My Demon's Kiss

by Lucy Blue

  He looked at her blandly, his face a perfect mask. “He said he was, my lady,” he answered. “I can only choose to believe him.”

  “Aye,” Brautus said as a knock came on the door. “And we can choose not to.” He opened it, and Glynnis came in, carrying a tray of food.

  “You should eat, my lady,” she said, watching the wizard as she set it on the desk between them. “And we thought Master Orlando might be hungry, too.”

  “Thank you, Glynnis.” She filled a trencher for the wizard and set it before him, but he didn’t touch it, watching for her to start instead. “Orlando, good heavens,” she said, taking a bite of bread that tasted like sawdust in her mouth, so little did she want it. “What have I ever done to make you believe I could poison you?”

  “Nothing, my lady,” he said after a moment. “Forgive me.” He began to eat as Glynnis left.

  “This purse was found on the dead woman we thought was killed by the wolf,” she said, pushing her own food away. “I saw Simon change into a wolf last night. I can’t help but notice how much this resembles your other purses and bags.” He kept eating, never even glancing up. “Is it yours?” she persisted. “Did Simon… ?” The question stuck in her throat, but somehow she made it come out. “Did Simon murder that woman?”

  “You know him, Lady Isabel,” he answered, his brown eyes meeting her green ones. “What do you think?”

  “I want to think he did not, that he could not do such a thing,” she answered. “But I can’t forget what I saw.” He looked away. “Orlando, I understand your wanting to protect Simon,” she began again. “But you must understand that I must protect Charmot. I am sworn to it.”

  He smiled his bland little smile. “And I am sworn to my master.” Brautus snorted in obvious disgust, but she remembered the words Orlando had spoken to her in this room on his first morning at Charmot. Simon is my only hope, my warrior and my salvation, he had told her. My soul is in his hands. How could she expect him to betray him? “What do you wish me to tell you?”

  “Ah, now that’s an easy one,” Brautus answered for her. “Tell her how to kill him.”

  “I don’t think he has to tell me that,” Isabel said. “I think I already know.” Orlando looked at him, surprised. “Sunlight,” she said. “Is that true, Orlando?” Simon had three vows that she knew of—to avoid human contact, to never eat food, and to never see the sun. The first he had broken with her fairly regularly from the first day he had arrived. The second had already been explained—as a vampire he fed on the blood of the living. But why avoid the sun? Mother Bess had said the druid gods had cursed the wolf, banishing him to darkness. “Is this why Simon can never go out in daylight?” But Orlando only smiled at her as if he hadn’t heard. She thought perhaps he looked a little paler, and he had stopped eating his breakfast. But she couldn’t be certain, and she couldn’t afford not to be. “I don’t want to hurt Simon,” she said, standing up. “But I can’t let this other demon hurt Charmot. Orlando, I want to save him, but…” Tears rose in her eyes, and she turned away, staring hard at her father’s books to keep from breaking down. That was when she saw it.

  “You have to help me, Orlando.” She took the bottle from the shelf, the ruby red bottle that felt so cold to the touch. He had told her it was deadly poison, all but snatching it out of her reach. “If you don’t, I will open this and empty out whatever is inside.” She turned to find him still smiling, if anything more broadly than before. “Outside in the courtyard,” she continued. This time she was sure he had gone pale, and his smile disappeared. “In the noonday sun.”

  “No!” He leapt to his feet. “Give it to me!” He tried to rush forward, but Brautus held him back. “Please, my lady, you must not.”

  “Then you must help me.” He seemed so desperate, she felt horrible. It was not in her nature to threaten or torture anyone, even at such need. But he’d given her no better choice. “Will sunlight kill Simon?”

  “Yes,” he admitted, near tears. “But as my god or yours may judge me if I lie, you need not fear him, my lady.”

  “And why should she not?” Brautus demanded. “Because he is her kinsman?”

  “No,” the wizard answered. “Because he is truly not a demon, for all he is a vampire.” He looked up at Isabel with pleading in his eyes, so powerful she felt near to weeping herself. “He would say I am a fool, but I swear on the treasure you hold that is more dear to me than life, he is just what he has always told you, a good man under a curse.”

  “Orlando, I saw him,” she answered, wanting desperately to believe him. “I saw his fangs. I saw him turn into a wolf.”

  “Only to protect you,” he insisted. “It is Kivar that you should fear, not Simon. It is Kivar who will take down this castle stone by stone to find the prize he seeks. Only Simon can protect you. Only he can destroy Kivar forever.”

  “Why should I believe you?” Simon had tried to protect her from this Kivar; he had done everything she had ever asked to try to protect Charmot. But what of her mother’s prophecy?

  “Let me go to him,” the wizard begged. “Let me bring him back to you.” He struggled free, and Brautus allowed it. “He loves you, Isabel,” Orlando said. “Even if he has not said as much, I promise you he does. Let him save Charmot.”

  “He has said it,” she answered, the memory threatening to make her cry again. “I want to help him, Orlando.”

  “Then believe him,” the wizard persisted. “Allow him to return.”

  Behind him, Brautus nodded. She could read his mind; he wanted to trap Simon somehow here at the castle, somewhere open to the sun. But she would not. “All right,” she said, taking a deep breath. “I will let him return.” She looked down at the bottle she still held, so cold it seemed to burn inside her palm. “But if you lie, if you betray me, your treasure is forfeit.”

  “I do not lie,” he promised. “Let me go, and I swear I will return to you your protector.” He smiled slightly, a very different smile from the one he’d hidden behind like a mask. “I will bring you your Black Knight.”

  “No,” she said, meeting his eyes with her own. “I am going with you.”

  “No!” Brautus protested. “Let him bring the vampire back here where we can deal with him together.”

  “We cannot deal with him at all,” she answered. “Simon is not coming back through the gates of this castle until I am certain he is what Orlando says he is, a good man under a curse who will protect us, not harm us.” She wouldn’t let Brautus send him away again, wouldn’t give Mother Bess the chance to turn the household against him. If Simon truly was a monster who could not be saved, she would deal with it herself. And if he could be, she would find a way to do that, too.

  “And how will you know that?” Brautus said. “If someone must go with the little one, fine, I will go; I will take Kevin and the other men with me—”

  “Brautus.” She put a hand on his arm. “If my mother was right, if Simon is the creature we believe him to be, then this quest is mine alone.”

  “No one ever said that,” he said, his jaw set hard.

  “No one had to say it.” Ten years of confusion and resentment over what her father might have wanted and what she was meant to do with the legacy he had left her was melting away. For better or worse, this was her destiny. “I’m sorry I was born a woman, Brautus. I’m sorry my father is dead. But he is, and I was, and this is my destiny.”

  “Isabel, you must trust in me,” Orlando said. “Whatever destiny you think you must serve, you must trust in Simon’s love.”

  “I want to trust him,” she answered, meeting Brautus’s eyes. Trust me, she tried to say to him without speaking, and he nodded as if he understood. “But I must also trust myself.”

  “So you mean to go alone?” Brautus said. “You think I can allow that?”

  “Orlando will be with me,” she answered.

  “A wizard roughly the size of an acorn,” the old knight scoffed. “A fine, strong guard indeed.”

 
“I don’t need a guard.” She thought again of her mother’s tapestry, the maiden charming the wolf. To her knowledge, she had never charmed anyone; how was she meant to be that maiden? But if not her, who else? “What good is a sword against a demon, if he really means me harm?” she said. “If I fail, Charmot is left to you.”

  “Don’t say it.” He cradled her cheek in his palm. “Your father would never ask so much of you, my lady. You are a better warrior than he could ever have guessed.”

  “No such thing,” she scoffed. “Come, Orlando. We will find my Black Knight together.”

  Simon watched the sun crawl in a ragged beam across the cavern floor, his useless breath now coming in panting gasps of fear. For an hour he had watched it, pale at first, then brighter, moving ever closer. In his mind, he could already see himself burning, his flesh exploding into flame, his clothes consumed like parchment in the fire. The girl still lay across his lap, her head against his shoulder; her blood oozed from her wrist onto his stomach, soaking hot and sticky through his shirt; he felt every pulse of her heart. She was dying; even if he did not touch her, she would die. But he would not touch her. One long draught of her innocent blood down his throat, and he would have the strength to break the chains that bound him and escape into the dark. But one draught would never be enough for the hunger that consumed him; he would devour her, an innocent; her death would be his crime, no longer Kivar’s. He would not do it. His maker had set him a test meant to prove he was a monster, not a knight. But Kivar was wrong.

  He clenched his fist, and Francis’s ring pressed into his skin, a warning and a comfort. The need for vengeance shuddered through him like another physical pain, but it was wrong as well. Francis was in heaven with God; he had no need for vengeance. If Simon was consumed in grace, he would join him.

  “Forgive me, Christ,” he murmured, his voice coming out as an animal’s growl, the name of the Almighty burning his tongue. “Forgive me all my sins.” Paradise would be Ireland, a green land by the sea. “Forgive me all the death I have caused, the pain that has delighted me in the blackness of my sin.” He would be with Francis and his father; he would see his mother’s face again. His eyes burned with tears that would not come; he had no blood left inside him to weep. “Save me by Your grace, and take me home.” The sun was moving closer; he began to feel its warmth on his skin, a shadow of the burning that would come. “Abandon me not to the dark.” Abandon… he was abandoning Isabel. She is strong, Kivar had said. Perhaps I have chosen badly. He would go to her, destroy her, and Simon could not stop him. Simon would be dead, consumed at last by the light. Orlando could not protect her; Brautus could not. The devil would take her.

  “No!” He screamed so loudly, the ground shivered around him, dirt raining down on his face, but still he could not pull free of the chains. Still he had no strength.

  “My lord?” The girl stirred against him, lifting her head. “My lord, I am frightened.” She clung to him, her heart beating faster, and the hunger twisted inside him, the fangs growing deadly in his mouth.

  “It’s all right.” Her throat was now within his easy reach, even with him chained to the wall; all he had to do was bend his head to be free, and still the sun was creeping closer, the fire rising hot inside him. “You have to run away.”

  “No,” she said, crying, her face pressed to his shoulder, burning his skin with her tears. “He will find me.”

  “No,” Simon promised, trying to soothe her, to keep his voice natural and calm. A child, he kept telling himself, repeating the words in his head to try to drown out the roar of her blood and the beating of her heart. A beast, Kivar had called her, no better than a sheep. But she was not a beast; she was an innocent child. “He will not find you, not in the sunlight. He cannot harm you in the light.”

  “He can,” she insisted, clinging even more tightly to him, so tightly he could feel her pounding heart against his chest. “I know he can. I want to stay with you.”

  “I said go!” She screamed and fell back as he lunged forward, eyes glowing green and fangs extended, the bolts that held him creaking, ready to give way. “Run,” he ordered even as his body fought to reach her, out of his control “Run, and don’t look back.”

  “Yes…” His demonic power to entrance was still intact; she could not disobey him. She backed away, unable to defy him even in her terror. “My lord…” Still bleeding, her heartbeat still like thunder, she turned and fled the cave, scrambling into the light.

  Simon fell back against the wall, great sobs of pain and anguish wracking through him, howls of grief that echoed through this cave that was his torture and would be his tomb. Soon it would be over; soon he would be free. Isabel was lost. But he didn’t know what else to do.

  Malachi had returned to the castle alone with a scrape on his leg but otherwise unharmed, and they followed the clear trail he had left through the forest—it looked as if he had galloped straight through the brush all the way. “What scared you, sweeting?” Isabel murmured, bending close over his neck to avoid a low-hanging branch. “Was it Simon?”

  “Listen,” Orlando said, stopping beside her. “Did you hear that?”

  “I think so.” She thought she had heard a terrible sound like the howl of some wounded animal, but it had come and gone so quickly, she could have thought she had imagined it if Orlando hadn’t heard it, too.

  “This way,” Orlando said grimly, taking the lead.

  A mile or so deeper into the forest, they heard another strange sound, softer but continuing this time. “Lisette!” Isabel cried, leaping down from Malachi to run to a girl huddled by the pathway, hidden in the brush so well, Isabel had almost missed her altogether. “Poor darling, you’re hurt,” she said. “Orlando, she’s bleeding.”

  The girl was hysterical, barely coherent. “Sir Simon,” she was sobbing. “He’s sick.” She seemed to be covered in blood, but the only wound Isabel could see was a deep cut on her wrist. “Something terrible…”

  “Did he do this?” Isabel asked gently as she bound up the cut. Orlando came closer to hand her his cloak, and she wrapped it around the girl. “Did Sir Simon hurt you?”

  “No,” Lisette insisted. “He didn’t… another man, like a demon he was… he took me from my father’s house to a cave and tied me up and left me, and then he came back with Sir Simon. Only he was hurt; Sir Simon was hurt, knocked out, like, and the other man chained him to the wall.”

  “What other man, Lisette?” Isabel said, stroking the frightened child’s hair, trying to calm her. “What did he look like?”

  “Michel,” she answered. “That Frenchman—I saw him when he first said he was coming to Charmot; I was hiding in the barn when he questioned my father, trying to find his way to the castle. But he didn’t sound like himself.”

  “Lucan Kivar,” Orlando said, turning pale.

  “Sir Simon woke up, and he and Michel talked to one another, but none of it made any sense.” She looked up at Isabel. “I was so scared, I couldn’t think, but Sir Simon told me it would be all right. But there was something wrong with him. The villain threw me on the ground, and I hit my head, and when I woke up, he was gone. Michel was gone, and my wrist was bleeding, and I felt so weak.”

  “Where was Simon?” Orlando said, obviously fighting to keep an even tone.

  “Still in chains,” the girl answered. “I was lying in his lap… I was just so scared. I didn’t want to leave him; I was afraid Michel would find me. But there was something wrong with Sir Simon; he… I don’t know.” Her face was pale as milk, and her eyes were wild with fear.

  “Did he bite you?” Isabel said, laying a hand on her cheek.

  “No,” she promised. “But… he had teeth like a wolf, and his eyes were on fire, green fire. He made me run away.” She huddled against Isabel, who held her closer, cradling her in her arms.

  “You see?” Orlando said. “You see he did not harm this child—”

  “Where is this cave?” Isabel said, cutting him off.


  “Not far,” Lisette said, pointing. “I couldn’t run any farther.”

  “It’s all right.” She smiled at the girl. “Master Orlando is going to take you back to the castle. You’re safe now.”

  “I am going with you,” the wizard insisted. “You won’t know what to do.”

  “I know enough.” She knew that cave, had played there often as a child. Part of the ceiling was open; it had let out the smoke when she built a fire. It would let in the sunlight. “Lisette is badly hurt; she needs looking after.” He started to protest, and she caught his arm. She still had the bottle in her pocket; she could threaten him again. But she didn’t. “You will have to trust me.”

  His eyes searched her face. “Yes,” he said at last, laying a hand over hers. “I will trust you.”

  13

  Isabel pulled the cross from her pocket and held it out before her, the chain entangled in her fingers as she ducked into the cool dark of the cave. Groans and howls of pain echoed back to her like the death throes of some great beast, and she shivered, tears rising in her eyes.

  She found Simon chained against the wall, just as Lisette had described, the sunlight streaming through the roof less than the length of her arms from his feet. He looked up as she emerged from the tunnel, his nostrils flaring as if he smelled her more than saw her. “Isabel…” She could no longer doubt he was a vampire; cruel fangs curved long and white from his mouth as he suddenly screamed in agony, and his eyes glowed yellow-green with demon fire. But he was still Simon, too.

  “Did you murder Susannah?” Her throat felt thick with unshed tears, choking her to death. She could still see her, the beautiful Queen of the May. How could she love the monster who had killed her? “Did you murder that girl at the church?”

  “No,” he answered, fighting for his voice. The hunger that was killing every shred of humanity left inside him leapt up in delight at the sound of her heartbeat and the smell of her skin, torturing him more sorely than any trap Kivar could have devised. He lunged against the chains again, the shackles slicing deep into his flesh. “Innocent… never the innocent.” He had to warn her, to make her understand, but his mind was gone; he couldn’t form the words. “Not Susannah… Kivar.”