Chapter 15: Beldren What we Deserve, Part 7

Beldren waited to see what Mabel would make of his challenge. Her face scrunched in thought, then she stuttered, "I...I will do something without permission, and you will see that she may chastise, but she is not tyrannical in her punishments."

"What will you do?" Beldren asked. "Tell her you have been to the pantry? Such an infraction would not earn more than chastisement, even from a dictator. That will prove nothing. The crime must be sufficient that a tyrant would act with swift retribution."

"Such as?"

Beldren managed a small shrug. "What would make her angry?"

"She has forbidden us to go to the village. I could disobey that command."

"That is an excellent idea." He feigned thought. "Though such a trip might prove dangerous. The local population may not take kindly to what you are. You cannot be killed, but you could be detained, as I have been."

"We can be killed by violence," she murmured. "Neither less, you are right. Such a trip would take time and the sun would burn me." Mabel paced a small circle. "I could release you, but in truth I do not think you would get far, certainly not far enough to prove her anger. Not in your condition."

"I believe you are right. Already the infection has given me a fever. Delirium and death are not far behind. It is a question whether I will even live to see my own words proved false."

Mabel nodded absently and continued to mutter ideas. Each one was rejected. At last she stopped and turned to him with triumphant eyes. "I could give the gift to you. Not only would it anger her, but then you would have life to see that she is not the tyrant you so paint her."

Beldren held back a smug smile. He must not appear too eager. "Would such a thing as that be painful? I do not know if I could endure more after these long weeks."

She deflated a little. "It does cause some discomfort as the body changes. But it was such that I survived it, even on my deathbed. Surely a man as strong as yourself could do as well as I?"

"It could be tried," he agreed. "Though I fear Ismene will use the occasion to show her true nature."

Mabel hurried and knelt in front of him. "We will see. I must bite you and drink you dry, then I will give you my blood to drink. Be brave and do not cry out, for if the process is interrupted then it will turn ill for you."

He nodded his understanding and held still as she leaned in and bit. He closed his eyes and tried to float away, as he'd learned to do when they drank from him. The moments passed. When still she drank, self-preservation pulled him back to reality. His heart hammered in his chest and his instincts screamed at him to fight her, to stop the blood loss, to save himself. How could he know that what she spoke was truth, that she was not really killing him?

His uncle's voice echoed through his head, "Stay calm, boy, and do not give away the game!"

Calm. He must stay calm.

The thought disappeared in a dizzy panic as the room smeared and spun. She released him and he was dimly aware off falling back into the hay, his arms stretched above him. Something pressed against his lips, as the mouse had done those long days ago, only smooth and not furry. He could hear her in his memory, telling him to drink, and so he did. Gulp after gulp of burning hot liquid; salty, spicy, sweet, like some kind of Christmas punch meant to intoxicate.

At last she pulled away, cradling her bleeding arm. "That is enough! More and I will be drained myself."

Beldren blinked at her, at her shimmering red hair worn in curls around her head, at her bright blue dress, at her ridiculous puffed sleeves and pale cleavage, at the crimson smeared on her chin. Blood. His blood.

Then the pain came: white hot needles that pierced his flesh. He stifled a scream and pulled his chains, his back arched in agony. Mabel stayed back until the fit ended, then she drew close and fingered the rusty cuffs at his wrists. "I do not have the key, I fear, but I will pull them free."

She moved to the wall and gripped the chains. With an unladylike grunt she pulled first one, then the other from their restraints. With nothing to hold him up any longer, Beldren fell back to the hay and lay curled in a ball of burning pain. When it passed, he sat up, his chest heaving, and his dry throat screaming for water.

Mabel offered him a hand up. As he accepted, he noted that he could see her in stunning detail, as if the sun lit the interior of his prison. Not only her, but all of his confines; he could see the rusty chains snaking against the dirt, the dented pan his dinner had come in, the bright-eyed rat that crouched in the corner, and the spider that hung on a slender thread from the rafters. More overpowering than the vision was the smell, as if a sewer had opened up at his feet.

He covered his nose and she nodded. "The pantry is quite pungent, but so are all livestock. Come, I will take you to Ismene, then you will bathe and we will find some fresh clothes for you."

Walking was harder than he'd thought, so he let Mabel help him to the mansion. He ran through a plan in his head. Once he recovered he could escape perhaps kill Ismene. But where would he escape to? Mabel had mentioned that the sun burned her. Would it burn him? And when he could not eat but must drink blood, what would happen? Frontiersmen might kill him or, worse, hold him prisoner, believing him to be a demon as he had once believed the sisters to be.

Mabel opened the back door and eased him into the house. His eyes moved from object to object, from gilt to silk, to paraffin candles and lace. All the beautiful things he and his uncle had spent years trying to attain, and here they were, at last. Why should he fly from this place at all? Why not stay and revel in the riches, in this new gift, in the so-called immortality?

Ismene stepped through the doorway, her face hard. "What is the meaning of this? What have you done?" She met Beldren's eyes and for once he did not mind her in his head. He let her see what she wished, let her hear Mabel's words.

"And if Ismene showed you wrong, if she proved her tyrannical nature and revealed the truth of her opinions? For example if she were to destroy one whom you had given the gift to?"

"Thomasin and I would leave! We would never stay with one who would murder our own kind, or who would dictate such things to us without care for our own wants and desires."

Ismene's anger turned to fury, and Beldren knew that he had her. She had taken these two children of another maker because she did not want to be alone. Though she set herself up as their master, better to let them break her rules than to be left with only the company of empty rooms.

He could not stop the self-satisfied twinkle in his eye as her hatred and anger faded into a cold, emotionless mask. "Congratulations, Mabel. You have your first fledgling. Clean him, then summon one of the slave children for his meal. He will need to feed."

As she moved away with sharp, purposeful steps, Beldren let his eyes roam the treasure stuffed room. Uncle Sweeney would be jealous indeed.