while I sought to stem the flow.”
“Your father’s blood is old and stale.” He straddled me, forcing me back on the
coverlet, his hands bit into my shoulders. He reared away, his sex hard on my belly, his
mouth twisting in a snarl. “Which of the brotherhood blooded you?”
“None, I swear!” I was frantic. “You are the only one, my lord, the first to touch my
secret places. Try me, Raven, the maiden’s barrier is there!”
“Hush your babble,” he snapped. He shifted his weight, his fingers touched my neck
and I winced with pain. “These puncture wounds, do you take me for a fool? Which of
the brothers has supped on you today? Speak, or I’ll drain you here and now, and then
I’ll drain your father.”
“I tell you . . . ” My voice was incoherent with fear. This Raven was a madman, a
beast in the guise of a man. And yet . . .
What was the warmth in my secret place, the place that throbbed with his nearness?
Why were my nipples aching for his touch? My head spun, the cold blue light streamed
down. His fingers pressed my throat and I felt the first thin trickle of blood as the small
wounds opened.
“A feeble creature, he!” cried Raven, flinging back his hair. The light of the lamp
gleamed on his face, gleamed on ivory fangs that showed in a snarl. Back he drew, back
again, arching as a serpent does to strike. And when he struck, it would not be poison
that would dim my eyes in death. It would be shock and loss of blood as he drained me
dry. For now I saw what I had refused to know.
And in my terror I suddenly sensed salvation.
The blood ran, a thin stream to my breast. “Fool,” I said. “My dark Lord Raven of
the night! You blind and stupid fool! Is your pride such a pitiful thing? Are your loins so
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weak you need reason to cast me aside?”
I thought he hesitated, so I forced myself to continue. “How could a broken goblet
stand as a shadow of you, a lord of the brotherhood of night?”
“A broken goblet?” His voice was cold as the starlight, cold as ashes from a funeral
pyre.
“The old woman dropped the goblet, it smashed and cut me a little.”
The madness left his eyes.
“Send for the beldame,” I said. “She saw the goblet fly. She can swear I was quite
unblemished until then.”
“I have done you a wrong,” he said. “I shall not drain you now. But betray me, Dove,
and know your blood is mine! Not the ritual drop I sip tonight, but every welling
mouthful from your veins.”
I dabbed at the blood that reddened my breast. I leaned against the pillows, my
body bared to this creature of the night. This thing that fed on blood in the guise of a
man. I feared him still, with a darkly sick excitement. And yet, where is a maid who need
not fear her man? Where is a man who may not be a beast who kills?
The creature’s eyes were black, his face was marble. And yet, the raven hair and the
curving crimson lips . . . and yet, the goodly form and the winning voice.
“You fear me, Dove,” he said. “You know my nature.”
“I should have known before.” My throat felt bruised and I raised my hand to
explore it. “A wedding by night, my father’s horror. I should have known.”
His eyes dilated, he took my hand away and touched my breast. And his touch
stirred madness and danger. “Understand, my dove,” he said, “as most men’s fancy is
stirred by breast and buttock, as most men savor sweat and the sap of your womb, so my
kind lusts for a slender neck and blood is the juice that drives us mad with passion.”
“Then my body cannot stir you, clothed or not.” I swear, I felt the lash of wounded
pride. I had a slender waist and rosy breasts, and yet they meant nothing to him,
nothing but a rude support for the throat and the blood he craved.
Raven’s fingers probed for my wrist where the blood flowed under the skin. “Your
body brings you to fever pitch,” he said. He caressed my naked breast with his mouth. I
gasped, for fear those fangs would pierce me, but he soothed me with his hand. “Your
body brings you to such a pitch, you lose your apprehension, you lose yourself in me. Let
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me show you, Dove, the pain and pleasure. Let me show you the madness we can share.”
What could I do? To resist would have angered him. To have screamed would have
shamed me and horrified my father. And—if I read him right—my father was safe while I
pleased this monstrous lord. And only then.
“Let me show you, Dove. You must be willing.”
“I don’t like pain,” I said. “I warn you so you’ll understand if I cry out.”
“Pain is pleasure and pleasure is pain, of a kind. Come to me, Dove, my beautiful
dark-browed maiden. Ride the river of night in my arms.”
He had claimed my body held no lure for him, yet he took me slowly to the pitch I
had suffered before. How well he knew his work!
His tongue lapped over my belly, breast and thighs, then probed my secret places
until I ached and moaned and grasped at him as if I were a drowning woman and he a
spar. His hands played with my breasts, and if those long fine fingers lingered most
often on the places where the blood was coursing close, perhaps it was not so strange.
He straddled me, his sex firm against me, with every probe it carried me closer and
closer to the edge. His mouth was on my shoulder.
I might have flinched away, but my secret center wanted him. My thighs gaped
shamelessly, my back was arched. My breath was panting. And then he thrust inside me.
The pain was sharp and swiftly spent.
He lay for a moment, stroking my flanks with his hands, then thrust until I thought I
would explode. And then I did, and as the darkness shattered, I felt the grim cold pain of
a second penetration, as the creature took its pleasure at my throat. The long strong
body quivered, I heard the gulping sighs, I felt the weakness as my blood was drawn
away. Again and again the draught was supped, and then he spasmed fiercely, raised his
head to cry out, then dropped exhausted upon me, our flesh still limply joined while my
life’s blood ran.
And so we lay on our marriage bed, marble limbs adrift on night-black velvet,
surrounded by the smell of blood and wine and roses.
Raven touched my bruised and aching neck with his fingertips, and soon the pain
had faded. I kept my eyes closed tightly, fearing to see his mouth besmeared with blood.
A carrion-feeding creature, a vile cruel leech, yet at his hands I had crossed to a magic
country. I would never be the same again.
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Blood and Wine and Roses
I knew I would not become as he. The brotherhood fed on blood for power as well as
lustful purpose. If visited once, a victim would recover, or he might be held in thrall
until he bled away. To the dark ones of the brotherhood, my kind was merely cattle,
wells to be plundered, pawns to be bent to their will.
My husband rose and I ventured to open my eyes. My hands seemed almost
transparent, and weakness washed over me.
I’m dying, I thought. My life will pay for my father’s whim. And I wondered why
Raven had wed me. Why
not slake his lust in the night and go?
“Not so, my dove,” said my husband. He had wrapped himself in the cloak, and his
eyes burned down on me. He was good to look upon, with his gravely chiseled mouth. It
seemed wild to believe him a monster.
“I am dying,” I murmured. “My lips are cold.” I could hardly form the words. “My
breast is cold and my hands . . . I cannot feel my hands.”
“Poor Dove, you tempted me with a rare bouquet. A sip became a banquet. Rest you
assured, it will not be so again.”
“Not if I die of the cold,” I whispered. “I feel the cold of the grave.”
Raven’s visage darkened. “You will not die,” he hissed. “Not until I will it. If you do,
be sure your father will pay for your inconstancy.”
“What has my father done to you? He gave consent to our union.”
“He spent the dower I gave him and asked it of me again. When I demurred, he
reviled me, and said he’d never give his dove to me. I fed on him in vengeance, but he
weakened again at the last. It is your consent that has saved him, not his own.”
“It was you who caused his agony.” I was desolate.
“Not at all,” he said. “His own dishonor paid him out in pain.”
He fetched me a posset and held me up to drink it, he cleansed chill sweat from my
body with rose-petal water. And then he held me close to his breast. With the silken
black of his cloak, the marble of his flesh, I was warm at last in body, if not in spirit.
I woke as the dawn was flushing the sky with rose. I stirred, and my limbs were
weak but whole. I touched my breast and my body yearned for more. The blackness
came over my vision and I knew my monstrous husband awakened a lust that consumed
me, body and soul. And yet . . . he had callously harmed my father.
I rose from the bed and dragged a coverlet round my nakedness. I trailed to the
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Lark Westerly
window and peered through the casement panes. If I sprang from the window I would
be cut by glass, I would dash my life away on the stones below. And then my father
would pay for my release. I turned my back on the breaking dawn and looked at the
form of darkness in the bed. His face was turned towards me, he frowned a little in
repose and my heart gave a salmon leap to see him there. And then he opened his eyes.
A spasm touched his face as the sun’s rays stroked the sill. A twist of pain and his
grim lips parted. “Bar the window, Dove. Bring down the shade and fasten down the
shutters. I cannot bear the light.” The words were cool, the voice was calm, his face was
full of pain.
I could have flung wide the casement and let the sun stream in, but I barred the
window, I fastened the shutters close. The beckoning day was shut away.
“Come to your husband, Dove.”
Death from the window had called me, the undead called me away. I took a
reluctant step or two and he held out his arms to me. My legs were shaking, my heart
ran wild, the veil of the wine was torn away. The beast of darkness called me wife and I
called the beast my husband.
If I had known what I know tonight I would have leapt to my death and damned my
father. I did not leap, I embraced the dark and so I have damned myself.
We stayed in the nuptial chamber and no one came. I ached to have him take me
again, but he slumbered like the dead. Meat and wine was left outside our door. The day
was sinking in darkness when Raven stirred. “Come,” he said. “It is time we were on our
way.”
“How shall we find a coach tonight?”
Raven laughed. “We ride the wings of night, my lady. Unbar the window now.’
I opened the casement, and Raven dressed in his cloak. I would have called for
apparel, but he told me no. “I’ll have nothing more of your faithless, whining father.” He
leapt to the sill, his cloak streamed in the wind. “Come!’ he said, his eyes compelled and
I stood on that dizzy ledge in his arms. He laughed in a way that chilled me, and then he
leapt from the sill.
I screamed my terror into the wind, but somehow the wind was bearing us up, black
as a monstrous bird across the dark. I screamed and his mouth was hushing me, and the
hunger rose in my loins. He took me on the wind, and I screamed anew. Doubt not that
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Blood and Wine and Roses
shambling poachers cowered in fear.
And so we came to his castle of blood and wine and roses.
The blood was mine, it was sipped from my veins whenever the hunger was on him.
The wine was dark, and it buoyed me, dulling my pain when he took me again and again.
And the roses, ah, the roses! I wandered by day through the gardens where the roses
bloomed dark as my blood. The buds unfurled like my secret place, the thorns sharp as
the fangs that broached my veins. By day I wandered in roses, by night I was drawn to
the sharpest pain, the wildest ecstasy. I moaned when his sex thrust in me, I screamed
when his fangs took hold. The darkness shattered in fragments, and the quiet was
roused by his sighing gulps as he plundered my flowing blood.
“I take too much,” he told me. “You are growing thin and pale.”
But my body was yearning for him, I was given to pleasure and pain. “Take me,
Raven,” I whispered, and I parted my thighs and bared my neck and clenched my teeth
as he pierced my flesh. And oh, the flames of my lust burned high till I feared they would
consume me.
And so the time went on.
By day, the roses and the sun, by night we sometimes rode the wind. I saw the trees
and dwellings pass below, but all I knew was the strength of my husband’s arms and I
begged him soon to take me home to the chamber.
And so it might have been while my body held to life, but one night a brother of
darkness came to the castle. His hair was white, his marble skin marred by a livid burn.
One eye was black, the other held milky blankness. One arm was charred to
nothingness. He gave a terrible smile and caught my hand. “So, Lady Dove, you see what
the eye of the day can do to our kind. The sun can smite us so in a blink of an eye. A
blade through the heart is surer, but the sun is what we fear, we folk of darkness.” He
stared at me with his one black eye and his tongue caressed his fangs.
I thought him most repulsive.
“Your lord is fair to look upon, but beneath the flesh we are both the same.”
“My lord is my love,” I said.
“He sups too well on your bounty.”
“I am strong.”
“And sweet, I’ll vow.” His fangs were brown, stained with the blood of whatever
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Lark Westerly
carrion he drank. I doubt he’d find a willing man or maid. “I shall sup with your lord
tonight.”
His words asked hospitality, but he made his meaning plain. He parted his cloak
and showed me his wrinkled sex, a monstrous thing.
“You may share our wine and meat, and nothing more,” I said.
“I will share your blood and lay my seed in your roses.”
“No,” I said. “I am Raven’s.”
“I shall ask,” he said with confidence, “and you will see. We brothers of darkness
share.”
He asked, and Raven laughed. “Get you gone, Balliono! None shall share in my<
br />
wedded wife!”
“He seemed so sure . . . ” I murmured. “I fear he may come by stealth.”
“He would not dare!” Raven’s eyes were cold. “He would not dare, my lady, and
neither will you betray me, not with Balliono, nor any other.”
“Never, Lord.” His eyes excited me, and I dragged up my gown like a wanton. “Take
me here!” I cried.
Raven’s eyes flashed darkness, he parted his cloak and slaked his lust as I slaked
mine. High on his sex I rode, his fangs deep in my veins. We fell to the floor and still the
flames were raging.
Other brothers came, and some were good to look upon. Some were ghastly-faced
and I flinched away. Each dark brother touched my hand and said he’d sup with us.
Raven answered all as he had answered first.
“I do not share my wife, she is mine alone.”
“As long as she lasts,” hissed a brother, tucking away his disappointed sex. “You’ll
drain her soon and then you’ll be back on the hunt. Cold sour blood will be your lot
when she’s wasted.”
I didn’t walk among the roses now. The scent beguiled me in my chamber, and
Raven cut great flowers with the night-dew on. Why should I seek the day that was
barred from him? We no longer rode the wind of night.
My limbs were weak, my thoughts often languid, but my desires burned deep and
dark as his. And oh, the nights we spent, with his sex strained deep within me, and oh,
his tongue as he tasted me, and his magical, sparkling fangs.
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Blood and Wine and Roses
Once in our frenzy he gulped too much of my blood. I spasmed and sank in a swoon.
I woke to the grey of dawn-light, and Raven standing by our bed. His eyes burned black
with pain.
“Come to me Raven,” I whispered, but he snarled and turned away.
“Take me, Raven! I’m burning for you!” Indeed, I was half on fire. I pulled away the
collar that warmed my neck. I tilted my head until my throat was straining. I felt the
punctures begin to ooze but the flow was weak and pale. “Come to me, Raven,” I said,
but his face convulsed and he flung away. He sprang to the sill of our chamber and
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