Bone Crossed

The stem of the water glass the vampire was holding broke. He set the pieces very carefully on his empty plate. “You aren’t afraid enough of me,” he said very carefully. “Perhaps it is time to instruct you further.”

“Fine,” I said. “Thank you for the meal, Amber. Take care of yourselves, Corban and Chad.”

I stood up and lifted an inquiring eyebrow.

He thought it was stupidity that I wasn’t afraid of him. But if you shiver in fear in a pack of werewolves, that’s really stupid. If you’re scared enough, even a wolf with good control starts having problems. If his control isn’t strong—well, let’s just say that I learned to be very good at burying my fear.

Pushing Blackwood wasn’t stupid either. If he’d killed me the first time—well, at least it would have been a quick death. But the longer he let it go on, the more I knew he needed me. I couldn’t imagine for what—but he needed me for something.

My bad luck he was taking it on as a challenge. I wondered what he thought would scare me more than Amber before I caught a good tight hold on my thoughts. There was no future, just the vampire and me standing by the table.

“Come,” he said, and led the way back down the stairway.

“How is it that you can walk in the daylight?” I asked him. “I’ve never heard of a vampire who could run around during the day.”

“You are what you eat,” he said obscurely. “My maker used to say that. Mann ist was mann ißt. She wouldn’t let me feed off drunkards or people who consumed tobacco.” He laughed, and I wouldn’t let myself think of it as sinister. “Amber reminds me a bit of her ... so concerned with nutrition. Neither of them was wrong. But my maker didn’t understand the full implications of what she said.” He laughed again. “Until I consumed her.”

The door to the room I’d awoken in was open. He stopped and turned off the light as we passed. “Mustn’t waste electricity.”

And then he opened another door to a much bigger room. A room of cages. It smelled like sewage, disease, and death. Most of the cages were empty. But there was a man curled naked in the floor of one of the cages.

“You see, Mercedes,” he said, “you aren’t the first rare creature to be my guest. This is an oakman. I’ve had him for ... How long have you belonged to me, Donnell Greenleaf?”

The fae stirred and raised his face off the cement floor. Once he must have been a formidable figure. Oakmen, I remembered from the old book I’d borrowed, were not tall, no more than four feet, but they were stout “as a good oaken table.” This one was little more than skin and bones.

In a voice as dry as high summer in the Tri-Cities, he said, “Four-score years and a dozen and one. Two seasons more and eighteen days.”

“Oakmen,” said Blackwood smugly, “like the oaks they are named after, eat only the sunlight.”

You are what you eat indeed.

“I’ve never tried to see if I could live on light,” he said. “But he keeps me from burning, don’t you, Donnell Greenleaf?”

“It is my honor to bear that burden,” said the fae in a hopeless voice, his face to the floor.

“So you kidnapped me so you could turn into a coyote?” I asked incredulously.

The vampire just smiled and escorted me to a largish cage, with a bed. There was also a bucket from which the odor of sewage was emanating. It smelled like Corban, Chad, and Amber.

“I can keep you alive for a long time,” the vampire said. He grabbed me by the back of my neck and shoved my face against the cage while he stood behind me. “Maybe even all of your natural life. What? No smart comment?”

He didn’t see the faint figure that stood before me with her finger over her pursed mouth. She looked as if she’d been somewhere between sixty and a hundred years old when she’d died—like Santa’s wife, she was all rounded and sweet. Quiet, that finger said. Or maybe, just—Don’t let on you can see me.

Blackwood didn’t see her, even though he had been using the other ghost as an errand boy. I wondered what it meant. She smelled like blood, too.

He put me in the cage next to the one that he had been keeping Chad and Corban in. Presumably he didn’t need to confine Amber anymore. “This could have been so much more pleasant for you,” he said.

The woman and her hushing finger were gone, so I gave my tongue free rein. “Tell that to Amber.”

He smiled, showing fangs. “She enjoyed it. I’ll give you one last chance. Be cooperative, and I’ll let you stay in the other room.”

Maybe I could get out through the roof of the other room. But somehow I didn’t think so. The cage in the Marrok’s house looks just like all the rest of the bedrooms. The bars are set behind the drywall.

I leaned against the far side of my cage, the one that backed up to the cement outer wall. “Tell me why you can’t just order me around? Make me cooperate?” Like Corban.

He shrugged. “You figure it out.” He locked the door with a key and used the same key to open the oakman’s door.