Black Swan Rising (14 page)

My hands flailed at the creature to pull it off and fastened around the tip of one scaly wing, but then something yanked it out of my grasp. I rolled over, raising my arms against another attack, but none came. A tall man in dark clothes held the manticore by its neck. I couldn’t see the man’s face because the manticore’s wings were beating the air in front of him. The scorpion tail lashed toward the man’s hand trying to sting him, but the man wore gauntleted leather gloves. He brought his other hand up and with a quick wringing motion snapped the manticore’s neck. Its wings beat twice more and went limp, but the scorpion tail still writhed. He dropped the creature to the ground and smashed the scorpion beneath his bootheel.

When he looked up, I saw that it was Will Hughes. His face was splattered with so much blood that even his eyes appeared to be red. His whole face was contorted, his lips pulled back in a grimace that bared his teeth . . . I stared at his teeth, hardly believing what I saw. Where his canines should have been were two sharp fangs. I recoiled in horror even as a voice inside my head said,
Of course, it would take a monster to destroy a monster.

Frantic, I tried to get to my feet but my legs had gone numb. Hughes raised his eyes from the body of the manticore and looked at me, but I wasn’t sure he really saw me. His eyes were flooded with blood. I somehow knew that all he would see through those eyes was blood: the blood pulsing through my veins. His eyes were fastened on my neck where I could feel blood trickling from the manticore’s bite down onto my collarbone.

I tried to scramble backward but now my arms were numb. Will Hughes blinked and a single tear of blood spilled from his eye and ran down his cheek. The red haze began to clear, replaced by a silver gleam. I tried to scream but it came out as a hoarse choking sound. The numbness had spread to my throat.

“The manticore’s bite is poison,” he said. “You’ll die unless I get it out.” He knelt down by my side, keeping his eyes on me. “But I need your permission.”

I tried to scream again but this time no sound came out at all.

“Nod your head if you give me your permission, but quickly. Once the poison travels to your brain—”

I didn’t need him to finish his sentence. With a great effort of will I jerked my chin up and down. It must have been enough because he was on me immediately, his chest leaning against mine, his mouth at my throat. I couldn’t feel the pressure of his body against mine, but I
could
feel his teeth sinking into my flesh. After one sharp painful sting, the pain turned into something else—a warmth that spread outward, down through my chest and into my belly, out into my arms and legs, like a hot liquid moving through my veins. It burned away the numbness. Slowly I became aware of his body pressing against mine, the tug of his lips and tongue on my neck pulling a silver thread that ran into the very core of my being.

I moaned as my throat muscles loosened. His mouth left my skin and he exhaled softly over the wound, sending a ripple of shivers through my whole body. When he moved away, I could see a shimmer of silver light filling the space between us. It lit up his eyes and made his skin glow.

Then he knelt back on his heels and wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “You’ll be all right now. I think I’ve gotten all the poison—”

Before he could finish his sentence, he began to shake. He fell back and I reached for him, but he held up a hand to keep me away.

His skin, already pale, turned a shade of milky blue, against which his veins stood out a darker blue. I could have left while Will Hughes writhed on the ground. I
should
have left. I was terrified. Although he was helpless now, I’d seen what strength he had when he broke the manticore’s neck. I’d seen his lust for blood. I let myself say the name to myself.
Vampire.
Just thinking the name made me want to run away and pretend that none of this had ever happened. But I didn’t. No matter what kind of monster he was (
vampire,
the voice inside my head said again,
he’s a vampire
) he had saved my life by sucking the manticore’s poison out of my veins, and now that poison was inside him. I wouldn’t just leave him while he suffered because of me. Nor would I tell myself that I had imagined that statue coming to life. The manticore
had
come to life and it
had
killed poor, innocent Dr. Tolbert. Will Hughes
was
a vampire
and
he had saved my life. Everything that had happened to me over the last two days since I’d walked into that shop on Cordelia Street was real. The silver box had flown open in a flash of otherworldly white light, blue alchemical symbols had moved across its lid, possessed shadowmen had
broken into my house to steal the box, my metal sculpture had come to life and attacked me, and my father had talked to a dead man who had spilled paint on his bedsheets. It had all happened. I wasn’t crazy. I hadn’t gone over the edge—the world had. I may not have understood it and I might have been terrified, but I would wait beside the vampire who had saved my life until he was well enough to explain it all to me.

When the shaking had stopped, he sat up and wrapped his arms around his knees. He drew in a long breath. “Thank you for staying,” he said.

“Thank you for saving my life,” I countered, “from that . . . thing.” I looked over to where the manticore’s body had lain, but all that was there was a heap of marble debris.

“Air and mist,” Hughes said, lifting a handful of stones and letting them sift through his fingers. “Dee sent the fog to animate this thing. I saw the fog come up as you left, but I had to wait for nightfall to leave my apartment.” He grimaced. “I would have been here sooner but Dee had sent an emissary I had to deal with first.”

“A man in a red sweatshirt?”

Hughes nodded. “You saw him?”

“He followed me from the other side of the park. Is he . . . ? Did you . . . ?”

“He’s alive. When he wakes, he won’t even remember what happened. He was only half-enspelled; Dee must have been in a hurry. He’d been implanted with the notion that he had to follow you and little else.”

“You can read minds?” I asked, wondering if anything should surprise me anymore.

“Only when I drink someone’s blood.” I lifted my hand to
the wound at my neck and he smiled. “Don’t worry. All I got from you was your fear of the manticore . . . and sadness at your friend’s death. I’m sorry that I wasn’t able to save him.”

“Dr. Tolbert. Edgar Tolbert. He was a friend of my mother’s.” An image of the librarian’s face—his expression of horror—passed painfully before my eyes and I looked up at the looming bulk of the Cloisters. “We have to tell the police what’s happened . . . so they can remove his body.” I started to get to my feet, but even though I could feel my arms and legs now, they were weak and my head swam when I tried to stand upright. I started to sway and Hughes, who had been a good six feet away, was at my side in a heartbeat to hold me up.

“We can’t do that,” he said. His voice seemed to echo in my head, filling me up, driving out every other thought. “There’s nothing more that you can do for him. Involving yourself with the police will only place more obstacles in your way in the days to come and believe me, you have your hands full already.”

He started leading me away from the Cloisters and across the lawn, his arm clamped tight around my shoulders, his voice silky and insistent in my ear. I felt that pull again, just as when his mouth was at my throat. . . . We had already crossed the lawn that separated the Cloisters from the woods. We were on the edge of the lawn beside a wooded path. How had we gotten so far away from the building so quickly? He was doing something to make me do what he told me to do, exerting some kind of power.

“Stop!” I cried, planting my feet firmly on the ground. “Stop whatever it is you’re doing . . . forcing me . . .”

Will Hughes turned around to face me. He was so close that I could see a blue vein at his temple pulse . . .
but how?
Wasn’t
a vampire supposed to be
dead
? Then I understood. It was
my
blood moving through his veins. I started to feel faint again, but his arm held me up.

“All right,” he said. “I won’t force you, but then you have to listen to reason. We have to leave. How would you explain all this to the police?”

He waited for my answer. I still felt the pull of him, but I no longer felt a compulsion to do whatever he said. The power he’d been exerting over me a moment ago was gone. He had let it go. He was giving me the opportunity to discuss the matter.
Awfully civilized for a vampire,
that cooler voice inside my head remarked. It was up to me to make my argument.

“The police will know that I was in there. It will look bad that I left the scene,” I said, willing my voice to sound calm and rational. “The guard saw me come in.”

“There’s no one left alive in there,” he said, his eyes steady on mine. “The manticore killed them all.” He slid his right hand down my arm. His touch made me tremble, but I didn’t pull away . . . then I saw he was only pointing to my messenger bag, which was still slung across my chest. I recalled, as though from another lifetime, slipping it over my head in the library and fastening the clasp.

“You’ve got your bag. Did you leave anything else?”

I shook my head. “No, but . . . Dr. Tolbert’s cane . . . I grabbed it and used it against the manticore.”

Hughes lifted his arm. The handle of Dr. Tolbert’s cane was hooked over his forearm. “I thought of that. There’s nothing in there to link you to your friend’s death. I know it feels like a betrayal to leave him, but if you want to bring his murderer to justice, you have to leave now.” He waved his hand toward the wooded path. If there were streetlamps to light it, they weren’t
working; the path lay in deep shadow. I had the feeling that the moment I stepped off the lit lawn and into the dark woods, I was committing myself to . . .
something
. A few moments ago, when I had watched Will Hughes writhe in agony, I had thought I’d gotten over the hardest part. I’d accepted that the supernatural was real. But now I realized that was only the beginning. The supernatural was asking me to take his hand and step into the dark with him. I looked at Will Hughes. His eyes flashed back at me, silver in the darkness, twin beacons. The dark would never be impenetrable with those eyes to lead me. I stepped out of the light and into the shadows, only realizing as I did so that I would be completely dependent on him once we were in the dark.

I was wrong, though. After we’d gone a few yards down the dark path, I could see perfectly well. It was not, though, as if my eyes had grown accustomed to the dark; it was rather as if the dark had grown accustomed to
me
. With each step the dark opened itself up to me, letting me into its secrets. Colors I had never before seen unfolded in the darkest shadows: deep indigos and violets, hidden cores of tender lilac and pale pink. As we walked deeper into the park, the shadows unfurled like buds opening in the sunlight, only here they were reaching for the dark. Out of these knots of inky black unrolled cascades of gold and silver that grew to waves of light swirling around us that seemed to push us forward like gusts of wind. And yet I felt no cold and no fear, only an overwhelming sense of wonder. I looked at Will Hughes and saw that his eyes glowed like twin silver stars in the roiling darkness.

“How am I seeing this?” I asked. “Have you done this to me?”

“When I drank your blood, some of my blood entered your bloodstream. It gave you some of my ability to see in the darkness.”

I pulled up short and whirled around to face him, all that wonder becoming fear again. “Does that mean I’m going to become like you? Am I going to turn into a vampire?”

He gazed at me, taking in my horror, not answering right away. Then he looked away, his eyes flashing red again. “No. I didn’t take enough of your blood. I’d have to drain you of all your blood and then give you some of mine to drink—”

I made an involuntary sound that made him pause. “That disgusts you, doesn’t it? And yet it’s the little bit of my blood that mixed in with yours that has enabled you to see all this.” He opened his arms wide as if to embrace all the colors swirling around us, and I felt a little sorry that I had maligned his gift.

“Does this happen to everyone you bite?” I asked, moving on ahead of him so he wouldn’t see me wince at the word
bite
.

“No, not everyone. You have to have a touch of the fey to see what you see. You have it . . . many artists do . . . poets, painters . . .”

“I’m not an artist,” I said reflexively, “but this does remind me of a painting: van Gogh’s
Starry Night
. This must be how van Gogh saw the night.”

“Poor Vincent. He fell in love with the colors of the night. They were like a drug to him. He grew addicted to the night. It drove him mad at last.”

I started to ask him if he’d actually known the artist, but then something else struck me. “What did you mean
a touch of the fey
?
Fey
as in
fairy
?”

He laughed, a sound that sent sparks of light shooting from
his fingertips. “Don’t tell me that after encountering a manticore and a vampire tonight you’re going to balk at fairies? Look again. They’re all around us.”

We’d reached the Heather Garden, where I’d started my walk earlier tonight—or was it yesterday evening? I’d lost all track of time as we wandered through the park—and at first all I saw were dazzling swirls of color and light among the last of the late-blooming flowers. But then I saw that there were shapes in the light, moving so quickly I could only catch glimpses of them: the sinuous curve of a smile, the rounded haunch of a hip, the sudden flash of wings beating the air.