One for the Morning Glory (11 page)

Her hand whipped up and grasped his wrist; her fingers were gnarled and long, as if they were barely more than bones, and they gripped with great force. The skin on her hand was completely blue.

Her other hand grabbed his wrist from the other side; it too was blue, and now he saw that the nails were long and ragged and dirty. With her right hand she fought to shove his hand from her forehead, but with her left she pulled his hand harder against her, so that between them his wrist was being slowly crushed. He could not imagine that anyone so obviously weak and ill could possess such tremendous strength, or understand the fierce battle she seemed to be waging with herself.

She began to kick and thrash, nearly pulling him off his feet, and gave a dreadful, keening wail, and her eyes flew open.

They were cold, indifferent, and remote as a viper's. Her whole body arched and kicked, arched and kicked again, then her lips pulled back to reveal that her canine teeth had grown into long, dirty fangs. Her breath stank like maggoty meat and burned like wet fire on his arm as she bent her force to breaking his touch on her forehead and bringing his wrist to her mouth.

He breathed the word as he looked into those feral frozen eyes. "A vampire. You're a vampire."

It might have been common sense then to slip her grip and turn and flee into the daylight, to return later with rosewood and garlic. But without thought or evidence he knew that though she was well on her way she was not yet truly undead, and so he let her keep her mad grip on his arm and with all the force and strength of his half-body, the Prince stood straight up, lifting her out of the bed with his single arm. Her toenails, long as fingers and coated with filth, slashed at his leg, but he kept his arm from her mouth and backed up swiftly.

She was so intent on biting him that he was almost to the doors to the balcony before she realized. She finally gave up trying to bite and tried to break away, but now he twined his hand in her hair—the long soft red hair he had adored since they had been children together, now coarse as a wild horse's hide and filthy as a leper's loincloth—and dragged her by main force, tears streaking down his cheek as he did so, until at last he could again enfold her in his arm and place his hand over her face, ignoring the sharp gnashing fangs shredding his palm. He extended his detached left foot into the sunlight—

And the foul illness poured in great lumps of cold slime down his arm, into his body, and somehow out through his detached foot to where the sun burned it from both of them. His belly convulsed, his chest and muscles surged with agony, and his eye felt as if it were on fire, but he let it continue, and he stared deep into the void of her eyes.

There was a tiny spark there, something that seemed to be Calliope, and he let himself continue to stare into the vampire's eyes, willingly bearing the risk of being compelled by her. The part that was Calliope grew bigger.

She ceased to bite. With a terrible effort, she brought her forehead willingly against his palm, and now the sickness surged from her in a thick slurry, invisible to the eye, that he nevertheless felt passing through him like half-frozen diarrhea. In a moment her eyes were clear and bright, and though deathly pale, she merely looked tired. The fangs receded and she smelled of the sickroom, but not of the charnel house. He knelt and lifted her up with his arm to carry her into the balcony's sunlight—

The bedchamber door burst in with a great clap, falling flat to the floor, and over it Calliope's servants rushed in, all with weapons, all deadly pale—every one a vampire.

Amatus swung the balcony doors open wider so that sunlight spilled into the room and they fell hissing back. He bore Calliope in his arm to the balcony; her breath, cold and rank but healthy, blew lightly against his neck.

He had not realized how long he had been struggling with her, and winter days are short. The sun would be gone soon, and there was no other way down. With a groan he yanked the doors closed, put Calliope down behind him, and stood with his escree at ready.

He pulled the silver whistle that the Twisted Man had always insisted he carry from its chain around his neck, and blew it long and hard, but he seemed to attract no attention. As long as the sunlight continued to spill onto the balcony, they would be safe enough, but this could not last more than an hour or so longer. He looked down, but there was no path along which he would have dared to climb even by himself, and a glance at Calliope showed that though she had been freed from her dreadful condition, she was weak and feeble. However they got out, he would have to carry her, using his single arm, and that made it utterly impossible.

Amatus had been quietly moving around the balcony as he looked for a way down from each corner and side, making as little noise as possible, and now he was close to the double doors. Abruptly, he wheeled and kicked them open.

Scenting the living, the vampires had been gathered near the doors; as the doors swung open, the sun, low in the sky, stabbed far into the room, and there were horrid screeches as the light hit them. But only two fell dead in the beams; the rest, shrieking and moaning, staggered out of the light. Clearly most of them, like Calliope, were not undead yet.

Amatus yanked the doors closed again. He sat down next to Calliope, and she slumped against him. Gently, he brushed her hair—still filthy but already seeming softer—back from her cheek. "Are you awake? Can I do anything to make you more comfortable?"

"You can give me your cloak. You hauled me out here in my nightgown, Highness, and though I'm grateful, I'm cold. How is your hand?"

"Not as well as it could be. You had sharp fangs." He took his cloak off and wrapped it around her; she tore a strip from her nightgown and bound his hand, carefully and neatly. "Have you ever done this before?" he asked.

"Tied up a wound, or been a vampire? The former was one of the things that my guardian thought a king's daughter should know." She snuggled against him. "I'm cold. You know, I remember all of it, and I surely wish I didn't."

Amatus glanced around, reflexively concerned that Calliope not speak of her true parentage where she might be overheard.

She had fallen asleep against his shoulder for a while, but as the sun sank, she stirred and woke. He blew his whistle again; this time he thought he heard distant shouting and crashing.

"This is not the way these tales end," Calliope said firmly.

"This is not the way that things end when they get to be tales," Amatus said, "but since ours is not yet told, we cannot count on it. There were a hundred dead princes on the thorns outside Sleeping Beauty's castle, and I'm sure many of them were splendid fellows."

There was a nearer, louder burst of crashing and banging inside, and Amatus noted that the broad yard below was now falling into shadow; the shadow of the building behind was now reaching toward the wall of Calliope's house, and in a little while would begin to climb the wall toward them—and then, in a few swift moments, they would be in darkness, and just as the first stars appeared the vampires within would burst out onto the balcony.

He put his arm around Calliope. "They're getting lively in there," he said. "Hunger, I suppose. It never occurred to me that this could be an attack of vampires, because no one ever died—but once a person was cured in the house (or even once a cured person was carried into it) the place had acquired a little of the white magic from the cure, and the vampire could not return to it. But how could it be that the vampire never killed anyone at the first feeding?" Belatedly, he realized that Calliope had said that she remembered everything. "You know who it is, then. Who?"

Calliope sighed and leaned against him. "Prince Amatus— Highness—if we die here, the answer would cause you great pain to no purpose. If we survive—then there will be time. I will tell you this much, however; there is only one, and because it detests its own nature and being, and would not wish its fate on anyone else, it has tried not to feed on more people each night than you are able to cure. If you had been summoned here the first day, my servants and I might have been safe, but before anyone knew it was already too late. You must understand that—"

There was a series of grinding crashes and thuds from within, and the sound of heavy things falling down stairs; then a rhythmic hacking noise that went on, growing louder and louder, and then more thumping and yelling.

"I wish Wassant had stuck around, and I suppose Cedric will be hard on the poor fellow," Amatus said. "Not his fault at all, though." He was not sure he believed this, but he did not want to die with a grudge against any friend.

The shadows were now reaching up the side of the building; the Prince checked all three of his pismires and laid them out carefully, chutneys already cocked. "I have heard it said that being shot will knock them down, and make holes in them, though doing little other harm. And perhaps I shall be lucky enough to hit ones who are still living and they will not rise till the following sunset, so I may win us some time. Besides, white magic was worked in the threshold, and that too may slow or harm them. Just the same, I'm afraid it will be settled with the blade—and those doors are wide enough for three of them to come through. It will not be long."

"Highness," Calliope said, "may I have one of the pismires?"

"If you wish. I suppose it frees my hand for the escree."

She shook her head. "No, Highness. I cannot choose for you, but I can for myself. I have been a vampire, or as near one as I could be and still return—the last feeding tonight would have finished me, and I would have been feeding in the city myself shortly after. I will not be made a vampire; the pismire is for me, if you fall."

Amatus looked into her eyes—a most remarkable shade of sea gray—and he saw nothing there but courage and firmness. "I trust your judgment," he said. "Take this pismire, and, if it comes to that, use it. I shall try to do the same for myself."

The shadow was now just below the balcony and creeping up toward them even as they watched. The sunlight still on them carried no warmth and now Amatus wished his cloak thicker and larger for Calliope, for she was shuddering with the cold.

"Soon," he whispered.

"Thank you for rescuing me."

"But I have not . . ."

"You rescued me from the worst of it."

There were many crashes, and wild yells—then many furious voices on just the other side of the door. Amatus set his escree where he could seize it the instant he dropped the pismire, and lifted the pismire to where its ball would go straight through the chest of a normal man coming through the door.

As the last rays of the sun fell on it, the door flew open.

There stood Duke Wassant, bloody and powder burned, but grinning from ear to ear, big and wide as life. "For the sake of all the gods, Highness, don't pull that trigger or they'll be writing ballads about us both forever."

Carefully, Amatus pointed his weapon at the sky, and gently released the chutney back to the safe position. "Wassant—then all that noise—"

"Was myself and some of my men. And naturally the Twisted Man knew you were in danger and turned up in the process, and good old Slitgizzard came with him; Sir John just chased the last half dozen of them up into the attic, Highness. We took as many alive as we could, and opened as many windows as possible so that the undead would die and the rest would retreat from us; there are several that we will need you to heal, though that had best wait until tomorrow morning when you've got the sun to restore you."

"You've done well," Amatus said. "I may yet forgive you that bit with the grig." The Duke flushed till red shone through his small black beard, and both of them laughed.

After a moment the Duke said, "You both must be freezing. It's plainly been days since there's been a fire in this house. I'll have someone get to it at once. Welcome back to your house, Lady Calliope, and I'm sorry for the condition we've put it in."

"All's forgiven if you can find a way for a lady to have a hot, private bath, Duke," she said. "And I do hope that among the servants—"

"There were deaths, lady, but few of them, and I can only beg your forgiveness, for we had little time—"

She inclined her head gravely to him, and he fell silent. Then she said, "I did not question your judgment, my dear old friend; I only wanted to ask that you make the living as comfortable as possible in their bonds until morning comes and our Prince can cure them. But as you must have guessed, this house is the first place that the vampire stops every night, and it will be here within a couple of hours, and you must be ready—and I would like a bath, and a meal, before then."

She swept past him into the house with more dignity than one might imagine a young woman in a torn nightgown and a borrowed half-cloak could muster. Amatus followed, and shortly all were gathered around a fire in Calliope's main dining room. Duke Wassant's cook—a talented fellow who everyone said was the main reason for the Duke's figure—had come over in haste, along with some hastily grabbed supplies, and improvised some astonishingly good food in a time so short that it was ready almost before Calliope came down from her steaming tub and hasty dressing.

It had made a considerable difference. Her face was still pale, but there was a pink sheen from scrubbing. Her teeth were white again, and when Amatus kissed her cheek, her breath was sweet and her hair—not yet fully restored, but clean and combed—smelled of flowers.

For a long time they did nothing but eat and sigh with relief. Sir John had joined them, having secured the attic, and though the Twisted Man ate little, he consented to sit at the table with them and take a little soup, bread, and wine. It was as good an evening as there had been in a long time.

But Amatus ate little, for he knew that there would be dark doings later that night, and Calliope had warned him on the balcony that it would bring him unhappiness. He looked from friend to friend and wanted to throw himself at each of them and be comforted; he thought of the balcony from which he and Calliope had been released, where she said the vampire landed each night.