Werewolf Knight 3, page 11
Matilda wore a simple red cotton dress that swung around her ankles and, as always, she had the sleeves rolled up. She had a white apron on as well, and her brown hair was tightly twisted into a low braid. She had hazel eyes and a child-like round face that she’d passed down to every one of her six children who lived on the estate with her husband Coltrane and their horse, Mordechai.
“Look at you three,” Matilda said, and then she spotted Imelda behind us. “Four, I mean… Oh, Priestess.” Matilda curtsied, something she rarely did for anyone else, and Imelda looked at us like she wasn’t certain what to do.
“Imelda will be staying with us for a while,” I said.
“Of course,” Matilda agreed, like this was something I did every day. “I’ll see that a room is prepared. But you must be cold after a long day of riding. Come in, and just leave everything in the front room where we can collect it later. I’ll just go tell the cook that you’re here and ready for a meal.”
She stepped aside, and I practically launched myself into the warm house right behind her. From the moment I walked in, I felt more at ease. The place smelled of pine and cinnamon, and I could feel the warmth spreading up from the marrow of my bones to the tips of my fur.
I swung both bags of moon silver onto the floor, and they both landed with a very satisfying clang. In any other circumstance, I would’ve resented such a loud noise after such a long and grueling day, but I liked hearing the sound of my money hit the floor of my giant house.
I saw Tabitha detaching her breastplate and decided to follow suit. It’d been a long day after all, and I didn’t want to be weighed down by anything else. I shook my head back and forth, and I shrank back down from my wolf self into my human Hank form.
Then I shrugged off all of my vampire-blood-covered armor as fast as I could. I was getting way better at it from practice now. I kicked off the legs, swiped off the arms, and detached my breastplate. The floor of the entrance was now littered with shining goods, but it felt more homey that way.
I looked at the girls, and saw that Imelda’s jaw was practically on the floor.
“Is everything okay?” I asked the startled ex-vampire.
“Oh, of course,” she said hoarsely, and her face flushed a light shade of pink. “I can’t believe I was staring. How incredibly rude of me. It’s just… you were in your shifter form before. I didn’t know what you looked like.”
“Hideous, isn’t he?” Tabitha joked as she raised an eyebrow.
“Oh, no,” Imelda answered in complete seriousness, and she took Tabitha by the upper arm. “Far from it. Hank, I don’t think you’re ugly at all.”
“Don’t worry, Imelda,” I said. “Tabitha has a biting sense of humor. And yes, this is what I look like when I’m not in my hybrid form. I hope you’re not disappointed.”
I could tell from a certain glint in the priestess’ eye that she wasn’t disappointed at all. In fact, if I didn’t know any better, I’d say that she was mentally undressing me.
“Far from it,” she murmured.
Tabitha looked like she was about to make another snarky remark, but Matilda returned at that moment with the head cook, Miranda, in tow.
“We will have all your armor and gear cleaned and prepared in due course, Sir Hank,” Matilda said, and she scanned the floor for all the items we’d dropped. “But first, if you don’t mind, we would like to pay our respects to the priestess.”
Tabitha and Sybil moved out of the way to reveal the ethereal priestess to both women.
“Oh,” Imelda said, and her eyes widened. “I haven’t been so… so kindly regarded in years. It is a great honor to be in the presence of two believers of the Moon Goddess.”
“We are most blessed to have a priestess here,” Miranda added, and the two women nodded at each other. “Sir Hank, I was going to ask, and don’t be afraid to refuse if you are too tired, but we were wondering if, after your cup of moon bean brew, we could introduce the priestess to our children? It is such a rare gift for us to meet a holy woman.”
Tabitha and Sybil both smiled at Imelda, and Sybil even reached to squeeze the priestess’ hand.
“Of course,” I said. “I’d like nothing better than for Imelda to meet some of the people who work on this estate. As long as that’s alright with you, Imelda. I don’t want to tire you out after such a long day."
Imelda looked up at me, and I noticed that her face was glowing even more than it had been earlier in the day. She was practically sparkling with a radiant light that seemed to make everyone around her joyful and calm.
“I would love nothing more than to meet some members of this estate,” the priestess said. “It’s been so long since I’ve been able to perform any duties as a priestess, and I am forever grateful for the opportunity.”
“That’s just marvelous,” Matilda replied and clapped her hands before she could stop herself. “Now, you four go sit in the main room, and we’ll bring you something to eat by the fire. You’ve been out in the cold, fighting no doubt, and I won’t have you catching your death.”
“Thanks so much, Matilda,” Sybil said with a smile. “You know exactly how to take care of us.”
Matilda and Miranda scurried off back to the kitchen, and I gestured for the girls to follow me into the main room. I could smell the fire that was roaring in the fireplace, and I couldn’t wait to sit by the warm hearth with the ladies and unwind.
“This room is absolutely beautiful,” Imelda gasped as she stepped into the room.
It was just as beautiful at night as it was when the sun streamed in through the large windows. We’d added more comfortable leather couches to the mix of old antiques from Tabitha’s family as well as some old hunting decorations from Charles and walls of shelves with books upon books. The exposed ceiling beams gave the whole place a very rustic feel, and the combination of the wood and the smell of the fire was utterly transporting.
“Thanks,” I said. “You know, I love this place. It’s one of my favorite rooms in either house. Come on, let’s sit by the fire.”
Tabitha characteristically flung herself over one of the couches closest to the fire and stretched out on the whole thing with little regard for whether anyone might’ve wanted to share it. Luckily, Sybil and Imelda were drawn to sitting on the big white, fuzzy rug that was right in front of the hearth, and I joined them on the floor before I remembered why we’d set off in the first place.
“Imelda, where did you put that notebook?” I asked the young priestess, whose face was even more aglow in front of the fire.
“The notebook?” she asked in a distracted voice. “Right now, it’s in Sybil’s basket.”
“I buried it beneath all my herbs and bottles,” Sybil said. “And the servants know better than to go through my basket, so it’ll be safe for now. But we should find somewhere else to hide it.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” I said. “The last time we left it lying around, the vampires hired a thief to steal it.”
“And then it was stolen from Melchior,” Tabitha added.
“Maybe it’s hexed,” Imelda suggested.
“It’s not hexed,” Sybil replied. “I would have found the spell if it was.”
“It may not be hexed, but it certainly causes enough trouble on its own,” I sighed. “When I killed Wenderoth, I took the notebook from the Obsidian Temple. There were lots of notes in there about the opal dagger that I used today as well as information on some of their plans and some… other things that were personally interesting to me.”
“Opals unlock powers in moon silver that are deadly to vampires,” Imelda said. “The vampires have an obsession with opals because of that. Higher status vampires will wear opals as a kind of prestige symbol. But only a weapon like a dagger that combines moon silver and opals would be able to actually hurt a vampire in a way they couldn’t heal from because of the alchemical reaction between the two. By itself, an opal is just a way of showing off.”
“That sounds like a vampire,” Tabitha remarked. “Try to convince everyone that you’re doing something dangerous when you’re really not.”
“Exactly,” Imelda said. “It’s part of the vampiric arrogance that their status symbol would be as futile and silly as that.”
I heard footsteps from the door and saw Matilda carrying a massive tray with four mugs of steaming moon bean brew and four heaping bowls of something that smelled absolutely incredible.
“That smells amazing,” Tabitha said and immediately stood up. “What is that?”
The housekeeper set the tray on a low table next to the fire, and I could see that the bowls were filled to the rim with a thick soup piled high with melted cheese.
“This cheese was sent over by Charles,” Matilda replied. “He sent a basket earlier today. Apparently, his wife has procured a dairy cow who is producing milk at far too quick a rate for their family, so we’ve made an onion soup topped with Charles’ cheese.”
I smiled at the idea of Charles stressing out over what he was going to do with the vast quantities of milk that this cow was producing. He was the type of guy to let his wife have anything she wanted, even if it did mean going to great and inconvenient lengths to sustain her current interests. Luckily for Charles, his wife was a down-to-earth woman, and I had no doubt that she was already making her own plans to expand their cheese empire.
“I love onion soup,” Sybil said, and she took a bowl from the tray and a wooden spoon. “Here, Imelda, take this.”
She handed the bowl and the spoon over to the priestess before hastily taking another one for herself.
“How polite of you, Sybil,” Tabitha said, and raised her eyebrow mischievously. “Normally, you can eat a whole plate of food just by looking at it for more than two seconds.”
“Oh, come off it, Tabitha,” Sybil shot back and rolled her eyes. “You know exactly what kind of a day I’ve had.”
“You know I’m just being silly,” Tabitha replied as she claimed a bowl of soup and a mug of moon bean brew for herself.
I took one of the bowls from the little table and dug the wooden spoon into it. It was the perfect dinner to warm us up after a long, cold day, especially since it smelled so much like home. I brought the hot soup to my lips and blew on it a little before taking a long slurp of the onion broth.
My muscles started to relax immediately as the soup melted down into my body and warmed me up. I took a bite of the stringy yellow cheese that topped the concoction, and the combination was absolutely heavenly.
“This is incredible,” Sybil said, and her eyes were practically rolling back into her head as she plunged the spoon back into the cheese. “This is the most decadent thing I’ve ever eaten in my life. And I can’t believe they didn’t make us sit at the table.”
“It’s our house, I guess,” I said. “If we want to eat dinner in front of the fire, then that’s what we’ll do.”
I looked over to Imelda, who was taking incredibly small but deliberate bites of her soup.
“Do you like it?” Tabitha asked the ex-vampire. “It’s got to be better than your last meal.”
Imelda looked up long enough to nod in agreement.
“You have no idea,” she said after she’d sucked down another spoonful of broth. “After years of drinking nothing but blood, this is a true feast. Hank, if you’ll let me, I’d like to perform a blessing upon this house for all that you have given me. When your housekeeper brings the children, we can all participate in the blessing. Is that something you’d like?”
I had never even considered having the estate blessed before, but it seemed like a lovely gesture. I hadn’t experienced that kind of spirituality back in Jersey. Or at least, not in my family, where Sundays were reserved for football games rather than church.
The closest I’d ever come was when one of my buddies in elementary school had to have his room exorcized after he kept losing sleep over what he described as blue shadowy people walking around at night. His very Catholic mother completely flipped her lid and had a priest come over and spray holy water over the entire place. My pal was pretty embarrassed by the whole thing, but that wasn’t the weirdest part.
The weirdest part was that it worked.
“A blessing by you, Imelda, would be an absolute honor,” I said.
“Oh, how lovely,” the priestess replied. “You know, you’ve all been so kind to me. Nobody has treated me like a priestess in years, and suddenly you come along, and I’m a human again. Then, we arrive at the estate and your servants simply accept that I’m still a priestess because… well, because they believe in you, Hank, and so now, they believe in me. It’s simply incredible, I haven’t felt this good in years. And I can’t believe that I get to eat this beautiful food with you all as well. This truly is the work of the Moon Goddess.”
The ex-vampire set her spoon back on the tray and opted to slurp the rest of her soup straight from the bowl.
“Now that’s the way to eat soup,” Sybil laughed.
The witch gulped down the last of the cheese, lifted the bowl, and drank the rest of her soup. There was a race to see who would finish first, and both priestess and witch smiled as they set their bowls down at the same time.
“You two are heathens,” Tabitha said with a snicker as she scooped up another spoonful.
“My dear Tabby cat,” Sybil replied lovingly, “We all know that if this was beer, you’d be swimming in it.”
“You’re probably right,” Tabitha added with a shrug. “You know, I can be self-aware. Imelda, can I ask you a question?”
“Of course, Tabitha,” the Priestess replied. “What do you want to know?”
“This might come across as a bit odd, and I don’t mean any offense,” she started, and Sybil shot me a wide-eyed look of nervous anticipation. “But I was wondering. What does blood taste like to a vampire?”
I brought my hand to my forehead and rested all of my weight into it. I couldn’t believe that after all of the progress we’d made in rescuing Imelda, Tabitha was casually bringing up one of the most traumatic ventures of her entire life.
“I understand your curiosity, Tabitha,” Imelda replied in her usual calm voice. “But I’m afraid it’s not a very interesting answer. Blood tastes mainly of iron and salt, and sometimes if a person is sick, you can taste that, too. Sometimes the flavor would be deeper or fuller bodied, say if someone was particularly strong or full of life.”
“Sounds like you’re talking about wine,” I noted.
“You know, I like that analogy,” Imelda said. “It makes it easier to think about. But it mainly felt good because it fulfilled a function. When your teeth broke the skin of your victim, the ecstasy was absolutely unparalleled. It was like the feeling of every worldly pleasure all at once.”
“Well,” Tabitha added in her smoky voice. “I suppose now we have Charles’ dairy cow for that. Why bother with every worldly pleasure when you can get fresh butter delivered to your doorstep?”
Sybil rolled her eyes and laughed. Then she leaned over to the tray to pick up two mugs of moon bean brew.
“Is that what I think it is?” Imelda asked, and she practically snatched the mug out of Sybil’s hands. It was the most forward gesture I think I’d seen her make since we’d rescued her from the basilica.
“We grow the moon beans here,” I told her. “That’s what the trade of this estate is. I suppose it was too dark to see the plants when we rode in, but when it’s light out, I can take you on a tour of the moon bean fields.”
Imelda had already brought the mug to her lips and took one long, slow gulp. Then she tipped her head back and gulped down the rest of the contents of the mug. When she set the mug down on the floor, her lily-white skin was glowing like the moon and her eyes were burning blue.
“Sorry, Hank, I lost you there for a second,” she said in a soft, dulcet voice. “That moon bean brew is nothing short of exquisite.”
“Isn’t it?” Sybil asked, and she handed me another one of the mugs.
I took a gulp of the piping hot brew and felt every cell in my body start to wake up. I don’t know what made our brew so good, but it was certainly better than the brew I’d had in the palace. No wonder we were making bank, back in the States.
“It’s got to be better than blood,” Tabitha said.
“Much better,” Imelda said with a shy smile. “And not just because it’s real food. It brings back a lot of good memories for me. My dad used to wake up very early every morning when I was a kid to grind his own moon beans. Then we’d sit and watch the sun rise and drink our brew. He’d have a normal mug, and I got a little thimble of the stuff. To me, it tastes like home.”
I don’t know if it was the brew or the story, but my heart felt like it was melting. Imelda’s story reminded me of how the simple things in life are often more than the grand occasions. And she’d gone so long without being able to appreciate the simple things that I felt like I was giving her a real gift.
For a second my brain flitted to Barney Converse’s offer. Even though I hated to admit it, this was the kind of story that would drive him wild. It was sentimental, nostalgic, and brought people together. That’s what he acted like his coffee brand was all about, even though JoeTown coffee was usually a pit stop for truckers on long-distance journeys or a place to duck into when you needed to pee in the city. I closed my eyes for a second and recentered myself so that I was back in Lupercalia and not thinking about business.
I felt something on my hand, and when I looked down I realized that Imelda had placed her hand on mine. Her skin was so incredibly soft and warm that it sent a rush down my arm and then all the way down my spine. When my eyes met hers, I felt like she was staring into the depths of my soul.
“I really can’t thank you enough,” she said in a low voice, and she started to trace circles on the top of my hand with the tip of her finger. “You’ve changed my life in ways that I never thought was possible after I’d been turned into a vampire. In fact, I was so deep in that vampiric nonsense that I couldn’t even remember what it felt like to be a simple human. It’s like I’ve been born again, thanks to you, Hank.”
