Wynter's Bite | Historical Paranormal Romance: Vampires (Scandals With Bite Book 5)

by Brooklyn Ann

  Carl laughed. “Our kind cannot catch any illness. And I don’t believe insanity is contagious anyway. But I insist that I smelled something. And Emily told me she saw a strange vampire two nights ago. A male, with hair as red as blood.”

  “Two nights ago?” Chester’s voice went thick with mockery. “He’d be long gone by now. Frank or Rodney would have chased him away if he didn’t have the sense to take off on his own. And I still say no vampire would have any business hanging about a place like this.”

  Justus nodded. Yes, let them avoid this place.

  “But what if it’s a mad vampire? I hear many rogues are cracked.” Their voices faded as their argument continued.

  Justus waited several minutes before climbing down the building. If the Manchester vampires caught him breaking Bethany out of the asylum, who knew what they would do? Keeping his senses open for others, he made his way to a set of hovels on the outskirts of the village. He’d never seen any of the Manchester vampires around this area, either because it was just past their borders, or they didn’t care about the poverty stricken mortals who eked a living out of the barely sustainable soil.

  Normally, Justus despised feeding on the poor. They were already malnourished as it was, and to weaken them further rattled his conscience. But the vicar of this impoverished area was a corrupt, greedy sod who leeched off the labors of the beleaguered folk. Justus had been preying on him almost every night and if the man succumbed to death from blood loss, he wouldn’t feel so much as a twinge of remorse.

  He found the vicar still awake, drinking a jug of ale and flipping through a dog-eared book of erotic illustrations. The lecherous wastrel did that often. Justus only hoped he’d arrived before the vicar became fully engrossed in the drawings. That was a sight he never wanted to see again.

  Tapping on the window, he captured the vicar’s gaze the moment the man looked up. In his trance, the vicar rose from the table and approached the window like an obedient pup. The moment he opened the shutters, Justus seized him and sank his fangs into his neck. He drank deeply this time, needing all the strength he could muster for Bethany’s rescue.

  Once the vicar was released and sent to his bed, Justus wove through the pitiful cluster of farms, looking for something that could help him break into Bethany’s cell. A hammer and chisel would be ideal, but it would make more sustained noise than if he simply tore the bars free with his bare hands. Though, to be truthful, for all of his brash talk, he wasn’t certain he was capable of such a feat. The bars were thick and deeply embedded in the red brick.

  After hours of searching various barns and sheds, he at last found something that might suffice. And just in time, too, for the sky was turning gray with the coming dawn. Justus made his way back to the crypt of a family plot behind a dilapidated manor house that might belong to the lord of the poor village. He knew better than to seek refuge in the public cemeteries. In all territories, such areas were reserved for the county’s poorest vampires.

  Bethany was right. He needed to secure her freedom and take them away from here as quickly as possible. Saints above, it had been agony to leave her after finally setting eyes upon her at last. Especially because the last time he parted from her, she was lost to him for eight years. Most vampires his age or older scoffed at such a short amount of time, thinking eight years was nothing but a blink of the eye, yet for Justus, those years had dragged on like decades of torture.

  If he lost Bethany again after so many years of searching, he’d go mad. Heart pulsing with mingled hope and worry, Justus lay down on the stone slab amidst ancient crumbling skulls and bone dust, counting the endless minutes before the sun would relieve him from this dismal tomb and he’d be with his Bethany at last.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The minutes passed like eons for Bethany. And at least once an hour, she had to pinch herself to be sure she wasn’t dreaming. She wasn’t mad after all. Vampires were real, and Justus had come for her at last. She would be free from this horrid place.

  Knowing that her time imprisoned in Morningside was coming to an end made the wait excruciatingly painful. It seemed her anxiousness was infectious, for her fellow patients seemed especially unruly this day. Carol, who lived in the cell beside hers, erupted into a stream of curses at the breakfast table, which in turn had made Bess scream until both had to be taken away. Susan, a woman who alternated between episodes of violence and periods of catatonia suddenly flung her bowl of porridge into Bethany’s face.

  Normally, this would have been quite vexing, but today Bethany was almost pleased, for that meant she could have a bath and be clean for when Justus came. She didn’t even mind when the nurse scrubbed her skin raw with caustic soap and a rough bristled brush.

  The nurse frowned as she rinsed Bethany’s hair. “We’ll have to shave you lot again soon before the lice come. I’ll recommend that we do so before the good doctor departs for his holiday.”

  Bethany bit back a triumphant smirk. When Justus freed her, she’d never be shaved again. As it was, her once waist-length mass of golden curls that he’d so loved was reduced to a dulled mess that coiled about her shoulders. Had he been disappointed to see her hair thus?

  It didn’t matter. It would grow back and they’d finally be together.

  When her bath was finished, Bethany was led back downstairs to walk the garden with Doctor Keene and the more well-behaved women.

  Usually, Bethany savored her brief periods outdoors, feeling the sun on her face and breathing the fresh country air, but today she lamented that reflection time in the garden meant that it was only mid-afternoon. Even worse, it was May, which meant the days were growing ever longer.

  Eleanor touched her arm as Bethany stared at the thorns on a rose bush, thinking of Justus’s fangs. “You’ve been quiet today. Are you well?”

  “Oh yes,” Bethany nodded quickly. The last thing she needed was to be sent to the infirmary. Eleanor was notorious for being convinced that every person she spoke to was on the verge of being stricken with the plague. “I am only wondering when these will be in full bloom.”

  “I dread the day,” Eleanor said with pinched expression. “Flowers make me sneeze dreadfully.”

  Doctor Keene droned on about rest and reflection, gazing at each of his patients in turn. Whenever his eyes landed on Bethany, she fought to maintain composure. Surely she was imagining that his attention remained fixed on her longer than the others.

  But once they filed back inside the asylum, the doctor pulled her aside. “I can’t help but notice that you appear flushed, Miss Mead. Are you feeling overstimulated?”

  “Oh, no, Doctor.” Bethany fought to keep her voice level. “I am very calm.” If he thought otherwise, he would drug her with his tonic, or worse, put her in the quiet room, where Justus couldn’t get to her.

  He eyed her with a skeptical frown, then thankfully moved on to scrutinize another woman before he escorted them back inside for a prescribed nap. Bethany knew she should sleep now to rest for the night’s escape, but her mind swirled with memories of her encounter with Justus, and thoughts of the future.

  He’d looked exactly as he had when she’d last seen him, with his pale chiseled features, faint freckles, and beautiful mane of hair. Though he’d told her that vampires did not age, seeing the evidence was another thing entirely. But she’d certainly aged. What had Justus thought to see her now, no longer a young debutante of seventeen, but a spinster of five and twenty?

  How could he even want her now?

  Yet tenderness had shone from his eyes beneath the sorrow to see her imprisoned, and his touch on her hands had been affectionate. The sight of the locket she’d given him with the fervent declaration that he’d never taken it off implied devotion. Did he still wish to wed her? Could they even marry with her being an escaped madwoman, and he an exiled vampire?

  As the light streaming in from the window dimmed, Bethany stared out into the dusk, waiting with heart-pounding urgency. Footsteps echoed in the corridor, so s
he quickly darted back to her bed, scrambled under the covers, and feigned sleep.

  She heard someone pause in front of her cell, but did not dare move or open her eyes to see whether it was Greeves or the doctor. After countless interminable moments, whoever was watching her walked away. She remained still, eyes squeezed shut moments after the footsteps faded.

  Worry crawled up her spine. What if she’d imagined Justus last night? She had been drugged with the awful tonic.

  No. She shook her head. The rough fabric of her thin pillow scratched her cheek. She’d been subjected to Keene’s tonic many times over the years, and never imagined something so real, not even under the influence of a large dose, much less the teaspoon she’d been given last night. Still, memories of her endless wait for him that fateful night eight years ago relentlessly haunted her. What if he decided not to come? What if he’d been toying with her all this time?

  What if…

  “Bethany.” Justus’s whisper flowed over her like a caress.

  Her eyes snapped open. “Justus?” She bolted up from the bed and there he was.

  Now, on her second time setting eyes upon him, Bethany noticed a few alarming details that hadn’t caught her attention the night before. Firstly, Justus was much paler than she remembered. In fact, he appeared somewhat sickly. Secondly, his clothes were ragged and patched, the complete antithesis of his former elegant garb. The chain of the locket he wore was tarnished.

  She remembered his talk last night of being constantly on the run, being hunted by other vampires with no place to call home. Her heart clenched with sympathy. He’d suffered as much as she had. The difference was that while her suffering would abate when she was freed from the asylum, his situation would remain unchanged. In fact, it may become more complicated, with her in tow. What if she slowed him down?

  For a moment she considered asking Justus to leave her here so he could be safer. But three things stopped her from doing so. First, his talk of Cornwall and the Americas implied that he had a plan. Second, she knew if she denied this chance at freedom, she’d regret it.

  Third: the potent longing in his eyes as he looked at her tugged at her heart even more intently than before.

  God help her, for all of her talk of reluctance to forgive him, her love for him refused to die.

  “Will you break me loose tonight?” she asked, struggling to maintain sensibility.

  He shook his head and held up an object that resembled an oversized corkscrew. “This will take some time to drill through the brick to free the bars.” At her indrawn breath, his brows lowered. “But I will get you out before week’s end. This I promise you.”

  She breathed out in relief and walked to the window. Reaching through the bars, she placed her hand over his. “Thank you, for coming for me at last.”

  His features softened for a moment before hardening once more. “You never should have been in this place.” He stroked her hand, feather light, making heat swirl in her belly. “You were supposed to be my betrothed, waiting safely until you came of age and I would return to wed you.”

  “When you returned?” Bethany repeated with a frown. “What do you mean?”

  “According to vampire law, it is forbidden to Change minors,” Justus said as he dug the tip of his tool in the mortar of a stone beneath one of the window bars. “I did not know that until I asked my lord for permission to make you my bride. He nearly denied me, but then decided that I could secure our engagement and leave Rochester until your twenty-first birthday, when I would return to claim you.” His lips turned down in a frown. “That is, until he’d discovered that I’d told you my secret.”

  She’d just passed her twenty-fifth birthday. Agony roared through her soul as Bethany closed her eyes and imagined what it would have been like to have waited for him for four years instead of eight. To have done that waiting in the comfort of her home, with her mother and father. To wake up on her twenty-first birthday preparing for her wedding day, rather than a breakfast of gray porridge and a day of captivity.

  The sound of metal chipping away stone brought her back to the present. It did no good to dwell on what couldn’t be changed. But oh, how different things could have been if she hadn’t fallen from her horse. Or if the laudanum had not affected her so. “Who is the Lord Vampire of Rochester?” she asked to deflect from her grief.

  Justus shook his head, locks of crimson hair sweeping his cheeks. “That I cannot tell you until you are one of us. I’ve endangered him enough.”

  Bethany froze. When she was a young girl, full of dreams and fantasies, she’d been willing to do anything to be with the man she loved, even if it meant becoming a creature who had to drink blood to survive and could never see the sun.

  Now that she was older, her dreams dashed to pieces, cold practicality reared its head. Did she want to live as Justus did, outcast and having to hide from both humans and vampires more powerful than she?

  Closing her eyes, she took a deep breath. She could ponder that later. Right now, her primary concern was escaping Morningside.

  “Very well,” she said. “No talk of vampires. How will you get me down once the bars are free?” He was making good progress, several inches gouged away from the base of the first bar.

  “I’ll carry you,” he replied as casually as if he spoke of helping her down from a horse.

  “Carry me?” She peered over his shoulder and her stomach lurched at the sight of what must be at least a fifty meter drop.

  Justus nodded. “Yes. I have the strength.” His eyes searched hers, full of concern. “Don’t be frightened. I would never drop you.” He reached through the bars and cupped her cheek, stroking his thumb over her skin. She shivered once more, though not from the cold. His lips curved in that rakish smile she’d fallen in love with so long ago. “Now, let’s talk of something other than taking a tumble. Have you read any good books over the years?”

  Bethany couldn’t hold back her laughter. “Despite the doctor’s fervent efforts to stop me, yes. A few of the women in the ward smuggle novels to me.” She sighed. “No Chaucer, unfortunately, but I absolutely adore Allan Winthrop’s gothic novels.”

  This time, it was Justus who laughed. “You’ve been reading Alan Winthrop?”

  She raised a brow. “Why is that so amusing? Is it because of the rumors that the author is really a duchess?”

  “Oh, she is indeed, but that’s not why…” He shook his head and chiseled away more stone. “I shall have to explain later. At any rate, yes, I’ve read the duchess’s novels. A very talented authoress for one so young. Reading has been difficult for me as well. One cannot have a library when constantly traveling.”

  They talked as he worked, exchanging stories of their various struggles to secure worthwhile reading material. When the conversation drifted to books they’d particularly enjoyed, the years fell away, and it felt like they’d never been parted.

  As if voicing her thoughts aloud, Justus halted with his telling her of Voltaire and smiled. “This is what I’ve been searching for all these years. Your taste and wit remain sharp.” He reached through the bars and brushed a lock of her hair behind her ear. “And impossibly, you’ve grown even more beautiful.”

  He bent his head and Bethany rose up on her toes and leaned forward, her heart pounding with excitement. He was going to kiss her again!

  But the moment their lips touched, Justus broke away. Bethany opened her mouth to ask what was wrong just as the privacy panel of her cell door slid open.

  She turned to dart back to her bed, but Doctor Keene strode in and held up a hand. “Miss Mead, I have heard the most troubling things about you.”

  Bethany took a shaky step backward, not daring to look at the window. Had Keene seen Justus? “What do you mean, Doctor?” she asked, a tremor creeping into her voice.

  “Greeves said he heard you laughing and talking to yourself in strange voices,” Keene replied as Greeves entered behind him, grinning at her like a malicious jester.

  T
he doctor withdrew his stethoscope from his bag and placed it below her collarbone. As he listened to her pounding heart, she glanced over his shoulder at the window. The tension in her shoulders eased as she saw that Justus was gone from view.

  “And your heart rate is accelerated.” Keene made a clucking sound in the back of his throat. “This is most alarming. Were you imagining a voice speaking with you?”

  She shook her head rapidly. “I was only lonely.”

  “But that laughter was abnormal, I’m told. Deep, as if you were pretending to be a man.”

  Bethany glared at the doctor and the guard. Damn them for intruding when she was on the verge of freedom. “Perhaps it is Greeves who is imagining things.”

  Greeves spat. “I am not the loony here, you are.”

  A low growl sounded from the window, but the men in her cell didn’t hear as they were too occupied voicing assumptions on her mental state. Keene with his usual pedantic lectures, Greeves with more crude sentiments.

  “Either way, it is clear that you are overwrought,” the doctor finished. “I’m afraid I have no choice but to take you to the quiet room for a spell. That way all that is stimulating you will be suppressed.”

  “No!” she shouted. If she went to the quiet room, Justus couldn’t get to her. “Please, no! I only need some rest.”

  Doctor Keene looked at Greeves as emitted a tragic sigh. “It is as you say. She is in complete hysterics. Now if you’ll assist me?”

  Bethany tried to lunge away, but Greeves and Keene seized her by the arms and hauled her out of the cell. For the first time in years, she kicked, struggled, and screamed at the top of her lungs. Perhaps Justus could then hear the direction she was going. Or perhaps her heart was merely breaking at being so close to her dreams being fulfilled only to have them cruelly torn from her grasp.

  When Doctor Keene released her to unlock the door of the quiet room, Bethany broke free and ran down the corridor. If she could only make it down the stairs and out the front door, Justus could meet her in the lawn and carry her off with his preternatural speed.