The world now consisted of the five feet in front of her she could see through the wall of white all around her. She’d lost track of where she was, but she never would have known anyway. Nothing outside of her own town would be familiar to her. She’d left to find help, but she was beginning to believe she would be destroyed by the winter. That she would wander out here for eternity, starving and cold, and the others would all die because of her failure.
That belief kept her trudging onward, struggling against the snow sucking at her boots and weighing down her rubbery legs. She grabbed hold of her hood when the wind snatched it away from her. Pulling it down, she held it close against her face. Crystals of ice coated her lashes; she’d bet she had icicles forming on her nose and clothing.
She took another step forward, stumbled and fell when her legs gave out on her. Kneeling in the snow, her numbed fingers dug into the fluffy flakes piling up around her. The idea of curling up and going to sleep, if only for a little bit, was so entirely tempting she leaned to the side to lie down.
“Agnes, Nora, Abbott, Pallas, Dane, Claude,” she whispered.
With a low groan, she somehow managed to push herself to her feet once more. Her knees throbbed; her legs wobbled as she forced herself onward. She didn’t know how far she went, how long she continued before her legs gave out on her again. Her body slumped to the ground; her shoulders hunched forward against the storm.
Unable to rise again, she sat in the snow swirling around her. Trying to bolster her strength, she recited the names of her loved ones again, but she still couldn’t force herself to rise. Exhaustion beat against her as insistently as the wind and snow. She’d become a vampire snowman before she woke again, but perhaps a small nap would help her.
The idea she’d never rise from a nap flittered across her mind. The cold wouldn’t kill her, but she couldn’t shake the thought she would awaken to find herself buried so far beneath the snow she’d never be able to escape.
She tried to get back to her feet but before she was halfway up, she collapsed again. The urge to cry overtook her, but she didn’t have the energy to summon any tears. Instead, she simply stared at the white now encompassing her entire world. If she’d been home still, she would have loved this storm. She would have started a large fire, settled in with a good book and watched as their world became covered in a blanket of white.
Now, she hated it. It was keeping her from what had to be done, it spelled the death of everyone she’d ever cared about. She shoved her fingers into the snow and staggered to her feet once more. She made it only three feet before her ankle twisted out from under her and she fell again.
Wiping at the white coating her lashes, she blinked against the storm as a murky figure began to take shape. At first, she believed it was a hallucination, that fatigue had pushed her beyond sanity and into a world no longer existing in reality. Then the realization that the invaders had found her hit her. In her mind, she got to her feet once more, but when she blinked again, she realized she hadn’t moved at all.
The warm plume of a horse’s breath blew against her face, providing a brief warmth to her icy skin. She lifted her head to take in the man sitting upon its back. He stared down at her with a furrowed brow and compressed lips. Tempest touched the horse’s nose to assure herself it was real. Her hand had just grazed its velvety muzzle when she passed out in the snow.
CHAPTER 10
William tossed another log onto the fire, stoking it higher when it began to die down again. His gaze fell on the woman lying across from him. She was lying with her back against the wall and her head on her hands. The dancing flames played over her refined, pale features and high, sloping cheekbones. In the firelight, her hair was the color of liquid silver as it tumbled about her shoulders. The slope at the end of her thin-bridged nose gave him the strangest urge to poke it. Her full mouth still had a bluish tint to it from the cold, but a rosy hue had begun to creep in slowly as her body warmed.
Where had she come from? He wondered as he watched her. He hadn’t seen a town in three days. He sensed no indication of anything being remotely close to them, but it was impossible to tell in the tumultuous storm. Somehow, even in the maelstrom she’d been there though, in the middle of nowhere, sitting in the snow. His gaze traveled over the white, patchwork cloak she’d been wearing over her much thicker, black cloak. He focused on the rips and blood staining the sleeves of the white cloak.
He’d pulled off both of her cloaks when he’d gotten her inside the cave and draped one of his drier, heavier cloaks over her. If the lightening of the gray sky was any indication, she’d been sleeping for almost ten hours, with no sign of waking. At the front of the cave, Achilles released a small snuff; his hooves clopped against the stone before he settled down again.
Rising to his feet, William walked to the shadows at the back of the cave where he’d stashed the blood he’d taken from a few deer and fox he’d hunted since leaving Chester. The woman would require blood when she woke. He grabbed one of the canteens and returned to the main part of the cave.
The fire cast shadows over the cave he’d discovered three days ago. He’d decided to use the cave as his base before the storm had started. It had taken time away from his hunt for Kane to gather the supplies, but after what he’d witnessed in Chester, he wasn’t going to take any chances on having nowhere to shelter. He had two maybe three days of supplies already gathered within for the two of them, depending on how hungry she was. It would have been almost a week’s worth of supplies for him.
Almond-shaped doe brown eyes met his when he stopped beside the fire. His eyebrows rose as those eyes surveyed him from head to toe. The look in them suggested she would start swinging if he got any closer to her. He took a step back, hoping to put her more at ease as she placed her hands on the floor and pushed herself into a sitting position. She winced and bit on her bottom lip before collapsing against the wall.
“Are you ok?” he inquired.
“Yes,” she muttered, but the wary look in her eyes didn’t ease.
He took another step away from her. “Where did you come from?”
“Where did you come from?” she retorted.
He gave a small snort of laughter and held the canteen up for her to see. “Are you hungry?” Red flashed briefly through her eyes before she glanced away from him. Her fingers dug into the cave floor; her nostrils flared, but she didn’t look at him again. Walking over to her, he held out the canteen. “It’s deer blood. It will help you.”
Her eyes slid toward him. He uncapped the canteen. “Take it,” he urged, swirling the liquid inside in an attempt to lure her with the smell.
The warm brown of her eyes flashed with red again; she snatched it away from him. Her eyes closed in ecstasy as she gulped down the contents. Turning away, he walked over to sit on the other side of the fire. He watched her as she tapped the bottom of the canteen to get the last drops before finally lowering it again. She wiped the blood away from her mouth with the back of her hand. The last of the blue had faded from her lips, leaving them the color of the blood she’d consumed.
“Thank you,” she murmured before placing the canteen down beside her.
“There’s more if you would like some?”
“No,” she replied and settled against the wall with her legs drawn up to her chest.
Her gaze darted over the cave again like she was trying to figure out where she was. She focused on the exit; he knew she was calculating how fast she could escape.
“When was the last time you fed?” he inquired.
“I don’t remember.”
His curiosity prickled. Had she somehow escaped a town like Chester? “Is there a reason for that?” He tried to keep the gruffness out of his voice, but she glanced at him sharply.
“I was lost in a blizzard,” she reminded him.
“That’s the only reason?”
Her shoulders thrust back, her legs stiffened. “Yes.”
He couldn’t shake the feeling she
was lying, but he didn’t think he’d get her to open up to him, not until she started to trust him a little more. “What’s your name?”
She pulled his cloak tighter around her before edging closer to the fire. Holding her palms over the flames, she enthusiastically rubbed her fine boned hands together. The fire danced across her face and lit the pale hair tumbling over her shoulders. When he’d first brought her in here, her hair had appeared white due to the snow and ice encrusting it, but they had melted and dried on the cave floor hours ago. He’d caught a glimpse of her slender body when he’d been taking the wet cloaks from her. The loose fitting, wool shirt she wore emphasized the swell of her breasts. Her wool pants hugged her thighs and rounded hips.
Her brown eyes held his across the flames. “Tempest,” she finally replied. “And you are?”
“William.”
Her head tilted to the side as she studied him. She pulled her hands away from the fire and looked braced to run once more as she placed her hands on the ground beside her. “What are you doing out here, William?”
“Searching for someone, and you?”
“They must be someone of importance if they brought you this far into the mountains.”
He didn’t miss the fact she’d ignored his question in pursuit of her own. “And what has brought you this far into the mountains?”
Her mouth pursed; her gaze shot to the front of the cave as she lifted her hands and moved them closer to the fire once more. “Are we safe here?” she inquired, apparently determined not to answer anything he asked.
“Yes.”
For the first time since finding her, he didn’t sense her distrust; instead, he sensed her fear as her hands shook over the flames. “Are you sure?”
An uneasy feeling filled him, he looked toward the front of the cave but all he could smell and hear up there was Achilles. After Chester, he knew there could be other things hunting them in the snow. Things he could have drawn here by bringing her inside.
“What were you doing out there in this blizzard?” he demanded.
***
Tempest watched him as he rose to his feet. The light of the fire brought out the fiery red in his deep auburn hair and beard. His broad shoulders blocked out the wall of the cave behind him; his head nearly brushed against the top of the rock ceiling. She guessed him to be six-foot-two, about six inches taller than her, but his broad chest and shoulders made him appear far larger.
She couldn’t deny the handsomeness of his features with his square jaw and broad cheekbones. The striking color of his crystalline blue eyes kept her gaze riveted on him. He wore a heavy, fur-lined cloak, but the shirt beneath it hugged his firm body and emphasized his muscular frame.
She didn’t know what to make of this man, or what he was doing out here, alone. If he was a part of the group that had invaded her home, wouldn’t he be with them, instead of in the middle of nowhere? The cloak he wore wasn’t white, but that was no definite indicator of where his allegiance lie.
She hadn’t realized it, but the entire time she was studying him, trying to figure him out, she’d been biting her nails. Hastily she lowered her hand and wiped it on her cloak as she inwardly berated herself for slipping into old habits. Across from her, he folded his thick arms over his chest and leaned back on his heels.
“You saved my life,” she murmured.
“You’re a vampire; the storm wouldn’t have killed you.”
She almost brought her hand back to her mouth but forced herself to leave it by her side. “You’re a vampire too,” she replied.
“Hmm,” was his only response.
“It may not have killed me, but I wouldn’t have found my way through it and I would have starved.”
Something flickered through his eyes at her words; a muscle in his cheek began to twitch. “Where did you come from?”
He wasn’t going to let that one go, and she couldn’t successfully keep dodging his question. “My town. I’m not sure how far it is from here or how to get back right now. It felt like I was walking forever,” she murmured. “And I could have been going in circles for all I know.” Her gaze slid over the cave they sat in again, but none of it looked familiar. “Where did you bring me?”
“To a cave,” he replied in a tone that suggested she’d asked him if dogs barked.
Grinding her teeth together in order to keep a hold on her patience, she managed to ask in a clipped tone, “Is it in the side of the large stretch of mountains?”
“No, it’s a couple of miles away. It’s more of a rock cropping that has sprung up over time to form a cave.”
“Good,” she replied. She’d at least succeeded in putting some distance between her and those she’d fled.
“I’ve answered your questions, now it’s your turn. Why did you leave?”
Her hand fluttered up to her mouth. “Damn it,” she whispered and forced her hand down again before she bit at her nails.
Rising to her feet, she turned away and paced toward the entrance. A cool wind blew through the entranceway, causing her hair to flutter around her face, but the warmth of the fire enveloped the ten-foot circle of the main part of the cave they were in. It could almost be cozy if she didn’t feel so jumpy and unsettled.
“I was looking for help,” she finally answered.
“Help with what?” he inquired.
She glanced over her shoulder at him. “I only plan to talk to the king about it.”
“And how did you plan to get an audience with the king?”
“I hadn’t thought about that yet. I was mostly concerned with trying to survive and getting out of the mountains.”
“I see. Is what you planned to talk to the king about important?”
Unwittingly, tears sprang to her eyes. She wiped them hurriedly away. Crying wouldn’t get her any closer to her goal. “It’s a matter of life and death.” William clasped his hands behind his back as he continued to watch her. “It may already be too late.”
“Too late for what?”
“To save them, but I couldn’t have brought them with me. I barely made it out myself.” Goose bumps broke out on her arms; she ran her hands over her arms at the memory of what had happened on the trail.
“I think you should tell me what is going on.”
“I only plan to tell that to the king.”
He stared at her for a moment before slipping past her and walking toward the front of the cave. She heard some shuffling and the hard pat of a palm on horseflesh before he reemerged from the shadows of the cave. His booted feet rang against the stone as he stopped before her. He held out another brown cloak with a patch turned toward her. She stared at the familiar wolf emblem for a minute before glancing up at him.
“It’s the insignia of the king’s men,” he said.
“I know. You’re a king’s man?”
“I’m more than that.”
“What does that mean?” she demanded.
“I’ll explain more when you do.”
She glanced down at the golden wolf again. “How do I know you didn’t steal it from someone?”
He tugged the cloak from her grasp and walked away to drape it over a rock. “I know the king personally and quite well, if I feel you need his help, I will get it for you.”
“I’m sure there are plenty of men in the world who claim to know the king personally, even if it isn’t true.”
His impatience radiated from him when he faced her again. “What is it you plan to talk to him about?” he asked in a clipped tone.
“His wife,” she hedged. He’d saved her life and claimed to know the king, but she was unwilling to reveal too much to a man she didn’t know.
She didn’t think he could have looked more astounded if she’d told him she could fly and oftentimes spit fire out of her mouth. His mouth closed; his eyes turned a vibrant shade of red. Tempest took a step back. Her hand fell to her waist but the torch no longer hung there. Glancing around the cave, she spotted the wooden stick resting against the
wall by her two cloaks. He was a lot bigger than the last vampire she’d fought, but she would do whatever it took to protect herself if he came at her.
“What about his wife?” he growled.
She took a step to the side, hedging toward the torch. “I uh…” she had no idea what to say as his gaze continued to bore into her. “I know where she is.”
His eyebrows drew together over the top of his nose. “She is with the king.”
Tempest took another step toward the torch. She’d stopped believing the woman in town claiming to be the queen was telling the truth, but what did she know of the royal line? She never left the town; she’d certainly never seen the king and queen before. It was treasonous for the woman to claim to be the queen when she wasn’t, but Tempest had a feeling the woman who had invaded her town cared little about treason or the consequences of it. She certainly had no value for life.
Tempest was unsure of how to continue. If this man really did know the king and queen, he would be able to tell her if the queen was the woman in her town, but she didn’t know how to proceed or how much to reveal. She took another step toward the torch. His gaze flickered toward it before returning to her.
“You can pick it up if it will make you feel better,” he said.
Tempest hesitated before taking a big step to the side and snatching the torch up. Holding it before her, she pressed it against her chest as she stared at him. It may be a false sense of comfort, but it was something. “When I last saw her, the king was not with her,” she told him.
“Then he was nearby, it’s not often they’re apart for long.”
“She was alone when she came into my town. Well, except for her numerous guards.”
She’d never seen anyone look more confused in her life; his puzzled expression would have been comical if this whole situation hadn’t been so awful. “Are you from Chippman?” he demanded.