by Lizzy Ford
It’s the exact same oath Ben and Tristan asked me to take.
“I won’t,” I reply. “I promise.” I don’t even know what a normal Kingmaker is anymore or how I’m different.
Myca’s phone vibrates, and he stretches for it, reading the text with a quizzical expression.
“What’s wrong?” I ask immediately.
“Ben says I can find vampire movies … something called Netflix. Is that a place?”
I start to laugh again. “No. I’ll show you.” I crawl out of bed and tug on one of his t-shirts. “Come on. Let’s go watch vampire movies.”
He pulls on a pair of pajama bottoms and then holds out his hands. “He said not to watch a movie named Twilight.”
Grinning, I silently agree and slide my hands into his. He hugs me. “The vampires and wolves fight in that one.”
“Ah. What or who is Buffy?”
“You’ll like Buffy,” I say with a mischievous smile. I lead him out of the bedroom and into the living area. We cuddle up together on the couch beside the fire, and I flip on the television and log into my father’s Netflix account.
We spend the day watching vampire movies.
Throughout most of them, Myca laughs, sometimes to the point of crying, and then recounts how ridiculous the claims are that people make about vampires. His personal favorites: garlic and inability to go outside during daylight.
It’s strange to see someone happy after the past few weeks with the trials and my father’s death. But … it’s also nice to know that a man who spent a thousand years buried alive can still laugh.
Myca gives me hope there might be a light at the end of the tunnel. If he can make it through all he’s been through, I can, too.
The rest of the day passes in a blink. I don’t want it to. I’m dreading what happens when I’m dropped off at my father’s home again to face whatever happens next.
Chapter Twelve
The next morning, I stand in the middle of the foyer of the row house. The second I set foot in the door, my emotions begin sinking. It’s dreary, gloomy and smells funny. Nose wrinkling, I follow the scent to the kitchen and release a frustrated sigh.
“Fucking vampires,” I mutter and rub my face.
Someone disposed of Barry’s body – but left his blood. The pool of dried blood covers the area of the entire kitchen floor and has crept into the carpet of the living area. It stinks – like moldy copper, if that were a thing. I had no idea blood could smell.
How the fuck do I get this much blood out of the carpet and floor? It’s not like I can call a carpet cleaner. Even if I had the money, I’d have to come up with a damn good excuse as to why half my living room is soaked with blood.
“I do know a vampire.” I text Myca and ask if they have a vampire carpet cleaning crew in addition to the vampire police.
I’ll send someone by your place tomorrow, is his quick response.
I grimace. I’m not sure I want to stay in a house soaked in blood. I’m also not in a position to complain.
I retreat from the entrance to the kitchen and then abruptly recall the Book of Secrets and letter my father sent me that arrived this week. My pulse jolts into overtime, and I hurry into the study. Picking up a book at random, I’m thrilled to see the moratorium on reading them seems to be up. I search the study quickly for the letter and snatch it off the floor.
It no longer feels like rubber. Clutching it in one hand, my eyes lift from it to the desk where my father used to sit. I accidentally sat there earlier this week. Navigating through the piles of books on the floor, I approach my father’s desk and circle it. With a deep breath, I pull out his chair and sit down.
The row house is silent, still, waiting, as if it, too wants to see if my father suddenly appears and berates me for taking his seat.
Nothing happens.
The sorrow fluttering through me isn’t as intense as it has been, and I release the breath I’m holding. I don’t feel any different sitting in his seat than I did standing on the other side of his desk. Foolishly, I realize I had hoped not to sit here until I was more like him – capable of understanding my world. There’s no magic in his chair or desk, and I’m disappointed by this.
“Stupid, stupid Leslie,” I mutter and sigh. I tap the letter on the desk, uncertain if I’m ready to read what my father has to say this time or not. In truth, a week without the depressing Book of Secrets and my father’s tortured notes was somewhat of a relief.
I set the note aside, torn, and then pull out the curse charms. I dump them on the desk once more.
This time, all of them are speaking to me, except for one. Absently, I tug the vampire amulet out from between my shirt and chest. It’s hot from whatever power it contains.
“Zombie, pixie, wraith …” I touch each charm as I say the name of the clan it belongs to and then pause at the one with two shadows –the only silent charm before me.
But I know whose it is. The clan mine replaced.
“Angels,” I say sadly and pick up the ancient, tarnished, bronze coin. A symbol of my ancestors selling out the Community in return for power, even if no one lived through the event to share exactly what happened. If the coin had markings, they’re long gone. Its edges are smooth, as are its faces.
How did an angel fall so far from its path?
The charms never have any answers. I replace the bronze coin and gaze at the representations of the Community before me.
“I’m so sorry,” I whisper to them all. “I swear – I will free you all from the curse.” But I don’t yet know how.
Frustrated to the point of depressed, I lean back in the chair and stare out across the study. I’m hoping, if I can recognize the different charms, I can now read all the books on all the clans.
But … does it really matter? The Kingmaker’s have kept records of every clan, through its leaders, for two thousand years. Is this part of the research my father referenced in Myca’s memory? Did they keep such meticulous records so they could learn how to break the curse?
A faint glimmer of silver catches my gaze. Every bookshelf in the study is bare, except for one I simply didn’t have time to tear apart before Tristan found me destroying the library last week. Leaning forward, I try to make out what the silver is without success.
I traverse the chaotic study and kneel in front of the shelf where the silver object is visible only from one point in the room – my father’s chair. Tugging the books off the shelf, I toss them without caring where they land. I’ve already made a huge mess; what’s a few more books to sort through?
Sitting back on my heels, I stare at the knife displayed on the wall at the back of the bookcase. It appears ancient, albeit in great shape and sharp, as if my father and the Kingmaker’s before him routinely cared for it. The designs on its hilt are too faint to make out, its corners rounded from time. The blade is plain and long, and its sheath sits on the bookshelf beneath it.
I pluck both free and study them. Something is written across the blade, and I shift so the light hits it better. As with the Book of Secrets, ancient writing has been underscored by more recent English. Someone in the past few hundred years took the time to carve a word beneath the flowery writing. Did someone with a dark sense of humor decide to name the knife or is this its real name?
“Exile,” I read. My heart beats hard against my breast.
The Book of Secrets hasn’t been talking about banishing a clan, or candidate, like I hoped. Exile seems to be a polite term for kill which means … every generation, a Kingmaker has killed a candidate, a clan leader. And now, the Book wants me to kill an entire clan.
I began to suspect this was the case when I read the conflicting terminology in the Book. I didn’t want to believe it at the time, though. Holding the knife, I can’t deny what’s literally written before me.
“Yet another reason for the Community to hate us.” I sheathe the blade. “But this madness ends here. No one else will die.”
I find myself lost in thought temporarily, trying
to recall how many vampires the council claimed had died the past thousand years. Forty three thousand and … something. It’s too huge as it is. What if all ten clans have lost that many people? How much suffering have the leaders and their people gone through?
And here I am – afraid to read my father’s letter, an act which might hurt my feelings, but won’t cause me or anyone else harm. It’s nothing like what Ben, Tristan, Myca, and dozens of other clan leaders have gone through over the years, faced with a curse that steals the lives of their clan members.
Furious at myself, convinced I’ll never be one millionth as good of a leader as any of them are, I return to the desk and use the Exile knife to slice open my father’s envelope. Before I read, I sit down in his chair and brace myself. It’s dated the day he died.
Dear Leslie,
This letter should reach you during your third trial. I have asked one of the candidates to send it to you at that time.
I wish to warn you, and to assure you that – as impossible as these trials seem, particularly with the Final Trials – you will have the opportunity to break the curse. For over fifteen generations of Kingmaker’s, we’ve been collecting information on how this can be done. Ending two thousand years of pain all boils down to a window of about fifty-one minutes, during the eclipse that occurs two months after my death. The Book of Secrets contains information about the Final Trials. The last leg of these Trials must be completed during this window.
“No way in hell,” I reply.
His writing is at an angle in this letter, and a combination of cursive and print instead of his normal preference for printing, as if he were in a hurry. The emotion is missing from this letter, unlike the others. I can almost imagine him sitting where I am, glancing at the Exile knife to remind himself what every Kingmaker has done to hurt the Community, before he leaves to meet the candidates at the bar for the last time.
His handwriting becomes even messier, and I have to concentrate hard to decipher what he’s written next.
I’m not supposed to tell you about this window. Indeed, it is almost impossible for me to write these words. I’m fighting it as I do so. I have given each of the candidates instructions on how they can help, but it is on your shoulders to act.
I want you to know I believe in you, and I know how good your heart is. However, I must also acknowledge the curse’s strength and the damage it’s done over the course of the past two millennia.
For this reason, and this reason only, I have entrusted one of the candidates with the secret of how and when to end your life, if it must be done. It was attempted a thousand years ago, and failed, because the Kingmaker’s did not know what I do now. I cannot tell you the details, for the curse will become aware of its weakness.
Please know this is a last resort. I have sworn the candidate chosen to undertake such a thing to act only if you fall to the curse, and all our efforts to save you are in vain. I trust his judgment, his intentions and most importantly, your life to him. There is only one man I would ever trust with the gift that you are, and I am certain he would only act if absolutely necessary, and only if every other attempt to save you, and break the curse, has failed.
I love you, Leslie. You are, and always will be, the light of my life.
Daddy
My eyes tear up as I finish the last few words. Maybe I should be angry but … I’m not. This is almost a relief, to know if I fuck up, the curse can be broken with my death.
Lowering the letter, I toy with the knife and use it to push the charms belonging to the werewolf, fae and vampire clans away from the others.
“Which of you is my potential murderer?” I whisper. Who would my father trust? I thought he hated all supernaturals.
A trickle of fear runs through me. The three men are supposed to protect me until I’m a lost cause, then one of them has the obligation to murder me.
I have to believe none of them will hurt me, unless I’m lost. Even so, looking back on my three weeks, it’s kind of freaky to realize one of the men I slept with – who had a front row seat to my vulnerability – has the potential to murder me over the course of the next week, if he should lose faith in me.
“Ben, Tristan, Myca.” My first instinct tells me it’s one of the two predators, wolf or vampire.
But … every single one of them has the motive to do so and the willingness to murder whomever it takes to break the curse.
Okay, so maybe I am a bit freaked out. How will I know if I’m on the right track or worse – if I fall off the right track? Is this something that only the candidates know, and suddenly, someone will stab me in the back if I fuck it up, whether or not I know I’ve made a mistake?
“Let’s just sit here and breathe, Leslie.” I take deep breaths to keep from panicking.
I just have to do the right thing. After I figure out what that is.
I reach for the Book of Secrets and open it.
The entire thing is filled with writing. Although, most of it appears to be references on the different clans. I flip through carefully, seeking any sign of information about my original clan, without finding it listed. Only the other ten clans are listed.
With dread, I turn to the chapter entitled, Upon Entering the Last Trial. I missed reading it, and the chapter I’m supposed to read after I finish the third trial, because of the deal I made with Myca. My fingers tremble at the idea of what horrific truth I’ll learn about how the candidates lied to or tried to kill me – or worse – this time around.
The third trial is the most crucial, for in it, the Kingmaker magic will awaken fully, and the Kingmaker will come to realize the truth about the curse, its power and how futile it is to fight it.
Just as I finish the first sentence, my phone vibrates.
It’s Ben.
My breath catches.
I need you to do me a favor, he’s written.
After how I treated him, and my lingering guilt, I don’t hesitate to respond. Sure. What?
The Book of Secrets forgotten, I lean back and stare at the phone, anxiously awaiting a response.
Of course, like everything else the past three weeks, when it comes, it’s weird.
“Don’t read any books in your father’s library, including the Book of Secrets.” I read Ben’s text aloud and frown. My eyes linger on the Book of Secrets. Myca froze the books somehow. Clearly, the candidates don’t want me accessing some information the books contain. Does this stem from my father’s guidance to them or … something else? And what harm can come from me learning about the curse and Kingmaker’s?
Already knowing he’s not going to answer, I text Ben back. Why????? “More importantly, how will I know what I’m supposed to do?” I ask him in frustration.
Check your father’s nightstand, Ben responds.
“Miracles do exist!” I exclaim sarcastically and launch to my feet. He answered a question I needed to know for once!
I maneuver through the study and race up the stairs to the second floor. My father’s bedroom is one of the first places I went after his death. I haven’t visited since. If I thought there was a chance to find any information about the trials in his room, I’d have ransacked it the first day of the trials.
Pushing open the door to his room, I stand in the doorway and look around. Everything is plain and neat, just the way he left it, from the tight corners of his twin bed to the worn shoes lined up against one wall to the sweaters, sports jackets and jeans hanging in his closet. He has no books, no electronics, no paintings or wall decorations, nothing personal in the room at all. The walls are white, the wooden floors brown and everything else boring neutral shades.
As with the rest of the house, there are no pictures, probably because he didn’t want to see our dual shadows and be reminded of what we are.
Sitting on his bed, I open the single drawer of the rickety nightstand that’s probably three times my age and definitely looks it. A pipe and lighter lie on one side, a paperback mystery novel on the other. That’s it. Removi
ng everything, I peer at each item, perplexed. I never thought my father would read modern fiction. He was always obsessed with the ancient tomes in our study.
“There’s nothing here, Ben,” I say, starting to get agitated. I grip the paperback by its cover and shake it – and another of my father’s letters falls out.
I pick it up and open it. My father’s handwriting is even harder to read this time. I fall back onto his bed and stare at the words, struggling to make out the letters.
Dear Leslie,
This is getting [illegible] but I must do this. There is much I could not tell you in my previous letters, and there is much I cannot tell you now. I must pray the steps I have taken will save you, for there is nothing else I can do.
To survive, you must do four things to prevent the curse from taking you.
1. wear the amulet
2. [illegible] the charms, books and all the curse has touched
3. trust the candidates to guide you
4. choose the leader and your mate wisely
I have explained what happens if you should fail. I cannot [illegible] you enough not to [illegible] [illegible] [illegible]. PLEASE heed this warning!
I love you, Leslie.
Daddy
“Oh, come on!” I shout in frustration. “Don’t what?”
Fuck! I roll onto my stomach and spend half an hour trying to make out what the words are he tried to write. I can’t. I have a feeling I know what he wants me to do with the charms – one that’s been tempting me since I first found them. According to what I learned online about curses, the charms need to be destroyed. Will it work, though, if the originator of the curse is supposed to be the one to break the spell? If I try and fail, will I just fuck stuff up more?
And does he really mean for me to destroy his library, the life’s work of every Kingmaker for a few hundred years?
What was wrong with him the last day that he couldn’t write? Was he sick? Sad? Afraid to die? He said he was fighting the curse but what does that mean? It’s not like he could physically fight it, unless it’s like an illness, or maybe, it followed him around the house, batting the pen out of his hand whenever he tried to write to me!
