William Read Free

windless morning, and bearberries rambled all about
the fence, heavy with blood-red fruit.
    Taking the key from my breast pocket, I
entered the home and shuffled through the shadowy front hall,
peeking into each dark room as I made my way to the kitchen in the
back. Tired as I was, the damp heat had left me feeling smudged and
sour and I was desperate for a bath. In some ghostly half-awake
state I managed to pull the washtub to the pump and strip down for
a healthy scrub.
    Clean and half-dressed in buckskins and a
plain white shirt, I hauled myself wearily up the stairs to take a
rest. Unlike Merrick I didn’t need to keep the heavy shades drawn
against the daylight, but I’d done so anyway in the weeks since
he’d made himself scarce. The dark was a simple comfort to me now
as I slept the mornings away, sadder and more sluggish with each
passing day.
    The matter was as simple as this: Merrick was
a vampire whose will to live had faded, and there was but one way
to keep him from wasting away. According to the strange laws of his
strange nature, the only way to revive his tired spirit was to
select a human to make into his vampire companion.
    I was that human. To his dismay.
    The sticky part of the whole affair was that
Merrick did not want to turn me into a vampire. Oh, he had
entertained the thought, had flirted with the prospect quite
extensively. But when it came down to it, Merrick had a crisis of
conscience and sent me away. And not only did he send me away, but!
To preclude himself from crumbling under the temptation to take me
for his own, the lunatic made plans to destroy himself. There was a
method to the madness, admittedly, for once Merrick the Vampire
chose me as his mate, there was no other way that Merrick the
Kindly Apothecary could be sure he’d not see the thing through. And
he was so determined not to rob me of my humanity, or what have
you, that he was prepared to immolate himself.
    But that option had been taken from him
swiftly. Shortly after he sent me back to the city, I was rudely
approached by one Theodore Verlaine, a sly and determined French
vampire who professed to be Merrick’s oldest, dearest, and only
friend. I had not yet witnessed a moment of mutual affection
between them, but there was no doubting Theo's determination to
keep Merrick alive. He was the one who revealed Merrick’s plans for
self-destruction and explained to me that turning me was the only
way around it. And when, in terror for Merrick’s life, I argued for
my own sacrifice, Theo stepped over Merrick’s objections to make an
inspired vow: if Merrick destroyed himself, Theo would hunt me down
kill me.
    And just like that, to Merrick’s dismay, we
had trapped him. We two selfish children had defied his wishes,
which were noble, I knew, and deeply felt. We had forced him to
commit an act he considered despicable, forced him to take my human
life and remake me as a creature in his own image, a predator, a
killer.
    I had done this to the man I so admired and
adored. And yes, I was terrified that he despised me for it, and
that this was the real reason for his lengthening absences—not
mercy, not reluctance, but resentment. Indeed, who was I to blame
Merrick for the mess our affair had become? Did I really expect him
to just hop to it after the way I’d forced my own will upon
him?
    Devil take it. One more blunder for me, the
eternal idiot. Christ, if Merrick went through with this I would literally be the eternal idiot. Perhaps that was the real
conundrum…
    I was just drifting off to sleep when I heard
the sound of hooves on the road outside, and a driver bidding his
horses to a stop. In an instant I was fully awake and stumbling
toward the window.
    From the idling coach outside the gate
stepped a man in black and gray, his head bowed low and his face
obscured by his broad black hat. His collar was turned up, his
hands gloved—not an inch of him bared to the sun.
    My heart, as always, was threatening to leap
from my