by Leigh Walker
“I want to know what you meant!”
“Of course you do. And when it’s safe, I will tell you everything.” Dominic turned to face me. “But I’ve learned the hard way. We’ve all the time in the world, yet without patience, we are guaranteed to fail.”
I gathered what remained of my patience, which was only scraps and shards. “Fail at what?”
The prince frowned. “We must deal with the problems here at the castle and in the kingdom. The choices made here impact the world at large. You saw my father last night—he’s worthless. You’re the only one who can help me with my mother.”
Though the queen was clearly a problem, I had no idea how I could be part of the solution. I waited for him to continue.
Dominic paced in front of the fire. “We have to stop her before she orders her coalition to make their move. She would have us return to the dark days—when the vampires ruled like royalty but behaved like savages, treating humans like poorly kept livestock.”
I blew out a shaky breath. “There were days like that?”
He nodded. “My kind has existed for millennia. We’ve had plenty of time to behave badly.”
“I don’t understand how I can help you.”
“You know, that’s where things get interesting.” The prince’s eyes sparkled a little. “The queen is our responsibility because we’re the only ones who can stop her. More precisely, you are the only one who can.”
Dumbstruck, I opened my mouth then closed it. That was not precisely what I wanted to hear. Having been mostly average my whole life, I’d sort of hoped that if I ever discovered a hidden talent, it would have something to do with curing cancer or singing like Beyoncé—not whupping a crazy vampire queen. I remembered what Mistress Olivia had said. “Is this about my blood?”
“It’s about you being special.” He smiled at me, warm and familiar.
That smile tugged at something deep inside me, a fact I chose to ignore. “How? How am I special?”
“From the moment I first saw you, I knew that you were. And as usual, I was correct.” He chuckled, pleased with himself. “Remember how I told you that your blood made me weak? It has that effect on all of my kind, some more than others.”
“Like the guard from the first time I came through. The one that…died.” I still had no memory of the incident, but I was trying to reconcile the story as fact.
“Yes, exactly.” Dom came and sat at the edge of the bed. “He was a new vampire, not strong enough to withstand the properties of your blood. But in smaller quantities, it has a less egregious effect.”
“And how do you know this exactly?” How many vampires have bitten me? My hand went to my neck again, and I absently rubbed it.
“We’ve tested the theory on many vampires over the years. You and I have worked out a… system.”
I raised my eyebrows. “Excuse me?”
He sighed and placed his hand gently on my right side, his fingers tracing my lower back. “I take blood from you and put it in vials. We use the droplets in my parents’ wine. Sometimes we use it on the others when necessary. In preparation for this visit, I used quite a bit on the villagers and the other candidates to make sure they didn’t remember you.”
“I don’t understand.”
He nodded. “I’m getting to that part.”
My skin felt hot beneath my pajamas where he touched me. Now what the school nurse had said suddenly made sense—the marks on my back were no rash. I had been cut but not by my own hand. “Do you need more blood?” I asked, a bit breathless because he was still rubbing my side.
“No.” He reluctantly took his hand away. “I have a collection of vials that are still full. I try to use them judiciously—it pains me to pierce your skin like that.”
“T-Thank you.” I was touched. For a large, muscular vampire, the prince seemed quite gentle. “Please, go on.”
“Once I believed that your blood might be able to help me contain the vampire uprising, I sought out ways to try to bring you back.” He glanced at me and quickly looked away. “There are other reasons I want you here, of course.”
“How did you do it?” I asked, fascinated. “How did you figure out where I came from?”
He scrubbed a hand over his face. “It took a while. But I realized there was a pattern to it, something more than random magic. You kept coming through at the time of the Trade then again six months later.”
“It always happens on the same dates?”
“Not precisely. The first time you came through, it was the day before the ceremony. The second time, it was exactly six months later to the day. The third time, you came through an hour before we started the Trade. Now I leave you notes and letters ahead of time to try to prepare you. I would love to be able to control when you come through, because it makes it easier to get you into the castle if you’re part of the ceremony. But as you have no memory of what happens here, it doesn’t work that way.”
“I still don’t understand.” I shook my head as if to clear it. “I’ve been coming here twice a year for nine years? Do you always choose me as a sacrifice? Don’t your parents get suspicious? Why haven’t I flunked out of school back home?” My mind simmered with questions, one after another furiously bubbling to the surface. The Dixons must’ve filed missing persons reports on me, and God only knew what my caseworker would have to say about my continued disappearances.
“Remember when I told you that time was malleable?” Dominic’s gaze searched mine. “It has been nine years here in the kingdom, but the time has not passed the same for you. You always look the same when you come through. Though you’re of an age when your physical appearance should be changing rapidly, you haven’t aged. You’ve told me each time that you’re eighteen and a senior in high school. When you go back, it’s as though you were only missing for a matter of hours, no matter if you’ve stayed here a week or a month. I’ve followed you through to confirm this.”
I stared at him. My head hurt. “What about the rest of it? I don’t understand how it works.”
“With respect to the Trade—yes, I often choose you as the sacrifice. To make up for the missing blood-slave count, I have Anthony bring in extra girls from faraway villages to keep their numbers up. As long as the girls are pretty, my parents don’t seem to notice that they’re different.”
“How can they not notice?”
He sighed. “It’s like shopping for a steak at the market—they all sort of look the same.”
I swallowed hard.
Dominic peered at me. “Are you all right, Victoria? I know this information can seem like a shock.”
“Do I look like a steak to you?”
He put his hand over mine. “Of course not. And I’m sorry to use such a crude example, but that is how my parents think.”
“Let me get this straight. I haven’t aged in the past nine years.” I sighed. On top of everything else, I had the phrase aged steak running through my mind. “But have you? Do you change? Do you age?”
“In years, yes, but not in appearance. I will forever look this way.”
For some reason—and though it was veering wildly off topic—that information struck me as extremely unfair. I felt envious of all the maidens who had gazed on Prince Dominic adoringly, for all time before, and all of those that would continue to ogle his good looks into eternity. “But were you born like this?” I motioned toward his broad chest. “Or were you turned?”
“I am a biological vampire,” the prince said. “I was born an infant, similar to a human. But my growth was different. Once I reached maturation, in the form that you see now, I did not age further. I am much, much older than I appear.”
“How old?”
He chuckled. “I’ve lost count. I was born in the late two thousands, if I’m to believe my mother.”
“So you’re…” I swallowed hard. “A thousand years old?”
“A little more than that.” Dominic seemed unflustered.
I tried to wrap my brain around
what he’d said, or at least any small part of what he’d said. “But other vampires look older than you—your parents, Mistress Olivia—how old are they? How does it work?”
He nodded. “Mistress Olivia was turned. She will forever appear the age she was made a vampire, for that was when her body ceased aging. My parents, however, are a different story. They are both biological vampires, just as I am. Their mothers carried them and gave birth to them just as my mother birthed me. They appear older because they have lived for thousands of years longer than I have. They are some of the oldest vampires in existence, which is why they are considered powerful.”
My brain went wonky. “So were they alive… Were they alive during my time?” I was still struggling with the idea that we were in the future. The drafty castle and lack of technology made it seem like we were in the distant past.
“Yes. My parents were alive in the early two thousands. And before.”
My poor brain felt as if it were boiling over. “So if you live for another thousand years, you will also mature? Will you have a silver beard like your father?”
“Hopefully that’s all I’ll have in common with him.” The prince stiffened. “I can no longer tolerate his cowardice.”
I nodded, but my mind was wandering, trying to untangle some of what he’d told me. “I still don’t understand something—well, that’s an understatement. If I’ve come through for nine years, and you’ve continued to bring me to the castle, how can your parents not recognize me?”
“Because I’ve poisoned them, my lady.” Dominic spread his long fingers out on the comforter and inspected them. “I’ve poisoned them with your blood.”
16
The Needs Of The Many
My jaw went slack again. “I’m sorry, but what did you just say? My blood is poison?”
“Like I started to explain before—your blood has several useful properties. It can kill vampires, at least some of them, if it’s ingested in large quantities and can also act as a vanishment. Vampires are good at such tricks, but your blood makes it easy to protect you. If the kingdom had a patent system, I would be the first in line.” He chuckled until he saw the look on my face then stopped. “I’m joking, of course.”
“Can you explain what you mean—about vanishments, not to mention poisoning your parents? I’ve no idea what you’re talking about!”
“Vanishments are devices that vampires use to trick humans and, less successfully, other vampires. For instance, we’ve used them on the villagers for a hundred years. That’s why they think we’re deities, and they’re happy to give up their loveliest young maidens to us. That’s also why they haven’t noticed that my family hasn’t aged in a century.”
“Explain how it works,” I said. “And also what the heck it has to do with my blood.”
“Our kind uses vanishments often. It’s to maintain the secrecy of our race’s existence,” Dominic said. “For example, say a villager witnessed one of our soldiers draining someone. We would use a vanishment on them so they would forget the event. We hypnotize them with our gaze, then our brain emits a signal to theirs. It’s a bit like a curse, I suppose. Or perhaps a bleaching.”
“Bleaching?”
“A brain bleaching, if you will. You might’ve noticed the citizens aren’t the brightest bulbs. That’s because they’ve all seen more than they should, so over the course of years, we’ve had to erase them a bit, I’m afraid.”
His matter-of-fact tone had me reeling.
The prince cleared his throat. “Back to our example. The next time the villager sees the guard in question, his or her mind repels the actual memory and replaces it with a bright, happy one. Like the guard helping to carry a small child—something positive.”
“So you bleach the humans’ brains and replace the ugly truth with happy fake memories.” I stared at the prince. “And they trust you and worship you like gods. They dress their daughters up to give them to you as presents.”
“That’s right.” He looked defensive. “Vanishment isn’t the worst thing, you know. It doesn’t hurt them so much as make them a bit…gappy.”
“Gappy.” I scrubbed a hand over my face. “And does my blood do this? Does it ‘bleach’ people, like your brainwaves do?”
“It’s actually much more elegant than that.” The prince smiled, warming to the topic. “Your blood, when administered in small doses to vampires or humans, makes your memory invisible. I have no idea how it works. But once someone ingests your blood, it’s like they have amnesia specific to you. When you come back through, it’s as though they’ve never met you before. So although you’ve visited the kingdom many times, no one—not my parents, not the guards, not the villagers—can remember you. They only remember you for the time that you’re here on your latest visit.”
“That’s… That’s crazy.”
He arched an eyebrow. “I told you you were a witch.”
“I’m not a witch.” I frowned as I rubbed the cuts on my back. “There’s something weird with my blood is all—it’s not like I’m dropping squirrel bones into a bubbling cauldron and muttering curses.”
“I would pay good money to see you do that.” Dom chuckled. “I do love it when you mutter.”
The prince, although devastatingly handsome, clearly had some issues. I shook my head. “Back to what you were saying about your parents. We’ve poisoned them with my blood?”
“That’s right, and for the love of the gods, don’t feel bad about it. We haven’t hurt them. Yet. I’ve just given them your blood in small doses, which erases all their memories of you.” Dominic leaned closer. “I do it with the villagers too. That’s why I’m able to repeatedly sneak you into the Trade. Between my brain waves and your blood, they’ve all been scrubbed clean of your memory.”
I stared at him. What he was saying was beyond anything I could’ve imagined—I couldn’t decide what was crazier, that a vampire prince was telling me the story or that I believed the vampire prince telling me the story.
“I didn’t know what would happen at first,” he continued. “I used a few test subjects, and unfortunately for them, the initial trials were a bit…rocky. But over time, I realized that the older the vampire, the more restrained the result. The newer vampires reacted poorly to your blood, even in small amounts. Most of them died.”
“That’s terrible.” I felt sick.
“The humans all lived. That’s something.”
I blinked at him.
“I’m not proud of what I did, Victoria. But I had to weigh the consequences. Your blood was the first thing that gave me any sort of hope that I could fight for the world I believe in. If my mother would enslave all of mankind—what would you have me do? Stand by and watch?”
“No, but it’s still…killing.” I shivered. Had he just seemed surprisingly gentle to me?
“I believe in sacrificing for the greater good. When you live for eternity, you see the ebb and flow of existence. I am my brother’s keeper, and I did not use the vampires as tests without hesitation or remorse. But in the end, I knew that if I killed them, it was for hope for the lives of many, hope for a better day for all of us. And I believe that they live on in the next world.”
“But why all the trial and error and experiments with my blood? I don’t understand.” I took a deep breath. “If you want to kill your mother, why don’t you just…kill her?”
“You mean, with a stake?” Dominic laughed, but it was without humor. “That wouldn’t work on a vampire as powerful as my mother. She is literally indestructible. I’ve watched her pull more than a few stakes out of her own chest over the years—she’s not exactly popular.”
“So the queen will live forever?” I couldn’t imagine an existence like that, one without end here on earth.
“Yes, unless I can find a way to defeat her.”
“And your father?” I asked.
Dominic shrugged. “He is more susceptible than my mother. He has weaknesses that she does not have.”
“
Why is that?”
The prince lifted his chin. “Because he believes he is weak. Even with vampires, the mind-body connection is a powerful thing. My mother believes she is unstoppable. My father believes he has limitations. They are both correct, for that is how they see their worlds, and that is how they live in them.”
I put my face in my hands. We’d gone down the rabbit hole, and I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to make sense of it. “I feel guilty that I’ve hurt all these people—these vampires.”
“Don’t. The choice to test was always mine. You had nothing to do with it. And we should only be grateful for the gifts your blood gives us.” He reached out and stroked my hair. “It protects you, even when I cannot.”
A knock came at the door, and Mistress Olivia stuck her head into the room. “Ooh, I am sorry to interrupt.”
I peeked up at her from beneath my hands. I needed to be rescued from the conversation. “Don’t be.”
She smiled cheerily. “You need to get dressed and begin your daily schedule, my lady. Queen’s orders.”
“One more minute, Olivia.” The prince’s tone was final.
As she closed the door, he turned back to me. “Your blood is the reason I’m able to bring you here each time without detection. They don’t remember you—they can’t. But my mother is very close to making changes, changes that all the vanishments in the world can’t undo. This could be our last chance to stop her.”
I nodded shakily. “O-Okay.”
“We must be careful. I have council meetings, and in order to keep up appearances, I’ll have to be away from you for some time. Stay safe. As I said, keep your eye on the ball—the staying alive ball. During your last visit here, something went very wrong. I don’t want to repeat it.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“The queen became fixated on you.” The muscle in Dominic’s jaw jumped. “And you nearly died because of it.”
17
Ripple
