Voices chant around me.
I stand at the foot of a black granite outcrop, my thoughts a tangle of rage and confusion.
I don’t know who I am, or how I have come to be here.
I see the blood, and smell it, too. Hot, vivid, sweet, with its copper tang. It fills a silver vessel before me like an offering.One I cannot refuse.I plunge my snout in and lap at it, filling my throat and my belly.
When the vessel is empty, I want more. Beside it lie the broken bodies of three hares, but they are bloodless.
Looking up now, I see the owners of the chanting voices ranged before me, enclosing me against the stone in a half circle. They are cloaked and draped such that I can see no part of them but their hands and faces. Some faces are mostly covered in hair; some are bare and smooth. There are males and females, all holding long staffs. The racket of their chanting stokes my growing rage. I smell their blood and bare my teeth.
An oak tree grows against the outcrop a short distance away, and I notice more figures beneath its branches. Two of them are like the others. They hold the arms of a bound man who is different. The hair of his head is cropped short, with none on his face, and his drapery only reaches his knees. I can smell his fear and his blood. Some of it is smeared across his forehead.
“Bring him!” calls a man standing just opposite me inside the half circle. He has a long red beard threaded with white, and piercing blue eyes. The men holding the prisoner drag him from under the tree, the half circle dividing enough to allow him to be led inside.
“Ancient spirit of the oak forest,” calls Red Beard in a deep and grating voice, “we have summoned you so that we may beg your protection. We offer you the blood of three hares, sacred to us, and now the blood of our enemy, who has burned our villages and our forests, and murdered and enslaved our people. We offer him so that you may know him. We ask that you destroy him and his kind, and chase them from our lands and yours.”
The men holding the prisoner release him and step away, joining the others. For a moment, he stands frozen before me, eyes wide and round. I can hear the thunderous beating of his heart. I can see his lips working as he begs some outland god to save him. But he is alone. I andmykind are gods here.
Then suddenly he bolts like a hare. The half circle divides again, allowing him to pass—and me to follow. The maddening chants resume, but soon I am free. All I can hear or smell or taste is the terror of my prey.
My prey stirred quietly in my arms. I raised my head from her throat, eyes falling on her still features.
Oh God, Mina!
A half-choked sob escaped my lips. I lifted her and pressed my ear to her chest. Beneath the soft swell of her breasts, I could hear it.Her heart still beats.
Relief flooded me.
“I am well,” came her broken voice.
“You arenot,” was my broken reply.
“You stopped, and both of us live.”
A few last vestiges of the memory I’d visited before waking—one I was sure rightfully belonged to the being who’d cursed my family—finally cleared from my mind. Then myownmemory returned.
Jack Penrose shot me.
My gaze dropped to my bared chest, where Mina was pressed, watching me through heavy-lidded eyes, a faint smile on her full, purpling lips. My wound had closed, though my dark blood smeared us both. The leaden ball had been ejected, rolling free to lodge between her body and mine.
“I—I don’t remember attacking you,” I stammered.
“It was more the other way round.” Her voice was like a child’s, dropping off to sleep. “You were dying, and it was the only thing I could think of.”
“The only thing ...?” Suddenly I understood.To save me.“Oh, Mina. Oh,God.” The world seemed to tilt, as if to tumble therock monstrosity that had been the cause of all this suffering and bury us both.
Her cheek rolled against my chest, and she closed her eyes. Her rain-soaked skin was cold as bog water.
Gathering her in my arms, I got my feet under me and ran up the stairs to the chapel.
Tangled
When I woke, I stubbornly kept my eyes shut, choosing comfort and warmth over the facts that I must face when I stepped back into the world.
But the smells wafting through the room were a very strong temptation. Roasting meat. Harker’s smoky tea. Harker himself, and the smell I’d come to know as his—herbs, brandy, old books.
It was the tea—and my desperate thirst—that finally coaxed my eyes open. I found myself for the second time on his comfortable reading chair. A teapot rested on the nearby table, as did a bowl of the same medicinal water. I worked a hand free of the blankets I’d been wrapped in and touched my neck; a fresh bandage covered my newly opened wounds.
