The Trelayne Inheritance Read online

  She pinned her hair up severely and dressed in her plainest attire, telling herself that, so far at least, she had no regrets. And since Maximillian seemed to turn her spine into maudlin mush, she’d be wise to avoid him. Besides, she’d rusticated long enough. She came here to be a scientist.

  It was time to beard Sir Alexander in his den if need be and press the issue of her employment.

  She found him in his study poring over his notebooks. He slid several under cover of his newspapers, making her wonder, quite logically, what he was trying to hide.

  “Good morning, my dear. How was your outing last night?” He folded his glasses to smile at her.

  Outing, was it? She cringed as she wondered what half the people at the party were whispering about her this morning. The other half were probably gossiping openly. And this man who smiled so genially, her mother’s brother, hadn’t lifted a finger to stop it.

  She was cooler than she intended when she rejoined, “Illuminating.” And she left it at that, secretly satisfied at his nonplussed expression.

  She proffered the book she carried. “Sir Alexander, if you recall during the exchange of our correspondence, I also wanted to offer my services as your lab assistant. I also told you I helped write this book and compile the research that led to its publication.”

  He took the book, glancing down at the title, ‘Blood–its Strange Properties and Exigencies,’ and set it carelessly aside. “Yes, yes, most interesting, but surely you see now that I could never allow my own lovely niece to waste away in a smelly laboratory. You, like your mother, my dear Angel, are meant to dance by candlelight, not toil by it.” When she made to protest again, he rose and took her hands, kissing the backs of her knuckles. “No, no, my mind’s made upon the matter. Now go along and let me work.” He sat back down.

  If he’d patted her on the head and called her a good little girl he couldn’t have angered Angel any more. She’d only been here a bit over a week, but she’d already figured out that nothing was as it seemed.

  Kindly, protective Alexander had his own hidden agenda and wasn’t above using his niece’s reputation to achieve it. And his wife, ever youthful, ever joyful, had a dark side that sometimes glistened in her eyes when she looked at Angel. The stable manager had her own self-confessed, mysterious mission. And the surly head groom always seemed to be where he shouldn’t, poking about even in the house, where she’d caught him on one occasion.

  As for the local rake, well, of him Angel didn’t want to think. Especially not now when she needed a clear head.

  Angel hovered a moment longer, but when Sir Alexander never even bothered looking up again, Angel took her worn tome and tattered dignity where they’d be appreciated.

  That was how Shelly found her, an hour later, playing with the puppies born only the week prior to Sir Alexander’s prize Irish setter. Angel held one soft, squirming little red body to her cheek, whispering to it, “Tell me, little one, what’s it like to have all these brothers and sisters and a mama who loves you?”

  The words scarcely escaped her before the pup’s little brother latched onto his sister’s toe. The pup howled. Angel gently pulled the little fellow away, holding it by the scruff of its neck. “On second thought, perhaps I should be glad I’m an orphan.” He licked her nose. Angel giggled, glancing up at the soft laughter from the stable doorway.

  “I should imagine if the dog could talk, he’d complain that you were giving his troublesome little sister so much more attention.” Shelly sauntered inside the stall door. With capable hands, she checked the mother’s teats for milk and shoved a fat little puppy away so the runt could have his share. “And so many siblings inevitably divides a mother’s love, with the result that one or more offspring feel left out. Being alone is not always a bad thing. Mayhap one doesn’t have a mother’s love, but one doesn’t have to compete for self-assurance if it springs from within.”

  Steady gray eyes met Angel’s. How could this strange woman see so clearly into Angel’s secret, guarded heart that she shared with no one?

  To avoid that stare, Angel set her pup down and watched it squirm through the bodies for its own teat. “The voice of experience, I imagine.” Angel sliced her eyes up in time to catch Shelly’s look of surprise.

  Then offense settled down over that strong face. Shelly stood to her full, imposing height and stuck her hands on her hips. “Are you implying, my girl, that I’m a runt?”

  Angel stood also to her equally imposing height. “No, I’m saying that we both like our solitude perhaps a bit more than is good for us.”

  A yelp made them both look down. The runt, pushed aside, had latched onto the aggressive little male pup’s ear and taken over his teat. Angel and Shelly both smiled, down at the dogs, then back at each other. Rejection did tend to make one strong, in both the canine and homo sapiens communities, they agreed with tacit smiles and thoughts.

  Shelly turned to the door. “I’m famished. Would you care to join me for a bite to eat?”

  By mutual agreement, they lunched that day on cold chicken and warm conversation. The more she got to know Shelly Holmes, the more Angel liked her. And the more she let down her guard. However, when the subject of Maximillian arose she knew not how, Angel looked away.

  “I don’t know him well. And I suspect I’d be most unwise to pursue further acquaintance with him.”

  “I suspect you are quite right.” Shelly wrapped her bones in her napkin and stuck them back in the sack. “But I also suspect that, as long as you remain a guest at Blythe Hall, you’ll have little choice in the matter. As with last night, the veriest chance will throw him your way.”

  “Are you suggesting I should leave?”

  “It might be wise.”

  “And where, oh Solomon, would you have me go? I sold every stick of furniture I owned for traveling money to get here. I quit my position and gave up the lease on my flat.” Angel angrily wadded up her own half eaten meal. “No, I came here of my own free will and so I will remain. Despite the dangers.”

  “Because you feel you have no choice?”

  “There’s always a choice. Except in this case, staying is my most palatable one.”

  Shelly toyed with the edge of her shirt in a nervous gesture that seemed most unlike her. “And if I proved to you that your behavior last night was the source of neither choice nor chance?”

  Angel blushed. So, it was true. Even the stable mistress knew of her wantonness.

  Again, Shelly showed that uncanny ability to read her mind. “There’s always gossip after Blythe Hall’s parties. Last night was positively tame in comparison to some of the tales I’ve heard. While a few will no doubt condemn you for leaving without chaperone, others have done far worse far more blatantly.” At Angel’s confused look, Shelly said baldly, “I was there, Angel. In fact, had I not been there, at this moment you’d likely be a resident at the Trelayne estate, mistress, in the pejorative sense of the word, of its last heir.”

  “But I don’t understand.”

  “Your wine was spiked.”

  Angel frowned. Spiked?

  “With an extremely strong aphrodisiac.”

  Angel’s eyes widened. Blood left her face in a rush, and then flooded back in a sea of outraged color. “Maximillian drugged my wine?”

  Shelly’s hesitation was all the answer Angel needed. Angel surged to her feet. “That bastard!”

  Shelly stood to face her. “No, Angel, it wasn’t Max.”

  “Who, then?”

  Shelly stared at her implacably.

  Angel turned away. “No.”

  Shelly patted her shoulder. “Unfortunately, yes. Sir Alexander and Maximillian are locked in some kind of fierce power struggle and you, my dear, are both the pawn and, if you’re not very careful, the prize.”

  Covering her ears with her hands, Angel ran. She didn’t believe that. She wouldn’t believe that. Why, Sir Alexander was her mother’s brother. He was her own last remaining kin.

  What possible
furtherance could he win from her ruin?

  Tears blinding her, she stumbled away from the Hall, but her feet seemed to have an unerring sense of direction. When she came to, wiping her eyes on her sleeve, she stood within the gates of the cemetery. Over her mother’s grave.

  Falling to her knees, Angel let grief and betrayal take her. And with them, they carried the knell of certainty.

  Deny it though she tried, she’d just solved one of the mysteries of her childhood.

  This was why her mother had fled the land of her birth for an uncertain future in America. Because she knew her own kin were not to be trusted….

  The niggling awareness of her pain came slowly to Max. He stiffened with dread this time, the second time it had happened. The first time, when he’d been bathing, thinking of her, he’d felt the brush of her awareness. He knew she’d seen him because he’d wished it so. However, the strange mental bonding was not always a matter of his control. And it only happened with those who touched him in some way.

  Mentally. Physically. Emotionally. Since Angel touched him in all three ways, he’d been expecting this.

  But now? It seldom came upon him so unawares, as he pored over his own research. At a time when nothing typically troubled him. But the more he tried to deny the tingle that crawled from his mind over his skin, the clearer the image grew.

  Angel. Crying. He closed his eyes and saw her on her knees, her arms cradled around her middle as she rocked back and forth. He let the eerie sight take him, the image broadening until he saw the headstone. She was alone. In the Blythe cemetery.

  And darkness fast approached.

  He dropped the books, flung open his windows, let the wind take him and flapped away on soundless black wings.

  The ageless hunger grew unbearable. Time to feed. But not just any blood would do. It had to be the right age, the right gender, the right shape.

  The right girl.

  Angelina Blythe…The taste of her was already a torment on the tongue. That last drop of blood they shared would turn the pasty-faced prude into the true creature of the night already in her nature, though she didn’t know it. A companion for the ages. Most importantly, a companion that would be the death of the hunter.

  Hunger was so piercing now it became pain. The Beefsteak Killer doubled over briefly, but through a fierce effort of will second nature now, it denied its own nature. For five hundred years it had learned to wait when patience was unbearable, to hunger when satiety was near.

  Since the time of the Crusades, it had thrived, growing strong on fear and hatred. Nothing stopped it, nothing frightened it.

  Except the vampire who killed vampires.

  They were both the last of their line. Both hated each other with a fierceness endowed by all the blood of their blood that had been shed in their ancient battle.

  But as much as fury raged to hurry, to strike now, the Beefsteak Killer knew it was too soon. It wouldn’t do to get hasty after so much careful planning.

  The time wasn’t yet for the end of Maximillian, the last Earl of Trelayne.

  But the girl…it wouldn’t hurt to torment her a little. To ready her for the melding.

  The Beefsteak Killer turned into vapor and melted into the night.

  By the time grief faded enough for Angel to realize it was almost dark, she remembered too late the whispers of the servants when they thought she didn’t listen.

  Don’t be alone after dark.

  Don’t wander outside the Hall.

  Most particularly don’t go near the cemetery.

  Angel got slowly to her feet, eyes searching through the gloom. She heard what sounded like a brief rustling. She turned in that direction, half able to see despite the almost total darkness unrelieved by so much as a sliver of a moon.

  She’d always been blessed with unusually acute night vision, perhaps to compensate for her odd tendency toward sunburn despite her dark eyes and hair. She started backing toward the gate, still watching the shadowy outline of a catafalque. She’d seen a flash of movement behind it, she swore she had.

  Angel…

  “Who’s there?” She froze mid step. She’d felt the voice more than heard it.

  Chill bumps pimpled her skin. The voice was soft, a whisper so magnetic that she couldn’t tell if it was male or female.

  Angel, come to me…

  Angel tried to run toward the gate, she truly did, but her feet were stuck in molasses. Cold molasses as congealed as her blood. And then she was moving…but not toward the gate.

  Toward the catafalque and the unseen presence. A strangely alluring presence, despite her fear of it.

  But one always feared the unknown, she told herself. She was better than that, smarter than that.

  As she drew near, the lid slid open smoothly.

  Welcome…

  Angel climbed inside the cavity to find smooth stone steps leading down into total darkness. It was then the scent brushed her nostrils, a chill damp almost like mist. Mist that carried the whiff of rotting things.

  Part of her, the cool, scientific part, gave her strength enough to recoil.

  “No.” The sound of her own voice was bracing. “I can’t see.”

  You don’t need to see. Only to feel.

  Angel’s rational half was swept away in a deluge of dark curiosity. Her destiny lay here in this place of her blood. She knew it. She couldn’t walk away without finding the source of this voice. Some instinct that went deeper than bone and sinew told her that if she solved the mystery of this voice she’d also solve the mystery of her own birth. Why she was different, why she’d always been alone.

  Angel walked down the steps.

  The second he flew over the headstones, Max felt the presence. But it shocked him so that the change wasn’t as smooth as normal. Half man, half bat, he fell with a thud to the ground, his arms slowly forming out of the bat wings.

  The Beefsteak Killer. He was sure of it. Once before, as his investigation led him to a victim a few minutes too late, he’d come upon this presence. It felt like nothing else he’d ever known, either human or vampire. But when he tried to chase it, it evaporated.

  Like mist. As long as he’d been a vampire, that was one skill Max hadn’t yet mastered. The handiest skill of all, to become part of the night itself. Even when cornered, such a being could still escape. You couldn’t drive a steak through mist.

  But the bitter taste of it was here again, upon his tongue.

  It was ageless, deathless, utterly without remorse or mercy.

  And Angel was here.

  Max forced his mind to clear of his own burgeoning panic, not for himself, but for her. As his mind cleared, his body rapidly completed the change. He sprang the short distance to the catafalque where he sensed Angel had disappeared.

  Indeed, as he neared, he saw that the heavy lid was thrown back.

  The presence grew stronger.

  Max cursed his inability to bring his kit with him. Ripping down a half dead tree branch, Max broke it into several pieces that would have to serve as stakes. If the creature would threaten Angel’s humanity, it would have to take human form.

  Max followed Angel’s footsteps, glowing before him like a beacon, into the murk.

  She was strong. Strong enough to resist the allure of her own nature? The nature she had no way to combat because she didn’t know she was heiress to it.

  Hurrying now, Max would have said an exceedingly rusty prayer if he hadn’t known he couldn’t be so sacrilegious.

  The vengeful God of his childhood wouldn’t want prayers from unnaturally immortal creatures who survived on blood. No matter how valiant, he was still a vampire.

  Suddenly, the rough stakes in his hands seemed woefully inadequate.

  As she walked deeper into the tunnel that led away from the steps, Angel realized she was beginning to see. Odd. There was no discernable light.

  Angel rounded a corner and found herself in a lovely sitting room. The outlines of the furniture were dim, but when s
he touched a gilded arm, her fingers came away coated with dust.

  A crystal decanter, covered with spider webs, sat on a sideboard. Angel felt a sudden urge to wet her dry throat. She walked toward the decanter, noticing a shadowy movement above in the mirror. She looked up. Her breath caught in her throat.

  Twin spots glowed redly at her. Eyes. Watching.

  Angel backed away, shaking her head. The eyes moved from side to side. Angel froze, her eyes widening. The reddish eyes widened, too.

  She stared at herself. Those eerie, glowing eyes were her own.

  Angel covered her mouth to hide a scream, but then that alluring voice that wasn’t a voice came again, calming her slightly.

  Accept your gifts…

  Angel resisted, she truly did. Staring at her own glowing eyes. Why had she never noticed them before?

  You’re growing stronger…

  “Who are you?” Angel begged. “What do you want of me?”

  Drink…

  Angel looked at the decanter. One minute she was halfway across the room, the next she was lifting the heavy crystal vessel.

  “NO!” Max’s voice came clearly. She turned, expecting him to be in the room, but she was still alone. “It will make you sick. Put it down.”

  Angel moved to put it down, but the other voice came stronger, harder, more powerful.

  DRINK…

  Angel took off the stopper.

  “It’s not wine, Angel.” Max’s voice was soft, pleading. She saw him standing as if in a shaft of light, that golden glow beaming from his hair, his skin, his soul. In that instant, she understood what was happening.

  There was a battle of wills going on, and just as Shelly had warned her, she was the prize.

  But who was good? And who was evil?

  It’s a lie…he’s a vampire…drink to protect yourself from him…

  Angel poured a small drink in a glass. Her hand felt numb, and when the two crystals rang as they connected, the sound seemed to vibrate through her, too. As if she were an empty vessel, also. Waiting to be filled, and used.

  Angel lifted the glass.

  Then he was there, in truth as he’d been in her mind. No footsteps, no rustle of clothes to presage him. He reached out to knock the glass away, but then he grasped his throat, choking.