My Demon's Kiss

by Lucy Blue

  “Simon?” Isabel repeated, following him, confused. Orlando had come out of the castle as well, and he was watching her with warning in his eyes, but she chose to ignore him. “Simon, I said are you hurt?”

  He turned to her, still streaming icy water, and gathered her into his arms. She opened her mouth to protest, and he kissed her, his mouth crushing hers, his tongue parting her lips to push inside. She felt as if the ground were dissolving beneath her, but he held her close, so tightly she couldn’t breathe, his arms a threat and sanctuary at once. Her hands slid over his shoulders, bare and sleek, and he should have been warm, but he wasn’t; his skin was cool but flawless, an angel’s flesh under her touch. Somewhere in the world people were laughing and applauding, calling her name and his, but that was far away. Here was only her angel, her Simon, his arms around her, his body pressed to hers, his tongue inside her mouth, and she was frightened and brave at the same time; she felt starved for something she had never tasted. She slipped her tongue between his teeth, exploring, and he let her, his movement urging her own.

  Then suddenly, it was over. Simon was letting her go. He set her back on her feet again, his mouth barely curled in a smile. “I am well, my lady.” As the men laughed and clapped him on the back and the women howled and scolded in protest, he picked up his tunic and walked away, stepping over the wolf he had killed on his way to the castle. Orlando looked at Isabel for a moment with a face she could not read before he followed.

  “Are you all right, my lady?” Hannah said, giving her husband a swat. “Brautus will have that puppy’s head for this.”

  “No, it’s all right. I’m all right.” She looked down at the wolf lying dead at her feet, its yellow eyes still staring. “He made the castle safe again. That is all that matters.”

  7

  Isabel sat by the hearth in the great hall, pretending to mend a torn stocking and watching Hannah fasten a wreath of spring flowers on Susannah’s head. “I like the other one better, the one with the rosebuds.”

  “Do you think?” the maid asked, admiring her reflection in Isabel’s best silver mirror. “I’m afraid all that yellow will make my face look green.”

  “Orange, more likely, from pure vanity,” Hannah scolded with a smile.

  The May Night dance in the druid’s circle was a tradition far older than Castle Charmot. People came for miles around to dance in the grove of the ancients, or so Isabel had been told. “You mustn’t tease the Queen of the May, Hannah,” she warned. “She might put a spell on you.”

  “You should come with us, my lady,” Susannah suggested. “You could even bring your cousin.”

  “Do you think so?” Isabel said sarcastically, pulling a wry face.

  “Hush,” Hannah scolded, giving Susannah a swat for good measure. “Lady Isabel has no interest in such goings-on, nor does Sir Simon.”

  “But it’s nice of you to think of us, Susannah,” Isabel said.

  In truth she couldn’t have invited Simon anywhere, even if she’d had the nerve or the inclination to do it. She hadn’t laid eyes on him in weeks. The last time she had seen him had been the night he killed the wolf and kissed her for his reward—for so the whole household had chosen to style it. Everyone thought the nobles, Isabel and Simon, must have quarreled about it afterward out of everyone’s hearing. They all guessed that she must have banished him to the catacombs for good for his impertinence. “That Irish devil’s intentions were plain enough,” she had heard old Wat laughing in the stables when he didn’t realize she was passing by. “A right shame it is Sir Gabriel brought our lady up to be so damned particular.”

  But in truth it was Simon who had stayed away from her. Orlando had emerged from the cellars every day or so to fetch food from the kitchen, and many nights she heard Malachi galloping over the drawbridge long after she had gone to bed. But she had honored her promise to leave him in peace, and he apparently preferred to do the same to her.

  “Don’t mind her; come with us,” Susannah persisted. She took the sewing from Isabel’s lap and replaced it with the rosebud wreath. “The woods are safe; Sir Simon has made certain of that.”

  “I know,” Isabel said, trying to hand back the wreath. “It isn’t that.” No one else had been attacked since Simon had killed the wolf; not so much as a single lamb had been lost, and there had been no sign of the brigand knight, Michel. The men of the household were all convinced that Simon was patrolling the forests on his midnight rides. “He’ll scare off any beastie that dares to cross him, I’ll wager,” Kevin had told his wife, and Hannah had repeated his words to her mistress.

  “Susannah, enough,” Hannah said now in a tone to put down any argument. “Go and see if Kevin has the wagon ready, why don’t you?”

  “All right, all right.” Susannah took the wreath but laid it back in Isabel’s lap. “Just in case you change your mind.”

  “You mustn’t mind her, my lady,” Hannah said when the other girl was gone. “She’s just a peasant and a child; she doesn’t understand your position.”

  “It’s all right,” Isabel said, setting the wreath aside. “She meant well.” She picked up her sewing, trying not to remember that she and Susannah were nearly the same age or that her own mother had been a peasant lass herself. She must have danced in the druid’s grove before her Norman husband came to claim her, Isabel thought. But her daughter was born a noblewoman, the lady of Charmot.

  She worked her way through a whole basket of mending as the rest of the household made ready for the celebration and left, all of them bidding her fair evening as they went. “Be careful tonight, young Thomas,” she called out to Tom as he walked through the hall with a cask of mead on his shoulder. “They say on May Night, the fairies come out in the wood.”

  He grinned, blushing scarlet. “A man can only hope.”

  Finally she heard the wagon roll away over the drawbridge, leaving her alone but for Simon and Orlando in the catacombs below and Brautus in his room above, or so she assumed. But just as she was about to go into the kitchen and find herself and Brautus some supper, someone came back in through the archway— Raymond’s wife, Mary, looking lovely in a pale green gown with her own wreath of flowers in her hair. “Forgive me, my lady,” she said, coming into the shadowy hall. “I need to speak to you.” She held out a fat little pouch. “I need to give you this. Raymond says I am a fool, but I’m afraid… I can’t go to the circle until you take it from me.”

  Isabel took the ragged purse, a soft leather bag trimmed in brightly colored silk, wine and peacock blue. “Where did you get this?” Most of the people of Charmot and the villages around it never saw two coins together in their lives, but the purse was full near to bursting with copper, silver, even gold.

  “That dead woman we found had it hidden in her skirt,” Mary explained. “The one the wolf killed.” Isabel looked up at her in shock. “We knew it was wrong to take it, but Raymond said…” She looked away. “We thought there might be a new lord at Charmot, that we might have to move away, and with that money, we could start over, maybe even go to London. I have a cousin there.”

  Isabel could hardly blame them; she’d been thinking of running away herself that day. “That girl had this?” she said, more shocked at that. The dead woman had been a peasant; where could she have gotten such a treasure? Some of the coins she recognized as English in origin, the same as ones she had herself, but many of them were strange and obviously old. She tipped a pile into her hand, and a large gold piece embossed with the image of a Roman Caesar rolled out.

  “Yes,” Mary nodded. The longer she talked, the calmer she sounded, as if the very act of putting the purse into Isabel’s hands had driven her fears away. “Raymond said she wouldn’t need it any more, and we did, or so we thought. But now that your lord… your cousin has come…” Isabel looked up at her again, and she blushed, but she didn’t look away this time. “You could give it to Father Colin.”

  “I could give it to him?” She poured the coins back into the bag.
“Why me?”

  “You’re the lady of the castle,” Mary said as if this were a perfectly obvious reason. “You might have such a purse yourself, left to you by your father the lord.”

  “I don’t,” Isabel said with a laugh.

  “But Father Colin doesn’t know that,” she pointed out. “You could give it to the church, and he would never question it. You wouldn’t even have to say where you got it.” She wanted absolution, Isabel could see, someone in authority to tell her she could dance now in the druid’s circle without fear of retribution for her and her husband’s great sin of looking out for themselves. So she had come to the lady of Charmot, a spinster virgin who had never danced there and never would. Thanks, Papa, Isabel thought with an inward bitterness that was becoming something of a habit with her. You left me a fine legacy indeed.

  “I’ll take care of it,” she said aloud, managing a smile. “Go enjoy the dance.”

  Mary’s face broke into a smile. “Thank you, my lady.” She bobbed a peasant’s curtsey. “Thank you so much.” Before her lady could answer, she had gone.

  Isabel studied the purse again. Strange characters she could not read were embroidered in the leather in a tarnished golden thread. She fished out the gold coin she had seen before and held it between her fingers. Perhaps the next time a suitor appeared, she could pay him a ransom to leave her in peace. Or perhaps she would give it to Father Colin as Mary had wanted, buy them all a bit of indulgence for their sins. But just now, she didn’t much care.

  She dropped the coin back into the purse and the purse into her pocket. Brautus would need his supper.

  Simon felt his way along the cavern wall, loath to trust even his demon’s sight in this dark, dank hole. “The floor is wet again,” he told Orlando, who was creeping a few paces behind him. “Bring the light.”

  The two of them had been fumbling in the dark like fools in a fable for weeks now, searching Sir Gabriel’s catacombs and coming no closer to finding the Chalice than they’d been the night they started. The tunnels seemed to twist for miles, deeper and deeper, water occasionally pouring through the ceiling in icy silver drapes or seeping through the floor. Orlando had produced a phosphorescent powder from one of his many purses that left a glimmering, reflective trail as they went; otherwise they would have lost themselves forever.

  “Here,” Orlando said, handing over the torch. “Oh, dear.”

  As Simon had suspected, the puddle at his feet already glowed—they had crossed this path before. “Lovely,” the vampire grumbled, stalking ahead to the next turning in search of a fresh tunnel. But in truth, he thought, what was the point? They had no idea how long the glow in this powder might last once Orlando dropped it—for all they could tell, they’d been retracing their own steps for days. “It’s hopeless,” he grumbled aloud, stopping to lean against the wall. “We will never find anything like this.”

  “And what would you suggest we do instead, warrior?” Orlando said, stumbling as he hurried to catch up. “I would love to hear.”

  “I don’t know.” The wall opposite him was painted with rough figures, men and women in a circle, most with bright red hair. They seemed to be dancing, arms upraised, and a spiky blue and yellow shape at the center of the circle could have been a fire. The catacombs were covered in such paintings, and they always made Simon feel strange, as if he had forgotten something important, something just out of his memory’s reach. At first, Orlando had been convinced this was a good omen, that the crude figures and Simon’s reaction to them would somehow point them to the Chalice. But after weeks, they had found no more pattern and order to the paintings than they had to the tunnels themselves.

  He raised the torch closer to the painting, studying a single female dancer with long, red locks entwined around her slender form. “Isabel,” he murmured. Her mother was a native of this island and the forests around it; she had woven a figure very like this one in her tapestry, a maiden taming a wolf.

  “What are you thinking, warrior?” the wizard said. Simon started back the way they had come, leaving his companion to chase after him. “What is in your head?”

  “Isabel,” he answered without slowing down. He reached Sir Gabriel’s study and fastened the torch into a holder on the wall. “She may know something,” he explained as Orlando caught up at last, looking vexed and out of breath. “We should have asked her long since.”

  “No, Simon,” the dwarf said, alarmed. “You must stay away from her—”

  “Why must I?” But he knew the answer. For weeks he had avoided his pretended cousin, venturing from the catacombs only in the dead of night when he was sure she would be sleeping. He had kissed her, not carelessly, not for the pleasure of a moment, but because he had needed her kiss. And he knew that was dangerous, not only to him but to his quest.

  But if she could help them, if she knew some piece of local legend or myth that could lead them to the Chalice, wasn’t that worth the risk? The sooner his quest was accomplished, the sooner he could leave Charmot, and the sooner Isabel would be safe.

  “Stay here and keep looking if you wish,” he told Orlando. “I won’t be long.”

  “Wait,” the wizard ordered, pushing past the vampire to reach the dead knight’s desk. He tossed his fortune-teller’s bones across it and studied them for a moment, his expression first grave, then alarmed. “No,” he decided. “I forbid you to go to her.”

  “You forbid me?” Simon echoed, incredulous.

  “I will speak to Lady Isabel myself, if you think she may have something of value to tell us,” Orlando said briskly. “You must not go near her, this night or any other. You have a duty, warrior, a better promise to keep.”

  “Orlando, I will not abandon the Chalice,” Simon said, trying to be patient. “I’ve already told you.”

  “I speak not just of the Chalice, warrior.” He reached into the pocket closest to his heart and took out the ruby-colored bottle that held the essence of Roxanna, the little sultana he loved. “She trusts you to save her,” he said, his eyes alight with feeling. “She will need you, a warrior who understands her kind and her past, who can protect her when her curse is broken.”

  “No, Orlando.” In his mind, he could see his vampire sister holding the dagger that had killed Duke Francis, his beloved patron’s blood staining the blade in her hand, a monster’s tears of scarlet on her face. “That will never be.” He started to walk past the dwarf, unwilling to say more, but Orlando blocked his way.

  “No,” he insisted, putting up his wizened little hands as if to hold the vampire back by force. “You will not— you will destroy her—”

  “I will not.” For the first time in all their years together, Simon lifted the tiny wizard off his feet, an indignity past all forgiving.

  “I will tell her!” Orlando raged, struggling in his grasp. “I will tell Lady Isabel the truth!”

  “No, you won’t.” He put him down on the far side of the room, then crossed to the door again in three long strides. “I’m sorry,” he said, going out and closing the door before the dwarf could catch him. He turned the key and left it in the lock. “I will be back here as quickly as I can.”

  Isabel came back down the circular stair with the tray Brautus had barely touched, feeling very put upon and cross. Her ancient friend had been in an extremely foul temper. His shoulder was still not healing as it should have done long ago, and it pained him very much. “One more thing to fret about,” she grumbled to herself as she rounded the corner into the great hall.

  “What did you say?” Simon asked from the shadows by the hearth, making her scream and drop the tray in fright.

  “Holy Christ!” she swore, scowling at him, her hand pressed to her heart, Brautus’s dinner smashed and splattered on the rushes at her feet.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, trying not to laugh. The usually reserved young lady of Charmot had shrieked as if she’d been bitten on the bottom by a goose. Muttering a response he was glad he couldn’t quite make out, she bent down to
start picking up the dropped tray. “Where is everyone?” he asked. He had already searched the courtyard and the stables without finding another soul.

  “What do you care?” she countered, scraping up a puddle of stew in a half-moon of broken crockery. “What are you doing up here?”

  “Let me help you.” He bent down to pick up the flagon that was spilling wine into the rushes. She slapped his hand away, cutting her own hand on another shard of broken bowl in the process.

  “Shit!” she swore, flinging the shard she still held halfway across the room. His eyes went wide, and she was glad; she hoped he fainted from the shock. She was sick unto death of being polite to him; suddenly every grievance that oppressed her felt like his fault, unjust as that surely must be. But she was in no mood to be reasonable.

  “Forgive me.” He stood up slowly, tearing his gaze away from the wound in her palm with an effort. He closed his eyes, the sudden perfume of her blood making him feel drunk.

  “They went to the druid’s grove, to the May Night dance.” She yanked the kerchief from her head and knotted it around her hand as best she could, since her knight errant seemed to have no interest in attending her. In faith, the great wolf-killer of Charmot looked as if he might be about to be sick. “Up here amongst the living, today was the first of May.”

  Simon looked at her, shocked, but she had gone back to gathering up the mess she’d made, oblivious to how keenly her barb had found its mark. “Why didn’t you go?”

  “Because I can’t.” She picked up the tray and headed for the kitchen, and Simon followed. “The May Night dance is a peasant festival.” She dumped the tray in the refuse barrel, then stripped out of her ruined apron and threw it in as well. “I am the lady of Charmot.” She caught sight of her reflection in the mirror Susannah had left on the table. “All appearances to the contrary,” she muttered, setting it aside with its glass turned down.