Dark of Night

by T. F. Walsh

  She had started to have dreams of Caleb, and in her dreams, he was apologizing over and over, insisting that he spent all of his time trying to free her. But if that were true why was she not free?

  She might be alone after all. Fine. That just meant that she would find her own way out of here. The trials had taught her that she had considerable strength and that her magic, used well, could be used offensively. If she were careful, if she planned, she could find a way to get herself out of this mess.

  Chapter 11: IN BLOOD

  For more than four weeks, for thirty-two days to be precise, thirty-two days and roughly eighteen hours, Caleb had failed in the one task that mattered. Libby was not yet free.

  He was still not king, but he had ceased worry over that, which now, illogically and beyond reason, seemed trivial. Though he knew that his ascension, or lack of it, should weigh heavily on him, his mind recognized no other burden than saving Libby. To have found her again and lost her, once more, in his own city — it was more than he could fathom, more than he could accept. In a mind that usually strategized ad infinitum, there was a shock in having only one concern, only one stray thought that trod back and forth. The senselessness of Libby being torn from him within moments of their reunion left him in agony.

  But Libby was suffering, too, and the thought of what might be happening to her made him wild. Since the night he had watched her walk into that prison — since the night he had taken her there — he’d been unable to sleep. Usually accustomed to getting only an hour or two of rest because the wolf inside him stirred restlessly at all hours, he was now getting absolutely none. Day after day, in a fog of exhaustion and worry, instead of sleeping, Caleb returned home from the government complex, climbed into his window, sat with his eyes closed, trying not to picture her in a dark cell, Desperate to see only the black behind his closed lids, he always pictured her there: sick, cold, tormented, her mind troubled, wondering where he was. He couldn’t stop the visions from coming, and he couldn’t stop what was happening to her. He had failed.

  She had been seriously ill, and though he grieved, though he worried, he could not go to her. Not only would there be wonder about a vampire prince who favored a wolf, but half the Council hated him already and would be guaranteed to deny him anything he wanted merely to serve their perverse sense of principle. His aid might be Libby’s surest detriment. Knowing this, he acted through surrogates in the council and in the prison. He sent doctors to her, when he could not go himself.

  At one point, a few weeks ago now, a doctor had told him that she was “probably” in a coma. When Caleb had asked what he meant by probably, the doctor had shrugged and said, “Well, you know with these creatures, it’s difficult to make a diagnosis. It appears to be a coma, but our people are who I treat. The only way I’ll really know what’s happening is to slice up the poor beast. And that won’t happen until it’s dead.” Caleb had wanted to kill the man, but he had to fool the Council. He had to fool the city. So he merely thanked the doctor and, after apologizing for taking up his time, told him that, in the future, they would not trouble him with the wolf.

  Finally, after finding other healers for her, she was stabilized and steadily conscious. While this should have reassured him, he still felt powerless to aid her, and any celebration he might have had over her improved health was checked by the knowledge that she was in the harsh and clumsy care of guards that the Council had chosen. God knows what the old guard of the Elders would do to her. He could barely stand it.

  The Council, however, was entertained by the stalemate, content, it seemed, to watch it draw on. These people loved games, and games of strategy were their particular pleasure. For them, this was merely another session of chess. How to make them rush without letting them know that he wanted her out?

  If he continued to act aloof, the tact he had tried thus far, it seemed as though nothing would happen at all, just as nothing had happened. He suspected that some of them knew how he felt and were simply waiting for him to admit it and, in turn, destroy any chance he had of gaining Libby’s release and any chance of his rule. He almost had a plan, though, and he was pretty sure it would work, but only if he didn’t seem personally involved. Talks about her could not, absolutely must not, originate with him.

  He planned to convince the council that it would serve the colony best if she were his prisoner, rather than a prisoner of the state. They needed to believe that the prison would not hold her for long, that she was a powerful sorceress, probably even now plotting her escape. He was going to assure them that, given her naive belief that they could be friends, she had grown to trust him and that only he could keep her under control. He would remind them that his own father had seen the possibility of this and that, while he himself had seen it as unlikely, it had happened.

  Caleb would tell them that, although he found her to be powerful, he also knew her to be simple and easily manipulated. He would share some of the things he had learned about her kind since meeting her to prove his point. He would insist that he could get more out of her if he continued the pretense and pretended to offer her shelter and sanctuary. He would tell them any damn thing they wanted her to hear, as long as it got her out of their custody. But first … first someone else had to introduce her into their council meetings — someone who had the approval of the dissenting Elders, someone had political pull but would not become a rival.

  There was the crux. What vampire could he trust with such information, with such a strategy?

  He could think of only one. His little brother Conor, but he hadn’t spoken with him since the night of his first shift. Of course, as mature males, they had both compulsorily served as soldiers in the Capitol Army. But unlike Conor, Caleb had advanced quickly, very quickly, and they had never worked together. And whenever they passed each other in the battery camps or the military installation, they had not spoken. His brother would never even meet his gaze. He couldn’t blame him. During Caleb’s first shift, they had both been children. Conor was terrified and shocked, disgusted, and he … Well, Caleb couldn’t think about that now. He had done all he could do to prepare for this meeting.

  After debating on where and how to meet Conor, Caleb had finally decided that his father’s office was the best place. Let his brother see him as king. Maybe that would be enough to manipulate Conor into following his plan. Of course, Caleb had forgone the formal robes of his office, and instead wore what he was most comfortable in — the dark shades of his human wardrobe. This might be a flaw in his plan. Costuming was significant in vampire culture. To shake off the mantel of king was a resounding statement, but ever since he’d been a boy, Caleb had refused both the robes of the prince and the traditional uniform of soldier, and, because he was the king’s first-born son, he had had his way.

  So, the setting itself would need to be enough. If only he understood Conor better — what he felt about having a monster for a brother, what he felt about the wolves —

  A knock at the door distracted him. “Enter,” he called out.

  A bent white head peered around the door. “My Lord,” said a small under-officer of the vampire court, one Caleb didn’t actually know though he had seen him frequently.

  “Yes, is my — ” He coughed. “Is Conor here?”

  “Yes, my Lord.”

  “Show him in.”

  The man said nothing, bowed, and closed the door behind him.

  What was Libby always saying? Caleb was just going to have to wait and see. He had planned as far as he might. Now, it was up to Conor. And if Conor refused, well, he would find another way.

  Another knock at the door. This one louder and more insistent than the one before.

  “Enter,” said Caleb, a little confused about the change.

  His brother walked in with the little vampire from before behind him, mumbling apologies. Conor entered unabashed, lean, agile, full of energy and smiling
, loping toward a sofa. What could he be smiling about?

  “Conor, welcome,” he said with some authority although he was taken aback by Conor’s smile. Then, looking at the under-servant, he excused the man. “Thank you. You may go.”

  “Yes, you may go,” echoed Conor. “I told you I knew my way around better than you.”

  Glancing at Caleb, the man muttered, “My Lord,” in Caleb’s direction, bowed, and quietly closed the door.

  “Old cur. I told him I have been in this house more than he has. I mean, I used to come all the time to see Father when you were, well, you know. When you were at … your place.”

  “My place?”

  “Well, yeah, you know, your place,” Conor said glibly, shaking his hand as though he were batting away something small, as though Caleb should know what he was talking about.

  Realization dawned on Caleb. His brother was talking about an old Gothic mansion at the edges of the vampire city that his father had restored to hold Caleb in when Caleb couldn’t control his shifts. Now, years later, Caleb shifted once for a single night, the first night of a new full moon. Before, though, he held no influence over his transformations. A child with no strength and no understanding of what was happening to him, his shifts would last for weeks, sometimes months at a time. And when Caleb was locked in the belly of his beast, his father had found the quietest and most isolated place he could find to hold him. His place? It had felt more a prison to him than a home, and surely that had been his father’s plan.

  It had been given to him as a gilded cage, for his father refused to use the city’s prison to hold his son. Though the prison would ensure that none were hurt during Caleb’s early years, the prison was built to hold only one kind of prisoner: wolves. The King would never suffer his son to spend a single night inside such a place. To do so would have been to admit that his son was not a vampire. To do so would guarantee that such a son never ruled, and his line might be broken.

  Over time, though, as Caleb learned control over his shifts, the place itself underwent a transformation for him. The place where he learned control became the only place he felt in control, the only place he used to find any rest at all. Until …

  He coughed again, trying to cover his lack of response, annoyed with himself and his own awkwardness, aware that his mind had wandered, “Oh, yes. My place. Certainly. So you were here often with Father?” He tried to smile. “I had not known that. That’s — that’s marvelous.”

  “Sure.” Conor looked down. “I used to come here all the time. Before. You know, before you started your training with Father. After that, I didn’t visit so much. He told me it would be a bother. You two were too busy for all of that.” He looked up again, smiling. “Anyway, I used to do a lot of hiding, playing in secret passages, that kind of thing. Just thought I would play with Roger for a minute, see if he could keep up.” He laughed. “It turns out that he couldn’t.”

  “I see,” Caleb mumbled, although he didn’t see. He had expected his brother to greet him angrily, cautiously or … something, anything but this playfulness. He certainly never anticipated this immediate attempt at camaraderie. What was his brother trying to do?

  Throwing himself onto the couch, Conor asked, “What’s up, Caleb?”

  Chapter 12: THE BEST LAID PLANS

  Three weeks had passed since Caleb’s talk with Conor, and he would find out tonight if his brother had gained the trust of the Elders. He would also discover if he had been right to trust Conor. His brother was to have met with members of the Council who expressed a desire for his rule rather than Caleb’s. He and Caleb had agreed that the faction might be amenable to Conor’s suggestions of what to do with Libby. Because Caleb did not want the Elders to suspect that he was manipulating his brother or them, he had not met with Conor since their first meeting. To be honest, he was terrified of both what his brother might have to say and of what tonight might bring. This full moon scared him.

  The past two cycles — the first two in his life outside the influence of his father — had gone smoothly, without any of the problems the Elders had feared. But if what Nevan, the Captain of the King’s Guard, told him proved true, he could not fully anticipate what the wolf would do tonight.

  As a general rule, the members of the King’s Guard did not talk to him. They were not his friends. In fact, until recently, they were not even his guards. They were his father’s, commissioned by him, controlled by him, and ordered by him to do his bidding. Strictly speaking, they were still not Caleb’s Guard as he was not yet king. For generations their job was to protect the king and his secrets. Caleb’s father had only truly held one thing secret — his son’s possession. He had told the vampires that his son contained the power of a wolf when the wolf truly had control over his young son. The wolf’s possession was the king’s most hated secret, and so the Guard’s role had, in time, changed. For years now, the Guard’s sole responsibility was to keep Caleb from the civilians of the city.

  Years ago, when Caleb had been without any control over his body or the wolf within, Nevan, who had been new to the Guard, had come to Caleb and asked if they could train together. He and Nevan had worked diligently, studying the wolf together to learn how to contain its powers. Nevan watched Caleb’s actions carefully and had coordinated and trained the entire Guard so that Caleb’s wolf became, after a time, within their control, his wolf unable to do any real or fatal damage on the citizens of the Capitol City. Grateful for his help, Caleb listened to Nevan’s rare advice and observations, because, whenever Nevan did speak to him, he always had something important to say.

  Nevan had told him that during his last shift, the wolf had bolted from the palace and ran madly around the city. The Guard had not understood that the creature was searching for a wolf’s scent until it had started to circle closer and closer to the prison. If there was any initial doubt that the wolf was looking for Libby that was settled when the wolf stopped in front of the prison and lay down. The Guards had not needed to fight the creature or try to chain it. It hadn’t attacked them; it didn’t so much as growl. Although no word yet had reached Caleb of the Elders’ awareness of that behavior, he was sure that, somehow, with their network of connections and spies, that they certainly did know, and were waiting, choosing to say nothing until it served their interests to do so.

  The Elders as yet did not see Caleb’s recent shifts as anything other than a fluke. Worse, many of the Council complained about the “unholy irony” of a king needing to use his Guard to protect his people from himself.

  But if he could survive another shift without incident, he might be approved by the Council. He might finally help Libby. He was probably being naive, but without word from Conor, there was little else to hope for. Until his coronation, he had no political power.

  What, though, did the wolf want with Libby? What news would Conor bring? What would tonight hold for Libby, for him?

  • • •

  “In the old times, nights such as this weren’t to be missed. Indeed they weren’t. The dogs would quiver so,” Se’ bragged, laughing at his own joke.

  Libby had listened to enough of Se’s stories. After her illness, after days of listening to Se’ spin bedtime tales designed to terrify her, it was time to create a nightmare of her own. A few weeks ago, pretending to sleep, Libby had started her spells. Leaving Se’ with only his own thoughts for company, night after night, Libby quietly clasped her hands and whispered the words of an incantation her teachers had taught her to reveal hidden thoughts. The spell was a difficult one. Plainsong took time and a great deal of energy. Plainsong allowed you to see the pattern of a person’s hidden pain. It had its limits, though. It wouldn’t allow you to simply read someone’s mind or syphon off their thoughts. Instead, singing the chant, if she applied it with enough patience, she would slowly see a person’s deepest and most intimate fears, fears that had dug deep grooves in the subject
’s mind. The vision came slowly, images crawling out of the fog, but whenever the subject’s mind passed on the object of fear, the image in the caster’s mind became more clear.

  After days of working her spell and waiting, Libby learned that Se’ was afraid of wolves. He was terrified that the wolf prisoners would hurt him. He was scared of Libby, too, which surprised her. There was something, some memory of his childhood that tormented him, a memory she couldn’t see, but when wolves were hurt, he was somehow comforted. It reminded him, proved to him, that they were not indestructible. It reassured him that wolves were vulnerable. That was something that she could use.

  Since making this discovery, she had been planning and practicing a spell that would give birth to Se’s worst nightmare. There would be a full moon tonight, and she’d be able to harness that to save herself. She wasn’t sure where she would go when she escaped, but she was going to escape nonetheless. If she could just get to Caleb, he could help her … Even though it was true that he had brought her here and that he had not yet saved her, she hoped there was a reason he could not release her. She trusted him, and she was right to do so. She was sure of it.

  In a few hours’ time, her powers would be at their peak. In a few hours, she would have answers to all of her questions.

  • • •

  “Don’t give me that, Conor. You promised me. You assured me that you had the Elders’ confidence.”

  “I did have it, Caleb.”

  “Don’t call me Caleb. I will be your king.”

  “Oh, we’re being formal, are we, because the plot to free your girlfriend — ”

  “Get out!”

  “Ca — Ulster. I am sorry. I apologize. I didn’t mean anything. I know she is not your girlfriend. It’s only — ”

  “Don’t. Don’t say anything else,” Caleb growled. “I am hours from shifting. I assure you, you do not want to anger me now. You have said quite enough. Get out.”