I glanced up at a massive chandelier overhead, the grand staircases leading up to the second floor, and side tables boasting statues and vases overflowing with flowers. This was a fine home, indeed. My castle had been large, but little warmth could be found in its drab stone walls. This was a place that was lived in. What I had been doing was … the opposite of that, I supposed. Un-living. My heart gave an unexpected twist at the thought that I’d squandered my time in that remote abode when lovely houses like this were within reach. It was certainly easier to escape notice away from society in my secluded location, and nice houses like this were hard to come by in such places, yet … I’d had the means. Why hadn’t I bothered? Was this a …humanfeeling? Envy? Wanting nice things? Such materialism was beneath an immortal vampire’s life, I supposed. The excess I’d enjoyed had involved pain, blood, and reveling. What I felt walking through the lavish rooms of this manor with its rich carpeting and carefully decorated walls was … comfort.
I rushed to catch up to Helena as she swung her cane gently before her, following the clicks of the maid’s shoes as she walked down a side hall. She stopped before a heavy oak door.
“Here we are then,” the maid said. “Percival just put another log on, so it should do for some time.”
“Very well,” Helena said as she opened the door. “Some tea for Lucian and myself.”
“Of course.” The maid curtsied, then offered me another smile. “The name’s Nancy if you’ll be needing anything while you stay.”
“It’s a pleasure,” I said, with a slight tilt of my head.
Nancy blushed, then rushed from the room to fetch the tea.
“Close the door behind you,” Helena told me as I stepped into the library. Bookcases lined walls twice as tall as me, with ladders to reach the higher shelves, all brimming with leather spines. A sofa set at the back of the room stood before the aforementioned fireplace. There was a table near the door, but as I pulled out a chair, Helena clucked her tongue. “One thing to know about the staff here, Lucian, is that they’re reliable, good workers, but they are gossips. If I didn’t know better, I’d say they were listening at the keyhole even now.” She nodded toward the back of the room, to the sofa set.
I watched Helena navigate her way across the room. She hardly needed the cane at all here, just enough to tell when she reached the sofa before she seated herself.
I took a seat across from her, admiring the warmth of the room. “Are there many servants here? This is a large house.”
“Over a hundred rooms. I believe it takes over seventy servants to maintain. They will no doubt be kept rather busy with the season about to commence. You arrived just in time. The other guests will arrive tomorrow with the first ball.” She sniffed. “Of course, I have only two servants in my own home. I brought Nancy with me. But I am well off, thanks to your generosity.”
I blinked. “Are you now?”
Helena lifted an eyebrow. “But of course. You may not have gifted me immortality when I left your service, but you did bestow riches upon me. The gold and those paintings … they paid for a comfortable life. Before I lost my sight, I was even, dare I say, a socialite. The queen herself gave me the title of baroness.”
“You’ve met the queen?” I was impressed.
“We ran in similar circles for a time. Which is how I’m acquainted with the duke and his family. That’s the reason you’re here, I’ve come to understand?”
“It is,” I said. I closed my eyes, sighing as the encounter that had changed my life washed over me. It had occurred just after I’d been driven from the only home I’d known for decades. It wasn’t a story I relished revisiting, but for Helena to understand my predicament completely, she would need to hear of it.
I managed to grab hold of a rock near shore as the raging river calmed several miles from my castle, hoisting myself onto dry land, wet and weary. The cold didn’t bother me much. Temperature never did, but the running water had sapped my strength. I would need to feed to regain it.
I climbed the mountain for ten minutes before I came across a ledge that wound up the side, barely wide enough for my feet to find sturdy purchase, and it was another twenty minutes before I reached a clearing that allowed me a generous view of the surrounding area. I could see the lights of a village off in the distance to the west, but it was too far to reach in the little time I had before daylight. The sky was brightening far too quickly, chasing away the cool midnight hues. I likely had only minutes before the first slivers of sunlight broke across the horizon.
But then, as if willed into being, I spotted a cave in the mountainside, dark and inviting. I could tell before I reached it that it ran deep. If a bear or some other creature lurked inside, they would be a welcome meal before I rested until the next dusk.
I tarried in the entrance to the cave, head cocked to listen for sounds from within, but all was still and quiet. I would have expected bats or insects stirring at the very least, but even they left this space well enough alone. That gave me pause. I did not, however, have the luxury of another option. It was the shelter of this cave, or the sun’s wrath as it peeled back my skin, layer by painful layer.
I ventured into the cavern, my undead eyes well accustomed to the company of darkness and thus able to discern the loose stones at my feet. I watched as the sun began to lighten the cave entrance, but I could also hear it: The subtle creak of earth as it warmed, birds cheerfully beginning their day, and blades of grass and leaves shifting, as if reviving from a deathlike slumber to greet the splendor of the sun’s embrace.
I’d forgotten long ago what a sunrise looked like, what it felt like to have its rays kiss my skin. For many years in the beginning, I’d tried to cling to those memories, hold them close so that I would never forget the feeling, grasping desperately to them as if they held the secrets of my ever-fading humanity. And perhaps they did. But I cared nothing for humans any longer, save for the convenience their ingenuity created to make my life more comfortable, and the pleasure they offered in their flesh and blood.
“And yet they managed to best you tonight.” A voice came to me from deeper in the cave. It seemed to echo against the walls, until it sounded as if a dozen voices had asked the question.
I blinked, staring into the darkness, but distinguished nothing in the shadows. “Who’s there?” I demanded. “Tell me at once.”
A chuckling reply caused the hair to rise on my arms. I didn’t scare easily. I was an apex predator.Theapex predator. But I had also just been driven from my home, and I was vulnerable in an unfamiliar place. And … how had this taunting voice known what I’d been thinking?
“Oh, I know all about you, Count Lucian Cross. Come. Deeper into this cavern. I wish to see your face.”
I stood still for a moment, debating. I did not take kindly to commands, but I was curious. Whatever this was, I couldn’t very well escape it. The only exit meant certain death. I was trapped in here with whatever was beckoning to me, and I might as well face it head-on with dignity rather than cower in a corner like some … human.
“You were human once too, Lucian,” the voice said as I cautiously made my way down the tunnel. It seemed to narrow with each footfall. “Or have you forgotten?”
“It’s been a while,” I murmured, reaching out to touch a stone wall and scowling at the mold growing there.
“Perhaps that’s how you became so … complacent.”
