Redeemer of Shadows

by Michelle M. Pillow

  Her eyes fell to his lips as they again parted. He seemed so near her. His skin was so pale in the moonlight, oddly so, but exquisite nonetheless. He held so still, like he didn’t even need to breathe. And she was breathless.

  Her eyes stayed trained on his mouth. Her pulse beat heavily in her veins. Her blood felt as if it were on fire. Instantly, she thought of his performance, commanding the room, touching the naked woman bound before him. And he had picked her. Or had he? Was that why he was in the garden? Did he come to finish what he wanted to start in the club? Was he angry at being denied?

  The lethargic trance swirled its way over her once more. She’d felt the same way when she watched him on stage. Her limbs became heavy weights.

  Servaes took in her every move. He found he enjoyed listening to her. Her voice was soft and gentle. It struck a chord within his depths. He liked watching her mouth form the words, not knowing in advance what she was going to say. It had been a long time since he had to stop and listen to a human, and most of his kind for that matter, without already knowing what they would say and do in advance. He felt her desire flowing in her veins. The scent of it drove him mad. His lips ached to part, to take her throat. His body ached for something rarer in his kind. It ached to take her.

  “Now it is I who must apologize,” he stated smoothly. He waited for her to walk forward, noticing the hesitancy she tried to hide in her steps. As she neared him, his eyes went to her neck. He heard the rapid beat of her pulse beneath her flushed skin. His eyes fixed on the thin flesh covering her artery, so strong and protective, yet so easy to pierce. Hunger bit angrily at his stomach. Still, he was reluctant to leave her so soon. “I did not tell you my name.”

  “Oh, I didn’t think to ask. I just kept thinking of you as Marquis Servaes. Not that I was thinking of you…”

  “Yes. I am Lord Servaes, Marquis de Normant.” He smiled. It had been a long time since he’d thought of his full title.

  “Right, your stage name. That is what I was trying to say. One of the people at the club told me you went by that.” Her tone dropped into a husky whisper. “Tell me what your real name is.”

  “That is my real name.” Slowly, he raised his hand as if to touch her face. His fingers hovered just over her skin, crossing before her full lips. He detected the warmth from her heating the coldness of the grave from him. She drew back, as if frightened.

  Hathor forced the mist from her mind, suddenly uncomfortable. To her, the idea seemed a bit extreme. She hoped he wasn’t an obsessive lunatic. “So, you actually changed your name to Marquis de Normant? You must really love your work to go to such lengths.”

  “Ah, love is a bit strong. Let us just say I must do it to live. Without my work, as you so cleverly put it, I could not survive. My existence is too lonely without the diversion of the club.”

  Realizing that they both still stood, she sat on the bench and made sure to leave enough room to put space between their bodies if he joined her. She had seen the look in his eyes when he studied her. He wanted to kiss her, almost as much as she wanted to kiss him. But it was foolish. He was a stranger, a man who touched women on stage every night for money. It was quite possible, by the looks of the club, that he was a fetish prostitute like the others. He could be diseased. He could be into some weird, kinky, porn cult.

  Even as her logical mind protested against him, her lips irrationally spoke. “Yeah, my father was the same way about his work. I, on the other hand, go through spurts.”

  Hathor shivered as he easily slid next to her. His movements were graceful and liquid. Turning his full attention to her, he continued to stare at her face. His body neared without appearing to make effort. Her eyes locked with his. For a moment, time stopped. There was danger in his nearness.

  She heard the faint pounding of her heart. Then, there was a second sound, fainter at first, but it grew steadily. Crazily, she thought she heard his heart beating as well, keeping time to hers. “How old are you, really? I mean you look so young, but you seem very well educated, and your eyes—they look so much older. When were you born?”

  She would have been shocked by her own rudeness if she had been given time to think, but his nearness captivated her. Her breathing deepened. His face drew near. Without a will to stop them, her eyes flitted closed. Her head leaned back, offering him her lips.

  “I was born in the year 1657. But in your years, I am forever twenty-six.”

  The words were light, but unmistakable. When he didn’t kiss her, she managed to open her eyes. Within the depths of his unearthly gaze, she saw the color shift from brown to green and then back again.

  “So, you are a French marquis from…1683,” she calculated. Servaes nodded. Grinning, Hathor asked coyly, “Shouldn’t you be wearing a powdered wig, cravat and big puffy shorts over tights?” When he frowned, she amended, “Sorry, I majored in antique fashion in college—talk about an unpractical field of study. So, is this role-playing what your clients pay you for?”

  “Clients?”

  Hathor thought that maybe he didn’t understand the English word. “You are a working man, are you not? A prostitute? My aunt didn’t try to hire you for me, did she? If she did, I’m sorry.”

  His lips curled up in surprise and his eyes shone merrily. “No.”

  “I’m sorry,” she whispered, though he was clearly not offended. “I just thought that you worked at an underground sex club.” Her mouth tingled, but she was too scared to lean forward to shorten the distance between them. “Well, monsieur, I wish I could play with you in your other century. I can see why you wish to escape this time. I’m afraid it is not as glamorous.”

  “I play at nothing. I am what I am,” he stated with charm and ease.

  Hathor shivered. Her eyes moved to his mouth. He parted his lips, letting her see the tips of his sharp fangs as they edged from under his pale upper lip.

  “Vampire,” she whispered in awe.

  Servaes waited for her to scream. To his amazement, she did not. Veins grew and formed on his skin, but she didn’t notice. They reached for her blood, yearning to be filled.

  “Oui, mademoiselle.” He wondered why she didn’t run from him in terror. But as he felt what she felt, there was no fear in her. Only an intense longing she was trying desperately to force back. He could take her, drink from her. She wouldn’t protest. Slowly, his hand lifted. This time, he allowed himself to touch her. Hathor gasped. “I am a vampire. Are you not scared of me?”

  “I don’t believe in vampires,” she whispered. His hand drew her closer to his mouth. Slowly, he began to tilt her head back, exposing her neck to his bite. She didn’t resist him.

  “Regardless, I exist,” he murmured along her throat with a deliberate chuckle. He could not remember enjoying himself so much. His parted lips grazed her as he spoke. He felt her pulse beneath his lips. Closing his eyes in rapturous anticipation, he opened his mouth wide and reached his tongue to taste her flesh.

  Hathor shivered in response. “Then why do you breathe? I can feel your breath as you speak. You can’t be undead.”

  With unbearable torture, he refused to bite her. She was too rare to kill. He knew that some night he would claim her, but not this night. Her resistance to him was too original. He wanted to learn more. And for once he noticed that the boredom he usually felt left him when he was with her.

  His teeth drew softly against her skin in agonizing slowness, not sinking below the delicate thread of flesh. His body ached with its ravenous hunger. Drawing back, he groaned. “I do not need to breathe to live. I could hold my breath for a century. But I do breathe to talk. It is how the larynx works.”

  At that she giggled. “You must have an answer for everything. Well then, Monsieur le Vampire,” she whispered, copying his accent, “I will leave you to your stage and to your own kind. For certainly there are more of you, I take it?”

  Suddenly, he stood, drawing back from her. He craved blood. The lust in him became powerful. “I must go.”

&nbs
p; “All right,” she said, as nonchalantly as she could muster. Gradually, she stood and turned from him. Her body shook, as if her legs were constructed of soft clay.

  Servaes watched her back. He began to leave her. Then, against his better judgment, he said darkly, “Meet me here tomorrow night. Midnight.”

  Hathor gasped. It wasn’t a request. It was a command. Spinning around to look at him, she searched the darkness in terror. He was gone. His sudden abruptness had taken her by surprise, and she had been unable to look at him for fear she would throw herself at him and beg him to make a woman out of her. Even now she felt the trail of long fingernails as they had grazed caressingly over her. His skin was unusually cold when he’d stroked across her cheek to cup her face, and her flesh had felt as if it were on fire.

  Unbidden by a particular reason, she turned toward the dark sky. Then, laughing at herself for expecting him to be flying in the air, she turned and rushed down the path back into her aunt’s big house.

  Chapter Four

  “Where have you been, dear? On a date?” Georgia called hopefully to her niece. She stood from the round chair in the front hall and placed her book on the seat, leaving it as she clicked off the light. The long folds of her thick cotton nightgown swirled around her feet as she stepped through trails of moonlight. Seeing Hathor’s flushed cheeks and sparkling eyes, she waited.

  “No, I wasn’t on a date. I told you I don’t date.” Hathor turned her dreamy expression to the window to glance out at the lawn. She searched for Servaes in the darkness. He wasn’t there. She wondered where he had gone.

  “London is no place to be roaming about unescorted at night,” Georgia said. “You should really have a beau to take you around, even if you don’t plan on marrying him. I’m too old to go out to all those raving parties.”

  “Oh, Georgie, you probably know more about raves than I do.” Hathor wrinkled her nose.

  Aunt Georgia was nearly seventy, but she moved with the energy of a woman just hitting the prime of her life. If it hadn’t been for her sudden attack of pneumonia, she wouldn’t have asked her niece for help. At least that was what the old woman kept claiming. Hathor had yet to even see her aunt cough, let alone need her help. She knew that, truthfully, her aunt was lonely. Being as they were their only family left, she wanted her niece close.

  Mischievously, Hathor added, “I was out walking the grounds. You have this place locked up like a military base. I doubt any harm could come to me here.”

  “Well, that’s true. Still, in my day—”

  “—they still wore powdered wigs and corsets?” Hathor interrupted playfully, thinking of her “vampire” friend in the garden. Her skin still stung with Servaes’ closeness. His need for her had been very readable in his gaze. He hadn’t tried to hide it from her, unashamed with the animalistic urgings of his body. She shivered anew thinking about it. Undoubtedly in the morning she would scold herself, but for the night she decided she would enjoy it.

  “Mm,” Georgia grumbled, trying to feign indignation and failing. The woman shook her head as her niece teasingly tugged her hair net.

  “I’m going to bed,” Hathor announced, leaning over to kiss the old woman’s wrinkled cheek fondly. “If any handsome men come by, feel free to date them yourself.”

  Georgia touched the kiss with tender fingers as the young girl sprinted up the rounded marble staircase. Shaking her head, she went to shut off the porch light and latch the giant, paneled front door. Then, slowly making her way through the darkened room, she chuckled softly. She was no fool. She saw the look on her niece’s rosy cheeks. The girl had met someone special. Georgia slowly nodded her head in approval. It was about time.

  Chapter Five

  “Servaes grows too confident in his place,” Ginger growled, looking into the demonic eyes of her companions. Around her in the sewers, severed human carcasses lay in the tepid waters. The corpses were cleaved in half by a wicked machete still gripped in her blood-stained hands. A head floated near her foot and she kicked it away like a ball. It bounced off the side of the sewers, making a horrible whacking sound as the bone of the lifeless skull struck the hard surface. Apathetically, she looked down at her most recent attempt and cocked her head, studying her handiwork. “Nearly clean through.”

  “Here,” Lamar growled, stepping forward. The sewer was so dim only the eyes of vampires and rats could see with confidence. “I can do better. Bring the last one forward.”

  A woman, who had the misfortune of walking over a street grate at the wrong time, was dragged kicking to stand before Lamar. Her whimpers were ignored as she pleaded with her unknown assailants through the gag in her mouth. Marred and bleeding from the fresh scrapes she’d received from her recent capture, she couldn’t make out the vampires standing before her.

  One of her captors pushed her down with a splash. Her body fell into the crimson sewage water, her fingers lodging into intestines still warm from life. Hands shaking, she jerked back, screaming against her gag. An unforgiving hand pushed her forward once more. This time she found the stone of the sewer bottom. Wearily, she braced herself and began to weep. Through the dimness, she stared in horror as a stray moonbeam from above gave just enough illumination to see her blood-soaked captors.

  Lamar waved the two vampires back as he took the machete in his hands. The red fluids made it slide between his fingers. With a sigh, he wiped at the handle to get a better grip. Already growing tired of their game, he said, “Servaes is one of the old. What can we do? I have no wish to fight him.”

  The captive woman’s eyes grew round as she saw the deadly blade glinting in moonlight. She couldn’t see the man holding the weapon, but she could hear his bored voice, and she could hear the slight movements of a crowd gathered, as if watching her. Quivering in terror, her body released itself into the sewage water. She didn’t care.

  “If we band together…” Ginger began.

  The woman whimpered louder. Her body propelled into action, she began to push to her feet. The vampires didn’t move to stop her.

  With a heavy sigh, Ginger growled, “Take your swing, Lamar! Her cries give me a headache.”

  Lamar lifted his arm. Bracing his feet in the water, he swung. For a moment, the whistling of the blade was the only sound beyond the woman’s gagged scream. Then, with a thud and a tear, the deadly weaponry found its mark. The woman was silenced. Her body fell into the water. Lamar jerked the knife back and moved to look at his achievement. Others came forward to survey the corpse as well. The blade had ripped her in half, from shoulder to genitals.

  “Ah,” Lamar said with a beginning of a smile. “Clean through. I win.”

  Ginger frowned. Tearing the blade from the vampire’s fingers, her hiss ended his pleasure. “It doesn’t count. You went through the shoulder not the skull. I win this round, Lamar.”

  “Argh,” Lamar growled. “Then bring me another and be quick.”

  Ginger laughed, but denied his command. Stopping those who would gather another victim with a wave of her hand, she said, “No, leave it for now. I grow weary of this game. Let us play another.”

  “What did you have in mind?” Lamar asked.

  “Burn this mess,” Ginger ordered to those gathered. Taking Lamar by the arm, she led him forward. “Come, Lamar, I will show you.”

  Chapter Six

  Morning brought with it a gentle breeze, stirring the ivy that wound through the long white trellis. The vines twisted up the side of Kennington House, trimmed back before growing along the large expanse of balcony outside Hathor’s bedroom. Multi-paned glass fitted into the narrow squares of the French doors. The doors were painted white, set off neatly from the stone look of the siding. The balcony was one of the few later additions to the house, nestled in the back just above the gardens, but completely out of view from the front.

  Inside the room, Hathor sighed in contentment, having dreamed of the man she met in the garden. True, Servaes was unusual, but who wasn’t strange these days? She had
to admit, the soft lull of his accented words, the fine cut of his antique clothing, the way in which he watched her from peculiar eyes, all made her tremble with nervousness and longing. He was refined, just like her aunt’s house that she loved so much. He was a man from the past, caught in a modern world. He had manners and style, elegance and knowledge, and part of her wished she could get trapped in the past with him.

  In her dreams it had been so. They strolled in the warm sunlight, surrounded by flowers and trees. He had touched her face gently with a warm caressing hand, handing her a flower for her hair. Lifting her fingers, Hathor touched her cheek and sighed. Last night his fingers had carried a deep chill with them.

  He probably is cold-blooded, she thought, not completely convinced of it. And last night was cool.

  The only blight in her dreamlike impression was the performance on stage. She was reluctant to get involved with an actor. Already she knew his lifestyle was more liberal than her tame existence had been to date. Yet, part of her—a small part she refused to give voice to—was intrigued by it all.

  “Well, he’s certainly not a vampire.” She giggled. Sitting up in the plush Victorian-style bed, she pushed the soft coverlet off of her legs. She felt a chill run over her spine. Her smile faded. The room was warm.

  Stretching her arms over her head, she suppressed a yawn. Not bothering to change from her sweatpants and T-shirt, she crossed the thickly padded carpet to the balcony. Glancing outside, she decided not to open the doors. Then, spinning around on her heels, Hathor couldn’t help but smile. She felt like dancing.

  Running with bare feet to her door, she ignored the adjoining chamber leading to her private dressing room fitted with an oversized wardrobe and exquisite vanity. Upstairs, there was nothing but rows of bedrooms. All just as lush and glamorous as hers, but none other adjoined by a balcony. She made her way down the long hallway fitted with brilliant woodwork and small tables with vases overflowing with fake flowers. Hathor knew that in the summer her aunt would have the maids cut fresh flowers to replace the silk ones when they had guests.