Cal barely spoke for the rest of the drive, until we reached the border of the state and I had to rouse myself from a restful torpor. Dawn tugged at the edge of my consciousness like a dragging weight.
“Stop the car,” I said.
He jumped, gasping.
“Sorry,” he said as he caught his breath. “I thought you were asleep.”
“I don’t sleep,” I said, rubbing my eyes. “I need to get in the trunk. We won’t make it by morning.”
“How can you tell?” he asked, easing us into the emergency lane.
“I can feel it.”
He put the car in park and popped the trunk. I climbed out, dazed, my limbs already heavy. I’d waited too long. I needed to pay more attention. It took me a moment to rearrange the luggage and dig out my “sleeping bag.” I climbed into the dark hollow of the trunk and pulled the lid shut behind me, wriggling into the tarp. I’d lined the inside so it was soft, though in a moment, I wouldn’t feel it. I clipped the lock on the zipper closed, turned onto my side, and tried to relax. Terror made that difficult. My body grew heavier and heavier, until my eyes closed of their own accord and my mouth fell slack. It wasn’t sleep; I was dying again, and again, and again.
I slipped away, into emptiness, as the sun must have crested the horizon.
Disorientation—a gentle word for coming back to life with a frantic gasp and a stuttering heartbeat in a quiet, dark, small space. The air I’d gulped stretched stiff muscles and I coughed it out, wishing I knew how to stop doing that everytime. I moved to find the key to the lock, but my elbow banged something hard when I shifted. I paused, then reached out with the other arm and encountered the same hard surface within a few inches. That wasn't right. I had passed out in the trunk of a car, safely in my sleeping-bag, with a pyrokinetic guarding my body. At least, I'd assumed that was what he would be doing. The ruse was too elaborate if he simply wanted to trick me into letting my guard down.
I patted up the cold metal sides and found that they were attached to a lid of some kind, with textured bumps like the inside of a tool box. I shoved against the section above me and it clinked but didn’t break open.
It was good that hyperventilating wouldn't make me lose consciousness, because I panted uncontrollably as I struggled and kicked with all my might. The metal dented under each slam of my leg but I didn’t have enough leverage to force it open. Someone had put me in a box and locked it up tight. They must have known what I was. Cal? I was never so wrong about a person’s sincerity—their scent and tiny bodily reactions were impossible to hide from me. Which meant that Cal had been in some way incapacitated and I was a prisoner.
Unless they’d put the box in a quiet, secret place and didn’t plan on coming back. Vampires could be starved to death, as punishment or torture. I would grow weaker, and I would fade, day after day, until one morning I died and didn’t come back. It could take months. I shrieked like a harpy and thrashed with all my might.
Four sharp knocks on the lid of the box stopped me.
“Who’s there?” I shouted, not sounding the least bit frightened.
“Someone who doesn’t want their throat removed from their spine any time soon,” a male voice said. “Or to get burnt to a crisp. So, we’ve got to figure out what to do with you two remarkably incompetent hunters.”
“Who are you?” I asked.
“Somebody who's supposed to be figuring out why you're really here,” he said. “Our sources said you were going to try to depose my king.”
The box shifted, as if he’d leaned against it, and I caught a whiff of scent. It was animal, but not wolf. Our dossier had, indeed, been incorrect. They were prepared for me, but what he’d said about burning meant they'd been prepared for Cal, too, and that didn’t bode well. As the movies like to say, we’d been had.
“That was not our intention,” I said. “We were told to moderate a leadership dispute between two local combatants after the old king died. The interested parties were a werewolf and a shaman. You aren’t either.”
“Right you are,” he said, thumping the case again. I flinched at the hollow sound all around me. “But if you’re telling the truth, then we're going to be in some shit with you for doing this, anyway, am I right?”
“I’m more interested in my freedom than a grudge,” I said.
“You see,” he said as if I hadn’t spoken, “the king isn’t dead. Whoever told you that was a fucking liar.” I didn’t respond. He took a slow breath and let it out. “Not only that, but we haven't had a dispute for leadership here for longer than I've been alive. No werewolf or shaman is even going to think about trying to take over this territory, trust me.”
“If the king's not dead, then may I speak with him?” I asked.
It was growing harder to keep my voice steady. The box was not warm, but it was small, and I kept brushing my limbs against it when I moved. It seemed to squeeze down around me when I breathed, but if I wanted to get out of the goddamned box he needed to hear an amiable acquaintance, willing to let go a misunderstanding, not a panicked vampire.
“You’ll meet him pretty soon,” he said. “I might not be able to handle you, but he can. I promise you that.”
I heard shifting again, and footsteps, leading away.
“Where’s my partner?” I called out.
“Somewhere else,” he replied.
A chill wriggled down my spine. Hopefully he wasn’t dead. If an informant had told me a pyrokinetic was coming to assassinate me, I would not take the chance of letting him live. Sniper shot, no stress, no fuss.
The small lump of fear in my stomach grew and hardened into a lead weight. The silence was absolute when I stopped breathing. I started again to have something to listen to: rush of air in, rush of air out. Quiet, but something. I had to hold myself in check and think this through. If Cal’s handler had intentionally misrepresented the job, implying a trick if not an outright trap, it seemed likely that he had also been the one to set us up.
The motive screamed at me, it was so obvious. A military man who had held Cal’s life some way or another in his hands for years, who had instilled fear and hate in his charge, who had not been willing to let him slip away even when his superiors told him he must.
It appeared that he'd made the decision so common to jealous boys: if I can’t have it, no one can—and a combat-ready pyrokinetic was a very special toy indeed.
Another sunrise and sunset left me beating my fists in a blind rage against the mangled inside of the box as I woke. The panic coalesced into a burning sensation in my guts, so strong it might rip me apart from the inside if I didn’t let it out. My original master had done this to one of his girls. Once, only once, because even he had discovered a kernel of compassion too great to allow him to continue the torment. He’d simply ushered her on to her final death instead of letting her fully starve. It had taken three weeks to convince him. It was one of the reasons I'd fought my way out of my territory and become a hunter.
I did not want to die this way. I also did not want to come out of the box a raving lunatic, if they let me out at all. I uncurled my fingers and lay still again, or as still as I could while my body quaked and trembled out of my control. I hadn’t realized how much this would frighten me. I spent every day in a small, dark space. But it was mine, and I wasn’t trapped—trapped, trapped, trapped. I bit my own lip, the pain sharp and shocking enough to wrest me out of the terror. The wetness of thicker, cooler blood trickled down my chin and onto the collar of my shirt. I swiped the thin trail up with my thumb and sucked it off my fingertip. I couldn't afford to waste it.
No one came.
The third night, I came back to myself with a whimper and tried to roll onto my side, banging my shoulder in the process. I curled up as tightly as the box would allow and pressed my fingers to my own pulse. The beat thumped irregular and lethargic. My mouth watered, teeth and fangs alike itching with need. Another day, or two, before the hunger became debilitating. I needed a plan, but if my capto
rs left and never returned, who could I convince to let me out? The strength in my limbs was already fading.
There were footsteps, faint but promising. I held very still.
The metallic thump of a lock opening came a moment before light dazzled my eyes. It took me a squinting, awkward second to realize the lid to the box was open. Tension sang through me as I prepared to spring, but I stopped and let it go again as my sight adjusted—attacking one person would not get me out of my prison. A position of power over their king: that was the ticket. The room, a small basement judging by the bare concrete walls, was empty beyond my captor, the metal box, and me.
“Good evening,” said the man leaning over the box.
It was a testament to my hunger and exhaustion that I identified him by smell first. As soon as the bloody tang of kindred hit my nostrils, I felt him, the flickering sense of his power brushing against my own. I wanted to smile. Instead, I bared my teeth at him and sat up to my full height, shouldering his arm out of the way. That was what a frightened, weakened hunter would do, not a woman with a trick up her sleeve. The leak, Cal’s handler or not, hadn’t done quite enough research on me. I remembered Cal asking what my “special trick” was the night he’d interviewed me—because he didn’t know.
“You must be hungry,” the vampire said. He tucked a lock of dark hair behind his ear with a winsome smile, playing his pale good looks for my attention. It wasn’t going to work. “I apologize for the treatment, but I’ve found that making a point about consequences at first meeting keeps a guest from acting out.”
The real king alone in the room with me, and a vampire at that. Not letting my fierce joy show taxed my acting abilities.
“A guest,” I scoffed.
“You could be a guest,” he replied, parrying my sharp tone with his relaxed ease.
“You would offer me hospitality?” I asked.
“Oh, no,” he said. “You won’t get me to agree to that. You invaded my territory.”
“I already informed your assistant that we were sent here on a diplomatic assignment, and our information was incorrect,” I said.
“That isn’t what we were told,” he said.
“Then we are at an impasse.” I swung my legs over the edge of the box and brushed by him to stand. My back popped as I stretched. “Will you offer me a meal?”
“I’ll offer you your partner,” he said. A knot loosened in my chest. Cal was alive. “Because if I offer you one of mine, you’ll claim I offered hospitality, won’t you?”
He met my smirk with one of his own. Let him believe I wanted to trap him within our laws. I tasted the edges of his power in my head, trying it and finding it a heavy thing, rich and thick with age. I was too weak to challenge him just yet; I needed to refuel.
“Follow me,” he said, pushing away from the metal box and walking toward the stairs in the corner.
I glanced at my prison and saw that it was a coffin of sorts with a row of thick padlocks and chains to hold it closed. It must have been specially made. The bare, small cellar and the lone box made a perfect oubliette. Failure, and a return to that slow death, was not an option. I hurried to catch up to the vampire, inspecting him from behind. He gave me his back not as a sign of stupidity but of strength. He trusted that if I was idiot enough to attack him, he would win, and his arrogance confirmed it. Psychological warfare of the smallest sort. His shoes, leather and well-polished, clicked on the wooden steps. The pants he wore were tailored, as was the grey silk shirt with its glittering jewel buttons.
“And how have you kept him from burning your home down around you?” I asked as we emerged into a largebasement, carpeted and decorated sparsely. The small windows at ground level showed me darkness and grass, but nothing else.
“Drugs, of course,” he answered. “Our informant prescribed a certain tranquilizer combination that will keep him conscious but unable to control his ability.”
“I see,” I said.
“You must know who it was, by that tone,” he said with a little chuckle. “I might believe you, about your misinformation. But if I allow you to leave, will you come back prepared and destroy us? That I can’t risk.”
“We were told there was a murder, as well. A corpse nailed up to a door?” I asked, knowing what to expect for the answer.
“Really now,” he murmured. “That happened in our neighboring territory last year, but it was solved by a hunter in short order. We’ve had no murders at all.”
“Then you have no reason to fear us,” I said.
He turned on his heel, catching a handful of my hair and jerking me to my knees. I went along with loose limbs lest I lose that clump. I stared up at him, directly into his cool blue eyes, and said nothing. Play along until I fed, and then, andthen…
“You must be terribly hungry,” he murmured. His thumb pulled my lip back and I let him touch the tender, itching surface of my fangs. I even winced for him. “You’ll feed, and we’ll discuss options. I have no interest in destroying two perfectly good soldiers, if I can win you both to me instead.”
I pulled my head away from the invasive fingers to say, “I agree to discussion.”
“Your partner is in that room,” he said, gesturing to one of the doors on the far side of the room. There were three in a row: bedrooms, I assumed. “Some privacy, but don’t take too long, if you please.”
I got to one knee first, laying a hand palm-up on it in traditional fashion. “Your name, if I have need?”
“No invocations of hospitality, I’ve told you,” he said. “But it’s Lysander.”
I nodded, once, and rose. He collapsed elegantly onto one of the tan couches arranged in the middle of the room without taking his eyes off of me. The bedroom door opened to a push of my hand and I closed it behind me, cutting off his line of view. The room was dim, lit by a small lamp, and contained only a bed and chair. I took a breath, scenting the bitter, poisoned sweat from the lax body on the bed. Cal blinked at me, rolling onto his side in an awkward spill of motion.
“Hilde?” he slurred.
“Hush,” I whispered, kneeling by the side of the bed.
The saliva pooling in my mouth tasted metallic. I pushed hair out of his face and watched his pupils, which were huge and black. Lysander had misjudged again, assuming that if he won me he would also get control of Cal. After all, Others always discounted those they considered human.
“I’m about to bite you.” I enunciated carefully. “Please don’t move, or you might hurt yourself.”
He made a sound that might have been a disagreement but I had no time for that. I pressed his cheek, tilting his head to one side. His skin was clammy to the touch but still warmer than mine. He groaned. I stroked his jaw to calm him and crawled up onto the mattress to get a workable angle. I was too short and he too uncooperative for anything else. One leg hooked over his to keep him still, I pressed my upper body over his arm and held the other one, which fumbled for me, at bay. He was weak as a kitten. Regret and the bitterness of his sick sweat tasted like ashes in my mouth as I found the thread of his pulse under his skin. I sank my teeth in as gently as possible and he barely reacted—the tranquilizers dulled the pain, at least. The blood that filled my mouth was acrid with additives but still rich and hot. I shuddered, suddenly ravenous, but drank only as much as I needed. The flow of life through my chilled limbs seemed to wake my every cell in a burst of light and pleasure. I pulled away with as much care as I’d used to feed, pressing my fingers over the oozing wounds.
“I apologize,” I whispered into his ear.
A part of me, a very small part, wished I didn’t have to pry myself away from the warmth of his company. I slid off the bed and patted his arm. Inadequate, but all I had to offer for stealing something as vital as life from his veins.
I drew my own power around myself in a wash of static and anger. Lysander was twice my age, but my old master had been nearly half a millennium when I rolled him under the force of my will. There were good reasons not to bring o
ver a psychic who, in life, had possessed gifts with the dead.
“Lysander,” I called as I strode into the room. “Lysander, I call you.”
He was on his feet in a flash, fangs bared, his energy rippling in a wave of strength against mine. I dove for him. He caught me in his arms and took me to the floor with his weight, trapping me under a body half again my size. The bastard realized his mistake too late—he touched my skin, and all control amplifies with contact. My aura ate into his, a sensation that filled me bodily like a feeding. I consumed him, colored him my own, as he spasmed and fought helplessly on top of me.
“You didn't ask my name,” I hissed into his shocked face. “Hilde. Devourer of masters and conqueror of death.”
He went still above me as the light went out of his eyes. All of that impossible, inhuman strength poised for my will and my orders—it was enough to make a girl tremble. The titles might have been silly, and vampires were a pretentious lot, but I had lived up to mine time and time again.
“Lysander,” I said. “Let me stand.”
He backed up on his knees until I pulled free. I tangled my fingers in his silky hair. The power was a rush, one too dangerous for even the purest heart. To reduce a king to a slave, or elevate slave to kingship? Too much, too much entirely.
“I command you to convince your followers you have released us,” I said. “Cal and I will leave unharmed, with your good will. You may play king if you choose, or give away your title to a successor.”
I had to think for a moment to make sure I missed nothing of import. An insidious whisper in the back of my mind requested that I finish it with an order to lay himself in the sun, or lock himself in that terrible box.
“You will behave with kindness and generosity towards those you meet, and you will brick up that cellar room with the coffin. Do you understand?”
Anthology of Speculative Fiction, Volume Two Page 474
