Born to Bite Bundle Page 9

  Her belly full, Alice sipped her wine and looked around at all the MacNachtons. Alyn sat with his newfound family and she could see how their delight in him was easing all that anger and bitterness he had held for most of his young life. Even though Jayne and Norma did not yet know who amongst the crowd of dark, handsome people they might be related to, they were being so showered with love and attention she doubted it would matter if they ever found out. The fact that they were females who would grow up to be the mates of some MacNachton male undoubtedly added to their worth, but Alice could see that the joy the clan felt in all the children had no ties to it. Even Donn, already seen as Gybbon’s son since he was mated to the child’s mother, was being cosseted and feted. Alice knew she was going to have to do her best to make sure the children were not spoiled.

  She knew she was basking a little in the acceptance of the clan. The shyness and uneasiness she had felt as Gybbon had presented her to his clan had fled quickly. It was hard to keep tears of joy at bay as she realized that she and the children had come home. Grief pinched her for a moment as she wished her family could have known this joy, but she shook it aside. She knew they would be happy for her and the children and that had to be enough.

  The laird stood up and everyone went silent. Gybbon took her hand in his and flashed a smile at her. Alice stared at Gybbon’s uncle, thought of how he would also remain so handsome for years and years and almost grinned back at him, but the laird began to speak.

  “We are blessed tonight,” he said, and paused to smile at Alice and each of the children. “We have brought five of the Lost Ones home. The number of fledglings returned to the nest will surely grow. And, since my nephew has had the good sense to mate himself with this fine brave lass who kept these children safe until they could come home, we will soon be celebrating a wedding as weel.”

  Everyone cheered as Alice blushed so hotly she was amazed her cheeks did not catch on fire. Gybbon laughed and kissed her cheek but it did little to ease the heat there. It was several minutes after everyone had returned to their talk and their food, or tankards of enriched wine, before Alice calmed down.

  “All right now, love?” Gybbon asked, a teasing note in his voice.

  “I was just a wee bit unsettled by how everyone was cheering,” she murmured.

  “Ye are a heroine to them, love. Aye,” he said when she shook her head. “As my uncle says, ye kept those children alive. That is no small thing. And everyone is overjoyed to have so many Lost Ones brought home.”

  “And I am home now, arenae I.”

  “Aye, love, ye are. That is what is being celebrated and ’tis a worthy thing to celebrate. Of course,” he murmured close to her ear, “I am eager to return to our bed so that I may celebrate in a manner more to my liking.”

  “Ah.” She felt the desire he could so effortlessly stir in her begin to rise. “I thought ye had celebrated it quite thoroughly already.”

  “Och, nay. Having ye as mine can ne’er be celebrated enough.”

  He sounded so cocky, and looked it, that Alice had to smile. She also felt a strong inclination to wipe that arrogant smirk off his handsome face. “Gybbon,” she whispered in his ear, “ye do recall that, er, kiss ye gave me a wee while ago, aye?”

  “Oh, aye, and I recall how sweet ye tasted as weel.”

  “Tell me, oh great lover of mine, do ye think I would find ye as sweet to taste?”

  He choked on his wine. Alice was still laughing about that when he grabbed her by the hand and dragged her out of the hall. She doubted the joy that filled her would fade anytime soon. She had spent six years in hell, running, hiding, and fighting to stay alive, but now she was home, home with a man who loved her and a people who accepted her because she was truly one of them. Alice realized that she had been lost and she thanked God that the man who was dragging her to their bedchamber as fast as he could was the one to find her.

  THE VAMPIRE HUNTER

  Heather Grothaus

  For my family

  Chapter One

  October 1, 1104

  The Leamhan Forest of the Scottish Highlands

  “Like that, do you?” Beatrix whispered into the stranger’s ear as he moaned and bucked against her body. She had pinned him against the rear wall behind the White Wolf Inn—foolishly close to the patrons reveling just steps inside the kitchen door, perhaps—but the added danger was exhilarating. And although his stealthy appearance had interrupted her countless nightly chores as the inn’s sole proprietor, she could not pass up the opportunity he offered.

  She thrust against him again and her blood rushed in her veins like liquid moonlight when he gave a choked cry.

  “That’s right—take it,” Beatrix gasped. “Take it, you bastard.”

  She felt sudden wetness soaking through her long apron and into the front of her gown and knew a moment’s rue at the telltale stain that would be left behind. But concerns for the condition of her gown whirled away as she felt the cold heat of the stranger’s lips skitter desperately along the side of her neck.

  “Doona…dare,” Beatrix growled and, throwing herself upon him with all her strength, finished him.

  He fell against her fully and Beatrix stepped away from the wall, letting the man’s body tumble into the muddy dooryard behind the inn, near the now-splintered slop bucket she had come outside to empty. She stood over him, gasping.

  A bright bar of moonlight divided by the roof peak above fell across his unnaturally pale and frozen face, setting free a single starburst from a pointed fang only just glimpsed through slack, gray lips as his head came to its final rest in the wet filth. The startling strip of light showed a slice of his torn and dirtied clothes, his ashen and decimated skin, his cratered chest ornamented with—

  “Ah, dammit,” Beatrix muttered, realizing her loss. She stepped to the corpse and, placing one foot on his rapidly sinking chest, grasped the springy fan of her short wooden fork with both hands and yanked it free. A hissing sound chased the fork’s release. She staggered backward and looked at her ruined utensil—the black blood was already soaked into the wood.

  “Third one this week,” she lamented and then pitched the fork in the direction of the refuse heap.

  Her eyes found the body once more, now sizzling away into shimmery dust, the high-pitched squeal of a soulless void being squicked away from the earth causing Beatrix to wince. Before the corpse could vanish completely, she spat on him.

  Beatrix Levenach took her time scanning the black wall of trees just beyond the inn’s back door. She could detect no movement in the thick dark—at least, not of any creature not properly alive—nor was there a return of the ominous prickle that warned her of impending attack. Save for the highland wind on its whistling journey through the elms, carrying a cumbersome winter on its back, the wood was still.

  For now.

  The night seemed colder after her kill, but perspiration trickled between her shoulder blades and breasts as she fumbled with the strings of her apron and whisked it over her head. Beatrix wadded it into a ball and tossed it to the same fate as her muck fork, and then turned into the moonlight so as to appraise the damage to her gown while walking to the rain barrel at the corner of the inn.

  Nae so bad, she thought. A streak of black here, a splotch there. She could disguise the freshness of the stains tonight with a good dollop of her rich, dark stew—Eternal Mother knew she ended each night wearing enough of the stuff, any matter—but her skirt would forever bear the marks of tonight’s kill. She reached the barrel and plunged her arms into her turned-up sleeves, scrubbing doggedly at the cold, sticky black blood.

  “Frocking vampires,” she muttered as her skin burned from both the icy water and the thought of the muck that contaminated her. She sniffed. It happened every time—this delayed release of…not fear, exactly. When faced with the undead she never flinched, never hesitated—she let her hatred for the unnatural beings and her sense of honor lead her into battle with a fearless vengeance. Only when the kill
was made and the threat no more did the uncharacteristic tears creep in, the trembling seize her.

  Beatrix gripped the rim of the barrel with both dripping hands, her reddened arms stiff, her head hanging down for a moment. Then she turned up her eyes to the ripe, white moon and took a deep breath.

  You are Levenach, she heard her father say once more, only now that he was dead, the words came from her memory instead of his smiling mouth. Protector. Guardian of the Leamhnaigh, of the forest…of all the highlands.

  A splintering crash sounded through the open rear door of the inn, but Beatrix did not flinch. Yet another one of her clay pitchers meeting its empty end against the hearth stones. Likely a retaliatory act by one of the innocent Leamhnaigh—her shoulders hitched in a soundless chuckle—she was sworn to protect, in a pique at not receiving more ale straightaway.

  Beatrix straightened from the barrel and swiped at her eyes so that she could look upon the moon clearly one last time before returning to the common room and the score or so of forest folk impatient to be tended to. The people who whispered about her, who drank her ale and ate her stew while watching her with suspicious eyes. Who grudgingly paid their dues to her in meager rations of supplies—adhering to the centuries-old tradition of supporting the Levenach even as they muttered about her black and wicked ways.

  Beatrix the witch.

  Bring us all to ruin and damnation.

  Nae, she didn’t want to go back into the White Wolf Inn, but she would.

  Because she was Levenach. And she was the last.

  After dropping the bar on the door following the departure of the last, straggling patrons, Beatrix felt as though she could slide to the floor and fall asleep that instant. But she only allowed herself to rest her forehead against the splintery wood and sigh. Her muscles ached miserably with fatigue and her eyelids felt lined with sand. Tomorrow was the Christian Sabbath, and then she could rest all the day.

  But she could not escape into sleep just yet. Although she boarded no travelers, and she had already destroyed one vampire this evening—ensuring that the rest of the demonic pack would likely keep their distance from the inn and townsfolk for mayhap a day or two—her mundane duties were not complete. After another deep breath, she pushed away from the door and turned to face the common room, surveying the damage.

  The tables were shoved out of rank, sticky-wet with the leavings of drink and food; mugs and wooden bowls lay strewn over tables and floor like giant, misshapen acorns shaken loose from a tree in a gale. Overturned stools tangled legs obscenely with each other. She’d not bothered to sweep up the shards of broken pitcher earlier—not wishing to expose her upturned backside to a roomful of drunken folk—and so the pieces still waited patiently for her on the hearth stones in the weary glow of the fading coals. The air was already stale with fermented grain and smoke, and for the thousandth time, Beatrix wished she could do the washing up with the door and windows thrown wide to the cold night air. But then, she might as well hang a shingle over her lintel: LONE WITCH IN RESIDENCE—VAMPIRES ENTER HERE.

  She lit several fat candles and then set about her chores with grim purpose, wishing them done, wishing she had someone to talk with and pass the dirty hour, wishing she was her great-grandmother, who, Beatrix had been told, could charm the furniture to dance and the old shake broom to herd the dirt with only a glance of her sharp green eyes.

  The room set to rights at last, Beatrix straightened from her bucket with a groan and tossed her rag into the scummy gray water. The broom, which had not so much as twitched on its own during her efforts even though she had glared heavily at it several times, leaned against a table and ignored her. A sweaty string of red hair fell into her eyes and she blew it upward. Her feet dragged as she crossed to the hearth to bank the coals and then circuited the room, blowing out each candle in turn, save the last, which she took in hand and carried with her through the door to the inn’s kitchen.

  There was little to do in this back room—Beatrix set the iron pot containing the congealed remains of stew on the floor with a heavy clunk and scrape and then tipped it onto its side. A white and then a black shape swirled out of the shadows draping the wall shelves and leapt silently to the floor at the telltale sounds of the meal being served, and the two cats attended their supper with their usual aloofness.

  The work bench wiped clean and the mugs and bowls left soaking, Beatrix picked up the fat yellow candle once more and walked to the small, woven mat covering a far corner of the kitchen floor. She bent and pulled the stiff rug aside with a huff and then grasped the metal pull ring set in the heavy wooden trapdoor and pulled it wide.

  A cool, minerally smelling breeze sighed through the quiet black square, and Beatrix took a deep breath. She thought of her stained and dirtied gown for a moment, but then let the worry go. It was nearing dawn already, and she could take no time to make herself more presentable. She smoothed her hair back behind her ears, wiped her cheeks and forehead high on her sleeve.

  The steps were old, steep and narrow, but did not spring or creak under her feet as she made her careful way into the cellar, the candle glow acting like a queer, reverse sunrise on the stone walls, dropping flickering light like a curtain. The very roots of her hair tingled as she landed on the cellar floor.

  “Teine,” she called into the cold, quiet room.

  Tall, standing iron candelabras immediately emerged from the darkness of each of the four corners of the cellar as their seven candles sparked to life.

  Beatrix set her own, crude light on the bottom riser and walked to the center of the room, where a massive, polished black slab comprised the largest portion of the floor, resting like a gem on a setting of dull gray. The points of light from the candelabras glinted off the hard surface like a mirror, and in an instant, so did Beatrix’s own image. She let her mind clear, becoming lost in the glossy black for a moment, before raising her arms away from her sides.

  “Fosgail.”

  As the command left her lips, a hairline crack appeared in the heretofore solid rock at her feet, and the slab began to slide apart in two halves with barely a whisper. In the widening seam was a black unlike any polished jet stone, darker than the depths of the deepest loch, colder than winter’s thick ice at midnight.

  Beatrix reveled in the moment, as she had ever since she’d first been allowed to visit the hidden, magical Levenach well as a young child. Here she could at last believe she was what legend reported: a witch of the mighty and ancient Levenach clan. A woman with powerful blood in her veins, strong magic in her heart. A warrior against evil, a protector of the highlands and of the innocent peoples who dwelt in the sheltering arms of the wood. Here, she could oft-times see the people who had shared her blood, her home, and who had now been called on to the Beyond.

  Here were her only friends, her only strengths, her only comfort—that of the dead, and their cryptic promises.

  Beatrix’s gaze was soft, and now in the wavering black water colors began to swirl into brightness. A man with white hair and short, neat beard.

  “Hello, Honey Bea.”

  “Hello, Da,” Beatrix whispered. “I’m missing you.”

  “And I am for certain missing you, lass,” her father assured her.

  “’Twas a wearisome night, this one,” Beatrix offered.

  Her father only nodded. “But still he comes.”

  Beatrix shook her head. She didn’t want to talk about that tonight—she wanted only a conversation with her father. Someone to comfort her. “I canna do this any longer, Da. I’m so tired.”

  “You can do this. You must. He comes, and he will save the Leamhnaigh.”

  “I doona want him to come, and I doona care about the Leamhnaigh,” Beatrix insisted in a shaky voice. “I’m lonesome for company that doesna think me the devil.”

  The smile was gone from her father’s face now, and his tone was grave. “It was sworn, Beatrix.”

  Even though her voice was still quiet, little more than a whisper, her ton
e matched the desperate tears now rolling down her cheeks. “’Tis nae fair, Da! I’m all alone and the folk have turned from me since you’ve gone on. They grow more convinced each day that ’tis I committing the slaughter.”

  “But still he comes, and you will wait,” her father insisted. “You are—”

  “Levenach. I ken,” Beatrix sniffed. “But what good Levenach am I? I command naught beyond some simple candles and a goodly sized rock! I canna so much as charm water to boil!”

  “You are a strong witch, Beatrix, but aye, ’tis true that your powers grow less obvious—”

  “Less obvious?”

  “But ’tis only for your protection. With no other Levenach to stand with you, your power would make you a target. It is how it has been for one hundred years. As our family has diminished in numbers, some of our powers became hidden. They will return when the most evil hour is at hand, and when you are matched with a strength equal to your own.”

  “Of what use is a witch with nae power?” Beatrix said, her voice growing petulant now. “’Tis like a man with nae pecker.”

  “Beatrix!” Her father roared with laughter.

  “Well?” Beatrix challenged. “’Tis what I am—Beatrix Levenach, the eunuch witch.”

  “You have all the powers you need for now,” her father said, still chuckling. “You can come to the well to scry, and the most important thing—you can hunt and kill vampires better than any Levenach that has ever been told in our history. You will be the resurrection of our clan.”

  “The folk will likely see me hanged for a witch. Ironic, as ’tis what I am and yet I canna do anything!”

  “Are you still holding to your tale of betrothal?”

  “Aye, but ’tis wearing thin. They keep asking of my intended, and I keep forgetting what it is I’ve already told them.”

  “It will be over and done with soon enough,” her father promised. “He comes—look. Godspeed, Honey Bea.”