William (2 page)

Whenever the Hell that would be.

I could have slept in my own bed back at my
mother’s home, but instead I set off for Greenwich. Though I was
stuck in that awful place between tired, drunk and hungover, the
rooftop conversation was tumbling fitfully around in my skull, and
I hoped the long walk would clear my head.

Jeremy was right that my world had been
turned upside-down. It wasn’t as if I never thought about what it’d
be like if I hadn’t passed out under that damn hedge. But it wasn’t
his fault. I didn’t blame him, or anyone else. I didn’t blame the
wine we drank that night, or the wretches who joined our revelry
and turned it into idiotic mischief. I didn’t blame whichever drunk
among us had led us to the judge's rose garden, nor care who in
particular had taken it upon himself to smash that parlor
window.

I didn’t blame the night watch, though they
were the ones to drag me out from under the hedge, beat me to pulp
and shackle me under the courthouse. Bastards, the lot of them, but
they weren’t to blame for my circumstances now.

I didn’t blame the judge who found me guilty
of public intoxication, breaking and entering, trespassing,
vandalism, and attempted burglary. A mockery of justice, to be
sure, but I would have rotted in prison if he hadn’t commuted my
sentence to a five-year apprenticeship. And so I certainly couldn’t
blame him for placing me under the guardianship of Doctor Silas
Merrick, an apothecary and healer of great renown who treated
villagers from his cottage in the dark woodlands two days north of
the city.

And I didn’t blame Silas Merrick. No.

It wasn’t Merrick's fault he was good and
beautiful.

It wasn’t his fault I had fallen in love with
him.

In fact—in fact!—it wasn’t his fault he was a
vampire.

It had been many weeks since I'd enjoyed the
walk to the pastoral tranquility of Greenwich where Merrick had
taken up residence last fall. After all, he was never there
anymore. And since he’d made himself scarce, the half-hour journey
had become my time to dwell on the recent past.

Sometimes it seemed like only yesterday that
I’d tumbled out of the constable's carriage and landed in the mud
at Silas Merrick's feet, and other times it seemed like an eternity
had passed since then. How frightful he had looked, covered from
head to toe in that dark hooded robe! I had been told he was
elderly and somewhat reclusive, not that he disguised himself as a
damned wraith. Even my captors were spooked by the grim figure
standing in the shadows, a flickering lantern in his hand and a
black mare looming behind him. I was chilled to the bone when they
left me there. The path to his cottage may as well have been a
passage to the underworld.

But my apprehensions unraveled soon enough.
Master Merrick, though he exuded a quiet authority, was nothing
less than cordial. From that first night, he treated me with simple
respect, bidding me to take a bath before I stepped into his stone
cottage. Looking back I could almost feel the cozy warmth of the
plank shed, the washtub steaming on a little stone hearth; I could
still smell the mingled fragrances of various herbs that hung in
bundles from the walls and ceiling, of the soft soap infused with
honey and pine. My senses were seduced.

God help me, I nearly lost my mind in that
damned cottage. The man aroused unsettling feelings from the very
first night, even though for weeks I never glimpsed his face or
figure, even though he professed to be an elderly man. Despite all
that, despite his stoic solemnity, I was drawn to him like a fish
on a line, and was lost every time he laid a gentle hand upon me.
Oh, the confusion. I still cringed with remembered despair at the
times my body had betrayed me before his eyes.

But that was then. And as for now—damn it
all, when would he return? And when would the deed be done? Enough
waiting! The decision had been made so long, so
long
ago.
Why did he insist on dragging it out? Why not be done with it, and
let me move on from the life I’d all but left behind already?
Christ, let it be done!

I sighed heavily, looking down to watch my
own boots travel over the damp, packed earth of Greenwich Road.
Merrick's understated home was in view at last, a wooden farm house
in the clean Dutch style set back in a green pasture. The land was
flush with beech and mayapple trees, their leaves eerily still on
this damp and 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 chest and throw itself at his feet.

The heavy drapes were drawn in the parlor,
blocking out the morning light, and a lone candle flickered on one
of the side tables. It did little to illuminate the tall figure
standing near the cold fireplace with one gloved hand on the
mantle. Only his black hair picked up a shimmer of light, leaving
the rest in shadow.

I stood in the doorway, and so help me, I
felt goose pimples rise all over my limbs. My thoughts were a
hectic mix of giddiness, longing, and—somewhere way in the back—a
hint of dread. "Merrick," I said, and cursed myself for managing to
betray every one of those feelings in two syllables. Damn it all,
why could
I
not be mysterious for once?

"Good morning, William."

The sound of my name on his lips made my soul
bloom as a matter of reflex, but I couldn’t ignore the fact that
his velvety voice now held a weary hush. My eyes wandered intently
over his broad shoulders, following the length of his right arm
along the mantle, making out the shape of his gloved fingers
against the faintly gleaming wood. "Good morning."

"Please sit down."

I did as I was asked, reaching to light the
lamp beside my chair. Despite how badly I’d longed for his return,
a worried knot formed quickly in my stomach. There was no way to
read his stillness, his silence—what he had returned to say, or do.
I knew only that he was still braced against the inevitable, for he
had come to see me in the morning, the time when vampires lost
their thirst.

Several moments passed as I waited for
Merrick to turn, but the stillness, the silence, stretched on. It
swelled in the room like a raindrop on a windowpane, poised to
streak down the glass.

At last, he spoke. "Have you changed your
mind?"

The question threw me, and I frowned.

Change my mind? Did he really think that
possible? Surely he did not expect me to lift my shoulders and say,
Well, now that you mention it, I think I would rather you just
go and set yourself on fire. And don’t worry about Theo, I’m sure
he’ll let the whole thing go.
Change my mind, indeed.

Without realizing it, I had buried my face in
my hand instead of answering. Now he turned to me at last, and I
straightened in alarm.

Merrick was not an old man by the looks of
him. Yes, he was old, two-and-a-half centuries old. But he had not
aged since his early twenties, when he himself had been turned. And
his face, Lord Almighty! He was handsome as the Devil, a
mesmerizing portrait of masculine beauty, with straight, noble
features and penetrating amber eyes that shined beautifully in the
light. Only in darkness did they reveal their true incandescence, a
subtle yet unmistakable glow, as though they were lit from
somewhere deep within.

Those eyes burned into mine now, but there
were dark shadows beneath them, and Merrick's handsome face was
tired and drawn. I had only seen him look that way when he had gone
days without drinking. Thirst aged him, sprinkling fine lines at
the corners of his eyes and dulling the luster of his skin.

"Have you not been drinking?" I asked, more
sharply than I intended.

"Have you changed your mind, William?"

So he really expected an answer, did he? I
rubbed my eyes, suddenly feeling very tired. "No," I said plainly.
"And I don't know what you mean by asking." That sounded rather
irritable, and I rose to my feet with a sigh. "Merrick, I hope you
mean to stay."

"I'm afraid I cannot."

“You cannot,” I repeated blankly, and a flash
of frustration caught me off guard. I looked away. The long hours
and drinking had done me no favors; my feelings were all
higgledy-piggledy, and his unwelcome response caused a foreboding
tingling in my eyes.

"I must return to the cottage for a
time."

"To the cottage?" I frowned in confusion, for
I had assumed that was where he'd just come from. "But where have
you been?"

"There was a typhoid outbreak in Brooklyn.
I’ve been treating the people there."

"Oh." He might have told me. "I am...sorry to
hear that." Was that what I was supposed to say?

Merrick acknowledged this with a nod, his
gaze resting idly on the table near my hip.

I was poised to ask what business he must
attend to in the cottage, but then, to Hell with it. I didn't give
a damn. Without a word I rose and crossed the room, ignoring the
way he tensed and recoiled as I embraced him and buried my face in
his shoulder. When his hands closed on my shoulders to push me
away, I locked my arms stubbornly around his waist.

"William, please," he spoke in a rush, but I
felt his grip loosen for a moment as though he would return my
embrace. Then he turned his face into my hair, and I thought,
Dammit, I'm ready! I'm ready, I'm ready, so do it, for the love
of God—dip your head, put your lips on my neck and do it!

"Merrick, I beg you," I moaned, raising my
head and stretching up to press my cheek against his, the better to
tempt him with my throat. I could feel my heart pounding between
us—surely so could he! Did he not crave the blood now racing
through my veins? I pressed the length of my body against him as
though I could prevent him from escaping, trapping my own arms
between the small of his back and the wall beside the
fireplace.

For one brief moment, Merrick lowered his
chin, and I felt his breath below my ear like a phantom promise.
But then he took my head in his hands and firmly pulled my face up
to his.