Dark Obsession: A Vampire Romance (Vampire Royals of New York Book 3)

by Sarah Piper

  Malcolm had been pushing for an alliance with Renault Duchanes from the start. He’d gone behind Dorian’s back to convene a council of imbeciles, the act alone further weakening Dorian’s position. He’d been witnessed feeding on humans with a vampire who’d left Charlotte for dead in an alley full of grays. And he’d just admitted to seeing Renault again, despite everything the other vampire had done to their family and to Charlotte since the night of the fundraiser.

  As far as Dorian was concerned, Malcolm was no longer his brother.

  Grabbing Malcolm’s elbow and dragging him out of the study and all the way to the front door, Dorian said, “I hereby revoke your royal title and standing, and forsake you as a member of the royal Redthorne family and as my brother.” He shoved him through the doorway and out into the cold night, hardening his heart for the final proclamation. “Darken my doorstep again, Malcolm, and I assure you—that urn will be more than ready to accommodate your remains.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  With one traitorous brother promptly escorted from the manor, Dorian stalked off in search of the other.

  He found him pacing the gutted dining room, clutching a bottle of bourbon, as drunk as he was furious—quite an admirable feat for a vampire.

  “Is it true?” Dorian demanded. “You and Evie?”

  Gabriel laughed, his cold eyes glittering with mockery. “Oh, yes, brother. I was fucking your fiancée right under your nose. That’s what you wanted to hear, was it not? Does it surprise you? You always knew I was the black sheep of the family. The wild one. Uncontrollable. Sounds like a traitor to me.” He took a swig from the bottle, then hurled it into the wall just behind Dorian’s shoulder. “Off with my head!”

  “For reasons I cannot fathom,” Dorian ground out, barely keeping his own anger in check, “you’re lying to me.” He knew it as surely as he knew the taste of his own bitter rage.

  “What’s done is done. Whether you believe me or not is irrelevant.”

  “Believe you? I’m not even sure what you’re saying, Gabriel. Malcolm’s innuendos clearly upset you. So if you didn’t have an affair with her, what secret are you harboring? What was so terrible a crime you felt the need to hide it from me across two continents and two hundred and fifty years?”

  “An affair. Right. If only my sins were so… pedestrian.” Gabriel scoffed and turned his back, kicking a loose stone from the rubble at the hearth. “Sorry to shatter your image of me as a shameless reprobate, but no, I wasn’t keeping your fiancée’s bed warm. I was merely keeping her secret.”

  “What secret?” Dorian pressed, but of course he already knew. There was only one secret his brother would’ve carried in silent shame for so many years. One secret that had the power to destroy what was left of their nearly broken bond.

  Still, he needed to hear Gabriel say it.

  Dorian waited. Moments passed. Days, it seemed, before his brother finally turned to face him again.

  And then it came, a whisper carried on a wave of sadness and remorse so vast it threatened to drown them both.

  “I knew, Dorian. I knew she was a vampire.”

  “The entire time?”

  Gabriel shook his head. “She confessed to me after I’d…”

  He paused again. Took a breath. Opened and closed his mouth a half-dozen times as the world continued to turn and time marched ceaselessly onward, and still Dorian was no closer to understanding his brother’s darkness. To understanding any of this.

  “For fuck’s sake, Gabriel. After you’d what?”

  “After I’d caught… It was late one evening. I was in the study, and I heard what sounded like an argument in the sitting room. But when I went to investigate, I…” He closed his eyes and grimaced, as if the memory still had the power to make him ill. “It wasn’t an argument. Evie and Father were… entangled. Quite thoroughly.”

  Dorian blinked, waiting for the punchline that never came. “Evie and… and Father?”

  “I waited in the shadows until he finally retired to his chamber, and then I cornered her, demanding an explanation. Naturally I assumed the worst. Levied all manner of accusations, called her every name in the bloody book, threatened her, all in defense of my eldest brother’s so-called honor.” Another broken laugh shook loose from the deep well of resentment inside him. “And for what, Dorian? To stand here among the ruins before my king—my blood—and convince him I’m not a monster? So many years, so much bloodshed, so many secrets, and this is what we’ve come to.” He pointed a cruel, accusatory finger at Dorian’s chest, swaying on his feet. “Fuck off, brother. We’re all monsters, carved in our father’s image, just as he intended.”

  Gabriel’s drunken speech quickly descended into a rampage about Augustus’ endless machinations, but Dorian could scarcely hear the words. His mind was stuck on the image of his fiancée and his father, thoroughly entangled.

  His heartbeat thudded in his ears, the room spinning as the blood rushed to his head. “Evie was… She had an affair with… with Father?”

  Gabriel’s gaze sharpened, cutting straight through Dorian’s heart. “Did you not know her at all?”

  “Not as well as he did, it would seem.”

  “He was blackmailing her, Dorian! For months. Somehow, he’d uncovered her secret and forced her into the arrangement. He berated and demeaned her for what she was, then he took what he wanted from her, including the information that ultimately lead him to the royal vampire family. He threatened to kill you both if she breathed so much as a word to you. So instead, she breathed it to me.”

  Memories slithered up from the depths, like corpses rising from the grave.

  Evie, recoiling at his father’s every touch or gesture as they shared a family meal.

  Evie, crying in the sitting room, not realizing Dorian had been watching her helplessly from the hall, desperately seeking the right words.

  Evie. Sad, complicated Evie, alone in a world of monsters she just couldn’t escape.

  Dorian held up his hands and tried to speak, if only to stop the rest of this dark tale from escaping his brother’s lips. But when he took a breath, his throat closed upon the words like a fist, and Gabriel continued, every revelation stealing a part of Dorian’s soul he knew he’d never get back.

  “I promised her I’d help her find a way to tell you—to break Father’s hold over her before he could solidify whatever dastardly deal he’d made with the king.” Gabriel’s voice turned thin and watery, as if he were swimming through an ocean of his own torment. “But I failed you both, Dorian. In the end, Father got everything he wanted. And here we are—the last of a dying legacy, one dark secret away from turning each other to ash.”

  Dorian collapsed against the bourbon-soaked wall behind him and slid down to the floor, unable to stand beneath the weight of Gabriel’s confession.

  Knowledge was its own kind of burden, ignorance its own kind of bliss, and in that moment, Dorian wanted nothing so badly as a return to the latter.

  That the cold shadows of the past clung to Gabriel like a second skin was no surprise to him. None of the Redthorne brothers had escaped Augustus’ reign unmarred.

  But he’d never fathomed the true depths of his brother’s anguish—a darkness that had chased him across the centuries and hardened his heart to ice.

  There were no words of comfort to offer. Even if they’d existed, Dorian’s mind wouldn’t allow them to form; it was singularly focused on the story his brother had woven, searching for the loose thread that might—if only he pulled hard enough—unravel it all.

  “You’ve made such an art of nurturing your guilt, Dorian, you’ve forgotten you weren’t the one to invent it.” Through bloodshot eyes, Gabriel glanced around at the hollow room—the stripped walls, the broken floorboards, the temporary plywood Aiden had nailed over the shattered windows and doors. “Do you think you have a monopoly on this pain? That the horrors of what happened in West Sussex are yours alone to bear?” Gabriel blurred into his space, hauling him uprigh
t and slamming him hard against the wall, his voice trembling with rage. “Do you think I don’t know what it feels like to look in the mirror and hate the man staring back at me?”

  Gabriel glared at him with such malevolence, Dorian wondered if his brother might actually kill him.

  It wasn’t their savagery that connected them, he suddenly realized, but their suffering. Or hell, maybe they were one in the same. Like a snake consuming its own tail, where did one end and the other begin? Did it matter? Ultimately, both would destroy them.

  Gabriel seemed to be waiting for something, but still, Dorian didn’t respond. He was empty. Broken. And he knew, right then, if he uttered anything more than a breath, the last of his tattered soul would evaporate.

  “I’m not the villain in this story, Dorian.” Gabriel finally released him. “My sin was keeping Evie’s secret. If I hadn’t…” He let out a deep sigh. “Perhaps we would’ve died as mortal men of England, entombed with our forebears as nature intended. Perhaps we wouldn’t be cursed to an eternity of choking on our own bitter lies.”

  Dorian looked up and met Gabriel’s gaze, watching as all the cold, calculating rage faded away. For a brief moment, he looked like a young boy again, wild and reckless, but still innocent. Still trusting that his big brother would look after him.

  Not since adolescence had he seen Gabriel so unguarded, and that—more than anything else—terrified him.

  “You asked if I’ve ever cared for anyone,” Gabriel said, his voice nearly breaking. “Evelyn Kendrick was my friend long before she was your betrothed. And our father brutalized her. Her own family executed her. The look of betrayal and fear in her eyes when her brother’s blade bit into her neck… I’ll never… I…” A tear slipped from Gabriel’s eye, but he brushed it away before it even touched his cheek. “Not a day goes by when my choices don’t haunt me, brother. But if given a second chance, I fear I’d only make the same ones.”

  At this, Dorian finally found the strength to speak. It was a single word, bearing the weight of everything that’d come between them. Everything that would keep them locked in this endless battle. “Why?”

  Gabriel offered a sad smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “Because it’s what she asked of me, Dorian.”

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Not even a roaring fire and a bottle of scotch could chase the chill from Dorian’s heart.

  He longed for Charlotte, but while he was battling with his brothers, she’d fallen asleep in his bed, her body undoubtedly worn out from the abrupt changes it’d undergone today.

  A vampire. He’d turned her, yet still, he could scarcely believe it.

  Now it was just he and Aiden alone in the quiet study, the scrapbook of Dorian’s Crimson City Devil horrors lying open in his lap, his guilt and melancholy sitting beside him like uninvited guests.

  A curse.

  A bloody fucking curse.

  “For how long will I pay for my father’s crimes, Aiden? Another century? Two? Or will I carry the burden of his sins like an iron albatross for my immortal eternity?”

  Dorian could scarcely carry the burden of his own sins, let alone those of the monster who’s shadow still haunted his every step. He should’ve let it go—let him go—yet in the quiet spaces between all the arguments, in the sadness that lingered in the long hours that followed, Dorian couldn’t help but feel his father’s looming presence.

  Aiden glanced at the book in Dorian’s lap, his eyes skimming the headlines that echoed across Dorian’s nightmares.

  city streets run red with blood; ‘crimson city devil’ eludes authorities

  “I heard what you told Charlotte the night she found the book,” Aiden said. “The whole story.”

  “You lived through the Crimson City hell with me, Aiden. It’s not as if you overheard any state secrets.”

  Aiden nodded solemnly, nursing his scotch as if it were his very last glass. The fire crackled before them, and outside, a bitter wind howled against the windowpanes—winter’s first harbinger.

  Dorian didn’t mind the silence. Aiden was one of the few people with whom he’d never felt the need to fill the void.

  But his best mate clearly had something on his mind, and Dorian hadn’t the heart to discourage him tonight.

  “Out with it, Aiden,” he said.

  “We never talked about what happened.” Aiden met his gaze, his eyes full of some new darkness. “After, I mean. With your brothers.”

  “No need. They abandoned me. Not that I can fault them—I certainly gave them good reason.”

  Aiden lowered his eyes and blew out a breath. “Your family is a tangled web of secrets, Dori. It always has been—long before the devils of House Kendrick turned us all into vampires.”

  Dorian nodded. His had been a noble family—six children, their parents wedded in a strategic alliance that had nothing to do with love, let alone mutual respect. Material wealth and status had never quite compensated for an absentee father and a doting mother who’d done her best with the cards life had dealt her.

  “You’ve always treated me like a brother,” Aiden continued. “Since that first day you caught me sleeping in your stables, pathetic little shite that I was.” Aiden smiled at the memory, as did Dorian. “Even when the princelings saw fit to ignore me, you never looked at me as lesser.”

  “Because you never were.”

  “No, but I was an outsider. In some ways, I still am. It’s granted me a unique perspective on your family—an observational distance, you might say.”

  “And what, pray tell, have you observed?”

  Again, the silence gathered between them. Dorian sipped his scotch and gazed into the fire, searching the flames for answers they simply couldn’t offer.

  Gabriel’s words taunted him.

  Fuck off, brother. We’re all monsters, carved in our father’s image, just as he intended…

  Aiden rose from his chair and poured himself another scotch, then handed the half-spent bottle to Dorian before settling back in. After a long, deep drink, he said, “When you were at your worst—when there was no talking to you—you’d vanish for days at a time. Weeks, even. All of us were mad with worry. It was the one time in our long, complicated history when your brothers and I managed to set aside our differences and unite under a common banner.”

  “What common banner? My brothers turned tail and ran, while you stayed behind and dragged me back from the pits of hell.”

  It was something Dorian would never forget; no matter how deeply he’d wanted to forgive his brothers, no matter how desperately he’d wanted to bring them back together as the royal vampire family, no matter how much he’d wanted to blame himself for their actions, the echo of that ancient betrayal was always whispering in his heart. Always reminding him he could never fully trust them—his own blood.

  Yes, Dorian had been at his worst in those days. And of all his so-called brothers, only Aiden had stayed.

  “Colin,” Aiden continued, as if Dorian hadn’t said anything, “followed a lead to Colorado, where he was able to use his medical credentials to get access to a lab. He spent months searching for a way to cure your bloodlust—a quest that eludes him even now, though not for lack of trying.”

  Dorian pictured Colin in a white lab coat, his hair tied back, his eyes glazed as he spent hours compiling data and looking at blood samples through a microscope, much like he was doing now. The thought tightened his chest, though he still couldn’t bring himself to truly forgive him for leaving.

  Dorian shifted uncomfortably in his chair. “Aiden, that’s hardly a—”

  “Malcolm walked away from his life in New York in a vain effort to ask your father for assistance. He followed Augustus halfway round the world, imploring him to return to Ravenswood and help his eldest son. Augustus—who insisted the Crimson City Devil’s only mistake had been his lack of discretion—thought Malcolm should be ashamed of himself, begging for help like a worthless child. He beat your brother to within an inch of his life,
waited for the wounds to heal, and did it again. And again. And again, for two long, excruciating months. ‘A vampire is a violent creature,’ he’d told Malcolm. ‘He must make peace with his nature, or he will forever be dominated by it.’ Yet still, Malcolm didn’t give up trying to convince your father to return with him. Not until Augustus finally slipped away to Buenos Aires, and Malcolm lost his trail.”

  A pain lanced Dorian’s heart, and he grabbed the bottle of scotch and took a deep swallow, desperate to numb himself, to block out Aiden’s words, to convince himself it was all just another nightmare.

  But in the end, neither alcohol nor denial could erase the truth from Aiden’s eyes.

  Bloody hell, Mac. I wasn’t worth it.

  “Which brings us to Gabriel,” Aiden said.

  Dorian closed his eyes and shook his head. Gabriel’s part, at least, would offer no surprises. Since their reunion after their father’s death, he and Gabriel had gone from sworn enemies to a somewhat tolerable nuisance in one another’s lives, back to enemies once again. Under the threats of their common adversaries, they’d temporarily found some neutral ground, but Dorian wasn’t fool enough to believe his little brother held any respect for him.

  Especially not after what had transpired in the dining room.

  Do you think I don’t know what it feels like to look in the mirror and hate the man staring back at me?

  “You don’t have to say it,” Dorian said, opening his eyes. “I know how Gabriel feels about me. I’ve brought him nothing but disappointment and agony, and every moment we spend in each other’s presence only drives him further away. I’ll be shocked if he’s not gone by sunrise.”

  A heavy sigh escaped Aiden’s lips.

  “I love you, Dori,” he said in a rare moment of complete seriousness. “You’ve been my brother and best mate for nearly the entirety of my life. There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for you. No stake I wouldn’t step in front of, no fight I wouldn’t wade into, no half-baked scheme I wouldn’t volunteer for if it offered even a chance at easing your burden. But—”