Dawn Thompson (15 page)

All at once her hands fisted in his hair, drawing his head down closer and closer to the curve of her throat, to the swell of her breast, which he had exposed in his frenzy, as she called his name again and again, keeping time with the palpitations of his sex grinding against her. Drawn to the hardened bud, his lips encircled it, his fangs a hair’s breadth from the vein clearly visible just under the surface of that alabaster breast in the moonlight streaming through the wounded door at his back. Her body reacted. Her breath caught. His name spilled from her throat again in rhythm with the contractions he felt riddling her now, riddling
him,
until his throbbing climax paralyzed his brain but not the bloodlust.

She was not safe with him now. These urges were too great—greater than they had ever been. A climax would not bring release from that. It demanded satisfaction, and—his head reeling, pounding, throbbing with pent-up passion—he eased her down, a bestial howl on his lips, and reeled away to the back of the barn, where he fell upon an unsuspecting goat and drained it dry. Behind, he heard the chickens’ frantic clucking as Cassandra skittered among them. She, too, had to feed. After a moment, the flapping, clucking racket grew distant and finally stilled. Overhead, a great barn owl Jon hadn’t even noticed screeched, then spread its wings. It flew out through the gaping barn door, nearly grazing him as it glided by.

He would have to do something to secure that door. It was open again. And if an owl could get out, a bat could get in. Staggering to his feet, he dragged himself back past the stalls to where he’d left Cassandra, only to pull up short, his ragged heartbeat suspended as if caught in his throat.

Cassandra was gone.

Jon ordered his clothes and ran out into the darkness. The sky was aglitter with stars, beautiful and calm in stark contradiction to the chaos clawing at his raw nerves from the inside out, his numbed brain scarcely able to permit the thought, much less accept it.
She is gone
.

Screaming her name at the top of his hoarse voice, he plowed through the chickens now milling aimlessly about the barnyard, causing some to test their wings in awkward flapping failure rather than risk being trampled by the madman come among them. Feathers drifted everywhere. One bird lay dead and mangled. He smelled its blood before he saw it.

Again and again he called Cassandra’s name until his voice broke. Staggering into the wood he loosed a cry that woke other birds and sent them pouring from the trees in all directions. Bounding through the blue-black haze deep into the forest, he staggered from one ancient tree trunk to another. His way was lit by fractured shafts of misshapen moonlight that filtered through the foliage and
provided keys through the vines and bracken, gorse, woodbine, and pine scrub in his path and beyond. Mold and pollen spores displaced from the forest floor by his careless footfalls rose up, took flight, and sifted down around him like snow. The heady scents of pine and mulch and mildew rose in his nostrils, choking him.

Cassandra’s scent was not among them. Nothing but the irate screech and hoot of an owl somewhere close by yet out of sight replied to his desperate cries in the shape of her name—for his cries were palpable, having shape indeed, and form and substance. It was no use; he lumbered back the way he’d come, praying he would somehow find her back among the animals in the barn.

Many more besides the chickens had strayed through the open barn door by the time he reached it. There would be hell to pay in the morning, when the villagers woke to the task of rounding up their goats and sheep, chickens and milk cows wandering the foothills—not to mention discovering a dead goat and chicken bled to the last drop. He dared not stay and face that, but he dared not leave, either, in case she returned. His addled brain was mulling that over as he burst back into the barn only to pull up short before Milosh beside the cart, tugging on his breeches.

“Where . . . the bloody hell . . . have you been?” Jon panted, sucking in the stench of dung and musk and barn smells with each word. The Devil take his heightened senses!

“Fine talk from a vicar,” said the Gypsy, stuffing his blouse inside his breeches and shrugging on his suspenders.

“Almost a vicar,” Jon shot back. “No more. It’s sacrilege to say it.”

“Get shot of those togs then; they’ll earn you no favor here. Those whom you will deal with hereabouts shall
know what you are without such trappings. They see inside you—into the soul they lust for taking.”

“What I
was,”
Jon snapped. “I have disgraced my office.”

“But your calling has yet spared you much. When you are calmer you will see it. There is no time now for sparring. You seek your lady wife. You will not find her here.”

“You know where she’s gone?” Jon spoke through clenched teeth, both his hands fisted in the front of the Gypsy’s blouse with little regard for the flesh beneath. He shook the man roughly. “Where? Damn you, man—
where?
”

The Gypsy pried Jon’s white-knuckled fists away with frightening strength. “Where you cannot follow until dawn,” he replied.

“The castle?” Jon cried, fully aware that he was beyond deranged. The Gypsy hardly deserved strangulation for this predicament. Nonetheless, he seized Milosh’s shirt-front again. “Answer me, damn you!”

The Gypsy nodded. “I was just returning from there,” he said. “As a wolf, I can go many places that I cannot go in human form—just as you can. I went ahead to scope out the danger, to know exactly what we are facing. I wasn’t near enough to attack. He came out of nowhere, astride a horse—a phantom devil horse if ever I saw one, sleek and black, with feathered feet and a great black plume on its head . . . the kind the horses wear in funeral processions. The kind that pull the
coach da mort
—death’s equipage. In a blink, he scooped her up as she ran after a chicken, and then they were gone. There was nothing I could do.”

“Well, there is something
I
can do,” Jon said. Shoving the Gypsy aside, he sprang for the door.

Milosh seized his arm. “You cannot go there now,” he said. “It would be suicide. It is what he wants you to do. It
is
you
he wants, not Cassandra. She is just the lure, the bait that will bring you. And he does not want to ‘finish’ you, Jon, he wants to kill you.”

“He wants us both,” said Jon, “and has done from the start. He never would have gotten to her but for me. He stalked me, knew my haunts, knew what she meant to me and that we met at Vauxhall Gardens—knew who it was he was taking when he took her down. He planned this!”

The Gypsy shrugged. “That may well be, but she is safe enough for now. He has a stable full of female creatures he has made. I have seen them: beautiful beyond imagining, soulless, empty shells of female perfection—hollow-eyed disciples, trophies of his bloodthirsty reign upon this earth. No, believe me, he has taken her to the exact purpose of insuring what you are about to do. She is just another filly in his stable. You must wait until dawn. You cannot hope to prevail against him in his domain, upon his own ground, at night. You will die, and then where will your Cassandra be? I know that of which I speak, and I will help you, but you must wait until the sun rises upon that mountain.”

“So, is it my soul
you
lust after taking, Milosh?” Jon said. “Is that why you would dissuade me from going—to keep me for yourself?”

The Gypsy gave a start. “You think—”

“I do not know what to think!” Jon interrupted. “For all I know you could be in league with Sebastian. You could be one of his minions.”

“I wish he could hear you say that,” Milosh replied with a humorless chuckle. “But yes, it is time that I reveal myself. I have not lied to you, Jon Hyde-White. I am as you are—vampire turned vampire hunter, both in the same shell of a body. I salivate over staking Sebastian,
shearing off his head, making an end of him for all time for the atrocities he has unleashed upon this land—upon me and mine—but I cannot do it alone. I have tried many times and failed.” He strode to the wagon and swept the straw aside. “Have you not looked here?” he asked, raising a wooden spike in one hand and a mallet in the other. He threw them back down again. “What? Did you think they were for you? Hah! Do not flatter yourself.”

“I did not look at all,” Jon snapped. “I took you at your word, but there is something . . .”

“That ‘something’ is that the minute I saw you, I knew that between us we could finish the demon. That is why I helped you—why I help you still, though you do not know a whit about gratitude.”

“Why me and not some other? Surely there are plenty of men with tainted blood whom you could enlist in your plan.”

The Gypsy’s hand shot out, and one stiff finger flicked Jon’s clerical neckcloth. “This is why!” he said. “You have no idea of the power it holds—your ‘calling.’ Power against the vampire, against the revenant, and the undead. With my cunning and knowledge of this land and its people and your power—a power you have not yet even begun to tap, that you have no inkling of—we will succeed. But not if you do not put your trust in me.”

“I want to know why you no longer need to feed,” said Jon. “I want to know how you can still change shape, and in daylight. I want to know—”

“You are not ready to know!” the Gypsy interrupted. “Else I would have told you.” He scathingly tapped his chest with a finger. “I will tell you when the time is right—when the blood moon is near, and when I decide you are ready for that rite of passage. You have much to
learn, Jon Hyde-White. You are as green as the grass that grows on the steppes.”

“Then you must begin my tutelage on the way,” Jon said. “Unless you are afraid? Now stand aside! I am going to that castle.”

Her worst nightmare become reality, Cassandra feigned a swoon, lying facedown across the saddle blanket in front of Sebastian as the horse galloped up the narrow trail that led to Castle Valentin. There was no saddle. Aside from the bridle and reins, and the tall, black, funereal plume the animal sported on its sleek head, it wore no other tack or trappings.

There was no use to struggle. She was no match for the vampire. Why he hadn’t finished what he’d started with her already, she couldn’t imagine. She must avoid his eyes and bide her time. Jon would come for her. But . . . that was what Sebastian wanted, she suddenly realized. She was the bait that would bring him, and he would surely give in and follow.

Her mind was racing. If she could survive until daybreak, there was hope of escape. She had no weapon to use against the vampire; the holy water and oil were still in Jon’s greatcoat pocket. She would have to use her wits against this centuries-old demon from hell—this damned undead who had taken her first blood and would not rest until he had made her what he was. Praying that her seeming compliance would give her an edge, she all but shut her eyes as he dismounted at the castle, and went limp in his arms as he carried her inside.

A sense of utter cold rushed at her the minute they entered the towering double doors that would have been at home in a dungeon. Her eyes barely open behind the
fringe of her pale lashes, she took note of every twist and turn in the empty corridors through which he carried her. She didn’t see another person anywhere, but that did not mean they weren’t lurking somewhere out of sight.

Torches in wall brackets shed the only light. Spaced a good distance apart, they caused tall shadows on the ceiling, on the walls and floor, which did indeed seem to have been carved out of the very mountain itself from the resemblance in both color and texture. A narrow staircase not unlike the one she’d traveled at Whitebriar Abbey spiraled down into deep darkness, and they headed down it to the lower regions. How would Jon ever find her here? There was a way to leave her scent for him to follow, but it was a dangerous way because it would also be noticed by Sebastian. She had to act now, before they’d gone too far below.

There was nothing for it. Praying that Sebastian had recently fed, she bit into her lip until it bled, then spat the blood out when he hefted her higher over his shoulder and rounded the last bend in the stairs. He seemed not to notice, just carried her deeper still into the bowels of the castle.

Finally they reached a large, circular chamber with alcoves around the perimeter. There were plenty of inhabitants here: rats. Dozens of the fat, brown, hunched-back creatures with long, ridged tails skittering over the cold stone floor every which way as he evicted them with his careless footfalls, lowering her down in one of the alcoves. There, he clamped antiquated manacles about her ankles and left her wall-shackled among the milling rodents.

Lying stock-still as the rats crawled over her body was the hardest part of her deception. Every instinct demanded a scream. She could feel it building in her throat,
like a hard lump of something too large to be swallowed down, despite that the smell of their blood threatened her with the feeding frenzy. She eyed them hungrily. Some were as big as cats.

Cats!
It was as if a lightning strike had awakened her fogged brain. She hadn’t shapeshifted since that first time at Whitebriar Abbey, and that had been an involuntary occurrence, brought on by her hunger. Could she do it on her own, willfully? She scarcely gave it any thought. Scrabbling to her feet, she tossed down her spencer, wriggled out of her frock as Jon had told her to do before shapeshifting, shut her eyes, and visualized her animal incarnation.

Black at first behind her closed eyes; the image slowly turned to gray, then amber, then blood-red. Light-headedness came upon her, and white-hot pinpoints of light that threatened her consciousness stabbed at the image taking shape in her mind. Still she kept her eyes closed, though every instinct in her cried out for her to open them. Then, when she thought she could bear no more, a feeling of weightlessness came upon her. In a surging streak of silver light, she shrank and spiraled down into the shape of not a kitten but a sleek black cat, one whose hind legs slipped easily out of the human-sized manacles.