The Book Depository is offering my Cairnwood Manor novels at not only a killer price, but with the added bonus of free worldwide shipping. This is the perfect opportunity for you to put Shadows Over Somerset and Keepers of the Dead on your bookshelf…
This is the first story I ever had published and though the publisher was thrilled with it I find it almost painful to read five years after the fact. I’ve grown much as a writer since then. So why do I offer it here for you to read now? Because if I learned anything after this weekend’s reunion, it’s that we would not be who we are without who we were…
And so I present to you Unfettered, a tale culled from Cairnwood’s past… and my own. Originally published in 2004 by Wicked Karnival.
UNFETTERED
Time kills me terribly.
“Time shall not murder you,”
He said,“Nor the green nought be hurt;
Who could hack out your unsucked heart,
O green and unborn and undead?”
I saw time murder me.
Dylan Thomas (1914-1953)
With her hands cupped together she collected the blood as it flowed from the old man’s gaping neck wound. Raising it to her lips, she gulped at the thick, salty life-force of her tormentor. With a wry smile she licked her fingers clean. It would be a fortnight before her fangs would regenerate. She saw them lying haphazardly on the floor, near the iron pliers that had been used to rip them from her mouth. She kicked her tormentor hard in the side, but there was neither sound nor movement from the fragile human. The tormentor was a lifeless thing upon the cold stone, bled dry by the liberated Vampire Queen.
The Contessa Margherita Garibaldi took in her surroundings. The room was no more than twenty feet in diameter, with a single window thirty feet overhead that allowed a beam of moonlight to strike the far wall. The heavy wooden door that gave admittance to her prison was barred from the outside and sealed with powerful Gnostic magics gleaned from cryptic tomes as old as the biblical Solomon. She felt nauseous just to be near the damnable portal. She kicked at the lifeless corpse once more, this time with enough force to send the body sailing into the rough-hewn stone walls. It served no purpose save to please her for the briefest of seconds.
The Contessa stretched the muscles of her lithe body. She had been chained for three days in this dungeon, unable to move due to the spell woven manacles that bound her at the wrists and ankles. She would still be bound had the old fool not mistakenly allowed her gaze to transfix him. It was easy enough to suggest he unbind her. His foolishness was quickly his undoing.
She was clothed in naught but drying blood. It cut a river from her mouth and chin, arcing down her porcelain neck and through the valley between her small but firm breasts. Her red hair was long, matted, and disheveled and fistfuls of the fiery mane had been ripped away when she was first taken captive. It, like her beloved fangs, would soon regenerate, but that did little to ease the fury that boiled within the Undead Queen.
Her captors had fallen upon her while she slept, tucked away within a secret compartment in a covered wagon, as she and her servant Yuri Ivanovich made their way into the Indiana Territory. She had supervised its manufacture herself, in the port city of Boston, knowing full well that if she was going to make the journey overland into the wilds of the Americas that she would be in need of such a construct.
She cursed her fate, spitting congealed blood onto the floor. She found herself regretting undertaking this journey to begin with. It had already been costly enough, what with the loss of her day servant. She had braved much to win back the favor of her undead lover, the Scotsman Malcolm MacGregor. She thought long and hard. Was it worth it? Was the damnable Scotsman so desirable that she should brave the pain, suffering, and loss that she has already been subjected to? The answer was a resounding ‘yes’.
MacGregor was a scourge on the landscape of Europe. Devilishly handsome, his perchance for fiendishness was a fine accompaniment to his attractiveness. His name was enough to strike fear in the living and the dead for his path in life was to seek out vengeance against his own bloodline and his reach was awesome in its maliciousness. He was a demon born of a wise woman’s curse and he sought to live up to his reputation by continually escalating the horrors he inflicted against mortal man.
And Margherita Garibaldi loved him for it. He was the Devil incarnate and powerful men bowed to him like an Undead King, and for a time, she had been his Queen.
She never learned of the reason for her lover’s hated for those who went by the name Cairnwood, but she soon realized just how deep that hatred ran. MacGregor had been called to wilds of Romania to meet with the vampire Tepes and he left her in charge of watching over the Cairnwoods while he was away. It was an honor she would soon regret.
The year had been 1746 and the Cairnwoods had thrown in with Bonnie Prince Charlie in his bid to win Scottish Independence. It was a dark day, the sixteenth of April, and Garibaldi had fed and fed well during the carnage that ensued. She lost herself in the melee that swelled around her as she bled Highlander after Highlander dry. Culloden ran red with the blood of scores of Scotsmen and as brutal as she had been, the English were worse. The surviving Cairnwoods escaped to their forest retreat near Edinburgh and licked their wounds.
Garibaldi spent a month hunting fleeing Scots and falling upon small bands of English. It was a blissful time, where massacred bodies littering the landscape would go unnoticed. And she relished in the bloodletting, allowing herself a wanton release of savagery. But when she returned to the Cairnwood’s retreat, they were gone. Their keep was empty. Their possessions removed. They had vanished in the aftermath of Culloden and she had let them.
Malcolm was furious upon his return and he had tortured her until she begged for a final death, but no, he would not give in to her pleas. For months he burned and maimed and flailed her. He whored her out to lesser immortals and watched as she cried for it to end.
“Please,” she had begged, “how can I regain your favor? What must I do? What more to endure?”
Then he spoke the last two words she would hear him say. He rose and walked to the door and looked back over his shoulder. “Find them.” And with that he took to the night sky.
That had been sixty-six years ago, and was why she found herself in this uncivilized territory. The trail of the Cairnwoods led here, amidst warring Americans, Englishmen, and savage Indians. And now she was a prisoner. The hunter had become the hunted. But who were these tormentors, she wondered.
Margherita was roused from her melancholy by the sound of footsteps. Someone was coming. Her preternatural hearing measured the clock of hardened boots on wood. The sound was distinctly that of a heavyset man climbing stairs. She spun about and looked over her cell then deftly leapt into the air to cling to wall above the doorway. She felt her stomach turn as the powerful magics worked on her unnatural constitution, but she had been through worse and fought off the unease.
The door opened slowly and Margherita watched as a powerfully built human strode into the cell. His dark hair was long and straight and had an oily sheen to it. His buckskins were worn and dirty and reeked of sweat and animal musk. The boots were old, hardened leather worn over the pants and rolled down buccaneer style. He carried a musket in his right hand and a powder horn and leather satchel was slung over his left shoulder, crossing his chest to ride on his right hip. A long knife was sheathed on his left.
“Grandfather?” the behemoth called out. He stood well over six feet and was easily near three hundred pounds, but he carried it like a fighter. This was no fattened courtesan.
Margherita dropped silently behind him as he moved next to his fallen grandfather’s broken body. The vampire smiled as she crept up behind him, ready to strike. Without her fangs, she was left to use her bare hands and claws to assault the lumbering giant, but her strength was far beyond what a mortal could ever dream to possess.
As the vampire prepared to deliver a blow to the base of the human’s skull, she was suddenly caught by surprise as the big man moved with an unnatural speed, swinging his musket like a cudgel and splintering it across her chest. The force of the blow knocked her backward, but she was quick to recover, back-flipping to land on her feet, but crouched low to the ground, like a panther ready to pounce.
“Demon spawn!” he hissed.
“You flatter me,” she responded. She tried to catch his eyes, but the giant was as clever as he was fast. That or he was a typical male and focused solely on her chest.
“I’ll see you staked and quartered before this night is through,” he said, drawing his long knife from its sheath. The vampire could sense the magic emanating from the blade and knew that it would do serious damage to her immortal flesh.
“I’ll bet you say that to all the girls,” she said with a smile. The vampire stayed crouched but moved backward slowly toward the open door. She had no qualms with fighting the man, but she would prefer to garner her freedom first.
Suddenly the man sprang forward, releasing an animalistic growl as he sailed through the air. He was fast, but Margherita was faster and turned and leaped through the open doorway and over the railing of the stair outside. She landed in a foot of snow roughly twenty feet below the portal. She turned just as the giant of a man came crashing down on her.
The giant’s knife cut a slice across her abdomen, which he followed with an elbow strike to her jaw. She recovered quickly but grimaced at the sting of his bewitched blade.
“You’ve got bite boy,” she said with a smile, “are you going to give me your name before I feast on your liver?”
“I am Mirren Cairnwood, son of Gregor, son of Tevish. And I will be no feast for you, devil woman. I have been prepared for your kind and I fear not to fight fire with fire.”
Cairnwood. The name flashed through her mind. She had found them at last. After more than a half century, the Cairnwoods were finally in her grasp. Now all she had to do was survive long enough to give the news to her beloved. His vendetta against these damnable humans could resume and she could return to her rightful place by his side.
“I’ve been looking for you for a long time,” she said with a sigh of relief.
The young Cairnwood smiled. “Well you found us, but I think you’ll regret it.”
The behemoth tore at his buckskin shirt and cast it to the snow as hair began to sprout across his chest. He fell to his knees, dropping the magical knife, and arched his back and grimaced with an agonizing pain that forced him to release a primordial scream that echoed through the woodlands. His face began to contort and elongate as his body began to convulse. Thick mucus oozed from his pores at the joints and appendages, mixing with blood that seeped from his cracking skin.
“Bloody Hell,” she exclaimed.
Margherita Garibaldi backed toward the edge of the wood, but quickly froze in her tracks. Before her stood a hybrid creature, more wolf than man. Well over seven feet, the beast frothed at its fanged maw, howling to the sliver of moon overhead. As frightening as this preternatural beast, in all its fearsome glory, appeared, the vampire’s senses warned that they were not alone.
In a matter of seconds, the Vampire Queen, as she liked to think of herself, was surrounded by a pack of wolves, some gray and some red. The werewolf crept forward and growled, signaling the others to advance. With a flourish they fell upon the vampire, ripping and tearing into her undead flesh.
Margherita Garibaldi had been born into slavery in the declining years of the great and terrible Roman Empire. Eventually she was sold to a Senator who took pity on her and married her, but his ill health kept her a prisoner at his side until his death. Soon thereafter she met the one who would ensure her subservience to a different master, that of the bloodlust. And then it was Malcolm, whose command over her was unquestioned. Finally, for the past half century she was chained to the hunt for the Clan Cairnwood.
The werewolf, Mirren Cairnwood, loomed over the Vampire Queen, enchanted knife in hand and as the blade descended she saw at last her chance for true freedom. In final death she had become unfettered. Shriven, she was at last released.
FINIS
Kilgour held the vampire locked in death’s embrace, slowly twisting the magical blade, spilling the hot blood onto his own chest and splattering Underwood in the gore.
“Blood…will have…” the vampire choked. Blood rose up in her throat and she spewed it from her lips.
“Blood,” Kilgour finished for her. He wrenched the blade free and with a strength preternatural, he severed Verkaik’s head and held it aloft allowing its blood to spill down upon Underwood’s chest. It drained off of the magician and was devoured by the cask beneath him even as he came a final time.
“By the gods,” he whispered a wave of ecstatic exhaustion assaulting him.
Cathal Kilgour let loose an agonizing scream. He turned and lowered himself atop the prone magician. His flesh rippled as a transformation began. Underwood struggled for release but was pinned beneath Kilgour as he thrashed about. His musculature realigned itself, his face splitting and reforming…hair sprouting across his tortured body. Before Underwood’s gaze, Cathal Kilgour transmogrified into a feral beast…a werewolf, truculent and hungered.
“Your turn, Underwood,” the beast growled, raising a clawed hand to strike.
“I don’t think so,” Underwood said calmly. He raised his hand and the false flesh fell away revealing the skeletal hand he had enchanted days before. This was the moment he had anticipated and planned for since the werewolf first came to him with his plans for power.
With a subtle flexing of his muscles, the skeletal hand clenched into a fist and Kilgour grasped at his chest in searing pain, falling back and away from the skillful mage. Underwood laughed as he magically tightened his grip on Kilgour’s heart, driving the beast to the ground where it writhed in torment beneath him. With a twist of the wrist, Underwood motioned for the creature to rise and Kilgour responded like a stringed puppet…Underwood was now the master.
“Let us end this, Kilgour…” Underwood gloated. “I’ve a demon to resurrect.”
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From the author of Shadows Over Somerset…
“Foolish pup,” MacGregor chided the wolf, “you don’t get it. Laddie, if water were evil I’d be but a drop.
What stalks below is an ocean.”
From the haunted halls of Cairnwood Manor to the bowels of Rosslyn Chapel, Keepers of the Dead hurls you into the very heart of the eternal conflict between the forces of darkness and the forces of light. It’s fang versus claw, spell versus steel, and love versus death in an epic battle of blood and thunder.
When a sinister cabal converges to unleash the ultimate evil against an unsuspecting world, only the combined strength of the Wolves of Cairnwood Manor and the Circle of Nine Skulls offer up a glimmer of hope as werewolves, vampires, witches, immortal warriors, and an army of the undead collide.
“Bob creates gothic atmosphere straight out of a gloomy old Hammer film, complete with towering, forgotten manors, and old family secrets.” -Louise Bohmer, author of The Black Act
“Bob’s imagination expertly fuses with occult wisdom to satiate anyone’s craving for a little blood, adventure, and a finale that’ll tear breath from mortal lungs.” –Rue Morgue Magazine
“…once the main characters begin to become real and have evoked some reader sympathy, Freeman pulls no punches and establishes a sense of tragedy when their fates are less than happy. I admire the fact that not everyone who meets a bad end does so because they’re just too nasty to live, and a few of these fateful moments prove to be rather poignant.” – Stephen Mark Rainey, author of Other Gods and The Lebo Coven
“This is the way werewolves vs. vampires should be.”-MP Johnson, author of The Mutilation of Paris Hilton
“This is some really juicy stuff. I’m intrigued and you’ve made me hungry for more. Delicious language and dialog… smooth, rich and very clear. Velvety.”-Fran Friel, author of Mama’s Boy
“…amazingly entertaining… dialogue, characters, prose, atmosphere… all of it is top notch.” -Ryan C. Thomas, author of The Summer I Died
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