“Beatrix!”
Alder turned the other way and saw the front door outlined by the sunlight showing through its frame, brighter than the flames that were now creeping across and gnawing on the wide timbers on the ceiling over his head.
Dawn had come.
Alder was trapped.
Chapter Seven
Beatrix swam through the thick smoke, treading the black to the kitchen. She felt blindly for the long, heavy apron hanging on a peg inside the doorway and pulled it over her head to cover herself and scrunched the bodice up over her nose and mouth to filter the choking smoke.
“Bo! Era!” She knew she would not be able to see the cats in the burning fog, but she hoped that they would hear her voice and come to her. When she jerked open the back door, she thought she felt a soft swish past her calf and she left the door swinging wide. She turned back to the kitchen.
How had the common room become engulfed so immediately?
And why wasn’t Alder behind her? She heard a ripping crash from the large room beyond—the sound of wood past its breaking point—then a hoarse cry.
“Alder!” she half choked. “Alder, this way!” It was impossible to see through the smoke—the daylight pushing ineffectively through the back door did little but reflect from the wall of roiling black. Beatrix raised a warding palm at the raven barrier.
“Black as night, flee from my sight! To banish this bane, I call the rain!”
The choking curtain parted and a low white shape began to materialize—larger than Bo or Era, but slinking through the smoke on four legs.
A white wolf, his black eyes rimmed with red, his snowy coat dusted with soot, came at her muzzle first, streaked past her hand, and leapt through the open kitchen door. His big body bumbled into her, and Beatrix felt a slick wetness on her fingers, and the back of her hand. She followed without hesitation.
A crack of thunder heralded their arrival at the front of the inn, which was already coughing smoke from under its thatched eaves, and the first cold, heavy raindrops felt like ice chips on Beatrix’s face. She could hear shouts coming from the woodland path and muffled by the trees as the white wolf bolted into the cover of forest, his left flank a smear of red.
Beatrix spun back to face her home as the rain fell harder around her, sizzling on the coaling timbers and cracking mud. The footfalls of arriving woodland folk pounded into the clearing behind her as she at last saw the two people slumped against the inn’s door.
It was Dunstan, and his wife, Freda, shoulder to shoulder as a companionable married couple should be, only with their severed heads resting neatly in their laps.
Beatrix brought her hands to her mouth to cover her scream and felt the wolf’s cool blood against her lips as the first outraged cries from the Leamhnaigh pierced her core.
“Have mercy, she’s killed Freda and Dunny!”
Beatrix spun around again to face her mistaken accusers, and the rain washed her hair into her eyes. “Nay! I didna! He…they—”
“Look—their blood still on her hands!”
Beatrix stood anchored to the sticky mud before the semicircle of horrified folk, expecting to be rushed at any moment, but they only stood staring at her wide-eyed. Behind her, the inn sizzled in the rain, the flames in retreat, surrender moments away.
“Ye’ll pay for this evil, Beatrix Levenach,” one man said to her, almost sadly. Thunder rumbled over the treetops. “We trusted you. Trusted yer man. Where is he, now? Have you had done with him, as well?”
At this suggestion, the spray of people started like a herd of frightened sheep and began backing away toward the sheltering trees once more. Lightning struck deep in the forest, although the rain was little more than mist now.
“Ye’ll pay,” the man promised again. “And when next we come for you, there’ll be none who will stop us.”
With that dire promise hanging in the humid morning, the Leamhnaigh melted into the tree line like the smoke from the inn’s rooftop and were gone.
A flash of white caught her eye and Beatrix turned her head to see the white wolf limp from the wood and stop, staring at her, his sides heaving, his head down. He regarded her warily, and Bea could see that he was holding his left rear leg slightly aloft.
She sighed. “Come, Alder. Let’s get you inside where I can look at your leg.”
Beatrix turned and began to walk once more toward the back of the inn, not bothering to wait and see if the wolf would follow.
When Alder limped into the kitchen on two legs, the Levenach was already gathering a collection of supplies on the table to tend him. Her torn shirt and breeches were largely covered by one of her innskeep aprons, revealing only her wool-clad calves and the sleeves of her shirt. She glanced over her shoulder at the shuffle and drag of his boots on the stones but then quickly returned her attention to the task before her without comment.
She knew he was the wolf. His cold, heavy heart pounded and he could not bring himself to step closer to her. Perhaps even now the ingredients she readied were the poisons that would kill him. She was strong, she was smart, she was a hunter. She was sworn by her very nature to battle bloodsuckers, of which surely she now suspected he was one.
Beatrix picked up the small tray with one hand and strode to a far corner of the room. Bending at the knees, she pulled aside a heavy woven mat, revealing a square wooden door set in the floor. She pulled on a metal ring and the door rose. She glanced at him, and for a moment Alder thought he saw a flash of doubt in her eyes.
It was gone with her next blink. “Come into the cellar—there willna be as thick of stench, and we will be safe down there should the Leamhnaigh return.”
Then she was descending a set of steps invisible to Alder from where he stood.
He knew his own moment of indecision. The Levenach could very well be leading him to his death. Then he remembered her face, her demanding passion as they had made love in the common room. Alder had known from the beginning that his strange relationship with the Levenach would end in death, and as of this day, he would rather it be his own than hers. He would not drink from her. If she wished him dead for what he was, so be it. He followed.
He was only halfway down the steps when he heard her soft command of “teine,” and yellow light bloomed beneath his feet like a magical lake. As he stepped onto the lowest level of the White Wolf Inn, he saw that he was not only in the cellar, but Beatrix Levenach’s bedchamber.
She had secreted herself away from him, he realized, in an area of the inn Alder had never suspected existed. All along, he had thought her just within his reach while he slept, but the Levenach had wisely protected herself.
She walked to the bed pushed against a stone wall, and set the tray of supplies on her woven coverlet. The room was lit by four tall, standing candelabras, each holding seven thin, yellowed tapers. A small wooden table held a wash bowl near the head of the bed, a bright rug covered the oddly fashioned dirt and black stone floor, and pegs along the diagonally ascending risers of steps held a collection of clothing. Mundane furnishings, certainly, common to any simple sleeping room.
But the hair on Alder’s nape prickled and his fangs throbbed instinctively at his folly. He was in the magical lair of the Levenach, and Alder had never felt so vulnerable.
“Lie down,” Beatrix ordered as she strode past him to the hooks on the steps. She selected a long, shapeless gown and then ducked into the shadows under and beyond the stairs.
Alder limped to the bedside and lay down, careful to avoid jostling her supplies. His left leg throbbed and burned. He could feel his fangs semi-erupted in response to the pain.
Beatrix emerged from under the stairs a moment later, retying the apron over a long gown, and she came swiftly to the bed, her eyes averted from him.
“I suppose you saw Dunstan and Freda,” she said as she took hold of the two ragged edges of pants surrounding his wound. She ripped the tear wide, revealing the whole of his leg.
Alder nodded. “Laszlo’s work. I could smell his evil
stench at the cottage earlier.” His words sounded awkward to his own ears, his lips trying to shield his elongated eyeteeth.
Beatrix turned a bottle of some unknown liquid onto a wadded-up rag and then began to blot firmly at the gash alongside Alder’s knee and thigh where the falling timber had torn his skin.
“He’s nae playing with us any longer,” the Levenach observed.
“Nay.”
She set the rag aside and picked up a needle threaded with thick gut. Alder’s leg twitched in anticipation of the stitches. His leg would heal well enough without them, yet he did not stay the Levenach’s hand, relishing even this opportunity for Beatrix to touch him while she continued to speak.
“He’ll end it soon, then.”
Alder nodded. “If he does not, then I must. Beatrix, the sun’s dawning means that today is All Hallow’s Eve.”
“I ken that, Alder. The day of the dead is an important one to witches, as well.”
What she meant by that statement, Alder could not discern.
“I’m sorry should you feel any pain,” she said quietly, not meeting his eyes. Then she bent over his leg and poked the needle into his flesh.
Alder’s leg stiffened reflexively, but the discomfort was slight. He spoke through clenched teeth. “The next sunrise must find Laszlo destroyed and me far from the Leamhan forest. When I seek him this night, you must not follow.”
She did not respond, only continued her ministrations with her brow knotted in a heavy frown. Her stitches were small, quick, expert.
“Best that you leave the Leamhan forest, as well,” Alder suggested. “Before nightfall. The folk will not be denied now.”
“I willna flee,” Beatrix said distractedly. “My family’s oath forbids it.”
“Then you will die,” Alder hissed and reached down with one hand to still her wrist and force her to look at him. “Either by the folk or by the fang. Beatrix, you cannot stay in this place alone.”
“I’ll nae be alone—I’m going with you.” She pulled free from his grasp. “Be still,” she commanded. “I’m nearly through.”
He let her finish the stitches in peace, although his mind raced with how to convince her she could not accompany him to Laszlo’s lair. Once she had knotted the string and cut the needle free with a short blade, Alder grasped her wrist once more.
“Heed me, Levenach,” he implored, the effort of concealing his fangs making his words slurred. “I ken that you have a duty to your family, and already you have fulfilled your promise—you’ve held the beasts at bay until my arrival, and now it is I who must finish it. Alone. I am also being hunted, by a creature that is not vampire, but neither is he mortal. If he finds me this night—and you with me—we are both damned. And even if he does not—” Alder swallowed. “Beatrix, I told you no falsehood the day I arrived. I am your greatest threat. You don’t understand.”
“I do understand!” she snapped in a low voice and held his gaze steady with her eyes. “Alder, I know you are a vampire.”
Beatrix let Alder keep hold of her wrist while her confession of knowledge of his true nature hung in the cool air of the cellar. She saw his throat work as he swallowed, the warm candlelight playing over his pale face.
“You knew before I came?”
“Nae before you came,” she admitted. “But as soon as you touched me, came near to me in the clearing.” She let a smile come over her face, although the last thing she felt was merry. “I am a hunter, Alder. ’Tis in my very blood. Think you that I could not sense what you are just because of your handsomeness? Or because you were prophesied to come by my family’s oldest legends?”
“You knew, and yet you did not slay me,” he observed, and his hand tightened around her wrist.
Beatrix twisted her arm until she could pull her fingers through the tight circle of Alder’s palm and lace their fingers together. She had made up her mind.
“Nay. You’ve already saved me once, Alder. I hold nae fear of you. I trust you. With my life, and with my soul.”
His face took on a pained expression. “Beatrix, no. Listen to me, on this day when the veil between earth and eternity is thinned, once Laszlo is dead I—”
She leaned over him quickly and placed a finger over his mouth, stopping his confession, whatever it might be. She did not want to know. She let her fingertips bumble over his lips, feeling the raised outlines of his fangs, and shook her head.
“I have lived in the Leamhan forest the whole of my life, and knew from a young age that I was to be the Levenach. I am sworn to give my life in protection of the Leamhnaigh, and that duty I willna shirk. But, Alder, you are the first man, the first person nae of my blood that I would willingly die for. I canna explain it, I doona understand it myself. And I doona care. If I must die tonight, then let it be by these hands, by this mouth.”
She leaned closer to him, her hunger for his body inflamed now that she knew with certainty that their hours together were few and dwindling fast.
“I don’t want to harm you, Beatrix,” Alder whispered.
She smiled at him again. “Could it be that you love me, Alder?”
He frowned, looked away from her face as if shamed. “It is not in my nature to love.”
“Oh, but I think it is,” she argued, and drew her body alongside his on her narrow bed. “I’ve never wanted a man before you, and now that you know I am not ignorant of who or what you are, you may take me with a clean conscience.”
“I have no conscience, either,” he nearly growled, and Beatrix could see his black eyes dilating in the flickering light, could hear his accent thickening as she ran her free hand up his chest and neck to caress his face.
“Then take me,” she said simply. “Give me what I ask for and let us have these last hours together.” She kissed his mouth lightly. “Alder, I am inviting you in once more. Doona refuse me.”
He took her mouth in a rush, plunging his tongue between her lips and pulling her roughly to him with both strong, lean arms. They were facing each other on the mattress now, and Beatrix drew one leg up to hook around his hip, careful of his injury. She longed to feel him inside her once more, to at last gain the release of desire he had built in her while the fire had sprung around them in the common room.
At her encouragement, Alder pulled her beneath him fully and reached down to drag the long skirts of her apron and gown up around her hips. He buried his face in the crook of her neck and she turned her jaw away to give him access.
“Don’t allow me to do this, Beatrix,” he said, his voice strained.
“I am making you do this,” she said, and arched her hips, pressing into him, taunting him. “You must. I command it. Make love to me, Alder.”
Then he did growl, sounding like his other four-legged self, and he snaked an arm between their bodies to free himself. “I will obey, Levenach,” he threatened hoarsely. In a blink, he slid inside her, and Beatrix cried out, matching Alder’s moan.
He drove into her rhythmically, firmly, steadily, filling her and more as he jarred her body with his length and his power. She panted up into his face, saw the gleam of his bared fangs, and the sight of them set loose her forbidden climax like an explosion. She cried out over and over as he pumped his hips faster, relentless in his pursuit, and when he dropped his open mouth to her throat, she cried out again, partly in fear, partly in anticipation.
She felt the initial prick of his fangs as he climaxed deep within her, felt them threaten and then abruptly withdraw as he screamed with his release. Beatrix’s head swam as if she was drunk, Alder’s cries sounding distorted, her own body quaking, her eyes blind with silver and white starlight in the cellar, and she took his vampire seed hungrily, willingly, gratefully.
They slept tangled together while the sun rose slowly to its pinnacle outside the crippled White Wolf Inn and hiked across the dome of sky, then began to sink over the treetops once more.
Neither roused when the stone slabs in the floor slid apart with a scrape, and the soot-dusted c
ats paced agitated circles around the bed legs. Bo and Era yowled mournfully, but neither their cries nor the light escaping the Levenach well caused the slumbering pair to wince in their sleep. The well’s single black eye shut tight once more before dark had fully fallen.
Chapter Eight
The bodies were gone.
Beatrix squinted through the thickening gloom of dusk at the front door of the White Wolf Inn, but the corpses were not just hidden in shadow. The mortal remains of Dunstan and Freda were no more.
In the place where the bodies of husband and wife had leaned together was a pile of herbs, bent twig talismans hastily assembled by the looks of the ragged knots, and bowls of coarse salt. A ragged X was scratched in the charred soot of the front door.
The folk had returned to claim the couple, and left the warding objects for Beatrix, perhaps thinking the charms to keep them safe from her. The knowledge caused a pinch in her heart. The people her family had protected for generations were using her own talismans against her. The symbol on the door was clear. They thought her a killer of the innocent. A murderer.
And now they would kill her if they had chance. Alder was right—she was no longer safe here.
As if the thought had summoned him, she felt his hand upon her shoulder. She’d not even noticed that night had come.
“Will you heed me now?” he asked quietly, the dark snuggling around them both like a cold blanket.
Beatrix shook her head. “Naught has changed. I still have a duty to fulfill.”
“How can you feel you owe them anything when they would kill you?” His words were gentle, yet demanding of an answer to his cool, vampire logic.
“I doona owe the Leamhnaigh, Alder—I owe my family. My father. If my oath was only of my blood and nae by my lips, mayhap I could flee. But I knew what I promised when I took the vow of the Levenach years ago. And I will honor that vow.”
His hand fell away, and if it was possible for one of his nature, his tone grew even cooler. “What will you do, then?”
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