Perfect Shadows

chapter 27

My face wet with tears, I gently laid Richard’s bandaged body on the bed that Sylvana had made for him, knowing that there was no hope that the boy would recover from this ordeal. If only we had known where he was, that it was Cecil and not Percy who was holding the boy, we could have saved precious days, and probably his life. If he had been my lover, or Rózsa’s, there would have been a bond that would have led us to him, but there was nothing. He had been racked at whiles, and the bones in his hands and feet had been broken, splinters protruding through the mortifying flesh. I was surprised to see Richard’s eyes fixed on me: I had not expected the boy to regain consciousness.

“Kit,” he whispered, using my fond name for the first time, “I am afraid to die, but I don’t want to live a cripple. Help me, Kit, please, help me.” I looked at him, startled, to see if he knew what he was asking. Richard gave an almost imperceptible nod and closed his eyes.

“It may not work, Richard. It doesn’t always, and we may not have the time. . . .”

“Please, Kit,” he repeated, and I gathered the broken body into my arms, pressing my mouth to the rapid and thready pulse in the throat. Richard relaxed as the pleasure welled in him, drowning the pain that had been his world for far too long; I thought with regret of the love and joy that might have been ours had he not been so needlessly afraid. I called him softly, rousing him from his thoughts. I used my sharp canine teeth to open the throbbing vein in my wrist. Like a woman feeding a child, I held the bleeding wound to Richard’s fevered lips and bade him drink. Eyes closed, he kissed the wound, then his lips parted, and he drew my dark, bittersweet blood into his mouth, and I trembled against him with the intimacy of the act. Soon he fell back, his pain much lessened, and he slept. I roused myself and wrapped a kerchief around my wrist.

Geoffrey was waiting for me when I returned to Chelsey after my visit to Cecil the following evening. Wordlessly he followed me to Richard’s room. After I had taken away his pain the night before, Sylvana had set the bones in the boy’s hands and feet, and he was resting easier for it, though he had been much disturbed by the knowledge that he had broken under the torture, fearful of what he may have let slip about vampires, and about the nature of his own family. It was this that had prompted my visit to Cecil, and I had gone fully prepared to kill the twisted little man if it proved necessary, although given the inescapable repercussions of such an act, I was most relieved that it had not. I gingerly settled on the edge of Richard’s bed, conscious that even this slight shifting must hurt the torn places inside him, broken by the rack.

“Richard,” I said gently, “I have the transcript. Cecil said that there was nothing to concern you. Whatever you may have told them, this is what they heard.” Richard’s troubled gaze turned to comprehension and then to quiet laughter as it traveled down the page, which reported that his brother and sister wore wool, and recorded numerous apparent references to the seaweed samphire. It was concluded that the captive’s mind had broken, and it was anger at this failure of his art that prompted Deacon’s final vicious attack upon the prisoner.

“W-w-wearing w-w-wool! Oh, God, and samphire,” Richard’s stuttering laughter choked him, and I slipped an arm around his shoulders. Geoffrey caught the papers as they fluttered to the floor, and added his deep laugh to ours.

“The disbelief of the enlightened is always our greatest ally,” he rumbled, added that he would meet me downstairs later, and left. Richard raised a halting hand to my face, drawing me into a kiss. I found that the pulse in the slender throat was somewhat stronger, though still rapid and uneven. I left the lad sleeping after the exchange, and went to find Geoffrey.

I fumbled with the bandage at my wrist, and Geoffrey pushed my hand aside, to tie it securely himself. I thanked him, and settled into the chair before the fire. Eden rested on the floor between us, her head against Geoffrey’s knee, and he absently caressed her hair. After a few minutes she spoke, her words hardly more audible than the soft sound of the fire.

“He was always the favorite, the baby. I was five when he came, and I never looked at a doll after that. It was little short of a miracle that he was not spoiled, with all the attention that he got, especially after his noble father noticed him. The village boys were prepared to take him down if he started lording it, but he never did. Oh, he had his faults. He could be an intolerable prig sometimes, and unable to understand anyone not living up to his lofty ideals, as you know, my lord. Will he—survive?” She ended her ramble abruptly, turning to look first at Geoffrey then at me.

“We cannot know that, Eden,” Geoffrey answered gently, and she rose gracefully from the hearth. “I pray you join me later,” he added as she left the room, then turned his attention on me, studying my face for a few minutes before speaking again. “It is never an easy decision to make, Christopher, to make this exchange. He begged your help, and it is not within us to refuse such a plea. If he does not rise, you must take what comfort you can in the fact that you did all you could do,” he paused for a moment, then added softly, “but I think that he will.”