THE LOST CHILD
Book 9 of the
Bryn and Sinjin Series
by
H.P. Mallory
Copyright ©2020 by HP Mallory
Published by HP Mallory at Smashwords Smashwords Edition License Notes
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Acknowledgements:
To my son, Finn: You are my world.
To my editor, Teri, at EditingFairy.com: thank you for an excellent job, as always.
About The Lost Child:
After realizing their infant daughter has been spirited away to the land of Faery by the Fir Darrig, one of the Unseelie Court, Bryn and Sinjin decide to go after her.
Luckily, they have Odran, Klaasje and Dureau by their side.
But once they locate the baby, Sinjin and Dureau are taken hostage by the Darrig and its Unseelie cohorts while the others are forced to find their own way back.
Forced to separate from Sinjin, Bryn thinks her luck can’t get any worse… that is, until they return to Kinloch Kirk...
Find out what happens in The Lost Child!
TABLE OF CONTENTS:
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
ONE
SINJIN
By the winter of 1645, the city of Chester , which had been under siege since September, and on and off before that since the preceding February, was as good as defeated. The Parliamentarian forces outside had starved and bombarded the Royalist city into submission, and King Charles’ attempt to mount a rescue had resulted in yet another crushing defeat for the beleaguered monarch. The writing was on the wall for the King himself as much as the city.
And yet, the commander of the Royalist garrison, Lord Byron (not the one of whom you are likely thinking, the Lord Byron whose acquaintance I would make more than a century and a half later),
refused to surrender. They had been as good as dead since late September, and yet now, as a thoroughly unmerry Christmas loomed, Byron still managed to hold out. Most likely, this was because the Parliamentarian commander, Sir William Brereton, knew that any attack would result in some loss of his men, while if he simply used patience to his advantage and awaited his enemies, he would win with no losses. He had the luxury of time.
Why was Lord Byron so stubborn? I suppose because he had nothing left, and a man in a desperate situation will cling to whatever shred of hope he has, even as a city starves around him, and the cannons level the houses of Chester.
But what did any of that matter to me?
My loyalties during the English Civil War, now entering its fourth bloody year, were dictated by simpler factors than loyalty. On the one hand, I would instantly be recognized as a member of the aristocracy – even my name, Sinjin Sinclair, proclaimed that much – and no man would mistake me for a commoner. On the other hand, I found the royalist Cavaliers faintly ludicrous, and the idea of them fighting a war with anything sharper than a silk handkerchief was an obvious recipe for defeat. I could hardly ally myself with that group of strutting peacocks. There again, I found the Parliamentarians uncouth, unwashed and distasteful. They preached a big game about being on the side of the people, but like all who come in the name of the proletariat, they had only a passing acquaintance with those whom they claimed to represent. One thing they did represent was the sovereignty of Parliament, and why would one such as I have given the least concern about that one way or the other?
The other thing they represented was Puritanism, and on that subject, I had strong feelings; powerfully anti. The Puritans outlawed dancing, music, theatre (particularly of the bawdier variety), excessive drinking, Sunday sports, boxing, gambling, prostitution and indeed all sex outside of marriage. Basically they disapproved of everything that made life enjoyable and pursuits in which I engaged on a daily basis. Though, in fairness, the Puritans had more serious reasons to disapprove of me.
The Cavaliers were probably closer to my way of thinking, but they were ridiculous, arrogant and worthless. I, therefore, had loyalty to neither side. My loyalty was purely personal; I was loyal to Sinjin Sinclair. And to Sinjin Sinclair the Civil War was not such a bad time. No one questioned sudden deaths when there were so many happening on a daily basis. No one cared to investigate accusations of satanic practice, and priests with their crosses and holy relics stayed shut up in their churches (where they belonged!), hoping that God (or at least a fear of God’s wrath) would protect them.
War meant that a vampire like myself could operate with impunity.
As I woke, that evening, I could hear the final impacts of the cannon, following the day’s bombardment. They would stop for the night because military commanders like to be able to see what they are aiming at, and get a kick out of watching it fall down.
Pushing off the lid of the coffin in which I had spent the day, I emerged into a stone-lined cellar—the safest place to be at the present. The building above had been blown apart months ago and the cellar had provided me with a convenient little bolt hole where no light could penetrate and where no one would think to look.
At the top of the stairs was a wooden trap door and, peering through its boards, I could see that the sun had gone down. I opened the door to crawl out into the wreckage of the house that had previously stood here. The scent of smoke met my nostrils as I took to the darkening street, and I could see the red and yellow glow of burning buildings in more than one direction. The Royalist assault was intensifying. How much longer could Chester hold out?
Having spent their days in hiding, people now began to emerge to perform the necessary tasks of the day. They did so with weary resignation, knowing that by fetching water and scavenging for food, all they were doing was staving off the inevitable. The people of Chester had long since given up any hope they might survive this ordeal —their spirit was broken. And yet they continued. It is a feature of the human race that no matter how dire the situation, people will cling to life to the last moment purely owing to the doubt of what comes next. They moved now, like automata, an assemblage of bones barely held together with thin, sallow skin. Food supplies were minimal, disease was rife, and if something did not change soon then Brereton would be taking a dead town.
Although the Roundhead assault seemed to be done for the time being, the people moved with caution, like deer going to drink at a river, knowing a wolf is nearby. Perhaps they knew there was more to fear in the night than the soldiers.
To a non-vampire, it may seem cruel to know that when I looked at these people, all I saw was prey. But does the fox pity the one-legged chicken? No. It attacks the weakest of the flock because the fox has to eat. I had to eat and it was the misfortune of these people that I was a vampire and my only form of sustenance was blood. It was not my fault, it was what I had been made some two centuries earlier. When I had first been
turned, I had struggled with my morality, but my hunger had driven me to kill.
Now I was more accustomed to the pecking order of the food chain, and, had I been so inclined, I would have picked any one of these emaciated waifs for my daily meal without so much as a pang of guilt.
But it was not to those poor bastards that I turned. Not because I felt sorry for them (although I may have done, after a fashio n
—they had been through enough already) but because they were, by this point, riddled with typhus, tuberculosis and other diseases springing from an absence of hygiene. I lived in a cellar, yes, but was fastidious in my habits, and a vampire can contract such conditions from the blood of his victims. Besides, the taste of diseased blood is not a pleasant one, if you have an alternative.
Food shortages afflicted the top of Chester society down to the bottom, but, as is always the case, ‘food shortage’ means different things to different people. Down here, famine meant starvation; elsewhere it meant hunger, but it was not going to kill anyone yet.
I passed through the nocturnal streets of the city, moving like a predatory shadow. If the people saw me, their glazed eyes did not register my passing. Had they seen me, they might have wondered why I looked so well-fed while the rest of them were bags of bones, but they had ceased to notice anything.
Towards the center of the city, where the cannons struggled to reach, the devastation was less total. It was here, therefore, that the Cavalier commanders had made their homes, and where the city’s wealthy had made their way. They might be as resigned to their fate as those in the cheap seats, but they were determined to see out the end of their world in as much comfort as money could buy. It was another idiosyncrasy of humans that, no matter how dire the situation, they still valued money. Even in their current state, people scrabbled for gold as eagerly as they did bread, even though they definitely needed bread more urgently.
There were more soldiers on the streets here as well. The rank and file were stationed around the protective earthworks and what was left of the city’s massive walls, which had enabled Chester to hold out for as long as it had, but here there were the middle-ranking Cavaliers. Not quite well-connected enough to be off-duty, but too well-bred to be cannon fodder. Even now, after the long weeks of siege, their long hair was glossy and their clothes wildly colorfu l—they were determined to go out on their own terms.
Two such preening fools were coming my way now and with a light jump, I caught the overhanging roof of a house and pulled myself easily up and out of sight. These soldiers were not patrolling for the enemy, but to protect their commanders from theft—God forbid the poor should get into the larders of the rich. From my vantage point, I watched them pass, chuckling to themselves about something. Each seemed to have enough moustache for two and neither had enough chin for one. I could have taken them both, but these were not my targets either.
Dropping back to the ground, I continued on my way, moving stealthily and quickly like the hunter I was.
From down one of the streets, I heard the music and laughter of a tavern that doubled as a ‘house of ill-repute’, as the Puritans would say. In fact, it had a very good reputation and was doing excellent business with Cavaliers who had decided to die with a tankard in one hand and a girl in the other. I stopped to listen for a moment; little as I cared about the outcome of the war or the fate of the humans of Chester, it was oddly moving to hear the laughter—there was little of that about the city these days.
I turned away. Up ahead of me, was my destination, the large mansion house that had been commandeered by Lord Byron as his headquarters. It was here that the healthiest and best fed humans were to be found —those who would make the best meal for a hungry vampire. Byron himself, I would prefer to leave. The man was a stupid, stubborn, pompous clothes horse, just like all of the Cavaliers, and the way he treated the people made it clear he thought they were a different species, but I had a grudging respect for his tenacity. Perhaps it was ill-advised, perhaps he was sentencing people to a slow death, but there was a bravery buried within the callous, asinine pig-headedness of the man. The others in there however, were fair game.
As I stalked closer, I wondered if there had been any comment about the sudden rise in the mortality rate among commanders and their entourages over the last few weeks. It did not matter—in wartime I acted with impunity and with an absence of guilt. Look at what humans did to each other. Why should I feel guilty when all I was trying to do was feed?
“ Come on, love.”
The voice from an alley, running alongside the mansion house, caught my attention just as I was about to enter. I peered down, my vampire eyes easily seeing through the blackness.
“ What are you so proud about, anyway?” The voice had the upper class twang of a Cavalier, and struck me as that of a man who you wanted to slap before you had even met him. I now saw its owner by the light of a flaming torch, projecting from the wall. His face matched his voice well.
“ We’ll all be dead in a day or so, anyway.”
The Cavalier was talking to a girl who I guessed to be a maid from her attire. Her back was to the wall and he had placed his arms either side of her, hands flat against the stone, preventing her from getting away. Her head was down, afraid to look the Cavalier in the eyes in case he interpreted such as acquiescence.
I could see her pale hands trembling, and her wide, frightened eyes. As I watched, she tried to get away, ducking under the blocking arm, but the Cavalier, pushed her back and slapped her face, lightly but firmly.
“ Ah, ah, ah. None of that. Don’t pretend you don’t want it.”
The Cavalier’s hand groped between the girl’s legs, bunching her skirts as he pressed her back against the wall.
“ I don’t, sir!”
“ Well, whether you want it or not , you’re going to get it.”
I am in many ways a hypocrite. If I had come across the girl on her own, I might well have bitten her and bled her dry. But seeing the Cavalier attack her, I did not hesitate.
“ Wha…”
The man barely had time to open his mouth as I rushed up to him with inhuman speed and tore him away from the girl, throwing him back against the opposite wall. The Cavalier’s shock quickly gave way to anger.
“ What the bloody hell…” he grabbed for the sword that hung at his waist, drawing it with a theatrical flourish that suggested he had managed to get this far into the war without ever actually being in a fight.
My own hand moved faster than the Cavalier’s eyes could register and I grabbed his arm and twisted it. The sword fell to the ground with a clatter.
“ Unhand me!” It was amazing how priggish the man could remain when he had every reason to be terrified.
Entitled arrogance dies hard but the effrontery vanished from his face when my free hand shot out to grab him by the throat and lift him off the ground. The man’s eyes widened in terror as he realized how serious this situation was and then goggled as I bared my fangs. I drew the dangling man to my mouth. He struggled, kicking and lashing out at me, but I simply increased the pressure on his throat and his movements weakened. A growl rose in the back of my throat as I sank my teeth into the Cavalier’s exposed throat and felt his hot, panicked blood pour into my mouth.
I drank well and deeply .
It is possible for myself, or any vampire, to drink a pint or two and leave the human alive —it takes a certain amount of self-control to do so, but the human is usually left compliant and will be a more willing ‘victim’ in the future. Some vampires develop long-term relationships with their victims, feeding on them week after week, over months and even years. For myself, I have always preferred to drain them, and in a case like this, there was never any doubt in my mind that I would kill the Cavalier.
After all, he was quite the bad sort, was he not?
I only stopped drinking when the blood dried up, and I let the limp body of the odious man drop to the ground in a crumpled heap. Wiping the blood from my mouth , I tur
ned to find the maid still standing behind me, transfixed with horror, her back pressed hard to the wall. He face was blanched and her eyes were all white with pin-prick pupils. In her mind, she had already decided she was next and she would never leave this alleyway alive.
“ Run along.” I made a dismissive gesture with my hand. “And if you see me again, do yourself a favor and avoid me. I may not be so generous next time.”
The girl seemed to regain control of her body and staggered away from me. In her haste, she tripped over her own feet, falling to the ground and looking back over her shoulder at me in blind terror, afraid I might attack , now that she was helpless. I made no move, and the girl scrambled back to her feet and ran off into the night.
I was satiated and replete anyway. I did not kill needlessly because such was needless. Vampires do not kill from cruelty (at least, not as a species, there are cruel vampires as there are cruel humans).
I strolled back out of the alley, leaving the body of the Cavalier behind. Now that I had fed , I thought I might visit the tavern and join in the music and laughter. War could be a good time for a vampire, but even we could be affected by the grimness of it all. It would be good to sing and joke for a while, and humans could be good company as well as good food.
TWO
SINJIN
I awoke, and for a moment wondered what I was doing in a bed rather than a coffin.
The dream had been so vivid that the smell of death and smoke seemed to linger in my lungs and I felt the need to roll over and see my Bryn lying beside me, slumbering gently. She looked so perfect in the light of the full moon that shone through the silk drapery hanging over our window, the luminous light seeming to make her glow from within. Seeing her gave me comfort, but it also made unbidden doubts rise in my mind—doubts that had been plaguing me much of late. What had I ever done to deserve such an incredible woman?
True, those horrors of my past were long behind me, and I had done my best to be a good man (whatever a ‘good man’ is), but still…
A week ago, or thereabouts, I had been in Africa, seeking out an ancient entity known as Gaia, The Mother. To ensure I was worthy of an audience with her, she had put me to the test and during those tests, I had been forced to confront things about myself and my past I would sooner have forgotten. Everyone has done things they regret, things they would undo if they could, but if one is a vampire, then those things do multiply in number. I had never pretended to be any better than I was, but perhaps I had done my best to bury all those things which did not show me in the best light. The encounter with Gaia had dug those events up and laid bare a still-sensitive nerve. Since then, I had been having dreams of my past.
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