Dark as the Grave

by Peter Dawes

  I smirked, my eyes fixed on the city. “When do we get to the swords?”

  Robin rolled his eyes. “You are still an impossible nuisance. Don’t think my sentiment on the matter has changed.”

  “You’re too old to know the definition of the word, let alone how to do it.”

  His jaw clenched, Robin answered with silence and I continued to smirk in the same cocky manner. My arrogance was relatively short-lived, however. Robin savored a cup filled with schadenfreude a few weeks later when my weapons instruction commenced.

  An open room typically used for meetings between Sabrina and the other vampire elders of our area facilitated our sparring sessions. On the first night, Robin stood halfway across the room, nothing more than tiled floor between us, with all tables and chairs removed from the immediate vicinity. Suit jackets stripped and sleeves rolled up, we held the blades Robin insisted we use. Two European swords; light, straight, and sturdy.

  “Bring me to my knees again,” he said, poised for attack.

  Yet, he did not move.

  I wrapped both hands around the hilt of my weapon, then leaped for him and swung the blade just as I had the night I bested him. This time, however, Robin ducked and shifted to the side. My swipe cut through nothing but air and my landing left me vulnerable.

  I felt a sharp blade slice across my shoulder. Turning, I hissed at Robin, fangs descending. He smirked at me and rotated his wrist to swing his sword around in an idle form of mockery. “What the hell?” I asked, freeing one hand to clutch my shoulder.

  “You’re lucky I am not nearly so incensed tonight, dear brother,” Robin said. “I could have impaled you through your back.”

  Gritting my teeth, I readied myself again. Robin remained still, not bothering to motion one way or the other. He kept his sword lowered to his side with only one hand clutching it. The nonchalant posture infuriated me and I made another aggravated pass for him, aiming for his neck and too angry to care one whit over chancing his demise. But he merely perked an eyebrow at me before dropping to one knee. My blade sailed past, again, not connecting with anything.

  The resultant momentum spun me around on my heels until I caught myself, and in that millisecond, I felt the tip of Robin’s sword pressed against my trachea. Robin rose to his feet while his eyes remained set on mine in a deliberate manner. Tepid blood seeped down my throat. “Death blow number two,” Robin said. “Care to make it a third, or have we learned our lesson yet?”

  “What fucking lesson?”

  Robin pressed the sword against my throat again and more blood trickled from the aggravated wound. I yelled, startled, wondering if he did intend to have my head after all. “I swear by The Fates and heaven above, I will now start bleeding you a pint for every crass euphemism you employ. Now, as for what lesson – the very lesson I have been trying to teach you for weeks now.”

  “Yes, finesse. Assassin. I get it.” I growled. “Please, lower the sword. That hurts.”

  He did as I requested, but still held a defensive position, as though not trusting me to hold back a cheap shot. “Precisely, but there is another lesson which accompanies this whole exhibition, Flynn.”

  I touched the weeping cut on my neck, glancing at the crimson staining my fingertips for a moment before my eyes rose toward Robin’s again. “And what lesson is that?” My voice took on a subdued tone. I was angry, yes, but far more frustrated with myself than Robin’s attack. He had sent me crashing from my ivory tower back onto the ground in two blows. Perhaps I was not the prodigy Sabrina thought I was.

  The smug expression on my older, more regal brother’s face evened, the half smirk fading into a frown. I thought I caught a flash of sympathy cross his gaze, but it, too, smoothed itself out as though an unintended wrinkle in his otherwise polished appearance. “Respect,” he said simply.

  My brow furrowed at the one-word response. “What do you mean?”

  “You lack it to your downfall.” He shook his head. “You claim I have been your antagonist from the start. I confess, even before I had to carry your unconscious body from the street and into our coven, I had decided you were a mistake and have acted accordingly. I might’ve been swayed otherwise, though, if not for your attitude.”

  “I don’t understand. What attitude?”

  “Never once have I detected an ounce of respect from you.” His frown became a scowl, yet I did not sense absolute disdain in it as I had before. The man was bent to level with me and for once, he had my attention. “Not when I attempted to teach you your initial lessons,” he continued. “Not from any subsequent time we passed each other in the halls. Had you not been an antisocial miscreant, I might’ve expected to see you snickering with the others behind my back. Maybe I made my disgust of you apparent, but you’ve done the same in spades.”

  The scowl relaxed. I lowered my hand from my throat, wiping the bloodstained digits against the fabric of my pants. “You probably think this is how I’ve always been,” I said. “Rude and stubborn. Moody. I’ll admit, I’m not the Boy Scout I once was, but I’m not ‘uneducated’ or ‘ignorant’ either.”

  “And you think me nothing but pretentious.”

  “You definitely act that way sometimes.”

  “And you the same, but now we have something more than our petty differences to focus on.” He raised an eyebrow at me. “Do you want to learn how to do this all the proper way? Then grant me a modicum of respect. I have been alive over a century longer than you have, dear brother.”

  He and I stared at each other, locked within a silent stalemate with neither of us breaking eye contact. After a significant amount of time, I nodded. “Alright,” I said. “I’ll listen to you. But you should respect me a little, too. I don’t know what happened here before I came or why you think I was that big of a mistake, but it’s not fair to take it out on me. The least you could do is tell me why you hate me so much.”

  Robin shook his head. His eyes drifted toward the other side of the room. “I don’t hate you. And perhaps someday I will explain these things to you. For now, I made a promise and you accepted a commission.” He turned his head to regard me once more. “You want to please our mistress, don’t you?”

  The question shot a tingle up my spine, inspiring immediate agreement from my lips. “Yes.” It also summoned the other notion nagging at me nearly as much as Sabrina’s wiles. “And I want to know what I am. You seem to. Sabrina and Timothy seem to.”

  “You are a vampire,” Robin said with finality, and I knew I would not hear any further explanation on the matter this night. “Now, raise your sword. And allow me to show you what you were doing wrong.”

  Sliding my shirtsleeve across my neck to wipe away the remainder of the blood, I nodded and took hold of the sword’s hilt once more. This time, Robin did not engage me. Rather, he walked around behind me to place his hands on my shoulders, adjusting my posture and stance. He bid me deliver a blow into the air afterward and corrected my failed attempt, stepping back to watch as I performed the action once more at his command. I glanced at him after he set his sword down on a table in favor of folding his arms across his chest. “Again,” he said.

  I nodded in response and complied.

  Time marched forward with its deliberate cadence, much as it always does. Days lengthened and nights shortened while the weather turned from chilly to sweltering within the confines of our urban estate. Robin remained my shadow throughout the better part of the months that followed, first instructing and then overseeing when I began to eclipse his own ability. It happened much sooner than he anticipated – than either of us anticipated, for that matter. The level of skill and composure I achieved by summer’s end could not be denied, though. A mortal familiar from Japan flew in at the beginning of autumn and the blade I first came to admire found its way into my hands once more.

  The skill of a master. The focus of a far more patient man than I ever was before. That being hinted at by Sabrina started to fill my shoes and embody my tailored suits. I was a
vampire’s vampire by the time the winter months, wrapping Philadelphia inside a blanket of frost and snow, came around again. Sparring with Robin, brother to brother, became common practice, with us crossing the threshold from adversaries to friends throughout the course of my instruction. Thus, the tenor of our sessions changed.

  Still stubborn and set in his ways, Robin held his European styled sword in hand while I whipped the curved blade of my katana from side to side. My sleeves rolled up, I stalked Robin as I had been taught, throwing occasional strikes without warning and anticipating the blows he issued in return. We conversed as this continued. “I am growing bored,” I said, thrusting my sword forward while Robin parried, using his blade to deflect my shot. Even my speech had settled into a much more refined pattern.

  “Define bored, dear brother,” he said.

  “Tired. Listless. My lessons are redundant.” I intersected a counterstrike from Robin. “When will Sabrina finally give me something more to do?”

  “You mean an assignment?”

  “Yes, an assignment.”

  Robin frowned. We engaged each other in several silent back-and-forth exchanges before he responded. “Flynn, I would not hurry into things. Once this starts, you’ll have a target fixed onto your back from that point forward. You do not shed the blood of an immortal without there being consequences.”

  “I can handle it.” I threw another strike his way. “I think I’ve proven my ability. My instructors have just about packed up shop and gone home.”

  “You mean you have mastered everything?”

  “Everything. Every bloody thing.”

  Robin sighed. We crossed blades once more. “I still dislike when you swear, regardless of what dialect you use while doing it.”

  “Be thankful I stopped saying the other words in front of you.” Steel caressing steel, I halted Robin’s blade and held it in place, my eyes shifting from our swords to his eyes. “You are ignoring me.”

  “I dislike that you do it at all, and no, I am not.” Robin stared me in the eyes for a few seconds longer before lowering his sword. I did the same. “Have you practiced with the knives?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Yes, both close combat and throwing them.”

  “And what is your current level of aptitude?”

  It was my turn to sigh. I freed one hand to scratch the back of my neck. “The same level as my sword skills. The same level as everything else. I stalk like a shadow. Nobody sees me whom I do not want to. Everything you taught me.”

  Robin drew in a deep breath, exhaling it slowly as he regarded me. “Brother, you have done well,” he said with a nod. “You have done very well. I simply worry about a neophyte being exposed to the sort of danger you’ll be exposed to. I never thought you would take so quickly to your lessons. I counted on this taking years, not months.”

  “I have done everything asked of me,” I said. “You have praised me in front of Sabrina several times.”

  “I know. And I underestimated just how much your...nature...would factor into your proficiency.”

  I raised an eyebrow and adjusted my glasses. “What does that mean?”

  Robin hesitated. He studied me, his mouth open as though willing something past his lips that was difficult to say. Just as it seemed actual noise would follow, the sound of stiletto heels clicking against the tile floor redirected our attention toward its source. I smirked at her the moment her brown eyes found me. “Good evening, fair Sabrina,” I said, turning my back on Robin for the time being in favor of meeting her halfway across the room.

  Stunning as always, the black suit she wore clung to all the correct curves. Each time I saw her, Sabrina called to me like a siren and I found myself helpless to resist. What had begun as touches on my face and through my hair had became seductive brushes of her body against mine, her fingers sliding across my shoulders, her lips almost nibbling at my ear as my training fashioned this assassin of which she dreamed. I had become more and more the item of interest to her and that night was no exception.

  Sabrina’s gaze wriggled into mine, ignoring the dark lenses protecting my eyes. If her seduction could coalesce into a form, it would have been tendrils of smoke lacing across my body, wrapping around me like an anaconda seeking nourishment, strangling first before consuming. I died willingly within such an embrace.

  “Hello, my devilish assassin,” she said, her smile possessing the slightest hint of fangs. “How are you tonight?”

  How much I longed for those teeth to find their way into my body the same way Rose’s did each time we slept together. Even considering it threatened to send a shiver running through me. “I am well, Mistress.” Bowing at the waist, my eyes remained set on her. “And you?”

  She reached out as I straightened, hands touching the collar of my shirt and tracing their way down to play with the top button. “The night belongs to its predators.” Her eyes shifted from her finger’s play up to my gaze. “I am doing well, too, my dear. I heard you two were sparring and thought I would check on my prodigy.”

  A half-smile blossomed on my face, yet my eyes fell partially closed. I felt her hand slide across my chest and struggled with mental images of me taking hold of Sabrina and doing the wickedest things with her. “Your dark son lives to serve you,” I said.

  “I know he does.” Sabrina’s head tilted to the side, exposing the pale skin of her neck. “You are eager for a kill, aren’t you, Flynn?”

  “I am.” I motioned forward before I could stop myself. My lips touched her cool flesh in a feather kiss before pulling away. “What good is knowing all of this without having some use for it, after all?”

  “Soon.” Sabrina met my eyes with hers as I stood straight again. Her hands left a burning impression where they had been when she lifted them. I became aware of Robin’s presence again when she turned to regard him. “How is he progressing, mentor?”

  I pivoted to align Robin in my sights, catching a look exchanged between him and Sabrina that spoke a thousand words. Robin’s reply hardly seemed a summary of any thought I saw in his eyes. “Remarkably well, Mistress,” he said, his tone chilled nearly to being frigid. “Prodigy does not begin to summarize it. We should have expected as such, though.”

  “Yes, quite.” She raised an eyebrow. Her eyes shot venom at Robin before returning to me. At once, the flames of wrath settled into soft lights when we regarded each other. I noted the change with passing interest, lost inside her seductive stare once more as though a switch had been flipped. “Is he ready, then?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  Robin and I spoke at the same time – I affirming and he stating the negative – which jarred me from the trance. I turned and looked at him, furrowing my brow. “Brother?”

  He stared at me, rather than looking at Sabrina. “You are too young for this,” he said. “There are lessons only time can teach that supersede sword skills and knife proficiency.”

  “I can handle them,” I said, frowning. I looked back at Sabrina as though pleading between two parents. “I do not understand what I still have to learn.”

  Sabrina looked at Robin, brow knitted. “Which lessons yet remain?”

  Robin sighed. “Self-preservation. He minds his own, but he needs to do more than slip through shadows. He must be prepared for all ends and everything to possibly go wrong.” His eyes finally settled on Sabrina. “You know what setting him loose will do. The moment somebody hears his name, he will become a public enemy, in more manners than one.”

  “I thought we came to an agreement on this last year, when it all started,” Sabrina said.

  “Yes, we did.” Robin’s eyes shifted back at me. “And the concerns I have now are ones I didn’t have before. I did tell you some things might arise along the way. The swiftness with which he’s mastered his weapons skills are one.”

  “What else?” One of Sabrina’s hands settled on her hip as she shifted her weight onto the opposite foot. “If his well-being is your only concern, then we�
�ll let the other six covens know that touching him means war.”

  “That is not as easy as you think it is, and you know it, Sabrina.” Gone were formalities. Robin stared Sabrina down as a peer. “There are other things as well.”

  “Such as...?”

  “Such as his mental state. I have been careful not to indulge his bloodlust nearly as much as he would like.” I caught a quick shift of his eyes from Sabrina to me and back again. “He needs more time to settle as a vampire.”

  “I am settled,” I said, interjecting.

  “Brother, you do not know the half of it.” Robin frowned. “You–”

  “That is enough.” Sabrina broke through our impromptu debate, both hands lifted with palms facing us. We eyed her as she sized each of us up. “I believe I am still the mistress in this coven, am I not?”

  Robin muttered something in a foreign tongue, dropping his sword onto the ground in favor of walking off toward where his suit jacket laid. Sabrina scowled. Proverbial steam rose from her ears, threatening to ignite the flames of wrath and consume Robin whole. “Ne tournes pas le dos à moi,” she said, answering Robin back in the language he spoke in hushed tones.

  “Pourquoi? Tu as décidé déjà.” Robin slid his arms through his suit jacket, and then looked at me. “I will leave you to decide this with the Mistress,” he said. “You are her child, not mine. Please know I don’t doubt your aptitude, Flynn. There are only things about your mental preparedness that have me concerned. I would like to see you mature as a vampire first. It would put my mind much more at ease.” Nodding, Robin looked away, leaving Sabrina and I the sight of his back as he hurried for the exit. I furrowed my brow at the display.

  It lingered with me for the remainder of the evening.

  Sabrina dismissed me shortly after Robin’s departure. After indulging in a quick hunt, I returned to my room, my need for blood sated as the dawn sky threatened to intrude upon the matters of immortals. The air outside grew colder by the day, my first year as a vampire ending, and yet, I wondered how many Robin thought I needed to weather. Five? Ten? A hundred, as he had? I shut my door with a bit more force than normal and leaned against it, arms crossing my chest while my eyes took stock of the room surrounding me.