Page 13 of Dhampira

“One hundred thousand kromni,” he said, his voice so deep I felt it in my stomach. “The woman is mine.”

I gaped at him.

He drew a sword, and I yelped when he slashed the blade through the silver chaining me to the post. He sheathed his weapon. In another swift movement, he collected the black dress, grabbed my hand, and rushed me from the platform. The nobles sprang back as he strode through them, pulling me in his wake.

“Please,” I said, running to keep up with him. The collar still circled my neck. The silver-lined manacles sent pain radiating up my arms. A stitch formed in my side.

The stranger ignored me. But as the double doors loomed ahead, he glanced at me over his shoulder. “Make yourself useful and scare them.”

“What?”

We reached the doors, and he kicked them open. More sunlight flooded the warehouse. As I’d suspected, docks lined a broad river. Dozens of boats dotted the blue water, which was so wide that the other side of the shore was a hazy suggestion. Behind us, shouts went up.

“Fuck,” the stranger muttered. Without warning, he swooped me into his arms and ran.

With a shocked cry, I clung to his neck with my mother’s gown squashed between us. The man’s cowl slipped, revealing a firm jaw and high cheekbones. A lock of russet hair spilled over his forehead, and a different kind of shock tripped through me. I’d expected black. Or brown. Something that matched his clothes and demeanor. Something, anything, other than red.

Footsteps pounded behind us.

The stranger ran faster, rounding the corner of the warehouse. A horse waited, and the stranger rushed to it and flung me onto its back. As I scrabbled for the pommel, the stranger stuffed the black gown into a saddlebag.

“I’ll show you,” he said, cinching the bag’s strap.

Confusion joined my alarm. “Show me what?”

“Stop! You there, stop!” Nobles with drawn swords poured around the side of the warehouse.

I gripped the pommel as my heart tried to beat out of my chest.

The stranger yanked down his cowl, turned, and roared. The sound rippled out like a shock wave, distorting the air before smashing into the nobles and sending them sprawling backward. Men cried out as they hit the ground. Several sprang up, flung down their swords, and sprinted in the opposite direction. The stranger spun back to me, his eyes a bright, glowing silver in a startlingly handsome face.

His fangs flashed as he smiled and swung up behind me. “That’s how you scare humans,” he said.

Then he kicked the horse’s flanks and sent us hurtling onto the streets of Sausberg.

4

The world whipped past in a blur of noise and motion.

Dozens of questions spun through my head, the man’s identity—and species—chief among them. Vampires weren’t the only Noctan creatures with fangs. But our breakneck pace made voicing my questions impossible.

I clung to the pommel as the wind tore at my hair and the horse’s hoofbeats thundered in my ears. When I’d dreamed of visiting Sausberg, I’d imagined wide boulevards and grand buildings. But the city I observed now was nothing like my dreams.

Narrow streets and crooked alleys formed a murky labyrinth that seemed to sprawl in every direction. Taverns and shops with muddy brown facades huddled next to the road. In some places, the weathered buildings leaned over the street, their stories stacked haphazardly. Mullioned windows that might have sparkled in the sunlight were glazed with dirt. The pungent scents of ale and decay wrinkled my nose. Sausbergians moved up and down the fabled wooden sidewalks, which sagged under the weight of boots and the occasional pile of garbage.

The stranger guided the horse through the tangle of streets, his arm clamped around my waist and his broad chest hard against my back. His gloved hands gripped the reins, and his thighs nudged my backside as he gave the horse unspoken commands. Every now and then, he tightened his arm as we jumped an obstacle or careened around a sharp corner. Passersby stared. A few startled pedestrians shouted after us.

The man continued our punishing pace.

Snatches of conversation and bursts of laughter joined the relentless pounding of the horse’s hooves. The afternoon sun baked the crown of my head. The silver around my neck and wrists sent waves of fatigue and nausea rippling through me. My nightgown, which had ridden up when the stranger threw me atop the horse, fluttered around my bare thighs. The stranger’s arm rested perilously close to the undersides of my breasts, a constant reminder that only a thin layer of cotton separated me from every set of eyes on the street. And every gallop jolted my spine and reverberated through my skull.

When yet another jump made my teeth clack together, I turned my head and shouted over the pounding of the horse’s hooves. “Can we slow down?”

The man’s silver eyes gleamed in his cowl, which he’d drawn over his face again. When he spoke, his incisors were a normal length once more. “No.”

I leaned around him, my gaze on the street behind us.

He grunted and tightened his forearm around my ribs. “You’ll slide off the horse if you keep doing that.”