by Lucy Blue
Isabel looked down at the tapestry, the tiny redhaired maiden and the wolf with his head laid in her lap, gazing up at her in love. I love you, Simon had said, on his knees before her, weeping tears of blood. “No…” She looked back at them, the knight and the peasant crone, both of them waiting for her to say she would do what they wanted, that she would kill her love to save Charmot. But how could she? Even if she had the strength, even if she knew how to kill a demon who could not be killed, how could she kill Simon? You cannot kill me, the demon in her father’s shape had told him. The second demon…
“There were two of them,” she said suddenly, standing up.
“Two what, poppet?” Brautus said with a frown.
“Two vampires.” She laid the tapestry aside to pace the tiny open space before the hearth, the room suddenly feeling too small. “The first one came and tried to hurt me, to take—” She reached into her pocket and took out the crumpled parchment she had made somehow with magic and her blood—her mother’s druid blood. “To take the map,” she finished. “He looked like Simon at first, but it wasn’t him. I could tell it wasn’t him. He wanted this map.”
“What map?” Brautus said.
“This map of the catacombs,” she said, handing it to him. “Don’t even ask me how it came to me.”
“Where is this other vampire now?” Mother Bess said, not disbelieving, just confused.
“He went out the window,” she answered. “Simon came in, and they fought. They both changed, not just Simon. The other vampire’s face kept changing.” She trembled at the memory, but she wouldn’t let herself stop. “He changed into someone Simon knew, then a man I believe was Michel, then…” She looked at Brautus. “He changed into my father.”
“Holy Christ,” he murmured.
“He asked me again for the map, and I almost gave it to him—I would have if Simon hadn’t stopped me. It was like I couldn’t help myself.” She looked down at the map again, remembering the monster’s voice, the tender voice of her father. But her father would never have kissed her that way; he would never have hurt her. “Simon attacked him. He protected me. He changed into a wolf, and the other one changed into a dog—a big black dog I had seen before, Mother Bess, and taken for the grim. They fought, and Simon pushed him out the window.” She looked at Brautus. “Then you came in.”
“Yes,” Mother Bess said, staring into the flames. “The wolf could make a son.”
“So how do I help him?” Isabel demanded. “If this other vampire is this wolf I’m supposed to kill, how do I help Simon?”
“Help him do what?” Brautus asked with bitter humor.
“Save him,” she answered. “You both seem to know so much about demons and vampires; tell me how to save my love.”
“He cannot be saved, little girl,” Mother Bess said, patting her hand. “If he is a child of the wolf, he is damned.”
“No,” Isabel said, pulling away. “I will not believe that.” She turned back to the tapestry. “He came here for a reason.” She looked up. “Where is Orlando?”
“Locked up in the cellar,” Brautus answered. “I didn’t want him running off to help his master.”
“Good,” she answered, taking the map back from Brautus and putting it into her pocket. “I want to talk to him.”
“Wait, my lady.” Mother Bess caught her by the wrist in a grip so tight, it hurt her. “You are the champion,” she said. “If you do not destroy the wolf, Charmot and all who live in this forest will be lost.”
“I believe you,” Isabel answered. “But I have to know which demon to destroy.”
12
Simon woke up in the dark. The pain was gone, so he knew he must be healed, but he still couldn’t stand. He was sitting against a rough stone wall with his hands over his head, shackled at the wrists, and his legs straight out before him. Heavy chains were shackled to his ankles as well.
A spark flashed in the dark. “Awake at last.” A vampire who looked like the thick-witted brigand Michel stood beside a table at the other end of the damp, lowceilinged cave. But in truth, Simon knew he was Lucan Kivar.
“I killed you,” Simon insisted, struggling to pull his arms free. He had broken chains before in his demon state; he could break these.
“You know quite well you did not.” He lit a second candle. “Even if you had been too stupid to realize it yourself, that insect you keep with you would have told you.” Simon gave the chains another rattling pull, and Kivar smiled. “You’re wasting your strength.” He carried the candle to another corner of the cave, illuminating a huddled mass that sat up as he squatted beside her and became a girl, bound and gagged. “Those chains will hold even a vampire for quite some time.” He touched the girl’s cheek, and she flinched, her gag muffling a scream.
“Who is she?” Simon asked, struggling to keep the horror he felt from his tone.
“No one,” Kivar answered. “Would you ask the cook the name of the sheep when she served you mutton?” He stood up and smiled. “Of course, being an Irishman, you might.”
“What do you know of Irishmen?” Simon scoffed with a deadly smile of his own. “The only one you ever met cut off your head and stabbed you through the heart before you could get acquainted.”
“Is that the way it went?” He frowned. “I thought Roxanna stabbed me through the heart.” He shrugged. “Not that it matters.” He came back to Simon, leaving the candle beside the weeping girl. “Did you kill her, by the way? I know she would have asked you to do it.” A shadow of fury passed over his thick-featured face, pasty white in the flickering light. “Stupid girl.”
“Would you care?” He held his wrist chains stretched taut, pulling them with all his strength but silently now, and he thought he felt them begin to give way just a bit.
“Of course I would,” Kivar answered, his careless smile returning. “I care for all my children.” He touched Simon’s cheek, and Simon snapped at his hand like a dog, unable to stop himself. This monster had kissed Isabel, pretending to be him, stealing his very shape. “But I must say, Simon, that you are my favorite so far.”
“What about Susannah?” Simon said, refusing to rise to the bait. “She was your newborn, was she not?”
“A momentary diversion.” His mouth twisted in a bitter leer that made him look more like the living man whose corpse he had stolen. “You killed her, too, I suppose?” He went back to the table and opened a leather pouch very much like the ones Orlando carried, only larger. “Did you at least fuck her first? She wanted you to so badly.”
“You killed her,” Simon answered. “Not me.”
Kivar looked back at him over his shoulder, considering. “Yes,” he decided. “You could say that, I suppose. But if so, then I also killed you.” He went back to taking objects Simon couldn’t see out of his pack and setting them on the table. “Are you dead?”
The iron shackles cut into Simon’s wrists. “You tell me.”
Kivar looked up at the ceiling with a wry half-smile. “Not yet.” He lifted a curving, golden dagger to the light, and the girl on the floor began to struggle, trying again to scream. Simon couldn’t be certain in the dim light from across the cave, but he was sadly afraid he recognized her, the child of a woodcutter who had taken refuge with her family at Castle Charmot the first night Isabel had seen him as the wolf. If it were she, she was barely more than twelve or thirteen years old.
“It’s all right, sweeting,” he called out, making every effort to sound braver and more certain than he felt. “He isn’t nearly so scary as he thinks.”
Kivar set the dagger aside. “No, perhaps not.” He palmed another, much smaller object from the table. “But you are.” He turned back to Simon. “I should thank you for this body, by the way.” He looked down at his scarred but powerful hand. “Not so elegant or intelligent as our mutual friend, the duke, of course.” He clenched his fist and smiled. “But it should serve my present purpose well enough.” He held the object in his hand up to Simon’s eyes—the signet ri
ng Francis had always worn, the proof of his noble title, given to him by the king. “But I do miss being Francis.”
“You were never Francis,” Simon said, trembling with rage. “His soul escaped to heaven long before your demon spirit touched him.”
“Not so,” his tormentor said with a smile. “His mind was still all but intact when I took possession of it; I could hear his thoughts quite well. As for his soul…” He shook his head like a man who has heard a child prattle a fairy tale. “Of course, the mind does deteriorate over time, even under my command. Still, I owe him a great debt. I could never have kept up with you so well without his help. Orlando is a clever little maggot.” He suddenly grabbed Simon’s right hand in a grip more powerful than any shackle and slipped the ring on his finger. “His one regret in all his stupid life was that he had not made you his heir when he could have so easily,” he said softly as Simon made his face like stone, refusing to react. “So see how I repay him for his service?”
“And I will repay you,” Simon answered, his lips drawing back in a smile that was more like a grimace. “Next time I will finish you.”
“I bid you do your worst, my son,” Kivar said mildly, unimpressed. He took a step back as Simon lunged to the length of his chains, and this time Simon felt a definite slip; the bolts that held him to the wall were definitely bending. “But spare me your ignorant prattle of heaven and souls, if you please.” He walked away again. “I was immortal when your God was still being invented under some sheepherder’s tent.”
“Then why are you so keen to have His chalice?” Simon retorted. If he could get himself free of these shackles, he was almost certain he could reach that golden knife before Kivar could stop him. He might not destroy the devil completely, but he could destroy the body he possessed, cut off the head and cut out the heart as Kivar himself had apparently done to Francis. At least the girl could escape.
“His chalice?” Kivar said with a mocking laugh. “Simon, do not be a fool if you can help it. The Chalice is mine, my birthright. It has nothing to do with your God.” He returned to face him, holding the knife. “Has that little worm, Orlando, not told you yet what the Chalice holds?”
“Salvation,” Simon answered.
“No such thing!” he cried. “Salvation is another pretty story, another myth your priests made up to keep you savages from eating each other alive.” He smiled wryly. “But you should not feel badly; in my time, it was the same.”
“So what good is the Chalice?” In truth, the devil’s words meant nothing to him; if Kivar had said he was on fire, he wouldn’t have believed him even if he smelled the smoke. Simon had been burned by too many crosses and repelled by too many innocent souls to doubt his God was real or that He took a hard but definite interest in the affairs of the damned. Isabel, he thought before he could stop himself. Isabel had driven him from her with a cross, invoking the name of the Christ. What must she be thinking now? How must she feel? He didn’t dare to dwell on it, or he would never escape this trap. “Why search for it?”
“The Chalice is healing,” Kivar answered, a strange, triumphant madness burning in his eyes. “The Chalice makes you whole.” He clasped Simon’s face between his hands, studying it. “You are afflicted with death, my son, a disease of the blood, not a curse. The Chalice could cure you.” He let him go slowly, backing away. “But perhaps I do not need you any more.” He turned quickly and snatched up the girl from the floor, baring his fangs, and she let out a despairing, mewling kitten’s moan. “You look at this and see a soul,” the ancient evil said softly as he removed her gag, sounding gen uinely puzzled. “You fear for her more than you do for yourself, even now, this empty-minded little beast whose name you do not even know.” He let her fall again, her head striking the stone floor with a tiny crack. She shuddered and went limp.
“I am a knight, Kivar,” Simon answered, watching the other vampire’s face, his expression impossible to read. The laws and life of chivalry were not something he had found much cause to think of since he had become a vampire. They just were, a part of him like the arm that wielded his sword, the code of his life. His father and the duke had both been men of honor, protectors of the innocent, and he had loved them, had lived and breathed only to make them proud. So he had become the same. Even as a damned soul, a vampire loosed upon the world, he had never found a way to give up the habit.
“Yes,” Kivar said, turning on him. “A knight— exactly.” He picked up the dagger. “I had heard tell of this new creation in the world, this knight, and it amused me to think of taking one as my son. But after watching you for all these years, I begin to understand your weakness.” He came closer. “And I have seen your Isabel.” He traced the dagger’s point down Simon’s throat, and with an effort, Simon allowed it without flinching. Kivar could not easily kill him with a knife, and if he had truly wanted to do so, he could have done it already. Besides, in another few moments, Simon might have worked himself free. “She is not a knight, but she is strong, stronger than you, I begin to fear. Perhaps I have chosen badly.”
“Leave her alone,” Simon ordered, the words catching in his throat in spite of his resolve. The very idea of this monster touching his beloved was more than he could bear; the killing rage rose up inside him, turning his vision to red.
“I cannot,” Kivar answered. “But I will not abandon all my hopes for you just yet.” He held the blade to Simon’s throat, curved like a scythe. “This knife could behead you like a blade of grass with a single flick of the wrist,” the ancient vampire said, the voice Simon had first heard from him in his true form returning, calm and cold. “Do not move.” He sank his fangs deep into Simon’s throat, sucking stolen blood from his vampire’s veins as his body went rigid with fury. The terrible hunger that ruled him, knight or not, rose up like a fever, gnawing at him like a serpent, driving him to madness, and still the devil fed, drawing deeper, pulling at his very heart. Only when Simon was empty and aching, burning to be filled again, did Kivar lift his head.
“The sun will come to claim you soon,” he said, stepping back, wiping his mouth on Michel’s dirty sleeve. “There is an opening in the earth above us, and now you are too weak to free yourself and escape.” His voice seemed to waver and echo inside Simon’s head. All he could think of was feeding, gorging himself on blood and taking his revenge. “But you can be strong again.” Kivar lifted the girl from the floor again, her head now lolling on her shoulders, but she was still alive. Simon could hear her heartbeat roaring in his ears, feel it throbbing through his weak and starving flesh as if it were his own. “Take the beast and feed from her as you were created to do,” Kivar said, slashing the dagger across the girl’s wrist, filling the cave with the scent of her blood. “Then you will be my son.”
He laid the girl across Simon’s lap, passing her wrist across his face to smear his mouth with her blood. Simon lurched up in his chains like a man possessed, a howl of agony erupting from his throat, but he did not take the bait; he did not bite her. “If you are still a knight, then let the dawn consume you. Do so that your innocent might live,” Kivar finished, backing away. “But if you have the strength to take what is yours by all that is right, I will come to you again.”
“Kivar!” Simon shouted as the ancient left him in the dark.
Isabel waited in her father’s chair in the catacombs as Brautus led Orlando in. “My lady!” the wizard said, rushing forward as soon as he saw her face. Expecting nothing but hostility after keeping him locked up in Simon’s room all night, she was surprised; he looked and sounded genuinely relieved. “Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she nodded as Brautus helped the little wizard into a chair. That wasn’t quite the perfect truth, as she was confused, terrified, and rather nauseated, but it seemed the wisest response. “But there are questions I would have you answer, if you will.” She set the purse Mary had given her and the silver cross she had found at the church on the desk between them. The druid’s map she kept in her pocket. “Questions
about Simon.”
“I have one as well,” Orlando answered. “Where is he?”
“I don’t know.” He barely glanced at the items before them, showing no sign that he recognized either one. “After he turned into a wolf and threw the second vampire out my bedroom window, I asked him to tell me what he was and how he came to be here, and he left the castle rather than give me an answer.”
“The second vampire?” Now he looked alarmed. “What was his name? What did he look like?”
“We were not properly introduced,” she answered. “As for what he looked like, I fear it would be easier to tell you what he didn’t. First he looked like Simon. Then when Simon himself appeared, he turned into another older, kindly-looking man who was a stranger to me but whom Simon seemed to know well. Then he changed into another man I believe was a brigand knight named Michel.” She glanced at Brautus. “Then for a moment, he was my father. At the end, he turned into a dog. So I truly couldn’t tell you who he was.”
“Kivar,” Orlando murmured, going pale.
“Simon said that word as well,” she said, remembering. “Is that this creature’s name?” She waited, but the wizard did not answer. “Orlando?”
“You should ask Simon,” he said grimly. “You should never have sent him away.”
“I didn’t send him away,” she answered.
“I did,” Brautus said. “Why should I not have done it? Is he not a vampire?”
“You say that word as if you know its meaning,” Orlando answered Brautus. He turned to Isabel. “Do you know, my lady?”
“I did not before last night.” She picked up the cross, remembering how happy she had been even in her fear when Simon left her for the chapel with the others, remembering the tears of blood that he had wept in her room. “I wish I did not now.” She saw pity in the wizard’s eyes, but he said nothing. “Orlando, is Simon my kinsman?”