Dragon's Oath (House of Night Novellas #1)(3)

“You blustering little braggart! That Scotsman is a border Laird. His lands adjoin mine, which you know, as you are aware that his daughter and her bed are within a short day’s ride of our estate!” The Earl’s face, flushed with anger, was so close to his son that his spittle rained over Bryan. “And now your impetuous actions have given this Laird all the proof he needs to go to our prattling fool of a new king and demand reparations for the loss of his daughter’s maidenhead.”

“Maidenhead!” Bryan managed to choke out. “Aileene’s maidenhead was lost long before I found her.”

“That is of no consequence!” The Earl tightened the strangle grip with which he held his son. “What is of consequence is that you were the dolt caught between her knees, and now that weakling king has all the excuse he needs to look the other way when thieving clansmen from the north sweep south looking for fat cattle to steal. Whose cattle do you think they will be after, son of mine?”

Bryan could only gasp for breath and shake his head.

With a look of utter contempt, the Earl of Lankford let loose his son, allowing him to fall, coughing violently, to the dirt floor of the stable. Then the nobleman motioned to the red-coated members of his personal guard who had been blandly watching his son’s disgrace, singling out the pockmarked senior member of the squad. “Jeremy, as I already ordered, bind him like the miscreant he is. Choose two other men to accompany you. Take him to the port. Put him on the next ship to the Americas. I want never to see him again. He is no longer my son.” Then he motioned at the stableman. “Bring my horse. I have wasted enough of my precious time on this foolishness.”

“Father! Wait, I—,” Bryan began, but another coughing fit cut off his words.

The Earl paused only long to look down his long nose at his son. “As I already explained, you are expendable and now you are no longer my concern. Take him away!”

“You cannot send me away like his!” he cried. “How will I live?”

His father jerked his chin at Bryan’s sword, which lay in the dirt not far from him. It had been a gift from the Earl when his precocious son had turned thirteen, and even in the dim, dusty light of the stable the jewels that encrusted the hilt glistened. “Perhaps that will be of more use to you in your new life than it was to me in your old one. Allow him to take the sword,” he addressed the guards, “and nothing else, with him! Bring me back the ship’s name and its captain’s mark as proof that he has left England—have him gone before sunrise tomorrow and there will be a purse of silver waiting to split between you,” the older man said, and then strode to his waiting horse.

Bryan Lankford tried to shout at his father—to tell him how sorry he would be later, when he remembered that though his third son was, indeed, his most troublesome, he was also his most talented, intelligent, and interesting—but another coughing fit gripped the seventeen-year-old so thoroughly that he could only gasp helplessly and watch his father’s horse gallop off. He couldn’t even fight as he wished he could when the Earl’s guard bound him, then dragged him through the dirt of the stables.

“It’s about time a little crowing c**k like you was brought low. Let’s see how you like being common.” Laughing sarcastically, Jeremy, the oldest and most pompous of Bryan’s father’s guards, tossed him into the back of a poultry cart, before bending to pick up Bryan’s sword and, with a calculating look at its glittering hilt, shove it through his own waistcloth.

By the time Bryan reached the port it was dark, both in the world around him and within his heart. Not only had his father disowned him and cast him from his family and out of England, but it was becoming more and more clear that he was in the grip of some horrible plague. How soon would it kill him? Before he was free of this stinking dock, or would he die after being dragged onto one of the merchant ships that bobbed in the black water of the bay?

“I’ll no be taking a coughing chit like this aboard.” The ship’s captain held his torch higher, examining the bound and coughing boy. “No.” He scowled and shook his head. “He’ll no be crossin’ the waters wit’ me.”

“This is the Earl of Lankford’s son. You’ll take him or answer to His Lordship about why not,” growled the Earl’s senior guard.

“I don’t see no earl here. I see a shit-spattered boy who’s got the ague.” The seaman spit in the sand. “And I won’t be answering to anyone, ’specially no nonexistent earl, if I be dead from this brat’s sickness.”

Bryan tried to stifle his coughing—not to reassure the captain, but to rest the burning within his chest. He was holding his breath when the man stepped from the shadows, tall, lean, and dressed all in black, his pale skin in stark contrast to the darkness that seemed to surround him. Bryan blinked, wondering if his feverish gaze was deceiving him—was that truly a crescent moon tattooed in the middle of his forehead surrounded by more tattooing? His vision was blurry, but Bryan was almost certain the tattoos looked like crossed rapiers. Then reason caught up with vision and Bryan felt a jolt of recognition. A crescent moon and the surrounding tattoo could mean only one thing: the man was no man at all—he was a vampyre!

It was then that the creature lifted his hand, palm facing outward directly at Bryan. The boy stared in wonder at the spiral that decorated that palm, and the vampyre spoke words that would forever alter his life.