Dawn Thompson (26 page)

A gentle wind fanned the flames, and Joss’s nostrils flared as the musky, sickening sweet stench of burnt flesh—horse and human—filled them. Somewhere beneath the pile Otis lay beheaded, and tears not entirely brought on by the acrid smoke welled in Joss’s eyes.
Good-bye, old friend,
he murmured in his mind.
Poor devil didn’t even see it coming. Good God! Could I have prevented it?

“There is no time for nursing regrets,” Milosh said. Joss gave a start. Would he ever get used to the Gypsy answering his very thoughts? No, probably not, but there were times in the past when that talent had saved him—and his father before him—and he had no doubt such a moment would come again.

They didn’t access the secret room by way of the tunnel. The rear door was closer, and the howling of the wolves seemed louder now despite the fire that should have kept them distant. Joss threw the bolt on the door behind them, and they made their way below stairs to the all but forgotten room at the end of the hall.

It was cold inside without a fire on such a bitter night, but Joss scarcely noticed the chill after coming in from
the windswept snow. His mind was upon the conversation he was about to have with the legendary Milosh, and what it meant for his future—if he even had a future. He had begun to doubt it.

He set down the lantern he’d carried from the stable, and took his seat in an ancient straight-back chair. Milosh remained standing, resting his elbow on the mantel of the vacant hearth. Wind from the tunnel beyond the false back behind the grate made a mournful, wailing sound. It rattled the sliding panel and ruffled the hem of Milosh’s greatcoat. It echoed the howl of the wolves, and sent cold chills racing along Joss’s spine. When the Gypsy broke the awful silence Joss stiffened, and the chair beneath him creaked.

“You are not undead,” the Gypsy said, “I told you that already. You are not a vampire in the conventional sense either, though you are
vampir
—you know that already as well. What else could you be, the offspring of two infected with the corruption?”

“Then, what use this conversation?”

“Let me finish,” said the Gypsy. “You’ve known this all along. How else do you account for your extraordinary senses of smell and hearing, your ability to communicate with your mind? How else do you account for being able to shapeshift into a wolf since puberty?”

Joss relaxed somewhat, and the Gypsy went on. “I came here fearing what I might find. I put it off for years, afraid that . . . Well, no matter, I fault your parents for not preparing you more thoroughly for what may come. But that is neither here nor there at this point. So far, you’ve experienced the fangs but not the bloodlust that goes with them. It is still thus . . . yes?”

Joss nodded. “But how long before I do?” he said.

Milosh hesitated, smiling the half smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “I still cannot give you a definitive answer,” he said. “I have seen many things in my more than three-and-a-half centuries. Now I must discern between that which I want to be the case, and that which is. It is much harder in this, because I have allowed myself to become closer to the Hyde-Whites than any of the other hunters I have mentored. If my first assessment was correct, your fangs will simply be your weapons, and your ‘gifts’ the side effects of the condition—including the heightened sexual intensity you were afraid to tell me about.”

Joss gave a start. Was the legendary Gypsy clairvoyant as well? “And if you are wrong?” he said.

“Then the bloodlust will eventually come upon you, and you will be as your parents and myself, needing to renew the ritual in order to keep the feeding frenzy at bay.”

“When will we know?”

“I would like to offer an opinion,” said Milosh, “but I cannot. I have never seen this before. I have never seen nor heard of such a case.”

“There has to be some way to tell—a test, something to try?”

“My answer,” Milosh said, “you won’t like. The only test is time, and you are not a patient entity, Joss Hyde-White.”

“There are reasons for that.”

“The girl?”

“What can I offer her, Milosh . . . like this? She has been cruelly used, and now me—and
this
.” He flicked his teeth with his thumb. “I’d sooner die than cause her harm.”

“She accepted you, fangs and all, did she not?”

Joss nodded. He wasn’t going to question how the enigmatic Gypsy knew. He didn’t have to; Milosh knew
his innermost thoughts. Hadn’t he proven it again and again?

“Yes, you have that gift as well,” said the Gypsy, answering Joss’s next thought almost before it crossed his mind.

“You see, that is what frightens me, Milosh,” Joss defended. “These ‘powers,’ these ‘gifts’ my inheritance has bestowed upon me. I fear they come at a price.”

“All worthwhile things come at a price,” said the Gypsy. “But let me tell you what I told your father: Do not question the gifts,
use
them for the good. Use them to fight that which you abhor—that which through no fault of your own you have become: the
vampir
. It is a noble calling for such as we, the resistors the Brotherhood—more wolf than man or vampire, we have embraced the blood moon, and we are committed to hunt and destroy the evil that has marked us.”

“Werewolves?” Joss breathed. “Is that what we are? What you have become—what you want
me
to become? Is that possible?”

The Gypsy smiled his humorless smile. “No, Joss, not werewolves,” he said. “Are you a werewolf when you shapeshift? No. It is simply that so much of the work of the Brotherhood is done in the form of a wolf that we tend to take on the traits of that noble creature.”

Joss’s brows knitted in a frown, and the Gypsy went on quickly. “When you shapeshift, do you not think like a wolf? Do you not move and hunt and kill with the instincts of a wolf? When humans lose one sense, another grows stronger. If we lose our sight, our hearing improves. If we lose our hearing, our sense of smell improves. This is a simplistic explanation, but it illustrates my point. When we lose the bloodlust and take on the mantle of the wolf in our mission to seek out and destroy
the vampire, our wolf incarnation becomes stronger. And we cannot exist as the wolf over time and
not
become one with it, Joss.”

“I have always been one with it,” Joss said. “Since I was breeched, I’ve run in the body of the wolf. We are as one. The wolf is an extension of myself—of my being—able to do things I cannot do in human form, to take me places I cannot otherwise go.”

“It was the same with your father,” Milosh reflected, a faraway look come to his deep-set Gypsy eyes. “As I am sure it still is. And your mother also, though she is one with the panther.”

“I wish they were here . . . ,” Joss said.

“If they were, they would not be able to help you. I do not even know for certain if
I
can.”

Joss hung his head. “I’ve fallen in love with Cora, Milosh,” he murmured. “I was attracted to her the minute I set eyes upon her. Then, when I learned that Clement robbed her of her virtue, I set out to prove that all men were not of his ilk. It was a cavalier undertaking—at least at first, but now it’s become something more, something I have no right to hope for. Oh, I’ve had women, but there was never any danger of my heart becoming involved, if you take my meaning. But this. I
want
this, Milosh.”

“Then take it,” said the Gypsy. “If she accepted you, fangs and all, you can face whatever may come together.”

“I would have to tell her all of it.”

“Then do it! Love transcends all things. If she has already accepted the worst, you have naught to fear. There is a more important question to face. May I welcome you to the Brotherhood? You have been a member since the womb, Joss Hyde-White, though you did not know.
What I need to know before we enter into battle is, will you embrace it now that you are aware?”

Joss got to his feet and looked the Gypsy in the eyes. “Yes,” he said. “I will.”

Cora yawned and stretched awake, alone beneath the counterpane. No, she hadn’t dreamed it; the imprint of Joss’s dynamic body was clearly defined in the feather bed beside her. What time was it? She threw back the quilts and swung her feet to the floor, which was cold despite the thick Persian carpet underfoot so far from the fire’s reach.

She stretched again. A dull ache grieved her body; but what a pleasant ache, evidence of the intimacies she had shared with Joss. A soft moan escaped her lips remembering his embrace, and she slid her hands the length of her body where his hands had been, where his lips had been, and moaned again.

Splashing water from the pitcher into the basin on the dry sink, she refreshed herself. Joss had draped her frock and underthings over the rolled-arm lounge. She padded over and struggled into them, proud of the way she was managing without an abigail. Slipping on her shoes, she went to the window and opened the portieres, hoping to determine the time. Unprepared for the
sight that met her eyes, Cora gasped, and gasped again. The ink blue night sky, vacant of stars, was sullied with great belching plumes of smoke rising from a fire raging between stable and paddock. Hungry tongues of crimson flame licked the sky, spewing showers of sparks upward into the starless vault. The deadly crackle and roar of the inferno rushed at her ears through the frozen windowpane.

“Joss!”
she cried.

Spinning on her heel, she snatched her hooded mantle from the armoire, flung it over her shoulders and ran from the room. The corridor was vacant, and she raced along it to the yellow suite, but no one answered her knock, and she poked her head in but neither Joss nor Parker was there. Their absence flagged danger, and Cora wasted no more time in her search. Racing down the back stairs, she burst through the rear door and bounded through the drifts toward the fire, her heart hammering in her breast for fear of what she would find.

Why hadn’t he wakened her? That something untoward was afoot there was no question. That there was precious little she could do never entered her mind. She could not sit idly by and let the stars alone knew what danger Joss was facing go unchallenged. Whatever it was, they would face it together.

Cora’s morocco leather slippers were bulging with snow by the time she reached the stable. She scarcely felt the cold. She was numb to all but raw fear that she was too late—for what exactly, she neither knew nor cared; her mind would not process what her fears tried to plant there. The deadly fangs she’d seen—felt against her lips, her tongue—told all too well Joss’s dark secret.
It was true that he had not harmed her with them. Yet, even if there was danger that one day he might, she had taken him inside her. To her, he was the first because she had given herself freely, and he had awakened her to mysteries of the flesh she never dreamed existed. She had accepted him wherever it may lead. Right now, that was toward a blazing bonfire, the heat of which narrowed her eyes even from this distance.

Sickening-sweet corruption threaded through her nostrils.
Burning flesh!
There was no mistaking the smell of charred musk, rot, hair and decay. Was Joss among those towering flames? She had come as near as she dared. The scorching heat was driving her back. It had melted the snow in her slippers, and snatched her breath away; her nostrils burned from it. She called out Joss’s name over the roar of the inferno, but it was siphoned off on the wind, and no answer came except the roar and hiss and crackle of the flames licking—what was it, horses? So intent upon the fire that was driving her back further still, she failed to hear the hoofbeats approaching. She failed to see the portly caped figure mounted bareback upon a wild-eyed stallion until snorts of white breath from flared nostrils spun her around. Her heart leapt in relief, expecting Joss’s handsome figure at her back when she turned, but the hands that hauled her up onto the phantom horse’s back were pinching and cruel, and she screamed at the top of her voice, but the sound was carried off on the wind.

To her horror, it was Clive Clement, and she was trapped in his arms with the breath knocked out of her. He spun the glowing-eyed animal beneath them toward the descent from the tor to the valley below.

“So, I have you at last!” he triumphed. He shook her roughly. “Do not struggle,” he warned. “You cannot escape me, miss. Now then, hold fast! Your bridegroom awaits, and there isn’t a moment to lose.”

“I shall tell her at once,” Joss said, stopping beside the toile suite with Milosh. “I should have long ago, but I feared she would do something foolish—run screaming from the house and put herself in harm’s way among the vampires stalking this Abbey.”

“If you need me to back you up . . .”

“Believe me, I shall not hesitate if I do.”

The Gypsy nodded, and slipped inside his apartments.

Joss took a deep breath and continued along the corridor. He had to act now, while he still possessed the courage. Thinking about how he would begin to tell her all that he knew of his situation, it took a moment to notice that the bench outside the master suite was vacant. Where was Parker? It wasn’t like him to vacate his post.

Reaching the door, he rapped upon it gently, deciding the valet must have been summoned inside. When no answer came, he threw the door open to empty apartments, and adrenaline surged through him. He streaked through the sitting room, bedroom and dressing room, calling Cora’s name, all the while knowing she wouldn’t answer. Where could she have gone, and why, when she was safe here? Striding back through the bedroom, he pulled up short before Parker on the threshold, a missive in his hand.

“Bloody hell, man, where the devil have you been?” he barked.

All color left the valet’s face. He looked like a cadaver standing there. “Th-the door . . .” he stammered. “I went to answer the door. ’Twas a messenger from the village
with this, sir.” He extended the missive. “I was gone but a moment.”

“Miss Applegate is not in her rooms,” said Joss, snatching the sealed parchment. “You were away long enough for her to disappear. Where could she have gone? Do you hear that howling? We are under siege here!”