Household (17 page)

She could see so well! She could see the churchyard and every separate leaf that clung to the branches of the hemlock trees. Looking down, she found a spider in the center of its web. She could hear its minute movements as it digested the moth it had just caught. Now that she was listening, there were so many strange sounds, but she knew them! She could identify the twitter of the bats and the sleepy murmur of the hedgehog as it lay in its burrow under her feet. She could hear the rougher grumble of a badger and the velvety flutter which were the wings of an owl flying overhead. Useless, useless, useless to cling to the notion that she was dreaming!

“Useless,” he agreed.

He was standing beside her but she had not heard him come, she who had heard so much.

“You must learn to deal with sounds, the new sounds. You must choose what you will and what you will not hear. But you will always be able to hear
them
, no matter how lightly they tread. You will always know what they are thinking. Only when you sleep, will you not know... and then will you be vulnerable to them.”

“Them?” she asked and knew the answer, but did not want to know it.

“Mortals,” he said brutally, because he knew she knew.

She wrung her hands, “Why... why did you do this to me?”

“Because I love you. It is not given us to love often. I knew I should love you when first your brother mentioned your name. I could see you, even as he spoke. You’ll be able to do the same with your lovers.”

“I do not want lovers,” she cried. “I want to be married and to have children and live in the sun!”

“Marriage is not for us, and the sun would be your true death,” he said reasonably and coldly.

“I know,” she said reluctantly. More was coming to her, flowing into her mind, even as he said it must. But not everything, not yet. “Why did Colin bring you to our home?”

“It was so ordained.”

“Ordained? How could that be?”

“Because you were cradled in evil, my dear child, cradled and cursed—the lot of you. Why do you suppose that hag of a banshee and her cat have the run of the Hold?”

“Because...” Juliet hesitated and then pressed her hands against her ears, but could not stop the knowledge from pouring into them, the fearful knowledge which flooded through her so that she knew what he knew. She knew everything. It battered against her brain.

She huddled down on the tombstone, putting her hands against her tearless eyes. “I want my family... I want to be with them, live with them... I want Colin!”

“Whom you loved too much,” he accused.

“Tis not true!” she cried. “He was my friend.” She finally looked up at him and saw his disbelieving smile. “I do not care what you think. It is true. Oh, he will miss me.”

“They will all miss you and then they’ll forget you, as I have been forgotten. I have not seen my family for a hundred years.”

“I cannot imagine they’d feel the poorer for that,” she said with a flash of her former spirit.

He glared at her. “You’ll do well not to alienate me,” he growled. “I can teach you much.”

“Your knowledge is already mine,” she retorted. “I do not want it. I will not be as you, frequenting the Green Dragon, awaiting the hapless traveler who strays off his path.”

“Those who come there...”

“Have not strayed but are guided,” she finished, with a shudder. “Is there so much evil in the world?”

“Is there not?” He moved to her. “You’ve absorbed much and quickly, my dearest. I knew ‘twould be so, but still you need me.”

“I neither need nor want you. I will not be as you. Tomorrow when the sun rises, I will be waiting.”

His laughter was ugly. “So be it, little Juliet. Yet it may be that you will change your mind.”

“Never,” she moaned. “I love the sun.”

“And do you not love the moon?” He pointed.

She would not look at it. “The moon is cold and... and dead, forever and ever, wandering through space and lost, lost as I am lost.”

“Without the moon, the seas would not roll. Without the moon... but ’tis early to convince you, my love.”

“I am not your love!” she cried.

“You are my love, while your blood warms my veins.”

“My blood!” She glared into his handsome, evil face. “Oh, you are cruel. I am... I
was
only seventeen. Could you not have let me live a little longer?”

“I have given you eternal life,” he said softly. “The stones of your castle will crumble. Those you loved will be dust in their tombs, but you will not die, not if you are careful.”

“I will, I will...” she sobbed. “I will die at dawning.”

“Your misery will pass,” he said calmly. “Mine did.”

“You...” She stared at him and speaking out of her new knowledge said, “You rejoiced in this life from the very first. You wanted it, sought it and were rewarded accordingly.” His dark eyes glowed red. “I cannot deny it. And you will learn to rejoice in it yourself. You will come to me and beg me to help you. Tomorrow night, I will stand outside the crypt and you will drink with me.”

“I shan’t! Go away, go away,” she moaned. “I will stay here and await the sunrise!”

His laughter echoed in her ears and then he was gone. She sat on the tomb, clutching her knees and staring up at the star-filled sky and at the moon. It was a beautiful night. The stars seemed so close. They were round, too. Billions of little moons clustering around the half-dark planet. She found suddenly that she loved the moon. She had never realized that in its way it was as wonderful as the sun.

She lifted her head. She heard footsteps. She turned, and though the churchyard was hedged, she could see through the greenery, see the man quite clearly, a drunk lurching home after a night at some tavern, his blood blending with his drink. She moved her tongue and felt them to see if they were there. They were—her sharp little fangs, sharp and retractable. They could not always be seen, she knew. Meanwhile, he was walking—walking away from her? He must not walk away. She leaped to her feet. A hunger she had never known before, a hunger that consumed her, was activating her. He could not get away, must not, must not. She streaked across the grass, easily evading the tombstones. The hedge presented no barrier; as she had managed the crack in the door, so she managed the hedge and emerged a few paces behind him. She stepped to his side.

He stared at her blearily, blinked and grinned. “Good evenin’, little lady. Where you goin’ this hour of the night?”

“Walking,” she said.

“Walking, is it? Yer a pretty piece. Walk a bit o’ the way wi’ me.”

“I will.” She could hardly speak for the desire mounting in her. But how could she approach him? How might she sip the wine that was sweeter and headier than anything she had ever drunk? He would have to stand still. How could she force him to stand still? She wrung her little hands while he went on walking and grinning at her. Then, of a sudden, he grabbed her, holding her tightly and pushing her down on the grass. His loose mouth was upon her mouth, and she knew what to do.

Yet even as the first swallow warmed her body, she shuddered and fled, sobbing, sobbing, back to the crypt, slipping inside, rushing to her coffin and flinging herself down on the hard padding. “Oh, what have I done?” she moaned.

“Nothing well,” observed a hateful voice beside her. “But you’ll learn. Where there’s a will, there’s a way.”

❖

Two nights after his mother’s funeral, Colin tossed and groaned in his sleep, finally blinking himself awake. Another vivid dream of Juliet had troubled him. He did not want to dream of her; it had been a year since her inexplicable death, and his grief should have been assuaged by now. He doubted that it ever would be. Each time he returned to the Hold, he could see her in his mind’s eye, running down the stairs to greet him, her beautiful eyes beaming with love for him.

Tonight she would have wanted to be with him, sleeping on the far side of the bed because she would need comforting in her grief. Still, one could not really grieve deeply for their poor mother, who had finally, gratefully breathed her last in her husband’s arms. His father, however, had seemed extremely stricken, considering how much he had avoided her in the latter years. He had wept as much over his late wife as he had over Juliet, but Molly had been surprisingly silent as well as Grimalkin, too. However, now Colin could hear them both. He shuddered wondering what more could come to afflict them?

Unwillingly, he recalled the grief in Molly’s tones on the night Kathleen’s son Mark was born. The household had feared for mother and child, but it was Juliet who died, so strangely, looking so pale and drained—and the doctor talking of anemia and dubbing it an odd but not entirely unusual occurrence. He had mentioned it again when attending his mother in her final moments. There had been other similar cases in the community, though none so severe as that which had killed Juliet. Only one had died in the last year, a young woman named Ruth Ellersbee, who sang in the church choir. She had succumbed some six months after Juliet’s passing.

Colin groaned and stared into the darkness. “Juliet,” he whispered. “My dearest, dearest Juliet...”

“Oh, Colin,” she said yearningly as she stepped to the foot of the bed. “I didn’t mean for you to see me. I shouldn’t have come. He said I shouldn’t, but I have missed you so dreadfully.”

Colin closed his eyes and opened them again, seeing her still standing at the foot of the bed, bathed in moonlight. She was looking at him with that same pleading expression he had been wont to see on her face when she begged him to let her remain with him through the night.

“I’m dreaming,” he said uncertainly.

“I said the same thing once, my dearest, but you’re not and I...” She sighed. “I wasn’t either.”

“Are you afraid of me? If you’re afraid, I’ll go at once. I expect I’d be afraid of you if... No, I wouldn’t. I could never be afraid of you, Colin. And as for me, I won’t harm you. I promise you that. I really haven’t harmed anyone, not so they’d die of it. I take very small sips. He laughs at me for it, but life is so beautiful. I don’t want to deprive anyone of it or of the sun, though I have found I can make do quite well with moonlight.”

He listened without comprehension, hearing only her voice yet seeing
her—Juliet
! “It is you,” he whispered. “Oh, my dearest, darling, I thought you were dead.”

“Well, Colin, my dear,” she said reluctantly, “I am, after a fashion.”

“You... you seem mighty solid for a ghost.”

“A ghost? Well, I am not precisely a ghost. Mama’s not either. I thought she might remain at the Hold, but she’s gone. I’m glad of that. She was so unhappy. And I am sure she’d not have enjoyed the company in the churchyard. Tale the Crusader... but I do not want to talk about him, though it is odd to see him looking so very respectable, his effigy, I mean, lying on top of his tomb with his wife at his side. She looks even more respectable. I don’t like her at all, though I expect we ought to be more in sympathy. But she does speak the most peculiar English. It is very difficult to understand her, and you’d not believe her French. And...”

“Juliet,” he interrupted impatiently, “you are babbling.”

“Oh,” she said, “how lovely to have you scold me.”

“I don’t mean to scold you,” he said in stricken tones. “Oh, Juliet, what happened to you?”

“I expect you need an explanation.” She sounded equally stricken. “I wish you could guess. I really hate to say it, even though he tells me I ought to be used to it by now. Oh, I do hate him, and he’d be furious if he knew I’d come here.”

“He? Who is
be?
”

“Sir Simeon Weir,” she said ruefully.

“Sir Simeon Weir! What had he to do with you?”

Slowly, reluctantly, she told him.

He listened quietly and without comment, managing to quell the rage that boiled inside of him. Yet, when she finished, she gazed at him wide-eyed, saying, “No, you mustn’t, dearest. You’d be powerless against him.”

He made no attempt to deny her unspoken accusation. “
He
is powerless after sunrise,” he said through gritted teeth, “and then he must seek his grave. Does he lie in Scotland?”

“No,” she said. “He needs only a stone, a stone as small as a pebble to put into his coffin.”

“A stone? A pebble?”

“Something from the plot of earth where he first lay, and with it he may rest in any graveyard, any crypt, any coffin. But I do not know where he has chosen to lie.”

“You’re not telling me the truth,” he accused.

“Nor will I!”

“You’d protect him!”

“Colin,” she said, shooting him a stricken look, “I am protecting
you!
He’d know if I told you and would seek you out. And before you had a chance... Oh, if I had not been so weak to come here, weak to cower away from the sun, which would destroy me. But I am not weak enough to reveal his hiding place. He’d only have to look at me to guess what I’d done. Just as I only have to look at you to know your intent.”

“I beg you,” he began. “Juliet...”

“And I beg you,” she interrupted. “Oh, ’twas wrong for me to come, but I do love you so much—too much, I fear. I would not believe it when he told me that it was so. Perhaps it is more of the evil, for we are accursed, Colin, all of us, and that will make us weak and make you vulnerable in the face of those who’ll not rest until we are sent forth from here—from the Hold.”

He listened unsurprised. It seemed to him that he had always known all she was telling him, and it was knowledge that held no terrors for him, he who loved her as she loved him.

“Why would he know?” Colin demanded.

“We are bonded,” she explained. “By blood. While one drop of my blood remains in his veins, he will know. Just as I know about him and the green...”

“The green?” Colin questioned.

“Nothing. Oh, I must go. I’ve said too much and I must go.” She moved toward the window. “It is late and I must go.”

“Not yet, my dearest, not yet,” he protested.

“I must.” She looked at him out of anguished eyes. “It grows late and I... I am thirsty. If I were to remain I might... It is a terrible thirst, Colin, a terrible, terrible thirst. I feel it come over me and when it does, I am not myself. I am its possession, its slave, and I cannot fight it. I must drink.”