by Lily Harlem
“No, no, that’s not true and they can’t have gone…” I held back a sob then gasped as she pressed harder against my body. She was solid and as cold as the night. I was breathing rapidly, my chest heaving against hers.
“Oh, but they have. They might be superhuman but even vampires turn to cinders in fire. Reduced to ash and carbon the way all matter is.” She paused and laughed again. “Especially if one is tied up and the other foolish enough to try to save him.”
I shook my head. “No, they’ll have got off the train in time. I did.”
“Only because of me. Only because I grabbed you, tugged you from the wreckage before the explosion killed your beloved Ryle and your tortured soul Aimery.”
“No, that’s not true. They’ll be here, any second. Get off me.” I tried to push her away but it was no good.
Another plume of snow landed nearby and an owl screeched overhead.
“They’ll both go to hell you know,” Elfrida said, licking over the bite marks Aimery had created in passion just hours ago. “All vampires do, but Aimery, he’ll have an especially hard time, what with being a murderer in his human state as well as his afterlife.”
“What…what are you talking about?”
Again Elfrida laughed, but it wasn’t with humor. “What I’m saying—and it’s so amusing that he never confessed this to you—is that Aimery, for all his airs and graces, his esteemed position as Order lawyer, was nothing but a common murderer before he was turned.”
“What…what are you talking about?” Aimery wasn’t a murderer. He was a fine upstanding member of his community. He loved with all that he was and paid attention to the details, every little detail with care and consideration.
“His human soul was pitiful,” Elfrida said, glee in her voice. “He was obsessed with blood and murder and lurked in the back streets of old London Town, waiting for poor unsuspecting women who were walking home. It wasn’t until sixteen eighty-one when he tried to murder one of ours, that he was caught.”
A shiver rattled its way up my back. “Caught?”
“Yes, caught and given the option. Be drained or become one of us. We knew he could be of use, given his high intelligence.”
“And…and he changed?”
“Yes, his wretched soul was useless to him. He knew that. What kind of man murderers innocent women, eh?”
“It’s not true,” I gasped.
“Oh, but it is,” Elfrida whispered, tickling her tongue around the angle of my jaw. “The man you hope to save you is nothing but a violent criminal, a serial murderer and so is his partner.” She paused. “You’ve witnessed Ryle in action so I hear. But now they’ll never walk on this earth again and they certainly won’t come rushing out of the forest to rescue you from a fate that’s sealed in the stars up there.”
“You’re lying. Get away from me.”
“Sorry. All true, and you know I’m not going anywhere, at least not until I finally have my fill of Bombay blood.”
“No.” Terror gripped me. “No, please.”
“Don’t be scared. I’ll make it good for you, Beatrice.” She rubbed against my mound, exerting a steady pressure on my clit. “While I feed you’ll come, and the less blood circulating in your body the more potent my saliva will be and the harder you’ll orgasm. So don’t worry, you’ll go out with a bang. I’ll ensure you die happy.” She dipped her head and I knew this was it. She was going to bite me, feed until I had no life left in me.
I cried out as the first nip of her teeth grazed my flesh. I tried to move but was pinned in place.
I screwed up my eyes, prayed for a miracle and bucked away from her touch.
A burst of activity shot past me. The arctic air became a whoosh of cold and a whirlwind of snow pelted my legs.
Elfrida was suddenly gone—she lifted from me and her teeth left my neck.
I opened my eyes and screamed as two enormous wolves hurled themselves through the air, chasing a retreating Elfrida. They grabbed the ends of her cloak, tussled with it, tugging and pulling, their necks twisting this way and that in frantic rolling movements.
She let out a shriek, an unearthly scream of fury and frustration. Then thrashed out at them, baring her fangs with her lips peeled back.
They didn’t let up. Their teeth were huge and sharp as they battled with the cloak. Their fur glistened and shimmered in the sparkling light, and snow was sent spiraling into the air as their enormous bodies scrabbled to bring down Elfrida.
The immediate threat of being drained dry left me, but now it seemed I would be mauled to death.
Suddenly Elfrida broke free and shot into the darkness, leaving only a ghostly plume of snow twinkling behind her.
The wolves darted after her, growls and barks stabbing the air as they slipped around tree trunks and melted into the black of the night.
I stared at her cloak slumped on the floor. It was ripped and the ends were in tatters where the wolves had savaged it. I was panting, my heart thumping and I wrestled with my binds not caring about the pain they were creating on my wrists.
But it was no good. I was firmly attached to the tree. A sob erupted but still I tugged some more. I couldn’t give up. The wolves would never catch Elfrida, she was too fast, too clever, and soon they would be back for me. They’d eat me alive. I was easy prey, a ready meal.
I shivered and shook, wriggled my hands. But even if I did break free where would I go? I glanced upward, wondering if wolves could climb. Wondering if Elfrida would dare come back if there was the threat of animal attack.
Of course she would.
The forest became silent around me and I stopped my frenzied movements. The extreme cold was sucking the life from my body and I turned numb. I would die here. Hypothermia would claim me if not a vampire or wolves.
I shut my eyes and stilled completely. My last shred of fight was seeping from me.
Soon I barely even felt cold anymore and the trembling that had besieged every one of my muscles faded to nothing. I was just limp and exhausted. So tired, so tired and fading…
I hung my head, thought of Aimery and Ryle and what Elfrida had said about my beloved Aimery. Even if he had been a bad man in his human form, Aimery had never been anything but loving toward me. He was my everything and Ryle, he’d killed to protect me, what could be more valiant than that?
The truth was they’d been the loves of my life. They’d made me happy, cared for me and protected me. Until…
“Hey, hey, open your eyes, stay with me.”
A deep male voice penetrated my blurred thoughts.
“Come on, lady, you’re okay. Open your eyes.”
It wasn’t a voice I recognized, a slight Irish accent maybe. My dreams were becoming strange. Death was sneaking up on me in the most bizarre of ways. There was no Irish man in the Canadian wilderness. That was madness.
“Come on, come on.” Same voice again.
There was a tapping on the side of my face and then I was aware of the binds at my wrists loosening.
“Shit, you really are cold.”
I began to slide to the ground, the bark snagging and pulling the thin clothing on my back.
“Oh, no you don’t. Here we go.”
Suddenly I was lifted into the air and pressed up against something broad and hot.
I opened my eyes, wondering if I’d see my deceased mother. Had I reached the other side of the tunnel? Was this my place for all eternity?
Instead I looked up at a man with light-brown scruffy hair and a square angled jaw. His arms were wrapped around me, one beneath my thighs and the other at my waist. He was holding me tight and firm.
“What?” I managed in barely a whisper. “Who…?”
“It’s okay now, I’ve got you.” He began to stride through the deep snow. Despite only wearing a T-shirt his chest was warm and I welcomed the sudden intense heat on my icy limbs. “But we have got to get you out of here. Quick.” He glanced over his shoulder and picked up the pace.
I ha
d no idea who my rescuer was or even if he was real. He could be something my mind had made up to protect me from the horrors of a brutal death. Yes, that must be it. Because why would a big, strong, handsome man be out in the freezing wilds in the dead of the night? Striding around looking for hopeless women tied to trees? No, that couldn’t be right. I’d dreamed him. I was still dreaming. Projecting something good and kind onto the last minutes of my life.
If only Ryle and Aimery were here, carrying me, saving me. Being with me in these final moments, rather than a stranger.
Chapter Five
I must have drifted in and out of consciousness but when I next became aware of my surroundings I realized that I wasn’t dreaming or imagining men. This was actually happening and now I was in a cabin lit by candles and that smelled of wood and spice.
“You should get in.” The man who’d just carried me pointed at a tin bath that was full to the brim with steaming water and set before a roaring fire. “It will increase your core temperature.”
I knotted my pale, blue-tinged fingers together and looked down at my black outfit. There was rip on the knee and a tear on my thigh. There was a deep scratch beneath it.
“You’re shivering again, which is a good thing.” The man stooped before me. “It means your body is coming back to life, but still, we must warm you further.”
“Who…who are you?” I asked, studying his soft brown eyes. He had small creases at the corners and looked as though he smiled a lot. The light of the fire was reflecting in them making him look as warm as his home.
“I’m Caleb, this is where I live. Please, get in the hot water, we can talk more then.”
“But I’m…dressed.”
“Fashion is not my thing,” he said, letting his gaze dip down my body. “But I don’t think that’s the most sensible thing to be wearing on a December night in the middle of the Rockies.”
“I agree.” I paused to shiver, my teeth clattering uncontrollably. “But I hadn’t…planned…”
“On being tied to a tree, I guessed as much. Come on.” He took my hand and urged me to stand. “Take this off and get in.”
I stood dumbly as he peeled away my outfit, uncaring that he was seeing me naked. I was too numb with shock.
Aimery and Ryle are dead.
I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t want to believe it.
“There was a train crash,” I said, resting my hand on his wide shoulder as he took off my heeled shoes and then peeled the lacy outfit from my feet. “An explosion. Lots of people killed.”
“Yes, I heard.” He looked up at me, but his eyes didn’t linger on my nakedness, he studied my face. It was as though my exposed female form didn’t affect him in the slightest. “You were on the train?” he asked.
I nodded.
“You’re lucky to be alive.”
“Lucky, really? My husbands are dead.” I shook my head and felt the blood drain from my face as I’d said the awful words. Saying them out loud made them true even though I was still grasping denial.
“Husbands?” Caleb said with a frown. “In the plural.”
I nodded. What was the point in lying? This whole situation was completely bizarre anyway. “Yes, my husbands.” A shiver snaked up my spine. “Aimery and Ryle.”
“In.” Caleb stood, held out his hand and helped me balance as I stepped into the warm water. To start with it burned but as I sank beneath the surface it began to soothe my skin and penetrate to my muscles.
Caleb again took no notice of my bare state or my nipples just peeking out of the water. Instead he sat on the soft sofa I’d just vacated and ran his hand through his hair. It flopped messily around his face, the long strands of his fringe caressing his cheeks. “And the woman, who tied you up. Who was she?”
“You saw her?”
“Yes.”
I swallowed as tears stung my eyes. “She’s an evil bitch. And she’s killed the men I love.”
“Yes, she’s evil, no doubt about that,” Caleb said, then his voice deepened and he kind of growled, “and she’s also a vampire.”
I snapped my head up to look at him. “How…how do you know that?”
“I saw her fangs. Saw her about to bite you. Not exactly the kind of thing humans do to each other.”
“But…” I tried to make sense of what he was saying. “So you saw the wolves too?”
He paused and glanced at the door of the cabin. “Yes. I saw wolves.”
“Shit, they were vicious and in a feeding frenzy. Did you have a gun with you?”
“No, no gun.”
“Bloody hell.” I trembled and sank a little lower into the warm water. I wished I could wake up and find that this all had been a bad dream, because as life was returning to my fingers and toes the fear of wolves and the pain of having lost Aimery and Ryle were becoming more acute. I began to long for my chilled, numb state where agonizing emotions were in the deep freeze.
“Hey, hey, it’s okay.” Caleb was next to me, resting his hand on the side of the bath and looking at me worriedly.
I was aware of tears flowing down my face—tears of grief and despair. I couldn’t stop them. They were flooding my cheeks and dripping off my chin. My nose was running too, quite unattractively.
“Shh…” he said, again throwing a look at the door. “She can’t get you in here. We’ll never invite her over the threshold. You’re quite safe.”
What Caleb didn’t realize was that I didn’t care about Elfrida anymore. In fact I wished she had killed me because I couldn’t go on without Aimery and Ryle. Without them I didn’t even want to exist. Maybe it would have been better to be drained dry or mauled to death, then I wouldn’t have to live without my lovers.
When I woke I was still crying, maybe not on the outside but on the inside. My heart felt torn in two. My eyes were puffy and my bones ached. I also had a stomping headache that circled the back of my head and screeched down my neck. The scratch on my leg was stinging and itchy.
I was in a bed, a super-soft bed with dark green covers and pillows. At the window matching curtains were drawn though the weak wintery light spilled around the edges creating fingers on the wooden walls of the cabin.
I turned over, clasped my hands beneath my chin and drew my knees up to my chest. I’d hoped I wouldn’t wake up.
But the warmth of the bed and distant voices told me I was alive, and that some weird twist of fate had dropped me in to Caleb’s home in the middle of the forest in the deepest, coldest corner of a Canadian winter. I was thousands of miles away from home and the cobbled streets of London.
I stared at the door, which was open a crack, and strained my ears to hear the conversation coming from the living area.
It was Caleb’s voice, I was sure, but there was someone else with him. Another man. The words were sharp, harsh, perhaps infused with anxiety.
Curiosity got the better of me and I pushed off the covers and stood. Glancing downward, I saw that I was dressed in a fleecy red and black checked shirt and a pair of navy sweats that slipped down my hips to my knees the moment I straightened.
Quickly, I pulled them up, covering my naked behind, and thought what a state I’d been in. Caleb must have dried and dressed me after my bath, but I couldn’t remember it, I’d been sobbing so much.
I padded barefoot to the door and peeked out.
Caleb was in the middle of the room. He still wore faded jeans and a white T-shirt and he had his hands on his hips.
Pacing in front of the fire, which had reduced to glowing embers, was a man of similar wide stature as Caleb. He was also just as tall and had the same haphazard hairstyle, only his was a little reddish, as though flecks from the fire had woven through it. He wore jeans and nothing on his top half, showing a dusting of dark chest hair shaped like a diamond.
“There’s no sign of her, nothing,” the pacing man said, rubbing his hand down his densely stubbled cheek. “Not a trace.”
“But how did you lose her?”
“They�
��re clever, you know that. They always have been.”
“I know, but her tracks. In the snow, where do they go?”
“They fade out, up by Gillmore Pass, just evaporate.”
“And no scent?” Caleb frowned.
“No, nothing, I told you. I went as far as I could and then it reached a point where she could have gone several different ways. It would have been pointless for me to go even farther from here.”
I worried at my bottom lip. Caleb’s friend had obviously tried to follow Elfrida. I had to admit I was surprised, though, given that two wolves were on her trail, that he hadn’t found a fight scene, either the wolves or the vampire dead in the snow.
“How is she, the girl?”
“She was cold.” Caleb reached for a log and threw it on the fire. It crunched and then spat, shifting on the ashes. “But I warmed her up and tried to figure out what she was doing tied to a tree and about to be bitten but she was pretty dazed.”
“And did you find out why the vampire woman wanted her enough to risk being here?”
“No, but I’m guessing she’s special if the bitch went to all that trouble to derail a train. She’s brought a lot of attention to the area. It’s just as well it’s on the other side of the pass.” Caleb tutted. “We can always do without attention.”
“Which makes it odd that she went back that way.”
“Not really, the trail will be complicated by others. You know, death, destruction, the emergency services.” Caleb shrugged and then sighed. “The girl lost people on the train, two husbands, so she said.”
I gulped down a sob and pressed my fingers to my lips. An image of Ryle and Aimery reaching for me filled my mind and I wished they were here now, to hold me, comfort me. Press me between them and tell me it was all a bad dream.
“Shit, that’s bad…wait, two husbands?” The other man stopped pacing. “What?”
“I’m just repeating her words.” Caleb stepped up to his friend and cupped his cheeks. “It makes me thankful you made it back safe, Isaac. It could have gotten nasty out there. It usually does when they’re around and I couldn’t survive if I lost you.”
