Heartstealer, page 16
“Tell me about her and I’ll help you!”
She felt his teeth against her ear. “You’ll help me anyway.”
“I’ll promise to help you willingly!”
He twisted her head around and laughed scornfully in her face. “A promise to a dead man? How much is that worth, to either of us?”
Der looked him in the brilliantly green eyes. “I’ll give you my word. If you make a promise to me in return.”
“Ah, of course you wouldn’t be selfless.”
She tried to shake her head, but his grip held firm.
He snorted in her face. “So what then? Perhaps I shall take your ear still.” He jerked her ear toward his mouth again.
“No! No! Tell me about her and I’ll promise! Please.”
Tom pushed her away, and pulled his silence about him like a dark cloak as he sat down beside her. His gaze settled into the campfire’s ashes, at the stars, at the moon.
He diverted his gaze back into the dead fire. “I was just passing through Urael’s capital, and in an alley, I heard a baby crying.” He shrugged. “No matter. However, when I tried to fly away, I immediately found out that I couldn’t. I walked toward the sound, and someone opened a window, and the stench of blood and death suddenly ruled the night.
“Here, I guess curiosity stole over me. I jumped and managed to pull myself up onto the stone ledge beneath the window where someone had tried to grow some sad roses. Holding myself by my fingertips, I saw some armored men, thugs the lot of them, removing a naked baby from the floorboards. She must have been hidden there, not very original, but I think the dead woman on the bed didn’t have much time left and she knew it.” He cupped his face in his hands. “The baby screamed all the louder. I don’t know why I did it, but I wanted to know why I couldn’t fly and this made as much sense as anything else.”
“Alright.” Der’s face bunched up in perplexity.
“Because it was strange that I couldn’t fly and this event was also strange. I’m suspicious, so understand I looked around to see if anyone was covertly hunting vampires. They use devices or magic to cancel our abilities, but it seemed that I was just an unfortunate passerby. So, I pulled myself through the window.”
“What about the baby?”
“She kept screaming, Der. What did you expect an infant to do? The guards, or whatever they might have been, were naturally surprised that someone climbed through the window, so surprised that I was able snatch the baby from the one’s hands.”
He almost laughed. “Here I was, without flight or an explanation as to why. I didn’t know if my alacrity or strength were gone too. I wasn’t going to chance things.”
“So you were afraid?”
“Cautious!” he snapped. “It’s a word I don’t presume you know. Well, there I was, facing four armed men while holding a naked baby. I did what any rational person would.”
“You kicked them to death?”
He rolled his emerald eyes. “Rational. I jumped out the window.”
“How is that more rational?”
He half smiled. “I was so used to flight that it didn’t occur to me that I wouldn’t able to fly, despite the contrary evidence. Oh well. I managed to crash into the building on the other side of the alley, shielding the infant from the impact and clinging to the edge of the roof by one hand.
“I crested the roof, all the while I heard those thugs cursing and running through the house and down the stairs. I still took time to examine this infant. After all, I couldn’t name a damn single good reason why I’d done what I did. I held her up in the moonlight and she stopped crying and just stared at me with those huge brown eyes. I didn’t know why she was special, but at the moment, I let my sensibilities of what I used to be once upon a time overcome me and I promised myself to get this child somewhere safe.”
“Then what happened?”
“Oh, then she urinated on me. It ran down my hands and onto my shirt. Quite ruined the moment, as well as my shirt, but I’d already made my promise. It was also then that I tried – because it’s just second nature – to fly. And I did. I heard the hammering of armored footsteps heading toward the roof, but that suddenly didn’t matter because they would never find me. We rose into the low hanging clouds so that I could observe. Then, she started to cry again and I was without my ability.”
“Oh, no.” Der winced.
“Oh, yes. We fell right into the middle of the very startled guards. I landed on my back with the baby on my chest and we crashed straight through the roof.”
“And the guards came for you?”
“Of course. But I managed to limp downstairs and out the door with the baby before they could reach us. After that, they couldn’t find me in the night.”
“Alright, so each time she cried, you couldn’t fly.”
“Exactly. I figured that out after some more painful experimentations.”
Der cocked her head. “I thought it’d have only taken once.”
He shrugged. “Well, it’s not like I could die trying to figure it out.” He sighed. “I remember this as if it were yesterday evening.” He shook off whatever smile was growing. “To end this tale, I delivered her to an old childless widower on the other side of the Dismal Horvath. Hell, I even built the cottage where they now live. I remember that first night when I gave her away, he asked me for her name.” He shrugged and his emerald eyes focused on seven years ago. “So I gave her one.”
“What happened next?”
“After that, I should have left the continent for at least a century. I think now that I certainly should not have named her, because then I started to worry about her. I went back to see her and how she was faring.” He almost smiled. “She has the brightest brown eyes.” He dropped his head. “I shouldn’t care, I truly shouldn’t. Old Erastus discovered what I was when her powers started to manifest and took us both by surprise.”
“She’s a mage?” Der frowned. “Wait, why didn’t you just do your little mind control trick on him like you tried on me?”
He glared. “I have a small amount of pity for the old man. He’s going to die as soon as I turn around. For your former question, no, Chloe is not a mage. At least, I don’t think so.” He sighed and pushed a few stray hairs from his eyes.
“What do you mean you don’t think she’s a mage?”
He snapped another glare toward her, but it lacked the virulence of previous ones. “That means that I don’t know, Derora.”
She held up her hands. “I got that. But she has this power though. What does it do?”
He took a long moment before he replied. “I’m not exactly certain. I have never heard of such a power existing in a person. She can–” He broke off and scowled. “She somehow just absorbs magic or any sort of power and can change it. I’m saying that she absorbs the energy and can do whatever she wants with it. It takes master magicians decades to even attempt it, and even then, they need spells. This is just something she does. She has no other magical ability. I haven’t had time to truly study her because she’s so young and recently she was somehow exposed to magic at all, she became ill.”
“Ill?”
“She’s dying, Der. I think that she absorbed raw power and she doesn’t know how to release it. So, it’s killing her. There’s too much power, and well, think of it like an arrowhead buried deep inside someone’s body, and you can’t get it out. Imagine what that would do to a body.”
“I’m so sorry.”
He nodded. “When she was still able to, she told me of a dream that she’d had. A great storm closed in from all directions, and lightning struck her. She said that it didn’t hurt, and while she stood there the bolt just froze around her, and then it just sucked in through her skin. She awoke with a fever, and she’s been getting closer to death every night.” He held up his pale hands. “That’s all I know.”
Der knotted her fingers together. “How can this be healed?”
“I know how.”
“So, how?”
He shook his head again and continued staring into the forest. “I don’t have the time; which is something I don’t often say. I have eternity, but now Thealith and Urael are being fools over a bloody river. This forces me to rush to get Chloe out of the area, and I can’t move her until she’s healed.”
“What?”
“Thealith and Urael will go to war soon.”
“What! Are you certain?” Her jaw fell open. “I haven’t heard of this.”
He laughed shortly. “Yes, the fools. I’d be amused if my ward were not in peril.”
“Why would you be amused?” She narrowed her eyes. “You know how glorious war isn’t.”
“I do.” He held up a hand. “Because they’re such fools. Der, I lost hope in humanity long ago, but I kept my sense of humor about it.” His features sobered. “This cursed thing is inevitable, and this blasted war will roll over her. I’m racing against her sickness and the war.”
“It isn’t so funny for you now, is it? Not when your bacon’s in the fire.”
He snapped his fingers and pointed at her. “Stop.”
“I am sorry though. For her, and you.”
His nostrils flared and he stared directly at her. “I neither need nor want your pity. I just need you.”
“Why?”
He shook his head. “No. Perhaps when the time comes.”
She stared at him for a long moment before glancing up at the lightening sky. The sun would come peeking soon. “I keep my word. I’ll promise to help you, if you promise me what I ask.”
He lifted an eyebrow, already squinting at the growing dawn. “Oh, indeed? I’ll let you name all the terms!” He pulled out his gloves.
She freed the Dawn Sword from her shirt. Tom grunted but didn’t turn away. Der held it out toward him. “Swear on this to Carenth.” She watched his eyes flare red for a second. “Swear to Carenth that Chloe exists and you’re doing this to save her life. Promise not to hurt or kill me.”
“And I get what in return?” His question hung damply in the air like fog.
“My promise.”
He studied her face for a long moment.
Slowly, he closed his fist over the elvish medallion. She instantly inhaled burning flesh. He stared at her and she couldn’t read the dark look in his eyes. “I swear to your god, Carenth, that Chloe exists and she is dying and I can save her. This is my quest. I promise not to harm you or kill you for the duration, and after she is healed, I will take you home.”
“Malfax,” she said. “I don’t want you to know my home.”
“I will deliver you safely to Malfax.” He dropped the sacred pendant. He turned his palm over and his skin was fried in a large circle. As they watched, the torn flaps of skin crumbled into ash and new skin began to form.
“I’m going to miss my interview with the knight-commander, but that can’t be helped now.” Der retrieved her necklace; it was hot to the touch. She gripped it in her own fist so hard the tiny blade point pinched into her skin. “I, too, swear to Carenth Almighty, I will act neither to harm nor kill you. I will aid you in your quest of my own volition to save this child.”
Tom gripped her wrist and smiled as widely as a vampire can. “Now, you are mine.”
Chapter Eleven
The Promise Demands
Tom was out there somewhere. Der looked out across the moonlight forest. Over the past few nights, he vanished into the darkness for most of the evening, out hunting, but was always back before dawn. He was used to solitude, he had said, he liked it and he didn’t like her. She had smiled at that.
She bit into her dry bread, chewing through another meal in the saddle as the horse plodded on beneath her. She glanced over her shoulder again; she had access to her sword, but she had decided against carrying it. Still, she found herself constantly considering it. He was not around to stop her, but… She just wasn’t sure.
The small game that he returned with tasted quite dry, and she had stopped herself from asking several times. He was a reliable hunter though, and always came back with something. Der swallowed the last of her food. She glanced upward to the plenilune. Its light was icy tonight. It was also the same electric blue as lightning.
Her ears itched. She cleared her mind and listened. There was something in the forest. Nothing she could see, hear, or smell, but she knew. Her back stiffened, something was wrong. It wasn’t Tom. Her hand reached for the Pallens sword.
Tom smelled blood. He could recognize it through water. Bears grumbled behind him as he moved through the forest. Their growls didn’t sound right, but everything was always a little off in a sense of awareness as heightened as when he smelled that scent. He easily covered a quarter of a mile faster than any mortal could, but he knew he was too late. Blood had already been freed from its vessel.
The horse was dead. Tom circled the corpse before he approached. Its body was still warm, saddled and bridled. Bitter curses slipped out from behind his teeth. That blasted sword was missing too, but nothing was strewn across the ground, except a copious blood pool. He could smell out individual blood scents, and this was all the horse. A small sigh of relief escaped his lips before he caught it.
He pulled a flask off the back of his belt. The steel tin was always bitingly cold to the touch due to a very simple enchantment. He set it to catch the blood still dripping under the mare’s wound. He put his hand on top of the horse and pressed down. It was too much to waste.
He frowned. The cut across her throat was thin and accurate, a level of precision most humans never achieved. A major artery had been punctured perfectly with only a whisper of broken skin. He searched the saddle. The saddlebags were neatly looted, and only a few items were missing.
He sniffed. Another person had definitely been here. His upper lip curled. This visitor wasn’t human, but he didn’t know what it was. He sniffed again. This stranger and Der had gone off this way, with Der following. He closed his eyes. He never imagined the night he would be relieved she was still alive.
He sped along after them. Their trail was so fragile sometimes he could only go by scent alone. An expert at stealth, he noted. Who was this stranger? Whoever he was, Tom silently promised, as his hands curled into fists, he would rue his encounter with this vampire.
Thalon tried to tackle Der when she followed Thistle back into camp. She dropped to her knees and hugged him. “Now let me up, I want to warm up by the fire.” He didn’t release her leg and she dragged him all the way to the campfire. He banged his head against her sword’s sheath, which was comfortably around her waist again. She patted his head. “You look older.”
“I am! And Dad got me new knives!” He released his grip and whipped them out of their sheaths, nearly cutting her knee.
She laughed and sat down. “Aye, I see it.”
He crawled into her lap. “I missed you!”
She hugged him again, knives and all. “I know, me too.”
Jakkobb smiled tightly. He towered over her, loomed even. “You look well – for being kidnapped.”
She nodded. “Yes, sir. I’m well.” She looked around. “Kelin! Oh, and– and, uh, Mora, right? Have you all been following me this whole time?”
The knight nodded. “What did you expect? Oh, and your sword looks like its normal glory, what happened to the spell?”
She patted the weapon’s hilt. “The spell just sort of broke, sir.”
He raised both his eyebrows. “I’ll save that scolding for later, and your ears will burn off from it. Now, where is he?”
She glanced back at the forest. “I don’t know. He was out hunting when Thistle showed.”
Kelin pointed. “Wait. He had gone off by himself and you didn’t run away? When you had a horse?”
“She was a prisoner, and I’ve seen the things that those bastards do to their captives,” Mora said. “She wouldn’t dare–”
“You don’t know Der,” Kelin replied. “Her name is said ‘dare’ for that very reason.”
“I remember you as a prisoner,” Thistle inserted softly. “You didn’t break when you should have.” He looked directly at her.
“The chemmen?” Der shook her head. “What else was I supposed to do?”
“Right,” Kelin snapped. “Why didn’t you run when you had the chance? That’s not like you.”
She dropped her eyes. “I agreed to help him.”
“What?” Jakkobb snapped to attention.
“Then why did you go with Thistle?” Mora asked.
She cast a meaningful look at the chemman. “I tried to explain, but I’m sure you know by now how he doesn’t like extra talk. So he killed the horse to prove his point, and thus I went with him.”
Thistle shook his head. “The horse panicked and attacked me.” He thrust out his arm to show a blood-ringed hole in the sleeve.
“It wouldn’t have done that if you hadn’t of sneaked up like you always do!”
He raised both his eyebrows. “I wasn’t sure if you’d been bewitched or not. Jakkobb mentioned that the target had some magical ability. I watched the camp, you were alone and you weren’t trying to escape. I didn’t know that you’d made a deal with the devil.”
The knight frowned. “Why did you agree to help him, Der? What could have convinced you? Did he magic you?”
“No! I agreed because he needs it. Look, I didn’t agree until after I came to know him, a little. He’s got a good reason. And no, no magic.”
“There’s something very wrong about that man, and you know that.” His eyes slid toward the depthless darkness of the forest.
“I know, I know. But he’s not evil, kind of like Thistle isn’t.”
Jakkobb raised both of his eyebrows exactly like her dad did at home before she found herself drowning in trouble.
She ducked away from the expression and waved her arms over her head. “Can we talk about something else instead? I don’t want to defend him. Uh, so, Mora, I’ve been thinking that perhaps we started sour with the theft and all and–”
