Blood Curse (Blood Series) Read online

  After all, when a gentleman was cursed to live forever, he had to do something to pass the time.

  Approached by his mysterious client, he had become intrigued by the man’s interest—and determination—to have Lady Ophelia. Raven had refused the commission, claiming he would not do it until he understood the man’s motivation. To get him to take the job, his client had been forced to reveal the young woman’s power.

  The truth had annoyed Raven. She had the power to kill with a touch, and his “client” had at first refused to divulge it. So now he drawled lazily, “Yes, it’s done. I have her.”

  “Good. Bring her—”

  “I did not say I was going to give her up.”

  Silence from behind the door. Then the man barked, “What?”

  “Now that I have her, I intend to keep her.”

  Raven turned abruptly and made his way through the dark, dank church. He passed pews coated with dust, and the various trappings of religious devotion, encrusted with dirt and hung with spider webs. His lip curled.

  He had turned his back on his god a long time ago. When he had begun to be haunted by the faces of the men he’d killed. Every death had been justified. In the duels, he had defended his honor. In battle he had been fighting for king, country, God. So why was his soul ravaged by what he’d done? Why was he tearing himself apart over it?

  He’d begun to understand that God did not reward a man for obedient service. God only increased the level of punishment.

  So he’d turned his back on God, lost his soul, become a vampire. Even in this deserted, long-abandoned church he felt pain. His skin sizzled, beginning to burn beneath his clothes.

  Scrambling footsteps told him his client was following. Chasing him. Driven out of hiding by the fact his lowly hired assassin was in control now and had changed the rules of the game.

  Chuckling, Raven ran through the church so quickly everything became a formless blur. If his client was in truth a vampire, the man could follow. But the footsteps receded quickly. Bursting out into a dingy, dark street, Raven shifted shape. His clothes dropped from him as his body changed, as his skin turned to something sleeker. He was naked when large wings erupted from his back.

  Unlike other vampires, he did not turn into a bat. He became a creature like a gargoyle, with a distorted human-like body. Instead of feet and hands, he possessed talons. His skin became a silvery black. Flapping his wings, he soared into the night sky.

  To return to his lovely prisoner, Lady Ophelia.

  Her mouth was as dry as linen and her throat ached.

  Dizzy, Ophelia opened her eyes. But wherever she was, there was very little light and she couldn’t tell what surrounded her. Fear made her heart thunder. Her arms were stiff and sore, and she felt as if she’d rolled down a grassy hill—she ached all over. Softness was beneath her and silkiness touched the skin of her legs . . .

  The bare skin of her legs.

  Ophelia blinked, fighting to see in the dim light. A fire burned low in the grate—it was just coals—and the reddish glow barely illuminated anything. Hulking shapes loomed around her. It took minutes before she guessed one was a wardrobe, another was a vanity table, and two fluttering things that made her heart skip a beat were curtains.

  Was she at home?

  There was something wrong, but she couldn’t quite remember what it was . . .

  She couldn’t remember coming back across town to Mrs. Darkwell’s supposed school or sneaking back into her room. How could she have forgotten all of that—?

  She hadn’t come home! This wasn’t her room at Mrs. Darkwell’s.

  The last thing she remembered was that sweet, horrible smell. The cloth pressed to her nose and the naked statues whirling in front of her eyes as she collapsed.

  Mr. Ravenhunt must have brought her here. He had taken off her gown. She thought she was wearing only her shift. She couldn’t be certain.

  How dare that wretched man do this!

  Heavens, why had he done this? What did he want with her?

  She wanted to get up, but now she felt dizzy again. She knew why she felt lost and confused. It was the aftermath of whatever he’d given her to make her faint.

  She fought the woozy sense in her head. Summoning her strength, Ophelia tried to move her arms.

  She pulled with all the force she could muster, but her arms would not obey.

  She now realized her hands were numb. There was something around her wrists. Furrowing her brow, she made her fingers explore. She touched rope, silky rope. It looped around her wrists and stretched her arms behind her head.

  She was tied up. Tied to a bed.

  The prisoner of Mr. Ravenhunt.

  “Fool. Idiot. Twit.” Enraged, she threw the words out. “You silly, silly fool. You believed every word he said. You thought—” She knew what she’d thought, but this she could not say aloud.

  From the first moment they had met, she’d fancied he admired her. It had been so long since she had been near a man that the moment he had smiled at her, she had concocted a ludicrous fantasy about it.

  Love, kindness, embraces, tenderness were not for her. She was a monster.

  And she had allowed herself to be fooled by a monster worse than she.

  What did he want from her? Was he a white slaver and she was to be shipped away to Arabia and put in a harem? Was he going to ransom her?

  Her harsh, bitter laugh echoed in her quiet room.

  Who would pay for her? No doubt Mrs. Darkwell would be happy to be rid of her.

  Her family thought she was dead. Mrs. Darkwell had told her that. Her last living brother and her younger sister had been told that to protect them.

  “Damnation!” Ophelia spat aloud. She pulled on the ropes, but all it did was drive the thick cord into her wrists. It hurt.

  She knew there were men who assaulted women and forced sexual relations upon them. Was Ravenhunt a man like that?

  If he was, he was an idiot. The minute he laid a hand on her, he was as good as dead.

  He’d already touched her. He had done so to hold the cloth on her face and bring her here. He might be dead already.

  With her weak fingers, she tried to find the knots at her wrists. Even though he would die if he touched her—might already be dead—she was afraid. He had worn gloves. So had others, who had then . . . died, but the touches had been longer. Some had just become very sick. What if he had not touched her long enough for her curse to work? What if he had not touched her very much to bring her here? He could have tossed her in a sack after all.

  What if he just wanted to kill her?

  He could do it safely with a pistol or a blade. He could hurt or murder her without touching her. After all, he knew what she was. What if he wanted to kill her because he thought she was evil?

  Her power was evil. But she didn’t mean to hurt people. It was something she could not control. To protect other people from her power, she kept away from them.

  Closing her eyes, Ophelia made a solemn vow. If she made it back alive to Mrs. Darkwell’s house, she would never leave it again. She would never break a rule again.

  First she had to escape from Ravenhunt.

  The fiend had tied her wrists and secured her bonds to the bedposts. She could reach the knots at her left wrist with her right hand, but no matter how much she tugged and clawed, she could not loosen the ropes.

  Roaring in anger, Ophelia pulled wildly at them, but that only made them tighter. Her legs were free and she kicked and slammed the bed, but it didn’t help.

  Tears burned in her eyes, but she wouldn’t cry. She had cried over so many people—people she had killed with her wretched power. She would not waste tears now. Exhausted from useless thrashing and fighting, she lay still.

  A board creaked in the hallway.

  She froze with fear. Was it Ravenhunt? Was he alive? Her heart galloped and she sucked in frantic breaths, her brain swamped by panic.

  Think, Ophelia.

  All she had to do was
coerce Ravenhunt to touch her without his gloves and do it long enough for her curse to work on him.

  Then what?

  There might be other men here. Servants. She had to get past them, too—

  The door creaked open.

  “I assume you are awake now, Lady Ophelia?”

  Deep, like the rumble of a lion, his masculine voice came to her. He was alive. He spoke mildly and softly, but in the tones of a gentleman who felt he was in charge. Smugness infused Mr. Ravenhunt’s every word.

  He would not be smug for long. If he touched her long enough, her cursed power would affect him, and then he would pay for kidnapping her.

  That thought banished fear. Instead, anger blazed in her heart as how evilly pleased with himself he sounded.

  “Yes, I am awake, you foul blackguard.” She snapped the words at him, sounding utterly unlike herself. Usually her voice was so soft it could barely be heard. But her angry shout must have been heard by everyone in the house.

  A dark shadow filled the doorway. With so little light, it was hard to distinguish him at first. It occurred to her he carried no candle or lamp and he had walked up a dark corridor to this room without trouble.

  This must be his house. Apparently he knew it well.

  He wore his dark clothing and his hair was black, so she could barely see him. “I demand that you untie me. Now!”

  He shrugged. “I am considering it. I’m not sure which one I prefer.”

  “What?”

  “I cannot decide if I prefer having you tied to the bed in that erotically fetching way, or having you free so I can see what you would attempt to do to me.”

  Nausea roiled in her belly. Erotically fetching?

  She could make out a little more of him where he stood in the doorway. It was not easy to see him. She had to rest her cheek against the pillow to do it.

  Mr. Ravenhunt’s shoulder was propped against the door frame, his arms folded over his chest. Relaxation exuded from him. Obviously, he wasn’t afraid that anyone else in the house—servants, for example—would learn she was his captive. They all must know.

  She wanted to spit on him. But years with Mrs. Darkwell had taught her to pretend to be a docile prisoner, to bide her time.

  But she had never been in such a vulnerable position in her life.

  “Please untie me.” It took every ounce of control she possessed, but Ophelia spoke in the meekest voice she could.

  “Not just yet, my dear. You look very appealing this way.”

  The softness of his voice sent a shiver of terror down her spine. What did he want from her?

  “Please . . . my arms ache. I’m frightened. Do you mean . . . to kill me?” There, she’d asked it.

  “No, Lady Ophelia, I do not mean you any harm. In fact, I might be the closest thing to a savior you have. Now wait there. There is something I must do—to ensure your safety. Then I will be back.”

  Ravenhunt drove his curricle into the stews that ran off Whitechapel High Street. He had no coachman, kept no servants.

  He’d lived alone in his rented house on the outskirts of Mayfair ever since he’d returned to England. Lady Ophelia was the only other person who had been in it.

  He slapped the reins sharply to set his two blacks galloping down the cobbled street. With expert touch, he veered around carts and slow carriages.

  In London, none of the naïve and innocent mortals had any idea what monsters prowled their streets. Some vampires hunted the elegant, wider boulevards of Mayfair, or the dark streets surrounding the gentleman’s clubs and gaming hells. For the purpose of feeding, Ravenhunt now came here, to the maze of intertwined, narrow lanes, and rickety buildings packed with unfortunates.

  When he’d first been a vampire, he’d been driven by lust and hunger. Too many of his victims had been fair maidens or voluptuous courtesans. He tried to forget their faces now. Those pretty faces wild with lust as he’d drunk their blood, then white with fear as they understood he was taking their lives along with their blood.

  The prettiest ones he had changed into vampires, then abandoned.

  He alighted from his carriage and tied the reins to a post. With his gray coat swinging around him, he strode deeper into the stews, passing through a narrow passage onto a dark, stinking lane.

  “Slumming, Ravenhunt?”

  “Feeding,” he answered brusquely. “I don’t hunt fragile maidens anymore, wolf. I like my prey bigger and stronger. Unlike you, I like my food with fight.”

  The wolf was the Duke of Wolfcairn, prowling the stews in human form. As a human male, he was two inches taller than Ravenhunt. He was lean, with black hair and a shock of white-gray in it. The wolf’s laugh held the undercurrent of a growl. “I don’t prey on the weak or the fair either, Ravenhunt.”

  Wolfcairn wore a gentleman’s attire and carried a gold-tipped walking stick. Ravenhunt dressed to disappear.

  “I forgot. You aren’t Ravenhunt anymore. Gave that up to your young cousin. Too cowardly to keep up the ruse of mortality?”

  Damn, he hated encountering Wolfcairn. The wolf liked to goad him—just as Wolfcairn liked to goad all the outcasts of the demon world who hunted here, in the depths of darkness, dirt, and poverty.

  Raven was an outcast. He avoided all members of the demon world, like other vampires, wolf and dragon shifters, warlocks, satyrs.

  There were many vampires in London. The vampire queens controlled different clans. There were even the “tamed” vampires who belonged to the Royal Society for the Investigation of Mysterious Phenomena.

  Raven claimed no allegiance to any queen or any vampire clan.

  In the shadows, Raven saw a warlock perform magic tricks with handkerchiefs and flowers to dazzle a large-bosomed ladybird who had been waiting on the street corner in a low-cut velvet dress.

  Raven came here for blood, as did the wolf. Others, like the warlocks, came for sex.

  “I am not cowardly,” he said coldly. “I gave up my life and title to protect someone I love. You are damned arrogant, Wolfcairn, and bloody stupid to keep your title. Unlike you, I don’t need a title to prove my power and superiority.”

  “Indeed? What about a wager? A thousand pounds’ wager that, if we chase the same prey, I will catch it first.”

  “I don’t have time tonight.”

  “No time? We have eternity, man,” Wolfcairn pointed out.

  “Someone is at my home, waiting for me.”

  He remembered what Lady Ophelia had looked like. Stretched out on the bed and tied up.

  Lovely, slender limbs. Her shift had been soft, clinging muslin that draped damned fetchingly over her pert, pretty breasts. Her golden hair had fallen from her pins, and it flowed around her in a halo of shimmering waves. Innocence shone in her big blue eyes.

  Hades, it was like handing a six-year-old boy a cream cake and warning him not to eat it.

  His cock had been going mad in his trousers, throbbing, pulsing, and bucking against the placket.

  And her neck—

  Pure temptation. Ivory skin, soft and perfect.

  He had to get control of his hunger. He couldn’t bite her and feed from her. So he’d come here to do it instead.

  “Why aren’t with her, you fool?” Wolfcairn asked. “Why hunt for prey in here when you have a delectable treat at home?”

  “Never mind, wolf,” Raven growled. “I accept your wager.”

  A woman’s sobs reached his ears. He saw the wolfman turn his head toward the sound and tip up his nose as if he was scenting.

  “A female in distress?” Wolfcairn asked.

  “Probably a dockyard brute abusing some poor, bedraggled street tart.”

  “The perfect appetizer,” the duke said. “I will even give you a head start, vampire.”

  “I don’t need favors from you,” Raven snapped darkly. “On the count of three.”

  But by the time he’d reached two, Wolfcairn was already running for the dark alley. Screams now came from there.

 
Cursing, Raven ran, using his vampire strength to catch Wolfcairn. He couldn’t lose this meal. Not when he had to return to Lady Ophelia.

  How could he have just left her here?

  She should be thankful he was gone and he hadn’t hurt her. He was obviously mad. How could kidnapping her and tying her to a bed make him her savior?

  Ophelia shut her eyes. Toad. Warty, smelly toad.

  Calling him names did help to stave off fear.

  Would he come back?

  Her stomach rumbled. She had not eaten since her dinner at Mrs. Darkwell’s and she had not eaten much. She had been too caught up in the excitement of planning her escape from the house. No one had noticed her lack of appetite since she ate alone, of course, so she would not accidentally touch someone.

  A mouth-watering aroma reached her nose.

  Her tummy clenched in sheer pain. Dinner now seemed like it had been a century ago. But if those delicious smells were for her, she was not going to feel grateful, for heaven’s sake.

  The only reason she was hungry was because some dangerous, villainous man was holding her prisoner. Out of pride and anger, she should refuse his food. But she had learned through her captivity with Mrs. Darkwell that she had to eat, even when her stomach was in knots with fear. Starving herself hardly helped in an escape.

  Could she appeal to the servant bringing the food? Maybe convince whoever it was to free her?

  Hope flared. Then the tiny flame of it went out as fast.

  Ravenhunt strode into her room, carrying a tray laden with dishes. Sweet scents and savory aromas swirled around her.

  Heavens, she hated this man.

  It was a crime he was so handsome. That behind the high cheekbones, full lips, and dramatic black eyes lurked the heart of a madman.

  He smiled. She stared up at him, mute with fury. How desperately she wanted to kick him. How could he smile kindly at her?

  “Are you hungry?” he asked softly. He put the tray down on the vanity table.

  “Yes,” Ophelia said, keeping her voice shaky and weak. “I am starving. I’m faint with hunger. Can you untie me so I can eat?” She hated sounding like such a weak ninny. Ravenhunt made her want to roar like a tigress and slash at him with claws.