by J. C.
Her body bucked wildly as she tried to throw him off, but he held like stone, waiting for her to suffocate.
Magiere lost awareness that her breathing had stopped. Loss of air now made room for her to grow, as if the grip on her throat held in her rage, letting it build up inside of her. She stared at him, her eyes unblinking and wide until they began to water.
As the first tear rolled down her cheek, a screaming, wailing cry of pain sounded from below, and the nobleman's head jerked slightly in surprise. Magiere felt his grip on her throat falter only for a moment. She let go of his wrist and grabbed the back of his head, then drove her own head forward and bit into his throat.
She felt the vibration of his panicked shout tingle across her face, as she pressed harder against his cold skin and blood leaked into her mouth. A knot of hunger twisted up suddenly in her stomach. Both his hands came in to push at her head. She pulled her mouth away before he could find his grip, and struck downward with her falchion. This time the blade connected with a solid crack as steel met with bone in his left shoulder.
"Magiere!"
The voice pulled at her from somewhere out of sight and far away—from downstairs.
The nobleman roared and swung with his right fist, even though the movement caused her blade to cut deeper. The blow caught her jaw.
The pain Magiere felt was as far away as the distant voice she'd just heard. The room spun until she saw the floor rushing up to meet her. She fell halfway on her side, and her breath rushed out. The moment that her head bounced off the floor, she thought she heard the sounds of shattering glass and wood. She struggled to sit, walls tilting haphazardly in her sight. She swung her blade blindly around, unable to focus. By the time the room stopped rocking before her eyes, and the pain in her head began to truly register, the room was empty.
Breathing was difficult. Rage and hatred leaked out of her as each breath, suddenly harder than the last, seemed to expel her strength. Her arms and head felt heavy, and she crumpled back to the floor. As she lay there, trying to gasp in air, realization of what she'd just done crept into her awareness.
Not all the blood in her mouth belonged to that hated nobleman, but she had tasted it, tasted his blood. And that memory caused fear to replace lost rage.
Footsteps on the stairs doubled that anxiety—the nobleman. She tightened her grip on the falchion and struggled to pull herself up.
Leesil appeared above her. He dropped to his knees and pulled her upper body into his lap. Relief caused fear to fade at his presence, but for some reason, she didn't want him to see her. She pulled away, covering her face with her free hand.
"Magiere, look at me," he said. "Are you all right?"
"It wasn't me," she whispered, finding her voice. "It wasn't me."
"Magiere, please," he said, his tone desperate. "Beth-rae is dead, and Chap's badly hurt. I have to get back downstairs. Are you all right?"
Shame, horror, and reality hit her all at once. Why was she hiding from Leesil?
She sat up, Leesil pushing her from behind, and turned to look at him. As she pulled her hand from her face, he grimaced at the sight of blood on her jaw. He reached out to inspect the damage to her lower lip where the nobleman's fist had landed.
Leesil pulled his hand away abruptly and glared at her, as if wary of her presence.
"What?" she asked urgently. "What is it?"
He hesitated before answering. "Fangs."
Night wind blew in from the shattered window frame across the room and stripped the last of anger's heat from Magiere's body.
* * * *
The scene they found in the common room pressed Leesil down to the point where he was almost unable to perform any more action.
A lit lantern rested on the end of the bar, and Caleb kneeled by Beth-rae's body. He looked up at Leesil in confusion, wanting someone to explain everything away. Chap also sat by the body, whining and pushing at Beth-rae's shoulder with his nose. The fur on his chest was matted with blood, but from the way he moved, it seemed he was not as seriously injured as Leesil had feared.
"I went out for fresh water," Caleb said numbly. "I came back and…"
"Caleb, I'm so sorry," Magiere whispered from the base of the stairs.
Magiere still appeared shaken, but at least fully aware of her surroundings. If not for the blood on her chin and the split lip, Leesil would have thought her no more disarrayed than she was after one of their old mock battles played at the expense of frightened villagers.
Beth-rae's throat was jaggedly torn from one side to the other. Leesil knew the weapon had been a dirty fingernail.
"It was him," he said finally, "that filthy beggar boy we fought on the road to Miiska." He didn't look at Magiere as he spoke. "He attacked us… or, actually Chap attacked him, but he climbed through that front window. Beth-rae threw something over him, and he started to scream, and his skin turned black."
"Garlic water," Caleb said softly, touching Beth-rae's hair.
"What?" Magiere asked.
"We've been keeping a cask of it in the kitchen," he answered flatly. "If you boil garlic for several days in water, it makes a weapon against vampires."
"Stop it," Magiere said harshly, stepping closer. "I don't want to hear it right now. Whatever they wanted, they were just men. Do you understand?"
For the first time since meeting her, Caleb looked at Magiere with something akin to open dislike on his face. He struggled to carefully lift his wife in his arms.
"If you stopped lying to yourself and dealt with the truth, maybe my Beth-rae wouldn't be dead."
He carried the body through the curtain to the kitchen. Chap followed, still whining.
Magiere slumped down to sit on the bottom stair and covered her eyes with her hands. Strands of her loose, messy hair caught in the drying blood on her chin.
"What's going on?" Leesil asked. "Do you know?"
"The man at the Vudrask River was the same," she said quietly.
"What are you talking about?"
"He was the same—pale, bones like rock, too strong— surprised my weapon hurt him. He was the same."
"You mean the same as the beggar boy on the road, the one in here tonight," Leesil added, growing more angry. "Something else you neglected to tell me, yes?"
He took several deep breaths. Shouting at her would do nothing to help the situation, so he turned away. He wanted a drink and walked to the bar, found his old cup, and filled it.
"I can't feel them now," Magiere said, and Leesil looked up to see her hesitantly running one fingertip across the tops of her teeth, slowly, one by one. She pulled her hand away. "Maybe you just imagined—"
"I imagined nothing!" Leesil said, his voice growing louder on each word. He slammed the cup down on the bar and walked back to crouch before her. "This is not just something in your head and certainly not in mine."
His hand reached up quickly, about to grab her jaw. Magiere started to pull away, but then remained still, staring at him. At first, her features were flat and emotionless at the closeness of his hand, and then they shifted. The look on her face told Leesil she was defying him to find again what he thought he'd seen.
Leesil moved carefully. Magiere did not open her mouth, but she did not resist as he gently pressed his fingers on her lower jaw to open it. He didn't touch her teeth, because he didn't need to. There was no sign of the elongation of her eyeteeth. Leesil let his hand drop away from her face, but he did not look away.
"We have to inform the constable about the attack," he said. "Word is going to spread soon enough about Beth-rae's death."
Magiere sank back, eyes closing slowly.
"Leesil?" a tiny voice called from the top of the stairs.
Magiere's eyes snapped open. "Rose?" she said softly, turning to look up.
A small form in a muslin nightdress rubbed her eyes and yawned.
Leesil took the stairs two at a time.
"Where's Grandma and Grandpa?" Rose asked, half awake. Her lower lip q
uivered slightly. "I heard noisy things in the dark."
"You had a bad dream." Leesil grabbed Rose quickly, but gently, and picked her up, holding her against his shoulder.
"Where's Grandma?"
"People who sleep in my bed never have bad dreams," he answered. "It's too big and soft. Would you like to sleep there?"
She blinked again, trying hard to keep her eyes open for the moment. "Where will you sleep?"
"I'll sit in the chair and watch over you until the sun comes up. All right?"
She smiled, clutching at his hair as she put her head in the crook of his neck. "Yes. I'm afraid."
"Don't be." Before turning toward his room with the weary child, he looked down. Magiere stood at the bottom of the stairs, leaning heavily against the railing for support. His voice was sweet and light as he whispered to the child. "Everything will be better in the morning," he lied.
Chapter Ten
Rashed paced inside the cave below his warehouse in nearly panicked agitation. He'd raced back home to find Teesha and Ratboy—assuming that Ratboy would have run home as well—in order to move them someplace safe. The hunter had clearly seen his face, and many people in town knew him or knew of him as the owner of the warehouse. Sunrise was only moments away, and not only was Ratboy still missing, but he'd come back to find Teesha gone as well.
Had she gone looking for them or taken Ratboy to safety herself? Either act was certainly in the realm of Teesha's nature, but he couldn't be certain. Rashed moved toward the lower end of the cave, ready to head back out in search of Teesha, but he could sense the time. After long years in the night, any vampire was fully aware of the time and movement of the unseen sun. Any who failed to build such an awareness had long since burned to ash in the light of day. He knew the sun was cresting the horizon, and so he stopped short of leaving, turning to pace again, back and forth in the dark.
Where was Teesha?
He'd constructed their world carefully in a place where they could exist and thrive, feed judiciously and not worry over being discovered. It was home enough, but not without Teesha. Given time, he'd even hoped one day she might be free of that specter of a husband who clung to her in after-life. If she had gone to find Ratboy and himself and been burned in the daylight? Then Ratboy best have burned with her, or Rashed would tear him apart slowly, piece by piece, over long blood-starved years, never letting the filthy little wretch have his second death.
Damn the hunter to eternal torture as well. And what a fool he'd been himself.
Blood dripped openly from the gaping wound in Rashed's shoulder, and he could not easily move his left arm. His collarbone was cleanly broken. The shallow wound down his chest seeped. Each injury burned as if he'd been dowsed with some priest's blessed oils. The wounds weren't healing at all. He remembered Ratboy's own panic upon returning from the fight on the road with the hunter, and he knew he would have to feed soon in order to close his wounds.
He'd told Ratboy "no noise." Was that such a difficult concept to understand? In a matter of moments, he'd lost control of his fight with the hunter, and Ratboy had managed to alert the entire household. Now the hunter had confirmation that at least two undeads inhabited the town. The situation could hardly be worse.
And what in all the demons of the underworld had happened to him during the fight itself? The hunter's sword was magically endowed, if not magically created; that much was obvious. Where did she get it? Even a blade that had been warded or arcanely made to battle the undead should not have prevailed against his open attack—he was too strong and skilled. This was not arrogance or pride, but realism. He should have been able to beat her down, if not kill her outright, and been back out the window with the body in a matter of seconds. Instead of tiring, her strength and speed had grown to match his every attack.
And she had bitten him as if she were one of his own kind.
He'd felt the heat of her body, heard the pounding of her heart, and smelled living blood in her veins. She was not a vampire or some other Noble Dead. What had happened? And she had seen his face. It was only a matter of time and questions asked before the hunter connected him to the warehouse.
"We must leave here," he murmured.
"Rashed!" Teesha's voice called to him from the far side of the cave.
Relief flooded Rashed at the sound of her voice. But when he turned to see her in the dark, stumbling toward him, her face was filled with as much fear as he'd felt when he dove through the inn's window to save his own existence. He ran toward her, and anger returned quickly at what he saw.
Teesha held on to Ratboy's half-conscious form by the back of his shirt collar, dragging him into the cave. She looked exhausted. She'd never had the physical strength with which most Noble Dead were gifted. Perhaps it was a trade-off for her higher ability in thought and dreams that she used to hunt. Even he had sometimes felt the soothing calm wash through him at the sound of her lilting words.
"Someone threw garlic water all over Ratboy," she said. "I found him crawling by the sea, using wet sand to scour it off. I had to kill a peddler down by the shore to feed him quickly. Haste would not allow a more discreet hunt, and Ratboy needed a great deal of blood. I buried the body in the sand for now. We just got inside before sunrise, but he's badly hurt."
By way of answer, Rashed grabbed Ratboy by the front of his shirt and held him off the ground against the dirt wall of the cave. The little urchin's skin was still partially blackened and charred in places, cracking and split. It served him right for his recklessness.
"We're stuck in here now because of you," Rashed hissed. "That hunter may come during the day and burn this place around us."
Ratboy's eyes were mere slits, but hatred glowed out clearly.
"What a pity," he managed hoarsely.
"I told you 'no noise'! You forced me out before my work was finished." That was only partly true—but Ratboy and Teesha didn't need to know that.
"And who cut through your shoulder?" Ratboy opened his eyes wide in mock surprise. "Did she hurt you, my dear captain?"
Rashed dropped him and drew his fist back to strike.
Teesha grabbed it. The mere touch of her hands was enough to make him pause.
"This will not help us," she said. With light pressure he could have easily resisted, Teesha pulled Rashed's arm down. "We have to get every trap set and hide as deeply as possible."
Of course, she was correct. There was nowhere to run until nightfall. Now he was the one playing the fool and right in front of her. Ratboy's blundering had undone him in more ways than one. He quickly collected himself.
"Yes, you help Ratboy. I'll set the devices and join you below."
Her tiny fingers brushed his face as if glad to see him in charge again. "Let me tend your shoulder."
"No, it's all right. Just get deeper below."
Perhaps they would all survive until nightfall.
* * * *
Leesil and Magiere waited in the common room for Constable Ellinwood to arrive. At sunrise, Leesil had accosted a passing boy on the street and paid the youth to run to the guardhouse with the news of Beth-rae's murder. His initial instinct had been to clean the mess up in the common room, but Magiere stopped him.
"All of this proves we were attacked," she said.
Everything was left where it had fallen the night before with two exceptions. Caleb had taken Beth-rae's body to the kitchen and had not come out again. And then there was Ratboy's thin-bladed dagger.
Leesil hadn't even remembered it until he'd stepped around to the back of the bar to put away the crossbow, and found it lying on the floor. He quietly picked up the blade out of Magiere's sight.
Ratboy must have used it to trip the latch on the common-room window. The blade was wide and unusually flat, making it thin enough to slip between shutters or into a doorjamb, and the width would provide strength when pushed against any metal hook or latching mechanism. Inspecting the blade, he found it well tended and sharpened, but with an odd shape to its t
ip. It wasn't overt, and perhaps anyone else wouldn't have noticed, but Leesil had slipped through enough windows in his life to know what he saw.
Near the tip, the edges were no longer straight, but indented slightly. Long use as a tool had worn down the metal and frequent resharpening had produced a slight inward curve in the edge on each side. Ratboy was not a common thief, whatever else he might be, but Leesil could see the beggar boy was practiced at unseen entry. A blade like this was a personal choice, sometimes specially made, and certainly a well-cared-for possession. And yet, Ratboy had obviously not entered the inn to steal anything, and his manner was not that of an assassin—the little creature might be cunning and stealthy to a point, but he had no finesse.
Leesil had serious doubts Ellinwood could even understand such things without them being pointed out blatantly and then explained. And he wasn't even sure how it connected to the more unusual details of last night. If necessary, he'd show the dagger, but for now he rucked it under the back of his shirt. Magiere might not agree with this action, but he would handle that if and when it came up. He stepped around the bar into the open room, surveying the ruins of broken tables and chairs, fresh scars in the bar top, and dried pools of blood.
Magiere's words made sense—everything needed to be left as it was to make Ellinwood believe what had happened, but he hated the thought of doing nothing. The bloodstained floor kept drawing his attention. Why hadn't he initially held his ground and reloaded the crossbow? Why hadn't he rushed the creature as soon as Beth-rae threw the garlic water? The scene played over and over in his mind as he examined every move he could have made differently. Scenarios taught long ago by his mother and father crept back into his conscious thoughts from places where he'd hidden them. He'd made so many mistakes, and now Caleb was a widower and little Rose had no grandmother.
Chap's chest was almost healed, which in itself seemed too much for Leesil to think about, in addition to everything else that made no sense in their lives of late. Magiere's facial wound looked days instead of hours old. Whenever Chap or Magiere fought these strange attackers, they healed with an unnatural quickness. Or had they always been quick to mend? It occurred to him that in their years together he'd never before been in such situations with either of them, so there was no way to be sure. He didn't want to talk about any of it, but how much were they going to tell the constable?