“Eireann himself was also poisoned; he appeared to have strung his body up on the Christmas tree before perishing.
“The manor remained empty until one such creature as Lady Veronica Delarue, an Undead French dignitary, purchased it at a bargain. Before then, every Christmas Eve, Londoners told the tale of the spirits of the Cumberlands, flying in on the snowstorm, every year, the same night. We believe that the family, even in death, are still protecting their home from the monsters.”
Benjamin cleared his throat and closed the book. “Well, my friend, I believe you have got off easy this time.”
“What do you mean?” Vincent asked.
“The solution, my dear Cross, is elementary: we dig up the corpses and burn the remains.”
“Is it not one of the most beautiful sights you have seen?” gushed Veronica as she walked with the hunters into Kensal Green Cemetery. The snow ceased falling that afternoon, leaving the old cemetery in a blanket of pure white, so bright it blinded her as it reflected the light of the moon.
George grimaced. “No, not particularly.”
“Normal folk don’t go around calling cemeteries at night beautiful,” Mahon added.
“Thank Heavens I am not normal, then,” Veronica replied, giving Vincent a little wink.
It was late, but somewhere in the distance, a church practicing for Midnight Mass could be heard singing holiday hymns. It added to the beautiful aura of the night. She adored winter: nothing was actually dead. Nature was merely cold and slumbering, waiting for the proper moment to waken. Much like a vampire in their unearthly sleep.
“No, my dear Lady, no one would ever dare call you normal,” Benjamin agreed. He and Michael led the band through the cemetery, searching for the burial plots of the Cumberland family.
“They won’t be there,” Veronica said when Michael turned towards the rows of commoners’ graves. “They would have a vault.”
It did not take long to locate the vault. It was large and gaudy, even for Veronica’s tastes. Vincent went ahead and used a large pair of pliers to snap open the lock. The door swung open, letting out the noxious air, pent up for over a century.
“Well, that’s rather unpleasant,” Veronica commented. She watched as the men walked into the vault, lighting torches where the moonlight did not penetrate. “Are you certain I cannot assist?”
“We are,” Vincent said as he set the heavy bag filled with a myriad of tools down.
Veronica looked about, counting eleven coffins covered with mold and in various states of decay. They were sealed, ascertaining difficulty for grave robbers that the commoners did not have.
“Shall we begin?” Benjamin asked, picking up a long, thin metal rod. Iron, Veronica noticed. He turned and brought the rod down on the lid of one rotting coffin, creating a loud clatter that made Veronica’s teeth set on edge. It worked, as the coffin lid was now shattered, but why do that eleven times?
“Would you gentlemen move out of the way?” Veronica asked, though it was obvious she was not making a request, but rather a demand. She passed by Benjamin and approached the next coffin. Her eyes slipped closed and she removed her gloves, willing her claws to come to the surface.
She knew all eyes were on her as her elegant hands began to change, nails darkening and elongating, appearing to meld into the fingers’ flesh. Where slim fingers rested were now ten long claws resembling a bat.
“Bloody Hell,” George muttered, earning him a slap to the skull from Mahon.
Methodically yet swiftly, Veronica slid her claws along the sealant on the coffin lid, and as she made her way around, she used her Undead strength to pop the loosened lid off with minimal effort and no noise whatsoever.
She turned to the men and said, “Now, wasn’t that, as a whole, simpler and more civilised?”
Vincent smiled at her. “You are, as always, brilliant, my love.”
She opened the next nine easily, and then she did step out of the vault. When they set the bodies on fire, they would first be doused in holy water and salt, and the fumes could possibly choke her. Best to be on the side of caution.
They also prepared for the conflagration, bringing along buckets of water that the men stashed nearby earlier in the afternoon. Within an hour, all eleven corpses were torched and the fire extinguished.
“There,” Vincent said with a smile. “We won’t have ghosts ruin our first Christmas together, my love.”
“What was that about ghosts not bothering us anymore?” Veronica snapped at Vincent a week later. They were at the dinner table, he with a plate of roast pork and she with a warm goblet of fresh-poured blood from a manservant. They only employed two, as Veronica preferred to do most things herself. One was exclusively there to provide blood for her on demand.
The chandelier above the table began to tremble, clinking noisily. The air in the room dropped low enough where she could see her breath coming. And being Undead, that meant it was quite cold, because her body temperature was significantly lower than her husband’s, even after consuming fresh blood.
The chandelier ceased its trembling, and instead began to spin faster and faster than the eye could see. Had Vincent not been so well trained in combat and Veronica wasn’t a vampire, one or both of them would have been crushed under the weight of the crystal as it crashed into the table.
Crystal and glass shattered, as did wood splinters from the table, one particularly sharp one narrowly missing Veronica.
“What are you waiting for?” she asked Vincent. “Banish the bloody thing.”
“I thought we already did!” Vincent cried, getting to his feet.
“Leave her grasp, mortal,” the voice of Eireann Cumberland intoned. He was formless now, but louder than before. Stronger, almost. “Do not fall further into her tempting Darkness.”
“Excuse me, but how is who I marry any of your business?” Veronica asked. “This is not your home anymore. It is mine, and I wish you to begone, now!” Her voice turned to an angry growl as her fangs began to elongate with her rage.
“Unearthly abomination!” Eireann shouted. “Monster! Foul Hellbeast!”
“Didn’t your mummy tell you it’s impolite to call people names?” she asked. Taking a chance, she found an iron chain that detached from the fallen chandelier and tossed it vaguely in the direction from whence the voice came.
There was a scream and then the spirit seemed to leave again. The temperature became much more habitable.
Both Crosses stood up and Veronica huffed. There was a tear in her dress, and it was no longer able to be repaired: the seamstress in Paris passed away about fifty years ago.
“I am so sorry for the vile names he spewed at you,” Vincent said, coming to place a hand on her shoulder.
She shrugged it off. “Now we know what horrors Benjamin and Michael face on a daily basis. Not fun, is it?” Sighing, she went and downed the rest of her goblet of blood.
“We have to find out why the bastard is attached to this house,” Vincent said. “And hope that we do not need to burn the house down completely.”
“I will live with the ghost before I consent to that,” Veronica commented.
Veronica hired some people to make the manor Christmas-ready, and they worked well into the night. The gigantic tree decorated with popcorn strings, glass baubles, and votive candles was beautiful and calming. The star at the top was carved in Paris and special delivered to adorn her first tree with Vincent. With Christmas two days away, she wanted everything to be perfect.
But the ghost was a continuous problem. According to more research from Benjamin, if they did not stop the ghost by Christmas Eve, then he could, and likely would, attack them. And any precaution Vincent could take would not last forever.
They spent every waking hour with their noses in books or searching for something that tied Eireann to the house.
Vincent fell asleep long before the dawn, leaving the vampiress to her own devices. Alone, she worked better and thought better, so she went into the third
floor of the manor, one she rarely visited. The rooms were old, dusty, drafty, and the fireplaces barely held any wood. She assumed servants lived there once upon a time.
When you have eternity, you take things such as organising and straightening with grains of salt. Cumberland Manor was filled with things from previous residents, and not once had she cared to go through it. Now, however, she had quite pressing motivations.
Something bound Eireann to the manor, and she needed to find out what before the old bigot killed her and her husband.
Most rooms were empty, some had ageing furniture. One door at the far end of the hall seemed to be stuck, as the skeleton key didn’t turn the lock. Bracing her shoulder against the door, she shoved while holding the knob still. The door gave with a wheezing groan of aged wood.
This room appeared to be a study. A large, cluttered desk sat against the far wall, and bookshelves lined two others. The third door made her shudder: it was filled with instruments of torture, mostly paranormal torture, as they were made of iron and silver. She dared not touch anything, lest lingering holy water somewhere burn her skin.
She noticed a crooked photo hanging on the wall, and she walked closer, wondering what a homicidal, xenophobic cult leader saw fit to hang on his walls.
It was a family portrait with … she paused in her counting. Twelve people. Not eleven.
There was a corpse missing.
“Mrs. Cross?”
The voice nearly made her lose her footing. Then she recalled the workers still downstairs.
“Yes? And it’s Lady Delarue still, thank you.”
“Apologies. You’d requested we check the cellar, for the room Master Cross wants?” The worker’s prematurely balding head peeked around the corner, into the room. If he questioned why it was in such a state of disarray, he knew better than to ask.
Shifters were good like that.
“And?”
“Cellar door’s stuck. Do we have your permission to break it and rebuild it?”
I’ve been down there numerous times, even as recently as this decade. The door works perfectly fine.
“No, let me, and I will wire your office when I am prepared to have you return to see what you can do. Thank you, gentlemen. Happy Christmas.”
He smiled. “Happy Christmas, Lady.”
He walked away, and she glanced at that picture one more time, absorbing the condescending scowl on the face of Eireann Cumberland. She smiled at it, hoping he was observing her.
“Looks like I found your hiding place. You tinkered with the wrong vampire, Mr. Cumberland. I do earnestly hope you enjoy Hell, because I will send you there just as soon as the sun sets.”
Vincent and Veronica stood before the cellar door, and he brought an iron jemmy bar. Both to open the door and hit the spirit with if it tried to intervene. So far, he had rotten luck getting it to open.
“My dear husband, while I do enjoy watching you work and sweat, perhaps you should allow me?” Veronica offered.
Vincent stepped back, embarrassment plain to see in his blue eyes. He handed her the bar. “I feel quite helpless.”
“Nonsense. You’re here to protect me from the big, bad ghost, right?” Veronica winked.
Opening this door took a bit more effort than the caskets in the vault, but she did it within five minutes. The couple descended the staircase, with Vincent lighting a torch so he could see.
The cellar was bare, with a packed dirt floor and hooks on the walls. Veronica never knew what they were used for before she got the manor. One could only imagine, knowing what she knew now about the former occupants.
Vincent began to inspect every corner, but he did not have the preternatural senses of his wife. Veronica spotted a thin line in the hard packed dirt and bent down to inspect further.
“Vincent!”
He turned at her call and bent down behind her, his shadow long in the candlelight.
“Look at this.” She traced the line with her fingertip. “This was disturbed some time ago, compared with the rest of the floor.”
Vincent grinned. “Excellent detective work, my dear. You would fit right in with the hunters, except…”
“I am a woman?”
He shook his head. “You’re not human.”
“Ah. Yes, that would put me in a bit of a pickle, wouldn’t it? Veronica stood up and dusted her dress off. “Let us see what we can find beneath the surface. Go get a shovel.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He left with the torch, but Veronica was perfectly capable of seeing. She leaned against a wall and waited, envisioning a beautiful future once she turned her husband, having children to share her family’s ancient bloodline.
She was pregnant, had been for the past week. And she would not let a rotten, hateful old buzzard ruin her joy … or her future.
In her brief daydream, she realised it took an awfully long time for him to go out into the backhouse for the gardening tool. She took a steadying breath, concerned. Vincent was not incompetent, he knew how to manage himself. However … the fear grew and gnawed at her until she raced up the stairs at vampire speed, only to be hit with freezing winds.
The tree was partially knocked over, wreaths blown away. And her poor husband was on the floor, unconscious.
She cursed, a word not typically used by young women or those in high society. “Cumberland!” she cried, rage coating her voice, making the normally pleasant accent sound demonic. “Take your bloody hatred and go away! You are not wanted here, and what you are doing is unwarranted! Get out of my house!”
“No.” The wind knocked her over and she skidded on the icy floor. The scent of Vincent’s blood was intoxicating this close to him; his head bled from an impact wound.
“What you are doing is against nature. You are against nature!”
“So are you, in case you’ve not noticed: you’ve got no physical body!” Veronica reminded him as she struggled to her feet.
The wind howled with his rage, and his body flickered in and out of view.
“Why hurt him if I am the unnatural one?” she asked, trying to buy herself some time to get something to get down to that basement and see if she was right: Eireann Cumberland was buried within the manor.
“He must be punished for crimes against his own humanity. You, however, must die for them,” Cumberland told her.
“Last I checked, you are not God,” Veronica told him. “And when you do cross over, I do not believe He will be so kind to one who pretended to be Him here on Earth.”
“The devil claims to know God?” The spirit laughed.
She gestured to the living room. “Well, I am not decorating to celebrate the birth of a deity I do not believe in.”
It worked. At her gesture, the ghost looked around the destroyed living room, giving her enough time to get to the kitchen and back with a canister of salt. She threw it on the ghost and he screamed, vanishing from sight. For now.
She knew she must work quickly. First, she drizzled some of her blood on Vincent’s wound to heal him, and then dashed to get the shovel. She also grabbed a lighter and the rest of the salt, as well as some kindling.
This was not her area. Not at all. But she knew she was capable of completing this horrible mission so she could have Christmas with her husband. Besides, if someone as hard-headed as the Quinn brothers could do this, she knew she certainly could.
The dirt came up in thick bricks as she dug, her brow coated with sweat and blisters on her fingers that kept trying to heal themselves.
Discomfort was worth the end result.
The shovel hit something hard and she peered down. It wasn’t far, perhaps three feet compared with the average six. And it was a coffin. Engraved on the top was quite the long proclamation.
Eireann Cumberland Sr.,
Interred in Cumberland Manor upon his death so as to always protect his home and humanity from the evils in the world.
“Evil,” Veronica spat. “What do these silly mortal men know of true evil, save for the hei
nous acts they willingly commit daily?” She spat on the grave before using the shovel to pry it open.
The corpse stared up at her, wispy strands of white hair attached to a yellowing skeleton clad in aristocratic clothing from a century ago.
As she began to pour salt on the body, the house gave a dreadful lurch.
“Veronica!” Vincent shouted, voice hoarse. “He’s back — he’s —”
“Fight him off!” she shouted back. “Don’t let him get down here!” The house shook again, and snow began to billow into the basement, wet, heavy, and hindering.
She screamed from the shock of the cold, and knew it would be difficult to light a fire now. Letting out a few choice curses, she re-salted the body and prayed.
Please, please, don’t let me die like this. Not due to a creature so rotten, so cold. Don’t do this to my baby. Tears stung her eyes; she knew she had to survive, if only for that reason.
“Then fight for her,” a voice said.
“Who on Earth?” Veronica saw no one, and it was not a voice she recognised.
“Protect the child, we need her.”
Her?
The snow began to slow, dancing in a whirl of white light. Veronica could barely look at it. The brightness burnt her eyes.
Books spoke of Christmas miracles, but dare she believe she was on the receiving end of one?
Veronica was many things, but stupid was not one of them. She knew that she had precious little time to work if whatever this was kept the snow at bay. Emptying the canister of salt on the corpse, she lit the flame, set the box of matches ablaze, and dropped the whole thing on the rotted body below.
The scream that followed caused the dirt to dislocate and silt to fall from the ceiling onto her head. Eireann was in pain.
Good; suffer.
The shaking ceased, the snow stopped, and the dancing whorls of light vanished without a trace.
Veronica stood next to the flaming bones and hugged her middle, unable to do anything but gasp for breath as relief poured through her.
Curse of Christmas: A Collection of Paranormal Holiday Stories Page 45
