“Put some clothes on, you disgusting man.” Sir Thomas snapped, his voice trembling with rage. “How dare you do this in the presence of—”
“Listen to me!” Libby yelled. “Why are you behaving like this? He couldn’t help it. His clothes don’t change with him. I didn’t look at him, Thomas. I swear.”
“I’m sorry.” His voice sounded softer, defeated. “I saw you out here with him, and you were smiling, and I thought—”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I love only you. Besides, Cole has only eyes for his Belinda, don’t you, Cole?”
I nodded, not trusting myself to speak or I’d say something to Sir Thomas that would make the situation worse.
“Very well.” He nodded to Libby. “I shall leave you to your games. Come back to the house when you’re done. Rose has some wedding china samples for you to choose from, and she wants to know where you’d like to put the unicorn sculpture.”
“Up her arse.” Libby replied.
“An excellent choice.” Sir Thomas nodded again, and scurried back up the path.
“I’m so sorry,” Libby gushed, as she handed me my stack of clothing. “Thomas did not mean anything by it.”
“Uh huh,” I rubbed my arms. The hairs stood on end.
“He gets jealous sometimes. He worries I’ll leave him for someone younger. He was hoping I’d end up with a female Bran, but you were all that was on the market. I think he feels intimidated by you.”
“Sir Thomas Gillespie is intimidated by me?” The thought would have been amusing if he didn’t have so much power over me.
“Well, you are quite hot, in a biker bad-boy kind of way. And that is exactly the kind of guy I tend to fall for. But don’t let that go to your head. I’m taken.”
“So am I.”
“What happened back there?” Libby grabbed my arm and started walking me back towards the house. “Why did you change when he told you to? I thought you had to obey my orders.”
“I do,” I replied, holding up my finger to show her the red, glowing ring. “See? The ring is punishing me for disobeying you. But I couldn’t help it. It was as though some force overpowered your command.”
“What could it be?”
“I believe it was your fiancé.”
“Thomas forced you to disobey me?”
I nodded. “That’s only the tip of the iceberg of what he’s capable of. What do you understand about his power?”
“I read a lot about vampires,” Libby said. “I’ve always been fascinated by them. They exert kind of a magnetic charisma over people. You find yourself agreeing with them, even though your opinion differs. You follow them, even when your mind screams at you to stop. You will strike a deal with one, even though it might leave you penniless. Thomas said it’s not something he actively does, it’s just that his will seems to overpower every other mind in a room.”
“Is that really the man you want to be married to?” I shuddered at the idea of being wed to someone who could exert that level of power over me. It was bad enough being controlled by a master, let alone being married to one.
“I’ve power of my own,” Libby said. “I’m pretty strong willed, when I want to be. Thomas knows not to mess with me. I’ll be having words with him about overruling my commands to you, don’t you worry. He just let his anger get the best of him.”
“If he could easily overpower your will when all we were doing was visiting, what makes you think he’ll agree to help us rescue Belinda?”
“Oh, he’ll agree.” Libby said, her pretty face set into a determined frown. She glanced back towards the house. “But not right now. He’s in a foul mood. We’ll ask him again tomorrow.”
“But Belinda—”
She squeezed my hand. “I give you permission to go to Morchard Castle and look for her. Don’t get too close and don’t let anyone see you. Go as soon as you believe it’s safe to do so.”
I brought her hand to my mouth and kissed her knuckles. “Thank you, my mistress.”
6
Belinda
The next day, it rained heavily. The wind pushed the droplets at the window. My room was cold and gloomy. I was grateful to be able to spend the day in the warm kitchen with Tony.
“So how’re we getting out of here?” he whispered to me as he rolled out pastry for a pie. His half-drained bottle of red wine sat on the counter beside him.
“I’ve been thinking about it,” I said as I browned a batch of diced steak in the skillet. “And I think we need to find this antiviral Victor used on me. Victor is bound to have it in his lab somewhere. If we can get our hands on it, then it’s only a matter of clawing our way through the birds—”
“This isn’t exactly the movies,” Tony explained. “You don’t just inject antiviral and then are suddenly fine. There’s still a risk it won’t work. Or worse, you could have a bad reaction. The side effects could be just as lethal as the virus itself, especially since Victor’s antiviral is untested. I don’t like this plan.”
“Damn.” I stared past his shoulder, trying to think of some way around this fate. Out in the hallway, a lone suit of armour stood sentinel, guarding the staircase from approaching villains. It hadn’t been polished in some time, and dust and cobwebs hung from the pauldrons.
Staring at that suit, an idea formed in my mind.
“I’ve got it! We construct some kind of protective suit for ourselves,” I pointed to the suit of armour. “The man who wore that would never have anything to fear from a few bird scratches.”
Tony glanced over his shoulder at the suit of armour. When he turned back again, he didn’t look convinced. “But where are we going to find armour to fit us? That guy looks like he was about four foot high. It’s even too small for your body. And won’t Victor get suspicious if we start pulling apart his knight?”
I dug under the bench and tossed him a large metal mixing bowl. “There’s plenty of armour right here in the kitchen,” I said. “We can find other stuff around the house and hide it here, too. There are some thick mink coats in the wardrobe in my bedroom. If we wore those I bet that would help stop the raven’s talons entering our skin.”
Tony turned the mixing bowl over in his hands. “I don’t know … it could work …”
“It will work, but we need to get that antiviral first,” I said. “I’m not leaving this castle knowing how easily Victor could unleash that virus on the world.”
“But how are we going to get in there? Morchard locks that place up tight.”
“We’ll find a way.”
“I was afraid you’d say that.” Tony’s face looked pale. He tipped his head back and emptied his wine bottle.
The first chance to look for the antiviral presented itself that afternoon. Victor summoned me into the laboratory to ask me how I was getting on with Tony.
“Fine,” I answered, wondering why he was smiling so oddly at me. Why did he even care how Tony and I got on? My stomach flipped nervously as I wondered if he’d somehow guessed at our escape plan.
“He’s a lovely young boy, a brilliant mind. He’s the most promising student I’d ever taught.”
“Oh yes.” I said sarcastically. “When I admire someone’s brilliant mind, I take them prisoner in my castle and force them to make food all day for my family.”
Victor’s lips turned up into a sneer. “My, you have got sassy. So different from the shy little wallflower who first laid eyes on my Bran.”
I bit my tongue, holding back the retort that came to mind. I needed his cooperation if I was to ever get my hands on that antidote. Instead, I bent down and gazed into the glass cages on the bench, holding the birds I’d seen him move there the other day. One of the doves lay on its back with its feet in the air, unmoving. The other two huddled in the edge of the cage, cooing sadly. The raven’s head drooped, but otherwise, he seemed unaffected.
“As you can see,” Victor explained. “This particular strain shows some promise. I’ve discovered something unusual about ravens that enable them
to tolerate a higher exposure to the disease. If I can synthesize this enzyme, then I’m well on my way to creating a vaccine.”
A vaccine? That would be even more useful than an antiviral. “Can I help?”
“Sure.” He stepped aside to give me some space on the counter. There’s one thing I knew about men like Victor, he was so convinced of his own genius that he wouldn’t suspect I had any motive other than interest in his work for staying with him. “I’m just collecting tissue samples from these birds to analysis. I need several from each bird, and it’s quite a fiddly process. You can prepare and label the jars while I make the extractions.”
I choked down my disgust at having to watch him work on those poor birds. At least he gave them a sedative first. Victor showed me how to label the jars and stack them in order inside the sample trays. We worked for a couple of hours, me labelling jars and holding them while he extracted the tissue samples with a large, frightening-looking needle. Victor tried to ask me questions about my bakery and my life, but I cut him off abruptly with one word responses.
“I am heading to my office for a minute,” Victor announced. “I need to check on a couple of things. Do you need to take a bathroom break?”
I shook my head. “I’m fine. I’ll just stay here and make a start on this next set of jars.” This is it. This is my chance.
Victor nodded to the tray beside me. “Very well. Please don’t touch anything else in here. A lot of the instruments have very delicate settings.”
“I’ll be careful.” Victor nodded again, ducked under the secret door, and disappeared from view.
I listened to his footsteps clatter on the marble floor of the ballroom. When I could no longer hear them, I leapt from my chair and darted across the room, scanning the shelves for some clue.
Where would he keep an antidote? I saw some storage boxes high on the top shelf. I shook my head. No, he would need it close at hand, in case one of the infected birds happened to bite him—
The fridge. Of course. In the corner of the room stood a tall industrial fridge, similar to the one I used to have in Bewitching Bites. If he was holding samples he’d need to store them at a certain temperature.
I tore open the door to the fridge, Sure enough, the shelves inside were lined with stacks of sample jars, vials, and test tubes resting in racks. Labels on each one in Victor’s neat handwriting denoted the contents, usually with the now familiar three-letter, six-number coding system I’d been using all morning.
I started from the bottom, scanning the labels for some clue as to what I was looking at.
Halfway up, I discovered the bird virus. A small amount of pink fluid sealed in a vail, with the code MOV – Morchard Virus. There were trays and trays of those little pink vials. Seeing them stacked up like that, knowing what they were capable of doing, made me feel ill.
I spied something in the lowest corner of the shelf. A single vial, right at the end, nearly invisible amongst that sea of pink. Two vials were filled with a clear liquid, and labelled with the Morchard Virus code. One also included the word “Antiviral”, and the other “Vaccine.”
Vaccine. Perfect. If I took that, Tony and I could vaccinate ourselves so the birds couldn’t hurt us. That was much less risky than treating ourselves with the antiviral after being infected. I’d take that too, of course, so that some clever doctors who weren’t megalomaniacs could produce more of it in case the Morchard Virus ever broke out.
I knelt down and held the tray steady while I tried to slide the vials out. Beads of ice around the rim held them in place. I wiggled the vial, trying to work it loose.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
I leapt to my feet, yanking the vial out. It dropped to the floor and smashed into pieces. No! Fear gripped me. That was our chance, gone forever. I whirled around to face Victor. He stood in the doorway, his hands clenched at his sides and his face red with rage.
“I was just—”
He stalked towards me, his skin red with rage.
“Get out,” he growled, pointing to the door.
“I wasn’t doing anything, I swear—”
“I said, get out of here. Before I do something I regret.” He stepped towards me, his eyes flickering over my body. Bile rose in my throat as I imagined what that man might do to me. I ducked around him and fled the room, leaving behind our only chance to prevent this deadly viral outbreak in a puddle on the floor.
7
Cole
“He’s my Bran, and I want to help him,” Libby said. “Don’t you care that Morchard is holding this woman against her will?”
We were back in Raynard Hall. I hadn’t had any luck finding Belinda at Morchard Castle. I’d tried to get close enough to search the windows for her presence, but there were at least a hundred ravens perched around the outer fences. I didn’t have any hope of flying closer without them seeing me, and they gave off an odd, pungent scent that concerned me. That wasn’t normal. And whether they were Bran or simply raven, I had no doubt Morchard was waiting for their message of my return.
I’d just assured a worried Alex that my brother, who hadn’t shown his face at the hall all day, was not in fact dead, but probably sleeping in a tree somewhere. I hoped I was right. Now I stood in the doorway of the sitting room in Sir Thomas’s suite, while Libby and Sir Thomas argued over me. I balled my hands into fists, trying to not let my anger show. It was so nice of Libby to attempt to help me. But I was so sick of having to get other people to help me, to get permission to save the life of the woman I loved. This whole conversation was taking precious time we could be spending searching for Belinda. And instead of being out there, doing my part to find her, I was in here, listening to their nauseating prattling.
“Of course I care, Precious.” Sir Thomas wrapped Libby in his arms and kissed her quickly on the lips – the peck of a devoted, doting man. “But you have to understand, Bran are born to serve. We do not do them favours or befriend them. They exist to do our bidding.”
“If you’re going to be with me, Thomas, you need to learn to respect all creatures of the world, not just those you consider your equals. I’ll befriend whoever I want, Bran or otherwise, alright?”
He sighed. “Yes, dear.”
My head snapped up. Yes dear? I couldn’t believe I’d just heard a vampire utter those words. Libby was right, she did have some considerable influence over Sir Thomas.
Libby wasn’t finished. “And besides, what good is a servant with a broken heart? That pain will only turn to vengeance, and personally I’d rather not have my meals served by a man who believes I stood by while his love was killed.”
Sir Thomas sighed heavily, then lifted her delicate hand to his lips and kissed it. “Yes, fine. I do not much like the idea of an innocent girl being held by Morchard just so he can get revenge on me and this raven for something we did not do. You and I will help the Bran free his mate, on two conditions.”
Of course. He wouldn’t be a vampire if there weren’t some kind of catch.
“Name them.” Libby cooed.
“Condition one: you are not to put yourself into danger. I will not have my beautiful fiancée murdered by a petty crook for sticking her nose in a Bran’s business.” Sir Thomas spat the word Bran out as though it tasted awful. He glanced up at me and glowered. A surge of pain welled up from my chest. “And condition two. This quest of yours is not to interfere with our wedding plans. I have been waiting my entire life to marry a woman like you, and I will not have it delayed by—”
“I get it,” Libby grinned. “I’m excited about our wedding, too. Although I wish Rose would let me make some decisions. All the white and pink everywhere? Yuck.”
“Let her have her fun,” Sir Thomas kissed her forehead. “She has very little in her life, especially now you will be gone from the house. You will make your mark on my residence, and I give you complete freedom to make any design choices you wish.”
“You won’t be saying that when I put up violet, skull-cover
ed drapes and turn the billiards room into a skating rink.”
“Will I not?” Sir Thomas had a gleam in his eye as he bent down to kiss her. I turned away, barely able to contain my rage. An evil vampire like Sir Thomas got to experience love, and yet I couldn’t even go to Belinda when she needed me most.
I cleared my throat. Libby and Sir Thomas leapt apart as though they were teenagers caught snogging behind a classroom by a teacher. “Unless you need me for anything,” I said, struggling to keep my anger out of my voice. “I’ll be leaving you alone.”
“Cole. I’d forgotten you were there,” Libby’s face fell. Seeing her look so guilty made my anger dissipate a little. “Please, stay here. We can perform the scrying spell.”
“It’s fine if you’re busy—”
“Wait here.” She bounded across the room and pushed past me, squeezing my arm with excitement. “I’ll go get the things we need and see if anyone else is around. The more people we have focusing energy, the more likely we are to see something definitive.”
She darted down the hall, leaving me alone in the room with Sir Thomas. He nodded to the chair opposite him, inviting me to sit. I wanted to refuse, but his will tugged at me, dragging me into the room.
“I assume you will not be following through on Morchard’s request,” he said.
I shook my head. “Not until Belinda is safe,” I said. “Then I’d happily attempt it, but not for Morchard. For myself.”
“I am telling you that I did not kill your father. There was a—”
“I don’t want to hear anything you have to say about my father.” I spat back. “You have made a mistake choosing me as Libby’s Bran.”
“We shall see about that.” He leaned back in the chair and shot me a cat-ate-the-canary grin. I gritted my teeth.
Libby came back carrying a large salad bowl, a black pouch, and she had Ryan and all the girls in tow. The blue-haired Bianca had returned from her tattoo store, and stood with her arms folded, tapping her boot impatiently against the rug. Alex carried a large roll of white paper under her arm. Simon followed after her, carrying a large pitcher of water. And skulking right at the back was Byron.
Reaper: A raven paranormal romance (Crookshollow ravens Book 2) Page 9