by Nancy Gideon
What is it, Master?
Go to Arabella, see her if you can, and tell her—tell her how much I truly loved her.
And saying that, Louis extended the saber again, and this time, Takeo took it, bowing solemnly.
“You have been a good friend to me, Takeo. Like a brother, like a son. Strike true, then see to the rest as it must be done.”
I will.
He embraced the boy quickly and stepped away before emotion could interfere with the execution of his plan. Execution—an amusing choice of words, he thought wryly, as he went to kneel before a low stool. Taking great calming breaths, he stripped off his coat and tucked his shirt down away from his neck. He’d seen it done that way a multitude of times during the reign of bloody terror in France—now, there were thirsty souls worse than any vampire he’d ever met. But from them, he’d learned better the blade have no restriction. He’d seen, as well, what a dull cut or a poor aim could do, and he had no desire to meet an ugly death. Quick and sure—as it should have been three centuries ago. Even as it should have been hours ago. He wondered as he positioned his head atop the cushion if he was the only man to know three deaths in one existence.
Then he heard Takeo step into a firm stance and he gripped the legs of the stool, panting hard into the sudden rise of panic. Oh, God... he should pray. But a soul as damned as his would have no audience with God. So instead, he composed a quick plea for Arabella’s happiness and squeezed his eyes tightly shut.
Takeo’s hand touched to the back of his head, gently shifting him so that his chin was off center and the back of his neck was offered up without obstruction. Louis’s fright fell away and he drew what would be his last breath and held it. And he waited, listening to the steady rise of the saber, the pause, and the abrupt whistle of descent.
Louis!
Arabella’s voice pierced through his mind, alive with desperate fear and need.
Bella!
And he moved.
The saber cleaved through the stool, burying itself deep into the wood floorboards.
And on his knees, Louis cleared his thoughts to receive her inexperienced call. It came to him, a frail, frightened whisper, yet so clear that his heart took wing.
Louis, where are you? I need you.
And he sent her a reassuring message to still the fever of alarm. I am here, little one. I am with you. I will be there soon.
Louis, don’t leave me!
I have promised to stay with you always, have I not? Rest. Sleep. Get strong and I will come for you soon. I love you, Bella.
Master, you must take care. You must go below. Dawn approaches.
Louis responded to Takeo’s concern with a resigned nod. The boy kicked aside the halved stool with a shaky relief and smiled thankfully as he caught Louis by the elbows, lifting him to his feet.
Perhaps it was selfish and wrong, but Louis couldn’t forgo the opportunity to see his Arabella again. If just to explain. If just to plead for her forgiveness.
He’d thought that the vile hunger alive inside him was the most powerful urge imaginable. But he was wrong.
Love was stronger.
“LOUIS.”
Arabella thrashed weakly upon her bed, unaware of what was going on about her. Unaware of the two men struggling to save her life.
“Now, carefully, Wesley. Just as I showed you.”
“But, Doctor, the accepted way would be to bleed her.”
“Fool, have you listened to nothing I’ve said? She suffers from lack of blood already. Hers must be enriched, not depleted. This is a revolutionary opportunity I’m giving you, boy. Do not argue.”
“Forgive me, Doctor, for being narrow of mind. Shall we proceed?”
The transfusing began from father to daughter, with Wesley Pembrook regulating the exchange. When color had returned to the near translucent skin and warmth to her body, her arm was bound and the two medical men sat back to observe. She seemed to rest, but it was not a true sleep. She continued to toss and whisper for her husband.
“What kind of spell does he hold over her?” Wesley asked, as he watched her clutch at the covers in the throes of her restless daze.
“He has infected her blood with his. Unless something is done, she is doomed to become as he is.” Stuart looked up at his intense protégé. It was not an alliance he would have chosen, but he was quite desperate, and that left little choice. Few would have believed the tale he laid before this young man. But Wesley never questioned. He’d felt Radman’s power, and he didn’t doubt. “I was hoping you would find the thought of that as objectionable as I do.”
“It cannot be allowed, I agree, but what can we do? What kind of authority would even listen to what would sound like mad claims against someone with Radman’s title and connections?”
“A higher authority, my friend. We must take it upon ourselves to see she is saved.”
“I am with you, Doctor.”
“And for your efforts, I shall see you have what you desire.”
Wesley looked avidly at the shifting figure upon the bed. “Arabella?”
“Once it’s done. Once you’ve destroyed Radman.”
Wesley smiled grimly. “It will be my extreme pleasure.”
Chapter Seventeen
IT WAS NEARING four in the afternoon when Wesley Pembrook rapped upon the front door. He waited, scrubbing his dampening palms upon his coat and casting furtive glances about, in case any took interest in his presence there upon Louis Radman’s doorstep. None did.
An Asian boy opened the door and looked out at him through flat, suspicious eyes.
“Is his lordship at home?” Wesley asked. “It’s urgent that I see him.”
The boy shook his head and began to close the door. Wesley stopped it with the brace of his hand.
“Please, you don’t understand. It has to do with his wife, Arabella.”
The youth paused.
“The doctor, her father, sent me to find the marquis. There’s been a serious change in her condition. If he is not here, might I leave him a message?”
The boy inclined his head.
“Have you something I might write upon?”
With a slight bow, the lad turned, and immediately, Wesley struck. The blow to the back of the boy’s head dropped him straightaway to the hall runner, and Wesley kicked his prone body aside so he could step in and shut the door.
Where did one look for a vampire? Howland said to look below, down below the level of the ground, in a subterranean grave, someplace quiet and undisturbed. The cellar.
He marched down the hall, not bothering to move silently. Radman wouldn’t hear him. From the folds of his coat, he drew the hawthorn stake, which, along with the mallet he’d used to strike Radman’s servant, he’d brought to rid himself of the obstacle to his greatest success.
After several false starts, he found a door that led down into darkness. Lighting a lamp conveniently placed on a nearby table, he began to descend. The chill was slow and seeping. By the time he reached the bottom, his breath fogged the dank air. There, he came to a chained door. The gate to Radman’s tomb.
It took time to break through those thick links, longer than Wesley liked, and then it was a struggle to push the door inward. It dragged on soft earth. Holding the lantern high to illuminate the underground room, he found himself in an antechamber where dusty racks of wine stood apparently untouched for decades. He moved directly toward an opposite arch that opened into a far greater room. The musty cavern was filled with crates of stored goods, collected belongings from Radman’s numerous lifetimes, he supposed. Wesley wasn’t interested in the treasure the man managed to amass. He was looking for only one thing. And after a lengthy time spent searching, still, he almost missed it.
For wedged in amongst the other boxes, without pomp, withou
t decoration, without any grandeur at all, was Radman’s resting place. It was just a crate fashioned inexpensively, like the rest. But this one had the dimensions of a supine body. Radman’s coffin.
Wesley approached it with a smug smile, hefting the stake and mallet with a wonderful sense of malice and retribution. He put them both in one hand so he might use the other to lift open the lid. It was then that his confidence faltered.
Radman lay within, stretched out upon tufted white silk, not in slumber or in death, but in an unnatural stasis, eyes closed, hands arranged in a relaxed position upon his bosom as if in light sleep. Yet there was no sign of breath. And Wesley stumbled back, totally unnerved, because telling himself he believed wasn’t quite as startling as being confronted with the actual fact.
Radman was a vampire.
For several minutes, he stood back, taking deep, composing breaths as he studied the supine form. If Radman was aware of him, he didn’t or couldn’t show it. Howland had said he was vulnerable only in this tranced state, so there was no time to spare in further hesitation. Squaring up his arrogant bravery, Wesley came nearer and finally sneered down upon the undead corpse. “Make a fool of me, will you? It is I who laugh now, Radman.”
He’d leaned down close with a doctor’s curiosity to examine the florid color of the skin when abruptly Radman’s gaze snapped open to reveal eyes like glowing coals. The intensity of that gaze staggered him. Wesley yelped in fright, but before he could leap back, his coat lapel was in the demon’s grip, a grip like death.
After wriggling in a desperate panic, Wesley managed to free himself and lunge back to what he hoped would prove a safe distance. But instead of flying out of the coffin in search of his jugular, Radman let his hand sink languidly back upon his unmoving shirt front and his awful glaring eyes drifted shut.
A protective reflex, Wesley told himself, fighting down his tremors of terror. If Radman could have gotten out of the box to slay him, he would have.
Angry for the scare he’d been given, Wesley returned to the side of the crude casket and determinedly aligned the point of the stake above Radman’s dark heart.
“Time to visit hell, Milord Devil.”
And with that oath, Wesley raised the mallet high.
“LOUIS!”
His daughter’s high-pitched scream brought Stuart hurrying to her bedside. She was sitting up, her eyes wide and staring, her respiration laboring with exhaustion and alarm. There was no recognition of him in her panicked gaze. It was fixed on something else, something that wasn’t there.
“Louis,” she cried again, with a heavy agony that hurt him to hear, and he damned the vile incubus that had seduced his innocent child.
“Arabella, you must lay back and rest,” he said gently. Yet, when he placed his hands upon her shoulders to ease her down, she resisted with a surprising strength.
“No.” Again, that desperate, wailing cry. “I must go to him. He needs me.”
“Who needs you, Bella?”
“Louis. Let me go to him.”
Stuart pushed more firmly and finally succeeded in pressing her objecting form back upon the bed. “You cannot, Bella. You are very weak.”
“But he’s in danger. Please. Wesley... Wesley’s trying to hurt him.”
How could she know? Had she somehow overheard their plot in her dazed sleep? It didn’t matter. The deed was being done, and his daughter would be safe from Radman’s snare. She was all that mattered. He should have remembered that earlier and spared them both much.
“You were dreaming, Bella. Everything’s fine. You must rest now and gain strength.”
She took no comfort from his words, continuing to thrash restlessly, moaning Radman’s name, weeping inconsolably for him. And while the sight distressed him, he refused to believe he’d done the wrong thing. Arabella would come to understand that in time, that he’d done it for her, because of his love for her. She would forgive him, someday. Perhaps she would even come to care for Wesley with a fondness, if not with the passion she’d had for Radman. And until then, she would live.
A sob constricting her throat, Arabella tossed weakly on her pillows and called again out of fear and longing.
“Louis.”
AS HE BROUGHT the mallet down with the force needed to drive the stake through Radman’s body, Wesley was abruptly struck from behind. The impact propelled him forward, sprawling him over the open casket, across Radman, who was suddenly no longer inert. His cry of terror was cut short by the wrap of Radman’s fingers about his throat, a grip that held him helpless as the smiling vampire sat up.
“Why, this is a surprise, Mr. Pembrook,” he drawled, in that sinister, silky accent. “I don’t recall inviting you for a visit. Or had you come hoping to pay your last respects?”
The stake and mallet were tossed disdainfully to the floor. Radman guided Wesley back, then swung fluidly out of the crate. About then, the demon’s attention was drawn to the boy who’d interrupted the killing stroke. The youth was tottering, still slightly dazed by the blow Wesley dealt him. Radman gestured for the boy to come to him, and Wesley saw his own death in the taut angles of Radman’s face as he examined the clotted wound. With a considerate hand, he lifted the boy’s head so they could commune silently. And while Radman was distracted, Wesley saw his only chance.
With a strength born of desperate fear, Wesley yanked free and raced for the exit, scrambling, stumbling in his panic. He felt a faint rush of air move by him; then, suddenly, Radman was before him, blocking his escape. For all his slighter stature, the marquis seemed to command mammoth proportions, powerful, threatening, deadly. Wesley floundered back in mindless horror as Radman came toward him, all gaunt-cheeked and red-eyed, oozing malevolence.
“So, you would not heed my many warnings.” The words were issued with a soft hiss. “You persist in meddling in my affairs. You think you can just injure or steal away what is mine. Think again, you loathsome parasite. I live off others to survive, but you, you suck off them for your own vanity. The time has come to send you to hell.”
Then Radman’s lip curled back to expose his great sharp teeth and Wesley realized his folly.
He’d waited a heartbeat too long. Darkness had fallen.
It was the last thought he ever had.
THIRST. THAT WAS what woke her. Horrible, aching thirst. When she tried to force a dry swallow, the muscles of her throat wouldn’t work properly. And then pain. Confused by it, she lifted a weak hand to assess the hurt and found her fingers taken in a gentle clasp. Arabella blinked her eyes open to focus upon the slightly smiling visage of her father.
“W-water, please.” Her voice was a frail rasp, but it was enough to gain the desired result. Her head and shoulders were carefully raised and a cup of cool water touched to her parched lips.
“Slowly, slowly.”
The first attempt nearly choked her; then she was able to drink down the rest almost greedily. She sank back unto the bolster of pillows, absurdly weary from the tiny effort.
“Rest, my dear. After a while, I’ll have Mrs. Kampford bring up some soup.”
“Mrs. Kampford...”
“Yes. Now, you rest—”
“Where am I?” Though her vision was slightly blurred, she knew at once she wasn’t in her bedroom, though Stuart would claim she was. “No.” But she was in the bedroom of her father’s house, not in the one she shared with her husband. “Why am I here? Where is Louis?”
Speaking his name brought an expectant tingle, warming, caressing through her. The anticipation heightened, becoming almost painfully acute.
“Where’s Louis?” she repeated, tone reflecting the sudden panic of separation. A feeling of aloneness like despair, like grief, an anguish she could not suppress.
“Quietly, Bella. He brought you here last night. You’d... fallen suddenly ill. He brought
you here so I might care for you.”
“I want to go home now.” She couldn’t bear the thought of being gone from there, of being apart from Louis. And though she had no strength for it, she sat up and started to throw off her coverings.
“No, child, you must rest. Please do not excite yourself. It’s not good—”
“I must go to him. I must!”
“Bella, you cannot.” And the heaviness of his tone alarmed her all the more. She lay back, panting wildly, her heart beating with a frantic anxiety as she looked up at her father. His expression was set in fatalistic lines.
“Why? What’s wrong with me? Have I some sort of contagion?”
Stuart’s smile was a tortured curl. “Of a kind. Time is the cure, and rest. So please try to allow both the chance to heal you.”
“Louis is all I need.”
An odd statement even to her own thinking, but Arabella believed it totally. Louis could make everything right with his presence. But where was he? Surely he had to know how much she wanted him here with her. She felt it then, the icy shiver of threat, not to herself, but to him who she loved. Louis had been in some dreadful danger, but the sensation wasn’t as strong as it had been. In her earlier, nearly delirious state, she could almost swear she’d reached out to him. She could feel the texture of his voice, the calming of his presence though distance separated them. She needed that feeling now, that oneness that was so inexplicable, yet so complete. She felt as if she might die of lonely torment if she had no reassurance soon.
So she closed her eyes and she reached out to him, calling his name, not aloud, as before, but silently, with all her senses straining. Louis.
I am here.
Her gaze flew open and she saw him, just a faint shadow in the open door, a shadow without enough substance to block the light from beyond. It seemed to spill through him as if his figure was transparent. And a moment of fright was quickly overcome by longing as he took on a comforting solidity. Her will fell away in that instant, her mind smothered by the intensity of his, her heart beating with the power of his as a trancelike stillness overcame her.
