It all came back to me in a deluge of body blows, and all I could do was sit there and take it like a man.
As the mental beating continued, it took every fiber of my being not to explode in a murderous rage, because the ramifications of my returning memories were forming a bleak, terrifying picture.
I stared down at the necklace, quivering. This man wasn’t just familiar. I knew exactly who he was. This was Deganawida—only decades older. Many decades older.
And he’d finally chosen to wake me from my slumber, to fulfill his promise to me. To give his life to do so.
Except…judging by his apparent age, he was decades overdue.
I was too late to avenge my family.
5
I recoiled in disgust, dropping the necklace like it was a burning coal as I spat and gagged, wanting nothing more than to vomit his blood out of my body, no matter that it had been willingly given to bring me back to life. I must have been on the verge of death for his blood not to kill me outright. I remembered his last words to me. Something about bonding us together. Was this what he had meant?
“No!” I rasped, shaking my head in denial as I stared at the Shaman’s kind, hopeful, lifeless eyes. He…had died smiling.
“Do you remember?” Nosh asked in a gentle, meaningful tone, his voice limned with what sounded like hope.
I snapped my gaze his way, hissing instinctively—both at momentarily forgetting that he was present and with unbridled rage at Deganawida’s contradicting betrayal and sacrifice.
“What have you done?” I rasped, not wanting to accept the fact that Deganawida had obviously chosen his fate of his own volition, evidenced by the dying smile on his face. “How could you let Deganawida do such a thing? And why is he so old?” I snarled, my panic rising at an alarming rate. “It was only supposed to be days or weeks! Not decades!”
Nosh’s jaw dropped. “Degan…awida?” he whispered, making it sound like two different words. His face was as pale as a sheet. “The Deganawida?” he asked as if speaking of a legend given flesh.
I stared at him, my hands still shaking. As much as I suddenly wanted to rip the man’s spine from his body, he was the only survivor of the obvious battle that had taken place around me. And…the look of raw agony on his face was convincing—enough to grant him a few more precious moments of life, anyway.
That didn’t mean that I felt any sliver of patience. “You will tell me everything you know, boy. I might not dare to drink two Medicine Men in one day, but that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t take particularly cruel delight in skinning you alive and handing you over to the settlers on the coast.”
The man didn’t even look at me, too busy staring at the dead old man to even register my threat. “He told me his name was Richard Degan…” he whispered, sounding hurt and…deeply furious, for some reason. “I assumed he was named after Deganawida,” he breathed, shaking his head and licking his lips subconsciously. His eyes looked a little wild around the edges, as if he was watching his world collapse around him.
“Why do you act so surprised? He brought you here, to see me. How could you not know who he really was?” I demanded, growing suspicious. Deganawida would have never told anyone about me unless he trusted them implicitly.
The man blinked, finally turning to face me. “Deganawida died hundreds of years ago,” he murmured incredulously. “You haven’t been asleep for decades, Sorin. You’ve been asleep for centuries. Five hundred years.”
I attempted to mask my reaction, but I must have failed miserably, because I sensed a noticeable spike in his pulse as he watched me. Five hundred years. That couldn’t be right. That shouldn’t even be possible.
A wave of panic roared through me and I realized that I was panting. That meant…
The entire reason I had been put to sleep—the cause of my unceasing nightmares, reliving that night over and over again.
Had all been for nothing.
Nosh abruptly glanced at the smoke, which had suddenly stilled in an entirely abnormal manner. He cursed. “Shit! I almost forgot about the fucking ritual!” Without explanation, he turned to one of the far walls and flung up a hand as if warding something away. He snatched up a dreamcatcher I hadn’t noticed sitting in his lap, and then he began to hum and chant a powerful song as he wafted the dreamcatcher back and forth, fanning the smoke—like I had seen Deganawida do many times when calling upon the rain or any other number of rituals as the tribe’s Medicine Man.
The smoke didn’t eddy or move. At all. Even when the dreamcatcher physically touched it, and the hair on the back of my arms shot straight up as goosebumps pebbled my flesh.
A swarm of icy blue lights bloomed to life from the eerily still blanket of smoke, and I felt his magic suddenly swamp the air—just like Deganawida’s magic. He truly was a Medicine Man.
A…Shaman, I thought to myself with a sad frown, recalling how I had always teased Deganawida with the incorrect term. Yet Nosh had seemed to prefer it.
The blue lights flitted through the air like crazed butterflies, revealing a painted mural on the wall. I gasped as the paint began to glow in the hypnotic dance of the blue lights. And Nosh kept on chanting, rocking back and forth now.
I stared at the dozens of images covering the surface of the wall from floor to ceiling, and I felt my stomach drop. It told a story…one I was well familiar with.
The story of a white, skulking, cloaked figure—me—huddled over a corpse, feeding. Of another man drawn in bronze paint—Deganawida—seated beside him, smoking a pipe.
An image of me standing before a tribe—my skin again colored with white chalk rather than the bronze faces of everyone else.
And dozens of other images.
Two white-skinned men—a werewolf and a man holding a flame in his palm—standing beside me as I married a beautiful bronze woman, Bubbling Brook.
My son struggling to walk. The chaotic battle of that fateful night when everything had changed. Me lying with a stake in my heart and Deganawida praying over me.
Then a cavern, laying me to rest on a raised dais.
White invaders attacking villages of bronze families.
Bronze warriors attacking villages of white families.
Deganawida addressing hundreds of bronze-painted stick-figures. An image of a tree and five arrows bundled together.
And many more that I didn’t understand but…images that obviously depicted a changing world—some horrifying and some revered.
The chanting suddenly stopped, and I turned to see Nosh panting, covered in a sheen of sweat. He set the dreamcatcher down and slowly looked up at me. “If this works,” he growled, “shit’s about to get very weird. If you have any questions for him, this is your chance. I know I’ve got a few questions for the lying bastard, all of a sudden.”
The steady gaze in his red-rimmed eyes told me he was speaking the truth—that, and the calm but thunderous beating of his heart. He felt just as betrayed as me. But what the hell was he—
A sudden rattling noise made me stop short, and I looked up to see that the cavern was filled with dreamcatchers. I hadn’t noticed them before. They were vibrating and swinging wildly, and the blanket of smoke was suddenly cresting and falling like waves in a turbulent ocean. Deganawida’s blood was practically spraying more vapor up into the air. I gasped as I spotted his old pipe tucked into a pocket on his shirt. Because it was also emitting thick vapor of its own.
My eyes widened in disbelief.
“I think it’s working…” Nosh warned. “The crazy bastard wins again.”
Before I could demand an explanation, an apparition of Deganawida—the younger version I had known long ago—suddenly coalesced before me, formed from the incense and magical vapor cloying the air. I grunted incredulously as he stared down at me.
“It worked!” he crowed, clearly pleased to see me alive. Without missing a beat, his cheer evaporated as if I had only imagined it. “Sorin Ambrogio…” he whispered. “I owe you the greatest of apologies. Y
our punishment has been my life’s greatest regret.”
I nodded stiffly, pretending that this was all entirely normal. “Keep your apologies, Shaman, but I demand an explanation for your betrayal of my trust.”
He nodded sadly. “The spell I used on you did not work the way I had intended. It did indeed bond us, but I learned that the only way to bring you back was for me to die. And the tribe needed me to protect them. And then other tribes needed me. And then…” he waved a hand vaguely, “there always seemed to be one more reason for delay. Until I noticed that my magic had begun to fade. Maybe as a consequence of my betrayal to you, my powers evaporated.”
Nosh grunted. “I could sense the power in you, and I always wondered why I never saw you use it, even while you taught me…” he said, as if trying to make sense of Deganawida’s claim. Then his features hardened. “And you never told me you were the Deganawida.”
Deganawida nodded. “That was the cruelest aspect. I still felt all my power—like nothing had changed—but I couldn’t access it. And my identity was my own secret to keep, Nosh. Knowing would have changed nothing.”
“Then why didn’t you just open a vein and give me your blood?” I demanded testily. “That was all I needed, right?”
Deganawida shook his head, and I saw Nosh stiffen in sudden understanding. “You needed a Medicine Man to perform the ritual and my blood to wake you up,” Deganawida explained.
Nosh growled angrily. “You used me. And you didn’t tell me that I was helping you commit suicide tonight, although I should have anticipated it when you forced me to learn the summoning ritual with the incense and dreamcatchers. I figured that part out pretty quickly. You know, after I saw the vampire drink you dry.”
Deganawida shot him a stern look. “I used you to do what Medicine Men do, Nosh. Chastise me for lying, but not for asking you to perform the magic that you asked me to teach you in the first place, boy.”
Nosh stiffened at the reprimand, but he still didn’t look pleased about only just now learning Deganawida’s true identity or any of his other secrets.
“Although I kept much from Nosh,” Deganawida explained, turning to face me, “I did tell him why I woke you, which is what actually matters right now. You two strangers will need each other in the coming days.”
I glared at him. “I’m not sure I’m too inclined to do anything to help you, let alone babysit the angry man-child over there.”
Nosh growled warningly, but Deganawida cut him off with a stern look. “His anger is justified, Nosh. As is yours. But I am the one who has earned that anger, so direct it at me so that I may carry it with me as I depart this mortal plane.”
His statement cut the tension like a knife, and we both lowered our heads. Deganawida was about to go to the afterlife. We were witnessing a man delaying his own death to give us a warning, and we were bickering like children. I nodded. “Speak your piece, Deganawida. I make no promises to comply, but I will at least listen.”
Because no matter what justifications he gave me, his actions had forced me to live for centuries in my own personal hell—forced to relive that fateful night on repeat for centuries—a prisoner in my own mind. An experience worse than any hell the Devil could give me.
The more I thought about my slumber, the more I began to realize that some small part of me must have been entirely aware that the memory had been playing on repeat. Encore after encore, keeping track of the number of repetitions. Because my current rage was more at his betrayal than any immediate emotional reaction for my dead family.
Like my subconscious mind had already processed and accepted that crime long ago, while I slept. If it hadn’t, I would have been in a blind rage over them right about now. But…my anger was deep and sterile, like a long-held grudge that had been forgotten but never forgiven.
Which made me feel incredibly uneasy—almost guilty.
Deganawida nodded somberly. “Your kin and other supernatural associates of your past have come to New York, and I fear it is my fault,” he admitted, gesturing at the two charcoal vampires on the ground.
I leaned forward, narrowing my eyes suspiciously. I didn’t want to interrupt him, though, fearing how much time he had left before this ritual was over and he was called to the afterlife.
“It will be some time before you are back to full strength, Sorin. I know how hungry you must be. How weak you must feel right now. You once warned me about the dangers of you drinking too much blood too quickly.”
I nodded, having already considered that problem. My body was so depleted that I would need a hundred humans to even begin to feel like normal, and drinking that much blood at once would turn me into a mindless, feral beast with no sense of friend or foe—no rational mind whatsoever. The only way back was gradually.
“In the coming days, you will need every power at your disposal, which is one of the other reasons I brought Nosh into my confidences. I needed his power to wake you, but you will also need his power to battle this new threat. He is a competent Shaman and knows the ways of the world—which has drastically changed over the last few hundred years. But Nosh can catch you up on all of that. My time is limited.”
I nodded. “I’m going to need more blood. Now. Are you absolutely certain I need the meat sack over there?” I asked, pointing at Nosh.
Deganawida nodded firmly. “More than you know, Sorin. More than you could believe. He is one of the last few remaining descendants of our tribe, after all.”
I stiffened, glancing sharply at Nosh. A descendant of our tribe? I couldn’t place any physical similarities between him and the tribe members I had known, but it had been five hundred years, so that wasn’t surprising. What was surprising was that we had any descendants at all after Dracula’s savage attack.
“Give him the blood bags. All of them,” Deganawida said, pointing at an orange and white chest against the wall. Nosh nodded and bent over to lift the hinged, white lid. It wasn’t metal, but it was a slightly reflective, firm material that I had never seen before. He reached inside to grab a heavy satchel before tossing it my way. I caught it, flipping open the top to see it was bulging with more of the transparent packets of blood. I didn’t even bother marveling at their substance. There would be time for that later. I tore into one and began to guzzle it down as Deganawida continued talking.
6
The blood hit my lips like oil on a dry wagon axle, my body drinking it down deep. I tried not to shudder as I felt my emaciated muscles growing denser and stronger, my flesh no longer on the verge of tearing like dried paper, my aching joints and bones suddenly relieved of strain and pressure, no longer creaking and groaning with each movement.
“Nosh might be the last true Medicine Man in the world, believe it or not,” Deganawida mused, eyeing Nosh with fatherly pride. “Over the years, the pool of potential Medicine Men has grown smaller and smaller. Those who might have had the potential to learn did not have the desire, preferring to abandon our Native American culture in favor of modern society. Nosh had no interest in that world, thankfully. But his parents have always been historians at heart.”
Nosh nodded with a faint smile. “They should have been museum curators.”
Deganawida smiled warmly, nodding his agreement. “In a way, they were.”
Nosh cocked his head at a sudden thought. “They would have lost their mind had they known you were the real Deganawida. You were their hero,” he said, smiling sadly. “Mine, too.”
Deganawida sighed tiredly. “I told no one. If I had, they would have locked me away in an asylum.” Nosh nodded his agreement, letting out a frustrated sigh. “Immortality is a curse, as I’m sure Sorin knows well.”
“Everyone wants immortality until they get a true taste of it—and realize it’s simply the opportunity to watch generations of cruelty rather than just one. And that it makes you more paranoid about death than any mortal.”
Deganawida nodded. “The allure fades rapidly, but the desperation only increases. It truly is a curse—a d
ouble-edged sword.”
I studied the two men, trying to process this new world so I could decide my place in it. Hundreds of years had passed, and now they expected me to help. Like a good soldier.
I’d never been very obedient. I reached for another bag of blood, discarding the empty packet on the ground. “What became of Lucian and Nero?” I asked. “Surely they could have come to your aid.”
Deganawida winced. “When they returned and heard of the attack, I showed them your body. They waited three days to verify you were not going to wake up, and then they went straight after the culprits. They swore to avenge you and your family by any means necessary.”
I grunted, sucking down the bag of blood with more violence than necessary.
“I never spoke to them again—they wouldn’t even accept an audience with me decades later—”
“Because you lied to them,” I growled.
Deganawida nodded, not bothering to deny it. “I do not know what happened to Nero, but I know that Lucian created a new pack of werewolves almost immediately—building an army to keep himself safe. They were beholden to none but their werewolf king, claiming the Americas for themselves. No vampire dared set foot here in the years since—upon threat of eradication. Until recently.”
I shook my head grimly, recalling the particulars of the attack. A small part of me remembered the taste of magic in the air, the howl of a werewolf before Deganawida’s spell had put me to sleep.
Had…my own friends been a part of the attack? No one else had known we were there. And I’d had many contacts at the nearby ports and coastal towns. None had spoken of any ship landing ashore in the days or weeks leading up to the attack, and none had been expected for months.
As much as I hated to consider it…there was a possibility my friends had betrayed me.
I punched my fist into my palm. “I gave Dracula everything I owned. I don’t understand why he would bother hunting me down years later. It doesn’t make any sense,” I muttered, speaking more to myself than anyone in the room.
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