Bled & Breakfast

by Michelle Rowen

  I worked the borrowed legs, the skirt flapping and threatening to tangle me up. I never wore long skirts except for the odd time I was in somebody’s wedding and didn’t have a choice of bridesmaid outfit.

  I’d never dressed like a Puritan before. Actually, scratch that. In college I’d dressed up like a Pilgrim for Halloween. A sexy one with a high slit in my black skirt, a red garter, a plunging neckline, sky-high buckled patent leather heels—and a plush turkey for good measure.

  This was a bit different.

  I was literally running by the time I spotted Thierry again. He followed the girl down a dark road lit by the full moon. She appeared utterly unaware of who was ominously trailing after her.

  As she left the road, he followed. And I followed, my steps quickening to a full-out sprint when I heard a shriek.

  He now had her by an oak tree, pressed up against its thick trunk with his hand to her throat.

  I didn’t hesitate to yell: “Hey!”

  I threw the Bible directly at his head, and it successfully knocked his hat right off. A tad sacrilegious to use it as a weapon, I’ll admit, but surprisingly effective.

  He turned with a snarl to send a chillingly dark look at me.

  I chose to ignore the immediate fear that raced through me, since it really wasn’t helpful right now.

  “Don’t do it!” I forced as much conviction into my voice as I could manage. “Don’t you dare even think about it!”

  “Leave me in peace, woman,” he snarled.

  “Help me,” the girl gasped. “He’s a demon. He’s a monster from Hell who will destroy all of us.”

  My borrowed heart hammered against my borrowed rib cage. “Well . . . no, he’s not. But he is acting like an ass right now.”

  He glanced over his shoulder at me and raised an eyebrow. “An ass.”

  “A huge one,” I confirmed.

  “His eyes . . . ,” the girl managed. “They’re black as pitch. He’s been sent by Satan to devour our souls.”

  I blinked. “Actually, he just wants your blood. But the soul thing does sound a bit more impressive, doesn’t it?”

  Thierry’s darkly curious gaze didn’t leave mine—it pinned me. Even three hundred years in the past I could still be effortlessly held in place by those eyes of his. “Who are you, woman?”

  Dangerous question. “Consider me your guardian angel.”

  “My guardian angel?” His lips curved into an unpleasant smile. “It seems to me that you’re attempting to be hers.”

  A moment later, he released the girl.

  “Run,” he suggested.

  She didn’t hesitate. She sped off into the night without a backward glance.

  Thierry was in front of me a split second later. He took hold of the front of my borrowed dress and pulled me back toward the oak tree as if I weighed nothing more than a Puritan Chihuahua.

  That fear I’d been trying to ignore came back in spades.

  “So kind of you to take the place of your friend,” he growled.

  “Not my friend. Never even met her before.”

  “Then perhaps the word I should use is ‘foolish.’”

  That would certainly be one word to describe my recent decisions.

  Still, I stared up into his face, half-freaked-out, half-fascinated. I reached up to touch the line of his jaw.

  He watched me warily, frowning now, but he didn’t swat my hand away. “I think you must be a bit mad to be so bold.”

  “I am mad. Furious, actually.”

  “You don’t fear me.”

  “I fear you. Oh, absolutely, Thierry. I fear the hell out of you right now.”

  His dark brows knitted closer together. “How do you know my name? Tell me who you are.” His eyes hadn’t shifted to any color but black. I’d put this woman’s body in danger by approaching him in order to save another girl. I hated to think I might endanger this one in exchange. I’d never forgive myself for that.

  Now I was faced with the problem presented in time travel movies. How was I supposed to tell him anything that might help? Didn’t that mess with the whole past/future time paradox, or whatever it was called?

  However, since Thierry was the one who said I couldn’t lie to him, and time was of the essence here, I quickly opted for the truth.

  “I’m from the future,” I said evenly. “I needed to stop you from hurting that girl. You can’t hurt anyone else, Thierry.”

  He cocked his head, perplexed. “The future.”

  “Yes. I know you in the future. More than three hundred years from now. You’re not a killer. You’re wonderful, actually. At least, I think so.”

  A long, silent moment went by before he began to laugh. The sound coursed pleasantly through me—another reminder that this guy might be half his age and seriously troubled, but he was still my Thierry. And I could still make him laugh.

  Even though at the moment I wasn’t exactly trying to.

  “Amusing,” he said. “Wonderful, am I? And I live for three more centuries; is this so?”

  “You do.”

  His smile fell. “You expect me to believe such nonsense? There’s only one thing right now that I do believe.”

  “What?”

  “Your blood is something I need.” He came closer, sweeping the pieces of dark hair that had escaped this woman’s kerchief away from her throat. I felt his breath, hot on my skin as he pressed me against the tree.

  “You’ve amused me,” he whispered in my ear. “I won’t take your life, only a taste of it.”

  “You’re sure you’ll be able to stop in time?” I drew in a ragged breath as his lips brushed against my throat—the sexy preshow before the scary movie began. “I know you hate that you can’t control this . . .”

  He pulled back from me, his expression quizzical. “It’s like you do know me.”

  “I do.”

  Uncertainty slid across his face. “It’s impossible.”

  I started talking. Quickly. “You were sired by Veronique during the plague. You married her shortly after, but you were never happy with her. You might have been somehow dependent on her in the beginning, maybe you even thought you loved her—I mean, she does look like a Victoria’s Secret model”—not that I needed that particular reminder right now—“but there’s nothing between you deeper than a shared history. She’s vain, selfish, thoughtless. She cheats on you all the time. She doesn’t care what you do or who you do it with.”

  He stared at me as if my words shocked him before he tempered his reaction with skepticism. “Many know of Veronique’s reputation.”

  “Even some random human girl in Salem?”

  His gaze moved over my face, my throat, before returning to my eyes. “Perhaps you’re a powerful witch—one who can see into my mind to pick out words to use against me.”

  “Look at me, Thierry. I know you don’t know me right now. I know I’m in the wrong body. I know this is the wrong year, wrong century. But you have to see that there’s something in my eyes. Something you recognize. Something that time can’t steal from us.”

  The blackness in his eyes began to fade back to his regular stormy gray.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know you.”

  “Yes, you do,” I insisted. “You know me. And you know I love you more than anyone else in the whole wide world.”

  “Love?” He whispered the word, his brow furrowing.

  I knew I had to keep talking. The original owner of this body was fighting hard to launch me out of it. The pressure built like a teakettle about to start whistling. If this was what real possession was like, then it was proof that something truly unnatural had happened with Owen. “That man you met with—the one you killed. I don’t know how, but he’s somehow involved with your disappearance. It happens tonight. You vanish for fifty years.”

  Yeah, I was breaking the time travel rules big time now, but I couldn’t stop myself from warning him. I’d deal with the ramifications later.

  “Despite the madnes
s of your words, I can’t deny that there’s something about you . . .” He studied my face, as if trying to memorize it. “Perhaps I’m the one going mad tonight.”

  I was getting through to him. I knew I could do this! “You told me that I wouldn’t like what I saw if I witnessed your past. But see? I can handle it. What I see is a man who’s lost his way, who chases after treasures to fill his empty days. One who’s lived long enough that there’s nobody he trusts anymore. But you can trust me. And I trust that you can control this thirst, even when it feels like it’s going to overwhelm you.”

  “Your words are so sweet, every bit as sweet as you are.” He studied my face, brushing his fingertips across my cheek. “But you’re wrong.”

  I froze. “What?”

  “There will never be any control for me.”

  His eyes shifted back to black, and then he pressed my head to the side. I felt the bite of his sharp fangs as they sank into my borrowed flesh—total déjà-vu to what had happened with Owen. And it stung just as much as it would in my own body. I grabbed his arms, but there was no chance for me to fight him. He was way too strong.

  I barely had a chance to panic when he let go of me with a gasp and staggered back a few feet.

  My hand flew to my neck to press against the wound. “Okay, so maybe I was wrong. You don’t have any control. Like, zero. So not impressed right now!”

  Seriously, I should have saved my breath. He’d just shown me definitively that I was like a wounded goat trying to bargain with a hungry lion. I’d go with the good old-fashioned knee to groin if he came near me again—as any wounded goat should. Even lions—or master vampires—were affected by that handy self-defense move.

  I watched him cautiously when he didn’t come any closer. “Not that I’m complaining, but why did you stop?”

  There was a strange glow coming from his chest. He reached into his inner jacket pocket and pulled out the timewalker, but it was barely recognizable anymore. It now resembled a piece of bright light.

  He swore under his breath. “David said it could be triggered remotely with magic. He must have done this before I—”

  “Before you snapped his neck like a Thanksgiving turkey,” I finished for him.

  His gaze shot to mine. “What does this mean?”

  My heart was pounding right out of my chest. This is what happened! It had to be. “It means that you’re going on a little trip. And you’re not going to remember anything about it.”

  “A trip where?”

  “Fifty years into the future.”

  He looked at me, stunned.

  I gave him a frustrated glare in return. “I mean, you just bought a timewalker from an evil wizard. What do you think it’s going to do? Give you a bikini wax?”

  “This can’t happen. I won’t let it.”

  “Right. Well, good luck with that.” I crossed my arms. My borrowed neck hurt from his fangs and I felt absolutely horrible that I’d put this woman’s body in harm’s way. “I guess you should look at the bright side.”

  “What?”

  I shrugged. “You’re actually fifty years younger than we thought you were.”

  A moment later, a tornado of bright white light swirled around him, obliterating his body from view. And then he vanished into thin air.

  I stared at the spot where he’d vanished for a full minute in utter silence. “Note to self: three-hundred-year-old Thierry? Less awesome than expected.”

  And here I thought we were going to have a romantic, star-crossed, soul mates moment. Nope. He was just a vampire who wanted to suck my blood.

  As if to punctuate that thought, my incorporeal body was launched right out of the one I’d borrowed. I landed ten feet away on my back and looked up at the star-studded sky before I propped myself up on my elbows to see the dark-haired girl.

  “What in the heavens?” She glanced around. “What happened?” When she touched her throat, her fingers came away tipped with blood. “Goodness! Have I been bitten by an insect?”

  “Yeah, a six-foot-tall mosquito,” I said dryly. Still, other than the neck wound, I was extremely relieved she seemed otherwise unharmed and untraumatized.

  I watched as she picked up her Bible and scurried away from the oak tree and back to the moonlit dirt road.

  “So, Thierry,” I said out loud. “I figured out the mystery of your disappearance and why you can’t remember a single thing about it. Mission accomplished.”

  It was because there was nothing to remember—those years never happened for him.

  David said that the hours leading up to and after a timewalker journey would obliterate the traveler’s memories. Since Thierry hadn’t originally asked David to get the timewalker, he wouldn’t remember having it on his person. And David had triggered the timewalker earlier, probably when his eyes had turned red, just before his death.

  It was a delayed reaction, but it had worked like a charm.

  Right now, Thierry would be standing in this very spot in fifty years, looking around and wondering how the heck he got there.

  As for me, I hadn’t gone anywhere.

  “Okay, I’m ready to come back to the present.” I turned around in a full circle. “Anytime now, Heather.”

  I was met only by silence. Actually, scratch that. Crickets literally chirped.

  I’d defied Thierry’s wishes and his better judgment to do this spell—one that came with no money-back guarantee.

  One that could keep my spirit trapped in the past forever if I was very, very unlucky. But I wasn’t going to panic. Not yet. This delay didn’t mean something was wrong. I just had to be patient and wait it out.

  I walked back to the village and scanned the streets. Maybe while I was still here I could investigate a bit more about these witch hunters and who they were using as their hired witches. The thought disgusted me. Who would ever agree to such a horrible thing?

  Two hours later, I was still there, with no further answers.

  “Okay, maybe I was wrong.” A nervous gnawing was growing in my incorporeal gut. “Maybe getting back isn’t going to be quite as easy as I hoped.”

  Yeah, maybe you’re going to be stuck in 1692 as a ghost forever, my unhelpful inner voice informed me.

  Well, that was actually impossible. It would only be 1692 until December thirty-first. Then it would be 1693. And so on. And so on.

  So not good.

  Already, I was working on my backup plan, which mostly consisted of me possessing another body and getting a witch to help my sorry butt with another time travel spell.

  I stood in the middle of the road, thinking hard, before I finally turned, ready to take another walk through the town. Then—bam—somebody walked right through me. I gasped at the jarring sensation. It felt as if I’d hit a wall—or rather, as if a wall had hit me. My entire body turned to smoke for a moment before it re-formed. I stood there stunned while I tried to gather myself together again. Literally.

  The man who’d walked through me paused as if he’d felt something. For him it likely felt as if he’d walked through a cold spot. He glanced over his shoulder in the direction he’d come from.

  I stared at him, shocked.

  It was Jonathan Malik, the witch hunter.

  “How strange,” he said under his breath before continuing on.

  Holy crap.

  I followed, my feet quickly developing a mind of their own. I couldn’t deny that finding out more about Malik interested me, and not because he was the sexy, deadly, alpha type some women really went for, hoping that their true, pure love might help soften his hard edges and redeem his evil ways.

  No, I was just curious what motivated a monster like this, and what he might do in his spare time—when he wasn’t torturing witches for fun. It might give me a better understanding of the darkness I faced more often than I’d like to.

  He moved easily through town, his gaze sharp, but his stride wasn’t as swift as Thierry’s had been earlier. It was leisurely.

  For som
e reason, this infuriated me more than anything else.

  “You think you’re so tough,” I said to him. “Well, you’re just a man. I’m not surprised you’re stuck haunting Salem now. Must be boring for you. Too bad.”

  Not surprisingly, he ignored me completely, as if I weren’t even there.

  Suddenly, I realized where he was headed. There was a dark-haired woman up ahead, and his gaze fixed on her as he followed her through this mazelike village.

  She didn’t seem aware of him.

  Just like with Thierry earlier, a predator had fixed his sights upon unsuspecting prey. My hackles went up, my immediate need to protect something smaller and weaker from something dark and malicious. I scanned the area to see how I might be able to raise the alarm, but no one was nearby.

  He caught up to her and grabbed her wrist, halting her steps. She turned to face him with surprise.

  But then a smile stretched across her face.

  “Malik,” she whispered. Her gaze then became guarded. “You said it was unsafe for us to see each other.”

  “I tried, but I can’t stay away from you.” He raised a dark eyebrow. “It seems you’ve managed to bewitch me.”

  “Not with any spell.” Her smile returned as he gathered her into his arms and kissed her passionately, pressing her up against the side of a stone mill.

  I stared at them with shock. Not because they were a couple living in Puritan times who were obviously romantically involved, but because I now recognized the woman.

  It was Raina Wilkins.

  I stared at her, stunned. How was this possible?

  Maybe I was wrong. Maybe this wasn’t Raina, but instead an ancestor of hers that looked identical.

  “Raina, your beauty brings me back to you every time,” Malik breathed. “I need you.”

  It could be an identical ancestor with the same name.

  Even I had to admit that was stretching things. Something bizarrely supernatural was going on here, and all I could do was stare.

  “I need you, too.” Her voice broke. “I hate this, Malik. I hate it all so much. Why can’t we run away? No one has to know.”