He had been walking for than two hours sunk in his thoughts, when finally the Fledgling lifted his head. A low rumbling sound, advancing and retreating, like the breath of a slumbering giant, reached his ears.
Henry scented the night air and breathed in the trace of the sea. The rutted wagon track shortly emerged from the trees to wind ahead across the open grassy headland of Boddin Point, that moonlit, reached out towards the ocean.
He was about half way across the distance to the cliffs at the ocean's edge. The wind was blowing off the water, carrying with it the scent of the brine and the sea wrack. He had been sunk in his consideration of the sound of the ocean's breath when he suddenly lifted his head.
There was the distinctive sound of multiple horses coming fast over the ground. He half turned as he glanced over his shoulder, the wind whipping his curls around his face. At least ten men on horseback were coming quickly over the grasslands behind him, clods of earth flying from their horses' flashing hooves and the hounds surging out ahead.
Surrey, God no! He thought. It was too late to conceal himself, his only option was to flee. He dropped his travel cloak to the ground and ran, knowing that once the horsemen saw the speed with which he moved, they would know him for what he was.
He lips were pulled back in a snarl as he heard the hounds behind fall on his cloak, ripping it to shreds as the voices of the huntsmen called out to one another.
"Cai, Andrew, to the left…cut off its escape." Henry heard the command as Surrey's voice rang out in the night air.
A hiss split the air beside his head and an arrow buried itself in the ground to his left. He was approaching the bluff's edge now, and was running out of earth. The night air suddenly stretched empty out in front of him as he looked down to the surf that crashed white and hungry on the rocks below.
I cannot…I will not allow Surrey to know what I have become, he thought as he was brought to bay at the cliff's edge.
He could scent the heat of the hunt in the dogs that circled him belling and snapping. He hunched over in a protective stance and bared his fangs, snarling, his eyes as black as the pits of hell.
One hound lunged forward and the vampyre hefted it from underneath as it jumped for his throat, sending it howling to fly over the cliff edge to the rocks below.
There was a sharp and burning pain in his chest. When he looked down it was to see the fletching of an arrow protruding from his shirt only an inch above his heart.
The horsemen were almost on him and the hounds circled and yammered, driven into frenzy by the scent of his blood.
The Fledgling spread his arms wide, as though he could fly or as though he could drift on the sea breeze and allowed himself to tip backwards into the empty night at the edge of the cliff.
***
The churning, cold water surged forwards and back, pushing him up against the sharp rocks that sliced and bruised his flesh and then sucking him away into its icy embrace again. He was cold, cold but for the burning above his heart and the slow kindling heat of the hunger, low in his belly. The cold and the dark claimed him.
***
He could feel the heat on the side of his face and behind his closed lids the vampyre could sense the brightness.
His instincts flared and his body jerked with his flight response, the day was upon him…
Fire shot through his chest at the movement.
"Peace, Nightwalker," a soft and feminine voice whispered. "The dawn is yet an hour off, you are safe here."
The firelight was golden on her skin when Henry opened his eyes. The material of the clothing she wore was coarse against the smooth silk of her flesh, where she sat on the ground opposite him. Her shawl fell down as she moved across towards him, reaching out.
The Fledgling shrank back with a hiss and his fangs dropped.
"Peace," she said again. "The huntsmen will not find you inside this cave; neither will the sea claim you. It is my own sanctuary that I share with you, Nightwalker. Let me tend to your wound, before you sleep."
Henry raised a hand to his chest, and in a voice that was rough from the salt water he had swallowed said, "I will heal. How do you know what I am and knowing, choose to…assist me?"
She smiled as she sat back on the dry bracken on the floor of the cave and drew her shawl tight around her shoulders again.
"How is it that I would not know you, child of the night? Am I not myself the child of the sea? Inside this cave no treacherous human heart beats."
Henry frowned and lifted his head drawing in a long breath, he rolled her scent around and examined it, his blue eyes narrowed as he realized she was not human, was not prey.
His eyes travelled slowly about the cave's walls and low ceiling and to the opening that led away to a tunnel that curved beyond his sight. He could feel, somewhere above, the slow approach of the sun.
She shifted slightly and his eyes flew back to hers, warm brown and full of compassion and secret knowledge.
"What are you?" the vampyre whispered.
"Here the people call us the Selchies," she said, smiling sadly.
Henry's eyes widened. In his eighteenth year, and dead and risen again he was still not so far from his nurse's knee that he had forgotten the cradle stories. "Seal Maiden," he whispered.
"She barked a laugh that had nothing of humor in it, "No Nightwalker. Selchie I may be, but a maiden no longer. A fisherman holds my skin and keeps me by him…to wife," she said shaking her head sadly. "He will not return to me the skin that he stole, and so I cannot return to the sea, but must stay in human form on the shore."
The vampyre considered this as he felt the lethargy of the day steal over him.
"And you help me because…?" he questioned.
"I help you because, like me you are other than human, and the humans who pursue you, mean you harm," she said, her eyes warm and open and tinged with a wistful curiosity.
"You will be safe here; I promise you. I will block the entrance when I leave. The day will not find you here, neither will the huntsmen. Tomorrow night I will return with some clothing for you and you will be free to go your way."
Henry glanced down at the damp, salt encrusted tatters that remained of his clothing. "I thank you," he said.
"Oh don't worry," she smiled, "it will be naught as fine as the young laird's clothes that you were wearing."
Having said so she rose, and crouching, made her way from the cave. He could hear the sounds of brush being piled against the entrance.
When she was gone the Fledgling, groaning, turned on his side amid the bracken that formed his bed. He was healing; he could feel it as he could feel the sun swing over the lip of the horizon.
When the world is dark again, he thought, I will wake heal...
***
A mournful bleating filled his ears as the distinctive pungent scent of goat filled his lungs with his first indrawn breath.
The vampyre opened his eyes to regard the underside of the goat's jaw moving slowly around and around as the beast chewed its cud directly above him. He turned his head to the side and glimpsed the bulging udders between the goat's legs.
Pushing the goat aside, Henry levered himself to his elbow.
The selchie sat across from him, grinning, holding the nanny goat's tether.
"I brought you something to drink," she said, nodding towards the goat.
"I thank you," Henry replied, as the hunger roused plaintive within, "but…I do not drink milk."
The seal woman smiled broadly, "Oh, the milk is for me Vampyre, her blood is for you. You can drink other than human blood, can you not?" she asked in a matter of fact tone, as she handed the tether and then a bowl and a sharp little knife across to Henry.
She placed her bowl beneath the nanny and nimbly stroked the teats. Soon enough the bowl brimmed with warm frothy milk.
She sat back and held the bowl to her lips, looking directly at Henry's face, her eyes peat brown and shining with curiosity and amusement. He watched as she dipped her head to sip the warm rich milk and when she set the bowl aside she used the back of her hand to wipe the foam from her lips. "Drink," she urged him.
After a moment's hesitation the Fledgling laid aside the bowl and knife and pulled the goat to his chest and though she bleated at being restrained the goat relaxed against him. He pushed her head gently to one side and eased his fangs into the taunt neck. As the warm blood flooded his mouth he closed his eyes, shutting out all external stimuli. He drew gently and with care, measuring the flow of the blood across his tongue until he knew he could take no more without harm.
He opened black eyes to see the selchie's deep brown gaze regarding him beneficently over the rim of the bowl.
"I did not know..." she said quietly, and then asked more briskly, "Will her blood suffice?"
He withdrew his fangs and in a mirror of her earlier action swiped the back of his hands across his lips. The goat sprang a few steps distance as Henry released her and then she began to nose amid the bracken on the cave floor.
Henry nodded as his fangs retracted and the darkness lifted from his eyes. "Until I can find my rightful prey, yes, I thank you, madam."
There was a moment of silence then and the selchie sat comfortable with her arms wrapped about her knees. She finally stirred, and handed him a bundle of plain clothing from the basket at her side, saying, "The sea fog is on the strand tonight. Would you travel on?"
The Fledgling shook his head, setting the long auburn curls bouncing. He made a small moue with his sensuous lips and then said, "No, not tonight. There is a fisherman I wish to see, about a seal skin."
***
The cottage was neat and well kept, with the orange flickering light of a peat fire wavering through the open door.
They approached from the pebbled beach. The small boat drawn up and overturned above the tide line was the testament to the trade of her master.
As they passed over the rocks below the cliffs three seals hauled themselves out of the water and barked a hoarse song to the fog diffused moon. The selchie gave no sign, but the vampyre saw the shimmer of tears in her eyes.
When they had returned the goat to the pen, they entered the cottage. The selchie crossed quickly to the hulk of a man who lay half asleep in a drunken slouch on a stool beside the small fire on the hearth.
The smell of fish, sour beer, peat smoke and human sweat assailed the vampyre's senses as he stood in the shadows.
"There you are my pretty, my selchie wife," the drunk exclaimed in a slurred voice full of fondness. "Come here to me, my wife," the fisherman said, grasping at her arm and tightening his grip as she pulled back. He dragged her forward, raising a grasping hand to her breast. "You are home from the shore. Come to my arms, my selchie."
Between one moment and the next, the vampyre had the drunk by the throat and pressed against the cottage wall.
The drunk's clouded eyes widened as he looked into the face of the Nightwalker. His heartquailed at the sight of the pitiless black eyes and sharp hungry fangs. The sudden warm smell of urine floated into the room.
Henry leaned in close and with a snarl said, "Where is it? Where is her skin, human? Tell me!"
The drunkard shook his head no and closed his eyes even as the vampyre exerted his will compelling the human to speak.
Henry asked in a hissing whisper as he brought his face close to the fisherman's, "Have you kept the selchie's skin?"
The drunk nodded miserably and his blurry gaze found his wife who stood across the room, her hands covering her mouth.
In the fire lit shadows of the cottage the selchie heard the sibilant voice of the vampyre as he compelled her captor to speak.
"Where have you secreted the skin?" Henry tightened his control. The drunk shook his head no, miserably, even as he said aloud.
"It is at a cobbler's shop, through the green curtain, there is a small room. There is a small flat chest that is . . ." he swallowed once as he struggled but then continued, "under the bed. I kept it safe, I kept it safe, a spotted silver seal skin folded and wrapped..."
The vampyre cast a glance over his shoulder. The selchie was already running out the door.
He turned back to the drunken fisherman and his black eyes were cold, his lips stretched in a toothy, predatory grin. "I hunger..." he said.
***
It was nearing dawn as the vampyre made his way back to the selchie's sanctuary.
He had though that the Selchie might be there but the cave was cold and empty. He lowered himself to the floor and amid the rustling of the bracken, arranged his body in preparation of the dawn.
He was flushed with the blood of the human who had imprisoned the selchie. Linked to the human as he fed, he had impressions of the fisherman's thoughts and emotions. The human was a lout and a drunkard, but he had loved the seal maid with a tragic desperation that in the end had caused the Fledgling to spare his life.
Have I spared him or condemned him to a life without her? The vampyre wondered fuzzily, as the dawn filled the sky.
***
He felt her palm on his chest as he drew his first breath and for a moment his heart quailed at the thought that his Sire was beside him.
When he opened his eyes it was to the soft brown gaze of the selchie and the shadowed overhanging ceiling of the cave.
"I felt it," she said, her eyes shining, and she patted his chest. "I felt the moment that your life returned. You are truly a wonder, Nightwalker."
Sliding back, Henry propped himself on his elbows, frowned and said, "A wonder, is not what I would name it."
"I have come to bid you farewell and to offer you my thanks," the selchie woman said with a smile. "This night I am returning to my home."
At the reminder of the fisherman's blood, the vampyre's eyes darkened to black and the tips of his fangs protruded. He bowed his head and then looked up to regard her from under his brow.
"There is no debt between us...Selchie," the Fledgling said slowly. "You helped me and protected me, when you did not need to do so. In return I helped you to find your skin, now you are free."
The selchie nodded solemnly and then she said suddenly, "My name is Rona."
The vampyre was taken aback, he had heard that the gifting of one's name was said to be important among the others.
"My name is Henry," he replied, "Henry...Fitzroy."
***
He stood by, on the rocks and watched as Rona shed her clothing, until she stood shimmering pale in the cold moonlight. She smiled as she shook out the bundled skin and drew it shawl like around her shoulders.
The ocean breathed out a long sigh, foaming up to the shore.
She nodded once to Henry, her eyes shining, and then her outline blurred and softened in the vampyre's eyes, re-solidifying as the sleek and spotted form of a grey seal.
Henry stepped forward to lay his hand flat against the smooth pelt. The seal turned her head to regard him with Rona's eyes, peat brown and full of mystery and compassion. Then she slipped into the sea, and was gone.
Henry stood for a moment watching the empty ocean moving restlessly under the moon and then he turned towards the town.