Cameo and the Vampire (17 page)

"Oh? Do you remember him?"

She thought about it for a minute. "He was like so many other soldiers that I was running from at that time. No ... I don't think so."

Jules went stiff, as if he'd had a sudden jolt, and then he turned and began to walk into the forest.

Cameo caught up with him easily. "Where are you going?"

"The
Master
calls."

"I thought we had agreed that if you were called, then I'd accompany you."

He stopped abruptly, staring off into the darkness in front of him. "I won't hold you to that."

Cameo moved around in front of him, examining the expression on his face. "What? No, I
told
you I'd come. I'm not going to back out on you now."

"That was before you went into Haffef's yard and saved Kyrian and those other holy people that he was attempting to kill. It's doubtful that he's going to greet you with open arms."

She nodded. "I know."

"But you still want to go with me?" his eyes met hers, full of hope.

His leather armor was glossy in the waxing moonlight. She could smell rosewater in his hair from a bath earlier that day, intermingled with the scent of his death ... and she heard the sound of his heartbeat.

"Don't you think it's safer?" she asked coolly.

"For me, yes."

She moved forward and felt him fall into step behind her.

"However, if you can't hear him call, then why go at all? Doesn't this mean that you have free will now? That you aren't his slave any longer?"

Cameo paused, thinking about what Jules had said.

"You could go to Shandow, like...
Edel
," he spat out the name. "At least you would be free there, even if there's a bounty on your head."

He had a point, although there was a bounty on her head in every town that she had ever stayed in for longer than just passing through.

"If I want a longer life— or whatever it is, existence, I suppose—then I would have to go somewhere I've never been. Another country perhaps."

"Why don't you do that?"

She turned around to look up at him, standing there, arms folded in front of him. A vision of darkness in black leather.

"Heh," she chuckled. "Well, I'm not exactly free, am I? You are my stalker."

Jules glanced down, apparently fascinated by the snow or a buried tree limb for several minutes. "If you had stayed in Shandow, it would have been safer for both of us."

"But not Opal."

"You
care
so much for him?"

She looked away. "He risked his life to go to Shandow with me. He knew how dangerous it would be for him to go back there, and he never said a word to me; he just followed."

"How
noble
," he sneered.

"What does it matter to you, Jules?"

He stiffened. "It doesn't matter."

"Mmm hmm ...."

He strode forward, brushing past her. "
He
awaits."

The forest floor was covered in snow, but it was slightly warmer, causing a light fog to gather. It slithered down the path in front of them. The moon made the snow glitter here and there, wherever it was able to gain access to the forest floor.

Cameo followed the swish of Jules' cloak, with his ungainly stride, made oddly graceful now that he was a zombie like she.
Supernatural grace
,
Edel had called it.
Edel
. Now there was someone she hadn't thought of in a little while. She hadn't heard him call her name, if it that had been him calling it, in days. Ever since she asked for it to stop, it had. Either it was him, or perhaps the blood drinking was starting to drive her insane. She assumed that could be possible; Edel had been. Haffef certainly didn't seem altogether in the realm of sanity either, if she really thought about it. Cameo hadn't really spent much time considering the possibility that Haffef was mad, mainly because he had seemed too frightening, but now, just walking quietly along, she wondered.... How in the world had he come to be as he was now? Was it all the years of living outside of what was considered normal? Having no guidelines for a life? Being more powerful than everyone else? Was he actually insane? Was she headed in that direction? Was that what drinking human blood could do to a person? An undead?

Or perhaps, was it because she was technically dead, so her brain was decaying? Is that why she saw dead people walking around? Perhaps she wasn't seeing ghosts after all; perhaps they were just figments of her dying mind? And the voice she heard, too. Something her guilty mind had pulled up itself.

She refocused on Jules' back as they continued on.

As he swept his long, dark hair back over his shoulder, she thought about the taste of his mouth. He was nearly immortal, like she. An undead.

Jules glanced back at her.

Chapter Nine

The fog began to thicken and twist around their feet as they continued on. They were miles into the forest now. Cameo had no idea at all where they were. Not near that broken-down farmhouse where Haffef apparently lived, or at least kept his coffin.

A cold wind blew past her, winding around their bodies to a small clearing a few feet in front of them. Snow whipped around in a small cyclone until a form stood before them. Haffef.

Cameo and Jules froze in place.

"Your eyes," Haffef said, looking at Cameo. "You've been drinking human blood."

She said nothing.

The Master regarded them coldly for a moment, but then nodded at Jules, and his mouth cracked open into half a smile, "Good boy. Did as I asked and brought me what I wanted."

Cameo met Jules' eyes questioningly.

Jules looked at the ground.

Haffef pulled out a pair of old pruning shears and a large glass vessel. "Come to me, Gwen
.
"

Cameo's eyes widened. She took a step back.

His brow furrowed, "I said come to me!"

His words had no meaning to her. She stood there stupidly, not really knowing what he was talking about.

"Hold her," Haffef said to Jules.

"No."

Cameo turned and ran.

"No? Did you just tell me
no?
" Haffef knocked Jules to the ground and then pulled him up by the scruff of the neck, staring into his eyes. "I said ...
hold her.
"

Jules felt his free will slip away. "Yes, Master." He stood in one fluid motion, paying no attention to the broken cheekbone that he'd just acquired at his
Master's
hands. He turned, facing the blur of Cameo's hair in the distance and felt his body lunge forward.

Cameo retraced their steps back in the direction of Ponth but knew that she could not lead that monster back to Kyrian and Opal, so she changed direction ... back north, back toward Hangingford, toward Shandow. Perhaps if she could make her way back to Shandow, she could hide there. She leapt from a pile of boulders, throwing herself as far into the air as she could and crashing down into the snow, sending a wave of snow everywhere. She was faster than Jules; that had been discovered while fighting him in Shandow, but she couldn't let him get hold of her. He was too strong.

So ... Haffef really did mean to kill her this time...
I have to run! I have to run all the way back to Shandow! If I can just get a little farther.
She passed through the town of Hangingford.
Just a little farther…. Yetta is next; maybe I can lose them in the cemetery—

She ran into a wall.

It was Haffef standing in the center of the road.

Before it fully registered that her nose was broken and her front teeth were so loose that they were barely hanging in place, his hands locked on hers like irons. His face was contorted with anger as he shoved her back into the arms of his waiting thrall.

"This way." He began walking back into the forest.

Cameo looked over her shoulder at Jules who was dragging her down off of the road, into the forest. "Don't do this."

She felt Jules' grip on her wrists tighten.

Led on by Haffef, Jules dragged her deep into the dark forest, in a southwesterly direction. She expected that they were going to Haffef's home, but they never got there. They raced at superhuman speed through a dense forest. It was very dark. Then suddenly, when it felt as if they'd run on for miles with Cameo fighting Jules the entire journey, they stopped in the middle of a small clearing. She had lost her bearings completely. This reminded her of the dark wood that they'd walked into near Ponth, but she didn't know the area. They hadn't passed by here when Jules was taking her to Haffef to begin with.

In the light of the waxing moon, Haffef laid out several metal instruments and that large glass vessel that she'd seen him carrying just a few minutes ago.

"What are you going to do to me?" For some reason her voice sounded … dull ... not frightened. She felt a surge of strength rise through her.

This seemed to displease Haffef. "A zombie that doesn't come when she's called. A zombie who's going to sacrifice her own pitiful life for her sister."

"What? What are you talking about? Ivy's long dead."

Jules forced her to the ground.

"Why do you think you've been around all of these years, Gwen? Did you think I
chose
you?" He laughed at the absurdity of the idea. "That you were going to be a vampire one lucky day?" His face went cold, "No."

She watched as he uncorked the vessel with one shaking hand. "That night so long ago. The night I found Ivy dead at the hands of those lords." He looked into her eyes. "But you .... Not as lovely, nor as charming as your sister, you were alive. Barely. So I gave you the half-life you have now. Brought you back from near death, so that you could bring Ivy back to life as well, in a night's time—"

"Bring her back?!"

"I brought her to my home and stashed her body. When I awoke the next night, the body was gone!" His eyes widened. "Edel had sent a thief to steal her body while I slept. Edel had betrayed me! And," he sneered, "to think that he believed I would spare him in the end! He died in agony."

Cameo's mouth opened slightly.

A miserable smile played at the end of Haffef's mouth. "Afraid, Gwen? Afraid that I'm going to kill you now? That I'll do it the way I did to Edel?"

She sobered. He was enjoying this a little too much. "No."

He laughed again, a short, brittle sound erupting from his throat.

"But ... you sent me to find Ivy's bones only a few weeks ago. Why didn't you send me to find them right after they'd been stolen? Why didn't you get them? Wait—you couldn't get them because they were in a holy cemetery. That's why I had to dig them up. I get that, but why, why didn't you go get her bones right away?"

Haffef ignored her and set to work sharpening the shears.

Then it dawned on her. "You didn't know where she was ... for fifty years?!"

He continued to labor over the tool, snapping it open and closed so rapidly that she could barely see what he was doing.

"For fifty years I've been wandering the world as your thrall only because you misplaced my sister's dead body?"

"Now you're catching up. You are nothing but a sacrifice that has been awaiting slaughter all of this time. Once I found her body, I sent you to it. You, Cameo, are nothing more than a bag of blood."

"What do you mean?"

Haffef brought the large pruning shears up in front of her, then lowered them slowly, caressing her helpless forearm, and pausing to see what sort of emotion was etched upon her face now.

"Jules! Jules, help me!" She struggled, looking into his vacant eyes.

Haffef cut away at her sleeve slowly.

"Jules!"

And then it was over; so fast, that she didn't feel the pain at first, but she saw the blood.

Haffef had snipped her artery.

Blood spurted all over the vampire, but he ignored it and caught the blood in the large glass vessel that resembled an urn.

She screamed and fought to get Jules off of her, with the sudden jolt of realization that Haffef was probably going to kill her, and she didn't want him to.

"I can't exactly bring Ivy back to life without the blood of a close relative," he smiled. "That should have been obvious, but not to a dolt like you, hmm? You and your pack of stupid friends. None of you could figure it out. Edel knew, but he never mentioned it? Probably keeping that little bit of knowledge to himself to lord over you later on. Fool that he was.... He ran the minute my back was turned. The minute he stole Ivy's body. Killed those lords, and ran away."

Cameo cried out, but it was more of a pitiful moaning now, as she began to wither. The blood was spurting out of her arm in a torrent. She stared at her arm, sick to her stomach, but too weak to vomit.

"You
horror
. You cruel monster," she spat.

"I'm cruel?!" he roared and nearly stood, threatening to upturn the vessel her blood was filling. "I'm cruel?" He cooled. "You're the one who took Ivy from me. You deserve this fate and so much worse! You talked her into working with you, as a
servant
for those royals. A servant! She is nobility! You led her to her demise! They ruined her. They murdered her. And it's all your fault!"

"Who were you to her anyhow? Why do you care?" The world was going black. Cameo felt herself cold and heavy, too tired to move or think. "Ivy wanted to go," she uttered. "She was running away from ... a man ... some .... one ... a fiancé...."

Haffef didn't move for a moment, then he dropped her limp arm to the ground, capped the vessel with a cork and let her continue to bleed out, heavily, into the snow. There was very little blood left in her body now.

"
Awaken."

Jules blinked, uncertain where he was. Cameo's hands were crushed beneath his own.

Haffef licked blood from the corner of his mouth. "You were wonderful, Jules.
Such
a good helper."

Jules lowered his eyes, feeling a weight against his legs. Cameo's body.

"Cameo?"

"You seem to have a knack for this sort of thing," the vampire said, grinning. "A knack for luring people to their demise."