Jane Slayre (2 page)

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his kind. I would not sacrifice my soul, as no doubt all of the Reeds had given theirs.

"What! What!" he cried. "Did she say that to me? Did you hear her, Eliza and Georgiana? Won't I tell Mama? But first--"

I felt him grasp my hair and my shoulder and lick at the drop or two of blood that had trickled down my neck.

"So sweet," he said. His fangs pierced my neck, a quick, sharp burn, and I was sensible of somewhat pungent suffering. These sensations for the time predominated over fear, and I received him in frantic sort. He drank until I began to weaken, and I had the vision again of my standing over him, victorious at last. I had no weapon, barely any consciousness, and yet I knew that I could fight. Fight! Something in me screamed. Fight! Live!

I rammed my knee up and connected with tender flesh.

"Rat! Rat!" he bellowed.

Aid was near him. Eliza and Georgiana had run for Mrs. Reed, who had gone upstairs. She now came upon the scene, followed by Bessie and Mrs. Reed's maid, Abbot.

I lived in dread of Abbot. She frightened me far more than the vampyres, for I wasn't certain what she was. I only knew that her limbs frequently detached and she had a devil of a time putting them back on. Sometimes, when Abbot nodded off for a nap and the Reed children were feeling especially naughty, they took delight in rearranging her as if she were a puzzle. Unfortunately, Abbot nodded off frequently, as she was not very vigorous, and the Reeds were always naughty. But what Abbot lacked in enthusiasm she made up for in strength. She held me by the collar with toes where her fingers should have been and pulled me away from John.

I heard, "He's going to eat her, Mama! May we all join in?"

"No, no, dears! Her common blood will bring on fevers, maybe apoplexy! We only eat what we kill out of doors, or nobility!" Mrs. Reed's insistence on purity of blood kept the servants feeling safe in her presence, but John Reed had occasionally shown that his appetite could overcome even this prejudice.

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"But she smells tolerable," Eliza said. I imagined her inching closer, fangs extended.

"She laughed," Georgiana pointed out, as if to add to her mother's argument about my disgusting common nature. "She nearly drove us all out of mind with her unmitigated mirth."

"What a wanton to tempt Master John with laughing and bleeding." This from Abbot, monotone as ever but dutifully indignant on her mistress's behalf. "As if she
wanted
to be eaten."

Then Mrs. Reed subjoined, "Take her away to the red room and lock her in there, away from my children." Four hands were immediately laid upon me, and I was borne upstairs.

CHAPTER 2

I DRIPPED BLOOD ALONG THE carpet all the way, a circumstance that greatly strengthened the bad opinion Bessie and Miss Abbot were disposed to entertain of me. I believed John Reed's fang had pierced an artery, for the flow came fast and would not stop though I tried to press the wound and dab at it with my sleeve. Abbot took my attempts to stanch the bleeding as fighting her off and held me tighter, confining my arms, until she fell asleep midwalk and nearly dropped me. Bessie caught me and nudged Abbot.

"Help me lift her, Miss Abbot. She's dazed."

"For shame." The lady's maid woke and took me entirely out of Bessie's hands, holding me, again, by the dress. "What shocking conduct, Miss Slayre, to entice your benefactress's son, your young master."

I hardly had the strength to speak, yet I found my voice. "Master? Am I a servant? Am I to let him feed at will?"

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"No, you are less than a servant, for you do nothing for your keep. And to laugh at Master Reed? There, sit down, and think over your fit of levity."

They had got me by this time into the apartment indicated by Mrs. Reed and had thrust me upon a stool, but I had such trouble sitting upright that I immediately lost my balance. Levity? I grew lighter by the minute.

"If you don't stop bleeding, we'll have to bandage you up," said Bessie. "Miss Abbot, lend me your kerchief."

The cadaver-thin Miss Abbot reached inside her sleeve, and I recoiled. I dreaded to think of something so close to Miss Abbot's pasty skin touching my own. If her hand came with it, I might lose my potatoes and spinach on the red room's carpet.

"Don't take it off," I cried. "I'm nearly done bleeding."

Bessie clucked her tongue, reached in a pocket for her own handkerchief, and began dabbing at my neck. I shifted a little on my seat, seeing two Bessies for a brief moment, and tried not to swoon.

"She's never done anything like this before," Bessie said to Abbot, as if I were no longer present.

"It was always in her" was the reply. "I've heard Missus often enough and I agree with her opinion about the child. She's an underhanded little thing. She wants to be like them."

Like them? My heart revolted, but I did not care to correct the notion for fear of losing my breath. My head swam.

Bessie didn't answer, but addressed me. "You ought to be aware, miss, that you are under obligations to Mrs. Reed. She keeps you. If she were to turn you off, you would have to go to the poorhouse."

Miss Abbot joined in. "And you ought not to think yourself on an equality with the Misses Reed and Master Reed, because Missus kindly allows you to be brought up with them. They have a great deal of money, and you have none. It is your place to be placid, and if Master Reed wants a taste now and then, so be it."

A taste? No doubt the bloodless Abbot thought it nothing to simply offer a sample.

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"What we tell you is for your own good," added Bessie. "You should try to stay out of the way and be quiet. Then, perhaps, you would have a home here."

"Come, Bessie, we will leave her; I wouldn't have her heart for anything." Indeed, even an animal's blood took preference over my common sort. "Miss Slayre, when you are by yourself, something bad might be permitted to come down the chimney and fetch you away."

I could not imagine much worse than with whom I currently resided. They went, shutting the door behind them. The red room was a square chamber, seldom slept in, I might say never, indeed, unless a particular noble the Reeds fancied came to visit. It was one of the largest and stateliest chambers in the mansion. I could not see well in the dark, but I remembered the layout from coming in once on an afternoon before Bessie came to fetch me and said it was too early to be up and I had best return to my own chamber.

A bed supported on massive pillars of mahogany, hung with curtains of deep red damask, stood out like a tabernacle in the centre. An ample cushioned easy chair sat near the head of the bed, white, with a footstool before it, looking like a pale throne. The two large windows, with their blinds always drawn, were half shrouded in falls of similar drapery. The carpet was red. The table at the foot of the bed was covered with a crimson cloth. The walls were a soft fawn colour with a blush of pink in it. The wardrobe, the toilet table, and the chairs were of darkly polished old mahogany.

The room was chill because it seldom had a fire; silent, due to the remote location far from the nursery and kitchen; solemn, because it was known to be so seldom entered. The housemaid came here on Saturdays to wipe from the furniture a week's worth of dust. Mrs. Reed herself, at far intervals, visited it to review the contents of a secret drawer in the wardrobe, where were stored divers parchments, her jewel casket, and a miniature of her deceased husband; and in those last words lies the secret of the red room--the spell that kept it so lonely in spite of its grandeur.

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Mrs. Reed had been a vampyre nine years. In this chamber she breathed her last mortal breath at her husband's side. Here, Mr. Reed had bitten her and transformed her, as he had been attacked and transformed on the road home from his sister's--my mother's--funeral. Bessie said that Mrs. Reed didn't want her husband to suffer through the curse of immortality alone, but I suspected that Mrs. Reed cherished the idea of eternal life more than she even cared for her husband.

It seemed Mr. Reed alone suffered agonies over his new soulless state. He had never been much for the hunt, and being required to kill to feed his cravings left him feeling forlorn and most unsettled, according to Bessie's assessment, though she was fairly new to the Reeds' service at the time. Mrs. Reed suffered no such pangs of conscience. She adjusted to her new situation as easily as learning a new mode of dance for a society ball, but her husband remained morose.

Mr. Reed, trusting in Mrs. Reed's ability to maintain the household and provide proper care for his children and infant niece, enlisted a mercenary to drive a stake through his heart, turning him instantly to a pile of fine dust, thus ending his earthly tortures in the very room where he'd turned his wife into a vampyre. A sense of dreary consecration had since guarded the red room from frequent intrusion.

Unable to contemplate eternal life without her darlings, it was not five years before Mrs. Reed gave in to John Reed's pleading to make him a vampyre, too. Georgiana and Eliza followed. Aside from turning her children, Mrs. Reed stayed true to the last promise she made Mr. Reed, to never turn another living being to her own altered state--most especially not me, for I did not deserve, nor want, the honour.

My seat, to which Bessie and the bitter Miss Abbot had left me half-conscious, was a low ottoman near the marble chimneypiece. The bed rose before me. To my right was the high, dark wardrobe, with subdued, broken reflections varying the gloss of its panels. To

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my left were the muffled windows and the empty frame of what I guessed had once had been a great looking glass. I was not quite sure whether they had locked the door, and when I tried to move to check, I fell to the floor.

All looked colder and darker from my low vantage point. I struggled to my knees, crawled to the window, clutched the curtains, and tore them open before I fell back again to the carpet. I slept, perhaps an hour or more, but woke again to darkness. How I wished it could be the sun!

Somehow, I found strength to return to my stool. I shook with fear, or perhaps rage. John Reed's vicious attacks, his tyranny, occupied my mind. What if he struck again? How could he be stopped? I felt my head, my hair sticky with dried blood, and my neck, still sore at the wound, the handkerchief Bessie bound me with damp but not soaked. I thought of Eliza, headstrong and selfish but still respected, asking for a taste of me, her mother's admonishment delivered to protect Eliza from my common taint rather than to save me from harm. I was glad Georgiana hadn't asked. She, with her spoiled temper, was universally indulged and might have been allowed a sample, just small enough to satisfy without putting her in danger of contamination.

Georgiana's beauty, her pink cheeks and golden curls, seemed to give delight to all who looked at her, and to purchase indemnity for every fault. John no one thwarted, much less punished; though he tortured servants, snacked between meals on the little peachicks and barn cats, stripped the hothouse vines of their fruit, and broke the buds off the choicest plants in the conservatory. He liked to call his mother "old girl," too. He bluntly disregarded her wishes, often tore and spoiled her silk attire, ridiculed her appearance for the dark shadows under her eyes that were similar to his own; and he was still "her own darling." I dared commit no fault. I strove to fulfill every duty. And I was termed naughty and tiresome, too cheerful, and sneaking, from dusk to midnight, and from midnight to dawn.

"Unjust!" said my reason. Why should I suffer their accusations

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and live with John Reed's bullying and without the sun? Could I run away? Where would I go? How would I find food? Might it be worth it to take the chance even if death was my reward? I would die free of the Reeds, at least, and with a bright sun shining to warm my limbs as I passed.

How cold I was without a fire. I began to shake with chills, or was it weakness? I couldn't run away when it was a struggle to remain sitting upright, let alone attempt to stand or walk. Yet my mind reeled.

Gateshead Hall sheltered a family of vampyres, an undead maid, some two dozen mortal servants who were paid well for their silence and their service, and me. Where did I fit in? I was like nobody there.

Eventually darkness began to make way for day. The clouded night grew lighter with the dawn. I heard the rain begin to stop, and the howling wind give way to tranquil breezes. I grew colder still, but my heart warmed. My courage rose. The Reeds would soon be off to bed, and I might be forgotten and get a glimpse of sunlight. I might see the day break, bright and beautiful, over the valley beyond the fields surrounding the house. My cheer returned.

What delirium had led me to think such thoughts as I had? I was aware that I never wished to be like the Reeds, and nothing could have induced me to drink another being's blood, most especially John Reed's. If he came to me now and gave me the choice that my uncle's attackers had reportedly given him, to drink or die, I would indeed choose death and not be sorry for it. But to give up without a fight? To admit defeat at John Reed's hands? Never. I did not have it in me to concede. Running away and dying of want would as much be giving John Reed his triumph as if I drank of his blood after he began to drain me of mine.

I would live to see the sun. There, it came up over the field, just peeking out from a cloud. I drew closer to the window and squinted through the pane only to fall from the ottoman again. On the floor, I let the light wash over me, warming me and growing brighter as