Nightlord: Sunset (108 page)

I couldn’t argue with that.  When it comes right down to it, what would I have chosen in her place?  She was right; I don’t know what it is to be old.  I think about it, I imagine it, but I can’t know it or feel it or live it.  I still have that youthful sense of immortality, the inner certainty I’ll go on forever.  I haven’t felt the cold wind of age and mortality.  I know I can be killed, sure.  But I’ll never feel the slow decline, feel old and decrepit and feeble.

The idea gives me shivers.

“You know that there are… difficulties in being a nightlord?” I asked.

“Avoid the dawn and dusk.  Drink blood.  What else?”

“You will never bear a child again.”

She shrugged.  “It has been threescore years and ten since last I gave that any thought.  I have outlived my children, and my grandchildren grow feeble with age.  My family is large, nightlord, and will satisfy.”

“That’s another thing,” I added.  “Your family.  I will want your oath that you will do your best to keep from making more nightlords.  No matter how they beg, no matter how terrible it seems,
nobody
gets transformed.  You will avoid that at any and all costs.”

She cocked her head and smiled.  “As you are avoiding it?” she asked, too sweetly.

I snorted.  “I’m hunted by a powerful faction of the Church, an insane magician that consumes the power of other magicians, and I’m a target for demonic assaults.  The only way to get to the heart of the matter—and preserve my life, as well as the lives of those I care for—is one dangerous old woman who will settle for nothing else.”  I shrugged.  “It doesn’t sound trivial to me.”

She nodded, soberly.  “I see.  Yes.  This oath is a condition of the bargain?”

“Yes.  There’s nothing else to stop you from turning loose a plague of nightlords on the world, except, perhaps, self-interest.  A lot of nightlords could cause a reaction, such as a rise in the power of the Church to hunt us down.  Anyone you create, even if it’s just
one
, has the potential to cause such a disaster.”

“You do appeal to my self-interest,” she remarked, dryly.

“Good.  I hoped to.”

She folded her hands together and thought for a moment.  “Have you any other conditions?”

I gritted my teeth, thinking.  I’ve never turned loose such a potential for disaster—but I was about to.

“No.  Those are my conditions.”

“You have a bargain,” she answered, quietly.  Then she swore the oath, weaving magic through it as she spoke.  I hadn’t thought that could be done; I was hoping just to get her word, for whatever it was worth.  But an oath-spell is worth seeing.

Once sworn, she turned away, still seated on the edge of the bed.  She tilted her head and exposed her neck.

I moved up behind her, sat on the bed.  I bit my own wrist, driving the fangs deep into the flesh.  A wound from my own bite would take a minute or two to heal—enough time to let her get some blood.  I uncoiled dark tendrils, filling the room with hovering, hungry darkness.  I put one arm around her waist, the other around her shoulders; I placed the bloody wrist against her lips.

“Drink,” I said.  Her mouth opened and she sucked at my wrist as I bit her neck.  Her whole body stiffened, rigid as metal, and I could feel the powerful, almost convulsive draw of her mouth against my skin.  Blood flowed, from me to her and from her to me, constantly, in a never-ending circuit.  I touched her with tendrils, drawing on her lightly, drinking lightly of her energies.

It was different from the matched set of Sasha and I.  There, we were both vampires, feeding on and feeding each other.  This was a consumption, a devouring, a conversion.  Her blood flowed into me; her spirit flowed, almost dripped from her.  It left her hungry, empty, void.  To fill this nothingness, she drew in what I offered.  Dark blood to flow into the cracks of her body, dark energies to draw shadows in the bright valleys of her soul.  Life leeched away, replaced by a kind of death, yet I was not diminished.

I tasted her spirit, felt the outer, most volatile layers depleted—the energy of living, the stuff people use to feel perked up or pooped out—and tapped more deeply, touching the nature of who she was.  I stopped there, drawing back the tendrils that worked so insidiously, so deeply into her.  Before I pulled my mouth away, I bit my own tongue and forced some of my own blood into the bite in her neck.  If that didn’t turn the trick, I didn’t know what would.

She slumped against me, chest heaving as she gasped for breath.  I took my wrist from her mouth and held her carefully.  Her eyes were wide and glassy.  Her skin was almost white.  I wondered if I had looked like that.

I moved, laying her down on the bed, then half-emptied a wardrobe for clothes to put under her feet and legs to elevate them.  She was unresisting, seeming only semi-conscious.

I sat down next to the bed and waited, watching.

Sunrise.

I made sure the windows were shut and then hid in the wardrobe I’d ransacked.  It wasn’t a good morning, but it was a lot better than, say, digging myself out of a beach.  I can’t complain.

Afterward, Keria looked much better.  Her color was better and she appeared to be sleeping normally.  Her pulse was strong and her breathing regular.  I had no idea this would take so long.  I was tempted to slap her a few times, wake her up, and demand answers… but…

I stuck my head out in the hall.  A semi-dressed young lady was escorting a well-dressed gentleman toward the stairs.

“Miss?” I called.  “Any chance of getting breakfast brought up?”

“Keria can fetch it for you, m’lord,” she replied.

“No, we’re not quite done in here.  Probably not for another few hours, at least.”  I grinned, almost leered.  “So be a dear and tell the kitchen, would you?”

She stared at me—well, they both stared at me—and she nodded.  “As you wish.”

I ducked back inside and bolted the door.  It wasn’t that long a wait; someone knocked and I opened the door enough to let him in.  He was a big guy, heavily muscled, and had a scar along the side of his face and up into his hair.  I pressed a finger to my lips as he came in.  He looked at Keria as he set the tray down, looked at me, and frowned.

I reached into a pouch and tipped him a silver coin.  He accepted it, looked at Keria again, and then shrugged.  I closed the door behind him.

Keria woke as I was looking over breakfast.  Eggs, toast, some sort of jam, suspicious-looking sausages—then again, that’s sausage for you—and a carafe of juice.

“Morning, sleepyhead,” I offered.  “How do you feel?”

She tried to sit up, gave up, and lay there blinking at the ceiling.

“My head…” she whispered.  “Am I dying?”

“Not completely,” I told her.  “At least, you shouldn’t.  Here, try some juice.  Get something into you; it’ll help.”

I held a cup for her and she sipped at it.  It took a while, but she managed to get it down.  Once it was down, she seemed to feel stronger.  She sat up, carefully, slowly, and rolled her shoulders.

“Every portion of me aches,” she said.

“Yep.  That’ll go on for a few hours, but you can cut it down if you eat something.  Trust me, I had it worse.  I went through this with a hangover.”  I put the tray on the bed next to her and kept some of the toast for myself.  I don’t know what the jam was, but it was sweet and tasty.

She regarded the tray like it was a stain on the coverlet.

“Go on,” I urged.  “Try.  You’ll waste away fast if you don’t.”

She tried a piece of dry toast, managed it, then some egg.  Soon she was devouring everything.  Fortunately, she stopped when she got to the plate.  I wasn’t sure she would.

“I… I am still hungry,” she said, amazed.

“You’ll be hungry all day for the next three or so.  The transformation process takes some time.”

“It does?”  She seemed startled.  “I had thought… I had thought it was simply a magical curse, transmitted by the bite of your kind.”

“Oh, no!  It doesn’t happen at all, except by a lot of deliberate effort—as you’ve seen.  Just biting someone doesn’t change them.”

“I see that now.  What else must I know?”

I opened my mouth, paused, and closed it.

“I think it’s more a question of what
I
should know, don’t you?”

Keria folded her hands together in her lap and nodded.  “As you say.  You have fulfilled your part of our bargain.  Yet I am concerned that you will kill me once I have given you that knowledge, for I am yet too weak to resist you.”

“Lady, even if I were willing to wait three or four days while you got fully into the swing of things, you would still be too weak to resist me.  I’ve been a nightlord for a while.  Just tell me what I want to know and I’ll be on my way.  Places to go, people to rescue.”

She worried her lower lip between her teeth, hesitant.  Finally, she nodded.

“As you will.  I will trust you.  Melloch is in Telen.”

“Why?”  I didn’t like it a bit that he was supposedly in the Hand’s headquarters city.

“I do not know.”

“Fair enough.  Did he take anybody with him?”

She shook her head.  “Yes.  He departed with Tobias and your woman on the very night you declared yourself before half the nobility of the kingdom.  He traveled with them upon a magic carpet.  A dangerous business, as such things are only meant to carry one.”

“Hmm.  How do you know where Melloch is, anyway?”

She smiled.  “I am young and beautiful, and I work in this place.  I hear things.  Having heard so much, I know what questions to ask—and I am also a magician of great experience and skill.”

“Oh.”  I cracked my knuckles and loosened Firebrand in its scabbard.  “Is there anything else you need or want before I go gallivanting off?”

She laid a hand on my forearm.  “Yes.  Please.  Tell me more of this transformation.  What must I do?”

So I explained about the heavy eating, the physical changes, and the need for blood.  It was a sketchy explanation, but it would do.  It’s not that hard to go through.  After all, I managed it—how hard can it be?

When I finished, her expression was intense and thoughtful.

“If you survive this encounter,” she said, “will you return and teach me?  I would know more of my new strengths and weaknesses.”

“Perhaps,” I said, and thought,
I don’t know how Tamara is going to take this—and I’d really rather not give her any cause to wonder about you. 
I only thought it.  I didn’t say a word of it.  Instead, I went on with, “If I don’t survive, I’ll expect you to carry on with killing Tobias.”

She looked surprised.  “That is not part of our arrangement.”

“No, it wasn’t.  It just comes with the territory.”

“What do you… ?” she trailed off, eyes widening.

“Yep.  I mean that you’re now a nightlord—or a nightlady, rather—and he’ll be coming after you, too.”  I grinned and opened the door.  “If I don’t succeed, you’d better hope I at least wear him down.”

The look of dawning worry was just starting as I closed the door.

Downstairs, there was a messenger waiting.  I say a messenger; in actuality it was a musician with an instrument that reminded me slightly of a mandolin.  He was providing chamber music for the lobby, even though the place was almost deserted.  When he saw me, he bowed slightly and sauntered over, still strumming.

“Good morn, lord Halar.”

“And merry meet?” I hazarded.  “Do I know you?”

“Nay, lord, but the bard sends his greetings and his wishes for your lordship’s good health.”

“Ah.  Right.”  I’d forgotten I’d asked Linnaeus and T’yl to find me if I wasn’t back by morning.  “I’m headed to see him, in fact.”

“As your lordship pleases,” he replied, bowing gracefully.  He never missed a note.  Maybe he was one of Linnaeus’ pupils.

I went out front and patted Bronze for a minute.  She nuzzled me with a very cold nose and I could feel she was glad to see me.

A shout went up.  I looked toward it and saw a priest pointing at me and screaming holy blue murder.  While this didn’t bother me especially, I noted that other priests and several lightly-armored thugs were pouring into view.

I’d left Bronze parked out front and someone had seen her.  Or somebody in the Seven Roses had spotted me and blown the whistle.  Either way, it didn’t matter; a bunch of holier-than-god types had lurked nearby and waited for me to come out to my horse.

I swung into the saddle and Bronze turned as I did so, making it easy.  She also kicked the lead thug in the head.  There was a wet crunch.  She kept turning, hooves lashing out to keep people back or kill them outright.

Within one revolution, I had Firebrand out.

“Light up!” I shouted, and Firebrand did.  A gout of fire twice my height shot down the length of the blade like a rocket taking off.  I swung Firebrand and the jet of flame around to clear some space; people screamed and fell back.  Some fell down, smoking; some danced back, beating at their clothes.

The priests were chanting.  I hadn’t done anything about it to this point because they were too far away and I had more immediate concerns.  Now, though…