Midnight Bites (The Morganville Vampires)(10)

“That’s the first you’ve spoken,” she said. “You’re getting better.”

Was he? He still felt hollow as a bell inside, and yet full of darkness. At least there were words in him now. Yes. That was true.

“You will remember this place,” she said. “Come. It looks worse than it is.”

She must have paid the driver off, or bewitched him, because the coach thundered off in a cloud of dust and left them in the moonlight beside what seemed a deserted pile of tumbledown walls . . . and then he blinked, and the ruins wavered like the shimmer of heat over sand, and rebuilt into what the keep would have been, in its prime. Small but solid.

And he did know it. He’d visited it often in his dreams, trapped in Cyprien’s cells.

“I remember,” he said. “I had a bath.”

“And you’ll have another, for all our sakes,” Lady Grey said, and linked her arm in his. “Can you walk?”

“Yes,” he said. His voice sounded rusty and uncertain, but his will was strong, and he put one clumsy foot before another as she walked him forward. The gate opened as they approached, and servants bowed them in.

One of them, a tall, lean man, approached and said, “Shall I take him and see him presentable, my lady?”

Myrnin shrank back. He couldn’t help it. The man wasn’t Cyprien, but he seemed to be, in that moment, and he clung to Lady Grey’s arm like a fearful child. She understood, he thought, for without a flicker, she said, “No, I will attend Lord Myrnin for a while. Draw a bath, as hot as can be done. He’ll need a long soaking. Fetch him clothes, too.”

The servant—vampire, not human, Myrnin realized—drew away and went to do her bidding. Lady Grey walked him into the dark hallways, and for some ill reason Myrnin felt safer in the gloom than he had in the light. He’d adapted to the shadows, he thought. So many years in the dark, it had seeped into him and stained him.

“This happened before,” he said to her, as they walked. “Didn’t it?” Things blurred when he tried to focus on them. Everything blurred and shook, except for her. She was a still, steady, glowing constant, and he kept his gaze on her.

“You were imprisoned before, yes, but not so unkindly as this time. But you are improving already,” she said, and smiled. In the darkness, it was as if the sun had come out, but it was a kinder sun, one that warmed instead of burned. “I’ve been searching for you for almost ten years, when word came that you’d gone missing. How did this happen to you?”

“I trusted.”

“The man I killed?”

Myrnin nodded. Just the thought of Cyprien, the impartial, cool interest in the man’s face, made him shiver again. He’d known cruel men before; Amelie’s father, Bishop, had been one such, with no regard for the living or the vampires who came after them. Death had been just another tool to him.

Cyprien hadn’t given him the kindness of death.

“He was my friend,” Myrnin whispered, and tears welled up in his eyes, and rolled down his face in a cold trickle. “My fellow seeker.”

“Then I should have killed him much more slowly than I did. If I’d known . . . well. Done’s done. Now, come and sit awhile until your bath is hot.”

She sat him on some impossibly soft cushions, and he leaned his head against the pillows and slept a little, or at least thought he did, until her soft, strong hands roused him and moved him to his feet. He thought it was a dream. It seemed a dream, a sweet one, with the smell of roses in the air and the air skin-warm and damp, and her hands stripping away the layers of things he’d worn for so long.

Someone—Lady Grey, he realized—helped him into the feverish heat of the bath, and bathed him like a child. This wasn’t like the last time, when he’d had enough of his wits to be ashamed for his lack of dignity and modesty; he’d left all that behind. Madness had stripped him far more naked. He sat passively while she scrubbed him, back and front, and poured slow torrents of soapy water over his head to clean it, too.

It was all done in strangely comfortable silence, until she finally said, “Well, I think you look more yourself now, Lord Myrnin.” The water had gone cold, and it was black with grime. “Stand up.” He obeyed her, not thinking of anything really, and flinched only a little when she poured buckets of more hot water over him to sluice away the lingering filth.

Then he stepped out onto the warm stone floor, blinked down at himself, and realized for the first time that he truly was nude as the day he’d been born, and Lady Grey, fully dressed, was standing in front of him with an upraised bath sheet.

Her gaze was level and calm, and she smiled a little. “Oh, don’t be ashamed. I wasn’t the Virgin Queen, by any stretch.”

He grabbed for the bath sheet, almost overbalanced, and she had to help him wrap it around his body. Of a sudden, his knees went weak, and he sagged in her arms. She carried him to a low couch and draped him in another layer of warmth, combing his damp curls from his face so that he could see her as she bent closer.

“Poor dear man,” she whispered, and her eyes were so warm, so gentle. He could see the girl she’d once been, before kings and fear and death. “What was done to you, down there in the dark?”

“Terrible things,” he whispered back, and tears blurred the sight of her. His voice trembled uncontrollably. “Terrible things. But they’re done now. Why do you bother? Why save me? I’m nothing. I’m a fool and I’m broken!” His voice rose on that last, raw and savage, and he hated himself for it all, for his foolish trust, his weakness, his madness, his continuing and pointless existence.