Chapter Twenty-One
It took hours to get home. Bryony was by turns excited, apprehensive, and sad.
Although she had desperately wanted to return home, she also wanted to spend more time with Stefan.
There was still so much about him that she didn’t know.
Her feelings for him were all tangled up.
One minute she was certain she loved him, yearned to be in his arms, taste his kisses, hear his voice whispering intimacies in her ear.
The next, she was terrified of him, of what he was, and of the preternatural power that was so much a part of him.
A horrifying part she had seen on full display only hours ago.
Her heartbeat increased when the house came into view. Home!
The carriage stopped in front of the porch steps.
Bryony sat there a moment, unable to believe she wasn’t dreaming.
But no, someone inside had heard the approach of the carriage.
She opened the door of the coach as Alistair stepped onto the porch.
He peered through the darkness, smiled broadly when he recognized her.
Moments later, she was surrounded by her family, all asking questions at once. Was she all right? Where had she been? Was she hurt?
Laughing and crying, they went into the front parlor where she spent the next hour telling them everything she could, except the part about Stefan being a vampire.
“So, this man kept you with him because he was lonely?” her father asked skeptically.
Bryony nodded. “He was just a strange, lonely man.”
“How strange?” her father asked, his voice sharp.
“Well, for one thing, he said his mother was a witch.”
“A witch?” Maida frowned. “To my knowledge, I’ve never met a witch. Of course, how would I know?” she asked, with a shrug.
Barrett snorted. “Did he do anything magical?”
Bryony bit down on her lower lip, not liking the direction of this conversation. Still, there was no reason for her father to suspect Stefan was a vampire. Few really believed they existed. “He did a few things, like start a fire in the hearth with just a look, that kind of thing.”
“He never misused you?” her mother asked anxiously. “Never hurt you in any way?”
“No. He was very kind to me. He bought me all the lovely clothes and shoes in those trunks., He took me out to dinner and to the theater, granted my every wish, except to come home.”
“Who’s this?”
Bryony looked at her brother, who had been pawing through her belongings and now held up the three paintings she had done of Stefan. She groaned inwardly as she glanced at the one of Stefan as a vampire.
“That’s the messenger who came to tell me you were all right,” her father remarked.
Rising to his feet, Barrett stared at the painting.
It was all the proof he needed that the vampire had been his daughter’s captor.
He swore under his breath, knowing she was lucky to be alive.
And more determined than ever to see the creature dead.
Bryony glared at her brother. Always a troublemaker!
“He’s quite handsome,” Veronica remarked, glancing from one painting to the other. “But why did you paint him with fangs in that one?”
Alone in her bedchamber some two hours later, Bryony undressed, and pulled on her favorite nightgown.
Stretching out on the bed, she closed her eyes.
So many questions. Thankfully, her father had made no mention of Lord Bloodworth.
She could only hope that meant the marriage was off.
Every time she’d thought the inquisition was over, someone asked another question.
Did she remember where his houses were? What was his last name?
Who else had shared the houses with her?
Why hadn’t she run away? Reluctantly, she had told them he had bewitched the house so she couldn’t leave and that she had painted him as a vampire because, in the beginning, she had viewed him as a monster when he refused to let her go.
The way her father had looked at her when she explained the painting told her more clearly than words that he didn’t believe her, that he knew, somehow, that Stefan was a vampire. But how could he possibly know? They had only met once, briefly. Surely Stefan hadn’t bared his fangs!
What was he doing now? He’d said he was sending her away because being with him was dangerous, but she didn’t care about that. She cared about him, and missed him more than she would have thought possible.
Tears stung her eyes and she dashed them away.
She told herself she wasn’t crying for Stefan, that they were tears of joy and relief because she was finally home with her loved ones where she belonged.
Thankfully, her father had made no mention of Lord Bloodworth.
Burrowing under the covers, she cried herself to sleep.
Stefan sat on a mountain peak overlooking the city below.
How empty his life would be now that Bryony was gone.
How had he endured centuries without her?
What had he done all those long, lonely evenings before she came?
His future stretched before him, as wide and deep as the sky overhead.
Perhaps he would go to ground for a thousand years. Perhaps then he would forget her.
Shaking off his melancholia, he thought about the woman who had turned him.
Charis. Was she still alive? She had been a tiny little thing, barely five feet tall, with a mass of curly brown hair, and a blue and green peacock tattooed on her left forearm.
She had one brown eye, and one blue. Where was she now?
He had not seen her or thought of her in seven decades or more. Why was he thinking of her now?
“Perhaps because I was thinking of you.”
“What the hell!” Not much surprised him these days but the sudden appearance of his sire gave him quite a shock.
“What the hell is right!” she agreed. “Why are you sitting here like some lost soul? You are a vampire. The most powerful creature in the world. You can have anything you want and yet you sit here like a bump on a log.” She snorted her disdain. “I should have let you die.”
“I am glad to see you, too,” Stefan muttered.
“I am glad to be here. The Hunter’s Guild has grown considerably larger over the past sixty years. They now have one or more members in every country in the world.”
“Yeah. I recently had a run in with a few of them. They said they thought I was the last of our kind.”
“Not even close.” Charis smiled a sly smile. “I have been making new ones.”
Stefan stared at her. Making new vampires? Well, why the hell not?
“You do not approve?”
He shrugged. “Whatever makes you happy.”
“I am happy,” she said, with a dreamy smile. “After all these years, I have found someone to love. Someone who loves me and will love me forever.”
“One of your fledglings?”
She nodded. “You could find the same happiness with your little mortal female.”
“What do you know of her?”
“Only what I have read in your mind. Why have you not turned her?”
“We never talked about it.”
She waved a negligent hand. “You do not ask. You just do it. Once it is done, she will come around. You did.”
He grunted. “What other choice did I have?”
“You could have walked out into the light of day and ended your existence.”
“No chance.” He had seen a young vampire do that once. Not a pretty sight.
“You have not fed tonight.” Taking his hand in hers, Charis pulled him to his feet. “Come hunting with me.”
“If you wish.”
“I’m in the mood for French food,” she said, with a grin. And the next thing he knew, they were in Paris.
They hunted for hours, drinking a little from many different people, pausing now and then to enjoy the quiet beauty of the night, or reminisce about days past.
“Go back to your little mortal,” Charis said in the hour before dawn. “No one else will ever make you happy.” She kissed him on both cheeks and then she was gone.
Stefan stood there a moment and then he began to laugh. Charis was right, he thought. He was a vampire and he could have anything he wanted. And he wanted Bryony to be his forever. She was his life, his love, fated to be his.
Barrett would undoubtedly be a problem, he mused, but there were supernatural ways around that, if necessary.
Stefan smiled into the darkness. He would go to her and court her and hope that, somehow, he could win her trust. That she could learn to accept what he was and find it in her heart to love both the man and the monster.
Leyton Barrett paced the floor in front of the hearth long after the rest of the family had gone to bed.
Years ago, he had been an avid hunter but he had put all that behind him when Eli was born.
He had kept in touch with the Guild, alerting them if he suspected someone of being a vampire.
But his interest had waned through the years, partly because his family was more important than anything else, partly because the number of vampires had decreased in recent years.
As far as he knew, there were less than a hundred bloodsuckers in the entire world and less than a handful in this part of the country. But even one was too many.
But one of them—this Stefan that Bryony thought was a witch—had kidnapped his daughter and kept her with him for months.
Had the vile creature defiled his daughter?
What unspeakable acts had he perpetrated?
Had he fed on her? The very thought made Barrett’s stomach turn.
His daughter, prey to a bloodsucking vampire. By damn, it was not to be borne!
Barrett grimaced. Should the Guild find this Stefan, he would rue the day he had dared lay his filthy hands on Bryony. The unholy creature would suffer for every day he had kept Bryony imprisoned and then he would pay the ultimate price.
It had been years since he’d taken a head, Barrett mused.
He was woefully out of practice, but perhaps it was time to get back into the vampire-hunting business, at least temporarily.
He still had the implements necessary to destroy the undead—a dozen sharp stakes, a wicked sword capable of separating a man from his head with a single stroke, and several bottles of holy water, the contents of which grew stronger and more potent as time passed.
Blowing out a sigh, he doused the fire in the hearth and padded upstairs to his bedchamber.
There was time enough for revenge later.
After changing into his night clothes, he slid beneath the covers.
He put all thoughts of vampires from his mind as he took Maida in his arms and lost himself in the warmth of her love.