Thicker Than Blood (Marchwood Vampire Series #2) (5 page)

The women led her through the parting
spectators. Again, Aelia dared not lift her head for fear of seeing
more hatred etched on familiar faces. More friends to spit at her
or curse her name. She felt she might die of shame. Soon, the women
came to a halt and Aelia found herself standing in a clear patch of
sunlight. She risked raising her face a little and found herself
squinting into the eyes of the village elders. She quickly lowered
her eyes again at the sight of their stern expressions.

She was shocked and a little dismayed to see
the women in black had melted away from her sides and she now stood
alone. Although they were her keepers, there had been some small
comfort in having them either side of her – a barrier between her
and the hostile crowd.

A hush swept across the square, like a dying
breeze. Where were her parents? Why weren’t they at her side? And
Lysus ... Where was he?

‘
Aelia Laskarina, you are
a maiden accused of sinning in the worst way, with a man.’ The
Praetor’s voice filled every pore of her body. It rang out across
the square and up into the sky. Aelia felt the tension around her
increase even more, if that were possible. ‘Are you guilty of this
crime?’ he asked.

She was expected to speak now, but what
should she say? Should she admit her sin or should she plead
ignorance and pretend she did not know what they were talking
about? Where was Lysus?

‘
Well?’ Praetor Garidas
said, after a few seconds of silence. ‘Have you nothing to say? Are
we to answer for you?’

‘
Where are my … Where are
my parents?’ she stammered.

‘
Your parents cannot help you.
They cannot answer for you. Only
you
can know what you did or did not. And only
we
can determine if
you tell the truth or if you lie.’

She heard the crowd hold its breath. The
silence was absolute. She knew that whatever she said now would
determine the rest of her life. If she told the truth, she would be
condemned, but if she lied and they already knew the truth, her
fate would be a thousand times worse.

‘
I … I did this,’ she
whispered.

‘
Speak up.’

‘
I did this. I am guilty
of this, but …’

The crowd erupted in a frenzy of jeering and
shouting, drowning out the rest of her words. One of the elders
rang a large hand bell, calling for silence.

‘
Sir,’ she said. But she
still could not be heard above the angry crowd. Once they had
finally quieted, Aelia raised her voice, tears streaming down her
face. ‘Sir, he promised me we would be married, that we would
…’

‘
Quiet, girl. Silence,
everybody.’ The Praetor stood and waited for the hush to descend
again. He spoke directly to Aelia who was shaking and sobbing. ‘I
am sorry to hear you say it. I am sorry to pass out this sentence,
but it is the law and we must abide by it or we will descend into
chaos and heathen ways.’

‘
But please, Praetor
Garidas,’ she wept. ‘He has promised to marry me. It is
…’

‘
Promises are not the
issue, girl. You have sinned. That is all that matters.’

‘
But if I tell you who I was
with! It was your …’ Aelia stopped as a stone struck her cheek. She
put her hand up to the stripe of pain, then gazed at her
red-stained fingertips before staring into the crowd, to where the
stone had originated.
Her gaze landed upon
a pair of guilty eyes and she caught her breath as realisation
punched its way through, like a blow to her gut. For it was
Lysus.

Up until now, Aelia had prayed that Lysus would halt her
humiliation and make everything right. But now, as she locked eyes
with him for a second that lasted an eternity, she realised his
loyalties were to himself. He would do nothing. Even if
Lysus
had
intended to marry her, he certainly would not help her now.
She knew nothing anymore, nor cared if she lived or died. The
gentle security that had cloaked her childhood had been ripped from
her shoulders and used to suffocate her. She turned away from Lysus
in disbelief, and surrendered herself to The Praetor’s
judgement.

‘
Enough!’ His voice silenced the crowd once again. ‘It is a
straightforward case. The girl has pleaded guilty. The sentence is
death.’

Aelia’s blood
stopped cold. The air emptied from her lungs and her legs turned
soft. There was a ringing in her ears and a feeling like she might
float away, a severing from the solid earth beneath her feet. There
came a low murmur from the crowd and then a high-pitched wail as a
small cloaked figure emerged and threw itself onto the floor in
front of the elders.

‘
Please, please!’ the woman shrieked. ‘Not death.
Please!’

Aelia felt the
world snap back into focus.

‘
Mother?’ she whispered, still rooted to the spot.

The woman
knelt on the ground sobbing. ‘Please, Praetor Garidas, I beg of
you! Do not kill my eldest girl. It is not her fault. It was me. I
did not raise her properly. Blame me.’

There were
loud mutters from the crowd now.

‘
What is she doing here?’ the Praetor said. ‘What are you
doing here, Madam Laskarina? You should not be here.’

‘
Where else would I be? This is my daughter. And you have
known her from childhood. You cannot do this to her. Have
mercy.’

‘
Mother,’ Aelia croaked and staggered across to the kneeling
figure. ‘Mother!’

Her mother
turned and flung her arms around her daughter, pulling her down to
where she knelt. Aelia breathed in deeply and allowed herself a
stolen second of relief. It felt so good to smell the scent of her
mother. To feel such love after the hatred of the crowd, the
dispassion of the elders and the betrayal of her lover.

‘
There is another way,’ her mother said to the elders,
shrugging off her recent hysteria. She rose to her feet and stood
to face the four displeased men. ‘You remember it. You must
remember it. There was a trial when we were children. You know how
that ended. You could pass the same sentence today. It is within
the law. It is within your power to make it so.’ She pulled Aelia
to her feet and held her close.

Aelia did not
dare look up, but buried her face into the soft space between her
mother’s shoulder and collar bone.

The Praetor
lifted his hand to silence Aelia’s mother and to still the crowd.
He turned to the other elders and they stood in council for a few
long moments. Aelia couldn’t think of anything but the word
‘death’.

The elders
soon returned to their places behind the trestle. The crowd became
completely silent once more.

‘
Madam Laskarina, you were given strict instructions not to
attend this trial today. You have disobeyed the elders and there
will be a punishment.’

Aelia’s mother
did not react.

‘
However, you have brought to our attention a precedent which
we cannot ignore. And we are relieved to have an alternative to the
sentence of death.’

Aelia’s mother
prostrated herself on the ground and cried out her thanks. The
crowd reacted noisily with booing and jeers, but there were also a
few cries of relief above the general displeasure. Aelia stood
above her mother’s cloaked body. She wondered how Lysus was
reacting to this. Then she told herself she should not care. The
Praetor’s voice cut through her thoughts and through the noise of
the crowd:

‘
Aelia Laskarina, you can thank your mother, for we have
decided your fate and it is to be
banishment
. You have been lucky
today.’

Lucky?
Mingled in with the terror,
and the vague relief of having escaped death, she felt an urge to
laugh at his word choice
–
lucky
. She heard him still talking and
struggled to concentrate on his words.

‘
You may not say goodbye to those you know. You may not take
anything with you but the clothes on your back. You may not return
to this village during the course of your natural life.’

Banishment.
Sent away from everyone and everything she knew. So it may as well
have been a death sentence. Her mother rose to her feet and
embraced her once more.

‘
My darling daughter,’ she murmured in her ear. ‘You will
survive. You will find a way, I know it.’

Aelia clung to
her mother as they were prised away from each other by rough guards
who surrounded them.

‘
Be strong!’ her mother shouted as she was dragged away out of
sight. ‘Be strong, Aelia!’

Chapter Six

Present Day

*

A strange engine-like hum filled Madison’s
ears and she had the odd sensation of weightlessness. The lingering
gluey smell made her remember. She snapped her eyes open and her
eyelashes brushed against cloth. She’d been blindfolded … no, some
kind of hood had been pulled right down over her face. She panicked
and suddenly breathing became hard. She tried to move her hands but
they were tied and so she struggled against her restraints, crying
out.

‘
Hey!’ her voice sounded
hoarse and muffled. ‘Hey! What’s going on?’

‘
She’s awake.’ It was a
bland male voice without an accent.

‘
Yeah, I think we gathered
that,’ came the reply.

‘
Why am I tied up?’ Maddy
shouted. ‘Take this thing off my head.’ She pulled again against
her restraints, but couldn’t move at all. Her ankles were also
bound together and as she struggled the ties cut into her
skin.

‘
Calm down. You’ll hurt
yourself.’

Maddy’s temper flared, her initial fear
momentarily forgotten at the amusement in the man’s voice. ‘I might
be a bit calmer if you hadn’t snatched me, tied me up and shoved a
bag over my head.’

‘
I’ll need you to be quiet
now,’ the man said.

‘
You can go …’ But then
Maddy felt a wetness seep through the material over her face. There
was that cloying smell again blocking everything out. The engine
sound grew faint, there was a whooshing noise in her ears and her
thoughts went fuzzy and then blank.

*

They gathered in the basement where no
daylight could harm them. This was no normal basement, but a lavish
suite of apartments furnished in the late nineteenth century style.
They all sat, except for Alexandre who paced the sitting room as he
filled them in on his discoveries. Ben was wild-eyed, exhausted and
hysterical.

‘
Do you think she’s dead?’
he asked Alexandre.

‘
No I do not. It is not
even a possibility so do not think it.’

‘
You can’t know that,
Alex.’ Ben stood up and ran his fingers through his hair. At
fourteen, he was no longer the naïve young boy Alexandre had first
met a year ago. ‘How can you pretend you know that? She could be
lying dead in a ditch somewhere.’

‘
Don’t ever talk like that
again,’ Alexandre replied.

‘
I’ll talk how I want.
It’s my sister out there! And it’s your fault she’s gone missing.
It’s because you’re vampires. You attract trouble. You’re not safe
to be around.’

‘
Calm down, Ben,’ Jacques
said.

‘
No, Jacques,’ Alexandre said.
‘Ben is correct. It
is
our fault Madison is missing. We have put Ben and Maddy’s
lives in danger, but we will make it right. We will find her.
Tonight, at first dark, we will go and confront Blythe.’

‘
We can’t go to that place
again,’ Leonora said. ‘We’re defenceless against those
lights.’

‘
We won’t go to his
offices. We’ll find out where he lives and we will kill him.
Madison will be there, I am sure of it. Then I’ll hunt down the
other vampires and I will kill them too. We cannot live like this
any longer – under threat all the time.’

‘
Sounds good to me,’ said
Freddie.

‘
You make it sound so
simple, Alexandre,’ said Leonora. ‘But you don’t even know if she
will be there. This may be nothing to do with Blythe or his vampire
clients. Perhaps she … needed some space away from us and has gone
off for a few days.’

At this, everyone began talking at once;
telling Leonora what a ridiculous suggestion that was and that
Maddy would never go off without telling them.

‘
Fine, I’m wrong,’ she
said. ‘I’m just exploring all the possibilities.’

‘
I guarantee it is Blythe
behind her disappearance,’ Alexandre repeated.

‘
Well then, we need to
find out where he lives,’ Isobel said. ‘And Ben, you need to
sleep.’

‘
How d’you think I’m ever
gonna sleep?’

‘
Then go upstairs and read
or watch television or just lie in bed awake. You need to
rest.’

‘
But I …’

‘
If you don’t, you’ll be
no good to anyone.’

Alexandre turned his head at a knock on the
basement door.

‘
Only me, love.’ It was
Esther, the housekeeper.

‘
Come in,’ Isobel called
out.

They had no secrets from Esther and Morris
Foxton, the caretakers of Marchwood House. That summer, they had
discovered that Esther was the great granddaughter of Refet, the
Turkish guard who had accompanied Harold Swinton (Leonora and
Freddie’s father) back to England in 1881. That was the year
Alexandre and the others had become vampires. Esther and Morris had
known about the vampires long before Maddy and Ben ever had. It was
a secret their family had been entrusted with for over a
century.