The Vampire's Curse, A Paranormal Romance (Undead in Brown County #2) (9 page)

When I took the poker from the fireplace and shoved it through his chest, right near his heart, he finally complied with my request.

“
She’s a seamstress for a theater in London. Drury Lane.” He gasped.

“
What’s her name?”

“
Meekah.” A trickle of blood appeared at the corner of his mouth, “She’s African.”

I tore his head off.

Several weeks later, I met her for the first time. She barely spoke English at all, but appeared to be very intelligent. She told me that she had seen me coming. She had known where we would meet. She also knew that I was going to turn her into a vampire. Without resistance, she accepted the attention and gifts that I lavished on her.

We spent the fall in a remote village near Bath. She had two servants, a little white dog, and garden. The cottage was not very large, but it was adequate for our needs. All I wanted was for her to be comfortable and to begin to trust me completely. Only then would I begin requesting information.

Neither one of us ever ventured to question the nature of our relationship. To me, she was a very valuable asset, an ally who could bring great insight into what lay ahead. When her English began to improve, she indicated that she wished to go to the American Colonies. She had heard great things about the land and people there.

She became a vampire the night we boarded our ship. By the time we landed in Boston, the crew had been reduced by fifteen men. She learned how to take blood from a human quickly and quietly, how to dispose of the body without making a sound, and how to take just a sip or two and compel the human to forget with just a flicker in her coffee-colored eyes.

The first time she experienced a vision after having been changed, she nearly went mad. Everything was enhanced. The things she saw were more clear than ever before. The sounds were deafening. For four days, I implored her to tell me what she’d seen. With a stained linen shift billowing about her like the image of some horrid ghoul, she screamed at me.

She said that she hated me. She hated herself.

To keep the ship’s crew quiet about it, I’d had to compel the majority of them. I locked Meekah up for two days in a traveling trunk decorated with real silver emblems of my personal coat of arms. At the end of the second day, I unlocked the trunk.

The shabbily dressed crewman I had brought with me down into the hold was for her. She stared at me silently for several minutes before she bit into him. I had imagined that she would completely drain the man, but she took only a few gulps of his blood.

Then she wiped her mouth, turned to me, and said in a steady tone, “I no trust you. But will tell you what I see. You give what I want.”

“
Anything you want. Yes.” I assured her, relieved that she seemed calm again.

“
House in Boston. Big garden.”

“
Yes. The largest one we can find.”

She turned back to the man who had given his blood, grasped his chin gently with her dark calloused fingers and stared into his eyes solemnly, “Forget what has happened here. You go do work again. You forget Meekah drink blood.”

When he left, she looked at me with a measure of hatred, “You do bad things. I not like that. Meekah good woman.”

“
I will not force you to do anything.”

She sat on a crate full of oranges, “I see new woman. She good to you. Victoria. You change her into blood drinker.” Pausing, she held out the remnants of her soiled shift and shook her head, “Big trouble soon. New woman help you.”

I leaned forward, “What trouble?”

“
I no say. You wait.”

Fighting the urge to curse and throw things, I nodded shortly. There was little doubt in my head that what she saw would come to pass. She had been accurate about other things.

So when we got off the ship in Boston, I found her a house with an expansive flowering garden. There were statues and fountains positioned perfectly between the shrubs and carefully tended flowerbeds. I offered the owner three times what the property was worth. His wife cried and pleaded with him to deny me. In the end, Meekah came forward and grasped the woman’s hands. She murmured gentle words in her native language while I compelled the husband to sell everything to me for the price I originally offered him.

The very next day, I saw Victoria coming out of a fabric shop. I wasn’t positive it was really her in the beginning. She was a slender woman, garbed in threadbare clothing that hung loosely around her petite frame. She had come out of the shop with tears shimmering in her eyes. I remember touching her sleeve and asking if she needed a carriage.

When she turned those eyes on me, I saw that she suffered. It was a raw grating thing that had come up on her over the course of several years; nothing she could correct or control. I discovered later where the pain came from, although it is not a story for me to tell. It is hers alone.

I turned Victoria into a vampire a few days later, after she gave full consent. It was one of the best decisions I ever made. She was unfailingly loyal, grateful for my presence in her life, and incredibly intelligent. Meekah adored her from the first moment they met. I worried occasionally that my seer would try to turn my newest recruit against me. It was unwarranted. Victoria looked upon me as her savior, having rescued her from a life that had ultimately been miserable.

It was a pity that Meekah did not feel the same towards me. But I learned over the decades to placate her, give her what she asked for without too many questions, as long as she told me about her visions. There were times when she refused to reveal what she saw. Back in those days, her gift was so precious to me that I often laughed away her refusals and walked away. Only later did my patience come to its end.

Chapter 10 –
Sarah

Alex had tried to see me only once, but his respect for Nelly’s word was absolute. She had told him that I did not want to see him. He had disappeared into the woods while I watched from my bedroom window. Gone like a dark spirit.

In a few days, I had regained most of my strength. One gray afternoon as I was mucking out the barn stalls, Messenger came walking in through the main barn door. I had not seen much of her at all recently, so I propped the shovel up against the wall and smiled when she stretched her neck forward to sniff at my shirt.

“
Have you been staying out of trouble?” I rubbed her forehead in short circling strokes, “Did you finally realize that you missed me? Or did you miss the grain?”

Her ears flicked forward at the word, and I laughed.

“
I think I know the answer to that one.” I pulled open the half door that led into her stall, “I’ll give you a little extra if you get in there without me using a halter on you.”

I could have sworn she rolled her eyes. Swinging her head around towards the entrance to the barn, she seemed to consider her options. She gave me another look that conveyed a sense of intense boredom and then stepped lightly into the fresh sawdust of her stall.

Sighing in relief, I pushed the door closed and rested my arms on the top board of the door.

“
You’re a troublemaker, Sarah.”

Messenger suddenly jerked her head up in surprise and let out a snort. When I turned to see what had frightened her, I found the one person I had not ever expected to see on my property again. Trevor Kincaid stood a few feet from me, his face cold with hate and his right arm encased in a thick cast and sling.

“
Where is your friend?” He asked.

That was when I saw the Miller brothers loitering outside the barn, looking around anxiously. They did not look particularly threatening. Neither did Trevor, once I got a good look at him. Sure, he was trying to look tough. However, there was clear anxiety exuding from him, and he was being uncharacteristically fidgety.

I sighed and went back to cleaning Lenny’s stall. “He’s not here, Trevor.”

“
What
is he, Sarah?”

Pausing, with my shovel half filled with soiled sawdust, I turned to look at him. There was little doubt in my mind that Trevor wouldn’t believe me if I told him the truth. It would also cause a lot of tongues to wag in town, because he would be quick to spread the news that I’d finally gone completely nuts.

“
He’s a former friend of mine. I don’t expect to see him again.”

He turned towards his buddies, who seemed to be getting more nervous by the second. I continued scooping manure and hoped he would leave quietly. I should have known better. Strong fingers grabbed my arm and squeezed. Trevor’s voice growled against my ear.

“
When I find out what I’m up against, I’m going to kill him.”

When he did finally walk away, I leaned against the wall and released a long sigh. He was capable of doing some awful things, but Trevor would never survive a real fight against Alex. I decided not to worry about it. There were so many other things going on to drive me crazy. Worrying about Trevor’s ridiculous threats was low on my list.

Glancing over at Messenger, I raised my eyebrows, “One more complication.”

She snorted, lifted her head and nose up into the air, and curled her lip.

The call from Michael came at 10:30 that evening. I was in my room, getting ready to put on my pajamas when my cell rang. I didn’t recognize the number, but it was showing up as a Chicago area code. I didn't know how to feel or what to expect.

“
Hello?”

“
You were probably thinking you’d never hear from me again.”

I sucked in a quick breath of air as I detected the warm tone in his voice.

“
Michael? Where are you?”

“
Down the road, at the edge of town.” He laughed quietly, “I was hoping I’d be able to get in without any help and surprise you in your bed.”

My toes curled up in my thick socks.

“
I’ll be down there in a few minutes. Don’t go anywhere.” I said. I ended the call and stared at myself in the mirror above my dresser. He was really back. Since I’d released him, I’d had my doubts about whether he would keep his word. My trust in him had just risen by several degrees, and I realized that I couldn’t wait to see his face.

With my thoughts focused on the memory of his embrace and the warmth of it, I hopped down the stairs. I almost fell down twice trying to pull on my boots by the back door. By the time I had the truck rattling down the driveway and out onto the road, I was shivering in anticipation.

I was alive. Inside and out. My pulse pounded in my ears, softening the sound of Guns ‘N Roses lashing out from the radio. When the headlights illuminated a single dark figure at the side of the road among the bare trees and dead grasses, my heart leapt. I drove up until the truck was twenty feet from him.

He held up one hand to shield the glare of the headlights from his eyes, so I flipped off the lights and shifted the truck into park. I stepped out into the darkness with fierce hope igniting my soul. All I could think was that whatever horrible moments I might live through later, I wanted more than anything to lose myself completely in the magic that was Michael.

I stepped in front of the truck and just watched him for a few moments. I wanted to preserve this moment somehow. I wanted his image etched permanently onto my brain, my flesh, my bones, so that I could look back and see it all again. I didn’t want to wait another moment to feel his skin against mine.

He stood there at the edge of the road, the trees immobile and pale behind him. They looked like ghosts waiting expectantly for the next move to be made between the mortals before them. What would they see, those half dead wooden beings waiting patiently for spring to breathe new life into their limbs? Would our little play in this dark landscape be enough to entertain them until the undeniable surge of life sprang forth inside them at the end of March?

Spring seemed very far away. I treasured the cold air around me, the spindly bare trees that reached fruitlessly toward the heavens. At that moment, though, my whole being was focused on the vampire before me; the dark wavy locks of hair that brushed the collar of his long wool coat, the intense hooded eyes that sent shivers through me with every glance. I wanted to hear his voice. I would have begged for a word at that moment.

Instead, I gathered the hollow shell of responsibility around me and asked him, "You pushed the field out this far?"

Silence. Only silence from him, the focus of my every breath, thought, and hope. I ducked my head down and felt a painful slice go through the heart of me. Was he rejecting me? After everything that had happened, after the blood I'd spilled and the tears and the awful battles, was he going to turn his back? That kind of heartlessness would destroy me.

I heard a muttered curse issued from him, and he shifted. Those sky blue eyes closed. His head went back. His fingers curled up into tight, fearless fists. I couldn't drag my gaze away from him. The power behind his every move held me prisoner.

In a few breathless moments, his voice came to me in the numbing breeze.

"If you invite me in right now, it won't just be an invitation into the containment field." It was a simple statement of fact. He wasn't asking me a question. He was declaring what he knew to be the startling truth.

My breath rose in a cloud before me over and over again, as I contemplated this undeniable path we had both stepped onto and rushed along without much planning, without enough caution or judgment. And there it was. Such things happened.