At Death's Door (Wraith's Rebellion Book 1)

by Aya DeAniege

  The figure lashed out, dragging one of my brothers screaming into the darkness. Then another. And another. Soon there was only my mother and father, standing back-to-back.

  My mother was grabbed from under the earth and dragged off as my father shouted after, chasing her as she bounced across the ground and then disappeared into a hole in the ground.

  The figure appeared behind my father and shoved him into the hole. I saw him tumble and called out. They hadn’t heard me any other time. I’m not certain what I was expecting to accomplish by standing there shouting at them.

  I ran to the hole. I almost tumbled into the gaping maw that had consumed my parents. The figure grabbed me, pulling me back as I lurched forward.

  “That is not your fate,” Lu shouted as the rain began to pour down.

  Thunder cut across the sky. The ground broke and blackened.

  “God’s kingdom doesn’t want you, it never has.”

  “This is where I belong!”

  “No, boy,” Lu dragged me close. He kissed me hard, and I swore I felt his teeth again. “You don’t belong here.”

  I woke with a start. Blinking up at the ceiling, I just didn’t understand. I should have been dead, yet there was the ceiling of my lord’s bedroom.

  And him slumbering beside me. His mouth had blood around it still, dried and darkened. My blood. It had also stained the sheets and blankets. There were speckles across us both.

  I reached frantically for my shoulder, finding it whole. My skin was unmarred.

  Startled by the undamaged skin, I felt over the rest of me. Everything was there. I felt cold, even to my own touch. There was a trembling in my hands as I checked on everything.

  I was completely whole, but felt a weakness and a thirst at the same time. I was so very thirsty.

  I stumbled off the bed and drank deeply of the water, though it tasted stale. Like it hadn’t been changed out in several days. Draining the whole pitcher didn’t help the thirst.

  The water seemed to slosh about in my stomach. It didn’t settle right at all.

  I made it to the chamber pot before the water came back up. You’d think water would leave little taste, but it was a terribly alkaline impression across my tongue. My mouth felt fuzzy.

  My vomiting woke Lu. He looked at the bed, at me, and made a disgusted sound. He left the room as I trembled over the chamber pot, my stomach threatening to begin dry heaving at any moment.

  When he returned, he brought with him a frightened servant who struggled to get away. Lu threw the man at from me, and I pulled away, skittering backward. Lu marched up.

  He grabbed the man and dragged him close to me. Then he grabbed me and bared the man’s neck to me. I shuddered at the sight of it.

  Instinct took over.

  I bit down on the throat. As I broke the skin, I felt the blood wash over my tongue. I gulped greedily, but as the heart stopped, so did the blood. Biting a human is such a waste of blood.

  If we truly wanted to feed off humans, we’d hang you by your ankles and slice your throat, allowing the blood to drain. Nowadays there are marvellous contraptions for other methods.

  Three more servants died in my arms before Lu made me clean myself up and help him move the bodies.

  I wasn’t allowed to rest until they were buried.

  Funnily enough, no one questioned us.

  Back in his room once more, Lu sliced into his wrist and offered it to me. I drank, my thirst barely sated. He only allowed me a small amount, but it helped a great deal.

  The Maker’s role does not stop upon the creation. Like most newborns, vampires are incapable of feeding themselves. We need the blood of our Maker to convert what we’ve consumed into sustenance.

  I’m told once, long ago, only a Maker could feed his Progeny. That must have been a dreadful experience.

  In the beginning, it takes about three cups of liquid. Quite a bit when you’re talking about blood. But all the other blood I drank was changed to the same.

  Vampire blood, when introduced directly into human blood can have a similar effect. We’ve not dabbled with it, but we could probably turn one of you into a blood bag for a baby vampire.

  Near as we can tell, besides converting previously consumed blood into nutrition for a Progeny, vampire blood has no effect on humans. Sorry, no miraculous healing if we get into a crash.

  You are buckled up, aren’t you?

  The Maker needs to wean the Progeny off his blood. This cannot happen quickly. Too quickly and the new Vampire is always hungry, slow is better. The Council has dictated a century must pass before a Progeny is allowed on their own, but in reality, most have stayed with their Makers a great deal longer.

  The venom changes the body. The blood helps us process what we need to eat. Starving a vampire is painful and can make us look like a corpse, make us vicious, but it won’t kill us.

  Food and water need to be reintroduced to the Progeny, but only after the weaning is complete. I didn’t consume normal food until I was almost five hundred. I was aware that Lu ate food, but anytime I tried, it would come back up again.

  I learned to pantomime the motions and to pocket food even better than Lu had at my family’s table.

  Can I ask about the powers?

  The powers do not instantly appear. They are gradual. For most, anyhow. Some experience powers right away. Some have the powers right away but do not realize that is what they are experiencing.

  As for myself, I am not actually aware of when they first arose, or if I simply inherited them from Lu, and no. I don’t want to talk about my powers.

  Each day, I needed to be fed. I was completely dependent on Lu. If I didn’t get to feed, I felt so sick and weak.

  I wouldn’t be fed unless I submitted to his every whim. Damage would heal as I slept, so Lu no longer had to be gentle with me.

  He liked to tie me to the bed and brutalize me, then feed me before I healed. The blood loss would make me complacent the next day when I woke.

  Fledglings tend to adhere to the sunset to sunrise timeline. I never asked where the bodies came from or where they went.

  I did not interact with any other vampires. Or mortals for that matter. My only link to the world was Lu. He kept me half-starved for years, weaning me only when he became bored with hurting me.

  Then he’d send me out to hunt, and each night I’d have to go back to him an prostrate myself before him. The feed would burn its way into my stomach as I earned the necessary blood to convert it.

  Just over a century later, he cast me out with only a bottle of his blood to sustain me. I had to finish the weaning process without understanding how.

  I still didn’t know what I was, who I was, or that there were others of us out there. I thought I was alone in the world, with no one else. I barely even understood that it had been a century.

  The nights had blurred together. The faces just seemed one after another.

  One a day?

  A fledgling needs two to three to feel normal. Stock became very important. Once they knew what we were, it was easier to harvest. Having twenty adults donating blood in a rotation is a great help.

  For myself, I drank greedily, leaving dead bodies in my wake.

  Now, what is she calling herself this century?

  Sasha, I think. She changes her name with each century and is about sixteen hundred years old.

  Anyhow, I was about halfway through the bottle, allowing myself only enough to wet my tongue, when Sasha found me on the side of the road. She dragged me halfway across the continent and dropped me at the feet of the Council. They were unaware of my existence. I had been unaware of theirs.

  There’s a lot of detail left out.

  I’ve lived fifteen hundred years, if I tried to tell you it all, we’d be here for another fifteen hundred years. I also don’t want to talk about my time with my Maker more than I need to. He was not a good man.

  I’m supposed to ask to meet him, if possible.

  I don’t know where
he is. I haven’t heard from him in three hundred years. Of course, he’s still alive. There’d be no way for him to die.

  Lu is mainly under house arrest. He is the type of vampire that humans whisper about in the darkness. His violence is barely contained, and when it comes to mortals, he prefers children.

  That’s not to say he prefers them and so is nicer to them.

  Not being allowed to kill mortals must be driving him nuts. He doesn’t have stock of his own, so he’s restricted to events he’s invited to. Others won’t invite Lu, as those events are no longer about killing the mortal that is chased and Lu has ‘accidentally’ killed the mortals of other vampires on more than one occasion.

  Why is he still alive, then?

  Because killing vampires is a difficult process. There are currently four others who are awaiting execution. While Lu is an abusive, neurotic, controlling, manipulative, narcissistic, bloodthirsty, madman, he’s never actually broken the laws. There’d be no justification for the act.

  Upon meeting others, I was afraid they would be just like Lu. I was pleasantly surprised.

  We pulled to a complete stop in the parking lot of a nondescript building. It was tall and grey, with no signs or labels on it anywhere that I could see. There was no indication that this was where we had been heading to. The parking lot itself did not have a chain link fence or any other sort of protection around it.

  I wanted to ask all kinds of questions. I was required to ask for details of his human life. Such as getting him to tell me where he had been born and where he had been turned. I already knew that information, but having him answer the questions was a way to build trust and to fact check the rest of his story.

  “I am required to ask for more information about your human life,” I said. “Most interviewees filled several days talking about their lives. You’ve only filled an hour or so. They’ll wonder about the discrepancy.”

  “I am not supposed to scare the mortals,” Quin said. “We may have been chosen at random, but we were spoken to individually by the Council about some things. There are some secrets that, for now, must remain secret. For my part, they were very clear that I was not to scare the mortals with Lu’s tenacity and violence. That involves most of my human and fledgling life.”

  “So, it was bad?”

  “When the man who owns your body and soul makes you kidnap children to sate his bloodlust, I’d say it was more than bad.”

  “And that’s just what you’re willing to share with me.”

  “Exactly, suffice to say, if I knew where he was, you would not be meeting him outside of circumstances that would be beyond my control. Little is beyond my control these days.”

  Quin turned off the vehicle and pocketed the keys. The man glanced at me, then to the door.

  “That is a manual door lock. You need to secure it as you get out.”

  “Okay,” I said, unbuckling.

  I stepped out of the vehicle, locked the door, then closed it. I attempted to open it just to be sure. It stayed shut.

  Looking across the vehicle, I caught Quin giving the building a sad sort of look. Forlorn might have been the word I was looking for, not sad. There was so much in that look, centuries of history and clashes. He put on a good mask, but something was bothering him.

  “This way,” he said, pocketing his keys.

  We walked up to the building, to a little door on the side of it. There were no markings or windows on the door or around it. There wasn’t even a handle on the outside, just a little black box to the right of the door.

  Quin placed his thumb on the small pad.

  “And guest, per Margaret,” he said, pronouncing the name in that odd way again. “English, please.”

  The door popped open.

  Quin stepped in and, after a moment of startled silence, I followed him. The door swung shut behind us.

  Inside was a hallway with no doors and incandescent lights overhead. The lights flickered slightly. There was an underlining hum that seemed to come from the walls, as if machinery was busy and work just on the other side. The linoleum underfoot was faded and cracked. Dirt had collected along all the corners and cracks.

  Spider webs ran from the lights to the walls.

  It was nothing like what I pictured a vampire archive would be like.

  Quin walked through another door that led to a hallway much like the previous one. A guard was standing in front of a separation that looked like it belonged in a prison. The guard pushed up his hat and eyed me suspiciously.

  “Mademoiselle?” The guard said.

  “English, please,” Quin said.

  “Bilingual country, my ass,” the guard said with a thick accent. “Margaret is waiting for you. Others are already present. You are late, Quintillus. It has been noted.”

  “She made me go back for my hat and glasses,” Quin murmured as the guard unlocked the door.

  The other vampire, I assume he was a vampire given context, arched an eyebrow and looked me over again. Eventually, he shrugged and opened the door.

  Quin stepped through with me close behind. The guard sniffed the air in my wake but gave no comment or indication as to what he thought of what he smelled.

  Around the corner, the hallway changed quite suddenly. The walls were a cream colour. The dust was gone, the flooring was dark wood, real wood not the laminated stuff that was popular. The lighting overhead was softer than at the beginning of the hall, but there were still no signs or indication of what the building held.

  Quin walked up to a dark brown door at the end of that hallway and stepped into a little sitting room with me following close behind. Dark grey carpet, warm off-white walls, and a woman sitting behind the desk.

  Dark skin, really dark skin, with high cheekbones and eyes that mirrored her flesh. Her hair was cropped close to her head, and lips painted a dark red, almost purple colour. She was in a golden coloured dressed with a patterned marking over it.

  Her heritage was African, that much was obvious. Her age, like most vampires, was a mystery. At turning she may have been twenty-five but no older. She peered at me, then seemed to glare at Quin even though nothing about her face seemed to change.

  There seemed to be an age restriction on turning. Not turning children was understandable, but all the vampires I was aware of were over twenty-five when they had been turned. As if vampires didn’t believe one was an adult until one experienced life as an adult.

  “You are late, Quintillus.”

  “She made me go back for my hat and glasses,” he said.

  The woman looked me over, then turned to Quin and sniffed slightly. Her head tilted to the side, eyes still on Quin.

  “Does Margaret know?”

  “She’s the one who made the assignment, so she must know. If not, she’ll find out in a few minutes. May I?”

  “Go.”

  Something was going on.

  I felt like they were having a conversation while I was there, one that had nothing to do with the reason why we were in the Archives in the first place. It was entirely possible. After so long together, the vampires didn’t need another language to have a private conversation.

  It was frustrating, to not be able to ask him what was going on.

  Quin led the way through the room. On the other side was a museum.

  Filled with random shit.

  Write something flowery about the archives.

  Even though I made that note, I made no attempt to apply fancy terms to the items I saw as I walked through. I had to get down as much as possible while there, not fill in one paragraph, then miss out on the rest. No one part of the archives was impressive or important in any way that I could see.

  Quin didn’t do much more than glance around the archives.

  A pair of glasses, a notebook. I glanced at the placards in front of each piece. There was nothing more than a name and dates crossing centuries of time. No explanation as to what was so significant about a soother.

  Look up dates provide
d in notations with names.

  I wrote up a list of every placard I could find, turning on the camera portion of the tablet casually. I made no attempt to direct it at anything in particular, just trying to take notes for later.

  Quin stopped in the middle of a display room and looked around. His eyebrows drew down in a frown, and something came out of his mouth. From tone alone, it must have been a curse. I could not even guess at the language that he spoke.

  He took a moment, possibly to compose himself. He then motioned to me and walked towards an open door in the far back corner of the archives.

  Inside the room was a collection of vampires. I desperately wished I had the time to take in all the details of their physical attributes. Gawking around the room might have been accepted because I was an interviewer, but it was still rude.

  Reaching casually once more, I shut the tablet’s camera off. We had been explicitly told not to take images of other vampires without their permission. Even Quin’s image wouldn’t be included in the final product.

  For their protection, of course.

  Some mortals had attempted to mob Lucrecia on her way to an interview before. If the images got out, more vampires would be at risk of exposure. Which, in turn, would put mortals in danger of dying because they got stupid and pushy.

  The multicultural faces before me spanned most of human history, from pale with rich red hair to the woman from the front desk, who slipped in behind us.

  There was one other human in the room. In a room full of vampires, the other interviewer stood out. He was awkward and lumpy compared to the finer vampires. They were well cared for, manicured, in tailored clothing that was styled like regular clothing, but had a quality to it that was different than day-to-day clothing.

  They all turned towards us, then focused on me. Each sniffed the air, then focused pointedly on a woman dressed in a floor-length, gauzy dress.

  She stood in the middle of the room facing the door. Her auburn hair spilled over her shoulders, thick and full, with natural waves to it. She was curvaceous, I believe the word for it is. Breasts and hips that modern women would kill for. Her face lacked the overly beautiful quality that most vampires had.