by Thea Devine
Rula felt something give way deep inside her.
Someone like me? Such a flood of emotions poured through her she couldn’t speak or frame a question. He was like her, born without the taint and the bloodlust and the urge to kill.
Another child of the dark side who’d been born into the light.
She felt him take her shoulders. “There are others. We’ve been waiting for you. I’ve been waiting for you.”
She barely heard anything beyond There are others. And then, waiting for her? Why her?
“Who? Where?”
“Listen—”
She gazed up at him, seeing now the harsh lines in his face, framing his mouth, his eyes. “Waiting for me?” she whispered.
He tightened his hold on her shoulders, and she saw he wasn’t going to answer that question. Not yet.
“There are more important things to tell you right now.”
She wanted to say, That was the most important thing. Instead she murmured, “I’m listening.” She felt faint. Like her.
A family of Like Her.
“I think I’m taking you back to Mirya. There will be time for the rest tomorrow.”
He slipped his arm around her shoulders as they started walking. “How do you know about Mirya?” she managed to ask.
“We know. We know every untainted child born here. We’ve been watching since the moment you were born. We know your parents, your brother. We know everything. We watch, we calculate”—his voice hardened—“we destroy.”
They kill, he meant. The letdown felt almost like falling into an abyss. There was no way to escape it—there would be blood, ever ending in death.
He knew what she was thinking and pulled her tighter against his side. “It’s the way it is,” he murmured, echoing Mirya’s words.
“Where are the others?”
“All over. Everywhere there are vampires, there are Vraq. We have to be everywhere, and aware of every bloodletting, every vampiric death.”
“So you watch my brother.”
“I watch you,” he said simply. “It was only a matter of time until Mirya told you the truth. I wanted to be the one with you when that happened.”
Comprehension dawned. Of course. This was where Mirya came up with her forethoughts. Rula’s spirits sank lower. Nothing supernatural about any of it, except her own vampire blood.
“We’re here,” Rob said, as he turned into the alleyway. Mirya was waiting, the soft light of candles and the fireplace limning her body against the door.
Mirya motioned them inside, and to the table, where she had set out a loaf of bread, a smear of butter, and a pot of tea on a trivet.
The bread was somewhat stale, but Rula ate it hungrily.
“So now she knows,” Mirya said to Rob.
“Almost everything.”
“How can there be more?” Rula asked between bites.
“Just this little bit more,” Rob said. “Tell her, Mirya.”
Mirya stared straight into her eyes. “I am Vraq.”
Those three words sent Rula’s senses reeling.
“It is so,” Mirya said. “Have some tea.”
“It was too much in two days,” Mirya said sadly as she and Rob finished the bread and tea. “And there will be many more questions when Rula awakens.”
“Answer them all,” Rob said. “She must come to our side quickly, or she’ll die. Charles is planning it even as we speak. You know this. The Keepers are on alert for the one time, the one place, they can successfully kidnap her and take her, one by one. Charles is looking forward to it. He revels in the thought of it. He imagines the bloodbath, her screams, her death.”
“She will never side with the mission,” Mirya said sadly. “She cannot kill.”
“I’ll make her see that she must.”
“How?
“Because otherwise they live. There’s no choice here. Murder on one side or the other. They kill to survive. But then, so do we. Are both sides monsters? We’re killers, both of us. Who chooses who survives?”
Rob squeezed Mirya’s arm and rose to leave. “This we know, there are no answers, we can only do what we must do, and that’s to kill Charles Sandston, in whatever form or shape he is now.”
“I had hoped this time would not come,” Mirya said the next morning as she and Rula sat down to their usual meager breakfast of tea and stale bread. “I prayed that the vampire clans had killed each other off in enough numbers that there would be none left to replace them. Sadly that did not happen—”
“Your parents?” Rula asked gently. Mirya was old—how many years had her mother and father been roaming the earth?
“I know they still exist,” Mirya said softly. “How can I wish them harm? They are out of sight, so they are out of my mind—until moments like this—when my Senna begs me to save her child. Or until Rob appears and demands my help to defeat the very one who wishes to harm you.”
Mirya shook her head. “I am too old now. I have no fire. I am smoke and ashes, and he asks too much.”
“Embers can be fanned into flame,” Rula said.
“No embers. No flame. Just ash and dust. I will do what I can, but I understand I might die.”
“Mirya!”
“How can it not be? It is all intertwined with Charles’s ambitions and grand schemes. My part will not escape unnoticed. He had been meant to marry your mother, you know.”
Another shock. More secrets. Rula could barely manage to say, “I didn’t.”
Mirya sighed. “The Countess wanted an heir. An heir with untainted blood. And your mother schemed to be taken in by a wealthy family as a poor relative. Their paths crossed, need for need, with the unexpected complication of Dominick’s return to Drom.”
“Would my mother have married him?” Rula asked.
“Charles? No. Charles would have bred her and abandoned her. He already was filled with the lust to kill. No. That plan did not work.”
“Who is the Eternal Ruler?”
“He is the One who will rule over all vampires to eternity. It is written that he must be born of a woman infused with the commingled blood of the two clans.”
“How can that be? It must be a myth.”
“It is fervently believed among the clans. It was thought your mother was that woman after the carnage at Drom because she was bitten by both a Tepes and an Iscariot that very same night. But, it turned out not to be so. Charles planned to simultaneously take the child and take power, in any event. And if the child wasn’t born with the marks of both clans, he meant to kill it.”
“He would have had to kill both me and my brother.”
“Well, now he means to destroy you alone to avenge himself on your father, who thought he had killed him. Only Charles somehow regenerated. And now he will not rest until he kills you.”
“How do you know that?”
“How can it not be so? I feel the stirrings, the indomitable will. What we don’t know is where he is. As he does not know where you are.”
“But—”
Mirya held up her hand. “It is inevitable that there will be a confrontation.”
“So, what are you trying to tell me? That I must kill him?”
“I am telling you that you must decide. To be a victim or a victor.”
“That sounds like something Rob would say.” Rula said it with a confidence that surprised her; how did she know what Rob would say?
“This is Vraq talking. Knowing there will always be blood. Always. Either yours or theirs. They die or you do. They survive or you do. Your choice, Rula. There is no middle ground. Blood will flow, from one side or the other.”
“I won’t kill.”
Mirya shrugged. “That is your decision.”
“You won’t try to talk me out of it?”
“Not I,” Mirya said s
adly. “It is not enough to talk about it. When you are faced with it—then you will truly make your choice.”
There was no talk of choices when Rob came for her later, as he’d arranged with Mirya.
“We’re going today to meet some of the others this morning.”
The meeting place was the lower floor of a centrally located church.
“Because they’ll never find us here,” Rob said wryly. “Down those stone steps. The first door.”
When Rula thrust it open, she was overwhelmed by the size of the crowd. “All of these—Vraq?” she whispered.
“All.” Rob clapped his hands. “Everyone, this is Rula.”
A hum went through the crowd, then a spattering of applause.
“Come, sit.”
She sat, facing the crowd, looking into the faces of people like her, Iscariot vampire spawn with blameless blood.
“Where are we now?” Rob asked the group.
“Five destroyed. A dozen injured but whereabouts and status unknown,” one of the men reported.
People like her, Rula thought, talking so cavalierly about blood and death. She shook her head. She couldn’t do it, she just couldn’t.
“All right. Our most cunning and most dangerous enemy still is Charles Sandston. I’ll go over again what we know for Rula,” Rob said. “It isn’t much. We have yet to locate where he is. We’re working toward it by eliminating as many Tepes as we can identify. We think Charles is impaired in some important ways, which is why we think the Keepers have been recruited as surrogates. They’re quick, secretive, and vicious. They’ll kidnap you, and they’ll carry out Charles’s will.”
Rob looked at Rula. “There are no guarantees that help will arrive in any kind of time, should that happen. You’ll be at that crossroads, Rula. You’ll have to decide who lives.”
Another murmur surged through the crowd.
“She should have a watcher,” someone shouted.
“More than one.”
“Put a guard around her day and night.”
“Send her away.”
“Get her in hiding.”
Rob held up his hand. “We need to cut off the hydra-head. That’s our prime objective. When Charles dies, the Keeper vampires die, the threats die with them, and we survive for another day, simple as that.”
Rula shuddered. It was not as simple as that.
I will not kill. I’ll die with honor.
That sounded good, except for the part about dying. She needed another strategy. She watched intently as Rob and the two other leaders conferred and delegated assignments, and then Rob turned to her.
“We’re done. As you see, week by week, we take small bites of the big problem, and we slowly whittle it down. Charles is now the big problem, and the more of his minions we kill, the closer we get to him.”
“Where could he be?”
“Anywhere. We surmised maybe your father’s town house that burned to the ground, but it didn’t seem a likely hideaway for Charles. We searched what little of it we could with no luck. Your parents took over Lady Augustine’s home, so Charles obviously isn’t there. Your father sold off his business and we could find no connection to Charles in that transaction. The stable at Drom was a possibility, but there’s been no sign of life there—I check periodically. Any other theory is pure guessing.”
“So you just methodically eliminate Tepes, hoping to stumble on Charles’s whereabouts.”
“Something like that.”
“No supernatural premonitions?”
“None of us have that power.”
“What powers do you have?”
“Probably the same as yours—night vision, superior strength, and intellectual capacity. We’re intuitive, but we’re not psychic. And we don’t know what more yet. There could be more that emerges under duress.”
Rob took her arm and propelled her to a small group. “Let me introduce you to some of the others.
“This is Dvora”—who was tall and dark haired; Naik was short and hairless; Zekka had the same reddish hair and blue eyes as Rob; Boru was tall, lanky, and redheaded; and Deklan was tall and hairless altogether.
She nodded to acknowledge each of them in turn and in wonder. They were just like her, and yet there was a difference. She sensed it, smelled it. They were committed, they would kill, they were not going to die.
“We’ll be watching,” Zekka assured her. “No matter what the others think. We won’t let him take you. We’ll find him first.”
“Thank you.” Rula felt humbled that these people who did not know her were willing to risk their lives to protect her. But then it occurred to her, if she died by Charles’s hand, would that be the end of it, or would he come after someone else?
How many vampires like Charles were there, manipulating the bloodletting in London? The vampires could go on forever; it had to be a never-ending, thankless task rooting them out and destroying them.
Why would Rob, or any of them, commit themselves to a hunt that would last through eternity?
She couldn’t understand it, but then she’d led a fairly circumscribed life in which Mirya had made certain that world was not even remotely in Rula’s consciousness.
If she’d been raised differently, she might feel as they did, she thought. But all these plans and schemes seemed like so much busywork for people burdened with a certain heritage and who didn’t know what to do about it.
She could have been one of them. The odd thing was, Rob and Mirya were taking the threat of Charles’s vengeance so seriously. They had no source to verify anything, no proof of any plans, no witness that Charles was even alive.
He had done nothing overt. Nothing to make anyone think that Rula was even in his sights. But they all fervently believed that she was.
Zekka was right. If he had survived, they had to find him first.
From behind a curtain, Senna watched as her daughter walked away.
My daughter.
She felt curiously detached from the idea of a daughter. Or the knowledge that she had borne both Renk and this girl together.
It now seemed so far away that it was impossible a girl of hers had come into this world not of the blood.
It had been the right thing to do, to give her away. They had kept the right child—the blood-hungry boy, who, even now, was recovering from a night’s murderous rampage.
Time had proved Dominick right.
She felt him standing behind her, watching Rula’s retreating back.
He put his hand on her shoulder as she let the curtain fall and with that gesture let the girl go.
Time felt as if it were rushing forward and things were going to happen that would change everything.
Charles now had control of Senna’s son, Renk, and was about to initiate that same mind probe to find her daughter, Rula.
A man couldn’t just lie around doing nothing when people had deliberately destroyed his life. Maybe they thought there would be no repercussions. Probably they thought he was dead.
Indeed, he had used that supposition to give himself time to heal, to figure things out, to plot and plan how the story would end.
Not well. Rula would die a horrible death. As horrible as he had nearly experienced, with her father bashing in his head.
Horrible, awful days, laying there, side by side with Dnitra’s decomposing body, wondering if the mixture of dirt, ash, and char would irreparably damage what was left of his brain. Sinking into unconsciousness for hours, days, months.
No one came looking, not even Dominick to gloat.
That, at least, was one good thing. It gave Charles the time to go through the cycle of pain, loss of memory, and loss of consciousness, time for what was left of his mind to heal, to coalesce, and to comprehend what he remembered, what he knew, what was gone.
To learn what he was capa
ble of—and not. And what it would take to become whole—or not.
It came to a choice of regaining his body but becoming a vegetable. Or letting his husk of a body root in the ground and his mind use that energy to expand and explore new powers.
He chose his mind over his body, which he let decompose into the dirt and ash on the ground. All that remained was his bashed-in head and his brain. His intelligence. But it meant no more vampire powers, barring his need for blood. It meant something new and different altogether.
Such as controlling Renk. Sending him out to maim, murder, and immerse himself in blood. That was the first step—to be able to touch someone’s mind and make the person do what he wanted.
Renk was the ideal tool, a blank slate who’d been allowed to run wild since he’d gained the third level of aging, and who would now be eighteen forever. Which meant he was ruled by his appetites and his eyes. And had a mind that was easily infiltrated.
Thus far Renk had done nothing in Charles’s name that Renk didn’t believe he’d decided. Which was just how Charles wanted it: the boy thinking everything had been his own idea.
But the next reckoning was now at hand.
Charles had been preparing for a year, exercising his mind, imagining tendrils of his brain reaching out beyond his useless body, beyond the gutted town house, the ash and char, the death and destruction, reaching, reaching all over the city, to places he conjured, envisioned, knew existed. Anywhere Rula could be hiding.
As with Mirya. Oh, he hadn’t forgotten Mirya, with her stolid pronouncements and odd loyalty to Senna. Or Senna. It wasn’t inconceivable that Senna was sheltering Rula, child of her body who was not of her blood.
But no. At this point, after this many years, Senna would have detached from Rula. Would consider her useless, not even hers. Probably she’d given Rula to someone else to raise when she still had some motherly feelings for her.
But now? Charles didn’t think so.
So who had taken a baby girl to raise all those years ago?
Surely not Mirya. She’d been as old as the earth back then. How could she have cared for a baby at her advanced age?
Nevertheless, one thing he’d learned in his probing and delving was never to reject the thing that seemed most impossible.
