how much he scared her. “Do you have a portrait of your brother in this dark house? I should like to actually see the man you accuse me of seducing.”

He paused. “I told you what he looks like.”

“Yes. Like you only more attractive. I would prefer to see for myself.”

With gentlemanly aplomb, he offered his arm. Given she was essentially his prisoner, the gesture seemed absurd. He felt no noble consideration to her. “Come,” he said.