Chapter Three

Dorina

 

“Let me out! Goddamnit, do you hear me?”

“He is becoming very loud,” I said, glancing back at the curly haired man in the cage behind us.

It was quite a sight, as the cage in question was perched on the back of a gigantic land crab like the one that my companion and I were riding. The creatures were used by the local fey for transport, as their home was the same huge forest that we were traveling through, and which they could navigate either on the ground or by scuttling through the treetops. We were on the ground at present, following a trail that was wide and well-known to our companions and was considered safe.

Or as safe as anything here.

“He’s an asshole,” Ray, my partner on this adventure, yelled back over his shoulder. “And an idiot who doesn’t realize that he’s only making things worse for himself!”

“I’ve been kidnapped, trussed up like a turkey, and am currently in prison!” the man shouted back. “Would you like to tell me how much worse it can get?”

“You’re gonna find out,” Ray muttered, obviously tired of the constant back and forth.

I did not blame him, as the conversation had been going on for days with no particular point that I could see. The fey were not likely to release a master vampire who they had caught prowling around their lands, particularly the dark fey, who had more than sufficient reason not to trust outsiders. And not when said master, instead of trying to make friends and reassure them, kept trying to escape, forcing them to chase after him.

They had finally dumped him in one of the cages they used for transporting exotic animals, which they occasionally stumbled upon and trapped for the royal court, and were taking him to their queen. They had told Ray that she would decide his fate, which seemed fair. Only he did not seem to think so.

Perhaps because Ray and I were also outsiders, as the captive man continually pointed out, and Ray was another master, and yet we were not trussed up.

“Such is the power of Little Debbies,” Ray had said, referencing one of the more popular items he traded with the fey.

He’d been a smuggler for years, although not to the highborn type of fey, which was where most of the trade from Earth went. The great houses who ruled much of Faerie had contacts who supplied them with whatever human items they required. That was technically illegal, but the Vampire Senate was not above such things, and I strongly suspected that the Silver Circle, the leading society of mages, felt the same.

Ray had not thought much of that point of view, as he’d mentioned last night, as we sat around a campfire sharing our evening meal.

“Sure, that’s typical,” he’d said, waving a roasted bird’s leg around. Ray, like all vampires, did not require food for sustenance, but refusing to eat what our hosts had provided would have been rude. I, on the other hand, had torn into the stew, flat bread, and roast fowl as if starving, which I mostly was.

A dhampir metabolism was rarely satisfied, and the novelty of choosing what I wanted to eat was a continual revelation. Indeed, everything was a revelation these days, from the way the moonlight filtered through unfamiliar trees, to the strange rhythm a troll girl was dancing to further down the road, her colorful skirts swirling in the firelight, to the haunting call of a bird I couldn’t name somewhere overhead. Faerie was a continual, startling newness around every turn, such as I had never known.

Of course, I had never known a good many things, even back on Earth. My father had long ago separated my and Dory’s consciousnesses, to save his daughter from the madness that took the lives of so many dhampirs. In desperation, he had carved off the vampire side of her nature that was threatening to overwhelm her, and locked me away.

Which was where I had mostly stayed for centuries, able to emerge only for short periods when she was unconscious. Until a series of strange circumstances involving a fey queen’s revenge, an ancient device, and a kidnapping ended with me being separated from her and taken into Faerie, where spirits are clothed in flesh. Giving me, for the first time in my life, a body of my own.

And how very strange that had been!

Dory had been in charge for most of our lives, to the point that I had never really come to grips with making the most basic of human choices—what to eat, what to wear, who to talk to. I went where she did; I ate and wore and talked as she did. And the rare occasions when I was in control were usually during a fight after she had been knocked out and I had been needed to take over.

And there were few choices to be made then except for who to attack next.

But as we traveled with the Wanderers, as they called themselves, I had learned that all decisions were suddenly mine, and it was a bit dizzying even after several weeks. Like the ale, which they drank in great quantities, and which was flavored in so many different ways. There was the small berry ale, as they called it, which was given to children as it was so low in alcohol, and so highly flavored by the dark purple berries that grew along the roadside, that it was basically juice; the rich, red ale, the color deriving from the sap of a vine that grew everywhere and gave it a buzzing feeling that numbed the tongue; and the regular golden ale, which wasn’t flavored with anything, but was so strong that it raised even my eyebrows.

We had a flask of each, so I had to choose between them each time I wanted a drink. It was surprisingly difficult, as I liked them all, and hesitated whenever I went to reach for one. Ray had watched me with firelight gleaming in his eyes, but said nothing, although I knew he’d noticed.

He noticed everything, but although he talked a great deal, he didn’t always comment. Yet he was the one who had made sure that we had all three brews, as if he wanted to force the choice on me. I didn’t understand why he would do that, but I was grateful.

They were all delicious.

After a moment, I settled on the red, and took a drink. “What is typical?” I asked, as the tingling sensation spread over my tongue. It was quite pronounced, as the vine it came from was also used to make salves for burns, and left me with an urge to giggle.

I did not, but Ray looked as if he knew I wanted to.

But again, he didn’t say anything. At least, not about that. He had plenty to say about the great houses, however, and did so at length.

“It’s the same everywhere,” he scowled, swigging back the strong golden ale. “The little guys have to look out for each other, ‘cause the big guys only see us as a commodity. To them, we’re the ones to be bought and sold, or our labor is, and do they ever reward faithful service? Oh, hell no. All they do is take, take, take—and make rules meant for you and me that they ignore themselves.

“So, I figured, maybe there’d be some little guys in Faerie wanting to buy from another little guy. Turns out, I was right. Weapons, wards, freaking snack cakes—there’s a market for it. Like there’s a market in our world for fey wine, which’ll get you drunk off your ass even if you’re a vamp—or a dhampir,” he added, noting the amount I had been drinking.

“This is not fey wine,” I pointed out.

“Naw, but they make it with a lot of the same ingredients. Unless you’re trying to get drunk? Which, I mean, is none of my business.”

I thought about it. “I do not know.”

“You don’t know if you’re trying to get drunk?”

“No.” I took another swallow, and let it play over my tongue. The numbing effect grew more pronounced. I swallowed it, and felt the icy sensation carving a path all the way down to my stomach. It was odd, but I thought I liked it.

But I wasn’t sure about that, either.

“Well, then maybe you outta lighten up ‘til you figure it out,” he said, which sounded like good advice. Ray frequently gave good advice, and since we had landed on these foreign shores together, I had learned to listen to him. I put down the skin.

He frowned.

“What is wrong?” I asked. I did not like to see Ray frown.

“Did you want to stop drinking?” he asked, his eyes narrowing.

I hesitated.

“Go on, have another drink,” he told me.

I obediently lifted the skin again, which only made him frown harder.

“What is it?” I asked, pausing the motion.

“Put the skin down,” he said, sounding annoyed. I did not understand why he would ask me that, when he had just told me to drink, but I did it anyway. Which only seemed to annoy him further. “This is bullshit!” he said, and suddenly got up and strode away from the fire.

I watched him, feeling confused. And was even more so when he abruptly whirled around, came back and got in my face. “This. Is. Bullshit,” he repeated, taking my cheeks between his hands. “You get that, right? And it ends tonight.”

“What ends?” I asked, finding it hard to talk with my face sandwiched between two rough palms.

Ray was a vampire; he should not have had calluses. But he had not had an easy life before he transitioned. The product of a Dutch sailor—hence his blue eyes—and, as Dory had put it, “the slowest Indonesian woman in her village,” Ray had not been wanted from his earliest memory. He had been shunned by the other villagers and had been lucky to survive, and that was before he fell in with a bunch of vampire pirates and began a new existence on the bottom rung of yet another ladder.

He had never really gotten off it, despite eventually rising to the rank of master, partly because of those blue eyes. They made him an outsider wherever he went in Asia, like his scrawny frame, lack of height, and Indonesian features had made him stick out in the West. Ray didn’t belong anywhere, which was one reason I found him so relatable.

Neither did I.

That was truer for me even than Dory, who straddled the vamp and human worlds, but would never completely fit into either. She had a position now because the Vampire Senate needed her, but when they no longer did so? Neither she nor I thought that her lofty title was likely to be permanent. And if it was, it would be in spite of her nature, not because of it.

And of the two of us, she was the normal one.

I was still not quite sure what I was, as the longstanding belief that I was simply Dory’s vampire half had been challenged recently. Apparently, dhampirs did not have two easily separated halves as Dory and I did. Our dual nature was instead some kind of strange experiment, or so Nimue, one of the queens of the light fey, had told me shortly before her death. According to her, I was not something that was supposed to exist, being a weird amalgam of human, vampire, fey and possibly god blood, intended as an uber assassin.

Well, that wasn’t entirely true. It had been my mother who had been engineered in the gods’ experiment, who had wanted to find something that could kill other gods in their incessant wars. She had been a failure as the hoped-for prototype, however; whereas I, a product of her affair with my father, a vampire in transition, had somehow solved the problem that even the gods could not. And become the weapon they had envisioned.

But a weapon was a thing, not a woman.

So, what was I?

And how did I live without my other half, who had always been there, navigating the world, dealing with all sorts of people, and making all the decisions? I had once looked forward to such things, had dreamed of the time when I might have some control over the one body that we both shared. But now that it came to it . . .

It was frightening.

Fortunately, I had Ray to help me.

Or perhaps not, I thought, seeing his scowl become even more pronounced.

“See? That’s what I was afraid of!” he accused.

I stared up at him, nonplussed, although I didn’t know why. He had shown a great ability to read my thoughts in the past. “Afraid of what?” I asked.

“That you’re making me a substitute for Dory! I’m not gonna do that; I’m not gonna make decisions for you, and you wanna know why?”

“Yes,” I said, because listening to him had been very useful so far.

“Listening ain’t the problem!” he said angrily. Before dropping his hands to my shoulders and shaking me a little. “Listen all you want, but you make the call. You make the decision. You got a good head on your shoulders; you don’t need to use me as a crutch. And given how dangerous Faerie is, you don’t want to. What if I’m suddenly not here anymore?”

I stared up at him, and felt an icy hand grip my heart. “Where are you going?”

“Down something’s gullet, like as not,” he said, glancing up, as a sound echoed through the forest from somewhere high above the tree tops.

Dragons. I scanned the darkened night sky while the haunting call etched its way across my skin, but saw nothing. We were near the territory of the wildest sort of beast, or so I had been told, although we had seen none up close.

So far.

“I will protect you,” I said, my eyes falling again to meet Ray’s.

His looked black in the night, with twin flames from the reflected firelight dancing in the pupils. For once, he looked like a vampire. “And if you can’t?” he said, and said no more, although I knew what he was thinking. And it didn’t take the mental connection we sometimes shared for that.

We had almost died a dozen times since our arrival here. Chased through an already hostile land by the creatures of a power-hungry queen, we had only been saved by the machinations of another one, by my own fierce nature, and by Ray’s seemingly unending resourcefulness, although he failed to see how much he had aided us. We had survived, but it had been a close thing.

I was used to thinking of myself as formidable, but Faerie was more so. Yet it couldn’t have Ray. It wouldn’t!

“I will protect you,” I told him, and saw his eyes roll as he released me.

“Look,” he said, scraping black hair off his forehead. “We gotta talk, okay?”

I blinked. “Is that not what we have been doing?”

“No! We’ve been bullshitting. But right now, we need to talk.” He knelt down, which was more comfortable than having him loom over me, and looked at me with an odd expression. Part fond, part exasperated, part . . . I wasn’t sure. But it was serious. I could see that much.

My hand reached out and cupped his cheek. He hadn’t been able to shave in a while, and unlike most masters, he had less than perfect bodily control. As a result, his beard was starting to come in in patches. He had tried shaving it off, because it did look rather odd, with a knife we had borrowed from one of the villagers and a bowl of soapy water, but the result had been less than perfect.

I was glad he had stopped.

I liked his face without a lot of chunks carved out of it.

He grasped my wrist and then just held it, staring at me. “Listen.”

“I am listening.”

“Good. Then stop trying to distract me.”

“How am I doing that?” I asked, confused, and heard him sigh again.

He put my hand back on the ground and kept his on top of it, to hold it there. “You aren’t Dory, okay?”

“I know that.”

“You are your own person; you are Dorina. And I need for you to get that, and to start acting like it. Don’t wait for me or anyone else to tell you what to do or how to think or what to feel, okay? You decide. This is your life now—”

“And when it isn’t?”

He frowned, possibly at the sudden roughness in my voice that I couldn’t disguise. “What do you mean, when it isn’t?”

I swallowed. “What I said. I have a body now because we are in Faerie, and souls always manifest bodies here. But what about when it is time to leave?”

It was a thought that had been bothering me more and more. I raised my other hand, and watched it gleam in the moonlight. It looked so strong, so substantial. I could feel the blood rushing through it, see dirt in the creases and the ragged state of the nails.

I turned it this way and that, and then met Ray’s eyes again. “What about when this just . . . dissolves?”

“It won’t!”

“Won’t it?” I looked at him almost as curiously as I had the hand. He was flushed, to the point that the stain on his skin was possible to see in the darkness, and looked agitated. “Why won’t it?”

“Because it won’t! We’ll figure something out, and anyway, who knows? Maybe we don’t have to. Maybe this is how your kind are . . . are born—”

“I don’t have a kind.”

“—like Dory was the chrysalis or something, and now that you’re here, having come out of her—”

“Ray—”

“—maybe you’ll stay. Maybe you’ll go back home and just be like that—”

“And maybe I won’t,” I said gently. “Wouldn’t it then be easier not to begin making distinctions—”

“Bullshit!”

“—that won’t matter soon?”

“They matter! You matter!”

I stared into his eyes, and they were big and sincere and pained, and for some reason, that hurt me, too. But I did not want to lie to him. I did not like to lie.

“Ray, I don’t even know—” I broke off.

“Know what?”

I looked around, my gaze suddenly almost as agitated as his had been. All I saw were tall tree trunks, the muffling canopy far overhead that blocked out most of the stars, and the groups of fey camped in the center of the road and spread out for half a mile in either direction. For there were things that prowled in the night here; things that even the fey had learned to fear.

It wasn’t the prettiest sight I’d ever seen, but it was real, solid, and completely unlike the hazy half world I had inhabited in my old form.

Here, I could feel the fire’s warmth on my skin, the coolness of the night air, the dirt beneath my fingertips. Could smell the few scraps of meat still adhering to the bones of my dinner, interspersed with the spiciness of the ale. I could taste the latter, too, a memory on my lips, like the faint buzz that still danced on my tongue.

I wanted this, wanted more of it, wanted everything I had never had and was suddenly, fiercely afraid that I’d never have again. These last weeks, traveling with the Wanderers, had been the most time I’d known as a person in my own right since childhood, yet it wasn’t enough. Not anymore.

I wanted a life, but wasn’t sure whether I was entitled to one. And whether I wasn’t just setting myself up for heartbreak by even daring to think of such a thing. I don’t even know if I really exist, I thought at Ray, knowing that he would pick it up.

“You exist,” he told me in a fervent whisper, his forehead coming down to mine. “And you’re very real to me.”