She smiles, taking my jaw between her hands. “Tristan, my love,” she whispers, offering me her lips. I come down on her mouth, kissing her desperately, and she loses herself. I press her soft breasts against my chest, and she grinds herself harder against my body, her hands knotting in my hair.
“Jesus, they’re gonna fuck right here,” one of the girls mutters behind the fence. I can hear the sound of her licking her lips, her eyes alight with anticipation. She wants to watch.
“Wait.” Isolde breaks the kiss, breathing hard against my mouth. She tries to take a step back, but I can’t let her go.
“There’s something you need to know, something important,” she says while I plant thirsty pecks on her lips. I can’t stop, I’m in a craze. I missed her so fucking much. Hell, is this what Lord Dracula was going through with Lady Ruxandra? Wasn’t it hard to even fucking breathe when she wasn’t with him?
Isolde pushes me harder, trying to talk.
“Why deny me,” I plead, mindlessly leaning after her, my lips begging for her kisses. “You know we both want it, right here, right now. Everything else can wait.” I don’t even care about the spectators, let them watch the young Father plunge his cock inside the woman he yearns for. I look the truth full in the face—I’m madly in love, I’m a fucking maniac.
She glances fearfully at the house. “The Old Priest, the one cursed with ugliness.”
Her words are only whispers, but they’re enough to make me freeze. Vampires are rarely confused, we make connections in our heads very quickly.
“That Old Priest? Here?”
She nods, wringing her hands.
“He is the old Father who served at the church in this village until he was supposedly too old to do it. He told me he kept his face hidden from you all this time, because he didn’t want you to recognize him, but when he heard my name, he couldn’t control himself.” She bites her lower lip like a child feeling guilty. “I didn’t give him my married name. I introduced myself as Isolde Jochs.”
Things go fast in my mind. “Which connected you to Juliet.”
“He actually expected this to happen. He says I was part of some great plan.”
“Let’s go find out more about that plan.” I take Isolde’s hand and start towards the house, determined to get the truth out of the old creep. It’s hard to keep my desire for Isolde in check, but this is huge.
“We’ve been looking everywhere for him after Gruia and the witch Victoria died,” I tell her. “So the bastard was hiding in this God forsaken village all this time.”
“Wait, Tristan.” She stops me on the porch, taking my face in her hands. “Things aren’t so simple. He’s not the same man you know. He’s...younger.”
“Younger?”
She tells me a short story about the Old Priest sneaking inside the Northern Monastery of the Black Monks, and provoking Abbot Lucian to spew his Black Curse at him. Turned out he won the gamble, and the curse gave him the ability to change his face.
“He says he has Father Ruben, and if I want see him alive again, I have to do what the he says.”
I grab her shoulders. “He threatened you?”
“Not directly, but Father Ruben is important to me, Tristan. I can’t leave this place without him.”
I turn to the house and walk in, shielding her behind me.
I’m determined to get the truth out of the Old Priest, and then kill him. He should be brought to Lord Dracula’s justice, but he messed with Isolde. That means he’s mine to deal with, and it won’t be pretty. I won’t tolerate anybody hurting her, in any way. My sweet white dove has taken enough evil, and I won’t let another drop of it touch her.
But the room where the Old Priest should be is empty.
“I left him right in that chair, over there,” Isolde says, pointing to a chair by the window. She sidesteps me and walks into the room, turning in circles, trying to make sense of this. She’s baffled.
“Where could he have gone?” She inspects the window, but I already know he didn’t get out through there. He went out through the back of the house and went deep into the woods, faster than an old man ever could. He must have done it in his younger form.
All I need is a glance and a few whiffs to reconstruct what happened in this room in the last twelve hours. I already know he sent Isolde for milk, then he kept her talking. In his young form he didn’t need her assistance as a nurse, of course, but then he sent her for water. He must have sensed me coming, caught my scent, so he needed to get her out of the way so he could escape. But how come I didn’t catch his scent all this time? Can he mask it?
I narrow my eyes as a thousand calculations go through my head. If he can turn into a younger version of himself, then maybe he can turn into other people as well. That way he would smell like someone else, and I wouldn’t catch his scent. Secondly, he told Isolde he would use her in his plan. But then he ran away. All my senses sharpen as I understand what’s happening.
I grab Isolde’s hand.
“Come. We’re getting out of here.”
“But the Old Priest? Father Ruben?”
“The Old Priest revealed his identity to you, then sent you outside when he caught my scent, knowing we’d meet and you’d tell me. Then he ran away. I’m sure he wants to be followed, and I’m sure that would lead us into a trap. But I have other plans for us.”
“Tristan, I can’t risk him hurting Father Ruben.”
“It won’t help Father Ruben if we let the Old Priest win this game. Besides, I know a way to win your freedom, Isolde. I know how to get you away from the serpents once and for all. You’ll never have to lay eyes on Mark’s despicable face again in your life.”
I pull her out of the house and out the gate, passing right by the spying girls. It happens so fast that the girls don’t get the chance to conceal themselves properly. They stare at us with open mouths as Isolde and I rush by. The old ladies even demand a, “What in God’s name are you doing, Father?”, to which one of the fascinated girls responds dreamily, “He’s eloping with the woman he’s forbidden to love.” Once during confession she did tell me she was hiding romance novels in her attic, so I guess that explains her poetic streak.
Isolde’s small hand clenches inside my fist as I lead her down the earth path toward the woods. We’ll go deep into the pine forest, up the mountain, and into the caves.
“Tristan, everybody’s staring,” she whispers, trying to keep up with me.
“Doesn’t matter anymore. I’m done hiding our—” I want to say ‘love,’ but I’m not sure she feels the same. I don’t want to scare her with my intensity, with my obsession for her. “Our affair. Let Mark come and claim you. I’ll turn him into a pile of festering meat.”
I glimpse goose bumps above Isolde’s wrist, up her forearm to the sleeve of her gown. It’s early summer and the air is warm, so it can’t be because of the chill. It must be because of what I said, which I guess appalled her.
Villagers come out of their houses, stopping at their gates with hands on their hips, trying to make sense of the scene—the priest hand in hand with the Old Father’s nurse, rushing down the main road like eloping lovers.