Besides, she hated him for his lies and his manipulation. She’d let the killer of her own mother into her body. Angel curled her hands and watched long nails grow, and felt her fangs forming.
Watching the progression of thoughts on Angel’s expressive face, Sarina flung off her hat with a joyous smile. “Welcome home, Angel.” She hugged her.
And then they drove through the gates of the Blythe family resting place.
Here, Angel’s journey to truth began. And here, it would end….
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The carriage that had borne Max, Shelly and Gustav was now empty. A dark yawning hole beckoned where Elaine’s simple headstone had been turned aside on a pivot.
Angel didn’t hesitate to storm down into that void. If she’d held a flaming sword high over her head, she could hardly have looked more full of fury and righteous vengeance. She’d learned well at Max’s side.
Smiling, Sarina swigged the last of Angel’s flask and tossed her hat on the seat. Then she followed Angel down into the blackness, her fangs glistening as saliva formed in her mouth. Her eyes glowed redly with an ancient hunger.
A hunger about to be fulfilled.
Down below, Max looked at the plush chamber that had been carved into the earth. He’d never found it because it didn’t connect to the other crypts. It was secretive, self-contained, accessible only beneath Elaine’s headstone. “How did you find it?” he demanded of Shelly.
“I followed her here late one night as a wolf. She never saw me. It was then I began to suspect her.”
The walls were painted with murals depicting the passage of the centuries–the Crusades, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, the Spanish conquest of the Americas, and finally Georgian, Regency and Victorian England. And in every panel, painted larger than the march of kings and visionaries like Leonardo da Vinci, hovered Sarina. Dressed in virginal white, with that same luminous beauty.
A luminous beauty she maintained by sucking lovely young virgins into dry husks.
Even Shelly looked a bit uneasy as she, too, her tongue caught between her teeth, as she realized the strength and cunning of what they were about to face. “No wonder she’s never been captured. Who would believe such a lovely, fragile creature so strong and evil?”
Max scarcely heard her, though he’d taken the precaution of verifying he had his watch, his stakes, and his hammer handy. He was standing over the center of the room now.
Here stood two caskets. Very ornate, very costly. Both were carved with symbols of the night, bats, wolves, moons. But the slightly larger one was glistening white, while the smaller one was bright blue.
Angel’s favorite color, Max thought grimly. But it held no dirt. He looked around, and then final proof came of Sarina’s plan when he found a crate stamped, “New York, New York.” He opened it. Inside was dirt.
Closing his eyes in pain, Max realized Sarina had fooled him yet again. She had no intention of killing Angel. Angel’s blood was a continuous source of strength for her. She intended to enrapture her prey, turn her into her familiar first and ultimately into her companion for all eternity. As evil, remorseless and eternally hungry as she was. How many humans would Angel convert to vampire along her path?
Max fingered the stakes in his pocket, his stomach roiling as he wondered if the fate of the mother would indeed be the same as the fate of the daughter. Before he’d let Angel live that life of eternal death and decay, he’d kill her with his own hand. And then kill himself, for surely he’d rather die than live with the knowledge of what he’d done.
Shelly saw, too, and comprehended. She looked at Max sympathetically. “It won’t come to that. No matter how she’s filled Angel’s mind with vicious lies, Angel is too strong. She’ll see the truth. We’ll make her.”
Max hovered over the caskets. The white one was filled with dark black earth mixed with desert sand. He ran it through his fingers, sniffing it. It even had the scent of the east. “Persian, I warrant.”
He debated spraying it with holy water, looking at the vials Gustav held. Gustav offered them, but Max shook his head. “She’ll have other stashes of earth. She’s too careful and too devious.”
Shelly agreed, but then she stiffened.
He heard it too: the rattle of a carriage, the steps being put down. Shelly retreated to a black corner.
Gustav peered after her, confused. Max gave the poor fellow two vials of his holy water and a cross. “You’re on your own. But it’s me she’ll want.”
Gustav glanced at Max, and back at the dark corner, where green eyes glowed. A growl came that made Gustav back up, and then whispered the soft pad of great feet.
A wolf stood there staring back at him with Shelly’s eyes. It even spoke with Shelly’s voice. “Sorry old chap, but there was no better way to acquaint you with my own unique skills as an investigator of psychic phenomena than to show you.” Shelly licked a paw. “Prepare yourself. They’re coming.”
Gustav tried for a retort, he truly did, but it was no use. He was so frightened he didn’t have spit enough to bless an ant, much less talk. A werewolf on one side and vampires on the other? “I’ll become a butcher if I survive the night. A clerk. A priest, even.”
As footsteps approached, Shelly thoughtfully eyed the white casket filled with dirt. Then, exchanging a look with Max, she heisted her leg over Sarina’s precious earth and urinated. “I had a bit too much water today,” she observed judiciously.
Max did something he’d never have believed he could do on the most momentous day of his long life. This was the reason he’d been born as a Watch Bearer: to face the Beefsteak Killer. And to save the only women he could ever love. Still, he was greatly amused at Shelly’s audacity.
Thus, when Angel entered the crypt, she did so to the sound of Max’s deep, rich laughter. She froze at the bottom of the steps, staring at him, stunned at his boldness.
There he was, showing no remnant of the burns. All bright, bold, beautiful in every way a man could be. On the surface. In truth, he was a liar, a killer, a coward.
Still she was torn. As much as her new vampire being despised her weakness, somewhere she still loved him. Somewhere in the dwindling humanity of the heart he’d once touched along with her body. But now she hated that humanity, wanted to wrench it out of her breast and fling it against the wall where it would burst with all her stupid, naive intentions. Far better to embrace the night and learn to enjoy not feeling pain or sorrow. Only hunger and power conferred the true peace she’d sought fruitlessly for all her days.
He felt her acrimony and met it with a gentle, mind melding reprimand. That silent bonding still linked them, despite everything. ‘No, Angel. She’s poisoned you with her lies as surely as she poisoned you with her blood. Only look around you. The paintings.’
As Sarina glided into the crypt, Angel looked at the murals. Her mouth dropped open. Sarina was everywhere, through the ages. Always in white. Always luminous with an unearthly beauty.
Sarina saw what she stared at. “He’s twisting everything as he always does. I’m older than I look, yes, because I’ve been Alexander’s wife for close to five centuries.”
“She’s lying, Angel.” This time, Shelly spoke. “Ask her to bite this.”
Gustav flung a large, juicy apple at Sarina’s head. Sarina ducked it and it splatted against the wall.
“I detest apples as much as I detest lying traitors and murderers,” Sarina spat. Her eyes were beacons now of red, murderous rage.
Angel looked at her and took an automatic step back.
Sarina noticed and the red glow softened back to luminous blue. “Ask him yourself. Ask him if he killed your mother.”
Angel looked at Max.
And he didn’t turn away. He stared right back, his green eyes glowing with a tinge of red. “Yes, I drove a stake through Elaine’s heart. And I’ve lived with that knowledge every night and every day of my life for the past quarter century.”
Tears filled Angel’s eyes. “Why? If
you loved her, how could you?”
“It’s only because I loved her so that I could do it at all.” Tears of remembrance filled his own eyes, and then a flood of memories assailed Angel’s mind.
Flowing like a healing river, from him to her.
Elaine, calling him to America. Begging him to end her torment. She’d started hungering lately for younger and younger prey. No matter how much she drank, it was never enough. But she retained enough of the glowing humanity that had so enraptured Max that she recognized how amoral she was becoming. She’d turned too many young people into vampires, and she feared for the fate of her infant daughter. Sometimes she stood over her crib, wondering what she’d taste like….
Angel physically recoiled from the sight of herself sleeping in her crib, but Max wouldn’t release her until he finished the terrible communion.
Elaine’s pain had been so great that Max had finally, after a wrenching argument, conceded. That next night, as Elaine lay sleeping in her crypt, Max had pulled out his kit and…
Finally, Max spoke aloud. “She made me promise, Angel, two things. One, to bring her home so she could spend eternity on the soil of her birth. And two, to protect you from becoming a vampire. No matter what it cost me.” He let her see her mother one last time.
“You’re the only one strong enough, and brave enough,” Elaine had whispered. “You’re not killing me. You’re freeing me.”
Angel and Max were so intent on the exchange between them that they’d momentarily forgotten Sarina.
But Shelly hadn’t. She watched the vampire with unblinking green eyes.
Sarina’s eyes flared redly back, and then she noticed the smell coming from her coffin. Her nostrils flared.
Shelly smiled her werewolf smile, tongue lolling..
Giving a chilling scream of rage that only immortality could endow with such shrill power, Sarina began to transform. Her form began to dissipate and fade away, but then,,,it stopped. Sarina shut her eyes and concentrated, but she remained corporeal, not the mist she always sought as her ultimate refuge.
The shock on Sarina’s face made Shelly laugh her husky wolf laugh. “Did you enjoy your wine, Lady Blythe?”
Sarina froze, so shocked that she was obviously distracted from the artifice that was not only second nature to her, but was all she consisted of. Briefly, she was revealed in her true form: old, wrinkled, hideous, a hank of gray hair and no teeth but two very long, sharp fangs, one crooked with age. Red, slanted eyes gleaming with evil.
While Sarina was distracted, staring, stunned, at Shelly, Gustav threw his holy water at her.
It hit her in the face. She screamed, the eerie rage drawing Max and Angel away from their silent communion.
Tears still filled Angel’s eyes, but at least now she understood.
Max had truly loved her mother. She’d felt his pain and despair, and believed that her mother had sent him here to protect her, as he he’d proved more than once.
But what did that prove about Sarina? How could someone so sweet and kind be such a ruthless killer?
Angel stared between Sarina and Max. Sarina drew her hands away from her burned face, lovely again now her concentration had returned, but marked with burns where the holy water had struck her. Pitifully, she squinted at Angel through swollen eyes.
It’s just as I warned you. He intends to kill me first, and then you. Look in his pockets. You can see the golden handles.
Angel looked. Indeed, the golden-handled stakes peeked out of Max’s pockets.
“Sarina is the one who converted Elaine to a vampire, when she was just a young schoolgirl in England,” Max said evenly. Without vitriol or condemnation, which would have made Angel suspicious. But he stated the terrible claim merely as cold, hard fact. Fact he’d witnessed.
But then that voice Angel had heard twice before was in her head again.
He lies. He’s the one who converted her. That voice sounded neither male nor female, as if it had learned such skill over many centuries because it had absorbed so much bright life along the way. Angel remembered it vividly. It was so insidious, so tempting. Begging to be invited into Max’s home. Tempting her to drink of blood.
“Remember my family picture Angel?” Max urged her softly. “Me, as a baby, on my mother’s lap a mere hundred years ago. And I’m not strong enough to transform into mist.”
Neither am I.
“Only because I put a potion in her wine that has weakened her. Believe him, Angel. He speaks the truth,” Shelly the werewolf added urgently, padding close to Angel and sticking a cold, wet nose for comfort into Angel’s aching side.
Sarina. Patting the nose absently, Angel looked again at the pictures of Sarina on the walls. If Alexander were the killer, surely he’d be there, too. And no one had seen a trace of him for hours. His clothes were still in his room, all the horses and carriages in the stable.
Sarina had lied about helping him get away. Which means she probably killed him because he was of no further use to her.
Angel stepped away from Shelly. Away from Max. Two steps closer to Sarina. It was somehow right and good that she face her mother’s true killer on the ground where her remains lay buried.
“Did you kill your familiar, Sarina?” Angel asked calmly. “Or should I call you the Beefsteak Killer?”
You ungrateful little bitch. You are your mother’s daughter. She was a whining moralist, too.
Just like that, Sarina changed. No brief transformation like with Max. One minute she stood on two legs, the next on four. As a tiger, but an unnaturally large and ferocious one. Roaring loud enough to flake paint off the walls, the tiger leaped for Angel’s throat.
And if she’d had any doubt, as Angel fatalistically watched those jaws gape open and the fangs glistening, she saw that one tooth was crooked….
Then Max was between her and the tiger, his stakes out. But as he tried to drive one into the heart as it leapt, the tiger swiped it out of his hand, leaving deep claw marks from his shoulder to his wrist. They began to bleed. The tiger paused, one great paw raised, and sniffed. Intent now on Max, not Angel.
With a feral growl, it shoved Max to the ground and bent its great head over Max’s jugular. Its fangs sank deep, and then there was the terrible sound of suckling. A smacking of delight, as if a delicacy that had been hungered for for over a hundred years was finally being satisfied.
Max struggled against the creature with all his great strength, but even weakened, Sarina was more powerful, especially in this form. She slammed him flat to the floor with both paws and feasted at her will.
Angel picked up the fallen hammer and a stake and ran forward, raising them over the tiger’s back, but to her shock, Shelly shoved her away with her nose. Hard enough to make Angel stagger.
“No, Angel, wait.”
Unable to bear the hideous sounds as Sarina began to drain Max of blood, Angel struggled against Shelly. But her vampire powers were still weak compared to Shelly’s unnatural strength.
“Stop! I don’t want to hurt you. Another minute and you’ll see…Max will be fine.”
Angel was forced to watch as the tiger slurped harder. It looked as if Max were paling, all color leaving his face. And then….
Then a most curious thing happened.
The tiger staggered. Once, catching itself, its fangs releasing Max. It staggered again, this time sideways, allowing Max to squirm free. He was weak, but he managed to crawl away from the tiger’s great shadow and then stand, weaving slightly, but still managing to make it to Angel’s side.
He rubbed at the fang marks in his throat, but they’d already coagulated. The dark smear clearly showed the outline of one crooked fang.
The final proof positive, not that Angel needed any more.
Max tried to take the hammer and stakes away from Angel, but she held them tighter, still watching in shock as the tiger walked as if drunk. And then, sides heaving with exhaustion, it collapsed in a heap. The transformation came much more slowly this time.
As if Sarina couldn’t control it. First into a wolf, then a great dog, then a cat, then a dove, then a bat, and finally a tiny shrew. Each figure smaller and weaker than the last.
Angel and Max exchanged a look. Then, as one, they stared at Shelly, knowing who was responsible for this unexpected boon.
“Later,” she sniffed, her nose in the air as if she still scented danger. “You’d better kill her now while you can.”
Max again tried to take the hammer and stake. Again, Angel resisted. She ran over to stand above the tiny shrew. She knelt, but when the stake touched the creature’s heart…suddenly Sarina looked up at her again with those kind blue eyes.
“I always loved you, my dear. I wanted you for my companion for all eternity.”
Angel hesitated. This was, perhaps, the first truth Sarina had spoken for the last century. Angel had to know. “How could you kill so many innocent young girls? And then you tried to turn me into the same creature.”
“Survival, Angel. Survival of the fittest. You are a scientist. Ask Darwin what he thinks of such a tactic. It’s the same one human beings have been using since time immemorial.”
“But we don’t think ourselves above the moral implications of feeding on one another.”
Angel set the stake against Sarina’s heart. She lifted the hammer high.
Then Sarina’s hand was about her throat, claws piercing her flesh.
Max grabbed the hammer and stake away, raising them, but he paused when he saw what Sarina held in her other hand. The gold pocket watch.
“Get back,” Sarina spat. “Get back or I’ll use it. If I die I’ll take her with me.” Sarina moved to open the watch.
Max casually reached in his pocket and removed his own watch. “You might get a quid for that one at a clockmaker’s. But this one…” He glanced over his shoulder at Shelly.
Sarina was distracted enough to release Angel. Angel staggered away.
Understanding, Shelly shoved Angel into her empty coffin and slammed the lid down.
The Trelayne Inheritance Page 23