CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Flora was pale, leaning on my arm for support as we hurried to the front hall. She let out a deep breath, preparing herself to see her son on the brink of death.
“This is all my fault,” Emmett lamented, looking ready to cry. “If I’d been more in control …”
Raven’s jaw twitched. “If Ambrose tried to run you through with a stake, he’s lucky to be alive at all.”
Flora narrowed her eyes. “Careful. That’s my son you’re talking about.”
Emmett’s eyes flicked between the two women, and I could see the confusion in him. One human mother, one vampire mother. I noticed he didn’t take a side, which was the smart choice.
“Ambrose can be reasoned with,” Cecelia assured Emmett. “He’ll come to understand your mistake.”
“So long as he makes it through the night,” Melbourne added.
Cecelia glared at him.
“What?” he demanded. “We’re all thinking it. This is why vampires are dangerous. They’re stronger than any person has a right to be. And then there’s the bloodlust. And the hypnotism. How are we supposed to trust them?”
“Indeed,” Raven muttered. “How are we supposed to trust vampire hunters when they can’t even imagine peaceful vampires?”
Cecelia shook her head. “You forget, Melbourne. Lucian is a former vampire who stalled Raven on Old Mill Road until we were safe. He tried to save Isabel at Foxglove Abbey. He’s been on our side.”
I winced. “I confess I … may have made you fall from your horse, Cecelia. Sorry about that. And I deceived you, all of you. But I don’t wish to see any of you hurt. I swear on all that is holy … and unholy, if that suits you.”
Zachariah turned to the duchess. “Flora?”
“I think it’s time to set aside presumptions of one another,” the duchess said, squeezing Emmett’s hand. “So long as both sides are willing to hear each other out, there’s a chance for peace.”
We paused as we reached the front hall. “Are you ready?” I asked Flora softly, lifting my lantern.
She nodded silently, and we stepped into the room.
“I’ll get a fresh basin of water,” I told Flora as we approached the sofa.
Flora nodded absently, and as we drew nearer to the sofa, I worried that perhaps in my absence, Ambrose had slipped away into death with no witnesses.
I became aware of the wet sound before my light illuminated the sofa clearly, and frowned. It sounded like a lapping. I lengthened my strides, but stopped in my tracks when my lamp shown over a figure crouched on the sofa, its back to us. A man, shirtless, fixated on Ambrose.
A vampire.
“Get away from him,” Flora shouted, lunging at the figure. She grabbed it by the shoulder and yanked it away from her son.
The vampire turned and my eyes widened. The duke, his mouth stained red. The liver spots on his bald head were gone, the skin as translucent, but firmer, giving him the appearance of a man thirty years younger from the one I’d last seen.
I gasped, stepping back. I had just seen this man earlier tonight in his sitting room. He’d been in the dark, but he’d sounded healthier, had moved easier. I hadn’t suspected this to be the reason for it.
“No, Jonathan,” Flora said, voice choked with emotion, shaking her head. “No, no.”
I stared at the duke, horrified by what he had become, before I remembered Ambrose. I rushed to the sofa, my heart sinking.
The bandages I’d painstakingly wrapped around Ambrose’s wound lay in shredded tangles at his side, clumps of hair and scalp with them. His skin had been torn back violently for the vampire to have easier access to the blood oozing from the head wound, and worse still, the cranium was broken open, exposing glistening brain.
The artery in Ambrose’s neck was still, his chest silent.
I turned, unable to keep myself from retching.
“Oh, God,” Cecelia turned away, burying her face in Zachariah’s chest.
