That Killer Smile

by Juliet Lyons

  I jump up from the rock, raking my hands through my hair, desperate to wake up, to discover that this is no more than a strange dream. “What about Tamlyn?” I ask.

  “She’s Quany’s.”

  “And he knew? He’s always known of the betrayal?”

  She nods. “I told him one night when he was attacking me. I thought maybe he would ease up if he thought a demon was watching him. I’m not sure if you’ve ever noticed, but he’s always been afraid of you.”

  “Fear is not something I’ve ever felt from him,” I murmur. “What about my real father? Has he been watching?”

  She shakes her head. “The paths between our world and theirs are closing little by little every day.” She takes a deep breath. “I only saw him once after you were born. He came to tell me about the curse.”

  “What curse?” I say in strangled tones.

  “Demons aren’t supposed to procreate with humans,” she says, her voice thick with emotion. “Your father is a blood demon.”

  I sink back down onto the rock. I’ve heard tales of such creatures before—demons who walk only at night, drinking the blood of humans. A cold sweat breaks out all over my body. “What curse?” I ask again.

  She breaks my gaze, staring down at her bare feet, swollen and dirty from the climb. Tears begin cascading over her cheeks, dripping off her chin into the thin wool of her shawl. “When you come of age, when your cycle of growth is complete and you’re a man, you’ll begin the craving.”

  My heart stills in my chest at the last word. “Craving?”

  “A thirst for human blood.”

  “That’s preposterous.”

  She reaches out, touching my arm with a pale hand. “He said you’ll be my son until you’re fully grown and his thereafter. If you give in to the urges, if you drink human blood, you’ll be trapped forever in immortality. Nothing and no one will ever kill you. That’s why I’ve brought you up here tonight, far away from prying eyes and ears, to tell you that you must never cave in to those urges. He gave me his word that if you didn’t, you would live as a normal human, aging until death.”

  “Tell me this is a lie,” I plead, jumping to my feet again. “I can’t become one of those creatures. I can’t!”

  She leaps up after me, tears running down her cheeks in rivulets. She tries to grab my arm but I flinch away. “I’m only telling you what he told me that night.”

  I spit onto the ground. “He was lying. I’ll never want to drink blood. He’s taken you for a fool, Mother.”

  She swipes the tears from her face. “He said there would be more of your kind. That the earth would bear the weight of halflings until the end of time.”

  “I would never harm anyone, Mother. Ever.”

  “That’s not all.”

  I screw my eyes tight. “What else?”

  “Those you drink from—not all will die. Those who live will become like you—immortal, with extraordinary strength.”

  For the first time since she landed me with this burden, I’m intrigued. “Strength?”

  She nods. “You will be fast, strong. People will fear you.”

  My mind wanders to the man I thought was my father. The idea of him cowering before me is far from repugnant. “These people who become like me—will they make others too?”

  “He did not say. Just that they would be like you, only less powerful. But, Ronin, that cannot happen. You must fight this.”

  I stare down at her, tears glistening in the lines around her soft, blue eyes. When she opens her arms, I go into them, pushing all thoughts of overpowering Quany out of my head. “Have no fear, Mother. I’ll die before I become a blood demon. He may be my father, but I’m your son, and I’ll live a normal life here by your side.”

  She nods into my shoulder, taking a deep shuddering breath. “Please, let it be so.”

  We stay on the mountain for a while longer, staring up at the stars in silence, and then we walk back together hand in hand.

  Before we go inside, she grabs the cuff of my shirt. “You are so much like him,” she whispers, brushing red hair from my forehead.

  I take her hand, squeezing it in mine. “Only in looks. I promise.”

  Yet even as the vow rolls off my tongue, I have to wonder if it’s a promise I can keep.

  * * *

  Ten years later…

  The village is covered in snow, sitting in drifts around doorways, blanketing thatched roofs. Occasionally, I see a dark shape among the white, hunched beneath animal skins as they shift powdery snow from the path with shovels. Though I’m high up in my tiny hut, wedged into the mountainside like a rook in its nest, I still fancy I can smell blood. Its iron tang is so sharp on my tongue that my ears ache.

  The promise I made to my mother ten years ago on the mountainside still stands, though if I’d known the lengths I had to go to keep it, I’m not sure the words would ever have passed my lips.

  I didn’t just wake up one day with the craving. It crept up on me with the stealth of a mountain cat, but once it had me in its grip, the effects were all-consuming. Suddenly I couldn’t embrace Mother or my nieces and nephews without hearing their pulses battering in my ears, the pump of sweet blood flowing through their veins. I began to picture sinking teeth into their necks and drinking, taking their lives in huge, satisfying gulps, feeling the liquid sit, warm and heavy, in my belly.

  Mother was on to me from the start, watching me everywhere I went with sad eyes. By the time she suggested I leave the village, move high up into the mountains so I wasn’t a danger, the sadness had melted to fear.

  So I built myself a tiny wooden prison, ended things with Cassandra, the girl I’d hoped to marry, and resigned myself to a life of solitude and loneliness.

  I grow more resentful by the day.

  And while I’m up here doing the right thing, Quany McDermott lives. He’s bent and frail now, less inclined to take the belt to my dear mother, but alive nonetheless. Mixing with people, watching Tamlyn’s children grow, perhaps even returning the sweet smile of my beloved Cassandra. The injustice makes me boil with rage.

  When I first came to live on the mountain, I hoped, rather foolishly, that my real father might visit, offer some words of wisdom. But as the years passed with no sign of him, the truth dawned on me—he’s a demon, an evil spirit who tricked an innocent young woman into bearing his young. Soon I began to despise him just as ferociously as I do my stepfather.

  I watch the huddled shapes of the villagers for a while longer before fixing myself breakfast. My days are filled with tedious duties dragged out to pass the time, and apart from Mother, who comes once a week with supplies, I have no visitors. The people I left behind believe the story that I have an incurable disease, and that, for everyone’s sake, I’ve moved up here to bear out its ill effects. No one questioned it, scared as they were for their own health.

  I open the small cupboard at the north end of the room, located for its coolness, and reach inside to grab the butter. I frown as I pull out a near-empty strip of cloth. Using my free hand, I count the days since Mother last visited—eleven. Odd. She’s never missed a visit before and the snow is freshly fallen—there would have been nothing to stop her from climbing up several days ago.

  Unless she’s ill or Quany’s injured her in some way.

  A cold hand clutches my chest, and I return to the tiny window, looking down into the village. With the snow, she wouldn’t be able to come now until it’s clear. I’ll have no way of knowing if she’s well for days. I stare at the animal skins hanging from one of my walls and sigh. I’ll have to venture down. Hardly anyone will be about, so it should be safe.

  Should be.

  With little other than Mother’s well-being on my mind, I wrap myself into a thick fur and plunge my feet into boots. The air outside is biting, the cold burning my face as I pick my way through the snow-cove
red bracken.

  It takes a solid hour of trekking to make it down the mountainside. I stop several times, sitting on a boulder to knock snow from my boots. By the time I reach the edge of the village, my feet are blocks of ice.

  I quickly forget about the cold when I catch the coppery whiff of human blood, pungent on the breeze. My heart begins to thud, a thin sheen of sweat breaking out on my brow. I can do this. After all, I manage during Mother’s visits every week.

  Rather than take the main route through the dwellings, I circle the perimeter of the village, so I can enter the house through the back. I fight through the heavy drifts, snow sticking to my furs in clumps, until I make it to the clay wall of my old home.

  Even before I push open the small wooden door, I smell the tart odor of meat on the verge of spoiling.

  I smell death.

  I shove at the door, barging into the dark room. There, lying pale and lifeless on the bed, her face waxy in the light of a single candle, is my mother. Even before I see Quany on his knees, praying by the bedside, I know she’s gone.

  Quany jumps up immediately, pointing at me with a trembling hand, his black eyes wide with fear. “You,” he says, his voice wheezy. “You killed her!”

  I stare in shock between him and my mother’s body, and then a gigantic swell of pain crashes into me like a wave. All those years—hiding behind the curtain as he terrorized my mother, the beatings I suffered by his hand—overwhelm me to the point of madness. The memories fill my senses, threatening to obliterate what’s left of the good inside me. I teeter on the edge of my breaking point, the scent of Quany’s rotten blood surrounding me. In a split second, I know I face a choice—swallow my feelings, the same as always, or finally give in to the rage.

  “You killed her!” I bellow, my voice filling the room in the way I always imagined it would when I was a small boy.

  I bound across the room, grabbing him by the dirty collar and shoving him with all my might. He stumbles backward, tearing the curtain from its hooks and falling flat on his back in the next room. I dive after him, yanking him to his feet by the scruff of his neck and ramming him face first into the stone fireplace. He whimpers in pain as he slides to the floor in an undignified heap.

  The sharp scent of iron hits the back of my throat even before I see it—spilled blood cascading over his face. As I stand staring down at my nemesis, the monster who stole my childhood, made my mother’s life a misery for so many years, the tiny thread tying me to humanity snaps. I reach down, lifting him up once more, my face level with his. I’m so consumed by fury I don’t see that he has the toasting fork from the fireplace in his grip. He swings it at me, catching me just below the eye.

  Quick as a cat, I seize his wrist, neatly snapping the bone. He screams—the last sound he ever makes, for suddenly my fangs extend, pressing into my bottom lip. I sink them into his throat, and the remainder of my humanity dissolves.

  Blood explodes onto my tongue like nectar, and my body sags, half in ecstasy, half in relief—like an alcoholic falling into a vat of wine. As I drain him of blood, I don’t notice the final spasm of my heart as it stills in my chest.

  I must enter a half-conscious state, because when I wake up a short while later, my stepfather is nothing more than a shriveled sack of bones, a heap of crimson-splattered clothes. I feel no triumph or regret, nor even sadness at my mother’s passing.

  Only thirst for more blood.

  I clamber to my feet, bursting from the door of the hovel I once called home and into the bitterly cold air. Two men are clearing snow a few feet away. They don’t see me until I’m upon them. I see myself reflected in their eyes, the pupils of my eyes glowing red, sharp, white fangs dripping over my chin. But my conscience died along with Quany McDermott, and I consider naught but the blood pumping through their veins—mine for the taking.

  I don’t stop there. Why should I retreat up the mountain? Why should I be the one who suffers when I’ve been suffering my whole life? I would like to say I black out again, that I have no control over my actions. But as I continue my rampage through the village, sparing no one, turning the crisp, white snow scarlet with death, I feel only the sense that justice is served at last.

  Chapter 17

  Cat

  I wake up groggy and disoriented, the image of blood-splattered snow burned into my mind. When I flip open my eyes, Ronin is there, his eyes the same cool blue as the sky over the village the day of his rampage.

  “I said don’t judge me,” he whispers, his voice breaking. “Was I wrong to show you?”

  I shake my head, though I’m still too confused to know how I feel. “Did you really have to kill them all?” I ask.

  He covers his face with his hands, a groan escaping his throat. “I was out of control.”

  A week ago, seeing that horrific montage would have come as no surprise at all. After all, haven’t I always known Ronin is a killer? But spending last night with him was a game changer, and the images in his life essence don’t mesh with the version of Ronin I’m actually beginning to like.

  “There was so much blood,” I whisper.

  He nods, reaching out to take my hand but drawing back at the last second. “I know.”

  “What happened to your mother?” I ask, remembering her lifeless body on the bed. “Did your stepfather kill her?”

  “I never found out,” he says, his eyes round with sadness. “I think maybe life finally took its toll and that’s what he meant by saying I killed her.”

  “I can see now why you say I’ve got no reason to feel guilty about killing Leonard.”

  He smiles weakly. “Small potatoes compared to a monster like me.”

  With a will its own, my hand finds his on the duvet. “Those people in the village—did you turn any of them into vampires?”

  He shakes his head. “I killed them in every way imaginable. Catherine, I’ve never shown or told anyone all this before.”

  My mind wanders to the night I murdered Leonard, the fog in my brain that clogged all reason, that made me think I had no other choice. Emotion had blinded Ronin in the same way it blinded me. Were we really so different?

  “How long was it before you sired your first vampire?” I ask, thinking of the bodies in the snow.

  He frowns. “A while. Mostly I just killed. It took even longer to figure out how to control my venom—to bite without allowing it to enter a person’s bloodstream. Many, many years. It’s the same for all ancients. All halflings, as my father referred to us.”

  I avoid his eye, rubbing a thumb into the palm of his hand. “Did you ever meet your father in the end?”

  “No. My mother was right about the doors between our world and theirs closing. For a little while, during my megalomaniac phase, I wanted to meet him. But I got over that pretty fast.”

  “Your megalomaniac phase?” I repeat. “Aren’t you still in that?”

  He chuckles. “I haven’t taken an innocent life in centuries. I do what’s necessary to retain order. Of course, I’ve grown somewhat redundant of late. Now that we mix freely with humans, we’re adapting, playing by their rules rather than ours. I’m not sure there’s much need for overlords these days.”

  “Perhaps you could outsource,” I tease, in a bid to lighten the atmosphere. “Use one of those virtual offices.”

  He smiles, his brows drawn. “Saying that, I do have the case of these murdered vampires to solve.”

  I pull myself up into a sitting position, suddenly remembering what Mrs. Colangelo told me about a decapitated body being found. “Murdered vampires?”

  “Two have been found in London recently. Both decapitated, their bodies dumped in scrubland. As overlord of London, it’s up to me to solve it.”

  A cold shiver zips up my spine. “Jeez,” I murmur. “How on earth would anyone manage to kill us? We’d fight them off in a heartbeat. It would have to be som
eone the vampire trusted implicitly.”

  Ronin nods, scooting closer on the bed, the hard muscle of his bicep pressing against my upper arm. A lick of heat sparks instantly where our skin meets. “I met with one of the girlfriends, but she wasn’t a killer. I would have seen it in her.”

  “Have you liaised with the police? I have friends at Scotland Yard I could put you in touch with.”

  “I’ve tried to, but they’re convinced it’s vampire-on-vampire crime. Which clearly isn’t something they’re willing to waste man hours on.” He gives me a wry smile. “But thanks for the offer. I remember all about your friends at Scotland Yard. Wasn’t it the little incident over V-Date which threw us together all those years ago?”

  I quirk a smile. “It was none of your business.”

  He trails an index finger along my arm, from my wrist to my elbow. “Everything around here is my business.”

  I ignore the fluttering in my belly and say, “So what do you plan to do next?”

  “I need to chat with the CEO of the company they both worked for.”

  I frown. “Will this chat involve pliers and a bright overhead lamp?”

  He smiles, blue eyes soft. “If it comes to that.”

  I stare into his face, pondering why I’m not afraid of this man, this creature who has possibly murdered thousands during his time on earth. Without thinking, I reach up to touch the tiny scar just below his eye. “Is this the scar your stepfather gave to you the day you turned demon?” I ask.

  Covering my hand with his, he says, “Aye. A constant reminder of that day. All of my other childhood scars faded except this one.”

  “How strange.”

  “Maybe I’m supposed to have it.” He shifts position on the bed, turning around so we’re facing each other. “I really didn’t mean to give you my venom that night, Catherine,” he starts.