The Watchtower

creatures who were both—horned men and women with tails and wings—the gods of the fey. They were incredibly beautiful and somehow horribly sad.
    I looked down and saw four rectangular plinths carved from a pure white stone that glittered in the light of my thumb-flame. Stepping forward I saw that two of the plinths were empty, but carved figures lay on the other two. The first was of a woman dressed in full battle armor, her long hair in a braid that lay over her cuirassed breasts. A fillet lay across her high forehead. A name flickered through my mind. Maeve . The sister who was killed. This was Maeve. Her sister Morgane had made this tomb for her. She was so beautiful that I stared at her for many seconds before looking at her companion.
    His body and hair were carved out of black stone, but his face was as white as hers and as beautiful … and familiar. I moved closer and held the flame directly over him. It flickered on his broad brow, wide cheekbones, chiseled nose, and full lips. I touched my hand to those lips, recalling the feel of them on my lips, my face, my throat …
    His lips parted, sharp teeth flashed in the flickering flame, a rush of black swept over me, extinguishing the flame and knocking me back against cold stone—but not as cold as the body pressed against me and the teeth at my throat.
    “Will!” I screamed, the name torn out of me as his teeth pierced my skin. Memory flooded into me with the cold. I remembered the first time he had drawn my blood after I’d been poisoned by the manticore, and the second when I’d called his name on the wind, and the third when we’d made love on Governors Island.
    “It will be difficult to stop once I start,” he had said that last time.
    He wasn’t trying to stop right now. He was sucking my blood with an urgency I hadn’t felt those other times. Because he was starving.
    “Will!” I cried again. “It’s Garet. We’re in the Valley of No Return. I came here to find you.”
    He moaned at my name but only drank deeper. I could feel myself becoming weak. Soon I would pass out and Will would keep drinking. He’d been here for months—if time meant anything here—hiding from sunlight in this tomb, starving to death. He might not even remember who I was.
    “Will.” My voice was barely a whisper now. “It’s … Garet … I came … to find you. I love…”
    My throat went numb; the venom the vampire released to anesthetize his victim had frozen my vocal cords. I felt the venom spreading from my throat down my chest into my stomach, seeping into my arms and legs. I was limp in his arms, pinned between him and the wall. All was black and cold here in Maeve’s tomb, which would soon be my tomb.
    “Garet?”
    The voice came as if from far away. I was lying on the ground now, staring up at the blackness, but then a light flickered in the nothingness and swelled into a face. A face etched with terror.
    “Garet! I didn’t know it was you! I didn’t know anything! I’d lost who I was. All that was left was the hunger. Garet, please don’t die. Hold on.”
    “Cold,” I managed to say, forcing the word out of my frozen throat.
    His eyes widened. Then vanished. The light vanished and I was left alone in the dark.
    Had he left me? Or had I died? I couldn’t tell. All I knew was darkness and cold, and then there was light again—lots of light and noise and heat. A fire was burning in the center of the domed room. I watched Will throw armfuls of sticks on the fire. They burst into flames but burned so quickly he had to keep adding more. He flew in and out of the room so quickly he became a blur—a bat flitting above the hectic flames, always adding more sticks to the crackling fire.
    They weren’t sticks, though. They were reeds. Will was burning the reeds, and as they burned, they cried out.
    He doesn’t love you, he doesn’t love you, he doesn’t—
    “Shut up!” I yelled. “It’s pretty obvious he does!”
    Will turned in midflight and landed by my side. His face glowed gold in the light of the burning reeds, his lips red—from my blood, I realized.
    “You’re alive,” I said, then laughed. “Or as alive as you get.”
    “I feel more alive than I have in four hundred years,” he said, grasping my hand. “When I thought I’d killed you … I … I wanted to die. Garet, I love you.”
    “I know,” I said, touching my finger to his bloody lips. “And I love you. So what the hell are we doing in this place? We