She, it appeared, was just as unhappy to see that Auguste was the one knocking, and sought to prevent him from entering—with no success. Tommaso could only grit his teeth and watch, knowing that none of this was truly his concern and, should he interfere, he would only have Alkaios angry and telling him off for the next several nights.
Those worries were pushed from his mind however, when he heard the distinct sound of Manette crying out in pain and fear rise up from within the room. Unable to restrain himself, Tommaso rushed through the door, to be greeted with the sight of Lord Auguste pinning a struggling Manette against the wall. His slobbering mouth was upon her jaw and throat, his hands around her wrists that were pressed to the wall above her head. Manette, in an attempt to free herself, was thrashing her body against his as best she could, but this seemed only to be exciting the drunk lord hellbent on experiencing his betrothed well before the wedding.
Fury coated his vision as Tommaso crossed the room in an instant. Taking a fistful of Auguste’s hair in his hand, he wrenched his head back, and essentially peeled his cloying form from off of Manette. She gasped in relief, and grabbed at the wall to keep herself up. Knowing better, but unable to restrain the wrath frothing in his veins, Tommaso snapped out with his teeth elongated and bit fiercely into Auguste’s neck.
The male gasped out in pain, fighting against the ironclad hold Tommaso had upon his form. The beast within Tommaso gloried in the fact Auguste would know what it was like to be trapped against his will, just before his death found him. There was no gentleness offered as he drew the blood from his veins in long, harsh drags, gulping down the hot liquid as quickly as he could.
Just as his heart gave one, last, faltering flicker, Tommaso pulled off him and allowed his slack body to drop lifelessly to the floor, the dull thud sounding triumphantly to his ears. It was the sight of Manette, in a small ball of horror upon the floor, staring at him with eyes filled with terror, that snapped Tommaso from his vindicated fog.
“I’m sorry you had to see that. Are you okay?” he asked softly, moving to stoop down at her side.
Manette scooted back along the wall, keeping her eyes transfixed on his face in her attempt to flee. She thought he meant to do the same to her, could see it in the paler of her skin, and hear it in the frantic beating of her heart.
“Get away from me!” she screamed, tripping on her skirts as she made to get up.
But Tommaso was upon her, gripping her shoulders gently—but firmly—and keeping her in place. “I do not mean you harm, I only wanted to protect you from that brute. I promised you my help…”
She was struggling against him as she had Auguste, fighting the hold as a rabbit fought against the snare. “Please don’t kill me!” she sobbed, her form shaking beneath his grasp.
“Manette…” he began, but there was too much fear within her mind for him to speak plainly with her, so instead he reached into her mind with his own, and forced her to calm.
When there was a silent blankness in her eyes, he began to speak, influencing her mind as he did so. “I need you to pack a bag of clothes, and your essentials. We are going to leave the palace tonight before anyone finds Auguste, and I will take you to a place where you can be safe,” he informed her softly. Manette, still swept up in the power of his glamour, merely nodded her head. “Now go do that, I will be back in but a moment.”
When he released her, the girl rose calmly to her feet and began to move about the room. Having the fortitude to cover his tracks a little, Tommaso lifted Auguste from his place on the floor and laid him out on the bed instead. Once the body was taken care of, Tommaso quickly left Manette’s chambers to find his own, gathering what few items he felt that he would need.
This was not what he had intended for tonight, or how he had meant his relationship to evolve with Manette. However, things had proceeded in unexpected ways, and he was left with no choice but to respond.
A part of him longed to leave Alkaios a note, recognizing that the older vampyr would perhaps worry, before being filled with rage at his sudden disappearance. But Tommaso wished to leave nothing behind that might suggest where he had gone, and with whom. In his heart of hearts, he knew that in the end, he would find himself at the side of the other man, once again.
Sack in hand, Tommaso returned to Manette and, with her hand in his, he led her out into the night.
When it came time to seek shelter before dawn, Tommaso needed to use his tricks upon Manette once more, convincing her body that she desired to sleep the entire day through. Soon, he would have to release her from the trance he had placed upon her mind, but not yet. Not until they were safe beyond the reach of King Philip, and the even longer reach of Alkaios.
That dusk, as he woke from his death-like slumber, Manette was already awake, sitting huddled in the corner of the abandoned barn he had found them, looking truly lost. Her eyes moved to him as he sat up. For a moment neither of them spoke.
“What do you plan to do with me?” Manette whispered, hands resting atop knees that were drawn up near her chest.
“Whatever it is you wish for me to do. I will take you wherever it is you want to go.”
“And then?”
“I will leave you set up so that you can begin the life you want, or I will stay… Whatever you desire once we have reached the place we wish to go.” Tommaso found a deep stirring within him for her to want him to remain. He wasn’t certain what it was, or why this girl had affected him so, only that he wished to remain in her presence for as long as she would allow it.
“Why?”
He took a moment to consider, before responding. “You are a beautiful young woman trapped in a life not of her choice, with a slovenly, gluttonous parent who seeks not your happiness, but his own ease. I know what it is to have the choice taken from you, and do not enjoy witnessing it happen to another.”
She was silent for a moment longer. Her deep, blue eyes studied him in a manner that made him feel exposed.
“What are you?” she asked at last.
“Once, I was a man of God. Now, I am a soulless demon that perhaps seeks his salvation in the rescuing of another life.”
“So that wasn’t a dream?” Her fingertips raised to brush along the side of her throat. “You killed Lord Auguste by…by—”
“Drinking his blood, yes,” he finished for her. “That is how I survive.” There was something freeing in being so open with another.
Manette was pale, but to her credit, she did not balk at continuing to meet his gaze. There seemed to be another question on her tongue, but this time she appeared to be faltering at speaking it aloud.
“No,” he murmured softly. “I will not feed from you.”
She nodded, her eyes falling to the straw-riddled floor. “Where will we go?”
His blood rushed with those four simple words. Whether she saw no other way out, or had merely resigned herself to his company, for now they would be together.
“Wherever we desire.”
Travelling with a human was much slower than Tommaso had remembered. Unable to travel using his own unnatural speed, there was a need instead to locate transportation either by cart or boat. In the end, he found a carriage for hire, and two men willing to take them to the coast, and able to provide nearly round the clock service by switching off between each other.
Manette, it seemed, had decided it best not to question their need of remaining out of the daylight, and instead settled into a quiet state of contemplation as they fled the capital. Knowing the internal struggle when such large changes were sprung upon a person’s life, Tommaso did not pry, but left her to her silent reflections.
When Alkaios would begin looking for them, Tommaso could not be certain. All that he could hope was that the elder vampyr would not expect them to be heading to the coast as he had warned Tommaso against travelling by sea if it could be avoided. Too much time spent confined on the water and one would run out of viable veins to sup from without causing obvious death and disease. So
, in hopes of leading him astray, that was exactly what Tommaso planned to do. While the passage across the waters into the kingdom of England was not a long one, he hoped it would be enough to throw Alkaios off their scent. From there, they would settle on a final destination for Manette.
He had begun to think they would pass the entire duration in silence, but at last Manette found her voice around him once more, and began to speak.
“I’ve never been to the ocean,” she announced one evening, just after they had stopped for both of them to feed and then returned to their closed in carriage to resume. “It was something I always desired to see, but Father saw no value in the time, or coins, spent to do so. If nothing else comes of this, I suppose at least I will have achieved that.”
“I am pleased to be the one to help you see it done. The waters of the ocean are vast and turbulent—both beautiful, and deadly.” He thought about the last time he had felt the cold spray of ocean water upon his cheek. “I’ve only seen the sunlight sparkling upon its surface once, when I was a young boy, but the moonlight can cast a breathtaking gleam over its rippling waters also.” He glanced across the carriage to Manette, peering into the dark cast of her eyes in the moonlight. “I think the ocean will speak to you.”
Like the waters of the ocean, Tommaso was coming to find that Manette’s inner strength ran deep. There was an essence to her that could not be contained, and would fight against any attempts at restraining it.
“I hope that it does.”
Though conversation did not flow frequently between them, it was no longer an entirely silent trip, and as time wore on, a side of humour and laughter began to show in the young woman steadily blossoming beneath the mantle of freedom.
When at last they came to the coastline, Tommaso pounded the roof to signal their drivers should stop. He helped Manette out of the carriage, and led her across the rocky shore to the narrow strip of sand leading to the water’s edge. The breeze coming in off the ocean was cold upon his cheeks, tussling his hair about in its cool fingers and bringing with it the scent of salt and seaweed.
“Oh…” It was a whispered word of amazement that slipped passed Manette’s lips as she stared out over the vastness of the water. “It is never ending.”
He felt a little smile tug at his lips. “Yes, it does appear that way. Beautiful, isn’t it?” he asked, eyes upon her face as she beheld the sight before them.
“Even more so than I had dreamed,” was her response, a smile of delight upon her face that filled Tommaso’s form with gladness.
Before he could speak another word, Manette was stooping down to slip out of her shoes and stockings, lifting her skirts to wade ankle deep into the water. A soft gasp slipped form her lips as she felt the shock of its chill upon her flesh. Tommaso merely stepped back, and took enjoyment in watching her happiness. He hadn’t thought himself to be jaded already, but the many centuries by Alkaios’ side, only seeing humans as something to sup, and bed, had stolen form him the appreciation for their tendencies toward wonder and awe.
Dropping her skirts into the water, Manette waded in further, until the cold ocean was up to her knees. She stooped down to scoop up some, bringing it to her lips to take a drink. She had done it before he could warn her against such actions, and he lifted a hand to hide his chuckles of laughter as she spat it back out.
“It really is unbearably full of salt.” Even this seemed to delight her, for she cast him a smile over her shoulder.
In that moment, Tommaso felt he could stand there and watch Manette’s joy in the ocean until the sun rose in the morning sky and burnt him to ashes.
Having managed to broker their passage on a vessel leaving for England the next evening, Tommaso was relieved there would be no need to smuggle him aboard, hidden from the sunshine inside a wooden trunk. Instead, he tucked himself away in an inn nearby, and suggested Manette spend what time by the sun-drenched sea shore she could.
Though he had mostly removed his glamour from her mind, he was not concerned with her running away while he slept. Something had settled in Manette during their carriage ride to the coast and, once they had arrived at the waters, a new sense of freedom had filled her. Tommaso could see it there within her eyes—Manette was beginning to believe there was hope of a new life for her.
Soon enough they were sequestered inside the belly of the ship, a dank space tucked away in the bow, just enough room for them to stow their trunks and tuck themselves into the swaying hammocks. It did not bother Tommaso. In some ways, the cradling netting rocking him to and fro on each new swell of the ocean brought back faint memories of his childhood, and a mother who used to sing him to sleep.
“Your eyes grow dim,” Manette murmured later that evening as they stood on the deck of the ship. He had thought they were both gazing out over the waters, but it would seem her attention had been elsewhere. “Are you ill? Can you…grow ill?”
“I am quite all right,” he assured her. “I simply did not feed to the extent I needed before we set sail, and I dare not try my hand at one of the crew lest I be caught.”
It did mean that being below deck, confined to such a tight space with the sweetness of Manette’s scent surrounding him, was almost unbearable. He had stomached the carriage ride due to his ability to find fresh veins at each resting point they took. Even still, most mornings he had met his slumber with the prick of sharp incisors against his bottom lip—in many ways, she was his delight and also his torment.
“I could…give you some, if you need it?”
“No,” he responded more sharply than he intended. Shaking his head, Tommaso reached over to gently place his hand upon hers. “While I am touched by such an offer, I will not feed on you.” For fear he would not be able to stop himself, or the pleasure of her taste would ignite a desire for another pleasure to be met, and he would simply take things too far.
While every part of him wished to devour Manette, to experience her to the last drop until he was branded upon every inch of her being, Tommaso knew for certain that he would never allow himself to—not until the day she specifically asked for it.
“If you are certain,” came her soft reply. Blue eyes dark in the moonlight studied him closely.
“I am.”
They came upon England some twenty hours after leaving shore, the sun having just set and provided Tommaso with the cover that he needed. Disembarking, Tommaso felt himself grow lighter as their feet touched down upon soil once again. With such a large body of water between them, he felt that perhaps at last, he and Manette could cease looking over their shoulders.
Warwick, England
* * *
“Are you certain?” Manette crushed the soft fabric of the gown to her chest as she admired herself in the mirror, while Tommaso looked on in pleasure.
For five days they had been safely tucked away in the fortified town of Warick. In this time Tommaso had won the favour of the influential earl, Lord Thomas, and earned a place for the both of them in his beautiful stone castle. While it wasn’t precisely the lap of luxury that residing within a king’s palace afforded them, it was enough to provide them with daily entertainment, and a proper bed beneath them. It was also giving them the opportunity to attend a ball Lord Thomas was throwing in celebration of the nuptials of his eldest son.
“Of course I am. You had naught with you that would suffice for such an evening, and it brings me pleasure to see you thus. We came away so that you might enjoy life, and tonight at the ball you shall do just that, new gown and all.”
It wasn’t as refined a gown as the ones found at court, but for the earl of Warwick’s estate, it would more than just do. Manette would shine amidst the other guests, her natural beauty and youth a beacon for all wandering in the darkness of age.
“Thank you so very much, Maso… I look forward to a night of dining and music where I am not being paraded out like a prized sheep to the highest bidder, but simply there to enjoy the evening.”
It pleased him to hear her say s
uch things, for when Manette was happy, Tommaso found that he was as well. The smile curving her lips in this moment was enough to make his own blood sing.
“Then if you are ready, let us go.” He offered his hand to her, feeling her accept it without hesitation.
Free of her father’s shadow she had blossomed, and with it, had come a new ease between them. A friendship of sorts that brought him more deeply into her confidence. Tommaso had forgotten what it was like to know a person’s heart and mind rather than the dips and curves of their body, to be allowed into their innermost thoughts and cares. She was causing him to realize he had spent centuries feasting upon the shallow treats of life that held no substance, and now he was being returned to the true fruit of life.
Leading her down the long hallway of the estate, towards the long sweeping staircase that would take them into the main area of the home, Tommaso felt his chin rise with pride. He had done precisely what he had told her he would do—free her from an uncaring father who wished to marry her off to a man of violence. And in doing so, had freed himself from a presence he had not fully realized was becoming stifling to himself.
Alkaios was the one who had taken him in when he had nothing, and knew nothing of himself, or the ways of the vampyr. While he would always have a love in his heart for the life they had built together, an eternity was too long to live at the behest of someone else. Perhaps now he could live a life of freedoms that were meant solely for himself, and fulfilling his desires. Manette just so happened to be his first step towards this.
Their steps carried them quickly towards the large ballroom that took up a large portion of the manor’s east side. Large columns supported the ceiling above, and a series of long wooden tables ran down the sides of the room, heavy-laden with food. Already, music was being played as couples mulled about, making introductions and reacquainting themselves with old companions. The newly married couple sat in a place of honour at the head of the room, sipping from goblets of wine and teasingly feeding each other bites of food from their fingertips.
Something in the Shadows Page 9