Darcy swallowed hard. Lady Ellender D’Arcy was Georgiana in ten years. Long blonde locks adorned her head; the square chin was softened by the high cheekbones and eyes the color of sapphires.“I brought someone to meet you, Ellender.”Wickham treated the apparition as if she were his lady. “This, my dear, is Fitzwilliam Darcy.”
“The last name is familiar, Sir.”The lady curtsied.
Wickham ordered,“Speak to the lady, Darcy.”
“Lady Ellender.”
“Mr. Darcy, Lady Ellender, came from Derbyshire, his family seat, to make your acquaintance.”
“Charmed, Mr. Darcy.” Lady Ellender swayed to the same unknown tune that the others had.
“Is she not beautiful, Darcy?”
“How could I deny it, Wickham? My sister is the spitting image.” Out of the corner of his eye, Darcy noticed Damon moving quietly to the right.
Wickham glanced back at Ellender. “I thought so also. Georgiana is Ellender as a young girl, when I first fell in love with her.”
How gently Wickham treated Ellender surprised Darcy. The man that this creature once was still loved this woman, despite the havoc she had brought to his life.This was a new aspect of Wickham, and Darcy hoped to use it against him.
“The gentleman has his own lady love, my dear.” Wickham brought Ellender’s delicate hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it; then he called out,“Will you not join us, Mrs. Darcy?”
“Stay where you are, Elizabeth!” Darcy ordered.
“If you wish to see me end your husband’s life on the spot, then ignore my bidding.”Wickham purposely nicked Darcy’s neck to let the blood bubble there.
Darcy warned,“It does not matter, Elizabeth;Wickham plans to kill me anyway.”
Wickham jabbed Darcy again, and a second stream worked its way towards his shirt’s collar. “Enough!” Elizabeth ordered and stepped from behind the granite. She walked slowly to where Darcy stood, taking his hand as she defiantly took her place beside him.
“That is more like the Elizabeth I have come to know and despise,” Wickham growled. “Now, play nice, Mrs. Darcy, and acknowledge my Lady Ellender.”
“I gladly acknowledge Lady Ellender,” Elizabeth contended, “but she is not your Lady Ellender, Mr. Wickham. She belongs to my ancestor Lord Arawn Benning.” Elizabeth watched with some satisfaction as her declaration caused Ellender to drift away towards Lord Thomas’s crypt. She now swayed to her own silent music, tracing Arawn’s name with her fingertips.
“Ellender!” Wickham roared, but the lady heard only her own longing. “Ellender!” he repeated. Then he turned on Elizabeth. “You…ruin…everything!” he roared, stressing each word, loading them with vehemence.With his injured left arm,Wickham lashed out at her, catching Elizabeth’s neck with his large hand, his bestial claws returning.
Elizabeth’s hands tore at his fingers, and, instantly, Darcy reacted, his own high dudgeon exploding as he hit Wickham full force in the chest with instant power. The potency of the impact sent Wickham reeling backwards as Darcy caught the slumping Elizabeth in his arms and knelt lovingly over her. “My love,” he cajoled as he pushed her hair from her face.“Speak to me.”
But before she could respond,Wickham charged again, and this time he did not stop—plunging the rapier into Darcy’s back. Darcy collapsed on top of his wife’s body as blood oozed from the entry and exit wounds in both his back and his side. They laid perfectly still, arms and legs entangled in an intimate moment of ghostly love.
CHAPTER 29
Damon Fitzwilliam saw it all, but was too late to stop Wickham’s potentially fatal blow. Armed with his own sword, he charged the brute, spinning Wickham away from Darcy’s fallen frame before he could deliver another strike. Now, they faced each other, swords at the ready, and the match began in earnest. Surprisingly, Wickham adeptly fended off everything Damon threw at him as they zigzagged among headstones and mounted the banked earth indicating each of the graves. Sparks disappeared into the night as the blades crashed against each other and grazed markers, but for Damon, this was more than a simple fight.This was for Elizabeth, for what Wickham had done to her, and for the horror of seeing his cousin skewered by this animal.
Darcy’s body pinned Elizabeth to the ground, but she managed to leverage herself away from him, scooting to the side until she freed her chest. Pulling her legs from his eased his weight from her badly bruised backside. Getting to her knees beside him, Elizabeth searched Darcy’s body for the point of entry. Luckily, the blood flow slowed when she pressed her hand against it, so Elizabeth tore at the shirt she wore, ripping at it to make a bandage.
She could hear the battle going on behind her, but she needed to stop the life from being sapped from Darcy’s body. It was too much like her dream, and she would not let him die.“Fitzwilliam!” She pressed against the wound, feeling the bandage go damp under her fingers.“Do not leave me!”
Miraculously, his chest heaved, and she heard him groan.
Elizabeth stretched out over his shoulders and kissed the side of his face.“Please stay with me,” she whispered close to his ear.
“Help me up,” he moaned, his mouth turned into the earth.
Elizabeth came as close as possible.“What?”
“Help me to my feet.” In obvious pain, Darcy rolled to his uninjured side.
Elizabeth tried to turn him back.“You cannot!” she protested.
“Damn it, Wife. I need your help!”
Darcy pulled his knee up and prepared to stand. In opposition to what she knew he needed, Elizabeth braced his weight against her and helped him lift his frame to a standing position, although he hunched his shoulders forward in pain.
“Fitzwilliam, please,” she begged as he took a deep breath and staggered in the direction of the foray. Ignoring her pleas, Darcy simply gritted his teeth and took a few more faltering steps before his momentum gave an appearance of strength. Elizabeth trailed along beside Darcy, preparing to help him maintain his balance.
The battle, once powerfully contested, now was one more of strike and retreat than of continuous blows.The colonel used both hands to steady his sword as he caught Wickham’s downward thrust and deflected it. Spinning counterclockwise, Damon sliced into Wickham’s side with a horizontal arc of the blade.As it was with Darcy’s attack at the house, the blood ran in varying hues of red as it trickled down his side.
Now, hilts entangled,Wickham and the colonel struggled face-to-face, hellkite strength versus human resolve. Smelling of putrid decay, Wickham repulsed everything honorable in the colonel’s body, and Damon momentarily retracted—a foolish mistake—giving Wickham the advantage he sought. He used his waning powers to send the colonel’s body cannonading against the side of the church, fiercely knocking the breath from him.
Darcy and Elizabeth staggered into the midst of the horror, and now he stood between Wickham and his cousin. “Do what I ask when I ask it,” he murmured softly as he shoved Elizabeth away from him.
Wickham sighed heavily. “I thought to have disposed of you.” He pulled his shoulders back and prepared for another battle.
“I am not so easily discharged.” In a like show of strength,
Wickham, a lover of all things pretentious, smiled. “How shall we settle it, Darcy? Are you prepared to die today?”
Blood running down his back, Darcy wanted to sink to his knees, but instead, he returned Wickham’s jeer with one of his own.“Are you prepared to die again?”
“I do not believe that will happen, but I will accommodate you just the same.”Wickham took a step back, preparing to attack. “How will you defeat me, Darcy?”Wickham arrogantly rolled his wrist, allowing the rapier to whish the air. “Everything you tried has failed.”
Darcy feigned a shrug of his shoulders.“As you have a weapon, and I do not, I will have to rely on my wits, unless you choose to do the honorable thing and allow me to recover my cousin’s armor.” He shifted his weight as if to walk to where Damon lay unconscious against the building, but a countermove by Wickham cut that short, or so Darcy hoped it would appear. In reality, Darcy caught Elizabeth’s eyes when he turned his head. She stood where he left her, but she did not cower from the danger. His Elizabeth would go down fighting. He willed her with a nod of his head and a lift of his chin to move closer to the nearest grave. Intuitively, as if he led her into the steps of a waltz, her body responded to his signal, and she knew he planned something and needed her help.A sign of recognition turned up the corners of his mouth, and Darcy winked before he returned his attention to Wickham.
“I seem to have left all my honor at Wickford Manor,” Wickham taunted. “Hopefully, you will forgive me for taking the advantage.” He pretended to bow to his opponent.
Darcy needed a few more moments for Elizabeth to be in place. He watched out of the corner of his eye as she moved closer to the nearest mound. He stalled Wickham. “You call what you did at Wickford honorable?” he challenged. “Sending a cauldron and the plates and the antlers…and even the snakes spinning around my head?”
Elizabeth heard the emphasis on the word and knew Darcy reminded her of her dream of driving the deer’s rack into Wickham’s body. Now, if she just knew exactly what else he wanted.
Wickham laughed lightly. “The snakes were a nice touch, do you not think, Darcy? And the cauldron nearly knocked you out of the picture.”
“No more so than when I speared you with the horns. I have learned to control my energy.” Darcy noted thankfully that she understood, because Elizabeth surreptitiously worked the stave from its place.
“Yet your powers are but half as strong as mine, for your weaker human half is a detriment.”Wickham quit playing with the sword and set his chin with determination. “You, for example, have not mastered the power of the change, but I have.”
A split second later, the sword lay idly on the ground, and Wickham was the vicious wolf advancing on Darcy again. However, Darcy did not balk, nor did he give any indication of what he planned. His eyes and facial expression betrayed nothing. Only Elizabeth observed the slight shift of his weight.
When Wickham sprang, she heard Darcy’s “Now!” and she tossed the ash stave into the air.
Instantaneously, Darcy’s arms rose and time slowed. Wickham, as a wolf, rather than a vampire, came under Darcy’s control, and the animal pawed the air in slow motion, its unyielding jaw open in preparation for the attack. Slobber dripped from its gums, while the tongue lolled to the side. Coal black eyes widened as the energy sustained its flight. Sharp fangs lengthened in anticipation of finding its prey.
The wolf moved in a straight line towards the sharpened stave pointed at it, and nothing the animal did could change that fact. They were on a collision course, and, for a moment, Wickham fought the reality, and then he relaxed into the movement, accepting what Fate gave him.
Darcy watched with satisfaction as it all came together in a perfect crescendo. When the point of the pikestaff tipped for its Twank! The stave pierced the animal in the center of its chest, impaling it as if it were a butterfly specimen. And then Wickham abruptly fell upon the grave of what was once one of his followers—his twisted body broken and deformed.
“How did you learn to do that?” Damon’s voice came from somewhere behind him. A heartbeat later, Elizabeth was in Darcy’s arms, kissing along his chin line and sobbing his name. Recognizing the finality of the act, Darcy breathed out heavily and collapsed, sinking to his knees. Damon caught him on the way down, hoisting Darcy’s arm over his shoulder and leading him to lie upon one of the benches lining the gravesites.
“I need to get some bandages,” Elizabeth called over her shoulder as she ran in the direction of the church.
“It is finished, Darcy,” Damon assured him as he unbuttoned Darcy’s coat and waistcoat.“We will get you to a physician.”
“Thank you, Damon.” Darcy’s words were breathy and a bit slurred.“For everything.”
Damon ripped Darcy’s shirt to see the wound better. “No thanks are necessary.We have always been more than cousins.”The colonel touched Darcy’s side. “This one seems to be a surface wound.Anyplace else?”
“Just my arm.” He touched the colonel’s shoulder. “And you, Damon?”
“More bruises and lacerations than I care to know about, but I will be well.” Damon continued to check for other possible wounds.
Darcy’s voice asked for the truth:“How did Elizabeth fare?”
“Mrs. Darcy did what was asked. There were a few close calls, but I tried to spare Elizabeth the enormity of what we did. I feared for how it might affect her disposition.”
Darcy swallowed hard. He had never even considered how such destruction might affect his wife. Her personality always seemed larger than life; he had never thought that anything could put a dent in her armor.
“I could not have finished this without her.” Darcy ran his hand in frustration across his face. “Elizabeth is everything right in my world, Damon.”
“I know, Darcy.”
Elizabeth’s hurried footsteps ended the conversation. “I found some sashes in the priest’s quarters,” she said as she approached the bench, but then Elizabeth went rigid, staring off into the cemetery, and Darcy followed her gaze to see George Wickham standing ten feet away—a broken lance still embedded in his chest.
Realizing the contest still raged on, Darcy struggled to sit up, and as Damon supported his back, he whispered,“My right boot… gun…one shot…hit his heart.” Damon helped Darcy swing his legs around to a seated position and then backed away.
“I will not make the mistake again, Darcy, of changing into something you can control,” Wickham hissed. “Luckily, one of my powers is rejuvenation.A night’s sleep will heal these wounds.”
Darcy forced himself to his feet. “Your coffin is destroyed, Wickham.Where will you find such sleep?”
“I will sleep with Lady Ellender.” Wickham took a menacing step towards Darcy, and, immediately, both Elizabeth and Damon stood between them. “We do not have to do this again, do we, Darcy?”
“You will need to go through me, Sir, to reach my husband.” Elizabeth reached into her pocket for the small bottle of holy water the priest had left for Darcy in the back of the church. She had planned to use it to help clean his wounds. Now, she moved her thumb to uncork it.
“And through me, also,” the colonel contended as he carefully cocked the gun he palmed in his hand.
“As you see, Wickham, even humans have loyal followers.” Darcy smiled at the show of defiance.
Wickham bristled with anger. “I will not have this!” He strode forward, his right arm extended to bring forth his power, when, suddenly, in desperation, Elizabeth released the vial, showering Wickham with the blessed water.
