But wait, therewasone thing. The song. The vampire song was so powerful it was said to be impossible to resist by humans, fae, or any creature. But few vampires ever mastered it. I hadn’t.
But my wife was in danger. I thought of Lydia and her fierceness and determination. She’d taught me the power of working as one, of being united. With her, I would always be stronger than alone. The power welled inside of me—a melody thatbegged to be released. The need to protect her brining me to a certainty about my powers that I'd never experienced before.
I shut my eyes.Lydia… sing.
Sing? How is that going to—
Feel the power and sing.
I opened my mouth and sang. Lydia listened for a moment, then she matched my tune. The energy inside me went from me to her, and before long we found ourselves in perfect unison.
The melody flowed from me, right and true, and Lydia followed suit. And then I put intention into it.Tell them to release me from the room, that they will tell nobody that I’m a vampire, and then command them to sleep,I thought to Lydia.
Through the glass, I read her lips as she repeated my instructions.
Oscar suddenly became very drowsy. His head lulled to the side, and he lay on the ground and closed his eyes.
The guard dropped the device he held and walked over to the door. I sensed the moment that the protective magic lowered. The guard then also laid down and went to sleep. I burst through the door and rushed to Lydia.
Are you all right?
She gave me the widest grin as she threw her arms around me. “Of course. That was amazing! Who knew we could do so much with combining our powers?”
I shook my head, a smile coming to my lips. I should never have expected a different reaction from my little fae-witch. “Oscar had to know our entire plan. He was Darcy’s man. But how did they get that potion? How did they get you to take it?”
“When he came to drop off the hearing devices and he tripped over me, he must have slipped it into my drink,” Lydia said.
My arms embraced her and I held her near, wanting to feel her warmth and be certain that she was safe. I buried my face in her locks and breathed her in.
“I’m all right, Wickham. They didn’t even touch me,” she said softly, running a hand through my hair, and the tenseness of the last little bit finally seeped out of me. After a moment, she eased back. “I think my phone is ringing.”
Reluctantly letting her go, I approached the device on the floor and picked it up, brushing my thumb over the image branded on its side. A heart and a cross. I’d seen it before.
Lydia pulled out her phone. “The signal-canceling magic is gone.” Her phone immediately rang. “Hello? I’m fine. Wickhamand I were just catching the bad guy. Yes, we did. How could you doubt us? I’m unsure of our location. Can’t you have Darcy track my phone?”
“Darcy?” I said into my mic but got no response. We were most likely well out of range of that technology.
After a few more minutes of assuring whoever she spoke with that she was okay—probably her sisters—Lydia finally hung up. “Darcy is tracking my phone. He’ll call the police.”
I nodded. “We’ll have to tell them we were both kidnapped, and they planned on killing both of us.”
“So that the police won't suspect that you are a vampire.” She nodded, then glanced at the sleeping culprits. “But they really wanted to set you up, since they knew you were a vampire and you used to be close to Darcy. And that he had recently given you money as a wedding gift. They wanted to discredit him by killing me and making it look like you did it. Once the police tested you and found out you were a vampire, they’d accept the whole thing.”
“And the blame would fall on Darcy for being a so-called vampire lover, and he’d lose everyone’s trust, and the council could move against him and force him to give up his role as heir to the throne.”
Lydia shook her head. “All this because Oscar’s family was killed by vampires.”
It felt weird. I’d grown up with Oscar around, serving the royal family. Clearly he wasn’t a friend since he’d always kept his distance, being a bit snobbish. But he’d been a fixture at Pemberley and in mine and Darcy’s lives. “Oscar is super old, like hundreds of years old. His family died at least a hundred years ago. A lot has changed since then.”
“Poor guy. He even risked his job for it.”
“Unless he was getting more money to get Darcy disqualified as the heir. Someone on the council must have paid him.”
“But who?”
My thumb again grazed the symbol on the device in my hands. “I might have an idea.”
Chapter 16
