by Raven Hart
I leaned forward in my chair. “No such papers were found on the Alabaster with Alger’s remains. Reedrek said he’d stowed away on the Alabaster to murder Alger out of spite and stop my smuggling operation, but it may have been more than that. Perhaps Reedrek knew that Alger had important information about the Council that he didn’t want to come to light.”
“I expect what’s left of those copies is at the bottom of the Atlantic by now,” Olivia said.
“Why have you only now told me this?” I demanded.
“There was no time. You sent me back here to organize the Bonaventures so soon after you put Reedrek away, and then you assigned me to brief and dispatch spies to search out Hugo’s vampires and determine if Diana was alive.”
“Which you lied to me about,” I said.
“Out of necessity,” Olivia replied impatiently. “And then there was this crisis with Renee. You have so much on your mind, so much to deal with, I only wanted to wait until we had something of substance to share with you.”
Olivia’s gaze searched mine for something akin to the excitement she was feeling. “William, forgive me, but I thought you’d be more…enthusiastic about this discovery.”
How could I tell her that I was beyond caring about vampire history and politics? She no doubt still expected me to transport her little coven to Savannah as soon as I got Renee back. I no longer gave a damn about her and her merry band of blood drinkers. I cared only about saving Renee. I barely cared about Will. I still needed Olivia’s help, however, and this new revelation might mean she could provide even more aid than I’d dared to hope.
“I assure you, I don’t lack enthusiasm. I’m just going through all the possibilities in my mind,” I said. “Have you been able to decipher anything that will help us with the problem at hand right now?”
“I hadn’t thought so until I heard Will’s story just now about how Ulrich is trying to impress the Council with a—a sacrifice.” Olivia glanced down at the floor. She couldn’t bring herself to say Renee’s name in such a gruesome context.
“But now?” I asked.
“We were comparing some of Alger’s recent notes to some that he made around the time you first went to the New World. We think that he was trying to get to the bottom of the Council’s resurgence—the feeling everyone’s getting in their blood that some big event is on its way.”
“The reason Alger decided to go to America when he did,” Will said.
“Yes. Exactly.” Olivia paused and took a breath as if what she had to say next would be difficult to explain. “When Alger himself began to get this—this feeling of…”
“Doom?” Will supplied.
Olivia snapped her attention to him. “Yes. Impending doom. That’s exactly how Alger described it.”
I appraised my son. He was much more intuitive than I had originally thought. Of course, he was five centuries old, much older than Olivia, and could therefore, like me, sense things younger blood drinkers could not. I too had sensed the approaching evil, as Donovan had mentioned the other night. At the time I had put it down to Reedrek’s being in my life again after so many years, but now I was beginning to understand it was something greater than that.
“So are you saying there were similarities between the feelings vampires had two hundred years ago and the things that so many of us sense now?” I asked.
“Yes,” Olivia said.
“So,” Will wanted to know, “was there anything in those moldy old papers that shed any light on what the old demons are up to this time and what, if anything, makes them think they’ll be any more successful than they were before?”
“According to one of Alger’s more recent contacts,” Olivia said, “the Council was learning to use their combined power to harness elemental forces.”
“Earth, air, water, and fire,” I muttered.
“And spirit,” Olivia added.
Ah, Olivia, ever the pagan. “How do they know they’ll be able to wield this power?” I asked.
“Do you remember when the last rogue country claimed to have tested those nuclear bombs underground?” Olivia asked.
“Claimed?” I said.
“Those were earthquakes, not nukes. According to this source of Alger’s, the Council caused them.”
The vampires in the room just looked at one another. Finally, Will said, “An earthquake? Doesn’t that seem like a bit of overkill, luv, just to get a few vampires in line? And what would a blood sacrifice have to do with manufacturing earthquakes? What can the old bastards be about?”
“We don’t know,” Olivia admitted. “You’re right, though, none of it appears to make much sense. Do you have any theories, William?…William?”
I barely heard her. The gravity of Renee’s situation hit me hard. How did her sacrifice fit in with the plans of the old sires? And how in the name of heaven was I ever going to save her?
Jack
“So you need to talk to both of them? The one who’s in heaven and the one who’s in hell?”
“That’s right.”
“Do you mind telling me who these people are?”
“I’d rather not.”
“How do you expect me to help you find them if you won’t tell me who they are?”
“I have this…this feeling that once I get there they’ll find me. Don’t ask me how I know. I just do.”
“Don’t ask, huh?” I said. “It seems to me that this telling-the-truth business should go both ways. How come I have to spill all my secrets and you get to keep yours?” Now, I thought this was a reasonable question, but I’m a man. And every now and then I get reminded that what seems right and reasonable to a man seems like flat-out crazy talk to a woman. Connie looked at me like I’d just escaped an asylum.
She started to say something sharp, I could tell. But she must have remembered she was trying to get a favor out of me, so she bit back whatever it was. Finally, she said, “I don’t want to go into that. I just need you to do this for me. I can’t tell you how important it is.”
“Can’t or won’t?”
“Jack, don’t make me talk about why I have to do this. I can’t handle it. Just trust me.”
“Like you trust me?”
She thrust out her chin and her eyes blazed. I felt like a fool then, opening up the way I did when it was clear that she didn’t think enough of me to do the same. During the few tense moments of silence that followed, I begged her silently to say something, anything, to signal me that she would let me into her mind and her heart. But she said nothing, and the silence hurt more than any insult she might hurl my way.
Finally, I took a deep breath and said what Mel told me to say. “It’s too dangerous. Melaphia forbids it.”
“Dammit, Jack, are you going to let her tell you what to do?”
“Don’t even start,” I said. “You can’t drive a wedge between me and Mel. She’s just about the only family I have.”
“That’s more family than I have,” Connie said, her eyes glistening. She got up and went to the door. Holding it open, she said, “Go home, Jack. And tell Seth that I will be at the fight.”
I went to the door and walked out before I could say anything I’d regret. But I hadn’t taken two steps when she spoke again. I turned back as she said, “Tell Seth this, too—tell him that whatever happens, I’ll never consider him to be a monster.”
What about me? I wanted to yell as she closed the door in my face. Sometimes it just doesn’t pay to sober up.
When I entered the house, I heard screaming. I swore as I took the steps to the upstairs bedrooms two at a time. I burst into the room Melaphia had been using since Renee was taken and saw Reyha and Deylaud—in human form—leaning across from either side of the bed, trying to comfort her.
“What is it? What’s the matter?” I demanded.
“They’ve got her!” screamed Melaphia. Her eyes were like those of a wild thing, and her arms flailed as if she were trying to beat back an invisible demon.
She shrieked ag
ain, and the twins, even though they were in human form, turned their faces to the ceiling and howled like the devil himself was after them. It was eerie enough to raise a fellow’s gooseflesh and short hairs at the same time. Even a badass vampire’s.
I turned on the light and joined Deylaud on his side of the bed. I put one knee down on the comforter and scooted next to Mel. “It’s all right,” I said. “William has gone to get Renee, remember? She’s going to be fine.” I said it to calm myself as much as to calm her. The sound of Melaphia’s and the twins’ wails had really rattled me.
“No!” Melaphia yelled. “It’s never going to be all right. Not ever again!”
“Why? What do you mean?”
“I saw her.” Melaphia stopped waving her arms and grasped my shirtfront, bringing my face close to hers. “She’s not what she was.”
“You had a nightmare, that’s all,” I insisted. I put one arm around her and gave her shoulders what I hoped was a reassuring squeeze.
“Not a nightmare. I saw her. I saw it.”
Behind me I heard Deylaud lean against the wall and slump to the floor. I glanced around. “See to your brother,” I said to Reyha, who scampered around the bed to her twin’s side. It had obviously taken all his strength to change into two-footed form and make his way upstairs to come to Mel’s side. He was as pale and wan as a ghost and he was panting, but his eyes were clear and frightened.
I turned my attention back to Melaphia. “What?” I asked. “What did you see?”
“She’s one of you!” Melaphia turned loose my shirt and pushed me away. “She’s a blood drinker! She is undead!” The look of horror and revulsion on her face made me back off from her. Hell, it nearly made me physically ill. And it hit me then as it never had before. This was what she thought of me. Why had I never known that the human I loved like a daughter thought of me as a monster?
I stood up and looked down into the faces of Reyha and Deylaud, as they whimpered on the floor behind me. They clung to each other as they stared up at me, their faces full of horror. They were as devoted to Renee as any dog has ever been to any child. It was not too strong to say they worshipped her. The look in their eyes broke what was left of my heart. I knelt beside them and tried to reassure them. “A bad dream,” I said. “That’s all it was.”
Reyha nodded and reluctantly let go of her brother long enough for me to pick him up and put him in bed beside Melaphia. With no strength left, he was dead-weight, but at least he’d made it back into human form again. That was a positive sign. I pointed to the other side of the antique four-poster and Reyha knew what I wanted her to do. She scampered back around and got in bed on Melaphia’s other side.
“Give me the doll,” Melaphia said, and pointed to something on the pedestal table by the bed. It was the little doll she’d been making with beads. I handed it to her and she clutched it tightly. “Maman Lalee, help my child!” she said. “I would rather see her dead than a vampire. Please, sweet mother, kill her by your own hand before the demons take her to be one of them.”
I didn’t know what to say. I started to tell her that Renee as a vampire was better than no Renee at all. But the words sounded insane, even to me. Of course she would be better off dead, as I would have been had I really known the path I was choosing when William asked me on that battlefield if I wanted to live forever.
I wanted to tell her again that everything would be all right, and mean it, but I didn’t know if it would. “I’ll be back,” I said. I went into the next bedroom down the hall, the one where Renee slept whenever she was staying at the “big house,” as she called it. I unplugged the Alice in Wonderland night-light, which hadn’t been lit since the night Renee was stolen. I took it back into the room where Mel and the twins huddled together under the down comforter, plugged it in, and turned it on. Then I turned off the overhead light and they relaxed a little.
I collapsed into a rocking chair in the corner, determined to stay with them until they were all asleep again. The little light glowed like it did the last night I read Renee a bedtime story. It just so happened that it had been Alice in Wonderland. Renee loved that one, although she found it scary at the same time.
I shivered, fighting an uneasy feeling. I was struck with the irrational need to get far away from this cozy little bedroom.
Melaphia still fretted. The twins were trying to snuggle with her, trying to make her feel warm and secure, but it wasn’t working. I remembered my “talent” for bewitching humans—the one I’d only used a handful of times—and figured now was as good a reason to use it as I was ever likely to see.
I concentrated on making Melaphia calm and sleepy. Go back to sleep, I murmured to her mind. She quieted gradually, and after a few minutes she was completely still. It even seemed to be working on Reyha and Deylaud. A few seconds after the rhythm of Mel’s breathing told me she was asleep, the twins’ eyelids began to flutter closed.
As I watched them sleep, I didn’t think I’d ever felt like more of an outsider, more of a cold-blooded imposter in the land of the living. It was clear that I was a demon even to the ones I loved the most. There was a built-in wall between us. The wall between the living and the dead. Between the good and pure and the ones who preyed on them. And those predators were me and my kind.
Looking at the three of them, I wanted nothing more than to curl up on the bed at their feet until the sunbeams came through the gap in the curtains and burned me to a cinder. Mel had said it, after all. I was better off dead. But my humans still needed me, and as long as they did, I guessed I might as well stick around, or try to anyway.
I went back outside to my Corvette and hopped in. There was nothing like a little physical work to get your mind off things, so I decided to head back to the garage since there was plenty of dark left. As I drove I wondered why I tried so hard to hang on to my humanity after all these years. I was a monster, a demon, but whenever I was reminded of that fact, it always came as some kind of surprise. And it always hurt. It was about damned time that I accepted what I was. Fangs and all.
Maybe accepting yourself as the evil dead would mean never having to say you’re sorry.
Ten
William
“Will,” I said, “you told me earlier that you could feel Renee’s presence but that she was not there in the room where you overheard Diana and Ulrich. You said she was somewhere deeper. Did the passage continue past the room they were in?”
“The room was more of a cavern,” he said. “I believe that if you kept on climbing down you’d eventually reach her. And them. I could feel them, too.”
“The Council?” Olivia asked.
“Yeah. They smell like…hell,” Will said. Then he looked at me a little doubtfully. “So, what’s the plan?”
“I’m going there tomorrow night,” I said. “You can take me as far as the room you spoke of. Beyond that I go alone. I don’t want Diana and Ulrich to know you’re working with me. If I find Renee and can’t get her out myself, we’ll make another attempt and you can come along. If necessary, all of you should be prepared to go with me that time. But tomorrow I will try to discover where they’re keeping her and what their numbers are. If Ulrich has already delivered her to the Council, there may be many. If they’re hiding her away from the Council until two nights hence, fortune may smile on me, and I might find her only lightly guarded.”
“All right then,” Will said. “Until tomorrow night.” He turned to go; Olivia and I followed him to the foyer.
“Will you have any trouble slipping away from Diana and Hugo tomorrow night?” I asked.
“No problem,” Will said. “I do have one question for blondie here before I go.” He turned to Olivia. “You didn’t trust me when I first came here tonight, and yet you spilled a lot of your secrets while I was around. Why is that?”
Olivia grabbed the front of his long leather coat, reached into the inside pocket, and brought out a bibelot that had been on the entry table when Will arrived, but which I now saw was missi
ng from its place. I had been watching him the whole time, and I hadn’t seen him pocket the trinket.
She set it back on the table. “I’ll tell you why,” she said, roughly letting go of the coat and shoving him a little at the same time. “You just don’t look that hard to kill. And make no mistake: I will kill you if you double-cross us, William’s son or no.”
Will looked surprised but covered quickly with a laugh. He was still laughing when he closed the door behind him.
Olivia and I heard a hubbub from the other vampires and turned around. A ghostly pale Donovan stood in the entrance to the parlor, leaning heavily on the doorframe. “Who was that?” he asked.
“My son, Will,” I said.
“Oh. His voice sounded so familiar, but I can’t place it. I didn’t get a look at him tonight or the night I followed him and the others. No matter. It will come to me.”
Olivia rushed to him and put her arm under his shoulders. “You shouldn’t be up yet. You need more sleep to recover.”
“I can sleep when I’m dead,” he said, and laughed at his own joke.
Olivia and Andrew walked him to a sofa and gently helped him sit. “Isn’t someone going to pop the obvious question?” he asked. His face reminded me of marble, with blood vessels showing through like the matrix in the stone. But there was still a twinkle in his pale blue eyes.
“Who staked you?” I asked.
“Your lady wife, Diana,” he said, and slumped forward in a faint.
Donovan came around well enough to feed off the other vampires and was put back into his coffin, but he wouldn’t stay. As soon as the other vampires went to their own coffins, he crawled back out of his and insisted on joining Olivia and me. We helped him walk to the long table in the coffin room.
“Blood sustains me, but I was dying for tea,” he said, and sipped the strong brew Olivia had just made.
“So what happened the night Diana staked you?” Olivia asked.
As if kidnapping wasn’t enough evidence of Diana’s evil, I winced at the thought of her unprovoked attack on a peaceful vampire.
