Bisclavret

Chapter 26

I wake to the sound of men arguing. Two of the voices, I recognize. The third only sounds vaguely familiar. I should probably open my eyes and find out what's going on, but my head hurts something fierce. It feels like I drank an entire barrel of cheap ale, and now I'm suffering the consequences.

"You couldn't have kept that information to yourself?" Henri snarls. It's almost enough to tempt my eyes open; I've never heard him so upset.

"She blew up a bullet," says the unknown man. "I wasn't about to keep such a useful weapon secret."

A low, ominous growl. "She's a woman, not a weapon."

"She's both," the baron chimes in. "And she saw the vampire."

My ears must be playing tricks on me. There's no way he just said what I think he said.

"You don't know that," Henri argues. "Its glamour might have worked on her."

A scoff. The unknown man clearly disagrees. "You saw the way she looked at it, Henri. You smelled her fear spike, just as I did. She saw through its glamour. She saw through my glamour too. Face it, friend; she's not human."

The words echo what Henri said to me right before I lost consciousness. I try to tell myself they can't be true, that none of this is real, and I definitely didn't see the things I think I did. I probably hit my head on a rock when Henri shoved me down, and this is all some horrible hallucination brought on by a damaged mind.

"We can't let her go now," the baron says.

"She doesn't want to stay here," Henri bites out.

"What she wants no longer matters," the baron tells him. If I weren't so out of it, I would laugh. Since when has what I wanted ever mattered to him? "She knows too much. She's seen too much. Hell, you've probably told her too much."

"I've told her almost nothing," Henri says. "Unlike you, I've been trying to protect her."

The baron's voice softens. "The mating instincts are strong when they first hit."

Wait, what? Mating instincts?

I crack my eyes open. Torchlight spears into them, and I groan and slam them shut again. God, that hurt, but at least that brief glimpse was enough to tell me where I am: lying in the back of a hay-strewn cart.

"She's awake," the baron says. "Get her up so she can play her part, and we can all go home."

"She's in no state to play a part," Henri snaps, and I feel a wash of warm energy roll over me as he approaches.

"I have to agree with him there," says the third man.

I risk another glance, fighting through the pain to see Rufus, the blacksmith, standing beside the baron at the edge of the cart bed. His handsome face is marred by scratches, clothing askew like he pulled it on quickly. Odd.

A shiver runs through me as something he said a moment ago snags in the back of my mind. I saw through his glamour? How? When? And why does he know everything that just happened? He wasn't there. The only people were Henri, me, the republican troops, that man-thing (vampire?), and the shadowy monster that...

Oh. Oh, no. No, no, no.

His face is all scratched up with what looks like claw marks. Like he went rolling through the undergrowth, spitting and fighting. He was the monster, wasn't he?

No. He couldn't have been. That's impossible.

Isn't it?

Henri blocks Rufus from sight as he steps close and leans over me, brushing hair back from my face with gentle fingers. His gloves are gone, and the skin-to-skin contact does wonders to soothe some of my pain and mounting panic.