The Ravening

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Milosh sat his horse just inside the forest curtain at the foot of the tor, staring through a veil of cold rain splinters toward what remained of Whitebriar Abbey, no more than a burned-out shell at its summit. He hadn't come this way in thirty years. This was the last thing he would have expected. The sight of the great house, standing wounded against the twilight sky, brought physical pain.

Milosh shrugged his saturated greatcoat closer about his neck and shoulders. Rain dripping from his wide-brim slouch hat was trickling down his neck from the wet hair resting on his collar. He was chilled to the bone.

"Easy, Somnus," he said, soothing the sleek black stallion underneath him, while crooning to it, sotto voce. The restless horse had begun to prance in place, tossing its long, wet mane. As if in reply, the animal bobbed its head, puffing visible breath from flared nostrils, and snorted.

Milosh paid no attention to the obvious protest. Narrowing his eyes to the rain, he spurred the rambunctious horse on and it bolted out into the thicket. The wind had picked up and the rain was fast turning to ice. He was heading into the gale, and the splinters of freezing rain stung his face and beat about him relentlessly. The horse balked as they started to climb, but the Gypsy would have none of it. Leaning low over the animal's neck, he whispered: "It is now or not at all. The tor will be as a sheet of glass in no time. Then where will you sleep out of the weather, eh?"

As if it understood, the horse complained in reply and began its high-stepping ascent, every muscle in its sleek, black coat rippling. There had to be some shelter remaining in the place. Instinct moved Milosh toward that possibility. There was a perfectly respectable inn in Carlisle, but that would not do. As inhospitable as it was in its present state, he would sleep in Whitebriar Abbey one last time before moving on.

Still complaining, the horse danced crazily up the tor, slip-sliding on the slick, icy crust forming underfoot. The closer it carried him toward the summit, the more Milosh's heart sank at the devastation. As he climbed, his mind's eye saw in rampant flashes the Abbey as it used to be, standing proud against the gales, facing the cruel north wind unscathed.

Destroyed by fire. That's what the vicar in the valley had said; a fire of mysterious origin. No word of its occupants, the Hyde-Whites. They were not harmed. They were seen soon after the ferocious blaze, but then disappeared. There had been no word of them since. Milosh heaved a ragged sigh. He was six months too late. Maybe there would be some clue inside, something his extraordinary perception would disclose. When he was here last, the Abbey was under siege by vampires. It was snowing then-a virtual blizzard. This was worse, this icy cold that stabbed a man to the very marrow of his bones.

It was the winter solstice. At home, at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains, there would be bonfires and feasting and pageantry. Many of the celebrations were remnants of the old religion practiced in secret there still or openly under new guises, like the bonfires in fall and winter, and the May pole in spring. And then there were the colorful events, tribal mysteries, whose roots were planted deep in Romany custom. Yes, Milosh was homesick, but he could not go home-not yet, it was too soon. Some still might live who would remember. Only sixty years had passed since he'd set foot on Romanian soil-a mere blink in time's eye to a vampire who had roamed through the world for nearly four centuries hunting the very thing he had become.

By the time he reached the summit, the ice had bent the grass spears low. Somnus snorted dourly, flashing eyes that glowed with an iridescent radiance, and glanced behind at Milosh in the saddle. The two shared a unique bond. Of all the horses Milosh had commanded over the years, Somnus was the closest to him. The animal was vampir, like the Gypsy himself, having been bitten by a vampire; Milosh had saved the wild black phantom, and made him his own. Somnus would be his last. Like himself, the stallion would not age, but rather wander through the centuries with his master.

The stables were still standing, having mostly escaped the fire, and Milosh breathed a ragged sigh of relief as he climbed down and unsaddled the horse. Somnus had grazed before the rain began, but Milosh was never without a treat for the horse. He drew an apple from his greatcoat pocket and lured the stallion into one of the intact stalls. Searching the others, he found an old horse blanket and draped it over the animal's back. Then turning on his heels, he sprinted out into the icy rain again, and made straight for the Abbey.

He entered where the west wing used to be. The front door was still intact, but the roof above the Great Hall was gone, as was everything up to the staircase that divided the house in two. He climbed over burnt timbers, heaps of blackened slag besotted with the rain, and scattered furniture, some of which was barely recognizable. The stench of it rushed up his nostrils and for a moment that was all he could smell. It wasn't until he had cleared the second-floor landing and turned into what remained of the east wing that another scent rose above the rest-an unfamiliar scent. Such always flagged danger and Milosh froze in his tracks, his head raised as he sniffed the cold air. When he lowered his head, he did so slowly, his eyes snapping in all directions. He was not alone.

Adrenaline surged through his blood. He was always on guard, elsewise he would never have come through the ages unbitten since that one fateful time so long ago, when the nightmare began. Making no sound, he prowled to the toile suite, where he had stayed as a guest so long ago. The master suite and yellow suite across the hall had been gutted, but several suites on the north side of the hall were in fairly good condition, but for smoke damage and crumbling plaster exposed to the weather. The toile suite was one of these. Aside from a dusting of soot over everything, the rooms were reasonably intact; at least the sitting room was as he strolled through it. The unfamiliar scent was stronger there, and Milosh was on his guard as he sauntered into the vast bedchamber.

Lifting down the tinderbox from the mantle, he lit a candle. A fire was wanted if he was ever to dry his soaked clothes. His wool greatcoat had absorbed the icy rain like a sponge. He spied a few logs stacked beside the hearth and chucked them into the hearth. More were needed if he was to keep the fire going through the night, and he strode back into the sitting room and collected what was there. Arms loaded, he was striding back into the bedchamber when a small hooded figure slammed into him as he crossed the threshold, catching him off balance.

"Hold, there!" he thundered, but his words were wasted. Two small hands gave him a shove and he backpedaled into the wall beside the door, dropping the wood in his arms. The impact of his body slamming against the singed wall at his back dislodged a heavy mirror, which fell, striking him a blow to the head that drove him down on the floor.

His slouch hat spared him being cut by the mirror shards raining down around him. Dazed, he shook his head to clear his vision. The room swam around him. Through the vertigo, he saw that his assailant was a woman, slight of build though fleet-footed. Her hood had fallen back in her haste, and her long mane of bright coppery hair streamed out behind her as she fled.

"Wait!" he called after her. "Who are you ... what are you doing here ...?"

A strangled outcry replied as she darted out into the corridor, the hem of her cloak dusting the woodwork.

Milosh ground out a string of blue expletives as he righted himself. Four hundred years roaming the planet doing battle with bloodthirsty vampires only to be knocked off his feet by a mere slip of a girl? He must be getting old. It was degrading. In his haste scrambling upright, he leaned upon several slivers of the broken mirror, and quickly drew back his hand. The shards cut deep into his right palm, and blood gushed from the wound. Things were much simpler when such geegaws were made of polished metal that did not put a body to the hazard.

Muttering a fresh string of profanity under his breath, the Gypsy clenched his fist over the ragged gash and staggered after the girl. She was nowhere in sight when he reached the landing. Still dizzy, he opted to employ his extraordinary power to leap great distances, and soared over the debris in his path. He touched down running through the gaping hole that had once been the west wing of the Abbey.

His eyes, narrowed in the stabbing rain, flashed in all directions. Where could she have gone so quickly in such a downpour, more ice than rain? He wasn't left long to wonder. His gaze had scarcely come around to the stable when he saw her leaving it at a gallop astride Somnus, her cloak billowing about her like a great black sail.

Cupping his hands around his mouth, he shouted at the top of his lungs: "Stop, thief! That is my horse you're stealing!"

The girl made no reply, and Milosh gave an earsplitting whistle meant to bring the stallion back, but Somnus galloped on, his high-pitched whine siphoned off on the wind, and disappeared down the ice-crusted tor a good deal faster than he'd climbed it.

Milosh ground out another oath and trudged toward the stable. No one else had ever been able to mount the phantom horse, much less ride him, which many a thief had discovered these past thirty years. In any other circumstances, Milosh would have praised the girl for her fine seat astride the stallion, and excellent horsemanship in general to sit such a horse bareback. As it was, quite something else was streaming from his clenched lips.

Anger set his blood racing, and with it came the fangs that always descended whenever his temper flared, or he was in need of a weapon, or had become aroused; this reality had not ended with the feeding frenzy. He would always bear the mark of the vampire-bloodlust or no.

There was only one way to catch the girl, and he stripped off his clothes, leaped into the air, and hit the ground running on the four thickly padded feet of canis dirus, his wolf incarnation. Truth to be told, the Gypsy was more at home in the skin of the great white wolf than he was in his mortal flesh. It had been that way since the blood moon ritual he'd learned of in Persia had freed him from the bloodlust. Though he was still and always would be a vampire, once the feeding frenzy was eliminated, his instincts and prowess in the body of the wolf increased until they carried over into his human incarnation. He was more wolf than man, able to destroy the undead in either body.

He sniffed the rain-washed air. The strange scent he'd smelled earlier rode the wind. So this was the foreign scent he'd smelled-her scent. It filled his flared nostrils still. He recognized it now-herbal and clean, a blending of rosemary and lavender-all manner of herbs-a fragrance of the wild-of the wood-of the earth, mysterious and evocative. It played havoc with his senses, reminding him of his early days ... and of home.

The great wolf snorted as it skidded down the steep incline in a gait that more closely resembled a limp owing to its gashed right front paw. It was definitely less graceful than its usual surefooted prowl, when sinew and muscle meshed in a flawless mechanism that felt more comfortable to Milosh than his two-legged stride. At the moment, he was too enraged to care.

The snorting wolf staved on in mindless pursuit. He was the hunter now, that feral instinct having taken over. Was her scent a memory or was she near? Either way, Milosh couldn't shake it. On his last visit to Whitebriar Abbey, he'd had the snow to show him his quarry's tracks. Now, he had to rely upon his extraordinary sense of smell. He wasn't too concerned. He also had the horse's scent, and since the other had made such an unsettling impression upon him, he decided to trust Somnus's musky odor instead. It led him through the brake and the thicket at the foot of the tor, past what remained of the dormant, sheared-off woad canes, then finally into the forest.

Above, the canopy of interlaced boughs kept much of the icy rain from penetrating to the forest floor. A cold green darkness prevailed under the pines. Reflected light from the shadows twinkled in the wet patches that hadn't escaped a sprinkling. The white wolf's breath puffed from its flared nostrils. The ice underfoot had slowed the blood flow in its gashed front paw, but the nagging pain remained. Now and then a high-pitched whine testified to that. His extraordinary night vision was charged now in the deep dark of the forest. He saw the path ahead as if through a bloodred veil, and though he strained and tested his power to its fullest, he detected no sign of horse or rider. Where could she have gone?

All at once, he stopped in his tracks. The scent was stronger now, but that was not what made the great wolf hesitate. It was the plaintive howling of other near and distant wolves that raised the hackles on his back. Waves of déjà vu washed over him at the sound. It brought back memories of the siege that had taken place there thirty years ago, of Sebastian, the vampire that hunted him as he did it, and of the Brotherhood that had driven the creature back, but could not-for all their number-destroy it. Could it be happening again? More pointedly, could he have brought it here? If it was, and he had, whoever the girl was she was in grave danger, and he sprang forward, her scent ghosting through his nostrils, and plunged deeper in among the ice-glazed trees in search of her.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from The Ravening by Dawn Thompson Copyright © 2008 by Dawn Thompson. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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