Page 43 of The Highwayman's Bite

Rhys grinned and held up his hand. The slash in his palm knitted back together before her eyes.

“Magic,” Vivian whispered in awe.

“Yes,” Rhys agreed in a self-congratulatory tone.

Madame Renarde regarded him with stormy fury. “You’ve doomed us! We are not supposed to know of your kind.”

“And how do you know that?” Rhys asked with narrowed eyes.

“I used to be a spy,” the companion explained. “I know many of the world’s secrets.”

The vampire seemed at a loss for words. He shifted back and forth on the sand for several moments before he cleared his throat. “We should probably head inside before one of you catches a chill.”

Vivian bent and retrieved the sword Madame Renarde had dropped, though it likely wouldn’t do any good. “And why should we spend another night under the roof of a monster that drinks blood to survive?”

To her shock, Rhys flinched. The word had hurt him. Then his jaw tightened as he favored her with a bitter smirk. “Aside from the obvious fact that you’ve been perfectly safe under my roof before learning what I am, I’ll inform you that you were already biding under a vampire’s care before I abducted you.”

“Uncle is a vampire?” Even as her voice rang with disbelief, Rhys’s words explained everything about her reclusive, nocturnal uncle.

“He’d be your great-great-great uncle at the least.” Rhys gestured for them to follow him inside. “And he is not just any vampire, he is the Lord Vampire of Blackpool.”

Vivian was tempted to refuse to return to the cave, but then she shivered as a chill wind picked up, piercing the sweat-soaked fabric of her dress to assault her skin. As if in agreement with the futility of the situation, Madame Renarde sneezed.

Reluctantly, she realized that Rhys had a point. Him being a vampire would hardly change the conditions of their captivity, aside from making the likelihood of escape much more dismal.

When they returned to the cave, Rhys added more wood to the fire and filled the tea kettle. The actions seemed so normal in the face of what she’d learned about him.

Vampire, her mind echoed. A vampire had abducted her. A vampire had talked and laughed with her. A vampire had taught her to curse. A vampire had dueled with her.

A vampire had kissed her.

A sudden thought jolted her. Had he used his mesmerizing powers to coerce her? Then she remembered the desire that flooded her when his lips had claimed hers that fateful night. Desire that returned when he’d held her in his arms earlier. No, she had kissed him willingly.

And that was a much more alarming thought.

So alarming that she’d temporarily lost the significance of the fact that her Uncle Aldric was also a vampire.

Now Rhys’s words earlier this night: “You had best pray to the heavens that you never learn what I know of Lord Thornton.”

Yet he’d now told them. And Madame Renarde had appeared to be more fearful of the knowledge of what Rhys was than of Rhys himself. Was there some sort of group of vampire authorities that killed humans for discovering their secrets? She thought there might be. And Uncle Aldric could be one of those authorities. Rhys said he was the Lord Vampire of all of Blackpool. That must mean that he reigned over all the vampires who lived in that region.

What would Uncle do when he found out that Vivian and Madame Renarde knew what he was?

When Rhys handed her a cup of tea, she voiced her thoughts. “This is what you meant when you said that you and my uncle move in the same circles.”

He nodded.

“And does my uncle know that Madame Renarde and I have been abducted by another vampire?” she prodded.

“No.” Rhys said with a satisfied smirk. “And that is probably why he’d rather try to hunt me down than simply pay the ransom. He thinks he is dealing with a human, thus his pride prevents him from allowing me to win.”

Madame Renarde coughed again. “Then this is your trump card. Letting Lord Thornton know that his foe is on equal footing. But if he has the same abilities as you do, why are you so confident that he won’t find you?”

“That danger will increase once he is apprised of what I am,” Rhys allowed, sipping his tea. “However, we are quite far from Blackpool, for one thing, and for another, Lord Vampires encounter difficulty travelling because they must secure permission as well as hunting rights from the Lord of each territory he passes through.”

“What if he were to send one of his subordinates?” Madame Renarde asked, then blew her nose with her handkerchief.

Rhys shrugged. “He would still have to ask permission for their passage.”

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