Ditchley Park, Oxfordshire – 11:45 pm

The horse trampled down the last end of the gravel drive towards the shadowy vastness of the estate. Its walls were towering, and it's windows were illuminated at random by a flickering of orange light, candles. The trees that were cast over the fountain where he tied the exhausted horse, petting his nose as he drank from the ice cold water—kept Frederick in hide long enough to search out the best avenue to enter upon the house. The front door was out. The windows were surely all sealed against the February wind. But there had to be back doorways, a kitchen access, or cellar hatch on the opposite side.

So he ran his hand down the side of the horse's aching stomach and hurried into the underbrush of the immense property's landscaping. He listened for sounds that would parallel those he'd heard in the back of his mind all night, but heard none. There was only silence and a bitter gust of air that left him frozen as he crashed against the first corner of the mansion. He stared up at the blue moon.

'I love you too,' she whispered over and over to him. 'You were perfect.'

He loved that she was there with him. Although he knew she was truly elsewhere in the vicinity. Hopefully, not within the sheets he so pictured her, and not bound in the arms of the man he knew intended only harm to her. Frederick moved down the length of the outer walls of the home, towards the back, to where he hoped something, anything would be unlocked and forgotten by those inside. Silence prevailed even where the glow of the ground level windows to the cellar were. The house was quiet, vacant, and just waiting to be compromised by his rage.

Vines grew tangled about the iron handles of the cellar doors, and he ripped through them, cutting his frozen palms on a thorn or two. Freed of aged containment, he pulled upward and out. The doors creaked and fell back with a thud in the wind. Light from within the basement illuminated the old steps leading downward. He snatched the one lantern from the wall when he'd found it, and hurried through the cobweb infested underground that led to first a wine cellar, and then to a stairwell. It took him to the kitchen, abandoned with the quiet of night.

Frederick's ears were focused even more than his eyes in the hazy darkness. He wanted to hear her voice, even if only for a shattered moment. He wanted to know he was on the right path, that this was the house and the night and the trail of destruction that continued to flash in his mind. So, he crept around a long wooden table, through herbs and shelves and cutlery racks, heading for the door opposite the cellar. It swung back, and his view was that of a golden parlor, which faced an immaculate dining area. No bodies moved within and no sound resonated on the thick wooden walls. The candlelight danced inside of waxed shells. The glass and porcelain dishware gleamed and reflected with sparkles from a high chandelier, onto the icy windows. It was the only life within the space.

He sat the lantern down on the table and moved for a hallway that rounded towards a grand staircase at the front foyer of the mansion. Its steps were carpeted, its rails carved for ignorant delight, and its entire length was cast in a blue shadow of ill inhabitance. It was as though the place had been deserted in the middle of a regular evening affair—all of 200 years ago—and never returned to. It was creepy, the way he most feared it would be.

But he carried on. He gripped the hand rail, and began to climb into the highest trenches of the quietest rafters, of the most dangerous house in the countryside. He shuddered when he heard a squeak from what could have been miles away. And he leaped into a sudden jog, the moment he heard the omens of his inner consciousness, coincide with the whisper of a moan high above his head.

It was a girl's moan.

The slow grind of his body upon hers had begun only once Ella had opened her eyes to the faint candlelight again. Her eyelashes fluttered and her heart skipped a beat, as hollow as the heated space within in her that he had so suddenly chilled. Her hands flew from his neck to the pillows over her head, where she gripped the satin tassels she could only but feel. John was still, patient in wanting her to find absolute comfort, which he realized all too soon, she had found the exact moment he'd entered her.

Eloise smiled hazily at him, and he raised her legs each higher, deepening the plunge of his body between. He knew in the way that she moaned his name a second time, the way in which she held the pillow more determinately and spread herself more casually beneath him, that she was in utter luxury.

"Kiss me," he heard her whisper. And he couldn't deny the forlorn look on her face.

John fell down, the smoothness of his chest sliding with the temperate dampness of her navel and bosom. His mouth struck first her chin, while his hands were firmly planted into the linens at her sides, and then brushed the curl of her bottom lip, which sat plump and moist and faintly bleeding from the urgency of her own teeth. He stared at the small bead of crimson in the orange light of the room, hovering above the fiery scent of it, breathing in that single droplet of life within her. He thought to ignore it. He thought to kiss her deeply and savor the taste of her blood in the back of his throat, as an afterthought perhaps.

But he did not.

He instead, held Ella safely in his arms, and let his tongue casually flick at her lip, stealing the drop of coppery heaven. Her eyes widened in shock, expecting more of his gesture, more of his mouth. He reacted greedily, in a way that Ella saw to be nothing less than beautiful. It was the slight of his hand gripping her right thigh when he indulged in the early zing of the blood from her lip. It was the way his eyes seemed to rotate back within his head, like planets swirling in the night sky. It was the way he began without any proper warning, to pound into her, moving his hips at a rapid, 'speed of light' rate guaranteed to put any other man before him to shame. Ella calculated that thought as she tangled her fingers within those of his left hand, knuckles grazing the wooden headboard.

Somewhere in the midst of heat and cold, brightness and darkness, jagged and smooth strokes of passion, Ella heard herself scream wildly into John's mouth, squeeze her thighs tighter around his waist to accept all of him that she possibly could. She felt the first violent stir of the bed beneath them. It was a powerful noise of creaks and cries, one that matched the desire begging to be freed of her lungs and the arctic burn she felt being buried further and further within her at second-to-second intervals of white light. The sound of the bed moving with them, with their actions, their own desperate entanglement, did nothing but support the fury.

There was a 'John' for every two 'pleases' and a whimper of ecstasy for every other thrust of his manhood within her. Little did Ella realize the disheartening role they were playing in her survival.