“I’m an old man, Mrs. Clairmont. I don’t get much shut-eye these days. I figure I’ll sleep when I’m dead,” Mr. Phelps said with a wheezing laugh. “You’ll find everything you need up on the mountain.”
“Thank you for watching over the place,” Matthew said.
“It’s a family tradition,” Mr. Phelps replied. “You’ll find Mr. Whitmore’s Ranger by the shed, if you don’t want to use my old Gator. I don’t imagine your wife will want to walk all that way. The park gates are closed, but you know how to get in. Have a nice night.”
Mr. Phelps went back inside, the screen hitting the doorframe with a snap of aluminum and mesh.
Matthew took Diana by the elbow and steered her toward what looked like a a cross between a golf cart with unusually rugged tires and a dune buggy. He let go of her only long enough to round the vehicle and climb in.
The gate into the park was so well hidden it was all but invisible, and the dirt trail that served as a road was unlit and unmarked, but Matthew found both with ease. He navigated a few sharp turns, climbing steadily as they traveled up the side of the mountain, passing through the edges of heavy forest until they reached an open field with a small wooden house tucked under the trees. The lights were on inside, making it as golden and inviting as a cottage in a fairy tale.
Matthew stopped Marcus’s Ranger and engaged the brake. He took a deep breath to drink in the night scents of mountain pine and dew-touched grass. Below, the valley looked bleak. He wondered if it was his mood or the silvered moonlight that rendered it so unwelcoming.
“The ground is uneven. I don’t want you to fall.” Matthew held out his hand, giving Diana the choice whether to take it or not.
After a concerned look, she put her hand in his. Matthew scanned the horizon, unable to stop searching for new threats. Then his attention turned skyward.
“The moon is bright tonight,” he mused. “Even here it’s hard to see the stars.”
“That’s because it’s Mabon,” Diana said quietly.
“Mabon?” Matthew looked startled.
She nodded. “One year ago you walked into the Bodleian Library and straight into my heart. As soon as that wicked mouth of yours smiled, the moment your eyes lightened with recognition even though we’d never met before, I knew that my life would never be the same.”
Diana’s words gave Matthew a momentary reprieve from the relentless agitation that Baldwin’s order and Chris’s news had set off in him, and for a brief moment the world was poised between absence and desire, between blood and fear, between the warmth of summer and the icy depths of winter.
“What’s wrong?” Diana searched his face. “Is it Jack? The blood rage? Baldwin?”
“Yes. No. In a way.” Matthew drove his hands through his hair and whirled around to avoid her keen gaze. “Baldwin knows that Jack killed those warmbloods in Europe. He knows that Jack is the vampire murderer.”
“Surely this isn’t the first time a vampire’s thirst for blood had resulted in unexpected deaths,”
Diana said, trying to defuse the situation.
“This time it’s different.” There was no easy way to say it. “Baldwin ordered me to kill Jack.”
“No. I forbid it.” Diana’s words echoed, and a wind kicked up from the east. She whirled around, and Matthew caught her. She struggled in his grip, sending a gray-and-brown twist of air howling around his feet.
“Don’t walk away from me.” He wasn’t sure he could control himself if she did. “You must listen to reason.”
“No.” Still she tried to avoid him. “You can’t give up on him. Jack won’t always have blood rage.