Bone Crossed (Mercy Thompson #4)(65)
Author: Patricia Briggs

"Come," he said, and led the way back down the stairway.

"How is it that you can walk in the daylight?" I asked him. "I’ve never heard of a vampire who could run around during the day."

"You are what you eat," he said obscurely. "My maker used to say that. Mann ist was mann ist. She wouldn’t let me feed off drunkards or people who consumed tobacco." He laughed, and I wouldn’t let myself think of it as sinister. "Amber reminds me a bit of her… so concerned with nutrition. Neither of them was wrong. But my maker didn’t understand the full implications of what she said." He laughed again. "Until I consumed her."

The door to the room I’d awoken in was open. He stopped and turned off the light as we passed.

"Mustn’t waste electricity."

And then he opened another door to a much bigger room. A room of cages. It smelled like sewage, disease, and death. Most of the cages were empty. But there was a man curled naked in the floor of one of the cages.

"You see, Mercedes," he said, "you aren’t the first rare creature to be my guest. This is an oakman. I’ve had him for… How long have you belonged to me, Donnell Greenleaf?"

The fae stirred and raised his face off the cement floor. Once he must have been a formidable figure. Oakmen, I remembered from the old book I’d borrowed, were not tall, no more than four feet, but they were stout "as a good oaken table." This one was little more than skin and bones.

In a voice as dry as high summer in the Tri-Cities, he said, "Four-score years and a dozen and one. Two seasons more and eighteen days."

"Oakmen," said Blackwood smugly, "like the oaks they are named after, eat only the sunlight."

You are what you eat indeed.

"I’ve never tried to see if I could live on light," he said. "But he keeps me from burning, don’t you, Donnell Greenleaf?"

"It is my honor to bear that burden," said the fae in a hopeless voice, his face to the floor.

"So you kidnapped me so you could turn into a coyote?" I asked incredulously.

The vampire just smiled and escorted me to a largish cage, with a bed. There was also a bucket from which the odor of sewage was emanating. It smelled like Corban, Chad, and Amber.

"I can keep you alive for a long time," the vampire said. He grabbed me by the back of my neck and shoved my face against the cage while he stood behind me. "Maybe even all of your natural life. What?

No smart comment?"

He didn’t see the faint figure that stood before me with her finger over her pursed mouth. She looked as if she’d been somewhere between sixty and a hundred years old when she’d died – like Santa’s wife, she was all rounded and sweet. Quiet, that finger said. Or maybe, just –  Don’t let on you can see me.

Blackwood didn’t see her, even though he had been using the other ghost as an errand boy. I wondered what it meant. She smelled like blood, too.

He put me in the cage next to the one that he had been keeping Chad and Corban in. Presumably he didn’t need to confine Amber anymore. "This could have been so much more pleasant for you," he said.

The woman and her hushing finger were gone, so I gave my tongue free rein. "Tell that to Amber."

He smiled, showing fangs. "She enjoyed it. I’ll give you one last chance. Be cooperative, and I’ll let you stay in the other room."

Maybe I could get out through the roof of the other room. But somehow I didn’t think so. The cage in the Marrok’s house looks just like all the rest of the bedrooms. The bars are set behind the drywall.

I leaned against the far side of my cage, the one that backed up to the cement outer wall. "Tell me why you can’t just order me around? Make me cooperate?" Like Corban.

He shrugged. "You figure it out." He locked the door with a key and used the same key to open the oakman’s door.

The fae whimpered as he was dragged out of the cage. "I can’t feed from you every day, Mercy,"

Blackwood said. "Not if I want to keep you around. The last walker I had died fifty years ago – but I kept him for sixty-three years. I take care of what is mine."

Yeah, I bet Amber would agree with that one. Blackwood knelt on the floor where the oakman lay curled in a fetal position. The fae was staring at me with large black eyes. He didn’t fight when Blackwood – with a look meant for me – grabbed his leg and bit down on the artery in the fae’s groin to feed.

"The oak said," the fae said in English-accented Welsh, "Mercy would free me in the Harvest season."

I stared at him, and he smiled before the vampire did something painful to him and he closed his eyes to endure. If he’d understood Welsh, I was sure he’d have done something more extreme. How the oakman knew I’d understand him, I didn’t know.

There are two ways to free a prisoner – escape is the first. I had the feeling that the oakman was looking for the second. When he finished, the oakman was barely conscious, and Blackwood looked a dozen years younger. Vampires weren’t supposed to do that – but I didn’t know any vampires who fed from fae either. He picked up the oakman with no visible effort and tossed him over his shoulder. "Let’s get you a little sun, shall we?" Blackwood sounded cheery.

The door to the room closed behind him, and a woman’s trembly voice said, "It’s because you’re too much for him right now, dear. He did try to make you his servant… but your ties to the wolves and to that other vampire – and how did you manage that, clever girl?  –  have blocked him. It won’t be forever.

Eventually, he’ll exchange enough blood for you to be his – but not for a few months yet."

Mrs. Claus ghost stood in the cage with her back to me, looking at the door that had closed behind Blackwood.

"What does he want from me?" I asked her.

She turned and smiled at me. "Why, me, dear."

She had fangs.

"You’re a vampire," I said.

"I was," she agreed. "It isn’t the usual thing, I admit. Though that young man you met earlier is one as well. We’re tied to James. Both his. John was the only vampire James ever made – and I blush to admit that James is my fault."

"Your fault?"

"He was always so kind, so attentive. A nice young man, I thought. Then one night one of my other children showed me the murdhuacha James had captured – one of the merrow folk, dear." That faint accent was Cockney or Irish, I thought, but so faint I couldn’t be sure.

"Well," she said, sounding exasperated. "We just don’t do that, dear. First off – the fae aren’t a people to toy with. Secondly, whatever we exchange blood with could become vampire. When they’re magical folk, the results can be unpleasant." She shook her head. "Well, when I confronted him…" She looked down at herself ruefully. "He killed me. I haunted him, followed him from home all the way to here – which wasn’t the smartest idea I’ve ever had. When he took that other man, the one who was like you – well, then he saw me. And found he still had use for this old woman."