The Queen of Swords: A Paranormal Tale of Undying Love Read online

  THE QUEEN OF SWORDS

  A Paranormal Tale of Undying Love

  BY

  NINA MASON

  The right of Nina Mason to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs, and Patents Act 1988

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it was published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Edited by

  Elizabeth A. Lance

  Cover Design by

  Rue Volley

  Copyright© 2014 Nina Mason

  All rights reserved

  Vamptasy Publishing

  www.vamptasy.com

  To my kid sister,

  Elizabeth Anne Kerby,

  who knows me better than anyone

  and somehow still loves and believes in me.

  Cat’s Dream Journal, May 18th

  I had the dream again last night, the one I’ve had since childhood. Only this time more details lingered upon waking. In the dream, it is night and I am abed in a room not my own. My belly is a ripe watermelon and I can feel the child moving inside. The room is small, the bed narrow. A washstand, table, wooden chair, and crucifix are the only other furnishings. As always, demonic yellow eyes appear to float in the darkness. A figure takes shape around the eyes—a man with long black hair and a wan complexion. He is as beautiful as a dark angel and wants something from me, something I will not give. I sense I am protecting someone—someone I love very much. The father of my unborn child? He crawls into bed with me and touches and kisses me in arousing ways before sinking his teeth into my neck. The bite is painful—I cry out—but intense pleasure soon follows. I feel him draining my life. Feel myself fading away. Feel death’s icy fingers pulling on me. Just before I die, someone calls my name, a male voice with a Scottish burr. Awakening abruptly, I find myself alone. Might the dream have something to do with my lifelong fascination with vampires and Scotsmen?

  Part I: The Meet

  

  Fain would I fly the haunts of men—

  I seek to shun, not hate mankind;

  My breast requires the sullen glen

  Whose gloom may suit a darken’d mind.

  Oh! that to me the wings were given

  Which bear the turtle to her nest!

  Then would I cleave the vault of heaven,

  To flee away, and be at rest.

  —George Gordon, Lord Byron

  Chapter 1: Tightrope Walker

  Graham Logan, teeth set against his lower lip, peered at the three tarot cards on the desktop before him, still face down. He’d laid them out with a particular question in mind, but now couldn’t bring himself to turn them over. Did he really want to know if she’d come again?

  Since the last time, he’d walked a tightrope of deprivation and despair. It was how he avoided entanglements, how he coped with his losses and his lot. Aye, he was lonely and miserable. Aye, he was sick to death of his colorless life, of denial and longing, of settling for scraps. But how could he let himself feel when the price was so dear?

  Lighting a Gauloise, he rose from the desk and walked to the window, leaving the cards where they lay. Sweeping aside the heavy drapery, he gazed out across the manicured hedges and intricate boxwood parterres of the estate’s formal gardens. The sun was just beginning to rise, bathing the scene in golden light. In the distance, through a veil of mist, he could see the bell tower of the private chapel and, just beyond, the treetop canopy of the woodland deer park.

  Wicken Manor, Wickenham Village, County Essex.

  The latest in an endless list of posh addresses in the English countryside. Like the rest, it was remote without being too far from the conveniences of London. Unlike the rest, however, Wickenham boasted a progressive university specializing in the occult. Reportedly, its library housed a collection of vampire literature rivaling his own.

  He hated moving. Changing residences every five or six years was a royal pain, but at least he’d been spared the scourge of repeating secondary school ad infinitum like so many poor sods in the novels of the day. He’d been transformed in 1814, on the eve of his wedding to her, the first time they’d met.

  Or was it?

  Filling his lungs with smoke, he blew it at the glass. If she did come, could he resist her this time? He honestly didn’t know. She seemed to call to something deep within him, something he might think his soul if he didn’t know better. Surely he’d lost that part of his being when he was made what he was.

  Vampires, they called his kind nowadays.

  The walking undead.

  A scoff rose in his throat. What did that oxymoronic word mean? How could anyone be un-dead? A body was either alive or it wasn’t. His was unquestionably alive. It had a beating heart and reasoning brain, among other functioning organs. It just didn’t age, get sick, or die of so-called natural causes. Neither did it require solid food for nourishment; rather, it absorbed the life force of mortal beings by consuming bodily fluids rich in DNA.

  He took another drag and exhaled with vehemence. Calling a creature undead was like calling something very unique. A thing was either unique or it wasn’t. Uniqueness had no degrees. He shook his head, reining his thoughts back to where they’d started.

  The woman about whom he’d consulted the cards.

  The woman he’d loved and lost twice so far.

  If she came again, would he find the strength to resist her?

  He doubted it. His body craved her as if she’d been taken from him the way Eve had been taken from Adam. Bone of his bone, blood of his blood, and flesh of his flesh. How could anybody resist such a pull?

  Realizing his cherished gold lighter was still in his hand, he rubbed his thumb across the time-worn inscription. Je t’aimerai toujours. I will always love you. It had been a gift from her the second time she’d appeared.

  Another century had since passed. Would she come again? And, if she should, how to keep history from repeating?

  Heaving a mournful sigh, he glanced toward the unturned cards before sliding his gaze to the windowpane. His reflection looked back at him with an expression of forlorn. Disgusted by the visage, he blew smoke in its face. Behind the cloud, it began to morph. His ginger hair darkened to a chocolate brown; his topaz eyes became sapphires; his angular face softened into a delicate oval; his wide mouth shortened and filled out.

  Her face, even more tormenting than his own.

  The past began to rise from his memory like a ghost from a grave. The next thing he knew, he was back in time, back in Scotland, pacing in the shadow of the medieval tower he still owned, but rarely visited.

  The thunder of an approaching carriage halted his pacing and quickened his pulse. As it stopped before him, he stepped up and opened the door. She took his offered hand, placed a slipper on the step, and smiled down at him. Even through her glove, the feel of her precious hand sent sparks up his arm. Her beauty, as always, heated his blood and filled him with awe. His eyes drank her in, lingering on the comely swell of her breasts above the low neckline of her pale-blue frock. He didn’t care overmuch for the high-waisted fashions of the day, but thoroughly enjoyed the view they afforded of the wearer’s décolletage. Caitriona’s especially, which aroused his passions.

  Just for a moment, he allowed himself to imagine those luscious breasts of hers at his disposal. Soon enough, they would be. How many times he’d imagined those sweet pill
ows in his hands and his mouth. The thought provoked a tightening down below. He clenched his jaw and silently cursed. Why had he not worn his kilt?

  He knew the answer. To impress her, he’d donned attire befitting Le Beau Monde. Fall-front tan knee breeches of virgin Scottish wool; an embroidered silk waistcoat imported illegally from Paris; a bespoke double-breasted frockcoat with cutaway tails; and a cravat tied in a manner befitting Beau Brummell himself. He’d even put on monogrammed silk stockings and slippers with absurdly—and painfully—pointed toes. His valet had tightly braided his long ginger hair before binding it with a length of silk ribbon in the Logan tartan.

  “I still cannot believe I shall be living here in less than a fortnight.” She looked up at the castle, her blue eyes displaying the same awe he felt when gazing at her. “The park is so...big and the castle so...well, it’s a bit like a fairytale.”

  “Come, m’aingael.” He offered her his arm. “Tea awaits us in the drawing room and, after you’ve had time to revive, I shall take you on the Laird’s Special Two-Pence Tour. How does that sound?”

  She batted her eyes at him in the manner of a coquette. “But wherever shall I get two pence, my lord? I am but the poor fiancée of a very wealthy man.”

  “And he is all the richer for it.” Her playfulness delighted him. “But perhaps he’d be willing to waive the fee in exchange for a wee kiss?”

  A hand flew to her chest. “My lord. How dare you suggest such a thing? Surely, a true gentleman would never propose anything so wicked.”

  With a bemused chuckle, he pulled her into his arms and pressed his lips against hers. Aware of his growing titillation and the watching footman, he let her go a moment later, offered her his arm, and escorted her inside. They’d been engaged for six months now, and thus far, he’d been a perfect gentleman. On the surface, anyway. On the inside, he was a depraved lecher who’d imagined the two of them in every position in the Kama Sutra.

  Thirty minutes later, after they’d partaken of tea and sweets, he took her on the promised tour, unchaperoned. The smell of her perfume—eau de violets, her signature scent—tortured him. So did every bed in the many sleeping quarters he escorted her through. It took everything he had to resist the urge to push her down on one of those beckoning coverlets and relieve the torture between his legs. Thankfully, the strenuous climb up the steep spiral staircase had brought his lust to heel.

  “This shall be our bedchamber.” He pushed open the heavy oak door to reveal the grand master bedchamber. “Unless, of course, you saw another you should prefer.”

  He’d had the room redecorated with her in mind. The cozy inglenook was now outfitted with his-and-her chairs and the adjoining bartizan with a skirted dressing table, a privy chair with a hinged seat, and a folding privacy screen. He watched with delight as she explored every nook and cranny, doing his best to avert his gaze from the room’s focal point: an ornately carved four-poster bed covered in embroidered velvets, silks, and goose-down pillows.

  “Will it do, do you think?”

  “Oh, aye, my lord.” Her sapphire eyes shimmered with excitement. “It will do very well indeed.”

  He’d hoped to impress her and it appeared he had. While her father was well-to-do, the baron’s wealth was nothing compared to his. Taking both her hands, he pulled her closer. “When we are alone, I should like you to call me by my Christian name.”

  “All right...Graham. I shall.”

  He smiled at the sound of his name on her lips. “You do not mind?”

  She blinked up at him. “Mind what?”

  “Sleeping in the same bed with your husband.” He ran his tongue across his lips. “Because if you’d rather—”

  “No. I want to.” Color touched her cheeks as she dropped her gaze to the floor. “May I ask you something?”

  “Aye.” Lifting her hands to his lips, he pressed kisses against the knuckles of first one and then the other. “Ask me aught, m’aingael.”

  Her hesitation tied a knot in his gut. What might she wish to ask? Please, let it not be about his past paramours. Because he’d tell her the truth, though he’d much rather not. He was a well-favored nobleman with property and a title. Bonny lasses often offered him their favors and, being a footloose young man with healthy appetites, he accepted as often as he declined. Not since their engagement, however. He’d worked too hard to win her to risk losing her over a few wild oats. Besides, he desired none but her now.

  “How do you imagine our marriage?” Her voice was meek, her eyes still downcast. “That is to say, what do you envisage when you think of us together as man and wife?”

  The relief he felt activated a smile. He had, as it happened, given the matter a good deal of thought. Setting a finger under her chin, he lifted her gaze to his. “’Tis my sincerest hope you’ll love me always, make love to me often, and put up with my ill humors when you must. And I hope to do the same for thee. Beyond that, I want our marriage to be a place where we both can be genuine. I want to experience fully who you are, not who you think I expect you to be. When we are on our own, anyway.” The smile broadened as he added, “’Tis not a completely selfless wish. It would be a lie to say I did not desire the same for myself.”

  The smile she gave him touched his heart. “Oh, Graham. Do you truly mean it?”

  He set his forehead against hers. “With all my heart.”

  A knock in the present shattered the memory. It also roused Wallace and Bruce, his West Highland White Terriers, who’d been napping on the bed. As the pair yapped at the intrusion, he barked at them to be quiet, even though he knew he was wasting his breath. They could no more ignore their instincts than he could.

  Heaving a sigh, he snuffed out his cigarette and crossed the room. As he reached for the doorknob, second thoughts made him snatch back his hand.

  “Aye? Who’s there?”

  “It’s me.”

  He cursed under his breath and bit his lip. It was the she-devil, just as he’d feared.

  “What do you want?”

  “Open the door, Graham. I won’t bite.”

  Says the spider to the fly.

  Hands fisting, he stepped back. “I’m not decent.”

  “In that case, definitely open up.”

  Patience wearing thin, he rolled his eyes. “What do you want, Branwen?”

  She took her time, leaving him dangling in her web. “The villagers are throwing a party tonight in our honor. At some dreadful public house called the Rusty Cauldron.”

  The villagers conjured an angry mob with torches and pitchforks. Finger-raking his hair, he blinked the disturbing image away. “Oh, aye? And what has that to do with me?”

  “I want you to come,” he dimly heard her say. “So does Benedict. We think it’ll do you good to get out more.”

  Benedict was her brother and his closest friend. The O’Lyrs were “faery sweethearts”—emotional drainers, in other words. A different branch of the same unholy tree as himself. He bit his lip as he considered her invitation. Her observation had merit. His spirits were low and a night out might do him good.

  On the other hand, her motives were suspect. If history were any teacher, they were not as altruistic as she would have him believe. Her alter ego was a raven, but in his opinion, it should’ve been a spider. More specifically, Shelob, the giant man-eating arachnid from J. R. R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings.

  Even so, maybe he ought to go rather than pass another long night with only his misery for company. Reaching his decision, albeit with serious misgivings, he leaned nearer the door. “Fine, I’ll come with. But I go stag or not at all. Are we clear on that?”

  “Have it your way.” Her tone was tart. “Just be ready to go by nine tonight.”

  Relief laved his chest when he heard her footsteps fading away down the hall. He lit another cigarette and returned to the window. The sun was up, but just barely, meaning he had the whole day yet to fill. What to do to pass the time? He glanced around the room. There was much more unpackin
g to do, but, all at once, he felt too restless to stay in. His gaze swept over the paneled walls, four-poster bed, and limestone fireplace before landing on the desk where the cards yet lay unturned.

  They called to him with the silent entreaty of unfinished business. Teeth scraping his lower lip, he wrestled with the choice. Perhaps he should turn them. Forewarned was forearmed, after all, and burying his head in the sand would change nothing. If he’d learned anything in his many years walking this earth, it was a man couldn’t defeat fate, however much he tried. Steeling his resolve with an intake of air, he strode to the desk, reclaimed his seat, and flipped the card of his past with a snap. His jaw clenched as he took in the stark image of a pierced heart afloat in a stormy sky.

  The Three of Swords.

  He scoffed. It was so much the story of his life he ought to have the card’s image tattooed across his chest.

  Biting his lip, he turned the card of the here and now quickly. Seeing what he’d most feared tightened his chest. The central figure sat in profile upon a throne carved with angels and butterflies. She wore a white gown and a cloak decorated with clouds. More clouds gathered in the background, suggesting a storm was coming. The woman’s left hand reached out toward someone or something unseen in the distance. Her other hand gripped the up-thrust symbol of her suit.

  The Queen of Swords.

  He’d drawn the card only once before: the morning he’d met Catharine La Croix at a sidewalk cafe overlooking the Seine. To say her resemblance to Caitriona discomposed him was an understatement. He’d been floored by the likeness. He’d also been drawn to it like a sailor to a siren’s song. Unfortunately, he’d had no ship’s mast to rope himself to until the danger passed. Within a few weeks, they were deeply in love. He never suspected she might meet the same fate as her previous incarnation. Not until it was too late, anyway.

  He’d done his best to protect her. After seeing Gerard Fitzgerald, the dark wizard who’d cursed him, on the street outside her apartment on Rue de Cherche Midi, he’d kept a watchful eye on her. Being as stubborn as ever, she didn’t care for his vigil. One morning, she slipped out after he’d fallen asleep. He’d searched for her everywhere, out of his mind with worry. He’d had her blood, should have felt her, but he didn’t. That evening, he learned why.