The Resurgence

Chapter 25 – The Past

Somewhere far away Zephon's knees cracked against the marble. The world around him was black, except for the green veins that spangled the dark globe.

He stood, leaning against the orb for support, if only because it was the only thing to cling to. The icy surface burned with cold. Looking up, he balked. Someone else stood there. Zephon jerked back but his hands stayed frozen to the black glass.

The robed creature was milky tan, tall and unnaturally slender, with wider shoulders that made Zephon assume it was male. One hand brushed the globe, its fingers long and delicate, tipped with translucent nails. A crest topped his head, matching the bony protrusions that jutted from his shoulders. His eyes were dark green, almost black, and his voice carried a metallic undertone. Voice? His thin lips did not move.

"Time remains a loop," the creature intoned in his flanging voice. "The Enslaved jump to fate and reincarnation. They are deluded. Time has no care or plan. It is, and always will be, connected by a thread even we the Hylden have not seen. Instead, we can see but the shadows of what is to come. And now that it has foretold our death, we cannot accept it."

"Still adding to our memoirs, Jezal?" the voice came from far away.

The ancient—Jezal, as the voice had called him—turned to regard the newcomer. This one's flesh was darker, his hair pale copper, and his chest covered with a breastplate. His limbs were steely and corded. His legs were strange; they arced back, like the haunches of a wolf.

"Saving them, though my hope is thin." His lips moved now, and smiled wryly.

"You've found something?" The armored one sauntered closer.

Jezal looked back at the black orb, its glowing veins reflected in his eyes. Zephon did not miss the casual stance of the one behind him. Jezal was trying not to look him in the eye.

"It is only a theory," he said. "We know of our savoir. We know of theirs. Strange they match so perfectly."

The warrior was tense as a wary wild thing. "What are you getting at?"

"What if they were the same?"

"Still impossible." His companion smirked. "You say you're above all this talk of our doom, but you're no better."

Jezal's lip curled and he turned on the warrior, one hand still touching the black glass.

"Better? The magisters created that beastly Mass to destroy all of Nosgoth. It only needs an indestructible vessel." His teeth, slightly pointed, bared at the other. "You think I have not guessed who? That curse is cruel genius—breaking them from their false god, turning them into beasts, and giving us the proper vessel to destroy anything left."

"You sympathize with those deluded wretches? They've dragged us into a war of religion when we have none! Somehow, those primitive wretches have found a way to defeat us."

"The Seer disagrees with the magisters," Jezal mused.

"She's mad!" the warrior hissed. "She gave herself to the apes to pass on her foresight. She does not see a future with us in it, but loathes any method to circumvent it?"

"She understands the paradox."

The warrior's golden eyes flashed. "Paradox?"

Jezal looked bitter. "If a paradox came to be—something existing in two forms, as two points of history collide, what would happen?"

"Any time we have tried to trick history we fail at best and die at worst," the warrior said. "It's a tide we cannot outrun." He flashed an acidic grin. "We can only make it more hellish for them."

"Yes, Rathar," Jezal spoke slowly, as if to a student. "But what if that tide knew not where to flow? Time cannot accommodate a paradox because it encompasses all futures."

"Enough," Rathar said. "I fight; I don't philosophize."

For the first time, Jezal smiled. There was affection there. Or what had been once. But soon again his expression soured. Rathar, ferocity softened, touched his shoulder in an unasked question.

"The Seer believes the Enslaved will tear the dimensional walls," Jezal said. "That explains why they've built those ridiculous pillars."

Rathar looked puzzled, then incredulous. "Those idiots think we will be stopped by a dimensional scrim?"

"They are fanatics, not idiots," Jezal bit back. "If they sealed their curse with the pillars it could be centuries until we were free again."

"If that comes to pass, we will still return." Rathar's eyes gleamed. "They won't survive their curse, even with immortality. Nosgoth will be ours once more."

Jezal's nails scraped against the glass. "If we are locked away for that long, we should not come back at all. We would be twisted shadows."

"At least we would be alive," the other said. "But I don't plan on going anywhere." His hands clasped Jezal's shoulders, his voice low and venomous. "I will fight to stay here with every fiber in me. When the time comes, I'll slaughter them all. You can't hate them as I do—you have never sired kin; you'll never know how hate burns."

The pain on the first one's face was clear. Zephon was immersed, but he had enough spare thought to want to bash their heads together. One seemed happy to yield and die. The other was too blinded by rage to think clearly. Sightless hate, it led one to so many foolish things. Like attacking a warrior before he studied his tactics, as he had. The warrior's vow though…Zephon felt wary, despite the millennia that had passed. Could some of them have found a way to remain, even before the rest returned?

Jezal turned fully, leaving the glass orb.

And Zephon was in true darkness. He jolted back, alarmed he was trapped in the void. The movement tore his hands away from the frigid surface. Another crack against the marble floor, this time his skull. The direct light made his eyes water.

A band of pain ran down his forehead and war drums pounded at his temples—not from the floor. As if a muscle had been wrenched and strained before it had fully developed. Gingerly he rose to his elbows, shielding his eyes and twisting away from the sunlight. Feeling strangled, he unclasped the cloak. His head ached with every movement.

What the fuck?

They recorded their history in that glass…thing? Perhaps it explained why they had fewer books than the girl had imagined. The girl.

His nose was blocked—he snorted, and blood splattered the marble. The bloodlust had faded behind his own pain and revelations.

The creak of a bowstring made him look up. She had used the shelves as a ladder. Niamh crouched on the stairless landing, her bow drawn and an arrow nocked. Bah, as if he could not catch an arrow midflight.

"You stayed still in front of a charging demon but not me?" he called up. "I'm flattered."

She stayed where she was. Zephon ignored the arrow and rose. From her stance, he knew she shot at rabbits, not people. Nor had she fled. Doubtless to avoid the demons, but he did not miss her pale eyes flicking from him to the orb. The girl was too obsessed to know fear.

"If I was still going to eat you, you'd already be dead," Zephon said. "You knew what I was when I washed up on your shore."

Logic rarely appealed to a fearful creature, but the girl had a pragmatic streak. Why else had she cajoled a blood-drinking nightmare into being her escort? She unstrung the bow and stood up. Her mouth had stopped bleeding.

"Why are you hurt?" she asked.

"Your friends are a tiring read," he said, rubbing his temples. It didn't help.

Her brow was furrowed. "The Aether Record? I thought it was a—" she groped for the word. "A symbol. A representation of their combined knowledge."

"They evidently grew bored of writing."

She looked as she did that day in the tree—a fixated scholar, undeterred no matter the price. She jumped from the landing. Zephon stepped back, smirking, and was rewarded by her panicked expression before he ducked in and caught her. But the drop made him step back to counterbalance, despite her light weight. He was weakening. Just behind his roaring headache, hunger waited far from assuaged, growling at the scraps of goat and deer it survived on.

Her breath rattled from her chest as he set her down, her body tense as a bowstring. He scowled; she was proving to herself as much as him that he had sheathed his claws.

She walked to the stygian globe, cautious but curious.

"Don't touch it," he growled. His head was no better.

Her breath whistled over her teeth and her shoulders tightened. Bracing herself.

Niamh slammed her hands onto the glass. Her brother would have wrenched her away, as would her father or grandfather. But Zephon was none of these and he waited, curious to see what happened.

Her head snapped up, eyes staring but seeing things long dead. Her featured showed no pain, only a sightless focus. Instantly Zephon was suspicious. He sidled closer, noting her fixed expression, her lips that silently moved.

Clearly the so-called First Ones endured no pains to record their memories. Neither did she to view them, though her mouth was strained in concentration. His mind skittered over possibilities. What had Rathar said—a seer who lied with a human? The girl claimed to know a seer, and herself claimed a second sight.

Niamh shifted, her expression tense. Wordlessly, she took his hand and pressed it to the globe, her fingers entwined. Zephon was about to wrenched his hand back when he realized the black glass was not as cold as when he first touched it. There was no jolt or worsening pain. He only looked up, and saw.

Perhaps the device sensed intention and made the best of his discordant questions. Otherwise, he had no idea why he saw this specific scene. Far away he sensed the girl, her hand still over his. He did not see her.

Jezal had returned, sometime after. Armor replaced his robe, though he wore it with less careless grace than his warrior companion. The plating was dark cobalt, light and sparse. He wore no helm; blood clotted a cut down his bony cheek.

Other figures appeared behind him. Humans, dressed in robes. Jezal looked sideways at his companions.

"I've sealed the upper level, but I must save my strength. You need to seal the doors."

A female stepped closer—Zephon realized she was neither human nor Hylden. Her skin was paler than Jezal's, her crest smaller, and her shoulders had no bony protrusions. Her thin mouth twisted in a frown.

"Why would we fear you? I fear my father's people more." Her voice carried a familiar accent.

A halfling. And a seer who lied with a human.

Jezal's eyes crackled with tired anger. "Because we won't be as we are now," he said, wearily resigned. He was not a fighter. "The sea will protect you from the Mass. But it may be centuries before we return." His hand brushed against the black globe. "You think some of us distrust you now…you cannot know what I've seen in the other realms. Madness, corruption…I fear we will return as twisted vestiges. I will not help them."

Even if the one who returns is you? Zephon thought.

The humans stayed silent. Some tried to look blank. Others tried to look—well, something they tried to pass as loyal. Zephon saw through them. In no way did they want to follow these orders. Even the Halfling. Her head bowed.

"It will be done, my lord."

He touched her cheek. The anger had faded. It was never strong to begin with. Anger was a cousin to hope, after all. He knew his adepts, even if they were human. He had to know they would not give up their newfound knowledge. Why even try? Zephon mused.

Jezal bade them farewell and left, vanishing from Zephon's vision. The Halfling took his place, a slender hand on the black surface. A man walked up beside her. His ruddy hair was tufted and mussed, but his green robes were immaculate.

"He can't expect us to give up all of this. Think of what we could do."

"Be as kings?" she replied, an edge to her voice.

"Why not, Banfaidh?" he said. For all his coltish youth, his eyes were hard. "The Hylden raised us to what we are. Why can we not do the same for our people?"

She looked up. Her expression was torn. Torn between two worlds. Torn by something she knew and they did not. She turned to her companion, her hand leaving the globe, and everything turned black again.

The shift back to the modern world was less wrenching. He opened his eyes he had not realized he closed. Zephon could guess what had happened after. From the stunned look on the girl's face, she did too. She was breathing harder and sweat touched her crown. Hand still on his, Niamh closed her eyes, and Zephon followed her back into the past.

The world was a screaming horror. His ears latched onto the distant cries. It was night, and the windows to the sides of his vision flashed a blue-green, as if fire razed just beyond. A woman leaned over the globe, one hand holding a dagger like one who had never drawn a blade in anger. Her robes resembled the ones from before, but grander and gaudy. A heavy necklace hung from her throat, a red jewel refracting the torchlight.

"We have no choice." Her voice was broken. "They came in a single blast. How many I cannot count. We've paid for our ancestors' mistake—for taking their legacy, and pretending they were gone. We will pay the debt. Whatever they plan, they will not use this."

A shout came from beyond, followed by a rushed cry in that language Zephon still could not follow. The woman's gray eyes were watery. She pushed herself away from the orb.

The present slid back into focus. Rain had begun to fall, splattering against the windows, dimming the library. He extricated his hand from Niamh's limp grasp and walked to the nearest skeleton. The robes covered most of it, but a now-familiar jewel gleamed inside the ribcage. He plucked it out—a hefty thing, delicately set in silver. Alexandrite, he thought, twisting the jewel against the shadows. Torchlight had made it red, daylight made it green. The girl turned, her face blanched.

"Well, not quite the expected?" He couldn't help his grin. I was right…partly. No one left a city abandoned. Even one who claimed a second sight could not refuse the thought of more power. And so her ancestors were a welcome party for the deranged First Ones.

"We did trade with your land." Niamh's eyes focused, sharp and searching. "We would've had a harbor. And this place, and the Aether Record." Zephon nodded. Niamh's eyes narrowed. "She was wrong. This was our city. We took their legacy, fair as anything."

Oh, this was amusing. Had she been born in Nosgoth, her life would have been a world apart. He tossed her the necklace.

"A long-lost family heirloom," he offered.

She studied the stone, undisturbed that it had nestled against a corpse for centuries. She looped the chain around her neck.

"I want you to ask it something specific," he said.

Niamh shook her head. "Give me a moment. It's tiring." She rubbed her forehead, though she hardly seemed as afflicted as he was.

"It seems more predisposed to your mind than mine—" he stopped himself. Damn.

He had broken one of his own tenants. Never admit to wanting something another had. That was the fastest road to slavery. But the girl was no politician, he countered.

Fair enough. It wasn't like he had a castle to retake. Zephon went back to the skeletons. Two had bloodstains down the fronts of their robes, staining the floor around them in black. None were missing fingers—suicide then, not starvation. This circle had died, while their kin outside were killed or enslaved. An interesting historical antidote…but little more than that.

I was right, Raziel. That creature that possessed my fledgling was no demon. But the thought brought him little succor. In the end, it meant nothing. Kain had never passed through this exact room. Zephon doubted he had even explored parts of the city that did not harbor the Sarafan Lord's army. Am I deluding myself into thinking there's anything beyond my own failure?

He had wanted to know why Kain murdered his own. Would he fear a return of the creatures? Not if he destroyed them. But if he banished them? Did Kain ever look away from his conquering armies and wonder if history would return, claws bared? But Zephon could not discern anything substantial from those scattered thoughts.

Anything Kain did not want him to know was worth knowing. At least it took the bite out of his current prison.

As for the cave, he'd pieced it together, as fragmented as his knowledge was. Somehow, one of their race had not left when the rest were blasted into another dimension—or Kain had simply done a sloppy job slaughtering them. Zephon thought back to the warrior Rathar, and his bitter promise to stay and continue the fight. He remembered the stories he had read, of priests encountering sinister forces and branding them demons.

The ruins at the edge of the city might give him more clues, but the rain and the flock of demons made it a sour venture.

The girl had curled up near the door, stealing any light she could for the tome in her lap. She nibbled at a piece of dried meat.

Despite rain-dark skies, he knew it was high afternoon. The lowest part of a vampire's activity. Rest was preventable, especially in times of battle, but the demon and globe had weakened him. As he slid to the floor, his back to a wall, rest seemed more appealing than the centuries of knowledge around him. At the very least he could scrap together more strength. And resistance to the idea of tearing her throat out. If he wanted to explore the device without his brain oozing from his nose, he needed the girl alive and able to use it.

What if you have all the time in the world for that? The thought made him flinch. What if Kain never planned to retrieve him? The island had food, and shelter. And mysteries. Would even Kain be cruel enough to strand him forever, on this wet little rock? He forced himself not to latch onto the idea—his mind would never let him rest otherwise. As Rahab had mocked once, when the fifthborn found an idea, he chewed it until his jaws bled.

The sound snapped him back. Hoofbeats. He jumped to his feet, just as he heard a shuffling sound, and a wet, furious banging on the door.

"Niamh!"

Niamh stood too, her face somewhere between horror and anger. Zephon placed the rough baritone.

"Ronan!" She followed with a furious question in her native tongue.

While the sibs shouted through the door, Zephon sprang for the landing. Outside on the balcony, wincing as the vestiges of rain pattered down, he could see the brother. The young man was drenched and his face was stark with fury. His horse stood nearby.

The girl clambered up after him, leaning over the balcony and yelling something down.

"The demons will kill him before he shouts himself hoarse," Zephon said. That might be fun to watch. He hadn't set his steed Gevurah on a slave in years.

"He's an idiot," Niamh said. "He left the village to come after me. He shouldn't do that, not with the Dearg-Dul close.

On the edges of his hearing, Zephon thought he heard something stir. Several somethings.

"Join us up here or leave," Zephon called down. "If I recall, the demons have a taste for you." He glanced at the girl. "He does remember they live here?"

"Let my sister go!" Ronan snarled back. The bloody fool was gesturing with a sword now, and one those harkbuses was holstered on his back.

Zephon laughed. "She should let me go, the demanding vixen." He slid up behind her, hands clasping her shoulders, his neck bending until his chin grazed her cheek. "Is she in more danger down there with you or up here with me?"

Even if the boy's grasp of the language was piss-poor, he looked ready to bleed from his ears.

Niamh squirmed away to lean farther over the balcony. She said something; Zephon assumed it was the obvious fact she was safe, and her sib was minutes away from evisceration. Surely she knew the longer he stayed, the less likely he would survive the hour. The footfalls were not far now.

"Lordling, I hear your friends," Zephon added. "I have no intention of fighting them."

Perhaps for the first time, Ronan noticed the demon corpse crumpled near the wall. At least, he remembered the gash on his thigh. The boy still moved with a limp. His sister continued to glare down, jaw set.

Finally her brother heard the approaching slaughter. Just as his horse bolted for the gate.

Alas, not fast enough.

The first demon growled from a low roof, about to pounce. A second sprang past, claws screeching on the stones as it raced for the horse. A third appeared in the road, blocking the way. These were different than the demons from Nosgoth. Lizard-like, slender things, built more like cats than boars.

Had Zephon been the boy's brother or father he might have made an effort to drag him out alive. He was not. Had it been a single demon, he might have considered it for the pleasure of killing one of the irritating creatures. But there were three, and Zephon had long been convinced he was not invulnerable.

Niamh was screaming now, rocking against the railing. She had not brought her bow, as useless as it would have been. He had seen that before in humans—instincts propelling them forward, self-preservation reeling them back. He had seen many of them do that when his army had descended upon a village and only a quarter of the inhabitants crossed the river in time.

The boy held up his sword. Useless, of course. The first demon dived at him, claws extended. Ronan yelped, though the sound strangled off as the paw swatted him like a toy. He hit the ground in a roll—desperation made him faster. But his wounded leg could not carry him further, and he staggered to regain his balance. Blood was already running down his chest. The demon paused, a cat playing with a mouse.

"Grab him, please!"

Zephon glanced at the girl. "You mistake me for a knight, sirrah."

Niamh pushed away from the banister. To get her bow? By the time she returned, she would only be annoying their dinner.

But she did not leave. Zephon tore away from the game below, to find her looping a cord over the railing. The cord he had used to pull her up. Somewhere close, Ronan's horse squealed as the second demon brought it down.

"Then save me!" she said as she dived over the edge, rappelling like an explorer with a death wish.

There was not enough cord to reach the bottom—she dropped several feet and stumbled to find her balance.

Zephon doubted the girl's sanity. Then he cursed her. She knew he needed her to use the First Ones' device. The little witch.

The first demon was close enough to the balcony that Zephon could leap over it. His sword was out, his weight behind it, as it crunched between the demon's bony shoulders. It fell with a squawk, throwing Zephon to his knees as it pitched sideways.

The third barreled toward the vampire. Zephon's sword was still in the first demon. He went for his daggers, forcing himself to think how and not if he would get out of this alive.

He lunged and grabbed the boy by his tangled hair, dragging him before the demon. Then he shoved him to the side—a predator always goes for the moving target. Zephon slashed at its throat as it swerved, cutting deep enough to feel the pull as the blade snagged on its trachea.

This ridiculous act of his wasn't going so badly—

His moment of victory died as the second demon leapt at him from a low roof. The beast had abandoned the horse while he dealt with the third. Zephon twisted and jumped, but wheezed as its scaly shoulder smashed into his chest.

He landed hard on his back, his shoulder blade clicking. Not completely healed after all… He hissed as acidic burned down his back. The road was covered in wet stones and tiny pools. The fall had knocked a blade from his grip. Zephon kicked wildly, pain driving away all coordination. One foot connected with its bony ribs, one knee with its concave stomach.

The demon reared back, hacking a glob of wet saliva. Then it struck again. Its serrated maw snapped at his windpipe—Zephon writhed and punched its snout hard enough to save his jugular, but not enough to save his flesh.

An explosion tore the air and eviscerated his ears. The world was ringing. The demon jerked up, startled. Zephon gave it an eye full of steel.

Niamh stood a dozen paces away, the harkbus in her arms. She had taken it from the fallen human. The shot had completely missed the demon, but the sound was enough to distract it. She dropped it with a heavy clang.

Zephon kicked the dying creature off him, its blood splashing into his eyes before he lunged to his feet. His back burned, head throbbed. He was drenched in brackish carmine—the stuff was coy and acidic to his nose.

This was hardly the stuff of legends. Up close, the demons were little more than skinny, undernourished lizards. Nothing like the Silenced Cathedral.

The girl had stepped in front of her brother. Even through the heady demon blood, Zephon could smell the wounds across the boy's chest. Vampires hungered hours, not minutes after a battle though; the adrenaline and war song numbed actual thirst. But sometimes instincts were treacherous. The gash across his throat wasn't closing.

I could die. The thought made him chuckle with disbelief, but that only made the blood flow harder. He was unsteady on his feet, head still swimming.

Niamh crept up to his side, looking like a deer about to bolt. "You can have the horse," she said.

The boy's horse sprawled further down the road, its neck broken. Zephon tottered to it. It was animal blood, but there was a lot of it. The girl latched onto his arm, as if he were about to collapse. He was too focused on pinching his throat closed to shake her off.

"I thought you were dying when I saw your neck," she murmured.

I already am, my dear, he wanted to say, but thought better of widening the gash.

All he saw was the dead horse. He did sink to his knees then, as he pulled its head closer. He had to draw on the artery; the heart no longer pumped, but the body was warm enough to still be pliant. At last, when he was starting to notice how weak and wretched the stuff tasted, he felt the tingling burn of his throat closing and back mending. The pounding in his skull finally quieted.

Niamh stayed beside him, morbidly curious. He rounded on her.

"Do that again and I will beat you to death with your severed arm."

She wasn't the cowering sort—she had never witnessed a vampire in a full rage. She did step back.

"But you killed them."

"You think it was easy? You stupid child!" He was speaking in his natural tongue but he assumed she got the gist.

She had not thought at all, the idiot. No…not precisely. She had been willing to let the demons scare off her brother, the moments before the horse bolted. She had not wanted him eaten. Then she threw Zephon's obsession with the past against her ability to use the globe. Damn you, he thought to himself. He had tossed his own cards to the wind.

A sound scuffled behind him "Don't touch my sister," Ronan said, his accent mangling the language.

Zephon spun on his heel and backhanded him across the jaw. The boy went down. A light touch, all things considered. Damn fool was lucky to still have all his fingers.

"Do you know how many lives I've saved?" Zephon snarled. "Luck always runs out."

The boy groaned but thought better of countering.

"Thank you," his sister said. He supposed cracking the boy's jaw was preferable to tearing his throat out and drinking from his windpipe. Niamh regarded him solemnly.

"Ask anything and I will try to find it in the Aether Record," she said. "You believe…the Enslaved were your ancestors?"

She was more perceptive than she looked. "Ancestors of a sort," he bit out. But she had set his mind wandering again, and rage rarely followed along.

There were too many similarities between the Enslaved and the ancient vampire—Zephon wracked his memory for the name—Janos. Janos Audron. He had assumed the stories of Janos' wings were figurative, or peasant superstition. Humans painted horns on everything.

But Janos sired Vorador, and Vorador, as gruesome as he looked, had once been human. Jezal had mentioned a curse. Perhaps the humans had unknowingly been correct. A curse that turned them into monsters…Zephon almost wanted to laugh. Did he owe this race his very existence?

The brother had climbed to his feet, keeping his distance. Niamh turned and spoke, and they trilled on in their native tongue. Finally the brother nodded, eyes hilariously full of loathing, and limped to the gates.

"He will go find the horses and wait for us."

"Making a wounded man hike a furlong?"

"He should not have come in the first place," she said.

Were he in a better mood he might have chuckled. Instead, Zephon's ears prickled. More creatures stirred, still far but waking.

"You hear them, don't you?" Her words were tense.

Zephon nodded. Ah, choice. Return to the forum for gods knew how long, or head back to the village.

"I want to come back," the girl said. "But my people need to know. If I get back before my father, I could make some of them see."

He doubted any would see the importance she saw in their history. Zephon had no idea what she hoped to achieve, city or no. But it was amusing to watch.

The strange girl looked around the city. "We were supposed to have this. If we have a harbor, we can reach your Nosgoth."

And we would welcome you with open mouths. Of course she had little hope of rousing a village of cowardly farmers to retake their former city. But it was amusing to watch.

A ring and a necklace were all it took to make her welcome at a busy inn. They fetched coins and wine and a lack of questions about a lone woman walking through the door.

Galvira had passed through Lambsheim only once before, but the smell of people and smoke drew her from a league away. She carried no gold, only two necklaces and two rings. One was her wedding ring—that would never leave her hand. One was the trinket the vampire had given her. She should have hurled it into the flames. But the engraving behind the jewel stopped her. The Maziere crest, an eagle, wings extended. He had never known what it meant, though Galvira wondered if Erkhard had it with him when he died or found it decades after. She had kept the necklace tucked away, unable to look at it or leave it.

She wasn't cold. She wasn't warm. She felt nothing, apart from the thirst tugging at her throat. Her mad escape from Sandulf had burned away any sustenance left from the dead servant.

Then why had she placed herself amidst a town of good people?

Loneliness, if anything. She could not kill herself. Her one chance had been Alaric but he had spared her. She wanted to curse him. It was almost crueler he had saved her. As unfounded as it was, it made her hope.

No, she could not kill herself. She could only kill others. And she lied to herself more than anyone. Her loneliness was there, but so was hunger. The hunger dominated everything else.

The man squirmed in her grip. He was weak from lack of air, shaking in pain. Perhaps he wondered for a moment why he could not dislodge the witch who straddled him, one hand clamped on his windpipe. Then she had pinned one of his hands to the nightstand with his dagger, which had narrowly missed her clavicle. His other wrist flopped brokenly–she had never known how fragile those bones were.

Perhaps he wondered why he had ever coaxed the solitary woman to join him in his room. Galvira could pretend she cared. But that would be another lie.

She buried her fangs in his throat. They tore through skin, gnashing for an artery. Finally blood pulsed into her mouth, hot and metallic and ecstatic. Too soon it was over, but her throat no longer burned. For a moment she felt almost sated.

The man was a brigand, that was clear. He had said mercenary, but he had no armor, and no mercenary traveled so far from his men. Alaric would have killed him; highwaymen were a blight. Surely that was better.

Another lie. She didn't care who the man was, only that he bled.

He had a good cloak, tossed into a corner. She had left hers in Sandulf's study. A pity; hers had a fur-trimmed hood. The cold scarcely bothered her but a hood was useful. Her dress was torn and mud-stained. Impractical for anything beyond riding. With a curse she took his shirt, jerkin, and trousers. They were loose, but she punctured a new hole in his belt to cinch her waist. The boots were far too large though but no matter. She had kicked off her shoes the moment after she fled Sandulf's study.

Then she remembered. Dawn, six or so hours away. She should have waited until morning. Already a vampire's whore, what was one bandit?

The room was too small—her impulsive pacing gave her no room to think. She couldn't stay here, but sunlight would burn her. Erato had said it would for several decades. At Nachtholm when she'd crept across the yard to meet Alaric, heavily cloaked and covered, she'd worried her eyes were about to melt in her skull.

She looked back at the dead brigand. He was younger than her, unlikely past his mid-twenties. The dead man smelled of horse. Reeked of it. He wouldn't need a horse anymore.