A Scare at Bedtime

<p><strong>BLACK XMAS</strong></p><p><strong>A Scare at Bedtime</strong></p><p><strong>Some debts demand payment in blood.</strong></p><p>Lord Percival Blackthorne has never paid a bill in his life. From his Gothic manor perched high above the impoverished village of Thornwick he rules with casual cruelty exploiting tenants abusing servants and living in obscene luxury while those below him starve.</p><p>But this Christmas he's planned something special. During his annual trip to Paris to source wine for his legendary gala Lord Blackthorne discovers a treasure in a forgotten shop: a cask of brandy from 1811 sealed for over a century. The blind shopkeeper warns him begging him never to open it. Some things he insists are not meant to be disturbed.</p><p>Lord Blackthorne takes it anyway.</p><p>The brandy is exquisite. Intoxicating. Perfect. And when he serves it to fifty aristocrats at his Christmas Eve feast the wealthiest cruelest families in the county they drink eagerly greedily demanding more.</p><p>By midnight they're all dead.</p><p>But death is only the beginning.</p><p>The cask didn't contain brandy. It contained a plague. The Black Death preserved in alcohol since the Napoleonic Wars dormant but viable waiting for someone arrogant enough to break the seal. And now it's been unleashed not just killing its victims but animating their corpses transforming the dead into vessels that spread corruption with every touch.</p><p>As the plague spreads from the manor to the village below the servants who survived the feast must make an impossible choice: flee and let the horror spread across England or sacrifice themselves to contain an evil they didn't create an evil born from the sins of their masters.</p>