“You’re a magic handler—a transmuter,” said the vampire in that strange voice I no longer always found expressionless. I heard him being surprised.
“Not much of one,” I said. “A small stuff-changer only.” The kids from the magic-handling families taught the rest of us some of the slang. Calling a transmuter a stuff-changer was pretty insulting. Almost as bad as calling a sorcerer a charm-twister. “I thought you couldn’t look at me in sunlight.”
“The sound and smell of magic were too strong to ignore, and your body is shading your hands,” he said.
I extended the foot with the shackle on it. This was the real moment. My heart was beating as if…there was a vampire in the room. Ha ha ha. My hand was shaking badly, but I found the odd little keyhole, fumbled my new key in it, and turned it.
Click.
“Well done,” he whispered.
I looked out the window. It was maybe seven o’clock. I had about twelve hours. I was already exhausted, but I would be running for my life. How far could adrenaline get me? I had a vague but practical idea where I was; the lake itself was a great orienter. All I had to do was keep it on my right, and I would come to where I’d left my car eventually…probably twenty miles, if I remembered the shape of the shore correctly. If I stayed close to the lake I could avoid the bad spot behind the house, and I would have to hope there weren’t any other bad spots between me and my car that I couldn’t get around. Would I be able to change my shackle key into a car key? I doubted the vampires would have folded up my discarded clothing with the key in the jeans pocket and left it for me on the driver’s seat.
Surely I could do twenty-odd miles in twelve hours, even after the two nights and a day I’d just had.
I turned to the vampire. I looked at him for the first time that day. For the first time since I’d bled on him. He had shut his eyes again. I stepped out of the sunlight and his eyes opened. I stepped toward him, knelt down beside him. I felt his eyes drop to my bloody breast. My blood on his chest had crusted; he hadn’t tried to wipe it off. Or lick it up.
“Give me your ankle,” I said.
There was a long pause.
“Why?” he said at last.
“I don’t like bullies,” I said. “Honor among thieves. Take your pick.”
He shook his head, slowly. “It is—” There was an even longer pause. “It is a kind thought.” I wondered what depths he’d had to plumb to come up with the word kind. “But it is no use. Bo’s folk encircle this place. The size of the clear area around this house is precisely the size of the area Bo thinks can be kept close-guarded. He will not be wrong about this. You will be able to pass that ring now, in daylight, while all sane vampires are shielded and in repose, but the moment I can move out of this place, so will my guards be moving.”
And you aren’t, of course, at your best and brightest, I added silently.
I stood up and stepped back into the sunlight and felt it on my skin, and thought about the big tree where a tiny sapling used to be. There are a lot of trees and tree symbolism in the magic done to ward or contain the Others, because trees are impervious to dark magic. And then I thought about traps, and trapped things, and about when the evil of the dark was clearly evil, and when it was not quite so clearly evil.
There was a very long pause, while I felt the sunlight soaking through my skin, soaking into the tree that up till a few minutes ago I hadn’t known was there, felt the leaves of my tree unfurl, stretch like tiny hands, to take it in. I was tired, I was scared, I was stupefied, I’d just done an important piece of magic, I was tranced out. I thought I heard a wind in the leaves of my tree, and the wind had a voice, and it said yesssssssssss.
“Then you’ll have to come with me,” I said.
There was another silence, but when he spoke his voice struck at me as if it might itself draw blood. “Do not torment me,” he said. “As I have been merciful to you—as merciful as I can be—do not tease me now. Go and live. Go.”
I looked down at him. He was not looking at me, but then I was standing in the sunlight again. I stepped out of the sunlight but he still did not look at me. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I am not teasing you. If you will not let me try the shackle on your ankle, give me your hand instead.” I held my hand out—down—toward him, still sitting cross-legged on the floor.
More priceless sunlit moments passed.
“Would you rather die—er—whatever—like a rat in a trap?” I said, more harshly than I meant. “I haven’t noticed you getting any better offers.”
I didn’t see him move, of course. He was just standing there, standing beside me, his hand in my hand. It was the first time I had seen him standing. His hand felt as inhuman as the rest of him looked: the right shape and everything, but all wrong. Wrong in some fathomless, indefinable, turning-the-world-on-its-end way. Also there was the smell. Standing beside him it was almost overwhelming. Mind you, he smelled a lot better than I did, I needed a bath like you don’t want to imagine—there isn’t much that stinks worse than fear—but he didn’t smell human. He didn’t smell animal or vegetable or mineral. He smelled vampire.
I took a deep breath anyway. Then I stepped back into the sunlight, still holding his hand, drawing it after me. His arm unbent and let me do it.
The sunlight struck his hand, halfway up the wealed forearm. Some subtle change occurred—subtle but profound. The feeling of his hand in mine was no longer a—a threat to everything that made me human. The hand became a—an undertaking, an enterprise, a piece of work. Maybe not that much different from flour and water and yeast and a rapidly approaching deadline of hungry, focused customers.
I felt the power moving through me. It did not come in fiery threads this time, but in slow, fat, curly ripples. The ripples made me feel a little peculiar, as if there was an actual thing, or things, moving around in my insides, shouldering my liver and stomach aside, twisting among my bowels. I tried to relax and let the ripples wiggle and squirm as they wished. I had to know if I could do this, do what I was offering to do, for a long time. Possibly till sunset. Possibly twelve hours or more. Could I bear this invasion that long, even though I was inviting it? What if I overestimated my strength, like a diver overestimating how long she could hold her breath?
I was demented. The most impressive thing I had ever done before today was turn a very pretty ring into an ugly botch. And I would have this vampire’s…er…life totally in my hands.
I was trying to save the life of a vampire.
The ripples spread through me, first balancing themselves cautiously like kids standing on a teeter-totter, then slowly, gently, finding spaces where they could settle themselves down on various bits of my inner anatomy, like the last customers during the early breakfast rush finding the last available seats. Most of me was already full of things like heart and spleen and kidneys, but there were gaps where the power could fit itself in, attach itself to its surroundings. Tap into me. I felt very…full. As the connections were made—as the power made itself at home—the ripples began to change. Now they felt like the straps of a harness being settled in place, buckles let out a little here, taken in a little there. When they were done, it felt like a good fit.