The one yer brother looked in afore he vanished.” Heath Winthrope, Earl of Blackmoor, swung off his mount. Ahead Tom, the moorsman who had led him here, pointed down to a tiny pond, encircled by a ring of granite boulders. A full moon hung blue-white and plump in the sky. They stood high on the moors, alone, surrounded by quiet, dark hills of waving grass. Heath’s jaw tingled as it always did before his fangs erupted. So as he crossed over the granite stones in long strides, he kept his face turned away. No point in letting poor Tom find out what he really was. Heath rested one foot on a large rock and looked down at the small pool. Ripples on its surface sparkled beneath streams of silvery light. “You claim that the reflection seen in this pool will be the next person to die.” Tom pulled off his cap, twisted it in his hands. “Aye, milord. That’s the legend, it is. If you look into the water you will see the face of the next person who will die. Young Mr. Winthrope was a bit foxed, milord, and determined to prove the legend to be just a myth.”
