Free Wuthering Bites by Sarah Gray

creature and it fled.
    â€˜The manservant picked Cathy up. She was sick, not from fear, I’m certain, but from pain. Fortunately, the crude beast had bitten her ankle, not her neck, and had barely fed upon her! The servant carried her in; I followed, grumbling vengeance. I had let the vampire live that week, only to have him attack my Catherine! He would die, and those he cared for with him!
    â€˜ “What prey, Robert?” hallooed Linton from the entrance.
    â€˜ “The gap-toothed vampire that lurks at the gate has caught a little girl, sir,” he replied. “And there’s a lad here,” he added, making a clutch at me. “He looks dangerous. It’s likely robbers were for putting them through the window to open the doors to the gang after all were asleep, that they might murder us at their ease. Hold your tongue, you foul-mouthed thief, you! You shall go to the gallows for this. Mr. Linton, sir, don’t lay by your gun.”
    â€˜ “No, no, Robert,” said the old fool, Linton. “Oh, my dear Mary, look here! Don’t be afraid, it is but a boy—yet the villain scowls so plainly in his face.”
    â€˜He pulled me under the chandelier, and Mrs. Linton placed her spectacles on her nose and raised her hands in horror. The cowardly children crept nearer also, Isabella lisping, “Frightful thing! Put him in the cellar, Papa. He looks exactly like the son of the gypsy slayer that stole my tame pheasant. Doesn’t he, Edgar?”
    â€˜While they examined me, Cathy came round. She heard the last speech and laughed. Edgar Linton, after an inquisitive stare, recognized her. They see us at church, you know, though we seldom meet them elsewhere.
    â€˜ “That’s Miss Earnshaw!” he whispered to his mother, “and look how the vampire has chewed on her—how her foot bleeds!”
    â€˜ “Miss Earnshaw? Nonsense!” cried the dame. “Miss Earnshaw scouring the country with a gypsy! And yet, my dear, the child is in mourning—sure it is—and she may be lamed for life!”
    â€˜ “How careless is her brother!” exclaimed Mr. Linton, turning from me to Catherine. “I’ve understood from neighbors that he lets her grow up in absolute heathenism, running about the moors with gypsy vampire slayers. But who is this? Where did she pick up this companion? Oho! I declare he is that strange acquisition my late neighbor made, in his journey to Liverpool.”
    â€˜ “A wicked boy, at all events,” remarked the old lady, “and quite unfit for a decent house! Did you notice his language, Linton? I’m shocked that my children should have heard it.”
    â€˜I recommenced cursing—don’t be angry, Nelly—and so Robert was ordered to take me off. I refused to go without Cathy, but he dragged me into the garden, pushed the lantern into my hand, and sent me on my way.
    â€˜I ran back for my sword, should the vampire return, and I resumed my station as spy. If Catherine had wished to return, I intended shattering their great glass panes to a million fragments to reach her.
    â€˜She sat on the sofa quietly. Mrs. Linton took off the gray cloak of the dairy maid, which we had borrowed for our excursion, shaking her head and expostulating. She was a young lady, and they made a distinction between her treatment and mine. Then the woman-servant brought a basin of warm water and washed Cathy’s feet, and Mr. Linton mixed a tumbler of negus, and Isabella emptied a plateful of cakes into her lap, and Edgar stood gaping at a distance. Afterward, they dried and combed her beautiful hair, and gave her a pair of enormous slippers, and wheeled her to the fire. I left her, as merry as she could be, dividing her food between herself and a little dog whose nose she pinched as she ate. I saw her eyes full of stupid admiration; she is so immeasurably superior to them—to everybody on earth, is she