She wouldn't let me feed off drunkards or people who consumed tobacco." He laughed, and I wouldn't let myself think of it as sinister.
"Amber reminds me a bit of her ...
so concerned with nutrition.
Neither of them was wrong.
But my maker didn't understand the full implications of what she said." He laughed again.
"Until I consumed her." The door to the room I'd awoken in was open.
He stopped and turned off the light as we passed.
"Mustn't waste electricity." And then he opened another door to a much bigger room.
A room of cages.
It smelled like sewage, disease, and death.
Most of the cages were empty.
But there was a man curled naked in the floor of one of the cages.
"You see, Mercedes," he said, "you aren't the first rare creature to be my guest.
This is an oakman.
I've had him for ...
How long have you belonged to me, Donnell Greenleaf?" The fae stirred and raised his face off the cement floor.
Once he must have been a formidable figure.
Oakmen, I remembered from the old book I'd borrowed, were not tall, no more than four feet, but they were stout "as a good oaken table." This one was little more than skin and bones.
In a voice as dry as high summer in the Tri-Cities, he said, "Four- score years and a dozen and one.
Two seasons more and eighteen days." "Oakmen," said Blackwood smugly, "like the oaks they are named after, eat only the sunlight." You are what you eat indeed.
"I've never tried to see if I could live on light," he said.
"But he keeps me from burning, don't you, Donnell Greenleaf?" "It is my honor to bear that burden," said the fae in a hopeless voice, his face to the floor.
"So you kidnapped me so you could turn into a coyote?" I asked incredulously.
The vampire just smiled and escorted me to a largish cage, with a bed.
There was also a bucket from which the odor of sewage was emanating.
It smelled like Corban, Chad, and Amber.
"I can keep you alive for a long time," the vampire said.
He grabbed me by the back of my neck and shoved my face against the cage while he stood behind me.
"Maybe even all of your natural life.
What? No smart comment?" He didn't see the faint figure that stood before me with her finger over her pursed mouth.