Perfect Shadows

chapter 11

“Were you mad, Robin, to send William on such a delicate errand?” Northumberland paced the room behind the settle, able to see no more than the back of his companion’s head, and his long legs stretched out to the fire. “I—we—need the man alive! William would as soon kill a man as a fox! I’ve heard tales of some of his doings out there in Devon!”

“Lies,” Robert Devereux, the Earl of Essex, said uncomfortably. “He vowed he’d be discreet,” he added.

“Discreet! He had four or five friends with him, each with no less than a brace of grooms. Discreet?” Northumberland continued pacing and fuming until Essex sat up suddenly and flung his tankard into the fireplace.

“Leave off, Harry! It’s done, and I cannot undo it. My cousin is dead, shot down like a dog on the road by that, that gipsy, and I can do nothing,” he ranted, then stood so suddenly that Northumberland fell back a step. “I shall sleep here tonight, if I may, and leave in the morning.” Northumberland nodded absently and rang for a servant to show Essex to bed. He was not overly concerned with the death of Robin’s kinsman—but one of those fools had shot an arrow—Jesú! If it had hit the vampire’s heart, Montague had told him, he would die like any other man. Northumberland broke into a sweat at the thought. He would never be able to lure any of the others into his grasp—it had to be the young one, the flawed one. Somehow, somehow, he had to find the key, the bait that would entice the young vampire into his toils. He was still pacing when the dawn light colored the eastern windows.