"If I had it to do over I'd have watched the sunset that day."
"My lady, you should rest."
The candles around the bed flickered with the opening of the door. Bianca looked up. The night had closed like an iron fist on Wraithburg, deepening the ever present shadows of the old fortress. She recognized the old servant by her voice, unable to pick her form out of the darkness by the door.
"I'm fine Helena." She said standing to stretch the kinks out of her muscles. Her eyes burned with fatigue, but she turned them again to the bed where her father lay. In the unsteady candle glow, he looked more like a corpse than ever. His normally angular face, sunken, with what thin hair he had sweat soaked and plastered to his skull. He had tossed and muttered with the fever earlier, but now he was still. So still, the shallow rise and fall of his chest was all that assured her he was alive.
"My lady, you won't do master Victor any good if you're sick with exhaustion."
The older woman carried an apron full of beeswax tapers to the bedside. Bianca reached for the candelabra closest and began replacing the guttering lights.
"These should last me till dawn. You should go to bed Helena."
The old servant made an exasperated noise, but Bianca ignored it.
"Is the page still outside?"
"Yes, my lady, but he's snoring, and you'll have to kick him to wake him."
Bianca sighed, sheer weariness pulled on her like a weight, but she nodded.
"Just so I can send him for the priest if we need him."
The new candles flared, brightening the room slightly. Bianca automatically pulled back the woven coverlet to check her father's wound. The linen wraps around his torso where stained with an evil smelling yellow discharge and blood. Without a word Helena filled the basin with hot water from the hearth. The activity of washing the wound was too familiar to Bianca. Like most of it's kind it had initially closed and appeared to heal. Her father had thought nothing of it; merely a scratch from an overlarge splinter. Nothing like the other scars littered over his body from his numerous battles.
The fever had come unexpectedly; he simply hadn't come to meal one morning. Bianca had dared to enter his room and found him in a swoon. It was only in bathing him to bring down his fever that she had found the corrupted wound. Still, none of her skill made a difference, neither herbs nor prayers could prevent his decline.
She carefully rewrapped with clean linen, and carried the basin to empty out the window while Helena bundled the soiled bandages into her apron.
"I'll see to these first thing."
Bianca shook her head. "Go to bed Helena. They will keep till morning."
The servant made no argument, and moment later she was alone once more, save for the dying man. She stood over him, her mind to numb and tired to feel much of anything, but she brushed the wisps of hair from his forehead. His skin was clammy, the fever broken, but she feared too late. With a sigh she settled back into the chair at his bedside.
She picked up the rosary from where she had set it down on the pillow by his head, but didn't even attempt to follow the ritual prayer. She just held it, rubbing the little silver crucifix between her fingers.
It was the draft from the open door that woke Bianca in the middle of the night. The candles glowed lower in their holders, there drippings frozen in weird shapes. She didn't move except to open her eyes for a moment. Her mind struggling tiredly to grasp what her instincts knew in an instant. There was someone else in the room.
Bianca's thoughts shook off their lethargy and began racing. The presence in the room was no servant she knew, yet her only weapon was her knife for meat, if it was an enemy.
Then she saw him.
He stepped into the light of the candles without hesitation. A handsome, richly dressed man, with an arrogant carriage. He looked straight at her, and his smile made her shiver. He raised one finger to his lips.
She didn't know where her courage had gone, but when he stepped closer to her father's bedside she spoke up.
"Who are you, and why do you disturb this sick chamber?"
Again he looked at her and she felt herself pale.
"Do not hinder me wench, if I meant to kill your father his blood would already be mine." He was already beside the bed "Though not before I'd had yours."
The man turned back to the bed, all interest in her lost.
"Ah, Victor, you've fallen very low." The stranger murmured. He reached out and gripped the sick man's chin.
"Wake up Victor, we need to talk."
Bianca made a noise of protest, that strangled off as her father's eyelids flickered then opened. He looked at her for a second blearily, then focused on the strange visitor. Immediately his gaze sharpened on the strangers face.
"Good," said the man. "I was hoping that you would be lucid."
The dying man's eyes narrowed.
"I don't suppose you know who I am." The man went on. "I think that you know my brother though." He sat easily on the side of the bed.
"You fought him not more than a fortnight ago, you and your men. I saw you cut him right across the snout. It turned the tide, you know, and sent him running." The man spoke lazily, flicking at a tassel on the bed curtains.
It took a second for Bianca to process those words. Her father had been hunting a great beast that was ravaging the villages. She had heard the tale from his arms man how the party had caught up to the beast in the middle of a rampage. They had driven it from the village into the woods, and the Lord Victor had fought it himself, sword against claw. In the end his sword had cleaved the beast's snout practically in two. The beast had retreated, but not before hurling her father into a nearby tree. He'd been bruised but unharmed except for a splinter of tree branch that had driven through his mail coat into the meat of his side.
The stranger was still speaking.
"That's what convinced me you know. I saw the way you and your men fought. Very impressive."
For the first time in days Lord Victor spoke.
"Get to your point. I am, on my death bed." Just speaking had drained him visibly, but the stranger nodded and gave an amused smile.
"My name is Marcus Corvinnus, and I can get you off this death bed."
Bianca felt as if she was frozen. A small part of her mind was screaming at her to raise the alarm. Wake the men at arms to come to her father's aid. She couldn't move though. She listened and could do nothing as the stranger outlined his proposal. She wondered if perhaps she was dreaming.
"You will help me capture my brother, and in exchange I will grant you immortality."
"And how," her father asked. "Will I receive this immortality."
"A simple bite, a brief time of pain, then forever." Corvinnus smiled, and spread his hands.
"If I wasn't dying I'd call you the ass you are, and throw you out the window." Victor grated.
"After which I would get up, walk back in here, and tear your head off with my bare hands." The other man never even stopped smiling.
Victor considered this.
"As I am dying anyway, and don't hold much hope for my soul in the after life; despite my daughter's efforts." He flicked a contemptuous glance at the rosary in Bianca's hand.
"This dithering is to very little purpose. Do as you wish, it makes little difference to me."
"I would have your word Lord Victor that you will aid me in the capture of my brother when you are recovered."
"Those are all your terms for immortality?" The sunken features of Miranda's father seemed to almost grin up at the other man.
"Boy, you have a lot to learn about bargaining."
"I am more than a century older than you human." Corvinnus's tone was flat and dangerous, and there was no hint of smile. "I have more experience than you can imagine."
Victor laughed, a horrible, wet sound.
"Year's don't count for everything, or you wouldn't need me to help you catch that beast of yours."
The laugh turned into a wheeze that rattled his entire body. Bianca suddenly found that she could move. She snatched the wine goblet from the bedside table, and moved to give him a drink, but the stranger stopped her with a hand.
"Never mind,.. I'll do it now. Before the old buzzard dies on me." He growled.
Bianca gasped as he casually batted the goblet from her hand, and took both of her hands in one of his. He leaned close over her father, and then very deliberately bit him. She did scream then. A short burst of sound quickly smothered as with indomitable strength, Marcus Corvinnus forced her face into the covers of her father's bed. She might as well have struggled against a tree root as made any impact on the strength that held her down. She felt panic as she fought to breathe through the heavy woolen blankets. An eternity later the same hand jerked her up by the hair.
"No point screaming now. He'll either live or die, and no amount of soldiers will make a difference." Corvinnus's tone was reasonable. Bianca concentrated on breathing.
"What have you done to him?" She finally demanded.
"Saved him... killed him," He shrugged. "It depends on how he takes the change." Then he grimaced.
"I hate the taste of death. Vile blood!"
Bianca darted a glance at her father. He was unmoving, as if once again sunk in his fever. Corvinnus caught her chin in his hand and directed her attention back on him, then smiled.
"Sweet lady, you wouldn't begrudge me a small drop just to rinse the bad taste from my mouth?" She tried to look at the wine pitcher, but he wouldn't let her move or speak. One hand trapped hers behind her back, the other held her face.. In a moment of clarity as he leaned close, she noticed his eyes, bright blue, like nothing she had ever seen before.
Then he bit her, and everything went black.