by Megan Derr
"You are Silas," he said.
"Yes," Silas replied. "So why are you smart enough to give me the secrets I desire when your master seemed certain that you would never do such a thing?"
"My only desire is to retrieve my master," Midnight said, and even with all the fear and uncertainty, he could not help but make note to call Devlin 'master' for a very long time, to drive him mad. "If I must trade the secret of my making to reclaim him, then so be it."
Silas moved closer to him. Midnight wanted to shiver because he could sense Silas, but not in any way he normally sensed creatures. Ghostly fingers brushed his skin, and Midnight resisted an urge to lash out only because he knew it would be wasted. Ghosts could not be touched or held, only felt. It was a cold feeling, yet hot at the same time. Much like sensing Silas, it was nothing Midnight had ever experienced before.
He did not like it, not one bit.
Silas frowned suddenly. "Why did you bring Ginny down here? She has nothing to do with any of this."
"I could hardly bring down her mother; she's too old. Ginny will work just fine for making you a draugr like me."
"What do you mean?" Silas demanded.
"I mean, you have no idea what actually goes into my making, but you are about to find out. However, we cannot do it without Devlin—he knows the spells, not me. I had no part in the casting, obviously. I am only the product."
Silas pursed his lips in annoyance and looked toward Devlin, who had not stirred. Midnight would have been hurt except that it did not surprise him Silas had put Devlin to sleep. "I do not trust you or him, and I most certainly will not let him out of the cage."
"I'm certain he could do it from within the cage," Midnight said lightly. "All he has to do is guide Ginny here through the casting. Hell, maybe you can figure out how to do it while she still sleeps. You're obviously clever."
"I am far more than merely clever," Silas said contemptuously. "Put her down, damn it. You've no right to touch her. Why should she be necessary to my spell?"
Midnight spoke before good sense could tell him not. "If you're so much more than clever, should you not be able to figure it out?"
Silas narrowed his eyes. "Watch it, boy," he said coolly. "So close to me and my power, you would stand no chance against my siren songs. You are special, but not that special."
As this was true, Midnight wisely kept his mouth shut this time. He looked around the room, spying a chair—why would a ghost need a chair?—and gently set Ginny in it, making certain the blankets were pulled up snug and secure.
Ginny settled, he strode toward Devlin, unable to help himself. Devlin faced away from him, and Midnight moved around the circle until he could look at Devlin's face.
He looked tired and strained. Devlin must be worried sick, trapped in this living nightmare. Of course he'd get no rest, even fast asleep.
Midnight reached unthinkingly to touch and swore as the magic burned his fingers. Putting them in his mouth, he simply continued to stare.
Even strained, Devlin was beautiful. Being able to look at him once again soothed every ache, even the ones Midnight had not been wholly aware of until that point. He wanted Devlin to wake up and smile at him, and then promptly grumble about needing tea and where was it, already? He wanted his soft-hearted grouch back, and right now, Devlin looked far too much like a Snow White himself.
"So we need him to cast this spell? I doubt he will cooperate," Silas said, reminding Midnight that they were not alone. "He will no doubt require persuasion."
Midnight's head snapped up at those words. "If you hurt me, you can be certain he will kill himself before cooperating. If he dies, I go with him. If you kill me, he will see no reason to keep himself alive. All we want is to go home. We give you what you want, Silas, you give us the same. Fair is fair."
Silas pursed his lips but slowly nodded. "So how long, draugr, have you been this way?"
"Just past fifteen years," Midnight said.
"Fascinating," Silas said. "You are perfectly preserved." He glanced briefly toward his own body. "A spell, no doubt. Suffer you any drawbacks?"
"I can't handle sunlight," Midnight replied. "If I expend too much energy, I require human blood to regain my strength. Otherwise, I am hale and hearty."
Silas nodded then gestured impatiently. "Your memories? Draugr lose all knowledge of their former lives, typically, save the barest shreds of the treasure they seek to guard. How did His Grace overcome that?"
Midnight wanted to laugh—Silas really did not know! He prided himself on being far more than clever, but he simply assumed that Devlin had been able to overcome that particular element.
Well, Midnight certainly would not be the one to break it to the bastard. Let his arrogance come back to haunt him.
"I do not know how Devlin and Ceadda overcame it," he said casually, reluctantly standing and moving toward Silas once more. "I remember meeting Devlin, fifteen years ago. I was enchanted. Then someone killed me. I remember nothing until I woke as you see me now—aware, with all intact, but neither alive nor dead. Devlin saved me, but I remember nothing between the dying and the waking."
Silas nodded again, then his eyes narrowed. "What do you mean, Ceadda? I know that name. He is, or was, the Alucard's lover. I met him once, decades ago."
"Devlin did not create the spell that gives me life by himself; half of my making is witchcraft, but the other half is necromancy."
Anger flashed across Silas's face, but also begrudging admiration. "Brilliant. I should have thought of that. Likely would have, shortly. Human magic is hopelessly limited. As a draugr, I will have far more options."
Midnight said nothing save, "Ceadda is upstairs. If you want this to work, you will have to let him through the barrier."
Silas's mouth tightened, but he gave a terse nod and snapped his fingers.
A few moments later, Ceadda came through the door. He scowled at Midnight and stalked toward him, grabbing his shoulders hard and shaking him. "What are you thinking, you bloody fool—"
Midnight gave a shaky laugh. "You didn't tell me you and Seth were lovers, Ceadda. Shame on you."
Ceadda froze, then roughly let him go. "We are not," he said coldly. "Once, yes. No longer. I refuse to be with a man who allows himself to die slowly because of honor. Not that it is any of your business."
"I cannot believe I let you go so easily, vampire," Silas said in his whispery voice. "Right beneath my nose the whole time, and I let you get away after a spot of tea and conversation. I even let you have a taste of my little maid as well. Tsk, tsk."
Stiffening, Ceadda slowly turned to face Silas. "Indeed," he said coolly. "All of this nonsense proves that it was fortunate I had nothing to give you. I shudder to think what you might have done with real power in your hands."
"I have all the power I need," Silas replied, smirking, "and will have all that I desire once you give it to me. Which you shall, or I can make the lot of you suffer for a very long time."
Midnight willed Ceadda to trust him, to see he had something else afoot. "Ceadda, I promised him we would make him draugr. I just want Devlin back, and he has promised to let all of us go if we will just make him into a draugr like me. That's not so much, right? I promised."
Ceadda glared at him, then turned away with a rough oath. "Fine," he said. "Let us get on with it, then." He motioned to Devlin. "We can hardly do it without him."
Silas nodded and once more snapped his fingers, barking a sharp word as he did it.
Midnight held his breath, and let it out in a sharp exhale as Devlin groaned. Forgetting everyone and everything, he moved to the spell cage and knelt. "Devlin."
Devlin froze, then whipped around and stared in wide-eyed disbelief. "Midnight—" His voice cracked, obviously from neglect since his capture, and he roughly cleared his throat. "Midnight. What are you doing here?"
"I'm glad you are all right," Midnight said softly, biting back the 'Heartbeat' he wanted so badly to say. He was still deathly afraid Devlin had meant
what he said about never using the endearment again. He'd been so angry, and they had never really resolved—
Midnight tried to smile and thought it horribly cruel he could not reach out and touch. He settled for curling his fingers around the rune in his pocket and pulling it out, then he let his hand rest at the edge of the spell circle.
Devlin's moved to the same space, and they would have been touching if not for the magic that kept them an ocean. "Midnight, what is going on?"
"I told him that if he would set you free," Midnight said, looking into Devlin's eyes, knowing that Devlin would see what Ceadda may or may not—that he was up to something, "we would turn him into a draugr like me. All of this is not worth the price we have paid. We will change him, and he will have no cause to hurt us, and all will be well again, hmm?"
"I suppose we don't really have a choice," Devlin said, sighing.
Midnight nodded and rose, but not before letting the rune he held slip free. Unlike him, it had no problem slipping past the barrier of magic, not when its brothers were on the other side with Devlin. Runes, Devlin had told him more than once, had a will all their own. They may or may not follow all the rules men thought they knew about magic.
He forced himself to move away, returning to the chair where Ginny still sat fast asleep under power of the spell Ceadda had cast over her. Pulling the blankets away, he unbuttoned the myriad buttons of her sleeping gown down to her waist, pulling the fabric away to bare the space above her chest where the anchoring marks must go.
"You'll have to do most of it," Devlin said to Ceadda. "I cannot do much from here, and I do not think our new friend will let me out until the deed is done."
"Precisely," Silas said, then moved close to Ginny, frowning as he watched Ceadda work. "Explain all of this to me."
Ceadda nodded. "Seeing as you're dead, your body needs a living anchor—someone who can share life with you, as it were."
"So I am to be chained to my maid?" Silas demanded in outrage.
"We didn't know of any friends upon whom we could presume," Ceadda said cuttingly, and Silas for once had nothing to say. "I'm certain if you take issue with being chained, you can develop some other way to survive. Our time was limited and it was the best we could contrive. Devlin and Midnight had never seen a need to find an alternate method."
Silas looked between Devlin and Midnight. "I can see where it would be useful for the master to have complete control of his minion."
Devlin choked, eyes snapping to Silas, bristling with outrage. "How—"
"My master is not so strict," Midnight interjected, mostly to see how red Devlin would get. When Devlin was around, so was Midnight's mischief, no matter how dire the situation. He was already in trouble, he knew it, so he may as well get in all the mischief he could.
Or perhaps he was simply giddy with the knowledge that Devlin was there and able to glare at him again. He'd missed those blue eyes, the way they flashed when Devlin was annoyed or exasperated or trying hard not to be amused.
Midnight finished, "My master simply sees it as less troublesome than trying to find another way. Why change something that does not need fixing?"
"Do you always speak for your master?"
"He is too modest by far. If I did not speak for him, no praise would ever be spoken." Devlin, modest. Ha. Devlin either pretended not to possess a trait, or lorded his title and wealth all over the place. Midnight rather thought he deserved a prize for calling Devlin modest with a straight face.
Silas did not look terribly convinced, but he did look too bored to bother pursuing the matter. "What comes next?"
"Midnight," Devlin said. "Draw the proper runes for me on Silas's body." He glared at Silas. "It is deucedly difficult to do my portion of this when I cannot move, you know. If this goes wrong, it shall be no fault of mine."
"If it goes wrong, I will kill those who wait for you upstairs, and then the villagers, until you get it right."
He rather thought Silas was underestimating their friends, but Midnight did not voice the thought. Instead he picked up the necessary ink and drew upon Silas's body the marks that decorated his own body—what parts he knew, anyway. Some of them, he did not.
When they were done, he stepped away, setting aside the ink. Once the spell was cast, they would be a permanent part of his skin. Ceadda came forward and drew his own portions, flawlessly weaving together witchcraft and necromancy.
Midnight stared in wonder, utterly confounded that he had never realized what all the marks upon his skin really were. He had always taken them for runes he did not recognize and had never cared enough to puzzle them out. It was necromancy so skillfully blended no one was likely to recognize them as that unless they knew to look for it.
Ceadda and Devlin really were masters of their crafts.
When he was finished, Ceadda stepped away. "All that's left is for you to become a draugr, and then for the spell to be cast."
Silas frowned.
Midnight spoke. "The spell is to give life to a draugr. Right now, you're a ghost. If we were to cast the spell upon the corpse, it would not work, for the corpse is just that. It's an empty thing, not a draugr risen to some thin imitation of life."
With a grimace, Silas sourly conceded, "I had not thought how to make myself a draugr."
"I can do that," Midnight said quietly. "I can compel it, but you will cease to be a ghost. You cannot be both."
Silas scowled. "You have set me up for some trap."
"No," Devlin said from where he still stood, trapped. "You can check the spellwork yourself, as you undoubtedly already have. It is sound, but it is to give a stronger semblance of life to something that already has it. We cannot give life to a lifeless corpse, but we can give it to a draugr."
For several long, agonizing minutes, Silas stood in a ringing silence. At last, when Midnight was about to scream just to break the tension, he gave a terse nod. "So be it—but if you do anything, you will swiftly be made to regret it."
The threat was an empty one, but Midnight did not call him on it. Silas was ultimately nothing more than a greedy fool who had finally gotten in over his head.
Moving to the corpse once more, Midnight laid a hand over its forehead and closed his eyes. Then he simply let his will to live, the need to be assured all was well and his fear it was not, his desire to protect, his craving for life, for blood, for flesh, pour into the corpse of Silas.
Little by little, he felt the corpse change and begin to wake.
Reunited
Silas made a beautiful draugr. As the ghost faded and the corpse took on the telltale markings—the blue hair and nails, the white skin that made snow look like cream—Silas really did begin to look more beautiful in death than he had in life. Strange, but Midnight had seen stranger.
He also realized, as Silas sat up, eyes vague but wild as he searched feverishly for flesh or his treasure, that he had made a mistake somewhere else in his calculations—he did not need to wait for the completion of the spell to end this.
It was as easy as he had pictured it to reach up and tear the beautiful head from the pale shoulders. Dark, thick blood poured out, but it did not spray. It never did with the walking dead.
Trembling with relief that his plan had worked, and without a single hitch, Midnight dropped the head he realized he still held, then sank to the floor. He fisted his hands in his lap to still their trembling.
"You goddamn bloody fool!" Devlin bellowed, all but shaking the foundation of the house. Midnight swore he heard a few of the glass bottles clatter and clink. "What in the fucking hell were you thinking, doing something that brash and reckless. I'm going to kill you myself, Midnight—"
Midnight remembered too late that with Silas dead his spells were broken, as he found himself roughly jerked to his feet and spun around. Devlin's eyes blazed like lightning. "You are a fucking fool, Midnight. If you ever do something that stupid again, I'll—"
Ceadda coughed, breaking into the tirade. "I think I'll take the
woman back and tell the others you are all right. This is the last time I get involved in your nonsense, Winterbourne, I vow it."
Devlin nodded but did not spare him more than that before he returned the whole of his attention to Midnight. "I should wring your neck right now," he said, shaking Midnight hard. "What if something had gone wrong? What if he had been pretending his ignorance? What were you thinking, Midnight? This was the height of stupidity."
"Thinking?" Midnight demanded, tearing away, shaking with anger now. "I was thinking you were gone. I was thinking you were furious with me, and then suddenly not there anymore. I was thinking I could not sense you, or find you, no matter how hard I tried." He shoved Devlin hard, then wrapped his arms around himself. "I knew only that you were alive, Devlin, that is all. There was no clue to finding you, no matter how hard we looked. We had to go to the Dracula for help. Then we were attacked by hundreds of draugr, and I tore them apart, and I enjoyed it, and I was thinking that I would do anything, kill anyone, to have you back because without your presence I'm nothing but a monster. That's what I was thinking."
"Midnight…"
He said nothing more, merely stared miserably at the ground, thinking this was not how their stupid reunion was supposed to go at all. There was supposed to have been Devlin apologizing, and Devlin kissing him, and Devlin finally admitting he was in love.
Instead, true to Devlin, he was yelling.
Then gloved fingers cupped Midnight's chin and forced his head up, and there was anything but anger in his eyes as he looked at Midnight. "If you are a monster, dark angel, then you are a monster carefully and lovingly made, and I would have you no other way."
"Oh," Midnight said, unable to manage anything. "Devlin—"
Hurt flickered across Devlin's face as he interrupted to say, "Is that all you will call me now, Midnight? Surely—" But he bit the words off, likely too stubborn even now to manage one simple I'm sorry.
Midnight considered making him suffer through it, but in the end decided teasing him would suffice. "Oh? Would you prefer master?"
