His Vampyrrhic Bride Read Online Free

through the forest.
    However, just an hour ago there’d been another twist to that particular story. He’d actually seen the woman riding by on a bus. So who was she? The beautiful stranger with fair hair.
    What really troubled Tom was that the woman must have been in the garden at midnight. Therefore, she really
had
been dipping her bare feet into the pond. So that meant he
must
have pursued her. Dear God, he’d been chasing her like he was going to attack her or something!
    I don’t stalk women. It’s out of character for me to grab hold of a stranger like that.
He kept telling himself this to avoid the guilty notion that he might have frightened someone who’d been innocently taking a midnight stroll.
Though that’s a dangerous thing for a woman to do, even in the countryside.
He decided the intoxicating effect of the spirit had briefly sent him . . . what? Crazy? Psychotic? Murderous?
    Shivers ran down his back. His imagination conjured up big, bright pictures of what he might have done after the woman made him angry by revealing that she’d been spying on him. As he paced about the lawn he found himself, to his horror, picturing how he might have grabbed hold of the stranger before strangling the life out of her. Then what? Frantically returning to the house for a spade so he could dig a grave out in the woods? Or dumping the corpse in the river?
    Those gruesome scenarios unsettled him so much that he couldn’t concentrate on any one job. He’d a long list of chores – rooms to be emptied of the army of chairs that his aunt had accumulated, walls to be painted, new curtain tracks to be fitted, fences to be repaired, lawns to be cut, dead wood to be lopped (the orchard was a spectacular jungle). Yet he couldn’t settle on any one task.
    He mooched from one of the mansion’s ten bedrooms to the other. Started to remove plastic light-switch covers to replace them with the beautiful antique brass ones bought at auction, then found himself remembering – or was that obsessing? – about the woman in white. Eventually, he returned to the basement.
    The fumes still caught at the back of his throat. Even after one lungful of vapour coming off the spirit that had soaked into the brick floor he felt light-headed. His lips started to tingle. Brick walls began to ripple strangely. It was a wonder he hadn’t choked to death last night. Tom quickly opened the hatch that once allowed delivery men to pour coal down into the cellar. With the hatch open, the air should start to circulate and dispel the evaporated spirit. He decided not to return to the basement until the fumes had gone.
    In order to get some fresh air himself, he strolled around the garden. It wasn’t long before he found himself by the pond where
she
had walked barefoot.
    Ponds tend to be slimy. At the bottom, there’s usually a disgustingly noxious black layer of mud and rotting leaves, which would be vile to actually walk on.
    However, this pond, fed by a natural spring, contained beautifully clear water. In bright sunlight, the liquid looked deliciously sweet. A sparkling Perrier effect. There was no foul, black mulch at the bottom. On the contrary, the pond-bed was covered with light grey sand, speckled with tiny blue pebbles. He found himself thinking that on a warm, summer’s night, the pond would be pleasant to bathe hot, tired feet. Even a skinny-dip seemed a temptingly refreshing way to escape the heat.
    Outdoors was definitely more attractive than cooping himself up inside and drilling holes in dusty plasterwork so he could install light switches. Now the chainsaw had arrived he could make a start on taming the orchard.
    He headed back round the house towards the garage. At first sight, the mansion had seemed intimidating. Its size, its age, the imposing pillars at the front. The edifice had resembled a Victorian courthouse. The kind of place where hungry kids arrested for stealing bread would be sentenced to go to rat-infested