I didn't dare move. He was crazy, I could see it, there was nothing in him that recognized me at all. Amelie's warnings screamed through my head, and Sam's. I'd underestimated Myrnin, and that was what had gotten all the other would-be apprentices killed.
Myrnin was shaking, and his broken hands were crunched into fists. His blood was dripping on an open copy of an old chemistry textbook that lay by his feet.
"Who are you?" he whispered. The accent I'd noted the first time I'd met him was back, and strong. Really strong. "Child, what brings you here? Do you not understand your danger? Who is your Patron? Were you sent as a gift?"
I closed her eyes for a second, then opened them and looked right into his eyes and said, "You're Myrnin, and I'm Ana, I'm your friend. I'm your friend, okay? You should let me help you. You hurt yourself."
I pointed to his injured fingers. Myrnin looked down, and he seemed surprised, as if he hadn't felt it at all. Which maybe he hadn't.
He took two steps backward, ran into a lab table, and knocked over a stand that held empty glass test tubes. They fell and shattered on the dirty stone floor.
Myrnin staggered, then sank down to sit against the wall, his face covered by bloody hands, and began to rock back and forth. "It's wrong," he moaned. "There was something important, something I had to do. I can't remember what it was."
I watched him, still scared to death, and then sank down to a crouch across from him. "Myrnin," I said. "The door. The one I opened. Where does it go?"
"Door? Doorways. Moments in time, just moments, none of it stays, it flows like blood you know, just like blood. I tried to bottle it but it doesn't stay fresh. Time, I mean. Blood turns, and so does time. What's your name?"
"Ana, sir. My name's Ana."
He let his head fall back against the wall, and there were bloody tears running down his cheeks. "Don't trust me, Ana. Don't ever trust me." He bounced the back of his head off the wall with enough force to make me wince.
"I -- no sir. I won't."
"How long have I been your friend?"
"Not that long."
"I don't have friends," he said hollowly. "You don't, you know, when you're as old as I am. You have competitors, and you have allies, but not friends, never. You're too young, far too young to understand that." He closed his eyes for a moment, and when he opened them, he looked mostly sane. Mostly. "Amelie wants you to learn from me, yes? So you are my student?"
This time, I just nodded. Whatever the fit was, it was leaving him, and he was empty and tired and sad again. He took off his glasses, folded them, and put them in the pocket of his coat.
"You won't be able do it," he said. "You can't possiby learn quickly enough. I nearly killed you tonight, and next time I won't be able to stop. The others -- " He stopped, looked briefly sick, and cleared his throat. "I'm not -- I wasn't always like this, Ana. Please understand. Unlike many of my kind, I never wanted to be a monster. I only wanted to learn, and this was a way to learn forever."
I bit my lip. "I want to learn, too," I said. "I --Amelie wants me to help you, and learn from you. Do you think I'm smart enough?"
"Oh, you're smart enough. Could you master the skills, given enough time? Perhaps. And you'll have no choice in the matter; she'll keep you coming until you learn, or I destroy you." Myrnin slowly lifted his head and looked at me. Rational again, and very steady. "Did I remind you not to trust me?"
"Yes sir."
"It's good advice, but just this once, ignore it and allow me to help you."
"Help -- ?"
Myrnin stood up, in that eerie boneless way that he seemed to have, and rummaged around through the glass jars and beakers and test tubes until he found something that looked like red salt. He shook the container -- it was about the size of a spice jar -- and opened it to extract one red crystal. He touched it to his tongue, shut his eyes for a second, and smiled.
"Yes," he said. "I thought so." He recapped it and held it out to me. "Take it."
I did. It felt surprisingly heavy. "What is it?"
"I have no idea what to call it," he said. "But it'll work."
"What do I do with it?"
"Shake a small amount into your palm, like so -- " He reached out for my hand. I pulled away, curling my fingers closed, and Myrnin looked briefly wounded. "No, you're right. You do it. I apologize." He handed me the shaker and made an encouraging gesture. I hesitantly turned the shaker upside down over my palm. A few red chunky crystals poured out. He wanted me to keep going, so I did, quick jerks of the container until there was maybe half a teaspoon of the stuff piled up.
Myrnin took the shaker back and set it back where he'd found it, and nodded at me. "Go on," he said. "Take it."
"Excuse me?"
He mimed popping it into his mouth.
"I -- um -- what is it, again?"
This time, Myrnin rolled his eyes in frustration. "Take it, Ana! We don't have much time. My periods of lucidity are shorter now. I can't guarantee I won't slip again. Soon. This will help."
"I don't understand, how is this stuff supposed to help?"
He didn't tell me again, he just pleaded silently with me, his whole expression open and hopeful, and I finally put my hand to my mouth and tentatively tasted one of the crystals.
It tasted like strawberry salt, with a bitter after-flavor. I felt an instant, tiny burst of ice-cold clarity, like a strobe light going off in a darkened room full of beautiful, glittering things.
"Yes," Myrnin breathed. "Now you see."
This time, I licked up more of the crystals. Four or five of them. The bitterness was stronger, barely offset by the strawberries, and the reaction was even faster. It was like I'd been asleep, and all of a sudden I was awake. Gloriously, dizzyingly awake. The world was so sharp I felt like even the dull battered wood of the table could cut me.
Myrnin picked up a book at random and opened it. He held it up in front of me, and it was like another burst of light in the darkness, brilliant and beautiful, oh, so pretty, the way the words curved themselves around each other and cut into my brain. It was painful and perfect, and I read as fast as I could. The essence of gold is the essence of Sun, and the essence of silver is the essence of Moon. You must work with each of these according to its properties, gold in the daylight, silver in the night ... It all made sense to her. Total sense. Alchemy was nothing but a poet's explanation of the way matter and energy interacted, the way different surfaces vibrated at different speeds, it was physics, nothing but physics, and I could understand how to use it now.
And then ... then it was like the bulbs all dimmed again.
"Go on, take it," Myrnin said. "The dose in your hand will last for an hour or so. In that time, I can teach you a great deal. Enough, perhaps, for us to understand where we should be going."
This time, I didn't hesitate licking up every last bit of the red crystals.
Myrnin was right, the crystals lasted for a little more than an hour. He took some as well, one at a time, carefully measuring them out and making them last until finally even a red crystal couldn't drive the growing confusion out of his eyes. He was getting anxious and confused, by the end. I started closing the books and stacking them up on the table -- the two of us were sitting cross-legged on the floor, practically buried in volumes. Myrnin had jumped me from one book to another, pulling out a paragraph here, a chapter there, a chart from physics and a page from something so old he had to teach me the language before I could understand.
I learned languages. I learned ... I learned so much. He'd shown me a diagram, and it hadn't been just a diagram, it had been three dimensional and as intricate as a snowflake. Morganville hadn't just happened, it had been planned. Planned around the vampires. Planned by the vampires, carried out by Myrnin and Amelie. The Founder Houses, they were part of it -- thirteen bright hard nodes of power in the web, holding together a complex pattern of energy. It could move people from one place to another, via the doorways, although I didn't yet understand how to control them. But the web could do more. It could change memories. It could even keep people away, if Amelie wanted it to do that.
Myrnin had shown me the journals, too, with all his research conducted over the last seventy years into the vampire's sickness. It was chilling, the way his notes degenerated from meticulous to scrawls at the end, and sometimes into nonsense.
But isn't this a good thing? The question kept battering at me. Isn't it a good thing that the vampires will die out?
And what about Sam? What about Michael?
The influence of the crystals was dimming now, and I felt horribly tired. There was a steady ache in my muscles, a feverish throb that told me this stuff wasn't exactly kind to the human body. I could feel every heartbeat pounding through my head, and everything looked so dark. So ... so confusing.
I felt a breath of air stir against my cheek, and turned toward the stairs. Michael was descending, moving faster than I'd ever seen him, and he came to a fast halt when he saw me sitting beside Myrnin.
"He's supposed to be -- "
"Locked up in a cage? Yeah, I know." I knew I sounded bitter. I didn't care. "He's sick, Michael. He's not an animal. And anyway, even if you lock him up, he'll get out."
Michael looked young to me, all of a sudden, although he was older than I was. And a vampire, on top of that. "Ana, get up and come to me. Please."
"Why? He's not going to hurt me."
"He can't help what he does. Look, Sam told me how many people he's killed -- "
"He's a vamp, Michael. Of course he's -- "
" -- how many he's killed in the last two years. It's more than all the vampires in Morganville combined. You're not safe. Now get up and walk over here."
"He's right," Myrnin said. He was losing it, I could see that, but he was desperately hanging on to be the man who'd been with me for the last hour. The gentle, funny, sweet one, ablaze with excitement and passion for showing me his world. "It's time for you to go." He smiled, showing teeth -- not vampire teeth. It was a very human kind of expression. "I do all right on my own, Ana, or at least there's rarely anyone for me to harm. Amelie will send someone to look after me. And I usually can't leave here, once I -- forget things. It's too difficult for me to find the keys, and I can't remember how to use them once I have them. But I never forget how to kill. Your friend is right. You should go, please. Now. Continue your studies."
It was stupid, but I hated leaving him like this, with all the light going out in his eyes and the clouds of fear and confusion rolling in.
I didn't mean to do it, it just happened.
I hugged him.
It was like hugging a tree; he was so surprised, he was as stiff as a block of wood. I wasn't actually sure how long it had been, since anybody had touched him like this. For a second he resisted me, and then his arms went around me and I felt him heave a great sigh. Still not a hug, not really, but it was as close as he was likely to get.
"Go away, little bird," he whispered. "Hurry."
I backed away. His eyes were strange again, and I knew we were out of time. Someday, he won't come back. He'll just be the beast.
Michael was beside me. I hadn't heard him cross the room, but his hand closed around mine, and there was real compassion in his face. Not for Myrnin, though. For me.
"You heard him," Michael said. "Hurry."
I bumped into the table, and the small jar of red crystals shuddered a little, nearly tipping over. I grabbed it to put it back upright, and then thought, what if he loses this? He loses stuff all the time.
I was only keeping it safe, that was all. It helped him, right? So I ought to make sure he didn't knock it over or throw it away or something.
I slipped it into my pocket. I didn't think Myrnin saw, and I knew Michael didn't. I felt a hot burst of something -- shame? Embarrassment? Excitement? I should put it back. But really, I'd never find it again if he moved it around. Myrnin wouldn't remember. He wouldn't even know it was gone.
I kept looking back, all the way up the stairs. By the time we were halfway out, Myrnin had already forgotten us, and he was restlessly flipping through a pile of books, muttering anxiously to himself.
Gone already.
He looked up at us and snarled, and I saw the hard glint of fangs.
I hurried to the door at the top of the stairs.