Page 9 of Wonder (Wonderfall #3)

I thanked the brownie, and he shut his door—rather firmly—behind me. I got into the Ford Anglia the king had allowed me to keep and made my way back toward the main road.

Hundreds of years. Wonders had been regularly vanishing for hundreds of years, and we’d never realized.

The brownie’s story matched the others I’d heard, varying only in the length of time since the disappearances had taken place.

I felt sick thinking of the rotting pestilence at the heart of the Royal Guard.

This wasn’t a few bad apples egging each other on as a whim.

This was entrenched generational behavior.

A club, a cabal. And all the members were vampires. My species.

When I was young, long before I’d left the Elven dimension, the vampire community had been up in arms over an Earth book, Dracula by Bram Stoker.

My kin were either amused or horrified that one of our kind would be portrayed as feeding directly from sentient people.

Theories abounded as to how the author had come to know of our species in the first place—some of the details were too accurate to be coincidence.

But what if that author had witnessed, or known someone who’d witnessed, a real vampire feeding from a Wonder?

I’d never suspected my people, my colleagues, could do such a thing, but obviously they had. What signs had I missed? There had to have been signs.

I’d led the Royal Guard for the past twenty-seven years. Maybe most of the guards who’d vanished with Prince Nicol had never been people I’d enjoyed spending time with off duty, but they’d all been completely professional. They’d done their jobs and done them well.

So I wouldn’t suspect them. So the king wouldn’t suspect them.

And when Wonders had reported loved ones missing, the only investigations had happened locally. Word had never reached the king, had never reached me.

If King Domhnull hadn’t decided to abandon Earth and close the portal, we still wouldn’t know about it.

I grimaced. There was no we. I was the only one who knew, the only one who’d ever know.

The king was back home behind the closed portal.

I wondered how many of the luchd-òl fola, the blood drinkers as I had named them, had returned with him.

Surely there were more in their club than only those who had taken Prince Nicol.

The Wonders in our home dimension were not safe, just like those here on Earth were not safe.

I’d sent thirty-six Royal Guards to meet Prince Nicol, his tutors, and his four Guards when they’d arrived in London.

Kinnon had announced there wasn’t room for everyone to return in the estate wagons.

He’d put the Prince’s Guards immediately on leave, then he’d chosen seven of the Guards he’d brought—and I’d cleared those seven of any involvement in the kidnapping—to stay behind with the tutors and travel by train back to Scotland.

When I reviewed the names of the remaining twenty-nine Guards, I’d been able to trace strong friendships between all of them.

I was certain none had been killed. They had all participated.

Twenty-nine Guards had betrayed their king.

Betrayed their prince, their people, and me.

Ordinarily, tracking such a large group would be easy, but these were vampires. Vampires trained to be Royal Guards. So far I hadn’t found a trace of them, so I’d resorted to looking for missing Wonders. I hadn’t expected to find evidence like this though.

I glanced down at the passenger side footwell to make sure my carryall was still secured.

I kept a journal of my findings, though I didn’t know who I’d ever show it to.

The bag also held Prince Nicol’s dèideag dìon.

The king had wanted to destroy them, but I’d asked to keep them with me on Earth.

He’d been relieved to have them out of his sight.

As adamant as he was that Prince Nicol was dead, the king had hated my decision to stay on Earth to find out what had happened and why. But in the end, he’d allowed it, deciding it was a tribute to his late son.

In addition to the car and a good amount of money and jewels, the king had left me with a generous supply of fuil-bheatha, the life-giving serum the Elves created so we vampires did not have to feed from other sentient beings.

But I was running low, and with the portal closed, there would be no replenishing it.

Soon I would have to drink from Wonders. I’d have to become like the luchd-òl fola myself.