The Vampire Dimitri (Regency Draculia 2)

She thought that by reviewing these items, her memory might be jolted as to where and when she’d seen the woman with the hairpin. Maia knew it wasn’t someone she’d known from the ton. It was either a newcomer—someone who’d married into the peerage from another country or area—or someone who hadn’t been out in Society for some years, or some distant relative. Or even, she thought suddenly, someone of the demimonde. Those women who were neither fully accepted into Society, but who nevertheless interacted with the men as their mistresses. Perhaps she’d seen such a lady wearing this sort of decoration while shopping or at the theater.

“Maia, whatever is wrong?” Aunt Iliana appeared in the doorway of the parlor. A handsome woman of perhaps forty or forty-five, she was built nearly as tall and sturdily as a man, although she was by no means masculine in appearance. Her skin was nearly as dark as the earl’s, and her eyes the color of strong tea.

Maia was more than a bit shocked to see her dressed in loose trousers and a manlike shirt, along with soft slippers. The older woman’s dark hair was pulled straight back into a braid and her cheeks were damp and flushed. She looked as if she’d just been doing something with great exertion.

“I apologize for my appearance,” Iliana said ruefully. “But Hunburgh said it was urgent, that it had to do with D—the earl.”

“He’s disappeared,” Maia said, and explained. She ended by showing her the hairpin.

Iliana took one look and said a very unladylike thing under her breath. “Rubies. Someone knows about his Asthenia.” Then she looked at Maia as if she’d been caught with her hand in the biscuit box.

“What is it about rubies?” Maia asked. “Do they affect all the Dracule that way?”

Iliana seemed to measure her for a moment. Then, obviously finding her not wanting, said, “It’s called an Asthenia. Each Dracule has his own specific weakness. The effects are like paralysis, and when whatever it is is touched directly to them, it can cause great, excruciating pain. Your instinct is correct. Someone used the gems to weaken him enough to take him away. Dimitri would never have been caught otherwise.”

Maia had known that without being told. Although she’d never had cause to see him in jeopardy or otherwise in a physical altercation, his presence suggested a man very much in control at all times. A flash of memory, of that bare, chiseled chest, broad shoulders and the long, sleek curve of his muscular arms had her insides fluttering again. No, indeed. He would not have been caught unless taken unawares.

She explained to Iliana the steps she’d taken to identify the hairpin’s owner, and the other woman nodded in satisfaction. “Very good. When Angelica and Voss arrive, we can send word to Giordan and Chas.”

Maia wondered about this woman, and certainly not for the first time. She spoke of the vampires and their world with such familiarity. “Who are you?” Maia asked. “You aren’t really Corvindale’s aunt, are you?”

Iliana laughed. “No, of course not. That would make me more than a hundred twenty years old, and a crone—or a Dracule—at that. No, indeed. I’m merely one who understands the threats of his world, and an old friend of Dimitri’s. I helped to raise Mirabella after he found her. She needed protection from the earl’s enemies, and I needed a place to live away from—well, that’s another story for a time when we have time. Suffice to say,” she said, “I’ve learned to protect myself to some extent from the beastly ones. Even your brother admitted that I’m quite capable.”

Maia looked at her. “Could you teach me something?”

The older woman opened her mouth, likely to decline, but Maia pushed on. “If I’m to live in this world where my sister is to wed a former vampire, my brother hunts them and my so-named guardian is one, I think it only proper that I know something about protecting myself. Especially since there are vampires who are coming after us. My father taught me how to shoot a pistol when I was twelve,” she added when Iliana began to shake her head.

“Your brother would never allow it.”

“He doesn’t have to know,” Maia said firmly. “No one has to know.”

Iliana frowned and then threw up her hands. “Very well. But don’t tell the earl.”

Maia awoke with a start, sitting bolt upright.

Her heart was pounding and her body slick with perspiration.

That had not been a pleasant dream. The darkness still lingered, wrapping the frightening images through her mind. Not of a warm, red world with sensual lips and tongue, the easy and welcome slide of fangs, but one of tearing flesh and screaming pain. Violence and violation.

She couldn’t catch her breath, and Maia threw back the covers of her bed, trying to jolt the last vestiges away with sharp movement. It didn’t work instantly, but slowly the ugly feelings eased.

Moonlight shimmered over her empty bed and the table next to it. Maia’s attention fell on the two new additions to her bedside table: the ruby hairpin and a slender wooden stake.

True to her word, Iliana had taken Maia to an empty chamber in the servants’ wing of Blackmont Hall. The room had no furnishings to speak of, and was windowless. There, she’d shown Maia how to hold a stake the proper way and where to aim when stabbing at a vampire.

“In the heart,” she said, “and they die instantly.”

A little shudder ran through Maia when she recalled how Chas had launched himself across the room at White’s and thrust his stake into Dewhurst’s torso. If he hadn’t been wearing armor, he would have been dead.

Maia and Iliana had practiced awhile, with Maia surprised by the other woman’s speed and agility, and learned that she did quite a bit of training for this skill. Maia realized that her own days spent with merely a bit of walking, some riding and much sitting, had left her much less fluent in body movement. And although she was uncomfortably warm and damp after her session with Iliana, Maia also realized she felt energized. And now, however, her own body was a little sore.

She decided then that she would practice every day, with Iliana if possible. But now, Maia was unsettled and felt the need to get out of her bedchamber.

She left the stake on her table and padded down the hall to the stairs. Perhaps a book. Or a cup of milk or even a slice of cheese and an apple might help to distract her mind.

As she reached the bottom of the stairs, she heard voices. Her heart leaped and she hurried down and along the hall, her nightgown flowing around her ankles. A light poured from beneath the door of Corvindale’s study, so, without much thought in regards to her attire and the mortification of the last time she’d seen him, Maia flung the door open.