Of Midnight Born by Lisa Cach

She flashed ahead of him, using the noise of her hands to herd him back toward the main stairs. He ran down them, and she followed, chasing him through the rooms of the castle, then out into the courtyard.
    She continued the pounding out in the open, blocking Underhill when he tried to make for the garden or the lower wall. She wanted him in the tunnel.
    He seemed to sense where she was sending him, and tried to escape to the left or right like a frightened sheep, but she kept him in line, coming up right behind him with a noise that he must have felt reverberating in every tissue of his thin body.
    The black mouth of the tunnel gaped ahead, and Underhill finally flung himself inside with a howl of surrender. Serena quit the pounding, standing listening as Underhill screamed his way through the turns of the tunnel, alone now with his terror. She doubted either he or Sommer would be coming back through that passage anytime soon.
    A deep tiredness began to overcome her as Underhill’s echoing cries died away. The thrill of the attack was stillwith her, still pumping the blood through her bodiless veins, but underneath it she could feel exhaustion seeping out from her marrow. She turned toward the garden and stumbled. She was more tired than she had realized.
    A fluttering panic rose in her breast. How much of her precious energy had she used? As the blood lust faded under the pressure of exhaustion, the voice of reason began to chide her for her wastefulness. Never had she expended so much at one time. Never had she allowed herself to get so carried away. She would need to spend several days in the unconscious oblivion that was her only form of rest, to recoup.
    She dragged herself into the garden, then allowed herself to float, too tired to go through the motions of footsteps. Her cherry tree was silhouetted against the dark sky, clear to her night-seeing eyes.
    Were those leaves there curling, drying out? She came closer, reaching out to touch them. The leaves crumbled under her insubstantial touch. She brushed her hands along the whole branch, feeling the drained wood. It was only where the limb joined the trunk of the tree that she felt life again.
    Oh, God. She had killed an entire branch with her stunts tonight. She wrapped her arms around the trunk, tears slipping down her cheeks to soak into the cracks of the bark. For nearly five centuries this tree had been her key to maintaining an echo of life. Without it, death would take all of her.
    Once again, if she were not careful, her efforts to live as she pleased would bring about her own destruction.

Chapter Nine
    “Leboff quit, and Underhill will sleep only in the stable quarters with Sommer,” Alex said, stepping around a sheep. “Dickie, who’s had the worst of it, remains in the castle. Underhill hired Dickie’s sweetheart, Marcy, as a maid, and I think Dickie is afraid she’ll lose all respect for him if he leaves.”
    “We heard you’d started hiring women,” Rhys said, climbing over a stile into the next of his pastures. “The word is, no man in his right mind would spend the night at Maiden Castle.” He cast a smart grin over his shoulder. “So much for your plan to live in a bachelor’s haven, free from the repressive presence of women.”
    Alex followed Rhys over the stile, and they followed the sheep path down to the bank of the river, where it ran alongside the water into the cool shade of the trees. “I begin to think an all-male house was a foolish idea. Look at Dickie: he puts on a much stronger front with Marcy there. And Leboff could have learned a thing or two from Daisy Hutchins, the young widow woman we found for the kitchens. Do you know of her?”
    “I’ve met her at church. A more stolid, unimaginative person you will not find.”
    “Leboff might have stayed if she were there to begin with, shaming him with her good sense,” Alex said, pausing to look into the darkened river for trout.
    “I hear there were actual teeth marks on