“Why not?” she said quietly. “Is it so bad; the power, and the ability to heal?”
“It isn’t what I want for you,” I said tenderly. “I want you to be you—gentle and happy and warm. It wears on a mind, living long years, and seeing so much that you loved and worked for come to nothing, and be replaced by things you hate, or worse, don’t understand. For that to happen over and over again.”
Anna was calm but persistent. “If I don’t become as you are eventually, I’ll age and die, Dev. I am not immortal.”
I felt like I’d been stabbed in the heart with an icicle, hearing her say it so bluntly. I swallowed, and got control of myself before I spoke. “We’ll be together as long as we can,” I said lovingly. “When you die, I will go out into the next dawn, the following day.”
“You will not,” Anna said firmly, with a faint smile. “You must take care of L’Amour.”
“I do not want to live without you,” I said, cradling her. “This past year with you has been the best of my life.”
“Mine, too,” she whispered back. “Mine, too.”
* * * *
Three years passed this way. I’d like to say that Anna never got close to turning again. The truth was we often drank from one another on our anniversaries, and every time, I lost myself in her until I scented her beginning to turn. But I never let it go again to the point I had to strike her to get her off me.
My investments abroad and at home grew dramatically, some from luck, because of world events, and some from skill. Mostly, my fortune was increased because of my daring, my ruthlessness, and my cunning in business matters, both those that were legal and those that were illegal.
Anna didn’t care for the shady dealings, despite how much more lucrative they were. We never discussed them, but I knew she knew of them, from little disapproving quips she dropped, and several looks that she gave me at certain moments. I ignored these largely, much as it pains me to admit that now. I should have talked to her, explained myself, so she understood how essential they were to our financial security. Instead, I just told myself it was necessary, that I’d been without money too much of my life, and I was not going to be without it ever again.
Uther became a good friend over the years, as did Levi. He mated to Eva that first year in the spring, and she became wolf for him. Sadly, they never had young, because of some problem with her body from being with Guy for so long. Levi said he didn’t mind, that his sisters were carrying on the family name, so it didn’t matter. I didn’t understand that, but figured it was another werewolf custom, and let it go.
Uther was a widower, but he had many young; in fact, he was a grandfather by this time, his eldest daughter having given birth to a large litter. He often said he intended to step down from being alpha bat, and retire soon. His role as leader was not an elected one, but one he had to win by fighting, a test that took place every year on the summer solstice. Yet every year found him still the battered and bloody leader of his people.
“I’m too old for this,” he rasped one night over some blood, as Anna bound his slowly healing wounds. “I can’t fight these youngsters and win easily; I have to rely on my skill. I don’t heal like I used to in my youth. It’s not worth the soreness the next day, to be alpha.”
“Then why do it?” Anna asked, taping up a hole in one wing. “You always say that this year is the last one.”
Uther grinned widely. “It’s an honor my people respect, especially the women.”
“So you do it for the sex,” Rip said, nodding. “No wonder you have so many offspring. They probably line up to ride your—”
Uther shoved him hard, knocking Rip to the floor. “Watch your words, Demon. There’s a lady present. Get out before I kick your ass back to Hell.”
“Prudish, for a were,” Rip rumbled with a smile, as he got to his feet and sauntered out.
“But that is the reason, is it not?” Anna asked pointedly, when Rip had left. “Mating?”
Uther cleared his throat, and then laughed. “Yes, Ma’am. It’s instinct.”
I hugged Anna. “An instinct not confined to weres, Love.”
“Indeed,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Almost all males seem affected.”
“Demons are not immune,” Uther added thoughtfully. “Despite Rip’s crude words, he is actually quite tame in that respect. Something to be thankful for, Lady.”
Uther was right that Rip was something of an oddity. He spoke of carnal pleasures, but he seemed to enjoy speaking of them more than performing them, even when given the opportunity. He was often goofy and silly, and yet he killed people easily, and ate them with relish. I was sickened by that, but Uther said it was just how demons were, that Rene had said to expect it. In those first years as Fontainebleau’s Lord that was very useful, as I often had people to dispose of. Many vampires and human hunters came testing me in those early years, and Rip didn’t care if the flesh was vampire, so long as it was a body. I didn’t care about his strange ways or vile talk. What mattered was that he was good at his job, saving my back on more than one occasion.
Quentin was Quentin. He worked the money, enjoyed his women, and was for the most part happy, as living with me he was well protected. He did have a close shave in the third year, when an assassin mistook him for me, but some of Uther’s batmen got there in time, and so things worked out. After I gave him a raise, he let it go.
There were some negatives, too, mixed in with the pleasant.
Louis came once to Fontainebleau, and threw his weight around. He did nothing I could report him to Samuel for, just enough so we were still picking up the pieces a week after he left. I told myself that was how things were, and to be thankful there was no lasting damage or lives lost
I also discovered to my fear that there was truth in the legend that removing a vampire’s head or destroying his heart would end his life, when it happened to an acquaintance of Quentin’s. I killed the hunter, of course, but it didn’t make the fear go away. I’d thought myself un-killable, save by being drained of my blood, and to find out that was not the case made me worry about what else I might be susceptible to. So I experimented with a few things, Quentin reluctantly assisting me. We determined with more than a little pain that for the most part, we were indeed immortal. Fire, sunlight, decapitation, and exsanguination: these were deadly. But a stake on its own could not kill us, as our body would push any weapon or bullet out over time as we healed. The danger lay in having someone on the end of that stake or knife keeping it inside so our hearts could not heal. We kept that discovery to ourselves, Quentin and I, deciding it would be in our favor if humans and others thought a stake, garlic, or cross might kill us. More interesting, we discovered that we could reshape our hands into a sort of claw, growing our nails to talons. It was nowhere near the shape changing ability of weres, but the ability made the need for a weapon such as a knife unnecessary, something I thought very useful in a fight.
The worst thing was not Louis’s destructive tendencies or my own newly discovered weaknesses; it was the change in my beloved Anna. After that first moment with her when she had almost turned, she no longer enjoyed my bite as she once had. It caused her pain, and so we shared blood only when making love. As we’d always preferred that, it wasn’t a big change. She didn’t cringe from my ardor, nor hesitate to embrace me freely. Yet I knew I hurt her now every time I bit her, that her soft whimpers were not from bliss, but from pain. Her scars, which I had always looked on as a sign of our commitment and of the pleasure we brought one another, became instead symbols of the suffering she had endured to be with me, the suffering she was still enduring.
That troubled me, though I said nothing to her about it.
It was close to 1817 or so when the event happened that was the catalyst for the rest of my life. I received a letter from the witch Rene, telling me my brother Danial was alive.
Chapter Eleven
How Rene discovered that, I still don’t really know. She and I were not friends. In poi
nt of fact, despite knowing her for years, she had not once ever let me see her face.
I was at her door an hour after receiving the letter, offering her a great deal of currency in my shock and exuberance.
Strangely, she refused my money. “I can tell you little enough,” she said solemnly. “I know only that a man resides at a monastery in Tibet, and that I suspect he is your brother, from what was being said about him.”
“What is said?” I asked.
“That he has been there many years, almost fifty some say, though others claim it is three times that. It is said he looks the same from the day he entered the monastery’s doors. Sorrow is his constant companion, and he spends a great deal of his time in his room praying. He is never seen in sunlight, though he labors at night regularly.”
I worried, hearing that. “Do they know what he is? Is he in danger?”
“No,” she said. “He seems to be fine. In fact, I am not sure you should go to him, Dalcon.”
She always insisted calling me by my last name, another thing that was odd. “I must. I must go just to see if it is him.”
She nodded. “I suspected as much.” She handed me a paper in a black-gloved hand. “Here is the address. Rip should be able to take you there with his magical power, using a process known as teleportation. It is instantaneous and safe.”
I thought about telling her that I’d already been teleported numerous times, but did not want to sound arrogant now, after all she had done for me. “Thank you.”
I journeyed back to my home joyously, only to discover a substantial setback: Rip had never been to that particular monastery before. That impeded teleporting, as the being teleporting needed to have physically visited the destination for the magic to work. That meant another few weeks of waiting, as my demon traveled from the closest place he’d been, Nepal, to Danial’s monastery.
I was glad for the delay. I’d never thought to see my brother alive. Now that I was about to, I had to come up with the right words to say that would end our longstanding rivalry. We’d been given a second chance to be brothers. This time, I would be the brother I hadn’t been two hundred years ago.
* * * *
The night I waited for Rip to arrive to take me to Danial was probably the most frightening of my life. I paced back and forth for hours as Anna tried to calm me. But I could not be calmed, no matter what she said. My brother was alive. I’d managed to find love after centuries; maybe I could finally find forgiveness, too.
Rip appeared a bit after midnight in my home, teleported me right to the monastery door, and then turned to me.
“I cannot go in,” he said, wincing a little. “This is holy ground, Master. I will wait for you a little way down the road, just out of sight. Come out this door and call for me when you wish to leave.”
I nodded absently as he walked off. Then I steeled myself, squared my shoulders, and knocked on the heavy door.
A monk answered. “Yes?”
“I am looking for my brother,” I said, trying to not show my fangs as I spoke. “I heard he was here.”
“We have many brothers here.”
“He is my size, but dark instead of fair. I must see him, if he is here.”
“I know the man of whom you speak. What name do you know him as?”
“Danial, um...” Shit, what had been his mother’s last name? I couldn’t remember.
“Come,” the monk replied. “I will take you to him.”
I followed him nervously, both wanting desperately to see Danial and also wanting to leave and not face him. What if he refused to talk to me? What if he hated me?
What had happened to us had been my fault, all those years ago. I’d lead us into that ambush; I’d said it was safe, knowing there had been attacks on travelers, that there had been people killed by some kind of beast. I’d been reckless, sure that I could handle whatever it was that was killing people. I’d wanted to return with some monstrous beast’s head tied to my saddle, positive it would give me both my father’s approval, and hopefully a position of my own at his level, as I was chafing under his thumb, and wanted to be out on my own. He had made it clear that unless I did something memorable soon, I was going to be married off to whoever had the biggest dowry, to spend my days stuck in some meaningless post pushing papers for a rich father-in-law.
To thwart that fate, I led Danial and my men down that road. I camped directly in the midst of the region where the attacks had taken place, and when the others slept, I stayed awake, my sword in my hand, so that I might get the credit for slaying whatever monster lurked here.
That night, a vampire attacked.
He had to have been old, and also crazy. Where he came from, I couldn’t even guess. What mattered was he killed everyone brutally within minutes, save Danial and me. It was only because I’d bitten him back as he was savaging me that I’d turned, and not died.
I still wasn’t sure why Danial had turned. I didn’t see him drink any blood. There had been blood all over both of us from fighting, so I had always assumed he gotten some of the vampire’s blood into his body through a wound, unlikely though that seemed.
After we discovered we had changed, we had words over what to do. He went back to our village, while I struck off on my own. I heard less than a year later that he’d died.
Two hundred years later, I still felt guilt over leading my trusting brother into the figurative lion’s den. I hadn’t been quick enough to save him. That I hadn’t been able to save myself was no consolation. Would he forgive me?
The monk took me to a rough door, knocked, and then left me there without a word.
I waited there for a while, debating on whether or not to call out his name. I could sense there was a vampire within, but not if it was Danial. I said nothing, deciding that whoever was inside already knew I was here.
Finally, the door opened. I looked into sad dark eyes that were no less beautiful for the fact they belonged to a man.
“Why did you come?” Danial said softly. “What do you want, Dev?”
I would like to say I hugged him, or I fell to my knees, and asked him to forgive me. But I was still the older brother. I fell back into that role almost automatically.
“I came to rescue you from your walls of cold stone,” I said almost merrily. “I came to ask you to rejoin the world.”
“I do not want to be in the world,” Danial said, turning away. “I am seeking salvation. There is still much penance to do, for all I’ve done.”
He tried to close the door, but I put my foot in it.
“Wait,” I said seductively. “Hear me out. I have discovered more of our kind in Europe, Danial. There is a system of vampires that rule the others, and—”
“I care nothing about ruling others,” Danial said flatly. “I never have, Devlin. And most likely, there is some requirement for being of noble birth to join the ruling class. There always is.”
“You are of noble birth,” I said stridently. “Forget that we do not have the same mother, my brother, that is not an issue, not anymore! The only issue is willingness to act, and the desire to want to make things better for the others of our kind that are being hurt by those callous few who have power over them.”
I could see I had Danial’s attention now. But how to keep it? I’d never understood him in mortal life, and I understood him less as vampire. I mean, c’mon, who wanted to be here amidst celibate men and cold stone when they could be between the warm thighs of a human woman, tasting her blood? It seemed a no-brainer.
“Dev, I am content here—”
“Come with me back to France,” I pleaded. “We can have a good life. My setup is a good one. You’ll like my men. You won’t believe it, but I have a werewolf, a werebat, and a demon working for me—”
“Werebats?” Danial said in confusion. “Are you kidding me, Dev?”
“No,” I said, laughing. “It’s true! And we’ll get you an Oathed One of your very own, brother. If Eva wasn’t already taken, I’d offer you her.
But then, she isn’t your type anyway, she’s got blond hair—”
“Oathed One?” Danial said, tilting his head. “What is that?”
“A vampire wife, kind of,” I said with pride. “Though mine is human, not vampire. Anna is wonderful. I’ve told her about you, and she wants to meet you—”
“Then I must go to see her,” Danial said smoothly, standing up. “I do have manners, after all.” His face creased into a faint smile. “To think you have finally married after all these years.”
“Wonderful!” I said, clapping him on the back. “Do you need to pack anything?”
“I have nothing,” Danial said, still managing to make that statement seem as if he had everything that mattered. “I took a vow of poverty when I came here years ago, and I had little enough then.” He gave a bitter smile, moving only one side of his face. “There was not much to give up.”
“Then let’s go,” I said, grinning widely. “For the night is wasting!”
“Give me a few moments in private, please,” Danial said, opening the door for me. “I will need to tell the monks I am leaving. I’ll meet you outside shortly.”
“Of course.” I left, and he quickly shut the door behind me.
The few moments I waited for him with Rip were closer to an hour, long enough I worried he’d changed his mind. I told myself this was normal. He’d been here for years, he likely had friends here to say goodbye to.
All of a sudden, the scent of Danial’s approach came to me on the night air with the soft tread of his feet. As soon as he drew near, Rip teleported us home.
* * * *
When I returned with my brother, Levi was waiting for us. I introduced Danial, who shook Levi’s hand.
“I see the resemblance,” Levi said, looking from Danial to me. “It is very good to meet you, Danial. Devlin, Anna waits for you in the sitting room.”
“And it is good to meet you, Levi,” Danial said cordially. “I hope to speak to you further. But I do not mean to keep you from your duties.”
Levi nodded, understanding at once. “I’ll give you time to catch up. Call me if you need anything.” He strode out.
Immortal Confessions Page 14
