Bloody Good Read online

  “You know I could fine you both for not having them,” he said.

  “Sorry,” Gloria said, before Andrew could reply. “I know we should have brought them, but I left mine at home. I always keep it with my nurse’s uniform…” Better drop that in. “…and forgot it tonight. My mind was taken up with crutches and how I was getting around.”

  “Nurse are you then?”

  “I’m the District Nurse based in Brytewood.” That should be worth something, darn it. Most people had more to do that make a fuss about gas masks. Although she’d nagged her share of school children for leaving theirs in the playground.

  “Well, Nurse, you know better, but…let’s hope you don’t need it tonight.”

  Didn’t everyone share that hope? Gloria smiled at him. “Let’s hope they’re just flying over.” Although that meant London would be getting it.

  “Time will tell. They came over a couple of nights ago. Dropped half a dozen bombs that was all, but they caused a bit of trouble.” He moved on to chat to the soldiers.

  “He didn’t even ask about yours,” Gloria said to Andrew. “Just picked on me,” she added with a little dig in his ribs.

  “Good thing too. He wouldn’t fine a nurse but I mightn’t have been let off so lightly.”

  “Your work is important.”

  “But since I can’t tell anyone what it is, not much of an alibi.”

  “Everyone in the village knows, or has guessed. Especially after the trouble back in September.” When she’d raised the alarm. Not exactly easy since she’d been in her fox skin at the time.

  His chest moved, as if he held in a laugh. “That’s still an official secret.”

  “I won’t tell. I promise.”

  “I know,” he whispered it, his lips almost touching her ear, his breath warm against her skin. “Wouldn’t be here with you otherwise, Gloria.”

  “We wouldn’t down here at all if it weren’t for the damn Luffwaffe.”

  As if on cue, another flight passed over head. More this time. Suddenly feeling hideously vulnerable, Gloria clutched Andrew’s arm, now handily wrapped across her chest. His free hand stroked the back of her neck. “Hang on, old girl,” he whispered. “This building’s lasted centuries, you don’t think it’s going to crumble for the Jerries, do you?”

  She hoped to heaven not. She tamped down the fox stirring inside. Stifled the instinct to run from danger. It was ten days to full moon, she didn’t need to change, couldn’t anyway with her leg in a cast but wanted to. She longed to shuck her human face and run free, away from this hotel and the town for the safety of the woods.

  Which weren’t safe in the least. Nowhere was.

  Bloody Right

  It will take all of Brytewood’s Others to save their village from destruction in the climax of a Georgia Evans’s supernatural trilogy…

  Gryffyth Pendragon has done his bit for the war effort when he comes back to sleepy Brytewood from the battlefront at Trondheim. It cost him a leg, and his chance to use his Dragon’s strength against the Nazis—or so he thinks. Until he finds out that his little village is facing a plague of vampire spies set on delivering it to the Third Reich. They’ve come up with a plan that, if they can pull it off, might break all of Britain’s will to fight…

  But there are more allies for Gryffyth in Brytewood than he’d ever imagined, and while a doctor, a nurse, a schoolteacher, and a couple of sexagenarians doesn’t sound like much of a battle force to him, there’s more to his cohorts than meets the eye. Against ancient and impossibly powerful agents of evil, they will need every man, woman, and Dragon-shifter they can get…

  Once the adrenaline rush from the part change faded, Gryffyth Pendragon found himself sitting on a heap in the lane. Fumbling around, he touched broken glass. So much for a torch to help him get home. And where the hell was his stick? To say nothing of what in Hades had attacked him? What now? Could he stand without his stick? He couldn’t walk without it. Unless he had Mary to support him. Thinking of her brought a smile to his lips, but didn’t help his current predicament. And on top of it, the sleeves of his shirt and new jacket were in tatters.

  Shit! Should he hope someone would come by on their way back from the Pig? It was hours until closing time.

  The narrow beam of a shaded bicycle lamp appeared in the distance.

  Help, thank the heavens, but how to explain his condition? Convince them he was drunk this early?

  “Hello,” he called.

  “Son?”

  Crikey, if wasn’t his father! “Dad?”

  The bicycle stopped just a couple of feet away as his father leaped off, letting it fall and crouched over him. “What the flaming hell happened to you, son? You tripped? You shouldn’t be walking home in the dark.”

  “Dad! There’s a thing loose in the village.” He’d probably think he’d been drinking but…“It grabbed me and had fangs.”

  “Not another one? Damn! Let me help you up.” He grabbed him by the armpits and steadied him to his feet.

  “What do you mean ‘not another’?”

  “Let’s get you home first. Remember I said I had things to talk about?” Gryffyth had imagined it meant a catch-up on village gossip. “Well unless I’m mistaken you just encountered one of those things. Where’s your stick?”

  “I dropped it.” What was the old man talking about?

  “Hang on a tick. Here, hold onto the handlebars.” His father stooped and retrieved his fallen bicycle. “That’ll steady you. Now, let’s see if I can find your stick.” He pulled a torch from his coat pocket and shone the beam over the ground. First thing he found was the broken torch. “This yours, son?” he asked, bending down to pick it up.

  “No, Mary lent it to me.”

  “Mary Chivers?”

  “Lord, no, Dad. Mary LaPrioux. The girl I danced with on Saturday night.”

  “Oh.” Amazing how much meaning and speculation the old man could pack into one syllable. “She lent it to you.”

  “Yes Dad, she did!” And right now he was not in the mood to share the circumstances. “I’ll buy her another to replace it.”

  “You might have a hard time finding one, son, but never mind that right now.” He’d happily change the subject too. “Hang on, let’s see if I can find your stick.”

  Less than a minute later, Gryffyth had his stick secure in his hand. “Right, son, let’s get back home and get you cleaned up.”

  In the light of the kitchen, Gryff looked a proper fright: His hair was on end, and his jacket and shirt were ripped to the elbow.

  “Haven’t I always told you to roll up your sleeves before you shift your hands?”

  “There wasn’t time. And what the hell was it came after me? You know, don’t you?”

  “Yes, son. I do. I should have told you before, but I wanted you to get settled and honestly never thought it would happen like this.”

  “Like what Dad? And what the bloody hell was it?”

  “Don’t you start swearing at me, son. You get a move on and clean yourself up and put on a new shirt. I need to call Helen Burrows and tell her I’ll be a bit late and you’re coming up there with me now you’re home.”

  “Up where, Dad?” He was in no mood for a social call.

  “Up to the Council of War.” He avoided more questions by going out of the kitchen and picking up the phone.

  Gryffyth took off his jacket and shirt and went over to the kitchen sink to wash up.

  Dad reappeared minutes later carrying a clean shirt and a knitted pullover. “Here you are, son. Put them on. At least you’ll look presentable. We’ll see what we can do about mending your jacket in the morning. For now, let me tell you a few things.”

  “Alright, Dad but first what do you mean about ‘Council of War’?”

  “Just that, son. We’ve been under attack. And I don’t just mean the blitz or the invasion.” He shook his head. “I should have told you the whole business, but things have been quiet since the last one, I wanted you to
relax a bit. My mistake.”

  “What ‘last one’?”

  “There’s been two of them, maybe three.”

  “There what?”

  “Vampires, son. Vampires.”

  “Spare me, Dad. Vampires don’t exist.” Stress of the war had addled his father’s wits. “They’re a figment of Bram Stoker’s imagination and a scary thrill for filmmakers.”

  “Now look here, Gryffyth. They do. You just faced one. You can’t deny it. Wish you hadn’t had to meet it unprepared but that’s done now. And before you start on about vampires being fiction, remember there’s a lot of people would say Dragons don’t exist.”

  “But we’re real, Dad.”

  “So’s what you met in the lane a little while back. What did you see? Feel?”

  What had he? Gryffyth shuddered, thinking back. “I felt menace, violence and I saw a twisted face in the dark and…fangs.”

  “We’ve got another one to deal with. Make no mistake about it.”

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

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  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2009 by Rosemary Laurey

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

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  ISBN: 978-0-7582-5126-8