The Trelayne Inheritance

by Colleen Shannon

  Using all his unnatural strength, Max kicked, and slashed with his nails, feeling skin slicing open to bone everywhere he struck. With his other hand he pounded with the hammer, but all he did was keep them at bay. They seemed to multiply, and the ferocity of their hatred made them even stronger than most of his prey.

  Then, to his shock, Angel was fighting alongside him, using all her puny skills to force the hissing vampires a bare half step further away. Max redoubled his own efforts and slowly, the creatures gave ground until there was a gap between them..

  It wasn’t much, but it was enough.

  They had just enough space for Max to pull Angel under his arm and jerk out his pocket watch. He flipped it open, whispering the incantation he’d learned by heart at the feet of a monk in the Transylvania highlands. The invisible glow brightened to a pale blue, iridescent and as lovely as an aurora borealis.

  But deadly to vampires. .

  The pasty-faced creatures fell back again.

  The glow brightened as Max held the watch high into a pale glimmer of sunlight. Suddenly, light flashed in a white hot beacon from the crystal, radiating in every direction.

  There was a sizzle, and the scent of burning flesh. Several unearthly screams, and then the creatures ran, some of them with blackened flesh falling in burned flakes to leave the grisly mark of their passing.

  Max held Angel firmly in one arm, the watch raised in his other, as he dragged them both, still caught in the protective circle of light, toward the entrance.

  He felt some of the more powerful creatures striking at them. Most of them were devotees of Alexander’s balls and punch, but even they feared the extreme purity of the radiance surrounding Max and Angel.

  Backing up the steps, Angel limp at his side, Max made his way into the dawn, the watch still their only protection. He slammed the trap door shut with his foot and hurried them to their mounts.

  Finally, he looked at Angel, intending to compliment her for her bravery.

  The words died stillborn on his lips.

  She was unconscious, her fair skin as bright as a beet. The radiance that had protected them had burned her. She was not a Watch Bearer, with his natural immunity to the light.

  This was the last proof he needed that she was dangerously close to full conversion.

  Slamming the watch back in his pocket, Max cradled her before him on his stallion and galloped like the wind toward his estate. Questions tormented him. Why hadn’t he made her go back? Why hadn’t he realized the same light that saved them would inevitably harm her?

  Because he’d been frantic for her safety, thinking only of getting them out of there. So he used the only powerful weapon he had left.

  Angel moaned, writhing in pain just at the touch of the wind on her face, and Max slowed the wild pace slightly.

  He had a potion that would help heal her skin.

  But was it too late for her spirit?

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Max saw the glow outside his estate and at first thought the dawn had tipped the trees with fire. But it was a strangely mobile fire, if so.

  He drew his mount to an abrupt stop, still hidden in the trees and listened with his acute senses. Without the noise his stallion made, he realized there were voices outside his ancestral home.

  Many voices. Angry voices.

  Someone had stirred the villagers up against him again.

  Agonized, Max looked down at the girl in his arms. He’d covered her with his cloak to protect her from the rising sun but when he moved the thick material aside to peek at her, she didn’t move. Mercifully, she’d fallen unconscious.

  What did he do? All his medicines, his own research, the rest of his weapons, all were in his home. But he didn’t have to be able to read the Beefsteak Killer’s mind to know that the creature had struck back by planting something incriminating now in his own home.

  Perhaps even in his own bed.

  With one last indecisive look between his home and the open road, Max wheeled his mount and took the lesser of two evils. As he road wildly away, he prayed, ‘Dear God, don’t condemn me for a sinner because I’ve always tried to follow the path of truth and justice, even if I had to kill to do it. Protect Angel and I swear not another innocent life will die in my quest for vengeance. Even if I have to die myself.’

  Outside Max’s estate, Gustav fanned the flames of hatred and torchlight, berating the villagers even as he waved the torch around to make it burn hotter. “Let’s not wait any longer. We’ll go on in and see what terrible secrets the bastard be hiding. He’s a killer, he is. He’ll steal your daughters from their beds and drain them of their blood and he’ll convert your sons to unholy monsters, unfit to walk the earth with decent folk.”

  The smithy shook his beefy fist. “Aye, remember the girl we found not two seconds after he appeared from the same filthy hole. He’s a vampire, he is.”

  Villagers milled around, eager to storm the door but only because they were the ones standing in back. Other equally frightened men felt brave, in that way of mob violence, only in the shared hatred of ignorance and superstition.

  But sometimes ignorant superstition is true.

  The prelate, still in his tight collar and robe, carried a stake. “It’s past time we took back our village and made it safe for decent folk to go about at night.”

  With the prelate’s blessing, the smithy led the way, storming the heavy front door. He banged on it with a cudgel. He was quickly joined by other men eager to regain their self respect. Between the heavy beating of cudgel, stick and even, from a carpenter, an ax, the locked door quickly fell, shattered into splinters.

  The mob stormed inside.

  A few screams sounded. Max’s servants ran out into the woods. A few minutes later, a tiny puff of smoke, a slither on the wind, escaped the gaping front door. Then a bright flame appeared at a window curtain on the ground floor salon. A blaze crackled merrily upstairs.

  Soon the entire estate, built by Max’s ancestors in the time of Henry the Eighth, was ablaze. The villagers came back out, some carrying the spoils of war, and watched with satisfaction as the ancient timbers caught fire from the blazing furnishings, priceless paintings, and tapestries.

  The smithy came out last, stumbling down the stairs, carrying something. Something far heavier than gold coins, but something far more precious to him.

  General satisfaction gave way to horror as the others saw what he carried. The prelate made an abortive move forward to check the limp girl in the smithy’s strong arms, but they all knew, from the one look made all the more horrific by the gory dance of red flames on her ripped out throat, that it was too late.

  The tell tale mark of the crooked tooth was everywhere on her neck and upper torso.

  Tears streaked through the soot on the smithy’s face. He stared at the Trelayne estate with a hatred that went far beyond mere mob violence.

  For the girl he carried in his arms was his own lovely, virginal daughter.

  “You’ll die for this, Maximillian Britton, Earl of Trelayne. I cares not how much money ye have or how far you run, I’ll find ye and kill ye.”

  His face frozen in a grimace of rage and grief, he stalked away from the conflagration that worsened the fiery rage in his heart.

  As the fire burned hotter and the villagers walked away, three witnesses watched the last tower collapse.

  Gustav, who watched blankly from a distance. With less satisfaction than one might expect from a rival vampire.

  And high in a tree, lurked two birds. Wings folded, hunched over like gargoyles, creatures of the night even in the broad light of day.

  They sat silently, the brilliant flames cast back in their beady eyes. Watching. Enjoying.

  A raven and a dove.

  Shelly Holmes looked severely at her stableboy. “What do you mean, you don’t know where he is? I expect my second in command to make his whereabouts plain to me at all times.”

  “I don’t know, ma’am, truly I don’t.” And the
lad scurried off to muck out the stalls.

  Shelly went in to check on the mare about to deliver, pulling on clean gloves. It amazed her that horse doctors couldn’t figure out, as human doctors finally had, that sterility in a birthing chamber was as critical as calm. As she had to gently labor to turn the mare by herself, for the poor thoroughbred looked to about to deliver a breach birth, Shelly debated the mystery of Gustav.

  Blast the fellow’s impudence!

  There’d been something different, something too bold and too secretive about Gustav, from the very beginning. This wasn’t the first time he’d disappeared without notice, sometimes at night, sometimes early in the morning, like now, when she really needed his help with a fractious mare.

  In fact, Shelly had her own suspicions about the fellow who played the crude groom with a bit too much felicity to be believable. With vampires thick as the nightly mist on the ground, she’d even watched him closely at night, looking for that tell tale tinge of red she’d noticed in every vampire’s eyes. Even Angel’s.

  And just last night, when she went down to the tool shed late, she’d seen him conceal something bright and gleaming gold in his pocket. It looked almost like a watch. A large watch similar to Max’s, but she hadn’t caught a close look at it. He’d dropped the tiny engraving tool he held and hurried out with a muttered excuse.

  Very well, she could hardly fire the fellow for sneaking around with an engraving tool on his own time. And he showed no vulnerability to daylight, he was visible in mirrors, and he even seemed to have a taste for garlic. But then Alexander shared all those qualities, too, and he was quite obviously a vampire.

  Shelly was frustrated beyond bearing that she’d found no clue to who Gustav really was even when she searched his tiny room off the tack room. But the insolent gleam he sometimes sported seemed equally distasteful to her. If he wasn’t a vampire, what was the purpose for his nocturnal wanderings? Or could it be that he was a vampire, just such an old and evil one that he’d learned to mask every sign that would give away his identity?

  “Here, let me help you.” Gustav suddenly appeared. He looked exhausted.. No, he looked beyond tired. He looked distraught.

  Shelly took in the soot on his face and dirt on his hands and slapped him away. “Wash up!” While he did so, she made the mare as comfortable as she could and followed him out. “Where have you been?”

  “A…village meeting.”

  Shelly’s eyes narrowed. “What sort of meeting?”

  He dried his hands without answering, his face twisting with guilt. He hurried back into the stall and made gentle clucking noises to the mare. He truly was good with horses. If he hadn’t been, Shelly would have fired him long ago just to see his reaction. Unsettled, for it was the rare man who could throw her off balance, Shelly knelt beside him.

  For the next few minutes, they were too busy with the mare to talk, but when one stableboy ran to the stable door, and another, and another, and an excited buzz ensued, Shelly looked up. One of the lads ran back.

  “There be a fearsome fire at the Trelayne estate, Miss! Should we form a fire brigade?”

  Shelly leaped up, about to say yes, but she was interrupted.

  Gustav said flatly, “It’s too late for that. Since the mare’s settled for the nonce, I’ll be about my other business.” And he automatically reached as if for a hat to tip toward Shelly’s astounded countenance. But he wasn’t wearing one.

  Lost for words for one of the few times in her life, Shelly watched him walk off. What a cavalier way to dismiss a calamity like that. And the mere fact that he said it was too late was proof enough he must have been there when the fire started.

  Poor Max.

  Shelly peered down at the boy. “Do you think you can follow Gustav at a distance and be sure he doesn’t see you?”

  The boy nodded eagerly, obviously anxious to avoid his usual unpleasant chores. Smiling affectionately, Shelly ruffled his hair. “Good lad. If he spots you, immediately turn around and come home. And when he reaches his destination, return and tell me where it is. There will be a quid for you in it if you do your task well.”

  More inspired than ever, the budding detective tiptoed after his quarry.

  Shelly was about to turn back to the mare when she heard the voice. ‘Please, Miss Holmes, help us.’

  It was so clear she looked around for Maximillian Britton before she realized she’d heard him only in her head. Damn his powers that were, in so many ways, so much more useful than her own. ‘Where are you?’ she asked back silently.

  ‘In your quarters above the stable. Bring a burn salve.’

  For once obeying a male’s bidding without argument, Shelly grabbed a pot from a shelf and snapped at a hand, “See I’m not disturbed!” She ran up the side stairs to her own room and burst inside. She froze in horror.

  Writhing in pain, Angel reclined upon her bed, Max gently holding her chapped hands in a cool bowl of water. Angel’s face was patchy with red splotches in places, and peeling skin in others. She even had a few blisters on the end of her nose.

  Shelly didn’t waste time asking what happened. She rinsed her own hands and immediately applied the salve to Angel’s face. Angel stiffened at the additional pain, but then the oil of peppermint Shelly had personally mixed with aloe and other medicinals in her own powerful burn concoction began to numb her pain. She relaxed slightly as Shelly treated her arms and hands.

  “Anywhere else?” Shelly asked. Angel shook her head.

  When the girl was eased, Shelly scowled at Max. But the look on his face was sheer torment, and Shelly’s questions died stillborn. “You were battling vampires and somehow Angel got caught in the crossfire because she refused to let you go alone.”

  Max turned away from Shelly’s acute gaze, but Angel’s troubled dark eyes filled with tears. “He used his watch, Shelly. It emits a bright radiance different to anything I’ve ever seen. And it…he didn’t know…I didn’t know I would be hurt by it, too.” Angel subsided back against the pillows.

  Sympathetically, Shelly looked at Max’s broad back, turned away from them both. He’d pulled the curtains tight over the daylight to shield Angel, but still he stared as if into a far distance.

  A far distance he could not see or hope to reach.

  As badly as she felt for Angel’s pain, Shelly felt more deeply for Max, for she knew how he blamed himself.

  “It’s not your fault,” Angel whispered. “You were only trying to protect us both.”

  Max whirled on her. “It’s my fault for starting you onto this path. If I hadn’t initiated you that night, if I hadn’t taught you the need to feed, then you’d not be in far more danger than a few burns. Your soul, your humanity, your ability to love will be forfeit if the killer has its way. Don’t you understand? They’re using you. They’re using me. They’re using the attraction between us not just to drive us apart, but to kill our spirits first and then our bodies.”

  Angel’s voice was very small and very bleak. “Then we shouldn’t see one another again.”

  “They’ll find a way to finish converting you whether I’m around to tempt you or not. No, together we stay. For whatever time we have left.” Max turned back to the window.

  Shelly reached out with her mind and found only a black wall of pain. She glanced at Angel. Angel’s eyes were closed, and tears seeped past her temples, dotting the pillow under her head.

  Max was blocking Angel out, too. “And now,” he said hoarsely, “my last hope is destroyed. My research, burned. My other weapons, cinders. My home, my refuge, annihilated.”

  With my head groom’s help, Shelly thought bitterly.

  Max’s green eyes cut into her face like jade razors. “Gustav?”

  Shelly nodded.

  Frowning, Max debated this news. “Could it be…”

  This time, Shelly shook her head. “No, I don’t think he’s the killer. I think he’s a gentleman pretending to be a groom so he can infiltrate the Oxford covenant.”

>   “Are you saying you don’t believe he’s a vampire?” Max asked incredulously. “Impossible. He’d never get near them.”

  Angel interjected, “I overheard him in that meeting.”

  Max said, “About what time?”

  Angel rubbed her forehead. “It was late.”

  “Their covenant meetings last for hours and begin at sunset. I know because I disguised myself to attend once.”

  “So he was only allowed in when all the important matters had been settled,” Angel concluded for all of them. They exchanged a look.

  “And that means they don’t trust him,” Shelly pointed out with her usual irrefutable logic. “They trusted him to start a riot that would destroy my home.”

  “Perhaps he was forced to do it,” Shelly said. “He seemed a bit…distraught when he returned a few minutes back.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “He left but I had one of my boys follow him.”

  Max debated this. They both saw some of the guilt and grief fade from that strong face, leaving only iron hard resolve in its stead. A very dangerous resolve, for it was part Trelayne earl, and part Watch Bearer. “Take her back to the Hall,” Max ordered. “Just see that only you supply her food and drink and I think she’ll be safe enough. They’re not ready to kill her.”

  Yet. They’ll use her to corner me.

  Both women knew the last, most painful danger he did not state.

  Angel sat up, wobbling as if she were obviously still in pain, but she managed, “But you said we wouldn’t be separated.”

  “I have to figure out who the killer is, Angel. How can we battle an enemy we can’t identify? I’ll return very soon, I promise, and we’ll find somewhere to hide.”

  “But…I’m afraid.” Her small voice petered out on the last word as if she were ashamed of the admission.

  Tenderness softening his granite hard green eyes to tender spring shoots, Max knelt next to Angel. He started to take her hands, noted their condition, started to kiss her cheek, noted its redness. “Damme, you’ve always been a prickly wench, and now you’re slippery as well!”