One With the Night by Squires Susan

Author:Squires, Susan [Squires, Susan]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Romance, Paranormal, Fiction
ISBN: 9781466830394
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2007-04-03T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

Fourteen

Callan trudged into the kitchen with a pail of milk and set it by the sink. Clara had made a pie out of early gooseberries. The smell of pastry and cooked fruit filled the kitchen. She looked up as Callan entered. Her brown eyes were strangely flat.

“My mistress wants to see you,” she said.

“Your mistress can go ta hell,” Callan muttered. He pushed past, but she held his arm.

“Please,” she said. “If I don’t bring you, she’ll be angry with me.”

Callan pressed his lips together. He wouldn’t put it past Miss Zaroff to say cutting things to her maid. “Verra well. I’ll see her.”

The girl trailed him up the stairs. She’s no’ a lass, but an old vampire by her vibrations, Callan reminded himself. She tapped at her mistress’s door. “He’s here,” she said, and opened it.

Callan pushed inside. “What d’ye want?”

Elyta Zaroff sat brushing her long black hair in front of a small dressing table. Her purple dressing gown with some kind of flowering trees and pagodas on it gaped over perfect, jutting breasts. Her eyes lifted to his in the mirror. “You were made by Asharti, weren’t you?”

Callan lifted his chin to hide his shock. “Nae.” How did she know his shame?

“Don’t bother to lie. I saw your scars. They are her marks.”

He clenched his jaw. She’d seen him naked. What did he care if this woman knew? “Aye, th’ marks are hers. But she did no’ make me.”

“Then one of her minions did, perhaps Fedeyah.”

She knew! He didn’t respond, but stood staring at her.

“She was a good student,” Miss Zaroff remarked. “I’ll wager she trained you well.”

“What…?” All that was implied in that statement washed over him. But even as he turned to plunge toward the door, her eyes flashed the deepest of reds and he was transfixed.

She rose, slowly, sensuously, and moved toward him, a smile spreading across her face. He felt the familiar helplessness like a black blot growing inside him. He tried to move, but she had him fast, transfixed like a butterfly in the collections displayed at the university so long ago.

“Poor Asharti.” She pulled at his cravat and let it drift to the carpet. “She had been much abused by men. I met her in … let’s see … the early part of the fifteenth century, in Florence. Delightful place, what with the Medici running the place and the Buonarotti boy carving those beautiful nude men and priests flagellating themselves. It was nearly perfect for us until Urbano threw us out.” She pulled Callan’s shirt off over his head. It turned inside out as the sleeves left his wrists. He was having trouble breathing. The vampiress could have popped the buttons on his breeches, but she slid her hand beneath the waistband and unbuttoned them carefully. “We traveled together. I taught her everything I knew.” Her gaze held his. He wanted to shout in horror and protest. How could there be another like Asharti? And in the Highlands of Scotland, worse luck? He had done with Asharti.

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