“Things are bad enough already,” Brautus said. “We don’t need this old witch making matters worse with a lot of pagan foolishness.”
“Tell me, Mother Bess,” Isabel repeated. “Pay him no mind; this is my castle, not his.” She took the old woman’s hand. “Who is this wolf who cannot die?”
The old woman touched her cheek and smiled. “You are so like your mother.” Then her expression clouded, her gaze stealing over Isabel’s shoulder to Brautus. “But yes, I am hungry,” she said, letting her go. “I will have some soup.”
“You are needed in the kitchen, my lady,” Brautus said. She turned to glare at him, and he smiled, looking tired. “I swear to you, poppet, it’s nothing.” He touched her cheek as well. “Haven’t we got enough to frighten us already?”
Isabel wanted to argue, but what would be the use? “I will bring your soup, Mother,” she said, getting up. “We can talk later.” Giving Brautus a final baleful glance, she headed for the kitchen.
When Simon returned to the castle, he found Orlando waiting in the stable. “Did you see the girl?”
“Not a sign.” He climbed down from Malachi’s back. “How are the others?”
“Frightened but quiet.” Isabel was right, Simon thought; the wizard looked frightened himself.
“Orlando, it’s all right,” he said, unfastening the horse’s saddle. “I killed two of those men myself, and the third…” He let his voice trail off, loath to even say it.
“The third was killed by the girl,” Orlando finished for him. “Did you turn her?”
“No, I never saw Susannah last night either.” As he unsaddled and rubbed down his mount, he explained how he had spent the night before, starting with a slightly censored version of his time with Isabel and ending with the vampire he had made, the knight, Tristan. “He bit me back,” he said with an incredulous smile, still shocked to think of it. “And you were right, by the way. I could never have done that and not known it. I’ve never felt anything like it.” He stroked Malachi’s neck. “I suppose Tristan must have turned Susannah.”
“A new-made vampire with no one to show him how?” Orlando said. “Not likely.” He sat down heavily on a bale of hay, wiping his face with a cloth.
“Then who?” Simon had never seen his small friend so worried, even the night they had met. “Orlando, what are you thinking?”
“Kivar.” He looked up, pale and grim. “It is Lucan Kivar.”
“You can’t be serious.” Simon almost laughed, the thought was so ridiculous. “Kivar is dead—”
“No,” Orlando cut him off, shaking his head. “Not dead, just driven from his solid form, from his vampire body.”
“Which amounts to the same thing,” Simon said.
“No, it does not.” He took his seer’s stones from his pocket and rattled them in his fist. “If somehow he has found another host, another way to possess a human form; if he has found you—”
“He would have attacked me long ago,” Simon pointed out. “I agree that something strange is happening here, strange even for us, but why should we think it has aught to do with Kivar?”
“The way the bodies were arranged,” Orlando said. “Two killed by you, his vampire son, and one by a vampire daughter.” He shuddered. “It is an old device.” He dropped the stones on the straw-covered floo
r and bent over them for a moment. “I see nothing,” he finished with a sigh.
“Because there is nothing to see.” Simon hated the notion that he was somehow connected forever to the monster who had made him, that he was Kivar’s vampire son. He hated it so much that Orlando had learned long ago not to say it for fear of sending him into a rage. That he was doing so now only proved how worried he was. “That kind of pattern is known here, too, you know,” he said. “These people come from druid stock, remember? A native vampire might think he was a warlock, might try to use the old magic to cure himself or to gain more power.” But Tristan wasn’t from this plain, he thought in spite of himself. “In any case, we should keep a close watch on those bodies tonight.”
“Yes.” Orlando gathered up the stones. “Come then.”
“You go; I’ll be along.” He scratched Malachi between the ears before he left the stall. “I want to make certain Isabel is all right.”
Isabel paced her tower room, a dozen different terrors spinning in her head. As soon as she heard Simon’s footsteps coming up the stairs, she flung open the door and rushed into the corridor to meet him. As soon as she saw him, she threw herself into his arms.
“I was so scared.” She clung to him with all her might, her cheek pressed to his chest. You will mourn him, the old woman’s voice spoke in her head.
“It’s all right, love,” he promised. “It’s all right.” He kissed her, and she rose up on tiptoe to reach him, her arms entwined around his neck.
She kissed his cheek, his jaw, his throat, fear becoming passion in a single moment, a kind of lover’s madness. He lifted her off her feet, carrying her back into her room, and she wrapped her legs around him as well.
“Did you find Susannah?” she asked as he kicked the door shut behind them.
“No, love.” He kissed her deeply. “I’m sorry—”