Valley of Silence Read Free

going to a chest for one of the packets of blood that had been transported from Ireland. Apparently, the gods had deemed to allow the blood, as well as the vampire who required it, to travel through worlds from their circle of stones.
    Then again, it was pigs’ blood. Cian hadn’t fed on humans in centuries. A personal choice, he mused as he broke open the packet, poured its contents into a cup. A matter of will, he thought, and well, manners, come to that. He lived among them, did business with them, slept with them when he was in the mood. It seemed rude to feed off them.
    In any case, he’d found it simpler to live as he liked, to stay off the radar, if he didn’t kill some hapless soul on a nightly basis. Live feeding added both thrill and flavor nothing else matched, but it was, by nature, a messy business.
    He’d grown accustomed to the more banal flavor of pigs’ blood, and the simple convenience of having it at his fingertips rather than having to go out and hunt something up every time hunger stirred in him.
    He drank the blood as a man might his morning coffee—out of habit and the need for a kick on waking. It cleared his mind, jump-started his system.
    He troubled neither with candles nor fire as he washed. He couldn’t say he was overly pleased with the accommodations of Geall. Castle or not, he imagined he was as out of place in this medieval atmosphere as both Glenna and Blair.
    He’d lived through this sort of era once, and once was enough for anyone. He preferred—much preferred—the daily conveniences of indoor plumbing, electricity, Chinese bloody take-out, come to that.
    He missed his car, his bed, the damn microwave. He missed the life and sounds of city life and all it offered. Fate would have given him a solid kick in the ass if it ended him here, in the era, if not the world, of his beginnings.
    Dressed, he left his room to make his way to the stables, and his horse.
    There were people about—servants, guards, courtiers—those who lived and worked within the Castle Geall. Most avoided him, averting their eyes, quickening their pace. Some made the sign against evil behind their backs. It didn’t trouble him.
    They knew what he was—and had seen what creatures like him were capable of since Moira, the scholarly gladiator, had battled one in the playing field.
    It had been good strategy, he thought now, for Moira to ask him along with Blair and Larkin to hunt down the two vampires who’d killed her mother, the queen. Moira had understood the importance, the value of having vampires brought back alive so the people could see them for what they were. And see Moira herself fight and end one, proving herself a warrior.
    She would, in a matter of weeks, lead her people to war. When a land had been at peace as long as Geall was reputed to have been, it would take a strong leader, a forceful one, to whip farmers and merchants, ladies-in-waiting and creaky advisors into soldiers.
    He wasn’t sure she was up to the task. Brave enough, he mused as he slipped out of the castle, crossed a courtyard toward the stables. More than bright enough. And it was true she’d honed considerable fighting skills over the past two months. No doubt she’d been trained since birth in matters of state and protocol, and her mind was clever and open.
    In peace, he imagined she’d rule her pretty little world quite well. But in wartime, a ruler was general as well as figurehead.
    If it had been up to him, he would have left Riddock, her uncle, in charge. But little of this business was up to him.
    He heard her before he saw her, and scented her before that. Cian very nearly turned around to go back the way he’d come. It was just another annoyance to come across the woman when he’d been thinking of her.
    The problem was, he thought of her entirely too often.
    Avoiding her wasn’t an option as they were inexorably bound together in this war.