The Bleeding Dusk

Nine In Which Three Ladies Are Set Loose upon the Villa

Max heard the soft click of a pistol being cocked, and he froze just as he realized the back of his neck had begun to prickle and chill.

Vampires…somewhere…but not in close proximity.

The sudden flare of a candle lent a soft yellow glow from down the steps, just out of his sight. Then the light grew stronger and more yellow as three shadowy people moved up the stairs, into his view.

“And who were you—Ah! Maximilian!”

He knew that annoying voice all too well. Blast the chit.

“Sara.” He couldn’t bring himself to sound as delighted as his former fiancée did. “And Starcasset. What an unpleasant—yet not wholly unexpected—surprise.”

He saw that Victoria—whose face was streaked with two narrow rivulets of…tears?—was under the control of George Starcasset and his pistol. She was also giving him, Max, a most loathing glare, as if it were somehow his fault she’d stormed into the barrel of the firearm.

Before he could move Sarafina came toward him. She was the buxom blonde, with pretty brown eyes and a head filled with little but fashion sense and coy comments, that he’d squired about Roma and engaged in many more tête-à-têtes with her than he’d cared to do. She was a lovely, fluffy piece—just the kind of woman he should marry if he ever actually thought he would do the deed, except for her affinity for the undead. But her voice and simpering mannerisms tended to grate on his nerves when he was exposed to her for any length of time.

Of course, at the moment, that simpering, fluffy chit had a pistol in her hands, so he was going to have to watch his tongue.

When she reached toward his right shoulder he merely looked down at her in annoyance and faint amusement, wondering if she was about to pull him into a reunion embrace. But when Sarafina yanked on his collar, pulling it back from Max’s neck and exposing the raw bites there, he pushed her hand away, heedless of the pistol flailing about in her other grip.

“Good gad, watch that thing,” he snapped, flipping his wretchedly stiff collar back into place. “You’ll hurt someone, Sara. Put it away.”

Unsurprisingly, she kept the pistol and steadied it, pressing it right into his middle. Painfully. “So it is true. You did go to her.”

Max remembered belatedly that there was no fury like a woman scorned.

“Perhaps you could settle your lovers’ quarrel some other time,” Starcasset luckily interrupted. He must have jabbed his firearm into Victoria’s skin a bit more harshly, for she winced and jolted. Looking at Max, he added, “I’m certain you can appreciate the benefits of coming along quietly.”

Max nodded. “Indeed. It would not be in our interest to involve the other parties below in a skirmish.” He glanced at Victoria to make sure she understood that she couldn’t go blazing into a fight, but she was studiously looking away, her lips firmed with annoyance.

Surely she wasn’t concerned about their current predicament.

“Well put, Mr. Pesaro. Now, if you and your jilted fiancée would be so kind as to lead the way, Lady Rockley and I will follow.”

Thus they moved down the steps in pairs, remaining out of sight of the presumed party in the chamber beyond the anteroom where the stairs ended, Sara prodding him along in the opposite direction from which he and Victoria had come.

Max was armed with several stakes, including his favorite black one, and his own firearm, as well as a dagger sheathed in his boot. It was the mark of the amateurs who led them away that neither Starcasset nor Sara Regalado thought to check either of the Venators for weapons. Likely they thought vampire hunters would merely be carrying stakes and little else.

He would make certain they were far enough away not to alert or alarm the partygoers in the parlor before making his move. The last thing they needed was a hoard of frithering ladies and blustering would-be heroes getting in their way.

As they progressed, the sensations at the back of his neck grew colder and more intense, telling him that they were being taken to some conglomerate of vampires. They walked through a door, entering a large, dank room that appeared to be at least partially underground, if one judged by the greater chill in the air.

Obviously a contingent of undead had gathered in the Villa Palombara. Apparently that was the true purpose behind the ostensible treasure hunt: a harvesting of victims by the Tutela, likely for Sara Regalado’s father, the conte—and whatever minions he’d managed to gather around him after he was run off by Beauregard last fall in the wake of the destruction of Akvan’s Obelisk.

An argument could be made, Max reflected as he ambled along next to Sara, that being brought closer to where the vampires were waiting would make their efforts to subdue them more efficient.

A sudden movement behind decided him. Knowing it was Victoria who’d somehow managed to catch Starcasset, the brainless devil, off guard, he swung into action as soon as Sara’s attention was diverted and the pressure lifted from his ribs.

There was a fine line between disarming a woman and causing her hurt, and so Max allowed himself a bit of flair in this battle. He slid to the side, his feet lifting from the ground in the long, gliding leap of a qinggong movement, and came up and around Sara, Victoria, and Starcasset, executing the maneuver even in the low-ceilinged chamber.

The room was a blur as he spun and floated, leaped and glided, clocking Starcasset neatly at the back of his head with a well-aimed boot toe (he had no such qualms about injuring the dandy), and then coasting around to snag Sara around the waist and toss her through a nearby doorway.

In the midst of this effortless and liberating activity, Max saw a flash of pink that was Victoria, dashing away in the frilly gown she’d chosen for this occasion. It wasn’t like her to run from a fight, so he knew precisely why she’d taken off.

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.

“We’re not frightened,” Melly said in a strangled voice, trying to free herself from Winnie’s death grip. “We just stopped to look at the map. Are you on the treasure hunt?”

“Of course. Perhaps I can assist you? Did you wish to go back to the parlor, where everyone else is waiting?”

“Has everyone returned to the parlor already? Has the treasure been found?” Winnie forgot her nervousness and stepped toward him, disappointment oozing from every pore.

Before he could answer they were interrupted by a loud sound, as if an altercation was happening, perhaps a short distance away. “What is that noise? Are they celebrating the treasure being found?” Winnie demanded.

“No, no, I do not believe so,” the bald man replied, offering an arm to Melly. “It’s too early for that. Please, let me be of assistance. If you would come with me, I shall take you ladies on your way.”

Melly started off with him in the direction he indicated, followed by Nilly and Winnie.

“But what if he’s a vampire?” Winnie squeaked softly to Nilly. “He could turn into a bat at any moment and swoop down over us and get caught in our hair.”

“If he is, he’s likely going to take us somewhere and ravish us,” Lady Petronilla replied, her voice pitched nervously. “I wonder if it will be in a bedchamber, or if he’ll take us to his coffin and chain two of us up inside while he bites the other one?”

Lady Winifred stumbled. “Ravish? Chains? Coffin? Oh, how could I be so foolish as to leave my cross at home!”

“I shall offer him to take me first,” Nilly said bravely. “Then perhaps there will be a chance for you and Melly to escape whilst he is ravishing me.”

“A stake. Perhaps I can find something to use as a stake. It must be wooden, mustn’t it?”

“Oh, dear! But he cannot be a vampire,” Nilly suddenly said.

Nearly fainting in relief, Winnie turned to look at her companion. “No? But are you certain?”

“See—he carries a candle. Of course, everyone knows that vampires can see in the dark. Why should he need a candle? And he isn’t nearly handsome enough,” she added. “Not tall enough either, I venture to say.”

“Oh…yes, not tall enough. And he doesn’t need a candle. Indeed, I am so relieved you are such an expert about vampires, Nilly,” the duchess said, picking up her stride and jouncing along merrily now.

Lady Petronilla didn’t appear to be quite as relieved as her friend. “But, of course, I could be wrong. After all, I never have met a vampire,” she added. Perhaps there was even a bit of wistfulness in her voice.

“We must have gotten very confused,” Lady Melisande was saying to their guide, her voice carrying back to her two companions. “I don’t recall walking this way at all.”

The gentleman’s soft laugh was easy and full of humor at the ladies’ confusion. “No, indeed, madam. This is the way to the parlor. Unless you wish to see where I think the treasure is hidden.”

“Treasure?” Lady Winifred bounded forward to walk on the other side of their guide. “Do you know where it is hidden?”

He smiled ruefully. “I didn’t mean to—ah, you have caught me out, madam. I shall take you, if you vow not to tell a soul it was I who led you there.”

“But of course not! And if there is treasure to be found there, you can rest assured we shall share it with you, kind sir,” Winnie soothed him. “Besides, it is best to bring us there posthaste rather than wait until after you have taken us to the parlor and then come back…for someone else might have found our treasure before you return. And then what a fine fettle we’d be in.”

“Indeed. Your logic, though intricate, is quite—er. If I am to take you there, then we must turn on this hallway here,” he said, ushering them along.

This passageway was smaller and closer than the other ones through which they’d traveled. It was spare of furnishings and decor, which would imply that the area the ladies now traversed was part of the servants’ quarters.

Winnie noticed this and thought it was a brilliant deduction. “Of course! The treasure should be hidden in the back of the villa, where no one ever goes.” Forgetting, of course, that the servants who ran the household would have quite outnumbered the residents of the villa.

Nilly had begun to lag behind her two friends, who’d placed the gentleman guide betwixt them. So when she felt a hand on her shoulder, her soft gasp of surprise was lost in the treasure-hunting conversation ahead.

She turned and found herself facing a tall man with black hair and fair skin, dressed like a gentleman on his way to the theater. He smiled, and she saw the glint of very white teeth behind his lips.

His eyes glowed red.

Nilly opened her mouth to scream, then thought better of it. Instead she closed her eyes and turned her head away demurely, fully aware that between her coiled-up hair and the low cut of her gown, there was quite a lot of skin exposed. Holding her breath, she let the candle fall and heard it roll away on the wood floor.

Her skin prickled as she waited, her veins fairly leaping, her heart trammeling in her flat bosom. Then the air shifted, and she heard something that sounded like a shove, and then a faint little pop followed by a soft poof.

And then a very smooth, mellow voice said, “Are you quite all right, madam?”

Nilly’s eyes flew open. The man standing in front of her was no longer dark haired and pale visaged; nor did he have glowing red eyes.

He was just as handsome, but in a golden sort of way, with curling tawny hair and skin that glowed like toffee in the light of the candle he held. He was looking at her with one cocked eyebrow and a humorous twist to his sensual mouth.

“I…you…he…”

“He is gone, and you are quite safe, madam. Or should I say mademoiselle?” He gave her a melting smile. “But what is such a lovely woman like yourself doing—”

“Nilly!”

Her attention was drawn back along the dark, narrow hallway to the bustling of gowns and the rustling of paper heralding the approach of her two friends, their gentleman guide nowhere in sight.

“Oh!” wailed Nilly, her disappointment firmly sinking in.

“Why are you dawdling?” demanded Melly. “As we’ve found, it’s much too easy to get lost in this vast house.”

“And you’re keeping us from finding the treasure,” the duchess informed her. “I vow, if we get there too late because of your mooning about, I shall never forgive you, Petronilla.”

“Now come along. Our lovely gentleman friend is waiting,” Melly added, pointing down the hall into the darkness.

“Where is your candle? Now we shall have only one light, and you know how weak my eyes are in the darkness,” said Winnie. “I vow I cannot see past my own fingers even in my own bedchamber at night unless Rudgers leaves the fire blazing.”

Nilly turned to the golden-haired man and found he was gone. Her mouth opened, then closed once again without making an intelligible sound.

There was nothing about to indicate that either of the men had ever been there, except her dropped candle—which had gone out when it landed—and a small pile of dust that she hadn’t noticed earlier.

“But…” Nilly gave up trying to speak and, with one last glance backward, followed the others.

“I begin to wonder if Victoria has made her way back to the party,” Melly said suddenly, as she and her companions started back down the hallway. Their gentleman guide had been left standing at the corner of an intersection of two passageways when the ladies had realized Nilly was no longer with them.

“I hope she’s found that nice Mr. Zavier,” Nilly said, finally having obtained control of her tongue. “Perhaps they are becoming better acquainted.”

“I certainly hope not.” The Lady Winifred straightened up as though Nilly had suggested Victoria might have fallen in love with a vampire. “As kind as he might be, he’s much too coarse and…and…unshaven, and he certainly isn’t up to snuff for our marchioness. After all, she stepped up from being a mere miss to become the wife of the Marquess of Rockley—God rest his soul—and it won’t do to have her sliding back into a dank, drafty castle in the Highlands. Why, there’re probably vampires flapping—”

“Ladies,” called the gentleman guide’s voice, beckoning them toward him. “Are we all together again?”

“Indeed we are, sir. Please lead us on,” Melly replied, conveniently ignoring the fact that they hadn’t yet been introduced to their savior.

Just as they rejoined their guide, a pretty blond woman came bursting on the scene from a different branch of the hallway. The man turned in surprise, and the young woman grasped his arm, pulling him away from the older ladies. “At last! I have been searching the whole villa for you!” And then her voice dropped very low, and it sounded as though she said something about a…senator?

“I shall not abide it if that chit insists on accompanying us,” Winnie fumed, glaring at the pair, who’d moved far enough away that she couldn’t hear what they said. For, despite her complaint about failing eyesight, her ears worked perfectly well. What was so important about a Roman senator that the chit had to interrupt their treasure hunt?

And then from behind them came the sound of heavy, rushing feet. The three ladies turned to see Mr. Zavier hurrying down the hall toward them. With him was another gentleman—unknown to Winnie and Melly, but perfectly familiar to Nilly as the handsome blond who’d interrupted her tête-à-tête with the dark-haired, pale-skinned man.

“There ye ladies are,” Mr. Zavier exclaimed, his brogue thick with emotion. His cheeks were flushed enough that they showed their ruddiness even in the low light, and he was holding something in his hand—something long and thin and pointed—but before anyone save Nilly could take notice, he shoved it in his pocket. “We must take our leave now,” he said, looking about.

The blond man, who was also approaching, peered beyond them into the darkness. But when the ladies turned to follow his gaze, they saw that their gentleman guide and the young blond woman had disappeared.

“We’ve almost found the treasure,” the duchess complained as Mr. Zavier offered her his arm. “We cannot leave now.”

“I’m afraid the treasure has already been located, and that it is well past time to leave. All of the other guests have gone,” said the handsome blond man in his comforting voice.

“And what about Victoria?” Lady Melly asked Mr. Zavier, taking his other arm, yet still looking behind her to find out what on earth had happened to that handsome man who’d been leading them about. “How vexing that he should have disappeared so suddenly,” she muttered. “He was quite charming, and I didn’t even learn his name.”

“Victoria, thinking ye had done so, has already returned home after joining me for a short time in the parlor. After ye disappeared”—Mr. Zavier fixed a dark look at Winnie, and she returned his glance with all the haughtiness she could muster—“she had come with her slipper fixed and was quite disappointed that ye’d gone on without her. Come, ladies, ’tis best that we be on our way.”

“May I?” The blond gentleman offered his arm to Nilly, and when she accepted it, began to hurry her along the hall.

If the two gentlemen happened to look back over their shoulders, the older ladies didn’t appear to notice; they were much too intent on keeping their footing alongside the agile men and their long, rapid strides.

“But this is not the way we came in,” Melly exclaimed when they came to a door—a small, unobtrusive one that was most certainly not the grand entrance they’d been welcomed into.

The night air was cool, and the half-moon glowed down on them as they stepped out of the villa onto…grass.

“My slippers,” shrieked Nilly, lifting her feet one at a time in a mad, hopping manner. “They’ll be ruined!”

“Come, come,” Mr. Zavier said, ushering them along the dark building toward the front of the villa where their carriage was waiting.

As the ladies climbed in, their creaking joints reminding them they’d had hardly a spot of rest in the last week, with Carnivale and all of the other excitement, they noticed that theirs was the only carriage in sight. Mr. Zavier handed each of them in and then followed with an energetic leap, slamming the door shut behind him.

Rapping harshly on the roof, he settled back into his seat, surrounded by gowns and panting ladies. Not, perhaps, his preferred environment to be surrounded by such feminity…but it was his duty, nonetheless.

It wasn’t until the carriage pulled away from the street in front of the villa that the ladies realized the blond gentleman had disappeared.

In fact, none of them could recall seeing him once they came outside of the villa.

“Well, I never,” snapped Winnie, looking back out the carriage window. “That man! He tricked us into leaving so he could have the treasure.”

And she settled into her seat, plump elbows crossed over her just-as-plump bosom, and brooded all the way back to the Gardella villa.