Dawn Thompson (2 page)

Jon tore open the wrought ironwork, then the door, and stepped inside. His heart sank. The crypt was empty. Cassandra wasn’t there waiting as he’d hoped she would be—as he’d
prayed
she’d be. He wasn’t surprised. God heard him no longer. Why would God help one undead, and another destined to be? Had Clive Snow damned himself as well by giving them aid—by keeping Jon safe and giving her sanctuary? Was Jon’s friend and mentor
another casualty of the nightmare? He shuddered to wonder.

Shaking those thoughts free like a dog sheds water, Jon strode inside, the stone floor cold and hard beneath his bare feet. A change of clothes was set out neatly on a stone bench in the corner. He dressed himself hurriedly, tugging on his drawers and buckskin breeches, then the shirt, waistcoat, and chocolate brown superfine frock coat. He would go back for the clothes he’d left in the woad field, but not yet. Not until he’d found Cassandra. Not until he knew she was safe.

He tugged on his turned-down top boots and stamped his feet to settle them inside the stiff though malleable leather. They still felt like the large, padded feet of the dire wolf, and would for awhile. The wolf was his favorite part of the
condition
, as he referred to it. He did love roaming fleet-footed over the moors, with the Cumberland north wind whipping tears into his eyes, combing his silver-tipped fur.

His makeshift toilette complete, he stepped out into the misty darkness and closed the door of the vault. The light in the nearby vicarage beckoned, and he parted the mist with long-legged strides, hoping Cassandra had taken refuge there, and banged the knocker impatiently—once, twice. He raised his hand to grip the knocker again when the door came open in the vicar’s hand.

The elder clergyman pulled Jon inside. “Are you trying to rouse the dead?” he asked, leading the way toward the study.

Clive Snow seemed borne down as he trudged the narrow hallway lit by candles in wall sconces. The flickering candlelight picked out the silver in his hair and shone in his articulate eyes, the color of amber, which had always
seemed to see into Jon’s soul. Jon couldn’t bear those penetrating amber eyes boring into him now. There was no time for a lecture; even less for explanations.

He dug in his heels. “Is Cassandra here?” he asked.

“No. Is she supposed to be?”

“We were to meet at the crypt. She was supposed to arrive before sunset, and she isn’t there. She doesn’t realize the danger she is in, Clive. Sebastian will try again. It’s only a matter of time.”

“Jon, we must talk,” said the vicar, gripping his arm.

“Yes, but not now. I must find her before Sebastian does. He’s out there somewhere. I know it—I
feel
it! If he finishes what he’s begun, she will be his for all eternity. She will be lost to me forever.” He broke free. “I must go,” he said, sprinting down the narrow corridor.

“Jon!” the vicar called after him. “We must talk, I say! If we do not speak before the sun rises on another day, you will find the crypt locked when you reach it. I mean it!”

Jon didn’t answer. It was an empty threat. If Clive were to lock him out of the crypt while in wolf form he would have no togs to change into when he transformed back. Clive Snow knew that. He would hardly let Jon be caught in the altogether by some member of the parish visiting a loved one in the kirkyard. Only one thought moved Jon then. Where was Cassandra? He had to find her.

“Jon!” the vicar called after him. “Come back here!”

“I shall—later,” Jon said, slamming the rectory door a little too loudly as he fled, the vicar’s protests ringing in his ears. No. He most definitely wasn’t himself. How could so much have happened to change his otherwise ordered life in the mere space of a sennight?

Seven days ago, he’d known who he was and where he was going. His future was charted, impeccably planned.
He was to be vicar of All Saints Parish. The previous vicar and his friend, Clive Snow, was retiring by dispensation from the bishop. It was all arranged. What’s more, Jon had met the girl of his dreams, and had been about to press his suit when Clive Snow’s missive arrived, asking him to try to locate a parishioner gone astray, to convince the man to return to his increasing wife post-haste. Jon now bitterly wished he’d never received that missive.

Half sprinting, half stumbling, he scaled the tor to the flattened summit where Whitebriar Abbey stood buffeted by the cruel north wind, no less scathing in spring and summer for all these seasons’ mildness. Bursting into the abbey, he bellowed for Bates at the top of his lungs.

The white-faced valet—cum butler cum footman, since Jon’s
condition
reduced the staff—loped to the gallery balustrade above on his lame leg, his graying hair fanned out behind him in dishabille, his stone-colored eyes wide.

“Oh, sir!” he cried. “Thank heavens! I am at the end of my tether. Please come!”

“What is that racket?” Jon asked, scaling the broad, carpeted stairs two at a stride. Only then was he aware of the din echoing through the mansion above.

“ ’Tis Gideon,” said the servant. “I cannot do a thing with him. He’s run mad, I think!”

“What’s happened?”

“The young lady’s come—”

“Thank God!” Jon cried, his posture collapsing in relief.

“I put her in the blue suite off the west gallery,” Bates went on, pointing down the upstairs hall, “and no sooner had I done when Gideon come a-chargin’ up here goin’ at that door all-out straight. See for yourself, it’s nearly in splinters.”

“Fetch his chain.”

The servant shot out his hand, the dog’s chain dangling from his fingers. Jon hadn’t even realized that Bates was holding it all the while. He snatched it from him.

“Gideon, stay!” he commanded.

The mastiff’s head flashed toward him. Its jaws were dripping foam, flinging spittle, its dilated eyes glazed with the iridescent luster of mindless irritation.

“Gideon, heel!” Jon charged.

The mastiff pranced in place—tail wagging, lips snarling—his head bobbing back and forth between the wounded door and his master, a troop of desperate whines leaking from his throat between growls. Jon rattled the chain, and the dog padded toward him warily, tail between his legs. Reluctance ruled the animal’s step, and still there was a silent showing of fangs, culminating in another guttural growl and a rousing bark that more closely resembled a snarl. What was wrong with the animal? Gideon had never snarled at him before.

Jon snapped the chain fast to the collar and jerked the dog to a standstill, handing the chain to Bates. “Take him below,” he said. “And keep him there.”

“Y-yes, sir. I’m sorry, sir. I cannot control him when he’s thus. You are the only one he heels to.”

No longer,
Jon thought. He gripped the door handle and waited, his fingers working the gilded scrollwork impatiently while the servant led Gideon down the stairs, before he lifted the latch. Once the pair was out of sight, he burst into the room, calling Cassandra at the top of his lungs. She didn’t answer, and he streaked through the sitting room, charged through the door to the bedchamber adjoining, and pulled up short. Cassandra was nowhere in sight, but her sprigged muslin frock lay in a
heap on the floor under the antique Glastonbury chair in the corner.

Calling her name again, Jon spanned the distance to the dressing room in two strides, but she wasn’t there either, and he crossed back into the bedchamber, his eyes upon the daintily patterned frock underneath the chair in the corner. It was
moving.

Approaching with caution, Jon squatted down and seized the frock, suspecting rats. The shape of something small wriggling inside confirmed his suspicions, and he surged upright and raised his foot, set to crush the rodent beneath the heel of his top boot, when he was stopped by a mewing sound leaking forth. Jon lowered his foot to the floor, then reached down toward the moving frock. Once, twice he drew his hand back before he finally seized it, exposing the head of a little black kitten, whose big green eyes stared up at him like two sparkling emeralds in the candlelight. In fact, the creature seemed all eyes, the way they dominated that tiny face.

All at once, the mewing became sobs, the head expanded, and the soft ebony fur became a streak of molten silver surging toward him in a blurred rush of motion. Then
she
was in his arms. The scent of meadowsweet and lilies of the valley threaded through his nostrils from her sun-painted hair, from her naked skin bared by the tangled frock twisted around her that showed him more of her exquisite body than he was prepared to view. His sex grew hard against her. The tightness began at his very core—the hunger—as he could smell her blood. He could taste the salty sweetness of its thick nectar at the base of his tongue. He fought back the inevitable drool, the lubricant saliva that made the piercing easier. Anticipation quickened his heartbeat. He felt the painful pressure as
fangs emerged from his canine teeth—long, sharp, hollow fangs—their manifestation an arousal.
The feeding frenzy!
How could it be? He had just fed.

As if it had a will of its own, his hand slid the length of her soft white throat, feeling for the pulse beneath that smooth, opalescent skin. Blood was racing through her veins, through the artery leaping there. Her very life was palpitating beneath his trembling fingers, inches from the deadly fangs hovering above; it was there for the taking. He groaned and put her from him, tugging the twisted frock back up over the milk-white breasts trembling in rhythm with her sobs.

“What . . . do you think you’re . . . about, Cassandra ?” he panted. Reeling away from her, he raked his hair with a trembling hand, taking deep, shuddering breaths, and did not face her again until his needle-sharp fangs had receded. After a moment, all evidence of the condition faded—all, that is, except the thick, hard arousal challenging the seam of his buckskins.

He spun to face her. “What did I just see here, Cass?” he asked through clenched teeth, as if clenching them would keep the fangs from emerging again.

Cassandra reached toward him, but he backed away. “Stay where you are!” he said. “Good God, come no nearer!” The throbbing in his sex dominated his body, echoing in his ears like the thunder of timpani. He had to keep her at arm’s length.

Cassandra burst into fresh tears. “I . . . there was a rat,” she wailed. “I smelled its blood. It gave me such a hunger. I hate rats, Jon. What is happening to me?”

How he wanted to take her in his arms and comfort her—only that. How he longed to embrace that sweet flesh on any pretext. He dared not. He had to keep his
distance. He would not finish what Sebastian had started. There was hope for her if he did not yield to temptation. But it was more than mere temptation, this; it was something dark and sinister and all-consuming that he could barely control. How long before he could no longer keep that control? How long before . . . No!He dared not give those thoughts substance with words—not even in his mind.

“Did you feed?” he murmured, his voice trembling and strained.

She shook her head. “All at once I had paws and claws and silky fur, and the rat was bigger than I was,” she sobbed. “I wasn’t me anymore. I was a
kitten,
and it
bit
me . . . see?” she said, holding out her hand.

Jon stared at the blood still oozing thick and red from the back of her delicate hand, trickling down her fingers. His own hands balled into white-knuckled fists at his sides. It came again: the tightening, the turgid pressure in the pit of his belly like a fiddle bow string stretched to its limit. The throbbing started at his temples, the terrible pounding commanding his sex until it throbbed to the same shuddering rhythm. He had to taste her or go mad—now, before the blood congealed and lost its flavor; now, while it was still fresh. He snatched the hand and raised it to his lips. If he did this, his hunger for her would be insatiable, his thirst for her sweet nectar as that of a wanderer in the desert in search of life-giving water. She was already in his blood, and had been since before the condition changed both their lives. Were he to lick the sticky blood from that hand—whether he were to take but a taste or suck it dry—she would be in his very soul, and nothing would slake that hunger save that he take her to completion.

Unaware, for he hadn’t told her everything, Cassandra made the decision for him. She reclaimed her hand and raised it to his lips. Jon groaned. Seizing her wrist, he took her bloodied fingers into his mouth and sucked them clean—then the wound itself, until he’d swallowed every drop. Afterward, ashamed, unable to meet the nonplussed expression on that lovely face, in those doelike brown eyes, he dropped her hands and turned away in disgust. She had no idea what he’d just done, but he knew all too well that he had sealed their fate. She was no longer safe in his company. He would have to fight the urge to finish her with every fiber of what was left of his being to keep himself from ravishing her body—and worse, ravaging her soul.

“Sit down, Cass,” he murmured. “No! Not on the bed . . . in the chair.” He waited while she did as he bade and took a seat in the Glastonbury chair she’d so recently hidden beneath. He noticed her wary observation of it as she eased herself down with a cautious slither. “Vampires have the power to shapeshift,” he explained. “You have seen me change into the form of a dire wolf. Each of us has our own creature—”

“Mine is a . . . a
kitten?
” she interrupted. “A helpless kitten? Am I to be devoured by rats—or dogs? I heard your hound at the door. He would have torn me to shreds.”

“How am I to make her understand when I do not?” Jon cried to the rafters. After a moment he sobered, as much as he could with the sweet taste of her life force lingering on his tongue, taunting him,
obsessing
him. Why had he tasted that sweet nectar? “You are not a full-blooded vampire . . . yet,” he went on shakily. “You have the ability . . . but not the power—the strength—to take your creature’s
proper form, which, I presume, would be some form of cat by this display. Did you have fair warning?”

“Fair warning?” she repeated, a frown spoiling her lovely face. “How do you mean?”