My Vampire Husband Wants to Bite Me Every Night novel · Chapter 2 of 24
Chapter 2: The Keep
Niall takes her into Dunmorrow out of the storm; she tests what he is, her nose bleeds and he flees the smell; at dawn he locks himself in the cellar as the factor's riders reach the gate.
"I am not your wife," I said.
My teeth chattered so hard it came out in three pieces.
"No," said the man in the road.
"Not yet."
He took the pony by the bridle, and the pony, which had screamed at him a moment ago, let him.
Far behind us the dog whistle blew again, closer.
"That will be Angus Gow," he said.
"You have a few minutes, Miss Munro, and a choice of two roads."
"What's the other road?"
"The one that goes past my door."
He lifted me down from the saddle.
His hands were cold through my wet jacket, colder than the rain.
I looked at his face.
Water ran off his jaw, and nothing came out of his mouth when he breathed.
No cloud of white in air cold enough to freeze my lashes.
"You don't breathe," I said.
"Only when I am talking."
"That is a terrible answer."
"Yes," he said, and for one second the corner of his mouth moved.
"Come on."
Dunmorrow was a square grey tower on a rock above the loch.
A ruined chapel stood beside it, and the wall had lost half its stones.
I had lived in the glen for twenty-four years and never once been inside the gate.
The kitchen was big and warm.
A woman with a grey bun and forearms stood in front of the fire with a shotgun.
"Himself," she said, without lowering it.
"You've brought a lass."
"I have brought Ailsa Munro, Morag. She is wet through and the Gows are behind her."
"Aye, I can hear the whistle. I'm not deaf, I'm seventy-one."
She looked at my hacked hair and my bloody lip and my torn sleeve.
Then she stood the gun against the dresser.
"Sit," she said.
"Broth for you, and Himself will go and stand somewhere else while you eat it."
He went and stood by the far wall.
I ate three bowls with my skirt steaming, and watched him.
He did not take a bowl.
He did not shift his weight like a man who has been on his feet too long.
He was as still as a carving in a church.
"You said wife," I said.
"I said it badly."
"You said I was early."
He was quiet a moment.
"Morag's almanac promises a storm on Sunday. I have stood on that road in every storm for a hundred years, in case."
"In case of what?"
He did not answer that.
Morag, scraping a pot, made a noise through her nose.
I put down the spoon.
My head had been a drum since the counting room.
Now the nail behind my eye went all the way in, and I felt the warm run on my lip and tasted copper.
"Oh, damn it," I said.
My nose was bleeding into the broth again.
It does that after a reading.
I put my fingers to it and looked up.
Niall Kerr had not moved, but his whole face had changed.
His eyes had gone dark from the middle outward.
His lips had parted over teeth that were longer than a man's.
He looked at the blood on my hand.
I should have been afraid.
I think I was, a little.
But Angus Gow had looked at me for two years, and this was not that.
Angus looked at me as a thing to own.
This man looked at me as a lit lamp in a freezing room, and he was holding his own hands behind his back.
"Out," Morag said, in a voice like a door closing.
Niall went.
One moment he stood by the wall, and the next the kitchen door was swinging.
I heard his boots on the stair, too fast to be boots.
Morag put a clean cloth in my hand.
"Pinch the top of it," she said.
"What is he?" I asked, though I knew.
"Hungry," said Morag.
"Himself hasn't fed properly in forty years. Deer when he can bring one down, and a deer won't carry a man."
"He thinks if he stays thin enough, he can keep his hands off the world."
"Why?"
"Ask him. I only cook."
He came back in a quarter of an hour.
His eyes were grey-green again, and he carried a folded handkerchief by one corner.
He set it on the table in front of me and stepped away.
"It is clean," he said.
"It's my nose," I said.
"It's the sight. It does it every time."
"Then I will see to it that you read nothing else tonight."
I nearly laughed.
For eleven years everyone who needed me had needed me to read something.
I did not laugh, because the window had gone from black to the faintest iron grey.
Niall looked at it too.
His whole body went tight.
"Dawn," he said.
"I sleep through the day, Miss Munro, and I cannot wake, not for fire and not for you."
"There is a cellar under the keep. Stay out of it."
"Why would I go in?"
"Because you will want to see," he said.
He went to the cellar door beside the dresser and went down.
I heard the key turn on the inside.
Then I heard nothing at all.
Not a breath, not a heartbeat, not a board settling.
The silence was like a hole in the house.
"Dead to the world till dusk," Morag said calmly, and put the kettle on.
In the yard, on the cobbles, I heard horses.
Many horses.
And Hamish Gow's voice, hoarse and carrying, calling for me to come out.
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