The King's Vampire (4 page)

The silence within the pub, thick as London fog, hung in the air. Darius briefly acknowledged Elizabeth sitting between them before he continued. “We have reliable information that George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, has been attacked by psychic vampire demons. He’s now one of them and works for those belonging to the abyss.”

“What’s this about an abyss?” the tall, thin vampire cried out.

“The abyss is the portal of hell for demons. Elizabeth found a nest of them at the ruins of St. Paul’s, discovering the chasm at the same time.”

“If the psychic demons have a portal to hell, then we shouldn’t be messing with them, should we?” Godfrey said.

“If Master Godfrey will allow me to continue,” Darius said, glaring in the direction of the ferret-faced vampire, who bobbed his head like an angry chicken. “It has been brought to my attention the psychic vampire demons are planning an attack on King Charles. If the leader of England becomes a soulless devil, he’ll lead the country that’s already poised to become the greatest empire in the entire world straight into destruction. The fact our community will be decimated will be the least of our troubles.”

“What’s it to us if King Charles becomes a psychic vampire demon? I’ve already heard from the humans his parliament is already sucking the lifeblood out of them anyway.”

The other vampires laughed but Darius slammed his hand down on the oak table. “Those who are damned forever have never been allowed to rule the world, not now, not ever. I don’t intend to allow that to happen as long as I exist.”

“Will they take the king’s soul when he’s asleep or when he’s dead?” Ferret-face yelled out.

“Or will he become an immortal vampire or a psychic vampire demon?” the tall vampire shouted.

The group of vampires converged, and their babbling voices all demanded answers on how the psychic vampires planned to attack the king, until no one was bothering to listen to anyone else. The noise level of the hall reached such a pitch Darius couldn’t have answered them if he’d tried.

Darius rose from the dais and strode over to the rough-hewn oak table where Elizabeth sat squeezed between the Duke and Duchess of Denham. He grasped her hand and led her to the front of the room, while she quirked an eyebrow at him. Every vampire’s sharp, burning eyes fixated on her, causing her heart to thump so loudly, she feared they’d hear it.

His deep, sonorous voice rang out, while facing the group with Elizabeth by his side. “We need to consider all of the possibilities in order to prevent this reprehensible act to happen to King Charles. A plan of action must take place immediately.”

“What’s she got to do with any of it?” Godfrey raised a finger, pointing at Elizabeth, his thin lips drawn into a sneer. “She’s the one what thinks she’s better than the rest of us. Being a vampire is too unholy for the likes of her, I’ve heard.”

Darius’s voice hardened. “I don’t think it’s for you to speculate on what Elizabeth might, or might not feel. Our focus is greater than that of our own petty disagreements. We must convince the king his soul is in danger and his life depends on our protection.”

Thoroughly sick of the skinny man’s hostility and Darius’s attempt at speaking for her, Elizabeth had no intention of standing like a ninny and letting the entire vampire community judge her. “Will you get to the point, Lord Mayor,” she said. “We don’t have much time until dawn, and if you spend all this time dithering about, we’re all likely to be burned to a crisp by the early morning’s sun. Then there will be no defense at all against the psychic vampires.”

She watched Darius frown, looking shocked and disapproving by her irreverence toward him in front of the crowd. He cleared his throat and said, “The only way to convince the king he’s in danger is to use his weakness, his ultimate folly, which has always been a woman. So it is a woman who must convince him of his grave danger.”

The Duke of Denham rose once more. “If you will permit me, Lord Mayor, perhaps I can explain more clearly, since my wife and I have a position of some importance at court, if you’ll pardon my saying so.”

“So what’s your plan, gov’ner?” Godfrey asked.

The Duke of Denham ignored him. “The beautiful Elizabeth looks strikingly like King Charles’s favorite mistress, Barbara Palmer, the Countess of Castlemaine, only she’s younger and more beautiful than the countess.”

“What are you suggesting, Your Grace?” Elizabeth gave him a sharp look.

He turned and bowed toward Elizabeth. “Once we present you at Whitehall, and you’re permitted access to the royal apartments, we feel certain a woman with your appeal, tact, and intelligence will quickly gain the king’s confidence.”

All too familiar with the king’s reputation with women, Elizabeth looked from the Duke of Denham to Darius. “You plan to fob me off as the king’s mistress?” A sense of betrayal washed over her, and unable to face Darius, she glanced down into her lap, blinking her eyes rapidly. How could she have thought he actually cared for her?

“I know there’s no one more likely to gain his confidence and persuade him to do whatever is necessary to save his life, indeed, his very soul. You have the strength of character to present the facts in a manner Charles can accept. I realize it still remains the king’s will, and his right to save himself and the kingdom is up to him. The choice must be the king’s to act upon, as he deems fit. Yet it will be your decision on how to persuade him of the danger. I trust you, Elizabeth. Let the challenge begin, if you dare.”

She knew Darius was baiting and daring her in front of all the vampires, and she glared at him before answering. Still, his expression pleaded for understanding. Then she looked out at the other vampires, and saw some leering and giving her malicious glances.

Angered even more by their attitudes, she raised her head high. “I accept the challenge, Your Lordship, and I promise to protect the king against the psychic vampires to the best of my abilities.”

“Why doesn’t she just persuade the king to become a vampire for us? Wouldn’t that stop the psychic vampire demons from causing us more trouble?”

“That’s a good point you’re making, Godfrey, but I don’t think England could tolerate the Stuart rule forever,” Darius said. “Rulers of the world must be part of the living in order to understand the needs of humans. The vampires’ goal concerns survival and not increasing our population to unmanageable proportions, nor do we wish to have a hand in controlling human affairs.”

The lean vampire with his black hair swept over his boney brow spoke again. “We’ll keep the truce for now, but we’ll not wait forever.” His mouth tensed. “If we keep getting blamed for what the vampire demons do, then the humans shall be left at our mercy.”

“Your point is well taken, Ashley,” Darius said. “Our goal is to contain the psychic vampires, so they are unable to harm immortal vampires or humans. We ask for your patience in order to achieve our goal. I promise we won’t fail.”

Godfrey spoke up. “Don’t take too long about it, Lord Mayor.” He bowed and sat down.

A hush enveloped the room, and all the other vampires dispersed quickly. Elizabeth and Darius were left standing in the center of the great hall. His eyes gleamed down on her. “Thank you for your courage, Elizabeth.”

Her head spinning with all the words that had been spoken, she wondered again if she’d misread Darius, perhaps what she’d considered his special regard for her was something else—something more sinister. Perhaps that passionate kiss she’d shared with him a short time ago hadn’t meant the same to him. It could have been another step in a plot to lower her defenses. Maybe making her the king’s mistress had been his plan all along, after all, vampires were masters of deception. She dared not voice her suspicions. She merely nodded and smiled, hoping to convince him she trusted him implicitly.

They walked outside together where the street now appeared sodden and desolate from the previous rainfall. Clopping of the horses’ hooves on the cobblestones ceased when the shiny black carriage halted. The coachman sat on his high seat and the footman leapt down from his position and opened the door, helping them both inside. The two sleek horses, black as the carriage, started off. Elizabeth pressed her face against the rain-swept window, her heart pounding in fear and anger building up until it spilled out.

She turned to face him. “Well?” she cried out.

“What do you want me to say?” He brushed back a lock of dark, damp hair that had fallen across his forehead. “I wouldn’t have asked this favor of you if I didn’t think you were capable of handling the situation.”

“You might have told me what you were planning before you announced it to all the vampires. I felt like a fool in there.”

He stroked the side of her face. “You’re the bravest woman I know. If anyone can persuade the king of his danger, it’s you.”

“What makes you think I can convince the king of England that he’s in danger from psychic vampire demons? Either he’ll think me mad, or he’ll destroy me for being a vampire. I don’t like either one of those options, Darius.”

“You traveled all the way from Prague to London alone when you became a vampire, even though knowing nothing of the vampire’s ways and vampire hunters were searching everywhere for you.”

Her mind rushed back to those first horrible days when she became a vampire. It had been after the fire that had destroyed her entire family. Right after the catastrophe, her husband had made her a vampire. It had been a nightmare that haunted her still. A pain knotted in her chest at the memory, so she forced down all thoughts of the past.

She drew away from him in the carriage. “My journey wasn’t one of courage, rather of ignorance, and perhaps a bit of luck. After my husband was made a vampire, he then made me one, too, but he forced himself upon me. He made me drink his blood. I had no choice, so I ran away. You were the first vampire to ever help me.” Elizabeth lowered her eyes, unable to face the glowing embers in his eyes. “The survival skills I knew at the time were those from the folklore.”

“Folklore isn’t always wrong. Vampires prefer to move alone in the world. Our group here in London has learned the hard way it’s best to cling together for protection.”

“They trust no one but you. You’ve been a vampire for a long time.”

His face became heavy, and his muscles seemed to tighten. “It was my own arrogance that made me a vampire. I thought I had no need of a soul, and immortality was my dream. I imagined I could do much in the world, if I had several lifetimes.”

“Haven’t you done a great deal?”

Instead of answering, he said, “Dawn comes quickly. We must get back to the inn.”

Thinking again of what he’d said, anger made her turn on him once more. “But the king, Darius, what in heaven’s name made you think I might charm a king?” The only answer she received was a volley of rain on the carriage windows, while the horses rushed back toward the Boar’s Head Inn. She didn’t even know how to speak to a king, so how could she possibly charm one?

Darius pressed her hand to his lips. “You are a woman who could charm the sun and stars from the sky.”

She had no words to respond.

Chapter 3

Darius dashed back to his apartment once he saw Elizabeth safely to her own room. He dared not stay in her company when she was so furious with him, especially when he wanted nothing more than to draw her to him, and drink of her lips, and of her body, believing it would quench his desire for her far more than the taste of her blood.

Why now, of all times, did he have such a powerful desire for her? He’d been her friend for nearly one hundred years, and now, something had ripped apart the barriers. He shouldn’t have drunk of her blood, but he’d panicked at the thought she might soon recapture her soul and leave him. He’d believed that if they drank one another’s blood, they’d be bound together forever.

The scent of her, the taste of her, the touch of her, now consumed his senses, sending him reeling into a web of unbridled, raging desire. If only he could drag her into his arms and feel the silky smoothness of her sweet body next to his now and forever.

He pulled the heavy, black curtains around his bed, leaving him in suffocating darkness, hoping to obliterate his lust in the darkness. On the backs of his eyelids, visions of red eyes and snarling white teeth of wolves surrounding him bore down on him, their fangs coming closer, so close he smelled the pungent scent of their shaggy bodies while they strained toward him, sinewy limbs and sharp fangs pulling forward in an attempt to rip him apart.

At first, he thought the wolves symbolized his own lust and fear paralyzed him, an unreasoning fear that made him groan aloud. He struggled against the racing of his heart, the shortness of his breath, reminding himself this must be the work of the psychic vampire demons, those forces of the damned made him doubt himself even as they fed on that fear and doubt.

Insufferable arrogance had put him in this position of always trying to control his world through his own strength, and he had been paying for it for over eight hundred years. Even now, he remembered the day when his father had delivered him to the monastery in the woods near the Rhone River in France. He recalled the bare trees, iced-over and looking like skeletal hands reaching out to grasp him.

He’d never forget the humiliation he’d felt when his father had told him he’d never live up to the strength and prowess of his three older warrior brothers, and how his father had personally taken him to the monastery. He’d been eight years old and still couldn’t forget those endless prayers he’d made on the cold, hard chapel floor, praying he’d be rescued some day.

That memory passed, and suddenly, an image of the Byzantine-like castle at Aachen crossed his mind. An image of soaking in the hot thermal springs with his ancient heroic king blotted out the lingering visions of the wolves and monasteries. He felt the hot water and the strong sulfurous smell of the springs while Charlemagne laughed at some story he’d been told. Darius then drifted off into a dream of hot, dusty battles for useless past glories.

He’d been alone until Elizabeth had come seeking asylum in London. He would not go on for another eight hundred years—he couldn’t exist without Elizabeth by his side. She had allowed him to drink of her vampire blood, and in his mind, uniting them forever.