A Dowry of Blood (A Dowry of Blood #1)(42)

“Uncover what he keeps hidden from us,” I said. “Alexi, you can pick locks can’t you?”

“That’s right,” he said, still looking a little dazed. Finding out your husband would kill you at the drop of a hat was destabilizing, I knew that well. “I used to spring locks all the time when I was squatting with my friends. It’s easy enough.”

“I’ll need you to come with me as far as the door, then. You don’t have to come inside if you don’t want to.”

“I’m not afraid of him,” he said, puffing out his chest. A bold-faced lie, but a valiant one. “And I’m not letting you go by yourself. Maggie?”

Magdalena was gazing off into the distance with a hard stare, her lips pressed into a thin line. She was probably thinking of all the ways she wanted to punish you for your duplicitousness.

“Someone has to stay on the ground floor to welcome our dear husband home,” she said slowly. “Just in case he arrives while you two are still otherwise occupied.”

Alexi sucked in a breath through his teeth.

“If you cover for us and we’re found out, you’ll be paying double hell. You know he hates it when we take each other’s side.”

“He won’t find out,” she said, squeezing his shoulder reassuringly. “Because I’m more clever than him by half.”

“So we’re agreed?” I asked.

Your voice, sneering and snide, came into my mind. Levelling all sorts of ugly words at me. Ungrateful. Unfaithful. Mutinous.

I smothered the thoughts with a quick litany, begging any saint who would still listen to give me strength.

Alexi gave a decisive nod.

“Absolutely.”

“Then we’d better get going. He could be back any minute.”

I seized Alexi’s hand and we started to bustle out of the room, but Magdalena’s voice stopped me at the door.

“Constanta?”

“Yes?” I asked, turning back around.

Her eyes were as dark as a night without stars.

“Find out how to make him hurt.”





The basement was vast and dark, running almost the entire length of the house. Alexi made short work of the lock on the door with one of my hairpins, and then we carefully traversed the stairs one after the other. I could hear Alexi breathing behind me, shallow, quick breaths betraying his fear. He was terrified of being caught down here, but he had come with me anyway, and I was deeply grateful for his bravery.

The floor of the basement was made of damp earth, tightly packed down by thousands of footsteps. We picked our way through moldering wooden chests and shelves of wine left to age, doing our best to navigate without bumping into anything. My eyesight was keen in the dark, but Alexi was too young to have developed the skill yet. He followed closely, one hand clutching the sleeve of my dress so we wouldn’t be separated.

It didn’t take long to find your hideaway. I could make out the shape of two long tables littered with ephemera, and after some groping around, I found an old oil lamp. Alexi, who was clever enough to always carry a pocketknife and matches, lit the lamp and cast its glow on the room.

Your strange devices looked even more ghoulish in the flickering firelight. Forceps and vials, eclectic light bulbs and compasses, all scattered around in an arrangement that only made sense to you.

One of the tables had been cleared into a makeshift gurney, and the wood was stained with blood. Perhaps you had carried out one of your experiments on a victim after you had drained them. Or before.

Alexi held the lamp high and we set about trying to find something, anything in the mountains of research to arm us against you. We riled through books heaped upon books, case study notes, and scientific journals, none of which contained what we were looking for. It didn’t help that we had to painstakingly return the papers exactly the way we had found them, which caused us to hemorrhage time. With each passing minute, my dread steadily grew. How long had we been down here? Ten minutes? Twenty? We could have spent the whole day down there and still not found what we were looking for, but we didn’t have that kind of time.

In the end, it was only sheer, blind luck that saved us. Alexi was flipping through a heavy leather-bound journal he had found stacked up with other books, and he gasped out loud.

“Constance! Come look at this.”

I pressed in close to him so we could share the light of the lamp, and flipped lightly through the journal. It was full of your looping, tight hand, pages upon pages of your personal theories and thoughts. It was not a diary. It was a casebook, containing all you knew about the nature of vampires.

“This is it,” I whispered.

I flipped faster through the pages, digesting everything I could. You had laid out your theories about our bodily processes, our strange hungers, our heightened abilities that came with age. You had also documented how long a vampire might be expected to live, if no act of brutality got in their way. You had jotted down a few quick notes about one death you had personally carried out. Your sire, I realized. The man whose blood had made you strong enough to sire vampires of your own.

My breath was as quick and shallow as Alexi’s now, my pulse roaring in my ears. He must have sensed that I had struck upon something, because he pushed in tighter to me.

“What is it?”

My fingers trailed down the page, committing every word to memory.