The Midnight Guardian

by Sarah-Jane Stratford

  “Yes,” Brigantia nodded. “Eamon. I think I’ve always known that’s who you were, or who you were going to be. Welcome, Eamon.”

  “It is good to be here.”

  She held out a hand and he took it, burying his face in her palm, kissing it with a passion he didn’t know he had. He thrilled to the feel of her blood rising, even as they both remembered this was the hand she’d offered up to his mouth on his making. He kissed it in benediction, and she in turn received the kiss with gratitude, feeling his forgiveness and the beginning of something she didn’t dare put a name to, in case she might yet be wrong. In his eyes, she saw the shimmering bricks around him, a shadow that clung with a fierce will. His eyes curved toward her fingers, craving their touch, and yet tacitly agreeing that he was not wholly there, not quite ready to take that final step. But he was getting closer.

  Hand in hand, they headed back through the deep blue predawn to the lair and exchanged neither a word nor a look as they parted.

  A few weeks later, on a close and balmy night, Eamon felt restless and itchy, sensing there was a direction he was meant to walk but not quite able to find it. He lingered by Micklegate, eager to move and yet standing unbearably still.

  Brigantia joined him and took his hand.

  “I think it’s this way,” she said, and he followed, sure that she was right.

  At the curve in the road, she left him and he went on alone.

  The musician sat on a stile, his head hanging heavily over bony knees. The rebec lay wedged between his feet, its gleam a glaring antithesis to his worn shoes and shabby clothes. Even a human could have smelled the despair and brokenness that he exuded with such heartbreaking absoluteness. He looked up as Eamon approached, unkempt hair obscuring eyes that were far too dull, his thin face so much older than his years. Eamon did not surprise him, because after the shock of finding daily life so arduous and impossible, nothing could be surprising. Even when Eamon knelt beside him and touched his arm, he didn’t move, didn’t wonder. His few flat words came easily, answering the question Eamon hadn’t voiced.

  “The music just wasn’t in me, after all. I wanted it. I chased it. My father had it, but all I had was the dream. I thought it was enough. It was, for a while. A short while. Everything and everyone I loved died, and I’m still here. Except I’m not. I should have sold it, I know,” his eyes traced the rebec’s silky contours and took on a tiny speck of animation before deadening again. “But I couldn’t, how could I?”

  “Of course not,” Eamon assured him.

  The musician’s eyes locked on Eamon’s then, and dilated in comprehension and even pleasure. This beautiful young man, he had the music. He had that spark, that ineffable quality that can’t be taught, that goes beyond talent and skill and is simply innate and will always captivate. It was full inside him, brimmed over, was the gift given him that he would turn and share with the world. Whether for an audience of one, of hundreds, or of air, this man would make music that would seep into the earth and stay.

  The musician smiled slowly, and it looked as though it pained his lips to curl upward, but he welcomed the pain. He handed the rebec to Eamon, who took it with proper reverence. Despite the tremble in his fingers, it was exactly as he knew it would be. He laid it on his thigh, touched the bow to the strings, and spun out a melody that held despair at bay as it told a curious, charming little story.

  When he stopped playing, Eamon stared down at the instrument, wondering how he’d ever been without it.

  “You’re a vampire,” the musician said simply.

  Eamon stared at him in astonishment. The musician shrugged.

  “Music like that, expressed like that, you should be panting, your pulse visibly throbbing. You haven’t taken a single breath.”

  Eamon smiled. He couldn’t help it.

  “The rebec is yours.” The musician smiled in return, and with real delight. “As it was meant to be. It plainly loves you. It’s a living thing, in your hands. Me, I want no dark gift. I ask only two things in return. That you find a way to make the music touch the world beyond your own, and that you send me away with ease, and a song.”

  Eamon understood, and played a melody that blanketed the musician, tucked him up in a cozy bed and sent him into a happy dream from his childhood. The hands on his face were his mother’s, tender and loving, and the turn was swift and sure, so that the smile stayed on his face above his broken neck.

  Brigantia helped Eamon bury the musician, feeling his pleasure in the guiltlessness of the death and the completion of one part of his journey.

  That dawn, he stepped inside her chamber. They said nothing, they knew there were to be years of endless conversations. He looked at the bricks of his wall, which were now almost transparent. The sound of them cracking and finally, completely, collapsing, was one he would store for a different song. Alma’s face lingered briefly, suspended in his mind’s eye. She smiled and nodded, fading to one small flicker and then slipping away under his skin to rest in her own private corner of his partial soul. His hands extended to the creature who had touched him more deeply than he’d even known, long before she’d ever laid a hand on him.

  “Brigantia,” he breathed, tasting each syllable with care.

  But she shook her head, a strange smile on her face. He waited.

  “Not anymore,” she said, “the name of a goddess no longer fits. I think, with you, with us, I have to … I have to be …” her eyes were filling with tears and she struggled to command herself. He stroked her palm and she clenched both his hands in hers and gazed at him intently. “Yours is a human name, and there is a thread yet of humanity in you, and always will be. And to be with you, properly, the way we’re meant to be, I have to be more and less than a goddess. I have to be something closer to human. The goddess name was presumption, perhaps, but it fit then. It doesn’t now. Now I am Brigit, I have to be, there’s no one else I could ever be. You and I, we are equals, each making one half of the other. So I step down from the goddess and into Brigit, and as surely as you and I will learn Eamon, we will also learn Brigit.”

  He kissed a tear from her cheek, slipped a hand around her neck to look deep into her eyes.

  “Yes,” he murmured. “The education of a lifetime.”

  And they kissed at last, a kiss that seemed to have neither beginning nor end, because it was always meant to be. He pulled her hair loose around them, ran first fingers and then face through it. Her mouth traced his ear, his neck, the shoulder she gently laid bare. They took great care tugging at each other’s clothes, letting hours pass as threads slipped away to reveal oases of skin, vast acres of terra incognita to be explored over centuries. Their inexperience was a patient guide, leading them to sweet spots in wrists, the crooks of elbows, the shallows of necks. There were deeper shivers to enjoy as first fingers and then tongues discovered the delicious sensitivity in nipples, in inner thighs, and all that lay between. The impossibility of their physiology, of bodies that were predominately shells and yet still generated such heat and moisture, an impossibility that allowed him to slip deep inside her and carry them on a long, long journey into the heart of ecstasy, this was the unspoken benevolence of the dark gift. The demon took pleasure when the body bathed in eros, and it was generous enough to allow the relic of the human inside to fall into the warmer, sweeter bath of love.

  All throughout that long, rapturous day, they mapped every inch of each other’s body, discovering their own selves in all those commingled molecules. Every sigh and cry and drop of sweat was precious, each whisper imprinted deep upon the psyche and lodged in silent, yet swollen, hearts. As tongue entwined with tongue, the separate entities ended and a new creature emerged. They were wrapped in a binding that was unique and had more power than either of them could ever possess on their own, however long they both should live.

  When at last there was a place for words, Eamon took her hand again and pressed it to his heart.

  “You are my blood now.”

  “And
you are mine,” she promised.

  A few hours later, she suddenly laughed.

  “Tell me,” he smiled, winding a lock of hair around his hand and kissing it.

  “We are meant to have received a curse from Hell, and yet here we are, touching Heaven.”

  They settled into each other’s arms, preparing to sleep.

  “Yes,” she said again. “Heaven. We must cherish this thing. Honor it, and protect it. Love it. As we will cherish, honor, protect, and love each other. And I do, Eamon. I love you. I love you.”

  “And I love you. My Brigit. I love you. You are the music. You’re everything.”

  They wiped each other’s damp eyes and slept the sleep of the blessed.

  It was exactly as Otonia had imagined. The true union, without barrier, of the ones they now all called Brigit and Eamon, was a force to be reckoned with. It was a phenomenon that Mors, Cleland, and Raleigh observed with bemusement and awe. And indeed, it was not written about in the legends, because few humans could believe such a thing could exist anywhere, even, or perhaps especially, in the dark and inhuman world of the vampires.

  Once, when Eamon was off hunting, Mors came to Brigit in her garden. She handed him a trimming of lovage.

  “Explain it to me, my dear old Brigatine”—she noticed he hadn’t yet used the name Brigit—“my brilliant and powerful brain cannot wrap round this puzzle. Cleland and Raleigh have a great love, and whatever else you want to say about Swefred and Meaghan, less said the better, generally, you can’t deny their love. Leonora and Benedict, Althius and Allisoune …” He ticked through the tribunal’s couples in a singsong recitation. “And yet somehow you and your Eamon are peculiarly peculiar. What ’tis, old girl?”

  Brigit snapped off a sprig of parsley and nibbled it thoughtfully.

  “You’re asking a question for which there is no answer.”

  “Isn’t that the sort of thing you like about me?”

  She laughed, pulling his dog out of the burdock.

  “Ah, Mors, what isn’t there to like about you?”

  “Well, now, that is a good question. One for which, perhaps, there is no answer. Or rather, if we’re being completely honest, one that there would never be enough time to answer.”

  She reached out and squeezed his hand.

  “True enough, my friend, true enough.”

  Brigit and Eamon did not question what had grown between them. They tended it carefully, as though it was a delicate plant in Brigit’s garden. They talked of everything: books and poetry, music, the funny quirks of humans, remembrances of things past. But Brigit was circumspect about her history. She was secure in the knowledge of Eamon’s love, but not ready for him to know about Aelric, or the fire. For his own part, Eamon did not mention the guilt that clung to him, the path his mind occasionally walked toward Alma and Abram. They would both be grown up now, he realized with a jolt. Grown, married, with children of their own. What would Alma look like? A beauty, no doubt, like their mother, with untamed dark curls and flashing eyes. Marriage and motherhood would not have suited Alma, though, not the girl she was under her sweet smile. Alma would want what Brigit had, the chance to read, to run, to explore. But then, if she didn’t know such a chance existed, would it have mattered? Eamon couldn’t stop himself wondering about her, wishing he could reach back through the vortex of time and pull her through it.

  He also wanted to know about Brigit’s birth as Brigantia, and how she spent the 274 years before she found him. She told him a few stories, funny stories, usually involving Mors and often Cleland and Raleigh, but he watched her dance away from details and questions, her eyes averted, although never so quickly that he couldn’t see the clouds, and wondered if it was really so awful as that. He knew she trusted him, and suspected that her refusal to delve the past so thoroughly had something to do with a sliver of mistrust of herself.

  The truth did come at last, however, and was spurred in a manner none could have wished. It would have come eventually, but it was hastened by death.

  For their five hundredth anniversary, Raleigh wanted to visit Ireland and the place where he’d made Cleland. Cleland was more wary. Raleigh had found him in a prison cell, awaiting his torture and death after having been forced to witness that of his lover that day. It had been a good joke on the tribe to discover the empty cell, and a better one when the pair revisited the tribe that night, after Cleland’s rising, but Cleland had no sentiment about Ireland and would have been just as happy to hear it had sunk into the sea. Raleigh missed the music, and the action that could be found there, and thought that now, as an old and powerful vampire, Cleland might find that to enjoy and thus eradicate some of the bad blood of the past. Raleigh was a vibrant, fun-loving vampire, and it was hard to deny him anything. When Mors, Brigit, and Eamon decided that they would like to holiday in Ireland as well, Cleland gave in.

  Eamon was immediately struck by the music in Ireland. It was so lovely, so plaintive, so evocative. It seemed to call out over the sea to long-vanished lovers, promising eternal fidelity.

  “Music like that, it could reach the one who’d gone away and pull him straight back to his beloved’s arms.” Brigit sighed, and Eamon nodded, pulling her into his own arms.

  Mors liked the Irish girls and the wildness. Raleigh liked the old spots and the entertaining stories he could tell of various exploits, only half of which they believed. Even Cleland began to relax and to pick up strands of happy memories. There was something in the air that unnerved them all, made the demons restless, but the dizzying chill of the wind excited their senses too much to care. They had heard that the hunters in Ireland were particularly refined, but they were not fresh young things, easily picked off. They must be immune.

  Why they’d ever thought such a thing was absurd, because even Mors was in more danger than he knew. Some Irish hunters knew how to dispatch a millennial. They were heading toward an ancient site that was meant to give luck to all who entered it. Raleigh had been there once before and was running ahead, shouting at Cleland to hurry up. His voice changed midshout, and Mors snatched the other three and used his own special powers to bear them into the forest, somehow keeping them silent, even with only two hands. They never questioned how he found a cave, he simply deposited them there and left it to Brigit and Eamon to hold Cleland down while he went back for Raleigh.

  He rejoined them alone, his face gray, his eyes those of an old, old man. He took Cleland in his arms, put his hands over Cleland’s ears, and rocked and sang to him throughout the rest of that night and the next day. He, Brigit, and Eamon sat in helpless horror, listening to the hideous screams that rhythmically punctured the air, the long, slow end of Raleigh. They hadn’t known a vampire could be tortured, and it was only years later, reading a gleeful account by a hunter, that they learned he’d been confined to a box and exposed to short bursts of sunlight through the day, burning chunks of him off bit by bit. It was only when he begged for the hunters to finish him that they did, but not quickly. They wanted the fun to last.

  Brigit never believed that Raleigh had begged. That was just a flourish to make for a better triumph. She told only Eamon that, though. Among her and Cleland and Mors, Raleigh’s name was not mentioned again.

  The hunters had searched for them, but Mors knew how to get them home. It was not fear that any of them felt, not really, just fury. That Raleigh should be cut down was bad enough, but the torture bespoke something else, something deeper. Vampires viewed hunters with respect, and naturally kept their distance, but these men seemed more like beasts than their own selves, and Mors and Brigit were determined to avenge their friend.

  Otonia had called for a communal gathering by the river. Eamon knew it was a sort of memorial, but Otonia did not want to say as much. Cleland had not spoken a word since they’d returned and was under watch. Otonia clearly hoped that this reminder that there was love and friendship here, that many of them had experienced loss but had recovered and found love again, might start him on the pat
h to acceptance. Brigit made him a special bouquet of herbs for healing and remembrance and Mors and Eamon each had new songs to share.

  It was Meaghan who threw a bitter golden apple into the circle.

  “At least you tried to do something,” she congratulated Mors and Cleland. “We all know someone who didn’t lift a finger to help when her maker was staked.”

  Even Otonia was shocked. Meaghan so rarely spoke to anyone but Swefred, and rarely loud enough to be heard, and why she should want to lob such a vicious insult at Brigit was unfathomable. Swefred simply gaped at her, and so no one tried to intervene when Brigit turned to her accuser with steaming eyes.

  “If memory serves, you were not there, so you don’t know,” Brigit hissed through clenched teeth.

  “As though anyone had to be there!” Meaghan scoffed. “You despised Aelric, that was hardly a secret, you were relieved to see the end of him. You broke the code, you ought to have been chastised, cast out, and yet here you are, happy and in love, as though you deserve it! I’ll tell you what I think, I think the wrong vampire was killed over there in Ireland, and if …”

  The fire exploded. The circle, too. Mors was closer to Cleland, and seized him as he hurtled toward Meaghan with a yowl of fury. Leonora, the only other one who had seen what could happen to Brigit when so roused, had her hands full quelling Swefred, who was raring to pounce on Cleland. Eamon felt he must be caught in a nightmare, seeing the massive flames pouring from his beloved’s eyes, ears, and mouth. Even Otonia’s terrifying bellow, which silenced the others, did not stop Brigit from gripping Meaghan’s wrist, but the flames were overwhelming her. Hardly even thinking, Eamon threw his arms around Brigit, ignoring the hot pain, and tumbled them both into the river.

  They rode the current for a long time, Eamon holding Brigit underwater till her skin felt smooth and cool. Her eyes were closed, and he sensed this was as much out of a fear of looking into his as out of sheer exhaustion. He laid a hand on her belly. It was cool and still. The fire was gone.