The Lost Duke

by Kristen Gupton

  The floor inside the door was covered with pitchers of water and plates of food, the ones closest to the door still relatively fresh, the others pushed to the margins in advanced states of decay.

  Jerris looked at the vampire, still covering his mouth. “If we’re going… No, if you’re going in there, you need to get on with it. I can’t stand the smell. I’ll stay out here.”

  Keiran glanced at Jerris and gave a small nod before forcing himself forward. He walked on his toes, doing his best to avoid stepping on the plates scattered over the floor of the entry hall. Once he got past them, he stopped to look around.

  Enough sunlight came in through the boarded windows to see by. The plumbing had failed spectacularly. Water dripped down freely along several areas of the walls as well as from the ceiling.

  The rotting wood and mildewed textiles in the house gave the air a humid, swampy feel. Now, the smell of human waste he’d picked up before was more of a subtext to the rest of the scents. It was old, not acute nor overwhelming of the other odors present.

  He did his best to reach out with his senses to try and pinpoint where someone might be hiding in the mess surrounding him, but he picked up nothing.

  Keiran moved further into the house, stopping at the base of a grand staircase, now in ruin. The banisters had all broken away, and several of the risers were missing. Furniture from upstairs had been hurled down the stairwell for some reason, creating several obstacles along the way.

  Still, something drew Keiran up the steps, though he wasn’t certain the structure would hold him. He went cautiously, jumping over the missing treads. The entire staircase made protesting sounds as he moved upward, but it held.

  At the top, he stopped again to get his bearings. There was a hallway stretching before him, with multiple doors on either side. There had been a fire there at some point, some of the rooms destroyed; but it had burnt itself out before taking the entire structure.

  The doorways to the rooms where the fire once raged had been boarded over, but increased light spilled out between the planks, indicating the roof or walls beyond were damaged or missing.

  It was in the hallway when the unidentifiable scent that had been nagging at him finally became obvious over the other smells within the building. There was a coppery scent in the air, and Keiran’s initial fearful reaction returned twofold. It was similar to what had always accompanied Athan, and it made his stomach knot.

  …but it wasn’t exactly the same.

  He turned his head to the left, spotting a long line of painted portraits hanging along the wall. His worry about what was ahead pushed him toward procrastination, and he went closer to inspect them. The first one made him smile. Two young, auburn-haired girls were posed together in silk gowns. Keiran reached out and touched the painting.

  He was able to identify the younger woman in the painting as Adira, and he realized the other girl, slightly older, had to be his mother. If they’d been a little closer in age, it would have been simple to mistake them for twins.

  Ilana stared back at him smiling, her wide green eyes skillfully captured by the artist.

  Keiran hung his head, feeling tension build in his throat. It was the first time he’d ever seen his mother, and it made an impact.

  Though he knew time was of the essence, he quickly pulled his knife from his belt and sliced along the inner portion of the frame, freeing the canvas. He rolled up the small painting and tucked it into his shirt, knowing he couldn’t possibly leave the only image of his mother he’d ever seen behind.

  His eyes fixed on the other portrait hanging on the wall, and his blood ran cold. Athan’s familiar teal stare pierced him, but it wasn’t the elder vampire. The man in the picture was younger, his long, dark-brown hair kept in an unfamiliar style. There was something written along the bottom of the portrait:

  Duke Garhan Devora Aviatrov

  Keiran shook himself back to attention, knowing he needed to find Garhan and leave. He started to make his way down the hall, stepping over more broken furniture, dishes, and discarded clothes. The walls were streaked with more water damage and smoke stains from the fire long ago.

  There was a door missing at the end of the hall, the result of it falling from its hinges years before. Keiran stepped inside, instinctively knowing who he was looking for was somewhere within.

  The room looked as though it had once been a bedroom, but the mismatched furniture within made it hard to tell. A broken, harpsichord-like instrument sat on two legs in the middle of the space, assorted chairs and tables otherwise within. All the windows of the room had been broken out, though the wooden planks fixed to the exterior of the house had prevented any escape. At one point, the manor house must have been absolutely spectacular as it retained a certain level of grace even in its decay.

  The fear Keiran felt was overtaking him. He didn’t know what he was going to find when he actually saw his half-brother nor did he know what the other man’s reaction would be. It was reasonable to suspect he’d not had any real contact with others for quite some time.

  Keiran stopped in the center of the room, knowing the other was somewhere inside, hiding behind one of the pieces of furniture. He took a long breath, trying to calm down. If Garhan was like him, his anxiety wouldn’t do either of them any favors.

  “Garhan, are you in here?”

  He remained completely still and listened intently. There was no vocal reply, but through the silence came a long, rasping breath.

  Keiran pivoted, turning to face an overturned armoire. The sound had come from behind the piece, and he took several slow steps forward.

  “Garhan, please come out, I won’t hurt you. I’m here to help.”

  Slowly, a skeletal hand lifted up and was placed down onto the side of the armoire, its owner still obscured from view. The hand was painfully thin, the skin over it leathery. As the fingers flexed slightly, Keiran heard the skin and bones creak together.

  He stepped around the edge of the armoire, spotting the hand’s owner lying behind it on the floor. Keiran drew in a sharp breath, horrified at what he saw.

  Despite his fear, he slowly knelt down beside the body. The idea the desiccated corpse before him had moved at all was beyond Keiran’s ability to understand. He looked Garhan over slowly, trying to make some sense out of it.

  Garhan was no more than a skin-shrouded skeleton. There were remnants of clothes pooled over his form, but they did nothing to hide the condition of his body beneath. His skin was drawn tight over his bones, like rawhide stretched over an angular frame. The skin itself had a matte appearance, the color of it a dusty, jaundiced yellow, except on the uncovered portions of his arms and hands. There, he had large swaths of slate gray, where unhealed bruises had spread. Any hair he may have once possessed was gone, having fallen out during his prolonged starvation.

  Keiran had to forcibly refrain from giving any outward reaction when his eyes found Garhan’s face. Like the rest of his body, it was little more than hide drawn taut over bone. The contours of his skull were readily evident, cheekbones jutting out sharply below his closed eyes. His lips were shriveled and drawn back, revealing teeth that looked unnaturally long. This was mainly the result of his gums having receded badly, leaving the roots of his teeth exposed. However, his fangs were also exposed, resting in their retracted position over his canines.

  He couldn’t believe the being before him was still alive, yet he’d seen the arm move. He leaned in closer, placing a hand onto the center of Garhan’s chest.

  “I’m going to help you,” he whispered.

  That’s when Garhan’s eyes opened, and Keiran was helpless to fight his instinct to recoil. The dried lids opened with an audible crinkling, revealing nearly vacant sockets. The globes of his eyes had shriveled up and sat deep within, staring up blindly.

  A sound came from Garhan, but without functioning lips and a tongue long ago dried to the floor of his mouth, the only noise emitted was a grating wheeze.

  Keiran looked around
the room, trying to figure out exactly what it was he intended to do for Garhan. If his current condition was from a lack of ingesting blood, clearly he needed to get some to his half-brother. As a vampire himself, he wasn’t sure if his blood would do anything for the other.

  His attention was pulled away from Garhan, however, when he heard noises from downstairs. There were people moving about, and he distinctly heard Kanan and Jerris’ voices as well as Stepan and Victri’s.

  “Damn,” he grunted before scooping Garhan up into his arms.

  Garhan’s eyes mercifully closed again, and he didn’t fight being picked up in any way—not that he had the ability to actually do so.

  Lifting him proved to be no great challenge. In his current skeletal state, Garhan only weighed half as much as a sack of grain. His body felt rigid, and it was like lifting a mummified corpse.

  Keiran moved down the hallway with him and to the top of the stairs where he stopped to look down at the scene below.

  His two guards stood with their swords drawn, Stepan at their side with his out as well. Victri stood behind them, his weapon in hand but not raised.

  Adira was in the manor’s doorway with nine of her own men standing between her and the Tordanians. There were other guards behind her, but they were reluctant to enter the building. Still, the fighting hadn’t yet started; everyone standing in place in an uncomfortable silence that Keiran was the first to break.

  “Queen Adira, Garhan isn’t dead. You were wrong,” he said, carefully descending the staircase.

  Adira looked up at the vampire, her angered expression faltering as her eyes widened, and her lips parted. Whatever it was Keiran was carrying toward her, it most certainly didn’t look like Garhan, or at least, it didn’t look like what she’d seen several years prior.

  Keiran had to jump past the last missing steps, landing gently on the floor below. Kanan and Jerris lowered their swords, both fixing their attention on the corpse Keiran held.

  “My Lord, that man is not alive!” Kanan scrunched his nose up in repulsion at the sight.

  The vampire glanced at his elder guard before taking several steps past him and toward Adira’s guards. His own fangs were pushing down in his anger toward the queen for leaving Garhan to waste away. “Yes, he is. He’s alive in this hellish state, though, I can’t possibly understand how.”

  Adira whispered something, and the guards parted, allowing her to pass between them. She neared Keiran, her hands coming up to cover her mouth, dishes on the floor breaking as she stepped on them.

  She stopped and looked at Garhan, her eyes brimming with tears. Her cheeks began to burn red, and her horrified eyes panned up to meet Keiran’s. “I didn’t know…”

  “He couldn’t simply die, Adira!” he said, brows knitting, fangs obvious. “You just locked him up and hoped he’d go away!”

  The sudden influx of shame washing over the Alerian queen made her fear of Keiran secondary. Absolute humiliation drove her to look back over her shoulder to order her guards away. “Leave us!”

  They hesitated, not willing to leave the woman after her previous insistence on being completely surrounded as long as Keiran was nearby.

  Adira clenched her fists at her sides and spun to face them when they refused to move. “Leave us at once!”

  The guards muttered amongst themselves but slowly retreated back through the doorway. They lingered out on the porch of the house, not willing to go very far.

  Kanan, Jerris, and Stepan lowered their weapons and moved in closer to get a better look at Garhan. None of them could understand what they were seeing, and they thought it possible Keiran had gone insane. The man in his arms must have been dead for quite some time.

  However, Garhan found the strength to lift up an arm again and reached out toward Adira, causing them all to gasp in surprise.

  She refrained from screaming but took a hasty step backward, tripping on the dishes on the floor before falling onto her seat.

  Keiran pursued Adira with Garhan in his arms, his lips parted as he scowled down at her. “How could you do this to him?”

  “I didn’t do anything to him! What was I supposed to do?” She scrambled back up to her feet, tears marking her cheeks. “Let him just run through the countryside to kill at will to satisfy himself?”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way!” Keiran shot back, eyes narrowing. “You could have found a way to get him blood! How he’s lived this long, I can’t even fathom! I know how horrible I felt at twenty, but you’ve let him waste away imprisoned like this longer than I’ve been alive!”

  Her hands came up to her mouth again, and she dared to take a few steps forward to look at Garhan. She’d tried to put him out of her mind for years, hoping he would have died without her ever having to see it or play a hand in it.

  “If you wanted to kill him, Adira, you should have had the bravery to just order his execution rather than subject him to this! What in the hell could he have done to deserve this?” Keiran asked.

  Her utter shame washed out, impacting Keiran, though it didn’t temper his rage toward the woman. He looked around the room and spotted a ruined couch and went to it to lay Garhan down.

  Adira and the others followed. Jerris and Kanan looked at one another, silently communicating their disbelief over what they were seeing.

  Keiran carefully laid Garhan down, not overly concerned with his weight causing the deteriorating couch to collapse in on itself. After, the vampire turned to look at Adira.

  She stood beside the couch and continued to stare at Garhan. “How do we help him?”

  “Now you care?” Keiran asked, snarling as his anger continued to build.

  “I didn’t know!” she said again, waving her arms out to her sides. “What experience have I ever had with your kind before him?”

  “You forbade anyone from even checking on him, Adira.” Keiran crossed his arms over his chest. “It would serve you right for me to give him your blood to restore him!”

  Adira’s eyes went wide, and she took a step backward, sensing something from Keiran that cut through her shame. She jutted out her arm and pointed toward her advisor. “Give him Victri’s! I was going to execute him anyway!”

  Victri produced a small squeak and looked at everyone in the room. “Me? I wasn’t the one that did this to him!”

  “You urged me to lock him up and never look back.” Adira turned to face her advisor. “This is your fault!”

  “You are the queen!” Victri replied, his voice going hoarse. “I told you to kill him outright! You found it more palatable to simply put him where you didn’t need to see him!”

  “The both of you, shut up,” Keiran growled. “Adira, you have the chance right now to fix this. I can’t do it, but you can.”

  The queen slowly turned toward Keiran again, her expression going slack and the color draining from her face. “You intend to kill me?”

  His expression was deadpan, and he gave a small shake of his head. “No, but you can help him. If you truly regret getting him into this state, you should be willing to get him out of it.”

  “Then what? I’m not turning a vampire loose in this country,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “Just as I’m not inclined to let you run off out of here. Very clever escaping like you did. I’d imagine I can thank Stepan for that.”

  Keiran rolled his eyes as she, yet again, tried to take the focus off of herself. “Adira, you can’t keep me here. Sooner or later, I’ll begin to gain abilities like Athan has, and I will get out, regardless of what you want. Your only option is to kill me, but looking at Garhan here, I can tell you don’t have the resolve to do so.”

  Adira wasn’t used to being spoken to like that. While Victri had tried to steer her to his own ends, there was something in the vampire self-assured and utterly unafraid of her.

  Her confidence wavered. “Then what do you propose? I just let you walk out of here and return to Tordania? Are you going to simply take Garhan with you?”

  “Yes.�
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  She blinked, not having anticipated such a short reply. “I can’t let another vampire rule—”

  Keiran took one step closer and stared down into her eyes. His fangs were visible when his lips pulled back to respond. “You already have.”

  An uncomfortable shock ran through her, and her eyes moved to the side in a sign of submission. She turned to see her men lingering back in the doorway. If she were to signal them to take down the Tordanians, Keiran would be able to kill her before they could do anything to help.

  Not that she felt she deserved anything more in that moment.

  “…then how do you suggest I help him now?” she asked.

  Keiran reached down to his belt where his knife hung. “He needs blood. Not much, if he’s anything like me, just a bit. You don’t have to die to give him that.”

  Queen Adira’s eyes widened as they fell upon the blade. Sickness welled up at the thought of allowing Keiran to cut her. Her attention moved back to Garhan as one of his arms again lifted up.

  “Just make it quick.” She closed her eyes and held out her arm toward Keiran.

  He reached out for her arm with his right hand, knife held in his left.

  Victri had crept closer to Keiran and Adira during the course of their conversation, his sword still in hand. He had no illusion that he was going to get out of this alive. Even if the Tordanians managed to negotiate a way out of Aleria, he would end up back in the dungeon to either live out the rest of his days or be executed.

  If all he could do was prevent Adira from making another foolish decision before he died, it was what he needed to do. Besides, if he was doomed anyway, she might as well be taken out in the process for having disgraced him.

  As Keiran prepared to drag his blade across Adira’s wrist, Victri lunged with his sword held out before him, aimed for Adira’s chest.

  Keiran had been so focused on Adira that he’d let his guard down. He turned toward the charging advisor, knife in hand and ready to react, but he never got the chance.

  Even immersed in a completely alien situation, Stepan hadn’t let his guard down, and his instincts to protect Adira hadn’t abated, despite what she’d done to him. He’d read Victri’s body language easily enough and had followed him silently around the perimeter of the room.