by Peter Dawes
The force of him falling pulled the dagger from his back, leaving it clutched in my hand. I laughed at the way he twitched before me, bent around on his side with his mouth agape and tears welling in his eyes. “Now, that was undoubtedly some place between your thoracic and lumbar spine. For being a raw plunge, I probably at least damaged a nerve or fucked with a ligament. Nothing you could not recover from, but I think this will give me enough time to have your attention.” Sheathing one dagger, I freed a hand to reach into my pocket and produce a piece of black cloth. With thorough strokes, I cleaned my other knife and tucked it away, too. “I do have your attention, yes?”
“Why toy with me?” he murmured, his face contorted and eyes squeezing shut while he let out a gasp. I had enough time to pocket the cloth again and adjust my coat before he managed another word. “Kill me. Get it over with.”
“That would be too simple. First, we need to have a chat.” Walking over to the chairs, I slid one across and twirled it around, straddling it in nearly one fluid motion. My sword protested the action, but after a moment to settle, I made myself comfortable, fangs retracting in the process. “A little bird has been tweeting in my Mistress’s ear about you. Have you been misbehaving, Demetrius?” I asked.
“I don’t have…the foggiest idea what the fuck you’re talking about.”
“Oh, come now. I have no doubt the level of pain you are in, but surely your memory can be jogged.” I grinned. “Do you wish your memory jogged?”
“Doesn’t matter. You’re just pawing.” He had to pause, his gasps forcing a tremor through the top half of his body while the bottom half remained still. “Kill me now or wait until later, I’m still dead either way.”
“Ah, but you underestimate the level of pain I can inflict on you first. A little measure of trivia for you – I was a doctor prior to being turned vampire.”
“Fucking ironic.”
“Is it not just? Emergency room medicine. If I was evaluating you right now, I would say you needed to go into surgery immediately. No doubt, a lot of internal bleeding and my, even if you did make it, I might have hit the jackpot and crippled you. If you would like, I can give you a rather painful anatomy lesson.”
“Go to hell.”
“Save me a place, as you shall be heading there first.” Reaching into my coat, I pulled one of the daggers again and idly chipped at some dirt beneath my fingernails. My eyes deliberately remained set on the task. “What is your business with my brother?”
It took a moment for him to respond, but when he did a derisive chuckle managed past his lips, wavering toward the end. “You wouldn’t understand my business with your brother. All the same, I should’ve known he would run to Mother.”
“You grossly underestimate where Mother can see.” I smirked. “She smells something foul on the wind and you seem to be its origin.”
“The only foul thing that woman smells originates from her.” As I glanced up at him, I saw him shudder and felt tempted to throw my dagger right through his larynx. If not for the fact that he seemed to be attempting further speech, I might have done just that. “I told him to leave, you abomination,” he finally said, continuing. “But the stubborn mule wouldn’t leave you. Or that bitch of a mother you both serve. And now, I know why.”
“Do not leave me hanging in suspense, Demetrius,” I said.
“Because he’s in bed with the Devil.”
The phrasing caused my brow to furrow. “Are you calling my maker the Devil?”
“Not her. You.” He twisted as much as his broken body would let him, eyes finding me while he pushed his torso up from the floor enough to flop onto his back. A fresh flash of pain rushed across his facial features, taking a moment to subside. Lids clenched shut, they opened once more to regard me and this time, his gaze refused to waver. “Those eyes. Those damn eyes of yours. He never told us.”
A knot threatened to form in my stomach. I lowered the knife, albeit subconsciously. “What are you carrying on about?”
“Oh, don’t play stupid, assassin. I’m about to die. Who do you think I’ll be running off to tell?”
“I do not presume to know what in God’s name you are talking about.”
“He knows and so does your whore maker. About you. About what you are.” A shaky breath, the remainder of what he drew in to speak, exited his lungs with a tremor. “This is why she hides you. She knows we’d murder you in an instant – any elder who had the chance to look at you would know what an abomination you are. Your eyes. They might be blue for now, but they won’t be forever.”
Here it was again, the grand allusion to some great mystery, and for once something eclipsed insulting Sabrina in its vie to make me lose my temper. Standing abruptly, I kicked the chair to the side and crouched beside him, pressing the tip of the blade against his throat, my fangs peeking back into extension again. “Listen, you fucking mongrel,” I said. “I have no bloody idea what you mean, so spell it out for me. What about my eyes has you in such a snit?”
Demetrius barked a laugh out despite the pain. If the feel of cold steel caressing his skin instilled any fear in him, he failed to indicate as such. “I don’t believe it,” he said. “Sabrina hasn’t told you?”
“Told me what, goddamn it?” Jabbing forward with the blade, I provoked another wail from him, but resisted in penetrating him any further. I needed his vocal cords intact if he was to issue a response. “Answer me. Or else your life is forfeit.”
He writhed beneath me, his own fangs descending. “My life’s forfeit either way. I only hope your brother finally has enough sense to murder you after this.”
“Demetrius, I swear to you, I mean it. Continue with this line of speech and I shall hasten your demise.”
“I’d gladly welcome death.” The corner of his mouth curled, a thin strand of blood forming at his lips and trickling down to his neck. He mocked me with his expression. “If you’re looking for answers, you’re asking the wrong person, assassin. It’s better you remain ignorant until someone else finds out about you. Or until one of your own kind finally rids the world of the atrocity you are.”
“I have had enough of this.” Pulling back the dagger, I tossed it aside in anger and drew my prized new sword slid from its scabbard. Demetrius narrowed his eyes and shuddered while I mirrored his loathe back to him. “I shall send my brother your regards when I see him next,” I said.
Then I swung the katana’s blade downward, ridding him of his head.
His head lobbed only a few inches before his entire form became ash, disintegrating before me. I studied his remains, not certain when I had started to twitch from rage, but feeling it pour out of me like a dam inside of me had burst. I did not know how long I searched his remains, except to say I slid the sword back into place with his blood still coating the edge. I would clean that later.
At the moment, I had more vital things to do.
Elaine eyed me with a blank, curious stare when I emerged into the living room. Grabbing her hair in a fistful, I dragged her into the kitchen, apathetic to her screams and silencing them once I could rip into her neck over the linoleum floor. Her blood stains mingled with his, until she fell to the ground, useless and depleted, and only slackening my fury by the smallest of margins. I swore through the clean-up of the kitchen, and put myself together in enough semblance of order to clean her blood from my face and conceal my weaponry once again. The last thing I took, as I disposed of them, was a swath of Demetrius’s shirt. That, I would deliver to the House of Matthew Pritchard.
Along with another black rose.
A brusque walk marked my march back to the coven house. I had told my mistress it would be done within two days and lived up to the claim, but the mission itself had not been a complete success. When she beckoned me into her quarters upon her return, there was no pleasantness in the silent vigil. No tingles of expectation married with the thrill of release once she acknowledged my presence. She asked what I had learned and somehow, the report I offered failed to
live up to the standards with which I held myself.
“He was beckoning Robin to leave us,” I said, frowning. “Robin, however, refused.”
“Fascinating,” she said, leaving the word hanging idle in the air for what seemed to be an eternity. She lost herself in thought, as did I, strolling to her closet clad only in a chemise and matching undergarments. Such a thing of beauty and yet, I could not be compelled to admire it.
The thoughts she broke me from when she spoke again were discordant, at best. “Perhaps another one of theirs will be more willing to talk,” she said.
“I think they would sooner choke on their own blood,” I murmured in response.
“That hardly seems like you to say, my assassin.” Her comment forced my gaze to meet hers. The concerned look on her face bore an unsettling undercurrent to it. “Usually, you are offering to oblige them.”
My stomach twisted, though I hardly knew why. Managing a smirk, I said, “I hardly wished to presume, Mistress. But should you command it, I would readily do so.”
Sabrina nodded, an eyebrow arched. “Then stand at the ready. I might soon have work for you.”
A nod was all it took to purchase my departure, but my world hardly settled from that point forth. It had been three weeks prior to my birthday on that particular evening. A mere three weeks before I would meet Monica. It was the first time in a while someone had made mention of my hidden gifts, and the mark of more incidents to come in the days which followed. Lydia’s enchanted necklace would find its way into my ownership. Robin would be murdered by my hand, at the machinations of our maker. The chain of dominoes had all been aligned, one hitting the other until it brought me around full circle. Monica kidnapped. My own kind, as Demetrius had called them, aiding my quest to rescue her after we established a hard-won truce.
Now, my brother had returned.
I sensed the end of a long mission at hand, with a much rockier road lying ahead of me. My final push to Mordor lay before me with more shadows looming heavy on the horizon, all pointing toward these eyes of mine, this destiny uttered from the lips of friends and foes alike. With as many things as I had discovered thus far, I knew more secrets waited to be uncovered.
If he was to be my aide, as he claimed, I could only hope Robin would be more forthright with me than he had been under Sabrina’s roof.
Part One
A Brother’s Commission
“I would rather walk with a friend in
the dark than alone in the light.”
Hellen Keller
Chapter One
“We stood across the expanse, weighing each other silently as though time had paused and permitted us the luxury. I could sense dawn closer than I would have liked it, and knew he had to be aware of the same thing, but neither of us seemed apt to break the stalemate. Of all the people I might have expected to come upon on this mission, his name would not have even made the list.
I settled on speaking my thought out loud. “You have me at a loss,” I said. “The last time I saw you, you were dead by my hand.”
Robin tilted his chin in recognition of the assertion. The way his gaze weighed me left me confused. I saw no hate or anger present, as though he had not yet fully settled on this creature he saw before him. An eyebrow raised, his expression hardened for a split second before relaxing, the other vampire finally giving in to a nod. “Yes, that you did,” he said. “But these are different times and you are not the neophyte I trained any longer.”
“Not entirely, no.” The words were spoken through the haze of shock, with me aware of little else than how much of a turn for the surreal my quest had just taken. As Robin stepped closer, I remained in place, tracking his movements while struck by the impossible. His long hair had been tied back, coat and suit much the same as he had been – as though he had not even suffered a scratch. What sort of mission raised the dead from their grave? Gave a vampire back vestiges of his humanity and visions of things that had happened; warnings of things to come?
When had I ascended the ladder of the cosmos to such dizzying heights?
My brother – my formerly perished brother – paused a few yards shy and glanced around the neighborhood. While it bore an eerie silence to it, I could not deny his need to descend into whispers. “Your activities have not gone without notice, brother,” he said. “We may want to go indoors to talk.”
The comment struck me aback. I turned to regard the piles of ash being scattered by the breeze. Had I been more in my mind, the sight might have caused me to wince, given present company. As it was, I studied them and felt for something on the wind, attempting to latch onto the task at hand while my mind struggled to catch up. “I thought I had covered my tracks fairly well,” I said.
“You did well enough that it took some time for me to find you.” He crouched low, plucking a shirt from one mound of ash. As he glanced up at me, the eyebrow arched once more. “But even the most obtuse of us know when a seer’s been about. Especially in Seattle.”
“Point assuredly granted.” I indulged another quick scan of the neighboring buildings. Robin stood, allowing the garment to descend back to the ground again and dusting off his hands. “What would you suggest?”
“I suggest we find refuge for the day. This might take a while.” He waited for my gaze to return to his, a soft smile creeping across his lips as he took in whatever confused look I must have been directing toward him. His footsteps brought him closer still, until a mere few inches separated us. “I know you are determined, and that your witch was taken from you, but if you could indulge your brother once for old time’s sake, I promise we can be about your work again in the evening.”
His comment captured my attention enough for me to muddle through the wonder this truly was. I could not help but to reflect his smile. “I believe I should honor the request for more than mere indulgence’s sake.” The impetus to embrace him made itself known enough for me to act upon it without question. I drew him close for a moment, my arms wrapped around him spurring one of his hands to settle on my back. “Brother, you have been missed.”
“As have you.” We lingered together for several seconds, until he pulled away and nodded with a sigh. His hand sliding from my back to my shoulder, he turned me to face the opposite direction and used his hold on me to prompt me forward. Both of us strolled from the debris with not another word given over to the carnage around us.
I adjusted my coat to conceal my weapons as his arm fell to his side again. From my periphery, I saw him incline his head to regard the stars. “I find it amusing,” he said, disrupting the brief period of quiet which had settled between us. “You talk about my being dead, but the last time I saw you, you were a lost soul taken by the Devil. It would seem the Fates have been about the work of miracles.”
“I am still attempting to reason with the absurd,” I said.
“Yes, I can’t imagine how startling this must be for you. I apologize. If I had been given some way of relaying a message to you sooner, I would have.”
“I hardly think you should be apologizing for anything.” Perking an eyebrow, I glanced at him for a brief moment. “How long have you been…?”
“Among the living once more?” He thrust his hands into his pockets, in silent contemplation for a scant few seconds. “Two or three weeks, roughly. I was told where you’d wind up, but not when you’d be here.”
“I had been sequestered longer than I would have liked. Alas, when the Fates fail to hand you the next piece of the puzzle in a timely fashion, it leaves you precious little to do other than regroup.” A frown tugged at the corners of my mouth. “I needed the time to recover.”
“The Fates have their reasons for everything, Peter. I recall telling you that more than once.”
The evocation of my name forced my head to turn again, eyes lining Robin fully in their sight. The frown evened, tempted to succumb to a bittersweet smile. “The last time you used that name was to mock me.”
“Be that as it may, I know wha
t you are. Still a vampire, yes, but anyone with eyes to see knows the fangs and pale complexion are merely a link to the nature thrust upon you and nothing more.” Robin lifted a hand and tapped his right temple. “No sunglasses any longer?”
“No, not since about the same time as you have been in the realm of the living again.”
“Ironically, it makes it harder for you to blend in. And exposes quite the weakness for you, master seer.”
We paused at the end of the alley, stepping foot on the pavement and lingering near the street. The stoplight in front of us forbade anyone from crossing to the other side just yet. I shifted uncomfortably, peering behind my shoulder like a paranoid man. “What weakness might that be?” I finally asked, after replaying Robin’s statement in my head.
“You have need of an ambassador.” Catching him move out of the corner of my eye, I looked straight ahead again and followed him just as the light turned. He looked my way once he knew he had my attention once more. “And, I am sorry to say, but for as relieved as you might’ve been to be rid of them, you’ll have to keep them on hand. Your eye color alone will make all of this that much harder.”
“All of what?” I frowned. “And I still have them. Thought it would put me at a disadvantage if I threw them out only to have the infirmity return.”
“Cautious optimism is never a bad thing, though I think your former self would’ve taken more exception to that.” Robin waited for us to finish crossing before speaking again. We continued walking straight, but turned immediately down a much less-traveled road. “As for what… The next task assigned to you, dear brother. I owe you a debt and have been called upon to repay it.”
I barked out a laugh which dripped with disbelief. “You have a debt toward me? Have you not noticed the katana still fastened to my hip?”
