The Song in the Silver (2 page)

***

In a dark glade, deep in the woods, far from any path and where the daylight scarcely ever reached, a pale woman in a green gown that covered her all the way from her white throat to the mossy forest floor stepped from behind a blackened, dead oak into a fading patch of moonlight. Dark clouds loomed above, a portent of the storm she knew was to come, the storm she welcomed, the storm that would bring fear and dread, for those were the things that called to her. Those were the things that had awakened her.

With a pained creak and a rumble of wood against dry earth, the exposed grave closed on itself and slid back to hide again beneath the roots of the oak. The villagers who had buried her there two hundred years ago had left the spot unmarked but for the sapling they had planted over her. But they had failed to drive the wood through her heart and though it did not beat, nor would it ever, she had not truly died. Nor could she. She feared only fire and felt only hunger.

The clouds swallowed the moon, and the pitch of night enshrouded the woods. She wrapped the darkness around her and turned from her grave. The footprints she left in the damp moss as she walked were of a cloven hoof. Soundlessly she moved; no breath from her lips disturbed the night.

She stopped and sniffed the air. The wolves were there, as always, as they had been when she had last awoken, but their scent was far way on the other side of the woods. She knew better than to walk those paths. The wolves, as nonmortals, too, could kill her. They had taken her sisters before, as she and her sisters had taken theirs when they could, but the balance now was far too great in their favor. Yet her hunger needed answer, it needed it tonight; it was a pain she felt, an ache that gnawed at her. She would risk much to assuage it, but she would not dare the wolves.

She would follow safer paths and seek easier prey not so near the wolves and not too near the farm or the villagers with their stakes and their fire. The night air carried the promise of just that. The sweet scent of young love, alone, unprotected, frightened, cold, but with a beating heart and fresh, red blood flowing. She could taste it, she could almost drink it from the dark of night around her; it lay on the breath of the wind. She had drunk from the throats of innocents before; she knew that the sweetest blood flowed from first love, from a heart beating with the one thing she would never know, had never known, nor would ever know.

She would feed tonight. She would kill and leave another to walk undead. Only then would she sleep again.

A smile of pure evil spread over her face. She lifted her head to the night sky and howled.

***

William wrapped himself in the blankets that he and Mary had slept in, his soaked jacket hanging by the small fire he’d lit in the hearth. It gave little warmth, but he felt the better for it. It was dark and awful out there, but at least the rain had stopped. It was too late to get back across the glen, and he resigned himself to a cold, damp night in the bothy. He pulled the blankets tight around him as the distant echo of an unearthly howl rent the night.

The hideous noise hung on the wind and faded slowly away. William trembled a little. The door was safely bolted and barred so he had no fear the wolves that roamed the higher slopes would get at him, but it was an awful cry. It could almost have been human, a woman screaming unimaginable loss and pain, but it was far too powerful, bestial, and raw. It had to be an animal but an animal he had no desire to meet. He was glad of the four stone walls and the fire that, though it now burned low, still gave flickering light to the room.

He slept, fitfully at first, clutching Mary’s cross to him, thinking of the love they had shared earlier and how one day he would be the shepherd of his own flock. Then he could ask her father for her hand. With that thought, he drifted deeper into a happy sleep to await the dawn and a new morning.

He was jarred awake by a frantic knocking at the door. He sat up, not a little disoriented as he realized that he was not in his own bed. He blinked. The fire had died down to a dim red ember, but at least the rain had passed. It was quiet, and only the wind around the stone walls made any noise at all.

The knocking came again, insistent.

He stood and walked to the door.

“Who is it?” he called.

A soft voice that seemed too quiet to carry through the door at all drifted in, like a wisp of smoke on a breeze but with an icy edge to it, cloaked in seductive femininity.

“Will you let me in? I was lost in the woods, and I am cold and frightened.”

“Who are you? Are you hurt?”

“Please, it’s so cold out here. Will you let me in?”

“One moment, I’ll unbolt the door,” he replied.

He wasn’t going to let a poor lost lass spend the night out there. He pulled the bolt and lifted the wooden bar from across the door. A tall, pale woman in a green cloak stood outside.

“Thank you, kind sir. Please, may I come in and share your fire?”

“Yes, of course, please do. Come in quickly now, and I’ll put some more peat on the fire. You must be bitterly cold out there,” replied William.

He held the door to one side to let her in. She stepped past him and stood by the hearth as he put a dry peat turf onto the fire, poking it to get the flames alive again.

“You are a sweet boy. It’s so easy to get lost out there in the dark.”

William nodded. She was tall and slim, with black hair that framed her face and fell down the back of her dark green cloak. Her face was pale, almost white, with lips that lacked any color, almost blue, but it was her eyes that captivated him. They were set beneath dark, arching brows and sunk into her face, almost black with no color at all that he could see. They seemed to be endlessly deep, black pools of infinity, and he found it hard to look away. She swayed gently, as if dancing, and he had to concentrate to stay focused on her.

“Yes, it is a foul night. Warm yourself by the fire and stay here. I have blankets,” he said, his voice slowing and falling into time with the gentle, side-to-side movement of her body. He could not take his eyes from hers.

“Thank you. It’s so easy to find yourself lost out there in the dark.” Her voice seemed to be coming from inside his own head.

“Yes...it’s so...easy...lost.”

“Lost and alone in the dark, so easy to be lost.”

“Yes...lost...” All he could see were her eyes, endlessly deep and so fascinating.

“So dark. So alone.”

“Dark...alone...” The sound of the wind faded from his awareness, and all he heard was her voice.

“That’s right. All alone now. All alone. And you are mine now, aren’t you?”

“Alone...yes...yours...”

Her voice and eyes were beautiful, so wonderful. All he needed to do was to look into her eyes and hear her voice.

“You don’t have a name, do you? You can remember nothing before me, can you?”

“I... I am... I... No. No name... Nothing before you.”

“Good, you are so good and pure and kind. And you want only to taste my kiss, don’t you?”

“Y-yes...to taste...your kiss...”

“And you shall.”

He stood, unable to move or think as her mouth descended on his. The icy bliss of her kiss flooded his mind, and all he knew was that he wanted her, that he must have her, that he must give himself to her. Her mouth possessed him, and she caressed his face, her fingers as cold as steel, freezing him to the spot. She slid a hand down his chest, across the broad muscles, and then down over his stomach. He was hers. All he could ever remember was that he belonged to her and must give her all that she desired.

“Mine? Are you mine?”

“Yes. I am yours...”

The infinite black pools of her eyes held him captive. A grin spread across her face, wide and evil, to reveal a row of perfect white teeth interrupted by two long, slim fangs. A cackle echoed on the stone walls, and she fell forward onto him, driving her fangs into the naked flesh of his neck, piercing his skin, and freeing his blood to flow into her mouth.

His eyes were suddenly wide, and he knew. The pain of her bite swept away her spell, and he knew himself again. His hands fell to his sides, one feeling something cold and metallic. He grabbed Mary’s necklace, cold silver that, as his lifeblood flowed away, burned his flesh.

He managed to gasp, “No...”

The howl of a wolf, clear and close, rent the air, and the bothy door swung wide in the wind. The
baobhan sith
lifted her mouth from his neck, blood running from her fangs and down her chin, dripping onto him. She turned her cold, dead eyes from her victim and looked to the door as two wolves, silver gray in the moonlight, sped up the path and burst through the doorway.

She howled a demonic scream of total frustration and spun around, her long green dress swinging wide and revealing her cloven hooves beneath legs that began as a woman’s. She moved with an unnatural speed to the side as the first wolf sprang at her, and would have escaped through the door and into the night but for the second, smaller wolf. It leaped up at her, its powerful, heavy paws suddenly on her shoulders, pushing her backward against the fireplace. She snarled in futile rage as the wolf bared its teeth and lunged for her throat, but at that very moment, the bottom of her long, green cloak swung into the flame of the peat fire. It caught instantly, and the fire roared into life, as if it, too, were set on ridding the world of her evil. Her entire dark green garment was suddenly aflame, and the wolf fell back to avoid being caught in the conflagration that engulfed her.

Her black eyes filled with an evil rage as a final, unearthly wail of pain and anger leaped from her snarling, bloodstained mouth.

And then she was gone.

The fire burned no more, and in the deathly cold silence, a cloud of black ash fell to the floor.

Beside the smaller wolf, there now stood a tall woman in a silver-gray fur cloak. She hurried to William, who had fallen back onto the blood-soaked blankets, his hand closed tight on the silver, though it burned him deeply.

“He is changing. We are too late to save him from that. Her bite has done for his mortal life. He will walk the night now. But we must take him away from here. If the farmers find him in the morning, they will bury him with a stake through his heart, and I cannot see a love so pure taken from this world. Hurry now and bring the Pack. We will take him to the cave,” she said.

She lifted William in her arms and stroked his blood-soaked face and hair.

He looked up into the silver-blue eyes of the wolf-woman, the pain in his hand burning deeper as his lifeblood ebbed. His eyes fluttered, and his consciousness faded into black.

***

Mary woke in the dead still of night as the distant sound of... What was it? A wolf? But no wolf she had heard before. It was high and distant, aching and angry—and terrifying. Not human, but not animal, either. Then she heard the howling of wolves, nearer, louder, almost a conversation in howls.

Then suddenly it was quieter as the pack, she assumed, ran off to the depths of the woods. Whatever they had chased, they had brought down. The wolves sometimes took lambs, sometimes a sheep, less often a deer. She was glad to be safe indoors and glad that her William, even if he had not found his way home before the storm, would be safe behind the stone walls of the bothy.

She reached for her necklace, a movement that she made a dozen times a day, unconsciously, for comfort and reassurance. Her fingers brushed her bare throat, and she smiled. It was with William. He had part of her with him. They were together for that. She rolled over, warm in her bed, and fell into a contented sleep.

The morning came, gray and dreich with no color in the sky and a bitter wind that blew through any clothing and bit into her. Mary wrapped a shawl around her shoulders and hurried to the bothy to see if William had spent the night there. If he had and if he were still there, wrapped warm in the blankets with a fire lit, then she would steal a kiss and perhaps a little more.

The bothy door swung wide, and the path leading to it was muddied with a confusion of tracks. Mary could see the imprint of wolf paws in all directions and what looked like the tracks of a deer heading to the bothy but not away. But no footprints. William must be inside still.

She ran in, calling his name.

And fell to her knees and wept, her tears falling to the blood-stained floor where the silver chain of her necklace lay.

Chapter Three

“You saved me that night. Not my mortal life, but you saved me. And gave me...time. Time to protect her when I could, and the knowledge that there would be times when I should be far, far away from here,” said William, gazing across and beyond the glen.

“In the early days, when the bloodlust of your change was upon you, William, we protected her. Not just from you but from the revenge of the
baobhan sith
for the loss of one of theirs. You clutched Mary’s silver to you until it burned its mark forever in your hand, but the fire inside you was beyond your control,” said Aatu as she sat by his side.

William opened his right hand and looked at the imprint there. The scar of a Celtic cross, a circle around the intersection, harsh red against the white of his palm.

“And now I cannot touch it, Aatu, but I can feel it, its song. I held it then until I could hold it no longer, and only when I let it go did I realize that it sang. I felt it in the quiet of the night, the song that it sings, silently. It sings with the life, the
uisge
, that she—we—gave it when we brought our daughter into the world that day. The starting of her life and the passing of mine, through the fire and the blood in that cold, stone bothy. There it began its song. It sang the harmony of both of them until Mary passed, and now it sings with our daughter’s fading song.” He reached inside his cloak and brushed his fingers against the deerskin pouch.

Aatu stroked his raven-black hair and kissed his head.

“But you saw her at the end. You told her. She knew that she had been loved, always, and that your love would continue for your daughter. She passed happy, in your arms.”