Free Wicked as They Come by Delilah S. Dawson Page A

at me and leaned to kiss my glove.
    “Don’t mind me, love. Getting all philosophical. I’ve never had someone to talk to before. I’m glad you’re here.”
    I smiled, too. It was a tender moment, a peek behind his mask. And a glimpse at what my life would be like outside of his caravan. Unlike in my world and my time, I had to admit to myself that in Sang, a woman couldn’t be both independent and safe, whether she was full of blood or hungry for it. And then my confined stomach grumbled, making him laugh.
    “But enough of philosophy,” he said. “Let’s feed you.”
    It was noon, and the dining car was crowded with hungry carnivalleros. Little booths lined both sides of the long wagon. At one end, a short buffet served stew, bread, and little crabapples. At the other end sat a small table, covered with a cloth of mauve paisley. A mysteriously smoking black cauldron squatted on the cloth, and I watched as Criminy reached in for a small glass tube of red liquid.
    Blood.
    “Is that all you eat?” I asked.
    “Mostly,” he said mysteriously. “Two vials a day, when possible, but I can subsist comfortably on one, as long as it’s human. With animals, it takes much more to satisfy. Without any blood, I could last a few weeks if I had to, although I’d be weak and peevish and eventually wither to nothing.”
    “How do you know it’s not diseased?”
    “What’s diseased ?” he asked.
    “Surely you have diseases here?” I asked, dumbfounded.“Colds, flu, rickets, measles. Plain old infections. Any sort of sickness?”
    “If a person doesn’t eat or drink, he gets sick. Is it different, in your world?”
    I, a nurse, had landed in a world without viruses or bacteria. Was that even possible?
    Carrying my tray, he guided me to a larger, curtained booth in a corner. We slid in, one on either side of the table, and he fiddled with the curtains until we were in a cozy little nook lit by a buzzing orange lamp, the thick velvet muffling the sounds outside. The king’s table.
    I had forgotten to get a drink and started looking around for something, but Criminy smiled and said, “You’ll be wanting wine, won’t you? Just a moment, love.”
    As he left me alone in the private nook, I pondered a world without illness. How was I going to describe modern medicine to a blood drinker living in a world of clockwork machines and magic?
    Goblet in hand, he slid back into our booth.
    I took a sip of sweet red wine and said, “Where I come from, people get sick with diseases caused by tiny, invisible monsters called viruses and bacteria. But there are no blood drinkers and no magic.”
    “Invisible monsters but no magic,” he said, thoughtful.
    He removed the cork from his vial and poured it into his own goblet, swirling it around. The thick red liquid clung to the glass, and he sipped it politely. My gorge rose, and I dropped my eyes to my stew, which smelled divine.
    “No magic,” I agreed. “But lots of science. We have huge buildings called hospitals where doctors work, and they can do all sorts of surgery and fix people on the brink of death. When a person loses a lot of blood, they can replaceit with someone else’s donated blood. And you can get sick by sharing diseased blood.”
    He seemed charmed. “That’s fascinating,” he said. “A world where people go around giving each other blood, but no one wants to drink it.” Then he gazed at me, a soft light in his eyes. “Were you happy, where you came from?”
    “I was starting to be,” I said, “although there were always challenges. What about you?”
    “I was maybe a little sad, before,” he said quietly. He reached out to stroke my hand, a gesture so fast and light that I wondered if I had imagined it. “I’m one who always yearns, in any case.”
    We ate for a while in companionable silence. Or I ate, and he occasionally sipped at his glass, his lips stained bright red.
    “You know, in my world, blood drinkers are storybook monsters,” I