the setting sun. Staring into the crypt's darkness, he remembered how he had gone seeking death and how, when it had been within his grasp, he had discovered he wanted very much to live.
He had been hovering on the brink of oblivion when his skin began to tighten. Near the edge of eternity, he had smelled the coming dawn, had heard Rhianna's voice, growing ever weaker, echoing in his mind, begging him not to leave her, and he had known that, if he died, she would die, too. It was a burden too heavy to bear. He had been ready to end his own life, but he could not take hers, not when she had hardly lived at all.
With a strength of will he hadn't known he possessed, he had dragged himself toward the crypt in which he now lay. The door had been partly open, and he had squeezed in through the narrow crack. The rusty hinges had creaked loudly, shrieking like a soul in torment, as he pulled the door closed behind him and then, breathing heavily, his nostrils filling with the musty odor of old death, he had crawled into a corner and fallen into a deep, deep sleep.
How many suns had set since he took refuge here, he wondered. Ten? Twenty? He had lost count.
His stomach churned with disgust as he looked at the small furry bodies of mice and rats that littered the floor of the tomb. And yet their blood, repulsive though it might be, had kept him alive - that and his ever-growing need to see Rhianna again.
She was dying. He could feel her vitality ebbing along with her will to survive, and he knew that he was to blame. They were linked together by the blood they shared. But, unlike him, she was subject to the weakness of the flesh.
Salvatore, help me...
He closed his eyes, and the old Vampyre's image rose up in his mind. Salvatore. Slightly built, his black hair combed back, his dark brown eyes filled with the wisdom of the ages.
Rayven smiled faintly. Salvatore looked nothing like the Vampyres of legend. A dapper man, with a thin moustache and refined features. A man who knew what he was and accepted it.
To be Vampyre is not for the weak,Salvatore had once told him. Eternity can be very tiring if one does not keep oneself amused. You must keep up with the world, or you will drown in the past.
You can be a monster, preying off the life's blood of others, or not. The choice is up to you...
With an effort, he rose to his feet, ran a hand through his hair, settled his cloak around his shoulders.
Tonight, for the first time since he had sought death, he would hunt the streets of the city. And then he would go to her and beg her forgiveness.
If he was not too late.
Chapter Twenty-six
The spires of Castle Rayven loomed before him, shrouded, as always, in a thick, swirling gray mist.
Dark clouds hung low in the sky, promising a storm before the night was through.
For a time, he rested in the changing shadows. Earlier, he had hunted the streets of the village, but in vain. For the first time in four hundred years, his powers had failed him. Desperate for sustenance, he had taken nourishment from a scrawny goat he had found tied behind one of the cottages.
Too weak to make use of his preternatural powers, he had made his way, step by slow step, up the long winding road to the top of Devil Tree Mountain, what little strength he had obtained from the goat expended by the time he reached the summit.
Closing his eyes, he rested his head against the damp stone wall of the castle. For a moment, he contemplated going out into the fields and killing one of the sheep, but the urge to see Rhianna, to see for himself that she still lived, was more compelling than his hunger.
Pushing away from the wall, he made his way up the steps to the castle door. It opened at his touch.
He stood in the dark hallway, his senses probing the rooms. Bevins was in the kitchen. Rhianna was upstairs. He drew in a deep breath, and her scent wrapped around him, as warm and familiar and comforting as the folds of his cloak.
And then he heard voices. Montroy's. Ada's. A man's voice he did not recognize.
On silent feet, he climbed the stairs, padded noiselessly down the dimly lit corridor to