Midnight Reign (15 page)

G
ONE
, Benedikte thought, huddling against the wall of an upstairs bedroom.
It is…gone.

Night peered through the abandoned house’s filmy window, moonless and anesthetic. A rat’s footsteps scratched over the dusty wooden floor, reminding the vampire of how he had escaped, too.

Alone now. He was alone and, somewhere below the foundation of this old building, his Underground was in ruins.

Something like a scream welled up in Benedikte’s chest, but it couldn’t push its way out. The vampire couldn’t even move, couldn’t even function, because almost everything he had loved was gone now, scattered to ashes.

Images played before his burning eyes, as if his memories were being filtered from a projector onto a screen. As if he were reliving one of the grainy black-and-white silent movies he studied and adored. Scenes of exuberant decadence, revealing how Benedikte had come to enjoy the world anew with Sorin, how he had taken resurrected pleasure from sharing a vampire’s wondrous abilities with another. Sequences, centuries’ worth, showing the fortunes they had charmed out of unsuspecting victims, blood kisses they had enchanted out of ladies in ball gowns and peasant clothing alike, crazed orgies of feeding and satiation.

Then…ah. Then came London.

More flickering pictures: tunnels and spaces they had discovered belowground, shafts that had been deserted by humans during construction for the Tube. The vampires had improved this rough matter into a palatial home, intent on obeying the recent command Benedikte had received from his own maker.

Create a community,
the ultimate master had beseeched from afar.
Create and breed so I might rule a future kingdom.

Even though Benedikte had never been raised or trained to do anything but follow commands, he had taken up responsibility and leadership. He had given birth to children, sisters and brothers to Sorin, who still had not loaned his bite to any living creature himself. Unable to forget how his human family had abandoned him, the younger vampire feared being left behind by anyone but his constant companion. For him, the pain of desertion wouldn’t go away.

Benedikte, or the Master as he’d been called in his Underground, trembled. At this point, his analysis of the attack had gone beyond shock and was becoming physical, taking him over. His vampire gaze rested on the opposite wall, where a crucifix loomed, as if to chase away the evil from this house, which was said to be haunted.

At least, that’s what popular gossip maintained. And Benedikte had often used these sorts of rumors, newspapers, and patterns of human speech and interaction to educate himself about fashions and trends whenever he came Above. But his newly kindled interest hadn’t only become a personal pleasure—it had been vital to his home’s survival.

As if challenging the crucifix to punish him, Benedikte stared at it.

Nothing. Nothing at all anymore.

No guilt at what he’d become. No cries for redemption from deep within his soul. It used to be that spiritual mementos affected him profoundly, but that had been long ago, before he realized faith was only an invisible cloak that warded off the fears of reality. Or maybe he had just seen too much in his debauched life to care anymore.

But, oddly, he did care. Too much. Terribly.

Out of desperation, he folded his hands in front of his chest, raising his head to the crucifix.

Help me. Help me to get my paradise back?

But the object merely rested in silver silence, clouding in his vision.

In a fit of profane dejection, Benedikte pushed out with his mind, swiping the item from the wall. It clattered against the floor, the persecuted figure on the cross staring at the ceiling with resigned serenity.

Benedikte contained himself, holding back an unexpected yell that could have shaken the ground. Where to turn now? Where to go after losing…?

Clumsily, he reached inside his coat pocket, searching for the one item he always kept near—the only vial he’d managed to save while all the rest had perished in the attack.

He grasped the slim tube, fumbling to get it open, to hold it to his lips and drink.

Immediately, the rush of Sorin’s captive soul lit through Benedikte, coloring every vein, animating him. He felt the glorious wonder of appreciating a sunset on the wealthy estate where Sorin had grown up, felt the admiration from a small audience who had been wildly entertained by the talent of snatching fire from air….

Benedikte crashed to the floor, rolling to his back in shuddering ecstasy. Eyes open, he witnessed the play of rainbows as joy literally emanated from his body, flashing over the walls, reflecting off the windowpanes.

Then, when the soul allowed him to feel the sublime grief of the day Sorin had been tossed out of his home, Benedikte moaned, cried, became human again for one heavenly moment—

Furiously, the soul ripped out of him, crazed and wailing, as frightened as always. It flew back into the vial, which the vampire had enchanted with a spell that told the soul this was home, this was safety.

It clamored inside and, even while racked with agony, the Master plugged the vile, knowing he would be truly empty if he lost this one last possession, as well.

Feeling as if each corner of the room was pulling and quartering him into pieces, Benedikte shivered on the floor, clinging to the aftermath, destroyed by it.

Minutes, maybe hours later, the door groaned open. Still panting, Benedikte glanced in its direction. There, even in the darkness, he discerned the beating outline of his only surviving son.

Sorin, his tattered clothing smoked with acrid memories of the battle, walked inside, closing the door behind him. “Here you are. I should have known you would be in your beloved sanctuary.”

The Master rested in this place often. Normally it was after a picture show, with the grand piping of organ music still chorusing through his limbs, or after a night of visiting clubs, with their Harry Houdini imitators or flappers dancing to the jazz music.

When Benedikte didn’t answer, Sorin tried again. “Your Awareness was closed off to me—”

“We had no protection.” Benedikte pressed his hands against his face. “I’m not a leader—I never have been—and we were caught off guard because of it. If we’d only had some sort of defense….”

Bonelessly, he allowed his hands to fall to the floor. He stared at the ceiling, much like the crucifix figure on the other side of the room, although there was an abyss of difference between them.

Sorin slumped back against a wall, coming to sit. He’d battled valiantly, utilizing the magic he’d been born with—magic that had been honed through vampire talents, magic that he’d refined from country to country, border to border.

But all the other young, jazz-baby children hadn’t been able to fight, thanks to Andre, the vampire Benedikte had once believed to be a brother in blood.

Benedikte rued the moment he and Sorin had been lured outside by Andre’s cryptic presence. There had been a frisson splitting the air, a faint thrum Benedikte had not felt since leaving the old country.

Unsuspectingly, they’d gone to investigate.

Andre had been waiting, arm draped over a bench he’d been sitting on in Hyde Park. The emerging moon had made him more shadow than substance but, all the same, Benedikte had noticed that his brother’s beard had been shaved off, his hair clipped to accommodate today’s fashions, just as he and Sorin had done, as well.

He hadn’t seen Andre for centuries, not since the brothers had discovered that each of them possessed diverse talents and had gone their own ways to revel in the discovery of how far they could take them. The others could perform feats such as commanding animals to obey or even affecting weather; Benedikte could do neither, although he was coming to believe that his immunity to religious objects might be a latent strength.

The only other time Benedikte had even been close to Andre was during their father’s mental gathering of the blood brothers—when the great one had commanded all of them to begin separate communities and then had gone underground himself, gathering power until it was time to rise again. At that point, communication between the brothers had somehow stopped, cut off by the pursuit of their own quests, Benedikte had thought.

But now, he knew he’d been wrong about that.

Coolly, Andre sat back on the bench while a sense of disquiet gnawed on the back of Benedikte’s neck. It was sharp enough to keep him from greeting his own blood kin.

“You never heard the rumors, my friend?” Andre asked.

When Bendikte didn’t respond, the other vampire was more than happy to supply his own answers. “Takeovers among the brothers. Civil warring. Greed. You should’ve done better at keeping your perception open, Benedikte.”

Before his brother could even fully explain, Benedikte suspected what might be happening Below.

“All I want is what you already have,” Andre added, direct and businesslike. “And I’m in the process of getting it right now.”

With a blast of preternatural speed, Benedikte and Sorin had whisked back to their Underground, where they discovered Andre’s vampires holding the children captive.

The youngsters had cocked their heads at Benedikte, their faces reflecting heartrending bewilderment: how can one of our own do this?

All they’d wanted was an oasis. And, for good money, Benedikte had provided these heiresses and playboys a hedonistic refuge where they could indulge, where they could dance until dawn and the party would never end. Up until this night, the worst threat had been a fear of humans and their destructive tendencies when it came to matters they didn’t comprehend—matters such as vampires. But secrecy had kept that particular threat away.

Who would have ever predicted that a brother vampire would be far worse?

By now, Andre had solidified behind Benedikte and Sorin, blocking the Underground’s veiled exit.

“Surrender,” the other said.

“Are you daring to go against our father’s mandate?”

Andre had laughed. “I am daring. And do you know why, Benedikte? Because I want to. It’ll be close to two hundred years before Father rises again and, by that time,
I
will be the one who welcomes him.
I
will be his right hand.”

The vampire had been no such thing in the past. He had been a lower-ranked soldier for their master. Ambitious? Yes. But powerful? Not in his wildest dreams.

Benedikte had refused to surrender, and that’s when Andre had declared war. But even before Benedikte could free any children, or before Sorin could use an ambush of violent magic to rip the hearts out of Andre’s vampires, or even before Benedikte could behead his bastard brother and his brood, a clearly immune Andre laid fire to a curtain, most likely planning to extinguish the flame once he’d driven out Benedikte from his own home.

Now, here in this abandoned house where he’d shut himself off from reality, phantom cries of his still-bound children, burning in the inferno, tortured him.

Fire. Why did it have to be one of his progeny’s only true killers, fire? He hadn’t even salvaged their soul vials from the flames….

Coward, he thought, remembering how he and Sorin had fled before the humans could arrive to put out the flames creeping from the Underground’s hidden entrance near the park.

They had separated in the gathering crowd, and Benedikte the Master—the master of nothing now—had crept back to his favorite haunt to wonder what had just happened.

Lying prone on the hard, wooden floor, the seeds of destruction still weighed heavily inside of him—an instinct for isolation, the urge to make the world a mirror of what he’d suffered tonight.

“Master?” Sorin whispered.

Benedikte realized that his body had gone vaporous, reflecting what he felt: empty. A useless nothing who had no choice but to live out endless years unless he was destroyed first.

Out of pure mortification at being so revealed, Benedikte sucked into solid form. Through the years, he’d practiced his talent for changing into other shapes, but he had lost control this time.

Not that it mattered.

“Master,” Sorin repeated, his tone careful, as if he were prodding a sleeping snake. “I am just as bereft as you, but we cannot stay here, not with all the human activity the fire has conjured tonight. We must go….”

He trailed off.

“Where, Sorin?” The Master’s voice was flat. “Where shall we go now?”

“Another home belowground.” His son slid to his feet, vampire graceful. “We can find one. We will begin anew, perhaps in Edinburgh—”

The Master stayed silent.

“Or…” Sorin began, logical until the end, never giving up. “Or America, Master. You adored San Diego and Los Angeles.”

“Never again.”

Sorin stilled himself, Awareness vibrating, soaking into Benedikte. The older vampire batted his son’s optimism away, seeing no use for it.

“I’m done.” The Master closed his eyes, willing darkness into every inch of him.

“Master, I know we are at a low ebb, but there is so much more to discover in this world. Night by night, there are new inventions, new
movies
for you to see. Think of more films with little Mary Pickford.”

Not even the lure of his favorite, an actress who smiled as Tereza had, could interest Benedikte.

He shut down, a broken film flapping in a projector.

Too weak to speak, the Master used his Awareness.
I will never subject myself to this failure again, good soldier or not.

Numb, he blocked out Sorin’s inevitable answer.

He just wished he had enough hate to keep himself going.

With one last attempt, he tried very hard to conjure it, to summon some emotion that would spark the will to continue. And, miraculously, his form turned from this sad lump of cynicism to something he’d never experienced before: an awful monster he should be—the picture of horror. Yes, yes…

The materialization of the hatred he wanted to feel.

He reached his zenith, rising in the air and growing, seething, baring his fangs to the emptiness that this world had become.