by Peter Dawes
“Robin! Do you mean to stay there the remainder of the evening?”
The sound of my voice echoing down the stairs broke Robin from his trance, spurring him to action again. “Patience, Flynn!” he responded, smoothing back the tails of his suit jacket to tuck the knife behind his back. After adjusting the way the jacket hung again, he took a deep breath and marched out of the room. I watched him pull out his keys and frowned as he locked everything up behind him. My heart sank at the way he cleaned his face and plucked a bottle of wine from one of the racks. “To our health. Right, dear brother?”
“Indeed,” I murmured, walking behind him and making note of the bottle opener and glasses he fetched along the way to the stairs. We ascended them again, greeting Flynn where he stood at the top.
Robin flashed a wan smile at him. “My apologies, but I was looking for this bottle in particular.” He trudged past, leaving the implicit command to follow. My former self and I walked nearly in tandem toward the common area. “I think it might be thirty years old or better. Who knows? Sabrina will most likely throw a fit over my taking it, but I can’t be bothered to care.”
My former self seemed none the wiser to any form of treason on the wind. The eyebrow he perked read more of confusion than suspicion. “What the devil has come over you?” he asked.
Our brother scoffed. “Matters far beyond any you should be forced to endure hearing. Just keep me company and tell me what you have been reading in my absence.” He cast a quick glance at Flynn. “I expected to hear you’d been painting the town.”
“Yes, well, even the game gets old after a time. You act as though all I concern myself with is hunting.”
“You do have quite the penchant toward murder.”
“I seduced a few women. Nothing more than the ordinary.” He and Robin paused near one of the couches, prompting me to stop. I could not see my eyes through the glasses Flynn wore, but the rest of his expression had turned befuddled. Nearly wounded. “Would you please mind telling me what has bewitched you?”
Robin frowned. “An observation, nothing more.” He glanced away. “Of all the things I taught you, this is one field where the student has surpassed his teacher.”
“Damn it, Robin.” Flynn stepped in front of our brother, catching his eye again. “You used to chide me for behaving like you are right now. You leave for several days and return acting as though I wronged you. Should I put you out of your misery?”
“I am nearly apt to take you up on that offer.” A soft grunt passed through Robin’s lips, with him lowering onto one of the couches and setting the wine bottle and glasses on an adjacent table. Flynn’s brow remained arched as he settled in the chair opposite, his words stilled in favor of waiting for Robin to open the bottle and pour them each a glass. Finally, he sank back into the cushions while Robin took a healthy sip of his drink.
Our brother inhaled deeply and released the air in a slow, steadying manner. “I don’t know if I’ve ever given you my accurate age, Flynn,” he said, relaxing at last. He swirled around what remained of his wine. “I was born in 1847 and turned in 1880. This past April, I celebrated one hundred and five years as a vampire. I should have been accepted as an elder when I turned a century. I guess I should consider myself fortunate they decided to recognize me as one at all.”
“Have you finally been formally recognized?” my former self asked, bringing his glass to his lips.
“Yes, finally. Sabrina found other covens who feared slighting her might bring death to their doorstep.”
“Wise if they feared that.” Flynn paused to take a drink and set the glass down afterward. Reaching into his suit jacket, he pulled out his cigarettes. “So this means congratulations are in order?”
“Spare me the congratulations. There is nothing auspicious about this occasion. To the contrary…” Robin hesitated with whatever he wished to say next. His gaze flicked to the wall and returned to Flynn only when my former self had lit his cigarette and reclined in his chair. “When you’ve lived as long as I have, you’ll find yourself regretting some of the things you’ve learned through the years.”
“Such as what?”
“Things I wished I had known years ago.” Silence pervasive enough to cast a chill on the area settled between us, something I vaguely remembered as I saw it enacted before my eyes again. Both my former self and I turned sober in response. “Do you ever sense something not right about your world?” Robin asked after a few pensive seconds. “Does anything about your existence trouble you?”
I appeared more confused than ever with the delivery of those questions. “What are you talking about?”
He released an exasperated huff. “The peculiarities of your life. Your visual handicap. Your talents with the sword. Why the Mistress fancies you so much.” Robin leaned forward in his seat. “Do those matters ever cause you to lose even an ounce of sleep?”
“You tell me, Robin. Should it?”
“It would me if I were in your shoes. There are things you have been ignorant toward.” He prefaced the next statement with a deliberate stare. “Flynn… You are special…”
“Oh, bloody hell.”
The exasperation in my voice set him back. Robin opened his mouth, hesitating in his response just long enough for my former self to flick his cigarette in an adjacent ashtray and scoff. “Are you to go into all of that bullshit with me?” Flynn asked.
Robin blinked. “Brother, I...”
“Allow me to spare you the speech you wish to deliver about these extraordinary things I should be capable of, which might someday be an asset to our kind. Or toward which I shall owe some sort of recompense someday.” Flynn drew from his cigarette and frowned. “The whole subject fails to make me anything but irritated at its mention, in case you have not noticed.”
“Flynn, I swear to you, I have my reasons –”
“Shove them. Fine, you had some sort of experience and have been imparted some sort of knowledge which has become a burden to you. Whatever. But if you intend to do what the Mistress does each time the subject is broached, then I beg you to save me from this misery.”
A wounded expression overtook Robin’s countenance. “Has it never occurred to you that anyone who holds back with you does so for a reason?”
“If you insist. I could not care less.”
“I see.” He continued staring at Flynn while my former self assumed the affect of nonchalance. The assassin failed to notice it, but I did – the way Robin studied us, that question swirling through his mind which must have run itself on repeat. Whatever it was he had learned, it brought him to this point, with a dagger behind his back and a painful decision hanging in the space between us.
Would he be doing the world a favor in sparing it of me?
He looked away in time for Flynn to glance at him again. I could not recall if I had noticed it at the time, but a glisten had overtaken his eyes. “Why do beings such as us deserve to live?” he asked, producing the words with a sigh. “What makes us such arrogant fools to think ourselves gods?”
“Because we are higher beings,” my former self quipped. “Is that not what you always told me? Elevated beyond death to be its bloody executioners.”
“Yes. That is what I taught you.” I winced at how bitter the comment sounded.
Flynn was not to be dissuaded. Pointing his cigarette at Robin, his sudden movement drew our brother’s attention back to him. “You need a hunt. This matter can wait for another night.”
“I have the wine, thank you.”
“I am going to insist.” With a brusque motion of his hand, Flynn dismissed both the wine bottle and glasses alike. “Forget the wine and the brooding. Come with me, brother. Let us be vampires without apology. To hell with the curses of station or existence. We are above them all, am I correct?”
Flynn shot to his feet, flicking the ash from his cigarette once final time and polishing off the rest of his wine in one fell swoop. Robin stared at him the entire time, lost somewhat in a daze un
til he slowly rose to his feet. “No,” he said. “You are cursed, brother, but you are also an ignorant neophyte. In that, you have me jealous.” He motioned to the cigarette. “Give me one of those. I want to pretend I am you for one evening.”
“You are not nearly sadistic enough to be me.” He – I – winked and produced his pack of cigarettes, tapping one out and lighting it for him. Robin drew from it deeply while Flynn shoved his lighter back into his pocket. “And not adept enough with a sword. I would have to spend years cultivating you to be my understudy.”
“Perish the thought of you going out of your way on my behest.” Nodding, he pulled the cigarette from his lips and looked at it while exhaling. “Still, I find your ignorance refreshing. I would like to embody at least that much for the final hours before sunrise.”
“Pretentious bastard. You could only hope to be so ignorant.”
The comment had its intended effect. A smile tugged at the corners of Robin’s mouth and my former self laughed, starting a walk for the far side of the room where we had come in. Robin, however, lingered near the couch for an additional moment, the smile dissolving while his free hand reached behind his back, fingers caressing the hilt of the ornamental knife. When Flynn noticed him absent, he turned around, perking an eyebrow at our brother in confusion.
Robin stood still, the solemn look in his eyes conveying a message I should have picked up on at the time and questioned further. Instead, the room remained quiet until Robin groaned exaggeratedly, his hand falling to his side again and a nod preceding his surrender to my demand for a hunt.
I failed to pursue them. Remaining in the common area, I found myself reflecting on how what little effort it would have taken for him to plot my demise. Robin was the only one I allowed to get close enough to me. The only one whose loyalty I never had cause to question. All he would have had to do was unsheathe the knife, hide it up his sleeve, and plunge it into my chest the moment my guard was down.
So why did he not?
I realized suddenly I had spoken the reason with my own lips.
“Because we are higher beings. Is that not what you always told me? Elevated beyond death to be its bloody executioners.”
“Yes. That is what I taught you.”
Robin had been my mentor and could not wash his hands of me just yet. A fact, I was willing to believe Lydia and The Fates had banked on.
***
Breaking away from the vision, I focused on Robin again, seated in the parlor of our shared room, on the third floor of James Hurley’s establishment. He held his glass of blood in hand, eyebrow lifting when he noticed my sight focus on him once more. I frowned, swallowing past a lump which had formed in my throat. “How many times?” I asked, knowing he would understand the question.
He sighed, shoulders sinking as I lost him to thought. “A half dozen times,” he finally said. “Not always armed, but once or twice I wondered just how swiftly I could pull the dagger out from beneath your coat.” A sardonic chuckle punctuated the comment. “Each time I hoped you had your sword drawn so you could end me, too. I...” His words trailed off.
“You...what?”
Robin shook his head. “I never could go through with it.”
With a nod, I decided to leave it at that, afraid of digging deeper into what seemed to be a bleeding wound. He placed his glass aside and I indulged a steadying breath. “What is it you discovered in your time away which would drive you toward thoughts of malice?”
The question had the fortunate consequence of dissipating the storm cloud which had settled on his demeanor. He sat up, adjusting his position on the couch. “There are sacred secrets,” he began. “An entire history which has been passed down from elder to elder throughout the existence of our race. I couldn’t share them with you because you weren’t ready to hear them, but considering your former lover made an allusion toward it, I think it might be time to end your ignorance.”
I shuddered at the severity of his expression. Robin nodded as if to confirm I was right to be so nervous. “You are at the center of these secrets,” he said. “A key which could be used for good or evil merely from being what you are. And that makes you much more dangerous than you could begin to imagine.”
Chapter Three
“Explain,” I said, inching forward in my seat.
Robin nodded, rising to his feet and taking his glass with him to where the carafe of blood still rested. He polished off what little remained inside the glass before refilling it. “You saw where I was left, deposited like a newborn child in a mortuary with the command to find you. Admittedly, I was relieved to hear that the man I encountered would vastly differ from the one who plunged that sword into my chest. It still didn’t make the weight of what I had to say to you any less burdensome, however. It took death for me to realize how foolish I have been not to say more to you sooner.”
“I think you are right, though. I would not have known what to do with such knowledge.”
“They do say everything happens for a reason.” Swirling around the contents of his glass, he lifted it to his nose, inhaling the scent of the blood with an air of relish before taking a drink. I read the stall for what it was – an attempt to organize his thoughts. “Now, while your former lover could hardly be accused of being explicit, considering the memories she evoked, I can at least determine she wished me to tell you the same story shared with me when I became an elder.”
A brief pause marked the space between his comment and the question he issued. “Do you remember what I first told you about the origin of our kind, dear brother?” he asked.
I shrugged. “I vaguely recall not learning much from posing the question,” I said.
“I painted several scenarios, am I correct?”
“More or less.”
Robin nodded, walking back to the couch and settling back where he had been seated. “To be perfectly honest, even I had no idea at the time. Sabrina had given me the same run around when I first asked her and my travels provided me more legends and myths than I knew how to sort through. In truth, I think the elders try to be as vague as possible and for very good reason. You have to have enough sobriety to give it the deference it deserves.”
“Sobriety?” I perked an eyebrow.
“Presence of mind not to do something rash with the knowledge you now possess. Although, with some of the elders, I am sure even that didn’t stop them. “He lifted a leg to cross over the opposite knee and stared into his glass. “Imagine if Ian had been your master instead of Sabrina. She was selfish enough to keep you in her pocket, at the very least. Ian would’ve cultivated you into corruption.”
“Ian did hint at some greater purpose he wished me to serve.”
“A task I would be willing to believe he was set upon by his maker.” Robin sighed. “I never met the man, but Ian indicated more than once that he was something of a zealot. I can only imagine what that meant.” His gaze turned distant, a shudder seeming to run up his spine before he could place the glass aside and look me in the eye. “For the lack of a better place to start, I will begin with this… We are not the first vampires ever to have existed.”
I relaxed in my chair, settling in place as a reflex. With a pensive nod, I drew a deep breath inward and exhaled it slowly. “So there are others?” I asked.
“There were. If they still exist, they undoubtedly keep to themselves. Not that I blame them much. If the vampire race has factions to it, I believe we would qualify as being the reckless ones of the lot.”
“I do not understand.”
“You know of magic now. You know of the Order and the purpose they serve. Those are things I knew about as well – almost all of us do by the time we reach a decade, even if only as that cautionary tale that hunters exist for those of us who go astray. You had not yet reached the age where I felt it necessary to talk about dark magicians, but that is the second truth we learn in tandem with the first. We are reborn as immortals with the ability to wield powerful spells, and that due to our
dark father.
“The first of us,” he said, continuing, “Was named Raulin Mallowburne. The name sounded like a myth, straight from the pages of a novel. As this knowledge was imparted upon me, however, each vampire elder held a sober expression as if saying the name alone bore the power to summon a host of seers onto our doorstep. What makes him unusual is not his name, though. Nor the fact that he predates us by nearly a millennium. Raulin had been a white magician – someone not unlike your witch, who practiced with the people we assume are the progenitors of the Supernatural Order.”
While I had fallen out of the practice of smoking under Malcolm and Kaylee’s roof, I found myself reaching for the pack I still carried in my pocket. Lighting the end, I grimaced at the first few puffs, noting I would have to buy a fresher pack if I wished to indulge the habit again. Nodding, I motioned for him to continue.
Robin sighed and lapsed briefly into thought. “Our history states he had somehow set upon the path toward immortality,” he said. “And such a concept isn’t hard to grasp, really. Sorcerers are imbued with great power, but they are mortal. Our dark father desired immortality and thus is where his magic became twisted, his mind perverted by the dark gift. Raulin converted other sorcerers like mad. They built up enough power to nearly decimate the natural order. As a result, we were once hunted nearly to our extinction by what became the Order.”
“Because this sorcerer made such a heavy handed vie for power?” I asked.
“I don’t know that dark magic allows for much else. Feed it once and it demands to be fed indefinitely. This is our curse. We all possess the ability to wield it, but wielding it costs us not just our lives, but our sanity. Our Mistress only dabbled and it filled her head full of paranoia. I hesitate to think of what she would have done after gaining control of the city with you by her side.”
