Chapter Thirty-Three
It’s not your fault.
Winifred forced the words through the bond as the horrified expressions on Marcus’s and Felicity’s faces grew smaller by the second. Air rushed past her, tinged with the acrid stench of smoke. She was falling. Killed by her own cousin.
She wished she could relay the same message to Felicity. Her cousin had acted out of fear, not hatred. That made the betrayal easier to forgive.
She didn’t want to die with regrets.
The shock of the impact was so powerful that the air evaporated from her lungs, but it didn’t hurt.
Maybe that meant she’d been spared and could still make things right with Felicity.
She squirmed, but then a powerful throb of pain made her go limp.
There was something pinning her in place.
She moved her hands to her chest and wrapped her fingers around the narrow shaft of an iron fencepost.
A croaking sound that could have been laughter came out of her mouth. She’d been skewered, just like in the story Marcus had read to her days ago from his journal. History was repeating itself. She lifted her head but was immediately struck by a wave of dizziness that made her stomach gurgle.
“Winifred!”
That was Felicity. Her voice had the hollow softness of someone shouting from a distance.
Winifred tried again to move, if for no other reason than to give her cousin some kind of sign that would keep Felicity from falling apart in the days and weeks to come, but her arms and legs no longer obeyed her commands.
The best she could do was tilt her head back and forth.
There were other voices, then. She recognized Kitty and Marcus’s brother. Marcus was shouting something about fire. It took a few seconds, but then she understood; Marcus was sending them to help the village.
The golden rope in her mind pulsed, blinding her with its intensity. She closed her eyes and shied away from the light, but it smashed through her resistance and sunk its claws into her thoughts.
Hold on, dearest. I’m almost there.
The sick-sour taste of Marcus’s fear filled her mouth.
She should’ve been with him, not tethered to a useless lump of flesh.
She grabbed for the mental connection, thrashing violently until she wrenched free of her body and flowed through the bond.
He was leaping down the steps of the tower three at a time.
His hands and feet were numb and there was an awful rattling in his chest, but he didn’t slow down until he’d reached the ground floor.
Only then did Winifred realize what was happening.
Marcus was caught in the grip of an attack.
She could feel his suffocating panic but was helpless to do anything but watch as he stood before the door to the garden, shaking like the last leaf on a branch in fall, unable to come to the aid of the woman he loved.
A fluttering sensation trickled through the tenuous thread that still tied her to her physical form.
He loved her. She ached to hold him in her arms and tell him she felt the same, but her consciousness was fading.
She could already feel her body calling her back, even as she stubbornly clung to Marcus.
His knees buckled. He fell but kept one hand clasped tightly around the knob.
She could actually see the fear that kept him frozen in place.
It was like a sticky, black cobweb clinging to his thoughts.
She burned with anger. Marcus did not deserve the suffering that was being thrust upon him.
She opened her arms and willed the cobwebs to come to her.
Where she was going, pain was irrelevant.
The clinging tendrils resisted at first but eventually separated from Marcus and drifted to her. She gathered them up, compressed them into a ball, and let it sink into her essence until it vanished.
*
Marcus couldn’t move. It was as if there were a steel mesh draped over him, keeping him pinned in place. Winifred was dying, and he was helpless to stop it.
He tried to do as she had taught, breathing and focusing on the present, but awful images kept intruding. Winifred’s wide eyes and open mouth as she’d plummeted to the earth. The sickening crunch of her body hitting the fence post. Damp hair falling out of her chignon.
Her human life had ended, but he could still save her, if he could only conquer his fear.
Then a bright light flashed in his mind, and it was as if the weight were being lifted from his body. Not all of it, but enough that he could move. He struggled to his feet, pushed the door open, and raced across the garden to Winifred’s side.
Her heart had stopped, but she was not yet gone.
He lifted her off the fence post and set her on the ground.
Then he brought his wrist to his teeth and bit until his fangs severed his nerves and he could no longer move his fingers.
The wound had to be large enough that she would take what she needed before it healed.
But when he placed the gash against her lips, she didn’t react.
He cursed and cupped his mouth around the cut for several seconds, then transferred as much blood as he could to her, forcing it between her lips.
She sputtered and coughed. Both were good signs.
He took another bite of his arm, this time farther up.
Feeding her was a slow process, but he continued until her eyelids fluttered open.
Her irises faded to blue, then turned to pinpoints. She uttered a fierce snarl, and fangs erupted from her jaw. The thin connection between them burst open like a collapsing dam.
She jerked her head toward him. “Did you feel that?”
He touched their foreheads together. “Yes.”
She put her hands on his shoulders and struggled to her feet. She tottered like a lamb as he held his arms around her, ready to catch her if she fell.
“I feel so different.” She opened her mouth and touched her fangs again. “How do I get them to go back?”
“It’s the corpses,” he said. “The smell is triggering your new instincts. That’s why your eyes are blue, like mine.”
She blinked. “My eyes?” Then she smiled. “How fascinating.”
She shouldn’t have been so pleased to be a vampire, but he didn’t begrudge her excitement. The smell of death bothered him as well. If he released control, the vampire in him would bring death to any living creature within reach.
Winifred pushed his arms away and stumbled toward the castle.
After a moment of staring at her back, he realized what was happening from the trickle of hunger and desperation coming through their bond.
She was a fledgling, and she was hungry.
Unless he stopped her, she would find the nearest human and tear out their throat.
She would never forgive herself, or him, if she took a mortal life.
The village was too far away, and he wouldn’t subject his staff to a fledgling. There had to be some other way…
His invention. That was their only chance. He caught her just as she picked up speed. She whipped her head around and bared her teeth. An animalistic reaction. Her new body required a fresh infusion.
He grabbed her upper arm and led her to the stairs to his workshop. He couldn’t easily bruise her, but he still hated the whimpering sound she made when she squirmed, and he had to tighten his grip.
“We’re almost there,” he said. “I have what you need in my workshop.”
She whimpered. “It hurts, Marcus.”
He knew, because he could feel her pain as if it were his own. The gnawing hunger was becoming impossible to ignore. She shouldn’t have been so famished, given how much blood she’d consumed, but his poisoned state had likely contributed to her weakness.
They reached the circular room at the top of the tower. He shoved her inside, then bolted the door behind them.
*
Winifred could feel her own blood pumping through her veins.
It was a distinctly odd sensation, like something inside her was trying to claw its way out of her body through her throat.
It was made stranger by the sharp pangs assaulting her stomach.
She kept licking her lips, but every time she did, her tongue scraped along one of her blasted fangs.
She stared at the glowing orb of the moon, so bright, that it made her eyes burn. This was to be her life now. She would never see the light of day again. She would spend that time asleep or do whatever vampires did during the day.
Marcus would know. He would help her, as she had helped him.
They would remain together forever, tied in a way more secure than the piece of paper that declared them married.
Now that she knew how to ease his attacks, they could explore the ruins of Pompeii.
Visit the site of the Coringa cyclone. Hike up Mount Tambora at night.
The pain in her stomach intensified, making her groan. She knew she was famished, but the thought of eating made her want to cast up her accounts. She turned around and found Marcus slotting a glass vial full of a dark-red substance into the top of his machine. Her mouth watered.
She had to have it.
She lunged, but he was too fast. He caught her around the middle and lifted her into his arms in one smooth motion.
“My blood is tainted,” he said as he cranked. “I think that’s why you’ve regressed even faster than most fledglings. I hoped it might be different for mates. But I think I have a solution.” The machine creaked and groaned as if it were about to fall apart.
She struggled through the haze in her mind to understand what he was doing. She doubted he could have convinced Smith or another servant to donate so soon after the violence of the fight. They were all likely hiding or had fled the castle.
Marcus released the handle, then removed a vial.
Miraculously, the contents were no longer solid red, but divided into fuzzy sections, including dark red and pinkish yellow.
He uncapped the glass tube, grabbed a suction device, then siphoned off the top layer and dripped what remained on his tongue.
The sour face he made suggested it was not pleasant, but then he grinned.
“It worked.”
She swiped for the vial, but again, he was too fast. He scraped the last of the pinkish yellow away, leaving only the red.
“There,” he said. “Drink it.”
She wrenched it out of his grip and let the contents flow into her mouth. It tasted shockingly bitter but wasn’t nearly as foul as she’d expected. It did, however, ease her pain. She scraped the remaining substance with her finger, then stuck the digit in her mouth and sucked.
“How do you feel?” Marcus asked.
She ran her teeth over her tongue. “Better.”
He peered into her face with all the seriousness of a physician.
Then she remembered his warning about what happened to newly made vampires and shuddered. “Did I hurt anyone?”
She had only vague memories of the evening. When she tried to bring them into focus, they squirmed out of her grasp.
“You did not,” Marcus said. He closed his eyes and visibly relaxed. “Thank God. It worked.”
She screwed up her nose. “You said that before. What worked?”
He gestured to her hand. The vial. She hadn’t realized she was clinging to it. She pried her fingers apart and let him take it.
“You figured it out.” All the time they’d spent practicing, but it had been science that had saved them.
“No. I cannot regret my discovery because we can use it to ease the suffering of unmated vampires and fledglings, but it’s not a cure.
I set out to find an alternative to mating, but what I found instead was much more precious.
” He dropped the vial. As it smashed to the floor, he wrapped his arms around her. “I found you.”