Keystone (Gatewalkers) (26 page)

I should have known better than to let her get this close
. In the same moment, he wanted her closer.

In the moments after Charlotte’s transformation back into human form, with her heartbeat crushed against his, Rhys had felt the same tingling
aliveness
as when he held a lightning bolt.

It terrified him. That sensation was happening all too often lately.

Part of him could not believe she was actually there. That she not only survived the attack, but also found him. While transformed into a
squirrel
no less. Rhys felt his mouth curve into a smile, but he wiped it away. He could not let himself forget the danger they were in.

Rhys lightly touched two fingers to Charlotte’s forehead, dredging up the last drops of power he had to feel the shape of Jack’s spell. He could sense it was intended for protection, not transformation, but it warped somehow. Something about Charlotte herself had turned it askew. Perhaps he could invoke the faulty spell again, should it become necessary, but Rhys doubted he could set it straight – he had little aptitude for anything magical that did not involve destroying something, much to the dismay of his early tutors and the demise of quite a lot of furniture. Some had gone so far as to suggest that he be taken to a remote fosterage until he learned to control his abilities. Or worse.

Rhys realized he had allowed his fingers to linger against Charlotte’s forehead longer than necessary. He snatched his hand back. He fixed his eyes on the wall of the cell, the stone painted in sharp moonlight grays by his night sight. Rhys tried to turn his thoughts to the morning and to escape, but found himself thinking of Charlotte’s small hand resting in his, the strong pulse under the thin flesh of her wrist. Pressing his fangs against it and then –

Rhys wrenched his mind away from the image and his eyes away from Charlotte’s bare neck. He ran a shaking hand through his pale hair. He had to hold out another few days. He had to keep his strength. Enough time to escape and enact this foolish rescue attempt, but before he grew so sensitive to the sun that even indirect light became painful. He could do it. He could wait. A week was nothing. Rhys had once managed to wait two weeks before the constant thirst became maddening. He never pushed it that far again. It almost killed him, in more ways than one.

Rhys caught himself eyeing the smooth curve where Charlotte’s neck met her shoulder. He tore his gaze back to the opposite wall, feeling disgusted with himself.
 
The tiny cell was fast becoming a torture chamber of his own making. It was just as well he never had much of a sense of smell; it was one of the few things that the enhancing of his senses had not changed. The vampires who “raised” him said the smell of living blood could be madness-inducing all of itself.

Rhys did not often think of the three natural vampires who ended his life. When they finished toying with him they had abandoned Rhys to die, and he spent a full day and a half dying of blood loss while the venom in that same blood kept him alive. After…. Days later, once the transformation had finished taking its course, he chased after them. Tracked them down with the intention of slaughtering them. Or, perhaps more likely, inducing them to finish the job.

It amused them to keep him as a sort of pet, the boy who tried to fight them away from his mother’s corpse and then survived his rocky transformation. In the end, Rhys stayed with them for nearly two years, learning from them though they tried to keep him ignorant. He knew he could not run. He had nowhere else to go. But he learned how to survive.

They lived largely in caves, church crypts, and buried cellars, moving from place to place, lingering in cites or larger towns where they would not be as easily noticed. The vampire trio kept Rhys bound with iron chains during the daylight hours while they slept. Once, they chained him outside to show him what sunlight could do. At the end of the day, Rhys wished they had simply killed him.

Then they settled in a cave complex near Alta, and the hunters came.

The raid came in the early evening, as the vampires first wakened. Already alert though still bound, Rhys heard their “stealthy” footfalls at the entrance to the caves. He could have warned the vampires, their senses dulled with sleep. He could have warned the hunters that attacking vampires in their lair was sheer idiocy, and to do so at night even more so. He had done neither. The choice still haunted him.

Bound, unseen behind a rocky outcropping, Rhys listened to the hissing, roaring, shrieking battle. The hunters came well armed. It did not save them in the end, though they managed to kill one of the males with their silver plated blades, silver being the only metal that interrupted a vampire’s healing. When the remaining male came to release Rhys, it was probably with the intention of fleeing to some new sanctuary to heal.

As they passed through the littered corpses of the hunting party – five in all – Rhys realized that he could wield one of the fallen weapons.

He snatched up a spear from the bloody cave floor, and took the female down through sheer surprise, driving the spear head through her ribs. The expression on her face said she could not believe that their “pet” managed to kill her. After that, Rhys – uninjured and still strong – found it almost pitifully easy to kill the last injured male.

Rhys sat on the cave floor among the corpses, trying to find some semblance of purpose to his life. He killed his mother’s murderers, but he was still a vampire. He could not go back to his family when they came so close to killing him.
 

Somewhere in the twisting paths of memories, the memories slipped into dreams of running through endless caverns.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Hero

“Tell me, princess.” The Mara’s ethereal hand stroked the girl’s cheek. “Has anyone saved you?”

Maelyn, bound by the chains of the Mara’s mind spells, trembled but did not flinch. The Mara held her within view of the sealed Gate, taunting the Guardian with the girl’s nearness but keeping her outside his reach. He would not leave the Gate and Maelyn would not open the seal, but the Mara could feel the girl’s defiance weakening.

“Who did you think would save you?” the Mara continued, mixing mockery with a semblance of pity. “A kind stranger?” The Mara circled the girl, but her eyes were on the Guardian. He yet refused to acknowledge their presence, but the Mara knew that the girl’s pleas for rescue must be tearing into his soul. “Your baby brother, perhaps? Your guardsmen? Soldiers?” The Mara’s mouth curved into a fanged smile, savoring. “Did you truly think that
anyone
could rescue you?”

The Mara caught a wisp of thought, a thread of memory. The Mara plucked the fluttering memory from Maelyn’s mind. An image. The dying Crown Prince, covered in blood and lying on a stretcher in the middle of the palace courtyard.
 

“Oh, yes,” the Mara breathed. “Your precious, heroically tragic older brother. His life was cut terribly short by the evil vampires.”
 

The Mara felt Maelyn’s stab of pain, digging deep. The Mara made a show of reveling in it, taking in the potent emotion. The Mara took the memory and replayed it through the princess’s mind. Almost lost in the heady taste of Maelyn’s despair, it took a second replay of the memory to notice what she should have seen from the start.

Wounds that matched pale scars in pale skin. And that face….

She had seen so many faces through the centuries that most looked like any other. But
that
face!

The Mara tore the memory from the girl’s mind, the image blazing bright. The Crown Prince of Seinne Sonne. Heir of Gwalchmai. Bloody, yes, but breathing, in the midst of the transformation that would harden his bones, strengthen his muscles, and sharpen his eyes and his teeth.

The Mara sank her “claws” into Maelyn’s mind, this time with determined purpose. “Did you see him die? Did you watch the stake driven through his heart? Did he crumble to ash before your eyes?”

The princess’s blank eyes widened.
No.
Her father’s terrible voice sounded through her memory. “
Your brother is dead.”
Maelyn listened. She believed.

Everyone believed.

They were deceived.

“
Rhys
,” the Mara hissed.

***

Charlie woke abruptly when the “pillow” beneath her jerked upright with a gasp. Charlie snapped upwards and overbalanced, rolling sideways onto the ice cold floor.
 
Cold!
Charlie scrambled to pull the edge of the tunic down over her frozen thighs. Shivering, Charlie scrambled back onto the pallet, her brain still catching up. Rhys. She was in the dungeon with Rhys and he…. She’d. Been. Lying. On. Him.
Don’t think about it!

“Rhys, are you all right?” Charlie said, her searching hand finding his hand in the darkness.

“Y-yes,” he said, but his voice said otherwise. He sounded frightened. His hand was nearly as cold as the air and gripped hers very tightly.

“What’s wrong?”

“Nothing,” he said, sounding steadier. “Nothing.”
 

That didn’t seem like nothing. Not if it was enough to wake him up like that. But if he didn’t want to tell her, she supposed it wasn’t her business.

Wait. She was holding his hand.
Holding his hand.

Charlie quickly released him and felt around for the edge of the blanket.
Awkward!
At least it was pitch black in here without the candle. He couldn’t see her blushing. Or anything else. “So you
do
actually sleep. I’d started to wonder.” There we go. Joke about it.

“I sleep. I simply need less than you do.” Rhys wrapped the blanket around her, but hesitated before letting go of it.
 

In the pitch black, Charlie couldn’t see him, but his face was close enough she could feel his breath against her cheek, faint and cool. All she had to do was lift her hand and she’d touch his face. Her heart stuttered. What was she
thinking
? She should back up. Or -

Cool, dry lips touched hers, faster than the brush of a butterfly wing. The contact went through her like a shock, her tiny gasp skimming across his mouth. She froze. Was that deliberate? Was that a kiss?

Rhys abruptly pulled back, the light breeze of his breath vanishing.

“What’s wrong?” Charlie whispered, her heart crashing against her ribs.

Abruptly he leaned forward to whisper in her ear. “Find me,” he said, and spoke his name. His
real
name.

He touched her forehead and abruptly she knew she was a squirrel again. She recognized the tail. The blanket fell to cover her.

The door burst open, admitting torchlight and two blurred shadows that pounced on Rhys. A masked vampire wrenched Rhys' arms behind his back, one of his shoulders popping out of joint. A second vampire clapped manacles around his wrists, then wrapped a plain leather half mask around his face.
 

"Be easy, little brother," one of them said, laughter in his voice. "This is only a precaution. Our Prince has every confidence that you will come to join our number."

Rhys snarled. Faint sparks of lightning skittered between his bound hands, but they quickly died away. The vampires pushed him out the door.

Charlie wanted to dash after them, but following vampires was bound to be more dangerous than following terradi. If she were caught, she'd be dead before she realized they noticed her.
 

But she couldn't leave Rhys to his fate alone!

Charlie skittered into the dark hallway, but her hesitation cost her dearly. She saw no sign of the vampires or Rhys.

She froze, her tiny squirrel heart drumming wildly, her head twitching to follow imagined movement.
Now what?
What could she possibly do, trapped entirely on her own, in a snack-sized furry body? Charlie’s lungs squeezed out a mournful wail.

Her squirrel instincts screamed at her to run for cover. She stood dangerously exposed in the middle of the hall, shadows or no. Her muscles tensed, ready to flee. Her tail flicked in anxious rhythm.

Charlie’s entire body shook, torn between running and… what? Rescuing Rhys from the other vampires? Finding the Keystone pieces? Rescuing the princess from wherever she was being held? It seemed as feasible as flying. She couldn’t find them without Rhys.

Find me.

Could she? Charlie held up her skinny wrist. She couldn’t see the contract beneath her gray fur, but she knew his name now. She could use the contract.

“Buckbuckburrrrr.” DANG IT! Stupid squirrel mouth with stupid squirrel voice and stupid squirrel teeth! The contract didn’t speak squirrel.
Now
how was she supposed to find him?

Stupid vampire.
 

Before she could give in to the “run and hide” impulse, Charlie flung herself down the corridor in the direction she thought the throne room lay. She could only hope that they took him to the Blood Prince.

When I find you, I’m giving you a good, solid bite on the nose, William!

***

The vampire guards took Rhys to a room that was obviously not a part of the original structure. The entire room was a dome of glass, with shutters that could be removed or replaced to allow sunlight inside or block it. At the room’s unadorned center was a tall, thick stone pillar to which was attached a pair of rusting iron manacles hung from a chain.

A few shards of cracked, yellow bone and ashy tatters of clothing scattered around the base of the pillar. The distinctive stench of smoke and old ashes was so dense that even Rhys could smell it.
 

His guards – natural born; they were too strong to be otherwise – locked him into the manacles. Rhys did not offer the vampires a show of testing the bonds. He could feel the spells running through the pillar at his back. Three natural born vampires together would not have the strength to break free.

They left him there, alone with his thoughts.

It was obvious why they brought him here. If Rhys refused to pledge with the Blood Prince, they would let the sunlight in.
 

Charlotte was alone in the Blood Prince’s nest of monsters.