The more she thought about it, the more it worked in her head. Thoughts of Vic entered as well. She knew him, knew his heart, and could almost hear his words. He would have been an ally, and maybe, just maybe, she’d sold him short. It occurred to her now that when she’d been hesitant to take the trip to Romania with him, he hadn’t protested very hard.
In fact, the more she thought about it, the more she realized he hadn’t argued against her staying at all. He’d been happy, engaged, and excited to go: alone. Did he know? Had he been trying in his own way to let her go? Tears began to prick at the back of her eyes as the truth of her marriage began to settle at long last. How she did love that man, would always love him—as a friend.
She turned and looked at Nicoletta riding tall and proud on her horse. Fresh starts. That’s what it was all about. For Vic, for her, for Nicoletta. A smile was spreading across her face as the first arrow whizzed by so close it left a bloody slash across her cheek. Her scream shattered the silence, and instinct kicked in. Ignoring the pain in her face, she whipped around to see if Nicoletta had been injured.
From all appearances, she was fine. For the moment. Lura opened her mouth to ask if she was hurt and didn’t get the chance. The words died on her lips as she went flying through the air and then tumbled hard to the ground. Her horse, kicking wildly, was bleeding from the throwing axe buried in its chest.
“Damn it,” she screamed as she scrambled to her feet, her legs tangling up in the yards of skirt fabric. These stupid dresses were a nightmare. Why didn’t these women wear something more practical, like pants?
She managed to right herself just as Nicoletta brought her horse around to Lura’s side. With power she didn’t know she possessed, she managed to vault up, bulky gown and all, to mount the horse behind Nicoletta.
“Go, go, go,” she whispered into Nicoletta’s ear, her arms tight around her waist.
Nicoletta spurred the horse and it took off at a run, deftly maneuvering around trees and fallen logs, snow slapping their faces as they raced through the forest.
Behind them, hooves pounded. She risked a look behind and was dismayed to see half a dozen men on horses. They were big, they were angry, and worst of all, they were armed. One was pulling back on his bow and, as he released, Lura yelled, “Down.”
They both drew themselves down as close as they could to the horse’s back, and the arrow sailed over their heads before lodging in a tree twenty feet away. It was close, very very close.
“Son of a bitch,” Lura muttered. Every nerve in her body was on fire. She hated this place.
“We must get far from the soldiers,” Nicoletta said with an urgency in her voice Lura hadn’t heard before.
She wanted to say no shit, but that was just rude and unnecessary. Besides, it wouldn’t help anything. She’d done a turn in the ER of a Houston hospital during her residency, and even though she practiced a different kind of medicine, she’d learned a lot in that time that still stayed with her. Crisis and fast thinking were staples of each and every night in the emergency room of an inner-city hospital. She’d handled everything from massive heart attacks to motorcycle accidents to drug-fueled gunshot wounds. Panic wasn’t an option then, and it wasn’t an option now.
“We’ll beat these bastards,” she said as she hugged herself even tighter to Nicoletta’s body. “We haven’t gotten this far only to have them put an arrow in our hearts.”
“I don’t want to die,” Nicoletta said very softly, her words nearly lost in the snowstorm growing stronger with each passing minute. “I don’t want the child to die.”
Lura understood. It didn’t matter who the baby’s father was; the child was a part of Nicoletta and important. She tightened her arms around Nicoletta. “And I won’t let you.”
Chapter Twenty-six
Rodolphe was beautiful in the black-velvet doublet with leather sleeves and shiny brass buttons down the front. His breeches fit him well, not hiding the strength in his buttocks and legs. Tall leather boots rose past his knees, polished to a high shine. A black-wool chaperone hat gave him a regal, almost royal appearance. All eyes followed him the moment he stepped into a room.
Catherine studied him, knowing much of his secret lay in the beautiful package he presented to the unsuspecting. He was a true master at deception. Few would believe that beneath the pristine velvet beat the heart of a monster.
She knew and hated him for it. In many ways, he’d created her in his image. She’d been a beautiful young woman of means when he’d taken her life away, and from that night forward he’d groomed her to be the perfect companion always at his side. Always scheming.
Looking down at her burgundy wool tweed dress, the best money could buy, she frowned. It was lovely, made to complement every curve of her body. Only the finest fabrics, the most skilled seamstress, the latest fashions. Like Rodolphe, her package was deceiving. Pretty on the outside. Bleak and ugly on the inside.
Standing here in the monastery, a matching burgundy turret hat covering her beautifully arranged hair, she was the proper maiden head to toe. No one would question her; no one would think her anything but a genteel lady. They were the picture of well-heeled society patrons with enough money to command a private audience inside the monastery.
In this place, pretending to be human was a joker’s game. Here they understood the darkness and those who came from it. They did not turn away in confusion, and they did not make-believe. Here they lived in a world very real and very bloody, and rather than run, they faced their fears and fought. It was not a land for the weak.
Rodolphe called it the motherland. She called it perdition.
He took her hand and laid it upon his arm. Into the monastery they walked as the moon shone high and bright outside. To look at them was to believe them little more than a handsome couple visiting a holy place to pray.
Only three of them knew why they were really here. She, Rodolphe, and the priest who walked before them down the long aisle. The click, click, click of Rodolphe’s boots and her slippers was the only sound. Ahead, the priest stopped at the edge of the altar. A large stone with rounded edges was set into the floor, a cross carved deep into its smooth top. Years of footsteps crossing it had filled the indentations with dirt as thick as if it had been mortared into place.
The sight of the stone sent cold shivers up her spine. It took much effort not to pull her arm away, turn and flee outside to where fresh air awaited. She did not want to be here. Longed for the wind to blow through her hair and clothes, and to take with it the evil that clung to her like dirt. Rodolphe did not share her reticence. He seemed to literally quiver with excitement. He had been so since the moment they stepped foot on this island. She hated him all the more for it.
The priest waved his hand as if to encompass the stone. “He awaits you,” he said with a small smile on his lips. The sight of that smile sent ice into her veins. A priest should not look so.
Rodolphe took her hand off his arm. “My maker,” he whispered with a reverence she had never heard from his lips before. Somehow that seemed even worse than the sickening smile of the priest.
Rodolphe knelt at the edge of the stone. His fingers searched for purchase and, when at last found it, lifted the stone from its resting place as if it weighed no more than a pebble. She put a gloved hand to her nose as a horrifying stench rose from the earth beneath.
Catherine wanted to retch. Her eyes stung with the rancid odor that now filled the church. Resisting the urge to run, she was sickly gripped by the look of rapture on Rodolphe’s face. Never had she seen such an expression cross his features, and it made her shudder. His eyes glazed with something akin to love as he stared down into the murkiness of the hole beneath the stone.
She followed his gaze, and bile rose even higher in her throat. Time had not destroyed what lay in the earth at their feet. A crimson-brocade Cotehardie, black breeches, tall black boots. The supine body rested with hands clasped at the waist, a large ruby ring on one finger of the left h
and, the stone sparkling in the light of the priest’s torch.
It was not the body inside the elegant clothing that turned her stomach, nor its almost pristine condition despite having been in the grave for many years. It was that the body had no head.
In the shadows, Riah was still as stone as she watched the Prince ride past accompanied by a league of men traveling close behind him. She wasn’t shocked to find him so near them. No, what he wore as he traveled past made her want to scream. A crimson-brocade Cotehardie, black breeches, and tall black boots. If she’d been closer she’d have definitely seen a large ruby ring on his left hand.
Why today of all days? Their only hope of survival was to get to those damned rocks and pray that whatever let them walk between worlds was still open. After Rodolphe’s meeting with his messiah that long-ago night, she’d never wanted to set foot here again. She’d done it now because Ivy had asked her to.
This, however, was far more than she’d bargained for. She should have known it’d all blow up in her face. Fighting evil was tough, especially when it involved always keeping low so humans didn’t get wind of what was happening around them. The regular folks in society just didn’t want to know about those who lived in the shadow lands. No vampires. No werewolves. No witches. No nothing but plain old human beings.
What people wanted and what was reality were two very different things, and that’s what kept them busy. Even so, on occasion she seemed to be signing on for trouble to come knocking. An invitation for a bit of an adrenaline high that she honestly didn’t need. This was one of those instances.
Riah should have known better than to come back here. Her instincts were usually so much better than this. In Adriana-speak, she’d just screwed the pooch. Her decision to walk through the stones could end up costing everyone their lives. From all indications, instead of going home, she was leading them right straight into the hornet’s nest.
What she realized and no one else probably knew was that the final battle for Vlad the Impaler was on Snagov Island on a wintery December day…just like this one. He was buried after the battle inside the Snagov Monastery just as he had fallen, headless and wearing the clothing she’d seen in the grave that long-ago day with Rodolphe—the same clothes she’d just glimpsed riding by.
Sometimes, her life really sucked.
*
Nicoletta ignored the growing pain in her leg. When they first mounted their horses and set off at a brisk pace, she had been unconcerned. The magic Lura had done worked and her foot felt better. Before long, though, the pain began to creep back in. Now, with Lura behind her, their bodies low to the horse and arrows winging past them, the pain grew with each pound of the horse’s hooves on the hard earth.
Snow flew at their faces so fast it was like a winter blizzard coming in to blanket the land. As a child, she had loved the storms. She would sit by the fire, listening to the wind howl and sing outside, while her mother told her stories of love and adventure.
This snowstorm did not have the ferocity of any from her remembered childhood, and yet this one felt more menacing than any of those she could recall. Perhaps in her heart she understood that this one could be the last she ever rode through and certainly the last she would be one with the woman whose arms encircled her body. She prayed they would make Snagov Island before the soldiers caught up with them or, worse, before one of their arrows found its mark in Lura’s heart.
She spurred their mount forward, praying for God’s help in getting them to their journey’s end. All she wanted, all she prayed for, was Lura’s safe return to her own world. What happened to her no longer mattered.
Nighttime dropped quickly in the worsening storm, and for once she was grateful. With their heavy cloaks and their black horse, they could blend more easily into the dusky light.
“Are you hurt?” she asked Lura when she heard her gasp.
“No. But my butt’s getting so sore I won’t be able to sit for days if and when we ever get out of this mess.”
Despite the terrible events around them, this remark made Nicoletta smile. She had grown up riding the horses her father kept in their large stables. She had ridden many times with her brother, and it was there, on the back of a horse, that she always felt most free. After her move to the Prince’s castle, she would occasionally take one of the horses out for a brief ride in the countryside. It was far from the freedom of her youth, and she longed for a return to those carefree days. Still, each and every time she rode tall on a horse’s back, she felt alive and happy.
Even if she made it out of this, and even if the Prince saw fit to spare her life, this was the last time she would ever ride a racing horse through the countryside. Once he had her in his thrall again, he would never allow her freedom. Upon her return to his castle, she would be his prisoner. If she lived.
He would not call her a prisoner. Oh, no, he would call himself her protector. That is what he professed to everyone. He committed each evil, deadly, and gruesome act in the name of his people. To protect them. Yet each time she wondered what he protected them from.
Bringing her head up to let the wet snow slap at her face, she pushed her dark thoughts away. They would make it to Snagov Island. Lura would go back to her world, where she would be safe and far from the Prince’s reach. Nicoletta would live the rest of her life with memories of the woman who had opened her heart. It was enough because it had to be so.
After a little bit she realized the only sounds she heard any longer were the snorts of their horse and their own rapid breathing. The pounding of the men charging behind them had faded until there was nothing left to hear.
“Are they gone?” Lura asked, sitting up for the first time in a great long while.
Nicoletta also straightened and peered into the distance. “Perhaps.”
“What do you think they’re up to?”
At first she thought they had probably tired of chasing them in the storm but, as she thought about it, decided that was not what they would do. The Prince would not tolerate retreat. He would not do so, and he would expect his men to be as courageous as he. If they failed to show courage, his punishment for such a crime would be harsh. No, they were using strategy to capture them; she was certain of it. That is what she would do, and that is what they would have to do if they had any hope of completing their journey to the island alive.
“They will try to capture us as we reach the boat.”
“Sucks to be us,” Lura muttered.
Nicoletta smiled as she wiped melting snow from her face. Her cheeks, icy to the touch, were wet, yet she did not feel cold. Determination to get Lura to safety warmed her despite the winter storm that was making the sky deepen to a steely gray.
Much of what Lura said she did not understand, though listening to the sound of her voice and the strange words made her heart light. She wanted to remember every detail and every odd word for the long days and nights stretching ahead of her.
“I too have a plan. I do not wish for the soldiers to stop us.”
She shivered at the thought of what could happen to them if they did. The men would return them to Dracula, but only after they had enjoyed the capture. What that meant sent dread into her heart. She would not permit that to happen. Men would fall before she would allow them to touch her beloved Lura.
Their race to evade the soldiers had helped them cover much ground. They were close now, but instead of heading to the spot where the boat waited to take them to the small island, she guided the horse much farther south. The trees were thick here and flowed nearly to the water’s edge. Inside the trees, the snow cover was lighter and the wind barely moving at all. The protection they afforded was the cover Nicoletta wished for.
She winced as she dropped from the horse. A dull ache in her leg made it feel as heavy as stone, while her ankle throbbed as though someone was hitting it. She ignored it all. As long as she could still stand and walk, it was enough.
Reaching up she offered Lura her hand to help her down to the snow-c
overed ground. In the gloom they gazed out from the trees to the island beyond. The steeple of the monastery rose in the night as though it beckoned them. Perhaps it did.
She did not bother to tie the horse; she was not sure she would make it back. The horse should not be made to suffer if she was never to return. She patted its back end and it trotted off into the night, disappearing quickly from sight.
“Come.” She put out her hand for Lura to take. “I do hope you can swim.”
“Say what?” Lura stopped and stared at her. With the moon sending down shafts of golden light through the treetops, she could easily see the expression of confusion on Lura’s face. It was only right. What Nicoletta proposed was madness, and yet it was the only way.
Nicoletta explained her idea, and while the confusion in Lura’s face began to clear, concern took its place.
Shaking her head, Lura said, “We can’t…it’s far too cold to make that swim.”
“We do not have another way. Here the island is the closest to land. It is our only chance to make it to the island without being seen.”
Lura squinted and studied the water, still slowly shaking her head. “I don’t know, Nicoletta. It seems like a suicide mission.”
“Suicide?”
“Killing ourselves.”
“Oh.” She nodded, understanding Lura’s concern. “Even if we perish, our souls will be safe. I do not ask this of you to end your life. I ask it to save you. They have our boat. They will be looking for any other boat that goes across the lake. If we are to survive, we must swim.”
“You’re a crazy woman, Nicoletta, though you do have a point. I just hope I can swim like a fish and get to shore before hypothermia sets in.”
Once more Lura spoke words she did not know. All she did understand was the urgency, and of that she shared her concern. It did not slow her down. It could not. They had no more time. “Now, you must quickly disrobe.”
Vermilion Justice Page 22
