It was like a dream. A nightmare. “Carolyn. Willie. Joe. Josette. How could you?”
She turned to face the drapes fluttering the wind, accompanied by the wail of the widows. They were here in Josette’s room. They were all around her. “Barnabas, how could you?”
“I’m cursed, Victoria.” He stood in the shadows, out of the range of light. “I was hungry. Do you know what Collins blood means to me? The blood of my own which ran in my veins?”
He came closer. His face was still shadowed, but a glint of red shone in a dark eye. “I can smell it in you. You look so much like Josette, but in truth, you are mine.”
His lips parted, to reveal a fang, gleaming in the moonlight.
A thrill of terror ran down Victoria Winters’s spine to see this.
Yes, this made sense, too. She’d summoned the past, beckoned the past. Any past. The past came to her in the form of a beautiful monster, ready to bite her.
Angelique’s laughter rang in her ears, cruel and sweet.
If only she could put her mark on him, scar him, even as he came for her, to mark her as his own.
She raised a hand, the very hand which killed Noah Gifford. Raised it to touch his lips.
“Let flesh and fang meet when blood flows.” She felt the power stirring in her words, in her claim. “I am yours, Barnabas, but you are mine.”
Angelique’s laughter died, turning into a cry of anguish, a cry which wasn’t hers.
Barnabas dropped to his knees, lifting his hands his face, a raw scream pouring out of his mouth.
Victoria’s hand burned with a searing pain even more intense than when Noah Gifford died.
She looked down to see a second bloody wound, the shape of a crescent moon appearing in her flesh.
“Barnabas!”
Dr. Julia Hoffman appeared in the doorway, gazing at the fallen vampire with her mouth a perfect o, right before she raced to his side.
Maggie Evans was sharp on her heels. She looked down at the doctor and the monster she loved.
She raised her head to stare at Victoria, huge dark eyes filled with a shocked disbelief.
It was the same look she’d seen in Josette’s eyes when she spoke of Angelique. Of seeing the dolls, the fetishes she’d made of Jeremiah and herself. The toy solider throttled by the scarf. The doll with the pins in it.
Shocked that anyone could do such a thing. Especially to someone dear to her.
A small sound, a stifled cry lost in the moans which Barnabas continued to let out, Julia holding him, trying to get him to let her see his face.
Victoria Wintes realized it was herself.
She took flight, focusing on that open doorway. The wails were getting louder. The widows were screaming right along with Barnabas.
She raced out into the storm, heedless of the rain beating down upon her.
***
“Go after her!” Barnabas gasped, lifting his head, even though he still held onto Julia.
Maggie Evans didn’t waste time arguing. She ran after Victoria.
“I’m all right.” Barnabas gasped, lowering his hand.
There was a blood crescent upon his cheek.
“Barnabas!” Julia cried, reaching out to touch him, fingers shying of the wound.
“It was an accident.” Barnabas did his best to smile with some of his usual aloofness. “Really, Dr. Hoffman, are you so squeamish at the sight of a little blood? You know how quickly I heal.”
“Right.” Dr. Julia Hoffman swallowed, drawing her composure around her like a coat. “What happened?”
“You know what happened.” Barnabas lowered his hand with a grimace. “My lust for blood got the better of me.”
He struggled to rise, regaining his dignity.
Julia Hoffman kept a firm grip on his arm, helping him. “If that’s so, why isn’t Victoria Winters lying half-conscious on the floor, weakened from the loss of blood?”
Barnabas didn’t answer. He gazed at the door through which Victoria had departed as if she’d carried off his last hope. “I don’t know.”
“You may not.” Dr. Julia Hoffman looked in the same direction, her mouth thin with anger. “I’m fairly certain that someone else does.”
***
The night screamed around Victoria Winters as if echoing a thousand fears, a thousand wrongs, a thousand pains.
Including Josette’s. Victoria felt her feet stumbling in the same fateful path to the cliff that she’d taken. Trying to escape.
Only Josette had been innocent. She’d done nothing wrong other than accept Barnabas as he was. Accept his love and the darkness which came with it.
What made her run? Angelique? Barnabas himself?
Or something in Josette herself?
Victoria couldn’t claim innocence. No matter what Barnabas intended, coming for her with fangs bared, she’d been the one who hurt him.
Victoria moaned, feeling the wind carry her voice away to join the others.
“Victoria, wait!” Maggie’s voice cut through the screams, sharp with authority, soft with concern.
Victoria stopped at the sound of it, swaying on her feet, the wind ripping at her coat.
Maggie wore a similar coat, of billowing white. It almost made Victoria let out a hysterical laugh. Their clothes, this hill. It was all almost like an odd homage to Josette’s death, running out on a night like tonight in a white gown which the winds must have threatened to tear right off.
“It’s all right, Vicki.” The calm assurance with just a hint of exultation exuded from Maggie Evans as she stood like a sorceress of legend, auburn hair whipping in his wind. “You came to Collinwood, looking for your heritage. It found you.”
“What do you mean?” Victoria screamed, feeling none of the calm exuded by the other woman. If anything she was filled with an almost elementary excitement.
If she let go, she could take flight. Let the wind take her. Join all the others to wail and cry forever, free in the air.
There was a certain appeal to such a fate. Not to mention a certain punishment she might well deserve.
“You get that power from your father.” The awe and respect tempering Maggie’s calm laced her her last two words, brightening her dark eyes. For the first time Victoria Winters saw flecks of green in the soft brown. “I’ve been expecting it to manifest.”
“My father.” She hadn’t expected this. Not here. Not on Widows’s Hill. This place belonged to women. It belonged to Josette. It belonged to Elizabeth Collins Stoddard and Collinwood.
Not some mysterious man who might claim paternity over her.
“Meeting Barnabas may have confused you. Seeing Josette and your own likeness to her.” The measured calm made each word thrum like a musical note, beating in tune with Maggie’s heart. “Your legacy here may have confused you. Lured you away from the other half of your heritage, but it was always here, waiting for you.”
Maggie took a step forward, a princess ready to claim a long-lost sister, a legacy which concerned her as much as her bewildered listener. “As was I.”
“You warned me not to come to Collinwood.” Maggie Evans’s calm was spreading through the ground under her feet. It reached for Victoria Winters, finding her center. Calming her. “You didn’t want me to come here.”
“I underestimated you. I underestimated your strength. I underestimated your power.” Maggie’s eyes glowed with a joy, gleaming like a cat’s in the night. “It is his power. Your father’s.”
“What do you mean?” Victoria found herself frozen as if she’d turned into a statue. She couldn’t move.
Somehow Maggie Evans had mesmerized her. Perhaps turned Victoria Winters into stone.
Maggie frowned, some of her triumph softening. She closed the distance between the other woman and herself.
“It’s concentrated in your left hand. You’re left-handed, so it is slightly different than him.” Maggie took Victoria’s hand in hers. “If you wish to use your power, you need to use that hand. You can shield others from it if you wear a glove. You may wish to do so or cover it until you learn how to do so.”
Victoria flinched, but she didn’t pull away. “Maggie, what are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about you, Victoria Winters.” Maggie stroked her hand with a slow, sensual reverence. “I’m talking about what’s awakening in you. Your father’s legacy.”
“You know my father?” This was unbelievable, yet she’d always suspected Maggie Evans was keeping a few secrets.
Including ones about Victoria Winters’s own past, whom she truly was. It turned out she’d been right.
“He is my mentor. My master.” For the first time Maggie’s calm was ruffled, her assurance disturbed. She avoided looking directly at Victoria. “In this lifetime he’s known as Professor T.E. Stokes. He’s had other lifetimes.”
“He sounds old.” Victoria’s voice came out hushed, almost like a little girl’s. “Like Barnabas.”
“Actually he’s older than Barnabas.” Maggie smiled a little at her own words. “He’s a little too canny about matters occult to reveal his true name. The truest name he’ll offer others is Count Petofi.”