by Barb Hendee
“However, you are still a living being,” he went on. “This bone was endowed, enchanted, so that contact with a living being allows that mortal being to also absorb the life force and use it in the same way as the Noble Dead. The only living creature I know of who can consume blood the way you have already done is a dhampir. That amulet allows such an act to become more than feeding on blood; it allows that feeding to become the consuming of life energies directly.”
“Where would something like that come from?” she asked.
He frowned. “You said your father left it for you. I don’t have all the answers. But if I could do what you can, I would not be sitting here chatting with me. I would be preparing to fight.”
“I’m still losing every time I fight Rashed. How do I win?” she asked.
“Don’t resist yourself. Become one of them. That is why they fear you, because you can use all of their strengths against them. Fight without conscience or morality. Use every one of your gifts.”
His advice was not what she wanted to hear. And she suddenly felt some anger toward him for being honest, as if blaming the messenger would bring comfort. She knew she should not blame him. But being in the same room with him was difficult now. She stood up and walked to the door.
“I won’t see you again,” she said. “After tonight there won’t be a need.”
Chapter Nineteen
Wearing black breeches, a white shirt, and a snug-fitting leather vest that Loni had provided, Magiere found movement easier without her heavy skirt. When he offered, she’d allowed him to call the housemaid to comb out her hair and bind it back with a leather thong into a long tail. She found this was actually more comfortable than a braid.
His offer did not seem familiar but rather a contribution to what he either knew or suspected she was doing for his town—the act of an ally rather than a friend. After dressing, she started to tuck her amulets inside the shirt and then stopped, leaving them to dangle loosely in plain view. Perhaps the topaz stone could help warn her.
Just past sundown, Magiere walked home through the streets of Miiska. Her armor waited at The Sea Lion, but other than this, she felt ready for whatever lay ahead.
Someday, she would turn to dealing with what lay behind her in the past she’d ignored for so long.
Stands of garlic hung in every window she passed. How many times had she walked through a village decorated with garlic bulbs, some still with leaves and flowers attached?
Was she seeking redemption or forgiveness? And from whom? Why had Leesil’s suggestion of flight never occurred to her?
The street was barren and abandoned. In the years of travel with Leesil, the village paths and town streets had always been empty before they “performed.” Those with no intention of fighting, believing openly in the threat, now hid inside their homes. She couldn’t blame them. When she reached The Sea Lion, she went around back and approached the kitchen door. It was ajar, and a bizarre sight greeted her.
Brenden’s cleanly dressed body lay stretched out on the table. He was clad in a green tunic, dark breeches, and polished boots. The tunic’s collar covered his throat. Near the end of the table, Leesil sat on a stool, soaking quarrels in a large bucket of brown water. He moved slowly, as if each small effort hurt him. The bandages around his ribcage hung loose.
“You should be in bed,” she said from the doorway.
He managed a smile. “You’ll get no argument from me, but we’ve got a long night ahead.”
She came in to stand by the table, looking down at Brenden’s closed eyes.
“It’s like he’s asleep,” she said, “as though he’d been peeling potatoes for a party and stretched out to nod off on the table.”
She had no time to properly mourn Brenden, but his pale skin and endless slumber did not allow neglect.
“I know,” Leesil answered. “It was a macabre sight. There were near a dozen people in here all working with me. I kept trying to ignore him as he lay there, but then I had to send the townsfolk to their places, and for quite a while, it’s just been me and him. I actually talked to him, chastising him for sleeping on the job. Sounds crazy, yes?”
Magiere touched Brenden’s stiff shoulder. “No, it doesn’t. I never thanked him for carrying me out of those tunnels.”
“He didn’t expect thanks—not from us.”
All the pots and pans were scattered about, some full of garlic water, some empty.
She sighed. “I have to get my armor. Are we ready?”
“Yes, I think so. Oh, there was a hidden cellar beneath the floor of the stable just up the road from us. I’ve had Rose and the other children moved there . . . as many of the youngest that could fit.”
“Good, where are you going to be?”
“With Karlin and our so-called ‘archers.’ They’ll need direction when the fighting starts.”
Magiere blinked. “Leesil, you can barely walk.”
“I’ll be all right. Caleb made me chew some foul-smelling bark that deadens pain. Tasted even worse than it smelled. I only need to make it through the next few hours.”
Every instinct told her that she should track him and knock him out cold from behind. She could hide him below the stable with Rose. But he was right. The others would need direction and someone with clear wits to hold them together. Half of them would probably run at the first sight of Rashed.
Leesil was so calm, and he’d put up with so much.
“Be careful,” she said simply.
“You, too.”
When Rashed woke, his senses told him sunset had long passed. The hull floor felt hard. He turned over and pushed himself up. He was alone.
“Teesha?” He scrambled to his feet, instantly awake. “Teesha?” he called louder.
Crawling through the trapdoor to the boat’s deck, he cast out with his thoughts for any trace of her presence. He’d never been able to sense another of his own kind, except his brother, Parko, but he tried it just the same. Only the background tingle of forest life answered him.
Caution abandoned, Rashed dropped to the shore, calling aloud and not caring who heard him. “Teesha!”
“She’s gone,” a hollow voice whispered.
The tragic visage of Edwan materialized beside him. Although Rashed could not help feeling some pity for the ghost, he disliked having to speak with Teesha’s dead husband. Worry now overrode such personal distaste.
“Where?” he asked.
“Into town, to defend you.” Edwan sneered in open hatred, the twist of his mouth awkward looking on his tilted head.
A jolt ran through Rashed. At first, he did not recognize the sensation, smothered in astonishment as it was. Then it cleared, and he could feel the fear.
“Why didn’t you stop her?” he demanded.
“Me? Stop her?” Edwan’s transparent features were vacant, not from lack of feeling, but from anger and hate turned bitterly cold. “She listens to no one but you, cares for no one but you. Did you see her shed sorrow over Ratboy’s departure?”
Rashed bit back a retort, suddenly pitying Edwan. He regretted Corische’s act of executing a helpless bartender, but such sentiments were trivial—a mere shadow compared to Teesha’s safety.
“Where has she gone?” he asked with as much calm as he could feign.
For the first time in Rashed’s memory, Edwan’s manner altered to one of obvious desperation. His long yellow hair seemed to float on an invisible wind, and his voice pleaded.
“Listen to me. That hunter is not mortal. Do you understand? She is half Noble Dead—half of your kind.” He faltered. “Teesha cares nothing for revenge. Find her and leave this place, please. I have never asked you for anything and never expected anything. I ask this of you now.”
Rashed crossed his arms in frustration.
“Edwan,” he tried to sound patient, “I can not. If I leave that hunter alive, we will never be safe.”
“I think . . . I was wrong about the hunter’s intentions!” the ghost cried. “S
he was counseled by the stranger living in the cellar of The Velvet Rose. And now you and she are caught up in playing some tit-for-tat game of revenge. Someone else has been urging her on and, in turn, you keep coming back to her. You are each blindly convinced the other is an enemy seeking a battle. Can you not see that? Find Teesha and take her away. No one will follow.”
Rashed strapped on his long sword, picked up an unlit torch he’d prepared the night before, and then waved one hand in dismissal. “Go. You are no help to me.”
As soon as the words left his mouth, the ghost’s form began slowly spinning around, its image warping in the air with frustration. At first, Rashed thought the spirit was trying to do something, use some new ability never before displayed. The whirl of mist continued, and it became clear to Rashed that the ghost was merely entangled in its own rage and helplessness.
“You are a fool!” Edwan cried.
Rashed left him there and ran into the woods, leaving the boat and all his tools behind. Dark trees around him pulsed with life, and near the edge of the forest, he stopped and closed his eyes, seeking outward. Although Teesha’s mental abilities were more defined than his, he possessed a few strong talents that he’d rarely used. His own thoughts were now stained with the sensations of a hunt—urgency, the smell of a prey’s trail tainted with fear, the rush of hunger as the chase closed, and all the other things that called to a predator.
From far away, a sound reached his ears. It was so distant and faint that no one else might have noticed it among the soft night noises.
A wolf let go a long, throated howl.
“Children of the hunt,” he whispered, concentrating. “Come now.”
Leesil leaned against the front wall of a candle maker’s shop just across the street from the tavern. He wondered how much longer he could stay on his feet.
Karlin the baker stood nearby, anxiously peering this way and that. Leesil tried to hide his own physical condition as well as he could. The pain in his chest and back had long since spread to a numb rebellion throughout his whole body. He feared his legs would buckle and betray him, but he had to keep going.
Magiere was inside the tavern, donning her armor while he carried out his part of the plan. Sensible in its simplicity, it entailed arming the townsfolk with bows, if possible, and pitchforks and shovels when necessary. He’d placed most of them on watch inside homes, shacks, and small buildings in a perimeter around The Sea Lion, as too many on the roofs or outside would give them away. He’d wanted to prepare a firetrap ahead of time, but rejected the idea as too easy for the enemy to spot. Instead, he had women armed with dry boards, flasks of oil, and flint with makeshift lines of tinder and wood between buildings, ready to be ignited quickly if needed.
The whole point was to keep the vampires inside the perimeter and not allow them to escape once they entered. He had no idea what more these creatures were capable of, but hoped he’d already seen all they could do. There were childhood tales he remembered of undeads that flew or transformed into beasts large and small. He said nothing of this to the townsfolk.
To their advantage, four of Ellinwood’s patrol guards—Darien among them—had offered their help. Leesil had positioned them in an old storehouse close to the tavern. Two of them were even properly armed and looked capable of hard fighting. Perhaps, like Darien, they had lost loved ones, or they were just disconcerted by Ellinwood’s disappearance and looking for leadership. Leesil didn’t care which. He was just slightly relieved to have anyone besides bakers, weavers, townsfolk, and merchants to hold things together.
Strangely enough, his right hand and most dependable “soldier” was Karlin. The man’s resourcefulness was astonishing. Between Karlin’s ability to organize a band of frightened laborers and find a wealth of tools to serve as weapons, Leesil could not have managed without him. Now the two of them moved to stand outside the tavern, occasionally seeing one of the townsfolk peering out a window.
“Everyone ready?” Leesil asked, not remembering until too late that he’d already asked this same question twice before.
Karlin nodded, and for a moment he reminded Leesil of Brenden. Although he was beardless, the baker’s solid, yet massive, form and matter-of-fact countenance were familiar. He was also considerate of others and had brought Leesil a heavy, dark blue shirt which hid the half-elf’s injuries and helped him blend into the night. Leesil tied his hair under a long black scarf, the last wrap of which he pulled across his face, leaving only his eyes exposed. He could vanish into the night shadows if need be.
“What if one escapes from the tavern and Magiere can’t kill it?” Karlin asked, voicing doubts for the first time now that they were alone.
“I’ve told the archers and the guards in that storehouse to inflict any harm possible.” Leesil lifted his hand and held up an ax. “If they can even stun it, I think I can take its head off.”
Karlin flinched, biting his lower lip.
“It may sound grisly,” Leesil admitted, “but what it would do if it escaped would be far worse.”
“I’m not questioning you,” Karlin answered softly. “You and Magiere have more courage than I can imagine.”
“And Brenden.”
“Yes,” the baker said, nodding. “And Brenden.”
Leesil recalled his first proposal that morning, that he and Magiere find a ship or boat and disappear. If Karlin knew that, he wouldn’t think so highly of his present company.
“We should keep out of sight for now,” Leesil said. “Everyone knows what to do. I want to stay close to the tavern. With the guards on the seaside, we stay in this shack, landside. If need arises, we’ll be able to close in.”
Karlin nodded. For some unsettling reason, Leesil thought of his own beautiful mother and the green trees of his homeland. They were bare in the winter and lush in the spring, so unlike these cold firs and evergreens around him now that never changed. Of all the places where, and for all the reasons why, he thought he would die, defending a small coastal town of common folk from undeads was not among the possibilities he’d ever imagined. But then again, perhaps Karlin and these laborers had nothing to do with his efforts. Of the faces pushing to the forefront of his mind, only one truly mattered—one with smooth, pale skin, a serious expression, and thick black hair that shimmered red in the light.
Teesha never spoke of nor consciously acknowledged several senses she’d developed after Corische turned her. She considered a heightened sense of smell, attuned to all the small and tedious odors constantly present, to be unladylike. Nevertheless, as she slipped into Miiska and approached Magiere’s tavern, the smell of the town was wrong. Scents of perspiration from fear and nervous exhaustion hit her and continued to grow the closer she drew to The Sea Lion. The strength of it contradicted the quiet of the empty streets.
Casting out with her mind, she absorbed a jumble of thoughts carried on the presence of life in the town.
I’m thirsty.
Where’s Mother?
Joshua always teases me because I’m short.
I’m going to marry Leesil when I grow up.
Mustn’t let ’em escape Magiere.
What simpletons these mortals were. Then she caught a flash of thoughts joined in a cluster. Frightened, but simple and clear.
Children. Where were they?
Turning in the night air with eyes half closed, she felt for their origin, as if the cluster of thoughts were a breeze she could feel upon her face and judge its direction.
Moving quietly along the sides of buildings, Teesha stopped when the wash of thoughts across her became strong and near. She found herself facing the end of one of the main streets toward a stable in the lower half of town not far from the tavern. On the roof, she could make out two adult men crouched or sitting. She felt the tension in them, and it was easy enough to send them a tingle of apprehension that made both turn toward the shoreline, as if unsure whether they had heard something. She slipped silently across the road to the wall of the stable.
/> Teesha lingered on the outside, carefully separating the patterns until she could identify at least ten . . . no, twelve young minds somewhere within. She was about to step in and seek them out, then stopped.
Empty streets smothered in fear.
Children hidden away.
Two guards on the roof.
They had laid a trap in the town.
She slipped inside the stable’s door. Upon her entrance, a large bay gelding threw his head and snorted. Entering his thoughts, she calmed him.
“Shhhh, sweet beast,” she crooned softly to the horse. “The night is when you sleep.”
The gelding quieted, pawed once at his stall floor, and settled with eyelids drooping.
Teesha sensed that one of the smaller girls missed her mother terribly. Looking about, all she could see were two bales of hay, straw scattered thickly across the floor, a few broken pitchforks, and the one horse in its stall. The other five stalls proved empty. She looked about once more, then stood motionless.
“Murika,” she called in a gentle voice. “Where are you?”
Silence followed and then, “Mama? I’m down here.”
Down. They hid somewhere below.
She searched the floor, pulling aside the straw as quietly as she could, and finally found a trapdoor. Fairly well-crafted, it was disguised with a layer of dirt beneath the scattered straw. It opened easily, and peering down, she found a huddle of small children, all looking back up at her with curious stares. Not one was above eight years old.
Teesha smiled warmly.
“Well, hello,” she said. “What are you doing?”
“Hiding,” a green-eyed boy of about six answered. “You should hide too. Something bad is going to happen, and we have to be quiet.”
“You’re not being quiet,” scolded a smaller girl to his right.
Teesha nodded in agreement and then sent out the mental suggestion that this event was only a dream. “I’ll be very quiet, too. Now tell me, which one of you wants to marry Leesil?”