Bloodbound

by F. Wesley Schneider

  “I don’t think you’re going to get that option. Don’t the bodies outside prove that?”

  Her eyes narrowed.

  I hurried on, not having meant to insult her. “The vampire I’m after, he’s my father.”

  She blinked, her gaze drifting away. Several moments passed before she began drumming her pen on the desk.

  “And you think I’m you’re mother.”

  “I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “But he does.”

  The creaking noise she made sounded annoyed. “That has certain … implications. You’re sure?”

  “He told me.”

  “You know him, then? You’ve met him before?”

  I tried to think of some way not to make it sound damning. “His name’s Rivascis. I’ve known about him for—for all my life. But I only met him last night.”

  The pen clicked rapidly. “You found him?”

  I nodded.

  “On your first night here?” She shook her head. “He wanted to be found.”

  “He’s not the first vampire I’ve tracked down,” I said, suddenly defensive. She was right, though.

  “He wanted to be found. The smart ones only reveal themselves when it’s in their best interest.”

  The mask of ashes crowning Tashan’s corpse leapt to mind. Had Rivascis just been keeping me out of the way?

  Her clicking stopped. She gently put down the pen. “So you found him, but it sounds like you both survived.”

  There had been a moment while I was uselessly carving up Rivascis that I realized I’d failed, that I’d come all this way for nothing. As he and I had talked, that feeling had faded. Now it rushed back, just as intense as before.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?”

  I didn’t answer.

  Not just that, I couldn’t find an answer. Questions had been winding through my mind since I’d left the theater. I’d struggled with them through miles of the city’s cold streets, but every time I thought I’d caught even the least of them, they slipped away.

  “Why?” she repeated more forcefully.

  “I tried to kill him.” The tired frustration of a hundred wasted blows settled back into my arm. “He was too fast.”

  “Then why aren’t you dead?” She gave voice to the question that I’d already repeated hundreds of times this morning.

  “He never struck back.” I was almost whispering. “He could have at any time. I don’t think I could have stopped him. But he didn’t.”

  “He just let you go?”

  It hadn’t been like that. I shook my head. “I’m sure I could have left, but he wanted to talk.”

  “And what did he say?”

  “He apologized.”

  “For what?”

  “For leaving me in Caliphas. For never coming for me. For all the things they did and made me do.”

  Her head shook so slightly that, for a moment, I mistook it for a tremor of age. “He would have said anything. That’s how they win you over. The most dangerous know the best slaves are the ones who serve willingly.”

  “Why would I help him?” I threw up my hands. Some dam inside me broke, but I didn’t care. “I’ve obeyed corpses all my life. Every time I’ve defied them they’ve dragged me back and made sure to remind me that I’m just a tool to use how they please—to break if the whim takes them. This—coming to find you—it’s given me a reason to escape. This is the longest I’ve gone in my entire life without crawling through shit to take a corpse’s orders. But even now I know it’s going to end. Some night soon they’ll lose patience and take me back. Or I won’t be worth the effort, and that’ll just be the end. In either case, for a few days I have a life, and I’m not spending it as someone else’s slave.”

  My last words rang, fading into the library’s pages. Those books looked more receptive than Kindler, whose face remained an arrangement of flagstones. I sealed my mouth, realizing what an untrustworthy thing it was.

  Kindler gradually worked her way around the desk, holding its edge for support. Her voice came slower, softer. “It sounds as though this Rivascis told you things you’ve waited a very long time to hear. He’s giving you a choice, and you’re choosing to defend him.”

  Was she pandering to me? I ground my teeth together. After a long breath, I spoke deliberately. “He’s one of the only people who’s known what I am who didn’t treat me like either a slave or some curiosity. He’s the only person since Jadain who—”

  My frustration with Kindler had completely distracted me.

  “Where’s Jadain?”

  The old woman’s expression didn’t change. “I haven’t a clue. The woman leading those thugs said their master might have some use for her.”

  “What woman?”

  “The sort you’d notice on the street. All in black, a veil—”

  “Gold pinned to some atrocious dress?”

  Kindler frowned. “You’ve seen her?”

  Something heavy filled my stomach. Like that, everything I said about Rivascis sounded incredibly naive. Hopes I didn’t want to acknowledge tore free, flotsam snatched away by a wicked tide. I dropped into one of the lounge chairs, staring nowhere. “She led me to Rivascis.”

  “Who is she?”

  “I have no idea.”

  Silence hung there for a moment.

  “She knows something about magic,” Kindler said. “Fire, in particular.”

  I looked over, confirming what she was suggesting. She gave a sad nod.

  I hadn’t known Tashan well, and certainly hadn’t trusted him after what happened in the mountains, but he deserved better than that.

  “They killed Tashan, beat Rarentz, and took Jadain.” I stated facts. “But somehow you managed to get away?”

  Kindler waved my halfhearted accusation away. “The veiled woman wanted me to come with her. It’s not the first time someone’s tried to take me somewhere against my will.” She adjusted her shawl. “I’ve had this little treasure with me a long time. Just a whisper and,” her snap sounded like a breaking twig, “I’m someplace else.”

  She gestured to the bookcase passage opened behind her. “In this case, my writing room.”

  “You left them, then.”

  She frowned. “No, but I did manage to escape. I was readying to call the guard when you arrived.”

  That didn’t sound like “no” to me, but I didn’t press the matter. What could I have expected the old woman to do?

  “I don’t think the city watch is going to be much help.” My fist clenched, feeling empty without my sword’s grip in it. I pushed myself up from the chair, the weight in my stomach hatching into anger. “If it was Rivascis who did this, I know where to find him.”

  Kindler glanced to a curtained window, a dismal glow at its edges. “Truly? He showed you where he rests during the day.”

  She was right. I knew where he’d been, but in truth I had no way to know where he was hiding.

  “He was painting at the Mirage Theater in White Corner. It might not be where he keeps his coffin, but it’s a place to start.”

  “Painting?” She looked doubtful.

  “Yeah. It looked like he’d been at it for some time.” I hesitated, but couldn’t think of any reason not to tell her. “It was of you.”

  Disgusted deepened every wrinkle.

  “You in your youth,” I clarified.

  She leaned back on the desk and was quiet for a long moment.

  “How old would you say?” she finally asked, her attention straying across the room.

  I shrugged. “I don’t know. About as old as I look.”

  She nodded gravely. “About as old as I would have been in the file you gave me?”

  The question made me suspicious. “I suppose.”

  Kindler crossed to a bookcase near the fireplace. Reaching high, she pulled upon a set of dusty books. The matching bindings slid from the shelf as one, their covers a solid whole. Taking the set in both hands, she set it carefully upon a side table. Bony fin
gers traced the edges of the nearly square set, producing a series of metallic clicks. The last noise was the loudest, and a hidden lid popped open.

  Kindler reached inside and produced a folio of crumbling pages. She flipped the cover back and handed it to me.

  I recognized pages before taking them: a record from Maiden’s Choir. More than that, I realized upon reading only a few lines, it was Kindler’s record. The exact file I’d delivered to her the day before. The record she’d burned.

  “How?” I flipped through the file. It was all here. In fact, there was more.

  “It’s from Havenguard. Supposedly I stole it years ago.”

  “Supposedly?” That was concerning. I’d scoffed at the possibility of the retired explorer’s senility, but this sounded like the beginning of a confession.

  She reached into the box of books and produced a wrinkled old traveler’s journal. She didn’t open it, just handed it to me.

  I set the file down, then took the charcoal book and unwound the leather strap tying it closed. I skimmed the first page, then the next.

  “What is this?” I didn’t look up, flipping through the first dozen pages.

  “A warning. Read.”

  I nodded slowly, not understanding. The handwriting subtly changed every few pages. The messages were all short and similar, but in different ink.

  “But who wrote them? And who are they for?” When I looked up, she was watching. Her expression was something between worry and doubt.

  “Read.”

  Choosing a short message several pages in, I read aloud.

  “Ailson. You’ve always known knowledge is your greatest weapon and strongest shield. You’ve also known it can be a responsibility, that it can inflict wounds of the deadliest kinds. You know things that could change the lives of those who mean the most to you—rarely for the better. You’ve kept such secrets, because what you know could be a poison.

  “I’m sorry, I know you will not fully understand, but you are poisoned, Ailson. Fortunately, I have a cure. It’s not brave, but I beg you to believe what you read here and on the pages that have come before. The cure is forgetfulness, and even now you benefit from its balm.

  “Do not do as I have done. A future in doubt is better than a past you cannot change.”

  It was signed at the end with a simple “A.”

  “Is this …” I pointed at the signature.

  She nodded. “It’s mine. The message is from me.”

  32

  BURIED ALIVE

  JADAIN

  Voices. I recognized the noise before I could understand the words. The combination of nausea and a throbbing headache didn’t make interpreting them any easier.

  Something else was off.

  The voices were close. Close enough that I was sure I didn’t recognize them.

  A sudden crack startled me fully awake. Through slitted eyes I watched a shadow topple, sprawling to the ground with a clatter like a handful of coins. But the ground was clearly situated in the wrong direction.

  I was suspended upside down.

  The figure in the black gown lifted herself from the dirt floor.

  “Don’t presume you know my wishes,” a man’s sneering voice came out of the dark. “Do as I say, exactly as I tell you. Anything else is failure.”

  “Yes, Lord,” the woman said, speaking through clenched teeth. “But, if you will …” She waited for approval. I couldn’t hear or see any hint of permission being given beyond the dim ring of lantern light, but she nodded nonetheless.

  “Her eye.” The gesture toward me made my already unsettled stomach lurch. “She’s been cast out.”

  The woman on the ground had called him master, but in his tattered clothes, he looked more like a prisoner. His face was all angles, sharp and severe with a jaw for etching marble. Thin brows were razor lines over a statue’s eyes, his irises the color of slate in rain. He was striking, but in some antique way. It felt like being attracted to a portrait of someone a thousand years old, both surprising and morbid, as there was no doubt he was dead.

  I shut my eyes as he approached, trying my best to feign unconsciousness. It didn’t matter. He wrapped my shirt collar into a fist and pulled. I rose, a chain clanking above. Something cold and sharp barely touched my cheek. The linen bandage covering my eye fell away.

  “Show me.” His voice was inches away from my face. I tried to remain still, praying he wouldn’t notice the gooseflesh prickling my neck and arms.

  “If I open them, you will never close them again.” His voice was carelessly calm. “Show me.”

  I opened my eyes.

  His colors had faded, leaving his skin sickly and dagger-cut hair like sun-bleached straw. There were wrinkles, tallies along his thin lips and crow’s feet edging eyes only inches away. The passage of breath didn’t disrupt his frozen features. His attention fixed on my right eye. The perverted symbol there prickled as though a fly’s steps circled toward my pupil. Despite the revulsion, I dared not blink.

  “She travels with your daughter,” the dark woman said, her jewelry complaining as she regained her feet.

  “Indeed.” The dead man’s face was close enough to mine that I could feel the air carrying his words. I smelled like ashes.

  “Tell me, priestess, are you responsible for this?” He twisted his grip, turning me in the direction opposite to my past view.

  Several layers of dark canvas lay across the ground. At their center stretched Considine, still bearing a sharpened board through his chest.

  The fist at my throat shook me.

  “No.” I coughed, my mouth dryer than I’d expected. I wondered how long I’d been unconscious.

  “Then you won’t have any objections.” He dropped me. Chains clattered, a beam above groaned, and for a sickening moment I swung freely.

  My captor crossed to the other corpse, knelt, and yanked the stake impaling Considine. The crunch of spilt bones caused my teeth to clench, but the wood came free. He snapped the board and sent the pieces skittering into the dust.

  Considine thrashed, but his lips moved most desperately. “Intrusion? My, no! I have nothing but the utmost respect for your mistress. You see, I’ve read all—”

  The remembered moment passed, his head lifting in confusion. His curiosity settled on me first, then drifted to the man standing over him.

  “Oh.” His body gave way to misty eddies. They swirled upon the ground, ready to drift in any or all directions at once. Reluctantly, the vapor rose and dissipated. The lanky, truant academy boy vampire stood there, fingering a sizable tear on the left breast of his wine-colored vest.

  “Father.” He looked up with a wide smile. “It’s been too, too long.”

  “I am not your father,” the man said sharply.

  Considine made a little pouting noise. “Hurtful. I’d call you ‘master’, but you freed me of those duties so long ago. What they call you in the Old City just doesn’t seem polite. And ‘Rivascis’, hmm, I just don’t think I could get used to—”

  “Quiet.”

  Despite refusing to call him “master,” Considine’s mouth snapped shut.

  Rivascis turned to the empty dark. “Did Luvick send you after me?”

  Considine guffawed, then made a show of trying to stifle it. “My, no. Grandfather goes well out of his way to keep me from any matter that ventures too close to being meaningful.”

  “Then why are you here?”

  “Watching after your daughter, that’s all—can I call her your daughter? Do you call her that? You have met, I assume.” Considine looked to me. “You seem to be taking an interest in her friends. I might have misjudged your paternal instincts.”

  “Larsa brought you?” Rivascis kept a strict, level tone.

  “In a manner of speaking, yes.”

  The space between the two blurred. When my eyes caught up, Rivascis’s claws were where Considine’s face had been. Considine’s fog was reforming into features, a step behind where he’d been standing.


  His mouth seemed to manifest first. “Grandfather did send me, just not after you. A friend conveniently comprised the third part of Larsa’s little trio. That he didn’t tell anyone about inviting me to make it a quartet didn’t come up until we were nearly here. Sister-dear didn’t appreciate me tagging along uninvited, but she has a soft spot for her big brother.”

  Considine turned to me, and my stomach pitched. As if feeling my discomfort, he smiled, his thin fangs obvious. “Right, Jadain?”

  Rivascis’s glare unhurriedly passed between us, settling back on Considine. “You allowed yourself to be staked by an old woman.”

  “By an old woman’s wolf of a gardener,” he corrected. “But I’m not the only one to have his intentions undone by Miss Ailson Kindler. Tell me, are the rumors true? Has she single-handedly kept you from launching your rebellion against Siervage for all these years?”

  “The years have made your tongue even looser.” Rivascis looked over Considine’s once well-tailored clothing. “I won’t hear any talk of revolution from a thing that survives on the scraps of the living.”

  Considine reached for a tatter that might have once been part of Rivascis’s coat. “Are we really going to compare scraps?”

  The elder vampire jerked away.

  “Why would I want a revolution anyway? Apart from inconvenient disruptions like this, I’m quite content in Caliphas. I’ve a fine room in what amounts to a palace, with the means to indulge my every curiosity.” Considine gave a bitter little laugh. “I don’t see the outrage.”

  “Your lord’s dwindling ambitions infect you. He’d see you all rot beneath the capital rather than rising to control it. He clings to a memory of power. Tell me, little prince, who can you feed upon in Caliphas?”

  “I don’t want for blood.” Considine shrugged. “Warm or cold, taken screaming or given willingly.”

  Rivascis scoffed. “You take what you’re told you can take. Whatever watered-down dregs Luvick and his human masters dole out. Taking the blood of the weak has made you weak. I didn’t give you immortality to see you continue a wasteful, wanton life.”