head back by my hair with the other. Struggling against him only caused my arms to be forced to the point of dislocation. Unable to move, I waited. I felt the movement of the air across my throat as his teeth found their mark, and tensed against the assault.
“Geoffrey!” Nicolas shouted, and Geoffrey turned his head to face him. “Let him go.” Geoffrey tightened his grip and I clenched my teeth to keep from crying out at the pain in my shoulders. “I will take him into my custody,” Nicolas added, and Geoffrey released me. He stood then, leaving me on the floor at his feet. I struggled to a sitting position, but felt too weak to rise from my place before the hearth. Geoffrey ignored me while he paced and told us the outcome of his meeting with Northumberland.
Percy had denied everything, and insinuated that unless the entire matter were dropped it could go very ill indeed for both Sir Walter and for us. We were far more vulnerable than he, and he would see that we were hunted down and killed should the matter be made public, and public it would be should any harm come to the earl.
“We will certainly kill him,” Geoffrey snarled when he finished his account. He crossed the room to stand leaning on the mantelpiece and I scuttled away from him. He smiled cruelly at that, then continued, “The only questions are when and how. If he rises a vampire from this depraved deed, he must be killed, and at what cost then? I would kill him now in a manner that will preclude his rising at all.” He turned his eyes, like burning steel, on me, and waited in silence.
“There is little chance that he will not rise, if his fear of dying could drive him into . . .” I found myself unable to continue.
“No, that is not so,” Nicolas said thoughtfully. “Simple fear of death has never made a vampire in the history of the world, but only the will to live, to survive. They are not one and the same.”
“There are other ways to preclude his rising,” Geoffrey said, still eyeing me.
“This is neither the time nor the place, Geoffrey,” Nicolas said.
“What does he mean?” I asked, suspecting that I would rather not know.
“That killing you before his death will undo the effect of the exchange, ”Geoffrey said flatly. The room spun as I scrambled to my feet, and I caught at Nicolas’s angry voice as if it were a lifeline.
“We do not know that! It is merest superstition! Are there so many of us that we should sacrifice Kit, only to find that we still have a rogue vampire on the loose, and one less of us to call on as ally? Is that not so?”
Geoffrey nodded curtly, and turned again to me. “Since it seems that you will be among us yet a while,” he said coldly, “you may tell us why you allowed yourself to be taken so.” I recoiled at the deadly tone of the rebuke. “You endangered not only yourself, but every one of us by your foolhardiness. You did not even tell Jehan, who might then at least have given us an idea of whereto begin a search.” His burning eyes had turned to ice.
“I never thought—”
“No, you did not.” Geoffrey’s voice was a whiplash, but I found myself pushed too far, angry rather than cowed.
“I am not a child!” I said, through clenched teeth.
“That is precisely the thing that you are! Even were you whole, you are yet young in our ways, and your impairment makes you vulnerable where another would be strong. You agreed once to live under my rule, Christopher, and though I give you into Nicolas’s care, this you must yet do. We will make it as agreeable as we may, but you will submit, by choice, or by force, if necessary.” I knew what he meant, that if I did not comply either he or Nicolas, perhaps both, would feed on my blood, to enforce their domination. I nodded, unable to force words past the burning knot of anger, alarm, and shame that choked me. I rose then, and returned unsteadily to my room. Mephistophilis’ words came back—crippled, he had called me. Crippled I was, and must learn to curb my defiance before I died of it.
A few days before All Hallows, I paced the South Gallery at Nonsuch, waiting. I had met Percy once or twice at