Chapter 15: Fangs for the Memories

Mike opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling of the castle suite for almost twenty minutes, trying to make up his mind regarding Lady Charlotte and what to say. While in the Dreamscape, he had held a small conference with the others regarding most of his ideas, then had those familiar with vampyr lore chat with him about the most likely outcome of his plan.

During this discussion, Dream Lily had summoned a rather large telescope and pointed it at the sky. When pressed for an explanation, she had informed everyone that it was the only way she would be able to observe what she thought to be an astronomically stupid decision.

Dream Tink had offered to install a camera so that everybody could watch on a monitor. When Mike had asked if they could see everything he did while awake, Ratu reminded him that they were part of his soul, so they weren’t just watching, they experienced it all.

Tink promptly demanded that he eat someone’s ass.

Now, despite the warmth of the blankets, Mike felt a chill go through his veins. While asleep, Kisa had dropped in and informed him that the Fae had started tapping on all the windows of his home in order to drive the occupants insane. Ratu had magically sound-proofed the home in most places, but poor Abella was now living down in the Labyrinth to avoid losing her mind. The Fae were now trying to antagonize Beth and the others into retaliation, which meant they were likely getting bored or desperate. Mike wasn’t sure which of these was considered worse.

He had full confidence that Beth could handle whatever the Fae Courts threw at her. According to the women in his soul, Titania had not dropped by ever since revealing she was under close watch. Mike knew that the Queen was somehow in trouble, but that wasn’t a problem he was remotely capable of tackling right now.

Sitting up, he took a moment to rub Sofia’s butt through the thin fabric of the blankets. It really was a nice ass. He looked forward to winning their bet in the very near future.

“Hmm?” she muttered, still mostly asleep.

“Going out for a walk,” he told her, then scooted past Cerberus who was sleeping at the foot of the bed. Mike put on his clothes and headed for the door. Upon leaving the room, He saw Sulyvahn and Cecilia sitting by the fireplace below. They were speaking to each other in quiet tones, but paused to look up at him.

“Yer up early,” said Sulyvahn.

“To do the devil’s work,” Mike replied.

“Bless ye, then.” Sulyvahn flashed a short-lived grin. “Nyx still be out, makin’ plans and moves.”

“Let her,” Mike replied. “I have zero intention of waiting around for someone who doesn’t trust me enough to at least suggest what they might be doing.” In truth, he was done with her. Mike wanted either enemies, friends, or people who would just leave him the fuck alone. Nyx was somehow none of these things. “I’ll be back. I need to speak with Charlotte.”

“Do you want company?” whispered Cecilia.

“No,” Mike replied. “Not this time.”

The banshee looked disappointed. “Don’t forget to be back early. Taylor will have our clothes ready, but will probably need to make last minute adjustments.”

“This shouldn’t take long,” Mike replied as he moved for the main door. “If I’m not back by lunch, I’ve probably been murdered.”

“That’s not funny, mo chroí.”

“I’m not joking,” Mike said. “Send Cerberus to find me. I should be okay, but...” He didn’t bother speaking the alternative. What he was about to do next was a bad idea, but necessary.

Cecilia frowned, but nodded. Mike stepped through the entrance of the tower and onto the bridge. He let out a heavy sigh. This was all so stressful.

“That was pretty heavy,” said a voice from the bridge’s balustrade. It was Slade, his talons hooked into the stone.

“They have you on watch duty?” asked Mike.

The gargoyle shrugged. “We’re technically always on duty. Where are you off to?”

“Oh, you know me. Gonna walk the castle, get some exercise, maybe go flirt with Lady Charlotte a bit.”

Slade chuckled. “Better men than you have tried, my friend.”

“Did she throw them into the pit?” asked Mike.

“Maybe.” Slade shifted his wings. “I know one of them is still pretty broken up over it. Poor guy put his heart on the line and she rejected him.” He pointed toward one of the other towers. “Spent the last few years watching anything but her tower.”

“Oh, one of your people?” Mike fought to keep a grin off his face. “I didn’t know you guys were into humans.”

“Hey, it’s not all of us.” Slade suddenly looked offended. “It’s rare, but some of my kind find you fleshbags. appealing.”

“Fleshbags?” Mike put a hand to his chest in mock shock. “That almost sounds like a term of endearment! Are you sure you weren’t talking about yourself just a second ago? Are you Lady Charlotte’s admirer?”

Slade chuckled. “She is nice enough, but I like a girl who doesn’t hit the ground like a bag of soup. Someone far sturdier, if you catch my drift.” Slade moved his hands to his chest and pretended to squeeze a pair of breasts with some difficulty.

“Like bags of sand, right?” Mike repeated the gesture and both of them laughed. He waved to the gargoyle and continued on his way. Slade seemed like a really nice guy. Mike hoped that he wouldn’t have to fight the gargoyles, or the villagers either.

He probably wasn’t that lucky, though.

The walk through the castle took longer than expected. Part of this was due to the fact that Mike actively avoided areas with servants wandering about. The thralls were on autopilot, but he could see the faint, dark threads attached to them. He could not tell how many thralls belonged to Vincentius or the others, but he did notice most of the threads seemed to be concentrated toward the center of the castle, near the top.

The other problem was that the towers rotated while he was walking. So when he thought he had reached Charlotte’s tower, it had actually shifted three positions over. That was one of the things about the towers themselves that made little sense to him. They didn’t just move one place at a time, and the rotation was random. Was it based on something? What purpose did it serve?

“Stupid ass magic castle,” he muttered as he was forced to navigate the body of the structure once more. On this occasion, he didn’t waste energy bypassing the thralls, doing so may cost him precious minutes. He had no idea if Charlotte would even be in her tower. What if the vampyr had wandered into town, or had been called into another meeting with Vincentius?

By the time he made it to her tower, a cold sweat developed on the back of his neck. He hesitated before knocking, momentarily worried about what could come next.

I need to get home, he thought, then steeled his resolve into a fist and used it to knock. There was a long delay before a servant opened the door and stared at him with glassy eyes.

“May I speak with Lady Charlotte?” Mike asked. The thrall pulled the door open and allowed him to enter. Mike was forced to wait for a moment while the thrall checked in with Charlotte, then was led to the sitting room where the vampyr sat with a tray of tea on the table next to her.

The crimson light of Avalon cast ominous shadows across the room. Lady Charlotte sat next to the window, and it was clear by the mostly empty tea cup that she had been there at least a while.

“Please get our guest a cup,” she said, and the thrall vanished. The vampyr looked at Mike with tired eyes. “Is there something I can do for you, Lord Radley?”

“Perhaps.” His throat was unusually dry and he didn’t wish to speak until the thrall was dismissed. “What sort of tea are we having this morning?”

“A special blend made from apple blossoms and some sort of grass that grows here in Avalon,” she replied. When she lifted the cup to her lips, he noticed her hand trembling. “It ... helps to take the edge off.”

“You really haven’t fed after all this time,” he muttered.

She shook her head. “I have not,” she admitted. “Not on a living creature, anyway. I should have perished long ago.”

“Why haven’t you?” he asked. “You seem like the kind of person who might have simply refused to eat and eventually perished.”

“I tried to,” she admitted. “Twice. Both times, I became a ravenous fiend, barely able to control myself. The first time, I was spared a terrible fate by my creator, who fed me blood from a wineskin. He wanted me to learn how desperate I would eventually become. The second time, my brother was the one who forced me to consume cow’s blood lest I prey on some children that Lady Cecilia had deliberately left in my care.”

It took Mike a moment to remember that she was referring to the false Cecilia. The fake names bit had grown old. “They really wanted to make you into something that you didn’t want to be.”

“Yes, I—” Charlotte paused and waited for the thrall to hand Mike a cup of tea. “That will be all,” she said.

The thrall bowed at the waist, then left the room.

Mike sipped at the tea and discovered it wasn’t too hot, so drank most of the cup and then set it down on a nearby table.

“How ... alive are they?” asked Mike, gesturing toward the man who had just left.

Charlotte shook her head. “It’s hard to say,” she admitted. “It starts when they are partially turned. Some of them retain their intelligence, but times are lean, so they give themselves willingly again and again. Some become little more than walking husks. I’m not sure there’s anything left of the men or women they used to be.”

Mike thought back to some of the thralls he had seen with dim sparks flickering in their chests. It wasn’t just that their souls were weak. They had vanished. “When your people feed, do you have to take their souls?”

Charlotte shrugged. “I wouldn’t know for sure,” she said. “Every one of us is different. Amymone prefers flesh and bone. My brother prefers—” She winced as the dark vein closest to her pulsed. “We should speak on other things.”

“Have you seen this?” Mike asked, holding up his fingers so that a spider made of electricity appeared. It was a jumping spider, hopping from fingertip to fingertip.

“It’s beautiful,” whispered Charlotte.

“Magic is all about intent,” Mike said. “When you speak about how a first meal shapes you, I imagine it’s very much like this. My magic is always changing. Some time ago, I met someone special to me.”

“What happened?” Charlotte asked, watching the spider jump.

“I lost her,” Mike replied. “In doing so, I almost lost myself. The effect she had on me lingers to this day, and it looks like this.” He gestured for her to hold out her hand, and he sent the spider onto her palm.

“It tickles,” she said as it danced around. “What can it do?”

“Whatever I can imagine,” Mike told her. “My power goes far beyond this. As you are aware, some of it is intimate in nature.”

Charlotte’s cheeks turned red, but she didn’t look away from the spider. It was now climbing her fingers and doing somersaults down into her hand.

“But everything I do comes down to matters of the soul.” Mike reached out and took Charlotte’s other hand. “This will sound insane, but what if I agreed to let you feed on me?”

Charlotte’s head snapped up, her eyes briefly feral. “What?”

“I’ve seen how the process works,” Mike replied. “If I let you do it, you will be far stronger than you are now, maybe even strong enough to tilt the scales.”

“But you would ... be less,” Charlotte whispered. “It is not just a matter of blood, Lord Radley.”

“You’re right.” Mike held up his hand and saw glimmers of his own soul circulating through his palms. “But I believe that I can keep you from taking that part of me. Or at least minimize the damage.”

“But you could become ... like them,” she whispered, looking at the door the thrall had exited. “And would belong to me.”

“I really don’t believe you would,” he said. “And if you started to do it, I could stop you.”

“How?” she asked.

Mike reached out with his magic and plucked the strings of her soul as gently as possible. Charlotte let out a tiny gasp and put her hands to her chest, causing the tiny spider to fall from her hand and vanish like the dying ember of a fire.

“You still have a soul,” he told her. “I can see it. The others do as well, though they’re all wrapped up in a darkness I don’t quite understand. If push came to shove, I could protect myself from you.”

She shook her head. “You either underestimate me or overestimate yourself. Touching my spirit won’t amount to much. Even in my current state, I’m extremely dangerous.”

“So am I.” Mike leaned back in his seat and looked out the nearest window. “I’m currently looking down the barrel of a life sentence without my family. My children will grow up without me. My home will fall into disarray. The ones I swore to protect will be left to fend for themselves. I...” He took a deep breath. “Don’t see this as an act of kindness, Charlotte. This is a desperate plan, a Hail Mary effort to stack the odds more solidly in my favor.”

Charlotte blinked at him, then set down her teacup and contemplated his words. Eventually, when she broke the silence, it was to ask something unexpected.

“Do you really think that prayer will help us here?” she asked. “God has turned a blind eye to this place long ago.”

Mike winced. “It’s a sports metaphor, actually. Well, I guess it’s a sports metaphor based on a prayer, I’ve never really thought about it. Anyways, it means a play or strategy meant as a last-ditch effort to succeed. Look, I know I can’t make you do this, but ... if it works...” He locked eyes with her. “You would add your strength to ours. Together, maybe we can make a miracle of our own.”

Lady Charlotte sat back in her chair, her fingers tapping anxiously on the arms of her seat. She was breathing hard now, her lips parting ever so slightly to reveal the tips of her fangs.

“On one condition,” she said.

Mike frowned. “It depends on the condition.”

“Should you actually overthrow...” She gestured in the general direction of the castle. “I want you to take the villagers with you.”

“Excuse me?” That caught Mike off guard. Perhaps he had been dealing with Nyx for too long.

Charlotte nodded. “They deserve a better life than the one they have here. Even if they are centuries behind in their ways and thinking. If you are who I believe you to be, then you would take them in and care for them, even if they are ... different. Your predecessor was—”

The dark vein throbbing up above shifted down onto Charlotte, to listen in to what she was doing. Mike watched it wrap around the woman’s throat and squeeze.