Dawn Thompson (10 page)

“Aren’t you coming to bed?”

“I will prepare the holy water, and watch beside you awhile,” he said. “I heard a rustling noise in the forest just
now, high up in the boughs. That is where I last saw Sebastian, where he flew after he transformed into a bat. I heard it again just before I came inside. It might be nothing, but we cannot afford to take chances. Holy water will not destroy him, but it will keep him at his distance—if we’re lucky, long enough for us to book passage and get away. Go to sleep, Cass. With any luck, tomorrow at this time we will be riding the high seas, well on our way toward putting all this behind us.”

The hired chaise tooled off toward the border as the first cold rays of dawn crept over the horizon. It reached the estuary at Blyth in time for them to sail on the evening tide upon the fastest ship in port, the
North Star
, a three-masted barque whose cargo was somewhat suspect. That mattered not a whit to Jon. Whether smuggling, privateering, or carrying treasonous refugees was its mission, the stealth surrounding the ship was appealing. The captain, one Elijah Hawkes, was amenable to taking on passengers no questions asked for a price. Jon’s clerical garb worked in his favor, and Hawkes didn’t even question that he had enough blunt to have the first mate ousted from his cabin aft so that he and his bride could make the voyage privately and comfortably. If these sailors were thieves, they were honorable thieves: they settled their passengers in and afterward for the most part ignored them.

That they were making the voyage in summer spared them much of the dirty weather they would have faced
during other months, when the notorious North Sea, laced with deadly pack and floe ice, kicked up snow-swept gales and bitter winds that stirred the towering seas to foam and froth; but it wouldn’t spare them all of it. Three days out, a squall blew up complete with water-spouts and hellish winds that drove the barque before them all but horizontal in the water. All hands among the crew except the cook and ship’s doctor were called on deck, which made it easy enough for Jon to slip below to steerage when the bloodlust came upon him. Cassandra was limited to the rats she abhorred so in her natural state. These Jon provided when she grew too weak to hunt for them herself. Whether it was ordinary seasickness that plagued her or there really was something to the tales that vampires could not cross water without falling ill, he did not know. The effect was devastating. Jon, however, was not affected. That Cassandra could not keep regular food down made matters worse. She rarely left their bunk, and Jon rarely slept in it. Animal blood was not sufficient to satisfy the bloodlust hunger. Recalling what had happened after feeding upon the deer in the Scottish forest, he would take no chances, and more often than not he spent his nights in steerage among the cattle. He would not put Cassandra to the hazard again.

The storm raged for two days and nights, with the salt spray dousing the ship’s lanterns, and the eerie blue glow of St. Elmo’s fire snaking up and down the naked spars. The crew was a superstitious lot, and murmurings that the strange phenomenon was a sign of evil rumbled among them. But these were for the most part uneducated men, and Jon put no store in their fears. He’d learned of such phenomena at university, and knew that the strange blue lights were caused by atmospheric conditions
, were the handiwork of Mother Nature, and could be explained away as lightning. St. Elmo’s fire paled before the
real
evil in their midst, of which the seamen were in ignorance. Jon would not enlighten them.

As quickly as the storm came up, it dissipated with the dawn. The crew scurried over the decks, clearing away the debris and doing makeshift repairs. The sheets were untied and the unfurled sails, bellied and snapping in the wind, propelled them eastward through the Baltic at a steady clip. And so it went until they reached Gdansk.

The minute the ship docked, Cassandra began to rally. The sun had just set when Jon took her arm and led her up on deck to wait for their trunks to be brought from the cargo hold. But when the first mate unlocked the hatch and lifted the iron ring to raise the cover, he fell back with a shout that ran Jon through like a javelin. A swarm of squeaking, flapping bats soared through the hatch in a great black cloud, streaming past them over the ship’s rail, through the ropes and spars and ladders, past the bulkhead, weaving in and out among the pilings to disappear in the bleak shadows of imminent darkness inland.

Meanwhile, the gaping crew members gathered around, swatting at the last of the stragglers, the first mate’s rasping bark proclaiming all the while that he’d gone into the cargo hold a dozen times since they’d left Blyth and seen no bats, nor had he any idea how they’d come aboard. Cassandra cried out as one grazed her cheek, and she buried her face in the folds of Jon’s multi-caped traveling coat as another’s claws caught in her hair strafing past.

“Oh, Jon!” she cried. “Sebastian—could he be among them?”

Soothing her with gentle hands, Jon watched the last
of the bats exit the hold. “Not among them,” he said. “Unless I am very much mistaken, he
was
them, or rather they were he. I have been reading the tome Clive gave me when we parted. It tells of such as this.”

“I do not understand,” she sobbed. “How could it be?”

“The stronger undead, those who have prowled the world for centuries, are reputed to possess the power to transform not only into one creature, but into a veritable army of rats or a swarm of bats at will. He flaunts his power—a very clever demonstration.”

“Several of them . . . they . . . he
touched
me, Jon,” she said, shuddering in his arms.

“He has marked you for making. We must be even more careful. Stay close to me, and do exactly as I tell you. It could mean your life, Cass.”

“But how has he come here? You sent the brougham back to the Abbey with your scent upon it.”

Jon sighed. “If you remember, I told you I heard a rustling sound in the wood, and then again just before I reentered the cottage. I’ll wager he eavesdropped and overheard me telling you my plans for the voyage. It doesn’t matter how he knows, only that he obviously does. He is a vain creature. He evidently could not resist flaunting his cleverness in our faces. But overconfidence will not serve him well; now we are warned. Come . . . we shall find an inn and stay the night. Hereafter, at least until we’ve put some distance between us and that creature, we sleep by night and travel by day, when he cannot be abroad to follow. We must proceed with utmost caution. He will have minions here.”

Cassandra stirred. How strange it seemed to sleep in a bed after the long sea voyage, pitching and rolling with the
swells that moved the
North Star.
She had staggered like a lord in his cups leaving the barque. What must the innkeeper have thought? Jon lay beside her, sound asleep. It seemed the sleep of the dead, for he made no sound. But he was not dead. She could feel the warmth of him through her nightshift, the pressure of his corded thigh leaning heavily against her. Strange . . . she had always been alone when the dreams came. She knew it was a dream. Her eyes wouldn’t open, and yet it seemed so real—real enough that she lowered her feet to the floor and stood to prove the point.

How light she was. She seemed to float, responding to a gentle tapping noise sounding back in echo. Something was tapping against glass. The sound seemed to swell all around her, like the rising waves of the sea. She shuddered, remembering. That was when the dreams had begun—in the first mate’s cabin on the
North Star
. She hadn’t told Jon about the dreams, they would only worry him. They were just
dreams
, after all.

There was only one window in the room—a small round opening set high in the eaves, where the roof tiles outside shaded it. It was fitted with a grill of ornamental ironwork, and shuttered on the inside. Jon had latched the shutters before they retired. What a beautiful window. She had never seen the like; such a pity to cover it. It reminded her of the portholes belowdecks on the barque, though they had been square. She raised her arms to lift the latch, but it was out of reach. The tapping grew louder, more urgent, and she began to moan, standing on tiptoe, stretching, reaching . . . but the latch was set too high.

All at once she felt herself lifted. Her eyes snapped open wide. She was moving, but her feet had left the
floor. Jon was carrying her! Slowly his image came into focus. How handsome he was, gazing down through those hooded quicksilver eyes. But his mouth was hard-set, and the muscles along his jaw had begun to tick.

“What are you doing, Cassandra?” he asked, setting her down on the counterpane. “The window must stay shuttered—you know that. What were you about just now?”

“Someone knocks,” she said, pointing toward the shutters. “Don’t you hear it? No . . . how could you? This is
my
dream.”

“It is not a dream,” Jon said, foraging inside his traveling bag. After a moment, he took out the wineskin filled with holy water and a handkerchief, which he saturated.

“Of course it is!” she breathed. “It always is . . .”

Jon stood frozen in place, the handkerchief in his fist dripping steaming water on the bare wood floor. For a moment he stood rooted to the spot, then he strode to the window. He was tall enough to reach the latch. Cassandra watched, her brows knit in a puzzled frown as he passed the saturated handkerchief over the odd round shutters, then looped it through the latch and tied it securely. Only then did he turn to face her. His silvery eyes were blazing. Anger lived in that stare . . . and something else, something she couldn’t read.

All at once a squeaking sound on the other side of the window crescendoed into a rasping screech, then grew distant. Jon sank down on the edge of the bed and gathered her into his arms. How strong he was. How safe she felt in his embrace, though she was not, and unless they could find help in Moldovia among the holy men there, she never would be.

“I heard it, too, Cassandra,” he said. “It was him, and if you could have reached those shutters and had not wakened
in time, you would have let him in. He has mesmerized you. He owns your mind when he wills it. He commands, and you obey.”

“B-but it is such a small window, and so high! Why, it’s set beneath the overhang. How could he—”

“Have you so soon forgotten the bats?”

She gasped. She had. Had the creature erased them from her memory? All at once she was terrified. The connotations all but paralyzed her brain.

“How long have you been having such dreams?”

“They started on the ship,” she said, trying to remember.

“Did you sleepwalk during the dreams as you did just now?”

“I . . . I don’t know. I don’t think so. Oh, Jon!”

He soothed her with gentle hands, though his demeanor hadn’t changed. That was more terrifying than it would have been had he taken her to task, scolded her, admonished her—anything but this intense, stricken look. She turned her eyes away.

“Where was I when you were having these dreams?” he asked.

“You often left me at night,” she said. “You slept elsewhere much of the time—”

“Because I could not risk myself in your presence when the bloodlust came upon me,” he interrupted.

“I imagined I heard you calling me, though it didn’t really sound like you at first, but then . . . you asked me to rise up and let you in—”

He seized her upper arms and shook her. “You didn’t . . . ?”

“N-no!” she cried. “I couldn’t. I would have, but the ship—it tipped and rolled in the water so severely, I had to tie myself down with the bed linen to keep from
falling out of the bunk. I nearly did once. Even if I could have risen as you bade me, I could never have stood without an arm to lean on. At times the ship was nearly lying on its side in the sea. I couldn’t keep my balance. It was dreadful!”

“That wasn’t me calling you, Cassandra. It was Sebastian. If you had let him in as he demanded, he would have drained your blood until you died but not died, and you would have risen to number among the undead as he is. In the open he can have you in a trice. But if you are enclosed inside a house, a room, a chamber—if there is a door, some barrier between you, he cannot enter where you are unless it be by invitation. Do you see how vulnerable you are to his wiles? You would have let him in just now if I hadn’t stopped you. He would have had you and killed me. Now do you finally see what we are facing? No matter what, you must resist him!”

Tears spilled down her cheeks. “It sounded like you,” she sobbed.

“He evidently has the power to change his voice, to mimic others. I do not know. I have not read the entire book that Clive gave me. There hasn’t been time, what with trying to stay one step ahead of the creature and dealing with our symptoms. I am trying to separate the wheat from the chaff in the tome. It treats things I have always thought were myth as fact, which is why I am in hopes that these holy men will be able to help us.”

“You are angry with me,” she said.

“I am out of sorts, yes, but not angry with you. It is the animal blood. It does not agree with me. I need human blood to sustain me until I can find a way to stop the cravings altogether.”

“The tome the vicar gave you,” she said. “Does it not
offer a solution?” She had to know, though she feared the answer.

“It mentions several things, but none that I might try without the priests. One remedy involves an herb I’ve never heard of, and the other a ritual so bizarre I would not dream to attempt it without holy sanction.”

“Is it a very long journey to Moldovia?” she asked.

“Longer than the distance we would travel from the tip of Land’s End in Cornwall to the uppermost reaches of the Scottish Highlands,” he replied.

Cassandra swallowed. “Oh,” she said. “It will take at least a sennight, then. I had hoped—”

“At the very least a sennight,” he interrupted, “depending upon the terrain we must travel and how often we stop along the way. I have never been in this part of the world, but several of my colleagues at university were Romanian. Homesick, they shared tales of their land. They spoke of steppes and forests and valleys, but much of the terrain we must travel through is in the mountains, whose passes are carved high and narrow in the rock—treacherous roads, if you can even call them roads, and Sebastian will be there with us in one form or another, whether he makes his presence known or not. And then there are his minions. We can trust no one here, Cassandra. We were not safe on the ship, and we were unaware. We are less safe here on land, and though we
are
aware of danger, we have no idea of the nature of the danger we are facing. I cannot stay awake the whole distance to Moldovia to keep you from answering the vampire’s call. You must be vigilant or we are both lost.”