Moonless
Crystal Collier
© 2013 Crystal Collier
www.crystal-collier.com
Published by Raybourne Publishing
ISBN: 978-1-62983-049-0
Cover Design by J.Matthew Collier
This eBook is licensed for a single device and is not to be resold or given away to other people. A sincere thank you for your honesty, from hard working authors everywhere.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, reproduction, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher and copyright owners.
Fly little sparrow, the Soulless are comin’
Fly lest yer caught on the Moonless night
Or render yer heart to the one that is callin’
Take up yer Passions and join the fight.
--Author unknown
1
Blue Eyes
Alexia was reasonably confident that exiting the carriage was the equivalent of stepping into Hell. She glanced out again at the grand Roman pillars of the finest country estate in Devonshire and shivered. Just let me be invisible.
Mother cleared her throat. Her golden tresses glowed in the lamplight leaking through the open door. Alexia straightened up. Her mouth curled into a forced smile as she smoothed the folds of her amber gown, the newest cut and height of fashion for 1768.
Mother rolled her eyes, took Father’s waiting hand, and descended to the drive.
Alexia scowled. A month ago she had turned sixteen. A month ago the expectation to be lady-like and presentable had begun. A month ago the nightmares had started. Her night terrors certainly resulted from Father’s talk of making her a match early—before anyone had a chance to glimpse the ghastly girl and advise the gentleman against it. Her too-thin frame and sunken jowls were enough to keep her own eyes away from reflective surfaces. How could she fault others for sharing that opinion?
Father extended a hand. “Alexia, come.”
She’d inherited his dark tresses, but that’s where her resemblance to this handsome man ended. He gave her a grim smile and assisted her down before taking his wife’s arm. Her parents pulled together, draping her in their shadow—though out of embarrassment or a need to shelter her, she couldn’t decide.
She glanced back over her shoulder as the carriage rattled away.
Goodbye, safety. Goodbye, anonymity. She turned to the brightened steps. Hello, Hell.
“Ah, the Dumonts! It’s been six years since I’ve had the pleasure.” Baron Galedrew bounced on the balls of his feet as they arrived at the top step. He had only recently returned from living in London, and Alexia didn’t remember quite so many wrinkles.
“Welcome, welcome! And who is this?” He pushed her parents apart. His creased brow doubled, lip drawing back in a grimace. He coughed. “This cannot be Alexia, can it? What a . . . mature young woman you are becoming.” He bowed.
She curtsied, wishing she could douse the heat in her cheeks and hurtle back into the carriage. “You are too kind.”
He opened his mouth to speak.
Thunder pealed behind them. She turned, ready for a distraction, any distraction. A cloud of dust billowed up against the sky, masking the night. With a shimmering white mane, a speckled grey horse sped toward them, the forerunner of an approaching storm, a rider bent over its neck. The beast skidded to a halt at the foot of the steps, spraying dust.
Alexia froze, unable to move even to save her hem from the prevailing dirt. That horse, she knew that horse—but it could not be!
“Oh dear,” the Baron uttered.
A cloaked stranger leapt from the animal and approached through the filthy cloud, face masked in a menacing hood. Alexia stumbled back toward Father.
The newcomer stopped two steps below, head turned in her direction. Her knees shuddered. With a slower but still harried gait, he ascended.
“You will excuse me.” The baron shook hands with her father and hurried into the house.
As the stranger rounded her parents, she glanced up to find him watching her. Though his face remained in shadow, the light caught his eyes, eyes that radiated the hue of deep still waters below wooded boughs—eyes that resonated with her soul.
She grabbed Father’s arm as the stranger disappeared after Galedrew. She forced herself to breathe. Surely she was mistaken—he could not be the same . . .
Alexia’s mind whirled, snatches of the dream racing through her memory:
Starlight streaked across the silvery hair of the man who lay on the entry’s floor, glassy-eyed. His open mouth was frozen in a gasp or silenced scream, a ladle protruding from the breast of his night-dress. Real, warm, oozing blood . . . It pooled across the estate’s open doorway and stained her fingers . . . A speckled gray stallion shrieked in the drive. She cringed into the shadows as the beast’s master, a cloaked stranger, snapped around. Blue eyes flashed.
Father growled, ripping her out of the memory. “Not fit to be seen in a nobleman’s home!”
“Father?” she whispered. “Who is he?”
He glanced at Mother, whose peachy skin had turned pearl-esque. “No one, Alexia.”
She blinked up at him. No one? Then why did Mother look as though she might faint? Why did his eyes hold a darkness and rage reserved for the greatest of miscreants? And most importantly, how had the stranger found a place in her nightmares?
***
Two women occupied the space next to a pianoforte, voices floating harmoniously over the assembly of yawning country gentry in a duet of ridiculous runs. Alexia’s mind raced away from the music with reckless abandon, circling the blue-eyed mystery. Such an unusual color. She’d seen eyes that hue many other times in slumber—reflected in the glassy stare of a dead girl.
Applause broke her out of her thoughts. She joined in late, and Mother shook a disapproving glare away with a stiff jerk of the head. Even when on her best behavior, Alexia could not please the woman. She never would. She could only imagine Mother’s embarrassment at having to sit next to her, to proclaim openly that she had produced this child, this unbecoming young lady both she and Father had kept from society’s eyes.
Alexia snuck a glance through the seven rows of noble “friends,” several stares darting away as she turned. Those haunting eyes were missing from the assembly.
Mother cleared her throat and snatched Alexia’s chin, pulling her face forward.
She bit down. Anger pulsed into her clenched fists. Her eyes landed on the double doors leading to freedom. What would Mother do if she simply rose and escaped? Surely she wouldn’t dare to come after her.
A corner of her mouth crooked up. Perhaps that was just what her family needed, a bit of gossip to brighten her future prospects. If a lady couldn’t be attractive, she could at least be distinct.
A door cracked open. The silvery-haired baron slipped inside, pausing in the curtain-framed entrance, skin white, hands trembling.
He is not dead.
Alexia frowned. Of course not. It was a dream and nothing more.
She turned back to the performance and something pelted her exposed neck from behind. She twisted.
Rupert Vanwick waved from his seat. Feathery walnut hair branched haphazardly on either side of his face, which had elongated. Narrow hazel eyes squinted below a lengthy forehead, thick brows, a fluted nose. She had to laugh at his attempt to grow a mustache. Their fathers went hunting together every summer, and that meant several extended visits. Ru may as well be her cousin or brother.
He pointed down to the penny he’d thrown at her and grinned. He had a year and a half on her, although she wondered which of them acted older sometimes.
With a
nod, he asked her to join him and his sister, Abigail. At fourteen, she had similar hair, longer and pulled up, with a slender face and smiling eyes.
Alexia retrieved the coin and joined them before Mother could scowl at her for moving.
“Is that really you, Lex?” Rupert grinned. “You have changed.”
“I could say the same about you.” She handed back his penny and quirked her head at his thin lip-wig. He brushed a finger across it with pride.
“Hello, Abby,” she said.
An uncertain smile split the girl’s face. “What is this? I like the curl! You are so,” her nose crinkled, “beautiful.”
Alexia blushed. Yes, tonight the curl hadn’t fallen out of her hair as quickly as usual, but that would never be enough to qualify her as beautiful. She silently thanked her friend for the kind, but overly generous word.
“Is your father staying for the hunt tomorrow?” Ru whispered.
She swallowed back a laugh. “Are you joking? He has not had enough things to shoot since his days in Officer’s Academy.”
“I know!” Abby snickered. “Daddy is always saying the same thing.”
Their fathers’ friendship stretched back to the early days, before schooling, before family, before history as far as Alexia could tell. They liked to sit up swapping stories of the old days and drinking themselves into a riotous depression.
She cleared her throat. “Baron Galedrew received a rather odd caller as we entered—a man who wore a hood and did not bother to remove his cloak. Did either of you see him?”
Her friends exchanged a puzzled look.
“A man in a cloak?” Ru’s tone was drier than the Sahara. “How terribly specific.”
She folded her arms. “I would swear the baron was running from him.”
Both their heads whirled her direction.
“Shhh!” Lady Vanwick glared. They slunk closer together.
“Running?” Rupert rubbed his chin.
She nodded. “And even now he looks as though he has met death face to face.”
They both leaned in their seats to view the nobleman pinched in the shadows of the doorway.
Ru huffed. “Probably a business deal come to ruin.” He smirked as his eyes darted about the parlor. “Or he has finally learned the reputation of this old place.”
“This estate?” Alexia asked quietly.
“Stop!” Abby covered her ears. “I don’t want to hear it again.”
Rupert leaned in, braced on his knee. “This is the Weeping House.”
Alexia gave him a dubious frown.
“The original owners were marauders, wealthy from a lifetime of piracy. They would shackle and torture disobedient servants in the cellar. It is said a stable boy died from the abuse, and they buried him under the compost heap.”
“No!”
His mother turned on them, eyes blazing. “Rupert Vanwick!”
“Sorry, Mama.”
Lady Vanwick’s glare stopped on Alexia. Her brows pinched. She returned to the performance, glancing back once and shaking her head.
Rupert leaned closer, breath tickling Alexia’s ear. “The help rebelled. They chopped the family up with an axe and planted them in the herb garden, but they left the youngest alive—a little girl—and kept her prisoner until she hung herself in the cellar. Sometimes her crying can be heard at night.”
Alexia huffed. “Where did you hear this?”
“Gun Williams swears it is true.”
“Gun?” She couldn’t help the skeptical tone. “You trust a boy who answers to Gun?”
“It’s a nickname.”
“From school?”
He nodded.
“What is yours?”
His face colored. “Bones.”
She laughed. “He made the story up.”
“Maybe. We will see tonight.” He grinned and he snuck a valiant arm around her. “Do not worry, Lex, I will keep you safe.”
“Pardon me?” She knocked his arm off. “Who is it that faced the phantom attic rats last year?”
Abby giggled.
He reddened. “You are never going to let me forget that, are you?”
“Never.”
Movement in the shadows drew Alexia’s gaze to Baron Galedrew, chalky white but no longer trembling. What did he fear?
And had she truly seen him dead?
2
The Weeping House
Mother took to bed, ill, at the conclusion of the concert. Alexia sat in Father’s shadow during dinner and tried to ignore the weight of countless eyes, her stomach twisted tight. Any time she boldly lifted her gaze, heads turned away.
She hated their stares. More than that, she hated the whispered conversations. Father had been wise to keep her isolated on their own estate—where she yearned to be now. If only Aunt Sarah could have joined them! Sarah would not tolerate this veiled scorn.
Alexia kept her shoulders back and head high until the meal’s conclusion, and while Father was occupied with other gentlemen in the dining room, she escaped, ignoring the chorus of gossiping women at her back. She eased into her “guest chamber” bed with a novel and buried herself in the script. Exhausted from their travels and ordeals, she yawned and rested her head on the pillow, fading into a dream.
Vacant eyes. Blood. A screaming horse. A cloaked man . . .
Alexia leapt out of bed, gasping. Her book clattered to the floor. The nightmare burned in her mind, those blue eyes . . .
It was a dream. Nothing but a dream.
Disgusted with herself, she climbed out of bed to retrieve her book. She turned to douse the candle she’d left burning, and froze. Glancing out the corner of her eye, she straightened up.
Movement. Was someone in her room?
She turned.
A framed portrait hung opposite her. Two brass roses met at the base of its circular surface, and at the center stood a young woman with dark curls, jade eyes, gleaming skin, and pert pink lips.
Very lovely. And then she noticed the candle flickering behind the girl.
Alexia twisted. The candle’s flame danced behind her.
She looked back at the frame—no—mirror. The enthralling girl studied her with a confused frown. She stepped toward the glass, trembling as she lifted a hand. The girl on the other side reached toward her with shaking fingers.
“Am I dreaming?” She watched the double’s lips move, frightened the image would respond. Somewhere beneath the glamorous layers hid the child who turned sixteen a month ago, the young woman whose father hid her away because of an unsightly exterior, the girl who spent the better part of her life in books.
“Impossible!” The word fell simultaneously from both their lips. She lifted her trembling hands, the lovely reflection’s hands, slim and shapely. Running her fingers over the voluptuous curve of hips, she swallowed. “Not possible!”
And yet she couldn’t deny what the mirror told her. Somehow she’d been transformed. That, or she’d lost her mind.
A whisper of sound pulled her reluctantly from the glass. She strained to interpret it. Crying?
Yes, weeping.
Desperate and broken, the sound was barely audible but distinctly feminine, echoing from some forlorn corner of the estate. She shook her head and turned away, but the whimper filled her heart with guilty pinpricks, beautiful in its defeat. She ached for the child.
Rupert’s story?
No.
A prank. That had to be it. Ru stashed Abby away somewhere to imitate the trapped spirit. Their parents would be so heavy from the festivities and alcohol they’d sleep solid until morning roused them to hunt.
Smart, Ru. Smart.
She’d let him have his hoax, and then she’d give him a good scare in return. No point prolonging Abby’s misery.
Pulling on a dressing gown, she tucked her hair back, retrieved the candle, and aimed for the door. She gave the mirror a last wary glance before slipping out.
Hundreds of empty portraits bid her unwelcome in the hall. A m
an stood at his wife’s side holding her hand, but in the dark she could see he squeezed mercilessly at the back of her neck. Another canvas flaunted two sisters on a set of swings, the cool glint of their flat silver eyes, smiles malicious. Empty things. She hated empty things: pictures without a soul, statues wrought in tragedy . . .
She shuddered.
Not tonight. She wouldn’t entertain those fears now. She had a prankster to put down!
Starlight glazed the parlor as she descended to the first floor and through the hall to the blackened kitchens. The cry strengthened to a wail, broken and wretched. How could the rest of the house sleep through such a desperate overture?
She turned down a servant’s hall and halted at an alcove. The wail echoed about her, as though she could cast her eyes about and find the child standing there.
A window glimmered against her candle. An empty chair sat beside crumbling mortar and exposed brick. Before her hung a crimson tapestry of a knight driving his lance through the heart of a whitened maiden. She reached for the fabric.
It rippled.
Wind?
She slid a hand around the edges and cool air tickled her palm. Pulling back the thick material, she found a door that came to her chest. No handle. Only a keyhole. Crouching forward, she pressed against the barrier. It moved.
The sobs stopped.
She froze.
An intake of breath resonated. Silence.
She shoved the door wide. Whitewashed walls closed off a narrow space whose apex reached far above her head in the darkness, no windows. Straw glimmered in the candlelight, covering the circular floor.
Alexia filled her lungs with air and forced her thundering heart to slow. There were no such things as restless spirits. Someone had been crying, and she would prove it.
With steady hands, she pressed the walls, searching for an alternate exit. Another draft lifted the ends of her hair.
She knelt in the straw, slowly brushing a hand from left to right until a cool breeze hit her palm. She cleared away the straw to reveal a handleless trap door.
This went well beyond Rupert’s ability to devise. She could return to bed now and pretend she’d not heard the frantic summons . . . but these irrational fears would haunt her slumber and seed an insurmountable terror of the supernatural. She exhaled, closing her eyes. There was a rational explanation for all this.
Moonless Page 1