Chapter Eight
Friedrich circled the feasting vampire. Mikhail and Dmitri took up opposite sides of him and they moved clockwise, drawing closer. The beast suckled wet and noisily, hunched on his knees with his prize clasped in his arms. Her blonde hair dangled, eyes wide and glassy with death.
Blood dribbled onto the floor, spreading wider. Friedrich’s stomach roiled at the foul thing feasting on the innocent girl, horrifying the people of Terrington. And all the while, the creature didn’t even take notice of his own death drawing nearer.
Friedrich caught Mikhail’s eye then Dmitri’s, giving them a terse nod to signal their attack. At once, the three of them fell upon him. Yanking him from the body, having to break the clawed fingers of both hands to unclench his hold, they pressed him flat on his back. Friedrich gripped his throat with a knee in his chest while Mikhail and Dmitri held his arms and body.
“Who are you?” Friedrich grated out.
His eyes were full black. The blood madness. The beast curled his thin lips, revealing a row of serrated teeth and four razor-sharp canines, top and bottom, blood smeared over mouth and chin. The animal couldn’t seem to recognize human words at all, growling and snarling, but the duke knew there was a man in there somewhere.
“Who made you?” he commanded, though he was sure he already knew. He wasn’t one of the huntsmen his uncle had brought to his castle but he had the same unhinged look about his dark eyes.
Then the crazed vampire did something he didn’t expect. Laughed. A low, chuckling chortle, blood gurgling in his throat, like a man on the brink of insanity. He most probably was.
He leaned closer, seeking the dilated pupils within the vacant wells of black. Friedrich grated low, “If you think you’ll find a swift death, you fucking beast, you are wrong. You’ll be singing like a bloody lark before I’m done with you.”
For a split second, the vampire’s expression flattened. A spark of fear flashed then was gone. The creature grinned, tilting its head toward a group of ladies cringing against the wall and weeping.
“Blood,” it said in a rasping voice. “More blood.”
The soft murmurings of men and sniffling cries of women still in the hall told him this could wait.
“Oh. There will be blood,” Friedrich assured him, leaning back and lifting him to his feet by his throat.
Mikhail and Dmitri still gripped his arms.
“Captain, you and Dmitri put him in the dungeon, then bring the rest of the guard. Sweep the town then report back to me. I won’t leave until I have a full escort to get Miss Snow safely home.” He lifted off the man’s chest. “Get this thing out of here quickly.”
“Yes, Your Grace.”
“And don’t delay in your return.”
Without much effort, Mikhail and his brother lifted the creature by his arms and blurred in vampire speed from the hall. He turned to the victim, wincing at her savaged throat, burning with the urge to follow his men and slaughter the vampire who did this. He swallowed the bile rising in his throat and willed away the memories of his grandfather. He was not that man. With a gentle hand, he closed her eyes.
“I’ll take care of her, Your Grace.”
The coroner, a short, bent man with strong arms stood above him. A middle-aged woman cried into her handkerchief nearby, a man most probably her husband holding and patting her.
“Does the girl have family?”
“Yes, Your Grace. The milliner and his wife here are her uncle and aunt.”
With a stiff nod, Friedrich stood, but something caught his eye. There in the pool of her blood soaking into her satin purse was a corner of parchment sticking out of the satchel. He recognized the color of the paper. Leaning down, he opened the satchel and pulled the leaflet from inside, recognizing it without reading a word. The treatise by the White Lily. Folding it, he tucked it inside his jacket.
“Magistrate Figgs,” he called.
The gray-bearded man who was watching in horror, stumbled forward, a handkerchief to his mouth and nose.
“Yes, Your Grace?”
“Be sure that no one else leaves until my men sweep the area. Just to be sure all is safe in the town. This appears to be a rogue vampire, but I want to be sure.”
“Yes. Of course!” He bustled off to the other officials huddled in a corner to spread the word.
Friedrich strode back toward Brennalyn, needing to touch her, make sure she was safe. She stood next to Grant and Sylvia, her eyes wide but not with the shaking fear he expected. She was frightened to be sure, but her balled fists and alert posture told him she was a fighter. As if he expected any less. He admired his small warrior. While most women in the room had cowered into corners and under tables, even some men, she observed the room with shoulders back, eyes alert, ready to take on danger.
He’d already reached out with his senses, not smelling or hearing another vampire in the vicinity, except for Mikhail and Dmitri. He’d not let any harm come to his little warrior. If that creature had even looked in her direction, he would’ve dismembered the beast on the spot, no matter what information he kept hidden in his mad brain.
Finally making it to her side, he gripped her upper arms gently but firmly. “Are you all right?”
She nodded. “Yes. Of course.” Her eyes drifted to the body being wrapped in a linen and removed. “Who was that…man?”
“I don’t know. Not from Terrington, that is certain.” He glanced at Grant, who held Sylvia close to his chest. “The guard will return and escort you back to the palace after they do a sweep of the town.”
Grant’s usual cavalier manner was gone, anger brewing beneath his hard expression. “You and I need to talk.” His gruff command was out of place. No one spoke to a royal that way. Both Brennalyn and Sylvia noticed, staring at Grant as if he’d lost his mind. Grant added finally, “Your Grace.”
“We will. Later.”
Friedrich knew what conversation they’d be having later, the same one they’d had for the past few years. As his half brother, Grant had asked to become vampire, seeking that gift of long life. But if Friedrich had done so, Grant would have been shipped off to the Legionnaires. Vampires did not work in service to other vampires as humans did. They were either titled nobility by birthright or they served in the Legionnaires as soldiers and officers to the Varis Empire. Female vampires simply married a soldier or an aristocrat. This was a strict law enforced by the crown. As a bastard of a duke, he would hold no titles and would be sent away.
When Friedrich’s parents died fifteen years earlier, he learned that the teenager who’d been raised in the servants’ quarters was actually his half brother by their father’s favorite concubine. Another secret sin of the great Duke of Winter Hill. Grant’s mother took her own life when her duke was killed. Friedrich and Grant were both motherless and fatherless. Left behind. Friedrich refused to let the boy wander off on his own. As a young vampire at fifty years old, Friedrich still realized that this was the only family he had left. He’d hired private tutors to educate him since Grant bore the same keen intelligence as the father they shared.
Grant had finally asked him to make him a blood brother in the vampire sense right about the same time whisperings of the Black Lily swept through the north. It was also when Friedrich began to suspect that his uncle had planted spies in his Legionnaires to watch him. He’d promised Grant that one day he would turn him vampire, but now he needed him to remain a servant in his house, being his true eyes and ears. A servant could move about unsuspected.
Mikhail, Dmitri, and three others of the Bloodguard marched into the hall, their boots stomping in unison across the wood floor. The guards spread throughout the room, urging the remaining townspeople toward the exit. Mikhail stopped before them, expression calm but grave.
“We’ve swept the town. There is no other intruder.”
“What?” asked Brennalyn. “But how? You haven’t been gone more than ten minutes.”
Friedrich and Mikhail exchanged a glance before the captain answered.
“We are fast and efficient, Miss Snow.” He turned to the duke. “Your carriage is waiting. I will go ahead to Miss Snow’s household to be sure all is well with the children.”
Without waiting for a response, the captain vanished into a blur, leaving a rush of wind in his wake.
“I will be happy to take Miss Snow home,” came a voice behind them.
Mr. Dawson had been standing there the entire time and Friedrich hadn’t even noticed. Brennalyn’s mouth opened as she sought some response, glancing between him and the mason. Though Friedrich might sound like a callous bastard, he simply didn’t care. Better the man understand the situation clearly now for his own good. Better Brennalyn understand it as well.
“No need, Mr. Dawson,” said Friedrich, looping his arm about her slim waist. “Thank you for your concern, but I will be ensuring Miss Snow’s safety.” She stiffened when he pulled her against him. “From now on.”
With that, he guided her toward the door, ushering her wide around the bloody pool in the middle of the floor.
“I didn’t give you permission to take me home.”
“I didn’t ask for it,” he declared, grabbing her cloak from the pile of coats on a table in the corner.
He draped it over her shoulders and clasped it at the front.
“How do you know that’s even my cloak?” Her bow-shaped lips pressed together, a small signal of defiance.
He lifted the hood over her dark hair then slid his hands within to cup her face, pressing his palms to her cheekbones. Lowering his face to meet her stubbornly averted gaze, he answered in the softest voice he could manage, considering death hung in the blood-scented air and his need to get her to safety clutched him like an eagle’s talons to her fledgling fallen from the nest.
“Because your night-flower scent is embedded in my skin. Whenever I draw near to you, it settles on my tongue, watering my mouth, making me ache for you. Yearning for one little taste. But it isn’t just your blood I want.” He smiled when her pouty lips dropped open in shock and her eyes dilated with desire. “That is how I know this is your cloak, kitten.”
He brushed a thumb down her cheek to her parted lips. She snapped them shut at once before he could slide his thumb inside to feel her hot mouth. He chuckled.
“Let’s get you home.”
Soon, he promised himself. Soon.