Susan Squires - [Companion Vampires 0] by OneWith the Shadows

Author:OneWith the Shadows [Shadows, OneWith the]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

Thirteen

Kate knocked on the door and entered the contessa’s bedchamber without waiting for permission. There was no time for courtesy. She had been pacing her own room for nearly an hour trying to find some way around it and she couldn’t. There was likely nothing to be done. It was too late. But someone had to do it anyway.

The contessa lay in a great four-posted bed hung with red and gold brocade and covered in red velvet embroidered in gold. Her dark hair spread out around her in a halo over her white pillows and her white embroidered nightdress. She was as pale as her sheets. The smell of cinnamon and that elusive something else still hung in the air, but all the contessa’s electric feeling of life had drained away to a steady, small tapping. A maid fussed with a vinaigrette at a small table under the window. At Kate’s hurried footsteps, the contessa opened her eyes.

“Contessa.” Kate sighed, relieved. “I must speak with you.”

“You leave her ladyship alone,” the maid scolded. She was an angular woman with her hair drawn back at the nape of her neck in a severe style that only made her cheekbones seem to jut the more.

“No, let her stay.” The contessa’s voice was a frail whisper. “You may leave us.”

Kate approached the bed. “Will … Will you be all right?” she asked. She couldn’t remember when she had felt so timid. How could she ask a woman this ill to rescue her son? And come to think of it, the contessa had fainted before Kate had told Elyta where to find Gian. Oh, that was bad. Kate tried to imagine telling the woman she had betrayed her son.

“Perhaps. Eventually,” the contessa replied. “Bucarro brought me a restorative.”

“Eventually” would not help Gian. Kate smelled something more than cinnamon in the room. It smelled like … Was the contessa wounded? It didn’t seem to be coming from the contessa. Kate glanced around and spotted a pewter flagon on the bedside table. She sidled over to it. The scent of blood was overwhelming. Kate froze. It was all true! All this talk of a disease was very well, but the disease was vampirism. Elyta and her cohorts hadn’t turned into bats, but they had been eaten up by a whirling blackness and disappeared. That was the next best thing.

“We don’t kill for it,” the contessa breathed. She must have seen Kate’s horror. “Bucarro bought this from a strong young man.”

Kate could only blink at her, her brain struggling to function. Gian was a vampire …

“Don’t hate him for it.”

“Hate … has nothing to do with it.” Suddenly she was angry. “He might have told me.”

“Forgive his cowardice.” She looked up at Kate with a distant curiosity in her eyes. “You were there, weren’t you? Why did they not finish me?”

“Because I told them where Gian had gone.” There. She’d said it. And her voice was calm if the emotions in her breast were not.

The contessa’s eyes narrowed in shock.

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