by Thea Devine
If only she could see what she couldn’t feel. And if she couldn’t feel those two little punctures—if he hadn’t dug his fangs deeply enough into her neck to—
Draw blood . . .
She touched her chest, still oozing from the Countess’s bite.
She had to leave.
Peter could return at any moment to this coffin, which was accessed through a secret panel in the armoire in what had been her bedroom.
If he were still—did one say alive when speaking of the dead?
His room, Lady Augustine had told her. Down a short flight of steps, through a door that was to her right, and you stepped right into his reeking-rot-larded vampire resting place.
She had to get out; she wanted to stay. More than any of that, she wanted a good wash, for the unrelenting pain and bleeding to subside, for Dominick to come. And she consciously suppressed the memory of her ravaging of the butler.
She pulled open the door and walked out of the armoire into the bedroom. Her bedroom while she’d lived with Lady Augustine. Dominick had created the scenario and hypnotized Lady Augustine into believing that Senna was her ward. But the litany of events leading up to that moment was so incomprehensible, she still couldn’t order them in a way that made sense. Except she knew it involved the Countess’s secret plan for her to marry Dominick’s half brother, Charles, and later her stumbling upon the Countess sucking the blood from small furry animals.
Dresses still cluttered her bedroom from her haste to flee after discovering a bloody body in Lady Augustine’s parlor.
The room was beautiful, furnished for an aristocrat’s daughter, with a vanity table, a washstand, a roomy bureau, a massive armoire holding dresses bought for a manipulative sharper.
And a secret room to house a vampire.
She tipped the ewer and found it still held about two inches of days-old water. Relieved, she sank onto the vanity-table chair.
How many times had she sat here wondering, worrying? She glanced in the mirror and was shocked that she saw nothing. No one. No reflection. No movement. The Senna who had occupied this room for the previous couple of months did not exist in that mirror.
She felt so tired, weak from the pain, filthy with blood, and daunted by the truth that she’d regenerated into this altered state, she couldn’t move.
She just lay her head in her arms and let the memories flood in.
She’d never known where she came from. It seemed to her that she’d always been on the street, always fighting for scraps, for money, for a place to rest. Until the realization hit her that her street life was limited, and at some point, when she was not much older, she’d have to resort to selling her body.
Which was when she’d devised the seemingly clever idea to write, in the guise of a kindly solicitor, to a random list of wealthy families claiming a distant kinship, and asking if, in charity, they could take her in.
The instant response of the Countess Lazlaric offering her a home should have made her wary, along with the long, eerie trip to the isolated Drom Manor, the unexpected son, the unexplained noises, the notes she’d found in the library warning that Nicolai was watching, the odd habits, the dead creatures littering the grounds . . .
By the damned, she’d been so utterly jubilant her ruse had succeeded she brushed away the inconsistencies.
Until the Countess suggested she marry her son Charles, because she wanted an heir. The conniving Countess, counting on Senna’s having no compunction about bartering a baby for a lifetime of security.
Senna bolted upright. That was a memory she didn’t wish to pursue. The upshot was that she’d wound up in an overturned carriage in Kensington Gardens in London, and the ward of the solicitous Lady Augustine, who immediately rescued her.
And here, in this luxurious room, was the result of that: all those beautiful dresses; her entrée to the best society; Dominick, the man of her dreams, seducing her slowly, deliciously, in ways she didn’t wish to remember now that he’d abandoned her.
She swallowed hard. Wallowing in the past got her nowhere and it surely didn’t reduce the pain. Any of the pain. She needed to be practical now. She needed somewhere to go, to formulate a plan.
Washing and changing her blood-stiffened clothes seemed like a good first step. She would shed the imprint of her foul deed along with her clothes. She’d wash away her sins. She’d be reborn. Again.
But she couldn’t ignore the reason there was so much blood, or that her dress was torn, that her wounds still oozed, that the pain persisted. Or that Dominick was gone.
She stripped and washed, feeling every inch of her body carefully for other wounds, sores, scrapes, aches. The punctures on her neck. Instinctively she bent once more toward the mirror to look and pulled back sharply as if she’d been stung.
No reflection. No Senna. She had to remember that. She felt along her shoulder line. Were there depressions? She couldn’t tell and didn’t want to know.
She tore off a fresh strip of the pillowcase and carefully washed around the swelling edges of the X-shaped bites on her breast, then fashioned a bandage that she wrapped around her chest before she dressed.
Each day dress reminded her of the joy of being pampered like a child of wealth. The compliments, the choices, the accessories, the pleasure it had given Lady Augustine to play with Senna’s clothes, dressing her as if she were a human doll.
All because of Dominick.
Tears of frustration welled in her eyes. Every outfit was too complicated, with ties and hooks and bows and no one to help fasten them. How quickly she’d gotten used to that.
She fell onto the bed into a froth of dresses, the pain swelling against the tight fit of her makeshift bandage.
I will figure this out. This is no different than any other tight spot I’ve ever been in. I’m not inhuman. I can still be Senna. I’ll find Dominick. I am NOT a Tepes. Not not not.
The words beat like a chant in her mind. She rummaged in the armoire for something more suitable—a shirtwaist and skirt would do, although it was obvious the Senna who’d inhabited this room had too easily been seduced by silk dresses.
She was not that Senna anymore. A robe would do now. Just something to cover her body. And slippers. The obsidian.
She felt armed and prepared.
Now what?
Where was Lady Augustine?
She felt a tremor shimmer along her spine.
She didn’t have to give in to it. She felt the urge to just close her eyes and will herself someplace else.
Where?
She closed the bedroom door behind her.
The bad feeling escalated as she went downstairs and turned toward the parlor. The double doors were closed. There wasn’t a sound in the house. She remembered the night of Lady Augustine’s séance when the name of a murderer had been revealed. A mysterious name that no one could identify except Senna.
Nicolai. The name on the mysterious notes she’d found at Drom.
She remembered herself and Lady Augustine discussing the first bloody murder Senna’s first days in London; Lady Augustine’s impatience at feeling confined until the authorities investigated; the Vanquish the Vampire Ball; the second bloody murder; the idea that there were vampires among them.
By the damned, there were vampires among them—and she was one of them.
She flung open the parlor doors.
Lady Augustine was indeed in the house, sprawled on the floor, immobile, her body blood-soaked, her throat and chest ripped to violent shreds.
Senna felt no shock, no surprise, no remorse. Not even the impulse to feed. Nor did the sight of Lady Augustine’s body horrify her. It just was. Almost as if she’d expected it. But it made things that much more dangerous for her.
She herself had witnessed that Lady Augustine had been alive mere hours ago, sitting in this very room, with the newly turned
Charles Sandston by her side, calling himself Peter, acting as if he were her son.
It had been a chilling moment. Senna had still been unnerved and unsteady from her own turning, virtually only an hour or two removed from having awakened from her own blood death.
She could do nothing for Lady Augustine now. Nothing for herself at this point. Peter was gone. Charles might keep hunting her. The Countess had been drained of blood. Time stood still for just that moment, the tipping point of a future that would go on forever.
It didn’t matter who’d murdered Lady Augustine. They could even apprehend her—it didn’t matter when all of them could escape the bonds of mortal earth so easily.
And then return to decimate their enemies yet one more time.
She gazed dispassionately at Lady Augustine’s corpse. All that blood burbling from her wounds . . .
Did she have time—?
All she had was time. She had nowhere to go.
No! I’m not that monster, I’m not. She started moving toward Lady Augustine’s body as if she were hypnotized.
She was. She knelt and fed. A kaleidoscope of images tumbled through her mind, her past, her schemes, Dominick, who she had been, what she was now, haunting her, taunting her.
She’d had a predictable life not that long ago. A cozy place in a kitchen in exchange for odd jobs now and again. A shilling for a magic trick. A ha’penny to read a palm. A doorway in which to huddle at night. Mirya when the snow fell.
She’d had Mirya then.
She paused, her hunger abating for a moment.
She’d had Mirya.
Mirya knew nothing of what had happened to her. She was probably wondering, worrying. She’d been the closest that Senna had ever come to having a mother. An irascible, superstitious, trick-wielding, cryptic palm-reading, fortune-telling intuitive witch of an elderly mother.
Mirya would help. Senna had somewhere to go.
Feeding was a messy business. Her robe was soaked, her slippers stained. The sun had gone down by the time she finally felt sated and ready to face Mirya as herself, the Senna Mirya had known, and not this new and reckless creature.
She hadn’t seen Mirya since before she’d gone to Drom. She doubted if she’d even told Mirya that her ruse had worked or that she was leaving. Nor did she have money to offer her.
It could be argued she had something better. But surely threats wouldn’t be necessary. And why would she even think about coercing her? Mirya had always been good to her. She just needed a place, a respite, so she could figure things out. Make a plan. Mirya, of all people, would understand.
Senna discarded her blood-soaked clothes and unwrapped the drenched bandage. The wound was still raw, the pain still lanced through her when she moved in certain ways.
She wondered, as she washed thoroughly, if the pain would ever go away, if the raw edges would ever heal.
She touched her neck and shoulder, still feeling for the puncture wounds she couldn’t detect. She had to believe the bite hadn’t gone that deep, that the Countess’s blood could defeat any alien blood infused in her.
She had to.
She sifted through the dresses on the bed for the one with the fewest hooks and buttons, that fit without the torturous undergarments she’d had to wear. She had to fashion another bandage to cover her wounds, to which she sacrificed another petticoat. Tucking the obsidian between her breasts, she dressed carefully since she couldn’t check a hem or see if all the buttons were fastened.
Once dressed, she felt normal. Well, as normal as a creature with an unholy bloodlust, and urges warring within her that she had yet to learn to control, could be.
But Mirya wouldn’t know that.
It was time to go.
She stood on the threshold just inside the outer door of the town house and envisioned Mirya’s hovel, tucked in between two buildings at the end of a long alley, well away from the heavily traveled Lombard Street.
Mirya’s place, she thought with a surge of unaccustomed feeling, and in an instant she was standing at the corner of the alleyway, in the midst of a stream of people and carriages.
The noise of wheels rattling and people talking felt deafening. She saw lamplights burning all along the alley. As she drew closer to Mirya’s hovel, she heard scraping and scratching, as if something was being moved around. And then dead silence.
She knocked. “Mirya.”
No answer.
“Mirya!” Even Senna heard the feral tone in her voice.
“Go away.” Mirya’s rusty, old voice, laced with fear.
“Mirya—” Still that snarling voice. Senna tried to tone it down. “It’s me, Senna.”
“No. It is not you. Go away.”
How did Mirya know? “I’m coming in,” Senna said with an authoritative growl, certain that her desire would transport her where she needed to go.
But it didn’t work this time. She couldn’t penetrate the walls, she couldn’t seep in under the door. The creature Senna was not welcome because she had not been invited in.
“Let me in.” Her voice sounded tight, cold, impatient. She’d compel the old witch if she had to. She didn’t want to have to. “Mirya—?” She couldn’t get that anger out of her voice. She focused full force on Mirya’s mind.
Invite me in.
No response. Senna girded herself. Mirya knew all kinds of mystical things. She could read minds and foretell the future. She might well be chanting some spell or putting up some kind of magic barrier against Senna’s attempt to control her.
“MIRYA!” A command Mirya could not deny.
She felt the give in Mirya’s soul, the resignation and admission that Mirya was too old and too fatalistic to put up much more resistance.
“Invite me in.”
“Come if you can,” Mirya answered her grudgingly. It sounded as if she was moving whatever furniture she’d thought would be a barricade away from the door.
Senna closed her eyes. Inside. She found herself in the small front parlor of Mirya’s home, a room in which Senna had confessed, cried, slept, sought comfort, a room Mirya was now ready to defend with her life as she reached for the fireplace poker and turned to face Senna.
They stared at each other for a long moment, Mirya’s eyes dilated with fear, as if she saw the bloodlust in Senna’s eyes, and the struggle.
“I know who you are.” Mirya’s voice cracked. “I know what you’ve become and what you’ve done. And I know you’ve come to kill me.”
“Mirya—”
“Stay away!” She brandished the poker. “I know what you are.”
“I am who I always was,” Senna said firmly, “and I need your help.”
“I won’t help you. You are death. I have nothing you want, except my blood. Go away.”
Mirya knew, of course she knew. Senna quelled her irritation. This was Mirya, the odd old soul who had nurtured the homeless child she’d been.
“I don’t want your life,” Senna said at length. She looked at her hands. No lines. No heart, no life. She could move through walls. She could kill without compunction. She was what she was. And she was still human.
But for how long?
“I need your help. You’ve always helped me.”
“Ghouls don’t need help.”
“Really, Mirya—”
“I don’t trust you.”
“What would make you trust me?”
“If you left me alone.”
Senna gave her a look from beneath her lashes. Mirya never changed. She had a tiny, old-lady’s body that seemed to be one piece from her neck to her shoes. A lined face always set in a frown. Clawlike hands. Gray hair scraped back from her face and twisted into a bun.
Mirya had taken pity on her, fed her scraps, found her odd kitchen jobs, taught her to read palms and do simple tricks. Gave her shelter from
the elements. Protected her from predators.
She was now the predator. She was the enemy. No wonder Mirya was afraid.
“I need to stay here for a few days,” Senna said softly, choosing her words carefully.
“No.”
“I expect I don’t even need to ask,” Senna countered, “if I am what you think I am.”
Mirya stared at her sullenly. Then, suddenly, she grabbed Senna’s hand and turned it over. No lines. She looked up at Senna with her rheumy eyes.
“I say this as the one who knows you. You are a vampire. You cannot be trusted. You have no mastery of your powers. You have no control of anything, and you will kill me without pity when the next hunger burns in your blood.”
“I swear—”
“What do you want?”
Senna sank into the one of the wooden chairs by the fireplace. “Tell me what to do.”
“I can tell you nothing.”
“Then read the cards.”
“They cannot be read for the likes of you.”
Senna felt desperate. If she didn’t have Mirya on her side, she’d have nothing. “Then read for them for yourself. Assure yourself I mean you no harm and that I really need your help.”
Mirya shook her head, hobbled to the other end of the room, and sat on her bed. “The cards have no control over the blood,” she said finally. “What do you want?”
Senna let out her breath. “I don’t know. Teach me what I need to know.”
“I can’t.”
Senna leaned forward. “You must know—a chant, a spell, a divination, a revelation . . . something. They’re all gone—Dominick, Charles, Peter—they just all disappeared. You must know something.”
Mirya made a noncommittal noise, and Senna realized that Mirya did know something. Senna felt her blood start to boil with impatience; that quick, she was a minute away from grabbing Mirya and biting the answer out of her.
By the damned. She got a grip on her emotions with great difficulty; all the while Mirya watched out of those teary eyes that saw everything.
