by Lana Sky
Someone like Raphael.
My throat went dry. “I…” Even as my voice failed, I knew that my horrified expression revealed the truth. I died.
“Dublin has never offered to turn another mortal,” Dmitri murmured, his tone suddenly serious. “Never. Not once. Not even in his most…shall we say, his heyday as a man who made Raphael quake in his cape.” He smirked at the memory. “I think, all along, you’ve already suspected as much,” he added knowingly. “The real catalyst for your pregnancy. The blood you require, though you remain mortal still. Mero, I suspect, had counted on him breaking his one rule all along. For you. But it’s corrupted you far beyond what poor Dublin intended. While not a vampire, you are…changed.”
He eyed my belly. “You just haven’t bothered to admit it to yourself. You know there’s more to it, and I will tell you what—it is your bloodline. You Grays have been cursed for centuries. Everyone knows it. Especially Dublin. Before you, he has spent years ensuring that none dared feed from any of your kind. Did you know that? It’s why the Grayne still exist—he lets them thrive, purely out of courtesy to Mero, the dear friend he betrayed.”
“How?” I whispered. “How did he betray him?”
He waved his hand dismissively. “Oh darling, I’m sure you saw my beautiful opera. You are no fool.”
I tried to picture the morbid performance and its grisly themes. A man had escaped those in his faction, only to have everything he’d fought for ripped away by someone he trusted.
“Mero was the first to crave another life,” Dmitri said as though settling in for a long tale. “A different life from the hell he’d consigned his soul to. I suppose ruling hand in hand with the ruthless Cael took its toll. Rather than trade in lives, he wanted to live. And he craved it so badly he found a cunning little witch talented enough to give him and his mortal lover the life he so desired. There were a few caveats, of course.”
He lifted his hands in a makeshift scale, raising one while lowering the other. “A terrible price would be paid by both parties involved. I assume they considered it a worthy sacrifice however, in exchange for an abomination in every sense of the word. But then what happened, my dear?” He chuckled darkly when I flinched. “Come on. Continue the tale.”
As he had taunted, his opera revealed the answer. The villain of the story had slaughtered a woman and her unborn child in the name of duty.
“Dublin killed her,” I choked out in a whisper. “The woman. Didn’t he?”
God, I wanted him to laugh, proving I’d been wrong.
“Yes,” he said instead, displaying his fangs in full. “And in his grief, Mero founded the Grayne, utilizing your dear ancestor in the process. At his behest, his witch cursed your entire bloodline, though some might say ‘protected.’” He scoffed. “Serving within the Grayne was a mere small part of the deal your ancestor made. Mero would protect every Gray to follow, just as long as a few descendants contributed to his lunatic cause. For years, he has maintained that bargain, always watching from the shadows. And in guilt, Dublin has kept even Raphael from destroying them. Though now I have to wonder if perhaps his motive all along was fear?”
He searched my face for any reaction. In the end, he sighed. “What better way to punish the man who stole everything you desired than to ensure that he too one day will dare to crave the same simple, honestly boring, wish? Love. A family. A reason to endure these wretched, lonely years. And then, were you such a man, you would get to rip it all away.”
Pausing his story, Dmitri waited, as if expecting me to realize something. To feel something. I just felt numb.
“I see I may have to spell it out for you, dear.” He inhaled sharply. “Dublin’s always known that one of your kind might set Mero’s devious revenge into motion, I suppose. And now…” He gestured toward my stomach. “Have you wondered why he has accepted your condition so easily? It isn’t usual—I can tell you that. Or why he hasn’t killed you, despite the obvious danger you pose? Why he can’t even bear to face the truth by telling you the very things that I am now? Or why the one soul you care for more than him perhaps has vanished and he hasn’t even offered to help you find her?” He leaned forward, and almost in a whisper, he declared, “You are his doom, Eleanor Gray. Always have been. Always will be.”
He stood and stretched his arms over his head in a mock yawn. “I will leave you to your rest,” he said before exiting the room. Near the threshold, he paused long enough to add, “Pleasant dreams.”
Tokens
With my thoughts raging in turmoil, I couldn’t sleep. I sat hunched over the side of the bed instead, so lost within myself that I barely heard Dublin when he finally returned. Whatever he saw in my expression made him stiffen with one foot poised over the threshold.
“What’s wrong?”
God. The sight of his cautious, careful frown banished some of the agonizing tension in my chest. Gone was the stranger from the throne room. He resembled himself again, radiating his usual mixture of fury and frustration—but still Dublin, the bastard soul collector extraordinaire who’d stolen into my life uninvited.
The man who had corrupted me in more ways than one.
The man who had lied to me.
Tears spilled from my sore, bloodshot eyes, streaming down my cheeks before I could keep them at bay. Despite the roaring fire, my teeth chattered. Tremors racked my hollow frame, yet all I could manage to rasp was, “I’m fine.”
“You’re not.” He spun on his heel, aiming for the door, “I’ll get Dmitri—”
“No.” I shook my head until he stopped, his back partially to me. “It’s not the poison.”
Just horror.
Just anger.
The worst part? I didn’t know whether to direct it all at him or myself.
“Dmitri,” Dublin hissed, this time without concern. Suspicion laced every uttered syllable. “What did he say?”
Anxiety clawed through my blood, sowing bitter regret. How funny that my demand for answers had come back to bite me—after weeks of questions and unintended answers, I doubted I could withstand any more revelations.
“Did… When Raphael bit me…” I closed my eyes as the memory threatened to unfold in painful clarity. “Did you try…t-to turn me?”
“That sly fucking bastard.” His voice was a low rasp. “What did he tell you?”
And for some insane reason, I found myself laughing. “That I am destined by blood to destroy you.”
“Is that all?”
I bit my lip. His tone was all wrong, suddenly neutral. Confused, I opened my eyes, gaping as he shrugged.
“Frankly, Eleanor, I’d like to think that my doom lies in something a little more formidable than you.” He crossed over to my position and stroked his chin, eyeing me with a sweep of his gaze.
“Don’t lie to me,” I countered. “Is it true?”
He raised an eyebrow. “Is what true?”
“The curse.” I ran my fingers through my hair, parting the curls. His reaction didn’t fit the morbid, somber tale Dmitri had told. If anything…God, his lack of concern made it all sound so silly when put into perspective.
So silly. So morbid. So very much like Dublin.
“That my family’s bloodline was cursed by a witch so that one of us would ultimately result in your destruction. Is that ringing a bell?”
“Not particularly?” Dublin frowned as though seriously mulling it over, hunting for that obscure detail among the centuries clouding his ancient brain. “Eleanor, I get damned to Hell on a weekly basis. You can’t really expect me to remember one witch from—”
“There’s more.” I stared at my bare toes rather than face him. “That the reason why you could feed from me had nothing to do with venom. No other vampire can. That’s why Raphael’s bite killed.”
“Raphael killed you because he grows more sadistic with every year he’s aged.” His upper lip curled from his teeth in disgust. “Toying with mortal lives is a game to him. Think of it as a child ripping the win
gs off a butterfly merely to watch it squirm.”
“Then…why are you drawn to me?” I wondered helplessly. Magic would certainly explain it.
“Why?” He raised a golden eyebrow as though I were a simpleton asking why the sky was blue. “Honestly, for the same reason a lion might be drawn to a psychotic, bold, fearless little lamb who acted so peculiarly from the rest of the sheep. I think I’d have to be blind not to notice you merrily skipping into danger.”
“But…” Doubt returned, planting itself firmly in my chest.
“In fact”—he swiped his finger along the length of one of my curls and then snatched my wrist, inspecting the ring glinting on my finger—“I’d say you are the very opposite of what a curse might conjure to tempt me. I’ve always despised the color green.” He peered into my eyes with a frown. “I also prefer skin that has some definition to it. As well as sun-kissed hair—”
“You mean like Georgie?” I was too stunned to feel offended.
“Yes,” he mused, the corner of his mouth lifting. “If some witch designed one of you Grays to ‘doom’ me, as you put it, it would be Georgiana who’d fit the bill. Beautiful, sane, agreeable. A cliched, whirlwind love affair would commence, I suspect.”
“Do you know where she is?” My eyes stung. Blinking didn’t banish the sensation. His ring threatened to crush my finger. It suddenly felt so heavy. “Have you both just been toying with me this entire—”
“No.” He grabbed my chin when I tried to turn away, forcing me to face him.
“I don’t know where she is now exactly, but the day I met her, she didn’t infuriate me,” Dublin went on callously. When I tried to wrench my head away, his grip tightened, holding me captive, forcing me to see. That alarming shift in his gaze—I sensed he wanted me to see it. “She doesn’t make me question things I have never questioned. She didn’t make me sell my soul to Raphael after one ridiculous dance. She didn’t arouse me to the point of madness. So if Dmitri meant ‘doom’ as in ‘liable to drive me insane,’ then you, Eleanor Gray, fit that bill perfectly.”
Furious, he swiped at a bead of moisture rolling down my chin, crushing it.
“Come. Raphael doesn’t keep his dwelling as well ventilated as I do mine.” He tugged on my wrist, yanking me to my feet. “The air in this damn place is making you delirious.”
I had no choice but to stagger behind him in a daze, my head spinning as deliriously as he’d claimed. As we entered the hall, he didn’t shield me with his body this time. Side by side, we wandered the empty, breathtaking corridors until he shoved me through a doorway and I had to shield my eyes with my hand, blinded.
When my vision gradually cleared, I was convinced we’d entered another realm. One of luxurious sunlight painting a landscape of emerald green, surrounded by stone walls and positively brimming with roses. At least thousands, bloomed from vines and shrubs, spanning every shape and color imaginable. The moment I inhaled, I realized it was open to the air. Beautiful, crisp, fresh air. Up above, a blue sky melded with the scenic landscape, and I nearly forgot all of Dmitri’s grim tale.
“Is this your apology?” I blurted as Dublin pushed past me.
“Whatever on Earth for?” He shot me a weird look even as he snatched a fresh rose from a nearby bush and held it out for my inspection. “It’s merely somewhere we can talk in private.” He glanced warily at the structure we exited from—a wall of gray stone. A castle?
“Talk about what?” I asked, struggling to stay focused.
“So, perhaps Dmitri wasn’t entirely lying.” He stared dead ahead, and I could only guess at how hard it had been for him to admit even that. “There’s more to the Grayne’s history than I told you. Superstitious drivel, but if you want to hear it…”
“Tell me.” I crossed my arms, approached a worn stone bench and sat, still marveling at the wild space. It reminded me of some fairytale castle’s crumbling courtyard, abandoned by a monarch who no longer craved the sun. I cradled a nearby bloom between my fingertips, surprised by the petal’s softness. As Dublin neared, I whispered, “Tell me about Mero.”
After the snippets painted by Dmitri and Raphael, I needed to hear the rest from him.
He came to my side, threading his fingers through my hair while snatching my rose away. “His name was Abrahaim.” In a hollow contrast, his voice echoed cold and detached while his fingers casually parted my curls, easing a rose behind my ear. “Descended from Spanish Moors, he worked as a hired missionary in the heart of Andalusia, Spain. The stories he used to tell…” Something pained flitted across his expression too quickly to name. “He used to boast of sneaking into the Alhambra palace, stealing trinkets from the royal apartments. Of charming his quarry with myths of the crusades. A master thief. I met him as nothing more than a wandering vagrant.”
He turned on his heel and approached a shrub containing a soft, pink variety of blossoms. He fingered one, manipulating the delicate petals with ruthless intent.
“By then, I had escaped Ireland, stealing away on an English ship. To skirt the British occupation.” He shrugged as though referring to a minor inconvenience—not a defining event in a country’s history. “I had no plan. No goals. I merely deigned to explore wherever work or curiosity took me. It just so happened that, in Spain, I decided to try my hand as a hired mercenary working for a merchant who traded along the coast. There, he caught wind of a series of vessels returning from some new, mythical land. The Americas.
“Rumors ran rampant of the riches the vessel might contain, ripe for the taking. At his behest, I snuck onto a ship—one whose name you won’t find in the history books, mind you—in search of unspeakable treasure.” He looked away, gazing into the past. “And I was nearly gutted by Abrahaim, who worked for a rival merchant. After some rather heated back and forth, we decided we were too evenly matched to kill each other within a reasonable amount of time. So we would split the treasure between us, our masters none the wiser.” His faint smile fell flat. “Instead, we found a creature far beyond our understanding.”
“Raphael,” I supplied as he went silent.
He returned, pressing a new conquest against my palm—another rose. “Yes, Raphael,” he admitted. “Starved after months at sea, he attacked us both. To this day, I still don’t know his true origins. The man is, shall we say, obsessive regarding his past. Even the dates in the history books have been tweaked by him. I suspect your sister must have come close to the truth, for him to grow irritated enough to notice her.”
He sighed. “But in those early days, believe it or not, he was but a scared young man tormented by a curse he didn’t understand. One he’d inadvertently passed on to Abrahaim and me. But as we realized the new limits of our power, his curse became our gift. Our revelation. Anything we wanted or desired was ours with nothing more than a flash of fangs. I struggled at first, if you can believe that.”
He laughed, fingering his cross. Slow, his steps carried him away from me again, to yet another rose bush. “The constraints of my religion weighed heavily on me. I was a damned, hell-bound creature. But in a way, I grew to accept that doom. I embodied it. Raphael and Abrahaim may have enjoyed their newfound control, but I relished in it. And under my command, we consolidated it, conquering cities from the shadows, building influence through contracts as we discovered creatures more varied than even the creators of the Bible imagined.”
Awe painted his tone as he snapped the stem of another rose—a beautiful, creamy white.
“A triumvirate of allies, we were unmatched. If only you knew. Your little history books. Your legends and myths. If only you knew how much of it was a lie.” He laughed bitterly, twisting his blossom between his fingers. “But then…the years marched on, unending, taking their toll on each of us in different ways. Raphael grew more reclusive, content to control his reality through proxies on puppet strings. Abrahaim on the other hand, became pensive, racked with more guilt with every additional life ruined. And I…”
He turned to me, but I doubted
he even saw me. His eyes were wide, consumed by the past.
“I grew numb. Detached. It was as though I could only ever feel anything through violence. Through sowing fear. Crushing souls.” He formed a fist, crushing the rose into nothing. “Destroying lives. The more they bled, and agonized and screamed, the more intoxicating the power became. There is something terrible and addicting in sowing chaos… But every drug presents the danger of a relapse. When its high breaks and you fall from the glorious height. Increasingly I felt it, that guilt. A woman desired money to save her ailing father. In return, I consigned her to years of servitude, whoring herself, no different than hundreds before her. But in those days, I’d see her pain and, for a second, I’d feel it. Guilt.”
He gritted his teeth against it, and I knew deep down that if he could have purged that emotion from his soul entirely, he would have.
“It became too frequent, too much. In yet another instance, I desired the soul of a succubus, and in the process, her daughter was harmed.”
Saskia, I realized.
“As if conjured by heaven’s mercy, Abrahaim was there to convince me that there was another way. We could control our impulses, he claimed. Leave that life behind. He made it sound beautiful. I will give him that.” His mouth contorted into a painful imitation of a smile. “We took new names to reflect our rebirth—mine a reminder of where my was soul bound, while his was a simple phrase, chanted during the crusades his ancestors fought within. Memento Mori. Remember death. From it, he took the name Mero. Then he told me of a witch he knew, powerful enough to create a totem to keep him grounded. Help him remember the humanity we both had so eagerly shed.”
“Your necklace,” I whispered, eyeing the silver totem hanging from his throat. The one I found in the crypt took on a darker meaning. Not a backup of Dublin’s, but something far more meaningful…
“Yes.” He bowed his head, stroking his fingers along his cross. “Mero had one as well.”
