CHAPTER 13: THE VAMPIRE LORD
Theodore entered the basement again, wrinkling his nose at the scent of Firstlander blood. In this Realm, blood always smelled strange. Hotter. More acidic. It tasted different, too, and at times, he much preferred the relaxing smoothness that he had left behind.
But then he remembered the atrocities he had been forced to commit by the command of a queen and he grimaced. No. It was much better, here. At least here, he had a mind of his own, and could choose. He wasn’t just some mindless peon, some noble-born brat who accidentally succumbed to the kiss of a baby queen, in play. He hadn’t been forced to watch that arrogance, surrounded by such pomp and awe, grow into something utterly evil, and be absolutely unable to stop it. Be forced to love it.
Shaking himself, Theo pushed the final door open and flipped on the light.
The two strange vampires were hanging limply from his wall, weak and dying. He’d refused them blood for the last week, smelling the fear and suffering of hundreds on their skin and in their essence. Their heads came up feebly as he dragged a chair across the room and settled it in front of them. Sitting down, leaning his torso over the chair-back, he examined them again.
“What I want to know,” he said, for the hundredth time, “is what the fuck you were doing, coming after me.”
“Not you,” the woman babbled. It was the first intelligent thing either of them had said since they’d spent the first few days flailing like animals in the full throes of the blood they’d taken. Interesting. He had half-suspected it was an assassination attempt by another lord, but this made him wonder.
“So you were after my neighbors.” Theo didn’t particularly like his neighbors in Kenai, but these two had been completely high on blood and pain, and would have created an enormous mess, had he allowed them to reach their destination. A mess that would have solidly put the tiny Alaskan town of Kenai—and, consequentially, Soldotna—squarely on the map, and Theo had come to enjoy his privacy.
When neither of them spoke, he demanded, “Why?”
The woman bared her teeth at him. She and her mate both had the smell of the home-realm, but it was mostly faded. They’d been here some time, then.
What reason would two unattached vampires have in coming to hunt his neighbors? He could find no connection to a queen in their blood. No enthrallment by a lord. They were just…alone.
Cocking his head at the, Theo offered, “You didn’t even know I was here, did you?” That was a…minor miscalculation…on their part.
What he really wanted to know, though, was how they had driven to Soldotna in the middle of the day. Night had only fallen half an hour before when they drove up to the gas-station where he’d been filling up. And unless they were from somewhere like Sterling or Cooper Landing, which he doubted because he had never heard of or seen them before, then they had somehow driven to Soldotna from somewhere distant, like Anchorage or Seward.
And, as hyped up on blood as they were, without so much as a captive in the backseat, they had come to Soldotna fully intending to die. Or take a few captives from the local populace, most of whom Theo had befriended over the years. It was one of the boundaries that he’d taught the adolescent nest in Kenai to respect. They were not to take captives from his hometown, and he would not make unexpected visits and slaughter them as they fornicated in their harems.
“Please release us,” the man whimpered again, for like the thousandth time. “Please.”
“You’re going to die here,” Theo said, picking at a flake of dried blood crusted to the top backboard of his chair and flicked it aside. “I don’t like the smell of you, and I am not looking for soldiery.”
Both of them started sobbing again. Theo sighed. He hated those who couldn’t handle what they dished out. It was such hypocrisy. “Just shut up,” he said. “Stop simpering. Tell me where you are from.”
“Eagle River,” the woman babbled.
Beyond Anchorage. He narrowed his eyes at her. “Are you halfbloods or something? How were you out in sunlight?”
“We have a yatagarasu,” the man whimpered. “We can give him to you. In trade for our lives.”
Theo froze, almost overwhelmed by the temptation to make such a trade. But he also loathed drinking from those who did not offer themselves willingly, and there was no way he would trust a yatagarasu not to kill him. “There will be no trade. Where did you leave him?”
“He’s in our attic,” the woman babbled. “We can take you to him. He’s a good slave. He tastes exquisite.”
Theo winced at the idea of how creatures such as these must have left their prize. If they had intended on coming back, he was probably in a cage where he could get a daily dose of sunshine, and would live that way indefinitely. “Give me your address. I will go free him.”
But, oddly, the two strangers went silent.
Theo sighed. “The address. Or I will extract it from your bodies.”
Strangely, helpless and in the presence of a lord, they still refused to give him the address.
“You do realize that you’re going to die here, right?” Theo demanded. “I’m not freeing you. Do one tiny good deed with your final, dying breaths and tell me where you’re keeping that fucking golden crow.”
“Why,” the woman jeered at him, face twisted with bitterness, “so you can feed on our prize?”
Theo stared at her. “So I can free him.” Granted, he would take the yatagarasu on a long road-trip and dump him on some very abandoned bit of road before releasing him, but he would not leave another immortal to suffer like that. It was vile.
The female laughed, a bitter, malicious sound. “No vampire lord would turn down a yatagarasu.”
“That is where you are wrong,” Theo growled, straightening on his chair. “Tell me where you left him.”
But they just ignored him.
Theo could not believe it. Even while dying, they would not do for the world that one last, tiny act of benevolence. “It is creatures like you,” he said softly, “that never should have crossed the veil to this Realm.”
The woman spat at him.
Because he didn’t feel like finding some instrument with which to torture the address out of them, he sighed. “Fine. Tell me why you went on a feeding-frenzy intending to rampage on my neighbors and I might find it in my heart to feed you a little bit before killing you.”
He watched their fangs protrude slightly at the mention of being fed. Disgusting. Completely uncontrolled brutes.
It was the man who spoke. “We heard there was a young vampire lord making an army in Soldotna,” he whimpered, twisting his wrists in the metal cuffs.
Theodore snorted. “No. Kenai, perhaps. They’re always adding new blood, there. I think they might have opened a portal, the fools.”
“You’re obviously not the one we were looking for,” the woman whimpered. “Let us go. Please. We were only trying to—”
“I told you you’re going to die here,” Theo interrupted. “I don’t like your kind. It’s humiliating to be associated with you. Why were you looking for a lord? What could you have possibly gained?”
“We wanted to find a conso—”
“Quiet, Frank,” the woman snapped.
Theo froze. Had he been about to say consort? Very stiffly, he got to his feet and stepped away from the chair. “Are you a queen?” he whispered, finding it hard to speak through his dual rage and horror.
“No,” she cried, cringing.
But Theo ignored her, stepping forward. He savagely tore the skin away from her wrist, to see.
The venom-sac was not there.
He pried around at the flesh between her tendons, just to make sure. Ignoring her whimpers, he stepped back. Frowning, at her, he said, “Whose consort are you looking for?”
She just started sobbing. The hypocrite. Theo glanced at the one called Frank. “Whose consort are you looking for?”
The man lowered his head and looked at the floor, unanswering.
Theo found himself getting rather sick of their blubbering. “I know you have committed worse than this, on others. You reek of terror. Die with some honor, you disgusting vermin, and answer me.”
But their shoulders just started to shake and they sobbed.
“Answer me!” Theo growled. “Why would two unattached vampires attack a nest?”
But the female was staring at the blood gushing from her wrist, babbling about needing to feed. With a growl, Theo twisted her head off and tossed it aside. Her mate let out an anguished wail and shuddered, staring at his feet.
“Tell me,” Theo growled, as blood pattered to the ground beneath her twitching toes.
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The man continued to stare at his feet.
“At least give me the address for the golden crow,” Theo snapped. “Show some kindness, in your final moments.”
For a long moment, it looked like the man would speak. Then, in silence, he shook his head.
“Your choice,” Theo snapped. He reached out and, with a fraction more effort, twisted off the male’s head. He threw it to the corner with the female’s, to be disposed of later.
Glancing up at the tips of fangs still poking from their wrists, he twisted his face in disgust. The fangs of such filth were not even trophies. He didn’t even want them in his house, tainting the rest. Shaking his head, he left the basement and walked back upstairs, pulling shut the basement door behind him. Stepping back into his small living-room, Theo found himself more agitated and unnerved than he had been in centuries.
Two vampires, not even lords, had gorged themselves on the death-energies of dozens and come here with the full expectation to take a young lord. Whether or not there was a lord in Kenai, Theo wasn’t sure. They had kept their distance after Theo’s third visit, retrieving yet another pretty young Soldotna girl that they had decided to take for their own.
The disgusting vermin. Barely better than the two dead things on his wall.
Theo glanced up at the clock. Just past midnight. Tonight was Mandi’s night. He’d already missed Shelly’s night, dealing with the two vermin, and he was starting to feel the effects. The world felt less alive, dimmer, less exciting.
More…ominous.
Grabbing his keys and throwing on his coat, Theo went out to his truck. Angus was waiting for him in the truck-bed, panting and tongue lolling, making the entire truck creak with the shifting of his weight. Theo went up to the enormous mastiff first, distractedly giving him a good scratch behind the ears, then climbed into the cab, still disturbed. After heating the glow-plugs for longer than he needed to, he fired up the big diesel engine on his Ford F-350, then sat there, listening to the throaty rumble around him.
Why would two vampires go looking for a lord? Unattached vampires stayed away from lords. The smart ones did. And, judging by how well-versed in the First Realm these two seemed to be—and how far their fangs had jutted from their skin, in their contortions—they were old. Vampires didn’t get to be old by being stupid.
Then why would they want to kill a lord?
He was still ruminating over that by the time he pulled up to the inconspicuous little pull-out along the Kenai River, with a little path leading through the woods and down to the water. Mandi’s little red Subaru was parked in the darkness under the alders, and Theo immediately felt a pang of gratitude for the girl’s bravery. Not many women would be willing to drive into the forest, alone, at night, to face a vampire. He knew.
Shutting off his truck, he climbed out. “I’ll take you out for a run later,” he told Angus. The mastiff made a disgusted snort and settled into the bed with a rumbling groan. Leaving him there, Theo went looking for Mandi.
While all of his other senses dulled the longer he waited between feedings, his blood-sense sharpened dramatically. He saw her blood-web long before she became visible through the trees. She had a soft lavender color to her life-essence, one that he had always taken the greatest care to keep untainted by his silver. He knew she suspected the danger he posed to her every time he fed, but she had never mentioned it, for which he was deeply humbled.
She was seated on a boulder, looking out over the rushing blue waters of the Kenai River. She didn’t notice his presence until he put a hand on her slender shoulder.
She started and turned, then immediately broke into a shy, guilty smile. “I thought you were a bear,” she said softly.
“You should bring your brother along,” Theo growled. “I thought we discussed you parking out by the highway at night alone.”
Mandi grinned timidly up at him. “What could be worse than a vampire?” She was one of the ones that Theo had rescued from the den in Kenai, and she knew, first-hand, just how nasty vampires could get.
But Theo gently took her hand between both of his and said, “Lots of things, sweetie. Lots.”
She sighed. “My brother doesn’t like the whole idea of tagging along. He’s done a lot of research and he thinks you could, oh, I dunno, enthrall me or something.”
Theo flinched. Right then, he knew that this would be the last time he fed from Mandi. Either he put an end to it…or her brother would. Far too many times in the past, he’d had a liaison with a volunteer cut off violently and abruptly by misguided family members. With a sigh of regret, he glanced out at the Kenai River, the water blue to him even in the half-light of an Alaskan summer. That made Shelly the last, all the rest either having moved away or died of old age. Damn.
“It’s okay if you can,” she said softly. “I kinda guessed, the way you’re so careful.”
“Actually, most vampires can’t,” Theo told her, looking back.
But she caught the lie and smiled. “But you aren’t like most vampires, are you?”
Such innocence, such sweet surrender in her eyes was almost too much. Again, Theo considered trying to bring this one home, to make her a wife. Unfortunately, he knew what her brother would have to say about that all too well. He had woken many times to a stake in his chest, after making the foolish decision of taking a bride, regardless of the love-affair that preceded the marriage. Over the years, he had come to understand that friends and family simply could not understand why a woman would wed a vampire, no matter how many ways they tried to proclaim their love. Love, to one who could command permanent devotion with a simple constriction in his wrist, was denied him, because he could do it. Because outsiders always thought, the moment they saw the scars of his fangs, that he had enthralled those he had wed.
…which was never the case.
Theo swallowed. He knew he couldn’t drink from her that night, then. If he did, the bliss of her blood might become too much, and he might give in to the urge, to the fire in her eyes.
Theo shuddered and looked away. As a lord, he had no real need to feed. Not like the soldiers or the queen. A lord produced his own essence. It was the lord’s duty, evolutionarily, to feed the queen, and it often took several lords to sate a single queen’s appetite. But, while Theo produced easily enough to sustain him, life in this Realm was always more bountiful and wholesome with the simple gift of the blood of a native, given without fear or pain. It helped ease the burden of being outside his homeland.
“I need to go,” Theo said.
A confused frown spread across her delicate features. “Why?”
Theo couldn’t tell her why. Too many times before, he had told them why, and they had sought him out anyway, and made the parting all that more unbearable. People could not understand risk, when they were teetering on the brink of love. And, with Mandi, the risk had just become too great.
“I’m sorry,” Theo said. “Tell your brother that tonight is the last you’ll ever see of me.” He turned to go.
Behind him, he heard gravel crunch as she slid from the boulder to the pebbled bank. “Why?!” she demanded, anger in her voice, now.
Theo set his shoulders and kept going.
He heard the stone approaching only a moment before it hit him in the back of his skull, so dulled were his senses. Grunting, he ducked forward, holding his head. Then, turning slowly, he glared at the girl, who had picked up another stone.
“Why?” she demanded, hefting the second stone in warning.
That impudence, that utter fearlessness in the eyes of a monster, had been his exquisite unmaking too many times in the past. He remembered one such time, when a woman of similar tiny stature had also thrown a rock at the beast, and in her hands, the beast had transformed into something almost human.
Then she had died after two decades of bliss, set ablaze on a cross, soaked with tar.
Thus, it took everything he had to look Mandi in the eyes and say, “The truth is, you are no longer of any use to me. I’ve been patronizing you these last few meetings, hoping you would take the hint. Your blood has lost its flavor, and I find your blatherings about work and the frilly hens you live with to be mindless drivel. Go back to tending your father’s used bookstore. I’m no longer interested in wasting my time with you.” He turned to go.
The second rock never came. He could still hear her sobbing when he put the truck into reverse and hit the accelerator. Theo took the road home barely able to see, using his dulled other-senses to keep himself on the road. He hated this existence. Hated it so much.
And yet, the First Realm was better than his home-realm for one simple reason—it had no queen. It had no one who could force that which should only ever be earned.
He’d been sitting in his driveway for some time, staring at his front door, before he realized he was home. Yet, even after realizing it, Theodore sat there, listening to the engine rumble around him. He would have to move, he knew. And soon. Often, when the tenderest new love was crushed, it twisted to the opposite, to vile hatred, and with Mandi’s brother already sided against him…
Theo shut off the engine and slumped against the steering-wheel. “That was stupid,” he told his dash. He should’ve just told her why.
And yet, if he’d done that, and told her that he could no longer meet with her because they were growing too close, he would have had to move then, too, because she would have started hunting him, not taking no for an answer. He had seen that in her. It was part of what he had found so attractive about her, when her father had first come to him and asked for his help. She had been the kidnapped victim of an entire vampire nest, had watched him rip hale men limb-from-limb in rescuing her, and had been perfectly willing to tell him to shove his own foot up his ass afterwards, huddled in the backseat of his car, thinking he was going to eat her.
“Damn,” Theo said to the odometer. He’d killed two rogue vampires to protect his little town, and now he was going to have to leave it because of a woman spurned.
He just hadn’t been thinking properly. He needed to feed. His senses were closing slowly around him, and without a willing host here in the First Lands, his perceptions were always going to be muted, less alive. Like living behind a screen. “Damn,” he said again.
He thought again to the two vampires he’d killed. So many things had gone wrong since they’d first appeared, but he had dropped everything to deal with them, putting his very name at risk. He’d taken them both in the open, on a busy road, driving them home in the bed of his pickup truck. He’d even stayed his ground and gone through the questioning by the police when their car was found abandoned, unattended, with him being the last person they had talked to at that little gas-station on the corner. But he’d had to kill them.
They had reeked of evil. Seeing them, he had known, deep in his gut, that he had to deal with them. Yet it had caused him nothing but heartache since. He thumped his head against the steering-wheel again, listening to the diesel roar around him. Half of him wanted to call Shelly and beg the woman—now alone, in her forties, living off a government pension and the money she made selling artwork—to let him drop by her house for a quick visit. It was out of schedule and she probably hadn’t properly prepared for it, but he was finding it hard to concentrate. His mind wandered back to the two corpses in his basement, which he would have to get rid of quietly, yet another problem he’d piled onto his shoulders that he did not want or need.
They’d been looking to kill a consort…but whose consort? Theo had fled the Third Realm the moment his queen had been killed by a jötunn court three hundred years before, and he had been a thrall, not a consort. He had never sipped of his queen’s venom before she took him for her pleasure. At first, he had been furious with his parents, for allowing him to play with the child-queen, before she had learned to control herself. Then he realized that she had poisoned them, too. In an attempt to get at a lord.
And then, once she’d had him, she’d risen to the top in a reign of cruelty and violence that had lasted over four hundred years.
So why were they looking for a consort? As far as Theo knew, there wasn’t even a queen in the First Realm. They didn’t have the power to cross the veil—the magic of the Third Lands simply yanked them back.
Unless…
A sudden wash of goosebumps made Theo stop breathing. Unless.
No. Not possible. Odin would not allow it.
Yet Theo shut off the engine of his truck and climbed out of the cab. His heart was hammering by the time he’d made it back inside and down into the basement.
Yanking the door open, he wrinkled his nose at the smell of blood and excrement, but flipped on the light and went straight for the headless female.
Unhooking the corpse from the rack, he dropped it unceremoniously to the ground and removed one of the metal shackles. Then, carefully, he tore away the cold flesh of her forearm around the base of the still-protruding fangs, revealing more ivory than he had expected. The female, at least, was old.
Then, at the very base of the fang, tucked up against the tendon, he saw what he sought. A thin silver ring of bleached ivory, the kind that came when a female carried a queen to term. Beneath the silver band was a fraction of an inch of ivory. A couple decades had passed.
Seeing that, Theo froze. Decades. Time for a young girl to come of age and claim a consort.
Or thrall a lord.
Right then, Theo knew he needed to call Shelly. Then he needed to make a road-trip.