by Sophie Avett
Stomping the distance to the coffee table, she snatched up another cupcake and plopped down on the opposite, matching chair.
The corner of his mouth curved. “Have you ever been drawn, Ms. Karr?”
“Does that line work with most women?”
His smile widened shamelessly. “Yes. Yes, it does.”
She chomped half of her cupcake, heedless of the frosting smearing across her cheek. “You’re impossible.”
He lifted his eyebrows slightly at the sight of the crumbs tumbling from her mouth. “Am I?”
She swallowed bundles of sugar and chocolate bliss and waved the other half like a gauntlet. “Perhaps you should mind what’s yours and drink your tea.”
Ring! Ring! The Blackberry resting on the coffee table vibrated, further grinding Elsa’s gears. She glared at the vampire, and he sipped at the steaming amber liquid without the faintest inclination to answer it.
“Well?”
Like a ghost having tea, Marshall set his cup on the saucer without a clink and abandoned it on the tray. The phone fell silent and he stood and sat on the coffee table.
“What are you doing?” Her forehead wrinkled as she blindly sought her mouth with the business end of a cupcake. “Whatever it is, it looks suspicious.”
He caught her wrist. “Ms. Karr…” It was a whisper. Deep with promise.
His grip was gentle. Tender, even. The softest it had ever been. Butter around her wrists. And yet, for the sake of consistency, it must be punished.
She arched an eyebrow at his hold. “Vampire…”
“You should let me draw you.” One hand slipped down from her wrist. The pad of his thumb drifted across the sensitive flesh of her inner arm, and then he made a fist against her skin, counting out her proportions. Knuckles dragging, leaving trails of sparks in their wake.
Elsa’s mouth parted in subtle invitation as his discovery trailed up the curve of her shoulder, riding the slope of her neck, where he threaded his fingers through her hair. He feathered his thumbs against her earlobes as he measured the girth of her skull.
She curled her fingers into her fist. “I would never allow such a thing, vampire.”
He lowered his eyes, his touch skimmed her collarbone and the purple fabric obscuring the valley between her breasts. “Pity.”
“Vampire,” she growled softly. “You will be punished.”
He nodded slowly, his hooded eyes tracing the path his fingers didn’t finish. He used his kneecap to press her thighs open as he eased himself to the edge of the coffee table, bringing them that much closer.
“Your cake, Ms. Karr.” He caught her wrist and guided the cupcake in her hand, sensually painting frosting on her bottom lip. Faint granules of sugar teased her tongue and hunger panged through her gut. Her vampire did not make her wait very long. He pressed the cake to her mouth and fused his lips to hers, lending his flavor to butter crumble and velveteen chocolate. Sinister. Sweet.
He pulled away, leaving her breathless, his eyes bright with mischief as his thumb gathered the cream collecting around the delicate corners of her mouth. “Cake or punishment?”
“Fuck the cake.”
He laughed. Elsa opened her mouth to assure him she’d been very serious, but she didn’t utter another word. His kissed her and she wrapped her arms around his neck, and the cake was forgotten.
Well…at least for a little while.
Chapter Thirteen
He was dreaming. That much was very clear.
Marshall Ansley licked the front of his teeth, lolling his head as he peered at the raven perched on a coat rack in the middle of his empty apartment. Mature, thick-billed, it had brown irises, a graduated tail and black iridescent plumage. It was larger than any real raven, talons curved through the skull’s eye sockets. Blinding it even in death.
Silence stretched as the shadows twisted themselves into grotesque idols. Phantom cackles and raven squawks echoed in the distance, the moon was painted red with blood. Glowing crimson beams beat through his loft’s tall bay windows. Screams. Faint, but humming below the darkness like a spine-chilling hymn—they were in the walls. He recognized some of them. Others, he did not.
“How ridiculous.” He rolled his eyes as he levered himself out of the sleek leather chair, the only other piece of future in the room, and came to stand nose to beak with the bird. “I don’t care what you are, or what you’re supposed to mean. If you so much as breathe ‘Nevermore,’ I will rip your goddamn wings off on bloody principle.”
The sound of the red dragon-scale duster snapping off the rung blended with the ghoulish chant. Marshall shrugged into the Van Helsing coat and the hem grazed his slick black shoes. Finished working his fingers into the snow white gloves, he lifted an eyebrow with disdain and drew the top hat over his eye. “Well? Are you not here to show me something? Or perhaps you’re just here to torture me. Whatever it is”—he motioned with the walking stick in a little swivel—“get on with it.”
The raven’s neck twisted at an impossible angle, its beady black eyes holding his. Bright with mystery. Eerie mystery. And Marshall wasn’t sure if he imagined the grim little smile cutting into its beak. He blinked and the raven and room were gone. Replaced by the rolling white wasteland the front grounds of the Clan Wingates’ estate became in the dead of winter.
Ravens. Their squawks echoed through the dark forest, rising in staunch silence around the valley of the cliff. Upon the lonely windswept hilltop was the citadel. It was a stark Gothic relic, built from weeping black flagstone. The tallest of its towers and twisted spires tore into the ash gray sky. Parapets and the barbican guarded the inner walls and sanctum of the clan’s lair.
Wind. It howled, whistling icy snowflakes. Almost melodic. Dusty white powder and prints marked his every step closer to his personal haunted house. His tapered shadow scrabbled and clawed at the snow as the vampire sledged closer with languid grace. He was in no hurry. It was just as cold inside as it was outside.
Home sweet home. A wicked fang bit into his smirk. “A nightmare it is, then. How lovely.”
Heavy cathedral doors opened by unseen hands. They banged shut behind him—sealing with the cemented echo of crypt doors. Moira Ansley was a vampiress—a British one, lest anyone forget. And Castle Wingates reflected that from the framed British flag over the stone archway to the ramparts supporting thousands of years of tradition. Tradition steeped in so much blood it was no surprise to Marshall it was seeping through the cracks in the stone walls. Fifty shades of red oozing to paint the elegant nightstands and priceless artifacts framing the great hall.
He did not know if he had changed the way his childhood home looked in his mind or whether his mother had actually changed her decor, but yawning cobalt blue banners bearing the gold Chimera had been replaced by a deep, blood plum. Everything was familiar, but disturbingly so. Old, somehow. Like he was gazing back at the room in the past.
The back center of the room was dominated by an ebony throne, the royal seat perched on top of a three-tiered dais. Above it hung a tapestry so large it consumed the entire back wall. It looked like a doorway into another world. In a way, it was. It was his mother’s pitiful imagination of the family she’d created. He came to stand before it, his footsteps going silent in the majestic room.
Threads woven together to capture his mother in all of her taffeta glory. Straight-backed in another one of her impossible corsets left over from the Elizabethan era and a silver circlet adorned with onyx jewels, she sat elegantly on a low Versailles stool. Her two children knelt at her feet. Full cheeks, blonde hair piled in girlish ringlets atop her head. His sister’s violet eyes bit even through the portrait, the slope of her lovely little neck framed by a fan of starched lace.
The women were vampires. They belonged.
The men did not belong. Holding the cane behind his back, Marshall tilted his head at the image of himself tucked at his sister’s side. Swathed in a starched black suit, lace frill licked the underside of his chin as it p
oured from the collar of his cravat. He sat farther back, partially hidden by his mother’s dress, peering at the world with empty blue eyes. He remembered the slender leg of the stool biting into the side of his thigh as he sat back on his heels for days. Waiting for the artist to finish braiding their lies into a picture his mother could use as a shield during her vicious political hunger games.
Speaking of a shield… Marshall lifted his eyes to the second pair of blue eyes peering across the throne room, the very world, as if it were nothing more than dust and sand at the bottom of a broken hourglass. Henry Ansley stood vigilant at Moira’s back. His father’s shoulders pulled at the seams of his iron gray suit as if even it didn’t quite meet his standards for starched excellence, and suddenly, the tapestry was like looking into a mirror. The jut of his square jaw, the hard sensual line of his mouth. The shadows poised in the background like guillotines ready to descend on a whisper.
Blood seeped through the fabric, inking the white wool braided over the arc of his father’s soft cheekbones. Cheekbones his mother had cut herself slapping time and time again. Black flagstone wept and screams rose high, deep chants stretching across the domed ceiling as Marshall bent and pressed his mouth to the dais out of habit, out of respect, out of brutal conditioning. His eyes drifted closed as familiar disgust threaded through his veins, so thick he almost forgot it was a dream.
The heavy wood doors to his left screeched open. The back parlor—the family room. The gnarled fir his mother had probably ripped from the surrounding forest was sighing heavily beneath the weight of the gaudy bulbs, human bone chips, and other gruesome trophies pulled from under the bed and put on display in a mock attempt to marry the darkness with a ridiculous, tacky human tradition.
And yet, the petrified bat perched at the very top drew him in, its tiny fangs glinting in the orange glow of the large marble hearth. The doors sealed shut behind him. Marshall frowned at the Steinway Cassandra had broken on her fifteen birthday. It was whole and properly kept. Seated beneath the gargoyle idols bearing witness to his family’s terrible secrets.
The raven appeared on one of the gargoyle’s stone shoulders, black eyes glassy in the faint firelight. What the hell was it? Better yet, who the hell was it? Should he ask it why he was here? Strangely enough, as it peered down at him with an unreadable expression, he understood no questions would be answered. Perhaps never. Marshall tapped on the skull-top of his cane in time with the faint, festive melody oozing out of the record player. “And…?”
As if to answer, figures faded into reality. His sister and Sir Elton, a family friend, as children dressed from head to toe in dark festive finery. The children were playing. With him. They sat with their backs to him, the only evidence of what Marshall knew was happening, the sight of his shoes sticking out from beneath his sister’s voluminous taffeta skirts, and firsthand knowledge.
Ah, yes, he remembered this Christmas. This nightmare. Very well. Each one sitting with a knee on his groin. They’d pinned him down before the roaring fire hearth, their faces gaunt and drawn in shadows. Eyes bright with selfish delight as tiny fangs rested against impossibly lush bottom lips. Nails curved into claws, piercing his flesh all the way down to the bone. Making sure now that they’d finally managed to catch him, their favorite prey would stay exactly where they wanted him to. Right where they had him.
“Make him do it, Cassie.” Sir Elton was breathless, fierce Dresden blue eyes bright with blood-lust. “Make him sing.”
Marshall lifted his fingers, playing along with the festive melody, playing along with screeching violin notes—his screams.
Cambions were rare, but true vampire children—like the ones playing him like a violin with their claws and teeth—even rarer. It made fighting them impossible. Status alone was enough to protect them. And besides, he was a weak child. Born sickly. Gangly legs kicked out against the wood, drummed along with the music.
The scent of blood, bile, and excrement clouded the air and he shrugged half-heartedly, detached from the moment. Watching it like the raven. He almost felt pity. For he had been such a weak little creature then. Such easy prey.
The air changed. Tension radiated from the closed doors at the far end of the room. The little fledglings drew to a standstill, momentarily distracted from their fun, and lifted their delicate blood-speckled noses. Even young Marshall, eyes fused shut from searing tears, throat hoarse from cries, held his burning breath as the familiar thrum of impending violence—of true violence—shot through the air like a silver bullet.
Standing in the shadows, Marshall turned his eyes to the door, seconds before they blasted open, sending the children skittering up the walls. Their nails tick-tacking across the stone as they hinged themselves to the ramparts, hissing like a den of frightened snakes. They left young Marshall’s tiny body ravaged, his lower intestine spilling from a gaping wound. Bleeding. But healing, slowly healing. Blood gurgled and spilled from his lips as he fought to anchor himself on his elbow, kicking at the floor. Trying to find purchase in the blood on the wood.
Cassie screeched and Sir Elton spiraled around the beam and caught her by the hair before she could fling herself to her brother’s rescue. He hauled her back up and tucked her behind his cape, instinctively shielding her from what would come next.
Marshall frowned as his sister was whisked out of an open window. Strange. Cassie had tried to rescue him. He had never noticed before.
The raven squawked. Music rose from the depths of hell and Marshall tore his attention away from the gaping window and glanced at the child weakly trying to make it to his feet. “Get up, fool.” He could try to dart forward and save young Marshall from what was to come, but it wouldn’t make a difference. This was the past. It had already etched its bloody fingers into stone. Perhaps that was why, though he tried, his feet were cemented in shadow. “Get up.”
Cheeks covered in blood, young Marshall gurgled and coughed, purple intestine winding itself back inside the slowly knitting slashes across his abdomen.
His mother’s shrill scream. “He is your son, you heartless bastard!”
Smack!
The scent of blood, demonic and acrid, pierced the air. One terrible violin note—his father’s evil hiss. Marshall’s chest expanded painfully as he tore his eyes from the child. The doors.
They were coming. They were here.
Darkness and fury blew through the doors. Inky spectral bats and red mist swirled around his mother in a righteous fury, meeting shadow and darkness without fear. True vampire and demon locked in battle. His mother’s face was a mask of death. Fifteen feet of black leather, ribbed bat wings curving out of her back in a vicious ‘M.’ Nails, black and curved. Leather black lips drawn up into a snarl over fangs long enough to rip straight through a neck and pierce a heart. The Mother of the Clan, the only true vampire with the gift of flight and fertility. She roared in a screaming boom that shook the window panes and cracked stained glass lamps.
Her death white skin and glowing red eyes were lost in the flurry of the taffeta billowing around her as she fought and danced with smoke. That’s all Henry Ansley ever was—smoke. Capable of slipping through a skeleton keyhole in the dead of night just to suffocate and rape you in your sleep.
And he was winning. His father never lost. Not once. You could not kill what you could not catch. Marshall watched the ill-fated battle and dread bubbled to meet the fury he kept chained deep inside his being. And yet, even now, he was detached. Here and not. Feeling everything. And nothing. Watching as his child-self was forgotten in a vat of blood. Exhausted, young Marshall’s limited strength gave out and his tiny body collapsed back on the wood. He curled his severely masticated fingernails into the carpet, suffocating in his own blood.
“Get up, boy,” Marshall whispered, softly. Sadly. Wishing he could at least reach out and close the lad’s eyes. Keep him from lolling his head to the side and watching as his mother fell. Swarmed by a needle-like fog, she cried out, scrabbling and scratching. A furious a
ncient saber cat on her back, humanity nearly gone. Nearly.
“Not here, Henry! Not here!” She wrenched her head to the side and met her son’s dull gaze. “Not here! Henry!”
Henry Ansley was the darkness in all things. Darkness was the absence of mercy. It was not evil. It was not capable of being confined to conventional definitions of right or wrong. Because sometimes ruthless was necessary. But not then—never then.
“Please…don’t.” Moira’s back arched as her wrists were forced to the wood, and her eyes fell closed, her expression muted with pain. Then pleasure. And then, shame. Blood tears inked down her cheeks as she fell to her husband. Shade billowing to cover them in dark cloud, leaving only her desperate cries to strum every chord of pain in Marshall’s heart.
And then, they were gone. Vanished. Figures fading into nothing like insidious whispers. Leaving Marshall to stand alone in the room with nothing but the raven for company. His grip tightened around the steel skull as he met the bird’s eyes and bared his fangs. “Yes, yes, he’s a bastard. Are you quite finished?”
“A bastard, perhaps.” The raven spoke, though it did not actually open its beak. Shrill squawks stretched over a raspy timbre, echoing through his mind. “But he is not why your journey must continue.”
* * * *
Meanwhile, Elsa’s eyes popped open just as the sun started to sink beneath the burning horizon. It was not night yet. The heat of day was bearing down on the king-sized coffin-bed. She palmed the pillowed satin interior, absorbing the heat that would turn her to stone if she ever gave into the temptation to see it for herself.
There was a series of brass dials on the widths of the cover. Buttons that would allow her to draw the poplin curtains in the suite so she could free herself from this shiny box. Lying prone for long periods of times was as unnatural and uncomfortable as ever. The ache between her rib-cage was throbbing. Her airflow was constricted, the center of gravity bearing down on her lungs, pressing her farther into the plush feather mattress. Cool air graced the bottom of her feet, sending little shocks up her calves, adding to her vulnerability.