My Demon's Kiss

by Lucy Blue

  “I need you.” He sounded just as desperate as she felt, and his hands moved over her feverishly, brutal and tender at once as he reached under her skirt. He crushed her hard against his wall, his sex against her stomach, then grinding lower as he lifted her up again, and a hot wave of desire tore through her like lightning, making her gasp as they kissed. His hands slid under her behind, holding her easily, and she laughed, caressing his neck, kissing under his hair. He was strong; he could hold her forever. He could keep her safe.

  She kissed his eyelids, his brow, nuzzled his cheek as his mouth found her throat and moved lower still, bathing her skin with his tongue. His hand stroked her flesh, her inner thigh, then higher, and she writhed against his touch, her breath coming faster. “I want you,” she said, bending her head to his shoulder, sweet waves of bliss radiating through her as his touch pressed deeper. Her breasts felt swollen and deliciously tender as he kissed them through her gown, suckling her nipples through the cloth, first one and then the other. “I want you inside me.”

  His hand opened her sex, rough with desire, and she moaned against his shoulder, stifling a scream. Then suddenly his hand was on her cheek and it was his sex filling her up, a single, breathless stroke that seemed to touch her very soul. She laughed, dizzy with pure, sweet joy, and he moved, a steady, brutal rhythm like the beating of her heart. “Angel,” he murmured, hoarse with desire. “Isabel…” Her hips rose to meet him, matching her rhythm to his, and he shifted her closer, thrusting in deeper, making her cry out.

  “Yes…” She was crying, and he cradled her close, kissing her cheek, their bodies still moving as one. “Simon, please don’t stop.”

  “Never.” His kiss moved to her throat, turning cruel, a bite, and she cried out again in pleasure, not pain. A different kind of ecstasy rushed through her, making her swoon in his arms as her climax rose and fell and rose again. She was dying, surely, but she didn’t care, not if he was with her, not if he would never let her go.

  Simon had not meant to bite her, but he couldn’t stop. His demon’s fangs were tearing her flesh; her blood was on his tongue, and the pleasure was like nothing he had ever felt before. Her body embraced him as he fed, pliant and burning with life, her soul in his mouth, liquid fire like he had drunk so many times before. But this was no stranger, no meaningless prey; this was Isabel, his love. Tearing his mouth from her throat, he passed his tongue over the wound, a final thrill of taste as his demon’s magic hid the mark. She sighed in his arms as if she felt the loss as deeply as he did himself, the loss of this demon’s kiss. He kissed her mouth instead, adoring and breathless, and his body shuddered, spilling into hers.

  “Simon,” she murmured, caressing his face with her hands as she brushed her mouth across his cheek and lips. He wrapped his arms around her, molding her body to his as he carried her to the bed, crushing her beneath him as they fell. But he couldn’t stay; the dawn was coming. He could not let himself sleep in her arms. He felt tears rising in his eyes, tears of her blood he could not let her see.

  “Simon?” He was getting up, she realized in shock; he was leaving her again. “Simon, no.” She sat up, reaching for him. “Stay here. Stay with me.”

  “I can’t.” He sounded tearful, but his face was turned away. “The dawn will be here soon—”

  “So let it come.” She turned his face to hers. “My love, I swear it isn’t real.” She kissed his cheek, her heart aching with love. “This curse isn’t real.”

  He gathered her close for a moment, hiding his face over her shoulder. “I wish it were not.” He kissed her hair, fighting back tears. “I so very much wish it were not.”

  He was holding her so hard he hurt her, but she could still feel him pulling away, retreating into the pain that shut her out. “Tell me, Simon,” she ordered as he kissed her cheek. “Tell me what Orlando has told you; why has he said you are cursed?”

  “Orlando?” He drew back. “No, darling, it isn’t Orlando—”

  “Then what?” He turned away. “Simon, stop. What do you want me to do?” If he said to stay away from him, she would murder him on the spot, she thought. “Do you mean for me to keep you as a plaything forever, my lover I keep in the cellar?” she joked, touching his shoulder.

  “No,” he promised, turning back to her with a bitter smile.

  “Do you mean to leave me then?” Her face flushed hot, her pride long ignored but not forgotten. “Am I the plaything instead?”

  “No.” He knelt on the floor before her and took her hands in his. “I would marry you, beloved, if I could.”

  “Then do it.” She thought she must be going mad; joy and grief were so entwined inside her heart they seemed to be the same. “Ask me to be your wife.”

  “I can’t.” He kissed each of her palms. “I know you think… but you’re wrong.” He looked up at her. “When this curse is broken, I am yours.”

  “When this curse is broken.” She looked away, her hands limp and still in his grip. “Will that ever be?”

  How could he answer her? he thought. For ten years he had searched for salvation and not found it; how could he promise her that he would find it now? “I don’t know.” He rose to his feet. “I—”

  “Don’t.” She looked up at him. “Please, don’t tell me you’re sorry.”

  He smiled, but it was not with joy. “I will not.” He bent and kissed her forehead. “Sleep well, love.”

  “You, too.” She watched him go, needing all the will she had to stop herself from running after him. When this curse is broken, I am yours, he had promised. Then broken it would be.

  10

  Simon found Orlando snoring on the ground near the bodies, his lantern long burned out. He examined the corpses himself, but apparently none of them had so much as twitched all night. These three were well and truly dead, their souls dispatched for heaven or hell as suited God, not evil. Simon rather envied them. He thought again of Isabel’s face when she asked him if his curse would ever be broken and the coward’s answer that was all he had to give. All his fine promises to the contrary, he had broken her heart.

  The sky was growing lighter. A line of dawning purple traced the castle wall and glowed on the surface of the lake. The sun would kill him; this was one of the great, unchanging truths of his vampire life. To kill in darkness was to live; to stand in the light was to die. But how did it happen? Orlando had described undead bodies bursting into flames, consumed into ashes in a moment, but how would that feel? Would his consciousness pass into hell in an instant, becoming a demon indeed, or would his soul move on to judgment as if he were a man? Orlando had no answer for such a question; he did not think of hell or paradise as Simon did, did not believe in the same God. And Simon’s own theology was not equal to the task. The priest in his home village had never heard tell of a vampire.

  The first pale rays of sunlight pierced the trees along the lake shore, reaching for the shadow of the castle where he stood. He felt a prickle on his skin similar to the sensation he would feel walking into a church, only stronger, reaching deeper through his flesh to the bone. In a moment, he would explode into hellfire, every cursed particle that made him transformed at the same instant into flame. He waited, entranced, as still as the corpses lying dead before him, watching as the sunlight crawled across the ground, moving ever closer to his feet.

  “Simon!” Orlando rushed at him, flinging all his weight against him to push him to the open cellar door. They plunged together through the opening and fell backward down the stairs as sunlight swept over the wall. Smoke rose from Simon’s clothes and boots as the wizard scrambled back up the steps to the door, climbing like a beetle on his hands and knees as Simon felt the burning rising up inside him, pain like nothing he could have imagined. A scream formed deep inside his mind that his throat was too far lost to voice, drowning out every thought of guilt or truth or salvation. Then Orlando slammed the door, and the burning stopped.

  “Are you mad?” the wizard demanded, limping as he came back down t
he stairs. “Ten years of fighting, of searching, and now, with the prize all but within your reach, you think to surrender?” Simon made no effort to answer him; he had no answer to give, no explanation the dwarf could ever understand. He sat up on the cold, earthen floor, bowing his head to his hands.

  “Never mind, warrior,” Orlando said, patting the vampire’s shoulder as if he might have been a grieving child as he passed. “Come, you must rest. You will have much work to do tonight.”

  Isabel walked out into the courtyard, yawning in the early morning light. Kevin and Tom were coming down from the castle wall as she emerged, and Raymond’s cousin and Wat were headed up. Another group of men were coming from the stables, carrying shovels and picks, and Kevin and Tom went to join them.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, going to meet them.

  Kevin looked at her, surprised. “We’re going to bury those bodies, my lady. I thought we’d put them in the orchard, near the back where those trees have died out—”

  “No.” Suddenly all she could think of was what Mother Bess had said. Much that is dead can still rise. She had tried again the night before to speak to the old woman, but she wouldn’t say any more, and in her mind, she thought Brautus must surely be right, that the tales she told were nonsense. But in her heart, she couldn’t be sure. “We must take them to the church,” she said to Kevin. “They must be buried in sacred ground.”

  “The church is an hour’s ride away from here, my lady, and that on horseback,” Kevin said. “No one here will care to venture so far from the castle, not with a killer in the woods.” Several of the other men mumbled their agreement. “Not in daylight, anyway.”

  “Not in daylight?” she echoed. “Kevin, that’s ridiculous. Daylight is safer—”

  “Not without Sir Simon, I should have said,” he corrected. “If he thinks we should take these men to the church tonight, I think there are some who would go. But not now.”

  “Not on my order, you mean,” she retorted. Once again, they all seemed to accept Simon’s right to rule here completely without question, stranger that he was and strange as his habits might be. Never mind that she had been their lady all her life, that she had spent the last ten years shut up behind these walls to keep them safe.

  “It isn’t that, my lady,” one of the other men protested. “We want to oblige you, truly. But…” He looked around at the others for support.

  “Sir Simon is a knight,” Kevin finished for him. “He can protect us. You cannot.”

  “No,” she said coldly. “I suppose I cannot.” They all looked miserable, at least. “Then we will wait for Simon.”

  Simon awoke at sunset to find the entire household in the castle courtyard. “What is this?” he asked Orlando, coming down the steps.

  “Lady Isabel insists the dead men must be given proper Christian burial at the Chapel of Saint Joseph,” the wizard explained. “They expect you to lead them there.”

  “You jest,” Simon answered. But in truth, that was exactly what it looked like. The wagon was hitched to its team, and the three bodies had been laid inside, covered over with blankets. A whole procession’s worth of men were waiting beside it, armed and obviously anxious. “I will talk to her.”

  “I would wait a moment, if I were you,” Orlando advised. “She’s busy arguing with her captain.”

  “Brautus, can’t you see I’m frightened?” Isabel was saying in the meantime. Brautus had come down, prepared to go with the others, but the very thought was more than she could bear. “If I had my absolute choice, we would drop those bodies in the lake, and no one would leave the castle. But that would be wrong. Someone has to take them to the church. But not everyone, and not you. I don’t mean to protect you by keeping you here; I mean for you to protect the household.” He made a disgusted little snort that made her want to hit him, but she took his hand instead. “I am the lady of Charmot, and I need you. Will you abandon me?”

  If she had struck him, he couldn’t have looked more shocked. “Never,” he said, his jaw clenched tight. Shooting a final glower in Simon’s direction as he came toward them, he turned and went into the castle.

  “Brautus!” she called after him, but he was gone.

  Simon reached her side. “Shall I try to speak to him?”

  “God’s faith, no,” she said with a bitter little smile. “He’d probably try to kill you.”

  “I wouldn’t blame him.” Her eyes widened, and he smiled. “I would in his place. He has been the Black Knight for quite some time, I hear.”

  “Yes,” she said, smiling back. “He has.”

  “So what is this about going to the church?” he asked.

  “Simon, we have to,” she said. “We have no idea how those men were killed or who two of them were; we owe them a Christian burial.” There was something more, he could tell. Something had convinced her that to bury these men at the church would protect them somehow, keep her castle safe from the evil that had killed them in the first place. Who was he to tell her otherwise?

  “Very well,” he nodded. “But you are staying here.”

  “Simon—”

  “Lady Isabel.” He touched her chin, turning her face up to his. “I will comply with your wishes and see your will carried out. But I will not risk your safety to do it.”

  If he meant to be mocking her, he hid it very well. “All right,” she said with a nod. “I will wait for you here.”

  “Good.” He grinned. “See if you can make up with Brautus; that should keep you busy.”

  “Oh, Brautus will come around,” she promised. “It’s really you he dislikes, not me. He thinks I’ve given you far too much consideration here, that I’ve treated you far better than you deserve.”

  “And so you have.” He sounded almost cheerful, the Irish rogue again.

  “Yes, but Brautus doesn’t know it,” she retorted, blushing as she smiled. “Once he sees you’re not some scoundrel after my castle, he should take to you well enough. Everyone else seems to like you.”

  He took her into his arms. “It isn’t your castle I want,” he said softly, almost a growl, as he bent to kiss her. For half a moment, she thought about the others watching and what they might think. She was the lady of Charmot, after all; she should think about her dignity. But as soon as she felt his lips touch hers, every such thought was forgotten.

  “So what is it?” she said, speaking just as softly as he broke the kiss. “What is it you want?”

  His answer was to press her closer and kiss her more deeply, the only answer he could make. “Keep the gate barred and the drawbridge up,” he ordered, letting her go. “We should not be long.”

  “Not to worry, sweeting,” she promised with an impish smile. “Brautus may be furious with me, but he and I have been holding this fortress together for quite some time now. I think we can manage one more night.”

  Something about her words made him shiver, demon that he was. “Just be safe.” Kissing her softly one last time, he turned to the men who were waiting, pretending not to notice what he and their lady were doing and making a poor job of it. “Come, Kevin,” he said. “Let’s see this done and come home.”

  Isabel watched him mount Malachi as if he had been born to ride him, watched the men of her father’s castle follow him without a moment’s question. You can help him, Orlando had promised. You can save him from this curse. The little wizard, riding his new pony, stopped at the gate and turned to wave to her, and she smiled and waved back. She would help Simon. She even knew how.

  This time the gates of the chapel swung open as soon as Simon knocked. “My lord,” Father Colin said, coming out to greet him. “Kevin sent word what had happened.” He stared for a moment at Simon’s face, his eyes clouding with confusion, but after a moment they cleared with no further sign he recognized him at all. “Please, all of you, come inside.”

  Three fresh graves had already been dug in the churchyard’s consecrated ground. “We cannot know what manner of Christians these stran
gers might have been,” the priest explained to Simon as the bodies were laid to rest. “But all in the village know the miller’s son, Jack, was a godly man.” An older man and woman who must have been Jack’s parents stood beside his grave, the woman sobbing in her husband’s arms. “Their only son,” Father Colin finished with a sigh.

  Simon felt sick just watching, the guilt he felt writhing inside him. These good people had done nothing to deserve their pain, yet he had brought it to them even so. Could even the Chalice be worth such a price? Even if it existed, even if he could find it, why should he think himself worthy of the salvation it was supposed to offer? He turned away as the priest began the funeral mass, picking up a fallen shovel, the sacred ground suddenly burning under his feet like the sands of the desert as he walked away with Orlando following close behind him, carrying a lantern he had brought from the wagon.

  It seemed a century since he had stood here in this garden, but in fact it was only a matter of weeks. This was where he had made his first kill at Charmot; this was where the curse he had brought on this plain had begun. The corner where he had buried Michel and his men was just as Isabel had described it to him the night she had made him promise to protect her castle; the ground in one grave-sized plot had obviously been disturbed. Moving closer, he could see it had sunk in even deeper, until it looked only half-filled with earth.

  “So there it is, wizard,” he said. “Do you still think Isabel imagined it?”

  “No,” Orlando admitted. “But I still don’t know how it happened or what manner of creature is inside.”

  Simon glanced back at the others, still engrossed in the funeral. “There’s only one way to find out.”

  All the time he was digging, he expected Michel to rise up, but the ground under his feet didn’t stir. After a few minutes, his shovel struck what was unmistakably a corpse, making a nasty, squelching thud. “Stand back,” Simon ordered as a terrible stench rolled up from the grave. Orlando nodded, but he stayed where he was, holding the light.