For The Sake of Revenge: An Alaskan Vampire Novel

by Atha, DL

  “I am even more damned than I knew,” Adrik responded as much to the room as to me. His eyes weren’t focused, and I knew his thoughts were somewhere in the past. I waited what seemed like an eternity for him to gather himself. Finally, his eyes cleared somewhat, and he looked at me unhappily. “If Peter means to you what Ivan meant to me, then go to him. Forget that he meant to stake us for he certainly had good reasons. You have little time left to say your goodbyes, and we both know he cannot be saved from death any more than we can be saved from hell.”

  I looked back at Peter resting against the couch. I had been angry at him for coming here tonight. I had been angry that he’d planned to drive a stake through my chest. But I was angrier still that he’d heaped guilt on Adrik, who was more fragile than he understood. But Adrik was right that I loved Peter, at least as deeply as I was capable.

  Despite my anger, I gathered Peter back into my arms and caressed his cheek, wiping away the tears of pain that trickled from his eyes. Peter was minutes away from dying. His wounds could not be repaired, his spinal cord was severed, and most of his blood had run out in a river on the floor. Adrik came and knelt beside us, dejected but looking for absolution. I hurt for them both.

  “Tam, please lift me up. I can still help him,” Peter whispered to me.

  I did as he asked and supported his head and body in my arms. He stretched out one hand towards Adrik, grimacing when his hand touched the coolness of Adrik’s arm, but he kept it there. Adrik barely responded at all, except to part his lips slightly at the bloody hand on his skin.

  “Adrik. Confess your sins. You were mistreated, I realize that. But you chose the wrong path.” Peter’s voice wavered, but he persisted.

  “They excommunicated me. By the sins of another, I was judged and sentenced,” Adrik hissed. “It was not my sins.”

  “It WAS your sin that condemned you. You should have trusted God. But instead you made your own path, and now the children of Ivan’s children have paid the price. Tamara has paid for your sins.”

  Peter spit out the words forcibly with the final adrenaline rush that accompanies death and then collapsed against me as his hand dropped from Adrik’s arm. His face paled suddenly as his heart palpitated and skipped a couple of beats. His body jerked as the pain of a heart attack ripped through his chest. The sound of the dying organ filled the room, and I gathered him even closer in my arms.

  “Peter, I am so sor…” I began to whisper, but I couldn’t get the words out. My voice died in my throat. I buried my face against his chest.

  “Confess, both of you while there is still time, and we will open our eyes in Glory together,” Peter pleaded with me with both his eyes and words. His right hand found mine, his fingernails digging into the palm of my hand. “Please, Tam. Time is precious. At least to me,” he added. “I want to be with you forever. I always have.”

  Adrik turned towards me but I avoided his eyes. I didn’t want to hear his words. I didn’t want to acknowledge what I knew was coming. I dropped my head down but gently he lifted my chin so that I had to meet his gaze. And then I was trapped by the power of his eyes. The eyes of a man broken, a man who has been forced to acknowledge his crimes. The eyes of my maker.

  “Tamara, forgive me for bringing you into this life and for abandoning you in it now. I could live with all the other sins I have committed, but the knowledge that I have betrayed the one person who meant anything to me is too much. I do not know if God will welcome me, but I have to try.”

  Adrik waited for a moment, but I was too dazed to speak. Peter would be dead soon. Adrik was speaking of contrition, and I realized I soon would be alone. I could find no words.

  Adrik pulled me against him. He caressed the back of my head, and I leaned into him for strength before I trailed my lips up to his forehead and kissed him gently. “I forgive you for whatever you think you did to me, but my sins are my own. We were both ignorant of my ties to Ivan, who will be so happy to see you when you open your eyes in Heaven.”

  “Come with me. Accept the forgiveness that is offered and follow me into the afterlife.”

  I nodded at him and smiled as I placed his hand in Peter’s. “Find your peace, Adrik. I’ll find mine too.”

  Peter’s fingers were colder even than mine, but he managed to curl them around Adrik’s. “Confess, Adrik. Say the words. Quickly!”

  “Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned,” Adrik said and just listening to the words made me somewhat nauseous.

  The change in Adrik was instantaneous, and I watched as the purest peace washed across his face. It was the first true smile I’d ever seen cross his features. His expression relaxed, and his eyes for a moment became even brighter. In his happiness, I saw his true beauty. Not just that of his face which was as heavenly as his body, but I could see the true man that he had been. The goodness that his vampire nature had tried to strip away but could never completely remove.

  “Follow me, Tamara,” he said in a voice I didn’t recognize. It was as if his body had become hollow, and he was speaking from a void.

  I smiled at him again, and as I did so, his body caved in upon itself. Dissolving into millions of grains of dirt, his remains scattered and skittered across the floor, filling in the cracks of the floorboards and landing briefly on the blood spatters before being absorbed into the clotting fluid on the floor. It rose up in a great cloud of dust and overtook the room and the smell of dirt and decay filled my lungs. Adrik had finally died the natural death he had avoided for two centuries. Heaven had welcomed him. I’d had no doubts that it would.

  In my arms, Peter stiffened again as his heart fired off another rapid succession of beats. His face twisted in pain again, and he clutched my hand more tightly.

  “He’s at peace, Tam. Come with us, and we’ll be together for an eternity.”

  I stroked his hair. I touched his cheek. His body shook with the chills of a dying man. I held him closer, tears rolling from my eyes and dropping red blotches onto his chest.

  “Confess, Tam,” he urged me again. His voice was dying away, barely a squeak over the wheeze of his lungs and he forced the words out by sheer will power.

  “He deserved it. Joel deserved to die,” I whispered angrily.

  “What about Kendall Scott? Or the hiker that was found in the woods or the other two people who disappeared off the island in the last two weeks? By whose sins did they die?”

  I had no answers.

  “And now me, Tam. I’m dying even though you swore to protect me. Was your revenge worth it? Do you feel any remorse?”

  “Of course I do. I love you,” I shrieked at him but I couldn’t meet his eyes. I hated what I’d done to him. I’d meant to protect him, and here he lay in my arms struggling to breathe his last.

  “Then prove it,” he mouthed, the words barely whispering across his lips.

  “Father, forgive…” I began.

  “Confess Ta…” he started but couldn’t finish. His heart sped up again momentarily and then settled into a slow march towards death. His eyelids started to close, but from sheer will power, he forced them open. His gaze held mine. “Please,” he mouthed but even I couldn’t hear him. No air moved across his vocal cords. He simply didn’t have the strength to whisper even another word.

  “Father, forgive me,” I began again.

  The corners of Peter’s mouth lifted into a smile as he waited for my final words. He nodded at me slightly for encouragement and he closed his eyes. His expression was calm. Trusting. He deserved so much more than I had ever been capable of giving him.

  “Father, forgive me. For I am about to sin. Again,” I whispered into his ear as I bent my head to his.

  Epilogue

  The philosopher Confucius once said that if you plan to embark on revenge, you should dig two graves. One for your victim, and the second for yourself.

  I’d laid Joel in the first grave, and in my own grave, I placed the cold body of my childhood friend and the last person on earth who’d had any
faith in me.

  I had sworn that I would protect him, keep him safe and in my arrogance, I honestly thought that I could. Instead, I’d taken everything from the man I’d sworn to protect. At least the things that were important to him. His God. His identity. No doubt Peter would think it the cruelest trick of all. The priest turned vampire. The Father with no god.

  Both his blood and his spirit stained my hands because there would be no repentance to save his soul. He couldn’t ask forgiveness for my sins. I was the one who needed redemption and I felt no contrition at all, only remorse over the consequences and not the actions that caused them.

  Already, I could feel the beginnings of Peter’s reawakening as he crossed through death. A restlessness was brewing. A rage that I could nearly taste was burgeoning somewhere deep in the remains of his dead heart.

  Would he understand when his body caught up to his mind? Would he forgive me or would he chase me across the earth seeking his own revenge? Would he understand that I couldn’t live without him and yet I couldn’t die with him?

  No matter the outcome, I could not leave Peter even if I wanted. The two of us were tied to this same grave for the next six months and we would either meet the sun each morning wrapped up in the arms of passion or in the throes of bitter rage. Eternal enemies or immortal lovers.

  For now, while I still could, I pulled him into my arms as the sun began its ascent into the sky, and with the last movement of my lips, I told him I loved him.

  About the Author

  DL Atha was born and resides in Arkansas. She is a practicing internal medicine and wound care physician. She happily lives with her three children and husband on a farm where she enjoys reading, writing, farming, and raising flowers and herbs. Some of her favorite things are horses, chocolate, flowers, and books, while her least favorites are anything that occurs before nine a.m.