“Good, because I don’t think I could carry you further if I tried,” said Vic.
There was notable strain in the vampire’s voice, but he set Johnathan down gently against the soft moss of a fallen log, collapsing beside him with legs splayed. The salvaged shreds of his trousers hung around his lower body in a ragged apron that covered little, the fabric held fast by the remains of his leather belt. That they were both spent was worrisome. They were deep in the forest, the morning light still worming down from the treetops. The two of them sat braced against the trunk.
“How long were we gone?” said Johnathan.
“A day at most.” Vic’s brows pinched with a hint of uncertainty.
Unease settled in. Johnathan couldn’t help but recall Vic’s warning before the fairies yanked them through the portal about the rapid passage of time. What if seasons had passed, the world speeding along while they swam through the mire of the fairy realm? The pain of his ignored shoulder wound compounded into a sour note of agony. Johnathan dreaded what festered beneath his bandages.
He pushed the fear down. There wasn’t time, not nearly enough time, and Johnathan knew they were on a clock even now, though they didn’t understand how the passage of it was measured. The fairies spoke in evasive riddles, but he knew they didn’t lie. The beasts would attack again. Not that he could rise and fight if he wanted to.
The revelations of the fairy realm nipped at his thoughts. He rolled his head to study his companion. The scrap of fabric Vic recovered from his trousers was enough to provide him a modicum of modesty but left his pale, perfect chest and long lean legs bare. His gaze wandered down the strong planes of muscle, admiring their definition, more akin to a laborer’s build than the lithe dancer he so often attributed to Vic. Through all the time they’d spent together, it wasn’t until now Johnathan allowed himself the curiosity of Vic’s past. What sort of man was he before he turned? Johnathan burned to know, but his weary mind couldn’t find a way to broach the subject.
Johnathan realized he was still staring at the man’s chest. He cleared his throat, clenching his teeth to keep from yelping as he struggled out of his coat and offered it.
Vic stiffened, his expression openly surprised by the gesture, before he gingerly plucked it from Johnathan’s fingers and turned away to put it on. His expression was set as he turned around. “Let me look at that shoulder.”
“It’s fine,” said Johnathan. He’d much rather close his eyes for a few moments.
A sound of frustration escaped the vampire. “I can smell the blood, John. Please, let me see it.”
If he had an ounce of energy to spare, Johnathan might have tensed as those cool fingers gently tugged and peeled the saturated cloth away. Instead, Johnathan watched Vic’s face, expressionless but for the small movement of his throat as he swallowed. “That bad, huh?”
Vic’s gaze flashed with worry. “It’s inflamed, likely infected. We need to drain the wound.”
Johnathan closed his eyes. “How would you recommend we do so? Sponge it with moss and tree bark?”
“Pain makes you surly,” said Vic. He carefully redressed the wound with dirty bandages. The only bandages they had. “I shouldn’t have let you come.”
Johnathan smiled. “You couldn’t stop me.”
“Yes, I could have,” Vic snapped, his words punctuated by knotting the bandage with enough force to make Johnathan wince. He sighed. “Sorry.”
Johnathan leaned back against the log. The state of his wound was worrisome, but there was not much he could do about it now. That it hadn’t healed like the puncture in his hand was worth noting, though he couldn’t seem to summon much alarm about the strange wound. Rather, the thought filled him with a sliver of hope that the magical nature of the puncture was why it vanished. A weak theory, but he clung to it, unable to deduce why he’d kept the puncture’s miraculous healing from Vic. Why couldn’t he tell him now? Even as he worked up the gumption to do so, the will drained from him. Why couldn’t he hold onto that sense of dread? Disgusted with himself, Johnathan could not stand the unnatural quiet in his own head.
“So. What are beings from the Nether?”
Vic’s head snapped up, his face incredulous. “That’s what you want to talk about?”
Johnathan’s brows creased. “Seems fairly relevant to our situation.”
Vic sat back, bare legs bent so that his arms rested loosely on his knees, fingers knitting and unknitting together in a study of nervous energy. Johnathan wondered what he had to be nervous about, but clearly his exposure in the fairy realm left Vic more unsettled than Johnathan realized.
“Aren’t you dying to ask me about,” he gestured to his now covered arms and back, “this?”
“What does that have to do with the price of peas in Portugal?”
“What?” Vic almost sounded outraged by Johnathan’s unflappable manner. He stared at him. “Do you want to talk about…any of it?”
Johnathan blinked, mildly alarmed by the heaviness of his eyelids. “Do you care that I was a lure?” He didn’t mention the other secret, the one that still burned on his tongue.
“I don’t,” said Vic without a beat of hesitation.
“You don’t have to tell me about the marks,” said Johnathan. What did he care about scars? He had more than his share from training at the Society. The life of a Prospective was a rough one. The Society cared little for one’s past or the scars they carried from before. They only cared about their resolve. The kind of resolve it took for a boy to drive a blade through the heart of the one he loved.
He watched Vic shift in the overlarge coat, unsettled and depleted from their encounter with the fairies. Johnathan hadn’t forgotten how Vic kept tugging at his back, how the vampire tried to take his place over and over. How Vic kept him standing and dragged him away from that hellish illusion.
“Tell me what we’re up against.”
Vic’s fingers knit together and held in a tight knot. “The Nether is full of demons.”
Johnathan wanted to slam his head against the tree trunk. “Of course. First fairies, now demons. Are all our childhood tales true?”
Vic shrugged. “Your guess is as good as mine. I’ve walked this earth for a few centuries now, and I’ve only ever seen one.” His knuckles cracked. “One was more than enough.”
“Centuries? Really?” said Johnathan.
Just how old was Vic? Why had he never asked the vampire more about himself? He flinched inwardly at his own question. Johnathan knew why he hadn’t asked. Part of him had clung to the idea that at some point he might have to end the vampire.
“The Morrigan said—”
“Try not to say her name out loud,” said Vic.
“The big scary fairy said the ones who died weren’t strong enough to survive,” said Johnathan. He winced at a twinge in his shoulder and pressed a hand to the wound. It was hot to touch despite the layers of cloth, a sign of infection. “I don’t think this creature, demon, whatever it may be, is actually out to kill.”
“I think it’s collecting them,” said Vic.
“What do you mean? For what purpose?”
“I’m not quite certain yet.”
“So, we are dealing with a demon, an actual demon.” Johnathan released a shaky breath. “We know it found a way into our world through a bargain with the late Mr. Fairchild, whose own child was one of the victims. The beast that attacked us was Lydia Fairchild. Does that mean the demons change the girls into those…things?”
“Yes. If they establish a foothold in our realm, demons have more power over humans than fairies. They can use their mark to taint and change humans. I believe the girls, if they survive the process, become servants. Demons, like the creature that made them,” Vic explained, his voice hesitant at points, as if he was uncertain about the veracity of his information.
Johnathan swallowed with a grunt. His mouth was beyond parched, an effect, no doubt, of the fairy realm to further tempt him. “But how are they selecting the
ir victims? What does ‘they have to be tainted but pure’ mean? Damn fairies and their riddles.”
Vic’s throat worked. “They are famous for their wordplay. It should be an obvious answer, but it’s never straightforward with them. Could be purity of soul. Could be purity of body. If I knew more about the processes of demons, I might be able to answer it.”
Johnathan paused to mull it over. “Virgins,” he mumbled.
He’d suspected before that the victims had maintained their virginity, though he wondered how chaste Vic’s relationship with Alyse could possibly be, and wasn’t she a mark?
His head lolled towards Vic. “You think they are coming for Miss Shaw? Or have you corrupted her beyond their desires?”
He wanted to drag the words back inside him the moment they left his lips. Yet part of him wanted, needed to know the answer, and that need was a hard lump in his chest.
Vic gave a weak smile, the cat too tired to play with the mouse, thank the stars. “The nature of my relationship with Miss Shaw may meet the criteria for purity, but she is no virgin, I assure you. Her sister fit what I knew of the original parameters, but now I wonder how accurate our information was.” Vic looked truly worried, tugging on the battered buttons of the coat. “I feel like I’m missing something important, but I am certain the Shaw household will be hit next.”
Johnathan didn’t say anything, a thought niggling at the back of his mind. There was an important detail just out of reach. Dammit, he was too drained to organize his thoughts, bruised inside his skin. Those half-forgotten memories nipped at the ragged edges of his self-control.
“We need to get back,” Johnathan said without inflection.
“Yes,” Vic answered, his tone equally void of emotion.
Neither of them moved. Johnathan finally noticed Vic leaned against him, shoulder to shoulder. The vampire’s arm dropped to the ground, only a few inches from his own, a reminder of the way Vic had slid his hand into Johnathan’s earlier. Without letting himself overthink, Johnathan closed the distance between them, the sides of their hands touching. Vic hooked two fingers around his, the touch as grounding now as it had been in the fairy realm.
Johnathan sniffed, shocked to realize there were tears gathering in the corner of his eyes. He hadn’t shed a tear since that day so long ago, when Sir Harry’s blood was on his hands.
“Don’t you dare start crying,” said Vic. “Because if you start, then I’ll start, and my dignity has already taken a fair knock today. Yesterday? Blast.”
Johnathan chuckled and obligingly wiped his eyes. “Wouldn’t want that now, would we.” Silence settled between them, not awkward or comfortable but brimming with unspoken questions. “You know, I am a tad curious about your life,” he said, glancing at the sliver of Vic’s skin bared to him from beneath the collar of Alyse’s father’s coat. “But if you tell me to ask you a question first, I will tell you to stuff it.”
“Likewise,” said Vic, a spark of humor in his gray eyes. “To the curiosity and the stuffing.”
“Just so we understand each other,” said Johnathan. The log dug into his sore back, but he closed his eyes. The devil of the Nether could take him now for all he cared, so long as it let him sleep.
“I was a monk,” said Vic.
Johnathan’s brows rose, but his eyes remained shut. Though, he had a feeling Vic would continue to speak whether he reacted or not.
“My father said he had too many sons, and I needed to better my relationship with God. That might have had something to do with my friendship with the local lord’s daughter…and son.”
A smile tugged at the corner of Johnathan’s mouth.
“I didn’t mind the life. It was austere but simple, and more than one man in the monastery was sent there for similar affections.”
“You had lovers in a monastery?”
“I thought we agreed on no questions,” Vic teased. “It’s not as difficult as you would believe, lovers. There are many hours in the day, and you can only pray to the stone around you for so long.”
There was another question, but Johnathan would not speak it. Vic paused for so long, Johnathan’s exhausted mind thought him done and began to drift.
“The plague hit my second year there. We were brothers under God, and it was our duty to give God’s mercy where we could. There was so much suffering, so much death, and holy vows gave no protection against the disease. It took everyone, young and old, rich and poor, the lowest criminal to the most pious saint.” There was a dull cadence to his words, as if time and distance subdued the pain of the moment.
Johnathan knew the technique well, and he was tired enough for his defenses to slip. Least, that is what he told himself as he slid his hand further over Vic’s, twining their fingers together in a hold both comforting and intimate.
Vic’s muscles tensed and released. “It didn’t spare me either. I flogged myself for weeks with the rest of my brothers to purify our bodies. Not that it mattered. The whole monastery took sick.”
That explained the scars on his body, wounds that had time to heal before he transitioned.
Vic sucked in a breath and held it. “One night, a vampire slipped in. He fed on the dying in their beds. I woke to their cries, their pleas for mercy as they choked on their own blood.”
He swallowed more than once. A vampire’s memory was long. It didn’t fade and wane like a human one, but remained sharp, a living script of their history, especially their regrets.
“I didn’t try to save them. I panicked. I wanted to run, but my legs were too weak to support me. I knew my body was failing, but I was desperate. I crawled across the floor. The stone scraped my stomach raw. That is how he found me.”
Vic turned their twined hands over, tracing the veins on the back of Johnathan’s hand. The gesture would have lulled him to sleep if he wasn’t so invested in the vampire’s story.
“I don’t know why he turned me. I wasn’t the most handsome or the most passionate. I was closer to death than some, further than others.”
“I know why,” Johnathan murmured, his gaze riveted to the dance of Vic’s fingers down his wrist. “Because when the others called for God to save them, for mercy, you crawled.”
“Why would that matter?”
Memory knocked on Johnathan’s exhausted core until he sank into the murky depths of his past. A flash of silver in the dark, tears running down his face, cool against his feverish flesh. The knife handle slid in his blood-drenched hands, limbs shaking with fear and hesitation. He didn’t want to do this thing. “Press the blade deeper, boy. We don’t have all day.”
Unseen by Vic, the fingers of Johnathan’s free hand curled under until the knuckles of his fist burned a waxy white. “His name was Sir Harry. He was a vampire, and he caught me stealing bread.”
Vic was silent for a moment, then, “The man you loved?”
Johnathan nodded, a burning sickness swelling in his gut, the truth wanting out. “My mother died of consumption that winter, my father long lost to drink and cards. I was another scrawny street kid in a pack of them, scrounging and stealing to survive.”
Johnathan remembered that hunger. Sir Harry kept him lean to suit his purposes, but never again did he experience that all-consuming hunger of that winter. An empty belly kept him sharp and desperate, until food became the only thing he could think of, and his focus narrowed to that singular focal point.
“The baker was a mean son of a bitch. One time, he tossed his rolling pin at the children picking through his garbage for scraps. It caught one of the boys in the side of the head; he didn’t get up the next morning.”
There was a tightness in his chest at the memory. That was the world Johnathan lived in.
“I was so hungry. Possible death was worth the risk, and I was brazen enough to go right for the baker’s front display. So focused on filling my belly, I didn’t even hear the bastard coming until he seized me by the collar.”
Worse than rats. You know what we do with rats round he
re? Johnathan knew.
“He was ready to club me over the head with that rolling pin, so I shoved the bread in my mouth. Might as well die with a full stomach.”
Vic chuckled. “Defiant to the end. That sounds about right.”
Johnathan didn’t think of it as particularly brave, merely desperate. He remembered bracing himself. But the blow never came.
“Sir Harry saved me from a beating. Said I was too much of a spitfire to waste.” Johnathan’s throat closed, choked by the memory, the first caress of those cool fingers, the baker’s look of shock and fear. The other children melted into the shadows like morning vapor before the sun, but Sir Harry was a solid pillar behind him, permeating the air with the sharp tang of danger and the illusive promise of something more.
“He felt safe,” whispered Johnathan.
It was something he’d never told anyone before. He could picture the disgust on Dr. Evans’ face over such a confession, but Vic’s fingers gave the barest squeeze, a silent acknowledgement to those complicated feelings. “He took me in, fed me, protected me, told me stories. He was mother and father and more.”
Johnathan finally swallowed the tight mass in his throat, letting his head fall back to look up at the sky. It stretched above the trees, that endless ceiling of the heavens that made man and beast alike so very small in the great wide world. Under the vault of the sky, Johnathan’s secrets felt insignificant. He felt insignificant in the company of a being who—how did Alyse put it?—would roam the Earth long after he was dust, as Sir Harry would have if Johnathan had just kept walking that last day.
“I knew what I was doing,” Johnathan went on. “Knew what it meant. Part of me hated it, hated myself. He was what he was, but what was I? A traitor to my own species, leading innocents to their deaths.”
Vic stilled. “He didn’t have to kill,” he whispered.
“He didn’t know another way,” said Johnathan. “He didn’t want to know another way.”
The specter of death dogged his every step as a boy, fear that warred with love, a toxic combination that fell prey to the whispers from the Society recruiter.
A Bargain of Blood and Gold Page 17
