Read Online Wuthering Bites by Sarah Gray - Free Book Online Page A

porridge, the rinds of cheese, and stale crusts at supper. The lad who had led the life of a gentleman’s favored child was put to coarse labor outside, compelled to muck stalls, skin and butcher livestock, clear fields of stones, and dig fresh pits for the necessary. From dawn until night, poor Heathcliff had to work harder than any other lad on the farm, and him not fed more table scraps than would keep a stoat alive.
    â€œAnd did he accept this turn of fate, poor lad?”
    Heathcliff bore his degradation pretty well at first because Cathy taught him what she learnt, and worked or attended him in the fields when he practiced his arts of defense and attack. They both promised fair to grow up as rude as savages, the young master being entirely negligent how they behaved and what they did, so they kept clear of him. I do not believe Mr. Hindley even suspected the boy was training to defend the manor. I know for a fact that he did not take notice the days when the boy disappeared to be among his gypsy relatives, returning with even sharper skills.
    It was one of Heathcliff and Catherine’s chief amusements to run away to the moors on a Sabbath morning and remain there all day, playing vampire or lost maid and slayer, and the after punishment if caught grew a mere thing to laugh at. The teacher might set as many chapters as he pleased for Catherine to memorize, and Joseph might thrash Heathcliff till his arm ached, but they forgot everything the minute they were together again.
    One Sunday evening, they were banished from the sitting room for making a noise or some other light offense, and when I went to call them to supper, they were nowhere to be found. We searched the house, the yard, and the stables; they were invisible. At last, Hindley told us to bolt the doors against the night, and swore nobody should let Cathy and Heathcliff in until morning for fear they might bring the beasties with them.
    The household went to bed, but too anxious to lie down, I opened my shutters and put my head out to hear them, should they return. I would have let them in. I knew Heathcliff would not let the vampires inside. I had already seen how they feared him, respected him, or both. Only days before, I had seen him talk a vampire down, getting him to turn over a calf and walk down the lane without so much as a mouthful of blood.
    In a while, that night, I distinguished running steps coming up the road, and the light of a lantern glimmered through the gate, a trail of vampires howling near behind. I threw a shawl over my head and ran to prevent them from waking Mr. Earnshaw with their snarls and howls. Heathcliff fought them off at the gate and sent them flying into the night, and he did enter then, by himself. It gave me a start to see him alone.
    â€˜Where is Miss Catherine?’ I cried hurriedly, stanching the blood that ran from a wound on his arm. ‘No accident, I hope?’
    â€˜She’s at Thrushcross Grange,’ he answered, wiping clean the black blood from a long-bladed sword. I did not know where the sword had come from and I did not dare ask. ‘I would have been there, too, but they had not the manners to ask me to stay.’
    â€˜Well, you will catch it!’ I said. ‘You’ll never be content till you’re sent away for good. What in the world led you to wandering to Thrushcross Grange in the dark? You know the vampires congregate between here and there.’
    â€˜I’m not afraid of them,’ he boasted. ‘They are afraid of me.’
    â€˜And so they were chasing you down the lane,’ I muttered. Either he did not hear me or he chose to ignore my jibe.
    â€˜Let me get off my wet clothes, and I’ll tell you all about it, Nelly,’ he replied, handing me the deadly sword.
    I bid him beware of rousing the master, and while he undressed and I waited to put out the candle, he continued.
    â€˜Cathy and I escaped from the wash-house to have a ramble at liberty