The Vampire & Her Witch

”Kiss the ring ’o Dame Sybyll Hanrahan, and help me put an end to the usurper’s line!”

Sitting on the floor and struggling to take deep breaths, Sir Carwyn stared at the signet ring bearing the seal of the Hanrahan Barony, blinking several times in confusion. Dame Sybyll Hanrahan? When had the Hanrahans ever produced a woman who could be awarded the title of a knight? And she claimed to be Baron Ian Hanrahan’s cousin?

But she was a vampire! How could a vampire be related in any way to one of the noble houses of the Kingdom of Gaal, much less the one he was pledged to serve?

Sybyll’s demand left Carwyn stunned and confused but it drew exactly the opposite reaction from Hugo.

”No, you can’t,” Hugo said, scrambling around the dinner table to put himself between the vampire and the fallen knight. ”Don’t do this to him,” Hugo said. ”He, he’s a good man who won’t compromise his oaths. If you have a problem with my father, or a problem with me, then, then take it up with me.”

”But don’t ask a good man like Sir Carwynn to break his oaths,” Hugo pleaded. ”He, he deserves better than that,” he said, though his voice grew weaker and less confident toward the end as Sybyll’s crimson eyes bored into him.

Hugo’s heart thundered in his chest and he needed to keep a hand on the back of a chair in order to keep himself upright with knees that felt like jelly, but he refused to move out of Sybyll’s way. He’d just been thinking about how pure and upright Sir Carwyn was compared to his own bent and twisted self and he wasn’t about to let this woman who claimed to be his cousin do to Sir Carwyn what Owain and Sir Rain had already done to him.

”So there is a spine to ya, cousin,” Sybyll said with a light, musical chuckle that sent a shiver down Hugo’s spine. ”So be it,” she said, withdrawing her hand and tucking the ring back into the pouch at her waist.

”Since yer willin’ ta stand fer him, I won’t make it rough on you,” she said as she returned to her seat. Her posture when she sat was hardly dignified or lady-like, and the high slit in her red dress parted enough to reveal an exceptionally toned and well muscled thigh, but Syble gave no sign that she even noticed. Instead, she reached for the bottle of wine on the table, pulling out the cork with her bare hand and taking a long swallow directly from the bottle.

”I told ya ta sit, didn’a I?” Sybyll said as she looked from Hugo to Carwyn and back again before she gestured at their seats with the bottle in her hand. ”Sit, drink with me, I won’t be here long. I jus’ came ta take a look at me little cousin.”

”I still don’t understand how you can be my cousin,” Hugo said as he helped Carwyn back to his seat at the table before sitting himself. Neither man was comfortable sitting too close to the red-haired vampire and they both unconsciously slid their chairs to the farthest corners of the table from Dame Sybyll.

”My father has no siblings,” Hugo said carefully, anxious that questioning her story would provoke another outburst that he would be helpless to defend against. ”And if you were related to my mother you wouldn’t be a Hanrahan... Just because you have the ring, it doesn’t mean...”

”Boy, you weren’t listening,” Sybyll said, thumping the bottle of wine down on the table as she gave Hugo a dirty look. ”I’m yer father’s cousin. I’m the daughter of Baron Brighton Hanrahan, your bastard grandfather Aiden’s older brother.”

”That’s not possible,” Hugo blurted. ”Brighton died childless and Baroness Caitlin was known to be barren,” he said, thinking back over everything he’d read in the family’s archives.

It had been nearly fifty years since Brighton Hanrahan died of a sudden illness and while many suspected that he had succumbed to poison from a demon’s bite, the official record said that it was the Red Cough that claimed the life of both husband and wife.

After Brighton’s death, the barony had passed into the hands of his younger brother Aiden who already had a young son, Ian Hanrahan. The very same Ian Hanrahan who had grown up to become Hugo’s father.

”Aye, everyone thought me mother was barren,” Sybyll agreed as she took another swig of wine. ”An they thought the throne would pass ta Ian when me old man gave it up. But then, me mother weren’t as barren as they thought she were,” Sybyll said. ”And yer grandfather Aiden decided not ta risk that she might birth a proper heir.”

”But you couldn’t have inherited,” Hugo said. The most a daughter could have done for the succession was to hold Baron Brighton’s place by giving birth to a worthy grandson who could inherit, but Brighton would have had to hold his throne long enough to see his grandson born and he was already approaching his forties by the time Sybyll would have been born. It shouldn’t have changed anything.

”But no one knew. If it would be a boy or a girl,” Carwyn said through painful breaths that strained against the ribs he was certain were at least badly bruised from Dame Sybyll’s strike to his chest. ”And even if she was a girl, she was proof that the Baroness wasn’t barren,” Carwyn pointed out as he thought of his own pregnant wife at home and how worried she must be if word had reached her about the attack on their caravan.

”What happened then?” Carwyn asked almost unconsciously as his mind lingered on his Olwyna. ”How did, how did your mother manage to survive with you when your father died?”

It was a question both men at the table wanted an answer to. Neither man doubted the truth of Dame Sybyll’s words. They were both rapidly learning that the Eldritch people considered lying to people who were significantly weaker than they were to be beneath their dignity. Clearly, Dame Sybyll barely needed to raise a hand in order to end their lives and as long as that was the case, what reason did she have to lie to them?

But still, there were gaps in her story that didn’t make sense to either man and until they understood what had happened, how could they decide what to do about it?