Grief For Heart: The Vincent Du Maurier Series, Book 4

by K. P. Ambroziak

  The horror was too much to bear, and yet I didn’t understand what I witnessed. I asked Evelina who she was—the child—but she wouldn’t say.

  “How can a goddess kill an innocent—her own child?” I crumbled to the ground, my breath taken from me at the sight. I kept asking how a woman could destroy such helpless innocence. “It is unnatural,” I mumbled.

  “You assume the child was hers,” Evelina said. “From her womb.”

  “Isn’t it worse to kill the child of another?” I shrieked.

  “You will never understand it, my boy, but you think fit to judge it.”

  “I just … I don’t know what I’ve seen.”

  “There’s a whole world beyond this one,” she said. “In many ways you’re unprepared to greet it.”

  “What are you saying?”

  “Do you think death leaves you blind?”

  “What can you mean?”

  She reached down and pulled me up, putting me on a level with her. “Do you believe you are more than this shell, Dagur?”

  “Are you asking if I am like Saba?”

  “I’m not asking if you are like her. I am asking if you think you are.”

  I hadn’t thought about it, but once mentioned it consumed me.

  We returned home to find my father and Freyit standing on the threshold, unwilling to enter until I arrived. I led them inside, Freyit passing Peter with barely a glance, going in to check on Saba and Finn. Gerenios greeted Peter, standing at ease beside him. If there’d been tension between them, I couldn’t see it. My father wasn’t too concerned with Huitzilli’s arrival. He was no stranger to vampires showing up unannounced. He wasn’t prepared to create unnecessary tension. Gerenios and Peter had a longstanding relationship, a unique report, and faith in one another.

  My father had greeted me with his usual hug, clapping his hand on my back, then praised my kin for returning Saba safely. “They’ve succeeded where we failed,” he said.

  “How are the others,” I asked. “Have they spoken of it?”

  “I won’t lie. Hackles are raised, and we’ve a meeting planned tonight.” His voice boomed through my little home.

  “I’ll be there.”

  He shook his head. “No, my son. This is between New Men.”

  “How can you say that—”

  “Hush,” Evelina said. “This is ours to deal with, boy. You’ve got a daughter to tend to.”

  I glanced at Peter, who hadn’t taken his eyes from the doorway that led to Saba.

  “And the other,” Gerenios said. “That boy’s been through the skinner, I’d expect.”

  My eyes remained steady on Peter, who’s face tightened at the mention of Finn.

  “We’ve got things to do in the meantime,” Evelina said. “We’ll do our best to locate Huitzilli, but both Peter and I think he may be gone—”

  She stopped mid-sentence, and cocked her head to the side. Peter turned to her, and narrowed his eyes. At that moment, Dion’s call came through the trees. “Gerenios! Infraction!” He shouted.

  My father sprang for the door, my kin following on his heels. The three were out, and over the gate in an instant, following Dion through the woods. I was about to go too when Freyit stopped me with a hand on my arm. “Your daughter is ready to speak to you,” he said. “She’s waiting.”

  “The others—”

  “I’ll go,” he said. “Infraction is our business, not yours.”

  I’d felt his lashing most readily. The Hematopes made their own laws, their own justice. An infraction had nothing to do with my world, or so I thought.

  * * *

  After Huitzilli left Evelina and Peter on the mountainside, he traveled away from the colony, across the deserted expanse where only reindeer lived. When he finally stopped he realized he’d been running away from something.

  “What has happened to me,” he belted his cry to the emptiness. He recalled most of what he’d done since escaping the whale but he was not of his own mind. He’d done things he hadn’t wanted to do.

  He dropped to his knees and rested his head on the ground. He kept silent, abstaining from appealing to his own god, until in that quiet, the god who possessed him spoke.

  “There is a debt owed,” he said to Huitzilli in the vampire’s own voice. “I’ve come to collect.”

  Huitzilli gave no mind to his reality. He was talking to himself now, speaking for the god. The reindeer convening nearby moved closer to him, unafraid of the blood hunter.

  “Whose debt?” Huitzilli asked.

  “We almost had her,” the god said. “She slipped away from us when your heart softened to the other.”

  Huitzilli recalled his cherished time with the hunter. He hadn’t seen it as a violation, he’d felt the boy’s limbs willing participants, begging him to unite their wilds and seek a partnership beneath skins.

  “He’s mine,” Huitzilli hissed. “I will not harm Finn.”

  “You shall do whatever it is I will have you do.”

  The god who possessed him sent a scorch up his throat, a fire worse than the searing welt of heat he’d gotten when he was mortal and stabbed in the eye with a torch. Huitzilli clutched his head and raised his face to the sky. The fire bubbled up from his gorge and exited his mouth.

  “You shall never taste blood again,” the god said. “Unless you agree to do my bidding.”

  “What?” Huitzilli’s words were tortured, speaking both as himself and for his possessor.

  “You must plant a seed in her womb.”

  “No, I cannot.”

  “You must make it happen.”

  “What seed? I have none.”

  “Any man’s seed will do.”

  Still tortured by the burn in his throat, he eyed the reindeer who clung to him as if drawn in by the deity himself.

  “How am I to do this?” Huitzilli said to the god in him.

  “You were close once. You may be close again.”

  “Why?”

  In an instant, a flash, Huitzilli understood why. He saw it all, the god’s past and his grievance with the goddess who lived inside of Saba. The goddess had done a grave deed, and the god was chasing her through time for payback.

  “She must answer for this and I have waited too long,” the god said.

  “If she does, if I make her pay, will you leave me, let me be with my little one?”

  “That is the only way to regain her confidence. She will love you forever, but first you must do as I say. Infuse my goddess with new life.”

  Huitzilli bowed to the ground, his throat still on fire. The god in possession of him flashed an image before him, a juicy donor for him to sink his teeth into. He showed him where he could find the morsel and said, “Take this blood as our covenant, which I give to you in accordance with my occupation of your body.”

  The vision he placed before Huitzilli was too tempting to keep him kneeling. He rose to his feet, and licked his lips, the god planting the map in his head. “Give chase,” he whispered into his own ear. “She awaits.”

  Huitzilli tore across the plain, the reindeer giving chase after him. They recognized the beast in him, and wanted to be near their kind. The vampire eventually lost them, when he climbed higher, launching his body from ridge to ridge to make it back toward the civilization he sought. His mouth grew wet, his lips smacked with the promise.

  The god kept the vision before the vampire, titillating him for his own pleasure. He’d grown used to this body and would regret letting it go. But he had one thing to do, and one thing only. Pay back the goddess who’d made him suffer.

  The sun was full in the sky by the time Huitzilli reached the colony. The stacks of smoke were billowing above the treetops, revealing life, and blood. He ran through the birches with such speed, none were the wiser. He passed a group of hunters who caught his breeze, the scent of sulfur on the air, but it was gone before they realized what it was. Knowledge of the threat had been kept to a few, those at the head of their clans. Most of the colon
y went about their day as usual.

  When Huitzilli reached the ravine, he recognized the spot. His quarry would be there in a moment, sunning herself on the rocks. He ducked down into the brush and waited. The god kept him in check, assuring him it was but a minute more.

  Andor had warned Hannah not to stray from the cottage, but she wouldn’t give up her daily routine. She’d a load of linens to wash and couldn’t put it off any longer. The twins were with a neighbor, and Starlet asleep in a hammock in the cottage, when she wandered down to the ravine with her basket of sheets. She sat on the bathing rock, turning her face to the sun before beginning her chore. Her thoughts were put to her sister, who’d been taken but was now returned safely. She wondered why Peter hadn’t been keeping watch. Despite Saba’s tight lip about it, Hannah believed he was the one her sister loved. She knew it better than Saba did, but each time she saw her sister she lost the courage to say it. She chuckled to herself at the idea of the two. They’d make a strange couple, she thought, but much better than Finn and Saba. To Hannah, Finn wasn’t everything he seemed.

  Huitzilli had watched Hannah for a moment, he’d read her aura, felt her energy, smelled her taste. She was kin, like the others. His expectations were satisfied, his mouth hungry. After mere seconds, he could wait no longer and raced across the water, taking a simple leap to straddle the entire gulf.

  Hannah’s thoughts turned from one idea to the next when all at once she went from feeling the sun on her skin to suffering the deepest ache, the coldest sensation she’d ever experienced. Huitzilli had a hand on her mouth, another at her back, and fangs at her neck in an instant. He closed his eyes and dug in deep, unwilling to temper his passion. Hannah squirmed in his arms, struggling for an instant. But the instant was a flash, nothing in the scale of time, and soon she was limp in his arms.

  Huitzilli couldn’t stop himself, the god in him forcing him to take it all in. Drink your fill, this blood marks our covenant. The words spoken into his mind, his head aching with the pleasure of the salve on his burning throat. The god had given him the thirst one feels at one’s transfiguration, the hunger that may only be slain with an ocean of blood.

  When he was done, he left Hannah on the rock, the sun working to heat her once again.

  He took off, ripping through the trees with more force than he knew what to do with. To quell him, the god in possession of his body forced him into the sea, to sink again, to wait, to bide his time until the one he wanted came. The god knew what he was doing when he sicced Huitzilli on Hannah. He knew how to get what he wanted from Saba. He knew everything because he was a god bent on revenge and heartache.

  * * *

  Andor discovered Hannah soon after she’d been found. A hunting party spotted her first and brought her back to her home, calling him to her side as soon as he was located on a ridge hunting grouse. He blew the cottage door off its hinges, racing to get to her. No one had thought to call on Freyit, but had gone for Gerenios instead. My father knelt at Hannah’s side, knowing there was nothing to do. He was wise to the ways of blood. He understood the limits that must be put on feeding. He’d watched over me my whole life, concerned for the donor I’d become. When he saw Hannah, he knew there was no return.

  “Get Freyit,” Andor called to the men who clung to his door. “Get Freyit.”

  “Impossible,” Gerenios said. “It’s no use.”

  “No.” Andor pushed my father aside, and dropped down beside his wife. The sun shining through the window showed her face to be a shade of green. Her blood sickness, rising to the surface.

  “She must be saved.” Andor spoke to no one in particular. His voice was hard, his emotion in check.

  “We must hunt the beast,” Dion said. When he’d stepped into the cottage, and seen his sister-in-law, he punched a wall with his fist. His knuckles bloodied, he’d gone for Gerenios to plead their case.

  He stepped forward now. “No time to waste,” he said. “I’ll put a team together and we’ll track him down, this time tearing off his head when we do.” His eyes gleamed, as he dragged the straight edge of his hand along his neck.

  Freyit came in soon after, breaking down at the sight of Hannah. Her death was imminent though she clung to life with a shallow breath. The veins of her arm were swollen and purple, almost filled to bursting, and this gave him the most unorthodox idea, one last chance for hope.

  “Do you want to share your blood?” He asked Andor, who stood behind him.

  “What?”

  “Will you give your wife your blood,” he said.

  “Don’t I need it?” Andor stepped back, and touched his arm where Hannah’s was exposed.

  “It’s simple biology,” Freyit said. “It’s called a transfusion. It could save her.”

  Gerenios stepped forward. “Their blood is not the same.”

  Freyit shook his head. “It’s no matter. We cannot know her type. It may be different from every one of the other descendants, but our blood is common, and is potent enough.”

  “What can this do?” My father asked.

  Freyit turned to him, his brows knit together. “Save her.”

  “Yes,” Andor said, stepping toward his wife. “I will do it. Save her.”

  Freyit set to work, pulling what he needed from the satchel that had quickly become his medical bag.

  The science of it evaded me, but Freyit was equipped with a mental database for medicine. Vincent had told me some of the Hematopes were made with built-in knowledge, claiming a chosen number were given distinguishing marks of intelligence. Volumes of data, he’d told me, encyclopedic. The information was uploaded at inception—a term I didn’t fully comprehend—giving a certain number of Gen H vast amounts of knowledge from the previous world, information they stored forever. There’s no distinguishing feature, but those who’d acquired it wouldn’t necessarily know how to uncover it. It explained Freyit’s genius, his always knowing more than the others.

  So understanding human anatomy as he did, he rigged up what he called an intravenous line, and used a needle to send it into Hannah’s veins. Then he placed something similar in Andor, setting up a tube between them. How he sent his blood to her body, and not vice versa, I’ve no idea, but Freyit’s attempt sounded crude at best. Instead of dying peacefully, my Hannah’s body convulsed, shaking the bed beneath her. Andor tried to jump back, but Freyit held him steady, insisting he wait until the exchange was complete. Her body continued to spasm, then finally settled when peace descended. Freyit removed the tube from her arm, leaning over to check her pulse at the neck, then the wrist. He put his cheek to her mouth, and smiled when the soft breeze of her breath touched his skin.

  “We wait now,” he said to Andor.

  Andor dropped to her side, the needle still stuck in his vein. Freyit had capped the end but left the contraption in case he needed to give my daughter more Hematope blood. The transfusion proved successful, or so Freyit thought.

  I learned of this later, of course. Saba being my only concern at the time. When she woke, she wanted me, and I rushed to her side unaware of Hannah’s suffering. The guilt plagued me, but Peter told me to forgive myself. “A father cannot love two children at once,” he’d said when I confessed my sorrow.

  Saba had much to tell me but wouldn’t speak in front of Finn, still unconscious at her side on a second cot. I assured her he couldn’t hear us, but she insisted we go up the tower, and sit in my studio.

  “I can’t carry you, my girl,” I said. “I am too weak.”

  “We can hold on to each other as we go,” she said with a smile, pushing herself up to sitting. “Netta won’t approve but let’s slip out before she returns.”

  My wife had gone to the garden to fetch more herbs, she oblivious to Hannah’s suffering, too.

  “You’ll get me in trouble,” I said with a smile.

  She shrugged, standing as though she’d never seen a bit of injury. Saba always had the strongest constitution, unlike me.

  We rose to my studio toge
ther, and sat in the stream of sunlight that filled the room.

  “What am I to make of it all?” I asked.

  She looked unwilling to talk once we were in the silence above the colony.

  “Something is hunting me,” she said. “In the darkness, up on the mountain, it came for me.” She told me about the vision, or dream, she had when abducted, admitting it was difficult to read.

  She sat on the windowsill, and I on my stool. I wanted to step forward and clutch her in my arms, but resisted. “Why is it difficult?”

  “I don’t know, Dag.” She looked out over the colony as Vincent and Peter had done. She seemed otherworldly in that moment with the sun on her face. “There’s a fear rising up in me that I can’t shake loose.”

  “A bad feeling?”

  “It’s much bigger than a feeling. It’s got to do with change.”

  “What sort of change.”

  “Mine.”

  I gave her a knowing look. “We have much to discuss with regard to your desire for transfiguration, but it’s not right to do so now.”

  “I’m not talking about that.”

  “What then?”

  “There’s someone I must find.”

  I looked at the books on my shelves, and her gaze followed. “Yes, him.” She said it matter-of-factly, as if she knew the burden of the task but wasn’t fearful of it.

  “What did you see?” I asked.

  “He’s the only one who can save her.”

  “You mean, you.”

  “Yes, me.”

  “Vincent Du Maurier has yet to return, my dearest girl.”

  “I’m not so sure.”

  “Tell me what you know.”

  “I must make sense of it on my own first.”

  “Is this about Finn?”

  She looked away. Saba had been unconscious during their time on the mountain, but still she saw what the vampire did to Finn. She witnessed the god’s act, Diomedea showing her the bare truth, wanting her to understand his villainy, to know of the young hunter’s heroism.

  “I can’t speak about it, Dag.” The vision of the two creatures fighting over the boy’s body was all she witnessed, the blood drinker proving more angelic than his godly counterpart since he tried to resist. “Know that Finn has suffered for me,” she said.