Camdeboo Nights (38 page)

“Eleanor said...” another person said.

“
The blood is the life, Arwen
,” Eleanor’s voice spoke in her mind. “
Do you want to live?
”

Somehow this did not surprise her, so she replied, “
I don’t know.
”

Reality twisted somehow, and the world grew dim, Eleanor’s presence so much brighter.

“A little alchemy would go a long way. There is still much that you can accomplish if you take the chance to become something more than the sum of your parts. Think of Art, Arwen.” Eleanor sounded a lot closer than her friends.

“
What strange union do you propose?
” Arwen asked, reaching out after Eleanor.

Her vision darkened, spiraling to a dim room–the interior of Eleanor’s caravan.

“How did...” She spun around and faced the tall woman, her sight in this half-reality revealing Eleanor transformed, as if viewed through thick glass.

Eleanor blazed, her hair an ashy explosion curling with an invisible current. Her skin gleamed, like ivory–unnatural and smooth–with hard planes reflecting light.

Arwen held up her hands, looking through skeletal joints to see the ragged pattern of Persian carpets on the floor. She looked back at Eleanor, who stalked forward, each limb elongated, spider-like.

“
Will you take a chance, Arwen? Become something else that we may have a chance to stem the tide?
”

“
I don’t want to die
,” was all Arwen managed, aware of a creeping pain aching through her nervous system.

Eleanor approached, her eyes large obsidian curves reflecting the sunken-eyed wraith that was Arwen, dissolving from the feet up, like a ghost.

Eleanor’s fingers pierced the skin on either side of her face, sending cold that crystalized what remained, halting some inexorable process threatening her dissolution.

“
Then take my gift, take the hungry one’s offering and live again.
”

The sensation was like having a bucket of icy water douse her, a shock so intense Arwen sat bolt upright while a blizzard filled her lungs to settle in her chest cavity.

Clarity seized her and she looked about, confused at first by the people surrounding her.

“I don’t have much time,” Arwen said. She spoke yet she had no control over her actions.

“Arwen!” Etienne called behind her.

But, she had eyes only for Trystan, who backed away from her, shaking his head. Oh, he knew all right. He suspected.

A black woman next to her hissed beneath her breath, and let go of Arwen’s hand. “Your eyes!
Ma cherie
! Your eyes! They are as black as sin!”

Her awareness shifted and Arwen felt herself shifted to the role of spectator within her own body.

Why did they waste her time? Stupid fools, if the young mage wouldn’t help the girl then it was only well enough that she’d intervened. Arwen was important; useful in this game of pawns and queens.

“Trystan, I need your blood.” Eleanor ignored how strange her voice sounded issuing from a young human’s lips, the sound wheezy through the hole in her throat.

Trystan made a strangled noise but Eleanor knew she had him because he took a step forward, doubtful but pliant. She tugged the skeins of power connecting them.

“Don’t!” the mage shrieked, who reached toward Arwen but the dwarf–the All bless his souls–gripped the black girl’s hands and she did not fight to move or disagree. Her mere presence was enough to weaken the barriers between the spheres.

Eleanor drew on the upper planes, to the Abyss and felt the surge of energy that told her–no
sang
–of the connections in the higher aethers. Eleanor pulled and reality shifted, bringing with it a cold storm that blasted the small group with such intensity those on their feet staggered.

“
For once you’re the prey, hungry one.
” She laughed, watching his face as he registered the full implications of his situation.

“You can’t–”

“
Who’re you to tell me I can’t, Essence wight?
”

He didn’t resist, crumpling into Eleanor’s arms. He looked up at her, his expression blank.

“
It will only hurt a little bit and I promise I won’t take as much as Mantis did.
”

His blood tasted like honey and it took only a small amount of pressure for her tongue to tease open the partially healed wound on Trystan’s neck.

Through Arwen’s lips Eleanor gasped at the electric shock of stolen power. At the same time she drew on the aethers, the cold living flames she dreamed of but rarely had the opportunity to touch.

She only let go of the frail girl’s consciousness once she was satisfied her alchemy would yield satisfying results.

Chapter 45

Last Gasp

The return took longer, by Helen’s estimation. One moment she imagined a third eyelid obscured Troth’s eyes with a lazy flick. He smiled his Cheshire cat grin, lazy and broad with his tongue flicking to wet his lip. Then she twisted, her vision spinning in a vortex.

Water soaked her jeans to the knee and she staggered, gasping at the decompression, her ears ringing. It took her a few heartbeats to gain her bearings. False dawn painted the eastern horizon with charcoal and insects sang.

Balmy air raised gooseflesh on her skin and Helen breathed deeply of the leaf mold, the moist muddy silt of the dam and something darker, speaking in terms of iron.

The orange of the street lamps on the bridge gave more illumination than where she’d just been–where the hell had she been? An orange patina tainted her skin.

Something large splashed in the water farther out behind her, which spurred Helen into action as she shivered in horror, remembering Troth and his true form. Faint laughter rang in her ears as she sloshed to the bank. The mud showed signs of earlier struggle and a lumpy form sprawled not far from where she’d come ashore.

Against her better judgment she went to look, marveling at how the body resembled the forms discovered in the ruins of Pompeii, the way it disintegrated into flakes–ash–when she nudged it with her sneaker’s toe. It had no head. Weird.

The reek of blood was strongest here. She touched a metal spike sticking out at an angle in a nearby flower bed and her fingers came away tacky. Something untoward had occurred here.

“Damn you, Troth, you could have brought me back sooner.”

“
In time to get you killed?
” His voice rang in her mind. Would he maintain contact? She had a feeling she didn’t want to find out.

Now what? Helen gazed about her. The most logical step would be to get out of the park, to find a payphone and call her father.

Where had Bijou gone? Helen sucked in her breath and drew on the skill of stretching her awareness. The attempt struck her as foolish and, at first, she was sure it wouldn’t work.

The garden blazed into three-dimensional clarity, like an infrared map stretching in every direction, blurring at the edges. Small life forms lit up like torches. An owl examined her from a flame tree. An inhuman two-legged being the size of a small dog paced a hundred meters to her left. Helen did not recognize it as anything that had a name in standard nature guides. Tiny sparks at ground level reminded her of mice. The more she stretched her awareness, the more she identified, marveling at the deliberate intensity of certain plants, the sentinel trees that were old enough to gain an alien form of sentience.

She knew it was Trystan by the way he seemed almost apologetic, insinuating himself at her periphery, as if he knew well enough to avoid her. Somehow it didn’t surprise her to know he’d find her. He flared dark but her disappointment left a bitter taste at the back of her throat when she recognized him for what he was.

He drew energy toward him, as if some sort of singularity tugged at the lives of those whom he passed.

Trystan emerged from a stand of hibiscus, the red flowers blooming black in the low light.

After what she’d experienced during the past few hours she couldn’t find it within herself to be angry, although she wished she’d known about his true nature sooner, before her world had been turned inside out.

He was thinner than she remembered, and walked like an old man–careful–as if the least miss-step would break a bone. His clothes–a dark t-shirt and jeans–sported so many rips he appeared to have had a run-in with a lion. His hair hung in limp, ragged skeins on either side of his face yet his eyes were what kept her from turning her face away from his.

Years of hurt shone there–and concern. They stared at each other for a long time, until Helen spoke. “I understand why you didn’t want to tell me sooner but did you show interest because of who I am or what I could become?”

Trystan looked away, his shoulders curved inward. “I’ll be honest that I wasn’t entirely honorable, or honest. At first.”

Why did she always pick the ones who were wrong for her?

“It won’t work, will it?” she asked.

“I don’t think so.”

“And now? I didn’t expect you to be here.”

He looked up, his thin lips twisted in a wry smile. “Would you believe me if I said I’d followed you because I didn’t want to see anything bad happen to you?”

“I’m tempted to but your very nature suggests I shouldn’t trust you.”

He twitched and kept his gazed locked on his feet, his hands, anywhere but her. “So, you want to tell me what happened to you? We were worried, and we almost got killed trying to find you.”

A cold thrill had her pause mid-step as she considered approaching him. “What do you mean, ‘we’?”

He made eye contact then. “When you left, a woman with black hair came looking for you. Mantis. I ran into trouble and couldn’t make it back in time to warn you.”

Helen laughed but it was not a happy sound. “Oh, she found me, all right, as did some crazy women who had it in their heads to kidnap me and try to drag my butt all the way to the DRC. Don’t tell me.”

He kicked a small stone, worrying it into the mud with his toe. “I didn’t mean for them to get involved but they insisted.”

“Who?”

“The dwarf and the witch.”

“Are they–”

“Etienne’s fine. As for Arwen, she’s still... She’s okay.”

“My brother?”

“We left him behind. With your dad. He doesn’t know any of this.”

Relief flooded Helen’s system with a sharp burst of nausea. “Now what?”

“I don’t know. We were about to leave. Sun’s coming up soon. We don’t want to risk–”

“So, that much is true about your kind. I don’t know why I never saw it sooner. I’m disappointed. I’d been hoping that you were still one person I could count on.”

“Some doors were never meant to be opened.”

Helen’s throat constricted and she tried to swallow but it felt more as if she choked. “You’re telling me.” She rubbed at her arms, only now feeling a chill, which had descended, despite the season.

“I’ll walk you to the car park. Then I’ll stay out of your life, I promise. I’m sorry.”

Trystan hunched over, looking at once so lost, so forlorn that Helen wanted nothing more than to rush over to him, to clasp his cold flesh to her but for awakened senses screaming at her to stay far away.

“This isn’t finished. We may have won the round tonight but there will be others. I can’t ever go back to what I had, can I?”

He shook his head.

“We’ve already established that although, by all rights, we should be mortal enemies, you’ve had dozens of opportunities to destroy me and you haven’t, why?”

“I don’t know.”

“I don’t think it’s a case of you not knowing. I think it’s a case of you not wanting to admit your feelings.” She sighed, on the verge of tears but not wanting to show her weakness in front of Trystan. His being a “hungry one” was the least of this night’s shocks compared to Troth’s rude denouement. He’d–
it
–had done something to her, made it so that she now viewed the world without the veneer of human ignorance that had shielded her before.

She turned her back on Trystan and stared across the dam’s darkly lapping waters, hugging herself against the cold, which had settled within. Helen knew exactly where Trystan stood, behind her, a few paces to her left, instinctively
knew
how much she’d have to draw on the world around her to blast him into ash.