by T. F. Walsh
She started crying and couldn’t stop. She acknowledged her strong and misplaced desire for Caleb to comfort her and make her feel safe, but she needed a friend now, and if she had to settle for Caleb, then so be it. She was tempted to push that desire to him, but she couldn’t bear his comfort when she knew that it was forced. Her body was wracked with silent sobs.
• • •
He walked a few feet away from her, hoping to — to what? What was he hoping? He felt like a monster. He definitely wasn’t a man. She was weeping. She needed sympathy. She needed understanding, but he had none to give her. His blood was boiling. He wanted to kill them. He wanted to rip and tear their bodies until their own mothers would not recognize them. When she cried, it did not soften him as it should have; instead, it hardened him into a weapon. It steeled his will. He wanted to run after them and make them scream, make them beg as she had done. He wanted them weeping, praying for death.
He needed to clear his head. This possession, this shift, had been unlike any other. He had felt the shift coming … and then it had not. He had not felt totally in control of himself, but he had remained, more or less, as he was. For the first time in his life, he had been Caleb on the first night of the full moon.
He needed to understand what the wolf had done tonight, why he hadn’t shifted, how he had found Libby. But most of all, he needed to talk with her. He needed to make her understand that she was only safe if she stayed with him.
She had been on foot. Alone and on foot. Surrounded by vampires. In the Capitol City. Could the situation have been any worse? Again, her famous lack of survival instincts.
She was always near death, and it was starting to have an effect on his health. As soon as he returned to the Capitol buildings, he was telling the Elders on the Council that she was only safe in his protection, and that he wasn’t letting her out of his sight. Let them think what they would. He had already heard jokes about how he wanted to keep one of the wolves as his pet. He also heard rumors that the animal within him had been lonely too long, and that it was driving the young king to insane action. None of this meant anything to him.
She would only survive here, could only exist here, at his side, as his prisoner. He had to make her see that, but he had been so angry. He would wait a few moments, until he was calmer; perhaps she could help him be calm. Perhaps — if she just —
He noticed, then, that she wasn’t following him. Turning back, he walked toward her, but she didn’t look up. He kneeled down, touched her head briefly. It was barely a tap of his palm against her hair. He didn’t know if he should ruffle her hair the way mothers did to their children or if he should run his hands through her hair in the manner of lovers. He really knew nothing about how to help her. He knew nothing about what it meant to be with other people; he knew even less about what they both were to each other.
He sighed. What a pair of fools they both were. Deciding to carry her home — to his real home, not that ridiculous room in the palace that he now hated — he picked her up and pulled her close to him. Libby was warm and soft. The terrible irony was that, while he couldn’t comfort her, holding her in his arms immediately soothed and comforted him. He was still upset, but his rage was diminishing. What was he even doing here with her? He should escort her out of the city to live the rest of her life in relative safety and peace. He should let her go, but he wouldn’t. He had stopped even trying to push her away. He had also stopped wondering why he stopped trying: it was simple enough. He just couldn’t let her go. That was the only thing he was sure about. She was safe. She was his, and he would keep her that way.
He laid his chin on her head and said, “You belong to me. Be calm. You are safe. No harm will come to you now.”
“Where are you taking me?” She said it without emotion, unusual for Libby. She sounded more as she had in the prison.
“Caleb, where are you taking me?” she asked again. This time, a little fear was in her voice.
She feared him. Unsure of what to tell her, he said only, “My home. I have uses for you.”
She tensed in his arms, and he winced at his poor choice of words.
He reassured her quickly, “I need a teacher. I think you will serve admirably.”
“Your teacher?” she asked, surprised. “I thought we weren’t — ”
“It seems you have more gifts than I realized,” he muttered, wondering if the image he had just seen of the two of them, happy, laughing, at home was more her dream or his.
Chapter 22: HOME IS WHERE THE HEARLTESS VAMPIRE IS
“Wake up. We’re almost there.”
He wanted to let her sleep; she could feel that, but she also sensed his worry. He was anxious for her to see where he was taking her. Recalling the last time he had lead her blindly through the city, he wanted her to know where she was going. He thought it would help her adjust tomorrow if she saw the place from the outside. Having made a final decision about waking her, he had acted, but he was still unsure.
“We’re almost there. Wake up — if you want to. Wake up.”
She tried forming some questions about where they were going, but as they traveled slowly up a graveled drive, she nodded off. Her earlier spells had exhausted her, and she kept falling asleep until Caleb would move too abruptly and her head would flop around, stirring her. Every time he jostled her, he apologized.
After a while, he muttered, “We’re here.”
Opening her eyes, all she saw at first was a tall wall of trees.
The city was behind them. In her sleep, she had lost her sense of where they were, but it was clear that they were no longer in the city. He had not brought her to the Capitol Palace, as she anticipated, but somewhere out in the wilds.
Thick forest surrounded them. Caleb circled out, moving around a group of tall oaks, and a huge stone mansion appeared seemingly out of nowhere. Previously hidden by the forest that grew and curled around its sides, the house now loomed above her. In the light of the moon, the stone reminded of her the prison, but that was where all similarities ended.
The front facade of the building gleamed, moonlight falling on sheets and sheets of windows — windows, not bars, wide windows unlike anything she had seen in the vampire city. And the gargoyles of the fortress were gone, too, replaced by innocent and simple gables. The mansion had a certain maniacal whimsy, with several sections that seemed to have been slapped together by a mad architect. A tall four-leveled manor house stood at its front, followed by other random pieces, some long and thin, as small as a single room, others almost as large as the front house.
In the back of the large house, she could see lights on. The staff quarters, probably. Life buzzed back there; she could feel it. The front of the house, though, was almost completely black. The only sign that anyone lived there was a small light near the front entryway that she could see through one of the windows. As Caleb neared this light, the door swung open. She heard a voice, though she could not see a speaker.
“Good evening, sir.”
Caleb said nothing, simply walking in through the opened entry.
“Put me down,” she said, feeling self-conscious about being carried over the threshold. She didn’t know a lot about the human world, but she knew the significance of that custom and was concerned that his staff would get the wrong idea. Caleb, as per usual, remained silent, carrying her still. She would have argued, but the house distracted her.
Caleb’s home was ornate, carefully and precisely put together, but it wasn’t beautiful; it was … heartless. Although the temperature was normal, almost comfortable, his house felt cold and unused. It felt … dead. Looking around, she couldn’t see any signs of normal life. No dishes sitting around, no projects left undone, no unfinished books sitting out. There were no pictures on the walls. The furniture that did exist had no signs of use. The couches bore no signs of sitting.
Caleb
continued walking through the dark house, and she noticed that the furniture varied from room to room, each reflecting various periods. The only thing the rooms had in common were shades of green. Using various amounts and tones of the color, the house was covered in it. “Why is everything green? I thought you all favored black? Is it because you’re king?” she asked quietly.
“Family color,” he said simply, not breaking stride, still intent on getting her somewhere. Then he was silent again.
They continued walking for a long time up stairs and across long hallways, making her a little dizzy and completely lost. Finally Caleb brought her to a room, and opening the door, she saw a large bed in the center. This was to be her room. In the dim light of the moon, she saw that her pack had been placed in a chair in a corner.
In a worried voice she asked, “You said you have a use for me. What did you mean?”
“Why do you ask that so suddenly and so timidly?”
She didn’t answer him, too tired, too shaken by the day to speak.
“It’s all right,” he said after a while. “You don’t need to talk. We will speak of it in the morning.” Nodding his head to an area behind her, he said, “There is an adjoining room there, to the right. Do you see the door?”
Tired and confused, she looked, noticed the door, and nodded. He gently eased her to the ground.
“Fine. In a few moments, you will hear noise within. That will be servants preparing a bath for you. Finish there. And then sleep.” Backing away, he bowed his head slightly to her, and then closed the door behind him.
“I will see you in the morning.”
“In the morning? But I thought — ”
“I told you. I am unique. In the morning then?”
“Yes, of course. In the morning.”
Chapter 23: IN THE LIGHT OF MORNING
When morning splashed into the room, Libby sprang up, unsure of where she was. Afraid that she was still in her cell, that everything last night had been one long nightmare, she leapt up in a crouched position, looking for the guards. Glancing around her, finally waking, she noticed the light against the walls, the soft bed, the clean room. Last night had not been a dream or a fantasy. No, for the time being, she was truly safe.
She crawled over her covers and leaned on the thick, dark headboard to see outside. Turning her head to the left and right, she could see green, green for miles, a small flat plain of grass that seemed to stretch forever, until the ground rolled into the horizon.
Last night, she had seen that the house was nestled in a forest that reached around the mansion on three sides, allowed to grow wildly up into a tall hill that protected the rear of the house. Unlike the city, this was a place a wolf could be comfortable.
Hopping to the floor, she shuffled the covers back in to place and carefully made her bed, as she had done every morning back in her old home. She glanced at the cupboards along the walls, knowing she needed to shuck off her nightgown and find something to wear, but she wasn’t ready to relive the surprise she suffered last night.
After her bath, she had walked over to her old duffel bag, the one she’d lost when she entered the prison. Although it had held all of her clothes then, when she searched the bag, her limited wardrobe was missing. Hoping that Caleb’s people had hung them in the wardrobes in the room, she had opened the one nearest the bed and gasped. There her old clothes hung, looking worn, bearing witness to the weeks she had wandered in the forest near the Vampire City trying to reach Caleb. But, beside her old clothes, there was an entirely new wardrobe, one that had taken time and money to assemble, clothes unlike any she had ever worn, clothes that she had only seen in the occasional human film: blue jeans, skirts, dresses, knit tops, sweaters. And there were undergarments, which she refused to think about. If Caleb had chosen them for her … No, most probably, he had one of the house staff help him with it. Closing her eyes against what everyone might think of her, she had snapped a nightgown off the hanger and gone to bed.
In the light of morning, though, she couldn’t ignore the clothes or their significance. Given these clothes, it was clear that Caleb had planned all along to bring her here. That was reassuring, but a little overwhelming. Almost everything in the closet was in different shades of green, everything except the aptly named blue jeans. Even the underwear was all a silvery soft green, barely a whisper of the shade, but still noticeable. Even a petticoat, which she absolutely refused to wear on pure principle because wolves did not wear petticoats for any reason, was that color, and was hung next to a soft green thick cotton dress. Green, his family color, the shade of the royal line. It was embarrassing if he chose the color for her to wear, but it was just as mortifying if one of the women of the house had thought to deck her in this shade. And the undergarments! He would only see those if he were undressing her, so why would it matter if those were green? What did the color signify? She went back to sit on the edge of the bed. What was she going to wear? It seemed as though anything she chose would mean something.
Clearly the blue jeans were the best place to start.
• • •
Thinking that going down would get her where she needed to be, Libby began looking for the breakfast room, but the building was a monstrosity, and she was lost. Of course, most of the staff was sleeping, so she couldn’t ask anyone. Last night, while a servant helped prepare her bath, Libby was told to find the breakfast room when she woke because Caleb would be waiting for her. Foolishly, she had been too tired to even consider that she had no idea where the room might be.
She went round in circles, until, finally, she smelled food and found Caleb, sitting at the head of a long lonely table, simply waiting for her. She sat down, full of questions. Why was a room prepared for her? Why were all of her clothes so … strange? Was she a guest here or a prisoner? What did he want from her? What she wanted to know and wanted to ask was all clear and straightforward to her upstairs in her room, but after dithering over what to wear — blue jeans and a light green t-shirt — and after getting lost in this palace for over forty minutes trying to find the breakfast room, she was a mess. What she needed to know got lost in her curiosities — well, her curiosities and Caleb’s evasions.
Why was he awake while his household slept? To meet with her.
Why was he awake at all, didn’t he need to sleep when the sun rose? No, unlike the rest of the staff, he was not tied to the night, a special gift, he called it, with an ironic twist of his mouth.
Was that because he was royal? It was a very special gift, he answered ambiguously.
Why was his home so far removed from the city? He needed privacy and he preferred the open woods to the web of the city.
Why did he need privacy and why did he prefer the woods? Because he did.
Didn’t most vampires prefer the city? Most did, but, again, he was not most vampires.
Round and round they went, circling one another, with him saying little and implying much, the conversation more taxing and meandering than her search for the breakfast room.
When she finally asked what made Caleb so special — though she thought she knew after that night at the waterfall — he would offer no answer, and instead said, “You certainly have more than a reasonable share of questions. I will give you one more. Make sure it’s one to which you truly want an answer.”
One question? Only one? Stumbling though all of the questions in her mind, she blurted out, “What did you mean last night when you said I belonged to you?” Had she actually asked that? Was it possible to die from embarrassment?
“What did you think I meant?” Caleb asked.
“I don’t know … you … well, you told them I … you called me … you said, ‘my woman’ … so I just … ” She shrugged her shoulders at him and wrinkled her forehead. Apparently, you could not die from shame. You could, however, generate such a hatred of yourself and your mouth that
you wished you were dead.
After a pause, Caleb explained, “I told Torin that you were mine to underscore how much I would take exception to any harm that comes to you. I felt if I staked a claim that you would be safer. Of course, you’re not my anything. Certainly not my woman. I assure you, even were we lovers, I would never say anything like that, not sincerely at any rate. I apologize if I offended you.”
“Oh. I see.” So, Caleb thought the idea of their being a couple was offensive. “That’s good … not that you wouldn’t say that … or that we … aren’t … you know … but that … that you told them. I mean, it’s good that you told them that. It seems like a good plan.” If she could just stop babbling. “Yep,” she finished weakly.
“Whether claiming you was a good plan or not remains to be seen. It might make you safer. It could place you in greater danger. We’ll have to see,” Caleb said, drawing her attention away from the conversation at hand.
“What do you mean, more danger? You’re always threatening me with that. Caleb, I was imprisoned for months. I was almost killed last night. How much more is there?”
“It’s a little complicated.” He looked down, fiddling with the tablecloth, avoiding her eyes.
She sensed unwillingness, discomfort, fear and decided to stay silent.
After a moment, he looked toward her and said cheerfully, “Despite whatever complications there may be, you are here now and I think that calls for celebration.” He gestured toward the food stacked on a long, tall table behind her.
Nodding at him, agreeing easily, she stood and followed his suggestion. How bad could breakfast be? After all, if she had food in her mouth, she couldn’t talk, right?
• • •