Rhys fought to keep his voice steady as he wrapped the cord of the pendant around his wrist. “Take a place among your men?” He gave a choked, bitter laugh.
Rhys gathered up all the power of his remaining strength, turning it into a crackling white heat at his center. He did not have the strength to pull lightning from the sky, but he could draw it out of himself.
Rhys swayed on his feet, his knees nearly buckling. “Twice you have destroyed everything that ever mattered to me.” He loosed a lightning bolt at the Blood Prince, pouring out everything he had in a concentrated attack.
A woman stepped into the path of the bolt, taking it into herself. For a moment she glowed with it, but the glow faded and left her undamaged. Her upper lip curled into a snarl. “That was uncomfortable, pet.”
The mind magic slid into Rhys’ skull like a stiletto, then ripped out his pain and his anger, leaving behind an empty numbness.
“I should let you think it over,” the Blood Prince said with forced cheer. “You are of no use to me if you die.” He gestured to the terradi. “Take him to one of the secure guest chambers. One with no windows.”
The terradi seized Rhys’ arms to haul him away. Rhys stumbled, but kept his feet.
***
The trip through the halls was harrowing and terrifying. Any moment, Charlie expected to be stepped on or spied. Finally the terradi threw Rhys into a small room, locking the door behind them. When the terradi had gone, Charlie squeezed under the uneven door.
The room was little more than a niche with a door placed over the opening, lit by a small, wavering candle. A straw pallet with a single blanket lay on the floor, but Rhys sat slumped against the far wall. The gash above his temple colored a streak of his pale hair bright crimson.
Charlie couldn’t tell if he breathed. Did vampires need to breathe?
Almost in answer to her anxious question, Rhys gave a shuddering sigh that made his shoulders shake. He gave a hiss of pain, clasping his ribs again.
Not thinking, Charlie scampered forward to help. The room suddenly brightened, and Charlie fell back with a squeal. Wisp thin lightning crawled around Rhys’ bare hand, mere threads compared to what he could usually do, pointed at Charlie.
“Rhys! It’s me!” Charlie tried to shout. It came out as incomprehensible rapid fire “chuck chuck chuck chuck.”
Rhys lowered his hand, the tension in his frame evaporating, leaving only weariness. The light bleached his already pale, drawn face. He looked older again, and utterly exhausted. “How did you come down here?”
He understood me! Charlie thought elatedly, then started to explain, but then he continued.
“This is no place for a squirrel. Something might decide to eat you.” He let the faint lightning fade away, leaving only the dim light of the candle. He sank into a curled ball on the floor.
Charlie let out a mournful noise. Come on, Rhys. Someone needs to figure out who I am. I don’t want to be stuck like this forever. I don’t want to get eaten either! Charlie shivered, heaving a squirrelly sigh.
Charlie cautiously crept over and laid a paw on his forehead. He felt cold and clammy.
“Do not bite me,” Rhys mumbled. “I bite back.”
Charlie gave a disdainful “burrrr.” What am I going to do with you, Rhys? You are all I have right now. Charlie wanted to give another squirrelly sigh. Well, she could at least make sure he didn’t kill himself by sleeping on a cold floor without a blanket. Charlie left him and hopped over to the pallet. The blanket was threadbare and ratty, but at least it looked clean, which was more than she expected. She supposed they were trying to be relatively nice, to make Rhys want to join them.
Why was she so worried, anyway? He was a vampire.
Charlie paused, the scene in the throne room playing in her mind's eye. He didn’t really want to be a real vampire, did he? But she remembered the look on his face when the Blood Prince suggested it. Charlie cast Rhys an uneasy look. Ok, Charlie, enough thinking. Back to what you were doing.
Charlie grasped the blanket with her stubby fingered "hands," and found a small problem. Squirrel paws weren’t made for dragging. She eyed the blanket, then decided it was best if she didn’t look too closely. She closed her eyes and gingerly took the edge of the blanket between her teeth. She tugged it in Rhys' direction. At least the smallness of the room meant she didn’t have to drag it far. Dragging was harder than it looked at her size.
The blanket suddenly became lighter, lifting away from the floor. Charlie let go and opened her eyes. Rhys had risen to his knees and picked the blanket up. He scrutinized her with an odd look on his face.
"Jack?" he said tentatively.
Charlie brightened. Oh! He gets it! Charlie shook her head wildly. Of course, hauling blankets wasn’t normal squirrel behavior, she supposed. Nevertheless!
A furrow appeared between his brows. "But not a squirrel," Rhys ventured.
Charlie nodded vigorously, hopping from one foot to the other. Rhys started to speak, but stopped and shook his head, frown deepening. Oh, come on, Rhys! Charlie mentally shouted. It's me!
"Charlotte?" Rhys said tentatively.
Her vision jerked, like a film that missed a frame.
"Yes!" Charlie shouted. She flung her arms around Rhys' shoulders.
Rhys wrapped his arms around her in return, just short of crushingly tight. For the first time since the spawn attack, she finally felt safe. “I thought you must be dead,” he said, sounding stunned. “Or worse.”
Charlie could feel his heart beating, his breath warm on her cold shoulder. “No,” she said. “Just turned into a – Wait.” All the blood rushed to her face as she suddenly became very aware that she was human again. With human skin instead of fur. Skin.
Charlie started to jerk away, mortified and face flaming, but with one arm Rhys kept her from pulling back. With the other he picked up the blanket from where it fell, and pulled it around Charlie’s shoulders.
“Thanks,” she muttered, pulling the blanket tighter around herself as she pulled back, her cheeks still clashing with her magenta hair. Rhys carefully didn’t look at her until she was fully wrapped.
“I followed,” Charlie said, needing to fill the quiet. “Through the gate and then here. But…” the color in her cheeks darkened, “I don’t know why I suddenly changed back.”
“I am not familiar with transformations,” Rhys said. “Jack works… worked magic differently than I do.” He held himself straighter now, some of the weariness having fallen away.
However it happened, it was a definite relief not to be a squirrel anymore. Charlie pulled the blanket tighter, shivering. Being covered in fur had its advantages, though.
“Here,” Rhys said, noticing her shiver. He stripped off his tunic and held it toward her. “I apologize for the blood, but it must be warmer than –” he abruptly broke off. Charlie suspected he would have been blushing, but his pale cheeks never changed color.
Warmer than nothing, Charlie mentally finished, but she hesitated.
“Won’t you be cold?” she said, staring hard at the offered tunic to avoid looking at Rhys. The corner of her eye told her that his physique was even better than she thought. The pure lean muscle of an athlete, like a dancer or martial artist, but short of obsessive body builder.
“I am cold blooded,” Rhys said lightly. “I will be fine.”
Charlie reluctantly accepted the tunic and Rhys turned away while she pulled it on. The drying blood felt cold and sticky, but the tunic felt warmer. The sleeves fell past her hands, and the hem draped to mid thigh. Charlie hesitantly touched the hole in the right shoulder.
“Can we do anything about your wounds?” Charlie said. It felt like a lot of blood, though not all of it could have been Rhys’.
“It is almost healed.” Rhys displayed his shoulder.
It did look well on its way to healing. Pale purple scar tissue sealed together the edges of the slash. Fading greenish bruises dappled one side of his rib cage, marking where
he’d cracked a rib or more. He definitely didn’t have the body of an older man.
Just how old was he? Nowhere near fifty. Maybe not even forty. As young as thirty? Might be a bit of wishful thinking on her part, but thirty wasn’t all that much older than twenty four…. What was she thinking?! Stop that, she told her brain firmly. Thirty year olds didn’t have white hair and crows feet. With her luck, he was probably sixty or so, and it would just be gross to…. To what? Date a guy who was older than her father? Euch.
Old scars crisscrossed his pale skin, all white and faded with age. A few looked like they’d been fairly nasty, but many were small. Rhys lifted aside his hair to show that despite the blood, the gash on the side of his head was healed altogether.
A glint of silver and a flash of purple dangling from Rhys’ wrist caught Charlie’s eye. She gasped and grabbed his wrist.
“My necklace!” She’d thought her little dragon was lost forever along with her sneakers. Tears stung her eyes before she could suppress them.
Rhys unwrapped the cord and placed the pendant in her cupped hand. The look that flashed across his face echoed the one he’d worn when first thrown into the cell. “I feared I would not be able to return it.”
“My mother gave it to me,” Charlie murmured, fingering its familiar shape. “It was our little tradition when I was a kid. On my birthday she would hide a small present in my lunch bag. It was the last thing she gave me. I’ve worn it nearly every day since.”
“It reminds you of her?”
“Partly,” Charlie said. “But I think…” Charlie paused, feeling heat creeping into her cheeks. “I think it’s also sort of come to represent who I want to be.” Charlie nervously played with the wings. “Someone who stands outside the ordinary rank and file. The faceless, uniformed mass.” Charlie held up the dragon to the candle light. “Someone with wings.
“Here,” Charlie said impulsively. She grabbed his wrist again and re-wrapped the cord around it. “Hold onto this for me. Who knows when I’ll turn into a squirrel again.” She paused, taking a better look at his other wrist. “That blow to the head must have really knocked you for a loop.”
“Why is that?”
Charlie held up his other hand so he could see the contract still imprinted in his skin. He stared at it blankly for a moment, then broke into a sheepish grin. “I suppose I should have realized you survived the attack. I found the pendant and thought…. It makes no difference now.”
Twice you have destroyed everything that ever mattered to me. Could he have been talking about… her?
No, she had to be reading into things.
Charlie squinted at the scars on his hand in the dim light. She lightly traced one. “Are those bite marks?”
“I told you I was bitten,” Rhys said.
Charlie snatched her hand away. “Those are vampire bite marks? But there are so many of them!”
Not just around his hands and wrists either. Now that she really looked, she saw sets of teeth on some of them. Parallel marks could indicate claws. She hadn’t thought of anything more than the usual vampire neck bite: two neat holes and that was that.
Rhys lifted his uninjured shoulder in a shrug. “There were three of them. Two males and a female. They already fed, so they simply toyed with me.” He looked down at his hands, crusted with drying blood. He scraped some of it off of his nails. “I was a foolish boy. Arrogant. Fifteen years old, and confident in my immortality. I thought I could fight them. I suppose even if I had run, it would have done little good.”
“How did you survive?” Charlie said, her eyes riveted to the scars. Those used to be fresh, bleeding wounds, each of them made by vampire fangs. Deliberate torture. And Rhys lived through it.
“As I said, I nearly did not. If I had not changed, I would not have survived.” Rhys said it blandly. No bitterness, no anger. “I could feel the venom burning in my blood as they abandoned me to die.” Rhys absently ran his tongue across one fang. “I have never before spoken of this to anyone.”
“I guess you wouldn’t have a chance, if you make a habit of locking yourself away in your basement,” Charlie said, but the admission that she was the only one he’d trusted with his past pleased her.
He shot her a wry smile. “No. I suppose not.”
“I’m glad though,” Charlie said. “That you trust me enough to talk to me about it.”
“You are the first who could listen.” His eyes flicked downward to his hands, lacing and unlacing, more dried blood flaking away.
“So what happened then?” She tugged at the tunic hem.
He flinched at some internal memory. “I do not remember much regarding those first few days,” he said abruptly. Somehow Charlie doubted that. It looked more like he remembered too much.
“I don’t suppose…” Charlie hesitated, not wanting to make him clam up again. “Can’t you do the whole ‘vegetarian vampire’ thing? Live on animal blood?”
“I have resorted to this when necessary, however it is akin to….” Rhys pursed his lips for a moment, considering. “It is akin to dining on grass and water. One might survive on it, if one must, but one cannot live on it. There is something in the blood of wild beasts that is lacking. One’s mind grows dull and the body sluggish. One’s life is in the blood. Perhaps in part that is what we feed on, like the Maras of old.”
“Maras? Never heard of them.”
“They were Ard Ri’s ancient queens. Three sisters, the daughters of a great king. Ard Ri wed them and corrupted them. Their children were the first vampires.”
Charlie shuddered, her stomach turning queasy. More vampires. Weren’t there enough vampires in this world? But then, Rhys wasn’t a full vampire. Not yet.
“You want to know if I will take the Blood Prince’s offer,” Rhys said, watching her thoughts play across her face.
“Are you going to?” she challenged, putting on a neutral mask. Or trying to. Please say no. Please say no.
Rhys didn’t answer right away, looking down at his hands. “What he said about gaining in strength was true. To be even stronger, faster, without having to wait through the weakening…. It is quite tempting.” The light she had seen in the throne room had returned to his eyes.
“What if there was a way to change back? To be cured?” Charlie said. “Wouldn’t you rather not be a vampire at all?”
Surprise flickered across his eyes. He still didn’t look up at her. “I could not say. Even… even if there were a cure to the venom, it would not be the same. My old life…. It is gone, and cannot be brought back. Is daylight enough of a prize to give up the new life I have built?”
“It’s not about the daylight. Its… like the Blood Prince said. Its about not having to hide what you are. Not having people afraid of you because… because of what you have to do to survive.”
Charlie stole a look at Rhys’ face. She saw a thoughtful sadness there that surprised her. And something else that made her think…. “Just how old are you?” she blurted out.
Rhys’ pale eyes flashed wide, like a deer in headlights. “What? Why?”
“How old are you?” Charlie pressed. “You can’t be as old as you look.”
Rhys’ expression turned mischievous. “Why not?”
“You just can’t,” Charlie said. The last thing she wanted to say was that his physique was hardly that of an older man.
“How old would you say I am?” A smile tugged at Rhys’ mouth, but he stubbornly refused to give in to it.
“Not more than fifty,” Charlie ventured.
“Heavens, no.” Rhys chuckled.
“Forty-five?”
Rhys shook his head, eyes sparkling.
“Thirty-five?” Her treacherous heart picked up its pace. She could only hope that Rhys’ sharp hearing wouldn’t pick it up.
Rhys shifted to clasp his knee. “I was born in the sixth year of the reign of High King Aneirin.”
“Which means….”
Rhys paused, as if measuring whether he wanted to t
ell her. “I am three and one score years of age.”
Charlie gaped. “Twenty-three! You’re twenty-three years old? Seriously?”
Rhys inclined his head. “Truly.” Rhys took a piece of his white hair and twirled it between his fingers. “Do not be deceived by appearances. The vampire venom strengthens the longer it goes athirst, drying the skin and eventually creating the effect of premature aging. Gareth and I are nearly of an age. He is simply… more often sated.”
“But that means you’re younger than me!”
“Younger…?” It was his turn to look surprised. “Younger!”
“Twenty four.”
He rubbed a hand across his bristly chin. “I took you for seventeen at most.”
Did she really come off that young? Then again. Twenty three. When Charlie was a sophomore in high school, Rhys was turning into a vampire. While she was in college, he was living as a mercenary. Maybe she really did come off that young. “Looks like we’re both full of surprises.”
Charlie didn’t know what to think. Somehow, finding out that Rhys wasn’t as old as he looked wasn’t as surprising as it should have been. He never moved or sounded like an old man. Not really. But she sure had to rearrange some assumptions.
Such as regarding his family. He was too young to be a massacre survivor, like she’d first thought. If he was fifteen when he turned into a vampire that meant probably no wife and kids in his past. But he’d been so blatantly hostile toward the royal bloodline, there was clearly bad blood of some sort. Or was that just another assumption?
Did she really want to know?
“You should sleep,” Rhys said softly, causing her head to jerk back upward. That was when she registered that her head had sunk to her chest.
“I’m all right,” Charlie mumbled, her eyes feeling dry and sticky.
“Sleep,” Rhys said sternly.
“You need sleep too,” Charlie said. After that fight, he had to be exhausted. There was only the one pallet though…. Charlie felt a blush heat her cheeks, but ruthlessly stomped down the thought that prompted it.
Charlie scooted onto the pallet, her back toward the cold stone wall, and patted the space beside her. Having that small bit of insulation between her and the floor made her realize how numb her butt had become. “We can share the blanket. You’ll freeze to death where you are, without a shirt and without a blanket. Cold blooded or not, if you still eat normal food and you still have a heartbeat, you can still freeze to death." She patted the space beside her.
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