Blood Melody

by Val St. Crowe

  “You know what would make my sister happy?” I said. “Letting me and Landon go.”

  “No,” said Viggo. “I can’t do that. No, I need you here.”

  “As leverage?” I said. “To force her to behave? Because you said it before, if you do that, it will never be real. She might do anything to protect me, but she wouldn’t necessarily mean it, and that won’t be enough for you.”

  “I would never use you as leverage,” said Viggo. “No, I just need you here to help me. You know your sister better than anyone. You can tell me what she likes, what she despises, how to court her.”

  “What?” I said. “You want me to help you seduce my sister? No way.”

  “I beg you, Camber. I am at the end of my rope. I cannot wait any longer. I will lose all semblance of decorum if I don’t have her.”

  “What if she never wants you?” I said. “What if the only thing that would make her happy would be to be free of you?”

  “That’s preposterous.”

  “If you really loved her, you’d let her go.”

  “I’m not keeping her prisoner. She can come and go as she pleases. But all vampires live in the city. There is nowhere else for us.”

  “Maybe you should let her decide that,” I said.

  “Oh, please, Camber, you think I don’t see through this very ill-disguised attempt to try to get your sister away from me?”

  I pressed my lips together.

  Viggo shook his head. He stopped pacing and peered down at Landon. “And you. What should I do with you?”

  “Nothing,” I said. “You should let him go. I mean, if Desta doesn’t see him anymore, she won’t be thinking about him, right? So, then you’d have nothing to fear on that front.”

  “He’s been gone,” said Viggo. “I don’t think she forgot about him.”

  “I’m sure she was about to,” I said. “Would have if Landon hadn’t reappeared out of nowhere. Let him go.”

  “Will you help me if I do?” said Viggo.

  Hmm. I considered. “Sure. You let Landon go, and I’ll tell you everything you want to know about Desta.”

  “No,” said Viggo. “If Desta agrees to have a romantic dinner with me, I’ll let Landon go.”

  I thought about it. Okay, so I’d just tell Desta that if she went on a date with—

  “And don’t think you’ll have any contact with your sister,” said Viggo. “I’ll keep her away from you, and you will have to help me convince her on my own merits. What do you say?”

  Well, what was dinner? It couldn’t be that dangerous. And besides, Desta had agreed to have dinner with Viggo when we’d all eaten with my parents, so she wasn’t completely adverse to the idea. It might end up fine. And then Landon would be free.

  “All right,” I said. “It’s a deal.”

  Viggo smiled. “All right, then, let’s get started.”

  “Right now?” I said.

  Viggo considered. “Perhaps not just now. In twenty minutes, I will send some vampires to escort you to my chambers. We will begin there.” He swept out of the room before I could even answer.

  Landon stood up once he was gone. He fingered the collar at his neck. “If you think I’m leaving without you, you’re crazy.”

  “You have to,” I said. “I’m doing this for you.”

  “I’m not leaving you here. There’s no way,” he said.

  “Well, that’s the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard,” I said. “I don’t even know why you’re so obsessed with my safety, anyway.”

  “Neither do I,” he muttered. “I’d turn it off if I could. All of this. You, me, Desta… it’s massively screwed up.”

  “There is no you and me,” I said peevishly. “Or did you forget that?”

  * * *

  “This is all?” said Viggo. “Why don’t you know anything else? All of these things, Desta’s already told me.”

  We were in Viggo’s dining room, sitting on the high-back white chairs. He sat at the head of the table. I sat next to him. “Well, then why did you want me to tell you about the things she liked?”

  “I thought you’d have more insight into what she wanted in a man,” said Viggo.

  “Well, sorry. She got the call when she was still in high school,” I said. “She hadn’t really dated that much. I mean, there were a couple of guys, but nothing serious. I don’t even think she ever went on a second date with any of them. And, you know, she didn’t talk about it with her kid sister.”

  “I thought women talked about this sort of thing together.”

  “Women do,” I said. “We were kids growing up together, under our parents’ roof.”

  “So, you’re saying you’re useless to me? You can only tell me her favorite movies and songs and what sort of flowers she likes? Nothing further.”

  “I’m sorry.” I spread my hands.

  “You are useless to me.” Viggo leaned back in his chair and began muttering rapidly under his breath in another language.

  “I am useless,” I agreed. “So, you should totally let me go, along with Landon. It would score you a lot of points with Desta. Let her drive us out of the city and into the woods, and if she comes back, then you know that you have a future with her.”

  “Stop that,” he said darkly. He got up out of his chair and went into the kitchen. When he came back, he had a bottle of wine and two glasses. He poured us both very tall glasses of wine.

  I took a sip of mine.

  He took a gulp. “I should just drain you. Bend you backwards on the table, fit my teeth to your neck, and suck you dry.”

  “Yuck,” I said, squirming. “Sounds like you’re turned on by the thought of killing me.”

  Viggo laughed. He drank more wine.

  “Don’t kill me,” I said. “Desta would never forgive you.” I was trying to sound glib, but I wasn’t. I was kind of freaked out. Viggo wasn’t a predictable sort of person, and I really wasn’t ready to die yet.

  “You should give me some reason to keep you alive. Give me some bit of knowledge that only you have.”

  “I would if I could,” I said.

  “I don’t know if you would. I think you’d keep beating that dead horse, trying to convince me to let you all go.”

  “Well, can you blame me? I’m only looking out for my sister here.”

  “And you think she would be better off away from me?”

  I drank more wine and didn’t answer.

  Viggo drained his glass and poured himself another. “Am I truly so terrible?”

  “Don’t you want to be terrible? It’s kind of your image. You know, I’ve seen you on TV since I was a kid, and I’ve spent my whole life being afraid of you.” Now that I thought about it, it was remarkable how comfortable I’d gotten around him so quickly. My life had truly turned upside down in a very short time. It hadn’t been so long ago that I was a college student denying that I even felt the call.

  “Frightened?” He swallowed more wine. “I attempt to be personable in those TV interviews.”

  “Well, not so much,” I said.

  He pointed at me. “You see? I need someone like you around. You and your sister are the only two people in my life who will ever tell me the truth. That’s why I’m so enamored with her. I am surrounded by sniveling yesmen, and she is a breath of fresh air. You too, although you’re a bit sharper than she is. You’re too honest for your own good.”

  I squirmed some more. “Sorry.”

  He finished his glass of wine again and then poured himself a third glass, draining the bottle. Vampires could drink a lot of alcohol without really getting drunk. “You care about your sister, and you think I would harm her. You must understand, I would never do that.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “You don’t sound convinced. You think I’m lying to you?”

  “I think… maybe you believe what you’re saying now, but you’ll eventually just get bored with her, like you get bored of everything, and then all bets are off. You’re kind of a h
orrible person.” Then I cringed. What he’d said about my being too honest for my own good? Yeah, he’d pegged me a little too well.

  “A horrible person?” He raised his eyebrows at me.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have said that. I didn’t mean it. You’re not horrible. You’re just, um… intense.”

  He rolled his eyes. “You realize that I could kill you without batting an eyelash.”

  “Yes,” I said. “And you’d do it on a whim, too, so it’s not as if I can really protect myself by being on my best behavior. I might as well say whatever it is that I think. You could kill me anytime, for any reason.”

  He regarded me.Then he finished his glass of wine. He got up from the table and went back into the kitchen. He came back with another bottle of wine. He poured himself another glass.

  “I used to have a sister, too,” he told me.

  “Oh?” I didn’t know what to say. Why was he opening up to me like this?

  He ran a finger around the rim of his wine glass. “Her name was Marigold. She and I grew up in some hovel with a dirt floor and both of our parents were dead before we were into our teens. I was left with the farm, which wasn’t really ours, but belonged to some lord in a castle. Until the barbarians came to our village and killed the lord in the castle and all of his army and carried off all the women, Marigold included.”

  My lips parted. “That’s, um… I’m sorry.”

  “Yes,” he said. “I should have died too, but I didn’t. I was changed into a vampire during the attack. I thought it meant something to be a vampire. I had strength and speed now, and I was angry. I wanted to save my sister. So, I went looking for her.”

  “But you didn’t find her? She was already dead?” I figured this story was going to have a pretty tragic ending.

  “No, I found her,” he said. “She had been taken by the one of the soldiers and used. His bastard child was growing in her belly, and I was appalled to see it. I rescued her. At least I thought I did.”

  I furrowed my brow. “What do you mean?”

  “She didn’t want to be rescued.”

  “Why not?”

  “Oh, she fancied herself in love with that brute who had captured her and raped her.”

  I shook my head. “She told you this? Because that doesn’t make any sense. There’s no way that she—”

  “That’s what I said. I thought it was some kind of madness that had descended on her. That she’d had to adjust to deal with the trauma of it, and that, with time, she’d be glad to be home. But she didn’t. One night, she raged at me, telling me that she was better off with her husband—as she called him—because she was carrying his heir, and that here, with me, she was nothing more than a fallen woman who would never be respected.”

  “Well,” I said, “I guess back then, women didn’t really have a lot of prospects.”

  “Yes,” he said. “And who knows? Maybe the man she was with, maybe he was just a soldier doing as he was ordered. Maybe he was an honorable man who did treat her with respect. I can’t say. All I know is that we quarreled and she grew angry. She knew I was a vampire, and she called me an abomination, and she said that I was a demon who had taken residence in her brother’s body. She rushed at me, and I defended myself. I was not yet accustomed to my own strength. I did not mean to do what I did.”

  Silence. Viggo drank more wine.

  I sat up straight. “Wait. You mean you killed her?”

  “I was able to bring her back as a vampire,” said Viggo. “But her child was lost, and she was despondent over that. I did allow her to go back to the man who had captured her, but he did not want a vampire bride, and he spurned her. One day, there was a huge bonfire in the village, burning broken branches after a storm. She walked into it.”

  I gasped.

  “It was my own fault,” said Viggo. “I should have listened to her. I shouldn’t have assumed I knew what was best for her.”

  I eyed him. “Are you trying to say something to me? About Desta?”

  “What?” He poured himself more wine. “No, I am unburdening myself to you, werewolf. I have not told anyone of this in a very, very long time. I am trying to make you see that I am not a horrible person, or at least, I don’t mean to be one. It is only that… it is so easy for things to go badly, even when one has the best of intentions. Do you see that?”

  I looked at him for a moment. Then I picked up my glass of wine and a took a long, long drink.

  * * *

  “I don’t get it,” I said to Landon. We were sitting on the couch in our apartment/prison. “Why would he tell me something like that?”

  “I couldn’t say,” said Landon. “Maybe he made it all up to make you feel sorry for him.”

  “Why make up a story that makes him look so bad?” I said.

  “Does it make him look bad?”

  “He killed his sister.”

  “No, she killed herself.”

  “Well, he killed her the first time. Just because he brought her back, that doesn’t mean that he’s off the hook for that,” I said. “It’s a pretty awful thing to do.”

  “He said it was an accident.”

  “Even still,” I said.

  “But you do feel sorry for him?” said Landon.

  “I do,” I said.

  “Of course, it’s apparently easy for you to feel sorry for vampires,” he said. “You said you felt sorry for Hadrian, even though he didn’t treat you with any dignity at all.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  Landon was quiet too.

  “Why would he want to make me feel sorry for him, though?” I said finally.

  “Hadrian?”

  “No, Viggo,” I said. “What does he gain from my pity?”

  “He wants you to be on his side and help him convince Desta to screw him.”

  “Could be,” I said. “He does seem unnaturally obsessed with my sister.”

  “You should tell her to just do it,” he said. “If she acted like everyone else, like one of his groupies, he’d lose interest. She’d be boring.”

  “Then he might kill her,” I said. “She’s not supposed to exist, you know. She’s got to keep that in mind. She needs to leave. She won’t be safe until she gets free of the vampires. Anyway, I can’t tell her anything. He’s keeping us apart so that I can’t influence her. He wants to get her favor on his own merit.”

  “He’s acting as though it’s a game,” said Landon. “Not like he’s playing with people’s actual lives. He’s completely out of touch with reality.”

  “That’s true,” I said. “He’s a crazy person.” I looked at him. “I can’t believe you’d suggest that Desta should just sleep with Viggo.”

  Landon shrugged.

  “That’s a disgusting thing to say,” I said. “No one should have to do something like that.”

  “Life’s not fair,” said Landon.

  I thought of things to say back to him, but then I remembered that he hated Desta, and then I thought about why, and then there was nothing to say, and I was still confused about all of it. And I didn’t want to think about it anymore. I didn’t want to think about Landon having sex with my sister. I didn’t want to think about Landon with other people, especially not in the past, when he wasn’t a bloodhound, when it was possible for him to have sex. It all made me feel a bunch of very volatile and uncomfortable feelings.

  We were quiet again.

  “Look, how much wine did you say he drank again?” Landon spoke up.

  “Two bottles,” I said.

  “A vampire could put away five bottles before they’d be noticeably inebriated,” said Landon. “Maybe ten bottles of wine to pass out.”

  “Wait. A vampire can drink enough to pass out?”

  “Viggo’s ancient and strong, though,” said Landon. “It might take double that to get him to pass out.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “I’m saying, you need to get him talking like you did last night and get him t
o drink, drink, drink. And then grab a set of keys from his bedroom. I know he keeps cars in the garage below the building. Drive away, easy peasy.”

  I pulled my knees up and hugged them to my chest. “You really think that’s even possible?”

  “Sure,” said Landon.

  “What about you?” I said. “What about Desta?”

  “I think I could take the guards on the door,” said Landon. “I’ve got the element of surprise on my side. They still think I’m chained up. And I’ve got an array of kitchen knives. It could work.”

  “I don’t even know how I could get Viggo drunk,” I said. “What would I get him to talk about?”

  “I get the impression he likes to talk,” said Landon. “I get the impression he’s pretty full of himself. I bet you could do it. And if not… well, we’re no worse off than we are now.”

  I wasn’t so sure that would be true. If Viggo knew I tried to escape, I think he’d probably get mad. I wasn’t sure if I would survive his anger.

  * * *

  But I decided I had to try.

  The only problem was that Viggo didn’t have any reason to invite me back to his place to drink wine again.

  Landon said that I should tell one of the guards on the door that I had information Viggo wanted about Desta. I countered that I didn’t. When I got there, he was going to demand it, and then what was I going to say? Besides, Viggo could simply come here and ask me to tell him what I knew. It wouldn’t necessarily put him in the mind to get drunk.

  But I didn’t have any other options, so eventually, I decided to try it.

  As I had predicted, Viggo came to my place and demanded I tell him what I knew.

  “Why don’t we meet tonight and have dinner and wine, and I’ll tell you everything?” I said brightly as Viggo paced my living room the way he had done before.

  “No,” said Viggo. “I don’t want to wait. I want you to tell me about Desta.”

  “Camber,” said Landon from the floor, where he was sitting, pretending to be chained to the wall. “Why don’t you go and see how much wine we have in our kitchen? Maybe bring out a bottle. The king should have some refreshment.”