Vampire - When Darkness Falls Part 1

WHEN DARKNESS FALLS.

Shannon Drake

Prologue

The Tomb

"So you want to be scared, eh? Really scared? Then it's darker, deeper, into the bowels of the earth!" the tour guide exclaimed, dramatically sweeping a section of his black cloak over his shoulder.

He had a pleasant, cultured Edinburgh accent. Rs that rolled. Clean enunciation. "Yes. Deeper. For those of you who scoff at the ghosts of simple murderers, at the haunting mewlings of their victims, we will go onward."

"Can't hardly wait!" intoned Jeff Dean, a dark-haired, good-looking college kid.

"Yes, onward, lead us onward, for heaven's sake-I'm just shaking in my pants!" his date, Sally Adams, added. She was a pretty blonde who managed to ruin the effect of her youth and beauty with a skintight blouse and short, short skirt. Her lipstick was way too red for her coloring and covered more of her face than just her lips. She pretended to be bored, but she was hanging on to Jeff's arm.

"For heaven's sake, yes, please do something scary!"

That came from another of their companions, a tall, skinny, red- haired boy-man named Sam Spinder. His att.i.tude was bored and taunting as well.

Jade MacGregor had come with the three of them and six other college-age visitors. She had met up with the group earlier while touring the castle; they had suggested the night excursion. Though they were a younger group- rich kids visiting Europe on their folks'

money-and she was a brand-new publisher and writer, working on a travel piece about medieval lifestyles, she had found the thought of the tour intriguing, and important to her work, so she had joined the group.

She had come to Scotland on her own, something she had wanted to do, but touring a foreign country alone could be quite lonely. The young people in the group were twenty-one and twenty-two to her twenty- five-not such a great distance in age-but she was already feeling as if she were fifty and they were living in a perpetual realm of adolescent football, fraternities, drugs, and rock and roll. She'd been dismayed to discover the extent of this group's recreational drug taking-they had come with an a.r.s.enal of pills and a variety of things to smoke. That they took such chances in a foreign country seemed exceptionally worrisome to her, and they had razzed her about not joining in.

Still, the tour was proving to be fun and entertaining. The night was beautiful, a full moon rising. It was fall, and the commercial significance of Halloween had touched Edinburgh along with ancient superst.i.tions. The streets were dressed for autumn and for Halloween; ghoulies and ghosties adorned shop windows. It was a good night to be out.

Her companions, however, were somewhat wild.

They were proving to be rude as well.

She wasn't quite sure what they were on tonight, but it was making them bold and brash-and insultingly cruel.

They were enjoying heckling the tour guide, who seemed to have the ability to take it all in stride.

"I'm shaking in my boots already!" Jeff said, faking a shiver.

"Where did you get that spiel, that accent-that look? High school drama? Ooh, I do shake!"

The sarcasm directed at the hardworking tour guide was unfair, Jade thought. Their guide was good-thirtyish, tall, lean, and yes, dramatic, perhaps a would-be Hamlet who had found his living as a tour historian, adding pathos to his recitations about the long-ago evil that had plagued the streets of Scotland. He had taken great relish and delight in extolling the inhumanity of man, explaining deaths by plague, by execution, and by murder most foul. They had gone underground, where the modern city had grown up over ancient closes, roadways that once housed homes, shops, taverns, and the everyday life of a people.

No more. Now, by night, the underground was empty- except for the tours. Ghosts were introduced in different rooms; grisly murders were described in detail. This was, after all, the city of Hare and Burke, royal murder and espionage, and the utmost butchery imaginable-and unimaginable-in the medieval world. The tour guide's grasp of history was very good, Jade knew, because she had studied much of it.

The guide had led them from the rear of Saint Giles- where children were hanged once upon a time for so much as stealing a loaf of bread-around dark and shadowy streets, and then down into the closes. An older couple with them had appreciably oohed and aahed at the proper places; a young couple with boys of about nine and ten had asked questions and received answers, totally enjoying the tour. There was a single man on the tour, older than the college crowd, but by how much, Jade couldn't exactly say. He was extremely good-looking, with fascinating dark eyes, the kind that could seem ebony one minute, then suddenly lighter the next, a curious brown shade, even ... red. He was tall, very tall, perhaps six-foot-three, and because of his height, he appeared lean, but having stood behind or near him at various stops along the tour, Jade knew that his shoulders were very broad and that beneath the fabric of his well-cut suit coat, he was probably nicely muscled. He watched the tour guide with interest. He hadn't jumped at all, or oohed or aahed, but he had listened to all the tour guide had to say with a respectful silence. He had kept somewhat to the rear of the group, in the shadows, never speaking. Actually, only the college crowd-nine in the group-had hissed and mocked and heckled. The young couple and their children had been totally intrigued.

"Where are we going?" Tony, another of the boys, asked. He'd been among the worst of the hecklers, a football player with a shaved head and shoulders the size of Cleveland and no neck between them. He seemed to consider himself too tough for the concept of fear. He and Jeff had already agreed to be volunteers. Pretending to be men branded as traitors, they had been lightly flogged with the guide's cat-o'-nine- tails, and had turned their backs on the crowd for a pretend disembowelment and hanging. They had made a huge joke of the proceedings, but the guide had gone along with all their foolery.

"Maybe we're not supposed to ask," Marianne, Tony's girlfriend and, oddly enough, the shyest and sweetest in the group, suggested hesitantly.

"Don't be ridiculous," said Ann, a tall, thin redhead with the impatient air of a bored scholar. "If you don't ask ..." Her voice trailed; she lifted her palms.

"You don't get to find out," Marianne said.

"And know if you really want to go or not," Ann said sagely.

"Hey!" Tony repeated. "Come on, she's right. Just where is it that we're going?"

"You said you wanted to be scared," the tour guide reminded them.

"Yeah, d.a.m.ned right, better than what we've seen so far," Jeff said.

"So tell us, where are we going?"

"Down to the dead," the tour guide told them dramatically.

"Down to the dead!" Jeff repeated, using his best Boris Karloff imitation.

Jade happened to notice that the tall, silent man on the tour frowned slightly. He seemed to realize she was watching him. His eyes caught hers. They were dark, incredibly dark. Black as the night. No ... lighter again, weather eyes, every-changing eyes. They were brown again. A brown touched by fire. For a moment she felt as if she couldn't turn away. A strange sense of warmth filled her. It wasn't just a feeling; she couldn't turn away. Or was she simply doing this to herself?

"And where is that?" Sally, the blonde with the skintight blouse, asked loudly, breaking the strange sense Jade had experienced of being like a moth drawn to a flame.

Yes, a moth to flame. The flame was in his eyes. Now they were amber eyes ... fire eyes, the eyes of a wolf at night. Arresting.

s.e.xy! she thought.

A stranger in a strange land, she reminded herself, uncomfortable suddenly with the way she had felt about a stranger. Hey, she warned herself. She was smart and savvy. Intelligent, friendly, but streetwise and careful. Not the type to fall for a total stranger under strange circ.u.mstances. Still ... he was compelling.

Very s.e.xy. Not just good-looking, sensual, s.e.xy.

Those eyes . . .

Um, those eyes. They caught hers. Yes, she was watching him.

He knew it. Did it amuse him? Perhaps not.

For yes, he was watching her as well.

"You'll see. First we're for a stop at Ye Olde Hangman's Tavern- for a wee bit o' Scots whiskey-or an ale, or a gin and tonic, or even a swallow of fine wine, if ye've a mind, mum!" the tour guide said to Sally. Sally sniffed, indicating her doubt that Ye Olde Hangman's Tavern might have wine that she would consider drinking, much less enjoy. Sally turned away. Jade, still watching their tour guide, was slightly unnerved to see the way he looked at Sally.

Chilling. And odd. Throughout the tour, he had handled the heckling well, appearing hurt and wounded rather than insulted by the jibes cast his way. He didn't look exactly angry now. No, the look was more ...

calculating.

Like a hunter stalking prey.

"Follow me!" he said.

Jade gave herself a mental shake. His smile was back in place. As they walked, Jade saw the tall, amber-eyed man talk to the couple with the young boys, warning them that the graveyards could be unsettling. The woman started to argue, telling him, "Oh, the boys are fine. They know myth from history, the present from the past-" She broke off, looking at the man. Then she told her husband, "Peter! We're leaving the tour here."

"Mary! This will be the best part-"

"A big tankard of ale will be the best part for you, Peter," Mary replied. "After that, we take the boys back to the Balmoral Hotel!"

They reached the tavern, easy access off the Royal Mile. The tavernkeeper, seeing their guide, nodded and called to one of his girls to see that they were quickly served. Jake chose an ale on draft. Sally and Jeff sat across from her at a dingy bar table in the center of the tavern. "Think he can scare us 'among the dead'?" Sally queried, giggling. Still, Jade thought, she sounded a little uncomfortable.

"He's nothing but a pile of hokey baloney," Jeff said disdainfully.

"No doubt we'll see a few old tombstones. And maybe the statue of that little dog."

"Ah, my friends!" their guide said, spinning around them, his black cape twirling. "I have disappointed you throughout the night! Angus!"

he called to the bartender. "Send these youths each a shot of your best-Johnnie Walker Black, if you will. Drink up, my friends, on me. I promise, a taste of Scotland's finest in your veins and what I am about to show you will curl your toes! The saints preserve me!" He laughed on the last.

"If the Scotch is on you, buddy, I'm in!" Jeff declared, raising the shot gla.s.s that had been brought to him. He downed the liquor in one swallow and chased it with his beer. Jade ignored the shot that had been set before her. She felt the tour guide staring at her. She smiled.

"You've scared me just fine already," she a.s.sured him.

He inclined his head slightly and turned to the others. "I'll tell you a tale then, about the crypt we'll explore. It's the vault for the de Brus family. Ah, now I see the historian among you looking at me!" he declared, catching Jade's eyes. "Aye, 'tis true that de Brus on the one hand became Bruce, as in our famous good king, Robert the Bruce. But there was another family-one that stubbornly remained de Brus, and none other. Aye, and when first they came, there was, they say, an illegitimate cousin among them, and he was cursed with the illness more than most. Some say the family curse was syphilis; some say that he was a hemophiliac. Whatever, this cousin went mad and was killed by his own family. Now this was early in time, around the year 1080.

He left behind a daughter, a rare beauty, but the family had her locked away in a tower. Still, as young men will do, suitors came to the tower, and some would find entry...."

"And then?" Sally demanded impatiently as his voice trailed.

"Then they tried to get into her pants!" Jeff said flatly. The group all laughed.

"Did they wear pants back then?" asked Tom Marlow, another young man in the group of teens. Of the boys, he was the quietest-it was the first time Jade had heard him talk that night. She had a feeling he wouldn't have said a word at all if it hadn't been for the Johnnie Walker Black.

"Shush!" Sam Spinder said. Apparently Tom Marlow didn't get to speak often. "Then?" Sam demanded of the guide, downing his own Scotch with a grimace and a swallow.

"Then they were never seen again," the guide said with a shrug.

"But bones would be found out on moors and marshlands. And young women would disappear as well. It's said that the poor beauty de Brus would cry, and her anguish would be like a howling in the night, like that of a million demons, like banshees coming for the dead; oh, she would cry in such agony that her kinfolk would find some poor peasant girls and bring them to her ... and likewise, they would never be seen again, for 'tis said she liked to bathe in blood, the younger, the purer, the better."

"That's the Countess Bathory story!" complained Hugh Riley, another of the football players. He wasn't quite as big as the others- maybe not quite as solid on the field. He did seem to know his history.

And he had listened and paid attention throughout the night. An interesting fellow.

"And Countess Bathory is a very real historical personage, cruel, remorseless, and without conscience." Jade said sharply. "She caused the deaths of hundreds-perhaps thousands-of young women. She did bathe in blood, and her appet.i.tes were cruel and voracious."

She felt a strange warmth again suddenly, as if she were being watched from behind. She turned. He was there, yes, at a table in the corner of the tavern. He sat alone. He drank a beer so dark it looked red. Maybe it was wine, a very large gla.s.s of dark red wine. He raised the gla.s.s to her, as if he agreed. She could almost hear his voice in her ear. It would be deep and cultured. Yes, evil does exist in this world; the cruelties of man to man need not be exaggerated!

He didn't speak. He inclined his head toward her and drank.

She turned away quickly.

"Great story! So this b.i.t.c.h like the blood of virgins, eh?" Sam asked.

"That will make you safe from any danger, Sally!" Jeff told the blonde.

"You all know what you can do with yourselves!" Sally said, drawing away from Jeff.

"Ah, come on now, Sal!" Jeff said. "We're teasing. I mean seriously-where do you get an adult virgin these days? Unless it's the teach over here-eh, teach?" he teased Jade.

She didn't have to answer. Their guide had swooped down on them again. "Our lady just liked young blood, my friends, the more tainted the better! Aye, she was a sensual one, she was!" He widened his eyes at them and winked. "Drink up, drink up, my friends! It's time to venture to the crypt!"

The young couple and their sons departed, Mary tipping the guide well. "The boys have loved this," she told him.

He smiled. "Sweet dreams, and many thanks."

The older couple bowed out as well.

Jade thought about calling it a night herself, but she had the feeling that this particular tour wasn't offered often, that the hecklers had goaded the guide into a special excursion, and that it might be her one chance to see something really unusual.

The dark-eyed stranger, she saw, was staying with them as well.

They left the tavern, walking darkened streets, taking all kinds of twists and turns. Jade had wondered what cemetery they were going to-she thought she knew most of them in the city. But they came upon a derelict church that seemed to rise high upon a hill. It was surrounded by unkempt graves-broken stones, slanted stones, lichen-covered stones, and those that seemed bone white and glowing beneath the light of the moon.

Jade looked up as they walked through wrought-iron gates and into the churchyard. There was a full moon tonight-perfect for such a tour.

"And it's nearly midnight!" a girl named Julie said. She giggled and clung to Hugh. like Sally, she was wearing a top that clung to her ample b.r.e.a.s.t.s and displayed a cavern of cleavage. She seemed sweet enough to Jade--just young and a little vacant.

"The midnight hour!" their tour guide exclaimed, lifting his hands to the heavens. "The traditional time for all witchcraft, for demons to rise, for the bloodl.u.s.t of the undead!"

Sally giggled nervously. "It is pretty dark."

"There's a full moon! You can see like it's broad daylight!" Jeff a.s.sured her.

"Come, see the crypt," the guide invited.

They walked over uneven ground. Jade turned as they walked, to study the architecture of the old church. Built of stone, it was Celtic in design. The windows all seemed blackened, like countless vacant eyes staring out at the night. Staring back at the church, Jade suddenly tripped over a gravestone.

She felt herself steadied by a pair of strong hands. Startled, she turned to see the face of the tall, aloof stranger with the curious fire- and-darkness eyes.

"Are you all right?" His voice was deep, slightly accented.

Scottish? She wasn't sure. It seemed strange to hear him speak. He did have a deep and cultured voice, husky, compelling ... as sensual as his eyes. And yet, though he certainly sounded as arresting as he looked, he also sounded perfectly normal.

What had she been expecting? "Am I all right?" she repeated, and felt like a fool. She knew she blushed. "I ... of course. I'm just klutzy, I'm afraid," she said.

"This graveyard is not a good place to be at night," he told her. He was still staring at her, his amber eyes strange and disturbing. He didn't just look at her; he studied her. He smoothed back a lock of her hair. It seemed a very intimate gesture.