Authors: Nerine Dorman
“I’m not like you,” Etienne said.
“You’re still young enough to believe yourself immortal.”
“You are immortal.”
“You’re wrong there, silly human. My kind can die, but it doesn’t do it as easily as your species. We can wither from lack of nourishment. The sun will slowly reduce us–painfully if I may add–to nothing more than a handful of ashes. If you remove my head, I die. If you drain every last drop of my blood, I die. This existence bonded to matter is not immortality.”
A wave of dizziness made him feel as if he spun on an invisible axis. Perhaps Mantis had gone too far. Perhaps this was the end.
“How much do you need?”
“Enough to make you wish you didn’t have such a generous heart.” Stupid, brave and foolish dwarf.
“Will it hurt?”
“There will be enough pain to make you wish you hadn’t offered.” Trystan’s voice was a whisper. Or he could give the boy enough pleasure to make him swoon for more, develop an unhealthy appetite which would spell his doom.
“Then do it!” Warm skin filled with its salt-rush pressed against Trystan’s lips. The little fool offered his neck. His breath smelled sour with the faint tang of off milk.
“You don’t want it there. I may not be able to stop myself.” In response to the shivering skin so close to his lips, his canines extended and he swallowed in anticipation. It was true, though. With great difficulty he turned his face to the side, resting his cheek against the tree against which he leaned. “Your wrist, Etienne, if you want to see sunrise.”
The boy pulled back and proffered an arm. He hadn’t even asked if the bite would turn him, stupid fool. Brave fool. This close Trystan could make out every pore, was struck by how human skin retained dirt, smelled moist, like seawater.
By comparison, his hand appeared shrunken to the bone, cadaverous, each vein standing in relief like cords connecting the joints.
Etienne let out a small gasp when both Trystan’s hands curled around the stumpy forearm.
“Help me up?” Trystan asked.
The boy’s strength surprised him. Or rather he’d lost so much Essence he had about as much mass as an anorexic beauty queen. He kept his eyes closed long enough for the wiggling bright sparks behind his vision to clear away.
“You okay?” Etienne placed a too-warm hand–his free hand–on Trystan’s shoulder.
A small smile played on Trystan’s lips but he couldn’t blame Etienne for trying. When last had someone willingly offered him blood?
“I’ll be all right. Just need a moment. Try not to squirm. Count to ten slowly. Ten seconds then tap me on the shoulder. I may...I may find this too euphoric to know when to stop. Ten seconds will be long enough for me to get enough to be mobile but not too much to weaken you. If I don’t abide by this agreement, you can still push me away but any longer...and it may be too late.”
Etienne met Trystan’s gaze without flinching. “What are you waiting for?”
Trystan shook his head. “I hope, for your sake, I can stop in time.”
Chapter 41
Blood, Milk and Sky
Arwen wasn’t sure what prompted her to run. Good sense told her to stay with Etienne but what could he do to protect her? What she was certain of was that something big was about to happen, an event so momentous she’d forever curse herself for not being there. A witch learned to trust her gut instinct.
While they’d walked it had been as if she waded through a thick psychic miasma, an aetheric pea soup. Her ears rang with the pressure, a build-up that made her nauseous and set her teeth on edge.
When they’d stopped to argue about whether to find Trystan, the environment had decompressed, as if all the air had exploded out of a burst balloon. She felt it then, like that night she and Helen had attempted the evocation in the cemetery, a sizzling mass of presence dragging at her from the direction of the dam.
Part of her had urged her to be safe, to stay with her friend, but her infernal curiosity had her running toward the shore before Etienne could talk any sense into her.
She ran as fast as she could without tripping. The vamps were only after Helen. She could talk her way out of anything, right? Her blood buzzed through her veins. The vamps wouldn’t see her, her magic worked. She’d sneak up, look, and hope there would be some way she could manipulate circumstances in her favor. Now that the interference had stopped, Trystan would find her if she was with Helen.
This was, also, possibly the single-most irrational thing she’d ever done, but after all the sneaking about she just couldn’t bother anymore.
Warmth lay ahead, like the glow from a fire. There was no other way to describe it, as if the water silently slapping beneath a thin layer of mist, was radioactive.
The woman’s scream of rage was followed by the sounds of a struggle. Then she made out two figures wrestling by the bank, both clad in dark clothes. They rolled on the ground in a parody of lovers in a fierce embrace.
“It’s your fault,” the female raged but the small male beneath her, his peppercorn hair full of leaves and mud, only gargled in response.
His throat had been torn out.
Eleanor had warned her of the “void-hearted bitch.” This had to be her.
“
She will kill you just to spite anyone who may care for you
,” Eleanor had said.
Arwen was glad she’d left Etienne behind–safer, she hoped–but what was she to do? These two fought like a pair of hounds over a choice morsel. Where had Helen gone?
She slowed and melted into a thicket of wild banana, praying no spiders inhabited the fronds. Dancing an arachnoleptic fit right now would not be a good idea.
The dam’s water alarmed her. It had not glowed so when they’d passed by earlier. Already the mist thinned but the green phosphorescence remained in glimmering highlights with each slap of ripples reaching the shore.
Stark branches soared skyward as if they’d pluck at the stars with their black fingers. Damn. Where was Helen?
The female vampire screamed–the cry of a triumphant raptor–and ripped at something the approximate size and shape of a rugby ball. She tossed the object so that it fell with a meaty
thunk
, and rolled to a stop at Arwen’s feet.
She stared at the object for a heartbeat. Something clicked a rapid tattoo and she nudged at the thing with her toe.
A head!
A small shriek escaped before she could collect herself and, as she stumbled, her ankle caught on a projection. Arwen fell onto her side, blind to all save the bulging eyes and snapping fangs that belonged to the small man’s face. His body sprawled more than ten meters away.
Sharp pain bit the soft flesh of her hand as she fell, her blood an iron tang in the air.
“Who’s there?” the raven-haired woman called out.
Ohshitohshitohshit!
Arwen bit her lip to stifle a whimper, not sure of the best course of action. If she attempted to run she’d make too much noise. She could hold perfectly still and pray her invisibility extended to the smell of her own fresh blood mingling with the earth.
She’d expected the woman to approach from the water. Arwen was not prepared for the vice-like grip clamping down on both shoulders, so she was dragged onto her feet. She was spun around and pushed up against the very wild banana with which she’d earlier hoped not to make prolonged contact. Now was not the time to worry about things with more than four legs.
In the dark she couldn’t see what color the woman’s eyes were but they glittered like twin rounds of obsidian. Their wildness was at odds with the fine, oval-shaped face and the lustrous black hair framing it.
The woman’s breath smelled like old blood, her skin musty, reminding Arwen of the python she’d once handled at a traveling snake show. The woman’s skin was as cold. How could Helen not have suspected that Trystan was the same?
“Where is Helen?” The woman’s shriek cut through Arwen’s hearing and her mind, a dual blade which shut down all rational thought.
“I-uh–” Arwen choked. This must be how a rat felt when a cat had it trapped.
The woman shook her hard, so that her head snapped against the trunk. Stars bloomed before her eyes and her teeth clipped her tongue.
“She-she was here by the water. I, uh-came down. She was here, I heard–”
The raven-haired woman hissed, nails breaking Arwen’s skin through her t-shirt, digging into muscle with sharp, sharp nails. Exquisite lances of fire shot through her.
The pain became twofold as the woman brought to bear a psychic assault which left Arwen gasping for air. It felt like someone had wedged a crowbar in at the base of her skull and tried to crack open her head, as if it were no more than an oyster, her brain a quivering mass of gray tissue.
The alien presence rifled through her memories, leaving Arwen’s thoughts in disarray, like so much paper upended to flutter about. She could compare the process to watching reruns of scenes on fast-forward, with particular attention paid to the events of the past two weeks.
When the woman encountered Eleanor, she hissed again and thrust Arwen away so that she fell in an awkward position into a small tree.
The sharp branches and finger-thick thorns bit into her skin. In many places, burning sap came into contact with flesh where skin had been rubbed raw.
A large stave of rusted wrought iron–obviously intended for signage or supporting a plant–protruded from her abdomen. She hadn’t felt it pierce her and it didn’t hurt yet. Did blood always soak through fabric so quickly? If only it were water.
Arwen cupped the wound with her hands, hardly daring to believe this was her life flowing away between her fingers, warm and smelling like the sea. When last had she seen the sea? Shouldn’t she be panicking about now?
“You consort with demons!” the raven-haired woman howled.
Arwen laughed. The woman’s statement was rich, considering she wasn’t even human.
Then the pain rushed through her, blossomed in her gut and traveled up her spine, making her rigid.
The woman advanced, every move liquid, speaking of centuries’ perfection in the art of predation.
It shouldn’t end like this. I’m only sixteen. I’ve never slept with a boy. I didn’t get to finish school. I never found out what I wanted to be one day.
Dozens of similar protests flashed through Arwen’s mind as she watched death approach.
Chapter 42
Bargains
Helen struggled at first, her lungs preparing for that first draught of murky water, which never came. Instead she sprawled in long grass, the scent of bitter herbs staining the air.
Wherever she was, no Southern Cross burned above her. The insects in the brush near her sawed a harsh melody that set her teeth on edge and not one but
three
moons in various phases hung low on the horizon. One was full and bloody and dwarfed its companions.
She patted at her clothes, dry–how? Then she stood, dizzy, not quite trusting that her feet rested on even ground. Some bird gave a subdued, mournful cry, three notes descending in pitch before warbling into silence. Three heartbeats passed before it called again.
A stick snapped, a harsh staccato. She spun around. A boy stood before her, not much older than her. He was tall, angular and dressed in little more than a pair of leather trousers–much patched. Long, dark hair spilled over his shoulders until halfway down his back and he watched her with the same slit eyes she’d looked into moments earlier.
“Who? What?”
He laughed and rubbed at his wiry brown arms as he stepped forward. “Who do you think, what do you think, Helen Ashfield with the soul of ancients?”
“I-I don’t know what to think. What happened? One moment I–”
“Then don’t think, Helen, my bright one.”
“Bijou! She’ll be in danger! I must...” She turned on the spot, searching for a direction to take but with equal knowledge that any course she chose would only plunge her deeper into an unfamiliar landscape, like Alice in Wonderland but without a white rabbit.
The boy regarded her, and tilted his head to one side, examining her as if he’d never seen a human before. And, if there was one thing he wasn’t, it was human. This was a certainty.