Viking Fire (20 page)

So cadaverous was his face, I’d have thought him dead if he hadn’t moved.

“Please,” he said and his voice sounded like cicada’s vibrations, “help me.”

“What ails you in this troubled place?” I wondered if my voice, foreign to my ears in speaking the human’s language, revealed my nature.

“I am lost.” His dark eyes crinkled around the corners. “Without strength to rise. If you would but assist me up, I’ll be on my way.”

I’d never touched a human on purpose before. Was it that that gave me pause, or dread that stilled my heart? My feet itched to flee. As soon as I helped him, then I’d leave. I gritted my teeth and reached a hand down.

His gnarled fingers snapped on my arm, making me wince. Jerking me forward, his face contorted. Surprised by his strength, I fell beside him. Blackness curled around me.

Teeth, fangs, broke through the skin on my neck. Then I knew him for what he was, a vampyre. I struggled in protest. My words trapped in my mind. This shouldn’t happen. I was not human. But I felt my essence slip from me with each sucking sound he made.

I tried in vain to push him off me. I was paralyzed. My joints and muscles locked in place. I couldn’t move.
Release. Get away.
I screamed again and again in my mind, but my body refused to obey. If I could reach my sword then I’d behead the monster. But my hands, even my fingers, refused to move.

Felt as though my bones were replaced with steel rods, which now in place, were tempered closed. Embracing death. Wind roared in my ears, bringing the laments of the trees around me, piercing into my soul. Here, I was to die.

• • •

He twitched.

And I felt a tugging at my wound. But apparently neither of us could disentangle. He was locked with me, and I with him.

Pain churned behind my eyes like scorching fire. It seeped through my skull and down my spine. His essence mingled with mine and filled me.

And I knew him.

I knew his thoughts, his name, and his victims through the centuries. Inside my head he was yelling. “Not human. Not human. What are you? Draining me, my power.” His words shattered through my mind.

I didn’t know what was happening. The ground beneath me sighed. Bugs crawled along the leaves, their mouths crunching through the bark. In sleep birds ruffled their feathers.

Stench of blood and death lingered. A feeling of falling coursed through me. Everywhere my skin tingled like pine needles pricked me. I sensed each groove of my knuckles.

Strength returned to me, and yet something more. A thickness settled over the beating of my heart. Just beneath my skin, an itch, a tingling.

My muscles and bones relinquished their rigidness. I shoved him away and he gasped.

“What have you done?” Black blood ran from his eyes.

“Nothing.” I saw his life force shimmering like the dew in morning. Fragile and waiting for the day to melt it away.

His eyes rolled back into his head, and he was dead.

But I was alive, no vampyre. I shrugged it off that my kind must have immunity to his. Doubt tickled behind the veil of my conscious mind. Fleeting stories of prophecy and a dark monster read to me as a child.

My fingers brushed across the wound from my attack. Before I stumbled upon any other visitors, I decided to change my clothes. These human clothes had nearly killed me.

I removed my old human clothes and left them beside the rotting body. Thrust my legs into my trousers. Then I yanked my silk tunic over my head.

Images of wolves swam through my mind. They’d be upon me in two hundred paces. Why I felt they come for me, I could not explain. Never before could I sense animals so far away, or their intent. I stomped on my boots and slipped on my cloak. Leaving the discarded clothes behind, I ran.

Heard howls echo behind me. I dared not stop, but flew over the rocks to my home. I’d search the scrolls. Warning steeled my breath when I thought of approaching my parents with what happened this night. No, I must find out for myself before I spoke about this to another.

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