by Thea Devine
He entered cautiously, hit by the scent of a disused home—the stale smell of food, blood, foul air, rot.
He took the steps two at a time and pushed into his bedroom. Senna. Senna had been here, alone, bloody, unaware of the lust that would consume her, facing an bottomless abyss she could never have imagined.
Let Charles come get him here.
He crawled into the coffin bed and waited.
Perched on the rooftop of Dominick’s house, Charles waited.
And Dominick waited.
Charles still kept guard by dawn—he’d made no attempt to shield from Dominick that he was on the roof.
Charles wanted Dominick to take the first action, and Dominick knew it. They were too evenly matched on every level except one: Charles didn’t care about anything or anyone.
The cavalier murder of an accomplice? He’d forgotten about it already. Sap the lifeblood from a friend? Not a problem, and he’d eaten from the body besides. Steal Senna’s child? He’d do it without compunction and never count the cost to her or the child.
Nice to have no conscience whatsoever. The very thing Dominick had been fighting to preserve for twenty or more years, a useless fight, a necessary fight even if he would eventually lose.
Where is Senna?
Charles was suddenly in his bedroom, a minuscule fly tormenting him, daring Dominick to dance around trying to swat his fly-self.
Dominick had a better idea. He transhaped into a mist and drifted unobtrusively under the door and down the stairs as he heard Charles buzzing around the bedroom looking for him. He’d almost made it out the door when he felt Charles’s body slam down on a wisp of him.
“You can’t do that,” Charles growled.
Dominick transformed into his own body. “Can’t I?”
Suddenly their hands were on each other’s throat as they stood chest to chest, each increasing the pressure, their bodies lifting and twining around each other as they fought for control.
“I’ve always wanted to kill you,” Charles panted.
“It will be my pleasure to kill you.”
High up in the air, as they wrestled each other, Dominick suddenly let go.
Charles fell onto the roof, landing hard on his stomach and giving Dominick just enough time to transhape and fly away.
When he turned to gauge how much distance he’d put between himself and Charles, he was shocked to see flames and smoke: Charles had set Dominick’s town house on fire. Charles had obviously wagered Dominick had some attachment to the house and that he’d try to save something of his life there.
But he decided not to play Charles’s game. The house from which Dominick had led the normal life of an importer of antiquities while he plotted his long-desired vengeance against his mother, the Countess, who’d destroyed his life by rescuing him from another burning house long ago and had sired him to save him—that house was gone.
None of that mattered now. Not the house, not his history.
Senna mattered. The child mattered. Keeping them—and Mirya—safe. Protecting them.
Which became even more imperative now that hunting down Mirya, the only other connection Charles knew of to Senna, had to be next on his list.
Dominick flew away, averting his eyes from the billows of smoke and flame devouring his house.
The army was growing. The Keepers prowled nightly, leaving victims scattered all over London. People began spending their evenings at home.
It made it easier for Dominick to forage for food while he watched Senna grow heavier and heavier, her limbs swelling, the child moving and kicking to the point that sometimes she couldn’t stand upright.
And she looked more than tired of carrying all that weight.
She obviously didn’t care about anything now except giving birth.
She was lying in Mirya’s bed, watching Mirya sew patches on her worn clothing, when she said abruptly, “What if I said I want to have the baby at Drom?”
She could almost hear the words hit the air and hang there. Mirya stopped sewing.
Dominick reacted visibly. “Are you crazy?”
“No.” But then she thought she was, wanting to give birth in the very place where she had been birthed into a monster.
“Where? How? On the ashes, in the dirt? On a pile of stone?”
Senna licked her lips. “There’s a stable that didn’t burn. Take me there.”
It sounded strange even to her. A stable on Drom’s fire-ravaged, blood-soaked grounds to be the birthplace of her child, their child?
A place they could not reach by vampiric means because the birth was imminent. They needed a carriage, they needed time to get there.
They couldn’t talk her out of it.
“I want to go.” Tears flooded her eyes. “I have to go.”
She couldn’t explain it.
So, the next day, with Senna reclining in the rear seat of a for-hire carriage, they made the long, arduous trip to Drom Manor.
The stable was still intact, but rickety in the aftermath of the firestorm that had destroyed Drom.
Still, there were stalls where Senna could lie, matted straw that could be stuffed under some blankets that Mirya had had the forethought to bring to cushion the birth, along with clean rags in which wrap the baby.
They could build a fire, heat water, keep things clean as best they could. The stable sheltered them at night when Dominick went hunting and shielded them during the day while Senna lay moaning and begging the child to come.
“It will happen soon,” Mirya said.
“Not soon enough,” Senna growled.
Another night passed. Senna awakened to an ache deep in her vitals and the feeling that she had wet herself.
“The time is here,” Mirya said. She bustled around the stable gathering straw and bundling it into the blankets she’d brought. Then she helped Senna get settled on them and began building a fire just outside the stable entrance.
Dominick would see it and come.
Senna felt the first contraction like a punch to her gut. “By the damned—”
“It will hurt more as the contractions come closer together. You will breathe deeply and push when the time comes,” Mirya said.
A shadow crossed the entrance to the stable.
Dominick. He dropped the bucket in which he’d collected the morning’s meal and fell to his knees by Senna’s side, grasping her arms tightly and pulling her to his chest.
It took a full minute for either of them to realize that nothing had happened. No showering sparks. No pain.
They stared at each other, and then another contraction hit and Senna thought she would die.
Dominick looked at Mirya.
Mirya shrugged. “The baby comes. Everything will make sense.”
The only thing that did was that he could finally hold her. Make her recline against his chest and prop her up, with his arms around her.
Mirya set her up, undressing her, positioning her legs, keeping her spirits up. “Every woman knows this. Every woman experiences this.”
“You lie,” Senna moaned.
“It is the truth.”
“Why weren’t there sparks?”
Mirya shrugged. “Breathe,” she commanded. “Be assured that danger is over.”
“I want to know about the sparks,” Senna whispered three hours later as the contractions started pummeling her body.
Mirya put a hand up to forestall more questions. “Breathe, push.”
Dominick held Senna, Mirya encouraged her. Everything went out of Senna’s head except birthing the child.
“Breathe, push.” Hours of that chant, like the beat of a drum, calm, steady, almost there.
As night fell, a baby’s cry suddenly rent the air.
“A boy,” Mirya cried as she helped him out. She gave
him a cursory examination and wrapped him in clean rags before she cut the cord. “A son,” she murmured as she handed the boy to Senna just as another contraction hit her.
“What?” Senna grabbed Dominick’s arm, and he took the baby while she held on tight as a series of contractions nearly bent her double.
Mirya’s expression changed to one of shock. “There is another baby.”
“WHAT?”
“There is another. You have twins.” Mirya dug in, twisting and pulling the second baby to position it, and catching it as it slipped from Senna’s body. “A girl.”
“Twins?” Senna whispered faintly, disbelievingly.
Mirya handed her the baby. “Twins.”
“Vampires?”
Mirya bent over the boy in the crook of Dominick’s arm and pulled back his makeshift blanket. “He bears the mark of the Iscariot,” she said at length, as her fingers traced the triple-X scar on his breast.
She looked up at Senna. “That is why the sparking stopped. It was a barrier to protect the boy until it was determined if he is the Eternal Ruler. They would have kidnapped him, they could have killed him.”
She lifted the baby so Senna could see. “He is Iscariot.”
Then Mirya took the girl baby and ran her fingers all over her body. No scars, no lumps, bumps, or pricks. “She is not.”
“She is Tepes?” Senna asked, terrified.
“She is neither,” Mirya whispered, checking the baby’s chest and neck with trembling fingers once again. “She is not vampire. She is herself.”
Neither . . . ? Senna struggled to get up. Mirya had to be wrong. It was dark in the stable, and now, outside. Firelight cast shadows. Maybe Mirya had misread what she thought she saw. Or maybe it was what she wished, what she willed, that this unexpected child had been born without the vampire taint.
“Take me outside.” The boy was rooting for her breast.
“Soon, soon. Let the child feed.”
Senna had no time for that. Because if the girl showed no vampiric scarring—then she was in danger. They’d want to sire her—both clans. Or kill her.
“Dominick—” As if he’d understand. She saw it in his eyes: he was already enamored of the boy.
“There are no scars, Senna. She is not of either clan,” Dominick confirmed.
“Ohh . . .”—as the boy found her breast. “When he’s done,” she said to Dominick, “I want to walk the grounds of Drom. I want to feel the ground on which I was sired when I name our son.”
Mirya shook her head, as if to say, Don’t heed her.
“I want to see,” Senna said fiercely, “where I was consigned to hell.” Her daughter had not been. The unexpected child, with the fine black hair so like her own, could redeem her choices. She could escape and live the life Senna should have lived.
She would teach her about the traps of the blood-driven existence, Senna promised herself. Her daughter wouldn’t be seduced by a handsome, vengeance-seeking vampire. She wouldn’t walk into a den of them and willingly sacrifice herself so her vampire lover might live.
None of that. She wouldn’t be that hypnotized by emotion or a victim of events. She would live in hiding until she was grown and able to manage her own life.
Senna would make certain of it. Her daughter would be raised by someone sensible and knowledgeable of the reasons Senna had abandoned her child. She was giving her a better, truer life, away from vampires and death and eternal damnation in a life that never ended.
The boy rested. The girl must be fed next, but Senna hesitated, uncertain if her milk was dangerous or poisonous. She had no way of knowing anything except the girl needed to feed.
And the babies must be named. She felt a fury to arrange things for her daughter, to get things done, to escape the thing most inescapable.
“In the morning,” Dominick said softly. “When the sun rises. It won’t be long now. I have the sun stone; the babies will be protected. All will be well, Senna.”
But he didn’t believe it himself. There were still at loose ends—Charles and Dnitra most immediately. Charles might be having sex with Dnitra at this moment, but he’d make no move to legitimize her until he found out whether Senna’s child bore the clan scars of the Eternal Ruler.
But now they knew—Peter’s sire-bite had not penetrated Senna’s blood.
And that meant Dominick’s son was wholly Iscariot, even to the reddish hair, an Iscariot trait.
It also meant he’d be coveted by Iosefescu, what with his determination to breed male children to infuse the clan with new young blood.
There was no point fixating on that threat. Dominick’s first loyalty lay nestled in Senna’s arms. His son needed a name, a family. He would grow fast, faster than Senna knew. They’d have to let him go sooner than she would want to discover his own forever destiny.
As for the girl—Senna, looking distressed, had now taken her to her breast—she would have to forge her own future, in all probability disavowing her heritage as she moved further and further away from the bloody night world of her parents and brother.
She would grow fast as well because she might well have some underlying vampire traits in her blood that would show subtly, unexpectedly. She would always be aware of and governed by the fear of her heritage. She would be alone, with a foreseeable end to her life, knowing that her parents and brother would exist in eternity.
He didn’t envy her that knowledge or the path she would travel.
His beautiful daughter, with her sweet head of dark hair and deep blue eyes, so like Senna’s. And no scar marks. Just smooth, silky baby skin.
His daughter. Not one of his clan.
Did he feel just the whisper of a wish that she were?
Not a Tepes either. That was enough.
How could he give her up? And yet—letting her go was the best gift he could give her.
This should be a moment to celebrate life even in the midst of a field of death. But that other world awaited them. The one where Charles still lived and Dnitra was fertile, available, and a fiend for sex.
Soon, dawn would break. And the blood hunger would rise like a wave with no ready bodies to feed on—except Mirya’s, and Dominick could see she was well aware how tenuous this emotional trip to nowhere really was.
Drom reeked of death. It was in the air, a thickness, an aura, a scent, a sickness. It seeped into his pores, it pulled him like the lure of a siren, demanding the total surrender of his humanity.
It was too potent. He could easily capitulate to the one thing in his nature that he had suppressed for more than twenty years and that he could now barely keep under control.
He cradled his daughter a little more tightly. Soon . . . he closed his eyes, as if in denial. Soon he would have to let her go. But not yet. He inhaled her unmistakable baby scent. Not yet.
He opened his eyes. Mirya cradled his son, Senna was on her feet beside her. “It’s dawn, it’s time.”
He followed them out of the stable into the pink-streaked dawn. On the horizon, the glow of the sun outlined the rim. Before them, the barren, spongy ground of Drom gave with their every footstep.
What remained of the house was a blackened ruin, surrounded by a desolate landscape bereft of anything but blood memory.
Senna knelt near where she thought Peter had caught and bit her.
“Here . . .” She crawled to where Dominick had lain with the Countess nearby, dying. She dug up a handful of soil, remembering how she’d dragged the Countess to Dominick’s inert body so she could infuse him with the last of her blood so he wouldn’t die. How, with her ebbing strength, she had sunk her fangs into Senna’s chest and, fulfilling a promise to her, turned her into a creature of the night.
All that she remembered as she rocked back and forth on her knees in a kind of agony, holding the handful of the blood-saturated dirt, sniffing it, tas
ting it, tears streaming down her cheeks.
“Bring him here,” she whispered finally, and Mirya handed the baby to her. She held him close with her dirt-encrusted hands, she pulled aside his wrapper and rubbed one hand up and down his baby body as if it were holy, and she murmured, “Your name is—Renk.”
Renk. Dominick rolled the name around on his tongue. Renk. Short, to the point.
Senna handed Renk to Mirya, wiped her hands on Mirya’s hem, and motioned to Dominick. “The girl now, please.”
Dominick knelt beside her and put the baby in her arms.
She did not take another handful of dirt. She held the baby close, staring into her face and the blue eyes so like her own. This baby, this girl, the heart of her heart. The soul she could have been.
The regrets for the life she’d so cavalierly given away poured through her like hot iron. She couldn’t control her tears. She wanted to hold her, protect her, hide her, and keep her safe.
But all she could do was give her a name. “You name is Rula.”
She kissed Rula’s forehead, baptizing her with her tears. “I was a child of the streets and so you will be too,” she whispered in Rula’s tiny ear. “I wish it were otherwise. But I’ll teach you, I’ll show you. You’ll know what I know. And whatever your fate, and mine, I’ll love you forever.”
It was time to take a hand, Dominick thought. “Give Rula to me.”
Senna shook her head.
“Senna—give her to me. It’s time. We have to leave this place. Right now.”
Senna gave in and reluctantly put Rula into Dominick’s outstretched arms. “Let me die here,” she whispered. “There’s no point to anything now. She was born to die someday, maybe soon. My son is destined to become a blood-guzzling murderer. And you and I—we’re already bloodthirsty ghouls—”
“With perhaps the last shred of conscience,” Dominick put in as he cradled Rula against his chest so she could feel his heartbeat. But he didn’t believe that. He felt removed, surreal. He held his daughter and wondered how much love he could summon for her after all.
