“And what do you see?”
He smiled. “Who’s it from?”
Ascertaining whether the seal had been compromised, I opened it and recognized the handwriting.
Jacob seemed distracted, but then his focus fell back on me.
I peeled open the cream paper. “Did you read this?”
“Why would I read your private letter?”
Had I really been stupid enough to teach Rachel to read and write?
Daumia,
I fell in love with you the moment you rescued me in the cathedral. You made me with your blood, therefore, our connection is great. I believe it’s your love for me that prevents you from allowing Jacob to become my lover. After all, you turned me, brought me over. To have your approval is all that I desire.
I couldn’t read anymore.
Jacob’s expression changed. “A problem?”
“Nothing that can’t be sorted.”
I’d nurtured Rachel and gone to great lengths to smooth her transformation, be there for her, and it had backfired. I’d selfishly enjoyed the way she’d stared at me, her admiring smile, and her coy blush. I’d encouraged her. I looked up at Jacob. “You read the letter?”
“I did.”
Sounds from the streets carried—carriages rumbling along, someone calling a name—but I didn’t catch it. I tried to maintain my composure.
Jacob approached the mantel and turned to face me. “It all makes sense now.”
“I’ve never been romantically involved with her.”
“I’m sorry.”
“For what?”
“Doubting you.”
I gestured for him to continue.
He shot me a wary glance. “Rachel is clearly unsound.”
Rachel had always acted a little scatterbrained, but crazy? “I didn’t know how to tell you.” I shrugged.
“May I visit her?”
“It’s best if you don’t.”
“Your idea of her taking the sea air, it’s the best thing for her.”
“Yes.”
“The blood thing?” Jacob ran his fingers through his hair. “Where do you think she gets her ideas from?”
The painting’s dramatic reds and oranges were lit up by the firelight.
Jacob followed my gaze. “Very often, it’s a stressful event that triggers such an episode.”
A stark visual of Rachel sucking from those whom she’d seduced, rocking with pleasure as her once willing consort had quickly become an unwilling victim, fading in her arms, and I’d been the one to teach her, Rachel’s bloody smile after her first kill, like a child who’d learned a new trick.
A knock at the door made me jump.
Marcus appeared and stuck his head in. “Can I have a word?”
I approached him. “Not a good time.”
“I’ve searched everywhere,” Marcus whispered. “Rachel’s gone and so are all her belongings.”
“Find her,” I said. “And make it quick.”
“Something wrong?” Jacob asked.
I closed the door. “Everything’s just fine.”
“From her letter, she appears to believe she may be a vampire,” Jacob said calmly.
The room felt horribly stuffy, the air thick. I loosened my shirt collar.
Jacob’s stare met mine and he nodded, revealing more than just his suspicion. “She told me everything.”
Outside, a dog barked.
“You don’t go out during the day,” his voice changed ever so slightly. “I’ve never seen you eat anything.”
As his words continued, I felt myself unraveling, my worst nightmare unfolding. I placed my pale hands behind my back.
“So I can see where she gets her wild ideas from.” He neared me.
“Quite an imagination, that girl.”
“Living with an eccentric can rub off.” Jacob nodded my way.
I forced a smile, self-conscious that the stress may cause an elongation of my fangs.
Great, give yourself away, for fear of giving yourself away.
“Any thoughts?” he asked.
“On what?”
“Is there something you’re not telling me?”
“How do you mean?”
Jacob rifled through his jacket pocket and withdrew a small bottle, inside which a small amount of liquid swooshed. He flicked the contents onto the back of my hand.
I wiped off the moisture, unsure whether to be shocked or annoyed. “And I thought you were a man of science.”
“I am.”
“Then why not study your subject objectively?”
You’ve lost him, again.
“You make it sound so cold,” he said.
“You just threw Holy Water on me. I assume that’s what it is?”
“You look so incredibly young. I mean, we could pass for brothers.”
“I’m flattered.”
“You find this funny?”
“Not so much.”
“You’ve never eaten in front of me. I’ve never spent a day with you. And the way you move . . .” Jacob reached into his coat pocket.
“Please don’t tell me that’s a cross.”
Jacob spun round and held up a mirror. His gasp grated. “I didn’t believe her.” He held up the mirror again.
“I could never muster the courage to tell you.”
“I deserve the truth.”
“I reasoned that if you got to know me first . . .”
“Why did you come back into my life?”
“Because I love you.”
“Are you even capable of such an emotion?”
“Yes.”
“I wished you’d stayed away.”
My heart felt like something had punctured it. I pressed my hand against my chest, trying to ease it.
“Deny it.” He sucked in his breath.
“You want me to tell you that I’m not what I am?”
“Yes.”
“I’m not a vampire.”
“How long have you been one?”
“Twenty years.”
His face paled even more.
I ran my fingers through my hair. “I wanted to be the one to tell you.”
“You should have.”
I turned away.
“But it’s meant to be a myth, folklore,” he said.
“People are comforted by that.”
“I have to sit down.” Jacob took the seat near the fireplace. He stood up again, fidgeting. “Are you really my father?”
The question stunned me.
Jacob’s face softened. “And I thought I’d seen everything.”
“I never asked for this.”
“Someone did this to you?”
“I chose this life so that I could save yours.”
“What?”
“Hanging by a thread, literally seconds from death, I had to make a choice.”
“You were given a choice?”
“Had I not taken it, they would have killed you.”
“Don’t blame me for what you are.”
“I don’t.”
“How is it done?”
The courtyard. My arms pulled back in their bindings. A scarlet flow that seeped from my wound. Sunaria’s voice, her scent mingling with her taste. Death summoning me and then that dark decision . . .
Outside, a crow squawked, shattering the silence.
“Rachel cut her wrist.” Jacob gulped. “And it healed instantly.”
“She wanted to prove to you what she is?”
“Yes.”
“Where is she now?”
“I don’t know.” Jacob’s voice almost broke. “Do you drink blood?”
I avoided his gaze.
His eyes widened. “Have you murdered?”
I picked up a lit candle and approached the bookcase, then yanked at an obscured handle and the shelves swung open, revealing a doorway.
“Where does that lead?” he asked.
“Like to find out?”
“You don’t expect me
to go in there?”
I headed on through, paused for a moment, and waited for him to join me.
Jacob sighed deeply, and then took his first step into my world.
* * * *
Jacob leaned back against the door with his hands wrapped around his legs, while I rested atop the long, black coffin.
Jacob’s pupils adjusted to the dark. The fluorescent glare of mine spooked him for a moment, but then he settled. The candlelight helped.
My philosophy had come up short. I refused to accept my lot in the great scheme of things, but rather to strive for a glorious life, to be authentic, true to myself and learn to live with the consequences. But now my relationship with Jacob felt threatened.
Having not fed, the slight shake in my hands increased, though my appetite had dulled. Within the small chamber, the drama of a troubled past unfolded, evolving over decades, a fantastical story that stirred the same emotions as it left my lips.
Jacob listened.
Yet again breaking my own rule, I trespassed into his thoughts, needing reassurance that this would not be the last time I’d see him. Jacob’s flushed face and fresh tears caused frequent pauses in my dark monologue, but his insistence for me to continue forced me to do so.
As I recounted my past, it revealed a new perspective and other possibilities arose, highlighting better choices that could have been made. Decisions of my youth were just that. I fought off the regret. Years ago, I’d mourned briefly and then moved on, hoping that my future would make up for the past. Taking full responsibility for what I’d become, it had been easier to accept. Trying to explain this to my fresh-faced son, who stared up, riveted, offered a new challenge. I gauged Jacob’s reaction.
He wiped away another tear. “If there’s a way back for you, I’ll find it.”
I allowed him solace in believing that.
Jacob stood up. “So light is your enemy?”
I subtly checked, watching for any sign that would indicate he’d test the theory and inadvertently put me at risk.
Jacob’s hand brushed over the door and then he pointed to the coffin. “What’s it like sleeping in that?”
“You get used to it.”
“How have you not been driven mad?”
“Does the mad man know that he’s even mad?”
Jacob squinted. “All those times I thought you were working and you were actually asleep.”
And while you slept . . .
“Your whole life is a lie,” he muttered.
“Smoke and mirrors, that’s all.”
“This is how you justify what you do?”
“You’re not my judge.”
“But God is.”
“I could be pedantic and say that God stood by and watched this being done to me.”
“He doesn’t interfere.”
“How convenient.”
“Do you not fear hell?”
“You and Marcus can have this discussion,” I said. “It bores me.”
“But what of your soul?”
I sighed. “What of it?”
Anxiety in his expression, his mind surely raced. “Are you damned?”
“Perhaps.”
“Aren’t you frightened of dying?”
“No more than you.”
“But are you not excluded from heaven?”
“Me and half of London, if you believe what you read.”
“You’re destined to walk the earth for eternity?”
His words echoed. Not for the first time had I considered the idea—immortalized in this body, being more than I’d been as a mere man, with God-like abilities.
“I will find a cure for you.” He broke the silence.
My fingers traced my jaw line. I was deep in thought.
“What did it feel like when you actually changed into this?”
Death’s drag . . . “I lost all sense of time and place and then blacked out. When I reopened my eyes, it felt as though I’d awoken from the deepest sleep.” Sunaria’s voice luring me, the thrill of her blood surging through mine, reanimating every nerve, sinew, muscle, and bone . . . “When my eyes took in the world again, shapes were more distinctive and colors vibrant. Your senses are so sharp, it takes a while to adjust to the sensory overload.”
“Is there pain?” Jacob’s voice seemed far off.
A difficult question to answer, having been impaled by a child’s sword, the agony of that bled into what followed. I shrugged.
“And now what does it feel like?” Jacob asked.
The ability to feel pleasure so intense that you lose yourself.
So acclimated to my new physicality, I tried to compare it. “We move with great agility.”
“But what does it actually feel like?”
I turned over my hands, studying them. “As though you’ve taken on a new body, one that is made out of something other than flesh, and yet it passes for it.”
“When you died, what did you see?” he asked.
“A blinding white light. A beautiful angel beckoned.”
“Really?”
“No. Just blackness. Nothing. An awful feeling of being awoken from the deepest sleep, and then being dragged backwards over hot coals.”
Jacob was riveted.
“Then the agony subsides into euphoria.” I sighed. “I suppose it’s what entices you to come back into your body.”
The candle flickered.
“What other benefits are there?” He glanced at the fading flame.
“My ability to detect the slightest sound.”
“You can read minds?”
“Rachel told you that?”
He nodded. “Do you read mine?”
“I try not to.”
“But you can. I mean right now you can hear every thought?”
“Yes.”
“Bloody hell.”
“It’s not what it’s cracked up to be,” I said.
“How do you mean?”
“The chatter’s overwhelming. And when someone thinks a bad thought about you, it feels shitty.”
“But you get used to it?”
“You get to control it.”
Jacob removed his jacket. “What did you think I’d say when I learned the truth?”
“That you hated me.”
“You underestimate me.”
“Actually, I don’t.”
“The drawbacks, what are those?”
“Well, you’ve seen one, no reflection.”
“That explains your hair.”
I ran my fingers through my dark locks.
“Just joking,” Jacob said.
I gave a wry smile.
“Actually, I’m always impressed with how dapper you look.” He almost smiled.
“Can’t say the same for you.” I winked.
“Ouch.”
“My tailor can remedy that.”
“Thanks, I think.”
I gestured to the door. “No sunsets.”
“That explains your artwork.”
“Dining takes on a whole new meaning.”
“You can’t eat at all?”
I shook my head no.
“What else?” he pushed.
“I can seduce anyone.”
“Is that how you trap them?”
I sensed where this was going and didn’t like it.
“You have to kill to survive?” he asked.
“The alternative is to take just a sip. But it results in several victims instead of one.”
“What if they see you again?”
“It doesn’t work like that.”
“What do you mean?”
“We return the favor with providing a taste of us.”
“How do you persuade them?”
“Eyes closed.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“I know. One sip and their arousal is their reward. Then they forget everything.”
“Are you suggesting that, for us, your blood is some kind of elixir?”
I
stared down at my shoes.
“You’re talking of an erotic experience?” Jacob said amazed.
“Now you understand why Rachel going anywhere near you made me nervous.”
“Your blood also affects memory?”
“Yes.”
“Please don’t try that on me.”
“Now that would be interesting.”
“I mean it.”
“You have my word.”
“How do you find your victims?”
“Take a walk down any back alley and you soon find yourself threatened. I turn the tables.”
“What do you do with the body?”
I gave the deepest sigh.
He couldn’t hide his horror. “You throw them in the Thames?”
“We’re all faced with complex decisions.” I rose off the coffin. “This is not how I want you to see me.”
He disappeared inside his thoughts. “There are some physicians that bleed their patients. Although I don’t practice this technique, perhaps we could give you the blood that they draw?”
The thought of drinking clotted blood caused a wave of nausea. Drinking for me was so much more than survival, a sublime sensuous ritual. “Please don’t see me as one of your patients.”
“How would you prefer me to see you?”
“As your father.”
“You look more like my brother.”
I shrugged.
He was suddenly anxious. “What happens when I age and you stay the same?”
The sense of evening looming brought little relief. We still had a few hours or so to go before we could welcome the fresh air of outside.
“Have you given any thought to that?” Jacob asked.
“I have.”
“Well?”
“We’ll just have to work through it.”
“This is surreal.”
“You have my word that you will never find yourself in my predicament.”
Jacob shifted uncomfortably. “That’s good to hear. But I’d assumed it was a given.”
“If there’s one benefit to being what I am, it’s that I have the ability to protect you.”
“I don’t need—”
“Trust me, we all need someone to watch over us.”
“I have God.”
“He doesn’t like to interfere, remember? I have no problem with the concept.”
“Some things are best left alone.”
“Like what exactly?”
He was taken aback.
“Jacob, you have my blessing to continue with your vocation, but not to spend any time worrying about me.”
“I’d like to study you.”
With a cringe, I gave my answer.
“I’ve offended you?” he said softly.
A Vampire's Rise Page 33
