The Canvas Thief

by P. Kirby

  Maya leaned over him, combing her fingers though a patch of blood-free red hair. “I can’t. If I do that and he disappears, he has made arrangements.” Benjamin’s left eye opened and he tried to speak. Putting her fingers over his mouth, she said, “One of his employees has a letter and they’ll send it to the Holders. The letter tells the Holders about me and my brother. Orson, see, has some magical power too.”

  Benjamin’s eyes closed and he muttered something. She couldn’t be sure, but it sounded like the f-word. That was followed by a long, shuddering breath and then silence.

  “Benjamin?” She pressed fingertips against his throat, feeling for a pulse. Checking against the location and sensation of her own, she searched, finding nothing except a flutter that might have been her imagination. Terror clamped down on her heart and she pressed her palm against the left side of his face, trying to detect the electric tingle of magical power. Nothing.

  On the edge of panic, she battled logic that told her he was just as mortal as any other person versus her acceptance of his supposed immortality. She’d held him in her arms, skin to skin, taken him inside her, heard his heart beat. He felt so human, so mortal.

  Immortals should be godlike, inhuman, like vampires.

  “No. You can’t die,” she said, eyes filled with tears. “You said you couldn’t die and I believed you.” She pulled up his sweater. The first bloody hole was about a handbreadth to the left of his belly button. The second was on the right side of his chest. Both still wept blood, red liquid moving in a slow pulse. “How can you be bleeding if your heart has stopped?”

  Desperate, an idea came to her. She took his phone from his jacket pocket. Coincidentally, it was the same model as hers and she found his phone book right away. Selecting a number, she hit the call button.

  “You feeling suicidal?” said the irritated male voice. “Because I’m feeling homicidal.”

  “Breas, this is Maya. Benjamin’s been hurt, shot twice. I’m not even sure he’s still alive.”

  “A couple of bullets aren’t going to kill him,” the vampire said, now sounding bored and angry.

  “He’s not breathing and his heart stopped,” Maya said, a sob catching in her throat.

  “If he’s hurt real bad, his body will go into a torpor, shut down so he can heal. It happens that way with vampires. I reckon it’s the same with the Formed. Take him home, snuggle for a few days and he’ll be good as new.”

  “I don’t have a few days. And what if you’re wrong? What if he’s dead?”

  “Well,” Breas drawled, “you get a shovel and dig a big hole.”

  Despair and rage tore at Maya. “What is wrong with you? Don’t you give a damn about anyone? What kind of person—”

  “A vampire, perhaps?”

  “Please.” Despair won and Maya started to cry. “I don’t know what to do. I’m scared and Adam—”

  “Gods save me from hysterical women,” interrupted Breas. “Where are you?”

  Now sobbing with relief, Maya told him.

  “Okay,” he said. “Take him home, his home. I have an invite. I’ll meet you there.”

  He was about to hang up when Maya said, “Wait. I, uh, don’t know where he lives.”

  Chapter Twenty-five

  Benjamin’s house was in an older neighborhood about five minutes north of the Plaza. The address Breas had given her was a small, brownish, stucco one-story, surrounded by a sagging chain-link fence and a yard full of gravel. At nine o’clock in the evening, the neighborhood was quiet, giving off the sense of life winding down for the night.

  Maya pulled Benjamin’s car into the driveway, switched off the lights, but left the engine on, letting the heater do its job. Seeing no other car, she assumed the vampire hadn’t arrived yet.

  She yelped when someone knocked on the driver’s-side window. Turning, she saw Breas. As before, he was outwardly unremarkable, an athletic, blond young man in jeans and a Seattle Seahawks sweatshirt. She rolled down the window.

  “What’s his favorite color?” Breas asked.

  “Huh? I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know where he lives, don’t know his favorite color. I don’t think you know him well enough to be taking him out and getting him shot.”

  Jaw dropping, she groped for a response, before realizing that this was the vampire’s attempt to defuse the situation. Unable to formulate a clever response, she said, “Thanks, Breas.”

  The vampire grunted and muttered something about a paranormal babysitter. He had Benjamin out of the car, hoisted over his shoulder in a firefighter’s carry, and was moving toward the home’s front door in less than a minute. Not waiting for Maya, Breas cast an unlock spell with ease and stepped over Benjamin’s threshold.

  “We should put him in his bed where he’ll be more comfortable,” said Maya, wincing as Breas rather roughly laid Benjamin on the kitchen floor.

  “He’s still bleeding. He’ll thank us when he does laundry.” Breas shoved Benjamin’s sweater up and examined the bullet wounds. “Looks like somebody beat the shit out of him.”

  Maya crouched next to Benjamin, opposite the vampire. “I can’t believe he’s still alive.” Pale blue veins were visible under his white, fragile skin. She touched his forehead, still finding no trace of his magic. His skin was icy.

  “I’m going to try a heal spell, so it would be wise to not touch him.”

  Maya withdrew her hand, looking at the vampire for an explanation, but getting none.

  The vampire held a hand, palm down, over each bullet hole as if he were putting pressure on the wounds. Magic, just as alien as Octel’s had been to Maya, touched her skin. This time, she felt her own quiver and vibrate in sympathetic harmony.

  “Don’t do that. Leave the room if you have to, but don’t link to my spell.”

  Though she had no idea what he was talking about, she rose and moved to the kitchen doorway, where the vampire’s gathering power faded to a weak tremor that made the hairs on her arms stand up.

  The spell’s words had a musical rhythm and, in the vampire’s deep voice, had a soothing quality. Benjamin’s reaction was anything but soothed. The spell rippled through him. His eyes flew open, and his body bucked on the hard floor. Breas drove his palms down on Benjamin’s torso, repeating the spell. In response, Benjamin writhed, his hands clenched into white-knuckled fists.

  Maya was back at his side in an instant. “You’re hurting him!”

  The vampire withdrew his hands. “Of course I am. Healing spells are painful.” He rocked back onto his heels and looked at his bloody hands.

  “You could have warmed me.” Then she gasped. A deep purple bruise now surrounded each bullet hole. The wounds themselves had shrunk to dime-sized, puckered scabs. “Why bruises?” The flesh under her fingers, his wonderful abs, radiated warmth into her fingers.

  “Bruises are a standard reaction to any kind of body trauma. You’re a doctor’s daughter, you should know that.” He gave her a look that made her feel stupid. “For some reason, I don’t know why, heal spells don’t fade bruises.” Breas sniffed his right index finger and then gingerly licked it. “Tastes like human,” he said.

  Maya shuddered and looked away, gaze dropping to Benjamin’s face. The ugly gashes had closed to thin red stripes and the swelling around his eye had gone down. He was still unconscious and a livid swath of bruises covered most of his face like a birthmark. A pulse, easy to detect, beat under Maya’s fingers as she touched his neck.

  “That’s amazing. That kind of spell could help so many people,” Maya said to the vampire, trying to ignore the fact that he was licking Benjamin’s blood from his fingers.

  “It wouldn’t work on a mortal, at least, not one as far gone as Benjamin.”

  “Why not?” Maya picked up one of Benjamin’s hands and rubbed it between her own. “It could save lives.”

  Right hand clean, Breas switched his attention to his left. “Because serious injury drains the spark of life.” To Maya’s unspoken
question, he continued. “The spark of life is like a metaphysical battery. All living things, even vampires—” he gave her a look that dared her to disagree “—have a spark of life. It’s stronger in long-lived mortals like elves and weakest in humans. The spark fuels natural healing and heal spells. Time or severe injury will drain it. If a mortal is that close to death, running a healing spell will just shove him the rest of way into the ever after.

  “An immortal’s spark can recharge itself infinitely. Vampires have an infamous way of recharging.” He licked a bloodstained finger to make the point, obviously enjoying Maya’s revulsion. “I reckon the Formed rely on other sources. That’s why I told you not to link to the heal spell or touch him while I ran it. There’s a possibility his spark might have taken energy from your spark. Could’ve killed you.”

  “Oh.” It had never occurred to Maya that the differences between her and Benjamin could harm her. Even now he appeared so human, bruised, bloodied, vulnerable. “We need to move him off the kitchen floor.”

  “We?” Breas sucked the tip of his thumb, squinting down at Maya. He had moved, too fast and quiet for her to notice, to a kitchen chair.

  “Yes, we.” The vampire made a noise which sounded like a sigh but lacked the usual deep breath. As he approached, Benjamin’s eyelids fluttered and opened.

  “Breas?”

  “No,” the vampire said, “I’m Cinderella. Get up so I can get out of here and home before midnight.” With no real effort, the vampire grabbed Benjamin’s arms, helped him to his feet and into a chair. Maya drew a chair up beside him. Benjamin put an arm around her shoulders and she leaned against his chest, ignoring the hot iron stench of blood that clung to him.

  “So what do you plan on doing about Sayres?” Breas asked, seated across the table from them.

  Lacking an answer, and finding too much relief in the steady beat of Benjamin’s heart, Maya said nothing, her cheek against his chest. Benjamin answered Breas without any hesitation. “Give him what he wants, Fade to EverVerse.” When Maya, alarmed, tilted her head back to look at his face, he shook his head. “We can’t send him to EverVerse without risking you, your brother and his family. Eric survived the car crash, but the next time, whoever Adam targets might not be so lucky.”

  “So you flit off to EverVerse, leaving Maya to deal with Adam?” Breas smirked at the horrified realization on Benjamin’s face. “He gets Maya and permanent immortality, and you get what, a sense of self-sacrificing nobility?”

  “Adam wouldn’t hurt Maya,” Benjamin said, his face indicating a lack of confidence in the statement. “He needs her to make more Formed.”

  “I bet Maya’s giddy about that career opportunity.” Breas sneered. “And what about the Holders? Two Formed people might avoid their notice, but an army? Eventually, word will get back to the Holders and they’ll come looking for the sorcerer responsible.” He pointed at Maya.

  Staring levelly at Breas, Maya spoke. “I have a question. ‘Immortal’ isn’t the same thing as ‘invincible,’ correct? You can be killed with a stake through the heart.”

  “Reference to the stake aside, I’m assuming you’re asking in relation to Adam.” The vampire’s mouth quirked in a wry smile.

  “Yes,” Maya said, conscious of the immortal at her side. “Can a Formed person be killed?”

  “Not, apparently, by breaking their neck,” Benjamin said.

  “That wouldn’t kill a vampire either,” Breas said. “But decapitation will. Separating the brain, a crucial conduit of magical energy, from the body, short-circuits the entire system.”

  “So it might work the same way for one of the Formed?” Benjamin asked.

  “Maybe,” Breas replied. “I can’t see how anything could live very long without its head, even with an infinitely recharging spark of life.”

  “So could you do it?” Benjamin said.

  “Do what, kill Adam?” Breas asked.

  “Yes,” Benjamin said. “I’ll pay you…somehow.”

  “I’m not an assassin.”

  “You once were,” Benjamin noted.

  “Six hundred years ago. Now I’m a lover, not a fighter.” He shrugged. “I don’t get involved in the affairs of humans.”

  “You healed Benjamin,” Maya said.

  The vampire shrugged. “Call it a parting gift before he leaves for EverVerse.”

  Persistent, Maya continued, “But you helped me get rid of Adam’s Mesmer spell.”

  Breas smirked. “Red owes me for that. But that doesn’t mean I have to kill Adam. It doesn’t mean anyone has to kill him.” He squinted at Benjamin. “And people say vampires are bloodthirsty.” He waved away the topic with his hand and a shimmer of Mesmer. “You know Adam’s been hounding me for years, desperate to get me on his payroll?”

  “He hates that you’ve turned him down,” Benjamin said.

  “Adam is getting arrogant, drunk on his power. He thinks he can get me to sign on with him by threatening…someone I know.”

  “And you won’t kill him to protect her?” Benjamin said with a touch of smugness.

  Breas scowled at Benjamin. “She’s not helpless. She can protect herself. But her family will take any attack on her personally. Adam risks pissing off some big paranormal players. If they start sniffing around, the trail is bound to lead back to Maya.”

  Benjamin’s blood, soaked into her sleeves and the side of her shirt, was starting to stiffen the fabric. Irritated by her state of bedraggled filth and the uncooperative vampire, she said, “So if you won’t kill him, do you at least have any suggestions what to do?”

  “Nope. I’m a Gandalf. I hang around, full of powerful magic I never use, and make vague, important-sounding statements.” He glanced at his watch. “Before you called, I was watching a movie with people I know. I reckon it’s time I got back to that.”

  Maya felt Benjamin make a low frustrated growl. “People I know” must have been shorthand for “friends” in Breas’s bizarre parlance. Breas stood up. “I don’t expect either one of you is capable of coming up with a brilliant idea at the moment. You’re not entirely healed and you’re about to have some kind of mental breakdown.” He looked from Benjamin to Maya. “You both smell like last week’s breakfast left out in the sun. Get clean, get some rest. Adam, stupidly, gave you most of tomorrow to work out a way to beat him.”

  He glanced down at his sweatshirt. “Damn. I love this shirt.” Bloodstains obscured part of the Seattle Seahawks’ logo. Power surged through the air, vibrating through Maya and Benjamin. Breas barked several words in a guttural language and before her eyes, the bloodstains vanished from the vampire’s sweatshirt.

  “I don’t know which is more disturbing,” Maya said after the front door clicked shut, Breas gone into the night, “that I’m thinking of calling him on laundry day or that I’m more impressed with that spell than the fact that he’s a vampire.”

  Benjamin awoke, shivering. Disoriented, he blinked, clearing sleep from his eyes, panning a look around the dark room. The location felt familiar, the window in the right place, fat shape of a dresser just to its right, but something had changed. A deep breath brought him the smell of soap and shampoo, but the scents weren’t coming off him alone.

  The reason for his shivering became apparent—Maya, asleep next to him, had stolen all the covers. That evening’s events rushed back to him: Eric’s accident, Maya being taken to Adam’s place, his confrontation with Adam, the shooting, Breas, Maya helping him into the shower.

  The last memory sent a flare of heat to his groin. At the time, he had hardly had the strength to stand up, much less appreciate that a beautiful woman had her hands all over him.

  Now, his body wanted to make up for the lost opportunity.

  He sat up and tugged at the sheets that Maya had pulled around herself. Her eyes fluttered open. “Hi,” he said, winning the battle with the sheets and dragging them away from her.

  “Hi.” Her ebony eyes sparkled with a sleepy smile.

  “You e
ven look good wearing one of my old T-shirts,” he said, pushing his hand under the fabric.

  She arched her back as his fingers found a breast. “You sure you’re up to this?”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” he said. Knowing that she looked even better in just her brown skin, Benjamin helped her out of the T-shirt. In his dark bedroom, her body was reduced to a curvaceous silhouette, a few patches of light outlining her breasts. Cupping her breasts in his hands, he paused, committing their softness to memory, before moving down her body, over the tiny swell of her stomach and around the sweep of hips, memorizing the shape of each.

  “Knees, huh?” he said when his fingers brushed the skin behind her knees. The muscles in her thighs quivered as he drew trails of magical energy on her skin. She made a weak grunt in assent and he grinned, pleased to have made the discovery. Leaving her knees for a moment, he moved higher, ridding her of the only other clothing she wore, her panties.

  She was ready for him, the black curls between her legs damp. Desire drummed an impatient beat in his blood, but he wanted some time to explore, match the perfect touch with the right place on her body.

  He started slowly, with long gentle stretches of contact, changing rhythm and pressure, gauging her reaction to each variation. All the while, he let the anticipation of being inside her tighten his magic like a guitar string, letting little currents slip from his mouth into Maya’s sensitive flesh.

  In a minute, she was responding, back arched, eyes half closed and more beautiful than ever. She reached one hand down and tangled it in his hair. Remembering his earlier discovery, he glided his hand down her thigh and lightly touched her behind her knee, pushing little sparks of magic through her skin.

  “Oh.” Maya’s little exclamation was followed by her fingers tightening on his hair. Benjamin continued what he was doing, enjoying the feeling of her quivering under his touch and the little sounds she made as she climaxed. When he moved up her body, her eyes were open and a faint sheen of sweat lightened her skin.