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He pressed his finger to his lips and shook his head. I glared at his illuminated eyes but he gave me some comfort when he wrapped a hand around mine. We crept through the thick fog to the rear of the house where the path opened to the wilderness of overgrown grass and the remains of flower beds. The stone path wound its way around the corner and toward a pair of large wooden doors in the back of the house, then turned and made its way into the jungle of the rear garden.
My eyes flitted over the foggy surroundings as Ben guided me down the neglected path. I didn’t even realize we had been walking on a stone porch until we were forced to step two feet down onto the lawn. My foot was one step behind my realization and I missed the drop.
An unbidden yelp escaped me and I tumbled forward into Ben’s back. One of his legs shot out to stabilize both of us and his foot cracked loudly against a dead branch. The sound cut through the deathly silence.
That is, until another noise followed it. The new sound was someone running through the brush away from us.
“Damn it. . .” I heard Ben mutter.
“Go on without me,” I assured him as I wrenched my hand out of his. “I’ll only slow you down or kill us both.”
Doubt lingered in his blood-red eyes. My eyebrows crashed down and I gave his back a push with both hands. “Go on! I’ll be here when you get back!”
He nodded and took off after the intruder. In a moment the night and fog had swallowed him, leaving silence in their wake. I wrapped my arms around myself and my eyes darted to and fro. All was quiet and calm.
Too calm.
A hand clapped on my shoulder. I screamed and spun around as the hand released me. That meant my balance was flung in all directions, as was I. I stumbled backward over the stick Ben had broken, but a hand shot out and grabbed my wrist. A gasp escaped me at the terrible cold in those fingertips.
A man of about fifty stood before me. He had a short beard and mustache, both speckled with gray hairs, and wore a worn brown suit with a dark shirt underneath. His feet were covered in heavy brown boots and twigs stuck in his hair and on the ragged edges of his cuffs.
He was also ghastly pale. Unnaturally so. And his fangs stuck out of his upper lip.
I screamed again.
CHAPTERSEVEN
Screamingsure does take a lot out of the lungs, but it sure didn’t take anything out of the rest of me as I thrashed in the pale man’s vice-like grip. My efforts were as successful as a three-legged giraffe winning the Kentucky Derby.
The creature spoke in a low, even, and deep voice, the kind that reminded me of mysteries where the butler did it. “My apologies, miss, if I scared you. I had no intention of doing so.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat and almost choked. “W-who are you?”
He opened his hand and released me. “Werd, miss, the gardener. You must be the young lady Master Ben is to wed.”
I rubbed my cold wrist in my other hand. “My name’s Millie. What are you doing out here?”
His eyes never wavered from me. I wasn’t sure if he had even blinked. “I could ask the same of you, miss. The nights have been cold of late and the garden is not a safe place to walk in the shadows.”
“Ben and I thought we saw someone sneaking around back here,” I told him as I eyed him with a sharp look. “It wasn’t you, was it?”
He shook his head. “I haven’t been back here all night, miss, until I noticed you two along the house.”
“Millie!”
The shout came from Ben who crashed through the trees with his red eyes aflame. He blinked them off for a moment when he noticed I wasn’t alone, but his tense shoulders relaxed when he took a good look at my companion. I scurried up to Ben’s side while the gardener remained as stiff as a statue and wrapped my arms around one of Ben’s limbs.
Werd bowed his head to Ben. “Good evening, Master Ben. It’s good to see you back here.”
Ben looped an arm around my waist as he studied the servant with a curious look. “I’m glad to see you still around, Werd, but you look rather different than last time we met.”
“I’ve been ill, sir,” was the vague reply.
“I see.” Ben didn’t sound very convinced with the response.
“What in all the three meadows is going on?” Aunt Dreda’s voice interrupted as the rear doors of the house were flung inward. She marched onto the vine-strewn porch and stopped a few feet from our little gathering where she put her hands on her hips. “Werd, Ben, Millie, as much as I enjoy the noise of company, screaming like a force of darkness has snatched you up is not the sound I would like to hear.”
“It’s my fault, madam,” Werd spoke up as he nodded at me. “I scared the young miss here.”
