by Moira Rogers
Beale. Which one had he been, what new hell had he contributed to the process of making hounds? It had something to do with the ledgers from his laboratory, no doubt. The truth was right there, along with the reason why the vampires were so desperate to get their hands on it.
But something else Cecil had said tugged at Archer. “Did he tell you her name?”
“The lady he left behind? Zilpha.” Cecil smiled a little. “My favorite cousin’s name, so I never forgot it.”
Archer’s chair hit the floor, and he had to look back at Cecil as he rushed to the stairs. “Get Grace. Tell her I need her upstairs, now.”
Cecil rose, his face pale. “Set my mind at ease, Archer. Did I do the right thing?”
He stopped at the base of the stairs, his hand tight around the banister. “Cecil, you might have just saved everyone left in this godforsaken town.”
The old man blew out a relieved sigh. “I’ll send Miss Linwood up to you.”
Archer didn’t wait to thank him, and he was halfway through the second line of the first document he’d grabbed when Grace’s footsteps sounded in the hall. She pushed through the door without knocking. “Is everything all right?”
He waved at her and shook his head as he read from the journal. “The girl survived. Her name is April.” He met her gaze, his heart pounding. “That’s how the first entry starts. I found the key, Grace. The magic word. Cecil knew it.”
She crossed to his side and touched the book with trembling fingers. “That was Diana’s name, before. April.”
Answers. “Grab some of the single sheets that look like they might be letters or messages. We can decode the first few lines until we find something that tells us who the hell Doc was.”
She dragged a chair from the opposite side of the room. “You’ll have to refresh my memory,” she told him as she sat, already sorting through the loose papers. “But I think I remember the basics.”
“I’ll walk you through it.” She was as brilliant as she was beautiful. Together, they could do this.
They could do it.
Archer set aside another journal and rubbed his eyes. “Anything?”
“I’m not sure…” She had shed her jacket hours ago, some time after Cook had brought up a tray with dinner and a self-heating pot of strong coffee. Now Grace sat with one foot tucked under her and a perpetual frown of concentration creasing her brows. “Doc wrote this letter, but it’s signed with a different name. Unless I’ve decoded it wrong?”
“What’s the name?”
“Ephraim Phillips.”
He froze. Cecil said Doc had told him he’d created something horrible, something monstrous, but never in Archer’s wildest dreams had he imagined the old man had been talking about something like him. “Well, fuck.”
“Archer?” Grace touched him. “What is it? Should I recognize the name?”
“Probably not. I barely do, but then I always was the Guild’s worst pupil.” He grasped her hand and met her gaze. “Ephraim Phillips was the doctor, the scientist, who created bloodhounds.”
“But—” Shock widened her eyes. “Surely Doc couldn’t have… Was he old enough?” A moment later she answered her own question. “Well, I suppose he was old, but it’s hard to imagine.”
“One of my friends in Iron Creek knew him. There must be a picture around somewhere, and we can be sure.” But Archer didn’t need a positive identification to know. Somehow, Beale—no, Phillips—must have alerted the vampires in the area to his presence. The only other possibility…
The vials. The experiments.
“What if the vampires don’t understand who Doc was?” he asked softly. “What if it’s somehow all about those vials in the cellar?”
“They must know something’s there, or they wouldn’t have tried so hard to break into the house.” She wet her lips. “You won’t be able to run the ghouls off during the new moon, and they’ll know it. Will the protections hold for three nights?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.”
“What if we stayed there?”
During the new moon, with her with him? “I’d rip apart anyone or anything that tried to come near you.”
She didn’t show horror or surprise. “Wouldn’t it be better than taking the chance that they could get what they were after? You wouldn’t hurt me.”
He wouldn’t hurt her, not directly. Not physically. He swallowed hard. “You’re right. Leaving that house unguarded is a risk we shouldn’t take.” Her hand was so small in his. Delicate. “I suppose I just…don’t want you to be scared of me.”
“Anything you do will be to protect me.” Grace rose from her chair and slipped into his lap, curling her bare arms around his neck. “I might be scared. I don’t have much stomach for violence. Maybe I don’t have much sense, either, because I’m not afraid of you. I can’t believe you’d hurt me, even if you were out of your mind.”
No stomach for violence, and she’d already cast her lot in with his. “Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked urgently. “The new moon? Really sure?”
She laughed and pressed her forehead to his. “I’m not normally an insecure woman, but you’re starting to make me feel as if you don’t want me to be sure.”
Because words had never been his strongest tool. They twisted, came out wrong. Never quite sounded the way he’d meant. He could try again to explain his fear, but it wouldn’t help. Instead, he kissed her.
She went still against him. She always did when he kissed her, a hesitance followed by her fingers curling in his hair or clothing, hanging on as he slowly explored her mouth.
Archer dropped a hand to her hip and slicked his tongue over hers, waited until she opened wider with a gasp and sealed his lips to hers. She melted and grasped at the back of his head, tangling her fingers in his disheveled hair as she tasted him in slow licks that grew bolder.
He broke the kiss but only pulled away far enough to rasp soft words against her mouth. “The new moon. Tell me what you expect.”
She shivered. “That you’ll be hungry for sex. That you’ll be hungry for me.”
“Hungry for you.” His cock hardened, so stiff it almost hurt. “But it’s a hunger that can’t be sated. Even if I’ve just had you, I’ll want you again.”
“With no sleep? No rest?”
She sounded nervous but not scared. Archer kissed her chin. “I won’t become a monster, Grace. My instinct will be to give you what you want and need—sleep, food, sex. A song and dance, if you truly desire it.”
With a soft smile, she stroked her thumb over his cheek. “Will you sleep when I do? How hard does the need drive you?”
He knew some bloodhounds who didn’t sleep for the entire three days, who stood watch over their women while they slept. But they were all mated, and Archer himself had never had a problem drifting into erotic dreams of slick flesh and needy screams before waking to make those dreams a reality. “I’ll sleep, honey. Don’t worry about me.”
“I can’t seem to help myself.” She kissed the corner of his mouth. “I like the way you took me the last time. I won’t mind if it’s a little wild.”
“If you think that was wild, you’re in for a hell of a shock.”
Her cheek heated against his as she blushed. “I undoubtedly am. And it’s not because I’m inexperienced. You simply have a way of making what came before seem…tedious.”
“I’ll show you more.” During the new moon, he’d show her everything. “Right now, we need to tell Diana what we’ve learned. Warn her.”
“And decipher as much as we can before the new moon.” She eased away, reluctance in every line of her body. “I’m glad you’ve retained your wits. Mine must seem depressingly scattered.”
“Flatteringly scattered.” He grasped her hand. “You should be the one to talk to her, but I can go with you.”
Grace shook her head as she rose. “No. She may have questions for you, but she should hear this—all of it—from a friend.”
“I’ll be here
if you need me.” Tearing apart Phillips’s papers and journals in search of answers.
Diana was still in the saloon, and Grace had no trouble drawing her friend upstairs for a quiet drink in her room. Finding the words to tell Diana the truth, however…
In the end, she chose quick and blunt. A clean cut, she hoped, as she explained what Archer had discovered in the basement, and the secret identity the journals had revealed. Diana stared at her and slowly began to shake her head.
“It’s not possible,” she murmured. “Doc—he would have told me. He would have told me.”
Grace reached for Diana’s hands. “Doc would have told you anything—unless he thought you’d come to harm for it. Anyone could see how much he adored you.”
“He would have told me this.” Diana met her gaze. “You don’t know how often he decried it all, Grace. The Guild, the process, everything. He said—he said it was all wrong, start to finish.”
She thought about what Cecil had said to Archer and couldn’t find a scrap of comfort in the words. Her own, then, whatever meager reassurance she could offer. “He saw what it did to you. How you’d been hurt, how you’d suffered. Perhaps he didn’t want you to hate him for everything that happened to you.”
“I wouldn’t—I—” Diana squeezed her eyes shut, pushing two tears down her cheeks. “He said the man who created the hounds was the real monster.”
Making soothing noises, Grace pulled Diana into her embrace, stroking the other woman’s hair with a trembling hand. “We all judge ourselves harshly for the things we most regret,” she whispered. “We fear seeing our own loathing reflected in the eyes of those we love.”
“I wouldn’t have hated him.” The words were muffled against Grace’s shoulder. “I swear I wouldn’t have.”
“I know, honey.” She rested her cheek against Diana’s head and closed her eyes. Her own secrets were mundane compared to Doc’s, and she’d held them close long after Diana had given every indication that she’d happily listen to Grace unburden her heart. The fear of seeing disgust or disappointment… How much worse must it have been for Doc, who’d been the unwitting cause of Diana’s pain? “You loved him, and he loved you. That’s what matters.”
She straightened and wiped her face. “You’re right. None of this is important. What matters is Crystal Springs.”
Grace tightened her hands on Diana’s shoulders. “That’s not what I said at all. It matters. You matter.”
“I matter,” Diana agreed. “So did Doc. But who he was or what he did before he came here—that’s nothing. This is what he cared about, the town and the people in it. Us.”
“Yes.” Grace managed a shaky smile. “We found journals. They need to be decoded, but we can work on that until the new moon.”
Diana bit her lip. “Did you and Archer… Did he ask you?”
Belatedly, Grace realized what she’d done by extending her reckless offer. Diana would be gripped by the same madness, the lustful need that forced her to disappear with as many young, virile men as she could put her hands on. With Archer here, in the same state…
Jealousy closed a fist around Grace’s heart, but she ignored the pain and forced the words through numb lips. “Wouldn’t it make more sense for the two of you to spend the new moon together?”
Diana muffled a snort that sounded like a laugh tempered with nausea. “Tell me you’re joking.”
Grace frowned, unsure if she should be relieved or offended. “Why not? You’ll both be in need, and he’s—” No, she would not extol his virtues as a lover, not when her cheeks were on fire already from being the butt of some unknown joke. “He’s handsome and considerate.”
“Oh, honey.” Diana shook her head. “Something about being near Archer isn’t—it isn’t pleasant, Grace. Not that I find him loathsome. I don’t.” She sighed. “When I’m near Archer, I want to hit him, not fuck him. I feel almost territorial.”
So much for her grand gesture of generosity. Grace exhaled a choked laugh. “So do I, I confess. Feel territorial, I mean. Though perhaps in a slightly different manner.”
“Slightly? Try entirely.” Diana looped an arm around her. “Be careful, Grace. The new moon, it’s… I don’t really even know how to describe it, but it isn’t just about fucking. Not by a long shot.”
Here were the answers she couldn’t bring herself to ask of Archer. “He seems nervous. I don’t know if he’s worried about hurting or scaring me, or something else entirely.”
“Scaring you, maybe.” Diana sighed. “The whole experience is so intense. I can’t even imagine what it must be like on the other side of it, not really.”
“If it’s not about sex, what is it about?”
“It’s about sex and pleasure, just…more.” Diana seemed to consider it. “Touch. Closeness. Peace, in a way. Knowing I can still do something besides hurt and kill.”
Nothing Grace couldn’t handle well enough, even with her limited experience with sex for the pleasure of it. “What about you? Where will you pass the new moon?”
“Same place I have been for a while now, with George Gilchrist.” Diana’s cheeks colored in a blush. “And perhaps Jesse Samuels. They’re both quite fond of me, you know.”
“And why wouldn’t they be?” Grace shook her head. “The world’s spinning too fast for me to keep up. I know he’ll be gone soon, and my heart may be bruised, but I want this. After so many awful months, I want a few days of selfishness.”
“Then take it,” Diana advised. “Take it and don’t look back. None of us have that luxury right now. We have to live for this moment, right now.”
“Not yesterday or tomorrow.” Reaching for Diana’s hand, Grace smiled. “Are you helping oversee the rest of the preparations?”
“For as long as I can stay.” Diana gave her a serious look. “Doc kept a journal. Do you think Archer could find it and decipher it for me? I—I’d like to have it.”
The girl survived. Her name is April. What would reading about the earliest days of her transformation do to Diana? Would it strip away the comfort she’d taken in Doc’s care? An impossible question to answer, and not Grace’s decision to make. “We found the journal. I don’t know if he’ll need to copy what’s inside, but if there’s any way for it to go to you…” Surely Archer would feel fondly enough toward her to consider such a request.
“Thank you, Grace.”
“Of course.” Grace hugged Diana, hugged her as much for her own sake as Diana’s. “After the new moon, after this is over, I want to tell you everything. All the things you never asked. I need someone to know me.” Someone other than Archer, who would be gone.
“I’ll listen to anything you want to tell me,” Diana promised.
“And the same goes for you.” Between the deciphered journals and the new moon, they’d both have plenty of things to talk about. At least they wouldn’t have to be alone.
Chapter Seven
Every surface had been dusted and cleaned. The coldbox was stocked with easily prepared foods. Enough wood to run the boiler for a week had been stacked in the small lean-to.
Even the bed had been readied.
Grace had blushed the entire time Cook had helped her fit the fresh sheets to the feather mattress. Not Diana, because Archer and Diana had grown increasingly irritated by each other’s presence as the day progressed, to the point that Grace had begged her to see to final preparations back in town.
Sunset might mark the start of the new moon’s worst fury, but Grace had begun to suspect the storm inside Archer would break much sooner.
“We have supplies enough to last us through the week,” she said, tucking the last covered dish into the coldbox. Her voice seemed to tremble between nervousness and anticipation, and she could only hope he wouldn’t interpret it as fear. “Is there anything else I need to do?”
“No.” He spoke from directly behind her. “You’re nervous.”
No lies between them, that was the agreement. “Yes, a little. But it’s the good ki
nd of nervous, I think.”
His breath blew across the back of her neck. “Would you tell me if it wasn’t?”
“Yes.” Maybe she should have taken her hair down, or left it in a simple braid. Something easier for a lust-addled man to deal with. But the heat of his mouth so close to the vulnerable nape of her neck made her skin tingle. “Only honesty, Archer. I promise you.”
“Mmm.” He licked his way to the side of her neck and drew her earlobe between his teeth.
She braced both hands on the kitchen table as arousal weakened her knees. “Should I go to the bedroom and undress?”
Archer growled, reached around and covered her hands with his. “No, don’t move.”
His voice sounded rougher. Low and intense, as barely restrained as the arms that caged her in place. Her heart thumped as she realized the storm had already broken. Archer was sliding into madness, and a sudden move might send him there hard and fast.
She forced herself to relax, to soften as she tilted her head forward. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“Not even moonrise yet.” His chest heaved against her back. “I won’t make it ’til nightfall.”
“You don’t need to. Everyone’s hunkered down in the saloon. Everything’s taken care of.” She leaned into him as well as she could with her hands pinned, and shivered when she found him already hard. “I’m yours for as long as you need me.”
“You’re mine for as long as the moon is dark,” he corrected in a rumble.
Pleasure sliced through her at the thought that his need wouldn’t easily fade, followed by loss at the reminder of how short their time could be. “So what are you going to do with me?”
“No. No more words.” He slid his hands up her arms to her shoulders. “Soon, no more clothes either.”
It might have been prudent to leave her hands on the counter, but she couldn’t keep from reaching back to cling to his legs. “Very soon, I hope.”
In the span of a heartbeat, he lifted her off her feet, spun her around, and dropped her to sit on the edge of the table. “I don’t know what I want.” He gave lie to the words by slipping free the top button on her bodice.
