Keystone (Gatewalkers) (11 page)

“It closed,” came Lallia’s small, guilty voice.

“Closed? What do you mean closed?” Charlie demanded, her voice rising. If she couldn’t get back, she would miss her shift at the cade tomorrow. If she missed two shifts without notice, she would lose her job. Eva would be worried sick when she didn’t come home.

“The Keystone can open it,” Lallia offered.
 

Charlie latched onto it. “So we can find it and use it, just like you wanted. Nothing has changed.” Except everything had changed.

“The Keystone? The Keystone is broken,” Rhys said. “That is why the Great Gates are opening at all.”

Charlie felt her life shatter. “I’m screwed,” she mumbled, her head sinking back onto her knees. She covered her head with her arms. There went her job. Her family. Her life. A ridiculous bad day had just become a lifetime.

It felt as if a gaping black hole opened inside her.

Charlie lifted her head, finding unexpected moisture on her cheeks. “I’m never going home. Am I.”

Lallia fluttered over to pat her cheek in sympathy. “It isn’t so bad here. Seinne Sonne truly is a lovely kingdom.”

“There’s no place like home,” Charlie said. She took a deep breath.
Pull yourself together, girl. It isn’t the end of the world.

Then again….

She heard a slight rustle. “If…” Rhys said, hesitant. Reluctant. “If you were to find one of the larger fragments, it may hold enough power to open a Great Gate.”

Charlie felt a small seed of hope budding. There
was
after all, someone tied to the Keystone sitting right next to her.

Rhys held out his hand to her. Charlie hesitated, but he reached out to wrap his cool fingers around her wrist.

“Come,” he said, drawing her to the door.

“Where are we going?” Charlie asked.

“Home,” Rhys said as they descended the stairs. “You may stay at my house tonight. Unless you have your own arrangements?”

Of course she didn’t.

As they emerged from the tavern, the sun was sinking into the spider web of masts and rigging along the docks. The sight was beautiful, but Charlie couldn’t summon the energy to appreciate it.
 

Pixies. She’d been kidnapped by fairies. Part of her still expected that any moment Eliza would pop in from the front room and laugh at her for taking any of this seriously. That it was just some elaborate joke. That Charlie was incredibly gullible for believing it for a moment.

***

“Wait here,” Rhys said, gesturing to a chair in the disused parlor.

Charlie sat heavily, a plume of dust flying into the air. In Rhys’ memory, the chair had never been sat upon before. He was unused to entertaining callers in his home.
 

Charlie’s fingers wrapped around her wrist again, as they had been for most of the quiet walk back to Rosethorn Manor.
 

“Matters will become clearer in the morning,” Rhys said. It was all he could offer her. He whisked through the door and up the stairs before she could respond.

It felt decidedly strange to have another living, breathing being inside the walls of his house. Even stranger that it was a Gatewalker, and a woman at that. Rhys could faintly hear Charlie’s pixies chattering, the sound alien to his silent sanctuary. He could not remember how long it had been since he last set foot on the second floor. He could not remember if he had ever gone up to the attic at all. Nevertheless, Rosethorn was his home.

He bought Rosethorn Manor as a place to sleep away from the guild house, where a bit of stray sunlight or an indiscreet feeding would have disastrous results. The house was out of the way and no one questioned his coming and going as they might at the guild house. Moreover, people tended to avoid the place because of its appearance.

Rhys opened the door to the master bedroom, intending to air and dust it for his guest – he hadn’t set foot in it in weeks, preferring to sleep on the cot in the basement. He found, to his surprise, that the windows were unbarred and open, allowing the cooling breeze to carry out the musty air. The furniture also displayed a suspicious lack of dust.

Rhys lightly laid a hand on the carved wood of the doorway, “I wondered how she got inside so easily.” Rhys felt the faintest rise of warmth beneath his hand. The slightest stirring of approval. “You like her that much, do you?” Rosethorn seemed almost to purr with smug content.

He supposed the house, having seen so many lives pass through her rooms, must have been a touch lonely, with only himself inside her walls. Rhys lightly stroked the wood, almost as if caressing a pet. “Perhaps someday you will have a proper family living here again.” When he was gone.

Rhys pulled blankets from a chest of drawers and replaced those on the bed. When he returned to the first floor, he found Charlie curled up on the threadbare chaise lounge, fast asleep. The pixies slept puddled at the bottom of the lonely bowl left on a shelf.

Rhys carefully lifted her up. To his vampire’s strength, Charlie felt little heavier than one of his sister’s childhood dolls. He carried her up to the bedroom and laid her out on the bed. He removed her shoes and installed her between the blankets. Charlie did not so much as stir.

Did she have any idea what she’d done, dancing into his life so blithely and blindly? The very picture of a fool tripping along the edge of a cliff, oblivious.
 

Was Rhys, too, braving the cliff now? There was no love lost between himself and the royal family of Seinne Sonne. He was inclined to think that even if he did manage to rescue Mae from her abductors, she’d just as soon turn around and see him executed.
 

Still. Perhaps… perhaps he had allowed the past to color a matter that was simply black and white. A young woman in danger, and Rhys the one who could offer aid.

Rhys turned from the sleeping human girl and strode down the stairs to the basement. He set about tidying up and storing away everything that should not be left out. There was no saying how long this quest would take. Perhaps he should leave word with Taryn that she should help herself to the contents of his basement. It would be a shame to see all this work go to waste. Perhaps Taryn could be convinced to watch out for the girl as well until she became accustomed to Seinne Sonne.

Rhys replaced the last few bottles on their shelves and set aside the bowls and utensils to be washed, until there was only one task remaining. Reluctantly he turned to the one table he had not yet cleared away.

From his belt pouch, Rhys withdrew a small wooden box wrapped in thick paper and tied with string. It had taken Taryn two years to find it. Rhys had searched for nearly eight. Indeed, the item in his hands was the initial reason that he took up herb craft.

He set the box on his cleared table and unwrapped it, then opened the lid to expose its contents. Bloodgrass. Bloodgrass only grew in soil where significant amounts of blood had been spilled, and it died quickly in the cooler climes of the north. Nothing else had the particular properties he needed.

Rhys pinched out a measure of its contents. Three long, thin, dried blades of grass the rusty color of old blood. Merely touching them made his fingertips itch and sting. Fresh was more potent, but impossible to acquire.

Rhys took his time powdering the three blades and preparing the rest of the components for his mixture. He told himself he worked slowly because he did not want to make a mistake. When it came time to let it simmer over a low flame, Rhys resisted the desire to stay and watch it. Instead, he took himself upstairs. He had other matters to attend to before the night was done.

***

Night brought a deepening chill. Spring was not yet so advanced that winter would relinquish its grip once the sun descended. Most of the town settled to their suppers and their beds.

Time to hunt.

It had been three days since his last hunt and Rhys had no desire to be caught in the mountains with inadequate shelter during daylight hours. The longer he waited, he became more and more sensitive to the sun’s effects. After a week’s time, any sunlight at all would become harmful. Ten days after a hunt, the sunlight would cause serious burns after mere moments of exposure. Two weeks… he would never wait that long again.
 

But first. Rhys’ purposeful stride took him to Alta’s center, officially named as the guild district though Alta boasted a scant few guilds. It was late for the shops, but Rhys had learned early that coin could open doors.
 

He went to the secondhand clothing shop and convinced the owner to stay open a while longer. Rhys found several serviceable garments that should fit Charlotte reasonably well, along with a pair of shoes, and purchased them. Then he put the shop owner into an unknowing daze and drew his fill of blood from his wrist. The man would sleep it off and be none the wiser in the morning.

***

It was not quite midnight when his feet took him back to the simmering potion to draw it off the fire with an iron hook.
 

While it cooled, Rhys wiped out a fresh bowl and drew his knife from his belt. He pressed the blade to his wrist and scored it deeply enough that blood flowed. Rhys was no lover of self inflicted wounds, but for this test he would need more than a few reluctant drops of blood.

When enough blood pooled in the bottom of the bowl, Rhys ran his tongue across the cut to seal it. In a few moments it would be a pale scar, and by morning it would vanish. Only the worst wounds and those scars he received before his transformation would linger on his vampiric flesh.

Rhys ladled out a small measure of the cooling brew, careful not to spill the milky fluid or touch it with his bare skin. He held it over the bowl of blood. He realized he held his breath, anticipating, and made himself exhale. There was a chance that it would do nothing at all, even with the bloodgrass.

There was a chance it could be everything he hoped and waited and searched for.

Rhys dribbled the potion into the bowl, and set aside the ladle. Each droplet made a pale cloud in the dark blood. Rhys watched intently as the small clouds spread. He was not certain what he expected to see; perhaps some sign that the potion was working. Or some sign that it was not.
 

He watched until his eyes became gritty and dry from not blinking. He watched until the potion vanished completely, then waited to be sure it had spread through the entire bowl. He could see no outward sign that the potion had done anything at all.

Rhys took a breath, bracing himself for yet another failure in eight long years of failing. He touched his finger to the blood in the bowl. He felt no stinging, no itching, and no sign of the bloodgrass. Unable to put it off any longer, Rhys licked away the drops of blood from his fingertip, expecting to taste the sour bitterness of the vampire taint.

His breath quickened, his chest tightening. Rhys tried another drop, to be sure his senses were not deceiving him. The blood was clean. Clean! A strange sound broke the silence in the room. Startled, Rhys recognized it as his own laughter. The blood was clean. Rhys had found it at last: the antidote to a natural born vampire’s venom.

Rhys gripped the edge of the table, his nails digging crescents into the wood. To be free of this curse, no longer dependent upon the blood of others to survive. To live as a normal man. To be free to walk directly in the sun, any time he chose. To no longer fear the discovery of his secret. Rhys could barely fathom it. That life seemed so alien now. To think of what it could mean, not just to himself, but to others as well. Something strange, almost unrecognizable blossomed in his chest.

Hope.

For a real,
normal
future. As a man instead of a vampire. He could have it again by morning if he so chose.

If all went well.

That was the catch. The cleansing of his blood could kill him, as his initial transformation could have killed him. He had wrapped so much around this one potion for so long, but did he dare to use it?

Did he
want
to use it?

The thought gave him pause. Rhys had fought so fiercely against his nature after his transformation. He tried to suppress it, deny it, control it. He finally acquiesced to the facts of his new existence. Truly, he had not thought it possible to cleanse his blood again, even as he searched.

Until now.

If he drank the potion, if he cleansed his blood, his parasitic dependence would end, but so too would his enhanced strength and speed. He had come to depend upon his ability to see in the dark. The ability to occlude or command the thoughts of others had also saved his life in the past. To lose them – he balked at that.

Terradi. Creatures that could defeat the High King’s elite. To face such an enemy, he would need more than the strength of a mere man.

Rhys carefully funneled the antidote into three small vials, carefully wrapped them in padding, and stowed them in a belt pouch. Once he rescued Mae, then he would take his chances, and take the potion.

CHAPTER FIVE

Almost Alice

Charlie woke with her toes freezing cold. She pulled them up, curling under the blankets that had shifted in the night. Not furs, like she had unconsciously expected, but a pair of quilts. She could vaguely feel the rope supports under the thick mattress, sagging slightly under her weight. The pillow under her head smelled of old and dust, with a hint of smoke and musty herbs. She didn’t know how she had ended up in a bed.

No, she knew how she must have ended up here. Rhys. She’d fallen asleep, and he must have carried her up.

Charlie checked. Her clothes were untouched, only her shoes were taken off. She lay in a large four-poster bed, the curtains drawn save for a small crack from which light sliced in, a narrow beam across her torso. The air felt chilly.
 

If she had spent the night in his bed, where had Rhys slept? But then, the dusty smell implied that this room wasn’t used much. Probably Rhys slept in the basement. Or maybe vampires only slept in the day. Or didn’t need to sleep.

She could hear muffled noises, voices speaking, seagulls, and unfamiliar sounds she couldn’t put a source to. The sounds of a little sea town, awake and moving already. Whatever time it was.