Chapter Thirty-Three
134 years ago: December 29th, 1877, Dobruga, Romania. Port of Constanţa off the Black Sea
Pettrila Rázóczi bent low over her galloping horse’s neck, urging the animal to a faster speed. Wind lashed her hair and whipped her cloak behind her, her eyes watering. Please, let me not be too late to find him. Her hands gripped the reins in shaky fists, the wadded letter from Ştefan still crushed in one palm.
My Dearest Pettrila,
I must apologize from the deepest part of my heart for not being able to journey with you to England. I thought I’d be able to withstand the pressures of my heritage, but have discovered I cannot. My mother has arranged a marriage for me with a woman of my own station, and I must not refuse this union. Go you to England without me, and make haste that you will not miss this opportunity to save yourself. I shall always remember you fondly, my dearest, although I fear I shan’t be pressed between the pages of your own memory with similar affectionate regard. This is wholly regrettable, but unavoidable.
I pray someday you’ll forgive me.
With all my best wishes for you,
Ştefan Dragoş
Dated 29 of December, 1877
She wanted to shout against the grip of anguish in her chest. Nay! She wouldn’t believe that Ştefan had rejected her until she saw the truth in his own damnable eyes for herself.
Careening off the harborside and into the town of Constanţa, she slowed her mount to a jolting trot, its hooves clattering on cobblestones glossy from a brief spate of rain. The buttery glow of an occasional gaslamp pushed back the shadows, although many had been left dark; few lamplighters made it to this poor and dingy part of town. Better if Ştefan had chosen to meet his comrades at the elegant Carol Hotel, and thereby relieved her of having to navigate her way, alone, to a seedy tavern called Cocoşesc Bârlog, or “The Cock’s Den,” in order to confront him about—
She screamed as another horse and rider thundered out of a side street and nearly collided with her. Her horse reared up with a shrill whinny, sending her tumbling out of the saddle. She gasped as she hit the cobblestones hard enough to clack her teeth together and light off a blast of stars before her eyes. Rolling onto her side, she glared up through pain-slitted eyes at her accoster. “Grigore Nichita,” she moaned out.
“Imbecilic woman!” he seethed at her. “Our armada sails forthwith, and you’re riding amok on a fool’s errand!”
She blinked hard to clear her vision of spots. “’Tisn’t foolish to want to know the truth.” She planted one foot, then the other, to climb painstakingly to her feet.
Grigore sneered at her. “You’ve been tossed aside like a pair of hose, Pettrila Rázóczi, no better. That’s the truth put on a platter before you. Look upon it and come away!”
“I’m less than inclined to believe anything you have to say, Grigore.” She made a grab for her gelding’s reins, but the loathsome beast pranced sideways and tossed its head. “You, who stalks me like a beslubbering varlet.”
“Then rely on the logic of your own mind, woman.” He made a derisive sound in his throat. “Did you genuinely believe a man outside of the Vârcolac breed would want you? Truly?”
The heat of a blush hurt her cheeks, her lips quivering before she could stop them. My mother has arranged a marriage for me with a woman of my own station. A shout swelled up her throat. “Begone, you odious toad!” she lashed out at Grigore in her pain. “I’ve had enough of your gum.” Jamming the crumpled letter into her skirt pocket, she went for her gelding again.
The shrill blast of a trumpet cut through the night.
“Hell’s teeth! They depart!” Grigore sent his mount surging forward, making a grab for her.
She tried to dodge him, but he was faster than she, snatching her up by the back of her belt and throwing her face-down across the horn of his saddle.
She let out an enraged yell. “Unhand me!”
Grigore reined his horse around hard, the animal’s hooves skidding. “So you can track your paramour into a pack of Vârcolac Vânător, my lady? You are addle-headed!” He dug in his heels, sending his horse hurtling in the direction of the docks.
With a shallow gasp, Pettrila seized Grigore’s tall boot to keep from falling. Her long, unbound hair whipped around, nearly tangling in the horse’s churning legs. Blood filled her head in her arse-over position, dizzying her. “Grigore, set me aright. Now, I tell you.” She could scarcely catch her breath with her stomach bouncing hard against the saddle. “I’m going to be ill.”
Grigore yanked his horse to a plunging halt. “Damnation, they’ve sailed,” he snarled, his boots hitting the dock with an angry scrape. He snatched her out of the saddle, his grip on her shoulders bruising, and shook her roughly. “You made us late, you insufferable doxy!”
She stared wide-eyed into his livid his face, a cold knot of fear in her chest. “I-I’m sorry, I didn’t intend… Oh, wait! Look! One ship yet remains, Grigore.”
Men on the deck of the Tempest were just now throwing off the mooring lines.
“Nay,” he growled, “we’re supposed to be on that ship.” He pointed to the Lady Revenge, already at full sail and making steadily for the open seas. “’Tis…’tis where my parents are and your brother.”
She opened her mouth, then closed it. Did it matter at this point? They were all traveling to the same—
She whirled around at the pounding drumroll of horses’ hooves, the rolling thunder advancing rapidly toward the docks. Lună şi steluţă! Several dozen riders were approaching, the torches they held bobbing maniacally. Vampire hunters!
“The devil take us,” Grigore hissed. “We’ve been found out.”
The angry shouts of the men grew louder, and fear clutched Pettrila’s innards. The riders would be upon them in mere moments! “Why do you tarry, Grigore?!”
With a savage curse, Grigore finally grabbed hold of her hand and hauled her at a run for the ship.
The triple-masted privateer had glided several feet from the dock, forcing them to leap the gap. They landed hard and stumbled, a sharp pain streaking through Pettrila’s ankle. But they’d made it, thank the stars, escaping just as the wall of oncoming horseflesh slid to a dock-gouging halt, hooves throwing up shards of splinters. Some beasts reared up, others stomped and blew as if echoing their masters’ frustration.
Above them, rigging lines clattered and canvas boomed as sails unfurled fully up the masts. The Tempest leaned into the wind, and Pettrila stumbled sideways, the deck slewing at an angle beneath her. She made her way on careful feet to one side of the ship and gripped the rail. Still breathing heavily, she watched the land of her birth—and her last chance to see Ştefan—gradually drift farther and farther away as they cut smoothly across the glassy water of the harbor.
Tears rose into her throat, but she swallowed them back. Grigore was at her side, tense and watchful, and she didn’t care to court any more of his wrath with another display of lovesickness.
They rounded the rock jetty which protected the Constanţa harbor from high winds and rough seas, streaking gracefully into open waters. The angle of their ship steepened, the deck rising and falling more forcefully over the bigger swells. Sea spray misted her face.
“Best you go belowdecks, my lady.” Grigore’s bearded jaw was rigid, his tension mounting as he stared at something in the distance.
She followed the direction of his attention and frowned. “What goes forth?”
A fleet of a dozen or more ships hulked just outside of the harbor, twice as many as their own armada, and as each one of their ships emerged, two of those others swooped in on them like vultures.
The captain of the Tempest ground out a curse from the forecastle. “Bring her hard about!” he shouted.
Men scrambled up the yards. The helmsman grunted and strained at the tiller.
“Grigore?” A shiver of apprehension slid down her spine. “Who are they?”
Grigore’s mouth flattened against his teeth
. “Those are Russian frigates.”
She gaped up at him. Russians! “’Tisn’t possible! The Russians have no means of knowing our plans of escape.”
“Don’t they?” Grigore turned his head to look down on her, his silver eyes molten with accusation. “Besides Vârcolac, there’s one man who knew of this escapade, is there not?”
For one dazed, disbelieving moment, she just stared at him, unable to countenance who he spoke of. “Nay,” she protested thickly, her throat fouling with bile. “Ştefan didn’t betray us. I know it!”
“Tell me where Dragoş is on this ship, then?”
Her stomach dropped down to her feet. “He didn’t come b-because I’m Vârcolac,” she quavered, her emotions shredding her voice. “He threw me over for that, you said so yourself.”
“Evidently, I was mistaken.” Grigore marked the path of one of the Russian frigates bearing down on them, sails flapping in the wind, hull slicing swiftly through sea swells. Gunports open.
“I wish I was not.” His voice lowered. “I wish you hadn’t been mistaken, either, my lady, trusting Dragoş to organize all of this, letting him vow to help our people when all the while he was acting as a Vampire Hunter in truth.”
She pressed a hand to her breast, struck to her soul as she remembered that night at Peleş Castle when Ştefan had told her of his plans. Why would you do this? she’d asked him. You risk your very life by helping vampires. He’d barely batted an eye over the danger. Was that because all the while he’d known he wouldn’t be in any?! Had he vowed his love for her only to use her? I need your help to see this through, he’d said. I cannot access every Vârcolac enclave to pass the word.
She squeezed her lids tightly shut, her knees going weak as ciorba soup. Any moment she would fall to the decks and prostrate herself to all of Romania for being duped by her woman’s heart. Stars above, she’d led her own people into an ambush!
She gripped the railing again, her knuckles going white as she fought to withstand the shock of the realization, and to bear the anguish.
Grigore had told her to hide belowdecks, no doubt wanting her safe, but she couldn’t move. She could only stand in place and stare at the attacking Russian frigate, watching it tack into firing position across from their sleek privateer. Pettrila could see men just beyond the black snouts of the enemy canons, long fuses held at the ready. Time seemed to slow to an impossible crawl, her heart constricting to half its normal size as the gunners lowered the glowing red wicks to the tops of the guns.
An instant later, a succession of ear-splitting blasts quaked the night, the canons spitting fire and belching black smoke. Plumes of water shot up from the ocean surface where several balls drove harmlessly into the sea, while others carved through the topsails of their ship. The upper half of the mainmast was sheared off in an eruption of wood shards and ripping canvas, and Pettrila screamed as the bloody remains of men from up in the yards splattered down onto the deck.
The Tempest returned a full broadside at the attacking Russians, the planks beneath Pettrila’s feet shuddering from the report of the guns one deck below. She lurched against Grigore, gripping his arms.
Another salvo wailed farther off, and she turned to look. A volley from a different Russian frigate had just been launched at their sister privateer, the Lady Revenge. Bar shot and cannonballs swept half a dozen men over the sides, chewed through railing, bulkhead, and hull. One of the Lady Revenge’s cannons was blown from its bed and sent tumbling onto its back into the ocean, coughing black smoke before slipping under the churning waves.
Pettrila pressed a fist to her lips, acid pushing at the backs of her teeth. The Lady Revenge had been holed in her lower decks and was taking on water fast. Her brother, Octav, was on that ship.
Grigore jerked away from her and flung back his head, bellowing in rage. “Bloody betrayer!”
The ship that held her brother and Grigore’s parents listed precariously to port, getting sucked into the ocean with alarming speed.
Tears blinded Pettrila. Why, Ştefan, why did you do this?
“Hard to starboard!” the captain of the Tempest yelled. “Tighten the sheets!”
The enemy frigate was cleaving sharply through the swells, coming about for another assault.
A second deadly frigate was sailing tight on its bow.
The Russian gunners reloaded—wadding, cannon ball, powder. They fired. The shriek of canvas being slashed from the mizzen mast was joined by the screams of dying men. A long cable snapped loose and whizzed straight for her—
“Pettrila!” Grigore called out.
Panic froze her in place, her eyes widening on the writhing snake of metal line.
Grigore charged forward and pushed her.
She skidded across the deck and slammed into the railing, knocking her head hard against the wood. Blackness swam across her vision. Gasping, she fought the unconsciousness that pulled at her, but darkness closed in an ever-tightening circle around her pupils.
And then there was nothing.
* * *
Pettrila woke in a small, dim room, the smell of smoke and blood lingering in her nostrils. A single candle on a shelf spilled a meager pool of light, but even that hurt her eyes. She was stretched out on a thin mattress in what was a ship’s stateroom, judging by the tightly shuttered portholes and the furnishings bolted to the floor. Two blurry Grigores were seated on the edge of her bed, pressing a wet cloth to her brow.
She dragged her tongue across her lips to moisten them and worked at focusing her vision.
“By darkest night, you’re awake at last,” Grigore breathed, his expression drawn with concern. “How do you fare?”
“My head hurts,” she croaked. Worse than that, it felt as if someone had shoveled out the bottom of her stomach into the kind of infinite emptiness that spoke of a severe blood-need.
“You hit your head very hard.” Grimacing, Grigore peeked under the cloth. “I pushed you too vigorously, I’m sorry. Damn me, I’ve been worried after you.”
She nudged his hand off her brow. “How are we alive, Grigore?”
He set the cloth aside. “We were rescued. I know not by whom, but whoever ’twas, they manned the cannons on the jetty and fired relentlessly at the Russian frigates, sending our enemy limping away. After that, we sprinted further out to sea, and are now steadily making our way to England.”
To England? She pleated her brow, then winced as her forehead complained. “I thought the privateer captains worked for…” She hesitated. She couldn’t utter the name, Ştefan, no matter how much he might deserve condemnation. “…the hunters.”
Grigore shrugged. “They’re not exactly men of the highest morals, my lady. An offer to line their coffers once we reach shore has seemed sufficient to earn our passage.”
She nodded, a bare movement. Perhaps she should feel relief that they were safe for now, but she didn’t. “How many of our ships survived?”
Grigore glanced aside. “Ours and one other.”
Only two out of their original six? “The Lady Revenge?” she whispered the question.
“Nay,” Grigore answered in a voice drenched with grief. “It sank, no survivors.”
Swallowing convulsively, she pressed a hand to her face. My dear Octav. “By the moon, it seems this world is determined to leave me without family.” She was a complete orphan now.
Grigore clasped her hand. “You and I can be a family, Pettrila, do you hear?” His forehead collapsed into creases. “Blast, I know I can be a difficult man betimes. I’m not as suave or as charming as I’d like to be, though I try. And—” A tautness rippled through his hand. “I must confess that part of my ill-mannered behavior of late was bred from jealousy. It’s killed me watching you fawn over that traitorous bastard, Dragoş.”
Pettrila turned her head aside. A tear trickled from her eye and dripped onto the pillow. She didn’t want to think about that now. Ştefan, leader of the Vârcolac Vânător, was the reason her brother was dead. Her chest j
erked. Stars, and she thought it’d been an unbearable happenstance to be thrown over for being the wrong breed of woman. What she wouldn’t give to go back to that.
“You’re the only woman I’ve ever wanted, Pettrila. Please, heed me. I…I think I could make you a good husband.”
She stared blurrily at the rough wood of the stateroom wall.
“’Tis a new life awaiting us in England. Let us commence it together.”
She dug her cheek deeply into the rough pillow, more tears welling and falling. She’d thought to begin her new life with Ştefan. ’Tis my greatest desire to run off to England with you, little doe, and marry you. His lies tore through her just as destructively as bar shot, leaving her bloodied and wounded on the inside as though she’d taken a hit in truth. She’d loved Ştefan so!
“Pettrila…?”
“Must we talk of this now, Grigore? I wish to sleep.” She was tired down to her soul.
“I fear you mustn’t wait too long,” he said. “You’ve lost a great deal of blood and need to feed.”
“There will be Sânge Taicăs on board,” she responded dully. She herself had arranged for several to be on each ship; she wasn’t the only unmarried Vârcolac making this journey.
“None here, I’m afraid. Only bonded couples are on board.” He paused. “Remember, we weren’t supposed to be on this ship.”
She turned her head to look at Grigore. That could prove to be a problem. “Can we pull alongside the other privateer?”
“Come, my lady,” Grigore coaxed softly. “There’s no time for that.” He picked her up and settled her on his lap. “Bond with me.” He slid one hand into her hair and cupped the back of her head, gently urging her face against his throat.
She was too far gone to her blood-need to prevent her fangs from giving a tight throb of hunger. Saliva wetted her mouth, her lungs and brain filling with the aroma of Grigore’s blood. Without thought, she leaned into his chest, instinctively wanting to fill herself with him. Grigore’s pulse beat against her lips, and she began to tremble with the desire to feed.
The Community Series, Books 1-3 Page 57
