16. Alaric

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

ALARIC

—a Dhampir – the abomination born from the coupling of an Upyr man and a human woman. That this is the only procreation that our kin can conceive outside of the Kiss! Corrupted by the unnatural mingling of blood, the Dhampir’s hunger can never be sated. With teeth of iron, they will tear their way through their own mother’s flesh, consuming her from the inside out before unleashing their horrors upon the world. They will kill indiscriminately – not for food, but for joy, and will devour the flesh of their kin. They must be prevented at all costs. Such are the strict laws pertaining to copulation with humans.

—The Crimson Annals: Accounts of the Laws of the Upyr , Akakios the Younger, of the Blood Ptolemy.

Callista: Since I know you’re not reading the news, I am informing you that the vampire community in England is in uproar over this husking in our territory. Our kind fear this will expose us, that we will be hunted again.

You say that you have Gideon Blake investigating on top of his duties as planner. What good is a property developer? Especially one with allegiance to the Midnight Court. Has he any leads to share? I wish to speak with him when I arrive. Arrange the meeting. And find that killer.

B y the time I send Winnie to bed after our midnight dinner beside the fire, the castle is bedecked with tapestries. I wander the halls that were once bare, cold stone, enjoying the way they now glitter with threads of gold.

I try to see my work through her eyes, to feel wonder when I look at these pieces instead of shame.

What place is it of a warrior to crave beauty?

Then I think of what my mother will say when she sees my work hanging in the castle, and of Winnie leaving in two weeks, so I will no longer wake to her winsome smile and terrible music, and the blood in my cold veins feels as though its made of razor blades.

I don’t want Winnie to leave. I want her laughter and her infuriating attempts to get inside my head and the way her cheeks redden sometimes when she looks at me.

I want to kiss her again.

I want things no vampire should ever want from a human. I want things that will crumble my whole world to ashes.

It’s best that she leaves.

She’s safer back in London, far away from monsters who lurk in the shadows.

But perhaps…perhaps I can capture some small piece of her in my work. Perhaps I can hold on to this feeling after she’s gone. My fingers itch to create. I settle at my desk in my tidy office, pulling out a freshly stretched canvas. Reginald appears from the shadows as I begin a sketch of Winnie.

“My lord, I’ve prepared the car for you.”

“Why? I’m not leaving the house.”

“You must, my lord.” Reginald regards me with his stoic gaze. “You are suffering. You need blood, and the vintage in our cellar isn’t cutting it. I’ve made us an appointment at a feeding club. Winifred will be fine in the castle for a few hours while you?—”

“I’m not going to a feeding club.”

The thought of it makes me shudder. Sinking my teeth into the neck of a stranger, giving them that pleasure when I only want her…

“But—”

“I said no. ”

Reginald purses his lips. “Is this because of Winifred, my lord?”

“It’s not your concern.”

“You kissed her.”

“I said I don’t want to discuss it!”

Reginald’s sigh is so quiet, it would be imperceptible if I weren’t possessed of supernatural hearing. “You wish for a nightcap, my lord?”

“Thank you, Reginald. The French aristocrat tonight, I feel.” I turn away, setting out my palette knives and brushes, not wanting him to read anything in my face. “You have checked on Winifred?”

“For now, she sleeps.”

“Please inform me if that changes.”

“As you wish, my lord.”

Reginald fades into the shadows to go about his business. I return to the canvas on my easel, allowing my mind to fill in the garish white space with a vision. This is the challenge with painting, the reason it infuriates and enraptures me. When I begin, I hold a picture in my head of what I want the finished painting to look like, but as I work, that vision becomes blurry, and I can never bring back the crispness of my original idea.

This time, I’m certain my subject will remain sharp and unmistakable, because she occupies my every waking moment.

But before I can begin…I search my tidy desk, trying to remember where Winnie put my phone. She left it in a tray on the corner, along with my set of castle keys. What an odd place for them to be. That woman is infuriating.

It takes me a few tries to remember how to make a call. Gideon answers on the first ring.

“Alaric Valerian himself?” He sounds amused. I hear the sounds of construction in the background. “I usually hear from your dogsbody. I didn’t know you knew how to use a phone. Have you called to apologise for your cruelty earlier?”

I realise I’m holding the rectangle upside down, and flip it up the right way before replying.

“You were toying with me.”

“I was doing you a favour. And if the sweet young Winifred happens to be taken with my roguish charms, then that’s hardly my fault. You really should bring her to my party. The reclusive, mysterious Lord Valerian with a human on his arm – utterly taboo, completely delicious…you’ll create such a stir.”

I have no desire to speak to him any further about Winnie. He may be a rake and a wastrel of the first order, but Gideon Blake will fall on a sword for me, as I would for him. (Although only if the sword is made by a master smith. I don’t eviscerate myself on inferior craftsmanship.)

“What have you found out about this husking?” I ask.

Gideon sighs. “It looks bad for us. I have feelers out in the community, but either this is a rogue unknown to us, or they’ve frightened their kin into silence. One thing is certain – Danny O’Hare had fang marks in his neck. According to the coroner, he died from blood loss. His organs failed, he went into shock, his blood vessels literally collapsed like a house of cards. Not a beautiful death. Luckily, the police are incompetent twits – their leading theory is that the killer staged the murder to look like a vampire did it.”

I snort. “That’s absurd.”

“I agree, but there’s precedent. A few years ago there were a string of murders in the village with a similar modus operandi , but it turned out to be a different kind of monster. You don’t remember?”

I did, vaguely. It ended up having something to do with Mina Wilde, the Nevermore Bookshop owner. But there hadn’t been as many vampires living in Argleton then. Gideon’s Sanctus development is attracting them to the area, which means he has a business incentive to catch this rogue vampire. The last thing either of us want is to risk courtly intervention.

“I don’t pay much attention to what goes on in the village,” I say. “I’m only interested this time because…”

…because I must keep Winnie safe, no matter the cost.

“…because of a certain scrummy organiser?” Gideon presses.

“Because my mother is concerned,” I snap.

Gideon laughs, slow and easy. “As well she should be, as her son the lonely, grumpy lord of the castle is a prime suspect. But don’t worry, I have a plan to throw them off your scent. Don’t panic, Allie, we’ll find who did this before they hurt anyone else, and we don’t need the Mora to give this bastard the justice he deserves.”

“I told you to stop calling me Allie.”

Gideon laughs again. “You did, but I rarely listen to anything you say?—”

I hang up and drop the phone back into the tray, then swipe the tray onto the floor. Keys, phone, and papers filled with doodles scatter across the rug, but I don’t pick them up.

I mix my colours and absorb myself in my painting, my mind luxuriating over every detail of Winnie’s joyous laugh and golden eyes. Earlier, I’d tried to use coloured glass beads to create a sort of mixed media sculpture that conveyed the varying hues of her golden eyes, but it turned into a mess, so I hid that under a sheet and went back to painting.

As I work, the hunger gnaws at me, twisting my stomach in painful knots. Strawberries invade my nostrils. My skin crawls with the memory of every time she’s touched me without fear.

How I have wished with a warrior’s forlorn hope that someone might one day look at me like that.

Reginald can see I’m growing weak. But I can’t abide the solution he proposes. Just last night he offered his neck to me, something he hasn’t done for years now. He knows how I feel about it.

I’m not sure I feel the same way anymore. When I look at Winnie’s neck, when I imagine the sweetness of her invading my mouth or her body melting against mine as she embraces the Kiss, I can’t believe it is anything wrong, or evil. I’ve only known her a few short days, against my lifetimes of loneliness, but I wish that she could be mine forever.

Perhaps she would want the Kiss…

No.

I cannot think such a thing. I cannot go back on the blood oath that has defined my life. I will not allow my mother to use me as a political pawn, and I will never curse another as I have been cursed.

But is eternity a curse if I could spend it with her…

Listen to this weakness! I must be strong, or I’ll be forced to send her away, and I…

…I can’t bear the thought of Black Crag without her.

So I paint and I rage and I burn from the inside out, and I hope that some solution presents itself. I have read every book on vampire lore in the Black Crag library, hoping for some loophole that will allow me to pursue her without giving her the Kiss. But there is none.

And so, she cannot be mine. And yet, I cannot banish her from my thoughts or my veins.

It’s sometime later that I become aware of Reginald calling my name. Reluctantly, I set down my brushes and wipe the paint from my fingers. “Yes?”

“My lord, it’s happening again.”

I fly from the room.

Reginald calls after me. “My lord, you cannot go to her in your state?—”

But I don’t listen. I cross the castle in a single heartbeat and ascend the staircase to her room. Her cries reach my ears. They rend my soul.

Who has hurt Winnie so deeply that the pain follows her into her dreams?

I think of the cruel, monstrous things I’d like to do to them.

My fingers grasp the handle. Even if she has locked the door, I can break it with a flick of my wrist. I can gather her in my arms and tell her…

Tell her what? That nightmares aren’t real?

But they are real.

I am real.

My fingers fall from the handle. Winnie lets out another strangled sob. Every bone and sinew aches to hold her.

Instead, I lean my back against her door. Every cry and moan that falls from her mouth renders me impotent.

What terrors have turned her nights into horror?

Winnie’s nightmares wake her, as they have every night since she arrived at the castle, according to Reginald. A crack of light appears under the door. I hear her sigh, hear her footsteps on the rug and the water running in the bathroom. The bed creaks, and the pages of a book turn.

And then, I hear something else.

A buzzing sound.

I don’t understand what the buzzing can be at first, but then Winnie moans.

This moan is different from the way she whimpers in her dreams when she is distressed and frightened and I wish only to hold her and make it all go away.

This moan is…is…

…it’s the moan she made when I kissed her.

It’s the needy tremble of her body against me when my teeth scraped over her skin.

It’s the sound that has haunted my dreams every day since that night.

It’s the moan that has undone me.

My whole body tightens. Long dormant sensations clasp at my cold skin, warming me from the inside out. I taste my own blood on my tongue, rich and old and filled with dark urges.

Winnie moans again and my hands seek my waistband. All the taboos of my kin, all the dire warnings about what can happen when a human and vampire go to bed together are drowned into insignificance by that moan.

I’m no longer in control of my body. I’m a coil of need and desperation and foolish longing.

This is not for you.

But I cannot tear myself away. My hand closes around myself. I close my eyes and draw myself out, stroking my length in cruel silence as I gorge myself in a vision of her golden eyes staring back at me, wide and burnished with pleasure. I see her full lips part, her body arch off her bed, her skin like spun silver, and…

“Alaric,” Winnie whispers my name, each syllable clear as crystal to me over the buzzing of her toy. “Alaric.”

I bite my lip, not realising that my fangs have dropped. The sharp pain jolts me back to reality, back to this wretched scene of me skulking in her hallway, listening to her most private ministrations, so befuddled with lust that I imagine she wants me as I want her?—

“Alaric…oh!”

Her voice weaves an enchantment. The knowing of it, of what she’s doing to herself in there with my name on her lips?—

There’s only a thin wooden door between us. In a moment, I could have the door off its hinges, I could be in her bed, tasting her, making her scream my name instead of whispering it.

My cold blood boils in my veins, and it feels like someone has stabbed me through the chest. She calls my name again, and I am done for.

I want her so badly that I might have to stake myself through the heart just to keep her safe from me .

Instead, I bite down harder, the blood spurting down the front of my red shirt as I draw out my release. With her strangled cry of pleasure, my body clenches.

I wipe my hand on the hem of my shirt, tuck myself back in, and somehow, I gather centuries of self-control and creep away into the night like the monster I am.