Changing Nature (The Immortal Descendants Book 3) Page 6

  “What’d you do to get caught?”

  Ringo turned at the sound of my voice. He was so rarely truly angry that the expression on his face surprised me with its bitterness. “I was set up. Made to go down fer a string o’ Lizzer’s own thievin’. ‘E’s got a copper in ‘is pocket, too. Nabbed me on the way ‘ome with our dinner in me ‘ands.” He looked back at Charlie and his tone softened again. “And no way to get word to ‘ye, neither.”

  “’E’ll be after ye again when word gets out yer gone.” Charlie spoke softly, but I could feel the protectiveness in her voice.

  “I’m not leavin’ ye alone, Char.” He pronounced her nickname ‘Shar,’ short for Charlotte, I guessed.

  “We can take you both.” My mom stepped up next to me. “But, it’ll have to be you, Saira. I’m not strong enough.”

  “Ye’d do that?” Ringo’s gaze was on both of us, and Mom nodded.

  “If you want to come, you’re welcome. We can keep you at Elian Manor for the time being, at least until we figure something else out.”

  Charlie looked at Ringo, her eyes wide, then at me. “Ye’d take me, too?”

  I stepped up and took her hand. “Come on. You won’t be able to feel my hand between, but I won’t let go.”

  Ringo grinned at me and took his place on her other side. “And if ye think I’m lettin’ go of ye, yer addled.”

  I led them to the carved spiral portal and waited until everyone was holding on. “Home, then?”

  Ringo squeezed Charlie’s hand and looked over her head at me. “Home is where yer people are, ain’t it?”

  Tom – June, 1429

  The sound of the door jerked me out of the dream. It was the same dream I had every time I closed my eyes, so I rarely did. Close them. Sleep. I was never sure if the screaming was in my head or in my throat, but my eyes didn’t have to be closed to see the blood.

  The cold morning air blew in behind Léon, the guy Bishop Wilder had found to keep me fed. I didn’t know if he was keeping Wilder fed, too. The Vampire bishop had already taken vials of blood from me. Vials and vials of blood. In the two months since he’d grabbed me out of 1554 he’d drawn enough blood to make another person. That kind of blood production required a lot of protein consumption, but even with extra meat and eggs, I was too weak to be much of a threat to him, even without the chains.

  Yes, chains.

  My cousin Adam would have made an utterly inappropriate joke about bondage if he’d seen me, wearing metal wrist cuffs that could be looped through with the iron chain at my bed. The leg irons had gone on the first time I tried to fight back. The last time I tried, he bled me into unconsciousness.

  The stone walls, flickering candle light, and Dr. Frankenstein laboratory look of the tower room Wilder kept me in just added to the melodrama of my situation, as if chains weren’t dramatic enough. Léon was about nineteen or twenty, and from a distance we could be mistaken for brothers. At this point I was probably just as skinny as he was, since blood loss will do that to a chap, and my Gypsy blood looked a lot like his Jewishness did. Léon’s father was the butcher from whom Wilder bought meat. I supposed kosher meat, in an age with no refrigeration, made sense if he didn’t want to kill me with botulism. I was sure his plans for killing me were much messier than that.

  I knew where and when I was because of Léon. When – 1429: medieval times. Where – the Hôtel de Sens in the Marais district of Paris. Léon said the Archbishop of Sens was building the castle as a Paris residence. Most of the structure was finished, but it was a shell, and except for a very solid tower room, apparently the main rooms downstairs were bare. I didn’t think it was meant to be inhabited yet, though I’d once heard Wilder speak to another man in the corridor outside my tower. I hadn’t seen the man, but his voice was of the villainous variety and sent an involuntary shiver up my spine.

  Wilder had left the lab about an hour before, and based on the little bit of light I could see through the high window, he was doing his Vampire dead-to-the-world thing. Léon only came during daylight. I didn’t know if that was the deal his father had made for his employment, or if he was just smart, but it meant that whenever Léon was around, I could breathe.

  He stoked the embers in the fireplace back into flames, and then stuck the two burlap-wrapped packages he’d brought with him into the coals. Finally, he turned to look at me.

  “Monsieur failed to kill you again last night?”

  “Sorry to disappoint.” We were speaking French. The man I’d thought was my father, Phillip Landers, had made sure I could speak his native language from the time I could walk. Léon’s medieval French was a little different, but we got by.

  Léon smirked. “How much did he take?”

  “Another two flasks”

  He poured me a glass of water and brought it over. “Here. You should drink.”

  I accepted the water gratefully. Léon pulled a tin out of his pocket and sat next to me. “Let me see your wrists.”

  I held them out, but had to support them on the table. I wasn’t strong enough to hold them in the air. Léon’s finger hovered over the track marks on the inside of my elbow. Wilder wasn’t gentle when he bled me, although considering he wasn’t using his teeth, I guessed I was still lucky. Léon twisted off the lid of the tin, and the pungent scent of an herbal salve filled my nose.

  “A new formula?”

  “My grand-mère suggested yarrow.” Léon pushed the metal cuffs about an inch up my wrist and scooped out a finger full of salve. “The infection doesn’t look so angry.” I tried not to flinch from the pressure of his touch on the minced meat that used to be my skin. When the cuffs first went on I thought I could break out of them, and I spent the days working my wrists to find a weakness in the metal. The weakness was in my skin though, and Léon finally found the wounds when they began to stink.

  “Thank your grand-mère for me.” He smiled a little and moved on to the next wrist. Léon was close enough that I could see the hollows under his eyes, and I didn’t think they’d been there a month ago. “You’re not sleeping well?”

  He shrugged. “The wolves, you know? My father lost an arrow in one last night, while three more made off with half a side of beef.”

  “I heard them. They seemed to echo through the whole city.”

  “It is common enough for a small pack to get in through breaches in the city walls during the winter when hunting is scarce, but this summertime cooperation among several packs is unnatural. I am very pleased we have the cattle on the island where the wolves cannot go. Even so, I have spent many nights there in recent months.”

  He finished with my wrist and got up to clean his hands. His voice was tight, and he didn’t look at me when he spoke. “They killed two children last night. A boy and a girl.”

  I exhaled. “That’s over thirty people now.”

  Léon looked a little sick. “There are bloodstains on the cobblestones that will not wash clean. I see them when I walk, and I cross to avoid them.”

  I tried and failed to picture what he saw outside. I hadn’t been farther than the window in this room since Wilder had brought me here. Léon pulled a chess piece, the black knight, out of his tunic pocket and absently ran it through his fingers.

  His voice was quiet. “Did the Monsieur leave here at all last night?”

  “You think it was him, not the wolves?”

  He didn’t meet my eyes. “The threats he made to my father …”

  “Wilder’s a monster, but he wouldn’t leave blood.” The room was deathly quiet around us, as if the stone walls absorbed anything that sounded like life. “Why do you carry the knight?”

  Léon looked down as if he was surprised to find it in his hand. “My father’s chess set has only this one, so rather than play an uneven game he has substituted two black stones for the knights. It is my task to find another knight in the marketplace to match this one.”

  My eyes felt heavy and I fought to keep them open. “Is there any such thing as a per
fect match?”

  He looked at the piece he flipped between his fingers. “If one strives for perfection in and of itself, then, no. There is no such thing.” Then he met my eyes. “But if one strives only to find the piece that compliments, that stands nobly alone, yet is made better with companionship, then yes, I believe a match is possible.”

  “Even when one of the pieces is a bloodless, spineless scarecrow?” The words came out more bitterly than I meant to say them.

  “Bloodless does not mean spineless, as your chains will attest.” His tone was wry, but then quieted. “Yes, even scarecrows find their match.”

  It was as if the eyes that looked at me saw past the weakness and vulnerability to the person inside--the one who remembered how to make a joke, how to laugh, how to live.

  Léon felt like a piece of sanity in something that seemed so insane. I was a prisoner chained to a bed in the tower of an unfinished medieval castle, for God’s sake. Not that the divine could have anything to do with the madness that had become my existence. There were no battles raging in Léon, nothing at war, and the peace he brought with him into the room felt better than the balm with which he coated my wrists. I didn’t want to sleep and miss any part of that peace. Not when everything else I battled, including my own mind, was descended from War.

  “Sleep now. I will stay and keep watch.”

  I smirked. “The monster sleeps now, too. There’s nothing to watch for.”

  “There are the wolves.” Léon sat next to my bed and his eyes found mine. “And the dreams.”

  It was the same nightmare every time. I had never told Léon what I screamed about, because no one should ever have to picture himself dying in a sea of blood.

  “You were humming when you came in. Sing the song to me.”

  My eyes were closing, no matter how hard I tried to stay awake. Léon reached for my hand and began to sing, as if his touch and his voice could protect me from the madness.

  Darkness

  I took a deep breath of the cool night air as we came out of the garden spiral at Elian Manor. I didn’t need my mom’s necklace to bring us back, and there was no way she could have Clocked three people anyway. But I should have been feeling worse than I was, and frankly, I felt fine.

  Mom gasped and steadied herself against the wall, and Ringo was trying to hold the puke down. Charlie had been at my side when we’d gone through the portal, and I searched for her face in the slash of moonlight that lit the garden. I blinked when I found it. Her eyes were shining, and she had a smile that defied all nausea-filled-Clocking logic.

  “That was Clocking.” Charlie’s voice was like an exhale, and I blinked again. She had liked it.

  “You don’t feel sick?”

  She tilted her head a little to one side, like a bird. “Hunger or fear makes me feel sick. That feelin’ was magic.”

  Okay, that was interesting. I wondered if maybe she was the reason Clocking all those people had been easier for me than it usually was. She did, after all, have a little Clocker in her.

  I hadn’t really studied Charlie recently. The first time I met her she’d been disguised as a boy with thin, blond hair and skinny, pale sticks for limbs. She had looked a little like a dandelion then, ready to blow away. But since Ringo had taken her into his flat, she looked less weedy and more like the flower version: still skinny, still blond, but with a little softness around her mouth, eyes, and body. While I was watching Charlie, Archer melted out of the shadows. I’d been expecting it, because he’s good that way, but he surprised Charlie, and I could see her fold into herself like a flower closing its petals.

  His eyes locked on mine with an instant of relief, then landed on Ringo. “Since when do you get caught?”

  Ringo straightened and grinned at his friend. “Since I grew a conscience and cared that I showed up fer work at the docks.” He clasped Archer’s shoulder, and they hugged like long-lost brothers. Charlie’s wariness relaxed fractionally as she watched them together, and after Archer had kissed my mother’s cheek, he turned to her and held out his hand.

  “I don’t believe we’ve formally met, yet. Archer Devereux.”

  They hadn’t? Right. Nineteenth century Archer had been sick when Ringo and I first encountered Charlie and her sister, Mary Kelly, the last of Jack the Ripper’s victims, and then he’d been turned. Twenty-first-century Archer couldn’t Clock back to that time with me because his nineteenth-century self was already there.

  Charlie gave him a tentative smile. “I ‘eard all about ye, of course. Yer not scary like I thought ye’d be.” He struggled to hold back a smile as she offered him her small hand. “Charlotte Kelly. But ye can call me Charlie if ye like.”

  “Which do you prefer?” Archer’s deep voice gave me chills even when he spoke to other people. Yeah, I had it bad.

  “Any’s fine. I feel like Charlie most of the time. Charlotte only when I’m safe.”

  Archer smiled. “Charlotte, then. It’s very nice to meet you.”

  That made her smile more confident, and I noticed Ringo watching the exchange with a grin on his face. I loved it when Archer turned on his horse-whisperer charm to calm the skittishness out of people. A useful skill for someone whom most people feared.

  “Anyone come tonight?” I asked him.

  Archer smirked. “Your Dodo set up camp in the root cellar about an hour ago. The Bear is watching him at the moment.”

  “Mr. Shaw’s ‘ere? I want ‘im to give Char one of them pox shots.” Ringo had been vaccinated against smallpox and influenza the last time he was here, and the way he said Mr. Shaw’s name with reverence made me smile.

  My mom raised an eyebrow. “Dodo?”

  “The guy who chased me across Tower Bridge. He looks like a Rothchild, only bigger.” I turned to Archer. “What’s the plan?”

  “We don’t know if he’s armed, so cornering him in the root cellar could get one of us shot. Shaw and I thought we’d ambush him when he emerges, presumably to try to grab you.”

  I nodded. “Do you need me as bait or want me at a post?”

  Ringo’s eyes narrowed as he studied me. “Yer different.”

  “Than what? A hedgehog?”

  He smirked. “Nah, yer still all prickly like one o’ them. Yer different like, I don’t know, part of a thing – a team, I ‘spose - not runnin’ it … or from it.”

  For about a second I thought about getting annoyed, but frankly, I was feeling too lazy for annoyance. So I settled for acceptance. “There are too many other things to run from.”

  He wore a half-smile and regarded me thoughtfully, but didn’t say anything else. Archer had watched the exchange with amusement, and then got back to the business at hand.

  “I don’t think we need to dangle you as bait, but I do want you to be the last resort trap. Just in case he gets past us, your sword and dagger skills work well in close quarters.”

  “If he gets past you guys, he’s going to know it’s a trap.”

  “But if he doesn’t see you outside, he might still go in after you.”

  I thought about it for half a second, then nodded.

  “Where do ye want me?” Ringo didn’t miss a beat, and I adored him for it.

  “You’re with me. Shaw has a groundsman with him, and Claire, you should probably take Charlotte and Millicent into the keep, just in case this one’s of the hostage-taking variety.”

  “I’ll stay with Saira if it’s all the same to ye.” Charlie’s small voice sounded shaky and brave, and Archer regarded her for a moment.

  “Do you have any defensive skills?”

  “I’m small, I hide easily, and I’m handy with a skillet.”

  Archer sounded confused. “I’m not sure how much good cooking skills will do you.”

  Charlie cocked her head with that bird look and stared him straight in the eyes. “How ‘bout bludgeonin’ skills? Will they do me?”

  Ringo was trying not to laugh. And failing. “That one’s got an arm on ‘er like a blacksmith.
‘Specially when a cast iron fryin’ pan’s in ‘er ‘and.”

  I snickered, and Archer just managed to keep from laughing. Just. “Right. Well, then, you might want to stop by the kitchens on your way upstairs.”

  “Come on,” I said to Charlie. “Let’s go scrounge some weapons.” I turned to Archer before we left. “I don’t like the idea of a predator on the loose if you’re down for the day, so if he doesn’t show before dawn, we need to go after him.” Archer opened his mouth to protest, but I didn’t let him. “I know Mr. Shaw could probably take him on his own, but unless you are willing to sleep in the keep for the day, you’re too vulnerable. And if, as you say, he’s not above hostage-taking, all he’d have to do is grab your body, and I’d do anything they said to get you back.”

  Archer blew out a breath as his eyes searched my face. “The feeling’s mutual, my love.”

  “Good. So, we agree?”

  He smiled at me. “Yes, we agree.”

  The surprise was back on Ringo’s face, and it entertained me. I caught the lingering look he gave Charlie as we went inside the manor house, and that entertained me, too. I think the prospect of capturing a Monger had put me in a good mood.

  I grabbed an extra carving knife from the kitchens to go along with the daggers I still wore under my clothes, and Charlie picked up cast iron pans like she was weighing for balance and quality. She finally chose a medium-sized one and we slipped upstairs, careful not to wake the cook.

  We passed my mother on the stairs and she spoke quietly. “Millicent laughed at me when I suggested we go to the keep. She basically dared anyone to come and take her from her bed.”

  I grimaced. “She’s way more dangerous than any Monger.”

  My mom smiled, but she was tired and it showed.

  “You reset your clock when you went back, didn’t you?” It hadn’t been that long since she’d last gone to her native time, but even seven months all at once made a difference.