I sit on the far side of the pool of blood, facing the door. Swathed in the Ghost’s cloak, with the hood pulled low, I present a strange picture, for breathers don’t draw blood, and by any reckoning — blood or breath — I should be dead, not sitting.
So, when the door swings open to admit the creature James with my lunch, I command all of his attention.
“What the hell?” he growls, his voice so deep I can almost feel it through the stones. I hold my breath as he walks toward me, then pauses a bare pace or two away, pivoting toward the sight of the blackened chain stretching to the window. My own chain runs across the floor to me, disappearing beneath my cloak to give the appearance of still binding me.
James chuckles. “Vallie, lad, did you forget you were a breather and savage her? You’re not much of a fang, you know. Or,” he laughs again, “a bird.”
Behind him, a guard has entered carrying a meal tray and a lantern. His eyes dart about as he sets the lantern by the door. Hidden in the shadows on the other side waits Val.
James takes two steps forward, his boots squelching in the blood, his hand closing around the front of my cloak and hauling me up. “Well, let’s have a look. You might still be good for something.”
I find myself staring into a wolf’s face, fangs gleaming. Lycan. I’ve heard of them before, men who can shift to wolf form at will, who can even adopt a demi form as James has, with a tall muscular man’s body and a canine head. Just as Kenta had, only he never looked half so terrifying as this creature.
I close my hands on James’s fist, trying to loosen his grip, gasping as the cloth tightens around my neck. He yanks my hood off with his other hand. His lips draw back into a leering, animal grin. “Oh yes, you’re still with us. Perfect.”
His words leave me with no doubt as to his intentions. I shout, flailing at him, trying to land a kick, but my legs are hampered by my too-long cloak. Where is Val?
James laughs, tossing me to the floor. My breath whooshes out of me, and for a moment I’m stunned by the impact, my ribs and back shuddering from this new abuse. I struggle for air, scrabbling sideways on arms and legs that will hardly answer to me, and then James’s weight slams down on me, pinning me to the ground.
He laughs, his hands ripping at my cloak, tearing it open. I try to twist away from him, my body pinned beneath his weight. If I can just land a good punch—
His hands close on my wrists. He holds them together with one of his own, his breath panting loud and moist in my face, canines gleaming. No.
A bony white hand loops under James’s muzzle, yanking him back and lifting him half off me. James releases me with a yelp of surprise, his arms wheeling through the air as he tries to catch his balance.
“Hello, James,” Val says softly, and, leaning in, he — breathes.
I don’t know whether it is I who screams or James. Perhaps it is both of us. James withers, his broad shoulders collapsing, his thick wolf’s pelt silvering and falling out in clumps, his teeth bared in a rictus of pain. I can feel his body shriveling, the weight that pinned me to the ground dissolving.
Val takes one more breath, his mouth hardly a hairsbreadth from the other’s muzzle, and James groans, a sickening death rattle that gurgles in his throat and twists his fingers into disfigured claws.
The breather straightens and tosses James’s body away. It thumps onto the stones beside me, a dead thing.
Val’s eyes meet mine as I cower before him. They are slate gray now; his hair, night shot with silver; his face hardly older than my father’s had been, the skin smooth. I stuff my fist into my mouth to keep from screaming again.
He stoops and unbuckles James’s sword belt, wraps it around his own waist, then checks the corpse for additional weapons. I scuttle away until my back presses against the wall.
Val holds out a dagger. “Can you fight?”
I shake my head jerkily. He slides the dagger into his new sword belt. “Come,” he says, the word a command, and strides from the room, his bare feet silent on the stones. I hesitate a moment, caught by the fall of sunlight on James’s aged body. Averting my eyes, I find myself looking at the guard’s corpse instead.
I had forgotten about him. He lies on the stones by the door, his arms flung out, the contents of the meal tray he held scattered beneath him. Unlike James, there’s no sign that he died in pain. Indeed, I don’t remember him screaming, don’t recall that he made any sound at all. As I stare, I see his chest lift slightly, then settle again. He’s alive?
“If you fall behind, you will die,” Val says, his voice hard but no longer brittle. I jerk my head up. He stands in the doorway, waiting.
For a long moment, we look at each other.
“Shouldn’t you….” I start to say, then stop.
“What?”
For a man who spent a year in a cell, he might have learned a bit more patience, I think, my mind curiously detached.
“Swap your clothes?” I point my toe toward the fallen guard. “As a disguise?”
Val steps back into the room. “Good thought.”
I turn away from him, waiting as he strips the man down and dresses himself. When I turn back, I see that he has even donned the helmet with its curling face guard. The illusion is complete: he looks like nothing more than a guard — a slightly older, grizzled one, but a guard nonetheless.
“All right?” he says. I nod. He leads the way down the winding staircase carrying the lantern. I am grateful it survived the fight unharmed; I wouldn’t want to try these steps in the near dark of the stairwell.
At the bottom, Val hangs the lantern from its peg and motions for me to stay back. Then he steps out, sauntering along the wall. I retreat up the stairs until I’m out of sight of the door. I wait, wondering if I trust Val to return. Will he consider our deal complete now that we’re free of the tower, or will he come back? Certainly he has the better disguise for escaping.
Something rustles in the room below. I start, then ease forward, pressing myself against the wall and peering down. A rat raises its long face, its eyes glinting, and then scurries into the shadows, just as someone enters. I freeze.
“I have an idea.” Val’s voice reverberates in the stairwell as he starts up toward me. “The gates are open, and you are dead.”
I swallow. “I’m dead?”
“Someone must carry your body out. You understand?”
He doesn’t wait for my response. He bends over and catches me around the legs, then straightens easily, tossing me over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. I grunt as my stomach folds around his collarbone, my arms flailing.
“Try to be a little more convincing,” he suggests, hitching me up a little higher. “Remember you’re dead now.” I clench my jaw, head spinning, and let my arms hang down. “Better,” he says. “Hold your breath when we pass the guards.”
He leaves the tower and makes his way to the castle gates. I close my eyes, my face rubbing against his leather jerkin, and try not to think. His shoulder is broader than I expected, and hardly bony at all. I take a shaky breath, let it out slowly. We’ll be through in a few minutes. Then he’ll go off to wherever his allies live, and I can start back to Karolene.
“What’s that you got?” a voice calls out. I’m surprised I understand. But perhaps the guards come from different lands, and need a trade language to converse in.
Val turns toward the speaker. “That girl as was fed to the prisoner.”
“She dead?” The voice comes closer, and with it the sound of other boots.
Val continues toward them. “Aye.”
“You sure?” Val pauses as a hand catches my hair and twists my head to the side. It is all I can do not to grimace. The man holds my hair a moment longer, until my breath begins to burn in my lungs, and then he releases me, my face thumping down into Val’s back. “Pity. She mighta been some fun.”
“The other ones came out looking old,” says a second soldier. “How’s she still young?”
Val shifts. “Couldn’t say. Wasn’t about to ask. Maybe she killed herself from fright before he got to her.”
The soldiers snicker. “You saw him?”
“Aye.”
“What’s he look like?”
“Skeleton thing. Bit like a demon.” He readjusts his hold on me, reminding the soldiers of his burden. “Where should I put her?”
“Haven’t taken one out before, eh?” the first man says. “There’s a ditch off the road a bit. Just go on down to the marker and take the path into the forest. You’ll see it.”
“Or fall in it,” another soldier laughs.
“Easy enough to get out if you’re alive,” the first soldier assures Val as we start forward again. Val only grunts in response, and then we are through, his boots crunching the gravel. He continues down the road with me over his shoulder and doesn’t let me go until we’ve entered the woods.
Before I can speak, he holds a finger to my lips, then hustles me down the path.
We smell the ditch before we reach it. The stench of dead things rotting permeates the air. I stagger to a stop some paces away, gagging, but only bile comes up. I wonder if the woman Kol killed for the blood knot was thrown here. I wonder how many other victims he has sucked dry, and how many of Val’s previous meals lie here. My stomach coils into knots.
“Keep going,” Val says. “This path will go on past the ditch.”
“How do you know?”
“The ditch can’t be that old; the marker has stood there fifty years at least.” His hand tightens on my arm, jerking me forward. “Walk.”
He drags me on, beyond the pit of bodies and over a low rise where the breeze blows sweet and clear. I gasp, inhaling great lungfuls of air as if I might breathe out all the horror of the ditch, all the terrible things I have seen today. But Val gives me no respite, pushing me on.
“I have to stop,” I tell him. “We’re out now. You go on — wherever you’re going. I have to stop.”
“Within a few hours someone will realize that James is missing. They’ll go to the tower and discover we’re both gone. Meanwhile, the soldiers will remember that I have not returned from throwing out your body. By dusk there will be a search mounted, with dogs following our scent — fangs have no trouble hunting at night. Stop here and you die.”
“Where do we stop then?” I cry.
“We don’t.”
With more strength than I realize I have, I dig my feet in and pull back. Val turns toward me. “I am human,” I tell him, “not what you are. The magic-working has taken my strength. I cannot go a year without food or drink; I have gone three days with only two meals, and I am weak. Leave me here, and when I can, I will go on.”
Val leans toward me. “You have a choice, girl. Force yourself to keep walking, or give your breath to me. I will not leave you behind to speak your story to my enemies.”
“You said you would not harm me.”
“I say many things,” he says, his teeth glinting. “Decide.”
“There is no choice,” I whisper, taking a step forward. He doesn’t answer, but then his hand appears before me holding a small roll of bread.
“Where did you get that?” I gasp, snatching it from him.
“They were bringing your meal,” he says. “The rest couldn’t be saved, but I thought you might want that.”
“Thanks.” I bite into it, unsure what to make of him.
“Now walk,” he says, his voice as cold as ever. “And don’t stop.”
At first, I am able to keep up well, for I’d had some rest between releasing the blood knot and James’s arrival. But as the miles pass my strength fades. I lose track of where we walk, going numbly where Val guides me, his hand on my elbow. I stumble often, on rocks or roots or rises or dips or nothing at all. Finally, I fall, my knees giving out beneath me.
Val bends down toward me, and I push away, my hands scrabbling at the dirt. “No. I can walk. Don’t.”
“Hush,” he says, as if he were my father comforting me.
“Please,” I say, my sight filled with the vision of James dying. I stagger to my feet, but fall with the next step. Only Val’s arms reaching around me keep me from sprawling face-first in the path. He lifts me up as if I were a babe. I wait for his face to turn toward me, for his lips to part and steal my life, but he does not look. Instead, he starts walking.
I rest in his arms, my cheek sliding against his chest. He walks steadily, his stride long and certain even in the gathering dark. We move faster than we did when I walked. The only danger is that he will tire of carrying me. It is not a fear I can comprehend. I give in to exhaustion and slip into a dreamless sleep.