Amanda Grange - Mr. Darcy, Vampyre

A wolf howled and Elizabeth’s pulse jumped at the thought of the dangers ahead and the dangers behind.

Darcy extinguished the torch and threw it aside. Then he led her cautiously ahead, pushing the creepers out of the way with his hands and making a passage for her through the thick and thorny tangle. Even so, she scratched her face and caught her cloak on a briar before she was able to stand upright in a dense part of the forest.

Through a gap in the canopy above there came the faint and sickly light of a new moon rising in the sky, floating like a ghost in the stark and terrible blackness. Beneath it was an angry red glow, moving towards the castle. But the castle was now some way behind them and Elizabeth stopped to catch her breath.

‘No, we can’t stop yet,’ Darcy said. ‘We are still not safe.’

There were far-off shouts and the dim commotion of steel on steel, but closer to hand all was quiet.

Darcy turned and looked ahead. Through the thick and gnarly tree trunks a cottage could be glimpsed, and it was to this building that Darcy headed, Elizabeth at his side. They moved quickly and quietly, their breath misting in the air and their lungs gasping with the cold.

They had almost gained the cottage when a shadow detached itself from the surrounding blackness and Elizabeth froze. She could not at first see what it was, it seemed too large for a wolf or a man, but then it split and separated and she could see that it was made up of half a dozen men or more, each holding a club.

‘They were waiting for us,’ said Darcy under his breath. ‘We were betrayed.’

He began to back away from the men, pushing Elizabeth behind him, protecting her with his body. And then she heard a twig crack behind her and she froze. Her arm was seized and she was pulled backwards, amidst a flurry of blows and cries. And then from out of nowhere, a wind arose, circling with force and speed, and she felt a roaring in her ears. She could see nothing and hear nothing, save a confused jumble of sounds and images, and then suddenly everything went quiet. The wind dropped, the cries died, and she was standing alone in the forest. There were no hands holding on to her, no one anywhere. The forest was empty.

‘Darcy!’ she called, softly to begin with in case there were any enemies nearby. But then, needing to hear a friendly voice whatever the cost, she called more loudly, ‘Darcy!’

‘It’s all right,’ he said, ‘I’m here.’

Somehow he was right beside her, though she had not seen him or heard him a moment before.

‘What happened?’ she asked.

‘Some of the mob knew what we would do and tried to cut us off,’ he said.

‘I know, but after that. The wind, the cries, what happened to the men?’

‘Gone,’ he said.

He turned slightly and the moonlight fell on one side of his face. His hair was dishevelled and his clothes were awry, and she saw to her horror that he had blood on his mouth.

‘You’re hurt,’ she said, removing her glove and lifting her hand to see to his wound.

He caught it, stopping her, and all of a sudden they were not in the forest, they were nowhere, in some strange realm where only they two existed, and where every inch of her needed him. She looked into his eyes and something shot between them, connecting them, joining them, making them one. She felt the hunger in him, she saw the longing in his eyes and her heart stopped beating. Then he wrenched himself away.

‘What is it?’ she begged him. ‘What’s wrong? Why won’t you tell me?’

‘I should never have let her do this to me,’ he muttered under his breath, ‘but then, if I hadn’t, I would never have met you.’

There was a low murmur like the sea coming towards them and the red glow was getting closer.

‘We must go,’ he said.

He took her hand again and together they ran through the forest, snaking through the tree trunks and jumping over gnarled roots until they came to the cottage door.

Darcy knocked swiftly and quietly in a distinctive tattoo. The door was opened at once by a woman carrying a candle, which gave out only the smallest light. She said something to Darcy in a foreign tongue and he thanked her, then took Elizabeth through the house and out of the door at the other side. A barn lay ahead, and a man was leading a couple of horses, both saddled and ready to go.

Elizabeth looked at her horse with some apprehension. It was no gentle mount, but a large and restive looking creature, and it had a man’s saddle on its back. There was no help for it, she had to mount. Darcy lifted her into the saddle, then mounted his own animal, and they set off. She could barely hold the horse, but she hoped it would become less restive when it had run off some of its energy.

‘Where are we going?’ she asked.

‘Across the mountains,’ he said.

‘But the Count—’ she said.

‘—Will survive,’ he said. ‘He has survived worse.’

His horse shot forwards and Elizabeth’s animal followed, and they were swallowed up by the dark.

The night was long and wearisome. The horses were strong and not used to their riders, so that Elizabeth could only hold her mount with difficulty. The saddle was uncomfortable, and it was not long before her arms and legs were aching with the unaccustomed exertion. At last her horse began to tire and she was able to relax a little, which came as some relief, but the road seemed endless and she longed for journey’s end.

To begin with they rode side by side but, as the road narrowed, Darcy began to ride ahead of her, stopping at each junction to consider the way.

‘Haven’t you been here before?’ she asked him.

‘Yes, I have, but not for some time,’ he said, looking down three roads. ‘This way I think.’

‘You think?’ she asked in a dispirited voice.

He looked at her with sympathy.

‘Tired?’ he asked in concern.

She sat up in the saddle.

‘No,’ she lied, ‘I have never felt better.’

He smiled at her blatant but courageous lie and there was admiration in his eyes, then he laughed, and she laughed too. It was a bright sound in the deserted forest, ringing through the trees, and it heartened them, until it was answered by the desolate howling of a wolf, and then their laughter died.

Darcy turned to the right and Elizabeth followed him.

The road now began to wind downwards until it reached a hollow, where ice was already starting to form on the shallow pools of water which had collected there, but once through the hollow, it began to climb steadily. The horses had to pick their way carefully as the road began to narrow and finally dwindled into a path.

The branches of the trees closed in on them from every side, and when the path became a track, the trees were so close that the branches reached out and groped at Elizabeth as she passed, snagging her cloak and tangling in her horse’s mane. The animal whickered nervously and began to roll its eyes. For all its fatigue, it became jittery and tried to turn back, and Elizabeth had to struggle to keep it moving onwards, threading its way through a tangle of tree trunks and wading through deep undergrowth whilst she swerved and ducked to avoid the low hanging branches.

The horse’s nervousness communicated itself to her and she began to start at the slightest sound. Her nerves were stretched so tight that they quivered like a plucked bowstring for the forest was full of noises. Leaves rustled, twigs cracked, and, every now and then, a wolf howled, sending its lonely ululations high into the air, wailing and crying like a tortured soul. Worse was the agony of expectation as she waited for the answering cry, so that it was almost a relief when it came, although it was quickly replaced with a new terror: the knowledge that the wolves were out in force and were hunting in a pack.

They rode on to the point of endurance and beyond, never stopping, until Elizabeth was dazed with weariness. Then Darcy took the reins of her horse and led it behind his, whilst she slumped in the saddle. The moon rose and fell, sliding through the darkness like a pallid spectre. It was only when she saw it fall so far that it almost reached the horizon that Elizabeth realised what it meant: they were coming out of the forest. Ahead of them the trees thinned out and there, right at the edge of the tree line, was a small hut. It was a ramshackle affair, but it beckoned her with all the allure of a palace.

She was so tired by the time they finally reached it that she fell out of the saddle and into Darcy’s waiting arms. He carried her inside and lay her down on a bed of bracken covered with soft white goat skins, and by the time she touched the ground, she was already asleep.

***

Night was followed by day, creeping into the hut like a ghost, slowly, hesitantly, but taking on strength as the darkness faded from black to grey, before mustering its courage and illuminating the small hut to reveal a cotillion of dancing dust motes and Elizabeth’s sleeping form.

She was dressed as she had been for her flight, except that Darcy had removed her bonnet to reveal her soft, tangled hair, and covered her with his coat. She looked angelic. The lines of worry had gone from her face and been replaced with the smooth calm lines of repose. Her lashes lay thickly on her cheek. It had lost some of its sun-coloured brown and was now creamily golden against the dark grey of his coat. Her hand was above the loving coverlet, the nails small and well-shaped with white crescents at the tip.

As the sun touched her cheek she stirred, but then turned over and slept again.