He swung around mid-stride, face a mask of ill concealed irritation, closing the distance with swift steps. Bernard interceded, slicing his stoic self between them. "Your Grace, perhaps…"
Sebastian turned his anger on his servant, snatching Bernard up by his lapels. "Am I not still master here? Am I not still master here?"
"Yes, your Grace," Bernard replied, subdued and calm in the face of his master's wrath.
Laurel paused a handful of feet away, looking between them.
Sebastian let go of Bernard's clothing abruptly and roared another command at her. "Go back to your room, woman."
Laurel had never seen him in such a high fury. Veins stood out in his neck and his eyes snapped blue fire. But commands hadn't ever sat well with her, this one included. She'd spent several months tolerating Kyle, who had also tried to order her around albeit with his fists and nasty sarcasm, and although she should have realized that Sebastian was a man out of time, it still irked her that he thought he could shout orders and she would obey them without question.
Janine, the petite, unobtrusive maid, stood staring with a feather duster in her hand down the hallway. Sebastian bellowed at her on his way by. "What has this world come to? I like it not. Do you hear me? I like it not!" He disappeared through the door and down into his subterranean room.
Laurel started to walk forward, mouth thin, fingers curled into small fists. If he wanted her in her room she would gladly go but she wanted all her things out of his sanctuary, first. She was in a fine fit, red faced and furious.
Bernard stepped into her path. "My lady, perhaps my lord needs his privacy for the moment."
"I plan to give him all the privacy he wants, Bernard. I just need my things from his room." She stopped and looked up at Sebastian's faithful butler. "He told me to obey him."
Bernard's expression never changed save for a knowing glimmer in his eyes. "If you will pardon me for saying so, madam, that is what women did in his time. He is confused here, out of sorts. He does not understand how things have changed."
Laurel relented, soothed somewhat by Bernard's calm reasoning. She was upset in the wake of the shouting and anger, realizing belatedly that this was their first real fight. "I know he doesn't understand. I don't know why he got mad to begin with, unless--" She paused, remembering him telling her to avert her eyes. Had he been jealous? It was a startling thought.
"Thank you for stepping in, Bernard." She stood on her tiptoes to kiss the butler's cheek.
Bernard accepted it and bowed his head. "Of course, my lady. I will do my upmost to settle things."
She knew that Bernard favored order and calm at all times. Deflated, she left and headed for her room upstairs, exhaustion setting in. Maybe after a few hours sleep she would seek Sebastian out and they could discuss it without their tempers getting in the way. They burned hot in all areas, it seemed, from loving to compassion to arguments.
Instead of going to her room she went to his, curling up on the covers of his bed. It smelled like the Sebastian she'd met in the graveyard. Just then, she longed for his dark presence, the feel of his arms and his strength.
It startled her to realize the very same man was downstairs right now, working through his own bout of unsettling anger.
Sometimes, they really did seem like two completely different men.
Chapter Sixteen
Sebastian didn't stop to consider the danger when he stalked away from the mansion. His intent was to put some distance between he and Laurel, to give his anger a chance to cool down. In that secret and honest part of his soul, the part most men kept buried deep and private, he knew his frustration to be as much about his inability to understand this new environment as it was about their argument. Not a man given to powerlessness, he set off to conquer this far-flung world he had been plunged into.
Only later would he realize the arrogance in that theory.
He could not have said how long he walked before he reached the heart of the city, passing houses with sprawling lawns and metal beasts – cars, he would come to learn – in the drives. People ran past in (what he considered) indecent attire, sometimes leading dogs on a long rope or with thin black cords dangling from their ears.
Standing now at a busy intersection, Sebastian was overwhelmed to find that he had stumbled into a concrete jungle. Tall buildings lined the streets, crowded together and reaching up into the sky at heights that threatened to steal his breath. Metal conveyances streamed past in an endless parade, horns honking, their smoke filling the air with noxious scents.
Everywhere he looked there was something new, something unfathomable to his archaic senses. Over his head, steel birds – planes, Laurel had called them – roared across the sky, dark shadows against the sun. People walked hurriedly past him, talking into small metal boxes they held to their ears.
It was another world; a world in which he could not understand his place.
People no longer recognized each other by title. Noise and smog clogged the air, and people rushed past like they knew something he didn't. Sebastian was a nobleman of high rank in the London he knew, a captain of his universe … but this. It humbled him. Here he was just one man among many, lost amidst the wonders of all that he could not comprehend. Small. Insignificant. Wondrous as he found some of the advances of this present day world (the plumbing system alleviated the need for dumping chamber pots out the windows), in many ways he had never felt more lost.
In an attempt to acclimate, he wandered for hours. Often he stopped to watch the people streaming past, or to stare at a television screen through the dinginess of a pawn store window. At some point it occurred to him that he had no idea how to return to the mansion. The streets seemed a perpetual maze to him, and in his wonder he had not thought to commit his route to memory.
Bewildered, Sebastian settled on a bench to contemplate his options. He was without currency, and as night fell he became aware that he was without the protection of a steel blade at his hip. From the small park in which he sat, he watched the artificial lights flicker on all around him, dimming the stars and the moon. Signs flashed garishly against the darkness, and the noise was ceaseless. Could a man no longer find peace, even in the night? Or acquire his own meal?
As he sat thinking on how to find his way back to Laurel he noticed, not for the first time, a strange vibration in the pocket of his suit coat. Snagging the lapel, he reached inside and wrapped his hand around what he recognized to be one of the metal things he had seen people talking into all day. A cellular phone, an advertisement he saw earlier called it. Not quite sure what to do about the incessant vibrating, he turned the thing between his big hands, studying the buttons and the screen, the light of which seemed harsh on his eyes in the darkness.
INCOMING CALL: SARA flashed at him several times. Sara. The woman he'd glimpsed in skimpy clothing. He lacked the context in which to understand the word 'call', although he gathered that it was some expression for communicating at a distance. Taking a chance, he pushed a button on the front. The vibration stopped, and he stared at the screen a moment before he realized he heard a distant voice calling his name. Tentatively he pressed the blackberry to his ear.
“...Sebastian? Sebastian?”
“Yes?”
“Thank God, Sebastian. Did you get my messages. I've been trying to call you for day--” her voice receded when he pulled the phone back to stare at it.
“--n't really want to talk about it over the phone. Are you in the city?”
“I … am in a city, yes.”
Silence.
“Sebastian? Are you all right?”
“I am well, thank you, but I appear to have lost my way.”
Silence again.
“To whom am I speaking?” he asked.
“... Sebastian, it's Sara. What is going on?”
A short time later, Sebastian idled uncomfortably in front of a bookstore Sara directed him to, cautioning him to stay there until she arrived. It made him bristle to have to accept
help from a lady, but his options were limited. Still, it sat ill against his already bruised ego, and he wore a scowl as he contemplated the facade of the older building crammed between others like it.
Gideon's Rare Books.
When he entered he was assaulted by the scent of books, though even these had changed from his era. Gone were the thick leather bindings, and in their place were thinner ones wrought of … wood? Curious.
He saw no one behind the desk, so he stepped to a shelf to have a closer look. Plucking a book down, he fanned the pages – glossy and thinner than the velum he was accustomed to. Running his finger down the page, he gathered that the ink was somehow applied differently than it had been in his age; the print much smaller and more orderly upon the pages.
Standing down an aisle between two towering bookshelves, Sebastian didn't hear the proprietor approach until the man was almost upon him. Concealing his surprise with effort, he turned to greet the man and extended a hand, noting as he did that Gideon had painful looking scars over half his face. It appeared he had been burned at some point, and the skin was a perpetually puckered red that stood stark against his natural pallor and dark eyes.
“You are master Gideon, I presume,” he said, and the man gave him a strange, intense look that made him mildly uncomfortable. Did he act so very different than his modern self?
Whatever troubled the bookshop owner about his demeanor, the man worked past it and extended his hand. Gideon had overly long nails for a man, and his skin was cool to the touch.
“Sebastian. It has been a long time,” he said, in what struck Sebastian as a cautious tone. His voice was soft and gritty when he spoke, as though whatever had scarred his face had damaged his throat as well.
“Has it?” he asked, trying to sound casual. “If it will not inconvenience you, I wish to pass a short time here. I am awaiting someone.”
Again, Gideon fixed him with a strange look. Nevertheless, the man made an expression that would have been a smile on an undamaged face. Something about it bothered Sebastian; as though a ghost had just trod over his grave.
“Of course. Make yourself at home,” Gideon said, gesturing around them.
Sebastian inclined his head as the man faded back and disappeared around the corner of the aisle as silently as he arrived. He stared at the spot where his host disappeared, trying to rid himself of the sensation that he was missing something fundamental. Something about the man bothered him, despite his polite demeanor.
Whatever his circumstances, Sebastian's instincts were still in tact.
For the next two hours, he read, soaking up as much information as he could about technology, inventions, religion and medicine. There was a never ending supply of books about war. Man had not changed so very much from his time. Societies still warred, only now it seemed they were much more efficient at destroying one another. He read various historical accounts, and came to a better understanding about the new things he had seen, as well as the general progression of society over the ages.
Something that caught his eye made him ponder Laurel's reaction to his earlier outburst with a new facet of empathy and thoughtfulness. His anger had long since cooled in any event, and like a man who had come through a war-zone somehow in tact, he only wanted to see her face. In the wake of that desire, their argument seemed nonsensical to him now.
Exhausted and overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information he was trying to absorb, he dozed on one of the sofas provided. He never saw Gideon reach for the old fashioned rotary phone behind the desk, or dial a number with one extended claw.
“Isabella? You will never guess who I have here with me. The Prince of Europe-- in the flesh.”
“My lady,” Sebastian murmured, bending gallantly over Sara’s paint-spattered hand.
A short time ago, he came awake on the couch in the bookstore to find her staring at him with the same sense of disbelief he detected on Gideon, and something more. Something softer, more private.
It struck him suddenly, this thing that would never occur to his modern incarnation: Sara was in love with him. He didn’t question the knowledge, it was just there with a certainty he could not dismiss. Although it softened him toward her, it did not seduce him. Only one pair of summer sky eyes held that particular sway, and he was feeling the loss of her after being gone all day in such strange surroundings.
He wanted to get to her, to go … home. Yes. His home, although it was no home he could remember.
Despite his desire to leave immediately, Gideon cautioned him to wait for someone called Isabella, and so he sat in conversation with the lovely young Sara for a time. He discovered that she was a painter, and that they were friends. That she had been married to a friend of his that was now deceased.
The way she choose her words was hesitant and careful. Like she was painting words in where others belonged.
It was as if they all knew something he didn’t.
Sebastian could not be unaware of the odd presence in the room when, a short time later, a very concerned Isabella swept in with Caleb at her back. He was struck by them almost against his will, and made a bit uncomfortable by the depth of their concern considering he could not remember them.
Pleasantries were brief, though Isabella did thank both Gideon and Sara for looking out for him before she took his hands and, with the same strange look he had been getting, kissed both his cheeks in greeting.
“Forgive me, I do not recall how we are acquainted, my lady,” he said, glancing from her to Caleb, who seemed to stare at him with something like ill intent. The man made his skin crawl, the hair on the back of his neck stand up.
“I will explain on the way,” Isabella said. He had little time to contemplate the reason his senses were on alert as she herded them toward the door.
Sebastian needed no prompting. He wanted to go home and see Laurel. Wanted to talk to her about all these newly discovered things … and perhaps to, no, he would not apologize, but he would forgive her for her disobedience, understanding now that women were not obliged to obey.
The thought put a small smile on his mouth, and after Isabella and Caleb filed out, Sebastian held the door so Sara could step through. She turned chin to shoulder to smile back at him; in the next instant, the expression changed to stunned surprise. Her soft sound registered on his hearing, and he was there to catch her when she crumpled back into his arms. He scooped Sara up, stricken by the haunted, sad look in her eyes layered over the pain.
“My lady … Sara.” Sebastian's voice was deep with concern as he caught her, a bloom of blood spreading across her chest. A trio of sharp cracks followed that sent everyone into action. Isabella snapped several orders out in cool Italian and urged him toward the door with Sara still in his arms.
“Fratello, per favore, back inside.”
Just before they reached it, something dropped down from the ledge above and blocked their way.
A man, but like no man Sebastian had ever seen. Long, pointed teeth protruded from the creature's gums and its eyes glowed red in the centers. When Sebastian connected with them, he found he was unable to move. It only took a few seconds to realize he was in the presence of a monster. The knowledge chilled his blood.
Before he could contemplate it further, Caleb hurtled between them and went tumbling down the sidewalk with the strange man, deep growls peppering the night air.
Isabella thrust Sebastian inside the bookshop.
“Gideon, there is trouble. Keep him inside,” she said, stepping out and closing the door behind her.
It all happened in a matter of seconds. Appalled when he realized the wet sound beneath his feet was Sara’s blood, he glanced down over her face and knew by the pallor of her skin that the situation was dire. He had seen enough death on the battlefield to understand that.
“Sebastian, come.” Gideon urged him deeper into the shop.
Sebastian crossed the center aisle and set Sara on a couch. Crouching down, he tried to staunch the flow of blood. For what little
good it would do her, he shucked the suit coat from his shoulders and balled it against the wound in her chest. Distant sounds of battle reached his ears but Sara held all his attention. While her life seeped out between his fingers, she tried to speak. Hoarse, unrecognizable whispers he didn't understand. Reaching up with shaky fingers, Sara touched his jaw. In her eyes, he read tenderness and something deeper. An emotion he understood that she'd kept secret for so long. For him.
He watched as her hand fell limply to the side. Her last breath was a rattle and sigh that produced a foam of blood along the seam of her lips.
She was gone. Sebastian closed her sightless eyes with a gentle touch and whispered a small prayer for this kind woman he did not know, but was somehow connected to. A fresh surge of anger drew him to his feet and he strode back toward the door where Gideon was standing watch. He barely registered that he was bleeding from a stray bullet that had grazed his shoulder.
With no fear, Sebastian snatched Gideon by the front of his shirt and snarled,“What is this? What manner of beast was that?”
In contrast to Sebastian's overwhelming fury, Gideon's calm was unflappable. “Those things are vampires. And you are their Prince.”
He spoke with such matter-of-fact serenity that Sebastian was stymied as he searched his eyes for the truth. Vampires? But they were myth, superstition; believed in by the lower classes, perhaps, but not by such enlightened men as he. Gideon smiled slow and deliberate, exposing the same elongated canines he'd seen on the man by the door. Sebastian detected nothing but honesty from him, and even without it Sebastian somehow knew. The words resonated somewhere deep in his gut.
Sebastian recoiled, releasing Gideon with a suddenness that would have sent another man sprawling. He stepped back, reeling, odd snippets of things clicking together like puzzle pieces in his head.
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