Blood Secret (26 page)

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Authors: Sharon Page

Tags: #Fiction, #Erotica

BOOK: Blood Secret
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20
Pursuit
T
he first thing Lucy did was hasten to Sinjin’s bedroom and ensure he had fallen into his day sleep. He had left her a note, a few brief lines.
You exhausted me, love, and I needed to seek darkness to rest. You were right. I cannot leave you.
From the doorway to his bedchamber, she saw him sleeping. He did it motionlessly. But he did not respond to her when she had whispered his name. And he could not go outside now, not now that it was daylight.
She had won. She’d managed to protect him.
Satisfied, Lucy closed the door and she went to James’s bedroom. He was awake and he looked happy. He held out his arms to hug her when she went into his room.
Touched, she had hugged him back. Tears leaked from her eyes, but she quickly brushed them away. Then she helped him dress.
Coaxing him to eat breakfast proved difficult. One of the maids had delivered an assortment of gleaming covered dishes. Tempting scents drifted into the air but James did not want to eat at first. She lured him with ham and eggs, and finally he began to devour the food eagerly.
He burped, giggling after he did, then looked longingly at the window. Sunshine streamed in, and it was promised spring warmth. “Could I go outside, Lucy?”
Hope shone in his large green eyes. But to go outdoors would not be safe. She shook her head. “I’m sorry, James, but we should stay inside.”
His lower lip protruded, and she tried to reassure him. “We will make lots of fun inside today. I promise.”
To keep her word, she spent the morning playing with him in the upper rooms of the brothel, the rooms reserved for them. Surprisingly, there had been a room in the attic with toys stored in a large trunk. She did not know what was happening down below in the house, but it was quiet. Last night she had extracted a promise from Helena and Beatrix that they would never go exploring in the brothel again. The madam, Mrs. Simpson, seemed to be working to keep James and Lucy’s sisters separated from the scandalous business of the brothel.
Sunlight spilled in through the window of the attic room. Skirts tucked beneath her, Lucy sat on the carpet and watched James play.
He looked very much like Sinjin when he worked with great seriousness. He patiently stacked his many blocks. He built a castle with soaring towers. A bridge, and a house, and a pile of scattered blocks that he claimed was a battlefield of war. Finally, though, on his third castle, he swept all the blocks down with an angry swipe.
He crossed his arms over his chest and cried, “Want to go outside!”
On her hands and knees, Lucy began to gather the scattered blocks. She had to jockey her skirts out of the way. As she pushed the blocks toward James, she thought of how to explain this. “I am sure you do, sweetheart. But you cannot today.” Sinjin had warned her that the prince would be watching the house. “There are bad men outside and your uncle does not want you to leave here, where you might be ... vulnerable.” Bother, this was a wretched way to go about it.
As though she could save him from anything.
The boy’s faith in her touched her heart. It also was a great responsibility. But she could not take him outside—she could not protect him from a powerful vampire, or from Jack and his lackeys. “Very soon, you will be able to go outside,” she said soothingly. It was not quite a lie, but it was not true. If she did not let Sinjin hunt down his prince, would it ever be safe to let James outside? To let him live like a normal young boy?
Perhaps it would never be safe. But even then, she couldn’t let Sinjin risk his life. She couldn’t let him die, even to give James and her and her sisters safety.
Lucy moved around the room, gathering up fallen toys and setting them up on various chairs in James’s bedroom. She was lost in a maelstrom of thought. James was like her—he could never live like a normal boy, could he? She had tried so desperately to be normal, but that was a path that led to loneliness. If James tried to act like a normal boy, he would spend his whole life hiding what he was, as she had tried to do.
He had to, didn’t he? There was no other way for a dragon to live. No dragon could be open about what they were... .
But she had been frightened of what she was. Ashamed of it. She did not want James to grow up feeling ashamed of being a dragon. Or hating what he was.
What if Sinjin took James away from England? Was there another place in the world where it would be easier for a dragon to survive ... ?
Bother, some of the blocks had rolled under the armoire. On her hands and knees, Lucy got down as low as she could, and reached. She gathered up two, and stretched her arms, trying to reach two more—
She frowned. In the background, James had been humming. Blocks had clacked together as he’d thrown them around on the floor.
It was now utterly silent.
She scrambled back, and jerked around. A pile of blocks sat in the middle of the carpet. But there was no James sitting beside it. Almost tripping over her heavy skirts, Lucy struggled to her feet. “James?” she called, even as she guessed she would receive no answer. Her heart plunged into her stomach.
“James?” she shouted, sharply. “If you are hiding, I want you to come out at once.”
Nothing. The door gave a soft creak, but it was only a breeze giving it a push. “James?” she called again, and her voice was growing shrill. “If you are hiding as a joke, I want you to stop. You are making me frightened.”
She rushed around the room. She dropped to her knees to check beneath the bed, praying she would see the blue-eyed scamp grinning at her. But there was nothing underneath.
Swiftly, Lucy searched behind the curtains, and the door, and under the covers of the bed. Her heart pounded in her throat—he wasn’t in the room. He must have gone outside. She ran out to the stairs, and almost tumbled down them. Clutching the banister, she steadied herself and started running down the steps again.
Heavens, James had wanted to go outside. Had he decided he wouldn’t get permission to go, he would just run out and do it?
She had to stop him.
She raced all the way down to the first floor of the house, clutching her skirts clear of her feet. Where would James go? Surely not out the front door—one of the footmen would have likely caught him. He would go out the back, probably, into the garden.
She reached the kitchens and almost barreled into a young maid. The cook, in the process of chopping up a chicken with a heavy knife, looked up. “Are ye after that lad?” the burly woman demanded. “ ’e ran through ’ere just now. Almost knocked over me pies.”
Lucy managed a stumbling sentence somewhere between “thank you” and “I’m sorry,” and she rushed past the woman, wended her way clumsily around large worktables, past an oven, and between hanging pots. She shoved open a low, narrow door, and flew out into the yard.
Sunlight dazzled her eyes after the darkness of the kitchens. The yard was narrow and long, stretching back to a stone wall that threw a line of shadow over neat gardens. Her heart flip-flopped in her chest. James stood in the shadows, near a wooden gate set in the wall. A brown-haired man stood with him.
“James, come here!” she cried, forgetting it was probably not the wisest thing to do. She ran down a small gravel path toward them.
The man’s hand snaked out and grabbed James’s wrist, capturing the boy. Then the stranger looked up and glared at her. Shock hit her so hard Lucy stopped on the path.
Blue eyes. Coffee-brown hair. A rugged line of jaw; a straight, perfect nose; long eyelashes; and the look of gentlemanly disdain.
Scowling at her, sneering at her, this man looked like Allan Ferrars. Like her former fiancé.
 
This was guaranteed to destroy him.
Even with his beaver hat pulled low, his collar high, gloves on his hands, and his greatcoat covering him, Sinjin could feel the warmth and power of the sun sapping away his strength. Each step felt like he was lifting a ton of stones and slamming them to the sidewalk.
He’d come in daylight because his sire would never expect an attack while the sun was up. He wasn’t strong, but the prince would also be weak, and that might give him the chance to win.
Lucy would not expect him to leave the house during the day. He knew she had come to his room to ensure he was sleeping. Once she saw him, she had left the room, and he had then forced himself up, and had left the house. This was the best way to sneak out without her catching him.
A grin tried to tug at his mouth, but even the muscles of his face were too exhausted to work. He was behaving like a disobedient gentleman trying to sneak out on his wife.
Wife
. When he thought of marrying Lucy, of spending the rest of his life with her ... hell, it was a sweet dream, but an impossible one.
When he had first left the house, he had gone to Charing Cross Road, to a bookstore owned by the vampire historian Guidon. There he had learned several interesting things. He had learned about Lucy—and why the prince was determined to have her.
Swinging a walking stick, Sinjin forced his heavy legs to move to the house as though he was a gentleman paying an afternoon call.
His prince’s house was only a block away, but suddenly, in the depths of his heart, he felt a stabbing pain. Fear raced through him—the same ice-cold, terrifying horror he’d known when he’d lost his brother. It rooted him to the sidewalk.
He could hear her roars—they were a dragon’s sounds of fury and hatred, but they were also Lucy’s. How he could hear them from so far away, he didn’t know. How he knew they were her roars he didn’t know. But it was like a voice in his head, telling him to get to her. To help Lucy. Save her. Fighting for strength, he spun in the street and forced his numb, shaking legs to run.
 
It
couldn’t
be Allan Ferrars. He had died. Lucy was certain of it. She had seen her brother attack him and she’d heard her fiancé’s howls of pain as Jack had lashed into him with his claws. She had seen Allan’s large dragon body collapse to the ground. He had lain there, unmoving, and his eyes had been open and blank.
She had been shaking with shock and horror, and sobbing with tears blurring her eyes, but she knew what she had seen. Jack had tried to pull her away, but she had gone to Mr. Ferrars and she had seen him change back into human form. Her brother’s arms had wrapped around her waist, stopping her before she could touch the man who had betrayed her, and Jack had hauled her swiftly away for her safety. But she had been
sure
Allan Ferrars was dead.
Father had told her he was. Father had told her Mr. Ferrars would never bother her again.
“Wh-who are you?” she cried at the man, cursing the tremble of her voice. “Let the child go.”
“But he is not a child, is he?” the man responded, his lips curving into a mocking smile. Heavens, it looked so much like Allan Ferrars’s smile, Lucy felt as though she had been hit in the stomach.
“The boy is a dragon.” The man waved his hand and murmured something to James. The boy gazed up at this eerie man, as though held under a spell.
James’s body began to jerk and stretch and change. Fear turned the boy’s face pale and he whispered in terror, “No. It hurts—no!”
She ran forward. “Stop this! It is too hard on his body and it is hurting him. You must stop it.”
James let a shriek of terror, a yell of pure pain. “Uncle,” he sobbed. “Help me. Lucy ... Lucy, make it stop. Please.”
She reached the man who held James. She stared into his gloating face, not caring if it was Allan—if he actually wasn’t dead, or he had become a demon or a ghost that had returned. She didn’t care. Shoving his arm, she tried to break his grip on James. But he laughed. A low, amused, tired laugh. Then he swung at her, and his open palm slammed into her cheek so hard it drove her to her knees.
Pressing her hand to her stinging cheek, Lucy got up on her haunches. Wings sprouted from James’s back, large blank and green wings, unusually wide for such a small body. His clothes had been torn by his change, and pieces of white cloth fluttered over the lawn. Scales were appearing over his body as it changed to dragon shape—as a tail grew and his arms became smaller, his face took on the shape of a muzzle.
He was screaming.
Lucy pulled up to her feet, and ran at the man again.
This time he threw her, and she tumbled like a rolling log across the grass and into a garden. Her body bashed against gravel and stones, and prickly twigs snagged at her skin. She dug her fingers into the earth to stop her, and got up painfully.
She had to stop him.
She hadn’t been able to fight Allan Ferrars, who looked exactly like this man.
It didn’t matter—she had to try. She understood Sinjin, understood why he was willing to face his prince alone, even though he knew it would be hopeless: to protect James, she had to be willing to die trying.
Lucy bit down on her lip and summoned her transformation into dragon form. The moments it took to do it were excruciating, and it felt as if it were taking forever. Her clothes seemed to explode off her body as her shape changed. As she grew and grew.

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