“It was the most exciting time of my life!” Mac declared. “That’s why I convinced my dad and grandpa to start this security company to watch after people in the town and on the campus. See …” He patted the owl emblem stitched on the pocket of his plaid flannel shirt. “I named it after you.”
“Huh? I don’t get it,” Nicky said. “What does an owl have to do with Professor McFay?”
“Um, it’s sort of a private joke …” I said, glaring at Mac. I’d run into Mac one night when I was patrolling the woods after shapeshifting into an owl. When an undine tried to drown him, I transformed back into a human to save him. Unfortunately, when he woke to see a naked woman with owl feathers in her hair, he decided I was an owl princess and declared his undying love for me. “… Um, because I stay up so late … um, grading papers, which I have to go do now. You make sure Nicky gets back to her dorm safely, Mac.”
“But what about you, Professor?” Nicky objected. “You shouldn’t be walking alone on campus, either.”
“That’s right,” Mac eagerly concurred. “Why don’t you walk with us to the dorm and then I’ll walk you home?”
The last thing I wanted was to be alone with Mac Stewart, but what kind of a role model would I be if I walked around the campus by myself at night when I was urging my students not to?
“It will be my pleasure to escort Professor McFay home.”
The voice, silky and urbane, came from the shadows beneath a nearby pine tree. A tall man-shaped figure detached itself and glided forward. It wasn’t a man, though; it was Anton Volkov, Eastern European Studies professor and vampire.
“Mr. Stewart.” He acknowledged Mac with a nod and a slight quiver of his long patrician nose. Mac tended to smell like chewing tobacco and hay. “Miss Ballard, I enjoyed your paper on The Master and Margarita. Such an original take on the devil.” And then, turning his glittering eyes on me, he bowed. His blond hair looked silver in the moonlight. “Professor McFay, I’ve missed your company at our security meetings.”
“I’ve been b-busy with my classes,” I stammered.
“Of course. But there are some matters that have come up that you should be aware of. I can catch you up on the walk to your house. Mr. Stewart and Ms. Ballard are right that you shouldn’t walk alone after dark. You never know who—or what—may be lurking in the shadows.”
Like you, I thought. But he was right that I needed to know what was going on. Giving Mac and Nicky a brave smile, I joined Volkov on the path leading off campus.
“You’ve been avoiding me,” he said as soon as we were out of earshot of Nicky and Mac.
“No! I’ve been busy with the semester start-up and … a research project. I’m trying to find another door to Faerie.”
I hoped that mentioning the door to Faerie would distract him and change the subject, but he remained quiet; his face, when I glanced over at him, was as impassive as that of a marble statue. We were walking on the path to the southeast gate, a heavily wooded and isolated spot where I’d once been attacked by a giant winged creature. I shivered at the memory.
Quick as a bird’s wings, Volkov’s jacket was off and around my shoulders. The silk lining was cool, holding no hint of warmth from its previous wearer, but it soon made me feel warm.
“Okay,” I admitted as we reached the gate. “I have been avoiding you. I haven’t forgotten our deal.” Volkov had given me the name of the witch who had cursed Nicky Ballard’s family, and he’d told me he would ask a favor in return. I’d been afraid he would ask for my blood, but he had only requested that I speak to the Grove on behalf of the nocturnals. Then the Grove had turned on Fairwick and I hadn’t been able to carry out my end of the bargain. “I know I still owe you … a favor.”
Volkov stopped past the gate and laid an icy hand on my arm to halt me. Once before he had used his touch to paralyze me, but I didn’t feel unable to move this time, just unwilling, held by the magnetism of his gaze. “That’s why you’ve been avoiding me?” he asked, his eyes holding mine. “Because you think I will ask for payment in some other kind?” He stroked a finger along my throat, from the base of my jaw to the rise of my clavicle. Although his skin was cold, his touch stirred a sensation of warmth under my skin, as if the blood in my veins were attracted by it, as if my blood were magnetically drawn to him. He’d said to me once that he would never demand anything of me that I didn’t desire, but, if he sensed my desire, would he take what he wanted without asking?
“I know with the supply of Aelvesgold dwindling in this world, you must be …” I tried to think of a polite way of saying hungry, but he finished the sentence for me even more alarmingly.
“Starving?”
I nodded.
He smiled. “It’s true that when my ancestors were banished from Faerie and cursed to drink the blood of the creatures we loved best, some of us tried to use Aelvesgold to stanch our hunger, but we have learned other ways to control our appetites over the centuries. Other creatures are not so … well equipped with alternatives. That’s what I wanted to talk to you about. We’ve been finding animals in the woods that have been savaged and drained of blood as if by some kind of beast.”
“Drained of blood?” I asked, feeling suddenly woozy. “Could it be one of your kind?”
“No!” he growled, so fiercely I had to keep myself from bolting. “There are talon marks on the victims. My kind”—he held up his long, elegant hands and twirled them in the moonlight—“are monsters in many ways, but we do not have claws. But something with claws is roaming the woods and feeding on animals. I thought you should know since you live nearby.”
He lifted his eyes to Honeysuckle House and then to the woods behind it. The moon, just risen above the tips of the trees, cast long, branching shadows across my back lawn. It looked as though the woods were advancing on my back door.
“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll be careful. I’ve only been going into the woods to take the tunnels—”
“You might want to reconsider that path,” Anton told me. “The blood-drained creatures we’ve found have been near the entrance to the tunnels, and we’ve found smears of blood that seem to vanish inside them, as if …”
“As if what?” I asked when he paused.
“As if these predators are clinging to the roofs of the tunnels like—”
“Like bats,” I finished for him, remembering the stir of wings I often heard when I was inside the tunnel.
“Yes,” Anton agreed reluctantly. “Giant bloodsucking bats.”
CHAPTER EIGHT
Anton saw me to my door. I thanked him for letting me know about the creatures in the tunnels. “Have you told Frank and Soheila?” I asked.
“Yes. They offered to convey the information to you, but I said I would tell you myself. I wanted to make sure you didn’t think that these creatures had anything to do with my kind.”
“Liz always said you were a perfect gentleman, and you’ve behaved like one with me.”
He smiled and then leaned down to whisper in my ear. I felt the brush of his lips like cool water on my cheek. “If I didn’t know your heart still belonged to another, I might not behave in such a gentlemanly way.”
Then he was gone, vanished into the night as swiftly as … well, as a bat. I shook the image away and went inside my house. Anton had assured me that vampires could not turn into bats. That was a myth. But there were some batlike creatures living in the tunnels and killing animals. I’d have to talk to Frank and Soheila tomorrow about how to protect the campus from them. As if we didn’t have enough to worry about …