“Deliver this penitent, I pray you, Christ,” Isabel said aloud. He and his small companion were on the drawbridge now, passing into the shadow of the castle wall where she couldn’t see them as clearly. Three more steps, and Simon would be within reach of the Black Knight’s sword. “Save him from this demon,” she prayed aloud.
The girl’s prayer echoed strangely inside Simon’s head as he passed into the shadow of the castle. Save him from this demon… He felt a tingle on his skin, a burning like he felt in a church, but different, some how, a comfort instead of a pain. Looking up, he saw a wisp of pure white fabric caught on the evening breeze, the trailing end of her sleeve. Deliver this penitent, she prayed on his behalf.
Suddenly the horse reared up, shattering his trance. The Black Knight lurched in the saddle, obviously struggling to keep his seat as the reins snapped in his fist. Simon saw the horse’s eyes, dark brown rimmed in red, wild not with terror but with rage. The Black Knight and the damsel might be fooled, but the animal was not; it knew him just for what he was, a monster. The vampire crouched on the drawbridge as the powerful hooves flailed just above him, and Orlando fell on his face beside him, muttering prayers of his own.
But just as Simon thought his skull must be crushed, the stallion fell back. He brought his hooves down harmlessly just in front of Simon and nickered softly, a kind of equine sigh. Simon straightened up again, and the horse lowered its head as if in a nodded salute.
“Go,” the Black Knight said, his deep voice gruff inside the helmet, but Simon thought he sounded rather shaken even so. The rider hadn’t known his horse meant to attack or that it would suddenly stop. “Go quickly or die!” He raised his sword, and Simon sprinted for the gate, scooping up Orlando as he went. Hoofbeats pounded the drawbridge behind them as they passed beneath the portcullis and into the courtyard beyond.
Isabel watched Brautus gallop into the forest, still brandishing his sword—Brautus, who by all rights should have been in bed. Waving back, she hurried to the stairs and down into the courtyard.
Simon found himself surrounded by people, more living souls than he had seen together since the terrible night he was cursed. Most were women or children, but a few boys and men were scattered among them— grooms and farmers, from the look of them, no guardsmen, he could see. All of them were staring at him and Orlando, some curious, some obviously frightened. “Look,” a boy said, pointing. “The little one’s a man.”
Isabel watched the stranger and his small companion for a moment from the shelter of the crowd, suddenly shy. He was handsome, this Simon; she hadn’t been able to tell before, but now she could see his face. His hair was dark brown, and he wore it long like a Saxon or a Celt—an Irishman, he’d said he was, and he looked it. His beard was dark as well, but barely a beard at all, as if he’d simply missed a day or two of shaving. If he hadn’t been so pale, she might never have noticed. His skin was as creamy white as her own and seemed just as fine, too perfect to be a man’s. But he was no delicate minstrel. She could see the powerful bulk of his shoulders and arms even under the rough, brown robe he wore, and she thought she saw the pale pink slash of a scar at his throat, his only flaw. Looking around the circle of the household, his eyes finally reached her face, dark brown eyes with thick black lashes.
“Well met, cousin,” she managed to say, stepping forward. “I am Isabel.”
“My lady.” Simon nodded, smiling without thinking about it for the first time in ten years. The cold, ethereal beauty he’d seen on the battlements was a warm, real girl after all. Her astonishing red hair framed a pretty face with hazel eyes and a pert little nose sprinkled with freckles.
“Your cousin,” she corrected, smiling back. She took another step forward and embraced him as a kinsman, and for a moment he thought he was lost.
In a single instant, with one innocent touch, the vampire hunger he thought he had learned to control leapt up inside him. As she pressed her warm body to his, he could feel his eyes changing color from brown to greenish gold, feel the fangs grow sharp against his tongue. Not since his first night as a vampire, his first terrible kill, had he felt such hunger and horror. He wanted to destroy this woman, to devour her, innocent or not. He could already taste her. He recoiled from her in horror, fighting for control.
“Forgive me,” he said, looking down at the cobblestones, at anything but her face, his voice gone gruff, the demon’s voice. “I cannot—”
“No, I am sorry,” Isabel cut him off, embarrassed. He sounded so strange, and he had pulled away from her so violently, she didn’t know what to think. She had touched him without thinking, a casual, ordinary gesture of greeting, but in that fleeting moment, she had felt something, a kind of coiled, brutal power that might have frightened her if she had felt it for more than a moment. But almost before she realized she was touching him at all, he had pushed her away. “I shouldn’t ha
ve—”
“No, love, please.” The endearment escaped him before he could stop it. Why should touching this girl have struck him so intensely, inspired such a hunger? She was pretty, yes, but what was that to his demonic curse? He had touched many pretty girls in his travels, tavern wenches and whores, most of whom had left his embrace with no more harm than a tumble and the memory of a dream. Why should his pretended cousin be so different? He let his eyes drift to her face again and almost laughed. Her beauty hid none of her feelings; she quite obviously thought he was out of his mind. Perhaps that was it, her innocence, her utter lack of guile. Wenches and whores were one matter, but how long had it been since he touched a truly innocent maid? “Forgive me, cousin,” he said with a more calculated smile. “In faith, it isn’t you.”
“My master is sworn to a quest for salvation, my lady,” Orlando interrupted. “He will allow himself no close contact until it is done.”
“I see,” Isabel nodded, though in truth this made no sense to her at all. She was tired, she suddenly realized; she hadn’t slept for two nights running, and now this stranger and his little friend insisted on speaking in riddles. “Actually, I don’t see,” she corrected. “But I don’t suppose it matters.” She looked down at the little man standing at her cousin’s side. “And what is your name, master?”
“I am Orlando, my lady.” He touched his forehead in a strange salute before making her a bow. Tom had taken this man for a child, and indeed he was as small as one. But in fact he was old, as old as Brautus, with a long, gray beard. Underneath his plain, brown cloak, his clothes were brightly colored like a jester’s, purple and green all embroidered with gold, and at least a dozen different little pouches and purses hung from his neck and shoulders and belt.
“Welcome, Orlando,” she answered him, making a curtsey of her own.
“Orlando is a wizard, Lady Isabel,” Simon explained, smiling once again in spite of himself. Sir Gabriel’s daughter was kind; she greeted Orlando as gravely as she might any noble squire, as casually as if she welcomed little men into her castle every day. But he must never touch her again, not unless he meant to murder her. “He can tell you such tales, your hair will curl in fright.”
“Yes,” Orlando agreed with a frown. “I can think of one tale in particular that certain parties would rather not be told.” He turned back to the lady. “But where is Sir Gabriel, my lady? Your father, I presume?”
“Yes,” Isabel said, looking past him to the others, still watching, curious and afraid, waiting to see what she would do. For the first time in her memory, she felt her father’s castle as a burden and wished she could just run away. Even yesterday, when she had been so frightened, she hadn’t wanted to leave; she had wanted to protect her home and these people. But suddenly she wanted to be free. She noticed Simon watching her as well and met his brown eyes with her own, and for a strange moment, it seemed he must know exactly what she was thinking. What if this man had been Michel? she thought. What if he had come to claim Charmot and beaten the Black Knight? What if he had wanted her?
“My father is dead,” she said brusquely, pushing such fancies away. “Come inside and tell me of your visions, and I will tell you of him.”
She led them into the castle’s great hall, a large, well-lighted room with a roaring fire on the central hearth. Coming in, Simon was struck again by how long he had kept himself away from the living and how lonely he had been. But he did not dare dwell too long on such fancies. Even now he could hear the beating of these living hearts growing louder in his ears, his vampire hunger ready to rise up and sweep away all reason. I should never have allowed it, he thought, his eyes straying to Isabel’s face. I should never have let her touch me.
“Are you hungry?” Isabel asked, and her newfound cousin laughed, a strange, hollow bark of a laugh. “Is that funny?”
“No, my lady,” he answered, but his bitter smile said otherwise. “Forgive me.”
“My master is fasting,” Orlando explained. “It is part of his penitence.” The dwarf watched a platter of roast pork pass by in the hands of a serving maid with unmistakably wistful eyes.
“But my servant suffers no such oath,” Simon agreed. As difficult as their exile from the living world had been for him, surely it must be worse for Orlando, still a living man himself.
“You don’t eat at all?” Isabel asked, beginning to lose patience. Her newfound cousin was a pretty thing, but apparently as useful as a peacock hitched to an oxcart and only half as natural. “How are you not dead?”