Kendra arrived in darkness, crouched on cold stone. Like a dreamer who screams with such determination that she makes the sound that returns her to the waking world, Kendra had the sense that her arrival had caused broken the silence an instant before she’d become aware of it.
As she held the crouch and strained to listen beyond her thudding heart, she felt a draft so faint and broad that she guessed she was in a large space. Hands above her head lest she bang into something, she stood. The chill dark seemed to reach for her as it swirled faintly around her. The air around her had no scent that she could sense above the stink that Rolf and William had put on her. Kendra wrinkled her nose. By 16th century standards, the place she’d landed in was incredibly clean.
“Must be a church,” she whispered, and reached out to feel around her--nothing. She took a step forward, then another.
“Ouch!” Kendra had smacked her shin against something hard, and bent forward to feel it--the seat of a pew. She shuffled sideways to its end, then made good speed up the aisle until she reached the last pew. She held onto it with one hand while she felt the emptiness in front of her, unnerved by her lack of bearings. After what seemed a long and fruitless minute of that, Kendra supposed she must look a bit like a castaway afraid to let go of a bit of flotsam even as she reached for the ship come to rescue her.
“Let go, chicken,” she whispered, and slid forward like a fencer, right foot and right hand in the lead.
“Oh!” she cried out with surprised when she made contact with cold stone. After confirming by feel that it was one of the building’s walls, she followed it to the right to the corner without meeting a door, then back to the left, where at last she felt her way to the juncture of two huge wooden doors. She pushed one open a few feet, and slid out into a moonless night nearly as dark as the church had been, but for the blazing glory of the stars, visible through a gap in the clouds.
Kendra sighed with relief, and ran lightly down the steps onto a narrow strip of lawn. A rough wooden fence about three-feet high enclosed it. She hurried forward, and through a little gate in the fence. She walked a ways down the cobbled street. It felt uncomfortable under her slipper shoes, just right for the 16th century. She turned around after ten yards to look back at the church, Trinity Chapel. She realized with relief that it wasn’t far from Alex’s house, and hurried on.
As she stood on his front doorstep, Kendra felt suddenly shy. Would the whole street hear her knock? Did she even need to knock? She looked over each shoulder. Everything was quiet.
“Alex?” she said softly at first, then a little louder. Nothing. She knocked, waited, checked the street, then walked in. Her heart pounded. How stupid was it to walk into a vampire’s lair at night? Every horror movie she’d ever seen raced through her mind. Don’t be dumb. We know each other. She opened the door to let the starlight in. Mostly by touch she found a candle on the sideboard by the door, but how to light it in an era without matches? Kendra sighed. To get anything done took forever before the modern era.
A cat in heat yowled in the street. She closed Alex’s front door before it could dash in with who knew how many single-minded toms in pursuit. When her eyes adjusted to the return of dark, Kendra saw a faint glow at the periphery of her vision, and made her way haltingly to it--coals buried under ash on the hearth.
She knelt in front of the fireplace, bent low and blew across the coals, glad that her hair was up and out of the way under her head scarf. In the brief seconds that the coals glowed more brightly, she saw some tinder and wood on the other side of the fireplace. She blew across the coals again, then grabbed a handful of tinder in that second of light.
By the time the tinder burned well enough to add some kindling, Kendra felt light-headed from all huffing and puffing she’d done. She was also tired and hungry. It had been near dawn, late in the vampire workday, when she’d left, and she’d had to skip a couple of meals. The mere thought of food preparation in Elizabethan England exhausted her. Alex probably kept no food for a live human anyway.
Kendra stuck a long bit of kindling in the fire, and used it to light the candle she’d found, and then she climbed the stairs to the guest room Alex had let her used on her first trip. She stripped off her stinking clothes, sank into bed and fell asleep.
Something brushed a lock of her hair of her forehead. She reached up to knock it away, and bumped into a cold, firm hand. Kendra sat up, startled.
“Did I not tell you to snuff the candle before you slept?”
Alex. She heard the amusement in his voice, and smiled. He sat next to her on the bed, a second candle in hand.
“Sorry to burst in without an invitation, but I require your assistance. In fact, you require your assistance too,” she said, and propped herself up in the bed, arms behind her.
“I have a long tradition of granting myself aid whenever I require it, but not for many years has anyone marked in me a need for my own assistance.”
“When first we spoke in this room,” Kendra said, falling into the lingo as she had during her last visit, “you told me of the autopsy done on Stephan Bathory. You asked what greater harm the thoughts of mortals would bring. Do you recall?”
“I do.”
“I have returned with one of the many answers to that question. Would you care to hear it?”
“I would indeed.”
“My news may cause more than a little shock. Are you prepared?”
“Quite.”
“Does the name Akhom have meaning for you?”
