Blood Bargain
Disclaimer: Those Who Hunt the Night belongs to Barbara Hambly, who did such a great job with it. My work is completely unauthorized, and I make no money with it.
This is an AU giftfic given in response to the prompt "What if Blaydon had convinced Ysidro to try and make a vampire out of Asher?"
"I have learned enough of vampires, Ysidro," Blaydon said in desperate, sneering tones, "to know how to make your cravings as violent as Dennis's."
From his position on the floor at the foot of the coffin, Asher couldn't see the Spanish vampire, but he knew Ysidro regarded Blaydon with complete calm, despite the presence of Dennis, who was both Blaydon's threat and Blaydon's protection. "It will not matter," Ysidro said.
Blaydon's sweating bulk moved forward in the dimness. "You will transform James into a vampire now, of your free will, or I will allow Dennis to injure you – torture you – until your agony brings on the madness of bloodlust. I hate to make such crude threats, but believe me, I will do it."
Dennis sniggered in the darkness. "Be my pleasure. Now, Dad?"
"Not yet, Dennis. We want to give Don Simon a chance to cooperate. I said, not yet," he added, harshly, when Dennis lumbered closer into the light. And you don't want to risk letting Dennis begin any violence on the vampire's person, because he might not be able to stop, Asher thought.
"As I explained," Ysidro said patiently, "the will to live must be very strong or else a mortal will simply die, and James has little incentive to live. All you will have accomplished is to make me stronger, while your prospective vampire meal will be a worthless corpse."
Asher listened to the three discuss his murder with growing panic. It wasn't the first time he'd been in imminent danger of losing his life, but this time he couldn't slip into the old instinctive detachment and listen to this as if it were a dream. The reality of his fate was all too likely and the searing pain of his wounded arm, bound ruthlessly behind him, kept him grounded.
"I'm tired of hearing your stories of why it won't work. Why should I believe a word you say? You need to feed, Ysidro, and James is your only prospect. Transform him into a vampire, or I will let Dennis torture you."
Asher cast his gaze around desperately, futilely looking for a weapon or for inspiration leading to escape, but neither was any more in evidence than they'd been before. The room held nothing but Blaydon's lantern, silver-plated bars on the window, the metal reinforced door and the metal-less coffin Ysidro sat cross-legged upon. Ysidro slid gracefully from the lid of the coffin to crouch beside Asher. He regarded him somberly, his pale amber eyes revealing nothing. "No," Asher breathed.
"I'm afraid so, James. I see no choice." Ysidro shook his white head. "I will take your life and if you survive, Dennis Blaydon will take what remains."
"I won't survive." It wasn't a plea, it was a promise. Exhausted, terrified, and in pain, he knew an assault such as Blaydon was forcing on him could easily be his death. The reverse would be the more difficult. Ysidro nodded. "I believe you're right. You must voluntarily drink my blood. If you refuse, it will certainly mean your death. You have served me well, James Asher. I shall make your passing as painless as possible." If Asher saw any hope in the vampire's face, it was in the promise that he wouldn't die at Blaydon's or Dennis's hands. Quick and painless was his best offer under the circumstances. Lydia, I'm sorry.
"If he dies without becoming a vampire, Don Simon," Blaydon said in a pitiless tone, "Dennis will hold you down while I brand your entire body with silver plated chains. Then I will bind you in them and bring another mortal. Every time you fail, you'll be injured further."
Ysidro didn't react to Blaydon's words, he just held Asher's gaze with calm regard. "Thank you," Asher said to him.
"It is most likely that I will join you in true death very soon," Ysidro said.
But at least one of us will die without much torment, Asher thought, though having a vampire's teeth ripping his flesh like a wild animal attack was far from an easy death. The alternative, however . . .Thank you, Don Simon.
"Make him get on with it!" Dennis growled. "Dad, I can smell him – both of them – but the vampire, I must have him! The burning in my mind …"
"Soon, Dennis, very soon." Blaydon sounded exhausted as he stepped closer to the two men on the floor. "Do it!" he ordered. "And James, I have happy news. Your wife is with child." Behind him, Dennis howled in frustration. "It's true," Blaydon said, hastily, to both Asher and Dennis. "She didn't tell you because she didn't want to distract you, but as I am her jailer, I needed to know. If you will not live for yourself or Don Simon, not even for the wondrous experiment we enact here for the sake of the empire, live for Mrs. Asher and your child. It may be true that Dennis will consume you, but your family's only hope is in your living and somehow triumphing over us. Your death accomplishes nothing for them."
"Dad!" Dennis moaned. His control would not last much longer.
Blaydon stepped back. "Get on with it," he ordered again.
When Asher dared to look at the face of the vampire who probably meant his death from the moment they met ("When he kills you, speak for me . . .") he saw speculation in Ysidro's eyes. "Is it true?" Asher asked, his voice hoarse.
Ysidro shrugged. "Were the child larger, I would have heard two heartbeats, but—"
"Get on with it!" Both Blaydon and Dennis yelled as Dennis stepped forward in threat.
The aristocratic face tightened with annoyance, but Ysidro leaned down, over Asher, his gaze aimed at Asher's throat. Asher's panic peaked, his heart beating so fast, he thought he was shaking the floorboards. Up close Ysidro's face held nothing familiar, no humanity – it was a nightmare monster come to kill him, but there would be no waking from this nightmare. Or would there? A surge of determination flooded Asher, he could not say from where – he didn't want to die, he didn't want to die. "How?" he croaked.
With economy of movement, Ysidro put his own wrist to his mouth. He ripped the skin with no apparent flinch and black blood oozed sluggishly from the wound. "When you feel your own life is fading, drink and feed from mine." He said nothing else. No words of ritual. Spare and necessary, like everything about the vampire. And desire rose in Asher. He needed to do this; longed to have this unavoidable, magical, spiritual,psychic experience that his reason had finally accepted was real. He nodded and then cried out as Ysidro's teeth ripped his throat.
Pain was the thing Asher was most aware of. Then visions began swirling in his mind, starting with the time he had smoked opium in Stamboul. They came unbidden, as they had then. Memories of the Great Game, spying, lurking, lying and killing. The visions were clear and sharp at first, but the colors faded swiftly, the edges blurred, like an old daguerreotype. Something else was looming, something black overwhelming him, erasing his memories, compressing them, collapsing them under the weight of a great darkness. The darkness was Ysidro. The only thoughts he had left belonged to Don Simon Ysidro. Drink and live. Just before the darkness overwhelmed him, Asher thought, Lydia. He opened his mouth, searching for the black life that oozed from Ysidro. He found it and drank.
And was flooded with an alien consciousness. His mind, his thoughts, his memories, Ysidro: Spanish, aristocrat, vampire, dandy, killer, lives in shadows – He struggled like a drowning man to remember himself. Trust me, he heard, though there were no words. Trust me. It was a demand — and an invitation. From somewhere Asher remembered it was important that he willingly submit, and lose himself. Lose . . .? No! Not that. He thrashed and fought, all the while growing weaker. Trust me. James, I am life. For Lydia. Live.
Lydia. Her memory was his precious lifeline. She was in danger. She was his heart, his life, everything worth living for. He clung to her as if to life itself. And for her gave up life itself. Drained, desperate, and dying, he opened himself to Ysidro, holding nothing back. He gave it up and lost all of himself in the abyss of Ysidro's personality. Lost everything except the memory of red hair and the sharp razor's edge of passionate logic. He sank and sank and sank. I want to live.
Then came a fear more terrible than his own loss; than Lydia's loss, even. He was alone, in the darkness, with death a growing pool at his feet. It hadn't worked; he was dying. He was dying. With all his remaining strength, he reached for something, anything . . . and found again, Don Simon Xavier Christian Morado de la Cadena-Ysidro. Don't leave me.
James, he heard or felt. James, I am yours as you are mine. For all time. James.
He drifted then, exhausted, in dark and empty places. But he didn't sink, nor was he further drained. He wondered where he was going, but the fear and pain was gone. Ysidro, he called. No answer.
Was he completely lost then? Merged with another psyche - merged so intensely with everything that Don Simon Ysidro had ever been that there was nothing left of James Asher?
Nothing?
James, he heard. I am here. Together we shall live. Remember, remember. Until you feed, you may withstand silver as a mortal man. Daylight, too, shall not harm you. You will be mad with hunger, fevered, but together we can overwhelm him, before you feed. Remember my words, and live.
I want to live, was the first and only thought defining James Asher for what seemed an eternity. His need to live grew as the essence that was Ysidro stroked it, stoking the flame of the desire, urging ever more, ever greater need, matching him in darkness in reaching for the climax and bursting finally into fire, burning in the crucible of the vampire's white-hot spirit.
Awareness, alien and disorienting came to him slowly. Stink, light, clamor. He felt Ysidro's thoughts, wordless now, as they may have always been, but clear nonetheless though fading – together we can overpower him, but you must not feed . . . Then he was alone in the world.
He could see Ysidro's face. The blood on the teeth and lips, and peculiar glow beneath it. Then Ysidro himself was yanked out of his field of vision and the repulsive, distorted face of Dennis Blaydon replaced. He remembered little after that; he lost himself in the overwhelming compulsion to suck the life from anything near him who had any.
Violence, explosive pain, he remembered, and madness – a maelstrom of chaos held him in its center. Dennis's monstrous form dominated his view in flashes of ripping pain; Ysidro was yelling something and Asher was bludgeoning a screaming Dennis with a weapon that glinted in the moonlight. He beat him and beat him and finally, with Dennis writhing on the floor, drove the thing in his hand through Dennis's chest, shattered bone and gurgling blood erupting from the wound's maw. Asher fell on the blood like a dog, seeking the life there, and howled in frustration when Ysidro hauled him away.
Blaydon was before him, a life force not corrupted like his son's. His aging heart pounding with panic and anger – Asher could read so much from the man, but he didn't care. His need was overwhelming and Ysidro was holding Blaydon down for Asher to feed. Asher fell on him, ravening, and tore his throat out.
Later he became aware of himself standing in a dressing-room – Blaydon's by the smell of it – and Ysidro was sorting through a pile of shirts and coats. Ysidro had on fresh, if slightly ill-fitting, clothing. His movements were still spare and efficient, but he no longer looked ephemeral and difficult to track. "Put this one on," Ysidro tossed the shirt he'd been examining over the chair near where Asher stood. "It should fit." Asher obeyed, moving oddly, uncertain in his own skin. He said nothing, wrestling with his memories. His psychic communion with Ysidro was the most gaspingly intense relation he'd ever known or imagined. His own violent assaults on both Dennis and Blaydon left him shocked, both that he did such a thing, and that it felt so right. Under the combined weight of both experiences, he had not yet found his footing.
"Simon—" Asher started to speak, but he stopped as the immensity of what had just happened to him made itself felt. He felt awkward, like the morning after making love to a friend. Making love – that's what it had been like – but as unlike it as a bicycle ride is unlike a motorcycle racing on the open road. "What did I do? To Dennis?"
Simon approached him with some torn strips of linen over his arm. He took Asher's hands in his and turned them up.
Asher looked at his hands and saw the bubbling welts before they disappeared beneath the bandages Simon was covering them with. "You wrenched one of the silver-plated bars free from the window and beat him with it before ramming it into his heart. He injured you, badly, as well as myself, but I had just fed well - very well . . ." Simon met Asher's gaze, his pale eyes penetrating. "You were healed after you killed Blaydon." He looked back at his work, nimble fingers completing the knots. "You were not unaffected by the silver, but unlike me, you were able to wield it, whilst you shed the vestiges of your humanity. Now, we have much to do. 'The Peaks' that Blaydon spoke of, do you know the place?"
"It's—" Asher suddenly realized that his mouth tasted of blood. He stopped talking while he tried to think. "His wife's ancestral home. I know where it is. We—we have to get there before sunrise." And rescue Lydia. Lydia. Oh, God, what had he done? "I have a motorcycle."
"Unnecessary. We will run."
Run? Yes, Simon had said, as Stoker misquoted, that the dead travel fast. Either Simon could read his thoughts or his face, for he handed James a coat from Blaydon's wardrobe and smiled. "If you cannot navigate there over open ground, we can follow roads. I will show you how to stay near them without being seen. I will show you much, James."
"I'm no longer human," Asher said.
"You'll grow used to it." Unaccountably, Simon's tone sounded tender. "Now, come," Simon said, and Asher was compelled to obey.
As the vampire led the way down the stairs to the kitchen, Asher said, "Lydia . . ."
"Ah," Simon said, as he set about setting fire to every flammable thing in the room. "We shall see."
They watched Blaydon's house burn from the safety of a nearby field. When Simon was satisfied that nothing would be discernible about the house or the bodies, he turned to Asher. "Lead the way to your lady," he said, a glint of humor in his eyes. For Asher's part, he'd only half watched the house; he was captivated by the night and how well he could perceive the life within it. Asher nodded and, instinctively, set off at an effortless run, Simon loping easily beside him. He followed roads, for the most part, skirting Oxford rather than entering it. He might have traveled cross-country more directly, but the roads he knew to The Peaks had their origins in Oxford. He followed Simon's lead regarding what piece of the terrain they bounded through, and, despite running at a speed like that of his motorcycle, they spoke easily, in a kind of whisper that was part sound, but must be mostly a speech of the mind.
"My life at Oxford is over," Asher said.
"Indeed," Simon answered, "and I must leave London."
"Why?" Asher knew, or thought he knew, the centuries-long trial Simon had put himself to, allowing Grippen unchallenged mastery of the city, in order to live in London."
"I have not Grippen's leave to create a fledgling, James. He will kill you. He must. And then he must try to kill me. Better we leave for the continent. Tomorrow night."
Asher was quiet for a moment, examining his new, changing feelings. Leaving his life at Oxford should be painful for him, but even before acquiring a vampire's detachment from the trappings of daylight life, his work for the Home Office had prepared him never to assume anything was permanent. He was embarrassingly grateful he would have Simon's company and guidance in his exile. He would just have to find a way to give Lydia a life with them, as well. "Lydia can settle my affairs as my widow," he said, "and can follow us to Europe."
"We'll see," Simon replied.
They reached the empty estate on the downs behind Oxford with an hour to spare before sunrise, and easily located Lydia's basement prison by the sound of her heartbeat. She stood ready in the dark room like a flame-haired fury, clutching a silver hatpin in her fist. "Lydia," Asher cried, and his wife flew into his arms, an uncharacteristic display of fear and relief.
"Blaydon," she said, "Horace Blaydon, is he here?"
Asher wished he could hold her like this forever, but he was resolved not to delay in telling her the truth and was also uncomfortably aware of the silver she now held carelessly near his shoulderblade. He pulled away from her. "He's dead. So is Dennis. Lydia, you're all right?"
"Yes," she said, pushing her spectacles in place on her nose and secreting the hatpin somewhere in her rumpled skirts. She glanced cautiously at Ysidro where he stood at a respectful distance, then looked back at Asher. "What happened to your hands?"
Asher had been many things, but he'd never been a coward. He rushed in. "I used silver to kill Dennis. It burned my hands." She blinked. "Ysidro made me," but he couldn't quite say the word, "like him. It was our only chance." Lydia's hand flew to her mouth, another uncharacteristically feminine gesture that betrayed her distracted state of mind. "Lydia," James asked gently, "Blaydon said you were with child. Is that true?"
She shook her head. "No," she said in a shaky voice. "I told him I was, in the hopes of getting better treatment. James, you're a vampire?" She turned to Simon and Asher could feel the moment her distress turned to anger. "You made my husband a killer, like you?"
"He was already a killer, Mistress. You knew that."
"That was different!" Her voice echoed off the stone walls.
"Lydia –" Asher tried.
"James, James," Asher had never heard her sound so upset, or else he was that much more aware of her thoughts and feelings. "You'll have to kill to live. Like him and like those others. Over and over, taking innocent lives and hiding your kills in sewers and charnel houses. We can't live like that! I can't be –"
"You don't have to say it." Asher had heard the words as clearly as if she'd spoken them. I can't be married to a killer. Part of him died with those words; another part of him was already dead to them. He'd been lightly holding her elbow; he released her. "If Blaydon had killed us, no one would have ever found you here. You'd have starved to death."
Lydia glanced around her prison. "Thirst," she said absently, ever the pathologist. "Thirst would have killed me first." She squared her shoulders and looked at him, nodding, accepting the practicality of the decision. God, how he loved her. "You bought my life, but you paid for it with ours. Ours together."
"Yes," Asher accepted it. "Yes, we did."
"Except you, Don Simon," she said. "You saved your 'life,' such as it is, by ruining ours. Nothing changes for you."
Simon bowed slightly, a sad lift to a corner of his mouth, and Asher couldn't help but think her accusation a bit unjust. "We will take you to the nearest house – we saw one but a half mile away, where you may report your abduction and escape," Simon told her. "Tomorrow night we leave for the continent and we will not return."
Lydia turned a somber face on Asher. "You'll follow him?"
Asher had always told her the truth. It was part of why she loved him, he thought sadly. "I am bound to him."
She nodded, blinking back tears. "I know the house. Don't take me there, someone might see us upon the way. I'll go there now, as if I did really escape. Good-bye, James. I have loved you with all my heart." Now a tear did escape and spill down her cheek. "I'll let everyone think Professor Blaydon killed you."
Asher forced his words out. "There was a fire. Tell them I was at his house. Lydia, I will always love you. I want you to - be – happy." The words were so few and so inadequate as a eulogy for the passing of what they'd had together.
"I know," she said, gulping. She turned from him, hiked her skirts, and fled up the stairs. Asher started to follow, but Simon's will, wordless, called him back. He stood still, listening, as she picked her way through the garden, out the gate and into the lane.
"We can't safely sleep here," Simon said gently. "Her story will bring police attention. Come, we must reach a village with its church."
"I will never see her again." Asher followed Ysidro out into the night, grieving. They moved as swiftly as before, coursing the countryside. After a time, Simon spoke.
"I have never known a woman like your wife, James Asher," he said with open admiration in his tone. "Her passion to know medical facts about vampires will not die, and how could she fail to think of her own husband when she seeks a subject of her study?"
Asher considered. "I will write to her," he said, "so she knows how to reach me."
Simon agreed. "The world is wide and our life is long. We may yet see your lady wife again."
With that hope, Asher let the night consume him.