Queen's Gambit

by Karen Chance

  “Augggggghhhhhhhh!” the vampire screamed some more. “Augggggghhhhhhhh!”

  We hit the ground and bounced, what must have been fifty feet into the air. And then did it again and again, while also rolling down a steep incline. It was covered in flowers, predominately purple with a few yellow and white ones mixed in.

  Beautiful.

  “Augggggghhhhhhhh!” the vampire yelled. “Augg—bump—auggggh—bump—aughhhhhhh!”

  We finally rolled to a stop.

  I found myself slightly dizzy, but mostly unharmed.

  The same could not be said for the vampire, who continued to scream, albeit weakly. I shook my head to clear it, which did not work as well as I would have liked. I still felt as if I was surfing the biggest storm in history, with my stomach doing flips inside my body. It was not a wholly unpleasant sensation, but it did make it hard to move about.

  I did so anyway, crawling across the gory floor to gather up the body parts that belonged to my companion. It was easy to tell them apart, as his were smaller than those of the fey. I finished and looked up.

  And saw him lying on the bottom of the shield, near the control mechanism, panting and shrieking softly whenever he found enough air. He was covered in blood, his eyes were wild, and he was trembling all over. I needed to get him somewhere safe, as I did not know if the fey could track their device.

  But first, I had to deal with more pressing concerns.

  “Hold still,” I said, tugging on what remained of his tuxedo.

  “Ahhh!”

  “I know it hurts. I am sorry.”

  He stared up at me in apparent shock. His eyes searched my face, as if looking for something. Probably signs of the woman he knew, which he did not find. Dory was not here; I could feel her absence like a missing lung, leaving me breathless. We had never been apart, not even when I took an occasional mental flight away from our body. There had always been a tether there, a strong, unbreakable connection to my other half.

  But not now.

  It made me feel dizzier than the ride, and more than slightly horrified. I did not know what had been done to us, but this was not the time to think about it. This was the time to survive; thinking would come later.

  The vampire seemed to feel the same. He tensed as if bracing himself. And then he nodded.

  I held up one of his severed arms and looked at it. It had lost the sleeve, but the arm itself was more or less all right, except for the raw, red meat and shattered bone at the end. The fey hadn’t cared how much damage they did, merely wanting to put him out of commission. I felt anger well up in me, red hot and burning, but tamped it down.

  Later.

  We would have our revenge on whoever had ordered this, but for now, I needed to heal the vampire.

  “Ray,” I said, suddenly remembering. “Your name is Ray.”

  “Raymond Lu,” he said, his lips white. “I’d shake your hand, but . . .”

  “You will in a moment.” I regarded the arm again.

  It was weakly moving, but not in any purposeful way. A master should be able to control his body parts, even when they were not attached, but Raymond had lost too much blood. He was almost exsanguinated, and that . . .

  Would be very bad.

  We had avoided exiting through the other end of the portal, and had thereby missed the reception that undoubtedly awaited us. But we weren’t scot free. I paused, looking about.

  We’d come to rest on the side of a hill, where a goat trail from below divided and created a small plateau. To our right and below was a verdant valley with a large river running through it, and bright green fields with grasses so long and thick that they moved like water under the breeze. To our left was a dense old forest, with tree trunks as big as houses and a canopy so solid that I did not know how any rain penetrated.

  It was beautiful, but it was foreign. I could not name a single type of tree, a single bird, or even the variety of grass, which had odd, purple tips. My tongue flickered out, tasting the air. Cool and faintly scented, but also strange. Alien.

  Faerie.

  It had to be.

  We must have traveled too far to reappear on Earth when we exited the ley line, falling instead into the land of the fey, just not where they had intended. I felt a shiver go through me, but it wasn’t one wasn’t of fear. It was excitement, curiosity, the thrill of the new. I was on an alien world that I knew nothing about—

  So why did something smell like home?

  “Wait,” I told Ray, who nodded weakly.

  I searched around the gory bodies on the floor, and discovered that they were a bit gorier than I’d expected. Eight times more. There had been eight fey warriors in all, and each of them had on his person a small bag.

  A bag of blood.

  One of them had ruptured during the fight, but the others were intact, inside of clear packets that looked like plastic but felt like paper. It was very odd. I had no idea what they were doing there.

  But they were a lifesaver, possibly literally.

  Ray did not seem to want the fey blood; perhaps it was too strange to nourish him? But he had to have something. I tore the corner off of one of the packets, to make sure that my nose wasn’t deceiving me, and he made a soft sound. Yes, it was human. I stared at it some more. It appeared to be fresh.

  I glanced back at Ray.

  Normally, I would never have thought to give a possibly adulterated substance to an already weakened ally, but I did not think that this was poisoned. I could detect no corruption, and in any case, what choice was there? Even were there humans to be found in this place, I did not know how to find them.

  And Ray did not have much time.

  Exsanguinated vampires could be brought back, but if his limbs were not reattached before he bled out, they could shrivel and die. Leaving him as a stump of a creature for the rest of whatever life remained to him. And while I could spare enough blood to sustain him, at least for a while, I could not give him enough to heal.

  We had to risk it.

  I held the bag up to his slack mouth, and dribbled a little inside. There was no reaction. He was fading quickly, and would soon go catatonic.

  “Ray.” The blue eyes opened, but did not focus. They were not fixed, not yet, but it wouldn’t be long.

  “Ray!” I gripped his chin, and saw him frown. But he didn’t curse at me, which I had learned from Dory was not a good sign.

  I forced more of the blood down his throat, massaging it to make him swallow. It did not make any difference that I could detect, other than for a faint tinge of color in what had been the dead white mask of his face. So I gave him some more, emptying the bag and starting on another, and kept going until he had drained that one as well.

  But still, he just lay there.

  I knew that he’d absorbed it; otherwise, it would have been trickling out of his wounds. But it did not appear to be enough. I fed him a third bag, and when he still gave no sign of returning to life, I began to panic.

  “Ray!” I slapped him across the face, not knowing what else to do.

  “What?”

  I blinked. It had been faint and crabby, but nonetheless discernable. “Are you all right?”

  “Do I fucking look all right?”

  I sat back on my heels, a smile stretching the skin of my face. “You are not dead.”

  “Not for lack of trying. The goddamned fey.” His eyes finally managed to focus on something—his arm beside me. “You don’t have that on yet? What the heck have you been doing?”

  “I am remiss in my duties,” I said, and saw him narrow his eyes.

  “Was that sarcasm? Cause in case you didn’t notice, I’m in pieces here! Can I get some help, preferably before the fey find us and finish the job?”

  “Yes,” I said, biting my lip. “I will help.”

  “Damned right.” He lay there grumpily while I worked to reattach the arm.

  It was easier than I expected. Vampire bodies are largely self-healing, if there is enough blood
to use as fuel. Ray had just ingested at least three pints, which was a full meal for his kind, and his body wanted to use it. I had barely put the limb in place when the bones were reknitting, when jagged flesh was flowing back together and smoothing out, when veins were squirming out of the wound like little worms, reaching for—

  “Hey! Do you mind?”

  I looked up. “What?”

  “I could do without the commentary, okay? Little worms . . .” he shuddered.

  I sat back on my heels in surprise. “You could hear my thoughts?”

  “Why so shocked? You’re my master, right? And where’s my other arm?”

  I regarded him for a moment, and then fetched the other arm.

  “Great. It’s got nasty fey blood on it.” He scowled.

  “Technically,” I reminded him, as I worked to get the second arm back in its proper place, “Dory is your master. You pledged yourself to her.”

  “Yeah, only you are her, right? I mean, kind of the hardcore version, but . . .”

  I shook my head. “We are different people.”

  “Uh huh. Who happened to start off as one person and share the exact same DNA.”

  “Twins start off as one person. And they share DNA.”

  “But they aren’t born as one and live that way for eleven or twelve years!”

  “They also don’t live more than five centuries.” The bone was knitting wrong. I adjusted it. “The percentage of our lifetimes that we lived as one is becoming an insignificant figure.”

  “Yeah, but like . . .” He scowled. “Trust me to get into a deep philosophical discussion when my head’s pounding and my eyes are crossing and I still don’t got legs yet.”

  “Your arms are healing. Trying to do too much at one time—”

  “Yeah, yeah. You’re the expert.” He closed his eyes.

  I was not, in fact, having spent far more time killing vampires than healing them, but thought that this might not be the best moment to point that out.

  We sat there quietly for a while. He looked so thin and pale, like a teenager, with his hair falling over his clammy forehead and his face speckled with fey blood. It had dried brown and looked almost like freckles.

  And even when healed, he would not be a large man, or a particularly strong vampire. He was a master, but he would never reach the upper rings of power. I had seen enough to know.

  Yet, he had been brave today, and honorable, and loyal. I had known far stronger men who would have fled at one look at what we faced. But he had stayed, and he had helped.

  I did not think I would have made it out of the ley line without him.

  “I would also be your master, Raymond Lu,” I finally said. “If you wish it.”

  The eyes opened, and as always, it was a surprise to see that they were blue. He was half-Dutch and half Indonesian, I remembered Dory saying. A bastard child never wanted by either parent, on his own in a hostile world far sooner than he should have been. And then a vampire with a master who, while not abusive by their standards, had not valued him. He had been given as a mocking sort of gift to Dory, discarded after centuries of service, like a dirty handkerchief.

  But she had recognized his worth, as did I.

  “You would?” he asked, sounding confused.

  “It would be an honor.”

  Ray stared at me. He seemed to do that a lot. “Well.” He cleared his throat. “Well, all right, then.”

  “I am happy to have you with me on this journey, Raymond Lu.” I looked around at the still intact shield. “Do you happen to know how we get out of here?”

  Chapter Seven

  Dorina, Faerie

  Ray was cursing again, probably out of frustration. I was feeling rather like that myself. I could see the world spread out so invitingly all around us, could watch a couple of bright yellow birds chase each other across the sky, could feel the wind that rustled through the treetops, even smell the flowers. But I couldn’t touch any of it.

  We could not get out.

  “They’re gonna find us,” Ray said, pacing back and forth across the bodies. His legs had been reattached, but they were not functioning very well yet, or perhaps he was tripping on the corpses. “They’re gonna find us in the middle of a pile of their people who we obviously killed—”

  “Perhaps they died in the crash?” I offered.

  “And we didn’t?” He whirled on me. “Plus, you cut that guy’s arm off! You think they’re not gonna notice that?”

  I regarded the fey in question. Ray had a point. He was looking a little worse for the wear, with a missing arm, a proud, blood splattered face, and long, red-stained, silver blond hair. They were so beautiful, these creatures, like their world. I felt a certain . . . not regret, but melancholy, that they’d had to die.

  And then I remembered them ripping Ray apart so callously, and I wanted to kill them all over again, but they were already dead.

  Although at least this one was still clothed, unlike several others.

  I had stripped them to provide Ray and I with something to wear. Whatever had happened in that alley had given me my own body, but it had not transferred over any clothes. That did not bother me, but it might be a problem if we met anyone, as I did not know the customs here.

  Unfortunately, the fey leggings had been far too long for either of us, as well as too large. But the tunics had proven easier to work with. I had hacked off part of the sleeves so that they did not cover our hands, but otherwise hadn’t needed to do anything. The one I was wearing was knee length on me, while Ray’s was a little below mid-thigh.

  They were also very fine. Ray’s was brown, although that word didn’t do it justice. It had a luxurious, velvety nap, which turned a beautiful russet shade if smoothed one way, and a light sable when pushed the other. I had settled on calling it brown, but it was more like the hue of the forest floor: different every time you looked at it from another angle.

  My tunic was simpler: a pale gray that did not change color. It was technically quite plain, with neither embellishment nor embroidery, but it was not peasant garb. It had a silver sheen to it when the sun hit it, and while it was a thick, heavy weave that was as warm as wool, it felt as light as silk. It looked like what it was: the clothing of an aristocrat.

  It appeared that the fey had sent elite soldiers after me, ones willing to die to complete their mission, and yet they had equipped themselves so poorly. There wasn’t a sword in the group, and only a single knife, and it was quite small. I had found a leather belt with a scabbard attached, into which I’d already placed the knife for ease of transport, although it didn’t fit. It was more like the kind you would normally slip down a boot, in order to hide it.

  But why would the fey have to hide their weapons? And why did they have so few of them? It looked as if the larger knife had been left behind, and just the empty scabbard taken into battle.

  Even if they had planned merely to push me into the trap they’d laid, and had not thought to get caught inside with me, surely it would have been better to be cautious? Going practically unarmed into battle against a largely unknown enemy, and one with backup nearby, with almost no weapons? It did not make sense.

  Like carrying pints of human blood.

  I could only think of one reason the fey would have blood. They must have thought that dhampirs were like vampires, and that I would need it to heal should I be wounded in the fight. They clearly wanted me alive, for what purpose I did not know, but they wanted it badly.

  Enough to strip their soldiers before battle?

  All except the one with the knife hidden in his boot.

  “Dorina?”

  Ray snapped his fingers in front of my face, as if he had been attempting to get my attention for a while. Or, to be more accurate, he tried to snap them. It would probably be several days before his coordination fully returned, after his nerve endings healed. That put us at a disadvantage in a fight, and I was little better.

  I had tried to manifest my spirit form a few min
utes ago to scout out the area and see if I could spot any silver-haired fey. Or to determine if there was a village nearby where I could nudge help our way. But it had not worked. I did not know whether that was because Faerie had different magic from Earth, or whether I was merely too tired. The two fights had taken a great deal out of me, and my spirit form took considerable energy.

  But it was not encouraging.

  And no weapons to speak of was even less so.

  “Damn it, are you listening to me?” Ray snapped.

  His temper seemed a little worse for the wear, too.

  “Of course, Ray.” I looked down at the dead fey again. “Perhaps if I mushed him some more?”

  “Mushed him? Did you just say mushed him?”

  “Or I could set him on fire.” I wondered if any of the fey had been carrying a flint? I started to check, when Ray grabbed my arm.

  I looked up into angry blue eyes and flushed cheeks, I supposed because he had some blood to work with now. “Yeah. That’s just great. You need to breathe, okay? Die of smoke inhalation and you leave me all alone in Faerie and that’s not happening, all right?”

  “I would never—”

  “Which means you don’t die, I don’t die, nobody freaking dies! We got that? Are we clear on that point?”

  I did not think it was particularly up to us, but doubted that this was the time to mention that, either. “Yes.”

  “Good.” Ray went back to thumping the crystal ball some more.

  It did not seem to help.

  “I think that it is broken,” I said.

  “I know it’s broken!” He tried to push some hair back from his forehead, but only succeeded in poking himself in the eye. “Damn it!” He glared at me through the limp black strands. “The problem is that the shield is not broken, and the fey are coming, and we gotta get out of—what are you doing?”

  “The fey warriors were not well equipped,” I said, tugging on a bloody corpse. “None of them had a sword and mine broke during the fight. They do not appear to make the souvenir versions combat ready.”

  “So?”

  “So, all we have is a broken sword and a knife. I thought that I would make us some more.”