Where A Witch Goeth

Chapter Five: Double-Edged Kiss

The vampire whispering against my ear was utterly unconcerned that five werewolves and two more in man-form were coiled to launch at him.

When he spoke again, his French accent had evaporated, replaced with an old-fashioned lilt. "Myself? I had three. Little blonde bairns, that is. Two lads and a lassie. They played in this cave. Swam in the pool below us. Grew up. Grew old. Fed the worms long ago. I could not keep them with me. My maker was a much more formidable laird than this Alpha, and he forbade it.

"Abraham, it is a terrible undertaking to make a monstrous child, he told me. It is done neither from love nor hate, but only from necessity. He was not wrong. Time has shown me this. And now, here we are at an ill-advised making in the very cave where my maker slept when he first came to this valley. He would be very displeased by this." The vampire's voice changed from its pleasant lilt, and now he hissed at Unger's wolf. "What you do is an abomination, you fool. I can hear from his cries this boy was not prepared. He will not survive it." His voice returned to his elegant French accent. "Is their victim your husband, Madame? The father of your bébé? Shall I avenge you by killing all the beasts who have stolen him from you?"

I did not think the things he said were meant either to horrify or comfort. I think he found it amusing, to speak with such civility about terrible deeds as if he were a character in a penny dreadful. I was sure of this when he didn't even allow me to answer his question, preferring instead the sound of his own detached voice.

"Yes, Madame, I think vengeance is required. These modern fools have not the stones for monster-making, except in their women's beds. Their intended target has not been brought near to death with enough haste, and the full moon is too far away. He has too much fight left. His fever will run too high, and it will kill him before his first change. I can smell death upon him even more strongly than I smell your oozing blood."

He lifted my arm to his mouth and lathed at the streams pouring from the punctures.

The way he moved my injured arm hurt, and I whimpered, but the pain stopped as soon as his tongue soothed the wound. I tensed in awful anticipation of a true vampire attack, but the moment he tasted my blood he seemed to change his mind. The strangest sensation I had ever felt was the snick of the vampire's incisors as they involuntarily elongated against my skin at the same time I felt the monster's hesitation. He cursed in French and elegantly whirled away from me, keeping hold of my hand, as if we had been involved in some old-fashioned dance.

It was then that I got my first good look at him. His overriding feature was momentary shock.

I was also shocked—at his face because it was unknown to me. For some reason that made no sense at all, I expected to recognize him. I expected him to be one of the four vampires from my vision, but of course, he could not be. That vision had been no hallucination. What I saw had happened in the past—a memory granted from the earth, which never forgets. The vampires in my vision were dead and gone. I had tasted their ashes.

The one before me was clearly alive—well, alive as a vampire could be, I supposed. Though he was known to me, he was very like one of the vampires that I had seen in my vision. Likely, they had been related through their human bloodlines.

The one who had burned in my vision wore twisted, agonized features, but I had seen his face slacken in death before his body turned to ash. That face shared a shocking similarity of features with the man before me. Dark, impenetrable eyes, straight, brooding black brows, youthful, expressive contours with beautiful bones. The vampire regarding me now had features slightly more fine than the one in my vision. His chin was a bit more delicate, whereas the dead vampire that had clearly been his biological kin had a squarer jaw and a firmer mouth. In my vision, the burning vampire's hair had no longer existed, but now I imagined it was of the same dark, shiny ilk as his relative. The vampire that stood before me wore his hair in a style that few but rock stars could pull off. Lank locks fell to his jaw from a center part that somehow lofted, probably by blowdrying and product. The style was neatly tapered around the neck.