Midnight

by Megan Derr

  "Smell blue and wolf-elf and blood drinker and master," Neirin rumbled. "Witch gone. No more magic."

  "Blue?" Midnight asked, then felt silly when they all looked at him in amusement. "Oh. Me, of course." He slunk further down in his seat and took a deep pull of his beer as they laughed.

  Ceadda frowned. "It is strange that nothing whatsoever can be sensed. I cannot think he would manage to shield himself this well from an entire village and such an array of nightwalkers as is present. So, he must not be here. However, it seems here is where the trouble began, decades ago. Perhaps here is where we might find clues."

  "We never found any before," Midnight said skeptically, but conceded, "however, we did not have you before, and hopefully that will make all the difference."

  "Indeed," Ceadda said. "Come then, let us go if all are fed."

  "Apples," Troyes cut in with a stubborn growl.

  Neirin shot Barra a look. "You are wholly responsible for this."

  Barra laughed. "I do not deny it. One moment." He stood and crossed the pub, speaking with the woman who had earlier fetched their food. A few minutes later he returned and set a plate down in front of Troyes.

  Troyes's nostrils flared and his eyes widened.

  As quickly as that, the slice of pie was gone. He licked his lips and looked at Barra as though he had every intention of devouring him next. Only the firm hand curled around his arm likely recalled him to the fact that such behavior was a bad idea when not behind firmly closed doors.

  "Good wolf-elf," he growled instead, an obvious promise he would do a great deal of devouring later behind those closed doors.

  Barra flushed but beamed.

  Midnight laughed and drank the last of his beer, as well as Ceadda's. "Come on, then. Let us go call upon a sorcerer."

  Outside, Midnight turned to ask Ceadda something—and realized the vampire was no longer with them.

  Neirin shook his head in amusement and motioned toward the pub. "He stopped to chat with the barmaid."

  "I see," Midnight said with a laugh.

  They waited patiently, and Midnight was grateful the rain had let up, nothing now but a faint drizzle. It was chilly, probably, though the cold tended to affect him less than others. He could not wait for the snow, especially since the later seasons meant more dark, which meant more time with Devlin.

  A few minutes later Ceadda rejoined them.

  "How was the house wine?" Neirin asked drolly, and Midnight had a sneaking suspicion Neirin tended to apologize in the same fashion as Devlin—that was, he did and said everything he possibly could to be forgiven without actually having to utter the words 'I'm sorry' or 'my apologies'. Those words were reserved strictly for purposes of sarcasm, so far as Devlin was concerned.

  Ceadda did not seem bothered by it. "Excellent," he replied, and if any tension between them had lingered, it was now gone.

  Midnight shared a look of amusement with Barra and said nothing.

  "Hmm," Ceadda said thoughtfully, looking around and slowly leading the way from the pub. "It's been several years since I've been here. Let us hope I still remember the location."

  "Several years," Barra said in amusement. "Two decades would be several years to a vampire, I guess."

  Ceadda laughed and turned right as they reached a crossing. "This way, I think."

  They walked quietly through the streets, and Midnight teased and encouraged the threads of mist that drifted around them. It would shroud the enemy if the sorcerer tried to attack them again, but it would also shroud them—and it was only mist. If he wanted to be serious, he would make it a full-fledged fog.

  He smiled briefly, remembering all the times he had confounded the threats they faced by the simple means of a calling up a fog where there should not be one. That alone was often enough to settle a problem before it got out of control.

  "Aha," Ceadda said in sudden satisfaction. "I do believe we are nearly there." So saying, he turned the last curving corner of a steep incline of street and continued on down until they were nearly at the end of it, stopping in front of a large house made of gray stone half-covered in ivy, light glowing warmly in most of the windows.

  "This was his house?" Barra asked, sharing a look of horror with Midnight.

  Ceadda frowned. "Yes. Is that a problem?"

  "I'll say," Midnight said with an unsteady laugh. "Ceadda—this is where we've taken rooms. This has been our abode while we worked upon the mystery of the draugr."

  "I see," Ceadda said. "Perhaps my memory serves me ill, but I am quite certain it does not. This was the house of the sorcerer. We had tea in a green salon, and he invited me to stay for dinner. I stayed the night in a room of maroon and brown."

  Barra laughed, but it was not a terribly amused sound. "Your room," he said to Neirin. "Oh, good lord, he's been right beneath our noses the entire time."

  "Indeed," Ceadda replied. "The graveyard where he was interred is not far from here, just back the way we came and down to the left."

  Midnight shook his head, not certain what there really was to say at this point. "I suppose we had best speak with the landlady then, though I fear she is not fond of us. Perhaps she can tell us a bit about the former tenant."

  Neirin briefly touched his sword hilt, then motioned to the house. "Then let us go and speak with her."

  Body

  "How did you come to take rooms here?" Neirin asked as they climbed the steps and let themselves inside.

  Barra replied, "The coachman found them and I handled the finer points once I arrived. Devlin requires only a good bed, good food, and a hot bath. Past that, he does not trouble himself with minor details. We put up with the most awful ghost once simply because the beer at the pub in question was of exceptional quality."

  Neirin snorted in amusement but was prevented from making a comment by the arrival of the woman they sought.

  "You're back then," she said. "Starting to wonder if you would be returning after all."

  Midnight doubted that, seeing as they had left a fair bit of expensive belongings behind, but he supposed all such people hoped for a visitor foolish enough to leave behind diamonds and rubies and far more besides.

  He kept back slightly from the others, in the shadowy portions of the poorly lit parlor in which they had gathered. Truly, he would be grateful when his little world returned to normal again, when they could go to Devlin's country estate and he would not have to worry about such things as being looked at too closely. Where he could be himself, wholly and completely, without fear.

  Neirin seemed to have taken over the conversation, swiftly turning it into an interview. "Madame, you have been most considerate and accommodating, especially to myself and my man here. We hate to trouble you with questions, but I am afraid they are rather pressing."

  The woman wiped her hands with her apron, obviously a nervous gesture, and nodded slowly. "What questions could you possibly ask me that are so important?"

  "They pertain to this house, actually," Neirin said. "Specifically, the former owner."

  Something passed over her face, a shadow of some sort, but then it smoothed out, banking all her thoughts and feelings. "Master Silas, you mean?"

  "Master Silas?" Neirin asked.

  "Yes," the woman said quietly, letting go of her apron long enough to smooth back her hair. "I worked for him, you see. Me mum and I, and Da 'til he passed away when I was a girl. We kept the house clean, made his food, all that. Strange man, Master Silas, for a certainty. The villagers would have as little to do with him as possible. The madness always ran strong in his family."

  Neirin motioned for her to sit, then glanced at Barra, who was already heading toward the door in search of refreshment. Sitting down next to her, Neirin slowly coaxed more information. "So how did you come to be in possession of this lovely house?"

  "Master Silas weren't altogether, if you know what I mean, but he was a right enough sort for the most part. He had no family left, you see, and the villagers avoided him. No friends
as I ever saw, though he had the odd visitor now and again." Her gaze flitted briefly to Ceadda, a faintly puzzled look in her eyes, but after a moment, she turned back to Neirin.

  "He left us the house in his will, saying as how we were the only ones to care for it, he would trust it to us. So we keep it up and let the rooms. Mama is too old now to manage it, but I do well enough on me own."

  Neirin nodded. "Why did the villagers avoid him?"

  "'Cause he were mad, like I said," the woman said patiently. "Always with his books and his elixirs, rambling on about ghosts and monsters and witches. Terrible, that, and not a little frightening when he was really on a tear. Spooky, like." She shivered and tugged a bit at the old, faded shawl wrapped around her shoulders. "Mum dealt with him by herself in those moods, wouldn't let me go near him. The night he died, he was in one of those moods; she said he drank down one of his potions and that was that." Bitterness tightened her mouth. "Plenty came and saw him then. I think they wanted reassurance he was dead. We laid the body out proper and saw he was buried. Then we found the house was ours, and we've kept it since."

  Midnight frowned. "He killed himself?" That didn't sound like the Silas of whom Ceadda had spoken. Quite the contrary—a man such as that would have done his best to stay alive as long as possible. Hadn't Ceadda said Silas had died of his heart problems? He glanced at Ceadda, who looked troubled and concerned.

  "Not on purpose," the woman said earnestly. "He was always working on those things. Said they would keep him alive forever if he could just get it right." She frowned and smoothed her wrinkled apron, then said quietly, "He believed in that nonsense. He really did. When he was not obsessed with it all, he could be a good Master. He let slip once his heart wasn't right, and he wanted to fix it. Guess that's what the potions were for, only one of them killed him instead of saving him. Mayhap it was a mercy in the end. He were never happy alive."

  Ceadda pursed his lips. "He wanted to live forever?"

  "Aye," the woman said. "Said he wanted to be as powerful as the long-lived races, whatever that meant, and couldn't if he were to die young. Mind you, he was closer to fifty than forty when he died."

  Midnight shared a look with Ceadda as the woman continued to ramble, then caught the same look of comprehension in the faces of the others. Live forever, was it? He was beginning to see the whole of the tapestry now. Draugr lived until something destroyed them.

  Whatever frailties Midnight had suffered while alive, they were things of the past while dead. He did not get sick, he had no weak organs or body parts, and his power grew and grew. There was no telling what he would be able to do ten years from now. Even five.

  Combine the powers of a draugr with the powers of a sorcerer…

  Except that he had retained practically nothing of his life. Only snippets that came to him in dreams, little more than impressions: an inability to breathe, the gold of Devlin's hair. The life he had now belonged to Devlin. It was not his own.

  If Silas was trying to make himself into a draugr to live forever—was that what he intended? Had he killed himself to that purpose? Was it something he had thought of later? Except, if he was dead, then he could not be controlling the draugr, or doing anything else for that matter. Dead was dead. The only other nonliving creature to exist were ghosts, and those were confined to a specific space. They retained all memories, ability to think, but it was a spirit functioning without a body. So if he were a ghost, then he would have no body.

  He could not be both. A ghost or a draugr: each had its peculiar strengths; both had a host of weaknesses. Dead was dead, unless a witch cheated it to give a draugr as much of a real life as possible.

  "Why you want to know so much about him, anyway?"

  "Merely curious," Ceadda interjected. "I met him once and was passing through this way again. I thought to visit him but learned of his death."

  She frowned at him, then nodded slowly. "Thought you looked a mite familiar."

  "Yes," Ceadda murmured, and Midnight wondered if perhaps the woman, around forty or so herself now, might have been Ceadda's dinner twenty years ago. "I do not suppose you would be kind enough to point us to where he is buried? I should like to pay my respects."

  "Oh, yes," the woman said, flushing as Ceadda continued to watch her. "Um, it's not far off, not at all," she said, rattling off the precise location in the graveyard Ceadda had spoken of earlier. She bit her lip and lowered her head, then looked up again after a moment. "His Grace—is he all right? I notice he has not been with your party. He has no complaints as to the rooms?"

  Midnight smiled, stepping forward a bit to bow. "Nay, milady, he finds the rooms most excellent. He was called here on business, and it keeps him well occupied. He will return shortly, do not fear. In the meantime, we appreciate your hospitality."

  She nodded. "If there's nothing else you need to be asking me…?"

  "No, thank you for your time," Neirin replied. They waited in silence until she had left them alone in the dim parlor.

  Midnight tapped his cheek thoughtfully. "I wonder if we might not try to speak with the mother at some point. It seems she knew a bit more about Silas, if not the full truth. They make him sound as though he was not a bad sort."

  "If you were a peasant and your master left you his house, would you not be inclined to remember him in a positive light?" Ceadda asked idly. "We need to see that body because I am not convinced it is where it should be. I do not yet know entirely what is going on, but I do not like the bits of the whole that I am beginning to put together. Let us go pay a visit to Master Silas's new home."

  Nodding, Midnight led the way to the door, glancing briefly at the clock on the far side of the room to double check what he could feel anyway—he had a few hours left before weakness overtook him. If only he could endure sunlight, then he would find Devlin faster.

  Outside, it had resumed raining, falling a bit harder now than it had before. Midnight closed his eyes, focusing on the rain, feeling it almost the same as he could feel the mist. Almost. It was there, at the back of his mind. A few more decades, and he might be able to control the rain to some degree.

  Setting that aside for the time being, he pushed onward. They walked back the way they had come, taking the necessary turns and eventually walking up a steep street until at last they came to the graveyard. An iron wall wrapped all the way around it and the gate was closed and locked. Reaching out, Midnight grasped hold of the lock and tore it off, casting it to the ground before pulling the door open with a hideous squeal.

  He did not wait for the others but pressed quickly on, following the directions the woman had given them to wend his way through the enormous graveyard. Rain pattered down, cold and sharp. Snatches of moonlight broke through the clouds here and there, never for more than a second or two at a time. Without it, everything was miserably dark, but he could see—all of them could, he supposed, save perhaps Neirin. If lack of light gave Neirin any difficulty, however, he had never shown it.

  Some of the headstones were little more than piles of moss-covered rock, while others were enormous statues or massive rectangles rising from the earth to proclaim the good deeds of the deceased buried below. More still were modest, with little more than a name, date, and a simple farewell.

  He heard things flutter and move, scrambling to get out of the way of their unwelcome presence. Death brushed at his skin, made it crawl, made the hairs on the back of his neck rise. Too close, here. He was far too close to what he was—what he should be, instead of the walking, breathing, living thing Devlin had created.

  Midnight put a hand to his chest, felt the beat of his heart and summoned up images of his Heartbeat.

  Normally he avoided graveyards. His presence threatened to stir others from their slumber, drive them to seek out their loved ones and be assured all was still well.

  The Walmsley crypt was where the woman had said it would be, well made and even elegant, the smatterings of moonlight accenting it perfectly. Latin was carved across the
top, but Midnight did not bother to read it. Striding to the door, he snapped this lock as easily as he had the first, casting the broken casing and shackle to the ground.

  Pulling the doors open, ignoring the teeth-grating creaking, he stepped inside. It smelled of must and mildew, dust and death. A hint of beeswax and incense lingered, fresher than the deeper, more unpleasant smells. Flowers, as well—roses, now he saw a dried bouquet of them upon a small altar set against the far wall beneath a pretty stained glass window portraying an angel.

  It took only a moment to locate the proper coffin amongst those lining the wall and another moment to move the coffin from its shelf to the floor. By then the others had caught up to him, but they said nothing as they crowded into the crypt around him.

  Midnight knelt and threw back the coffin lid, staring down at the body within. It was well-dressed, or had been, once. Whoever had laid the body out had cared, that much was obvious. Impossible to tell at a glance, however, if it was Silas. But with the body so well-tended, who else could it be?

  One way to tell for certain. Midnight stripped off his glove and laid his hand over the face of the skull, then closed his eyes and concentrated. The older the body, the harder it was to pull out the shreds of the spirit that dwelled within. Contrary to popular belief, the entire soul did not depart at once. Much of it leeched away slowly, reluctant to leave its dwelling place. A ghost was one product of an immediate and complete departure.

  Draugr functioned because of the bits that remained, leeched away slowly. Without that, the corpse could not, would not move. Midnight shared Devlin's soul; otherwise, he would be no better than the bag of bones in the box before him.

  He withdrew his hand after a moment and said flatly, "It's not Silas. This fellow was homeless, used to beg for food at the back stoop, spent his coin on gin."

  "Magic could have made the corpse look like Silas long enough to fool everyone who required fooling," Ceadda said thoughtfully—almost sounding impressed. "He even fooled me, I suppose. I definitely saw his dead body, and I would have sworn it was him—he even smelled like Silas. That is a hard thing to mimic. I wonder how he did it."