Dawn Thompson (34 page)

In the moon’s absence, precious little light filtered in from the snowy night sky through the tiny attic window. It was fitted with stained-glass patterns that cast an eerie
luminosity, colored spangles on the dusty floor as the gray sky pressed heavily against it. The whole scene seemed surreal to Joss, but there was no time to analyze it, or the emotions that had brought his fangs into play.

“Let her go, Clement!” Joss seethed, carving circles in the air with the halberd.

A cold, misshapen laugh bubbled up in Clement’s throat. But this wasn’t Clement any longer. It was
vampir,
Sebastian’s creature now, and if Joss did not act quickly, so would Cora be.

Joss’s glance fell upon Cora’s ankle; blood was still seeping from it. She was clawing at Clement’s arm. Her tiny fingers didn’t make a dent, and she bent her knee and dug the heel of her morocco leather slipper with all her might into his shin, reached behind, and thrust her fingernails into the creature’s eyes. Clement shrieked. His hands clutched at one of his bleeding eyes, and his hold slipped just enough for Cora to wriggle free.

“Cora, get down!” Joss bellowed, and she dropped like a stone. Joss spun in a circle to build up momentum, then lowered the halberd with all his strength to the vampire’s neck, severing its head in one fatal blow.

Cora screamed. For a moment, Joss thought it was the gruesome sight of Clement’s headless corpse on the floor that had wrenched it from her throat, but no . . .

“Joss! Behind you!” she cried.

Joss spun, but not in time. From the recessed shadows beside the attic door, a younger, more agile figure sprang through the air and struck, knocking the halberd out of Joss’s hand and driving him to the floor. Joss recognized his assailant at once. It was the younger passenger in the coach—Albert Clement, Cora’s supposed betrothed. It stood to reason that Clement would have let his son into the Abbey. He, too, was
vampir
, his fangs
inches from Joss’s throat as they grappled on the musty attic floor.

The creature’s strength was phenomenal, but so was Joss’s. They were well matched. Out of the corner of his eye, Joss saw Cora scrabble to her feet and seize the halberd. His heart leapt. She could scarcely lift, much less wield it. She was limping as she dragged it closer.

“No!” Joss gritted out through his fangs. “Stay back, Cora!”

Whether she heard or not, she didn’t obey. She dragged the halberd nearer. Try though she did, she couldn’t raise it over her head, but she did manage to raise it chest-high. Albert Clement was on top of him. Joss had the strength to easily reverse positions, but he dared not with that shaky weapon looming in Cora’s unsteady hands.

“Cora, don’t!” he thundered, a close eye upon the shaky halberd swishing through the air. He felt the rush of air as it passed over them. “Cora! If you miss . . . !”

But Cora paid him no mind. Watching her, he almost didn’t see young Clement’s fangs descending. It was too late. A cry on her lips, Cora lowered the halberd. Her balance thrown off by her wounded ankle, she missed the broader target of young Clement’s back, and the halberd sliced through Joss’s shirt, grazing his shoulder instead. He cried out. It wasn’t a deep wound, the blade having struck him at an angle, but it was deep enough to draw blood that attracted his assailant, whose fangs descended upon it.

Loosing a string of muttered oaths, Joss roared as the halberd swished through the air again. This time, it struck the creature a blow to the back of the head. Its shriek echoed from the rafters as it jerked back from the impact, and Joss scrambled out from underneath,
wrenched the halberd out of Cora’s hands and brought it down with all his strength, severing the neck of the writhing vampire.

“Joss—my God, I’ve cut you!” Cora cried, rushing toward him. “I didn’t mean . . . Oh, Joss!”

He scooped her up in his arms none too gently. She had obviously struck out in a fit of blind passion, and only now realized she’d struck him.

Joss didn’t speak—couldn’t speak—wouldn’t even if he could have. His jaws were clamped so tight upon his anger that his fangs had pierced his lower lip, and blood trickled down his chin from the wounds.
She might have been killed!
was all his addled brain could register.
What ever possessed her to leave the master suite where she was safe?
And now the scent of his blood would draw the other creatures descending upon Whitebriar Abbey, putting him at a grave disadvantage.

His jaw muscles ticking a stiff steady rhythm, Joss crashed through the attic door with little regard for the headless bodies he was leaving behind, carrying Cora below. Blind rage had made him impervious to her sobs and heart-wrenching apologies, rendered him oblivious of the pain and the blood trickling down his arm. His spine ramrod rigid, he staved on, his shoulders hardened like cold steel against her clutching fingers.

The fires were nearly out in the master suite when Joss reached it. Depositing Cora on the bed without ceremony, he chucked fresh logs into the bedchamber, sitting room, and dressing room grates, and ruthlessly stirred them to life. Snatching a length of bandage linen and a towel from the dressing room chiffonier, he returned to the bedchamber, where he spilled some water from the pitcher on the nightstand into the basin, tore off a piece of linen and began bathing Cora’s ankle. It wanted one of Cook’s herbal treatments, but there wasn’t time for that.

Touching her delicate skin aroused him. How could that be, when he was so livid that he could scarcely see? Impossible. But there it was. He was tight against the seam. Nevertheless, his own wound forgotten, he dried her ankle and bound it tightly with the linen strip, with fingers that felt like wooden sticks for their clumsiness. Once he’d finished, he staggered to his feet, and Cora reached out to him.

“I didn’t mean to hurt you,” she murmured.

Joss stepped back from her. Her touch was physically painful. The warmth of it tore at his loins like hot pincers. He still didn’t trust himself to speak. It was all he could do to keep from seizing her in his arms. The softness of her skin still lingered on his wooden fingertips as if they had a memory. Her rose scent, heightened from the ordeal and blended with her own essence, that sweet, earthy musk, was almost more than he could bear. But he had made his decision, and he would stick to it.

“You are still bleeding,” she said. “That needs tending. Please, Joss . . . let me . . .”

“Parker will tend it,” he got out through clenched teeth. The fangs had receded, though he could still feel their pressure at the ready to descend again. His only hope was to put some distance between himself and Cora, and he stalked toward the door, taking a large old key from the chatelaine he’d worn dangling from his belt since he staved that door in.

“Where are you going?” she cried. “Please don’t leave me!”

“Don’t let the fires go out,” he said, his voice like cold steel. “Nothing will come down those chimneys with fires lit in them.”

“Joss, please don’t leave me like this. Not like this,” she sobbed.

“I haven’t time to argue with you,” he said. “If you’d stayed here in these rooms, where you were safe, none of this would be. I’d have gotten you safely away before dark, and neither of us would be bleeding right now. Hah! Perhaps you are a vampire, too. You seem to have a penchant for drawing blood—
my
blood. None of this need concern you, because I’m going to lock you in
where God-alone-knows-what can’t get to you, but
I
must do battle now with vampires while I’m oozing blood. I shan’t have any trouble finding them. They will find
me
. They will smell me a mile away downwind.”

“You speak as if you believe I struck you that blow deliberately!” she cried.

“That doesn’t matter. The damage is done. Do you hear that howling out there? I have no time for this. All you’ve done is prolong the agony.”

“What do you mean?’ she breathed.

“Get some sleep,” he said. “Nothing is changed, Cora. Should we live, you are leaving the Abbey at dawn.”

“Joss,
please
.” she cried, her voice quavering.

With her sobs lingering in his ears, Joss turned the key, locking her in. He then locked the other two entrances to the suite as well, before stomping below in search of Parker in the servants’ quarters. Protocol be damned!

He could bear anything but her tears, and they followed him along the corridor, down the hall clear to the landing. It wasn’t his extraordinary hearing; the sound had pierced his heart. Realizing that, he almost failed to notice the tall, dark figure emerging from the shadows of the second-floor landing. It was Milosh.

The Gypsy’s eyes were drawn at once to Joss’s blood-soaked shirt. “You haven’t been bitten?” he urged in alarm, prowling nearer.

Joss shook his head that he had not. “I found Cora,” he said, “in the attic. The creature that once was Clive Clement had taken her there—”

“I’ve seen the carnage in the attic,” Milosh cut in. “Well done! How were you injured?”

“Cora tried to help. She missed.”

Milosh’s eyebrow inched up a notch. Was that a smile creasing his lips? The man had no laugh lines in his angular face. But for chilling half smiles that never seemed to reach his eyes, Joss couldn’t remember a single time he’d seen a genuine smile curl those lips. The expression passed almost as soon as it appeared.

“I think it was Clement in wolf form that Parker let in, and then Clement invited his son to enter. I’m hoping they were all who gained entrance.”

“I smelled your lady’s blood . . . and yours . . . and theirs. Was your lady bitten?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?”

“She would have said.”

“Would she? Where was she injured?”

Joss’s brows knitted together in a frown. “The halberd fell and cut her ankle. It wasn’t deep, but it bled severely. I cleaned and bound the wound and locked her in the master suite. I’ll have Cook prepare an herbal salve in the morning. I was going to have Parker dress this,” he said, nodding toward his shoulder. “The scent of blood will draw them.”

Milosh shook his head. “No time,” he said. “Is it deep?”

“No. I’m just afraid of attracting our foes.”

“It’s too late in any case,” Milosh said. “Steady on. Young Clement was
not
the only creature the older Clement let in. Sebastian is in the house. Believe me, he already has your scent, just as I detected it. I knew he sought to gain entrance, to prowl among your father’s things, to walk your father’s halls as if he owned them. He is a brazen creature, is Sebastian.”

“Where is he?” Joss blurted.

“I do not know,” Milosh replied. “Only that he is here. I feel his power—his energy. I smell him. It’s a stench unlike any other.”

“What weapon will destroy him?”

“None that we possess,” Milosh said. “Your parents and myself could not accomplish it before you were born. We will try again, but somehow I do not think this is the time, just as that was not the time. I also believe that when the time does come, I will be the one to destroy him, though I may destroy myself in the process.”

“How do you know this?” Joss asked, his brows knit in a frown. He studied Milosh’s glazed, faraway look.

The Gypsy shrugged, seeming to awaken from a deep trance. “We Gypsies know such things,” he said. “I would almost be willing to make that supreme sacrifice. It has been a long fight, Joss Hyde-White, and I tire. But I also know my work is not yet done on earth.”

“So, we cannot best him, yet we must fight him. We must try—how?”

“He is not impervious to fire, and your parents were able to repel and banish him with holy water. It will not destroy him, yet it has a startling effect. I believe it is because, before he was infected, he was a bishop.”

“How could a bishop be so corrupted?” Joss wondered again. “And why was my father not turned? He was a man of the cloth.” They had nearly reached the servants’ wing, and he hadn’t even realized it.

Milosh threw his head back in a husky guffaw, though no smile accompanied it. “Sebastian, Bishop Valentin, was an ambitious man, given to pomp and avarice, the perfect candidate for corruption. Your father’s heart was pure. Sebastian was driven by jealousy of that, and still is.”

“Sebastian wants you as much as me,” Joss pointed out.

Milosh nodded. “Yes,” he said simply.

“Did he infect you?

“No, we were both infected by the same creature, which I later destroyed. He did infect my wife, however. Sebastian was turned; I resisted, just as your father resisted. Many do, though not many live long as I have done. Much time passed before I learned of the blood moon ritual in Persia, and embraced it. It freed me from fighting the bloodlust so that I could concentrate upon hunting those of our kind who do not resist.” He sighed. “Sebastian’s infection was far too great for the ritual to help him. He was already
undead
. The blood moon ritual cannot resurrect the dead, Joss, and it cannot cure a vampire or those whom a vampire has killed that later rise up undead. What it can do is arrest the feeding frenzy, but only in those who are resistors. Sebastian has always been jealous of me because of the blood moon, and for those I have saved from the feeding frenzy with it. You should also know that in the beginning, when I first met your parents, there were some tense moments until I was certain they were candidates to undertake the ritual. If they had not been . . . Well, let us just say I am eternally grateful to Divine Providence that your parents were resistors.”

“You would have killed them,” Joss said, knowing it to be true.

Milosh nodded. “I would have had to,” he murmured. “I would have had no choice.”

Joss hung his head, thinking, and Milosh gripped his arm. “Remember—I had to destroy my own wife and unborn child,” he said through clenched teeth, “because they were too severely infected. She was undead, thanks
to Sebastian. Even if I’d known of the blood moon ritual then, she was too far gone for it to have helped. I pray God you are never faced with such a decision.”

“There is little chance of that,” said Joss. “If I must put Cora from me, I will never love another—and she is not infected. But how terrible it must have been for you.”