Magic & Memory (25 page)

          “What about all your progeny? They’d stick around even without being paid.”

          “All what progeny? I stopped siring vampires decades ago, and the ones I sired prior to that have almost all been killed by now.”
Mostly by me
, Augustine thought with a frown.

          Joey raised his brows at that. “You stopped siring? Why?”

          Augustine turned his head and stared out at the view of San Francisco as he said, “I have my reasons.”

          Joey watched Augustine for a long moment, then said, “And the IRS thing happened the same day Alastair was taken? Some coincidence.”

          “It’s no coincidence. Someone’s obviously trying to rattle me.”

          Joey licked his wrist quickly, then carried Ted over to a huge white bed and stuck him under the covers. “I’ve done all I can for him,” he told Lu. “I think if we let him rest he’ll be ok.” A bit of color had crept into Ted’s ashen complexion, and his breathing was deep and regular. Even the bruises and swelling were already receding.

“Thank you Joey,” she said, hugging him.

          When she released him he shrugged and said, “No big deal.”

          “It is to me.”

“Go check in the kitchen for something to eat, Lu,” he said. “You need to get your strength back too.”

Lu crossed the studio apartment and pulled open the refrigerator. Obviously no one had opened it in weeks, judging by the disgusting rotting food smell that assaulted her. She slammed it quickly and turned to the cupboards. The first thing she found was a box of crackers, and she tore into them. She wondered why a vampire would have a stocked kitchen, but was too hungry to give it much thought.

Meanwhile Joey turned to Augustine. “What aren’t you telling me about Alastair’s abduction?”

          “I’m not keeping anything from you, I just haven’t told you all the details yet. He was taken from my hotel in Santa Cruz around eleven a.m. the morning after you were locked up here. And whoever took him used Jin, the young warlock formerly in my employ, and his two brothers to snatch him. I opened the door for the warlocks, and next thing I knew I was waking up with the magic equivalent of a concussion.”

          “If you were unconscious, maybe Alastair left on his own, maybe they didn’t take him,” Joey speculated.

          “I’m sure they took him. They left a printed note that said ‘I’m going to love watching you suffer.’ What better way to accomplish that than by taking Alastair from me?”

          “And you really don’t think Jin orchestrated this himself? You think he’s working for somebody?”

          “There’s no way a dumb human kid would bother with something like this. If he was angry with me, all Jin would have to do was cast a spell to set me on fire or something. He’s obviously being used like a puppet by someone, the same way I used him.”

          “He’s still human?” Joey asked. “I’m surprised you haven’t turned him into a vampire. Isn’t that what you always do with the specimens you collect?”

          “That
is
normally what I do. Only once, about three hundred years ago, did I resist.” Augustine said the last part almost wistfully, staring back out at the sunlight sparkling off the bay. After a pause he added, “I fully intended to make an exception to my no progeny rule and turn Jin, but not yet. He’s only fifteen, his powers are still developing. If I turned him now, he’d remain locked where he is, he wouldn’t reach his full potential as a warlock. I was going to wait until he was older and then turn him.”

          Joey stared at Augustine for a long moment. Then he asked, “Why’d you try to knock over Bryn’s house?”

          “I wasn’t trying to knock over the house. I was just trying to distract Bryn before he actually succeeded in breaking the spell.” Then he added softly, “Or died trying.”

          “The shaking went on long after Bryn stopped working in Alastair’s mind.”

          Augustine sighed. “That wasn’t my idea. Jin is willful, headstrong. It angered him that he couldn’t break through Bryn’s wards, so he insisted on continuing long after it was necessary. And it’s not like anyone can stop Jin once he decides to do something. He only quit when he’d totally depleted his energy, and that was right about when you fled the house.”

“Ok. So tell me how you bespelled Alastair in the first place,” Joey said. “And what were you hoping to accomplish?”

          Augustine paused and looked down at his hands for a long moment. His voice was quiet when he said, “When I found Jin a few months ago, right here in a little apartment in Chinatown, and realized all that child could accomplish with his magic, I started thinking. I was forever chasing Alastair. Why not cast a spell to make him come to me? But then, he despises me. There wasn’t much point in bringing him to me if he was just going to fight me like he always did.”

          “But wiping his memories, making him forget how much he hates you, that would give you a fresh start with him,” Joey said.

          “Exactly.”

          “So,” Joey said, “You find an insanely powerful warlock, and all you can think to do with him is manipulate Alastair. Really?”

          Augustine sighed and said, “Pathetic, I know.”

          Joey frowned as he said, “Go on.”

Augustine pushed his hair back from his face with both interlocked hands, then said, “Well, like you said, I wanted a fresh start with him. But blocking his memories was far from simple. I didn’t just want to obliterate his mind, I didn’t want to destroy the essence of what makes him Alastair. He means far too much to me to simply wipe away his entire personality.”

          “No? I thought you’d enjoy having him as a mindless slave.” Joey’s voice had a hard edge to it.

          “Of course not. What makes him special isn’t just
what
he is, it’s
who
he is -- his character, his inner strength, his personality. Destroying that would be a tragedy, like defacing a priceless painting.” Augustine shook his head.

          “Why didn’t you just make him think he was in love with you? That has to be simpler than erasing his memories.”

          “Why would I want that? It wouldn’t be real,” Augustine said. “It’s the same reason I stopped siring vampires. They think they love you, but all they’re feeling is the maker bond. It’s empty, meaningless.”

          “Ok, so you decided to wipe his memories,” Joey prompted.

Augustine nodded. “And magic like that needs to be accomplished up close. So the first part of the spell brought Alastair to me, and then we rendered him unconscious and went to work.”

          “I looked everywhere. Where did you take him?”

          “We called him to our room at that big hotel in the girl’s town. The Ashland Springs, I believe it was called.”

          “But I looked there!”

          “I know. You were right outside our door at one point. Very thorough, by the way, searching every floor of every hotel in Ashland. But of course I’d had Jin wipe away any trace of Alastair’s scent, ensuring you’d never find him.”

          “Why didn’t you kill me if I was so close?”

          “Why bother? You’re no threat to me.” Augustine’s voice was quiet, level. “Besides, if the spell failed and Alastair learned I’d killed you, he’d never forgive me.”

          Joey watched Augustine for a long moment. The ancient vampire seemed uncharacteristically subdued, almost melancholy. After a while Joey asked, “Why did all of this take place in Ashland? We were just passing through there.”

          “Actually, I’d tracked you down in Seattle, but got there just as you two were taking off for San Francisco,” Augustine said. “My men and I followed you, and snatched Alastair when you got snowed in. That little town was as good a place as any to work the spell, I thought.”

          Joey kept his expression composed, though the muscles in his jaw were working as he ground his teeth. “How did he wind up at the creek?”

          “After we erased Alastair’s memories, we woke him up. And he was -- well, rather combative. He immediately went into attack mode the moment he regained consciousness, even without knowing who I was. It was his basic survival instinct taking over.

          “I decided to give him a few days before I tried approaching him,” Augustine continued. “The spell had been more disruptive than I’d intended, and he needed time to recover. And I knew I couldn’t be anywhere near him when he woke up. So we stuck him out by the creek -- a nice secluded spot, but not totally without food sources. I figured he’d wake up and gorge himself on the few humans that came by there, and that would help him rebuild his strength after all that blood loss. It would also give him some time to get his bearings. And of course I had werewolves watching him constantly to make sure nothing happened to him.”

          “You drained his blood?”

          “Absolutely. You know it’s no ordinary blood, and we were working an incredibly difficult spell. We needed all the help we could get, even with Jin’s innate ability.”

          Joey’s voice was dangerously calm when he asked, “Did you burn him on purpose when you put him out by the creek?”

          “Well, yes. I couldn’t think of another way to make him regain consciousness while keeping my distance from him. But my werewolves tucked most of him under some trees where the sun couldn’t reach him. Only a little of him was in the sun, just his hand, and there was water nearby so he could extinguish the fire quickly, before it did any real damage. I made sure he was safe.” Augustine looked guilty.

 “Safe.” Joey’s voice was dangerously low as he shook his head, his fists clenched so tightly his knuckles turned white. “How did you know he’d seek shelter after he put the fire out? How did you know he wouldn’t burn to death in the sun because he didn’t know what to do?”

“I wouldn’t have let that happen.”

Joey pressed his eyes shut. “Even just burning his hand hurt him so much. You must have stripped away all his defenses when you were messing around in his mind. You left him incredibly vulnerable.”

Augustine’s voice was surprisingly soft when he said, “I know we made mistakes. That memory block would have been hard enough to accomplish on a regular vampire. But Alastair’s mind, the part he got from his father, is like a labyrinth. It’s almost beyond comprehension. We had to make a lot of guesses when we were working the spell, and obviously not everything went according to plan.”

“You could have destroyed him!” Joey yelled.

“I know.” Regret was heavy in Augustine’s voice.

Joey wanted to leap at Augustine and tear him apart. But instead, he crossed the apartment to Lu, hoping she’d calm him, and she rubbed his arm soothingly. She knew Joey was on edge, struggling to keep from attacking Augustine, and held his gaze for a long moment. He rested his forehead against hers as he let some of the tension drain from his body.

After a while Joey turned back toward Augustine and asked, “What happened after he was burned?”

 “Shortly afterward, he climbed into the girl’s car. I hadn’t been expecting that. But then I thought, why not? I’d already been planning to give him a couple days to heal and rest. I decided being taken to someone’s house was even better than seeking shelter at the creek. He could drink the girl and her family dry in the privacy of their home, with even less chance of being discovered by some rogue vamp or by the local authorities.”

“And then what?”

“I was going to make contact when he’d recovered a bit,” Augustine said. “Once he was well-fed and rested I planned to approach him, tell him I was an old friend, and we’d start with a clean slate.”

“But I got there first.”

 “That surprised me. I thought I’d severed your bond when we were working the spell, and Jin still had Alastair’s scent obscured. I didn’t think you had any way of finding him. Obviously I was wrong.”

“Why did you send the werewolves after us at Lu’s house?”

“The night I went to get Alastair I saw you through the windows, talking to him,” Augustine said. “I knew you were telling him far too much, and I had to shut you up quickly. I couldn’t run in myself and kill you in front of him, not when I was going to try to make Alastair think I was one of the good guys. So I stayed hidden and called in the pack. A couple were already there, and it only took a few minutes for some reinforcements to join them.”

“They’d been watching the house?”

“Yes. They’d followed Alastair from the creek and had been keeping an eye on him.”

“Why’d they let me get to the house without attacking me?”

“Well, as I said, I didn’t think you had any way of finding Alastair. So I hadn’t given them instructions to be on the lookout for you.”

“And when you sent them in, the pack was supposed to kill me.”

 “That was the plan. Once you and the girl were both dead I was going to swoop in and pretend to save Alastair from the big bad wolves, and be a hero in his eyes. But somehow you got away.”

“Sorry to disrupt your totally insane, convoluted plans.” Joey’s voice registered his disgust.

Augustine sighed. “They didn’t start out convoluted. But then it all started getting away from me, and I kept having to improvise.”