The Purest of the Breed (The Community) (33 page)

She wanted to shout against the grip of anguish in her chest.
Nay
! She wouldn’t believe that Ştefan had rejected her until she saw the truth in his own damnable eyes for herself.

Careening off the harborside and into the town of Constanţa, she slowed her mount to a jolting trot, its hooves clattering on cobblestones glossy from a brief spate of rain. The buttery glow of an occasional gaslamp pushed back the shadows, although many had been left dark; few lamplighters made it to this poor and dingy part of town. Better if Ştefan had chosen to meet his comrades at the elegant Carol Hotel, and thereby relieved her of having to navigate her way, alone, to a seedy tavern called
Cocoşesc Bârlog
, or “The Cock’s Den,” in order to confront him about—

She screamed as another horse and rider thundered out of a side street and nearly collided with her. Her horse reared up with a shrill whinny, sending her tumbling out of the saddle. She gasped as she hit the cobblestones hard enough to clack her teeth together and light off a blast of stars before her eyes. Rolling onto her side, she glared up through pain-slitted eyes at her accoster. “Grigore Nichita,” she moaned out.

“Imbecilic woman!” he seethed at her. “Our armada sails forthwith, and you’re riding amok on a fool’s errand!”

She blinked hard to clear her vision of spots. “’Tisn’t foolish to want to know the truth.” She planted one foot, then the other, to climb painstakingly to her feet.

Grigore sneered at her. “You’ve been tossed aside like a pair of hose, Pettrila Rázóczi, no better. That’s the truth put on a platter before you. Look upon it and come away!”

“I’m less than inclined to believe anything you have to say, Grigore.” She made a grab for her gelding’s reins, but the loathsome beast pranced sideways and tossed its head. “You, who stalks me like a beslubbering varlet.”

“Then rely on the logic of your own mind, woman.” He made a derisive sound in his throat. “Did you genuinely believe a man outside of the Vârcolac breed would want you? Truly?”

The heat of a blush hurt her cheeks, her lips quivering before she could stop them.
My mother has arranged a marriage for me with a woman of my own station
. A shout swelled up her throat. “Begone, you odious toad!” she lashed out at Grigore in her pain. “I’ve had enough of your gum.” Jamming the crumpled letter into her skirt pocket, she went for her gelding again.

The shrill blast of a trumpet cut through the night.

“Hell’s teeth! They depart!” Grigore sent his mount surging forward, making a grab for her.

She tried to dodge him, but he was faster than she, snatching her up by the back of her belt and throwing her face-down across the horn of his saddle.

She let out an enraged yell. “Unhand me!”

Grigore reined his horse around hard, the animal’s hooves skidding. “So you can track your paramour into a pack of Vârcolac Vânător, my lady? You are addle-headed!” He dug in his heels, sending his horse hurtling in the direction of the docks.

With a shallow gasp, Pettrila seized Grigore’s tall boot to keep from falling. Her long, unbound hair whipped around, nearly tangling in the horse’s churning legs. Blood filled her head in her arse-over position, dizzying her. “Grigore, set me aright.
Now
, I tell you.” She could scarcely catch her breath with her stomach bouncing hard against the saddle. “I’m going to be ill.”

Grigore yanked his horse to a plunging halt. “Damnation, they’ve sailed,” he snarled, his boots hitting the dock with an angry scrape. He snatched her out of the saddle, his grip on her shoulders bruising, and shook her roughly. “You made us late, you insufferable doxy!”

She stared wide-eyed into his livid his face, a cold knot of fear in her chest. “I-I’m sorry, I didn’t intend… Oh, wait! Look! One ship yet remains, Grigore.”

Men on the deck of the
Tempest
were just now throwing off the mooring lines.

“Nay,” he growled, “we’re supposed to be on that ship.” He pointed to the
Lady Revenge
, already at full sail and making steadily for the open seas. “’Tis…’tis where my parents are and your brother.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it. Did it matter at this point? They were all traveling to the same—

She whirled around at the pounding drumroll of horses’ hooves, the rolling thunder advancing rapidly toward the docks.
Lună şi steluţă
! Several dozen riders were approaching, the torches they held bobbing maniacally. Vampire hunters!

“The devil take us,” Grigore hissed. “We’ve been found out.”

The angry shouts of the men grew louder, and fear clutched Pettrila’s innards. The riders would be upon them in mere moments! “Why do you tarry, Grigore?!”

With a savage curse, Grigore finally grabbed hold of her hand and hauled her at a run for the ship.

The triple-masted privateer had glided several feet from the dock, forcing them to leap the gap. They landed hard and stumbled, a sharp pain streaking through Pettrila’s ankle. But they’d made it, thank the stars, escaping just as the wall of oncoming horseflesh slid to a dock-gouging halt, hooves throwing up shards of splinters. Some beasts reared up, others stomped and blew as if echoing their masters’ frustration.

Above them, rigging lines clattered and canvas boomed as sails unfurled fully up the masts. The
Tempest
leaned into the wind, and Pettrila stumbled sideways, the deck slewing at an angle beneath her. She made her way on careful feet to one side of the ship and gripped the rail. Still breathing heavily, she watched the land of her birth—and her last chance to see Ştefan—gradually drift farther and farther away as they cut smoothly across the glassy water of the harbor.

Tears rose into her throat, but she swallowed them back. Grigore was at her side, tense and watchful, and she didn’t care to court any more of his wrath with another display of lovesickness.

They rounded the rock jetty which protected the Constanţa harbor from high winds and rough seas, streaking gracefully into open waters. The angle of their ship steepened, the deck rising and falling more forcefully over the bigger swells. Sea spray misted her face.

“Best you go belowdecks, my lady.” Grigore’s bearded jaw was rigid, his tension mounting as he stared at something in the distance.

She followed the direction of his attention and frowned. “What goes forth?”

A fleet of a dozen or more ships hulked just outside of the harbor, twice as many as their own armada, and as each one of their ships emerged, two of those others swooped in on them like vultures.

The captain of the
Tempest
ground out a curse from the forecastle. “Bring her hard about!” he shouted.

Men scrambled up the yards. The helmsman grunted and strained at the tiller.

“Grigore?” A shiver of apprehension slid down her spine. “Who are they?”

Grigore’s mouth flattened against his teeth. “Those are Russian frigates.”

She gaped up at him.
Russians
! “’Tisn’t possible! The Russians have no means of knowing our plans of escape.”

“Don’t they?” Grigore turned his head to look down on her, his silver eyes molten with accusation. “Besides Vârcolac, there’s one man who knew of this escapade, is there not?”

For one dazed, disbelieving moment, she just stared at him, unable to countenance who he spoke of. “Nay,” she protested thickly, her throat fouling with bile. “Ştefan didn’t betray us. I know it!”

“Tell me where Dragoş is on this ship, then?”

Her stomach dropped down to her feet. “He didn’t come b-because I’m Vârcolac,” she quavered, her emotions shredding her voice. “He threw me over for that, you said so yourself.”

“Evidently, I was mistaken.” Grigore marked the path of one of the Russian frigates bearing down on them, sails flapping in the wind, hull slicing swiftly through sea swells. Gunports open.

“I wish I was not.” His voice lowered. “I wish
you
hadn’t been mistaken, either, my lady, trusting Dragoş to organize all of this, letting him vow to help our people when all the while he was acting as a Vampire Hunter in truth.”

She pressed a hand to her breast, struck to her soul as she remembered that night at Peleş Castle when Ştefan had told her of his plans.
Why would you do this
? she’d asked him.
You risk your very life by helping vampires
. He’d barely batted an eye over the danger. Was that because all the while he’d known he wouldn’t be in any?! Had he vowed his love for her only to use her?
I need your help to see this through
, he’d said.
I cannot access every Vârcolac enclave to pass the word
.

She squeezed her lids tightly shut, her knees going weak as
ciorba
soup. Any moment she would fall to the decks and prostrate herself to all of Romania for being duped by her woman’s heart. Stars above, she’d led her own people into an ambush!

She gripped the railing again, her knuckles going white as she fought to withstand the shock of the realization, and to bear the anguish.

Grigore had told her to hide belowdecks, no doubt wanting her safe, but she couldn’t move. She could only stand in place and stare at the attacking Russian frigate, watching it tack into firing position across from their sleek privateer. Pettrila could see men just beyond the black snouts of the enemy canons, long fuses held at the ready. Time seemed to slow to an impossible crawl, her heart constricting to half its normal size as the gunners lowered the glowing red wicks to the tops of the guns.

An instant later, a succession of ear-splitting blasts quaked the night, the canons spitting fire and belching black smoke. Plumes of water shot up from the ocean surface where several balls drove harmlessly into the sea, while others carved through the topsails of their ship. The upper half of the mainmast was sheared off in an eruption of wood shards and ripping canvas, and Pettrila screamed as the bloody remains of men from up in the yards splattered down onto the deck.

The
Tempest
returned a full broadside at the attacking Russians, the planks beneath Pettrila’s feet shuddering from the report of the guns one deck below. She lurched against Grigore, gripping his arms.

Another salvo wailed farther off, and she turned to look. A volley from a different Russian frigate had just been launched at their sister privateer, the
Lady
Revenge
. Bar shot and cannonballs swept half a dozen men over the sides, chewed through railing, bulkhead, and hull. One of the
Lady Revenge’s
cannons was blown from its bed and sent tumbling onto its back into the ocean, coughing black smoke before slipping under the churning waves.

Pettrila pressed a fist to her lips, acid pushing at the backs of her teeth. The
Lady Revenge
had been holed in her lower decks and was taking on water fast. Her brother, Octav, was on that ship.

Grigore jerked away from her and flung back his head, bellowing in rage. “Bloody betrayer!”

The ship that held her brother and Grigore’s parents listed precariously to port, getting sucked into the ocean with alarming speed.

Tears blinded Pettrila.
Why, Ştefan,
why
did you do this
?

“Hard to starboard!” the captain of the
Tempest
yelled. “Tighten the sheets!”

The enemy frigate was cleaving sharply through the swells, coming about for another assault.

A second deadly frigate was sailing tight on its bow.

The Russian gunners reloaded—wadding, cannon ball, powder. They fired. The shriek of canvas being slashed from the mizzen mast was joined by the screams of dying men. A long cable snapped loose and whizzed straight for her—

“Pettrila!” Grigore called out.

Panic froze her in place, her eyes widening on the writhing snake of metal line.

Grigore charged forward and pushed her.

She skidded across the deck and slammed into the railing, knocking her head hard against the wood. Blackness swam across her vision. Gasping, she fought the unconsciousness that pulled at her, but darkness closed in an ever-tightening circle around her pupils.

And then there was nothing.

* * *

Pettrila woke in a small, dim room, the smell of smoke and blood lingering in her nostrils. A single candle on a shelf spilled a meager pool of light, but even that hurt her eyes. She was stretched out on a thin mattress in what was a ship’s stateroom, judging by the tightly shuttered portholes and the furnishings bolted to the floor. Two blurry Grigores were seated on the edge of her bed, pressing a wet cloth to her brow.

She dragged her tongue across her lips to moisten them and worked at focusing her vision.

“By darkest night, you’re awake at last,” Grigore breathed, his expression drawn with concern. “How do you fare?”

“My head hurts,” she croaked. Worse than that, it felt as if someone had shoveled out the bottom of her stomach into the kind of infinite emptiness that spoke of a severe blood-need.

“You hit your head very hard.” Grimacing, Grigore peeked under the cloth. “I pushed you too vigorously, I’m sorry. Damn me, I’ve been worried after you.”

She nudged his hand off her brow. “How are we alive, Grigore?”

He set the cloth aside. “We were rescued. I know not by whom, but whoever ’twas, they manned the cannons on the jetty and fired relentlessly at the Russian frigates, sending our enemy limping away. After that, we sprinted further out to sea, and are now steadily making our way to England.”