Chapter Six #2
“Mortals.” He said the word like it was a bad thing and stopped in front of her, his lips curling inward. “Do you need me to carry you the rest of the way?”
She grimaced at the thought of being so close to one of them again. “No. Thank you. I just need a minute or two. There are a lot of corridors.”
She sank to the floor, her back sliding down the bumps of the rectangular paneling.
“Let me help you, my dear,” Alexander said in a tone and crouched to her level, placing the lamp next to them on the carpet. Lines creased around his eyes, and for a moment he looked kind, boyish even. “We can stop here. Can you make it to that door?” he asked, pointing a few steps away.
She nodded, taking his arm.
“Let me show you the library. There is an armchair and a fire.”
“Why are you being nice to me?” she asked, grunting when she took a step.
“I am not nice,” he said swiftly, lifting her. “The library is simply my favorite place, and you make an acceptable companion.”
She wrapped her fingers around his forearm, eyeing him carefully, aware that behind his smile was a pair of fangs.
As he walked her into the library, he said, “I will ring the bell for the servants to bring you a light breakfast.”
“Thank you,” she relented, the pit in her torso hollowing with each passing minute.
The small doorway was deceiving of the labyrinth of black shelves and high, ribbed ceilings beyond it.
Leather tomes filled each shelf, and sliding ladders beckoned Charlotte as she stared wide-eyed around the room.
She breathed in the scent of wood smoke and parchment with a faint smell of roses.
It smelled like home, from before the tragedy.
Slowly, she sat on the dark green, suede armchair. The crackling and hissing of the fire calmed her as flames consumed the logs and embers burned to ashes. She noticed the book Alexander was holding, his fingers stroking the worn spine.
“That’s a heavy read,” she mumbled.
He lifted the spine to his lips, eyes closing with a crease. “Indeed. I am often drawn to books that break me.”
“Why?” she asked.
“So I may feel how it is to bleed.”
Her heart pounded. She glanced at the shelves, grazing her fingers over where he had bitten her earlier. “Does Nathaniel like to read?”
“These are all his favorites,” he said, waving his arms elaborately to the shelf behind the armchair.
She twisted her body, trying her best to ignore the aching in her bones.
Charlotte could tell a lot about a person by what books they read, so she was surprised to discover that the stoic vampire who seemed to have no regard for humanity was a romantic.
Or, at the very least, he once was. The books were covered in a thick layer of dust, yet the spines were deeply creased.
Her eyes swept over the titles: Wuthering Heights, The Scarlet Letter, Frankenstein, Hamlet, The Tempest, and several poetry collections.
A slow smile curved her lips. Among the fictions, she spotted a small, leather pocketbook.
It was the only book that had recently been disturbed.
She plucked it out and ran her fingers over the blank cover.
“Which one is your favorite?” Alexander asked, each word flowing into the next.
She lowered her gaze, afraid if she looked him in the eyes for too long that she would invoke his hunger. “I quite enjoyed Wuthering Heights.”
“Ah,” Alexander said with a knowing smile. He leaned against the shelf, his weary gaze dragging over the aged spines. “So you choose forgiveness over retribution.”
Her brows flicked down as she looked at the vampire with a gaze that glistened despite the dim firelight of the room, as if he was creating his own light. “I assume you think me foolish for it,” she stated, threading the pages of the pocketbook under her index finger.
“Not at all,” he stated, arching a light brow. “There comes a time, however, to choose one’s sword over your heart. The witches who are hunting you will not be slain by kindness.”
She inhaled sharply, her lashes flickering slightly. “Speaking of the witches,” she said, treading carefully. “Has Nathaniel said anything about his plans for them?”
“Some, but they are not for me to share. All you need to know is that you are safe here,” he said, giving nothing away. “We will not let them hurt you. You are too precious for that. With you gone, we will forever be without death.”
“So you want to be mortal too?”
“Not particularly, but I also do not want to exist forever as an aimless body traversing space long after this world has burned.”
She swallowed hard, imagining being trapped in nothingness forever. With a tense breath, she opened the pocketbook in the middle, her heart stumbling as she took in the rows of hand-scrawled names, many with the family name Lysanmore. “What is this?”
“Nathaniel’s food diary.”
She blanched. “These are all people.”
“What did you expect?”
She grimaced. “This is revolting. Why does he write them down?”
“Immortalizing a name ensures they are not forgotten. Although he might just enjoy reliving the kill.”
Wonderful. She was indeed living under the roof of two morally insane, homicidal monsters.
“Do you keep a record of your victims, too?” she asked, slowly closing the book between her palms, unable to stomach looking at the word Lysanmore over and again. It looked more like a sick list of trophies. As if he owned them.
“I do not concern myself with tracking my food.”
She swallowed thickly. “I see.”
“You are disgusted,” he said, his smile dropping for the first time since he’d approached her. “We are conditioned to take lives. People die every day. It is no tragedy. Most deserve death.”
Her jaw clenched. She thought about Alice and her mother, and a surge of heat flooded her body. “I don’t believe that.”
“Well, that is your prerogative. Although I am surprised you are squeamish of murder when Nathaniel relayed to me you were intrigued by the idea of becoming a vampire.”
“I—yes I said that, but I would not want to cause others pain,” she blurted. “Not innocent people, anyway.”
Alexander sighed. “Eventually, you would become desensitized to the suffering of others.”
“I hope not,” she said, horrified at the thought of being without feeling or compassion. “Speaking of suffering, where is Nathaniel? Is he sleeping?”
“We are vampires, my dear. Our day is your night. He is somewhere in the manor.”
“What is the time?”
“A little past three.” A hint of a smile lifted his lips. “I shall leave you to read. I have somewhere I must be, but a maid will arrive shortly with food for you.”
He sped out of the library in a blur, and once he was gone, she focused on the pain in her body, and the agony spreading over her hip. Slowly, she lifted her chemise and angled her torso.
A brownish-black mark was raised on her skin, with some kind of indentation in the center, with spreading redness around it.
She’d assumed the small lump she’d found after the burial was just a bug bite, but it was growing larger.
Perhaps it was infected. By the time she was done assessing the mark, she was surprised to find she was no longer alone.
A woman with ash-blonde hair wearing a black wool dress and lace-trimmed apron, stood in the doorway holding a tray.
Charlotte let go of the fabric of her nightdress, allowing it to fall back down her body.
“My apologies,” the young woman squeaked out in a thick, Irish accent, freezing in place with the tray. “I can come back later.”
Charlotte’s lips fell open. What did she think she was doing? “Oh, no need. I was just checking a…nothing.”
“Do you require any assistance?” she asked and walked into the library, placing the tray on the table in front of the crackling fire.
“No, really, I am well.”
The maid’s eyes swept to her throat, before looking back at the tray. “I brought you some cucumber sandwiches, a bowl of stew, cheese slices, and biscuits. I wasn’t sure what you would like.”
“This is perfect. Thank you.” Her stomach gurgled in response to the array of freshly made items and the glass of milk next to them. “I’m Charlotte. What is your name?”
The woman smiled, her round, pink cheeks balling. “Hartley, Miss. If you need anything, I am here night and day.”
“Oh, you live here,” she said.
“Yes.” She turned back. “I’ve been here for three years. I’m hoping my time will come soon.”
Her brows knitted. “Your time?”
“We all work here hoping Lord Sallow will make us like him. He chooses one of us every year.”
“Lord Sallow?”
“His family has one of the oldest baronies. He served at Henry the Eighth's court, you know. He could have been promoted higher, but he’s a recluse. He can’t be too involved with society since he must disappear every decade.”
“Because he doesn’t age,” Charlotte realized.
Hartley nodded. “Please excuse me, miss. I must attend to Lord Sallow’s dinner guests.”
“By guests you mean…” she said, trailing off.
“Everyone must eat. Even vampires,” Hartley stated, but didn’t seem anywhere near as horrified as she should. “Good evening.”
She watched the maid leave and suddenly her appetite was gone. Guests, Hartley had said. Plural. He’d murdered more than one person that night. How much could he drink? He’d already taken enough of her blood.
She had planned on trying to find him after eating, to discover how much he had seen while inside her head, but the last thing she wanted was to see the creature covered in someone else’s blood.
She’d seen enough of that when her father had come for her, his shirt and trousers saturated in scarlet, the stench of copper clinging to him.
He hadn’t used the knife he’d killed the staff with on his family.
No, his bare hands were the weapon of choice for the ones he loved the most.
Everyone knew that choking the life out of a person was far more intimate, almost as much as drinking their blood.
With a long sigh, she spent the rest of the night eating the food Hartley had brought and reading through Nathaniel’s favorite books, wondering if there was anything in them that could help her understand him better, so she might survive him.
Instead, she found herself enraptured by every page, her breath hitching as she became wrapped up in confessions of love and longing seeping through the pages, and forgot all about the haunting earlier, and the vampire that had bitten her.
Before she knew it, the sun had come up and peeked through a small gap in the thick drapes, and she was yawning.
She tucked the book under her arm and stood.
Her heart stammered when she reached the door, a strange tugging sensation pulling against the organ.
When she left the library and headed back to her bedroom, she swore she spotted someone watching her from the shadows of the hallway, but when she looked back, there was nothing there, but dust motes caught in lamplight.