Keystone (Gatewalkers) (25 page)

Rhys unwrapped the cord and placed the pendant in her cupped hand. The look that flashed across his face echoed the one he’d worn when first thrown into the cell. “I feared I would not be able to return it.”

“My mother gave it to me,” Charlie murmured, fingering its familiar shape. “It was our little tradition when I was a kid. On my birthday she would hide a small present in my lunch bag. It was the last thing she gave me. I’ve worn it nearly every day since.”

“It reminds you of her?”

“Partly,” Charlie said. “But I think…” Charlie paused, feeling heat creeping into her cheeks. “I think it’s also sort of come to represent who I want to be.” Charlie nervously played with the wings. “Someone who stands outside the ordinary rank and file. The faceless, uniformed mass.” Charlie held up the dragon to the candle light. “Someone with wings.

“Here,” Charlie said impulsively. She grabbed his wrist again and re-wrapped the cord around it. “Hold onto this for me. Who knows when I’ll turn into a squirrel again.” She paused, taking a better look at his other wrist. “That blow to the head must have really knocked you for a loop.”

“Why is that?”

Charlie held up his other hand so he could see the contract still imprinted in his skin. He stared at it blankly for a moment, then broke into a sheepish grin. “I suppose I should have realized you survived the attack. I found the pendant and thought…. It makes no difference now.”

Twice you have destroyed everything that ever mattered to me.
Could he have been talking about…
her?
 

No, she had to be reading into things.

Charlie squinted at the scars on his hand in the dim light. She lightly traced one. “Are those bite marks?”

“I told you I was bitten,” Rhys said.

Charlie snatched her hand away. “Those are
vampire
bite marks? But there are so many of them!”
 

Not just around his hands and wrists either. Now that she really looked, she saw sets of teeth on some of them. Parallel marks could indicate claws. She hadn’t thought of anything more than the usual vampire neck bite: two neat holes and that was that.

Rhys lifted his uninjured shoulder in a shrug. “There were three of them. Two males and a female. They already fed, so they simply toyed with me.” He looked down at his hands, crusted with drying blood. He scraped some of it off of his nails. “I was a foolish boy. Arrogant. Fifteen years old, and confident in my immortality. I thought I could fight them. I suppose even if I had run, it would have done little good.”

“How did you survive?” Charlie said, her eyes riveted to the scars. Those used to be fresh, bleeding wounds, each of them made by vampire fangs. Deliberate torture. And Rhys lived through it.

“As I said, I nearly did not. If I had not changed, I would not have survived.” Rhys said it blandly. No bitterness, no anger. “I could feel the venom burning in my blood as they abandoned me to die.” Rhys absently ran his tongue across one fang. “I have never before spoken of this to anyone.”

“I guess you wouldn’t have a chance, if you make a habit of locking yourself away in your basement,” Charlie said, but the admission that she was the only one he’d trusted with his past pleased her.
 

He shot her a wry smile. “No. I suppose not.”

“I’m glad though,” Charlie said. “That you trust me enough to talk to me about it.”

“You are the first who could listen.” His eyes flicked downward to his hands, lacing and unlacing, more dried blood flaking away.

“So what happened then?” She tugged at the tunic hem.

He flinched at some internal memory. “I do not remember much regarding those first few days,” he said abruptly. Somehow Charlie doubted that. It looked more like he remembered too much.

“I don’t suppose…” Charlie hesitated, not wanting to make him clam up again. “Can’t you do the whole ‘vegetarian vampire’ thing? Live on animal blood?”
 

“I have resorted to this when necessary, however it is akin to….” Rhys pursed his lips for a moment, considering. “It is akin to dining on grass and water. One might survive on it, if one must, but one cannot
live
on it. There is something in the blood of wild beasts that is lacking. One’s mind grows dull and the body sluggish. One’s life is in the blood. Perhaps in part that is what we feed on, like the Maras of old.”

“Maras? Never heard of them.”

“They were Ard Ri’s ancient queens. Three sisters, the daughters of a great king. Ard Ri wed them and corrupted them. Their children were the first vampires.”

Charlie shuddered, her stomach turning queasy. More vampires. Weren’t there enough vampires in this world? But then, Rhys wasn’t a full vampire. Not yet.

“You want to know if I will take the Blood Prince’s offer,” Rhys said, watching her thoughts play across her face.
 

“Are you going to?” she challenged, putting on a neutral mask. Or trying to.
Please say no. Please say no.

Rhys didn’t answer right away, looking down at his hands. “What he said about gaining in strength was true. To be even stronger, faster, without having to wait through the weakening…. It is quite tempting.” The light she had seen in the throne room had returned to his eyes.

“What if there was a way to change back? To be cured?” Charlie said. “Wouldn’t you rather not be a vampire at all?”

Surprise flickered across his eyes. He still didn’t look up at her. “I could not say. Even… even if there were a cure to the venom, it would not be the same. My old life…. It is gone, and cannot be brought back. Is daylight enough of a prize to give up the new life I have built?”

“It’s not about the daylight. Its… like the Blood Prince said. Its about not having to hide what you are. Not having people afraid of you because… because of what you have to do to survive.”

Charlie stole a look at Rhys’ face. She saw a thoughtful sadness there that surprised her. And something else that made her think…. “Just how old are you?” she blurted out.

Rhys’ pale eyes flashed wide, like a deer in headlights. “What? Why?”

“How old are you?” Charlie pressed. “You can’t be as old as you look.”

Rhys’ expression turned mischievous. “Why not?”

“You just can’t,” Charlie said. The
last
thing she wanted to say was that his physique was hardly that of an older man.

“How old would you say I am?” A smile tugged at Rhys’ mouth, but he stubbornly refused to give in to it.

“Not more than fifty,” Charlie ventured.

“Heavens, no.” Rhys chuckled.

“Forty-five?”

Rhys shook his head, eyes sparkling.

“Thirty-five?” Her treacherous heart picked up its pace. She could only hope that Rhys’ sharp hearing wouldn’t pick it up.

Rhys shifted to clasp his knee. “I was born in the sixth year of the reign of High King Aneirin.”

“Which means….”

Rhys paused, as if measuring whether he wanted to tell her. “I am three and one score years of age.”

Charlie gaped. “Twenty-three! You’re twenty-three years old? Seriously?”

Rhys inclined his head. “Truly.” Rhys took a piece of his white hair and twirled it between his fingers. “Do not be deceived by appearances. The vampire venom strengthens the longer it goes athirst, drying the skin and eventually creating the effect of premature aging. Gareth and I are nearly of an age. He is simply… more often sated.”

“But that means you’re younger than me!”

“Younger…?” It was his turn to look surprised. “Younger!”

“Twenty four.”

He rubbed a hand across his bristly chin. “I took you for seventeen at most.”

Did she really come off that young? Then again. Twenty three. When Charlie was a sophomore in high school, Rhys was turning into a vampire. While she was in college, he was living as a mercenary. Maybe she really did come off that young. “Looks like we’re both full of surprises.”

Charlie didn’t know what to think. Somehow, finding out that Rhys wasn’t as old as he looked wasn’t as surprising as it should have been. He never moved or sounded like an old man. Not really. But she sure had to rearrange some assumptions.

Such as regarding his family. He was too young to be a massacre survivor, like she’d first thought. If he was fifteen when he turned into a vampire that meant probably no wife and kids in his past. But he’d been so blatantly hostile toward the royal bloodline, there was clearly bad blood of some sort. Or was that just another assumption?

Did she really want to know?

 
“You should sleep,” Rhys said softly, causing her head to jerk back upward. That was when she registered that her head had sunk to her chest.

“I’m all right,” Charlie mumbled, her eyes feeling dry and sticky.

“Sleep,” Rhys said sternly.

“You need sleep too,” Charlie said. After that fight, he had to be exhausted. There was only the one pallet though…. Charlie felt a blush heat her cheeks, but ruthlessly stomped down the thought that prompted it.

Charlie scooted onto the pallet, her back toward the cold stone wall, and patted the space beside her. Having that small bit of insulation between her and the floor made her realize how numb her butt had become. “We can share the blanket. You’ll freeze to death where you are, without a shirt and without a blanket. Cold blooded or not, if you still eat normal food and you still have a heartbeat, you can still freeze to death." She patted the space beside her.

An odd, pained expression crossed Rhys' face. "Charlotte, you do realize that you invited a vampire to sit beside you? A vampire that lost a lot of blood today and has not fed in half a week."

"You can't scare me," Charlie drawled. "You’ve already tried that tactic. I know you won’t bite me.”

“You cannot be so certain, Charlotte."

"That's twice you called me Charlotte. No one has called me Charlotte since third grade."

"It is your name, is it not?" Rhys said.

"Well, yes, but I was such a tomboy that – Wait. Never mind. No changing the subject." Charlie matched his glare. “Are you going to sit with me?”

Rhys gave her a pointed look. At first he didn’t move, but between heartbeats he shifted onto the pallet beside her.

"There," Charlie said. "Was that so hard?" Even so, now that they sat almost shoulder to shoulder the space between them seemed filled with static electricity. It made her feel more awake than before.

Feeling flustered, Charlie draped the blanket across both of them. It fell short. “Um…” Charlie started, but before she could say anything more, Rhys closed the distance between them, hip to hip, shoulder to shoulder, and tugged the blanket into place. She could feel the tenseness in his muscles. His eyes flicked to her, questioning.

"There would be more room if you lifted your arm," Charlie said. Sneaky of her? Probably.

Rhys lifted his arm to wrap it around her shoulders. It did feel warmer, actually. No doubt it was testament to how cold it actually was. She bit down on a yawn. Rhys' tenseness began to ease away.

"We should figure out what to do in the morning," Charlie said sleepily. "They're not going to expect two people in here."

Rhys made an inarticulate noise of agreement. Or at least she thought it might be agreement.

The tiny candle on the floor wavered and dipped, dimming as it began to reach the end of its wick in a puddle of wax.
 

“Charlotte,” he said softly.

“Hm?” Charlie pushed her eyelids open.

“If we fall asleep like this, it is bound to become uncomfortable.”

Uncomfortable? It didn’t seem half bad, actually.

Rhys shifted to lie on his side lengthwise on the pallet and gestured for her to join him. Now who was being sneaky? Charlie suspected it was another test.
 

In for a penny, in for a pound.

Charlie let him guide her down to lie with her back to him. Rhys draped the blanket over both of them more fully. One of his arms cushioned her head, his other arm draped around her waist, but loosely like it was simply propped there for convenience. But it felt natural. He smelled like old dust as well as the musty, herbal scent from his pillow.

She so could not sleep like this. Every nerve in her body was wired. It was Rhys; she knew he wouldn’t try anything - it wasn’t like he hadn’t had opportunity before - but still! To try to sleep tucked up against a vampire like that? With her neck in easy biting distance? Not a chance.

Charlie could feel him breathing against her back. That shirtless, muscled physique was pressed up behind her, feeling strong and solid, and even though she knew nothing would happen -
nothing
would happen! - she… kinda liked it. The way he’d arranged them, his back blocked the view of the doorway, so anyone walking in wouldn’t see her. Protecting her. It was nice.

Wait a minute. None of that, now! Amidst this whole mess, the last thing she needed was a crush!
Nothing
could happen between them. Ever. Assuming they managed to survive - so far so good - she’d promptly be on her way home.
Home
. Home, with her thick, fluffy pillows, down comforter, 200 shows preprogramed on her master computer, and the sunlight peering between her curtains.

As her eyes drifted shut despite her best efforts, Charlie decided sleepily that she preferred the dungeon.

***

Sleep eluded Rhys, though the heavy weight of exhaustion dragged at him. Healing always wore him out faster than even wielding magic or physical exertion.

Charlotte’s breathing slowed into a sleeper’s rhythm. Her soft, limp form felt burning hot against his skin. So trusting. He had not expected her to agree to lie with him, but there she was, her back snug against his chest, her head on his arm. The casual way in which she trusted him despite his nature simply stunned him. No one had shown this kind of trust in him since his transformation. Or before, for that matter.

Charlotte had ripped open a scar Rhys had not realized existed. Like a starving man who had forgotten the taste of food, he had forgotten what it was like to connect with another being. Her acceptance awakened a craving that he did not know how to satisfy, and he found himself wanting to tell her things he could not trust with any other soul. Dangerous ground.