Between the Marshal & the Vampire(48)

"Did you truly? What kind of life will this be? Do you intend to make your home with me in Shadow Valley Territory? Live amongst the vampires, knowing that they'll follow your every move obsessively because they hunger to drink your blood? Or will we live here, where your presence by my side makes you just as guilty for every vampire crime committed in Mountain Sky? Either option, Mariel, promises death."

"Lots of things promise death," she told him evenly. "But not so many things promise happiness. Or pleasure. Those things are rarer. We came for those."

"Sentimental fools," he muttered, but his voice lacked rancor. The stiff line of his shoulders visibly softened.

Sensing that Vellum had given up attempting to drive them off, Mariel reached for Clay's hand and held it.

"Would you like to hear about the very first time that Clay attempted to help me pick out a dress?" Her voice held laughter as she recalled the memory. Beside her, Clay muttered beneath his breath.

Black vampire eyes lifted to her, glanced at their linked hands, then rose again to her face. Vellum slowly grinned.

"It sounds amusing at the expense of our dear Marshal. I would love to hear every detail."

Clay sighed. "Of course you would."

So Mariel related a story from a life they would never know as a trio, and if Vellum was jealous, nothing in his handsome, smiling face revealed it.

"I may have looked like a buffoon," Clay said when she finished, "but I reckon I did as well as any man could have under the circumstances."

Vellum seemed intrigued by that. "You believe men have no business knowing about women's fashions?"

"How could I have?"

"You've had previous lovers. A mother. Perhaps a sister? Your ignorance is your own."

Mariel hid a smile behind her hand as Clay made a sound indicating his annoyance.

"And what do you know about women's fashions?" he challenged the vampire.

Vellum shrugged casually. "I know that the thickest fabric is the most tiresome to wash but will endure the longest. I know that the wrong color gingham can make a woman too pale, and that smaller flower patterns are more flattering than larger ones. I know that lace is beautiful but can chafe against bare skin. I know that too many buttons can make a man go mad."

He said the last with a faraway look, as though he were remembering that effort.

"Were you ever married, Vellum?" Mariel asked gently.

His gaze cleared. "No, Mariel. But I have been in love."

Clay's hand tightened around hers. "What happened to her?"

Vellum sighed, as if weary. "She hung herself when she learned what I had become. She understood, even if you can't, that life with a vampire is impossible."

~~~~~

On they rode, the mountain grew ever nearer, like foreboding rising up to greet them. Mariel much preferred the sight of Scar Tooth during the day, in the hour or so before she fell asleep. At any other time the mountain was colored by sunset and appeared to drip with blood. Or else it hunched as it did now, black and malevolent-looking.

She found her appetite waning as they traveled. Clay hadn't been able to locate saberwolves this close to the mountain and had switched to hunting down the rock goats whose meat was gamey and chewy. Mariel tossed her half-eaten piece in the fire. Then, after checking that Clay was busy tending to their horses, she set off to find their wayward companion.

Mariel spotted Vellum about twenty yards out from camp, staring at Scar Tooth as though facing off against an opponent. They would reach the mountain in another day or so, and she could tell that she wasn’t the only one nervous about that fact.

Ahead lay only danger. Mariel understood that Vellum needed vengeance, but it scared her that this was the only way the vampire felt he could find it. The creature who had turned Vellum into a vampire was older than he was and likely more experienced. Did Vellum plan to set a trap for him? Was Vellum a skillful fighter? Did vampires even fight as humans did? She was afraid to ask him any details in case the answers were ones she couldn't live with.

"Mariel."

She wasn't surprised that he'd heard her approach. He had excellent hearing, something she and Clay had learned to their chagrin and occasionally still forgot. Fortunately the only times Vellum had caught them talking about him were when they were discussing being intimate with him, in which case the outcome was always positive.

"I don't want to bother you if you'd prefer to be alone," Mariel said as she drew abreast of him.

"No one ever prefers to be alone, Mariel."

Vellum was smiling faintly. The moonlight adored him and Mariel could sympathize. His elegance, so striking in the rough and tumble territories, compelled the eye to devour him. But Vellum was no pretty dandy. There was a hardness to him, an alienness that stiffened your spine when you first came upon him. Mariel had once been intimidated by it. Now, she was only aroused by it. Fascinated by it.

However, had she met him as a human she would have loved him even then. Maybe moreso, because that faint air of melancholy that she sometimes sensed from him would have been absent.

"We don't have to go on," she blurted. She winced and checked his reaction, but he didn't appear to be angry.

"You don't," he said calmly, "but I do. It's the only thing I can do."

"Wrong. You can stay here with Clay and me. We'll turn our back on the mountain and never look at it or think of it again."