The Blood That Bonds (24 page)

Lisette shook her head. “I know your
judgment already.”

“
That may be. You will come
with me regardless. Your fledglings may leave. The one you stole
from Abraham will have his own judgment to face. The other will be
… watched with great interest.”

Theroen took a step forward, meeting the
eyes of the vampire in the doorway. “We go nowhere without
Lisette.”

“
Theroen …” Lisette’s voice
was a whisper, the sadness behind it immeasurable.

“
Mind your tongue, priest,
lest you find it removed from your mouth.”

“
You have no
right—”

“
Fledgling, do you know the
concept of seniority? I have lived for more than a thousand years.
I have every right, if for no other reason than it will bring me
pleasure to see this one punished for her crimes.”

At this Lisette stirred,
anger flashing in her eyes. “Crimes? Against whom? I swore no
allegiance to your covenant, Isaac, nor that of any other. I am
bound by no rules but my own. Your seniority matters not to me, nor
does Abraham’s, nor does Edward’s. Eresh herself might give me
orders and I would disobey as I see fit. I will not live by rules
penned by the dead.
I will
not!
”

Isaac seemed unruffled by this. His
expression was amused, detached, a man only passingly interested in
what he was hearing.

“
You’ve made that obvious,
Lisette. I would not be here otherwise.”

“
No. And you … you live by
rules written by dead vampires who could not have foreseen these
times. The old ones are all dead, Isaac, or so disinterested in our
affairs that they might as well be. Why do you cling still to their
words? Why hold yourself to their useless laws?”

“
Sin challas est mura. Si mura vallas
etruars
.”
Isaac seemed to be reciting, as
if the sentences had been drilled into him.

“
I have read the scrolls,
Isaac.
Without law there is chaos. With
chaos comes destruction.
It is due to
weaklings like yourself that those words hold true.”

For the first time, her words seemed to have
an effect on Isaac. He turned to Lisette, gaze smoldering, a sneer
on his lips.

“
Weaklings …”

“
Mark this, Isaac. You will
be undone. You will know fear, and you will remember, in those
moments before the eternal sleep, what I have said to you. You will
know your weakness, and you will die in shame. That is your
curse.”

“
I have been cursed by
many, Lisette, in my years. Someday, perhaps, I will die. When I go
down that black hallway, I will take pleasure in knowing that you
went first.”

Isaac moved forward swiftly, grinning, eyes
aflame. Naomi shrieked something incoherent, and Theroen leapt out
in front of the charging vampire, grappled with him, and was
appalled at the strength in those arms. It was like wrestling iron.
Lisette screamed his name, the word a desperate plea. Isaac made
some noise that was halfway between a laugh and a snarl, grabbed
for Theroen’s hair, and by it threw him across the room. The back
of Theroen’s head collided with the marble slabs of the fireplace
with a flat, harsh cracking noise, and he felt himself moving as
though slipping slowly down an incline.

He heard more screams now, Lisette’s, over
and over, calling his name. Had Naomi’s voice joined in with hers?
Theroen couldn’t tell. It seemed difficult to think. Difficult to
breathe. There was the clink of chains, but it was all so dim, so
quiet, so distant. Could he hear other footsteps? He thought
perhaps the room was flooding with vampires, disciples who had been
waiting only for a command from Isaac.

Theroen wanted to move, wanted to help his
beloved, but he could not seem to gain control of his limbs, and
everything had grown so dark. He slipped into this world of
darkness, where nothing seemed to matter, and everything felt
safe.

* * *

The blow would have shattered a mortal man’s
skull and sprayed its interior contents out across the marble.
Theroen, no longer a mortal man, was left with nothing more than an
hour of unconsciousness and a splitting headache upon awakening. An
hour, though, was too much time. Too much time by far.

Lisette was gone. Naomi was gone. The
apartment was dark, empty, abandoned; little more than shattered
furniture and scrape marks against the walls were left to tell the
story of what had happened. Theroen fled from it, stumbling through
the pain in his head out into the night, into darkness. There was
no sign of the other vampires, no clue to where they had gone.

Theroen shut his eyes,
trying to concentrate through the throbbing, trying to feel
Lisette’s presence, as she had taught him to do. There was nothing
for him, nothing but the echo of her words, over and over again, in
time with the waves of pain and nausea.
Darkness, my love. All I see for us is darkness.

Sick, frightened and helpless, Theroen felt
his legs buckle, felt the hard cobblestones cut his knees, felt hot
tears scald his face. He put his hands there, covering his eyes,
and knelt in penitence, praying for salvation to a God in whom he
no longer truly believed.

* * *

Theroen was silent, reflecting, lost in his
memories. He had recounted this final part of the tale in a voice
that was listless, almost dead. Two understood. With pain came
emotional detachment. It was a survival instinct, and one with
which her days with Darren had made her quite familiar.

She felt vaguely ill. She knew where all
this led. There was no redemption. There was only three hundred and
fifty years of darkness, followed by her arrival, which in turn had
become the catalyst for events that seemed likely to end with more
blood, more death, more despair.

“
Not your fault, Two. Mine.
Death and rebirth. With you I can be free, but as with anything
else, there is a price I must pay first.”

“
How does this story end,
Theroen?”

“
I do not know. It is still
ongoing. I can tell you how Lisette’s chapter ended, though not in
great detail. I know from Abraham’s network of contacts that
Lisette was burned alive, chained to a pillar with brush heaped
around her. Of Naomi, I know not. The stories are confused …
conflicting. Some said she died with her mistress. Some said she
was able to escape, to flee into the night. I desperately hope for
the latter, but I hold little faith in it. In either case, I could
never bring myself to track down the truth. It would have been
painful enough to learn for sure that she was dead, and I fear that
the judgment in her eyes, should she be alive, would be even more
unbearable.”

“
And what happened to you?
To Isaac?”

“
To me? You know the answer
there. Lisette was gone. Naomi was gone. Isaac was more powerful
than anything I had previously known, save Abraham.

“
And so it was Abraham that
I turned to.”

* * *

Theroen had not stood in front of the large
stone dwelling that housed his father in nearly half a century. He
could feel Abraham here and, as ever, that presence disgusted him.
The throbbing in his head was distant now; it had faded away to an
echo of pain over the course of the lengthy walk. His sire’s
mansion loomed before him, Golgotha, the place of death.

Summing up his courage, Theroen walked up
the path to the large double doors, rapped once, twice. There was
no answer, but he felt the invitation as if on the breeze. Come in,
come in. He opened the doors, stepped into the light that burned
not for Abraham, but for appearance. Abraham’s quarters would be
without light. There, down the hall where the torches lay dark.

Theroen stood outside the doors to Abraham’s
sanctuary, wondering what he might say to this creature whose evil
he had abandoned. Wondering what vengeance might be exacted for
this betrayal.

There was a low chuckle from somewhere
beyond the doors, and they swung open before him. All inside was
blackness, save the embers of a small fire just inside the doorway.
When the voice came, it was from the far end of the hall.

“
And so, the prodigal son
returns. Come in, Theroen.”

“
Abraham. Father.” Theroen
stepped into the darkness, and the doors shut behind him. The elder
vampire laughed again.

“
Oh, and now it’s ‘Father,’
is it? How very delicious. Now that the lover is on the slab, and
the dream is over, the fledgling returns to his sire.”

Theroen felt his heart shudder at this. He
shut his eyes for a moment, spoke into the darkness. “She is …
dead, then?”

“
Surely she must be, no?
Isaac is many things, but a procrastinator he is not.”

“
How much do you know?
Could you not have stopped it?”

“
Theroen. You never gave me
time to
teach
you!
You never wanted to be my son, not after that moment of weakness in
the graveyard, after you were accosted by that idiot Leopold. The
scrolls speak of many things, and one of them is this: the affairs
of others are their own. Certainly, I could have interfered, but
these are not my affairs. Your reluctance to be my son has made it
so. What concern is any of this to me?”

“
And so you did
nothing.”

Abraham laughed. “My son, my son … why would
I do else? Do we share a bond of love, that I would come from on
high to rescue your beloved? No. You have spurned me from the
first. Now you come to me with accusations. I am not the guilty
party, Theroen. You have not earned the right for such
salvation.”

“
But it was in your power
to grant, as it is within your power to give me
revenge.”

“
Many things are within my
power. Light a candle, Theroen.”

Theroen had no matches, and so used a branch
from the fire. The light did little for the room, but he could see
Abraham’s face now, the heavy eyebrows overshadowing eyes which
gleamed with malefic humor. Abraham looked like a wolf as it gazes
upon a herd of sheep. Theroen found he preferred the darkness.
Abraham seemed to sense this, and the gleam of his eyes was joined
by firelight reflecting from his grin.

“
You will never be like me,
Theroen.”

“
No, father.”

“
And yet, some part of me
is pleased with your return. A deal, Theroen?”

“
Go on.”

“
Be my fledgling. Be my
servant. Be what you were supposed to be when I made you. Remain
here with me, or wherever I may choose to go, until such time as
you are of age. Perhaps in a handful of centuries, you will be
ready. Some fledglings never leave their masters. My blood runs in
you, though, and you are powerful … or will be.

“
Now, though? Now you are
weak, and in need of a master not so easily dispatched.”

“
What do I receive for this
service?”

“
Ah. Yes. The deal. My end
of our little … bargain. Remain with me here, Theroen, prove your
loyalty, and perhaps I will look more kindly upon you. Perhaps I
will see your plight with Isaac in more sympathetic
light.”

“
Perhaps? It seems an
unbalanced arrangement, father.”

“
I do not think, my son,
that you are in a position to make any demands at this time. I will
assuage your doubts, however. I am many things, and most of those
are evil. Wicked. Hateful. I hold no love for any vampire. I hold
no respect for the scrolls, short of how I may use them to my
advantage. Isaac and I are bound to come into conflict. I know of
his foolish politics. He would oust all competition and gain
control of London. I could leave, or simply ignore him, but I could
be persuaded to take a more … active interest.

“
Serve me now, Theroen, and
when that time comes I will give you not only Isaac’s head, but
those of his entire line.”

Theroen was young, still gripped by mortal
concepts like revenge. Still able to hate. He felt this hatred now,
burning hot like something molten inside of him.

“
Ah, son, such emotion!
Isaac has left you alive. Would you not give him the same
courtesy?”

“
There is nothing else left
for me, without her, but my hate. Isaac took from me everything I
had. I would not.”

“
Then we have a
deal?”

“
We do, father.”

There was a moment of quiet as the two
vampires surveyed each other. At last, Abraham turned back to
whatever lay on the desk, beyond the reach of the light.

“
Put out the candle. There
is a room for you in the west wing. I shall call upon you
tomorrow.”

Theroen, as he would for centuries
thereafter, did what he was told.

* * *

“
And that is all there is,
or nearly so. I could tell you lies. I could tell you that I worked
for goodness, even in Abraham’s service, but that is hardly true.
I’ve done many things that humans would consider evil for Abraham,
and I regret very few of them, beyond bringing Melissa and Tori to
him. I held my own goodness close. I would not tarnish Lisette’s
memory by returning to my former ways.

“
I was hated, greatly, by
some for my continued existence after my transgressions with
Lisette. Abraham’s power protected me where hers could not, and in
time, my own was more than adequate for the task. Of those vampires
left that might be capable of bringing about my destruction, none
care enough anymore to bother. The old hate is gone.”