Chapter 9: The Cup

The light reached my shoulder blades.

It was a thin warmth, and under me Niall's body was as cold as a doorstep.

"Get off him," Angus said, and laughed.

"Get off, Ailsa, or you'll burn with him."

"Then I'll burn," I said.

The shotgun went off in the passage.

Angus's man with the axe screamed and went down, clutching his thigh.

Morag stood in the doorway, grey bun coming loose, smoke on her face, thumbing in another shell.

"Out of my kitchen," she said.

"You great pudding."

"Out of my kitchen."

Angus ran.

He did not even bother to go through the door.

He threw himself out through the broken pantry wall and was gone.

Morag stepped over the groaning man, kicked the axe away, and slammed the iron shutter shut with the barrel of the gun.

She dropped the hasp and jammed the poker through it.

The light went out of the passage.

I stayed where I was.

I lay with my cheek on Niall's cold shirt, and I shook.

"He's not hurt," Morag said, kneeling.

"Look."

"Not a mark."

"He's not breathing."

"He never does, lass, till dusk."

She pulled me up by my arms.

I screamed.

She looked at my hands, and I looked at them, and I saw that I had no palms.

I saw red, and white, and pieces of black.

"Sit," said Morag, in an odd small voice.

"Sit down, my lamb."

"I'll get the goose fat."

I did not sit.

I pushed past her and out of the passage, through the kitchen with the smoke still hanging under the beams, and into the yard.

It was full of people.

Twenty or thirty of the township had come running at the smoke, with buckets.

The stable was a shell of black beams.

They had formed a line from the loch, passing water hand to hand.

Keep reading free with an account. Start My Vampire Husband Wants to Bite Me Every Night from Chapter 1, then sign up free to read the rest of this chapter.