Blood Winter

by S. J. Coles

  “Thank you for being here when I did,” he replied. He pressed his lips to my cheek in the darkness then eased himself away. I shivered and fumbled for the lamp on the new occasional table, marveling at his controlled movements as he dressed.

  “Can I see the rest of it?”

  “The rest of what?”

  “The rest of the house.”

  I raised my eyebrows as I zipped up my overalls. “It’s not exactly homey.”

  “It’s rustic, with great potential. Not unlike its owner.”

  I frowned. “If I’m rustic, what does that make you?”

  Another half-smile. “Timeless.”

  I smiled despite myself. “Does that mean…you want to stay here?”

  Both his eyebrows raised this time. “Sorry, was that not clear?”

  “You don’t just want me for my nice, dark cellar, right?” I realized with a pang that I was only half-joking.

  He stepped close. “There are many cellars in this world, Alec MacCarthy.”

  “Not many with access to a natural cave system.”

  His eyes flicked between mine. “I must admit that I didn’t expect you to start getting cold feet this quickly.”

  “I’m not,” I said hurriedly. “I just…” I sighed, rubbed my face. “I’m figuring this out as I go.”

  He took my hand. “That makes two of us.”

  I smiled too. Now that the heat of desire had ebbed, I was aware of a pang of uncertainty. Even the way he smiled was…different. My brain couldn’t process it the way it would a human’s. It took a second longer to decide what it was seeing. And in that second, doubt existed.

  Everything we’d said was true. There was nothing certain between us, nothing that could be put into words. Love was a human word with human implications that somehow didn’t fit what I felt. I couldn’t even predict how he, or I, would feel in the morning. I realized with a jolt that I wouldn’t even see him in the morning—or any morning.

  But even though I was very aware of how little I really understood about what we were getting into, I wanted to learn. The thought filled me with an almost physical sense of anticipation. He gazed at me with something between curiosity and fascination in his eyes and I wondered if I offered the same challenge to him.

  ‘I try to remember what it was like before,’ he’d once told me.

  “Would you change back?” I asked. “If you could.”

  He blinked. His smile disappeared. “Would you want me to?”

  “This isn’t about me,” I insisted. “I just want to know.”

  He stared at the Jacob More over the mantlepiece. I’d scraped together enough money to have it cleaned. The frame gleamed in the lamplight. The moody, dark paints were bolder with all the dust cleaned away, revealing the twisted, storm-battered landscape in all its dangerous, raw glory. I wondered what my father would make of it being admired by Terje as he stood with his hand in mine. Clem’s revelations had changed my memory of my father forever. But all that change had done had made me realize how little I’d really known him.

  “This is who I am,” Terje eventually said, his eyes still on the painting, “for better or worse. I couldn’t change, even if I wanted to. That will have to be enough of an answer.”

  I hovered on the edge of a question that had lain, like a black stone, in my mind ever since the encounter with his Magister in the caves. With him here, alive and real in front of me and with my immediate need and elation drained away, I opened my mouth and it tumbled out. “Did you kill Shelly Morris?”

  The silver of his eyes darkened to pewter. “No.”

  “You swear?”

  “I swear. That boy…” He winced, though didn’t look away. “Mr. Harris is the only human I’ve hurt in over fifty years. And that wasn’t on purpose, you know that.”

  My voice, when I found it, was thin. “I heard what you told Evgeniya in the cave, but I want to hear it again. Who did kill her?”

  “Alec, you knowing won’t help—”

  “I want the truth, Terje. All of it. Unless you think Evgeniya was right?”

  His expression flattened and he looked away. “Okay, I’ll tell you and in detail. I owe you that much.” He took a breath. “I’d had a…disagreement with Evgeniya over a human I’d grown close to.”

  “How close?”

  “That’s not relevant.”

  “Terje—”

  “Alec,” he said, firmly. “I will give you the truth…but only the truth you are entitled to.”

  I chewed on that a moment, something spiky working its way around my stomach that I was half-afraid was jealousy, but then I nodded. He continued, his face schooled blank. “She didn’t trust me to stay away. She was having me followed. This haemophile following me, they—” He broke off and took a breath. Something in his eyes reminded me of when he’d faced his Magister in the icy cave. Fear looked unearthly on him. I didn’t like it. “They were what you might call ‘private security’. They’re registered, legal, but Magisters usually choose the strongest and…more conservative members of the commune for the role.”

  “And by conservative you mean—“

  “Old-fashioned. Assertive. Unpredictable.” He shook his head, a heavy frown darkening his expression. “And Olsen had never liked me. We were too different. Being told to keep an eye on me was apparently the last straw for him. When he saw the chance to implicate me in something he knew would shame and disgust me, he took it.” Terje was still staring at the floor. “I didn’t kill her—but I guess it was still my fault.” He raised his eyes. I was shocked to see the brightness of tears gathering in their corners. “If I had just obeyed… If I’d just been like everyone else, the girl would still be alive.”

  I held his look. “If you were like the rest of them, Blood Winter would have been ten times worse.”

  “And that makes everything all right?”

  “Not all right,” I said, “but better than it could be. It’s not your fault, Terje. Being different doesn’t mean being wrong.”

  His gazed unblinking at me as the words he’d once said to me hung in the air between us. I felt like I was balancing on a cliff edge, my toes hanging out over nothing. I let myself smile and squeezed his hand. “What part of the house would you like to see first?”

  His expression warmed slightly. “The master bedroom. There are pictures online. It’s quite something.”

  “It doesn’t look like that now.”

  “It could again.”

  I shook my head, fighting something unpleasant snaking around my belly. “That’s Dad’s room.”

  He leaned close and brushed his mouth over my ear. “Not anymore.”

  I shivered, tried for a smile and led him out into the dusty hall. The lights flickered and hummed when I switched them on, the wiring old and crackling.

  “I don’t go up here much,” I said, picking my way up the creaking stairs.

  “We’ll soon change that,” he said, gazing at the arched ceiling, the dust-caked chandelier, the plywood boards on the windows.

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s time you stopped living in someone else’s idea of home,” he said softly.

  “It’s not that simple.”

  “I understand that,” he said, a hand on my arm. “But the answer is simpler than you think.”

  “And what’s the answer?” I said, trying not to sound tetchy. His smile went a long way to remove the needled feeling, though it couldn’t expunge it completely.

  “We turn it into something that makes you proud, somewhere you can really live.” He put his head on one side. “Or would you rather squat in the kitchen forever?”

  I made an impatient noise. “Even if I wanted to, it would take millions…”

  “I’ll help,” he said. “I have some means.”

  “You do?”

  His eyes swept over the chandelier again. “I set up my own private means of income years ago. Evgeniya never knew. When I died, it went into trust with Ivor Novák.
” He met my eye, smiling slightly. “So I still have access to it without anyone else knowing.”

  “It must be one hell of an income,” I remarked, trying not to sound incredulous.

  “It’s enough,” he murmured. “Enough to make this place a home.”

  “The E-type Jag,” I breathed. “That’s yours?”

  “Yours now.”

  “I can’t accept it,” I said, shaking my head, “any of it. It’s too much.”

  “I want to give it to you,” he went on. “I’ve no use for money. I set up the fund on the hundred-to-one shot that if a time ever came that I could start my own life—and now it has. I want to use it to make this place somewhere safe, for both of us.”

  “I never sold Glenroe because that’s just what Dad expected me to do.” My muscles stiffened and something hot surged up my back. “To abandon everything and run the moment I got a chance. The perpetual disappointment that I was, what else would I do?” I glared at the bannister without really seeing it. “I don’t think me being gay, in itself, bothered him,” I murmured, Clem’s words floating in my head, “but when I said that I’d never pretend, never marry, have children…that I wouldn’t do what was expected…” Terje was watching me but didn’t interrupt. “After Mum left, I was the only thing left of the life he wanted, and I was all wrong for that part. This house was all he had in the end…the only thing he felt he could rely on. It’s too him. It can never be mine. But I can never let it go, either.”

  “Let it do for you what it could have done for your father,” he said, drawing me close. “It’s sheltered your family for generations, kept reality at bay and protected the part of the world you most care about.” He brushed his lips over my brow and breathed in the smell of my hair. The cool touch of his skin was soothing. “It protected us,” he went on, speaking softly in my ear, “when we needed it to, shielded us from the storm and from the Ogdells. I know what it’s like to need a safe space. Don’t deny yourself one any longer.”

  I buried my face in his hair. To my great dismay, my eyes prickled and my body shook. The Blood still thrummed deep in my flesh, but another feeling overwhelmed it now, one I couldn’t entirely understand and which frightened me more. He held me until the shaking stopped then let me stand up and apart from him. I almost loved him then, for that effortless understanding of what I needed.

  “The E-type is completely the wrong sort of car for these roads.”

  His mouth twitched. “It’s for trips into town.”

  “There is no town.”

  “There are some very good architects and interior design firms in Edinburgh,” he said mildly. “And I’d like to see the castle.”

  I raised my own eyebrows. “For someone who doesn’t think about the future, you seem to have done a lot of planning.”

  “I’m an optimist by nature. And I believe in change. It’s what put me so at odds with my commune.”

  “Novák knows you’re alive, right?”

  “He does,” Terje replied carefully.

  “Evgeniya could find out.”

  “She won’t,” he said. “It’s in his best interest that no one ever finds out. Come on.” He held out his hand. “I want to see that bedroom.”

  I paused before taking his hand. “But you won’t be able to sleep up there.”

  He brought my hand to his mouth, gently brushing his lips over my knuckles. The Blood stirred in me again, making my heart thump heavily in my chest. “Not sleep, no,” he murmured against my skin, “but there are plenty of other things to do at night besides sleep.”

  I swallowed. “What about your…other needs?”

  He went still. He lowered my hand and took it in both his own. “Novák and I have made arrangements. You don’t need to know the details.”

  “He knows you’re here?”

  “He does.”

  I studied the wall for a moment, the reality of the situation slowly taking form in my head.

  “We’ll have to make the cellar more comfortable,” I said. “Get some heating down there.”

  His look softened. “I’d appreciate that. Alec…” His face was grave. “No one can know I’m here. No one.”

  “I know.”

  “I know you’re a good person,” he said, still serious, “and that you trust your friends. But—”

  “I won’t tell anyone,” I said, fervently.

  “I’m not trying to make it difficult,” he said softly. “And it’s not just Evgeniya. Us…being together, here. It would not be welcomed by many of your kind…or mine.”

  I tried to get my head around what I was teetering on the edge of committing to. I had visions of work starting on Glenroe whilst Terje kept from sight, of clients coming to the workshop whilst all the time a haemophile, a killer, whatever I thought of him, was just up the hill. Trying to act normal around Clem, day after day. A fridge filled with bottles of blood in the wine cellar. Terje drinking that blood, human blood, then joining me in the master bedroom.

  Blood junkie. Freak. Traitor.

  I blinked, fighting back the cold swell of uncertainty. His expression was guarded. I drank in the sight of him, the feel of his hand in mine, and fixed on the certainty that I wanted this, wanted him. “You’re sure about this?”

  “As sure as you are,” he said.

  Neither of us knew anything. We only…felt…something, something that didn’t have a name. But it was real.

  I kissed him again, letting everything fall away but the feel of having him close in a place that I, for the first time, felt I could own. No matter how uncertain it all was, it was mine—mine and Terje’s.

  I took his hand and led him upstairs.

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  Excerpt

  Rick slid his key into the lock. It caught, again. The thing had needed replacing for months. But, for the first time in years, the thought of another financial outlay barely registered. He wrestled the door open and hurried inside. Ella rose from her seat at the kitchen table, a half-drunk cup of coffee forgotten amidst a drift of bills and credit card statements on the kitchen table.

  “Well?”

  Rick was quiet just long enough for her face to tighten then he smiled. “I got it.”

  The worn lines of care at the corners of her eyes smoothed away. She laughed and flung her arms around him. He laughed too, squeezing her tight.

  “I knew you had this, bruv. I told ya, right? Didn’t I say?”

  “This is it, El. We’re sorted…finally sorted.”

  Ella wiped at the wetness in her eyes but her smile never wavered. “This calls for a celebration, right?” She went to the fridge and produced a bottle of cava.

  “When did you get that?”

  “Lidl had them on offer. Come on. A toast.” She poured the sparkling wine into two mismatched beakers and held one out. Rick took it, and Ella raised her own but then lowered it, her face growing serious.

  “What is it?”

  She huffed out a breath. “Before we drink… Fuck.” Her expression darkened. “Sorry… It’s just I’d kick myself if I didn’t ask this…”

  “El—”

  “Just let me, please?”

  Rick sighed and gestured for her to continue.

  “Are you sure this is what you want?”

  “El—” he said again, but she cut him off.

  “I’m serious, bruv. I know this feels like the answer. And I know Dad…” She took a breath then smiled a wan smile. “Dad would have been so chuffed. Beyond chuffed. But is this really, really what you want?”

  “A job with Swanson and Gerrard is above and beyond ‘want’, sis.”

  “But your music.”

  Rick glanced at the rack in the corner where his battered Martin acoustic, Fender Strat and Gibson Les Paul sat gathering dust. “Music was Mum’s dream,” he said softly, feeling a familiar clench in
his chest. “But Dad was right. It was just a dream.”

  “Money’s not everything,” his sister replied. Rick glanced at the bills littering the table. She followed his gaze and grimaced. “We could manage,” she went on. “We’ve managed this far.”

  “This isn’t managing.”

  “We could find another home for Mum—a cheaper one, outside London. We could move back up north, even—”

  “It’s not just the money,” he said. “This job means I’ve made it…finally made it.”

  “But—”

  “Leaving now would be going backwards. I can’t go backwards.”

  “Now you sound like Dad.”

  “The bloke did talk sense occasionally.”

  She sighed. “All right, Ricky. So long as you’re sure. Cheers.” She clinked her glass with his. “In which case, enjoy your moment. Christ knows you deserve it.”

  “We both do.” He drank. Ella drained her glass and poured another. “Don’t you have a shift tonight?” he asked.

  “Not until six,” she said, topping him up. “And it’s not every day your little brother lands a job as a junior analyst with one of the biggest finance firms in the country, is it?”

  “No, it bloody isn’t,” Rick said, a little grimly, and drank deep from his own glass, enjoying the light taste and the fizz. “My first payday I’ll get us some of the real stuff,” he added with a grin.

  Ella’s eyes were bright again. “Last time I had real fizz was at my wedding.”

  “That was Italian. Real fizz is French.”

  “Well, get you. Got a taste for it all now, huh?”

  “Champagne and caviar from now on, sis.” Rick winked at her, loosened his tie and sat, grateful to take his weight off his feet. He emptied his glass and reached for the bottle.

  Ella sat next to him, pressing her lips together as he poured the last of the wine into her glass.

  “What now?”

  “So they really didn’t twig?”

  “Would they have given me the job if they had?”

  “I dunno,” Ella said, shrugging. “I don’t have the first clue about how these big places work. But you’d think they’d be the sort to know if you lied on your CV.”