Reaper: A raven paranormal romance (Crookshollow ravens Book 2) (8 page)

“We didn’t know about each other until today. Maybe Victor has others trapped in the castle?”

I thought of the locked room opposite mine.
He could be right.
“They were acting very peculiar.” I shuddered, remembering the way they’d leapt forward into the light, and then disappeared into the gloom without a trace. “Do you think … maybe they’d fallen victim to Morchard’s virus?”

“You might be right.” Tony glanced up. I followed his gaze to the row of birds sitting on the wall, their eyes following our every movement. All the warmth and mirth inside of me fled as I regarded those still, silent birds. I thought of what they could do if Victor ever sent them out into the world; the damage they could do. And I knew that I couldn’t leave the castle until I had found a way to stop them.

T
oday was
the day I met my new master. Or mistress.

I slumped in the back of Sir Thomas’s Bentley, facing the ancient vampire himself. Rudolpho sat in the front to work the GPS, while Leonard was driving, and I when I say driving, I use the term loosely. He weaved in and out of traffic like he was playing some kind of computer game – one of those where you got extra points for how many postboxes or prostitutes you hit. Sir Thomas seemed oblivious to the chaos in our wake. He stared out the window, humming a tune under his breath. He looked almost … excited. A four-hundred-year-old vampire, giddy with anticipation of seeing his girl? It was a strange image.

Her name was Elisabeth Carlisle, although Sir Thomas called her Libby. I’d googled her last night, and her social media profiles showed a sweet-looking, white-haired girl with bright red lipstick and kohl-smeared eyes. She was young, probably not a day over twenty-five. Several gossip blogs had been following their romance for months, and there was lots of speculation about the upcoming wedding. I couldn’t fathom how she’d ended up engaged to a slimy murderer like Sir Thomas Gillespie, but it certainly didn’t speak much for her character.

Libby’s family lived in a box-shaped Georgian hall on the other side of Crooks Crossing. The place appeared run-down; the exterior smeared with dirt, the driveway cracked, the gardens overgrown. A guard at the gate waved us in, while two members of the paparazzi camped on the verge banged on the windows and snapped pictures of our faces through the dark windows. I cringed, not liking knowing my face could be in the papers.

The large fountain in front of the doors didn’t appear to be working, the pool beneath it drained of water, leaving behind only a muddy film caked with dead leaves. When we pulled into the round driveway, several mangy dogs leapt at the car, yapping and bouncing in excitement.

Leonard and Rudolpho pushed their doors open, fighting their way through the leaping dogs. Leonard grabbed Sir Thomas’s door and yanked it open, and as soon as the vampire’s smell hit the air outside the car, the dogs leapt back.
Smart pooches,
I thought wryly, as I pushed my own door open and we approached the house.
If only Bran could have such self-preservation skills.

The front doors swung open before we’d even started to ascend the cracked marble steps. A woman leaned out, frowning. “I thought I heard you, Sir Thomas.” She said, tucking a strand of dirty blonde hair behind her ear. She didn’t sound pleased to see him.

“Hello, Rose.” Sir Thomas grinned. “I have brought Libby a wedding present.”

“Very well,” she looked at me with a mixture of distaste and interest. She pulled the door open wider, and I followed Sir Thomas inside.

The interior of the house was even more run-down than the outside. A pile of newspapers and glossy fashion catalogues stood beside the door, next to a mahogany coat rack on which hung a threadbare white mink coat. A grand oak staircase wound up from the right, the ornately carved balustrade caked with dust and draped with laundry. The wallpaper had peeled away in sections, and several of the dusty gilt frames were crooked. The whole place stank of damp and neglect.

“Elisabeth is in her room.” The woman, who I presumed was Libby’s mother, mumbled, as she picked her way through a pile of laundry dumped in the doorway of the main receiving room. “I’ll just call for—”

“Thomas!” A musical voice called from the top of the stairs. “You’re here!”

I glanced up at the woman who had stolen my master’s heart. Libby Carlisle ran down the stairs, her long, ice-white hair flowing behind her. She was a wisp of a thing, even younger-looking in person, and the pastel gown she wore billowed around her thin legs as she hurried down towards us. She looked more like an elf than a woman.

Sir Thomas’s face had completely lit up at her approach. He walked to the bottom of the stairs and held his arms open, and they embraced as though they had been apart for years. I glowered at them, resenting the fact that they could be together so freely while Belinda was trapped in Morchard’s house and I could do nothing.

“Nauseating, isn’t it?” Libby’s mother groaned, her eyes flicking over me with a kind of bemused approval. “So you are the gift, then? You’re a bit unkempt, but nothing my stylist couldn’t fix. That vampire knows how to deliver. If all of your kin look like you, I might have to ask for a Bran for myself.”

“Don’t come any closer,” I growled, my hands clenched into fists. Sir Thomas and Libby were snogging on the stairs, their tongues making slurping noises against each other. It was as though he was deliberately rubbing my nose in the fact that I was trapped with him.

“Cole!” Sir Thomas barked. “Come over here and meet your new mistress.”

My ring twinged, reminding me of the pain that awaited if I even thought of disobeying. I turned on my heels and rushed across the entrance hall, standing at the bottom of the stairs, so the future Lady Gillespie could stare down at me. Her icy-blue eyes swept over my body, taking in my leather jacket, my clenched fists, the stony expression on my face.

“Hello there,” she smiled.

I grunted in reply. Pain flared through my body. I grabbed my chest as the pain forced the air from my lungs. “H-hello,” I choked out. “It’s a pleasure … Miss Carlisle …”

“Call me Libby. We’re going to become very close, after all.” She turned to her fiancé. “Baby, please. Don’t hurt him.”

“Libby, honey. We’ve spoken about this. You need to assert your authority over your Bran. Remember, this man is not your companion or your friend. He is your slave.”

Gillespie’s voice faded away, replaced by a loud ringing in my ears. My head felt light, as though it might float away. I clawed at my throat, but the invisible hands clenched it tight, choking the life out of me.

“I don’t see why I couldn’t be friends with my slave,” Libby shot back. “Please, Thomas.”

My throat opened up, and I gasped in sweet air, gripping the dusty balustrade as I doubled over.

“Very well.” Gillespie removed the ring from his finger, and placed it in her tiny palm. “He is all yours, my love.” He kissed her knuckles tenderly.

Libby slipped the ring on to her finger. I grabbed the balustrade to steady myself as another wave of nausea passed through my body, my chest tightening as the two sides of my body fought each other. The pain wasn’t anywhere near as great as it had been this morning, however, and a moment later, the feeling had passed, and my body felt completely normal once more. I looked down at the ring on my finger, and found it to be cool, and loose. Libby was definitely human, she didn’t possess the crushing, overwhelming power of her lover.

“I’m so excited,” she threw her arms around Sir Thomas again, kissing his cheeks. “I can’t believe he’s all mine.”

“I’ll give you anything your heart desires,” Sir Thomas murmured, his hands cupped her cheeks.

“Kill me with fire.” I scoffed. They were insufferable.

“Do not allow him to speak like that,” Sir Thomas admonished her, but Libby was giggling too hard to respond. I felt Sir Thomas’s power pressing against my chest again, weaker now that I was not bound to him, but still uncomfortable. Clearly, he still retained some power over me.

“If you can’t handle him, dear. I’ll happily take him off your hands,” the mother drawled from the foyer.

“I think we’re going to get on great.” Libby extended her hand to me. “Come on, I want to show you my room.”

“Go with Libby,” Sir Thomas commanded me. “Her mother and I have much to discuss.”

Ordinarily, I wouldn’t take orders from someone who wasn’t my master, but I didn’t like what Sir Thomas could do to me if I disobeyed him, so I followed Libby up the stairs. The second floor was an even bigger mess, with boxes stacked on the faded carpet, peeling wallpaper, and filthy crystal chandeliers covered in blown bulbs. Libby pushed open a door and ushered me inside.

“This is my room,” she said in her wispy voice. “Sorry about the mess. I’m packing my things for moving to Thomas’s castle.”

I gazed around me, unable to believe what I was seeing. The enormous room looked like something from a Disney film. The walls, ceiling, and drapery were all a dusky pastel pink. The white four-poster bed decorated with rows of frilly lace. A pink settee sat under a large bay window overlooking the garden. Pink and white flowers sat in vases on every surface. It looked like a Barbie dream house.

The most powerful vampire in the world was marrying this … this
child
. The whole thing was absurd. Before I could stop myself, a deep laugh tickled at my lips. I covered my mouth with my hands, but I was too far gone. I snorted, my whole body shaking from the strain of holding in my mirth.

“Something funny?” Libby asked me, slumping down on her pastel-pink bedspread, and picking her shoes off. I noticed that under her pink gown she wore black Doc Martens, and red-and-white striped socks.

“Forgive me … Mistress.” I choked, desperately trying to supress further bursts of laughter. “I just … I guess I’m having a difficult time imagining how you might decorate Sir Thomas’s dark, gothic castle.”

Libby waved her hand. “Oh, you mean all this? Laugh away. I always do.” She stuck out her tongue, and I saw it had a pink stud through it. “My stepmother – she’s that gross woman downstairs – did all the decorating here. She thinks I’m six years old.”

“How old
are
you?”

“Twenty-two.”

She’s so young. Does she know what she’s marrying into?
“And you know Sir Thomas is … I mean, he’s …”

“You can say it,” Libby grinned. “He’s a vampire. A blood-sucker. An immortal one. I know all about him, Cole. I know all about your world.” She got up then, went over to her pink bureau, and pulled open a drawer. I expected to see frilly pink underthings lined up in neat rows. But instead, the drawer was stuffed with an array of oddments. Crystals, decks of tarot cards, candles in different colours, leather and velvet pouches. Leather-bound journals with sigils stamped on the fronts in gold leaf. “I’ve been learning about the secret world of magic and shifters and vampires for years.”

“You practice witchcraft?”

“A little. I’m not very good yet. I don’t have anyone to teach me, and my stepmother won’t exactly let me join a coven or anything. She disapproves of this sort of thing.” Libby pulled out one of the journals and started to thumb through the pages. “I found this book amongst my grandmother’s things. She was a powerful witch, although she turned from the craft when she married my grandfather, and raised my father to think witches were evil, an opinion he passed on to that cow downstairs when he married her. It was in this book that I first read about Bran. When Thomas asked me what I wanted for a wedding present, it was the first thing I thought of.”

She reached over and wrapped her tiny arms around me, embracing me in a tight hug. I stood still, unsure of what I should be doing. No master of mine had ever hugged me before.

“We’re going to have the best fun,” Libby said. “You can live with us in Sir Thomas’s castle, and while Thomas is working, you and I can have adventures. It will be great.”

“Yeah, sure.” Belinda’s face burned my mind. I didn’t want to leave Crookshollow, not while she was in danger. But, of course, I would have no choice.

“You don’t look very happy,” she said to me. “How come?”

“Do you really want to know?” Masters didn’t usually ask slaves about their personal lives, either.

“Of course I want to know. I asked you, didn’t I?”

“Most masters don’t care much about the emotions of their Bran.”

“I’m not most masters.”

“That much is obvious,” I smiled at her. “You seem really cool, Libby. I can already tell you’re worlds above my last two masters. A woman I … care about greatly … was kidnapped last night. Victor Morchard has her trapped in his castle. I’m worried about her safety, and there’s nothing I can do.”

If she heard my dig at her future husband, she didn’t acknowledge it. “Does Thomas know about this?”

“Yes. He allowed me to go to the castle yesterday, but Victor won’t give Belinda back until I have killed Sir Thomas. He believes Sir Thomas killed his son, but he denies it.”

“If Thomas says he didn’t hurt this man, he’s telling the truth.” Libby said firmly. She patted my shoulder. “Oh, Cole. I am so sorry. This sounds just awful. You’re not going to do it, are you? You won’t hurt my Thomas?”

“Even if I wanted to, which I do, I couldn’t.” I held up the ring. “He seems to hold some incredible power over me, even though I now belong to you. But I have to warn you, he’s not a big teddy bear. Sir Thomas Gillespie has done some pretty despicable things.”

“I know,” she said. “But he’s changed his ways. I’m sure in time you’ll see—”

“He killed my father, Libby. I’m not ever going to be able to forgive him for that.”

“How? How did he do that? I’m sure he wouldn’t have done so on purpose—”

“He was shooting clay pigeons at Lord Carnarvon’s estate.” I squeezed my eyes shut. The memory of it was painful. “My father had been sent to deliver an urgent message to Lord Carnarvon. He saw the men out on the field, and swung around the back to approach them. But Sir Thomas aimed his gun directly at my father and shot him out of the sky. He died from blood loss from the wound. Luckily, that was before Sir Thomas could suck him dry.”

Libby wrapped her arms around me, embracing me in her tiny body. She smelled sweet, like candy. I raised my hand, and rubbed her back.

“I’ll speak to him,” she whispered. “I’ll see what we can do to rescue your love. I don’t want you to be sad, Cole.”

“That’s enough of that. I’ll ruin you for Thomas if you keep on acting like a human being. Do you want me to do anything right now?” I asked.

“Sure. You can help me pack.”

For the next two hours I taped boxes and wrapped unicorn figurines in bubble wrap while Libby chatted about Thomas and witchcraft and her new life on the great Gillespie estate. I was amazed to discover she was actually quite intelligent. She had a vast knowledge of mythology and occult lore, and her bookshelf stocked books on everything from chemistry and Shakespeare to the hunt for El Dorado.