The Silver Knight by Kate Cotoner Page B

effigy.
    A chill wind blew around him, and the door to the crypt slammed shut. Sufyan straightened, the back of his neck prickling with awareness.
    “I told you before,” Everard said from darkness, “you cannot kill what is already dead.”
    Sufyan raised the lamp and turned around, keeping his back to the effigy. Everard stood in front of him, whole and beautiful and otherworldly, his skin white as the marble of his tomb, his eyes dark as the shadows licking around the glow from the light.
    “I was right.” Sufyan kept his voice steady. “You are the Angel of Death.”
    “Not an angel. Just a cursed creature, one divided into man and monster.” Everard smiled, and this time Sufyan saw two sharp fangs—just like the blood-fiend's teeth. “For years I have fought the darkness inside me, trying to deny what I had become.”
    “You are the blood-fiend and the silver knight both.” Sufyan set down the lamp on the side of the tomb and stared at him. “How did this happen?”
    Everard sighed and ventured closer. “It was on the way to the Holy Land. Something happened.” His expression darkened, became troubled. “I don't remember—there was a battle... Someone saved me. He made me into this monster. He asked me to stay with him, but I couldn't. I wanted to come home to my parents, to my land—to the things I recognized and knew. I didn't want to be companion to a cursed blood-drinking creature out there in the wilderness, where the sun blasts the earth and the only flesh to feed upon was the corpses of my fallen comrades!”
    “So you came home,” Sufyan murmured, “and your world had changed.”
    “In more ways than one.” Everard gave a bitter smile. “It took a long time for me to return home. In those days, I could only travel at night, and I struggled with the necessity of feeding. The creature that made me like this warned me—he said if I didn't accept my changed condition, I would fracture and become divided. I didn't believe him. And then I woke one eve to find I'd become two—myself and the blood-fiend.”
    He came closer again, his head tilted up so he could look into Sufyan's eyes. “The blood-fiend has no qualms about feeding from innocent people. It has no sense of morality, of good or evil. It lives to fulfil the basest of urges. It enables me to survive.”
    “By denying those urges, you made it a separate creature.” Sufyan exhaled. “I have heard of such things happening before. The division of flesh from the soul shouldn't happen in this lifetime, not until the hour of a man's death. You spoke of me being doubly-damned, but you should look to yourself first!”
    Everard took a step closer and reached out. “But Sufyan, don't you see? You defeated the blood-fiend! You're the first man to help me—who wanted to help me—since I became like this.”
    Sufyan ignored the beseeching hands stretched out to him. He nodded at the jumble of bones around the crypt. “And these poor souls—who were they?”
    “The blood-fiend's victims.” Everard let his hands fall to his sides. “I tried to give them a Christian burial... or at least I buried them on consecrated ground. They're here to remind me not to slip into the darkness completely.” His eyes shone. “But now I have no need to fear the blood-fiend, because you destroyed it.”
    “No,” Sufyan said softly, “we both destroyed it. I may have defeated its physical manifestation, but surely it was the acceptance of your true nature that has made the fiend vanish.”
    Everard touched Sufyan's hands, and the caress was cool but not unpleasant. “If I have accepted my nature and reconciled my duality, that's also your doing. You lay with me without disgust or anger or guilt. You lay with me in pleasure, shared yourself with me. You fought by my side. You saved me from myself.”
    Sufyan slid his fingers over Everard's hands. “And yet you are still a cursed creature—a blood-drinker.”
    “Yes.” Everard's expression dimmed