Bury Our Bones in the Midnight Soil — Chapter no 21

II

Seville, Spain 1542

Beyond the city walls, ships bob, listless, on black water.

Just inside them, Sabine ambles down a narrow road. The Sailors’ Row, they call it.

It is an indecent part of town and an indecent hour, and a woman walking alone must be indecent, too. A body in search of purchase. A body inviting trouble.

Sabine smiles at the thought, her shoes—black leather, almost new— clicking against the cobblestones, her body draped not in widow’s weeds, but a lush green dress, a shawl around her shoulders warding off a chill she doesn’t even feel.

What would her late mother-in-law say, if she could see her now? Wearing no scarf, no veil, her hair twisted up into a coil, the threads of copper catching fire every time she nears a lamp. She is a flame in the dark, and the night is full of moths.

Their eyes land on her as she walks, trail after in her wake, and she wonders if they can taste her hunger on the air, the way she can taste theirs.

Some animal instinct warning them away. And yet, she knows it does not take much to tip the scale, a coy smile, a playful wink, a hand outstretched in invitation. But she has had more than enough of their attention.

Ten years she has been free of that old life.

Ten years she has had to make her way in this one, to carve a path, between the hours of dusk and dawn, to stretch, and grow, and bloom, and while it has not been easy, nor has it been arduous. The widow was right.

She is free to do what she wants. Take what she wants.

And that is everything.

Sabine walks on, heading for the wooden steps on the western edge of the

Row, five rotting stairs where women are known to gather every night.

Indecent women. Young and old, dark-skinned and pale, thin and wide, with painted mouths and weary eyes.

A pair sits at the base of the steps, passing a cup of wine back and forth and waiting for a caller. The air around them smells like need, and sadness, and just beneath, the barest thread of hope.

There are men, of course. So many, and so eager to follow a woman into the dark.

But Sabine has found she far prefers the taste of other women. Just as their skin is softer, she finds their life tastes sweeter, too. More earth than metal. Like burned caramel, perhaps? Hard to say.

After all, it’s been ten years since she tasted anything but blood.

In ten more, she’ll have been Sabine longer than she ever was María. And she does not miss much about that life, but the bitter tang of citrus? The sour bite of black cherries? The spiciness of coarse mustard? She misses those, has learned the hard way that she can consume a life’s worth of blood, but not a bite of fruit. And while she now understands the hungry way the widow watched her hold that chocolate on her tongue, watched her savor, watched her swallow, Sabine does not see the point in dwelling on it.

Food holds no appeal, except in memory, and as long as she can recall a taste, she will be haunted by it, the longing like a pebble in her shoe.

Far better to forget.

“Good evening,” she says now, stopping beside the women on the step.

The younger one looks up, eyes a little glassy from the drink. But the older one scowls as her gaze rakes over this red-haired stranger in her fine- cut dress.

“Shove off,” she snaps. “This is our plot.”

Sabine’s mouth twitches in amusement. “I’m not here to sell my company,” she says, drawing the small purse from her dress, the silver rattling as she turns out three coins. “I’m here to purchase yours.”

Good money, and yet, the older woman recoils, as if struck. Disgust stains the air around her, and Sabine feels her teeth go sharp inside her mouth. She has already taken a step toward the sitting woman when the younger one

rises from her perch.

“I’ll do it.”

The girl steps into the light, revealing a purple dress washed out to gray.

Her mousy hair is braided down her back, stray strands escaping round her

face. Her nose is small and pointed, her eyes wide, alert. She reminds

Sabine of a rabbit, or a fawn— Or Ysabel.

It is not a true match, of course—the girl is shorter than María’s maid, plumper, too, but the tawny color of her hair, the shape of her face, the way her lips part even when she is not speaking—it is enough to stir something in Sabine.

A memory comes nipping at her heels—a picnic laid out on an alcove floor, her head resting on pillowed skirts—but she pushes it away. Now and then, that old life rises up to haunt her. But it dies a little more with every passing night.

“Coin is coin,” says the girl with a shrug. “Don’t see how it matters which way I come by it.”

The older woman lets a word slide between her teeth, and Sabine pretends not to hear. She will come back for her, when she is done. But first— “Come,” says the girl, taking her by the hand, and drawing her down the dock. Away from prying eyes.

Sabine lets herself be led into a gap between the buildings where the lanterns do not reach. But there, the girl’s bravado fails her. There, she lets go, and her hand drops, and even as she turns to face Sabine, she begins to fidget with a charm around her neck.

“I’ve never been with a woman,” she admits, as if it isn’t obvious. As if the air isn’t full of the girl’s worry, and her want, her uncertainty, and hunger. A different kind, of course—a lust for the coins in Sabine’s pockets, not her touch. But hunger all the same.

“I don’t know what to do,” she stammers, and Sabine smiles, knowing the darkness will hide her teeth.

“Don’t worry,” she says. “I’ll take care of you.”

The girl blushes fiercely. She’s younger than she seemed at first, her cheeks still round with youth. Her hand goes again to the makeshift charm around her neck. A simple penny, stamped flat and pressed with a V. A bauble, made herself, or perhaps a lover’s token, judging by the way her fingers keep drifting to it, thumb skating nervously across its surface.

The next time she reaches for the charm, Sabine stops her hand. The girl jumps a little, startled by the suddenness, the touch, but doesn’t pull away.

Relaxes a little when Sabine’s grip shifts, gloved fingers grazing the girl’s

bare skin as she lifts the hand to her mouth and sets a gentle kiss against the

knuckles.

What follows is a kind of dance.

Sabine steps forward, and the girl steps back, once, then twice, tensing slightly when her shoulders come up against the wall.

In the dark, she didn’t notice it.

Sabine did.

There is nowhere to go, and the girl lets out a shaky laugh, her fingers going to the laces of her dress. “Should I . . . I mean, or do you want me to . . .”

But she trails off as Sabine continues forward, snuffing out the little space left between their bodies. She is a head taller than the girl, and lifts her chin, guiding her face up until their eyes meet.

It is a cool night, and the girl’s breath comes out in clouds.

Sabine’s does not.

“It’s all right,” she murmurs, cupping the girl’s cheek. She can feel the pulse quickening beneath her skin. Her lips look soft, and for an instant Sabine considers kissing her, the way she once longed to kiss her maid. But then the girl giggles, breath like stale wine, and the illusion breaks.

Sabine’s hand slides past her cheek, and through her hair, settling at the nape of her neck.

“Don’t be afraid,” she says, and a question fills the girl’s eyes, right before she pulls her in and bites down, hard, fangs sinking deep into her throat.

Fear spills into the night as the girl stiffens, gasps in pain, tries to push away, but Sabine snakes her other arm around her waist, holding their bodies flush, tight enough to feel the girl’s heart hammering against her ribs. And then it is no longer hers.

The silence breaks inside Sabine as the pulse pours in, filling her mouth, her chest, and soon her own heart begins to beat. She comes to life again, teeth driving deeper as the blood floods in and the world goes bright.

A muffled cry escapes the girl, a sound that could pass for pleasure, if not for the terror on the air, the panicked clawing of her limbs. But this is the dark side of the dock at an indecent hour. No one comes.

And so, Sabine drinks, and drinks.

Too soon, the girl stops struggling.

Too soon, the brightness fades, and Sabine’s teeth slide free, and the girl

slumps lifeless in her arms and a few moments later her own heart begins to

slow again, before dragging to a stop.

How brief it is, how fast it fades.

Sabine sighs and withdraws her arm from the girl’s waist. She lets go of the body, but not before catching hold of the little charm around her neck.

The hammered penny with its etched letter V. The girl collapses, the chain breaking with her weight.

Sabine slips the charm around her neck, settles the pendant in the ruby’s place. The ruby, sold off years before, when she had nothing else. A crime, to get so little for the gem, but she was all too happy to be rid of it, to shed the last piece of Andrés, and María. A dozen other trinkets now hang around her neck, a dozen more adorn her hands and wrists.

The heartbeats fade. It’s nice, to have something that lasts.

She looks down at the body on the ground, amazed she ever found any resemblance to Ysabel in the unwashed hair, the ruddy cheeks. She feels no guilt, no grief, for what she’s done. Given the girl’s poor lot, it might as

well have been an act of mercy.

Death is a kind of freedom, after all.

Sabine returns to the five rotting steps, intending to bestow that freedom on the older woman, too, but she finds only the wine cup, empty now. She sighs, and tips it over with her shoe.

The night is young, and so she takes the long way home.

Home—a word that once meant something solid. Caravans arriving in a square. Cherry pits tucked like secrets in an olive grove. Bare feet at the edge of a peaked roof.

Now it changes almost nightly. Rooms taken like tokens from her kills, their doorways rendered powerless by death, their contents hers to take.

Like this green dress, this purse of coins.

That night, home is a manse that belonged to a wealthy merchant with a long-dead wife, a soft bed, and heavy curtains. Sabine is halfway there, thinking of the well-stuffed mattress, the way she’ll sprawl across it, when three men stumble out into the road.

Three men, linked together like old friends, a half-drunk bottle passing from hand to hand. And even though Sabine prefers the lives of women, can still taste the girl’s blood on her tongue, she is not one to waste an opportunity. She falls in step behind them, hunger knocking in her chest.

That is the maddening thing about the hunger: it is always there.

It quiets, or grows loud, varies in scope, in scale, but never disappears.

She drinks as though dying of thirst, but she might as well be a barrel shot through with holes. Incapable of being filled. The life leaks right out again.

The hunger redoubles in its wake. It clings to her, even in sleep.

Her dreams are vivid, bloody things.

Sometimes she wakes with her teeth sunk into her forearm, mouth filling with the rotting iron tang, but her own blood seems to hold no nourishment.

Nothing but a memory, a ghost of someone else’s taste.

Ahead, the three men turn down a narrow road.

And so does she.

One begins a song, and the others take it up.

Their steps ricochet against the stones. Their voices echo on the alley walls. They make so much noise, and she makes none, and so they do not notice her. As she follows, she amuses herself by guessing how the next few minutes will unfold. Perhaps she will kill them all. Perhaps she won’t.

Perhaps she will get their attention, just to see what they will do. She could wait until they separate, and take them one by one, or simply trail behind them like a ghost, savoring the knowledge that their lives are hers to end.

Sabine is still deciding, when an odd thing happens.

One man slows and peels away, fumbling with the front of his trousers, overcome by the sudden need to piss. He half stumbles to the nearest wall and braces himself, groaning in relief as urine splashes on the stones.

But there is nothing odd in that.

No, it is the other two.

As Sabine watches, one of them sheds his inebriated swagger, easy as a body shedding layers in the heat, revealing a sober stride, a different breed of boldness. Between one step and the next, he is transformed. His companion doesn’t notice, but she does. Watches, rapt, as the man runs a hand through his loose curls, then turns toward his drunk compatriot, and

sinks his teeth into his throat.

She stiffens in disbelief. Delight.

Sabine, who has only once been the victim of such an act, and ever after the assailant, now finds herself spectator. Witness to the intimacy of the embrace, the head bent low, the mouth against the curve of skin, the arms that fold, viselike, around the man’s body, the gasping absence of a scream.

In an instant, the singing dies, the smell of piss overtaken by the scent of blood. She cannot taste the life, but she can see it fleeing, the expression

slipping with the color from his face. She feels a phantom pain, as if she’s the one whose heart is failing. A phantom pleasure, too, her own mouth aching as the stranger drinks, and drinks, and drinks.

The third man remains oblivious, still humming as he puts himself away, fastens his trousers and turns back toward his companions. The melody dies on his lips. He is too drunk to understand the scene in front of him, but fear is a primal thing. It slicks the air around him as he stumbles back, twists round, movements made slow and sloppy by the night’s festivities. He staggers, and she can hear his heart thudding with a single, urgent word.

Away. Away. Away. Away.

The man does not give chase, so she does, or means to, but she has hardly

moved when another gets there first.

A woman.

She peels away from the alley wall, like a shadow freed from the surrounding night, her skin dark, her hair darker still. Sabine doesn’t know how she didn’t see her before, but now that she has, she cannot look away.

The woman is doll-like, small and curved, with jet-black eyes and hair that floats around her face, a halo of tight curls. She steps into the third man’s path as he stumbles for a second time, goes down, and as he struggles to his feet she catches him, draws him up like a lover, her expression lovely, gentle, sweet.

“What’s wrong?” she asks, the scent of violence heavy on the air as he clutches at her and stammers out, “Diablo.”

Her face, contorting with concern as she looks past him. At the first man, still feasting on his friend. And then past him still, at her. Sabine. The woman’s eyes are bright with mischief as she says, “But sir, there are no devils here.”

Her tone is so earnest that for a second, his fear seems to fumble, gives way to confusion, even hope, as he turns to follow her gaze. Sees what the woman sees. Opens his mouth to scream. But it’s too late. She has already torn open his throat. Blood courses in a bright, metallic stream.

Sabine watches the woman drink until the sound of a body falling, dead weight against the cobblestones, tears her gaze away. The man stands over the drunkard’s corpse, wiping an arm across his face as his dark eyes land squarely on Sabine.

His mouth draws into a bloodstained smirk, and for the first time in ten years, Sabine feels herself retreat. A step—only a step—her limbs moving

before her mind, instinct taking hold before she thinks to smother it. But in that step, he moves, blocking the alley’s mouth as if she means to flee. As if the thing washing over her is fear, instead of fascination.

Sabine bristles at the thought.

She turns back in time to see the woman vanish, the body in her arms dropping lifeless to the street. By the time it hits the ground, the woman has reappeared, her face now inches from Sabine’s, her black eyes glowing faintly, like windowpanes at night.

“Hello, little shadow.” Her voice is soft, and strangely gentle, that same unnerving sweetness she directed at the man, so at odds with the manic gleam, the sharpness of her teeth.

“Where have you been?” she coos, her lips stained dark with blood—in that moment Sabine wants to kiss her, just to taste it. And even though she can hear the minds of others, when their thoughts are loud enough, she is still shocked when the woman leans close and whispers, “Go ahead.”

Sabine stiffens, and the woman laughs, a bright and airy sound.

“Does she speak?” asks the man, his voice a low rumble, like far-off thunder, and yet it carries, reaches Sabine and rolls right over her.

Before the woman can say anything, she turns toward him and answers for herself. “She does.”

“Oh, Hector.” The woman’s hand trails between her shoulders, a touch that makes her shiver. “Can I keep her?”

Sabine prickles. She was thrown by their appearance, but she will not let herself be tossed around. “I am not a pet.”

“No,” says the man. Hector. “You are not. Come, Renata.”

The woman pouts a little. But she doesn’t leave. Instead, she reaches out and touches Sabine’s face, cool fingers cupping her cheek, and to Sabine’s horror, her body betrays her once again, this time by leaning in. Those night-sky eyes, black and flecked with stars, fix on her, and hold.

“Not yet, perhaps,” she says. “But I can taste your longing.”

Sabine wants to knock her hand away, to tell her she’s wrong, that the only longing she feels is that relentless hunger, a need for blood, and nothing else.

But it would be a lie. And Sabine knows that this stranger can feel the truth, messy as it is. That she is glad—glad her husband is dead. Glad he can no longer storm her bed, her body, glad she does not have to fear a seed,

a growing womb, a child. Glad that she is free of Andrés, and his family, free of that old life, free of age, and illness.

But sometimes, when Sabine is sinking into sleep, or waking from it, she skirts a dream, a life where she did not leave León alone that night. And she fears she left something important in the darkened shop.

That sometimes, when she walks at night, Sabine imagines the widow at her side. And she feels a deep, simmering rage, because it does not seem fair that the only two choices she was given were to be alive and bound, or alone and dead. And no matter how much life she drinks, it does not seem to touch that other thirst, that want for company, and— The woman brushes her lips against Sabine’s.

A ghost of a kiss, carrying the taste of blood, the air of promise.

A ghost of a kiss, and yet, the first one she has ever welcomed—wanted— and if she had a pulse, it would be racing. Even still, something quickens in her, and she feels herself lean closer, hungry for— “Renata,” calls the man again, and just like that, the mouth is gone, she is gone, Sabine left standing there, alone again, licking the blood from her lips as Renata slides her arm through Hector’s, lays her head against his shoulder. They stroll down the alley. Away from her.

Sabine feels the night tip. The ground no longer steady.

Wait, she thinks as they reach the mouth of the alley. Renata looks back over her shoulder, her smile crooking like a finger.

And Sabine follows.

OceanofPDF.com