Here Be Dragons: A collection of short stories

by Sarah A. Hoyt

  For a moment – for just a moment – Rene thought she’d get up from the spinet bench and give him her hands, and smile, and she would tell him it was all a mistake, and she’d never been turned. Pons, yes. Pons was, after all, a grasping man, looking for worldly power, and there might not be much difference between Pons the Lord and Pons the vampire. In fact, at least Pons the vampire might be an improvement, since his evil would be out in the open, for once.

  But when she turned around to look at him over her shoulder, her eyes looked cold and concupiscent. And when she turned around to look at him fully, the smile that tugged at her lips was more menacing than welcoming and the voice in which she said, “Ah, my beloved brother has come back to me,” was full of dripping mockery.

  “Alix!” he said. He couldn’t help it. Through the back of his mind ran all the theology about vampires. How they couldn’t be preached to or reasoned with. How they were all naked craving and no human thought. None of the human emotions, either. They were not even as reasonable as animals who could be tamed, through pleasure or pain. Instead, they were little more than animated craving.

  But this was Alix, and Alix had been, for so long, like another part of him. how could he not reach her, reason with her? Somewhere, within her, her soul must be hiding, wounded, sobbing, but still there. “Alix, what happened? How can you be—? How can you have let it–?”

  He stopped. She was looking at him, her eyes dancing with poisonous glee. She laughed. “How can I? Well, you left me, didn’t you, my dear, dear brother. You left me to the pawing of the creature, to his embraces. You left me to bear your son in pain and anguish and to make up stories as to why he didn’t resemble your beast of a brother. What was I to do? Being a vampire has freed me of pain and of illness, of fear and confinement. Was I supposed to have died and be decorously dead, like your mother in the church, beneath a holy statue?” She laughed at the thought. “I am well, Rene, well, as I have never been, never since I found out I was to be a sacrifice for my fortune. I am well and happy and can play and dance again.” Her eyes sparkled up at him. “It is a remedy that would suit you well, brother my dearest. It would free you of your fears and your weakness.” Her smile turned sly. “It would make you a man.”

  He wished to protest, to say that she was wrong. He wanted to say that he’d never left her willingly, that he had no more choice than she did. He wanted to tell her of the strict discipline of the seminary, of the cold rooms, the dreary hours, the learning of things no one could care about. He wanted to tell her of the whippings, the penitent flagellation, the fasting.

  He could not talk. His mind was in turmoil, caught between horror and allure; wanting her and dreading what she was at the same time, and yet wanting her all the more through his dread. His sword and his dagger hung useless in their scabbards. He could defend himself. He should defend himself. Instead, he said, softly, “Alix!”

  And on that word, her eyes softened. They widened a little, too, and she looked just like his Alix as she had been. “Rene. My Rene,” she said.

  “I didn’t leave you willingly. That is, I–”

  Alix shook her head. “I know, I know.”

  And suddenly they were clinging, kissing, desperate. She smelled as he remembered and she felt maybe a little cooler to the touch, but not like he imagined a vampire should.

  He thought of his vows, and then that he’d never promised chastity. It seemed to him she made a sign, but he couldn’t tell what it was nor to whom. And then her mouth moved from his mouth, her lips from his lips, and kissed a path from his ear to his neck, then up again, and she moaned softly and said, “Rene.”

  The bite disconcerted him, sudden, painful. He tried to move away but her arms around him had the strength of iron bands and then the bite stopped hurting and pleasure spread, in waves, from his neck and over his entire body, pleasure such as he’d never felt before, not even that one night in Alix’ arms.

  Time contracted, then expanded, the pleasure filling all eternity, greater than the universe and God himself. He heard himself moan with it, and it seemed to him that Alix laughed, or would have laughed, hadn’t her fangs been deep in his neck.

  He knew then that she would kill him; she would make him a vampire. But wasn’t life forever with Alix better than any eternity to which the human soul could aspire?

  Her spirit touched his, seeking, like a child at a locked gate, to open his own mind so they could be one in thought and body. He rushed, joyously, to let her in. But there was something there, a sense of dread. He could feel her mind in his saying let me in and we’ll be one forever.

  But at the same time, behind that presence, there was a feeling of horror, a feeling of betrayal and fear. His throat closed. His mouth worked. His fists clenched. And he read, somehow, behind her presence, trying to enter his mind, the feel of a predatory creature, of a wolf baying at the lamb, of something... something dark, and old, and hungry.

  He tried to pull away from the fangs, from the pleasure of her bite on his neck. He couldn’t pull far, but he caught a glimpse of her eyes, and in them was the same craving, the same naked concupiscence as he’d seen in the vampire’s eyes in the seminary.

  Struggling back, pain again obvious from the site of the bite, he caught a glimpse of three burly men he vaguely remembered from the stables, the three vampires that guarded Alix. And he realized, in horror, that he would become just one of them and probably no more important to her than the stable lads.

  He struggled to free himself. He could not move. Her hands were stronger than anything he’d ever felt, her embrace unbreakable. He was clasped close against her while she drank his life and presently she’d leave him only enough that he would turn...

  Suddenly he felt Alix by his side. Not the physical Alix, the vampire holding him and turning him into a creature of darkness and perdition, but the girl he had known, small and slight, blond and sad eyed who could yet smile at him and laugh with him, in a joy and love so genuine that it was as though the sun came out even on the darkest day. He felt the Alix who loved him, the childhood friend, the lover who’d come to his bed even for just one night before they parted. She was there. He could feel her warm presence, her hand on his shoulder. He could hear her tell him not to stop, not to surrender. There was no one to defend me when the darkness came, but you can keep others from going down into the dark. You can defend our son. Would you see him turned?

  The thought of that boy he’d never met put fight in his arm, strength in his soul. Alix was clasping him so he could not get away, but he could slide his hand into his belt, and pull out the dagger there.

  It seemed to take forever, each movement unnaturally prolonged, but at the very last he had the dagger and, raising it, with sudden violence, pushed it between their chests, point towards Alix. He pushed it home, through her heart, and the smell of corruption came.

  She screamed and reared and hissed. And in that moment she let him go.

  He sprang back, lightheaded, knowing he was bleeding from his neck, feeling weak and lightheaded and hurting with tiredness. He pulled the dagger from her heart even as she fell, and he took the sword in his right hand, ignoring the screams of pain from his broken wrist.

  It was all barely in time. As he sprang back, like a wild man, a weapon in each hand, just as Alix's three companions, ignoring her even as she lay pouring black blood onto the expensive carpets on the floor, came towards him. They had knives. They needed no more. They were both larger and, of course, stronger than him.

  His mind flashed with the thought that he could run away. He should run away. It would be the work of a moment to break through the window and, his knowing the outside garden like the back of his hands, he knew there was a beech tree just outside which would allow him to shimmy down its branches to the ground and then run through the time. But in his mind what he thought of as the true Alix sounded, asking him if he’d allow his son to be turned.

  If he ran now... If he left now, what would become of that little b
oy whose name he didn’t even know? Bad enough that Rene had brought him into a world where vampires threatened him. To desert the boy, to run, to save his own life, would be worst of all.

  He thought of Monsieur D’Alban telling him they needed special priests, special men who would guard France against invasion. How could Rene let his own son fend for himself when he intended to defend France from encroaching dark?

  The first blow caught him off guard, coming not from a knife, but from a chair, which one of the vampires threw at him. Rene jumped back, barely in time, as the delicate chair splintered at his feet. And then two vampires came at him, one from each side, each putting hands on him from one side, one putting a knife to his throat, “Now stop fighting, lordling,” the boy said, his voice rough. “I always did think you were much too spoiled.”

  Rene got a feeling of something. The vampire was projecting something at him: something that was supposed to make Rene stop fighting and obey him. Vampire glamour? He didn’t know, and he didn’t care. He felt the injunction to stop fighting, but it had no effect on him.

  Perhaps the boy was counting on its working, because he looked startled as Rene wriggled down and away from the knife. This he knew. This was much like his fights with Pons when he’d been a little boy of five or six, and Pons a young man bent on doing what he called “disciplining the brat.” He knew the rules and the game. And it started with looking helpless. He rolled away from the knife, got on his hands and knees still clasping the weapons, and made as if to crawl away from the fight. The two vampires again came at him, fast, but with less caution than before.

  Rene straightened quickly, and put a blade through each of their hearts. They fell, dragging the blades with them. Before he could recover the blades, the third vampire, and the largest of the boys, was on him, snarling and growling. He bore Rene to ground with his strength, held him there, “What are you going to do now? You have no weapons.”

  It was true. Rene’s arm hurt, and his knee. His neck hurt where Alix had bitten him. The smashed chair was under him. It wedged itself uncomfortably into his back. He should give up.

  But his hand snaked back and grabbed the bit of the chair that was hurting him, and as the vampire’s fangs came down to bite him, he wedged the bit of chair into the open mouth, piercing the vampire’s throat.

  The vampire screamed and reared. Blood that smelled of rot poured out. And Rene, without thinking, picked another piece of chair and pushed it through the vampire’s chest, into his heart.

  * * * *

  Before he left, he saw his son. The boy was indeed his. No doubt about it. Blond and beautiful, combining his vivacity in childhood with Alix's grace, the child seemed scared of this bruised stranger – of his bandaged hand, his bandaged neck, his low, raspy voice, his hooded, tired eyes.

  “What is his name?” Rene asked.

  “Pierre, Monsieur. After Madame’s father.”

  “It is a good name,” he said, speaking to the servants who clustered around him. “You care for him. As of today he is the Chevalier D’Herblay.”

  “The Chevalie... but what of your brother?”

  “Pons is a vampire. Vampires cannot hold land for the king. They’re creatures of the Cardinal. The land is Pierre’s. You will hold it for him. And I... I will make sure that Pons doesn’t come back to claim what isn’t his.”

  By which he meant both his son and his land.

  “But Monsieur,” Irenie said. “Monsieur! What about you? Can you not hold the land?”

  “My mission,” Rene said. “Is different. I have taken orders. Keep this child safe. In him rests the future of my family.”

  And then he’d kissed Pierre’s forehead and given him his paternal blessing. And he’d gone to Paris to find Pons.

  * * * *

  It hadn’t been hard. Partly, of course, because Rene knew where to find him. It was just like Pons to leave details of his whereabouts in his desk, in his domain. He was staying in such and such townhouse in Paris, to which documents were to be sent.

  After a long voyage through most of which Rene slept, Rene found himself early evening in front of the townhouse. It was a graceful building that had, probably, at one time, belonged to a merchant of some sort.

  Rene had no intention of attacking early evening. He remained prudent. He might have killed vampires back in his domain, but he knew he’d done it, to a great extent by luck and chance. He would not brave a fight again on his own. But he wanted to verify that Pons was there, that he was still living in the place.

  Studying the area, he found that there was a wall at the back, and then a pear tree which he could climb to look through the window of the second floor. If needed, he would climb in through that window and go in, to see if Pons was still there.

  But he’d no more climbed the tree than from the street in front of him a sound came, startling him and almost making him fall. “A moi of the king, to me musketeers!”

  He edged away from the window, to look from the tree, at the street, where two men, one of them a giant and the other a noble-looking blond man were fighting a multitude of vampires pouring out the door.

  Rene’s mouth opened, in surprise, at the way these two men fought. They fought like the heroes of old, he thought. Like the people he’d only read about, the brave warriors who had once besieged Troy, and met offensives a hundred times stronger single handed and proud. These two seemed to be killing vampires almost too fast for the eye to follow. They stood, seemingly undaunted and fearless. It was a thing of beauty to behold, after what Rene had seen in his own dormitory, the way that the vampires prevailed over all there. Here, the humans were not afraid of vampires. More, the brown-haired giant called out jeers and taunts to the vampires as he mowed them down.

  So fascinated was Rene by the fight, by these men’s bluff courage, that he didn’t notice any sounds or see the window open. But it must have opened, because he heard a familiar voice nearing, “Hullo, little brother,” He looked up to see Pons standing nearby, his eyes sparkling with malice.

  There should have been, Rene thought, the moment when he realized Pons had changed and that his eyes looked not at all like a human. There should be a change in Pons as there had been in Alix. But there wasn’t. Instead, it was just Pons looking much as he always had: a tall, bluff man, with broad shoulders and the sort of bull neck that every culture everywhere has associated with a fighter. The way his eyes sparkled coldly hadn’t changed. He looked at Rene as he used to when he was about to do something that would discomfit the young man, or get him in trouble with their father. “I heard what you’ve done, you little coward,” Pons said. “I got a letter from one of the tenants I trust, informing me that you dispatched my lady wife and installed the whelp at the hall. My tenant could do nothing about it, but that is no problem, for I shall return to D’Herblay tonight and set all to rights.” He grinned, and sharp, overlarge fangs glinted in the moonlight. “After I consign you to Hell.”

  And then he had his sword out.

  Rene didn’t know how to fight in a tree. In all his time of dreaming up sword duels, his time of memorizing signor Fabrizio’s book on fencing, his play in the armory with various swords against stationary targets, he’d never thought to fight in a tree.

  But something he knew would be to his brother’s disadvantage. Pons had that mistaken idea that courage consisted of charging first and thinking later. Rene placed himself, by small shifts, where he could swiftly move around the tree by virtue of stepping this way and that. All near branches would support his weight. And then he drew his sword. He’d stand his ground for once, and not flinch.

  “Oh, you have a sword. How precious,” Pons said. And then he charged. He charged assuredly, as he should. Rene realized almost immediately, as he found himself flitting this way and that, his sword barely parrying his brother’s thrusts, that Pons was far more experienced. Truly the only thing that Rene had in his favor, the only thing keeping him from being speared right through in the first moments of the fig
ht, was that he could stand on branches that wouldn’t support the older D’Herblay’s greater weight.

  But his ducking and feinting had a limit. Twice, Pons’s sword came close to impaling him, and Rene knew that twice more it had drawn blood. He could feel throbbing in his arm and in his hand, where he’d been forced to parry thrusts with his own flesh.

  Once more, he thought he could run to fight another day. But he thought of what Pons had said, about going to D’Herblay. Doubtless Pierre’s life would be counted in minutes, were Rene not to stop Pons now. Or worse, should Pons not realize that Pierre was Rene’s son, Pierre might live only to become a soulless vampire.

  Fueled by his panic, Rene thought that blood should act as a distraction to a vampire. And he needed to distract Pons. He could feel his arm bleeding beneath its sleeve. Reaching for the cut, he hooked a thumb through it, and tore doublet and shirt across, exposing the cut and the blood. Two drops fell, glistening to the wood.

  Pons’s eyes followed them. Rene ducked under Pons’s sword arm and thrust his sword upward towards Pons’s chest.

  Pons roared like a bull and reacted quickly, backhanding Rene, and sending him flying backwards. Rene managed to grab onto a branch to stop his fall, and to step onto the wall in a controlled stumble, then from there to the ground in a jump that would likely have broken his legs had he not spent his childhood climbing walls and jumping from them. As it was, though he fell on the balls of his feet, the fall jarred his bones and made his teeth hurt. He had barely the time to recover, before Pons had jumped onto the street, in turn, and with a roar, dove for Rene.

  Every instinct screamed to run away. Rene stood his ground. Or he stood his ground, until the last second, when Pons was about to run him through. And then he sidestepped, thrust his sword in the way.

  The force that had failed him before, when his broken wrist hadn’t given him enough strength to puncture through Pons’s muscular chest, was now of no importance. Pons’s roaring charge carried him into Rene’s sword.