Dawn Thompson (36 page)

Jon hung his head and nodded. Of course Milosh was right. What other choice was there but to accept his lot and make the best of it? That meant accepting the truth: He and Cassandra were vampires for the rest of their lives. He’d known it, but he hadn’t accepted it until now.

Chambers lined the north side of the corridor, and he and Milosh assessed the distance. A few torches were lit in this quarter, and a hazy veil of golden light flickered amongst the distant shadows. Jon hesitated, deciding. “There’s little time. We’d best split up to search,” he said, flinging his arm eastward. “I’ll take this side, you take the other. We’ll meet back here.”

The Gypsy nodded.

“You have the residue of the sacramental oil in the pocket of that coat.” Jon said. He dropped his sack and opened it. “Take whatever else you need.”

Milosh pored through the sack and snaked out a stake and the mallet. “You keep the cleaver,” he said. “Let us do this quickly. I do not have a good feeling about it.”

Jon didn’t have a good feeling about anything in the vampire’s castle. Opening every door along the way, he thrust his torch inside, searching each room with anxious eyes for some sign of Cassandra or Sebastian’s resting place; but there was none. The rooms were sparsely furnished, cold and austere. It was plain that they were never used for anything but storage. Everything was frosted with cobwebs and dust; pallets were shackled to the walls with webs, and the mildewed dust that collected everywhere bore no trace of either fingers or footprints. Like everything else in the castle, these chambers cried of death and of the dead.

Jon had nearly traveled halfway along the corridor when something on the floor caught his eye. He snatched it up and held it to his nose—Cassandra’s frock! Had she shapeshifted? He prayed so. The alternatives tripping across his mind were unthinkable. The frock was heavy in his hands. Turning it inside out, he uncovered the pocket suspended on a cord beneath the skirt and unearthed the pistol he had given her; it was still loaded. Stuffing the gun under the waistband of his breeches, he added the frock to the sack and rushed along the corridor to continue his search.

He was suddenly frantic. She had been here! This was his first tangible lead, and it gave him hope that he was close. He dared not call out for fear of attracting the wrong kind of attention. His heart was thudding against his ribs as he flung open first one and then another of the heavy old doors. Nothing met his eyes but gobs of malodorous dust, and spiderwebs strong enough to ensnare the bats that he now and then glimpsed hanging from the rafters. Were these creatures of the night, Sebastian’s minions, or were they harmless animals that had taken shelter here? Whichever, they made no move to assail him; but for the occasional gleam of a shuttered eye, or a warning squeak, they paid him no mind at all.

He soon reached the end of the corridor. It terminated in another staircase leading upward. He hesitated. Cassandra had not been in any of the chambers he’d checked. The staircase was the next logical place to explore, but not without Milosh. Spinning around, he sprinted back along the corridor to the place where they were to meet, just in time to see the Gypsy striding out of the shadows to join him.

“Nothing?” Jon asked.

“No, no trace. These chambers have not been in use for some time.”

Jon dragged Cassandra’s frock from the sack. “She shed this back there,” he said, pointing. “There is a staircase. I thought we’d best search that together.”

Milosh smiled, clearly pleased. “You never give her enough credit, my friend,” he said through a lopsided smile. “I knew that from the moment I carried her, a mere cat, in my teeth from this accursed castle to my cart. She fought me to a fare-thee-well. She has evidently out-smarted our host. Hah! That is more than we have been able to accomplish between the pair of us. I can almost feel sorry for Sebastian at her mercy.”

Jon scowled. He wasn’t about to go that far, but he got the point, recalling the most recent of Cassandra’s feats. It was she, after all, who had set Sebastian’s clothes afire on the mountain—and not a minute too soon. Taking her blood had advanced her to his level. She was no more the helpless kitten; she was a sleek black panther. How could he keep forgetting how she had evolved? And why? The answer was easy: He worshiped her, could not help wanting to protect her. He would do so with his dying breath, with the last beat of his heart that lived only for her. Would he ever get the chance to tell her this, to take her in his arms, to live inside her exquisite body again? These thoughts banged around in his brain as he and Milosh ascended the narrow staircase into darkness.

Cassandra was in her element in panther form. As black as the shadows, she prowled the hall, bounded up and down staircases as wild as the wind. How she loved roaming free as a panther. She must remember to ask Jon if he enjoyed prowling as a wolf. It was the only aspect of the condition that she did love, though she’d come to terms
with the rest. She could bear anything as long as she could be with Jon. He was her very heart.

The halls were deathly still around her, but she took no comfort in it. Sebastian was lurking somewhere in the castle, waiting. Her objective now was finding his resting place. He was too intelligent to face her down. No, he was too cunning for that. Her panther could rip his throat out and annihilate him altogether if he were in bat form. One chomp of her great teeth would crush his bones. There were ways, of course, that he could vanquish her; there were always ways. But those were fewer than if she was in human form. It was then that she was truly vulnerable.

The whole castle seemed deserted. It was unnatural, as if she were the only living creature in it, and yet she felt as if a hundred eyes were watching her every movement. Nothing hindered her, however, and she soon abandoned the upper regions in her search. It didn’t seem likely that Sebastian would rest in daylight hours in the castle proper, where anyone might find him, and she soon began searching for other staircases leading below. At last she found one, a very narrow spiral leading down from the back of one of the third-floor chambers. It led to a tunnel carved in the rock. She padded along cautiously. Her extraordinary sense of smell was active now, and, nostrils flaring, she loped along, eyes snapping back and forth across the span, where what appeared to be crypts had been gouged out of the granite. The castle was carved literally out of the mountainside.

Cassandra noticed at once that, though cobwebs lived in the far corners, no dust existed here. As far removed from the house proper as this tunnel was, it was well traveled,
unlike the rooms above, where thick layers of dust coated everything like snow. Torches in wall brackets at intervals lit this passage as well, though they were few and far between, throwing just enough light for her to see the coffins in the cryptlike cubicles. There were six, three on either side of the tunnel, and all were empty. She raised her head and sniffed the air. Sebastian’s scent filled her nostrils, the sickening sweetness of corrupted flesh—of death, and stale blood. It was much stronger to her panther nose than to her human one. Had she found him? Yes; her raised hackles were testimony enough of that. But who were the other coffins for? There was no way to tell.

She had found them, but she could not in her present shape destroy them. She needed Jon for that, and she spun around and raced back the way she’d come, past the cubicles, through the narrow tunnel to the landing, and to the staircase winding upward from an empty room no bigger than a closet. But she wasn’t alone. Out of the shadows a dark figure emerged, blocking her path, his redrimmed eyes glowing in the bleak semidarkness. His cold laughter filled the span, bouncing off the crudely hewn walls, echoing down the tunnel on a fugitive wind that had risen out of nowhere.

Sebastian.

“She has come this way,” Jon said, sniffing the musty air. This time it wasn’t wishful thinking. He wasn’t imagining it; her scent was so strong here, it seemed a living, breathing presence with a pulsebeat of its own.

They had been searching for hours and found nothing in the upper regions, though Jon didn’t expect to locate Sebastian’s resting place where anyone might easily come upon it. Sebastian was too clever. Wherever it was, it was well hidden—and there was probably more than one. For centuries, the creature had evaded those who hunted his kind. He knew well how to play the game; he had practically written the rules.

Jon wasn’t overly concerned about finding Sebastian; sooner or later the creature would appear. It was Cassandra he was worried about. They should have found her by now. They had checked every recess, every chamber and staircase in the upper regions, from the Great Hall to the battlements, and found no sign of her. Sebastian roamed the halls of Castle Valentin and she was at his mercy, and
despite Milosh’s insistence that she was not to be sold short, Jon couldn’t imagine her holding her own in such a confrontation.

“That is not all I smell,” Milosh said in a low murmur. “
He
is near. I smell his excitement. I have hunted this vampire for centuries, Jon Hyde-White. I know him. When his feeding frenzy is at its height, he gives off an odor unlike any other. My ability to detect that odor in advance has saved me on more than one occasion. It is one of my most useful gifts.”

They were on the brink of a steep, narrow staircase roughly hewn of stone. It wound down into dusky semi-darkness. Something occupied that space hidden from view, something darker than death and colder than the grave. Jon could taste it collecting at the back of his palate, metallic and cold, like blood—like death itself, for, indeed, death had a flavor, salty and strong.

The thunder of Sebastian’s laughter drifted up the staircase from below, drowning out the shuffling noise of their hasty approach. The staircase was carved three stories deep into the castle’s very bowels. When they reached the second-to-last landing, the room at the bottom came into view. For a moment, Jon froze. He heard a great cat’s guttural, rattling growls before he saw it; Sebastian’s greatcoat was spread wide from his outstretched arms and in the way, but Cassandra as a panther was backed into a corner. Her long fangs were bared, catching glints of reflected light from the torches. The animal’s hackles were raised. It was poised to spring. He could see the cords in its long, sleek legs standing out in bold relief. The sight took his breath away. She was magnificent!

Milosh pushed against him from behind, trying to pass on the narrow stairs, but Jon’s arm shot out, preventing him.

“No. Wait,” he whispered. “Do not distract her. Do not give him the advantage. We are close enough to come to her aid if needs must.”

The Gypsy gave a throaty chuckle. “Now who is singing the praises of your lady wife’s prowess, eh?” Jon scowled at him. It was but a sidelong glance; Cassandra had his full and fierce attention now, and thus far Sebastian hadn’t seen them lurking on the landing above.

It was only seconds, but it seemed an eternity before the panther sprang; then everything happened so quickly there was no time to react. All Jon saw was a silvery streak as the animal sailed through the air and impacted the vampire, then sank its fangs deep into the monster’s throat. Jon heard flesh tear and bones crunch. Sebastian shrieked. It was a sound so vile Jon almost lost his footing on the step. Enraged, the vampire seized the panther around its throat, tearing it from the bleeding wound, its long talons attempting to snap the great cat’s neck. The animal went limp in the vampire’s grip. Garbled sounds came from its open mouth around its protruding tongue. Its eyes were glazed and bulging, its front feet twitching in a spastic rhythm.

In the blink of an eye, Jon was in motion. “
No
!” he cried with a bestial howl. He sailed through the air, his fangs fully extended, and slammed into Sebastian feet first. The impact loosened Sebastian’s grip on Cassandra, whom he flung against the wall. She struck it hard, and slid to the floor in a limp heap of fur.

Enraged, Jon spun in midair and careened into the vampire again, sinking his fangs into the gray, foul-tasting flesh of the vampire’s throat with the full intention of finishing what Cassandra had started. There was no danger of bloodlust, though the vampire’s gore covered him;
he would drink no blood with his needle-sharp fangs. Just as Milosh had said, they had become weapons, stabbing like knives deep into that corrupt flesh, the evidence of their effectiveness the creature’s pain-wracked shrieks.

Milosh had gone to the panther’s side. Cassandra tried twice to stand but fell back both times. A third attempt failed also, but this time she retched before sinking back down to pant on the cold granite floor.

Stay!
Milosh charged, speaking with his mind. Struggling with the vampire, Jon was out of range of reading his thoughts. The Gypsy squatted on his haunches, looking deep into Cassandra’s dazed eyes, deeper than any mortal man could. Stunned by what he saw there, his breath escaped in a strangled gasp. Still, he needed to be certain, and he leaned closer, sniffing her aura, sniffing in the way of a dog or wolf. No, he hadn’t been mistaken. There was no question. She was with child!
Have you told him
?
Does he know?
he asked.

No, please. I beg you
. . . , her mind responded.
Do not speak it! Say nothing! It is mine to tell . . . when the time is right
.

Can you change back?
he queried.

I . . . I don’t think so. Not yet
.

Milosh frowned, stroking her head.
Fine. Lie still then
, he commanded her.
Stay down. Protect your litter.

He staggered to his feet. He could not afford to be rattled now. Across the way, Jon was holding his own against Sebastian, but he knew well the cunning monster’s taste for deluding his victims into believing they had the upper hand. Self-confidence bred mistakes; Milosh had learned that lesson the hard way. Casting a quick glance over his shoulder to be certain Cassandra had obeyed, he joined
the fight just as the vampire flung Jon against the wall in much the same manner that he had Cassandra. Jon twisted in flight and hit feet first. Calling upon his new-found gift, he loosed a battle cry, ran up the wall, across the ceiling, and dove on Sebastian below, impacting him with force enough to bring the monster to his knees. Meanwhile, Milosh—fangs extended—groped the great-coat pocket for what remained of the sacramental oil. There wasn’t much, no more than a thin coating; but a fingertip full was all he needed. Scooping it out, he smeared it on Sebastian’s forehead, making the sign of the cross as Jon attacked the creature again.