Crimson Shadows Read online

  Simon laughed humorlessly and gave him a dark glare. "I did not transform Meghann to provide you with a child, my dearest uncle. You cost us forty years with your meddling ways."

  "You cost yourself forty years with Meghann," Alcuin said pointedly, "with your brutalizing, cruel ways." Alcuin would never forget his first meeting with Meghann, how the poor, hurting child had wrung his heart dry with the way she held her head high despite her misery and begged him to teach her to resist the blood lust Simon inflicted on her.

  At the time, Alcuin could not begin to comprehend why Simon chose this wholesome girl for his consort, unless he was satisfying some perverse need to twist that indomitable core of goodness in her. It was decades before Alcuin learned, to his great shock, that Simon Baldevar loved Meghann for the same reasons he did—that he too cherished her bright spirit and had no desire to break it.

  So why did Simon treat her so abominably that she ran from him and sought sanctuary with Alcuin? Alcuin snapped the bonds holding Lee's hands to the pine stump and continued to gaze quietly at the fierce gold eyes glowering down at him.

  "Here," Simon said and tossed a dark bottle at him. "I knew you would balk at taking prey so drink this before you starve the body I've provided."

  Alcuin drank the blood without savoring it as other vampires did, for he'd mortified his sense of taste when he was a mortal priest so he would not overly enjoy food and drink.

  Alcuin fed with quick, economic motions, feeling great pity and some admiration for Simon Baldevar. Had he known from the beginning that Meghann was the end of his cold, callous existence? How it must have frightened Simon to love her and know that love made him vulnerable, made him need someone for the first time in four hundred years. How he'd fought against his love for Meghann, hurting her before she could hurt him because he didn't know how to trust her, how to let her into his heart completely.

  "What a maudlin, insipid fool you are," Simon said contemptuously and Alcuin started, realizing he could not conceal his thoughts while he occupied this newly transformed body. "In Meghann's words, Uncle, please do not waste time 'psychoanalyzing' me. There is a great deal we must do and I do not know how long you'll remain in Lee's body."

  A slight lift in Simon's voice made his last statement a question and Alcuin smothered a smile when he thought how difficult it was for Lord Baldevar to admit ignorance on any subject.

  "I cannot be certain either, Nephew," Alcuin replied, not wanting to antagonize Simon. If he'd never known before, tonight would have proven to Alcuin just how much Simon loved Meghann and Elizabeth, that he'd call upon his deadly enemy to help him keep them safe. "My guess is your spell cannot possibly last beyond sunrise. The body feels strong now but I think it will weaken the longer I remain in it."

  Simon nodded and handed Alcuin a broadsword from the trunk, eyeing him suspiciously for a few minutes before something in Alcuin's expression convinced him he would not attempt an attack against him.

  "You know Mikal abducted Elizabeth?" Simon asked as he closed the circle, giving proper obeisance to the spirits that aided him before the sulphuric fire extinguished.

  "I felt Meghann's pain," Alcuin answered, a hint of reproach in his tone. "She should be by your side."

  "Women have no place in battle," Simon said curtly and gathered up his rain-soaked supplies, tossing them back into the trunk. The storm was letting up, the rain no longer pelting the two vampires but falling down on them as a gentle mist. "Meghann is safe."

  "She'd be safer with you, Nephew. Now she'll blunder into this melee on her own ... I feel she's awakened from your spell. You couldn't enchant her, transform Lee, and invoke me simultaneously—something had to give and it was your hold on Meghann."

  Simon's gaze turned inward and Alcuin knew he was meditating on the link between him and Meghann, master vampire and fledgling, husband and wife. Simon must have felt her alertness for his hawk eyes narrowed and he muttered a smothered oath before he hurried to the driver's side of the car and put the keys in the ignition.

  "Hurry," Simon ordered and gestured to the passenger seat. "We can still dispose of Mikal before Meghann arrives."

  'There is business between us first, Simon," Alcuin said quietly, making no move to enter the car.

  Simon heaved an exasperated sigh and left the car out of gear. "What business could that be, Priest? We are enemies, it is true, but I thought surely one as holy as you could put aside his hostilities to rescue an innocent like my daughter."

  "Your daughter is an innocent, that is true. But have you forgotten the thousands of innocents you killed and debauched over the centuries? If you can love Elizabeth, can you not feel compassion and pity enough for mortals that you will finally leave them in peace?"

  Simon's lips curled in a frightful grimace and for a moment Alcuin thought Simon would spring at him. But he only snarled, "You opportunistic, self-serving mealy-mouthed fool! Do you think to hold my daughter as the ransom to finally convert your great enemy to your insipid ways? Go to hell, Priest!"

  Alcuin saw Simon was moments away from exorcising him from Lee Winslow's body and spoke quickly. "I would never refuse to help someone is such dire circumstances as your daughter. I make no demands of you, Simon Baldevar. I am only asking that you consider a different way, a way that would end the last bit of strife between you and Meghann, for you know very well the guilt that tears at her when she takes mortal lives to satisfy the blood lust. Think how happy you would make Meghann if together you both taught Elizabeth to drink without slaughtering her prey. Simon, you have reveled in the agony of your prey for more than four hundred years and taught your son to take pleasure in pain. Isn't it enough now? Can't you even consider letting go of your hate?"

  "I can consider ripping out your tongue before I must endure another word of this sentimental homily," Simon snapped and Alcuin knew he hadn't reached him. Perhaps Meghann and Elizabeth might someday pierce the cold armor around Simon's heart so that he'd put aside his sadistic, vicious ways once and for all. "Now if you plan to help me rescue Meghann's daughter, get in the car and stop wasting precious time or I shall take my chances with Lee Winslow at my side."

  Alcuin entered the car quietly, not wanting to antagonize Simon any further for it would be nothing short of disastrous if Simon had to face his son alone.

  Twelve

  Mikal Baldevar sat in his office, gazing moodily into a round mirror on his smoked, opalescent glass desk. Normally he felt very happy and smug in this haven he'd designed for himself but tonight his mood was so low the sleek, ultra-modern room with its chrome-plated steel and aluminum furniture, glass walls and curving mirrored panels went unnoticed as he focused all his unhappy attention on his reflection.

  It just wasn't fair to be so plain, Mikal thought glumly, especially considering his genes. What he wouldn't give for his father's striking handsomeness, with those haunting gold eyes and sharp cheekbones. Then there was Meghann with her flaming hair and mermaid eyes, accentuated by dramatically fair skin. With parents like that, it was a cruel twist of fate for nothing better to be staring back at Mikal from the mirror than blade-thin features, an uninspired line of colorless lips, a beaky nose and too high forehead crowned by lusterless black hair.

  It was as though his twin, Elizabeth, had stolen his share of beauty while they occupied Meghann's womb, leaving Mikal with nothing while she took all the best their parents had to offer. Surely Elizabeth, with her jade eyes, long, curving body, and fluffy brown curls was exactly what Father expected beautiful swans like himself and Meghann to produce, while he reacted with disdain to his ugly duckling son.

  Mikal's lower lip jutted out in a childish pout and he glared at the mirror until the glass shattered. Then he picked up a shard and idly started carving up his bare arms in pentagrams and geometric designs, watching his mutilated flesh and lacerated tendons heal instantaneously.

  It had never failed to disgust Father when he came upon Mikal carving up his own flesh ... earning him yet another visi
t to the cellar and blood deprivation. Then again, so many things that Mikal enjoyed appalled Father. He was not supposed to take men for sex, scar his own skin or reveal himself to the mortals.

  That last codicil annoyed Mikal more than all the others. It was bad enough to confine himself to women when Father was around and leave his skin alone but why did he have to hide from the weak mortals? Why did he have to wear the specially made contacts that hid his snake eyes instead of launching himself into a thick crowd of humans, laughing at their shock, glorying in their mass terror as he flaunted his superior strength? But no, Father said such thoughts were the province of the mad. Father's argument was that the mortals outnumbered them and had the daylight edge—even over Mikal, who had little strength to defend himself during the day. That was why vampires must skulk about in secrecy.

  Well, Mikal was working hard (grinding his teeth when he remembered Father's many lectures about his supposed laziness) on eliminating that daylight advantage and soon he'd be ready to let the world know of his existence.

  Mikal's glass shard reached an unyielding hardness and he looked down at his forearm, seeing he'd cut himself down to the bone. He pulled the glass away and watched the ghasdy wound close up, feeling no pain as usual.

  As a boy, Mikal had been very curious about pain ... the pain he caused the animals he caught on the island, the pain of his prey as his fangs ripped into their flesh. He wanted to know why the mortals cried so when their flesh bruised and the blood ran from grisly wounds. After all, Mikal watched blood flow from his own body with no feeling but indifference. What did pain feel like? Mikal never knew any pain— even on the occasions he deliberately broke his bones, there was naught but a mild irritation before the bone knotted up and healed. Sometimes he felt an uncomfortable sort of pulling and dreadful nausea when Father saw fit to deprive him of the blood, but Mikal had no idea what pain was . . . his skin seemed immune to any kind of feeling but that of sexual stimuli. It wasn't until Father rammed that sword into the small of his back and left him to suffer the long, dreary hours until sunset that Mikal finally understood pain and loathed it almost as much as he loathed the creature that inflicted it.

  Mikal's lips curled into a vicious snarl that would have cracked the mirror had he not already done so and he let out a low growl of rage when he thought of Father besting him so easily, even in the sunlight. The old vampire hadn't even looked surprised to see Mikal leaning over him, much less scared. To the contrary, Father seemed to welcome the intrusion to his resting place and the opportunity to humiliate his son before killing him.

  Roaring his displeasure now, Mikal stood up and flung the heavy bronze and glass desk across the room, red faced and trembling as renewed hate for his father washed over him. He hated Father... hated him, hated him, hated him! He hated him for his cool poise and the ironic distance at which he kept his disappointing offspring, for never once displaying the uneasy fear Mikal inspired in all others—even other vampires.

  Well, Mikal had a way to break Father's cool spirit once and for all now. Grabbing a fresh shard from the mirror, Mikal turned to the black glass wall on his left and the occupant that hadn't stirred at all during his fit. . . his badly beaten, much raped, shackled sister, Elizabeth.

  Elizabeth was barely recognizable as the wildcat that screamed vicious curses at Mikal and his human assistants hours before, desperately trying to appear angry instead of frightened while they beat her, but Mikal had systematically drained the fight from his twin sister until she appeared as she did now, unconscious and beaten almost to pulp. In some areas where he'd broken her bones, like her fingers, the skin was taking on a puffy, blackish-purple hue that Mikal thought could turn into gangrene if she lived long enough to develop blood poisoning from her untreated wounds. But she couldn't die just yet; she must be a living presence when Father arrived so Mikal forced himself to break off the torture lest it become too much for her puny, mortal body.

  Mikal admired the contrast of Elizabeth's colorful injuries against the dark backdrop of the wall. He'd inherited some of Father's drawing ability; perhaps he'd paint his dying sister's last moments. After all, her corpse would soon grow too fetid to hang in his office forever. He'd use bright acrylics to capture the vivid grotesquery of Elizabeth's green and yellow bruises, the brilliant crimson splashes of blood and he'd accentuate the model's shocking condition against a black canvas for maximum contrast.

  "Sister," Mikal said and walked over to tickle her slumping chin. "What I should really attempt to capture is your expression when I unmasked myself." How satisfying it had been, after nearly a year of laboring to be the fawning boyfriend litde Ellie Winslow wanted, to watch Elizabeth open the door for him at the beach house and scream when she saw his true silver eyes instead of the tame blue contacts he wore in the mortal world.

  He had to give his sister credit, though. She did not faint or plead when she realized who he was—rather she aimed her knee directly at his genitals and attempted to run up the stairs behind her. It had been easy to catch her, even with an aching crotch that didn't heal immediately in daylight. But Elizabeth did put up enough fight for Mikal to wind up chloroforming her to subdue her and bring her to his lair, where he immediately began her torture, wanting her to wake up to pain and humiliation.

  Mikal started to harden when he thought of Elizabeth's body thrashing from side to side, making a futile effort to dodge his blows and blink back the tears of pain and embarrassment when he and his apprentices took her in any manner they desired. Father and Meghann would die, absolutely die when they saw what Mikal had done to their precious, sheltered daughter. Speaking of which . . .

  "We must make you more presentable, dear Sister," Mikal purred at her, his anger forgotten as he began designing an elaborate vigil from the Legementon on her flat stomach. How very ironic, to desecrate his sister's body with symbols from Father's treasured text of Black Magic.

  Mikal sliced through Elizabeth's skin, smiling at the blood path that followed the jagged edge of glass, forever damaging his sister's flawless—but mortal, and therefore vulnerable—white skin. He licked at the scarlet river flowing down her legs, reflecting that his twin's blood had a potency other mortals lacked— there was a tinge of the dark, heady taste of a vampire in her, a legacy from their parents.

  "What exactly are you, lover?" Mikal inquired of the mute girl. "Not a vampire and not a human ... a misfit, then, just like your brother. If you were merely human, you couldn't continue to dodge my tender ministrations or those of my drones."

  Mikal felt his good mood begin to crumble, as Elizabeth remained unresponsive. The sly bitch had escaped him a mere hour after her torture began. One minute her green eyes were glazed over with pain and terror, the next they were cloudy and lifeless. For one anxious moment, Mikal thought he'd killed her but he found her pulse easily enough. Elizabeth, mere mortal though she was, had managed to escape ... in her soul, at any rate. Now Mikal had the equivalent of a waxen dummy in his clutches—no fun at all.

  "She is still on the astral plane?"

  Annoyed, Mikal turned from his sister and stared at the intruder—a vampire with a delicate, almost ethereal beauty of long, silver-blond tresses that flowed past her hips, deep-set eyes of a rare turquoise color and full, pouting red lips.

  "Do you think Father will appreciate my handiwork, Gabrielle?" Mikal said in greeting, gesturing with the bloodied shard to the wound on Elizabeth's abdomen. "He always was a patron of the arts, no?"

  Gabrielle gave Elizabeth's mutilated body a disinterested glance before she grasped Mikal's wrist and licked the dripping red shard in his hand clean. "Simon will consider the wounds a fleeting nuisance—something that transformation can heal easily."

  "But she is not transformed now," Mikal argued, thinking his sister would never transform—he planned to murder the entire family before dawn. "Any scars she has now she'll carry for eternity."

  Gabrielle shook her head at him and sprawled her voluptuous body on a Corbusier chaise o
f black leather mounted on a contoured tubular frame, making it look like a long, lazy S. With her bright eyes, Gabrielle was the only touch of color within the chrome and glass room . . . Mikal had little use for the bright wood fixtures and vivid colors Father so enjoyed.

  Giving him a seductive pout, Gabrielle pulled her navy silk dress down to reveal a satiny, flawless white breast, pursing her lips at Mikal's indifference. "When I was young and mortal, some brute of a marquise branded me with his family's crest. The mark obscured my nipple but it vanished after Simon transformed me. Also, a tooth I had pulled grew back a month after transformation."

  Mikal could hardly miss the way Gabrielle's voice caressed his father's name, informing him that she was still enamored of the charismatic vampire despite the fact that she'd chosen to betray him by aligning herself with Mikal. He knew the reason for the defection, but bored with torture of his catatonic victim, decided to work on Gabrielle instead.

  "Why did Father transform you?" Mikal asked to begin the diatribe.

  As he expected, the gem-bright blue eyes darkened and the luscious red mouth flattened into an unattractive grimace. "We met in 1789 ... I was a courtesan servicing only the highest caste of the French court, your father a wealthy foreigner some duke entertained by bringing him to me.

  "Simon didn't make himself known to me immediately. At first, he was simply another debauched patron though his tastes were a bit... darker ... than any I'd encountered before."

  Mikal grinned, thinking of his father's quaint, old- fashioned ideals toward women. It was perfectly all right to amuse yourself with bad girls, but you must cherish the good girl, the one you made your wife. What a conservative creature Father was at heart. . . playing at romantic love by abandoning a life rich with perverted fantasy and orgiastic excess to embrace monogamy with a naive virgin! Mikal was certain that Meghann was never asked to allow other women to take her or exposed to the sadistic bacchanals that Gabrielle claimed Father used to adore. How could Father not be bored out of his mind with Meghann, Mikal wondered as he listened to Gabrielle.