Vampire Darcy's Desire (57 page)

Instantaneously, the girl released her hold and dropped to the ground on all fours. Using her fingers, she began to separate the seeds, lining them up and organizing the grain in structured piles.

Meanwhile, Damon staggered forward a few steps, trying to recover from the intensity of the fight, but then he turned, ready to begin again, only to see the girl’s spirit groveling in the dirt.

Elizabeth seemed as stunned as he.“What do we do?”

“Put her to rest forever.” Reverently, he bent over the girl and plunged the sword deep within her, aiming for her heart. The vapor rose from the wound, and with its exodus, the girl’s shape disintegrated into the night air.

Elizabeth’s mouth fell open.“Mercy.”

“Amen.”

“No more waiting for them to attack.” Elizabeth moved to the next grave.

The colonel half laughed.“I wanted to see what would happen when she reached the salt line.”

“Admit it, Damon.You were enticed by the girl’s
beauty.
”

He took a fighting stance before Elizabeth reached for the stave. “How could you think so, Elizabeth?” Damon smiled at her mockingly.
“You are the most becoming
Scottish laddie
I have ever seen.”

Elizabeth removed the stave, and they waited, but nothing happened. “That one is clear,” Damon noted. “Put the stave in the ground like a spear next to the headstone. That will be the mark tomorrow to pass over this one.”

Moving down the row, Elizabeth lifted the next stave.This time, the mist took on the visage of an old man. Once he stood before them, Damon struck out with the sword, hitting this one in the side of the neck. The revenant lashed out at Damon, as Elizabeth, on the other side, swung an arcing stroke of her weapon, also slashing at the man’s neck. He growled at her and bared his teeth, preparing to strike, but Damon lunged and hit the heart once again.The man fell backwards across the grave and disappeared into a bloody haze.

“That was better,” Damon commented as they moved to the next mound.

 

“Look at the size of this graveyard!” Elizabeth peered around them, realizing what they still faced. The vibrations continued, but the corner in which they stood no longer rocked. They had checked twelve graves and fought two apparitions.

The colonel moved around the last headstone of the row. The upright staves marked all those safe from Wickham’s evil.“The next row,” he said ominously.

“Where do you suppose Fitzwilliam is?” She glanced towards Wickham’s house.

“My cousin is well, Elizabeth,” he assured her. “Are you ready for the next one?” She signaled her agreement as he bent again. “We have our job, and Darcy has his. It is up to us to ensure that Wickham has no reinforcements. One on one, Darcy will prevail.”

The skeletal hand tightened on Darcy’s arm as Wickham sat up, like Lazarus rising from the dead. “I knew you would return.” The
ominous words ricocheted off the walls, and momentarily Darcy did not respond. He simply stared dumbly at the bony fingers encircling his wrist and the slow, gravity-defying climb of the snake up the length of the sword.

Elizabeth’s voice rose in the silence.
Because I did not get the chance to tell my husband that I am completely and hopelessly in love with him
, it called out, and Darcy reacted. Jerking his arm vehemently from the force holding it, Darcy spun quickly away, bringing his arms to his sides as he did.The rotating force sent the serpent flying through the air, carrying it through the open door and out somewhere into the bowels of the house. An overwhelming energy filled the room, pressing Wickham’s coffin against a far wall and tilting it on its end.

Incensed by the intrusion, Wickham answered, delivering a show of his own. The cauldron—the antlers—the engraved gold plates—and even the snakes swirled around Darcy’s head, dipping dangerously close in a maelstrom of power—an obvious threat.

Yet Darcy did not falter. He stood proud and strong, now beginning to understand that Wickham’s power was a great deal of smoke and mirrors, depending on his victim’s fear—on intimidation—and as he watched, the tornadic winds died out, and everything came crashing to the floor between them. Not waiting for Darcy to respond, a quick flick of Wickham’s hand sent the cauldron cannonballing into Darcy’s midsection, knocking him to the ground and leaving him gasping for air.

Struggling to his knees, Darcy answered with his own display by powering the antlers—a barbed spear—which barreled down on Wickham. A quick sidestep kept it from impaling him, but not from ripping open several points along Wickham’s left side. Miraculously, as Elizabeth’s dream had predicted, the wounds oozed with blood, each a different shade of red, as if it did not belong to Wickham at all—he had only stored it to sustain his existence.With his right hand,Wickham pulled the bony points from his shoulder and cast them down to join the debris accumulating on the floor.“Your accuracy improves, Darcy.” Wickham used a crossover step to keep
facing his enemy, but allowing the distance between them to increase. “We have crowed like the rooster,” he said and smirked. “Shall we now fight like cats and dogs?”

Darcy never let his eyes leave Wickham’s face, but he was very aware of every object in the room. One of the snakes slithered into the discarded cauldron, and another followed the flying one into the darkened hallway. In his field of vision, Darcy could not see the other two, but he did not worry about them. Even though he knew little of snakes, he suspected Wickham kept them, like everything else, purely for show—to instill fear in anyone who might invade his privacy. If a person was to die in this house, it would be at Wickham’s hands, not from being bitten by some poisonous snake.

In a mimicking pattern, Darcy also used a grapevine step to adjust to his enemy’s new position.“What now,Wickham?”

“We finish it, Darcy—only one of us.”

“Wait, Elizabeth!” Damon called from the end of one row of graves as she moved around a particularly tall headstone, which completely blocked her from his sight. He delayed; the last specter had come close to escaping before he threw holy water on it.The shriek of pure pain still resounded through every bone in his body. He would not forget the sounds and the smells associated with this night for as long as he lived. It was worse than the slaughters at Talavera and at Salamanca. The metallic smell of so much blood sickened him, and the fact that he and Elizabeth were bringing forth the demise of so many ate away at him.Yet he judiciously carried on, trying to spare Elizabeth as much of the slaughter as possible.
He
understood the destruction of war, but Elizabeth was an innocent. He would not let
her
suffer such nightmares.

Elizabeth’s scream jolted him from his thoughts, and instantaneously, Damon was at a run to reach her.A hulk of a man, perhaps twice Elizabeth’s size, pinned her to the side of Lord Thomas’s crypt and pressed her lustfully to the wall, meaning to have her in a
primitive coupling. Enraged, Damon sprang forward, and with a powerful attack of his own, stabbed the creature through the back, perforating his chest with the rapier. Now the scream came from the demon as he stumbled away from a very shaken Elizabeth.The mist rose again and was sucked back into the earth as Elizabeth propelled herself into Damon’s waiting arms.

She shook from sobs of joy and of fear. Damon’s breath rasped in exhaustion as he held her close. “I am so sorry, Elizabeth.” He caressed her hair, stroking gently as he held her head to his chest.“I should have protected you.”

Elizabeth pressed her face against his shoulder.“It was my fault; I should have waited for you. I foolishly put both of us in danger.”

Damon tightened his embrace and gently kissed the top of her head. Elizabeth’s arms encircled his waist, and they stood as such, hearts pounding from the unbelievable terror.

Breathing normally at last, Damon loosened his grip, but did not release Elizabeth. “Do you hear what I hear?” he whispered close to her ear.

Elizabeth tilted her head back to listen carefully. “I do not hear anything.”

“Exactly.” Damon smiled down at her.

Elizabeth pulled away and looked around her. “But we are not finished.”

“Maybe we are.This is the newer part of the cemetery—more than likely containing families not from this area originally.We will still check each one, but I suspect we have finished our task.” Triumphantly, they shifted between the last two rows of headstones, but nothing happened when they lifted the staves.

“No more!” Elizabeth nearly cackled when she speared the last stave into the frozen ground. “What of Fitzwilliam?” she asked in surprise at having forgotten her husband’s ordeal in the midst of her own struggles.Turning curiously towards the house, she called to the colonel,“My God, Damon, look!”

“We finish it, Darcy—only one of us.”

The words still reverberated in the room when Wickham threw himself at Darcy, clawing at him like a wild animal. His nails shredded the sleeve of Darcy’s coat and ripped the skin along his forearm. Like a rabid wolf,Wickham’s jaw snapped viciously, trying to reach Darcy’s face and neck.

Overpowered by the sudden attack, Darcy, knocked from his feet, braced his arms, holding back the sheer monstrous force of the beast. All of Darcy’s other dealings with Wickham had been with a mildly taunting gentleman vampire, who used his powers to strike quickly and then escape. This Wickham tried to tear Darcy limb from limb.This animal felt no remorse—just the compulsion to kill its prey. Finally able to wedge his knee between them, Darcy used his legs to hurl Wickham across the room, where he landed on all fours.

Immediately, the wolflike Wickham rebounded, crouching in preparation for the next attach. Like him, Darcy rolled from his back to a semiclosed position, grabbing the sword as he did. Straightening slowly, he shifted the sword to his other hand, and then made a come-hither motion, a silent challenge. Unhurriedly, Wickham began to circle, a bestial specter needing to hunt—needing to kill and feed. His eyes, now coal black, flashed with a fiery glow, as if coal tar burned within them. “You cannot win, Darcy,” he growled.

Warily, Darcy turned in a slow circle, keeping Wickham always where he could see him. Like the dance he arranged each night, Wickham turned in a definite pattern, and Darcy adjusted accordingly. As he turned once more, he began to search the room behind Wickham for weapons he could use. Surprisingly, just as in the great hall, Wickham’s earlier windstorm had left much of the periphery untouched. The candles still burned and the golden torque still rested on the altar.The three golden plates, which once hung above the coffin, now lay flat on the floor and off to the right. The cauldron, turned on its side, spilled out its contents: a layer of grey ashes, just like those Darcy had found in London; and then
there was Wickham’s coffin.
Wickham hides something in that house. You must find his
grave
and destroy it.…Without his grave—his coffin—Wickham cannot survive.
As he surveyed the room, Elizabeth’s instructions meant even more.Watching.Waiting.Wary.They circled each other cautiously.