Read Online The Vampyre by Tom Holland - Free Book Online Page A

passion, when heart and soul and sense move in sudden concert, and the sum of what is felt can no longer be reckoned.
    â€˜Yet the despairing mockery of his words stayed in my ears. Without sense of time, I still knew that I had to break from the kiss. I did so. I took Nikos by the wrist, then dragged him back into my room. Hobhouse stirred; seeing me with the boy, he groaned and turned his back on us. I reached across him for a bag of coins. “Take it,” I said, tossing the bag to Nikos. “I enjoyed your tales of vampires and ghouls. Take it as a reward for your inventiveness.” The boy stared back at me in silence. His inscrutability only made him seem all the more vulnerable. “Where will you go?” I asked him, more gently than before.
    â€˜The boy spoke at last. “A long way off.”
    â€˜â€œ Where?”
    â€˜â€œTo the north perhaps. There are free Greeks there.”
    â€˜â€œDoes your father know?”
    â€˜â€œYes. He is sad, of course. He had three children - one is dead, and I must flee, and tomorrow there will only be Petro left to him. But he knows I have no choice.”
    â€˜I stared at the boy, as slim and frail as a beautiful girl. He was, after all, just a boy - and yet I regretted the thought of losing him. “Why do you have no choice?” I asked.
    â€˜Nikos shook his head. “I can’t say.”
    â€˜â€œTravel with us.”
    â€˜â€œTwo foreign lords?” Nikos laughed suddenly. “Yes, I could travel very inconspicuously with you.” He glanced down at the bag I had given him. “Thank you, My Lord, but I prefer your gold.”
    â€˜He turned, and would have left the room had I not held his arm. I reached back to the wall and unhooked the cross. “Take this as well,” I said. “It must be valuable. I won’t need it now.”
    â€˜â€œBut you do!” said Nikos in sudden fear. He reached up to kiss me. From the road outside came the muffled sound of a shot being fired. There was a second shot. “Keep it,” said Nikos, pressing the cross back into my palm. “Do you really think I could invent such things?” He shivered, then turned and hurried from me. I watched him run down the corridor. When I woke the next morning, it was to find that he had already gone.’
    Lord Byron sat in silence, his hands clasped, his eyes staring into the flickering dark.
    â€˜And Nikos?’ Rebecca asked, her voice sounding distant in her own ears. ‘Did you see him again?’
    â€˜Nikos?’ Lord Byron looked up, then slowly shook his head. ‘No, I never saw Nikos again.’
    â€˜And the shots - the two shots - you heard in the night?’
    Lord Byron smiled palely. ‘Oh, I tried to convince myself that it could only have been the innkeeper firing at some creeping thief. A useful reminder, if we’d needed it, that there were robbers in the mountains less scrupulous than Gorgiou. A warning, that was what we had heard - to be careful at all times.’
    â€˜And were you?’
    â€˜Oh yes, in one sense - we reached Yanina without further difficulty, if that is what you mean.’
    â€˜And the other sense?’
    Lord Byron hooded his eyes. The faintest curl of mockery played on his lips. ‘The other sense,’ he repeated softly. ‘When we left in the morning, we saw the corpse of a man half-tumbled into the innkeeper’s trench. The man had been shot twice in the back; the priest’s sharpened stake had been driven through his heart. The priest himself stood watching as a grave was dug by the forest of stakes. A woman, the same we had seen the night before, stood weeping by his side.
    â€˜â€œSo they caught their vampire,” said Hobhouse cheerily. He shook his enlightened head. “The things these people believe. Extraordinary. Quite extraordinar y.”
    â€˜I said nothing. We rode on until the hamlet could no longer be seen.