Feet back on the ground, Max tossed Starcasset in after Sara, then shoved a heavy table in front of the door, wedging it under the knob, and started off after Victoria. His neck was cold; his fingers tingled. There were undead nearby, and many of them, if his senses were accurate.
And they always were.
The only reason he caught up to Victoria was because she’d taken a wrong turn—no surprise—and ended up in a dead-end hall.
He didn’t have to ask where she was going; she turned on him and said, “My mother!” Her eyes were worried and her mouth set in an anxious line as she pushed past him.
“This way.”
However, they’d not gone very far back when they turned a corner and were running down yet another hall just as a second door opened. More than a dozen creatures streamed in, at least some of them vampires.
Max saw Victoria run right into one of them, and before she could react another creature had leaped on her from behind. She went down in a bundle of pink lace and red rosettes, bringing the vampire with her and helping him on his way over her head.
He saw nothing else after that, however, for he was, of necessity, fully engaged with the four who leaped on him. He quickly dispatched one with his stake, but two more took its place. Something slammed into Max’s legs from behind, sending his knees buckling and him collapsing to the floor.
He reared up, swinging, just as a sharp report echoed through the room. A blinding pain drilled into his shoulder, just above the scapula, and then another flash of pain skimmed his boot top, above his knee. Breathless with agony, Max lurched forward, bringing his injured leg up behind to slam into the creature as he tried to catch himself on his good arm.
Rolling to the side, he jerked to his feet just as something crashed onto the top of his head and the world went black.
“I vow, I expect a vampire to leap out at us any moment!” Lady Nilly whispered loudly. She was clasping a slender hand to her flat bosom as she led the way down a dark, dusty hall, lit only by the candle she held aloft.The passageway was wide enough for the three of them to walk abreast, if they so chose, although the occasional table they passed might have necessitated that one of them temporarily fall behind. Vases or statues, many of them broken or lying on their sides, decorated the random furnishings. The ceiling was high, the walls lined with wainscoting, and everything was cobwebbed and dusty. More than once the ladies were startled by the sudden appearance of a cloudy mirror reflecting their progress along the hall.
“Vampire?” Lady Winnie gasped, slapping her own hand to her chest with a loud thunk and a poof of powder. She crowded up behind her slight friend and the safety of her light. “I’m not wearing my cross! And I’ve left my reticule with garlic at home! And my stake!”
“Hush, Winnie,” came Lady Melly’s voice behind them. “I scarcely need remind you that there aren’t any such things as vampires, and it’s just as well you aren’t wearing that ridiculous cross. It’s too large and bangs against you every time you move. It sounds like a morbid heartbeat, and it’s so big it’s dangerous.”
“It was supposed to be dangerous,” Winnie replied, her voice bordering on a wail. She’d grasped the back of Nilly’s gown and was holding a fistful of silk. “To the vampires.”
“This is just the perfect house for the undead to be lurking about,” Nilly said, turning to look back at her friends with wide eyes. The single candlestick she held made a yellow glow about her face, lighting her wispy blond curls. “I can feel it! The restlessness in the air…the sensation of dark shadows, moving toward us…the sound of bat wings flapping—”
“Stop,” squealed Winnie, releasing her friend’s gown to clap her hands over her ears. “I don’t know why we came to this dark, horrible place anyway. And why ever did we sneak away from that nice Mr. Zavier?”
Melly’s hand on the duchess’s plump arm nearly sent her friend through the cobwebbed ceiling, but her strident voice was sharp enough to penetrate the duchess’s hysterics. “You’re making a cake of yourself, Winnie. Do cease your wailing. And it was your idea to send Mr. Zavier for drinks whilst we sneaked away to start on this treasure hunt. Now, Nilly, let me look at that map. And do stop prattling about vampires. I don’t know why we’re letting you be in the lead.”
Lady Melisande pushed her way past her hysterical friend, who had twisted about to grab onto Melly’s arm and was now clinging to her like a good corset.
“I don’t hear anyone else,” whispered the cowering duchess fearfully. “We must be far away from the rest of the people. Oh, why did we come? We’ll be found tomorrow with our throats torn open and three big Xs marked on our snowy white bosoms.”
Melly had snatched the map, which was really nothing more than a crude drawing of the villa’s floor plan. She struggled to aim it at the illumination of Nilly’s candle, all without catching the large, curling paper on fire. “How badly have you lost us?”
“They won’t tear our throats open,” Nilly remonstrated the duchess, ignoring Lady Melly’s question. “Vampires don’t do that unless you fight them, or unless they are very angry. They just bite your chest or your shoulder and drink your blood.”
Winnie’s hands moved up to cover her alarmingly bare throat, her small eyes goggling as wide as they could, darting about as if to see the lurking vampires before they leaped. “But—”
“My cousin’s wife’s sister’s friend’s mother was bitten by a vampire,” Nilly continued, peering into the darkness ahead of them. “She said it hardly hurt at all…and that it was rather pleasant, in some ways.”
“I don’t see how big fangs cutting into my neck would be almost pleasant,” Winnie replied fearfully, bumping into a low table. “I do believe I should faint dead away so that I wouldn’t feel a thing.”
“May I help you ladies?” came a genteel voice.
All three heads snapped toward the man, who’d suddenly appeared from…well, it was unclear from whence he’d appeared.
Winnie gasped and squeezed Lady Melly’s arm so hard the other woman gasped too. “Wh-wh-wh—” was all she could manage.
“Do not be frightened,” he said, stepping closer, smiling gently, his hand outstretched as if to put off their fears. He wasn’t a young man, but appeared to be of an age with them. He seemed harmless enough, dressed in dusty evening clothes and carrying his own candle. A cobweb clung to his sleeve, suggesting that he, too, had been digging his way through the house in search of the treasure. The man wasn’t particularly handsome, but despite his trim mustache and beard—likely grown to make up for the lack of hair on his head—his face was pleasant. He certainly didn’t look like he was about to sprout fangs and leap upon them.