Beyond the Night

by Thea Devine

  She flinched. Every impulse for blood died. His hatred came at her in waves. He’d come to salvage what he could of his mother’s legacy, and he meant to kill her in the process.

  He walked toward her slowly, parting the crowd, which was still looking at him in horror.

  “Senna.” His voice was rusty. Blood was splattered over his clothes, his face, his hands, dripping from the crack on the side of his head that she had put there when she’d swung a rock at him during the bloodbath that should have killed him.

  “Peter.” Her voice sounded constricted.

  “How could it happen that I missed my own mother’s funeral?”

  She heard the knife edge of rage in that question. She knew she couldn’t slough it off when everyone in attendance had been asking the same thing.

  She should have made up some story then, but she hadn’t expected Peter would reappear, given the bludgeoning he’d taken.

  All she could do was go on the offensive.

  She moved toward him. “Peter! My gracious—where have you been? You went missing and no one knew where you were. And those injuries . . . what happened to you?”

  She held out her hands as if to offer help, and she could tell by his expression he was seething. “Do you remember?”

  “I remember,” he gritted out.

  “In the hospital, were you? Did you leave before the doctors gave you permission?”

  He made a threatening move toward her.

  “Peter, really, I’m only trying to help. Where were you?”

  He was so close now that the crowd started edging away from the fetid stench, the clotting blood, the nauseating dirt, his ugly death’s head.

  Senna turned and called over her shoulder, “Puckett!”

  Like magic, he appeared by her side. “Yes, miss.” He took Peter’s elbow, his face impassive. “Come, Mr. Peter. You’re home now. We’ll take care of him,” he assured those who’d remained nearby.

  Peter had no choice. She had manipulated it so that if he retaliated, there would be witnesses, and every gossipy account would praise her patience and loving concern.

  Getting him out of the parlor and away from the small crowd of remaining and too curious guests did not solve her problem.

  She began the subtle shuffle of the few last guests to the door. “Forgive us. Forgive Peter. Something awful obviously happened, and we need to find out what wreaked such havoc on him.”

  Her words were hardly palliative. Everyone would talk. The gossip would fly. They might be shunned for a week, a month, or longer, depending on how Peter’s condition and her response to him were perceived.

  Probably for the worst. Society liked nothing more than to pity and eviscerate at the same time. She needed to invent an unassailable story to account for Peter’s return in such a condition.

  They would gossip anyway, she thought, waving to the last of the mourners. “Good-bye, good-bye.” The outer lights were lit, the carriages rumbled away, twilight hovered, Peter was home, and the urgency to feed rose like a geyser in her blood.

  “Don’t.”

  The voice of doom, standing just behind her in the doorway, intuiting her thoughts, her needs, her will.

  “Mirya.”

  “Don’t.”

  Senna clenched her fists and whirled on Mirya. “Why not? Why not now?”

  “He is coming.”

  “He’s here.”

  Mirya shook her head.

  “Who then?” Three possibilities came to mind immediately: Charles, Dominick, the child—if she was with child.

  He was obviously not Peter.

  “Soon,” Mirya said. Mirya knew what Senna planned to do. And that was not to confront Peter. There was no point. They both had etched in their memories the bloody, fiery scene the night that Drom burned: Dominick, near death, demanding she kill Peter by chopping off his head; Charles wild with a flaming bloodlust at his turning; Senna willfully giving herself to the Countess and then dragging the Countess so Dominick could feed on her last life’s blood and be saved yet again from death.

  The closest she came to attacking Peter was to hurl a rock at him with her diminishing strength, after which she’d succumbed to the double infusion that had saved Dominick’s life and transformed hers forever. She remembered she’d collapsed on the Countess’s husk of a corpse and into oblivion as the blood, fire, and bodies dissolved into the dust of Drom.

  She was the sole living creature on the grounds when she wakened to her new life in death, a chunk of obsidian in her hand, protection from the sun and Dominick’s obvious farewell.

  She didn’t need to see or speak to Peter now. Peter had nicked her with his poisonous fangs. Peter had caused this. Peter should die.

  He will come.

  She heard an ominous scuffling above her. Peter, whose thirst for vengeance writhed under the skin and who would not stay still when the object of his rage was that close.

  She had been left to find her way alone. Senna knew only one way when she had little control over her body, her hunger, her invisible powers. She felt like a baby, selfish, impulsive, greedy, heedless. Peter wouldn’t stop her. Nothing could.

  “I’m going,” she snapped.

  The noise got louder: Puckett trying vainly to restrain and contain a vampire. It just wasn’t possible.

  “You will do what you will do,“ Mirya said in that aggravating tone of voice as she turned toward the staircase, seemingly oblivious of the ruckus. “It will not change things.”

  “I will change things,” Peter roared from the landing just as the front door burst open.

  Peter? The body, the face, looked like Peter, but as Peter howled and launched himself down the stairs at the intruder, the reality materialized: his mind control broke and revealed Charles under the scrim of Peter’s face, wrestling with Peter on the marble floor.

  Charles, Dominick’s half brother, the homicidal maniac who had found his perfect place in his vampire rebirth, was bashing the head of the man he pretended to be.

  Puckett pulled him off. Peter lay unconscious, limp, blood streaming from his head, looking like nothing more than a heap of trash someone had dumped by the door.

  Charles held his nose. “Really. Senna—into the parlor. Honestly, he was no challenge at all, to impersonate—or defeat.”

  Charles closed the sliding doors behind them. “And now here you are.”

  Senna glared at him.

  “I thought he was gone forever,” Charles said.

  “Nothing is what it seems, apparently,” Senna said finally, taking a seat on the sofa.

  “And we are not what we seem. Listen, we don’t need him. I can be Peter. I can control the Keepers of the Night. I can be your lover.” He reached out to touch her, and immediately her whole body sparked with electricity, and he recoiled.

  “Maybe not,” he murmured ruefully.

  “Where’s Dominick?” she asked, her tone flat and unyielding.

  “I don’t know.” Charles put a tentative hand on hers and jolted backward as the sparks enveloped them again.

  “Senna, what on earth . . . ?”

  “I can’t explain it. I don’t know.”

  He shook off the crackling sensation. “We’ve been waiting for you, you know.”

  “I hate this. I want to go back. I never wanted to die. I don’t want to hunt and kill for blood. I want to go back to who I was and what I was.”

  “You can’t go back. Ever.”

  Senna shook her head. “No, I don’t believe that.”

  “You should love this, Senna. Eternal life. All that power. You can be what you want, who you want, go where you want, fly, crawl, command, compel . . .”

  “I don’t want any of it. None of it. Stop.”

  “You can be Queen.”

  She couldn’t have heard that rig
ht. “What?”

  “You can be Queen.”

  The words hung between them for a long moment, then scattered like fairy dust.

  “Nonsense.”

  “Vampire Queen. Of all England. All in the palm of your hand.”

  “Ridiculous. The Queen is nowhere near death’s door.”

  “She’s not young. She could have accidents. The elderly do. It would be so easy to engineer an assassination attempt, or a fall down a short flight of stairs, which actually would be a lot less complicated.”

  “Charles?”

  “And now that Lady Augustine has awakened on the dark side, we have a way to touch and compel our beloved Queen.”

  Senna was so horrified she just jolted back in shock a moment. “She’s not even ill.”

  “But she’s old. The monarchy needs new blood.”

  Senna shuddered.

  “You, who may well carry the blood of two vampire lines, the future is in your womb, you will be our Queen and your child the Eternal Ruler.”

  “This is nonsense.”

  “And I will be your consort.”

  Now she thought he’d really gone mad. But as she stared at him, she saw the scrim slowly come over his face, and he changed, subtly, deliberately, into Peter, to the point where even she believed.

  She shook herself. This monster was not Peter. “Stop it!”

  “Peter is known, liked, respected. No one knows Charles Sandston.” The voice was Charles’s, the face was Peter’s. “I passed muster with the Keepers of the Night,” he added craftily, “and they are some of Peter’s most trusted friends.”

  That was because Peter had formed the Keepers, a volunteer vigilante group of vampire hunters, Senna thought. It didn’t mean they’d follow Charles, if he was ever found out.

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “You have no idea how much you can do now, Senna, how free you are, how forceful you can be.”

  She bolted from her chair.

  “No one can stop us, Senna. We’re vampire royalty.”

  “I won’t listen.”

  “You’ll remember,” he said with surety. “You’re one of us now, Senna Landseth, and nothing you can do will change that fact.”

  Peter was still unconscious on the entrance floor. Not even the servants were willing to touch him. They, and Puckett, had surreptiously disappeared.

  “You killed him,” Senna said. He looked ghastly, blood-caked and lifeless.

  “I truly hope I did. Where do you want him?”

  “The question is, do I want him?”

  “Look, for all our planning, day to day, everything must seem as normal as possible. It’s bad enough so many people saw a bloody ghoul invade your house. There has to be a strong story, a plausible reason.”

  “He tangled with the vampires,” Senna snapped without thinking.

  “Perfect!” Charles said admiringly. “You’ll tell that story to some of Lady Augustine’s busybody friends, and they’ll do the rest. Believe me, they’ll be here tomorrow to dig up dirt, mourning etiquette or not. Especially those who witnessed Peter’s return.”

  “This is a nightmare,” Senna muttered.

  “I’ll get him upstairs and into the armoire.”

  “You know about that?”

  “I know everything now.” Charles lifted Peter’s limp body as easily as if it had been a bag of laundry. Senna followed him upstairs, noting his familiarity with the armoire and the deathbed concealed below. He laid Peter on the rotted dirt, shoveled several handfuls onto the seeping wounds, and motioned Senna back up the narrow staircase.

  “If we could only lock him up forever,” Charles murmured, closing the armoire door. “I’m afraid you’ve been relegated to the bed tonight, Senna. How will you bear it?”

  She lifted her head. “I can bear anything.”

  “You’ll be yearning to wrap yourself in your death shroud. You surely don’t want to share the coffin with him. Perhaps you’d like to reconsider the idea of killing him?”

  Senna took a deep breath. “I have to think.”

  “I’ll think for both of us. Eliminate him, and England is ours.”

  Had Charles always been this verbose, with such grandiose plans? Talking about Eternal Rulers. And usurping the Queen, her government, Parliament. Insane.

  But still, with all their powers and abilities and the awareness of eternity constantly powering them, vampires could rule forever. It wasn’t so far-fetched, really.

  She went dizzy at the thought of it. Or maybe it was that she was desperate to feed. Charles wasn’t helping things either. He didn’t move, forcing her to take the lead to get him out of her bedroom.

  My bedroom, a lifetime ago now that I have died and returned to a new forever life.

  “He’ll try to attack you,” Charles said as she led the way downstairs. “I should stay with you.”

  “I don’t think so. I’m perfectly capable of taking care of myself.”

  “You’re a newborn vampire. You couldn’t kill a fly. You don’t even know you can transform into a fly. You are an innocent, Senna, and I wouldn’t trust you alone outside this house for thirty seconds.”

  Senna brushed past him and opened the front door. “Please.”

  “Senna . . . let me stay and help you acclimate.”

  “Leave.”

  “Then I’ll watch over you from outside. You’re not alone, Senna.”

  “And yet I truly wish to be alone,” Senna said, gritting her teeth.

  “You’re right. It’s a lot to consider, the things I said.” He wavered as Senna started moving toward him. “I’ll go; but I’ll be near.”

  She closed the door emphatically and sank back against it.

  Charles had said she didn’t even know she could transform into a fly if she wanted to. She must have misheard. Still, those powers he kept talking about, did that mean he too could . . . ?

  He could be buzzing around the room somewhere right now, watching her.

  You’re not alone.

  No wonder he’d been so cooperative.

  The house was eerily silent. No sign of Mirya or Puckett. Just the quiet, the pricking of her ears listening for Charles, and the hope that Peter was dead to the world in his shroud.

  For how long?

  And then what?

  Castle Biru sat high on a rocky promontory overlooking swaths of farmland and villages as far as the eye could see.

  The weather was dank, overcast, and the visibility limited, but it was enough that Dominick got a sense of the isolation of the castle.

  He wondered why he felt nothing. Why Dnitra had even bothered to bring him here.

  “We feed,” Dnitra said, waving her hand in a gesture that took in the whole of the vista below. “That’s all they’re good for. They think they’re providing food and workers for their country. But, no, they’re providing food and workers for the Iscariot.”

  “Very convenient,” Dominick murmured.

  “Periodically, they come hunting the monsters, but lately, since we’ve been feeding on the oldest ones, they are not so quick with their pitchforks, arrows, and rifles.”

  “And when they come?” he asked, not caring about the answer.

  “They cannot penetrate the walls. Everything else is useless against our powers. We transhape, pick one to die, the attack is over, and the legend of the Iscariot grows.”

  “Efficient.” This was what his mother had died for, to reinfuse him with life, provide him with a home, a woman, blood-food to keep him fed forever, and the comfort of being among his clan for eternity.

  But he had nowhere to run, no way to preserve his ever-diminishing hold on his humanity. And Senna was out there, in London, in the grip of her rebirth, suffused with the lust to feed, and no one to . . .

  He coul
dn’t think beyond that. Senna.

  Dnitra touched his arm. “Come.”

  Something about her compelled him. He followed as she led him to one of the bedrooms.

  “Here we occupy ourselves until it is time to feed.” She motioned to the bed.

  He felt slightly appalled. “You’re saying you spend every day—?”

  “The Iscariot must procreate.”

  “And feed.”

  “That is our way in our home country. Others, I don’t know. Come, it will refresh and relax you.”

  Senna.

  The betrayal felt like a shot in his gut. He had no feeling for this woman, no life beyond the next moment, no future beyond tomorrow. A bloodless coupling would mean less than nothing. He would close his eyes, be direct, and finish in five minutes. But five minutes after that, Dnitra demanded more. And still more.

  The Iscariot must procreate.

  He wondered if she was the first among many waiting for someone with the youth and stamina to service them. He wondered which of the men in the castle even had the vigor to create a child.

  He might indeed, in these several couplings with her, have created a child.

  He had created a child. With Senna. The thought jolted him away from Dnitra’s heaving, naked body with guilt slashing at his vitals, and he grabbed his clothes as he levered himself decisively from the bed.

  She had made it too easy, and he’d been too weak.

  He had to get back to Senna. He saw instantly that Dnitra had been part of an overarching plan to keep him from doing that, which was, in reality, the Countess still manipulating things from beyond the grave.

  That bloody night, she had probably believed that Senna would be easy to seduce into eternity, and that her feelings would die and there would be nothing but the child.

  That would eventually happen, no matter how long and hard he fought it. Every moment, he felt the chipping away of his humanity in small, subtle ways. And there was no guarantee that a child would carry Iscariot blood. But that didn’t matter if it was his child and Senna’s.