Blood by K. J. Wignall

talking. They simply walked together among the fallen stone walls, and when she turned to face him, she smiled and he was stunned by her beauty, and saddened in the knowledge that this day could never be, in more ways than one.
    Then, as if a cloud had covered the sun, her smile fell away and Will became uneasy. He didn’t want her to speak now, but she did and her voice was full of sadness as she said, “Will you sacrifice me, when the time comes?”
    â€œNo,” he said, aware that he’d spoken aloud rather than within the vision, but even as the dream shattered and left him stranded back in his dark chambers, he saw in the last glimpse of her face that she didn’t believe him.
    He looked at the daybed and, as if woken by his voice, Eloise stirred and lifted her face to look at him. It had been a dream, nothing more, but Will almost wanted to tell her again, the real Eloise, that he wouldn’t let any harm come to her.
    She stared at him for a second or two before cautiously pushing herself upright and leaning back against the wall. He’d been careful to light candles here and there so that she wouldn’t be too disturbed upon waking. Even so, her surroundings were still something of a shock to her.
    She looked around the chamber, glancing at the wooden chests, the bare stone of the walls, the dark openings into the other anterooms. With the exception of the bed and two padded wooden thrones, the candlesticks, and chests, there was no other furniture and no other decoration.
    He needed nothing else, and everything was stored in such a way that it would survive intact through the years of his hibernations, hence the wooden chests rather than anything more homely. But he could see how, to her, or to any normal living person, this would seem an unfriendly place, perhaps even the Gothic lair so beloved of storybook vampires.
    â€œWhere am I?”
    â€œThis is my … my home.” He could tell that she was remembering, the stone lifted from the floor of the crypt, the steps descending into the darkness. “It’s safe. The city walls are directly above us.”
    She glanced up at the roof of the chamber.
    â€œYou didn’t put anything in my drink.” It wasn’t a question this time, but a realization that none of this had been imagined or hallucinated.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œWho are you?”
    â€œI am William, the rightful Earl of Mercia. I was born in 1240, struck down by sickness in 1256 and I have been like this ever since.”
    â€œI know, you told me all that.” Eloise struggled to put her thoughts in order and said, “Okay, what I mean is, what are you? You’re not a ghost.” Before he could reply, an answer sprang into her head and, as if it should have been obvious from the start, she said, “You hypnotized me! You’re like that guy off the TV—you do all this mind control … You hypnotized me, to make me believe all this is real.”
    He shook his head gently, but instead of answering her directly, he said, “For a long time I had barely an idea of what I was myself. I knew only that I’d been buried alive, that when I stirred, nearly a hundred years had elapsed and yet my body was not a day older. I knew I had been bitten, I knew I needed blood, but in more than seven hundred and fifty years I have never met another like me or been given any guidance or explanation. Only halfway through that span did I first hear tales of beings that shared my habits, and only in the last two hundred years have I read enough to be certain that these stories refer to people like me.”
    â€œOh. My. God. This is amazing,” Eloise said, and stared at him with her eyes so wide open that he became concerned she might be once again about to faint. But she sounded almost playful as she said, “You’re a vampire!”
    â€œI prefer the term undead.”
    As if she hadn’t heard him, she was still teasing,