Midnight Bites (The Morganville Vampires)(2)

At the door, my mother stopped me and put her hands on my shoulders. I looked up at her and saw something in her lined, hard face that puzzled me. It was a kind of fear, and . . . sadness. She pulled me into her arms and gave me a hard, uncomfortable hug, all bones and muscle, and then shoved me back to arm’s length. “Do as you’re told, boy,” she said, and then pushed me out into the weak, gray predawn light, toward a tall figure sitting on a huge dark horse.

The door slammed shut behind me, cutting off any possibility of escape, not that there was any refuge possible with my family. I stood silently, looking up, and up, at that hooded, heavily cloaked figure on the horse. There was a suggestion of a face in the shadows, but little else that I could make out. The horse snorted mist on the cold air and pawed the ground as if impatient to be gone.

“Your name,” the figure said. He had a deep, cultured voice, but something in it made me afraid. “Speak up, child.”

“Myrnin, sir.”

“An old name,” he said, and it seemed he liked that. “Climb up behind me. I don’t like being out in the sun.”

That seemed odd, because once the sun rose, the chill burned off; this was a fair season, little chance of snow. I noticed he had expensively tailored leather gloves on his hands, and his boots seemed heavy and thick beneath the long robes. I was conscious of my own poor cloth, the thin sandals that were the only footwear I owned. I wondered why someone like him would want someone like me—there were poor folk everywhere, and children were ten a spit for the taking. I stared at him for a long moment, not sure what to do. The horse, after all, was very tall, and I was not.

Also, the horse was eyeing me with a clear sense of dislike.

“Enough of that. Come on,” my new master snapped, and held out his gloved hand. I took it, trying not to tremble too much, and before I could even think, he’d pulled me straight up onto the back of that gigantic beast, into a thoroughly uncomfortable position behind him on the hard leather pad. I wrapped my arms around him, more out of sheer panic than trust, and he grunted and said, “Hold on, boy. We’ll be moving fast.”

I shut my eyes and pressed my face to his cloak as the horse lunged; the world spun and tilted and then began to speed by, too fast, too fast. My new master didn’t smell like anyone I’d ever known: no stench of old sweat, and only a light odor of mold to his clothes. Herbs. He smelled like sweet summer herbs.

I don’t know how long we rode—days, most certainly; I felt sick and light-headed most of the time. We did stop from time to time to allow me to choke down water or bites of bread and meat, or for the more necessary bodily functions . . . but my new lord ate little, and if he was subject to the needs of the body, I saw no sign of it.

He wore the cloak’s hood up, always. I got only the smallest glimpses of his face. He looked younger than I would have thought—only ten years older than me, if that. Odd, to be so young and rumored to have such knowledge.

I ached everywhere, in every muscle and bone, until it made me want to weep. I didn’t. I gritted my teeth and held on without a whimper as we rode, and rode, through misty cold mornings and chilly evenings and icy dark nights.

I had no eyes for the land around us, but even I could not mistake how it changed from the deep green forest to slowly rolling hills with spottings of trees and brush. I didn’t care for it, truth be told; it would be hard to hide out here.

On the morning when the fog lifted with the sun’s determined glare, my master drew rein and stopped us on a hilltop. Below was a valley, neatly sectioned into fields. Up the rise of the next hill sprawled an enormous dark castle, four square corners and jutting towers. It was the biggest thing I had ever seen. You could have put ten of my small villages inside the walls, and still had room for guests.

I must have made some sound of amazement, because my master turned his head and looked back at me, and for a moment, just a moment, I thought that the sunrise turned his eyes to a fierce hot red. Then it was gone, in a flash.

“It’s not so bad,” he said. “I hear you have a quick mind. We’ll have much to learn together, Myrnin.”

I was too sore and exhausted to even try to make a run for it, and he didn’t give me time to try; he spurred his horse on, down into the valley, and in an hour we were up the next hill, riding a winding, narrow road to the castle.

So began my apprenticeship to Gwion, lord of the place in which I was taken to learn my trade of alchemy, and wizardry, and what men today would call science. Gwion, you will not be surprised to hear, was no man at all, but a vampire, one older than any others alive at that time. His age surpassed even that of Bishop, who ruled the vampires in France with an iron hand until his daughter, Amelie, cleverly upended his rule.

But those are tales for another day, and enough of this gazing into the mirror.

I am Myrnin, son of a madman, apprentice to Gwion, and master of nothing.

And content I am to be that.





NOTHING LIKE AN ANGEL




Dedicated to Teri Keas for her support for the Morganville digital series Kickstarter

This is the first of our original short stories in this collection, and again . . . it’s a tale of Myrnin and his struggle to be the man (or vampire) that he wishes to be. It’s also a story of his first encounter(s) with the lady we come to know (in Bitter Blood and later books) as Jesse, the red-haired bartender, whose history is intertwined with both Myrnin’s and Amelie’s back in the mists of time. Though Lady Grey has her own story, and maybe sometime I’ll get around to telling that, too.