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.
He’d been in the dungeon a few months this time, or at least he thought he had; time was a fluid thing, twisting and flowing and splitting into rivulets that ran dry. It was also circular, he thought, like a snake eating its tail. He’d had a cloak brooch once in that shape, in shimmering brass, all its scales hammered out in exquisite detail. The cloak had been dark blue, a very becoming thing, thick wool, lined with fur. It had kept him alive, once upon a time, in a snowstorm. When he’d been alive.
That had been one of the many times he’d tried to run away from his master. Of course, his master hadn’t needed a cloak, or fur, or anything to cover him when he came looking. His master could run all day and night, could smell him on the wind and track him like a wolf running down a deer.
And then eat him. But only a little, a bite at a time. His master was merciful that way.
It was cold in the dungeon, he thought, but like his old master, he no longer bothered with the cold now. The damp, though . . . the damp did bother him. He didn’t like the feel of water on his skin.
He’d been here for too long this time, he thought; his clothes had mostly rotted away, and he could see his blindingly white skin peeping through rents and holes in what had once been fine linen and exotic velvet. No telling what color it had all been, when times were better . . . dark blue, like the cloak, perhaps. Or black. He liked blacks. His hair was dark, and his skin had once been a dusty tan, but the hair was a matted mess now, unrecognizable, and his skin was like moonlight with a coppery shimmer over the top. When he had enough to eat, it would darken again, but he’d been starving a long time. Rats didn’t help much, and he ached in his joints like an old, old man.
He didn’t really remember what he’d done to land here, again, in the dark, but he supposed it must have been something foolish, or egregious, or merely bad luck. It didn’t matter much. They knew what he was, and how to contain him. He was caged, like a rabbit in a hutch, and whether he would be meat for the table or fur to line some rich boy’s cloak, he had no choice but to wait and see.