Vampire Lords of Blacknall: Trinity (2 page)

Both, one tall, one short, were gazing intently at the wrestling women, so neither man saw him as he reached outward. He grabbed them by the back of their collars, and then, faster than humanly possible, he lifted one upward and he tugged them together, until their foreheads butted against each other in front of him. The force was immense as the crack sounded in the alleyway like the strike of an anvil.

It was hard to kill a vampire, but it wasn’t that difficult to knock one, or two for that matter, out cold. Trinity let the unconscious vampires fall limply to the ground with varying thuds, dependent upon size, as his piercing gaze lifted to Cull. Cull’s human patrons ran away in the darkness.

Cull snarled, “Blacknall blood, always have to ruin good business.”

Trinity snarled much louder, lifting his muscular body and height over Cull. Cull relented quickly, especially with his two cronies unavailable. Trinity had fought Cull twice and won the last time leaving the chicane Cull with his head half-severed. It had taken Cull quite some time for that one to regenerate. Cull knew who the master was, and he submitted with a bowed head. Trinity relaxed his stance … a bit.

“I pinned her, Master Cull!” cried out one of the women behind them.

He and Cull turned their gazes to the tangled mess of fat, pale tits and bare legs.

Cull cussed with his fist rising. “Bloody balls! I would have won it all. That bitch was bet as the loser.”

Trinity shrugged wide shoulders and stretched his neck, turning fully to face the women. He growled with a fierce showing as his fangs distended. The whore on top screeched, shaking and swaying her melon-sized breasts. The one on bottom craned her neck and, seeing him, she screamed along. They both scrambled up and began to run away. It was a vision, even giving rise to the predator controlled deep inside him. His nostrils flared with the thoughts of tender flesh and hot pumping blood inside weak and fleeing prey. Then, with effort, he forced his gaze away, turning back to Cull.

“My best whore’s dead, now this,” Cull hissed.

Suddenly, Trinity’s interest was piqued. With a swift motion, he grabbed Cull, whose betting coins and pounds went clattering onto the damp cobblestones beneath their feet. With barely an afterthought, he lifted Cull off his feet. A fierce growl erupted from his throat as he marched forward and slammed Cull into a brick wall on the side of a tenant building. Cull’s fangs extended, as did his nails, while Trinity held him up against the wall by his throat.

“
Tell
me about your best whore,” Trinity’s voice spat, unrelenting, into Cull’s twisted features.

Cull snarled and hissed, but then Trinity started to become angry, his eyes slanting yellow and Cull immediately became more subdued.

“Killed,” Cull spat, glaring.

“How?” Trinity bared his fangs. Cull wouldn’t meet his threatening gaze and became more submissive. “How?” His growl was fierce again with his fangs punching longer.

“It’s not my blame,” Cull whined. Trinity shook him with increasing strength. “All right,” Cull gasped. “Torn apart,” he choked. Then he added, “Like the others.”

Trinity asked, enunciating each word with his fangs bared, “Do you have a renegade beast in your territory, Cull?”

“Not a vampire blood,” Cull barked. “No vampire rips its food apart!”

Trinity stretched his neck one way, then the other, as though realigning a kink. He let the mangy vampire drop.

“Shit,” Cull cussed, barely catching his fall in a half crouch.

Trinity strode several paces away with his back to Cull. He lifted his nostrils to the night air. Rotting food and stenches from the sewer filled the air. The east side had such a decaying fragrance.

“I thought the woman just killed was a high society chit.” Trinity didn’t turn to look at Cull who answered his question quickly enough.

“It was my slut. She was just dressed to meet a titled gent. Same as the others … all whores.”

“All yours?” Trinity asked, and he turned to face Cull. He saw Cull was groping around on the damp cobblestones for the scattered coins and pound notes.

Cull looked up at him sideways with a half sneer. “Not all, Blacknall, some’s the Mongrel’s, some’s independent.”

Trinity nodded. He lowered to a crouch with his forearms balanced on his bent knees as he let his eyes glow yellow with predatory tints.

“Where was the last one murdered?”

“Murdered?” Cull hissed. “That’s human kink.”

“You said it wasn’t a blood,” Trinity hissed back.

Cull didn’t dissent further, he just gave Trinity the location and Trinity left Cull alive. Nevertheless, his last words and final threat to him were, “Your house better be in order, Cull. There are worse punishments for a blood than death.” In times past, Trinity had told Cull about several abhorrent ones the Blacknall brothers were not above inflicting.

Trinity found the spot within minutes. The carnage had taken place in a small park between King Street and Row Street. The corpse was gone, of course, but the area on the grass was still bloody enough to attract two mongrel dogs which he scattered with his presence as he strode into the park. His long hair was damp and his gaze was sharp as he scented the air. It took him moments to analyze the blood scent as he crouched and surveyed the area.

“Cull was right,” he muttered. “No vampire would let all this blood fall to waste.” He touched his finger to a smear of the old blood. He held it to his nose to sniff and lifted it to his tongue to taste.

The victim was young and opium sour. His hand lowered as he tilted his head to the side, slowly evaluating the blood like a connoisseur. Suddenly, his gaze jerked to the left and it latched onto a footprint in the soft dirt. “She was chased,” he growled.
Hunted.

He rose, following the trail more by the taste of her blood than by sight. The footprints came from the far side of the park, and halfway across he found the scent of the foul beast that hunted her. It was a very weak scent, just a boot print and not blood. A barely perceptible tendril and it came from the west. Uptown.

“Interesting,” he uttered, rising again to follow the wavering scent west.

With difficulty — losing the scent, and then after barely finding it again — he followed it to a crumbling mansion in a section of London that housed the blue-blood nobles of old money and long lineage. He couldn’t say if the one carrying the odd, wavering scent from the possible animalistic murderer had entered the mansion or just stalked its circumference.

Then it came to him, on tendrils of wind suddenly moving the fog to swirl apart, an instant rise of awareness. There was a fear-laden hunt occurring somewhere. At the same moment, his attention rose toward an awareness of predator stalking prey. He could feel all three of his brothers’ attentions turning sharply to the west … following his own. He sensed the hunt in the wind and his brothers sensed it through him. Their connection was not of words, but more intentions, and he tried but failed to hold them back from following him as he tracked the newest evidence he perceived in the west.

The lethal monster was hunting again.

So soon …

Chapter Two

“Y
ou cannot hide from him forever, Beth,” Lord Adam Winslow announced as he lounged informally on the window seat in his sister’s small sitting room.

Said sister muttered at him, as she tried to tie her wavy, long black hair on top of her head with a velvet ribbon the exact emerald coloring of the ball gown she wore. “He doesn’t stalk you,” she replied with an accusatory tone.

Adam sighed. She was right; their stepbrother, Lord Fanton Rothschild, had always been very strange, however about three years ago he’d turned strangeness into a new life style. Fanton didn’t even seem to look the same. It was as though he’d gotten better looking with perpetually glossy hair and shiny eyes. Before, he’d been pimpled and fallow-looking. Back then he’d sweated profusely and had something he’d called a moustache on his upper lip, and that Adam called a few sorry hairs.

“Even his moustache is thick and glistens now,” Adam muttered under his breath. Fanton had been secretive and slimy, now he was secretive and feral. Adam didn’t know how his stepbrother had gone from a sappy pervert to a handsome deviant. But he had. One thing stayed the same though, unfortunately. That was Fanton’s unhealthy interest in his stepsister, Lady Elizabeth Winslow.
Beth.

“Adam, it is not that bad.” Beth’s voice was soft as she turned to him with her hair ribbon secured. “I’m supposed to be looking for a husband.” Her declaration placed her small hands on her generously rounded hips. “So going out every night—”

“Until dawn,” he interrupted, pinning her with an accusatory look.

She smiled at him, her ivory skin looking fragile against her midnight black hair. He worried about the fact she had to sleep during the day because she forced herself to stay away from her home every night … all night. She lost sunlight hours trying to keep the forced schedule she imposed on herself. Not seeing enough daylight for her health.

“I’m just so glad you see his manipulative and strange ways. Unlike—”

“Our step uncle Westfield,” Adam interjected.

Beth, used to his interjecting ways, continued on, “Yes, our step uncle to whom we owe everything, but does not see it. Without you, Adam, I would think I was going mad.”

“You are not,” Adam responded strongly, coming off the window seat in a lanky stand. Unlike Fanton, who was bull-chested these days, he was simply leanly-muscled and thin. Adam reached Beth’s side as he clasped her hand. “I see it,” he said, looking down into her glistening multi-colored eyes. Beth had the most unique eyes. One was dark blue and the other was hazel green against her long black eyelashes. “I just wish there was something I could do about it,” he finished with an edge in his voice.

“No, no,” Beth whispered, squeezing his hand. “Promise me,” she implored, “Promise that you will go about the University and leave Fanton alone.”

“
If
he hurts you …” Adam warned with a tight voice.

“He won’t,” Beth soothed, and then she said quickly, “All these years since our mother married his father, after our father died when we were just children, he has never really hurt me in all that time.”

“He just better not,” he retorted stubbornly, making Beth smile for some odd girl’s reason he would never fathom as she patted his cheek several times.

“You are so good to me, little brother,” she said with fondness, and then with another girl’s character trait, she changed the conversation as quickly as one could click their fingers. “So say you will come to church with me this Sunday. I’ve found a new one that has a rector who is said to give the most amazing sermons.”

Adam hedged, but he knew there wasn’t much he could deny Beth. Then, before he spoke, a barely-perceived knock sounded on the sitting room door. They both turned to look toward the door, puzzled. No one in their step uncle’s crumbling mansion came to their doors and knocked.

Beth was the first to recover, calling, “Come in.” She glanced at Adam with a furrowed brow, and then at the door. He suddenly realized Beth thought the person behind the knocking could be Fanton. He stood taller and he took a step in front of Beth. A second later, they both relaxed when the aged butler Spindle appeared, out of breath.

“There is a Lady Ariel Raleigh arrived, Lady Winslow, and she awaits you in the main foyer.” Adam knew both he and Beth wondered how the elderly Spindle made it up the long, twisting staircase at all to warn of the momentous event.

He also knew Lady Ariel was Beth’s only friend and since they had no female relatives to chaperon Beth into society, Lady Ariel and her aunt took charity upon Beth to escort her on the rounds. Without their good graces, Beth would be out of the social events.

Adam saw Beth’s worried gaze shifting to the window and he saw, as she did, it was already dusk. “She cannot be here,” Beth exclaimed. “It is too early and I’ve told her never to come inside for me.” At this exclamation, she grasped her shimmering silk skirts, lifting them to step forward with a hurried march toward the door. As she passed Spindle, she asked, with fear inflicting her voice, “Lord Fanton hasn’t risen yet, has he?”

“I am not certain, my lady,” Spindle called after them, as by then Adam decided he’d best follow Beth. Adam knew Spindle’s uncertainty meant Fanton might well be awake, moving about his suites on the lower floor of their infirmed, step uncle’s crumbling mansion. But Fanton never came out of those suites until after dusk had fallen into night.

And Beth was gone. Always.

“I could strangle Ariel for this,” Beth muttered, looking back at him as she rounded the dark wood banister. “She simply will not listen to me and stay away from him,” she continued to mutter, stopping at the top of the stairs to gather her skirts higher. Adam stepped beside her and clasped her elbow to steady her. She gave him a grateful glance, and then they began to step down the long, winding staircase that led into the foyer.

Adam knew for the longest time — well over a year now — Beth had been able to keep the fact she had a stepbrother a secret. Until ten weeks ago, though Fanton had never done it before, he began attending society functions. It wasn’t that Fanton stayed closeted in the mansion as a hermit to society. It was just in the evenings past Fanton usually attended more bawdy events across London. He ran with a crowd of indulgent and rowdy young lords. They attended what higher society deemed as unseemly events: boxing, gambling, whore house parties, and many more sordid affairs.

“Lord Fanton never cared for genteel parties before,” Beth expelled as though reading his ongoing thoughts. “Nor titled young ladies like Lady Ariel,” she continued on a sharp note. “But they’ve met now. Lord Fanton has forced his strange seductions upon her.” Beth stopped halfway down the staircase and he could tell she dreaded going further.

“We will both talk to her,” he said, offering what support he could.

“I should have brought my shawl,” Beth muttered.

Adam thought she looked lovely as usual. She would say, as women were wont to do, that she was too plump or just barely pretty, not beautiful. However, he knew men turned to look at the ampleness of her bosom and the sincerity of her laughter. For all that, Beth thought she was average. She was a very sweet girl.