“And so when the chance came to teach Thaddeus a lesson, you took it?”
I stared at Ilya in astonishment. She’d taken a huge jump, from me saying Thaddeus was badly-behaved to me killing him. “No,” I shot out a flat denial for her ridiculous assertion.
“I put it to you, Miss Daemonne that you waited until all the other vampires had returned to the beer cellar and you incapacitated him in some way?”
“No.”
“Come, come. You’ve admitted he was a thorn in your side.”
“I didn’t kill him.”
“But you wanted him dead?”
I rolled my eyes. “As far as I’m concerned vampires are already dead. Half alive, half dead. Undead. Whatever. I didn’t want him dead, but I’d have settled for him gone.”
“Gone, dead. It’s all the same to you, isn’t it, Miss Daemonne?”
“I wanted Thaddeus gone from the inn the way I wanted all of the vampires gone from the inn. I made a mistake agreeing to host the wedding in the first place. I should have listened to my great-grandmother.”
There was a commotion behind me, whispers and curses.
“Ah yes,” hissed Prince Grigor. “Alfhild Daemonne the first.”
Angry murmurs from the shadows. I half turned and received a timely prod between my shoulder blades. The vampires were reacting to Gwyn’s name.
“You’re so like her,” the prince was saying, and he sounded almost sad. “But unlike her, I’m afraid you won’t escape our justice.”
What justice had he wanted to exact on my great-grandmother? My mind raced. Gwyn had never told me anything about her experience with the vampires. Thank the goddess she had escaped whatever fate had befallen her companions here in 1924.
The Prince shifted in his seat and whined, “Do let’s get this over with, Ilya.”
“Of course, my prince.” Ilya bowed to him and turned to me. “We’ve established that you wanted Thaddeus dead—”
“We’ve established no such thing,” I snapped back at her.
“You had means, motive and opportunity, did you not?”
“I’d gone up to bed. As far as I was concerned my guests would be back in their coffins when I awoke.”
“Can you tell us what happened when you came downstairs?”
I thought back. “The lights wouldn’t work. I called for Zephaniah, one of the ghosts who works for me—”
“So he fixed the fuse?”
“No. He never turned up. Not in time. Ch—” I stopped. I couldn’t give Charity away. She’d been the one to open the curtains, but she hadn’t known that Thaddeus had been tied to the chair.
“Zephaniah is a ghost?” Titters from the edges of the room.
“Yes. He fixes things around the inn.”
“Not that morning though?”
I shook my head. If I could have changed anything it might have been that we’d waited for Zephaniah to arrive.
“Somebody set me up,” I said, more quietly. “Someone else tied Thaddeus to that chair, knowing that opening the curtains was the quickest and easiest way for us to light up the room when we discovered that the lights had failed. We wouldn’t have thought twice about it. It’s a perfectly natural thing to do in the morning.” I sniffed. “Well it is if you’re a mortal.”
Growls from the shadows. They sounded more and more like a pack of hungry dogs. I swallowed. “I’m telling you, I was set up,” I repeated.
Ilya shook her head, her face incredulous. “Unfortunately there were no other suspects, Miss Daemonne. It is my supposition that given enough time, your hatred of vampires was such that you might have picked them off one by one.” Ilya turned triumphantly to Prince Grigor. “That is the case as the Nation sees it, my Prince. I have tendered the facts. It is now for you to proffer sentence.”
“This is preposterous,” I said, trying to twist my hands free from their bonds and glaring at Grigor once more. “I need to speak to Wizard Shadowmender. You are obliged to let me talk with him.”
I didn’t see him move, but he did, fast as lightning.
Prince Grigor leapt to his feet and jumped from the dais, landing lightly to my side. The unexpected fluidity of his movement jarred my senses. The soft patter of his feet was one of the most chilling sounds I’d ever heard. They slapped on the ground as he ran for me, but I had no time to process the sound before he’d clamped his leathery hands around my neck. He twisted my head painfully, upwards and to the left, baring my throat to the light, then dug one of his claw-like nails into the skin close to my jugular.
Inhaling slowly, the air hissing as it passed over his ancient vocal cords, he brought his face level with mine. I gagged at the stench of him, unable to avoid the stink of earth and ripe meat and rancid milk. His tongue ran the length of my jaw and up towards my mouth, sticky and slick. I tried to wrench my head away, but he gripped me more tightly until I feared he would puncture the skin at my throat. “You forget yourself, Alfhild.”
My insides turned to liquid and I understood what terror truly was. My windpipe clamped shut so I couldn’t breathe, and even my heart seemed to pause, hanging painfully mid-beat, awaiting certain death.
My eyes rolled in their sockets, watching this monster, while my brain wanted to shut down my senses, to escape the horror. Always in times of trouble, I’d called on my inner reserves of strength and waited for the right opportunity to strike back. I’d tried to be proactive, to be strong, but here I was, in chains, on the floor of The Great Hall of a remote castle in Transylvania, in the middle of a vampire nest, with the hands of an angry vampire wrapped around my neck.
And he wanted vengeance.
I felt liquid trickle down the side of my neck. Blood. My blood. He’d punctured the skin. My fevered imagination ran riot. Those that haunted the shadows, they were waiting for this moment. They would all fall on me now, surround me like starving sharks. They would rip me to shreds.
I closed my eyes. Silvan! I sent out the thought as loudly as I could. Help me now.
As suddenly as he’d attacked me, he threw me down. I lay on my side, breathing heavily, watching him as he licked my blood from his fingernail with evident glee. “You killed my son and you will pay. But not here. Later tonight. At midnight. We’ll make a meal of it.”
He laughed. The ultimate sadistic peel of evil. The sound chilled my soul.
He threw his arms wide, addressing the occupants of The Great Hall in their entirety. “I pronounce Alfhild Daemonne guilty of the wilful destruction of my son Thaddeus Corinthian. The penalty is—”
He leaned down towards me, his grotesque body contorted in excitement. “Death.”
The room exploded with approving cheers and vicious shrieks.
I struggled to right myself, attempting to make myself heard above the din, my quaking voice hoarse with fear. “That wasn’t a fair trial. I demand to be heard! Ambassador Rubenscarfe?”
The ambassador scuttled backwards, away from me. You shallow and treacherous monster, I screeched inwardly.
I cried after him, “You have to talk to Wizard Shadowmender. He needs to hear of this.” The ambassador stared at me blankly, as though he had no idea who I was or what my connection to him might be.
“Ambassador?” I tried again. “The Ministry of Witches will not look favourably upon this. I demand my own counsel—”
“Oh shush now, Alfhild! You and your demands!” Grigor sounded positively cheery. “But perhaps you’re right. Perhaps I should find someone who can help you. Hmmmm.” He made a great show of looking around the room. Some of his followers edged out of the shadows, waving at him and laughing. “Are there any volunteers in here who would care to assist Miss Daemonne?”
He stalked along the row of shadow guards behind me, peering closely at each masked face. My stomach, already quivering with distress, sank into my knees. “Anybody at all who would like to help Miss Daemonne out on this occasion? Perhaps explain her side of the story?”
He came to the end of the row of gua
rds and snapped back towards me, his eyes deep wells of hatred.
“No. There isn’t. And do you know why there isn’t?” In my peripheral vision I spotted Nadia as she motioned at the two men guarding the entrance to the hall. They heaved the huge doors open.
“Because we took your treacherous friend into custody earlier.” Grigor nodded at Nadia and she beckoned somebody outside.
“Bring him in,” she called.
A pair of hefty shadow guards dragged a man in between them. They gripped him tightly under the armpits. His head lolled lifelessly, his legs dragging behind him.
Silvan.
They threw him at my feet, and he collapsed there, not moving at all. I gazed down in horror at his broken body. His swollen eyes and lips and broken nose.
A scream began to build inside me. It was all my fault we’d ended up here. If I had turned down the invitation to host the wedding at Whittle Inn the previous Halloween as Gwyn had wanted me to do, none of this would have happened.
Had I done this?
Had I killed Silvan?
It appeared the nest needed time to prepare The Great Hall for the proceedings required to carry out my sentence at midnight. For that reason they escorted me back upstairs to my room. A pair of shadow guards half-dragged half-carried Silvan in my wake and threw him down on the floor as soon as we were inside.
Guards were posted outside the door in order, no doubt, to ensure that I didn’t get up to any of my previous tricks and go walkabout. Not that I imagined I’d make it very far now that night had fallen and every vampire in the castle was awake and preparing for the banquet of the year. It looked like Silvan and I were lined up as the main course.
As the door slammed closed and the locks were jammed into position I took in the devastation of the room. The whole place had been turned upside down, the bed stripped, the wardrobe and cupboards emptied. What few belongings I had brought with me were scattered over the floor. Maybe they’d been after my mobile phone or my wand. It didn’t matter.
I fell to my knees beside Silvan, hardly daring to touch him, but when I did reach out to search for a pulse, his eyelids fluttered, and he looked up me through rapidly swelling lids.
I caught my breath and without thinking wrapped my arms around his neck, cradling him against me. “Thank the goddess. Thank the goddess,” I cried. He moaned. I could feel his body shaking so I eased his head back to the floor.
“Can you hear me?” I asked, my tears dropping onto his face as I bent close to listen for a response.
He groaned. “Of course I can hear you.” His voice sounded choked, frail. Evidently in pain, he made an attempt at a joke. “There’s nothing wrong with my ears.”
“Good,” I tried to laugh but sobbed instead. “Where does it hurt?”
He struggled as though he would sit up, so I pressed him back down. “It hurts pretty much everywhere.” He lifted his hands into the space between us and I stared in horror. “Especially my hands.”
Broken fingers.
“They did this to you?” I whispered, my voice almost lost in despair, my breath catching in my throat. I stroked his head with my own shaking hands. “We’ll make them pay for this. I promise.” I glanced up at the door, my eyes boring through the wood, searching for the whereabouts of Grigor. If I’d had a wooden stake to hand…
“They weren’t very happy to find out they had a spy in their midst.”
I clamped my hands to my mouth. All my fault! That’s all I could think. If I hadn’t foolishly trusted Ambassador Rubenscarfe then Silvan’s existence would have remained a secret. “What have I done?” I moaned.
“It wasn’t you.”
“It was! I told the ambassador—”
“Alf! Stop!” Silvan tried to reach for me, but he recoiled as his hands made contact with me. “It’s not what you’ve done or said that matters now.” He tried to sit up again but moaned at the pain. “What does matter is what we’re going to do next.” I tried to restrain him once more, but he waved me away. “Time’s passing. We will not die here,” he said.
His earnestness broke through the fury of my own emotions. He had a point. We couldn’t just wait for Grigor to send up for us. We would not wait here, patient for our own deaths.
We had no choice but to choose to fight. I helped Silvan to his feet. He leaned heavily on me as I led him towards the bathroom. “Come on,” I said. “Let’s get you cleaned up.”
Archibald hovered around us, his face glum, as I wound torn up strips of my bed sheet around Silvan’s fingers, binding the broken ones to their neighbours, in an effort to temporarily stabilise his injuries. I’d gingerly wrapped thicker strips of sheet around Silvan’s chest, hoping this would have the same effect for his ribs.
Oh how I wished I knew more about medicinal magicks. If only I could conjure Millicent to help. Or even simply ring her and ask her advice, but of course, even supposing I’d found a signal, my phone had been lost. I wondered if any of the shadow guards had stumbled across it during their sentry duty on the roof. Was it now in the possession of Grigor?
I’d cleaned Silvan up, but his swollen eyes, and his pale face told me he was suffering. I scrabbled around on the floor among my spilled possessions and located the mundane packet of painkillers I always kept in my bag for emergencies. I offered him three with a glass of water.
“We have to get out of here somehow,” he said, swallowing the horse-sized tablets with a grimace.
I glanced at the door, knowing full well that the shadow guards would put a quick end to any escape plan I could hatch.
And yet…
Gwyn had escaped from the castle. There had to be a way.
I rolled my head back and stared at the ceiling, thinking. Thinking hard. I could only wish I’d interrogated my great-grandmother more about her hatred of vampires. If I had, then maybe she would have told me about her experiences in Transylvania. I might have heard about her great and daring escape—I would have been able to learn from her experience. She wasn’t the kind to brag of such things, but escape she had.
On many occasions people had likened me to her. If she could do it, I could do it.
“There has to be another way out of here.” I stood and marched with purpose to the door. Silvan, slumped on the edge of the bed, turned his head with difficulty and watched me through his swollen eyelids.
“There isn’t,” Archibald argued.
I yanked at one of the tapestries, pulling it as hard as I could so that it fell away from the wall. Nothing behind it but stained plaster.
“I can assure you there really isn’t,” Archibald said again as I repeated the process with the next tapestry. It made a flumping sound as it hit the floor.
“There must be!” Furious now, I tugged and tugged again at the next one. Thicker, heavier. My nails snagged and broke, but I didn’t care. It finally dropped to the floor and dust billowed out around me, coating the thin sheen of perspiration on my face in grit.
“Grandmama made it out of this castle alive and so will we.” I mashed my teeth together in desperation and paced round and round the room, looking for something, anything, some way out. There were only the plastered walls, the heavy locked door, the bathroom, and the narrow stain-glassed windows.
I shook my head in annoyance and spun about again.
Walls. Door. Bathroom. Windows.
Walls. Door. Bathroom. Windows.
Walls. Door. Bathroom—
The windows.
Archibald noticed my sudden interest in the windows set on either side of the burning fire.
“Madam, I wouldn’t even consider those as an exit strategy.”
“Why not?” I demanded and marched over to them, trying the handle of the one on the right. It wouldn’t budge. I wasn’t sure whether the frames had simply seized up after years of not being used or whether they had been locked to prevent anyone escaping. Either way, I wasn’t intending to let a stupid inconvenience like a window lock hold me back.
“We�
�re a long way up, Madam. A very long way.”
“Well what’s the alternative?” I muttered and fished my wand out of my bodice. From the direction of the bed came a snort. I elected to believe that Silvan was brim full of admiration for my perspicacity in the face of adversity. I tapped the window lightly with the tip of my wand. “Reserare,” then slid the wand along a little way and repeated the process. “Reserare.” Round and round the outside edge of the window frame I went until finally, when I tried the handle for the umpteenth time, it gave a little. With brute force I shoved it open.
The wind instantly rushed into the room, biting with cold. I shot a wary look at the door, wondering whether the shadow guards would notice the freezing draft escaping underneath it. I needed to offset that chance, so I grabbed one of the heavy tapestries and did my best to ball it up before carefully pushing it against the door as quietly as possible to use as a draught-excluder. I didn’t intend to alert the guards to what I was up to.
Wiping my hands on my robes, I made my way back to the window. It was slightly too high for me to lean out, so I grabbed a chair from the dining set and placed it against the wall in front of the window.
Archibald fluttered around me in consternation. “Really, Madam—”
“Hush Colonel Peters. I need to think,” I warned him, seriously considering sending the spirit back to where he had come from. I took a deep breath and climbed onto the chair then stuck my head outside.
“Ooooh.” I wobbled on the chair, my head swimming. It was every bit as bad as bad as Archibald had warned. The good news was that this side of the castle did not face out into the courtyard. The bad news was that meant the drop was even more formidable. I can’t tell you how high up we were. The grey stone walls of the castle appeared to merge into the rocky edifice of the hill the castle had been built upon. The valley tumbled away well below us. If I were hazarding a guess I’d say we were looking at a sheer drop of over two hundred feet. I drew back into the room and took a terrified breath.
“What can you see?” Silvan asked, struggling to stand.
“Stay there,” I snapped at him, rubbing my forehead with a shaking hand. “Give me a minute.”
Vengeful Vampire at Wonky Inn: Wonky Inn Book 8 Page 12