Cin Craven - Wages of Sin Part 4

I thought about that and sat in silence, sipping my tea, until Archie came back, his keys jingling as they slid into his vest pocket. He looked questioningly at Mr. Pendergra.s.s, who motioned him closer and then reached out and took my chin in his hand, turning my head so that Archie could get a good look.

"No," Archie silently whispered, his eyes gone wide.

"Tell me what happened," Mr. Pendergra.s.s said.

I told them of Sebastian and the attack, leaving nothing out for fear any minor detail would be something of importance.

Mr. Pendergra.s.s settled into his chair. "Well, clearly something must be done about your inability to control your magic, Dulcinea.

We can't have you losing your temper and weaseling anyone who crosses you."

"I do not lose my temper," I said haughtily.

He arched a brow at me.

"Very well, I rarely lose my temper, then. All in all, that's not the point."

"Yes, I daresay the point is that we must find a way to eliminate the threat to you."

"What about a slayer?" I asked. "Could we find one?"

Archie shook his head. "My cousin was a slayer, the only one I know of in London, but he was killed while on the hunt three weeks ago."

"Oh, Archie, I'm so sorry," I said. "Surely you know how to kill them though, the vampires? If only I knew how to fight him, how to kill him. I don't want to go up against him with an a.r.s.enal that consists of only legend and folklore."

Archie looked at me. "Could you really kill him? Cut off his head? This man you've known all your life?"

I swallowed and paused for one heartbeat, two, three. "Yes," I said, and I meant it.

"In the time it took you to answer that question he could have snapped your neck," Archie said. I didn't really care for his brutal honesty. I didn't want to admit that maybe I was that weak.

"What do you suggest, Archie?" I said, a little more coolly than I intended. "Perhaps Mr. Pendergra.s.s could fight Sebastian? Or would you rather it be you? Should I leave your young wife a widow, all to save my hide? No, it has to be me. I can do what needs to be done, I swear it. I just need you to tell me how to do it."

He thought for several long minutes, pacing the room, and then he looked at me and shook his head. "It makes my skin crawl to suggest it but I think I have something that might help. It's an insane idea but it just might work."

"Well?"

"Wait here," he said. "I need to get something."

He came back a few minutes later holding a small, battered, leather-bound journal in his hands. I couldn't be sure but I suspected some of the stains on the cover were blood.

"This was my cousin's journal. I found it among the things in his rooms after he was killed. I, um, liberated it before my aunt could find it. I didn't think it wise for her to find out what he really was."

I nodded.

"There's a pa.s.sage written about a month before he died. Listen: I fear I'm getting too old for this. Tonight I was one second off, one heartbeat too slow and the beast was on me. She had me pinned to the cobblestones, her fangs lengthened, her head drew back for the strike. I watched in horror, frozen for an instant... and then a booted foot came out of nowhere and connected with the side of her head.

The impact threw her across the alley. I looked up at my rescuer. She was the most stunningly beautiful woman I'd ever seen. Her pale blonde hair was pulled back to hang in ringlets past her shoulders and her man's attire fit her slender body like a glove. The vampire got to her feet, hissing at the woman and then charged her. They fought as I lay there, watching in fascination. The blonde was like some warrior G.o.ddess, every move perfect, every blow a work of art. She made fighting the undead look like child's play, never even breaking a sweat.

The vampire fell before her and the G.o.ddess reached back and pulled a sword which had been sheathed down her spine, hidden beneath her frock coat.

'Do you know who I am?' she calmly asked the vampire.

'Betrayer!' the beast spat.

'I am the Devil's Justice,' the woman said and the sword fell, its blade taking the vampire's head in one clean motion.

Nothing but dust and bone was left where the beast had been.

The G.o.ddess sheathed her sword and turned to me. Reaching out a hand, she offered to help me up. I took her hand; it was cold. Recoiling, I realized what she was. Not a slayer, as I had thought. She was a vampire. She stared at me, her eyes sad for a moment and then going cold and distant. I sat there, unwilling to take her hand even though she had saved my life.

'Remember,' she said, 'who it was that allowed you to see another dawn.' And then she turned away.

'Who are you?' I called to her.

'The Devil's Justice,' was all she said, and then she was gone.

"Two weeks later he wrote this: I have asked those who would know. I believe she was one of The Righteous. They who would know whisper that The Righteous is a group of three vampires who slay the evil undead, those who take human lives. Their leader is a vampire called Devlin, or the Dark Lord. Supposedly in life he was one of Edward III's champions. He is invincible in battle and the undead fear him as they do the sunlight.

His mate is a Frenchwoman called Justine; some call her the Devil's Justice. In life she was an actress and an opera singer without equal and the courtesan of kings.

The third of the group is younger, less than a century old. They call him Michael, the Devil's Archangel. They say he is a Scot who fell at Culloden and Devlin was so impressed by his skill in battle that he spared him true death so that he may fight forever as a vampire.

So, do I believe any of this? Before I saw her I would have said with absolute conviction that there could be no good vampires, and yet she saved my life, took the head of one of her own kind, and walked away. Do The Righteous really exist? Do I believe? Yes. Yes, I do."

I looked at Archie and then I looked at Mr. Pendergra.s.s. He had a thoughtful expression on his face.

Oh dear.

"So," I said slowly, "you think that I should ask these vampires to help me? You think that they would?"

Archie shrugged. "There's only one way to find out. Besides, who better to kill your vampire than the undead themselves?"

"But that was written months ago! What if they aren't even in London anymore? And how do you go about finding a cadre of vampires in the City at any rate?"

"A summoning spell might work," Mr. Pendergra.s.s said, one finger tapping idly on the amber globe at the top of his staff.

"But it would have to be done at night, so they would be able to travel," I said.

"Yes."

"And I can't go out at night or Sebastian will eat me, or whatever."

"True," Mr. Pendergra.s.s said slowly, as if waiting for me to come to some sort of conclusion on my own.

I leapt to my feet. "Oh you can't be serious! You expect me to work a summoning spell, which I'm not even sure I can do anyway, to call vampires into my home who may or may not be friendly. And even if they are friendly they're more than likely to be very angry with me when they get there. Lord and Lady, I might as well just slit all of our throats!"

"Do you have a better idea?" Archie asked.

"Just tell me how to kill him!" I shouted.

"Dulcinea," Mr. Pendergra.s.s said gently, "come child, sit down. Here's a nice cup of tea. Now, we have to be realistic here. I could possibly work a spell quick enough to incinerate Sebastian but if he has reinforcements then we're all dead. Archie's a fine, strapping lad but he's only human and no match for the strength of a vampire and besides, as you said, there is his young bride to consider. You have a great deal of power within you but you have yet to learn to channel and focus it and, as Archie pointed out, if you hesitate for one instant, if you think for one heartbeat about the Sebastian Montford who was your childhood friend, then all is lost.

"Now, I don't like this idea any more than you do, and no one will make you do anything you don't want to do, but I think you should get some rest and consider it. Come, let me show you to the guest room."

As I wearily followed Mr. Pendergra.s.s up the back stairs I thought about what Archie had suggested. It was foolish, foolish and horribly arrogant. Arrogant to believe that I could fill a vampire with a compulsion to come to me, ask him to help me kill one of his own kind and expect him to agree to it, or at the very least not to kill me out of pure irritation. It was ridiculous. Tomorrow morning I would take Missy and go back home. Mr. Pendergra.s.s and Archie would stay in London safe and sound and I would think of something else. One thing was certain, there was no way I was ever going to perform a summoning spell to welcome vampires into my home. No. Absolutely not.

Chapter Six

"So how exactly does this spell work?" I asked Mr. Pendergra.s.s as the carriage rumbled along the lane, a very cranky Missy tied to the rear.

"It's quite simple, really. You create a circle of power and open yourself up to the magic. Then you call the ones you seek to you.

The closer they are, the stronger the magic will be. If the vampires are in London you should be able to call one or two of them, probably the Scot and the woman since they are the youngest of the three. If they happen to be closer you may even be able to call the Dark Lord himself."

"And we're a.s.suming that if I can call one the others will follow?"

"Yes," Mr. Pendergra.s.s said.

Archie flicked the reins and scowled. "Then why didn't we do this last night while we were in London?"

Mr. Pendergra.s.s sent him an arch look. "She was exhausted. I could have done it but it needs to be her spell and she needs to be well-rested and looking her best."

"Why?" I asked. I understood that I had been too tired and my thoughts too scattered last night to have performed the spell but I didn't understand Mr. Pendergra.s.s's last comment.

He laughed. "My dear, I am a wrinkled old man but you," he waved a hand absently in my direction, "you are a fair damsel in distress. It could make all the difference in their att.i.tude. We are asking a great deal from them and a pretty face can't hurt. I'm hoping that some things even death doesn't change in a man," he said with a wink.

I grimaced, my stomach knotting up in fear. "I don't think I can do this."

"Oh come, now," he said. "You've flirted your way through every ballroom in the ton."

"No, not that. I have no problem with that. I mean the spell. What if I try it and it doesn't work? Or what if it goes all wrong and something terrible happens?" I stomped my foot. "I've trained for this all my life and now that I have it I'm terrified of it. This is not how it was supposed to be."

"No, it's not, and your fear is part of what's making you so unfocused. Don't worry," he said, patting my hand in what I'm sure was meant to be a rea.s.suring manner, "I'll be there to help you."

Of course that in itself was one of the things that had me worried. Now I had not only Mrs. Mackenzie and Fiona in the middle of this mess but Archie and Mr. Pendergra.s.s as well. Archie's wife Kitty was off visiting her mother; she had no idea that I was leading her husband into danger. I felt sick.

At least with Mr. Pendergra.s.s there they all stood a fighting chance if the vampires ate me and came after them. I may have relented on doing the summoning spell but there was no way I would allow Mr. Pendergra.s.s or any of the others to be present when the undead arrived. If things went wrong I wanted them safely locked away in a secure room with every cross in the house and the rather large bottle of Holy Water I'd pilfered from St. James' on the way out of town. I wondered if stolen Holy Water still worked?

We pulled into the drive at four in the afternoon. Ravenworth Hall always took my breath away with the afternoon sun bathing its three stories of grey stone walls in golden light. The manor house was relatively new, having been built at the beginning of the last century by my great-grandfather who had wanted a country house closer to London than Ravenworth Abbey, somewhere the family could retire to, if they chose, while Parliament was in session. I loved this house with its walls covered in ivy and climbing roses, the gardens and the three hundred acres of parkland and forest, the pond where I had learned how to fish and how to swim.

My attention went to the front door as we pulled into the circular drive, my stomach quivering in relief as Mrs. Mackenzie and Fiona rushed down the front steps. I had never been so glad to see anyone in my life.

"No trouble last night?" I asked as I hopped down and hugged Mrs. Mackenzie.

"Not here," she said cryptically and then turned her attention to the gentlemen in the carriage. "Good day to you Mr. Pendergra.s.s, Mr. Little."

Archie tipped his hat to Mrs. Mackenzie and then looked down at me. "I'll walk the horses down and put them in the stable for the night."

"The lads from the village went home about an hour ago," Mrs. Mackenzie said. "I'm afraid there's no one to help you."

"I'll manage," he replied with a smile.

"I'll lay a protection spell on the stable," Mr. Pendergra.s.s said. "You, young lady, need to have a nice hot bath and get some rest.

We have much work ahead of us this night."

"Thank you. Again," I replied, and Archie clucked to the horses and drove them around to the stable.

"You said we had no trouble here," I asked Mrs. Mackenzie as we walked to the door. "Was there trouble elsewhere?" Had Sebastian realized I'd fled and gotten angry?

Mrs. Mackenzie sighed. "Two mornings ago one of the barmaids from the tavern was found dead, her throat cut. I didn't find out about it until you'd already left. This morning another girl from the village was found dead by the river, killed in exactly the same manner. Lord Lindsey's put a curfew on the whole village. They say that the girls were killed elsewhere and their bodies dumped because they'd lost so much blood and yet there was none on the ground where they were found."

"The way we figure it," Fiona said, "Lord Montford must have drunk from them and then slit their throats to cover the bite marks."

"Lord and Lady," I moaned. Was that all my fault too? I was the reason Sebastian was here, after all.

No, I thought, shaking my head. No, I was not responsible for what he had become. Someone, something else had done that to him, made him the undead. They would pay. They would all pay for the lives they had stolen. I would work this spell and The Righteous would come and they would hunt these murderers down. The journal had said that that's what they did. And then life would go back to normal. Well, at least as normal as it ever was for a Macgregor witch.

"Maybe if there's no one he can get to in the village it will mean he'll have to go farther afield to hunt tonight. It'll give us more time, at least, to do what needs to be done," I said, feeling a cold wave of guilt wash through me for speaking so plainly about the innocent life he would take tonight.

"So Mr. Pendergra.s.s has come. Did you find a spell? Or some other way to kill the vampire?" Fiona asked.

"Something like that," I mumbled. I paused in the foyer at the foot of the stairs and looked up. There seemed to be so many more stairs than there had been a few days ago. I sighed. "You're not going to like the idea any more than I do but we really have no other choice. Come, I'll tell you the plan while I get ready."

Chapter Seven

We chose the ballroom to cast the spell. Ideally we should have used my mother's "private workroom", as she'd called it for the benefit of the servants, her sacred s.p.a.ce. Instead, we'd chosen the ballroom from necessity. It was a giant rectangular room with double doors s.p.a.ced intermittently down three-quarters of each side, opening out onto s.p.a.cious terraces and the gardens below.

My mother had always taken great pride in those doors because they could be opened during a ball to allow a nice cross ventilation. No one ever complained of stifling heat at a Craven ball. The doors on one end of the room gave way to the house where guests would enter; the opposite end, where the terrace doors stopped, had solid walls with no windows. During a ball, it was here that the refreshment tables were always set up. High on this far wall was the minstrel's gallery. Mama always had the orchestra play from up there to allow for more room on the dance floor.

Under the gallery was where I would cast my circle. The theory was that the terrace doors would allow the vampires entrance without having them wandering all over the house and the far end of the ballroom with its three solid sides would allow me to keep my back to the wall and see whatever was coming. I shuddered at the thought of what I was about to do and sank further into my cloak.