Wicked Lord: Part One (2 page)

It was hard to kill a vampire, but it wasn't
that difficult to knock one, or two for that matter, out cold.
Trinity let the unconscious vampires fall limply to the ground with
varying thuds, dependent upon size, as his piercing gaze lifted to
Cull. Cull's human patrons ran away in the darkness.

Cull snarled, "Blacknall blood, always have
to ruin good business."

Trinity snarled much louder, lifting his
muscular body and height over Cull. Cull relented quickly,
especially with his two cronies unavailable. Trinity had fought
Cull twice and won the last time leaving the chicane Cull with his
head half-severed. It had taken Cull quite some time for that one
to regenerate. Cull knew who the master was, and he submitted with
a bowed head. Trinity relaxed his stance … a bit.

"I pinned her, Master Cull!" cried out one
of the women behind them.

He and Cull turned their gazes to the
tangled mess of fat, pale tits and bare legs.

Cull cussed with his fist rising. "Bloody
balls! I would have won it all. That bitch was bet as the
loser."

Trinity shrugged wide shoulders and
stretched his neck, turning fully to face the women. He growled
with a fierce showing as his fangs distended. The whore on top
screeched, shaking and swaying her melon-sized breasts. The one on
bottom craned her neck and, seeing him, she screamed along. They
both scrambled up and began to run away. It was a vision, even
giving rise to the predator controlled deep inside him. His
nostrils flared with the thoughts of tender flesh and hot pumping
blood inside weak and fleeing prey. Then, with effort, he forced
his gaze away, turning back to Cull.

"My best whore’s dead, now this," Cull
hissed.

Suddenly, Trinity's interest was piqued.
With a swift motion, he grabbed Cull, whose betting coins and
pounds went clattering onto the damp cobblestones beneath their
feet. With barely an afterthought, he lifted Cull off his feet. A
fierce growl erupted from his throat as he marched forward and
slammed Cull into a brick wall on the side of a tenant building.
Cull's fangs extended, as did his nails, while Trinity held him up
against the wall by his throat.

"
Tell
me about your best whore,"
Trinity's voice spat, unrelenting, into Cull's twisted
features.

Cull snarled and hissed, but then Trinity
started to become angry, his eyes slanting yellow and Cull
immediately became more subdued.

"Killed," Cull spat, glaring.

"How?" Trinity bared his fangs. Cull
wouldn't meet his threatening gaze and became more submissive.
"How?" His growl was fierce again with his fangs punching
longer.

"It's not my blame," Cull whined. Trinity
shook him with increasing strength. "All right," Cull gasped. "Torn
apart," he choked. Then he added, "Like the others."

Trinity asked, enunciating each word with
his fangs bared, "Do you have a renegade beast in your territory,
Cull?"

"Not a vampire blood," Cull barked. "No
vampire rips its food apart!"

Trinity stretched his neck one way, then the
other, as though realigning a kink. He let the mangy vampire
drop.

"Shit," Cull cussed, barely catching his
fall in a half crouch.

Trinity strode several paces away with his
back to Cull. He lifted his nostrils to the night air. Rotting food
and stenches from the sewer filled the air. The east side had such
a decaying fragrance.

"I thought the woman just killed was a high
society chit." Trinity didn't turn to look at Cull who answered his
question quickly enough.

"It was my slut. She was just dressed to
meet a titled gent. Same as the others … all whores."

"All yours?" Trinity asked, and he turned to
face Cull. He saw Cull was groping around on the damp cobblestones
for the scattered coins and pound notes.

Cull looked up at him sideways with a half
sneer. "Not all, Blacknall, some's the Mongrel's, some's
independent."

Trinity nodded. He lowered to a crouch with
his forearms balanced on his bent knees as he let his eyes glow
yellow with predatory tints.

"Where was the last one murdered?"

"Murdered?" Cull hissed. "That's human
kink."

"You said it wasn't a blood," Trinity hissed
back.

Cull didn't dissent further, he just gave
Trinity the location and Trinity left Cull alive. Nevertheless, his
last words and final threat to him were, "Your house better be in
order, Cull. There are worse punishments for a blood than death."
In times past, Trinity had told Cull about several abhorrent ones
the Blacknall brothers were not above inflicting.

Trinity found the spot within minutes. The
carnage had taken place in a small park between King Street and Row
Street. The corpse was gone, of course, but the area on the grass
was still bloody enough to attract two mongrel dogs which he
scattered with his presence as he strode into the park. His long
hair was damp and his gaze was sharp as he scented the air. It took
him moments to analyze the blood scent as he crouched and surveyed
the area.

"Cull was right," he muttered. "No vampire
would let all this blood fall to waste." He touched his finger to a
smear of the old blood. He held it to his nose to sniff and lifted
it to his tongue to taste.

The victim was young and opium sour. His
hand lowered as he tilted his head to the side, slowly evaluating
the blood like a connoisseur. Suddenly, his gaze jerked to the left
and it latched onto a footprint in the soft dirt. "She was chased,"
he growled.
Hunted.

He rose, following the trail more by the
taste of her blood than by sight. The footprints came from the far
side of the park, and halfway across he found the scent of the foul
beast that hunted her. It was a very weak scent, just a boot print
and not blood. A barely perceptible tendril and it came from the
west. Uptown.

"Interesting," he uttered, rising again to
follow the wavering scent west.

With difficulty — losing the scent, and then
after barely finding it again — he followed it to a crumbling
mansion in a section of London that housed the blue-blood nobles of
old money and long lineage. He couldn't say if the one carrying the
odd, wavering scent from the possible animalistic murderer had
entered the mansion or just stalked its circumference.

Then it came to him, on tendrils of wind
suddenly moving the fog to swirl apart, an instant rise of
awareness. There was a fear-laden hunt occurring somewhere. At the
same moment, his attention rose toward an awareness of predator
stalking prey. He could feel all three of his brothers' attentions
turning sharply to the west … following his own. He sensed the hunt
in the wind and his brothers sensed it through him. Their
connection was not of words, but more intentions, and he tried but
failed to hold them back from following him as he tracked the
newest evidence he perceived in the west.

The lethal monster was hunting again.

So soon …

C
hapter Two

"You cannot hide from him forever, Beth,"
Lord Adam Winslow announced as he lounged informally on the window
seat in his sister's small sitting room.

Said sister muttered at him, as she tried to
tie her wavy, long black hair on top of her head with a velvet
ribbon the exact emerald coloring of the ball gown she wore. "He
doesn't stalk you," she replied with an accusatory tone.

Adam sighed. She was right; their
stepbrother, Lord Fanton Rothschild, had always been very strange,
however about three years ago he'd turned strangeness into a new
life style. Fanton didn't even seem to look the same. It was as
though he'd gotten better looking with perpetually glossy hair and
shiny eyes. Before, he'd been pimpled and fallow-looking. Back then
he'd sweated profusely and had something he'd called a moustache on
his upper lip, and that Adam called a few sorry hairs.

"Even his moustache is thick and glistens
now," Adam muttered under his breath. Fanton had been secretive and
slimy, now he was secretive and feral. Adam didn't know how his
stepbrother had gone from a sappy pervert to a handsome deviant.
But he had. One thing stayed the same though, unfortunately. That
was Fanton's unhealthy interest in his stepsister, Lady Elizabeth
Winslow.
Beth.

"Adam, it is not that bad." Beth's voice was
soft as she turned to him with her hair ribbon secured. "I'm
supposed to be looking for a husband." Her declaration placed her
small hands on her generously rounded hips. "So going out every
night—"

"Until dawn," he interrupted, pinning her
with an accusatory look.

She smiled at him, her ivory skin looking
fragile against her midnight black hair. He worried about the fact
she had to sleep during the day because she forced herself to stay
away from her home every night … all night. She lost sunlight hours
trying to keep the forced schedule she imposed on herself. Not
seeing enough daylight for her health.

"I'm just so glad you see his manipulative
and strange ways. Unlike—"

"Our step uncle Westfield," Adam
interjected.

Beth, used to his interjecting ways,
continued on, "Yes, our step uncle to whom we owe everything, but
does not see it. Without you, Adam, I would think I was going
mad."

"You are not," Adam responded strongly,
coming off the window seat in a lanky stand. Unlike Fanton, who was
bull-chested these days, he was simply leanly-muscled and thin.
Adam reached Beth's side as he clasped her hand. "I see it," he
said, looking down into her glistening multi-colored eyes. Beth had
the most unique eyes. One was dark blue and the other was hazel
green against her long black eyelashes. "I just wish there was
something I could do about it," he finished with an edge in his
voice.

"No, no," Beth whispered, squeezing his
hand. "Promise me," she implored, "Promise that you will go about
the University and leave Fanton alone."

"
If
he hurts you …" Adam warned with
a tight voice.

"He won't," Beth soothed, and then she said
quickly, "All these years since our mother married his father,
after our father died when we were just children, he has never
really hurt me in all that time."

"He just better not," he retorted
stubbornly, making Beth smile for some odd girl's reason he would
never fathom as she patted his cheek several times.

"You are so good to me, little brother," she
said with fondness, and then with another girl’s character trait,
she changed the conversation as quickly as one could click their
fingers. "So say you will come to church with me this Sunday. I've
found a new one that has a rector who is said to give the most
amazing sermons."

Adam hedged, but he knew there wasn't much
he could deny Beth. Then, before he spoke, a barely-perceived knock
sounded on the sitting room door. They both turned to look toward
the door, puzzled. No one in their step uncle's crumbling mansion
came to their doors and knocked.

Beth was the first to recover, calling,
"Come in." She glanced at Adam with a furrowed brow, and then at
the door. He suddenly realized Beth thought the person behind the
knocking could be Fanton. He stood taller and he took a step in
front of Beth. A second later, they both relaxed when the aged
butler Spindle appeared, out of breath.

"There is a Lady Ariel Raleigh arrived, Lady
Winslow, and she awaits you in the main foyer." Adam knew both he
and Beth wondered how the elderly Spindle made it up the long,
twisting staircase at all to warn of the momentous event.

He also knew Lady Ariel was Beth's only
friend and since they had no female relatives to chaperon Beth into
society, Lady Ariel and her aunt took charity upon Beth to escort
her on the rounds. Without their good graces, Beth would be out of
the social events.

Adam saw Beth's worried gaze shifting to the
window and he saw, as she did, it was already dusk. "She cannot be
here," Beth exclaimed. "It is too early and I've told her never to
come inside for me." At this exclamation, she grasped her
shimmering silk skirts, lifting them to step forward with a hurried
march toward the door. As she passed Spindle, she asked, with fear
inflicting her voice, "Lord Fanton hasn't risen yet, has he?"

"I am not certain, my lady," Spindle called
after them, as by then Adam decided he'd best follow Beth. Adam
knew Spindle's uncertainty meant Fanton might well be awake, moving
about his suites on the lower floor of their infirmed, step uncle's
crumbling mansion. But Fanton never came out of those suites until
after dusk had fallen into night.

And Beth was gone. Always.

"I could strangle Ariel for this," Beth
muttered, looking back at him as she rounded the dark wood
banister. "She simply will not listen to me and stay away from
him," she continued to mutter, stopping at the top of the stairs to
gather her skirts higher. Adam stepped beside her and clasped her
elbow to steady her. She gave him a grateful glance, and then they
began to step down the long, winding staircase that led into the
foyer.

Adam knew for the longest time — well over a
year now — Beth had been able to keep the fact she had a
stepbrother a secret. Until ten weeks ago, though Fanton had never
done it before, he began attending society functions. It wasn't
that Fanton stayed closeted in the mansion as a hermit to society.
It was just in the evenings past Fanton usually attended more bawdy
events across London. He ran with a crowd of indulgent and rowdy
young lords. They attended what higher society deemed as unseemly
events: boxing, gambling, whore house parties, and many more sordid
affairs.

"Lord Fanton never cared for genteel parties
before," Beth expelled as though reading his ongoing thoughts. "Nor
titled young ladies like Lady Ariel," she continued on a sharp
note. "But they've met now. Lord Fanton has forced his strange
seductions upon her." Beth stopped halfway down the staircase and
he could tell she dreaded going further.