Blood Red (8 page)

“But she let you continue to hunt vampires because she knew how important it is,” Althea reminded him. “She let you follow your heart.”

“And my sweet Anne would have me head if she knew I had let you do it.” He stretched out his leg, wincing, and rubbed his thigh through his breeches. “You’re a distraction to me, lass. I can’t be worrying about your safety—”

“And when have you ever needed to do that? I’m well able to take care of myself.”

Father leaned back against the seat as the coach took a dip to the right and rattled through deep ruts. “The truth then, lovey? I want you to find yourself a husband. Give me grandchildren. I fancy myself as Grandpa.”

Her heart dipped as abruptly as the carriage. Marriage? She couldn’t marry! A husband would never accept a vampire-hunting wife. The brief time she’d spent in London had taught her two things. Gentlemen expected a wife to be proper and docile, preferably a pretty china ornaments. And twenty-three year old bluestockings in spectacles, with only modest family connections and no fortune, did not catch the attention of gentlemen.

Althea opened her mouth to protest. But a soft light sparkled in her father’s eyes—dreamy happiness at the thought of grandchildren. No doubt her father envisioned sitting beneath an apple tree and bouncing a hearty boy and pretty girl on his knees.

Her thoughts whirled like the swirling lights of last night. Her father longed for grandchildren. But what of her hopes? Did she want children? She’d always thought she should endeavor to rid the world of evil before bringing children into it, but that was, of course, impossible.

Would it be worth giving up her dreams, giving herself in marriage, to have children?

How could she give herself in marriage now?

A guilty flush swept her face and she couldn’t stop it. Her fingertips tingled as though they still touched the velvety steel of Yannick’s and Bastien’s cocks. Deep in her soul, she heard them moan again. Her body tightened instantly, hot and yearning. Her nipples puckered beneath her plain gown, her gray pelisse. Her quim throbbed like a second heartbeat.

Would this always happen to her now?

She turned to the window and watched the small village of Maidensby slip below as the carriage climbed to the church grounds.

She did see Father’s point. Flooded with thoughts of touching and stroking Yannick and Bastien, she couldn’t think of anything else. Naughty, sinful dream memories controlled her.

Blood Red by Sharon Page ©2006 Advance Reader Copy www.SharonPage.com 37

How exciting it had been to feel them both in her hands. To know they were both hard for her.

She loved thinking about their cocks, their hard, powerful bodies, their silvery eyes glowing with sexual hunger. She loved remembering how time had stood still, how nothing else had mattered but pleasure.

She couldn’t even concentrate on hunting. She only wanted to dream of sex.

Stop it immediately
, Althea warned herself. She dragged her thoughts from the shadowy bedroom of her dreams and looked out at the world around her.

Pale sunlight struck thatched roofs and shingled ones. Sheep ambled through newly green fields. The carriage climbed, passing a gnarled farmer driving a herd, passing two young ladies in bonnets, mud splatters on their hems, large bouquets of spring flowers held in gloved hands.

An idyllic place to hide a vampire. A place where she had no right behaving like a…a strumpet.

“Althea, pet?”

Her father’s tentative, gentle voice struck her like a rap to her knuckles.

She turned back, eyes watery. What could she tell him? “But I can’t leave you in the midst of this fight.”

“I’ll survive it. No fears there.” His smile radiated confidence, but her stomach lurched with the rocking carriage this time.

She took a deep breath. “But this is what I want.”

“You don’t know that, pet. I never gave you a chance to have a normal life.”

“But balls and London and society would never feel normal to me.” How could she give up hunting evil for such an insular, unimportant life?

And she didn’t belong in polite society. She’d allowed Yannick—a vampire—to take scandalous liberties. Liberties she had very much enjoyed. And while gentlemen of the
ton
might do such things, unmarried ladies certainly could not. How could she endure bland kisses when she dreamed of wild sex with two vampires?

Out of the carriage window, she spied the tall stone posts of the church gates.

“London soon would, lass. And surely you must want to marry.” The twinkle deepened.

They passed the first of the headstones. The old ones, one hundred, two hundred years old, were worn and faded, many split and broken. The carriage rattled on gravel as they passed stone crosses and a large crypt. Large oak branches stretched over the old graves, and a breeze sent shadows dancing. Flitting ghosts, she thought fancifully.

Althea’s heart danced as wildly as the shadows. Mystery and adventure surrounded her.

She was about to take part in a ceremony that should be impossible. She was about to raise the undead.

How could a stuffy ball ever compare?

She stroked the small case she held. “The truth is that I don’t want to marry. I want to pursue vampires.”

“And I want to sleep easy, Althea. You’re to marry.”

Suspicious, Althea stared at her father. “You haven’t already chosen someone, have you?

You wouldn’t do—”

The carriage lurched to a halt.

Blood Red by Sharon Page ©2006 Advance Reader Copy www.SharonPage.com 38

“Of course not, pet.” The door swung open. Sunlight spilled in, tinted with the heady scent of spring pollen, filled with the ruckus of birds. “But I’ve engaged a lady to help in your search.”

As he struggled to stand, Althea launched up and grabbed his elbow to assist. “What lady?”

“The wife of my old friend, Sir Randolph Peters, a fellow of the Royal Society.”

Horror and embarrassment wrapped icy fingers around her heart. “A matchmaker?”

Father glanced at the ground, a clear look of guilt shrouding his blue eyes, but before he could say a word, Mick O’Leary leaned in the door. “Are ye ready, sir?”

Loud protest would have to wait. She wouldn’t humiliate herself in front of Mr. O’Leary.

She bit her tongue and helped her father to the folding stair. But in a low and determined whisper, she set down her position. “No, Father. I don’t want a match. And I’m not going to London.”

With a grunt, Father stepped down, favoring his injured leg. “Oh yes, you are, lass. Indeed you are.”

As Mick O’Leary led the way down the rough path, Althea brushed at a bee that buzzed around her bonnet. Her case bumped against her thigh as she followed Father, Mr. O’Leary, and two of the workmen carrying the large trunk.

Once she would have breathlessly watched the movement of Mr. O’Leary’s muscles beneath his linen shirt. This morning all she could think about was Yannick… and touching both him and his brother in her dreams…

Loose stones rolled down the path as her half boots skidded along and mud splattered her hem. She heard her father muttering, reviewing the incantation he was to use to break the curse.

Would it work?

They reached the bottom of the hill, the sod torn up where the men had dug up the old stone tomb. Mortared bricks had filled the doorway the day before. The men had labored since dawn and now enough brick was knocked out to allow entrance. Light glowed from within.

“The case, Althea.”

He meant to make her wait outside. “I am going in.”

Mick O’Leary grinned. “It’s dirty in there, love, and smells none too fresh—”

Her gaze shot sparks at the dark-eyed Irishman. “It’s not as though I’ve not done this before.”

He held out his bare, callused hand. “Then let me help you, Miss Yates.”

“O’Leary…” Father warned.

She stomped toward the opening, fed up with them all, gripped the bricks to her side and hoisted herself in.

Lantern light lit the large space and played along the smooth stone walls, tooled into the rock that formed the hillside. The air in the crypt was still, dank, but no longer stale. Fresh air flowed in from the breach made in the bricked entrance. There was no stench of decay—the bodies in the sarcophagi were not dead and decomposing.

Several hundred years ago the tomb had been built, buried with earth and sod and apparently forgotten to all but legendary vampire hunter, Lord Devars. The peer had used it in the last century as a place to bring and destroy vampires.

Blood Red by Sharon Page ©2006 Advance Reader Copy www.SharonPage.com 39

And Zayan had known of its existence.

The search for this hidden crypt had been exciting, even though it consisted mostly of reviewing yellowing records and worn maps. She remembered the thrill in her heart when Mr.

O’Leary’s shovel had hit the walled-up entrance.

The light played along the smooth tops of the stone sarcophagi. A dozen filled the gloomy, musty crypt, arranged in neat rows.

“Cavern of the Vampires.” Father’s voice held breathless excitement—like a boy with a new pony.

The workmen climbed in the opening, carrying several wooden stakes sharpened to killing points. Nausea roiled in her, sudden and weakening. Her legs almost gave way and she rested her hand on the nearest stone slab for support.

Of course they would kill all the vampires but the one they wanted. But were they all ghouls, or were they men of charm and beauty, like Yannick? Were there other vampires like him? Was his brother also like him? Not just a creature driven by bloodlust?

She felt a stare and whipped around to see Father studying her intently. His gray brows drew together.

Could he guess she was weakening towards a vampire?

Oh no.

And she wasn’t. Not really. She still knew that vampires were evil and must be destroyed.

Of course, she still knew that.

To cover up, she walked along the row, touching the fronts of the stone coffins to hide her unsteady gait. Her fingers traced chiseled dates and names. Anthony Austen 1612 (d) 1705.

Francis Smythe 1512 (d) 1705.

The third from the last was the oldest but the letters were still crisp. Stephen of Myrlyn 1100. (d) 1706.

The dates of creation as a vampire. The date of destruction. These vampires had already been destroyed.

Zayan was estimated to be two thousand years old, but to see the evidence of Stephen of Mrylyn’s long existence sent a shot of pain through her heart. To walk the night for over six hundred years.

In six hundred years Yannick would still walk the earth, while she would be long buried.

Long turned to dust. Long forgotten.

Guilt slid through her like poison through blood. She’d lied to Yannick. She’d looked away from his penetrating, glowing eyes to hide her lie, but still she feared he knew. But that didn’t matter because he would know for certain tonight. What would he do?

Would he come to her in a rage or would he not come to her at all? Which did she fear the most?

The next coffin made her want to cry. It was not dated as the others, with the date of the transformation to undead and the date of destruction.

William. 1700 – 1708. IN HOPE OF ETERNAL SLEEP.

An eight year old vampire?

Heart in her throat, she moved on and stared down at the front of the last coffin. Blank. Her Blood Red by Sharon Page ©2006 Advance Reader Copy www.SharonPage.com 40

fingers, in brown kid gloves, skimmed over smooth, cool white stone. A hum began beneath her fingertips. A soft, light vibration that strengthened and took on a rhythm. Low and steady, with long gaps during which her heart seemed to beat a hundred times. A vampire’s heartbeat.

“Which is the one we want, sir?” O’Leary asked.

She knew even as her father spoke.

“The end one. Where Althea is standing.”

She glanced up. O’Leary strode toward her carrying a long iron bar and a second lamp. Her father stood in the far corner—near the entrance, with the young, brawny workmen. One pushed with another bar and stone grated over stone in the far corner, setting her teeth on edge.

“Burned to ashes,” her father announced, his voice matter-of-fact.

Had even eight-year-old William been destroyed that way?

As O’Leary reached her side, Father called out, “Don’t be so blasted impatient, O’Leary.

Put the bloody bar down for the moment.”

Despite his wounded leg, Father reached them in a mere moment. Again her father stared at her, as though he knew she could feel the presence of Sebastien de Wynter inside the coffin. Her hand still rested on the lid. Energy seemed to pulse into her hand, up her arm. She couldn’t move her hand away.

Though she was certain, she found it all so impossible. “How did Zayan bring him in here?

The entrance looked untouched for a hundred years. So did the hillside. Did he truly pass through earth and brick to bury Sebastien here?”

Father gave a curt nod. “He could do that. Or he could open the entrance with a wave of his hand and seal it up afterward with mere thought.”

“How is that possible?”

“How is it possible that the dead walk, love? Just because we can’t understand, doesn’t mean we can’t accept the existence of such power. And that we can’t recognize how dangerous it is.”

Father pointed at her case. “Lay that on the next coffin, please, love, and open it.”

She had only seen inside it once, just the briefest glance. She’d caught a glimpse of gold fashioned into a thick, flat necklace of some sort. As she flipped up the lid, she saw two such necklaces sat within, surrounded by a sand that was made of small pebbles of silver and gold.

Two necklaces.

Shocked, she turned. Father was laying out strings of dried herbs along the white lid in a crisscross pattern, like a diamond-paned window. He was chanting and she knew she couldn’t interrupt him now.