by Колин Глисон
Dimitri had considered visiting Rubey’s, which was, to put it bluntly, a brothel that catered specifically to the needs of the Dracule. Its eponymously named proprietress, one in a long line of women who’d taken on the name of the original madam, was a particular friend of Giordan Cale—and Voss, as well. She was also exceedingly astute for a mortal woman, as well as attractive, sensual and maternal—all at once.
However, Dimitri had no use for one of Rubey’s women. Certainly there’d been times—rare times—over the last century when he had taken his pleasure, and usually given some in return…but that was always after he’d fed, when the blood thirst wasn’t on him…though there’d been the one incident when his body had gotten ahead of him. He still had the scars on his arm where he’d ended up driving his fangs, instead of into the heaving, writhing woman beneath him.
Dimitri closed his eyes momentarily. The last thing he needed to think about was a heaving, writhing woman beneath him, since he’d had just that this morning. Only with clothing between them, thank the Fates.
He lifted his hand to pinch the bridge of his nose in frustration, and Maia’s scent came with it. This after he’d washed his hands thrice.
Was he now branded with her?
And he simply must not think of her as anything other than Miss Woodmore.
When he next looked out the window again, he noted that Tren had taken the opportunity to drive along Fleet and east toward Ludgate. The dome of the new St. Paul’s Cathedral rose over the tightly packed houses clustering around it, visible even through London’s constant filter of fog. At least, to Dimitri the church was new. To everyone else in London, it was the same cathedral that had always been there since its completion a hundred years ago.
But Dimitri clearly recalled the previous structure, whose spire had been destroyed by lightning in 1561, and then almost exactly a hundred years later, the rest of the cathedral had gone up in flames with eighty-eight other churches and thirteen thousand houses in London. The Great Fire of 1666 had melted St. Paul’s lead roof, sending the molten metal pouring onto the streets, making rivers of glowing red heat.
He would never forget the sounds of houses collapsing and towers falling, combined with the shrieks of women and men shouting. The streets were so hot that neither man nor horse could bear to walk on them. He and Meg had earlier taken a room at one of the public houses on Cheapside and were awakened in the dead of night by the shouts and bells clanging. By then the fire already turned the sky golden-red, and smoke filled the air, enveloping the citizens in soot and choking them with smoke.
They stumbled out of the public house as the fire danced on the rooftop next to it, flames leaping like curling devils. Dimitri heard a cry behind him and saw a woman screaming at the small, flaming house, and realized her husband was trapped inside. He didn’t hesitate but dashed around, trying to find an opening in the lashing tongues of fire. Only the front was burning, and Dimitri tore the door from the rear of the building and ducked into a dark, smoky hell.
It was his good fortune that the man was collapsed near the door, and Dimitri was able to pull him free. But by the time he reemerged, Meg had gone missing.
Even now, Dimitri remembered the terror of losing her. The paralysis, empty and cold amid all the hot chaos.
She’d become everything to him, to the man of thirty who’d spent most of his life buried with books and studies and had had little time or experience with the feminine gender. His Romanian mother, in adopting her new homeland of England, had embraced the Puritan tenet that affection toward children led them away from godliness. Thus she’d been remote and cool throughout all of his youth.
His father the earl, a Royalist who’d remained in England during the Cromwell years, took care to stay below the notice of the new government and taught his five sons to do the same by also seeming to adopt the simple, rigid Cromwellian ways. They had little social engagement and spent much of the time during the Lord Protector’s reign away from London.
Thus, the sensual, earthy Meg—who was several years older than he—had changed Dimitri’s world, bringing in a breath of life to an otherwise staid and bland one. She told him about her exciting, dangerous life as an actress in Southwark’s stealth theaters during the time when the public stages were shuttered under Cromwell. Filled with enthusiasm and smiles, she was a bold woman who exuded sensual promise.
Meg had become his life. She lured him, the proper and staid fifth son of an earl, into her bed, and in doing so, wholly snared his heart and mind.
In retrospect, Dimitri had come to realize that she wasn’t nearly as in love with him as he had been with her. Meg was enamoured by the thought of him being a peer and of a wealthy family, and what that might mean if they were attached, but she was not of his class, nor, more importantly, of his moral makeup. She lived for the moment and was scandalously loose while the genteel Dimitri lived only for the future.
Yet, that hot, red night when he emerged from saving the man from a house afire and found Meg missing, Dimitri’s life stopped. He simply couldn’t imagine his world without the sloe-eyed, coy-smiling, curvy redhead and he stood in the burning street, frantic.
Then, somehow, above all of the chaos around them, he heard her voice.
There, up in the window of the room they’d let at the small inn, next to the flaming house. He saw her leaning out the window, screaming for him. She’d gone back inside? Why? Then he saw the ruby necklace dangling from her fingers.
She’d gone back in to retrieve the most recent gift he’d given her.
His mind blank and terrified, Dimitri thought of nothing but saving her. He bolted through the door of the inn, which had just begun to catch fire. Inside it was already filled with choking ash and the heat radiated from the buildings around it.
But he could save her. There was time.
He ran up the stairs, already narrow and steep, but now darker and clogged with hot smoke. Stumbling, staggering, he went two flights until he found the room they’d used, blind and hot, barely able to breathe. The roar of fire filled his ears, the sounds of timber shuddering and heaving as it crackled into debris, the walls warm and rough beneath his fingers.
Somehow, he found her, his hands filled with the soft, familiar warmth of Meg, who’d collapsed on the floor near the door. He gathered her up and fell more than ran down the stairs, his eyes stinging with smoke, gritty and blind. The roof above was now ablaze, and falling pieces from the rafters scattered in front of him, tumbling down the steps and catching against his legs and trousers.
Down, down, down he went, staggering against the walls, at last reaching the bottom. Just then, a loud rumble filled his ears, followed by a horrible crash.
The next thing he knew, there was pain and heat bearing him to the ground, and everything was light…tinged with red and orange leaping everywhere. He coughed, tasted smoke, choking out her name and tried to crawl toward what he thought was the door.
Dimitri dragged them to the opening, his body weak and burning, his lover boneless and unmoving, the ruby still clutched in her hand, the chain wound around her wrist.
Save her. I’ll do anything. Save her. Save us. Anything to live.
The thoughts ran over and over in his mind as he crawled with superhuman strength, over rubble and coals, burying his face in the ground to keep from breathing the smoke.
It was a miracle that he made it from the smoking, blazing building, and even more of a miracle that he was able to pick Meg up and carry her down the burning streets, staggering west and away from the rage of fire.
At last, he collapsed, coughing, his eyes gritty, his hair and back singed and his body screaming with pain. He couldn’t catch his breath. All he could smell was smoke. Her body was warm and comforting next to him.
And Dimitri collapsed there, curling with his lover under a bridge as the fire raged in the distance. The sun had begun to rise in the distance, but the sky was already an arc of red over London.
He closed his eyes, fee
ling the strength sap from him. Meg hadn’t moved, even when he shook her, tried to listen to her breathing. But his ears were deafened from the great noise, and he couldn’t tell if her chest moved with breath.
Anything. Save us. Let us live.
He fell into sleep, or a faint, or something…and that was when the dark, fallen angel Lucifer visited him. Offered him precisely what he wanted.
I can give you what you want, Dimitri. I can save her for you. Both of you. Live forever. With the woman you love. Will you agree to it? Both of you. Forever. Will you save her?
Even now, Dimitri felt the rush of cold over him when he remembered that moment. The clear blue eyes and the handsome face of the visage in his dreams.
What must I do?
Lucifer smiled. You need do nothing but live. Forever. Enjoy life. You’ll save hers by doing so, and ensure your long life with her.
Dimitri remembered the vague feeling of evil, the cold skittering deep inside him. He opened his mouth—or perhaps only the mouth in his dream—to say no, to ask more, to question, perhaps even to pray…but Luce continued: Do you not love her enough, then? Not enough to save her?
Meg shuddered at that moment, and Dimitri felt her body as it gasped for breath. She was dying. He was losing her. No. He looked at his nocturnal visitor. We’ll live forever? Together. You’ll live forever. Lucifer’s hand reached out in the dream, settling on Dimitri’s left shoulder. Do you love her enough? Do you truly? Will you agree?
Yes. I’ll save her.
The devil’s hand rested on his skin and a blaze of pain seared through him, from beneath his hair, radiating over his left shoulder and scapula. And so it will be.
When Dimitri opened his eyes, the first thing he saw was the ruby, dangling around Meg’s neck. She was sitting up, her eyes bright and happy, her hair tumbling down over her shoulders. Not a hint of ash or soot marred her lovely face, nor were her clothes torn or singed.
Dimitri sat up and realized he, too, was intact. Except for a soft throb over his shoulder, right where the devil had touched him.
The city blazed behind them, a few miles away. They smelled the smoke, which choked out the sun and cast a pall over them even here. But they were alive. Uninjured. And together.
London burned savagely for three days.
Meg remained with Dimitri for three months. And then, fully realizing her power as an immortal, she left for greener pastures: younger men, an immortal career onstage and exotic travels.
It took years for the city to rebuild itself, disdaining lumber and using only brick and mortar.
Just as Dimitri rebuilt his own walls, stronger and more solid than they had ever been. Brick by brick.
“You look lovely, Miss Woodmore. Maia,” Alexander said, smiling.
She had her fingers curled lightly around his arm and they were, as planned, strolling through the gardens at Blackmont Hall. The roses still bloomed, but the spring flowers that cast such heady scents—lilac, lily of the valley, tulip—were all gone.
Pink coneflower and Russian sage marked the paths, along with thick green moss and neatly clipped boxwood. Lovely gardens. It was too bad that their owner couldn’t enjoy them…at least, in full sunlight.
“Thank you, Mr. Bradington,” she replied.
They were alone. Her heart should be light. It was light. It was, and she was happy and calm, and—dare she think it?—relieved.
“I do believe you should use my Christian name as you have done in the past,” he said, looking over at her. “After all, we are to be wed. Sooner, rather than later, I hope.”
Maia smiled back and ignored the odd sinking feeling in her middle. “I hope so, as well, Alexander.”
I could not hypnotize you.
You were never enthralled.
Maia blocked the words from her mind, along with the horrible feeling of mortification. It couldn’t be true.
“I’m so glad you’ve returned,” she told Alexander.
She spied an ivy-covered pergola and changed direction so that they walked toward it. Maia wasn’t certain what she had in mind, but the fact that it was shaded and out of sight from the back windows of the house could be a benefit.
“When shall we?”
Angelica. She couldn’t even think of a wedding until Angelica was safely home. And Chas had to walk her down the aisle. And Sonia must come from Scotland. “As soon as you can file for the license,” she replied.
She hadn’t told Alexander about her sister’s abduction, and certainly not about Chas’s occupation. How could she explain something like that? If she could stall for a bit until they got word about Angelica, at least…
“Will it be enough time for you? I can obtain the license easily within a fortnight. Will you be ready in two weeks? I know there is a dress to be made, but also flowers and invitations and announcements, and the food…and where would you like to have the ceremony?”
Maia’s insides warred between delight and misery. Here was a man who cared what she thought, who listened to her, who understood what she had to do. But she certainly could do nothing until her family was back in place. And safe.
And she couldn’t tell him. At least, not yet.
They’d reached the pergola. The shade from the clematis-entwined ivy covered a small area on the footpath, and, as if reading her mind, Alexander paused there, turning her to face him.
“As soon as possible,” she said, knowing that she would delay it if she had to. But perhaps something else to focus on now would be good. There were so many other things she didn’t want to be thinking about. “And I was hoping we could wed at St. Dunstan’s. It’s such a lovely little church.” Her heart was ramming in her chest as she looked up at her fiancé.
He was watching her with his gray-blue eyes. They always seemed so warm and affectionate, unlike those dark, flashing ones belonging to…other people. And he wasn’t quite so tall, nor as stiff and forbidding. He never spoke rudely. He never seemed as if her mere conversation was keeping him from something more important.
“St. Dunstan’s would be the perfect place. I shall make a generous donation and speak with the rector tomorrow. If that is what you wish, Maia.”
She swallowed, noticing the way his eyes changed. His hands closed around her arms and he drew her closer. Her heart was in her throat now, pounding. Her knees were shaky and her insides fluttered nervously. He was going to kiss her.
She was afraid of what it would tell her.
11
In Which Our Hero Faces Impossible Questions
Two weeks later, Dimitri stared at the door of his study, rancid bitterness burning through him. His fingers curled into two fists that he ground into the desk in front of him—it was either that, or put them through the wall. Or window.
Or somewhere equally painful.
Impossible.
Impossible!
Voss had just left, and was about to walk out of Blackmont Hall. Into the blazing sunshine with no protection.
It was impossible.
Voss had broken the covenant with Lucifer.
Voss.
The most self-centered, selfish, manipulative person Dimitri had ever known aside of Cezar Moldavi had somehow released himself from the unholy contract with the devil. A man who’d lived a life of debauchery and hedonism with out a hint of remorse, without a care for anyone other than himself—even before he’d been turned Dracule.
While Dimitri still bore Lucifer’s Mark. And it burned and writhed and seared him daily as he denied himself, studied and contemplated…and nothing. Nothing.
He glared at the stack of books, the curling, browned manuscripts and crinkling scrolls. His notes. His drawings. His hopes.
From somewhere deep in the house he heard the sounds of feminine squeals. Giggles, and a soft shriek. He knew what it was, and the sound infuriated him even more. He snatched up his heaviest cloak and stalked out of his den, calling for a groom and his carriage.
Damn the sunshine, he must get away from them
.
Angelica had returned safely two weeks ago. Voss had rescued her from Moldavi as planned. But Chas, refusing to allow a demonic vampire—particularly such a rapacious one—near his sister, had intercepted them in Paris and brought Angelica back to London, where wedding plans for her elder sister had commenced with great alacrity.
Now, as of his meeting with Voss, Dimitri knew he would be subjected to twice the excitement, for Voss had announced his intention to wed the younger Woodmore sister. Now that he was no longer bound to Lucifer, there was no real reason Chas could deny such a marriage. The viscount was wealthy and a peer. And he was a mortal.
Voss had actually removed his shirt whilst in Dimitri’s study in order to show him that the Mark was gone from the back of his shoulder.
When asked how he’d done it—how he’d shorn himself of the devil’s Mark—Voss had said simply that he’d changed.
Changed.
Dimitri climbed quickly into the carriage, taking little care to protect himself from the sun’s rays despite the cloak he carried. The flash of a burn skimmed his face and ungloved hand and wrist, and he fairly welcomed the pain.
The antiquarian bookshop seemed even less noticeable than usual, with the alcove entrance of Lenning’s Tannery next door fairly dwarfing the small, dark entryway.
Once inside, Dimitri paused and waited for the strains of serenity to slide over him. When he’d drawn in a steadying breath of old books and worn leather, he stepped into the dark shadows of the rows of shelves and waited.
It didn’t take long for Wayren to appear. This time, she wasn’t holding a book, although she had her spectacles on.
“Dimitri of Corvindale. I was suspecting you might return.” She looked at him closely, and all at once, he wondered what madness had brought him here. She knew nothing that could help him.
He found himself momentarily at a loss for words, anger and confusion churning like sludge in his gut.
Wayren cocked her head, watching him like an interested sparrow. “I’ve acquired something I think you might find interesting, and I’ve been saving it for you.” She turned toward a shelf next to her and plucked out a bound pamphlet from between two other much thicker books and handed it to him.
