Secret History of Elizabeth Tudor, Vampire Slayer Read Free

I, Mordred, king of the dark realm, came to the ancient hill where once Gog and Magog were worshipped by wiser folk than are to be found there now. The temples of the old ones are buried under the timber of the Saxons, interred in turn beneath the stones the Normans raised, foundation for the abode of kings, the place of execution for queens. I smelled the earth, well sated with blood. It warmed me.
    She was sitting at a tower window behind a curtain of frost that ran like a web of frozen ferns across the leaded panes. Fire-haired, pale-skinned Elizabeth, child of Anne, the one for whom I have waited so long. I confess to a certain excitement upon seeing her finally.
    She was not conventionally beautiful, being both too slender and too tightly strung like a fine thoroughbred mare that resists mounting. No matter; she was everything I desired, everything I needed. Or she might be. The coming hours would tell the tale.
    Little men with little minds would do their utmost to make her my enemy. I, who would give her immortality if only she had the wit to take it! I remember being human, if only barely, as a dream that dissolves upon waking. It is a mayfly’s existence, here today, gone today. Surely, she would recognize better when it is offered to her. If not—
    Her throat was white and slim. I could just make out the thin blue tracing of her life’s blood coursing beneath her skin. Could feel on my tongue the hint of how she would taste. Hunger stirred in me but I could wait, if only for a little while.
    Separated by mere inches but invisible to her, I observed Elizabeth at my leisure, watching the steady rise and fall of her breath beneath breasts round and ripe as young apples. She appeared absorbed in her own thoughts, with no sense of me, not then, nor any awareness that she sat not on the edge of a throne but perched on the hinge of fate. Swing one way and I would open the eternal vistas of the night to her and place her by my side in golden halls where death can never rule. Swing the other … I would drain her to the final carmine drop and throw regret away along with her hollowed husk.
    Surely it would not come to that.
    A flicker of motion on the Tower Green drew my eye. Bustling in their importance, the men of the hour hurried along with their cloaks clutched close against winter’s chill and their own fear. No doubt they had a plan to manage Elizabeth if she balked, but they looked anxious all the same, as well they should for they involved themselves in matters vastly beyond their ken. Balanced on the air, hovering over my ancient and eternal kingdom, I watched them come. They paused at the foot of the stairs leading to the royal apartment to exchange a final, anxious glance.
    And up they went.
    I followed when they emerged again with her in tow. I watched them enter the chapel that holds so much pain. I witnessed all that transpired from my perch on the far side of the high window above the altar.
    That light … the roses—oh, yes, I smelled them. Dear, dead Anne still couldn’t resist meddling, scant good it would do her.
    It was too much for my poor Elizabeth, of course. When it was done, she lay on the slate floor, hovered over by her fretful gentlemen, so pale and still, scarcely breathing. I could restore her with a touch, but this was not the time. She had chosen her path; now she had to follow it to me.
    It was as well that the centuries had taught me patience for I
swear, were that not the case, I would have claimed her there and then. How tempting to do so beside her mother’s grave. How exquisitely just.
    They lifted her, only just managing between them despite her being wand slim. Her head fell back against the magus’s arm, her face turned up to the altar windows through which I gazed. A strange yet hauntingly familiar sensation overtook me, and for a moment I saw another face, so similar, so implacably different. Morgaine, my love. My betrayer.
    Away then, from memory and shadow into night made