11
IT MUST HAVE BEEN AT LEAST FIFTEEN MINUTES BEFORE
the effects wore off, and I began to function again. The first
conclusion I came to was that whatever he’d hit me with had been no
normal Taser. No way in Hell. Ill and shaking, I huddled in the
vibrating trunk and tried to come up with a plan.
I couldn’t shift yet, but before we reached Spokane
I’d be able to. And the zip ties weren’t tight enough to hold the
coyote. The car was newer, and I could see the tab that would
release the trunk. So I wasn’t trapped.
The realization did a lot to stop my panic. No
matter what, I wouldn’t have to face Blackwood.
I relaxed into the floor of the trunk and tried to
figure out why the vampire wanted me badly enough to ruin his
lawyer to get me. It might be that he didn’t value Corban—but I’d
gotten the feeling that their association was of long standing. Was
he trying to take over the Tri-Cities as well as Spokane? Take me
down and hold me hostage to force the wolves to act against
Marsilia?
It had seemed like a possibility ... had it been
just yesterday? But with the warfare between wolf and vampire at an
end in the Tri-Cities, kidnapping me to influence Adam seemed like
a stupid move to make just now. And a vampire who was stupid didn’t
successfully hold a city against all comers. There was a chance,
just barely, that he hadn’t heard what happened. It was that chance
that meant I couldn’t dismiss the theory outright.
And Marsilia was down three of her most powerful
vampires. If he wanted to move against her, now was the time to
strike at her. Kidnapping me wasn’t a strike—it was, at best, an
end run. Especially now that Marsilia had declared a truce with the
wolves. Kidnapping me, I judged, would do nothing except send Adam
to Marsilia with an offer of alliance.
See? It was stupid to take me—if his purpose was to
take over Marsilia’s territory.
Since Blackwood couldn’t be that dumb, and I found
myself indisputably lying in Corban’s trunk, I was inclined to
think we had been wrong about Blackwood’s intentions.
So what did he want with me?
It could be as simple as pride. He’d claimed me as
food—maybe as he claimed anyone who came to Amber’s house. Then
Stefan came along and took me from him.
The theory had the benefit of conforming to the
KISS principle—Keep It Simple, Stupid. It meant that Blackwood
didn’t have anything to do with Chad’s ghost. It supposed that it
was sheer dumb bad luck that I had gone blithely into his hunting
ground when I went to Amber’s to look for a ghost.
Vampires are arrogant and territorial. It was not
only possible but probable that having fed from me, he would
believe I belonged to him. If he was possessive enough—and his
holding the city for himself presupposed that Blackwood was very
possessive—it was entirely reasonable that he would send a minion
to fetch me.
It was a neat, simple solution, and it didn’t
depend upon my being anything special. Ego, Bran liked to say, got
in the way of truth more often than anything else.
Trouble was, it still didn’t quite fit.
Being alone in the trunk with nothing better to do
gave me time to analyze the whole thing. From the beginning,
Amber’s first approach had bothered me. Upon reflection, it struck
me as even more wrong. The Amber with whom I’d had a water fight,
who gave dinner parties for her husband’s clients, would be neither
so thoughtless or gauche as to approach me to help her with a ghost
because she’d read about my rape—the rape of a near stranger,
really, after all these years—in the newspaper.
I hadn’t seen her in a long time. But, in
retrospect, there had been an awkwardness in her manner that was
unlike either the woman she’d been or the one she’d grown to be. It
might have been explained by the odd situation, but I thought it
more probable that she’d been sent.
Which left the question, why did Blackwood want
me?
What could he have known about me before he
required me to travel to Amber’s?
The newspapers announced that I was dating a
werewolf. Amber knew I saw ghosts. I sucked in a deep breath—she
also knew I’d been raised with a foster family in Montana until I
was sixteen. It wasn’t something I’d kept hidden—just the part
about my foster family being werewolves, except that time when I
was drunk.
But among the werewolves, the knowledge of the
walker, the coyote shapeshifter, who’d been raised by Bran, was
well-known. So say that he didn’t know anything about me until the
newspaper articles. Say Amber looked at the newspaper, and said,
“Goodness—I know her. I wonder if she might not be useful helping
us deal with our ghost. She said she could see ghosts.”
Blackwood said to himself, “Hmm. A girl whose
boyfriend is the Alpha of the Tri-Cities. A girl with an affinity
for ghosts.” And being much older than me, he might have known more
about walkers than I did. So he put two and two together and got,
“Hey, I wonder if she might not be that walker who was raised by
Bran a few years ago.” So he asked Amber if I was from Montana. And
she told him I was raised by a foster family there.
Maybe he wanted something from a walker. Here I had
an uncomfortable moment remembering Stefan telling me about the
Master of Milan, who was addicted to the blood of werewolves. But
Stefan had taken blood from me and hadn’t seemed to be much
affected by it. Anyway, suppose Blackwood wanted a walker and so he
sent Amber to find me and persuade me to come to Spokane.
I didn’t like it as well as the KISS theory. But
that was mostly because it meant that he wouldn’t quit hunting me
just because I’d escaped from this car. It meant that he’d just
keep coming until he got what he wanted—or he was killed.
It fit what I knew. Walkers are rare. If there are
other walkers around, I’ve never met one. So if he figured out what
I was, and he wanted one, it would be logical for him to come after
me. The question it left me was, What did he want with a
walker?
The tingling in my arms and legs had faded and left
only a dogged ache behind. It was time to escape ... and then I
really thought about what Corban had said: “He has Chad.”
Corban had kidnapped me because Blackwood had Chad.
I wondered what Blackwood would do if Corban came back, and I’d
escaped him.
Maybe he’d just send him out again. But I
remembered Marsilia’s indifference when she’d ordered Estelle’s man
killed ... when she’d killed all of Stefan’s people. She was hurt
that he was still angry with her after he’d figured out what she
had done. Maybe she had no understanding of Stefan’s attachment to
his people ... because humans were food.
Maybe Blackwood would simply kill Chad.
I couldn’t take that chance.
Abruptly, the sharp edge of terror made itself at
home in my innards because I really was trapped. I couldn’t escape,
not when it could mean that Chad would die.
Dry-mouthed, I tried to sort out my tools. There
was the fairy staff, of course. It wasn’t there at the moment, but
eventually it would come to me. It was accounted by the fae to be a
powerful artifact—if only vampires were afraid of sheep.
I couldn’t find the pack or Adam. Samuel had said
that the connections would reset. He hadn’t given me a timeline—and
I hadn’t been anxious to repeat the experience, so I hadn’t asked.
Adam said that distance made the connection thinner.
I remembered that Samuel had once run all the way
to Texas to escape his father ... and it had worked. But Spokane
was a lot closer to the Tri-Cities than Texas was to Montana. So
maybe if I stalled Blackwood long enough, I could call the whole
pack in to save me—again.
After dark, and it would soon be after dark, there
was Stefan. I could call to him, and he’d come to me, just as he
had when Marsilia had asked me to do it—but I’d have to do it
before Blackwood forced me to exchange blood with him again. I
assumed that what had worked to break Blackwood’s hold would work
in the reverse.
And, as with calling in the pack, I would only be
calling him in to die. If he didn’t judge himself to be a match for
Blackwood—and he hadn’t—I could only accept his opinion. He knew
more about Blackwood than I did.
If I left, I left a boy I liked to die at the hands
of a monster. If I stayed ... I would be putting myself in the
hands of a monster. The Monster.
Maybe he didn’t intend to kill me. I could make
myself believe that easily. Less easy to dismiss was the already
demonstrated desire of his to make me his puppet.
I could always leave. I shifted and told
myself that it was because I didn’t want to face Blackwood while I
was tied up and helpless. As coyote I wiggled out of the bonds and
gag, then I shifted back, got dressed, and fingered the release tab
on the trunk’s lock.
So I rode in the trunk of Corban’s car all the way
to Spokane. When the car slowed and left the smooth growl of the
interstate for the stop and go of city traffic, I straightened my
clothes. My fingers touched a stick ... the silver-and-wood staff
was tucked under my cheek. I stroked it because it made me feel
better.
“You’d better hide yourself, my pretty,” I murmured
in a fake pirate accent. “Or you’ll be put in his treasure room and
never let see the light of day.”
Something under my ear chimed, we took a hard
corner, and I lost track of where the staff was. I hoped it had
listened to me and left. It wouldn’t be much help against a
vampire, and I didn’t want it to come to harm while it was in my
care.
“Now you’re talking to inanimate objects,” I said
out loud. “And believing they are listening to you. Get a grip,
Mercy.”
The car slowed to a crawl, then stopped. I heard
the clang of chain and metal on pavement, then the car moved slowly
forward. It sounded like Blackwood’s gates were a little more
upscale than Marsilia’s. Did vampires worry about things like
that?
I rolled up, crossed my legs, and bent over until
my chin rested on my heels. When Corban opened the trunk, I simply
sat up. It must have looked as though I’d been doing it all along.
I hoped that it would draw his attention away from the contents of
the trunk, so he wouldn’t notice the staff. If it was still in
there at all.
“Blackwood has Chad?” I asked him.
His mouth opened, but no sound came out.
“Look,” I said, climbing out of the trunk with less
grace than I’d planned. Damned Taser or stun gun or whatever it had
been. “We don’t have much time. I need to know what the situation
is. You said he had Chad. Exactly what did he tell you to do? Did
he tell you why he wanted me?”
“He has Chad,” Corban said. He closed his eyes, and
his face flushed red—like a weight lifter after a great effort. His
voice came slowly. “I get you when you are alone. No one around.
Not your roommate. Not your boyfriend. He would tell me when. I
bring you back. My son lives.”
“What does he want me for?” I asked, while
still absorbing that Blackwood had known when I was alone. I
couldn’t believe someone could have been following me—even if I
hadn’t detected them, there was still Adam and Samuel.
He shook his head. “Don’t know.” He reached out and
grabbed my wrist. “I have to take you now.”
“Fine,” I said, and my heart rate doubled. Even
now, I thought with a quick glance at the gate and the ten-foot
stone walls. Even now I could break away and run. But there
was Chad.
“Mercy,” he said, forcing his voice. “One more
thing. He wanted me to tell you about Chad. So you would
come.”
Just because you knew it was a trap didn’t mean you
could stay out if the bait was good enough. With a ragged sigh, I
decided that one deaf boy with the courage to face down a ghost
should inspire me to a tenth of his courage.
My course laid out, I took a good look at the
geography of Blackwood’s trap for me. It was dark, but I can see in
the dark.
Blackwood’s house was smaller than Adam‘s, smaller
even than Amber’s, though it was meticulously crafted out of
warm-colored stone. The grounds encompassed maybe five or six acres
of what had once been a garden of roses. But it had been a few
years since any gardener had touched these.
He would have another house, I thought. One
suitably grand with a professional garden and lawn service that
kept it beautiful. There he would receive his business
guests.
This place, with its neglected and overgrown
gardens, was his home. What did it tell me about him? Other than
that he liked quality over size and preferred privacy to beauty or
order.
The walls surrounding the grounds were older than
the house, made of quarried stone and hand laid without mortar. The
gate was wrought iron and ornate. His house wasn’t really small—it
just looked undersized for the presentation it was given. Doubtless
the house it had replaced had been huge and better suited to the
property, if not to the vampire.
Corban paused in front of the door. “Run if you
can,” he said. “It isn’t right ... not your problem.”
“Blackwood has made it my problem,” I told him. I
walked in front of him and pushed open the door. “Hey, honey, I’m
home,” I announced in my best fifties-movie-starlet voice. Kyle, I
felt, would have approved of the voice, but not the wardrobe. My
shirt was going on a day and a half, the jeans ... I didn’t
remember how long I’d been wearing the jeans. Not much
longer than the shirt.
The entryway was empty. But not for long.
“Mercedes Thompson, my dear,” said the vampire.
“Welcome to my home at long last.” He glanced at Corban. “You have
served. Go rest, my dear guest.”
Corban hesitated. “Chad?”
The vampire had been looking at me like I was
something that delighted him ... maybe he needed some breakfast.
Corban’s interruption caused a flash of irritation to sweep briefly
across his face. “Have you not completed the mission I gave you?
What harm could the boy come to if that is true? Now go
rest.”
I let all thoughts of Corban drift from me. His
fate, his son’s fate ... Amber’s fate were beyond my control right
now. I could afford only to concentrate on the here and now.
It was a trick Bran had taught to us all on our
first hunt. Not to worry about what had been or what would be, just
the now. Not what a human might feel knowing she’d killed a rabbit
that had never done her any harm. That she’d killed it with teeth
and claws, and eaten it raw with relish ... including parts her
human side would rather have not known were inside a soft and fuzzy
bunny.
So I forgot about the bunny, about what the results
of tonight might be, and focused on the here and now. I forced back
the panic that wanted to stop my breath and thought, Here and
now.
The vampire had given up his business suit. Like
most of the vampires I’d met, he was more comfortable in clothing
of other eras. Werewolves learn to go with the times so they don’t
fall into the temptation of living in the past.
I can place women’s fashions of the past hundred
years within about ten years, and before that to the nearest
century. Men’s clothing not so much, especially when they are not
formal clothes. The button fly on his cotton pants told me it was
before zippers were used much. His shirt was dark brown with a
tunic neck that would allow it to be pulled over his head, so there
were no buttons on it.
Know your prey, Bran had told us.
Observe.
“James Blackwood,” I said. “You know, when Corban
introduced us, I couldn’t believe my ears.”
He smiled, pleased. “I scared you.” But then he
frowned. “You are not frightened now.”
Rabbit, I thought hard. And made the mistake
of meeting his eyes the way I had that little bunny’s so long
ago—as I had Aurielle’s last night. But neither Aurielle nor the
bunny had been a vampire.
I WOKE UP TUCKED INTO A TWIN-SIZED BED, AND, NO
MATTER how hard I tried, I couldn’t see beyond that moment when
he’d met my eyes. The room was mostly dark, with no sign of a
window to be seen. The only light came from a night-light plugged
into a wall socket next to a door.
I threw back the covers and saw that he’d stripped
me to my panties. Shuddering, I dropped to my knees ... remembering
... remembering other things.
“Tim is dead,” I said, and the sound came out in a
growl worthy of Adam. And once I’d heard it and knew it for a fact,
I realized I didn’t smell of sex the way that Amber had. I did,
however, smell of blood. I reached up to my neck and found the
first set of bite marks, the second, and a new third just a
centimeter to the left of the second.
Stefan’s had healed.
I shook a little in relief that it wasn’t worse,
then a little more in anger that didn’t quite hide how frightened I
was. But relief and anger wouldn’t leave me helpless in the middle
of a panic attack.
The door was locked, and he had left me with
nothing to pick it with. The light switch worked, but it didn’t
show me anything I hadn’t seen. A plastic bin that held only my
jeans and T-shirt. There was a quarter and the letter for Stefan in
my pants pockets, but he’d taken the pair of screws I’d collected
while trying to fix the woman’s clutch at the rest stop on the way
to Amber’s house.
The bed was a stack of foam mattress pads that
would yield nothing I could make into weapon or tool.
“His prey never escapes,” whispered a voice in my
ear.
I froze where I knelt beside the bed. There was no
one else in the room with me.
“I should know,” it ... he said. “I’ve watched them
try.”
I turned slowly around but saw nothing ... but the
smell of blood was growing stronger.
“Was it you at the boy’s house?” I asked.
“Poor boy,” said the voice sadly, but it was more
solid now. “Poor boy with the yellow car. I wish I had a yellow car
...”
Ghosts are odd things. The trick would be getting
all the information I could without driving it away by asking
something that conflicted with its understanding of the world. This
one seemed pretty cognizant for a ghost.
“Do you follow Blackwood’s orders?” I asked.
I saw him. Just for an instant. A young man above
sixteen but not yet twenty wearing a red flannel shirt and
button-up canvas pants.
“I’m not the only one who must do as he tells,” the
voice said, though the apparition just stared at me without moving
its lips.
And he was gone before I could ask him where Chad
and Corban were ... or if Amber was here. I should have asked
Corban. All that my nose told me was that the air-filtration system
he had on his HVAC system was excellent, and the filter had been
dosed lightly with cinnamon oil. I wondered if that had been done
on my account, or if he just liked cinnamon.
The things in the room—plastic bin and bed, pillow
and bedding, were brand-new. So were the paint and the
carpet.
I pulled on my shirt and pants, regretting the
underwire bra he’d taken. I could maybe have managed something with
the underwire. I’ve jimmied my share of car door locks and a few
house locks along the way as well. The shoes I didn’t mind so
much.
Someone knocked tentatively at the door. I hadn’t
heard anyone walking. Maybe it was the ghost.
The scrape of a lock and the door opened. Amber
opened the door, and said, “Silly, Mercy. Why did you lock yourself
in?” Her voice was as light as her smile, but something wild lurked
behind her eyes. Something very close to a wolf.
Vampire? I wondered. I’d met one of Stefan’s
menagerie who was well on his way to vampirehood. Or maybe it was
just the part of Amber who knew what was going on.
“I didn’t,” I told her. “Blackwood did.” She
smelled funny, but the cinnamon kept me from pinpointing it.
“Silly,” she said again. “Why would he do that?”
Her hair looked as if she hadn’t combed it since the last time I’d
seen her, and her striped shirt was buttoned one button off.
“I don’t know,” I told her.
But she had changed subjects already. “I have
dinner ready. You’re supposed to join us for dinner.”
“Us?”
She laughed, but there was no smile in her eyes,
just a trapped beast growing wild with frustration. “Why Corban,
Chad, and Jim, of course.”
She turned to lead the way, and I noticed she was
limping badly.
“Are you hurt?” I asked her.
“No, why do you ask?”
“Never mind,” I said gently, because I’d noticed
something else. “Don’t worry about it.”
She wasn’t breathing.
Here and now, I counseled myself. No fear,
no rage. Just observation: know your enemy. Rot. That’s what I’d
been smelling: that first hint that a steak’s been in the fridge
too long.
She was dead and walking, but she wasn’t a ghost.
The word that occurred to me was zombie.
Vampires, Stefan had once told me, have different
talents. He and Marsilia could vanish and reappear somewhere else.
There were vampires who could move things without touching
them.
This one had power over the dead. Ghosts who obeyed
him. No one escapes, he’d told me. Not even in death.
I followed Amber up a long flight of stairs to the
main floor of the house. We arrived in a broad swath of space that
was both dining room, kitchen, and living room. It was daylight ...
morning from the position of the sun—maybe ten o’clock or so. But
it was dinner that was set at the table. A roast—pork, my nose
belatedly told me—sat splendidly adorned with roasted carrots and
potatoes. A pitcher of ice water, a bottle of wine, and a loaf of
sliced homemade bread.
The table was big enough to seat eight, but there
were only five chairs. Corban and Chad were sitting next to each
other, with their backs to us on the only side set with two places.
The remaining three chairs were obviously of the same set, but one,
the one opposite Corban and Chad, had a padded backrest and
arms.
I sat down next to Chad.
“But, Mercy, that’s my place,” Amber said.
I looked at the boy’s tear-stained face and
Corban’s blank one ... He, at least, was still breathing. “Hey, you
know I like kids,” I told her. “You get him all the time.”
Blackwood still hadn’t arrived. “Does Jim speak
ASL?” I asked Amber.
Her face went blank. “I can’t answer any questions
about Jim. You’ll have to ask him.” She blinked a couple of times,
then she smiled at someone just behind me.
“No, I don’t,” said Blackwood.
“You don’t speak ASL?” I looked over my
shoulder—not incidentally letting Chad see my lips. “Me either. It
was one of those things I always meant to learn.”
“Indeed.” I’d amused him, it seems.
He sat down in the armchair and gestured to Amber
to take the other.
“She’s dead,” I told him. “You broke her.”
He went very still. “She serves me still.”
“Does she? Looks more like a puppet. I bet she’s
more work and trouble dead than she was alive.” Poor Amber.
But I couldn’t let him see my grief. Focus on this room and
survival. “So why do you keep her around when she’s broken?”
Without allowing him time to answer, I bowed my head and said a
quiet prayer over the food ... and asked for help and wisdom while
I was at it. I didn’t get an answer, but I had the feeling someone
might be listening—and I hoped it wasn’t just the ghost.
THE VAMPIRE WAS STARING AT ME WHEN I
FINISHED.
“Bad manners, I know,” I said, taking a slice of
bread and buttering it. It smelled good, so I put it down on the
plate in front of Chad with a thumbs-up sign. “But Chad can’t pray
out loud for the rest of us. Amber is dead, and Corban ...” I
tilted my head to look at Chad’s father, who hadn’t moved since I’d
come into the room except for the gentle rise and fall of his
chest. “Corban’s not in any shape to pray, and you’re a vampire.
God’s not going to listen to anything you have to say.”
I took a second slice of bread and buttered
it.
Unexpectedly, the vampire threw back his head and
laughed, his fangs sharp and ... pointy. I tried not to think of
them in my neck.
It wasn’t nearly as creepy as Amber laughing right
along with him. A cold hand touched the back of my neck and was
gone—but not before someone whispered, “Careful,” in my ear. I
hated it when ghosts snuck up on me.
Chad grabbed my knee, his eyes widening. Had he
seen the ghost? I shook my head at him while Blackwood wiped his
dry eyes with his napkin.
“You have always been something of a scamp, haven’t
you?” Blackwood said. “Tell me, did Tag ever discover who it was
that stole all of his shoelaces?”
His words slipped inside me like a knife, and I did
my best not to react.
Tag was a wolf in Bran’s pack. He’d never left
Montana, and only he and I knew about the shoelace incident. He’d
found me hiding from Bran’s wrath—I don’t remember what I’d
done—and when I wouldn’t come on my own he’d taken off his
bootlaces and made a collar and leash out of them for coyote me.
Then he’d dragged me through Bran’s house to the study.
He knew who’d stolen his shoelaces all right. And
until I left for Portland, I’d given him shoelaces every
holiday—and he’d laugh.
No way any of Bran’s wolves were spying for the
vampires.
I hid my thoughts with a couple of mouthfuls of
bread. When I could swallow, I said, “Great bread, Amber. Did you
make it yourself?” Nothing I could say about the shoelaces struck
me as useful. So I changed the subject to food. Amber could always
be counted upon to talk about nutrition. Death wouldn’t change
that.
“Yes,” she told me. “All whole grains. Jim has
taken me for his cook and housekeeper. If only I hadn’t ruined it
for him.” Yeah, poor Jim. Amber had forced him to kill her—so he
wouldn’t get a new cook.
“Hush,” Blackwood said.
I turned my head so I sort of faced Blackwood.
“Yeah,” I said. “That won’t work anymore. Even a human nose is
going to smell rotting flesh in a few days. Not what you want in a
cook. Not that you need a cook.” I took another bite of
bread.
“So how long have you been watching me?” I
asked.
“I’d despaired of ever finding another walker,” he
told me. “Imagine my joy when I heard that the Marrok had taken one
under his wing.”
“Yeah, well,” I said, “it wouldn’t have worked very
well for you if I’d stayed.” Ghosts, I thought. He’d used ghosts to
watch me.
“I’m not worried about werewolves,” said Blackwood.
“Did Corban or Amber tell you what my business is?”
“Nope. Your name never crossed their lips once you
were gone.” It was the truth, but I saw his mouth tighten. He
didn’t like that. Didn’t like his pets not paying attention to him.
It was the first sign of weakness I’d seen. I wasn’t sure if it
would be useful or not. But I’d take what I could get.
Know your enemy.
“I deal with ... specialty ammunition,” he said,
looking at me through narrowed eyes. “Most of it top secret
government stuff. I have, for instance, been very successful with a
variety of ammunition designed for killing werewolves. I have,
among other things, a silver version of the old Black Talon. Silver
is a lousy metal for bullets; it doesn’t expand well. Instead of
mushrooming, this one opens up like a flower.” He spread his hand
so it looked like a starfish.
“And then there are those very interesting
tranquilizer darts of Gerry Wallace’s design. Now that was a
surprise. I’d never have thought of DMSO as a delivery system for
the silver—or a tranquilizer gun as a delivery system. But then,
his father was a vet. This is why tools may be useful.”
“You knew Gerry Wallace?” I asked, because I
couldn’t help it. I took another bite as if my stomach weren’t
clenched, so he wouldn’t think that the answer mattered too
much.
“He came to me first,” Blackwood said. “But it
didn’t suit me to do as he asked ... the Marrok is a bit larger
target than I wanted to take on.” He smiled apologetically. “I am
essentially a lazy creature, so my maker used to say. I sent Gerry
on his way with an idea about building a superweapon against
werewolves in some convoluted scheme sure to fail and no memory of
coming to me at all. Imagine my surprise when the boy actually came
up with something interesting.” He smiled gently at me.
“You need to watch Bran closer,” I told him. I
grabbed a pitcher of water and poured it. “He’s more subtle, and it
makes that omniscient thing work better for him. If you tell
everyone everything you know, they don’t wonder about things you
don’t tell them. Bran...” I shrugged. “You just know he
knows what you’re thinking.”
“Amber,” said the vampire. “Make sure your husband
and the boy who is not his son eat their dinner, would you?”
“Of course.”
Chad’s cold hand on my knee squeezed very tight.
“You say that like it’s a revelation,” I told Blackwood. “You need
to work on your verbal ammunition, too. Corban has always known
that Chad’s not his biological son. That doesn’t matter to him at
all. Chad’s still his son.”
The stem of the water glass the vampire was holding
broke. He set the pieces very carefully on his empty plate. “You
aren’t afraid enough of me,” he said very carefully. “Perhaps it is
time to instruct you further.”
“Fine,” I said. “Thank you for the meal, Amber.
Take care of yourselves, Corban and Chad.”
I stood up and lifted an inquiring eyebrow.
He thought it was stupidity that I wasn’t afraid of
him. But if you shiver in fear in a pack of werewolves, that’s
really stupid. If you’re scared enough, even a wolf with
good control starts having problems. If his control isn’t
strong—well, let’s just say that I learned to be very good at
burying my fear.
Pushing Blackwood wasn’t stupid either. If he’d
killed me the first time—well, at least it would have been a quick
death. But the longer he let it go on, the more I knew he needed
me. I couldn’t imagine for what—but he needed me for
something.
My bad luck he was taking it on as a challenge. I
wondered what he thought would scare me more than Amber before I
caught a good tight hold on my thoughts. There was no future, just
the vampire and me standing by the table.
“Come,” he said, and led the way back down the
stairway.
“How is it that you can walk in the daylight?” I
asked him. “I’ve never heard of a vampire who could run around
during the day.”
“You are what you eat,” he said obscurely. “My
maker used to say that. Mann ist was mann ißt. She wouldn’t
let me feed off drunkards or people who consumed tobacco.” He
laughed, and I wouldn’t let myself think of it as sinister. “Amber
reminds me a bit of her ... so concerned with nutrition. Neither of
them was wrong. But my maker didn’t understand the full
implications of what she said.” He laughed again. “Until I consumed
her.”
The door to the room I’d awoken in was open. He
stopped and turned off the light as we passed. “Mustn’t waste
electricity.”
And then he opened another door to a much bigger
room. A room of cages. It smelled like sewage, disease, and death.
Most of the cages were empty. But there was a man curled naked in
the floor of one of the cages.
“You see, Mercedes,” he said, “you aren’t the first
rare creature to be my guest. This is an oakman. I’ve had him for
... How long have you belonged to me, Donnell Greenleaf?”
The fae stirred and raised his face off the cement
floor. Once he must have been a formidable figure. Oakmen, I
remembered from the old book I’d borrowed, were not tall, no more
than four feet, but they were stout “as a good oaken table.” This
one was little more than skin and bones.
In a voice as dry as high summer in the Tri-Cities,
he said, “Four-score years and a dozen and one. Two seasons more
and eighteen days.”
“Oakmen,” said Blackwood smugly, “like the oaks
they are named after, eat only the sunlight.”
You are what you eat indeed.
“I’ve never tried to see if I could live on light,”
he said. “But he keeps me from burning, don’t you, Donnell
Greenleaf?”
“It is my honor to bear that burden,” said the fae
in a hopeless voice, his face to the floor.
“So you kidnapped me so you could turn into a
coyote?” I asked incredulously.
The vampire just smiled and escorted me to a
largish cage, with a bed. There was also a bucket from which the
odor of sewage was emanating. It smelled like Corban, Chad, and
Amber.
“I can keep you alive for a long time,” the vampire
said. He grabbed me by the back of my neck and shoved my face
against the cage while he stood behind me. “Maybe even all of your
natural life. What? No smart comment?”
He didn’t see the faint figure that stood before me
with her finger over her pursed mouth. She looked as if she’d been
somewhere between sixty and a hundred years old when she’d
died—like Santa’s wife, she was all rounded and sweet.
Quiet, that finger said. Or maybe, just—Don’t let on you
can see me.
Blackwood didn’t see her, even though he had been
using the other ghost as an errand boy. I wondered what it meant.
She smelled like blood, too.
He put me in the cage next to the one that he had
been keeping Chad and Corban in. Presumably he didn’t need to
confine Amber anymore. “This could have been so much more pleasant
for you,” he said.
The woman and her hushing finger were gone, so I
gave my tongue free rein. “Tell that to Amber.”
He smiled, showing fangs. “She enjoyed it. I’ll
give you one last chance. Be cooperative, and I’ll let you stay in
the other room.”
Maybe I could get out through the roof of the other
room. But somehow I didn’t think so. The cage in the Marrok’s house
looks just like all the rest of the bedrooms. The bars are set
behind the drywall.
I leaned against the far side of my cage, the one
that backed up to the cement outer wall. “Tell me why you can’t
just order me around? Make me cooperate?” Like Corban.
He shrugged. “You figure it out.” He locked the
door with a key and used the same key to open the oakman’s
door.
The fae whimpered as he was dragged out of the
cage. “I can’t feed from you every day, Mercy,” Blackwood said.
“Not if I want to keep you around. The last walker I had died fifty
years ago—but I kept him for sixty-three years. I take care of what
is mine.”
Yeah, I bet Amber would agree with that one.
Blackwood knelt on the floor where the oakman lay
curled in a fetal position. The fae was staring at me with large
black eyes. He didn’t fight when Blackwood—with a look meant for
me—grabbed his leg and bit down on the artery in the fae’s groin to
feed.
“The oak said,” the fae said in English-accented
Welsh, “Mercy would free me in the Harvest season.”
I stared at him, and he smiled before the vampire
did something painful to him and he closed his eyes to endure. If
he’d understood Welsh, I was sure he’d have done something more
extreme. How the oakman knew I’d understand him, I didn’t
know.
There are two ways to free a prisoner—escape is the
first. I had the feeling that the oakman was looking for the
second.
When he finished, the oakman was barely conscious,
and Blackwood looked a dozen years younger. Vampires weren’t
supposed to do that—but I didn’t know any vampires who fed from fae
either. He picked up the oakman with no visible effort and tossed
him over his shoulder. “Let’s get you a little sun, shall we?”
Blackwood sounded cheery.
The door to the room closed behind him, and a
woman’s trembly voice said, “It’s because you’re too much for him
right now, dear. He did try to make you his servant ... but your
ties to the wolves and to that other vampire—and how did you
manage that, clever girl?—have blocked him. It won’t be forever.
Eventually, he’ll exchange enough blood for you to be his—but not
for a few months yet.”
Mrs. Claus ghost stood in the cage with her back to
me, looking at the door that had closed behind Blackwood.
“What does he want from me?” I asked her.
She turned and smiled at me. “Why, me,
dear.”
She had fangs.
“You’re a vampire,” I said.
“I was,” she agreed. “It isn’t the usual thing, I
admit. Though that young man you met earlier is one as well. We’re
tied to James. Both his. John was the only vampire James ever
made—and I blush to admit that James is my fault.”
“Your fault?”
“He was always so kind, so attentive. A nice young
man, I thought. Then one night one of my other children showed me
the murdhuacha James had captured—one of the merrow folk, dear.”
That faint accent was Cockney or Irish, I thought, but so faint I
couldn’t be sure.
“Well,” she said, sounding exasperated. “We just
don’t do that, dear. First off—the fae aren’t a people to toy with.
Secondly, whatever we exchange blood with could become vampire.
When they’re magical folk, the results can be unpleasant.” She
shook her head. “Well, when I confronted him...” She looked down at
herself ruefully. “He killed me. I haunted him, followed him from
home all the way to here—which wasn’t the smartest idea I’ve ever
had. When he took that other man, the one who was like you—well,
then he saw me. And found he still had use for this old
woman.”
I had no idea why she was telling me so much—unless
she was lonely. I almost felt sorry for her.
Then she licked her lips, and said, “I could
help you.”
Vampires are evil. It was almost as if the
Marrok himself were whispering in my ear.
I raised an eyebrow.
“If you feed me, I’ll tell you what to do.” She
smiled, her fangs carefully concealed. “Just a drop or two, love.
I’m only a ghost—it wouldn’t take much.”