Chapter 10
Ten
“Save your murderous looks,” Silt told the vampire as they slogged over soggy ground. “I go where you go.”
Her glare deepened, though she never slowed. “What’s your plan now?”
“Make sure I’m beside you in case Mirceo somehow shows up here. He might actually do it, using whatever arcane powers he used to breach my home’s defenses. I doubt his demon friend could’ve managed that on his own.” Scores of demons had tried and paid for their folly. “And then when Mirceo arrives, I’ll strike.”
Lips thinned, she said, “You blame him for your plight? Why not blame the Gaolers? Or by that chain of reasoning, blame yourself for breaking the laws of the Lore!”
The Gaolers had warned Silt not to use his sorcery in front of humans. But after he’d been robbed of his abilities—enslaved, then preyed upon as a child and young man—his lust for power had overwhelmed him. “You’re one to talk about broken laws, maneater,” he pointed out. “And of course I blame your brother. I’ve survived as long as I have because of my reputation. Mirceo has undermined it. Until I behead him, every immortal from here to the Elserealms will consider me an open target. That’s the way the Lore works.”
“You confound me. You seem to believe you can easily defeat Mirceo—who is an expert swordsman—yet not defeat any other foe.”
Silt sped through a puddle, splashing mud. “You must think I can defeat him as well.”
“I know that vow of yours will strengthen the resolve of a man otherwise lacking in it.” She eyed him for a strike, would cut his throat without so much as blinking. “And there will be zero chance of a conflict after you’re dead.”
“Try it, leech. Make this interesting.”
“You won’t see me coming.” Had her gaze dipped to his neck?
With each step across this wasteland, his hunger increased. Her thirst must be burgeoning like a tidal wave. “When was the last time you drank?”
She hurdled a large rock. “Why do you care?”
“You just clocked my throat.” He recalled the way she’d stared at his neck in the lava field, that dark thirst. Now he pictured her slowly piercing him, sucking on his flesh. He imagined her afterward, warm and sated from his body, licking her lips. . . .
Despite their circumstances, his cock stirred. He’d never been bitten, but if he’d come across a comely vampire, would he have allowed her to feed? Back in the day—or, rather, a few days ago—he would’ve tried almost anything to shed his worlds-weariness.
His perversions shouldn’t surprise him. His very name meant dirt and adulteration.
She said, “I have no intention of drinking you. I’ve never been intoxicated, won’t start now. Which means your befouled blood is off the menu.”
Of all the words. Over the ages, he’d been known as Silt the Befouler . “Why didn’t you drink the shifter you attacked back there? He wasn’t intoxicated.”
“I’m thirsty. I’m really thirsty. But I’m not at a point where he—or you—would prove appetizing enough.”
Silt hadn’t particularly wanted to strengthen this vampire, but her turning her nose up at his blood rankled. “At your age, you probably need blood every night. You’ll beg for mine before long. No other food exists on this plane.” Vampires could eat food if pressed, but nothing satisfied them like blood.
“I don’t believe that. If our captors intended for us to starve, then why not just kill us? They’re called the Gaolers, not the Executioners. There must be a higher purpose to this place. I continue my exercise in survival to discover it. And all the while, I’ll search for an escape and an opportunity to kill you. Fortunately, I can concentrate on many things at once.”
Her points weren’t lost on him, but he found himself preoccupied with her blood drinking: “With eyes like yours, you must not have been so discerning about your victims before. The Gaolers would have sent you warning dreams of this place, but you continued preying on others.” As that shifter had done. Had Kosmina found human throats tender ? For some reason, the idea enraged Silt.
“Seems you’ve got me all figured out. And what crime did the great King of Sand commit to end up here?”
“Millennia ago, I set myself up as a god among humans. After a show of my stunning sorcery, they fell to their knees and showered me with riches and adulation.”
“At your advanced age, you should know better than to reveal yourself to humans.”
Everyone in the Lore knew this. “Apparently, the guideline about not revealing ourselves is more of a rule.” He’d paid those warning dreams no heed, until they’d stopped. Then he’d sensed the Gaolers were coming for him, so he’d become a fugitive.
“If you’re so powerful—worthy of worship even!—then use your stunning sorcery to fend off the wendigos trailing us.”
He swiped rain from his face. “I told you. No sand here.”
“Why would it be so difficult to come by?”
“It’s rock broken down by physical processes, which takes untold energy over eons. For all we know, Nightside only recently developed rain and wind.”
As she ran beside him, she canted her head. “You’re not like the sorcerers I’ve read about with their impeccable clothes, masks, and glib words.”
He sidled around a petrified stump. “Not glib.”
“You don’t say.”
“What else do you think you know about Sorceri?”
As if reciting some text, she said, “Your kind are isolated creatures, prone to revelry and paranoia. Historically, you wore masks to discomfit enemies and armor to protect your bodies. You are obsessed with gold and eschew meat.”
He grunted.
“You can’t deny any of it, can you?”
“Of course I can. I eat meat.”
Eye roll. “One of my uncles recently found his Bride in a sorceress, and she confirmed everything I’ve read, saying Sorceri often enchant themselves with their own ills.”
Though true, Silt said, “Condolences to him. Sounds like your uncle got saddled with a killjoy.”
“They’re ecstatic together, thank you.” With an analytical expression, Kosmina observed, “You don’t look like a reveler. You must have been very active before you froze into your immortality.”
I was forced to be active. In his youth, he’d stayed just ahead of the tip of the whip. “I built many things. Homes, temples, castles.” He’d been good at it, seeing all the engineering angles, appreciating them. “And then I used my knowledge to fortify my stronghold, routinely updating my defenses.” Until he’d grown so weary of the monotony that he’d almost hoped for capture. Just end the suspense.
Smoking had obliged where enemies hadn’t.
“Your weakhold,” Kosmina repeated. “A pup of a vampire outwitted you. And now you have to kill him, or else other boogeymen will slink up behind you or something? The details don’t add up.”
He scowled. “My bounty was the longest-standing in the Lore for a reason—it was the most dangerous. To guard my holding, I let a pack of a hundred wendigos, like the ones back there”—he pointed over his shoulder—“patrol my valley. Past that was a field protected against tracing vampires and demons, one filled with ravenous, subterranean gulgs. Past them , two sand scyllas with esoteric powers nested at the base of the structure, their tentacles forever combing the walls. I inscribed the bricks with spells to repel break-ins and teleportation.” The scyllas alone had been worth their weight in Sorceri gold. “So how did your brother get past measures that foiled so many other hunters? You know, don’t you?”
She just smiled, irritating him the way sand in a shoe might irritate others.
“Why would he become a bounty hunter anyway? A prince like him wouldn’t need money.”
Her smile widened, displaying flawless teeth and two tiny fangs. “This fact is going to sting, but . . . he is not a bounty hunter. I’m fairly certain you were his first job.”
That fact stung like scorpion venom. As Silt dug for patience, lightning forked out over the sky and a strong wind gusted to pelt them with stinging rain.
Most people kept their heads down against the elements. The princess raised her face, as if the weather were an enemy she’d decided to defeat. And so he kept his head up to watch her.
Irritating, frustrating female.
When the ground rumbled in a series of small quakes, she said, “There’s a lot of seismic activity here. Unless one of your subterranean gulgs is beneath us.”
Silt ran a palm over his mouth, a suspicion arising. I prefer the gulgs. Volcanoes, geysers, and quakes hinted at dimensional instability. Some realms convulsed in the beginning, some toward the end. Despite a lack of weathering, Nightside had existed for ages. There might be a clock on my escape.
“Whatever it is, I’ll face it.” To herself, she added, “Adversity builds mettle.”
Who the hell was this vamp? At times, she seemed far wiser than her scant years. Other times, vulnerable and impressionable. Was she innocent? He believed so, her shirt’s message notwithstanding.
He cast her a considering look, again struck by her beauty, even with her wan skin and the strain in her feminine features.
While his concubines varied—he had no preferred type—he’d never bedded a fey-looking vampire before. Nor had he slept with sexually innocent females. Maybe he should make an exception for revenge.
No hardship there. Her wet T-shirt clung to plump breasts that bounced as she ran, captivating him. She was, in fact, a braless babe . He imagined plucking that shirt off and covering those mounds with his roughened palms, gripping her as he leaned down to suck?—
“Tell me more about our jail,” she said, rousing him from his fantasies.
“Jail?”
She pursed her lips as if she’d detected the direction of his thoughts. “If this is the origin realm for all undead creatures, then they must have escaped Nightside. How else would their contagion exist in the mortal world?”
“I see the wheels turning. You think that proves there’s a way out, maybe a portal or a rift. But if an escape once existed, the Gaolers sealed it. Otherwise, these beasts would have flooded the humans’ realm.”
She frowned at him. “How do you know so much about this place anyway?”
“Before I resigned myself to exile, I tracked down every rumor of Nightside and its wardens to uncover weaknesses. I talked to mystics who’d had visions of this place. I questioned others experiencing the same dreams I had—before they were collected, one by one.” Only those in Poly eluded the Gaolers’ reach.
“What would you do if you somehow escape before I kill you? Won’t you be recaptured? At least Dacia will provide me some protection.”
“If an escape existed, I would return to Poly and work on my defenses.” The prospect of more exile there made him queasy. “The Gaolers won’t enter that realm. No one knows why.”
“I read it’s unforgiving there.”
“Just as bad as this realm, yet freezing too.” But unlike Nightside, sand covered it.
She cocked her head, listening for the wendigos over the now pounding rain and wind. Did they already near?
Silt told her, “You were seeking a purpose for our imprisonment? Maybe Nightside is a menagerie of undead creatures, and we are the food.” At her disbelieving look, he said, “In the Lore? Why not?”
The prospect didn’t faze her for long. “This isn’t the end of my story. I won’t consider the battle lost till I’ve no more moves open to me.”
“Are you never daunted?”
She raised the makeshift sword he’d foolishly given her. “As long as I have a weapon, I will find my way.”
She continued to prove cool in a crisis. If he were honest—he wasn’t—he’d admit a growing fascination with this vampire that warred with his irritation. He might have to continue on with her just to satisfy his curiosity.
Then he recalled where he was and who’d put him here. As he was tortured in this realm, so too would he torture. Pain is a chain. His fascination vanished as if swallowed by sand.
She cast a glance over her shoulder, tension stealing through her. “They’re coming.”
Revenge took a backseat to survival. “If we’re lucky, we can get to higher ground before they catch us,” he said, wishing he believed his words as readily as she seemed to.