“I’ve never heard of vampires living in nests or having sheriffs. And Rhodes isn’t on my map of America.”
She fell silent. Then she said, “What are you?”
“I’m a sorcerer,” he said. “Peter Octavian.”
“A sorcerer.” She said it slowly, thoughtfully, as if speaking the word for the first time. “I know there are witches. Do you know the legend of Circe?”
“I have heard of it.”
“I killed the last Circe,” she said. “For murdering my husband.” She was absolutely matter-of-fact.
“Understandable,” Octavian said. “But I haven’t murdered anyone belonging to you, and I don’t intend to.”
“Are vampires citizens, where you come from?” she asked.
“For a time it looked like they might be, but no. That’s never going to happen now.”
“And yet, in the United States where I live, we are,” the woman said. “And by the way, other-worldling, my name is Dahlia Lynley-Chivers.” She sounded proud she’d remembered it.
“How long have you been down here?” Octavian asked. He was chewing over the implications of her being from another world.
“I came in two days before you. I was charged with a mission by my sheriff. I was armed with a spell so I could resist the blood of the Fae until my mission was accomplished. But just as I found my target, the spell wore off and I am now the pitiful and ravening thing you hear.” Her self-contempt was scorching. This was a proud woman.
“You could say I came here on a mission, too,” Octavian said, slowly. He pressed his face against the bars and looked as far to his right as he could. He was in a corner cell. The corridor stretched to his left five more cells. He had heard a faint moaning coming from that direction, and once he’d heard a man cursing, but other than that, nothing. He looked at Dahlia’s cell, the first one to the right, at a forty-five-degree angle to his. Though it was awkward, he could catch a glimpse through the bars of the next cell, just enough to tell Dahlia Lynley-Chivers was short – much shorter than he’d envisioned. And young, very young. At least in appearance.
“What was your mission?” she asked. She was pressed forward, too, and their eyes met.
Octavian felt a jolt down to his bones. She was old and strong beyond anything he’d anticipated. Though Dahlia looked perhaps twenty, her eyes were centuries old. She was also, undoubtedly, standing on her tiptoes to reach the barred aperture. Octavian found that amusing. Almost.
“I don’t see any point in keeping it a secret, considering it’s looking fairly likely we’ll die here,” he said, after a moment’s thought.
Dahlia waited without speaking, her large brown eyes curious. Octavian was glad that the curiosity was keeping the screaming at bay. He also suspected that her pride had been piqued, now that she had met the prisoner beside her. She had a face to keep, now.
“I was sent to extricate a half-demon, half-fae portal traveler named Ripley,” he said.
He hadn’t expected the shock and suspicion that transformed Dahlia’s face.
“You’re a plant,” she said, snarling, and she vanished from the barred window. Seconds later, the screaming resumed.
It was another day before he could persuade her to talk to him again.
Three more meals of grilled meat and a salad pushed under the door. Hours of listening to her weakening voice.
“Peter Octavian,” she said, at what had to be the precise moment darkness fell outside. She was whispering.
“Dahlia,” Octavian said. “I’m guessing from your reaction that you were sent here on the same mission?”
“I was,” she said. “And unlike you, I was very close to success when I was captured.”
Octavian bristled at her needling, but he had to admit that if she had gotten close to the objective, she had gotten further than he had.
“Do you know where Ripley is?”
“I do.”
Octavian waited until it was obvious Dahlia was not going to say anything else.
“What is your price?” he asked.
“Your blood.”
Octavian sighed. There was no way out. He could not reach her to force her to speak. Though he felt stronger now that his body was healing, and he could feel the power in him beginning to regenerate in a small portion, his magic was not as strong here in Faery as it had been in his own world. Not by a fraction. It might not have been the cell he was in after all; it might have been Faery itself.
“How?” he asked.
“Our cell doors are close together,” she said. “If you lie on your back as close to the corner as possible, and reach out through the slot at the bottom of the door, I think your arm might be close enough for me to bite.”
“How do I know you’ll let go?”
“For one thing, I’m too weak to hold on to you,” she said. “For another, I have honor.”
This was the last word Octavian expected to hear from a vampire. He was still doubtful about Dahlia, and he thought if she died—as she might, perhaps, after prolonged starvation—he would at least have silence. But he had to begin taking some kind of action, however dubious, because he was sure it wouldn’t be long before the Fae decided to make an example out of him. And from what he knew of the Fae, that wouldn’t be a pleasant process. The Fae were universally beautiful, strong, and pragmatic. Cruelty didn’t seem to be a fault from their perspective. They had their own brand of honor, but it wasn’t the sort that included keeping their word to outlanders. They cared only about their own kind.
Resigned to the experiment, Octavian lowered himself to the floor. Instead of the traditional slot jailers used to slide plates under, the whole door was raised about four inches. He lay on his back and worked his arm out through the gap. He could hear that Dahlia was on the floor too, and he heard her crying. She was doing everything she could to suppress her hunger, but it was overwhelming her.
“My mouth can’t reach your wrist, Peter Octavian,” she said. “I am going to puncture your arm, and the blood will flow to me. I’m sorry. This will hurt.”
And it did. Her thumbnail was like a knife, a dull knife, and it took all the self-control he had to stay still while his blood flowed out. He could hear her eating, the eager, urgent sounds of her lapping up his blood as fast as it ran over the irregular bricks of the corridor floor.
When the dull ache had gotten to be more than Octavian could endure, he said so. “Wait for a second,” Dahlia said, and he made himself stay still. Then he felt pressure on his wrist, and moisture. “All right,” she said.
He pulled his arm back under the door and looked at his wrist. It was already healing.
“How did you do that?” he asked.
“My saliva,” she said. “Now that I have some. Thank you. That was so good.”
She sounded almost dreamy with delight. After a moment, she added, “Stay on the floor for a while, wizard. You will regain your strength.”
“Probably lucky for me that you aren’t free,” he said.
“Yes, lucky for you,” she agreed. After a few seconds in which her relief practically hummed, she said, “Ripley is up two floors. He’s the only hybrid demon-Fae, and though the Fae find that abhorrent, they also think there may be a use for him. They are putting him through whatever paces he has, but at any moment, they may decide that he is worthless.”
“How far did you get?”
“I came in through a portal in the backyard of a house in Louisiana. A woman Niall is fond of lives there. I had heard there might be a way through, someplace close to her.”
“Niall?”
“The king.” Her voice added silently, You idiot. “Niall is strong and ancient, but there has already been one attempted coup, and who knows how much longer he will last?”
“And why do you want Ripley?” As long as she was answering, he might as well ask another question.
“We want his blood, of course. Not even all of it! A few vials’ full. It’s terrible being a slave
to the smell of the Fae. Now that they have retreated to Faery, for the most part, it’s not as much of a problem—but to have immunity, that would be best of all.”
“The Fae have retreated in my world, too,” Octavian said thoughtfully. “In fact, maybe that is where our worlds join...here.”
“And you need Ripley because?”
He hesitated, then shrugged. “Medea’s Disease.”
“What is that?” He could tell she really didn’t know.
“It’s a sickness that targets the magically gifted.”
“Like you?”
“Yes. Like me. And other sorcerers. And witches. For centuries, magicians thought it had been eradicated, but now it’s reappeared. It’s spreading. Ten people have already died. The last time it was active, the blood of a creature half-fairy and half-demon was used to cure it, but nothing like that exists in my world now. A group of sorcerers and witches came together to search for something comparable. The most powerful seer I’ve ever met had a vision of this guy, Ripley. Sensed his blood from a world away. Even she doesn’t know if it will work, but he’s the closest we’re going to get, so we have to take the chance.”
Dahlia went quiet for a bit, and Octavian could practically hear her ruminating.
“Do you need all of his blood?” she asked.
“Not necessarily, though we’d like to have him alive so he could keep producing blood, in case the first attempt to make a cure doesn’t work.”
“My sheriff would also like Ripley alive. But he doesn’t require it.”
“Then maybe we can work together.” Octavian felt a flash of hope, which was more than he’d had so far.
“Yes. Maybe.” She was doubtful, but interested. “I feel better already. If I can get back to my full strength, and you can regain some of your magic, maybe we can survive to escape. Though I would rather get out of here with Ripley in tow, dead or alive.”
“Me, too.” Octavian didn’t like to think how many other magic users he knew might have sickened since he’d been down here.
That night, Dahlia didn’t scream. Instead, he could hear her move. He was tempted to ask her what she was doing, but he was so tired from his blood loss that he slept instead. He was terribly thirsty, and when she slid her cup of water over to him, he drank it as well as his own.
The guards who came through the corridor that day seemed suspicious, and Octavian wondered if they could smell his blood. But he took care to lie still at the back of his cell, and of course since it was daytime, Dahlia was silent in hers. He could hear the two guards, a man and a woman, muttering to each other in their own language. The woman said, “Maybe she caught a rat,” and the man laughed. “That’s appropriate,” he said. Then they continued on their way.
The Fae were negligent jailers. They almost never came into the cell. Octavian’s waste bucket was noxious, but once he fell asleep and when he woke up it had been swapped for a clean one. The sleep had been induced. That was the only time someone had opened the door or actually looked at him.
For two more days Octavian and Dahlia followed the same procedure. He fed her; she healed him. Though Octavian had feared he would get weaker and weaker from the blood-taking, that didn’t happen, maybe partly due to the extra water Dahlia gave him to drink, and her immediate healing of the puncture. He also recovered from the physical punishment he’d received when he’d been captured as he entered Faery.
The portal he’d used had obviously been watched. In retrospect, it seemed likely that Dahlia’s break-in had made the Fae suspicious.
Octavian thought it was strange that the Fae guards seemed to show no interest in the two of them besides giving them food and water. The next night, that changed.
And not for the better.
Though the door never opened, he became aware that he was not alone in his cell. A beautiful woman was there, and she bore a heartbreaking resemblance to someone he’d once loved. He just couldn’t quite recall who that someone was. But she was so familiar, her eyes just as he remembered, and her breasts, too, because she was quite naked.
He was not surprised to hear an exclamation in another language from Dahlia’s cell. She had a visitor, too.
“My love,” said the woman. “I am so glad to see you, so happy.”
“My God,” Octavian said, knowing what he was seeing could not be real, must be magic...but still, it was intoxicating to see her again. “You’re stunning,” he said falteringly. Breathless. “I don’t believe it.”
“You don’t believe this?” She smiled as she took his hand and put it on her breast.
Octavian frowned. “You don’t smell right.”
“What do you want me to smell like?” she said, with the teasing smile he remembered so well.
“Honey and cotton,” he said, though he hadn’t wanted to speak.
Her smell changed.
“There, my darling, is that better? I’m so anxious to hear why you came to me here. Why am I having the pleasure of being with you again? Please tell me how you came to find me.”
It was harder and harder for him to cling to a shred of reality—I’m in a jail cell, she couldn’t really be here, she would never ask me for my secrets. After the bleakness of the cell and the pain of the past few days, her flesh and sweetness was absolutely compelling. He might have succumbed to the vision entirely, but then the screaming from the next cell began, and it wasn’t Dahlia’s familiar voice that was making all that noise.
The woman in front of him glanced toward the wall of the next cell, and in that second, the illusion was broken. It was a woman, yes, but she was Fae, not his beloved, and she was at least a foot taller than the woman he’d adored. She was naked, yes, but her body was not at all reminiscent of the one he’d made love to.
When her gaze returned to him, she could tell her spell had broken, and she instantly slammed him into the wall with such force that she knocked him out. When he came to again, he was alone.
Dahlia was laughing in her cell.
He went to the door. The corridor, as far as he could tell, was empty.
“What happened?” He could hear Dahlia moving closer to her door, and caught a glimpse of her.
“Killed him,” she said proudly. “He made himself in the image of my husband, but I knew it could not be Todd, and I killed him.”
“You should be full of blood,” Octavian said.
“Drained him dry,” she all but chortled.
“I’m going to go out on a limb and say this would be a good time to break out,” Octavian said. “You know they’re going to retaliate.”
“Yes, they’ll kill me,” she agreed. “But it was worth it.”
She was suspiciously cheerful.
“Did the blood make you high?”
She jumped up and down so he could glimpse her grin and bloody clothes. “As a kite,” she said. “Have you regained any of your magic?”
“A bit.” He wasn’t sure how much, but he could feel the magic flowing in his blood and will. Maybe the flow was a trickle rather than the usual torrent, but it was there. In every conscious moment, he had been tapping into the magic at his core and using it to reach out into Faery. Accessing the magic here, drawing on it to bolster the magic inside him, was like learning a new and very difficult language. But he could feel the connections beginning to be made; the translation taking place.
“Hopefully enough,” he added.
“Then now is the moment.” She laughed, and Octavian thought he’d never heard such a mad and excited sound. If this was the effect Fae blood had on vampires, he was surprised they’d let her live at all.
“Now,” she said, and a terrifying strength was in her voice. “Octavian, weaken these bars.”
He would have helped her anyway, but he felt compelled to press his face against the bars of his own window. He felt his slender thread of magic furl itself around the bars crossing Dahlia’s. He pulled, and he saw her tiny fingers wrap around the bars as she pushed. They both stra
ined. She was growling, though he didn’t think she realized it, and he was aware that he’d been holding his breath, which really wouldn’t help at all. Octavian thought his brain was going to pop from the pressure he was putting on it. He closed his eyes to focus more intently, only to open them when he heard a groaning sound that had not come from a human throat.
The bars were bending outward.
“I’ve got it now,” Dahlia said, and the bars popped out and flew across the corridor, to thwang! into the opposite wall.
Octavian said, “Oh, that’s not going to attract any attention.”
But Dahlia leaped forward and kicked her door, and the wood splintered outward now that it was not reinforced. She pushed through the gap, and for the first time he saw Dahlia in her entirety. She was a lot like a very short Barbie doll, and she was wearing boots with very high heels and the remnants of what Octavian, in his male ignorance, would have called a cocktail dress. At least, it was short and tight. It had probably been aqua once upon a time, before grime and blood made their own random patterns. Her tight, wavy black hair was in a sort of Helena Bonham-Carter state.
Dahlia was beaming as she grabbed the bars of his window, her hands covered in something messy and smelly. She leaped up easily and braced her feet against the door while she pulled with her arms. The bars smoked and hissed against the substance covering her hands, and Octavian pushed on alternate bars. When the whole barred frame gave way, he thumped against the door, then staggered backward.
Dahlia delivered one of her kicks to the wood, and he was out of the cell. From being captive to being free had taken about two minutes. Dahlia gave him a resounding kiss (which tasted of blood and metal) and pointed to her right. They began to run. Octavian wanted to escape the cellblock as swiftly as possible. “Anywhere but here,” he said, and Dahlia nodded.
Even in the boots, she could keep up with him, and Octavian suspected she might have passed him if she hadn’t been trying to stay at his side.
They heard voices just in time to flatten themselves against a wall.
“...what happened with Bronwyn and Eigar?” one of the Fae was asking. He was tall with long brown hair and a pair of pants that looked like snakeskin. His companion was shorter, blonder, and even more ethereally beautiful than the first. Octavian was too smart to be envious, but he noticed that Dahlia was smiling.
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