Midnight Bites (2 page)

Dedicated to Teri Keas for her support for the Morganville digital series Kickstarter

This is the first of our original short stories in this collection, and again . . . it's a tale of Myrnin and his struggle to be the man (or vampire) that he wishes to be. It's also a story of his first encounter(s) with the lady we come to know (in
Bitter Blood
and later books) as Jesse, the red-haired bartender, whose history is intertwined with both Myrnin's and Amelie's back in the mists of time. Though Lady Grey has her own story, and maybe sometime I'll get around to telling that, too.

H
e'd been in the dungeon a few months this time, or at least he thought he had; time was a fluid thing, twisting and flowing and splitting into rivulets that ran dry. It was also circular, he thought, like a snake eating its tail. He'd had a cloak brooch once in that shape, in shimmering brass, all its scales hammered out in exquisite detail. The cloak had been dark blue, a very becoming thing, thick wool, lined with fur. It had kept him alive, once upon a time, in a snowstorm. When he'd been alive.

That had been one of the many times he'd tried to run away from his master. Of course, his master hadn't needed a cloak, or fur, or anything to cover him when he came looking. His master could run all day and night, could smell him on the wind and track him like a wolf running down a deer.

And then eat him. But only a little, a bite at a time. His master was merciful that way.

It was cold in the dungeon, he thought, but like his old master, he no longer bothered with the cold now. The damp, though . . . the damp did bother him. He didn't like the feel of water on his skin.

He'd been here for too long this time, he thought; his clothes had mostly rotted away, and he could see his blindingly white skin peeping through rents and holes in what had once been fine linen and
exotic velvet. No telling what color it had all been, when times were better . . . dark blue, like the cloak, perhaps. Or black. He liked blacks. His hair was dark, and his skin had once been a dusty tan, but the hair was a matted mess now, unrecognizable, and his skin was like moonlight with a coppery shimmer over the top. When he had enough to eat, it would darken again, but he'd been starving a long time. Rats didn't help much, and he ached in his joints like an old, old man.

He didn't really remember what he'd done to land here, again, in the dark, but he supposed it must have been something foolish, or egregious, or merely bad luck. It didn't matter much. They knew what he was, and how to contain him. He was caged, like a rabbit in a hutch, and whether he would be meat for the table or fur to line some rich boy's cloak, he had no choice but to wait and see.

Rabbits. He'd always liked rabbits, liked their whisper-soft fur and their curious, wiggling noses and their puffball tails. He'd had a pet rabbit when he was small, a brown thing that he'd saved from the hutch when it was just a baby. He'd fed it from his own scraps and hidden it away from his mother and sisters until it had gotten too big and his mother had taken it away and then there had been rabbit stew and he'd cried and cried and . . .

There were tears on his cheeks. He wiped them away and tried to push the thoughts away again, but like all his thoughts, they had a will of their own; they scampered and ran and screamed, and he didn't know how to quiet them anymore.

Maybe he belonged here, in the dark, where he could do no more damage.

No footsteps in the hall, but he heard the clank of a key in the lock, loud as a church bell, and it made him try to scramble to his feet. The ceiling was low, and the best he could manage was a crouch as he wedged himself into a corner, trying to hide, though hiding was
a foolish thing to do. He was strong—he could fight. He should
fight
. . . .

The glare of a torch burned his eyes, and he cried out and shielded them. The silver chains on his hands clicked, and he smelled fresh burns as they seared new, fragile skin.

“Dear God,” whispered a voice, a new voice, a kind voice. “Lord Myrnin?” She—for it was a she; he could tell that now—put the right lilt into the name. The horror in her tone knifed into him, and for a moment he wondered how bad he looked, to engender such pity. Such undeserved sympathy. “We learned you were being held here, but I never imagined . . .”

His eyes adapted quickly to the new light, and he blinked away the false images . . . but she still shimmered, it seemed. Gold, she wore gold trim on her pale gown, and gold around her neck and on her slim fingers. Her hair was a red glory, braided into a crown.

An angel had come into his hell, and she burned.

He did not know how to speak to an angel. After all, he'd never met one before, and she was so . . .
beautiful
. She'd said a name, his name, a name he'd all but lost here in the darkness.
Myrnin. My name is Myrnin.
Yes, that seemed right.

She seemed to understand his hesitation, because she advanced a step, bent, and put something down between them . . . then withdrew to the doorway again with her torch. What she'd put there on the stained stone floor drew his attention not so much for its appearance—a plain, covered clay jar—but for the delicious, unbelievable smell radiating from it like an invisible aura. Warmth. Light.
Food.

He scrambled toward it like a spider, opened it, and poured the blood into his mouth, and it was life,
life
, sunlight and flowers and every good thing he had ever known,
life
, and he drained the jug to the last sticky drop and wept, clutching it to his chest, because he'd
forgotten what it meant to be alive, and the blood reminded him of what he'd lost.

“Hush,” her voice whispered, close to his ear. She touched him, and he flinched away, because he knew how filthy he was, how ragged and beaten by his lot, where she was such a beautiful thing, so fine. “No, sir, hush now. All is well. I'm sent to bring you to safety. My name is Lady Grey.”

Grey did not suit her, not at all: such a nothing color, neither black nor white, no luster or flash to it. She was all fire and beauty, and no gray at all.

Some of his memory stirred, though, gossip overheard beyond his cell by those whose lives were lived beyond this stone.
Lady Grey's become the queen. She'll not last long.

And then, the same voices.
Lady Grey's dead—what did I tell you? Chopped on the block. That's what politics gets you, lads.

This was Lady Grey, but Lady Grey's head had been chopped off, and hers was still attached.

He looked up, and like recognized like. The shine in her eyes, reflecting the torchlight. The hunger. The feral desire to live. She was like him,
sugnwr gwaed
, an eater of blood. A vampire. Interesting, that. He hadn't thought a vampire could survive a beheading. Not an experiment he'd ever tried. Experiments—yes, he liked experiments. Tests. Trials. Learning the limits of things.

“Lady Grey,” he said. His voice sounded full of rust, like an old hinge all a-creak. “Forgive.”

“No need for that,” she said. “Let me see your hands.”

He held them out, hesitantly, and she made a sound of distress to see the burns that were on him beneath the silver manacles. She sorted through a thick ring of keys, found a silver one, and turned it in the lock. They fell apart, slipped free, and clanked heavily to the stone floor.

He staggered with the shock of freedom.

“Can you walk, Lord Myrnin?”

He could, he found, though it was a clumsy process indeed, and his bare feet slipped on the mold of the stones. She was ruining her hems on the filth, he thought. She gave no thought to it, though, and when he reached her, she clasped him fast by the arm and gave him support he badly needed. Her other hand still held the torch, but she kept it well away from them both, which helped his eyes focus on her face, oh, her face, so lovely and well formed. A mouth made for smiling, though it seemed serious just now.

“I am sorry,” he said, and this time it seemed more expert, his forming of words. “I am in no shape to entertain visitors.”

She laughed, and it was like clear chimes ringing. It was a sound that made tears prick painfully. Hope could be a deadly thing here. Torturous.

“I am no visitor, and I hope this is not your home,” she told him, and patted his arm gently before she took a firm hold again. “I am taking you out of here. Come.”

He looked around at this narrow stone hole that had been his home for so long. Nothing in it but the scratches he'd made in the stone, half-mad words and mathematics that led nowhere but in circles.

He went with her, into air that felt fresh and new. He could hear the weak moans and cries of others here, but she ignored them and led him up a long, shallow flight of stone steps to a door that hung open.

He stepped into a guard's chamber, with a fire sizzling on the hearth and two men lying dead on the floor. Their dinner was still set on the table, and their swords lay unused in a corner. He knew these men, by smell if not by sight. They had been his captors for the past few months. They changed often, the gaolers. Perhaps they couldn't
bear to be down in the dark long, to think they were as trapped as their charges.

He smelled blood in them, and it was the same as coursed through his veins, filling him with strength. Lady Grey had bled them before she'd killed them.

He said nothing. She took him to another door, more stairs, more, until there was another portal that led to a cool, clear, open space.

They were outside.
Outside.
He stopped, all his senses overwhelmed with the night, the moon, the stars, the whispering breeze on his face. So much. Too much. It was only Lady Grey's strong hand on his arm that kept him upright.

“Almost there,” she promised him, and pulled him on, stumbling and clumsy with the richness of freedom, to a pair of horses tethered nearby. Dark horses, hidden in the night, with muffles around any metal. “Do you think you can sit a saddle, my lord?”

He could. He mounted by memory, feet in stirrups, reins in hands that knew their task, and followed the glimmer of the lady's dress into the darkness . . . which was, he realized, no darkness at all, to his quick-adapting eyes. Shades of blues and grays, colors muted but not hidden. The moon revealed so much . . . the castle's bulk they were leaving behind, the empty fields around it, the clean white ribbon of the road they followed. The trees closed around them quickly, hiding them, and he felt, for the first time, that he was actually free again.

He didn't know what it meant, really, but it felt good.

•   •   •

The ride lasted the night, and as the horizon began to take on a slow, low light, Lady Grey led him to a well-made hall—not a castle, nor yet a fortress, but something built for strength and purpose nevertheless. He did not know the design of it, but it felt safe enough.

There were no windows in it, save for shaded slits at the very tops of the walls.

The gates parted for them as they rode to the entrance, and once inside, he realized there were men, not magic, involved: vampires like himself, dressed in plain black tunics and breeches, who had opened and then shut and barred them behind. The horses were led away without a word, off to some stables, and then they were walking into an inner keep, one built even more solid and strong, lit for vampire eyes.

“Is this yours?” he asked the lady still supporting his weight as they walked. “This place?”

“It is one place of safety,” she said. “I didn't build it, nor do I own it. I suppose you might say it belongs to many. In time of need, we share our shelters.” After a brief pause, she said, with what he thought might have been amusement, “You are
quite
filthy.”

“Yes,” he agreed. “Yes, I am.”

“We'll put you right.”

His angel took him to a room near the back of the stone keep—not spacious, but it had an angled slit for a window near the top, and though he had a bad moment of terror crossing the threshold, he found it had a feather bed in it, not just chains and pain. It had been so long, he wondered if he could even sleep in such a thing, but it was a terribly wonderful thing to have the chance to even think on it.

“I will arrange for a bath,” Lady Grey said, and pulled a chair from the corner that he had not even seen, so blinded had he been by the bedding. “Sit here. I'll return soon.” She hesitated at the door, with her hand on the latch, and he saw the compassion in her face. “I'll leave this open, shall I?”

He nodded slowly, astounded she would comprehend so easily, and watched as she disappeared silently from the room. It was a
dream, he decided. A lovely dream, a wonderful thing, but it would make it all the worse when he woke up to burning chains and locks and cold, empty stones. He'd rather not dream. Not hope. It was better to live in the dark.

He closed his eyes, willing himself to wake, but when he opened them again, nothing had changed. His body ached from the ride and the stretch of muscles unfamiliar to movement; his hunger was blunted, though not truly sated yet. Surely, if it was a phantasm, he'd have imagined himself free of pain and thirst. Wasn't that the whole purpose of a dream?

He startled when Lady Grey appeared again in the doorway. She had changed her clothing to a plain pale gown, all jewelry and fine clothes put away. Over her arm, she had more clothing folded. She paused where she was, and smiled at him . . . a slow, warm thing, full of concern.

“May I assist you?” she asked him. He blinked, not certain how to answer, and then nodded, because he realized suddenly that it would be hard for him to stand on his own. Weakness was his constant companion now. He wondered if it would always be this way.
Surely not. Vampires are not so weak.

Except he felt very weak indeed.

Her arm felt strong beneath his, and he leaned against her as they walked the short distance to what must have been set aside as a bathing chamber. Within it sat a large copper tub, big enough to submerge a full-grown man if he was so brave, and on a three-legged stool beside it sat a pile of sheets to use as windings. There was even a thick liquid of soap in a pail; it smelled like lavender. The water was warm enough to steam the chilly air.

He had his shirt—what remained of it—half off his body when
he remembered his good manners, and dropped it back over his pallid skin. “Forgive me, my lady,” he said. “I—am not myself.”

“And little wonder of that,” she responded briskly. She was binding a piece of cloth over her red hair, which was now slung in a loose braid over her shoulder. “You must have help, Lord Myrnin. I am far from shy. Disrobe.”