Page 39 of Wynter's Bite

She laughed. “Aside from the scandalous reading material you’ve loaned me, I’ve heard my fill of impolite language during my stay. The woman next to me often has outbursts where the most clever obscenities pour from her like a volcanic eruption.”

Her words did not amuse him. Instead, he’d been reminded that she’d spent the last eight years locked up with real lunatics. She could have been hurt.

Suddenly, a scent reached his nostrils, one that made dread pool in his belly. Manchester vampires. The lord’s second among them. Justus had spied upon them and studied their movements ever since he came here to search for Bethany.

“I have to go,” he whispered. “I will return tomorrow after sunset.”

“But Justus...” she protested.

Time ran out. Just as the Manchester vampires neared the grounds of the asylum, Justus leapt across the parapet to another gargoyle downwind from them and scrambled behind it before he was in eyeshot.

Their voices reached his sensitive ears, even though they were still quite some distance away.

“I swear, Chester, I smelled a rogue nearby,” one said.

“And I’m telling you, I didn’t smell anything, Carl,” the vampire who must be Chester replied. “I’m forty years older than you, so my senses are sharper.” Their footsteps drew closer until Justus heard one of them tap the wrought iron gate. “Besides, what would one be doing around here? The only prey around is locked in the madhouse, where one can’t sink their fangs into them. And why would anyone want to? I don’t want to be infected by their madness.”

Carl laughed. “Our kind cannot catch any illness. And I don’t believe insanity is contagious anyway. But I insist that I smelled something. And Emily told me she saw a strange vampire two nights ago. A male, with hair as red as blood.”

“Two nights ago?” Chester’s voice went thick with mockery. “He’d be long gone by now. Frank or Rodney would have chased him away if he didn’t have the sense to take off on his own. And I still say no vampire would have any business hanging about a place like this.”

Justus nodded. Yes, let them avoid this place.

“But what if it’s a mad vampire? I hear many rogues are cracked.” Their voices faded as their argument continued.

Justus waited several minutes before climbing down the building. If the Manchester vampires caught him breaking Bethany out of the asylum, who knew what they would do? Keeping his senses open for others, he made his way to a set of hovels on the outskirts of the village. He’d never seen any of the Manchester vampires around this area, either because it was just past their borders, or they didn’t care about the poverty stricken mortals who eked a living out of the barely sustainable soil.

Normally, Justus despised feeding on the poor. They were already malnourished as it was, and to weaken them further rattled his conscience. But the vicar of this impoverished area was a corrupt, greedy sod who leeched off the labors of the beleaguered folk. Justus had been preying on him almost every night and if the man succumbed to death from blood loss, he wouldn’t feel so much as a twinge of remorse.

He found the vicar still awake, drinking a jug of ale and flipping through a dog-eared book of erotic illustrations. The lecherous wastrel did that often. Justus only hoped he’d arrived before the vicar became fully engrossed in the drawings. That was a sight he never wanted to see again.

Tapping on the window, he captured the vicar’s gaze the moment the man looked up. In his trance, the vicar rose from the table and approached the window like an obedient pup. The moment he opened the shutters, Justus seized him and sank his fangs into his neck. He drank deeply this time, needing all the strength he could muster for Bethany’s rescue.

Once the vicar was released and sent to his bed, Justus wove through the pitiful cluster of farms, looking for something that could help him break into Bethany’s cell. A hammer and chisel would be ideal, but it would make more sustained noise than if he simply tore the bars free with his bare hands. Though, to be truthful, for all of his brash talk, he wasn’t certain he was capable of such a feat. The bars were thick and deeply embedded in the red brick.

After hours of searching various barns and sheds, he at last found something that might suffice. And just in time, for the sky was turning gray with the coming dawn. Justus made his way back to the crypt in family plot behind a dilapidated manor house that belonged to the lord of the poor village. He knew better than to seek refuge in the public cemeteries. In all territories, such areas were reserved for the county’s poorest vampires.

Bethany was right. He needed to secure her freedom and take them away from here as quickly as possible. Saints above, it had been agony to leave her after finally setting eyes upon her at last. Especially because the last time he parted from her, she was lost to him for eight years. Most vampires his age or older scoffed at such a short amount of time, thinking eight years was nothing but a blink of the eye, yet for Justus, those years had dragged on like decades of torture.

If he lost Bethany again after so many years of searching, he’d go mad. Heart pulsing with mingled hope and worry, Justus lay down on the stone slab amidst ancient crumbling skulls and bone dust, counting the endless minutes before the sun would relieve him from this dismal tomb and he’d be with his Bethany at last.

---