This shouldn’t have made my situation any worse, but I was suddenly shuddering, and I hadn’t been before.
The house was plainly our destination. I stumbled, and stumbled again. I was not doing it deliberately as some kind of hopeless delaying tactic; I was merely losing my ability to hold myself together. Something about that cleared space, about what this meant about…whatever was waiting for me. Something about the reluctance of my escort. About the fact that therefore whatever it was that waited was more terrible than they were.
My jailers merely tightened their hold and frog-marched me when I wobbled. Suckers are very strong; they may not have noticed that they were now bearing nearly all my weight as my knees gave and my feet lost their purchase on the ragged ground.
They dragged me up the last few stairs to the wide, once-elegant porch; the treads creaked under my weight as I missed my footing, while the vampires flowed up on either side of us with no more sound than they had made ranging through the woods. One of them opened the front door and stood aside for the prisoner and her guards to go in first. We entered a big, dark, empty hall; some moonlight spilled in through open doors on either side of us, enough that my eyes could vaguely make out the extent of it. It was probably bigger than the whole ground floor of Mom and Charlie’s house. At the far end a staircase swirled up in a semicircle, disappearing into the murk overhead.
We turned left and went through a half-open door.
This had to be a ballroom; it was even bigger than the front hall had been. There was no furniture that I could see, but there was a muddle overhead—its shadow had wrenched my panicky attention toward it—that looked rather like a vast chandelier, although I would have expected anything like that to have been looted years ago. It seemed like acres of floor as we crossed it. There was another muddle leaning up against the wall in front of us—a possibly human-body-shaped muddle, I thought, confused. Another prisoner? Another live dinner? Was waiting to be eaten in company going to be any less horrible than waiting alone? Where was the “old-fashioned guest” who liked dresses rather than jeans and sneakers? Oh, dear gods and angels, let this be over quickly, I cannot bear much more…
The muddle was someone sitting cross-legged, head bowed, forearms on knees. I didn’t realize till it raised its head with a liquid, inhuman motion that it was another vampire.
I jerked backward. I didn’t mean to; I knew I wasn’t going to get away: I couldn’t help it. The vampire on my left—the one who had asked me why I didn’t beg for my life—laughed again. “There’s some life in you after all, girlie. I was wondering. Bo wouldn’t like it if it turned out we caught a blanker. He wants his guest in a good mood.”
Bo’s lieutenant said again, “Shut up.”
One of the other vampires drifted up to us and handed its lieutenant something. They passed it between them as if it had been no more than a handkerchief, but it…clanked.
Bo’s lieutenant said, “Hold her.” He dropped my arm and picked up my foot, as casually as a carpenter picking up a hammer. I would have fallen, but the other vampire held me fast. Something cold closed around my ankle, and when he dropped my foot again it fell to the floor hard enough to bruise the sole, because of the new weight. I was wearing a metal shackle, and trailing a chain. The vampire who had brought the thing to Bo’s lieutenant stretched out the end of the chain and clipped it into a ring in the wall.
“How many days has it been, Connie?” said Bo’s lieutenant softly. “Ten? Twelve? Twenty? She’s young and smooth and warm. Totally flash. Bo told us to bring you a nice one. She’s all for you. We haven’t touched her.”
I thought of the gloves.
He was backing away slowly as he spoke, as if the cross-legged vampire might jump at him. The vampire holding me seemed to be idly watching Bo’s lieutenant, and then with a sudden, spine-unhinging hisssss let go of me and sprang after him and the others, who were dissolving back into the shadows, as if afraid to be left behind.
I fell down, and, for a moment, half-stunned, couldn’t move.
The vampire gang was, in the sudden way of vampires, now on the other side of the big room, by the door. I thought it was Bo’s lieutenant who—I didn’t see how—made some sort of gesture, and the chandelier burst alight. “You’ll want to check out what you’re getting,” he said, and now that he was leaving his voice sounded strong and scornful. “Bo didn’t want you to think we’d try anything nomad. And, so okay, so you don’t need the light. But it’s more fun if she can see you too, isn’t it?”
The vampire who had dropped me said, “Hey, her feet are already bleeding—if you like feet.” He giggled, a high-pitched goblin screech.
Then they were gone.
I think I must have fainted again. When I came to myself I was stiff all over, as if I had been lying on the floor for a long time. I both remembered and tried not to let myself quite remember what had happened. This lasted for maybe ten seconds. I was still alive, so I wasn’t dead yet. If it wanted me awake and struggling, to continue to appear to be unconscious was a good idea. I lay facing the door the gang had left by; which meant that the cross-legged vampire was behind me…Don’t think about it.
I was up on my knees, halfway to my feet, and scrambling for the door before I finished thinking this, even though I knew you couldn’t run away from a vampire. I had forgotten that I was chained to the wall. I hit the end of my chain and fell again. I cried out, as much from fear as pain. I lay sprawled where I struck, waiting for it to be over.
Nothing happened.
Again I thought, Please, gods and angels, let it be over.
Nothing happened.
Despairingly I sat up, hitched myself around to face what was behind me.
It was looking at me. He was looking at me.
The chandelier was set with candles, not electric bulbs, so the light it shed was softer and less definite. Even so he looked bad. His eyes (no: don’t look in their eyes) were a kind of gray-green, like stagnant bog water, and his skin was the color of old mushrooms—the sort of mushrooms you find screwed up in a paper bag in the back of the fridge and try to decide if they’re worth saving or if you should throw them out now and get it over with. His hair was black, but lank and dull. He would have been tall if he stood up. His shoulders were broad, and his hands and wrists, drooping over his knees, looked huge. He wore no shirt, and his feet, like mine, were bare. This seemed curiously indecent, that he should be half naked. I didn’t like it…Oh, right, I thought, good one. The train is roaring toward you and the villain is twirling his moustache and you’re fussing that he’s tied you to the track with the wrong kind of rope. There was a long angry weal across one of the vampire’s forearms. Overall he looked…spidery. Predatory. Alien. Nothing human except that he was more or less the right shape.
He was thin, thin to emaciated, the cheekbones and ribs looking like they were about to split the old-mushroom skin. It didn’t matter. The still-burning vitality in that body was visible even to my eyes. He would be fine again once he’d had dinner.
My teeth chattered. I pulled my knees up under my chin and wrapped my arms around them. We sat like this for several minutes, the vampire motionless, while I chattered and trembled and tried not to moan. Tried not to beg uselessly for my life. Watched him watching me. I didn’t look into his eyes again. At first I looked at his left ear, but that was too close to those eyes—how could something the color of swamp water be that compelling?—so I looked at his bony left shoulder instead. I could still see him staring at me. Or feel him staring.