A Curse of Darkness: Midnight Vampires Book Two by Vivian Casey

Author:Vivian Casey [Casey, Vivian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Wilton Blake
Published: 2023-05-31T23:00:00+00:00

14

We stood silently in what had been Robert’s childhood home over two hundred years ago. The farm was all but gone now; all that was left were the stone foundations of the main house and barn, along with a few dead trees and the fragments of a well.

Robert’s gaze panned across the remnants of his former human life, a wistful smile playing on his lips. I could tell he was seeing something very different in his mind's eye than what was before us—a bustling homestead with farm animals and the sounds of toiling in the distance.

I wondered if he still remembered his mother and father: their faces and voices, the way they moved, smelled, and laughed. I was only in my twenties and could hardly remember my own parents, who I’d lost to a car wreck when I was a child, so I imagined he probably recalled very little about the people he’d briefly known a couple centuries ago.

There was so much I wanted to know, but I stayed quiet, not wanting to spoil the moment with arbitrary questions about his family, or what sort of animals they raised, or where parts of the house used to be. I doubted he’d be able to tell me, anyway. Like me, his mother and father had died young. He’d lost the farm shortly thereafter and had been whisked away to London to work in a factory under deplorable conditions.

As a vampire, he’d come back and purchased the land he’d once lost. Everything we were looking at belonged to him.

The crisp British air permeated my body so deeply that it was almost too much to bear. Even my bones felt cold. San Francisco was undeniably chilly, but England deserved its own weather category.

A few moments later, Robert turned to me, his face a mix of emotion. “This is where I was born,” he murmured.

He looked away, and I could see the reflection of his own life in his eyes. I reached out and put my hand on his arm, and he closed his eyes briefly.

“Come,” he said quietly. The sun had just about finished setting, and soon we’d be enveloped in darkness. “Let's go back to Leopold’s.”

Seeing him in this context allowed a brief glimpse into the window of his past, which was far more precious to me than food, monuments, or designer clothing. It wasn’t that I didn’t relish those other things, too. We’d had a wonderful day exploring London.

The clothes Seraphim had given me had been a huge boost to my confidence. I used to think the whole if you look good, you feel good ideology was something advertising companies exploited to sell things like overpriced shampoos and gym memberships, but now I realized there was truth to it. I did feel good. Damn good.

For our morning tour of the city, I’d worn the skinny jeans outfit Seraphim had picked out. In late afternoon, I’d changed into a plush cable knit sweater and distressed ankle boots for a haunted Jack the Ripper walk through East London.

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