Bloodwitch (20 page)

That was why he had died.
I
was why he had died. That whispering … had it actually been my own power, or had it been the contagion, seeking release?

“And after that?” I asked.

“Madness, when it reaches the brain,” he answered. “Screaming. We put them out then. Mistress Jeshickah told us to suffocate them, to make sure none of the blood was spilled.”

And this is my fault?

“How many so far?”

“I will be number twelve.”

“How can you be so calm?” I whispered. “Don’t you care?”

He frowned a little before asking, “Why?”

“If we can’t cure this, you are going to
die
,” I said. “Insane and in agony, by the sound of it. You don’t seem afraid. I’m terrified. Please, tell me why you’re not.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I don’t know how to answer that.”

Those were the exact words Elisabeth had used when I had asked her what it meant for a slave to prove herself.

Malachi’s eyes opened. He drew a deep, ragged breath before saying to me, “Vance, you’re talking to a slave in Midnight. Whether he was born here or born free and then broken in these cells, the spark of free will required for one to care about self-preservation has been stripped from him. He doesn’t care because he has nothing to care about.”

“That’s …”
Felix. Elisabeth
. Jaguar had been so insistent that they didn’t mind.

I had been so willing to
believe
him. If Malachi was right, then in a way Jaguar had been honest. They didn’t mind, because they weren’t allowed to. They didn’t know
how
to.

“That’s what trainers
do
,” Malachi said with a shiver. “At least it’s easier to move around through the dreamscape when there isn’t a spark of self-awareness to interfere.”

“What did you learn?” I asked hollowly. “Can you cure it?”

“Her fever dreams are the same as the blood dreams I had the misfortune of finding when I searched for you mentally,” he answered. “The first fever is probably a side
effect of the magic taking hold. The body comes to terms with it for a while, so the illness seems to go dormant, but humans don’t naturally have magic. They can’t sustain it. I’ll examine you next,” he said, speaking to Joseph, “but I suspect that the magic in you is almost gone. Give me your arm.”

Joseph did so without asking questions. I was the only one who yelped when Malachi used the knife Jeshickah had given him to cut across the back of Joseph’s forearm.

The blood that spilled onto the dusty floor was a sickly orange color, with bits of gray-white pus floating in it like dead insects drawn to rotten fruit. I gagged, pushing myself away. Even Joseph, staring at the diseased fluid trickling out of his own body, looked disturbed.

“Magic is the only thing keeping you alive,” Malachi said. “Blood magic is also fire magic, so the sun probably sustains it. When the sun sets the last of the magic dies, and your body has to try to function using
that
.” He pointed to the growing puddle on the floor.

Joseph continued to stare. He didn’t ask any of the questions I would have asked, but neither could he pull his eyes away from the wound.

“Sorry,” Malachi said to Joseph. “Let me take a quick look to confirm, and then I’ll make you more comfortable.”

Why did neither of them bother to put a hand to stanch the flow of that … I couldn’t think of it as blood. It wasn’t blood. It was more like bile, and it kept dripping slowly,
clumping and congealing on the dirt as Malachi closed his eyes again to search Joseph’s power.

My heart began to beat wildly. It was so
wrong
. This was all wrong.

I couldn’t have done this.

I looked from one sick human to the other. My fault. I couldn’t have known. The Azteka had told me … had Yaretzi told the vampires to feed on me? Not directly, but she had led Jaguar in that direction, while remaining vague enough that he would trust her motivations.

She knew what would happen
.

I was sure of it. She knew how this power worked. And she hadn’t just known what would happen when she came to “save” me, in that act of mercy that had so confused Malachi. She had known when we first met in the woods. She had established that I wanted to return to Midnight—that I was
loyal
to Midnight—and then she had given me to them. She had only saved my life later to ensure that the plan progressed.

Had Malachi known, too? He had said he would try to rescue me, but maybe that had been a ruse so he could stay close and track all these events. Now he was trying to save his own life, theoretically, but in reality he had yet to say he could do anything to help.

Malachi had said, more than once, that he and others manipulated me—easily and frequently.

Well, I was sick of it.

I didn’t want to die because strangers had decided to maneuver me into a position where I would become a plague to everyone around me, humans and vampires alike.

Of course, I didn’t have much say in my fate now, did I? I was locked down here in this tomb, with a man who may or may not have been involved in organizing this disaster and two humans who might as well already have been dead.

I leaned my forehead against the cold wall again and tried to bring my mind back to the lush jungle I had found in my head before, but it was so hard to put myself there when all my fears and doubts and despair were right here, locked in with me.

A wet snap made me jump. I twisted about to see Joseph slump with a broken neck.

Malachi set the dead human down gently as I shouted, “What are you
doing
?”

“Making him more comfortable, like I said I would,” Malachi replied. “Or would you prefer to wait until he was screaming in pain and madness?”

“How could you … you …” I understood
what
he had done, but not
how
. How could he, with his bare hands, have broken bone and sinew such that the poor, hollow-eyed human’s life ended in a blink? How could he stand it?

How many times had he killed?

“Am I next?” I asked.

“I very much hope not,” he answered. “Unfortunately, that decision is probably going to be left to Jeshickah. I
can’t do anything down here. This doesn’t seem to be a complicated spell, but that doesn’t mean I can do anything about it. The only thing I can tell is that there isn’t any observable connection between the infected humans and the trainers. Whatever poison has passed to them, it is working on its own now. The humans it infected along the way were rats carrying plague, nothing more.”

“The pochteca knew this would happen,” I said, sharing my suspicions and watching his face to try to determine whether he was involved, too.

Malachi shrugged. “Maybe they did. Mysterious are the ways of the Azteka.”

“They must have. That’s why she saved my life.”

“I considered that,” Malachi said, “but if the Azteka knew the blood of one of their witches could cause this kind of destruction in Midnight, they would have made up an excuse to sell one of their own in long ago. They would have sent someone who would be able to manipulate the situation and who would make sure to infect Jeshickah.”

“Unless they hesitated to sacrifice one of their own but had no such compunction about sending me in, once they realized I was already under Midnight’s thumb.”

“Azteka don’t shrink from self-sacrifice for the good of the nation,” Malachi said, shaking his head.

“Why are you defending them?” I demanded. I remembered the way Yaretzi had treated me when we had first met. I had been grateful at the time, since she had given
me back to Taro, but now that I better understood what she thought of Midnight, I saw the scene in a clearer light. “They’re the ones who should be in this box.”

“And they’re the ones who
will
be in this box if we imply to Jeshickah that we think they set this up!” Malachi shouted. “I am not selling someone else in to save my skin.”

And what about mine?
I wondered. Was I allowed to “sell in” the person who had sent me here with no warning of what I would become, and who had led to our being down here?

“Don’t, Vance,” Malachi said.

“You have done nothing but ruin my life from the moment I met you,” I snapped. “As far as I can see,
you
are the most obvious suspect for this plague. You have magic. Back when you still thought I was dangerous, you could have killed me. Instead, you saved my life and delivered me to Midnight. When I was dying,
you
sent the pochtecatl, who convinced the vampires to feed on me. So why should I trust you, or listen to anything you say?”

“I do have one theory,” he said flatly, as if my entire tirade hadn’t taken place, “about this fever.”

“What?” I asked guardedly.

“There’s no magical connection between the humans and the vampires,” he said, “but I cannot read your power well enough to know whether there might be a connection between
you
and the vampires. There is a chance that killing you might save them. Would you like me to try?”

The words were said so calmly and coldly that it took me a moment to realize he really had said what I thought I had heard.

Killing you might save them
.

A few weeks ago I might have accepted that sacrifice as no more than my duty as a grateful child. My life for all of theirs? Easy trade. In the abstract. In reality—

“I don’t want to die,” I whispered.

Malachi had suggested it as a possibility, not a certainty. What if I knew for sure?
Knew
that, with my death, I could save everyone—the vampires, the humans who were still sick,
everyone
. What then? Was my single life worth so much?

I wanted to scream,
Yes! It’s
my
life!

I didn’t choose this. I didn’t deserve to die.

THE DOOR OPENED
, and I had thrown myself at Mistress Jeshickah’s feet before I realized that if Malachi told
her
that killing me might save the trainers, she would do so in the blink of an eye. I knew my value to her—it was exactly correlated with my usefulness.

“What have you learned?” she asked.

Malachi explained about the slaves’ blood, and why they died at the end. He shared his theory about why the Azteka could not have known this would happen and concluded by saying that there was little else he could do from down here.

I made my decision in silence: I would not volunteer to end my life. I couldn’t stop Malachi from speaking and knew I had no hope of defending myself if Mistress Jeshickah decided I needed to die, but I wouldn’t sacrifice
myself, not for anyone. I wasn’t a slave, I didn’t need to selflessly put my owners before my own well-being. The Mistress of Midnight wasn’t
my
mistress. Not anymore.

“Someone needs to look directly at the trainers,” Malachi said. “Preferably someone more competent than I am.”

“Did you learn anything about our little bird?” Jeshickah asked.

I braced myself. The only decision left to make was whether I would try to run or try to fight, even though I knew either was useless.

Malachi looked at me for a moment before turning back to Jeshickah to say, “I cannot read his power well enough to tell if there is any lingering connection between him and your vampires. However, I have seen what happens to humans when the magical infection is suddenly gone. If Vance dies, it could kill the trainers.”

I wasn’t sure I hid my shock very well, so I was grateful that they were looking at each other, not me. That was the exact
opposite
of what he had said to me. Had he been lying to frighten me earlier? Was he trying to protect me now?

I was smart enough not to ask.

Instead, I asked, “What is wrong with the … the trainers?” Malachi always called them that, and Jeshickah seemed to accept that as a term for all of them, but my first impulse was still to call them all by name. “I mean, exactly?”

Part of me recognized that the precise symptoms might
tell us more about the illness and therefore help us heal it, but more of me just wanted to know what was happening. It was hard to imagine Taro or Jaguar falling ill.

“Good question,” Malachi said. “And I think you knew you would need to answer it eventually.”

“All of them are unconscious now,” Jeshickah said. “It started with vivid dreams and increased hunger.”

“Did anyone remark on how odd the dreams were when they first occurred?” Malachi asked. To me he added, “Vampires don’t dream.”

“Jaguar assumed—rightly—that they were a side effect of taking Vance’s blood. Taro did as well. Sometimes that happens when we feed on someone powerful. It has never led to this.”

“What kind of dreams?” I asked. Jeshickah gave me a look that asked, “Does it matter?” so I added, “I want to know whether they are the same as the ones I had.”

“Jaguar and Taro both described them as pleasant,” Jeshickah answered. “They have very different preferences, so I would be surprised to learn the dreams were identical. Normally I would be able to see for myself, but something about the illness keeps me out.”

“Can I see Taro?” I asked. “Please. He has always been good to me. I hate thinking about him ill.”