by Lucy Blue
“Where did you get it?” the brigand knight demanded, still gaping at Orlando like an idiot. “Has it always been so small?”
“Smaller, I would imagine, or hope for the sake of his mother,” Simon answered. “But when I met Orlando, he was already full grown.”
“Full grown,” the knight repeated with a chuckle. His eyes moved to Simon, sizing him up now. “What will you take for him?” Simon felt the dwarf grow tense beside him, and he put his hand on his shoulder. “I am near to acquiring a castle,” the Frenchman continued. “I will need a fool. Does it sing?”
“Not that I have heard,” Simon answered, trying not to smile. If Orlando had harbored any misgivings about the vampire’s intentions, no doubt they were fading away. “My servant is not for sale.”
The brigand’s smile faded. “Do not be so quick to say it, traveler,” he said. “You, come here.” He grabbed the woman by the arm and pushed her forward. “I will give you this in trade.” He yanked away the mantle, and she let out a shriek of indignation, fighting for it a moment before her arms fell back to her sides. She was barely more than a child with golden hair—a pretty thing when they’d taken her, no doubt. Now her mouth and eye were swollen and bruised, and the thin shift that was her only garment torn and stained with what Simon willfully decided must be mud. She looked at the vampire for barely a moment before looking back down at the floor, but Simon thought he saw the ghost of a smile on her lips, a glimmer of hope in her eyes.
“Your offer is tempting, my lord,” Simon said, giving the title an emphasis that was unmistakably ironic. But in truth, he could barely hear his own voice, so loud was the roar of his hunger and the pounding of the brigand’s heart in his ears. “But I must decline.”
“You must decline?” the man repeated, and his men laughed, coming closer. “I must insist you accept.” He put his hand on his sword hilt, and his henchmen followed suit.
“You would fight me in the church?” Orlando took a step away, and Simon gave him a wink. You see? he seemed to tell the dwarf. The idiot leaves me no choice. “Before the very cross?”
“Fight you? No, traveler.” The brigand smiled, showing rotten teeth. “We will kill you.” He unsheathed his sword.
Simon drew his sword as well, so quickly his opponents could barely have seen him do it. One moment he was easy prey, a single fighter standing at rest; the next he was the demon. The brigand’s henchmen lunged at him first, one armed with mace and dagger, the other with a sword. Simon killed the swordsman first, parrying his blow like lightning before slicing off his head. The second stabbed him in the back, plunging in the dagger to the hilt, but the vampire barely felt it. He whirled around as the villain raised his mace and caught him by the wrist, twisting the arm in its socket like a mortal man might break a winter twig. The henchman screamed, his eyes rolling wild, and Simon snarled, sinking his fangs into the henchman’s throat.
“Un diable,” their master was saying, his face shiny with sweat. “Tu es Satan.” He clutched his broadsword in both hands, but his body was stinking with fear.
Simon raised his mouth from his first prey’s fountain of blood. “You speak as if you know me.” He twisted the henchman’s head to one side with a snap, cutting off whatever life might still linger inside him. “Are we friends?” He let the corpse fall to the floor.
“Stay away!” The brigand knight dropped his sword and crossed himself. “In the name of Christ, stay back!”
“You dare?” A new rage coursed through Simon, feeding him more surely than the blood now coursing through his veins. “Villain that you are, you call on Christ to save you?” His tongue burned at the mention of the holy name. If he were to wear the cross that hung around this brigand’s neck, his cursed flesh would burn with holy fire. “You prey upon the innocent,” he said, moving closer. “You would defile His holy church, abuse His priest, and yet you have that right.” The injustice was more powerful than any hunger; the rage would no longer be contained. He sprang upon the brigand like a wolf, the two of them rolling together as one as his teeth tore into his heart. The brigand struck him again and again, begging for mercy even as he slashed him with his dagger, but Simon barely heard him, barely felt the pain. All that mattered was the blood, hot and sweet, still laced with the wine this man had drunk and thick with the evil in his heart. This was the food Simon had learned to crave above any other in his ten years as a vampire, the blood of men already damned.
“My holy God…” Father Colin had returned. He stood in the doorway, staring in horror at the vampire feeding at the altar of his God. “Merciful Christ…” He clutched his rosary for strength, holding his ground as Simon let the dead man fall and rose to his feet. The vampire knew from experience how he appeared, the way his black eyes shone with a devil’s flame, the scarlet stain of blood upon his mouth. But the priest did not cower in fear. “Be gone from His church, child of Satan,” he ordered. “In God’s holy name, I command it.”
“You cannot command me, Father,” Simon said, though in truth the priest’s words did affect him, make him feel a powerful compulsion to obey. This was a truly righteous man, a true priest of the Christ. “You cannot see what you have seen,” the vampire said sadly. “You cannot remember this night.”
“This night,” the priest repeated, his eyes going dim in the trance. Of all the gifts his cursed state had given him, Simon liked this one the least and used it the least often, the power to sway mortal minds. The more innocent his victim, the more easily and deeply he could entrance them, bending their thoughts to his will. “The Black Knight,” Father Colin said, understanding dawning in his eyes. “You are Isabel’s Black Knight.”
“Yes,” Simon answered, though in truth he didn’t have the slightest notion what the old man meant. Sometimes this happened; a victim’s mind would find its own solution, its own way of explaining away the evil it had witnessed. “I am her Black Knight.”
“Come,” Orlando ordered, bringing Simon his sword. “You must away. The Father and I will take care of this mess.” He looked the vampire up and down with a wry smile. “And find you something to wear.” Simon looked down at his tunic, slashed and soaked with blood. “Go, warrior,” the dwarf repeated, giving him a push.
Outside, it was full dark. Simon stood among the fallen stones of the old Roman temple and closed his eyes, breathing in the cool, misty air as if his body still required it. His flesh was tingling with life, but it was an illusion, vitality stolen from his victim’s blood. For a few precious hours after feeding, he would feel almost himself again, a man with a heart and a soul. He would remember Ireland and the dreams he had once held so dear, see the green fields, remember the warmth of the sun on his back. With a dead man’s blood still flowing in his veins, he would remember how it had felt to be alive, to yearn for love and home.
But come the morning, he would die again. The blood of the kill would be absorbed by his endless hunger, the only life that was real. He was a beast, a predator that killed for no greater purpose but to rise and kill again. All that was left was the blood and his quest, this endless search for a relic he still could not believe would save him. With every night his cursed body walked, he passed more deeply into the shadow, further from God’s grace. Why should this magical Chalice accept him, even if it should exist and somehow he could find it?
Sometimes he envied Roxanna, his sister in cursed blood, sleeping in another world for all these ten years past, a vapor in a bottle. Past all knowledge or control, she no longer felt this yearning he felt now, this illusion of life. If she hungered, Simon did not know and did not care.
The horses of the French knight and his men were tethered just outside the abbey wall. They each looked up at his silent approach, velvet ears laid back as they nickered and chortled in alarm. “You need not fear,” he murmured, holding out his hand. “This wolf means you no harm.” As a man, he had loved horses as only an Irishman could; there was no mount he could not ride, no stallion he could not tame. “Your master is dea
d.” The largest of the three, a dark brown destrier in armor, planted its hooves and tossed its head, whinnying a warning. “I cannot believe you will mourn him.” Almost close enough to touch the velvet nose, he reached for the horse’s bridle.
But just as his fingertips made contact, the horse reared up and screamed, flailing the air with its hooves, and its fellows did the same. The first two broke their tethers easily and fled, the destrier shattering the abbey’s wooden gates. But the third, a smaller gray mare, was trapped. Eyes rolling white with terror, she twisted and contorted, desperate to escape, but her tether would not break.
“I’m sorry,” Simon said, almost pleading, as he drew the knife from his belt. “I swear, love, it’s all right.” Dodging the flailing hooves, he cut the tether with a snap, and the mare reared away so violently she flung herself onto her back. “No!” he shouted, horrified, certain the horse would be crippled, but she struggled back to her feet. Shrieking once more at the vampire, she galloped away, soaring over the broken gate.
“I’m sorry,” Simon repeated, watching as she faded into the night.
“The horses fear you,” a voice spoke softly behind him. The girl the French knight had abused was coming toward him, picking her way between the stones of the ruin. “But I do not.” In the moonlight, he could barely see her bruises; he saw her for the pretty thing she was or once had been. She stopped before him, letting her mantle fall. “I am not afraid.”
“Why are you not?” He touched her cheek with the back of his hand, and she tilted her head, closing her eyes as she leaned into the caress. “You should be frightened, darling.” Even his voice sounded like the old Simon, the lilting poet’s brogue. “You saw clear enough what I am.”
“Yes.” She opened her eyes again. “I saw you.” She smiled. “But I am yours now.”
“No,” he said, shaking his head.
“I can do things,” she promised. “I can take care of you, and you can keep me safe.” She touched his cheek with her fingertips, tracing through the tears of blood. “Why do you weep?”
He smiled. “I weep for you.” He took her hand and kissed it before putting it away. “I don’t need a cook, little one.”
“Good,” she answered, moving closer. “I didn’t mean cooking.”
Her arms came up around his neck as he kissed her, eager for his embrace, and he groaned, despairing and amused. Such sport was but a comfort for the moment, but he ached for the girl even so, the warmth of her body, the parody of love. He pushed her down among the stones, opening her mouth to his to taste her hot little tongue. Her hands slipped up and down his arms, over his shoulders as he lifted her flimsy skirt. The cleft of her sex was as warm as her mouth, as eager to take him inside. He let sensation take him, closing his eyes as he lost himself in her embrace. The bloodlust he felt now was but a little thing after his feeding before, another nagging hunger like the throbbing in his sex, as easily satisfied. When his pretty comforter cried out, he kissed her throat, finding the vein. With both fists clenched tightly in his hair, she arched her hips to meet him, and he bit her, barely piercing her delicate skin, barely feeding as her climax shivered through her, tasting satisfaction in her blood.
He lifted his head and moved faster, looking down into her eyes. “You will forget me.” Her lips moved in denial, but she could not speak; she could not look away. “You will forget.” He drove into her deeper, holding her pinned to the ground.
“Yes.” She gasped as his climax exploded, trembling again. “I will forget.”
He kissed her cheek as he withdrew, let her go as her body went slack. He tugged her shift back down, and she sighed, rolling onto her side. “Sleep, sweet darling,” he whispered, and she obeyed, as peaceful as a child. Looking up, he saw Orlando coming toward him, smiling and shaking his head.
“Father Colin is sleeping as well now,” the dwarf said when he reached him. “Your spell was very powerful tonight.” He looked down at the girl on the ground. “He’s too old to be much help anyway.”
“I’ll do it,” Simon answered. In the past ten years, he must have dug hundreds of graves; three more shouldn’t take him long. “Give me the purse.” He took out a handful of coins and gave them back to Orlando, then tucked the purse under the sleeping girl’s arm. “Perhaps she can find her way home.”
“The good Father will help her.” Simon spread the girl’s mantle over her like a blanket, tucking in the corners, and his companion smiled. “Come, warrior. I think I have a plan.”
Isabel tied off the bindings on Brautus’s shoulder and sat back. “Better?”
“Aye, poppet.” The aged giant leaned back against the pillows, the lines of pain on his brow giving the lie away. “ ’Tis all but mended.” He took her hand and squeezed it. “Let this Frenchman come.”
“Tomorrow.” She made herself smile. “He will come tomorrow.” This great hand had protected her all of her life; this knight was as dear to her as a father. “Maybe he won’t be so bad.” If Brautus tried to fight the Frenchman, he would die. “Maybe I should let him marry me without fighting.”
“No.” His bearded face turned serious, and tears rose in her eyes. “You will not.”
“No,” she promised, standing up to kiss his cheek. “I will not.”
Outside the window, the moon was out, a cold, white sliver. She thought of her father’s study, three stories below her now, and the druid’s scrolls, full of magic that she could not read, wisdom she could not use. Send me my devil, dear wizards, she thought again, a pagan’s silent prayer. Send my true Black Knight.
2
Simon looked up at the castle Charmot, rising stark and gray from its misty island in the purple gloom of twilight. Its outer walls were covered with thorny vines and lichen as if the fortress might have been deserted for some time, but the drawbridge looked almost new, its nail-studded timbers bound in bands of iron. Sir Gabriel might be a recluse, but he was ready to make a defense. Even from the opposite shore of the moat, Simon’s vampire hearing could detect movement behind the wall, tense voices speaking quickly, the jingle of the horse’s bridle, and the rattle of chain mail armor. He looked down at Orlando, the great sage who had convinced him to come here without so much as a sword. “You’re quite certain about this, wizard?” he asked the dwarf, half joking. “This is the only way?”
“Of course not,” Orlando answered with a smile. He rang the bell again. “But we can try this way first.”
Isabel peered down at the strangers through an arrow slit in the wall. “You see, my lady?” Tom said, standing at her shoulder. The boy had kept watch here all afternoon, waiting for the Frenchman to arrive. “It is a priest, not a knight at all, and a child. They don’t even have a horse.”
“No.” In the failing light, she could barely make out the two figures, could not see their faces at all. But neither of them looked like the sort of brigand they’d been warned was on his way. The larger one was wearing some sort of long robe; he might have been a priest, but he was taller than any man of God she had ever seen before and broader at the shoulders. And while the second figure was certainly small enough to be a child, he didn’t move like one. “Tell Brautus to listen and be ready to ride out—he’ll know my signal.” She touched the boy’s shoulder and smiled. “It will be all right.”
Simon rang the bell again, losing patience. “Hello?” he called out over the water. “Hello, is anyone there?”
“Hello yourself.” The voice was a woman’s. Looking up, he saw her standing on the battlements, a beauty with copper-red hair, dressed in a snow-white gown—a creature from a minstrel’s swooning lay. “Who are you?” she demanded. “What do you want?”
“I come in search of Sir Gabriel of Charmot.” The tall man made her an elegant bow, a most unpriestly gesture, Isabel thought. “I seek his counsel.”
“And who is Sir Gabriel to you?” she called out loudly enough for Brautus to hear her in the courtyard. “Who are you to him?”
Simon glanced again at Orlando
. “His kinsman,” he answered, hating the lie. “If he will but come forth—”
“I speak for him,” the woman cut him off. From this distance in the twilight, Simon could barely see her face, vampire or not. But her voice was intoxicating, lilting but not sweet, intelligent but cold. “And I say you are a liar. Sir Gabriel has no kin—or none outside these walls.”
“I am his cousin,” the man insisted. “Distantly— from Ireland. My name is Simon.” He sounded sincere, Isabel thought; more importantly, he sounded Irish, not French. If this was a trick of the brigand she had expected, it was a well-considered one. Her father had never spoken of their having Irish kin, but she supposed it was possible. He had come from a large family in Normandy, and all of his uncles had been knights in service to William Bastard.
“Are you a priest, then?” she called out to this Simon. “A priest and Sir Gabriel’s cousin?”
“Not a priest, my lady,” Simon answered, meeting Orlando’s eyes with a frown. They had quarreled on this point, but Simon would not be moved. Not even for the Chalice would he risk so evil a lie. “A penitent returning home from pilgrimage to the Holy Land. I have had a vision of this castle and my cousin. If I could but speak to him—”
“This castle is cursed, Sir Simon,” Isabel cut him off, trying to decide what was to be done. The man said he was her cousin, but how could she be sure? If he really was her kinsman, perhaps she could convince him to help her, assuming he had done more in the Holy Land than pray. But if he wasn’t, she might be worse off than she was already. He didn’t look dangerous; perhaps Brautus could frighten him away. And if he couldn’t, perhaps he really could be of use. She raised her voice, making certain her aged champion could hear her in the courtyard below. “The Black Knight holds it for his own.”
“The Black Knight?” Simon repeated. Father Colin had mentioned a Black Knight—he had called Simon by that name when he was in the vampire’s trance. Isabel’s Black Knight. He looked up at the woman on the battlements. “Isabel?”