Fright Court

by Mindy Klasky

  At some point, James’s hands shifted to my arms. As one, we rose to our feet. We found our way into my bedroom. He drew back as we stood beside my bed, trailing his lips from my throat to the tender spot beneath my jaw, to the corner of my mouth. His touch was sweet, almost chaste. I pulled away before anything more could happen, and he seemed to understand.

  I couldn’t lie on my sheets with my blood-stained blouse; I couldn’t bring Richardson’s foul actions into my bed. Still in the liquid haze of James’s drinking, I fumbled with my buttons, stripping off the ruined white silk. Some other woman would have dropped it on the floor, shed it like an autumn leaf.

  But I wasn’t some other woman. I was a sphinx.

  I folded the blouse, my fingers moving automatically as I set the garment on the corner of my dresser. I glanced down at my bra. It had somehow remained clean, untainted by Richardson’s predation.

  When I looked back at my bed, James was sitting there, his eyes glowing. His fangs had disappeared; he looked like an ordinary human man. An ordinary human man who had spent his night walking me out of a nightmare.

  I glanced at his chest and gasped. The terrible burns were already fading away. The blisters had all healed. Only parallel red stripes remained, and the worst of those were already disappearing. He held out a hand to me and said, “Thank you.”

  Vampires didn’t say thank you. Vampires didn’t like the implied obligation, the debt.

  “You’re welcome,” I whispered. I took a step toward him, but I couldn’t help raising a hand to my throat. I was astonished to find that the wound was closed, that only a tender line of new skin remained. “How —” I started to ask.

  “We can clean up after ourselves,” he said.

  “But Richardson —”

  “Richardson might not be the best example for you to study.” James’s smile was wry as he beckoned to me again. I merely looked at him, suddenly, absurdly, feeling shy. “Please, Sarah. I’m not going to bite, you know.”

  “I don’t know that at all,” I said tartly.

  His face grew grave. “I would never touch you without your permission. You have to know that. You have to trust me.”

  I stared at him. Even with all of the training he’d given me, the training that I’d managed to put to such a satisfying use in Richardson’s basement, James was stronger than I was. Stronger, and more experienced, and less afraid to use his abilities.

  He was a vampire. He had a different set of values, a starker sense of right and wrong. He had sworn loyalty to causes that I knew nothing about, that I couldn’t begin to understand. He was bound to hierarchies with secret pledges with timeless oaths.

  He wrapped himself in secrets. I didn’t know where he lived. I didn’t know who he’d been, before he was a vampire. I didn’t know what he did in the dark hours before the Night Court opened, in the pre-dawn hours after the Night Court closed.

  In the end, he was right. I had to trust him.

  I crossed the room and sat beside him on the bed. I raised my hand to his chest, to where his heart would be, if he still had a living, beating heart. I settled my hand against his flesh, felt the lingering warmth from the blood that I had given him.

  He winced, though, as my fingers brushed against the still-red edge of a burn. I pulled back in surprise, in remorse. He caught my hand, moving with that preternatural speed that I hadn’t yet accepted as normal. His lips were warm against my palm.

  “Do you need more?” I asked. “More blood?”

  He shook his head. “The healing just takes time. I’ll be fine by sunset.”

  I realized that he was alert, that we were carrying on a normal conversation, even though the sun had long since come over the horizon. “So, you stay awake during the day?” The question sounded foolish to me, and I frowned, feeling like a schoolgirl on a very awkward first date.

  “The urge to sleep grows stronger, as the day moves on. I can’t resist its pull for a few hours before and after noon. I’m fine for now.”

  He released my hand, and I realized that I wanted him to keep touching me. I wanted to feel close to him, even though I hated the thought of causing him any more pain.

  He reached for the pillows at the head of the bed and rearranged them against my metal headboard. It took two tries, but he eventually settled comfortably, leaning his broad shoulders against the pillows’ comfort. I longed to curl up against him, to tuck in by his side, but his burns still warned me away. I settled for resting my head in his lap. His right arm immediately fell beside me, and he started to stroke my back slowly. Soothingly.

  I sighed and closed my eyes.

  It was just as well that he was still healing from his ordeal. I realized that I was exhausted. The past three days flooded through my brain—my frustration with Chris’s article, my fury with James for pushing me to make things right with the D.C. Council, my terror at discovering Richardson in Feld’s office. The sheer physical exertion of fighting for my life, for my life and James’s and Chris’s. The confusion and awe of learning about my true powers, my true sphinx self. Giving James the blood he needed to heal.

  I was floating between wakefulness and sleep, riding the soft wave of James’s touch, of his still-warm hand against my spine. “I’m sorry, Sarah,” he said, pitching his voice so softly that I scarcely registered the change from silence to speech.

  I roused enough to ask, “For what?”

  “For keeping the truth from you. I should have told you that you are a sphinx. I should have trusted you with that much.”

  That much. Not any truth about himself, but about me. His hand had come to rest against the small of my back. “Why didn’t you?” I finally asked.

  “At first, I wasn’t one hundred percent sure. When you wrote your name in the ancient script, I suspected of course, but I had Enfolded you, and sphinxes cannot be Enfolded. After Brandt’s attack, I tried to Enfold you again, but your insignia had been activated. I was certain of the truth then. But I still had to make sure you could tolerate us, tolerate being with vampires. Some sphinxes have lost that through the generations; they panic when they realize our true nature. Besides, you had already drunk from me, and I didn’t want to lose you, to…” He trailed off, as if he’d lost the ability to shape words.

  I filled the silence. “Richardson was surprised by that. Surprised you’d let me drink.”

  I felt James nod, but I was still too exhausted to raise my head to look at him. “It’s rare. When we give our blood, we can always feel the person who has drunk. I’m always … aware of you.”

  “Then you can read my mind?” I tensed, automatically rebelling against the invasion.

  He shook his head, and his hand rose to my nape, working through the tiny muscles at the top of my spine. “Nothing that specific. I know when you’re angry. When you’re afraid. Negative emotions are strongest; they penetrate deeper into my awareness than positive ones. I knew that something had gone terribly wrong on Monday night, about an hour after sunset.”

  “When I found out about Richardson.”

  “I felt your panic, but I couldn’t find you, not after you left the DFI building. I couldn’t do anything to help you, and I hated that. I was ready to contact Gardner, to see what he knew, but he showed up at the courthouse before I got the chance.”

  His fingers had stopped their ministrations. I kept my voice neutral as I asked, “Chris? How did he know anything was wrong?”

  “Allison called him.”

  “Allison?” I was not expecting that.

  “She told him that he was an irresponsible journalist, a disgrace to the Banner, and she regretted ever inviting him into her home. She said that his article made you want to quit your job. She threatened to create an entirely new cause of action if that’s what it took to sue him, if you actually followed through on your threat and walked away from the only decent job you’ve had since law school.”

  I raised myself up on my elbows, gaping at James incredulously. “Allison said that? And
Chris told you?”

  James shrugged. “He thought I was stonewalling him, when I said I didn’t know where you were. He said a lot of things.”

  I remembered my astonishment in Richardson’s basement, seeing James and Chris together. I thought about the silent conversation they’d exchanged in the courtroom, the night that imperial court was recessed, supposedly for Chris’s benefit. “How well do the two of you actually know each other? I thought you only met when he started writing his article.”

  “We did. But I’ve known him by reputation since he was a child.”

  “By reputation?”

  “He’s the Sun Lion of the Eastern Empire.”

  “What does that mean?”

  James sighed. “He’s the strongest sphinx attached to the Empire. He’s been the Director of Archives since he was fourteen years old. He launched a genealogy project about ten years ago, and he recently announced a plan to track down the oldest data that exist about Sekhmet, the earliest papyrus scrolls about your ancestors.”

  “Chris?” I said, shocked that the easy-going journalist I knew was such a powerful man in the hidden circles I’d just discovered.

  It made sense, though. I’d seen him take James’s cell phone, back at Richardson’s house. I’d heard the bark of command as he gave his name, as he pledged to watch over the vampire prisoners during the day. “But if he’s so powerful, why did you care if he watched the Night Court? Why would it matter, if he saw Schmidt’s case?”

  Even in his exhausted state, James spent the energy to bristle before offering up a matter-of-fact explanation. “There’s a … power struggle, between vampires and sphinxes. Sphinxes say they want to guard us, to help us, to organize. But all too often, they try to change us. Make us do what they think is right. They try to keep us from being who we truly are, from following our own instincts. Our own laws.”

  “But Chris— “

  James cut me off, speaking as if every word was dipped in arsenic. “I do not intend to spend the entire day talking about Chris Gardner, Sarah.”

  “Well, it’s not like you’re ever going to tell me about yourself!” I spat the words without thinking.

  Once again, I found myself looking into those deep blue eyes. Once again, I realized that I knew what James was thinking. I knew that he was measuring out his response. He wanted to tell me. He wanted to share his story. Decades of conditioning, though, centuries maybe, warned him against talking. He looked away before I did.

  I pushed away from him, feeling ridiculously exposed in my skirt and my bra. I edged toward the far side of the bed, intending to find a sweatshirt, sweatpants, something soft and comfortable that would make my sleeping on the couch the slightest bit more palatable. My back to James, I crossed my arms over my chest, biting my lower lip against the sudden chill in the room.

  “Maurice Richardson Impressed me a year and a day after he Turned me.”

  I whirled back to face him. James was staring at me, as if he could weave a lifeline with words alone. “I was thirty-three years old in 1872. I was married to a woman named Liza. We had a seven-year-old son named William. Liza and William were struck with yellow fever, and I rode to Philadelphia because there were rumors of a man there, a man who had a cure.”

  “James,” I said, shaking my head, suddenly afraid of the trust he was placing in me. “You don’t really have to tell me this. I don’t have to know.”

  His eyes bored into me as if I hadn’t spoken. “I met Richardson in a warehouse near the docks, at midnight on August 17th. He took my money, and then he took my blood. He didn’t bother with Enfolding; he didn’t want to taste the tang of the drug when he drank. I fought back, stronger than he expected. I managed to bite his hand, swallowed some of his blood. Enough. He nearly drained me, left me beneath a tangle of nets. When the Turning didn’t kill me, the sunrise almost did.”

  I wanted to say something, wanted to heal everything that was broken inside of him, the wounded memories that had been seeping for nearly a century and a half. I didn’t have the words, though. I couldn’t process the horror.

  James’s lips thinned, and his voice shook. “Liza and William were dead and buried by the time I made it home. It took me months to track down Richardson’s sanctum. I had to find him in the city again, watch him feed on unwitting prey. I followed him home a year after he Turned me. I hid for the day, and then I attacked, an hour after dusk.”

  “Enough,” I whispered. “You don’t have to tell me more.”

  James shook his head. “But this is the most important part. Richardson was stronger than I was. He was infinitely better trained. Without my even realizing what had happened, he took over my will, converted me into a mindless, soulless tool. He Impressed me, Sarah. He took my will and left me with absolutely nothing.”

  I shivered at the desolation in his voice. I couldn’t say anything, couldn’t imagine words that would bring him comfort.

  “Richardson … trained me, taught me his own dark arts. And when I was the perfect weapon, a mindless killing machine, he set me against the Eastern Empire. He sent me to kill Robert DuBois.”

  I thought James was through talking then. He looked away from me, staring into the middle distance, caught up in his memories of what had happened so long before. His jaw was granite; his fingers folded into fists. But he wasn’t through with his story. Not quite.

  “I caught DuBois by surprise, and I nearly got the better of him. In the end, though, he was the stronger vampire.” James’s lips quirked into a bitter smile. “The better man. He freed me from Richardson’s hold. I owe him everything. I’ll serve him until the day I die.” James returned his gaze to me, and his voice was absolutely level as he said, “And now, finally, Maurice Richardson will be brought before the Eastern Empire in person, to stand trial for every single one of his crimes. Not the least of which was kidnapping you, an imperial, on Monday night.”

  The sudden silence between us pressed down on me, made me ashamed of my earlier quip, at the jab that had led James to finally tell me his story. I’d had no idea his past would be so bleak, that Richardson’s crimes had affected him so directly. Finally, I understood what it had meant to him, cornering Richardson in that basement lair. I understood why it was worth taking the risks that James had taken, why it was worth suffering the burns.

  “Thank you,” I said. For finding me, I meant. For fighting Richardson with me. But even more, for trusting me with his story. With the truth.

  “You’re welcome,” he said after a pause that seemed to last forever. And then he glanced at the green-sponged window. “It’s getting late out there,” he observed. “It must be after ten.”

  After ten. And he needed to sleep, to finish the healing that I’d interrupted with my need for order. For facts.

  I walked around the bed and reached down to straighten the edge of my comforter, to pull it into a neat, chaste line. “What do you need?” I asked. “What can I get you?”

  He reached up to cup a hand behind my neck, to pull me down for a kiss. His fingers were cool again; the heat of my shared blood had dissipated. His lips were soft. “Just be here when I wake,” he whispered against my mouth.

  “I will be,” I promised. “Don’t worry. I will be.”

  I snagged my sweats from the closet and turned off the light before I closed the bedroom door.

  One advantage to painting over your windows: You can change clothes in the middle of your living room, in the middle of the day, and never worry that anyone will see you. I thought about Chris, lugging in the heavy bucket of Desert Sage paint, neither one of us having the least idea how it would ultimately be put to use.

  Chris. Sun Lion of the Eastern Empire.

  I retrieved my cell phone from the kitchen counter and punched in his number. He answered halfway through the first ring.

  “Hey,” he said.

  “Is everything all right there?”

  “Everything’s fine. Between their injuries and daylight, Richardson and his
men will be out cold till dusk. You got home without any problem?”

  “Yes,” I said. “We’re fine.”

  I thought about telling him that I’d let James feed from me. I decided not to. I stared at my bracelet and ring and wondered if he already knew.

  “Chris— “ I said, at the precise instant that he said my name.

  “Get some sleep,” he said, after a long pause.

  “What about you?”

  “I just put up a fresh pot of coffee. I’ll be fine until the cavalry arrives.” I pictured him adding cream to his cup, stirring a precise seven times. There was a smile behind his words as he said, “Sleep well, Sarah. I’ll come by the courthouse tonight, to see Richardson arraigned.”

  Strangely reluctant to end our conversation, I hung up the phone. I lay down on my couch, punching a pair of throw pillows into shape as I tried to convince my body to give up the last of its over-clocked adrenaline rush, to sleep for a few hours, to do its own rejuvenation.

  Allison was right, though. My couch was the least comfortable piece of furniture ever made by man.

  Allison was right about more than that. Even though she didn’t know the full truth—couldn’t know the full truth—she had been right to send Chris after me. If not for her, how long would it have taken for Chris and James to join forces, to find me, to defeat Richardson?

  I scrambled from the sofa and made another call. “Aren’t you supposed to be sleeping?” Allison asked. “You are still working for the Night Court, aren’t you?”

  I smiled at the familiar mix of best friend concern and maternal bullying. “I’m still the Court Clerk,” I said. “I just wanted to thank you.”

  “For what?” She couldn’t quite make her tone sound innocent.

  “For calling Chris. For telling him that I was about to throw away the best job I’ve ever had.”

  “I shouldn’t have interfered,” Allison said. “I bet James was pretty angry to see him at the courthouse.”

  “Yeah. But he got over it,” I said. Before I could dream up an explanation that she’d buy, I heard a shriek of baby glee in the background. “Hey! What’s Nora doing there? Aren’t you at work?”