Midnight Bites Read online

  It was cold in the dungeon, he thought, but like his old master, he no longer bothered with the cold now. The damp, though . . . the damp did bother him. He didn’t like the feel of water on his skin.

  He’d been here for too long this time, he thought; his clothes had mostly rotted away, and he could see his blindingly white skin peeping through rents and holes in what had once been fine linen and exotic velvet. No telling what color it had all been, when times were better . . . dark blue, like the cloak, perhaps. Or black. He liked blacks. His hair was dark, and his skin had once been a dusty tan, but the hair was a matted mess now, unrecognizable, and his skin was like moonlight with a coppery shimmer over the top. When he had enough to eat, it would darken again, but he’d been starving a long time. Rats didn’t help much, and he ached in his joints like an old, old man.

  He didn’t really remember what he’d done to land here, again, in the dark, but he supposed it must have been something foolish, or egregious, or merely bad luck. It didn’t matter much. They knew what he was, and how to contain him. He was caged, like a rabbit in a hutch, and whether he would be meat for the table or fur to line some rich boy’s cloak, he had no choice but to wait and see.

  Rabbits. He’d always liked rabbits, liked their whisper-soft fur and their curious, wiggling noses and their puffball tails. He’d had a pet rabbit when he was small, a brown thing that he’d saved from the hutch when it was just a baby. He’d fed it from his own scraps and hidden it away from his mother and sisters until it had gotten too big and his mother had taken it away and then there had been rabbit stew and he’d cried and cried and . . .

  There were tears on his cheeks. He wiped them away and tried to push the thoughts away again, but like all his thoughts, they had a will of their own; they scampered and ran and screamed, and he didn’t know how to quiet them anymore.

  Maybe he belonged here, in the dark, where he could do no more damage.

  No footsteps in the hall, but he heard the clank of a key in the lock, loud as a church bell, and it made him try to scramble to his feet. The ceiling was low, and the best he could manage was a crouch as he wedged himself into a corner, trying to hide, though hiding was a foolish thing to do. He was strong—he could fight. He should fight. . . .

  The glare of a torch burned his eyes, and he cried out and shielded them. The silver chains on his hands clicked, and he smelled fresh burns as they seared new, fragile skin.

  “Dear God,” whispered a voice, a new voice, a kind voice. “Lord Myrnin?” She—for it was a she; he could tell that now—put the right lilt into the name. The horror in her tone knifed into him, and for a moment he wondered how bad he looked, to engender such pity. Such undeserved sympathy. “We learned you were being held here, but I never imagined . . .”

  His eyes adapted quickly to the new light, and he blinked away the false images . . . but she still shimmered, it seemed. Gold, she wore gold trim on her pale gown, and gold around her neck and on her slim fingers. Her hair was a red glory, braided into a crown.

  An angel had come into his hell, and she burned.

  He did not know how to speak to an angel. After all, he’d never met one before, and she was so . . . beautiful. She’d said a name, his name, a name he’d all but lost here in the darkness. Myrnin. My name is Myrnin. Yes, that seemed right.

  She seemed to understand his hesitation, because she advanced a step, bent, and put something down between them . . . then withdrew to the doorway again with her torch. What she’d put there on the stained stone floor drew his attention not so much for its appearance—a plain, covered clay jar—but for the delicious, unbelievable smell radiating from it like an invisible aura. Warmth. Light. Food.

  He scrambled toward it like a spider, opened it, and poured the blood into his mouth, and it was life, life, sunlight and flowers and every good thing he had ever known, life, and he drained the jug to the last sticky drop and wept, clutching it to his chest, because he’d forgotten what it meant to be alive, and the blood reminded him of what he’d lost.

  “Hush,” her voice whispered, close to his ear. She touched him, and he flinched away, because he knew how filthy he was, how ragged and beaten by his lot, where she was such a beautiful thing, so fine. “No, sir, hush now. All is well. I’m sent to bring you to safety. My name is Lady Grey.”

  Grey did not suit her, not at all: such a nothing color, neither black nor white, no luster or flash to it. She was all fire and beauty, and no gray at all.

  Some of his memory stirred, though, gossip overheard beyond his cell by those whose lives were lived beyond this stone. Lady Grey’s become the queen. She’ll not last long.

  And then, the same voices. Lady Grey’s dead—what did I tell you? Chopped on the block. That’s what politics gets you, lads.

  This was Lady Grey, but Lady Grey’s head had been chopped off, and hers was still attached.

  He looked up, and like recognized like. The shine in her eyes, reflecting the torchlight. The hunger. The feral desire to live. She was like him, sugnwr gwaed, an eater of blood. A vampire. Interesting, that. He hadn’t thought a vampire could survive a beheading. Not an experiment he’d ever tried. Experiments—yes, he liked experiments. Tests. Trials. Learning the limits of things.

  “Lady Grey,” he said. His voice sounded full of rust, like an old hinge all a-creak. “Forgive.”

  “No need for that,” she said. “Let me see your hands.”

  He held them out, hesitantly, and she made a sound of distress to see the burns that were on him beneath the silver manacles. She sorted through a thick ring of keys, found a silver one, and turned it in the lock. They fell apart, slipped free, and clanked heavily to the stone floor.

  He staggered with the shock of freedom.

  “Can you walk, Lord Myrnin?”

  He could, he found, though it was a clumsy process indeed, and his bare feet slipped on the mold of the stones. She was ruining her hems on the filth, he thought. She gave no thought to it, though, and when he reached her, she clasped him fast by the arm and gave him support he badly needed. Her other hand still held the torch, but she kept it well away from them both, which helped his eyes focus on her face, oh, her face, so lovely and well formed. A mouth made for smiling, though it seemed serious just now.

  “I am sorry,” he said, and this time it seemed more expert, his forming of words. “I am in no shape to entertain visitors.”

  She laughed, and it was like clear chimes ringing. It was a sound that made tears prick painfully. Hope could be a deadly thing here. Torturous.

  “I am no visitor, and I hope this is not your home,” she told him, and patted his arm gently before she took a firm hold again. “I am taking you out of here. Come.”

  He looked around at this narrow stone hole that had been his home for so long. Nothing in it but the scratches he’d made in the stone, half-mad words and mathematics that led nowhere but in circles.

  He went with her, into air that felt fresh and new. He could hear the weak moans and cries of others here, but she ignored them and led him up a long, shallow flight of stone steps to a door that hung open.

  He stepped into a guard’s chamber, with a fire sizzling on the hearth and two men lying dead on the floor. Their dinner was still set on the table, and their swords lay unused in a corner. He knew these men, by smell if not by sight. They had been his captors for the past few months. They changed often, the gaolers. Perhaps they couldn’t bear to be down in the dark long, to think they were as trapped as their charges.

  He smelled blood in them, and it was the same as coursed through his veins, filling him with strength. Lady Grey had bled them before she’d killed them.

  He said nothing. She took him to another door, more stairs, more, until there was another portal that led to a cool, clear, open space.

  They were outside. Outside. He stopped, all his senses overwhelmed with the night, the moon, th
e stars, the whispering breeze on his face. So much. Too much. It was only Lady Grey’s strong hand on his arm that kept him upright.

  “Almost there,” she promised him, and pulled him on, stumbling and clumsy with the richness of freedom, to a pair of horses tethered nearby. Dark horses, hidden in the night, with muffles around any metal. “Do you think you can sit a saddle, my lord?”

  He could. He mounted by memory, feet in stirrups, reins in hands that knew their task, and followed the glimmer of the lady’s dress into the darkness . . . which was, he realized, no darkness at all, to his quick-adapting eyes. Shades of blues and grays, colors muted but not hidden. The moon revealed so much . . . the castle’s bulk they were leaving behind, the empty fields around it, the clean white ribbon of the road they followed. The trees closed around them quickly, hiding them, and he felt, for the first time, that he was actually free again.

  He didn’t know what it meant, really, but it felt good.

  • • •

  The ride lasted the night, and as the horizon began to take on a slow, low light, Lady Grey led him to a well-made hall—not a castle, nor yet a fortress, but something built for strength and purpose nevertheless. He did not know the design of it, but it felt safe enough.

  There were no windows in it, save for shaded slits at the very tops of the walls.

  The gates parted for them as they rode to the entrance, and once inside, he realized there were men, not magic, involved: vampires like himself, dressed in plain black tunics and breeches, who had opened and then shut and barred them behind. The horses were led away without a word, off to some stables, and then they were walking into an inner keep, one built even more solid and strong, lit for vampire eyes.

  “Is this yours?” he asked the lady still supporting his weight as they walked. “This place?”

  “It is one place of safety,” she said. “I didn’t build it, nor do I own it. I suppose you might say it belongs to many. In time of need, we share our shelters.” After a brief pause, she said, with what he thought might have been amusement, “You are quite filthy.”

  “Yes,” he agreed. “Yes, I am.”

  “We’ll put you right.”

  His angel took him to a room near the back of the stone keep—not spacious, but it had an angled slit for a window near the top, and though he had a bad moment of terror crossing the threshold, he found it had a feather bed in it, not just chains and pain. It had been so long, he wondered if he could even sleep in such a thing, but it was a terribly wonderful thing to have the chance to even think on it.

  “I will arrange for a bath,” Lady Grey said, and pulled a chair from the corner that he had not even seen, so blinded had he been by the bedding. “Sit here. I’ll return soon.” She hesitated at the door, with her hand on the latch, and he saw the compassion in her face. “I’ll leave this open, shall I?”

  He nodded slowly, astounded she would comprehend so easily, and watched as she disappeared silently from the room. It was a dream, he decided. A lovely dream, a wonderful thing, but it would make it all the worse when he woke up to burning chains and locks and cold, empty stones. He’d rather not dream. Not hope. It was better to live in the dark.

  He closed his eyes, willing himself to wake, but when he opened them again, nothing had changed. His body ached from the ride and the stretch of muscles unfamiliar to movement; his hunger was blunted, though not truly sated yet. Surely, if it was a phantasm, he’d have imagined himself free of pain and thirst. Wasn’t that the whole purpose of a dream?

  He startled when Lady Grey appeared again in the doorway. She had changed her clothing to a plain pale gown, all jewelry and fine clothes put away. Over her arm, she had more clothing folded. She paused where she was, and smiled at him . . . a slow, warm thing, full of concern.

  “May I assist you?” she asked him. He blinked, not certain how to answer, and then nodded, because he realized suddenly that it would be hard for him to stand on his own. Weakness was his constant companion now. He wondered if it would always be this way. Surely not. Vampires are not so weak.

  Except he felt very weak indeed.

  Her arm felt strong beneath his, and he leaned against her as they walked the short distance to what must have been set aside as a bathing chamber. Within it sat a large copper tub, big enough to submerge a full-grown man if he was so brave, and on a three-legged stool beside it sat a pile of sheets to use as windings. There was even a thick liquid of soap in a pail; it smelled like lavender. The water was warm enough to steam the chilly air.

  He had his shirt—what remained of it—half off his body when he remembered his good manners, and dropped it back over his pallid skin. “Forgive me, my lady,” he said. “I—am not myself.”

  “And little wonder of that,” she responded briskly. She was binding a piece of cloth over her red hair, which was now slung in a loose braid over her shoulder. “You must have help, Lord Myrnin. I am far from shy. Disrobe.”

  “I—” He was utterly at a loss for words, and stared at her until her fiery eyebrows rose. She looked more imperious than any bathing attendant he could imagine. “It’s not fitting that you . . . a queen . . .”

  “A dead queen, well buried, and I never liked her. I’ve discovered quickly enough that this life gives me a freedom I never tasted before. I like it, I think.” She flashed him a full, charming smile this time, and quirked one eyebrow higher. “I’ll turn my back if you give me your oath not to fall and dash your head open on the stones.”

  “I’ll try,” he promised. She politely turned, and he stripped quickly, shocked at the sight of his own skin after so long but glad, so very glad, to have those stiff, evil rags off his body. Getting into the tub was a daunting challenge that he only just managed, and he raised quite a splash at the last as his feet slipped from under him to spill him into the water. It raised a gasp from him, and then a groan.

  “Is your modesty protected, sir?” Lady Grey asked. She sounded as if she had difficulty keeping her laughter in check. Myrnin looked around, grabbed a small washing cloth, and draped it carefully over pertinent areas before he leaned back against the living-skin-warm copper back of the tub.

  “It’s not modesty,” he told her as she turned. “It’s politeness. I shouldn’t like to shock a lady such as yourself.”

  “I am never shocked. Not anymore.” She picked up his rags from the floor, frowned at them, and threw them into a heap in the corner. “Those we’ll burn. Clean clothing will be waiting when you are done. Shall I help you scrub?”

  “No!” He sat up, almost drowning the floor in a wave of water, and pulled the pail of soap closer to scoop a handful out. “No, I will manage. Thank you.”

  “You’ll need assistance with that mange of hair,” she said. “I can help with that, if nothing else.”

  So it was that, despite his worry and discomfort, he found himself soaking his filthy hair beneath the water, then coming up to allow her to slather lavender soap into the tangled mess and scrub with merciless strength. It took a great deal longer than cleaning the rest of him. He no longer worried about his modesty; the bubbles that formed in the water, not to mention the filth clouding the bath, protected him well enough. Lady Grey had an impressive volume of curse words for a wellborn woman, but he thought she enjoyed the challenge more than he enjoyed the sometimes painful scrubbing.

  When she judged him finally fit, she rubbed his hair from wet to damp, helped him stand, and wrapped the bathing sheet around him twice to sop up the water before she helped him out. Everything felt . . . different. His skin felt surprisingly soft, like a newborn’s. His hair was settling into clean waves; he’d forgotten it had that habit.

  Most of all, what felt different was his own mind. Amazing that a little kindness, a little care, had settled his chaos so well.

  Lady Grey was watching him with those striking, lovely eyes. He had no notion of what to say to her, except the obvi
ous. “Thank you, my lady.”

  “My pleasure, my lord,” she said, and curtsied just a bit. He responded with as much of a bow as he could manage in a bathing sheet. “She’s spoken of you often, you know.”

  “She?” Myrnin paused in reaching for the black woolen breeches that she’d set out for him, and blinked at her.

  “Amelie,” Lady Grey said.

  “Amelie?”

  “Our queen. She was concerned for you, and bid me find you. It took a good slice of time, but I am pleased you’re not as daft as I was told.”

  “Daft?”

  “However, you do repeat things quite a bit.”

  “I will bear it in mind.”

  “Please do.” She gave him a look he could not even begin to interpret. “Shall I help you to dress?”

  “No!” He must have sounded as scandalized as she hoped, for she gave him a saucy wink and left the room, closing the heavy oaken door behind her. He almost regretted her departure. She was . . . startling. Beautiful as an angel, tempting as something a great deal farther from heaven. Had Amelie intended for him to . . . No. No, of course not.

  He felt vulnerable in the empty room. It was a hard thing to struggle into the clean clothes, but once he’d fastened them up, he felt far better. She’d even given him red felt shoes, lined with fur and festively embroidered. Amelie must have mentioned his fondness for the exotic.

  Lady Grey was waiting in the hallway. She took him in at a long, sweeping glance, and he bowed again. “Do I meet your approval?”

  “Sirrah, you met my approval when I found you stinking and ill in a dungeon. You are bidding fair to be a heartbreaker now, though I must credit myself for the beauty of your locks.” She winked at him and pulled the maid’s scarf from her head as she walked down the hallway. “Come. Your mistress will want to greet you, now that you’re half yourself again.”

  “Only half?” he murmured.

  “I’ll have a meal waiting when you’re done. I expect that will restore you the rest of the way.” She walked a few steps ahead, then turned toward him, still striding backward in an entirely unladylike manner. “Of course, restore you to what will be the question. Are you really a madman?”