by Sharon Page
Miranda got out of bed and hurried to the closed drapes in the room. She pulled them open. A gray light spilled in. Not the soft pink and gold glow of dawn. She glanced out and saw thick, dark clouds massed in the sky. But it was still daylight.
She heard another sound—a scraping, followed by another sharp cry. It came from beyond her door.
Cautiously, she unlocked her door—the window was also locked, though she didn’t remember having locked it again after Zayan left her. Why was all that time a blank? It had disappeared from her mind. She made her way down the gloomy corridor, straining to hear.
All was suddenly eerily quiet.
She came to a junction of corridors. There was more light to the right, so she went that way, and had gone around another bend when she saw a crumpled body on the floor.
Miranda crouched down. He was a young boy, perhaps twelve. His face was ashen and his limbs limp. His eyes were shut, and fear—inhuman fear—was the last expression etched on his young face. His head had flopped to the side, and red droplets stood out against the white skin of his neck. Blood.
Miranda reached out, her fingers trembling. She brushed back the unkempt locks of hair. There, in the middle of his young throat. Two puncture wounds.
One of them had done this: either Zayan or Lukos.
She had seen Lukos feed from a woman and not hurt her. Did that mean Zayan had done this? Or had Lukos lost control here—?
She shook her head. It shouldn’t matter which one had been the killer. They were both vampires. They were both capable of this.
Miranda touched her hand to the boy’s heart. Had he been gone too long? Her arm began to feel hot—a scorching heat that seeped out her fingers. Her body began to hum, and she felt vibrations throughout her.
And suddenly, before her eyes, the boy’s chest jerked. He sat up abruptly. He stared at her with wide, frightened eyes. She sat back, amazed at how quickly he had begun to move again. Her hand lifted from his chest and he rolled away from her. He scrambled to his feet and ran away down the corridor.
“Wait, please!” she cried. “I don’t mean you harm!” She wanted to know who he was. Did he live in the castle?
But he’d vanished into the shadows farther down in the hall and she could no longer hear his light, frantic footsteps. Chasing him wouldn’t protect him.
She had made love with Lukos and almost with Zayan. She had let her heart be swayed by the pain in their pasts.
The visions she had seen had made her forget they were vampires. Even Aunt Eugenia, who tried to understand vampires, had told her that they could not fight the compulsion to drink human blood. That was the real tragedy, Eugenia had said. Vampires had to be killed for a craving that was not their fault and beyond their control.
But then she had seen Lukos merrily feed from the maid. They were not even willing to try to control their cravings.
And she now knew she must stop them.
Staking Lukos and Zayan while they were trapped in sleep would be her only chance, but the thought of making a stake, then driving it into each man’s chest brought bile to her throat. She had made love to them. How could she kill them?
Because she was the only one who could.
Slowly, Miranda rose to her feet. She did have another choice. She could escape and bring help to the castle. If she could get out, she could take the road down to the village at the base of the hill.
She shivered. She could be racing out in the open. But the vampires would be asleep now that it was day. This was her only chance.
Unease prickled along Miranda’s spine as she hurried back to her room to dress. Hadn’t Lukos and Zayan thought she would try to escape with daylight? Why hadn’t they imprisoned her in her room?
Or did they think that she had been seduced by them and wouldn’t leave?
As she hurried down the corridor toward her room, her half boots clattered on the floor and broke the quiet. She could feel the brisk, icy air seeping through the stone wall from outside and knew it must be bitterly cold outdoors. She rushed back to her room and pulled a pelisse from her wardrobe. Quickly, she pulled it on and crammed a bonnet on her head.
Now she had to find a way to escape.
She crept down to the main foyer of the castle, a cavernous room of stone decorated with embroidered tapestries. Her heart hammered furiously as she reached the double front doors—twin slabs of oak. She pulled on the iron handle of the door on the right. It didn’t budge. And neither did the left when she tugged desperately on it.
The doors were locked, the key missing. Miranda made a rushed search of the corridors and rooms close by. There were no servants, no one who could fetch a key to open the door. She swallowed hard as she turned slowly in the huge, empty entrance hall. Were they all dead? She raced down the servants’ stairs to the kitchens in the bowels of the castle. Heat wafted from the large rooms and voices within had her panic subsiding.
She rushed in to find the cook and two young girls busy at a large wooden table. The cook rolled out pastry with a wide, heavy rolling pin. One girl was laying out a plucked bird, the other placing herbs on the table.
“Good morning,” she said, trying for normalcy. But the women continued on with their work as though she were not in the room.
“I wish to go out.” She spoke louder, but again she was ignored. She walked past them and the cook relentlessly rolled, flattening the pastry. The other girls focused only on their tasks.
Miranda picked up a china dish and smashed it to the table. But no one flinched or jumped at the sharp sound and the flying shards except she.
Somehow, Lukos and Zayan had taken control of the servants’ minds and she could not break through.
Miranda reached the narrow door that must lead to the outside. She lifted the iron bar that bolted it shut and tugged. Of course this door, like the front door, was locked and it also required a key to open it. Blast.
With no other choice, she rushed back to the main floor of the large castle and searched the rooms there. She found a gallery off a room that had been changed from an immense dining hall into a ballroom. Large windows looked out onto a small stretch of manicured gardens before the wild of the woods encroached.
Miranda grabbed the back of a chair and dragged it to the gallery windows. She hefted as best as she could and half-threw, half-rolled it.
Glass exploded, and glittering pieces rained down on the flag terrace.
Miranda felt triumph for all of one heartbeat. She was free—but would anyone believe her story of vampires? Would anyone come back with her to save the castle?
And she felt a sharp, awful pain at her heart. She was going to betray Zayan and Lukos. She was going to bring about their destruction.
To save innocents like that young boy, she had no other choice.
Miranda ran down the winding, rutted road from the castle, her boot soles skidding on the uneven ground. The road dipped and rose, following the contours of the rocky hill on which the castle perched, and she found herself quickly clear of the trees, with a panoramic view of the village below and the surrounding tilled fields.
She had to slow down, her skirts clutched in her hands to lift her hems so she could run. She’d had no choice but to try to get to the village on foot. But she’d been raised to be a lady, which meant she hadn’t hiked up her skirts and sprinted for years. Already her lungs were burning and her legs ached. She rode well, but when she’d tried to approach the horses in the castle’s stables, they had reared and rushed against their stalls, terrified of her—as though they feared she was a monster. She’d never had that happen before. She wanted to believe that the vampires had controlled the horses, just as they had controlled the humans. She did not want to think the horses had sensed something evil about her.
Her lungs were burning.
Miranda stopped to suck in breath, but what she saw stole that breath away.
Fog hung over the village, but it was like no fog Miranda had ever seen before. At the bottom it was a
normal grayish white, but higher in the sky it appeared to be red. It was like the eerie look of the sky when Zayan and Lukos had stopped her carriage the day before.
From this vantage, high above the village, Miranda could see the mist was centered on the village, and it swirled around with the cluster of buildings in its vortex.
Had the vampires brought this eerie red mist? She remembered Zayan fighting a creature that had come out of it. And a mist the same deep blood-red color had swept around both her and Zayan in the castle.
Was it dangerous? Was it going to hurt the people below?
With her hand on her heaving chest, Miranda started off at a run again.
10
Wolf
The tall, thin, hawkish innkeeper’s gaze swept haughtily over her. Miranda knew he saw disheveled hair messily drawn back in a bun, a pelisse that was only half-fastened, and splatters of mud all over her skirts. She took a deep breath, then launched into her story.
Mounting disbelief came to the man’s eyes, and his brows rose as quickly as her hopes plummeted.
“You were attacked on the road by vampires?” he snapped. “Vampires who have taken control of Lord Blackthorne’s castle and have sucked the blood from a young boy.” He shook his head. “You’re either mad or drunk, lass, and I’ve no use for either in my fine establishment. Be off with ye.”
“It’s the truth,” Miranda stated hotly. “If you’d send men to the castle, you would soon find that out.” Her stomach was twisting in knots. She couldn’t just desert the servants of the castle. She had to find some way to get them help.
But she saw the innkeeper edging along his desk, toward an opening that would lead him to her. What would he do if he thought her mad? Throw her out? Or lock her up?
It was hard enough to betray the vampires, without having to fight the people she was trying to protect to do it.
She’d taken an unsteady step back, when a woman appeared behind the man. She’d come out of room behind the desk and hurried forward. The woman had a plump, red-cheeked face and tightly curled, iron-gray hair. “Hush, Harry,” she admonished. “Now, who might you be, lass. Have you had a bad fright, then?”
A fright? The woman bustled around the counter, a kindly smile on her lips. “What’s all this talk of vampires? There’s no such thing, my love. Oh, there were foolish tales around here dozens of years ago, but no truth in them. Rumors and stories invented by wicked people to persecute others. Why don’t you sit quietly, love, and have a cup of tea.”
Miranda understood. The woman thought she was mad, too, and hoped to calm her to find out where she belonged. She nodded her head and dutifully followed the woman to a private parlor. But what she hadn’t counted on was the woman locking the door as she left for the tea, imprisoning her inside.
Blast. And even as she thought the word, the lock glowed with an unearthly red glow. A fierce creaking sound came. With a crack, the lock broke and the door swung wide.
For a few heartbeats, Miranda didn’t move. She stared at the twisted metal of the lock. Had she—?
Two maids passed by the opening and Miranda ducked behind a faded wing chair.
“The gentleman in room six,” one maid said softly to the other, “it’s his lordship. I caught a glimpse as he opened his door, and I know it was Blackthorne.”
The servants stopped in front of the door, then stepped into the doorway to speak, assuming the room was empty. The second girl shook her head. “He wouldn’t stay here—”
“He might if he’s tupping one of the barmaids.”
“The man in room six is named Casselman—”
“Aye, the man of the castle. He’s not using his proper name. I think he’s doing dark things in his room. Things he has to keep a secret. There’s rumors he does witchcraft, you know.”
“I heard a tale that he drinks the blood of young maidens.”
“Oh, aye, I expect he makes them bleed. But from breaking their maidenheads, I’m certain.”
With that, the two girls scurried away.
Miranda stood. Her hands trembled. Was Blackthorne, the man she had thought she loved, the mysterious inhabitant of room six?
After what she had seen in the castle dungeons, she could not just let him hurt innocent women in his room.
Something had to be done.
A naked man stood at the window, running his fingers through his collar-length coal-black hair. Beside him, a lamp threw light on the tight curve of his derriere, the hollows at his haunches, and the small of his back. He was chuckling to himself, and with his other hand, he tapped a riding crop against his solid thigh.
He was a beautiful man, almost as gorgeous as Zayan and Lukos. But was he Blackthorne? From her view of his naked rump, Miranda had no idea.
A soft sigh fluttered to her. Her heart made a sudden lump into her throat and Miranda looked to the bed. Two women slept on it. The covers had been drawn back, but one woman clutched the edge of a white sheet. She lay on her back with her large breasts half-exposed. She snored lightly. The other was curled up in a ball, and long, dirty-blond hair streamed out around her.
What made Miranda stare was the pictures drawn on their bodies in…in some kind of paint. Pentagrams and strange symbols and exquisitely rendered letters that looked like the sort found on old manuscripts.
“Put the tray on the sideboard, lass,” said the man at the window.
Miranda froze with her hand on the doorknob. She’d stealthily opened the door when she’d found it unlocked. Not sneakily enough, it appeared.
The blonde who had been curled up stretched and uttered a groan. “Aren’t ye coming back to bed, milord? Won’t ye untie my hands?”
Shocked, Miranda realized the woman’s hands and ankles were bound with white rope.
Then she saw it. The long scar that snaked down his right side, the puckered lines illuminated by the light. It was deep and ugly. The skin had not knit well, and it made a trough along this perfect, strong body.
This must be Blackthorne. He had described himself once in a letter to her. Hair that looked like he’d been dragged through a sooty chimney, he’d written—dark as coal, but it tended to stick up in odd places. Eyes that had been likened to the color of a mud puddle.
She had fallen in love with him over that teasing description. And it hadn’t really been true—he was breathtakingly handsome.
But he had also shared his bed with two tavern wenches the night before. The night when he had not been at home and his servants would not divulge where he’d went.
He turned to face her, obviously surprised she had not come in. His smile widened to a leer. “Interested in joining the fun, pet?” He reached down to his privy part and her gaze streaked down with his hand. He fondled his shaft without a sign of embarrassment.
Stunned, Miranda stumbled back. She’d seen the accoutrements of his dungeon, had overheard the maids, and she didn’t know why she was so startled.
She gathered her skirts and ran down the hallway. She reached the stair, her momentum almost carried her headfirst down it, but she grasped the banister and raced down. Why was she running like she was being pursued by the devil?
At the bottom of the stair, she stopped. It didn’t matter what he had been doing with those women. His castle had been taken over by vampires, and he had the right to know. She was the one who had led Lukos and Zayan to his home. She was obligated to face him and tell him.
But cowardice struck. She couldn’t go up now. Not when he was naked, after he’d leered at her. Not so soon after she’d realized all the tender thoughts he’d penned in his letters to her had to be so much twaddle.
“The first coach arrived, Mr. Lorimer,” a woman’s voice announced. Miranda recognized the strong, hearty voice of the plump woman who had approached her kindly. But now the voice sounded strained and filled with fear. “And it seems that this odd, wretched fog is only here, around our village. The day is fine and clear everywhere else. Even in Haring-on-the-Marsh, which is only a mile to
the north.”
The innkeeper grunted. They were both in a parlor that led off from the stair. Miranda could see them, so she retreated in case they could also see her.
“We’re in a valley, Mrs. Lorimer,” he answered. “All the inclement weather pools here, as well you know.”
“Then explain why three wee mites have died last night—since this foul fog settled upon us. It’s witchcraft, mark my words. It’s something evil and demonic.”
“How is this fog responsible for three children’s deaths?” Lorimer barked. “Unless they were lost in it.”
“They weren’t. They just…died.”
Miranda took the risk of peeking in the room. Muttering something about gothic novels and not enough work, Mr. Lorimer left the room through a door in the back.
The vampires had brought this fog to the village—Miranda was certain of that. What if it was some evil form of their magic that stole children’s lives or their souls? She had seen a red mist around the boy she had saved. And Aunt Eugenia had told her that some members of the Royal Society believed vampires actually fed on souls not blood. Blood was the way to release the soul.
It was still morning, not even eleven. Miranda hurried into the room and the innkeeper’s plump wife stared up in surprise.
“Now where did you go, dear? I was looking for you.”
No convincing lie popped into Miranda’s head, so she blurted the truth, “I sought Lord Blackthorne to warn him of the danger in his home, but—”
“You went to his room?” Red suffused Mrs. Lorimer’s face. Her eyes narrowed and the kindly smile vanished. “Dear heaven, what did you say to him?”
“Nothing. He was not alone.” Miranda drew herself up. “He had two women in his bed. Women who work here, I assume—”
“No, he has them brought to him.” The woman’s gaze averted downward.
“I left him—and overhead you, Mrs. Lorimer. I want to know which children died last night. I believe I can help them.”
Tears glistened. “You can’t. They are all dead.”