by D. N. Hoxa
Dublin sighed, and he took his seat again.
“I’ve watched you all your life,” he said. He sounded calm now, all anger drained from his voice. “When your mother finally decided to leave that place, I was there. I didn’t expect the man who raised you to do what he did, but it was a good thing Ray was there.”
As he spoke, the last memory of my human life replayed itself in my mind. I remembered thinking that I was dying. That I was actually talking to God. That he’d actually answered me. It had just been Ray, in the right time, at the right place.
“You sent him there?”
“I did. He owed me a favor, and I sent him to protect you, because I couldn’t be there myself. He took advantage of your…situation, and made himself a Doyen. Why the hell not?”
He laughed dryly then, and I realized I’d never before even seen him smile.
I’d given myself willingly to Ray, thinking it was God I was talking to.
“I made sure your mother and your sisters were safely relocated. I gave them a house, enough money to live comfortably. Your mother died sixty-seven years old,” he said, and I shivered.
“Did you…did you tell her about me?”
“You never let me,” he said.
“I saw them?”
“You did,” he said and nodded. “You saw them, but you never came close to them. Just watched them from afar.”
“They’re all dead?”
Dublin nodded. I’d known before that three hundred years had passed that I knew nothing of. Three hundred years was a very long time, and I knew they were dead. But to have someone say it to my face made it all so much more real. Grief invaded my mind like a plague. I couldn’t speak for a long time.
“I have a safe place you can stay. With me,” he said. “No bomb could break through it.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?” I said instead.
“Because I was afraid you wouldn’t understand.” It was a shitty excuse.
“You should’ve told me,” I whispered, but I wasn’t really sure. What would I have done differently if I’d known I was him, when I remembered nothing? What would Morta have said?
The dead heart in my chest didn’t move like I expected it to at the thought of Morta’s face. What would she say when I told her that I was the man she loved? Would she speak to me then?
She would.
She would.
I raised my head slowly to meet Dublin’s eyes. My family was dead. This man in front of me claimed he was my father, and perhaps he spoke the truth. It didn’t matter. My goal, my purpose wasn’t all lost. It was still with Morta. Now that I knew I was him, she would let me kiss her again.
I stood up. “Tell me everything,” I said.
“It’s been three hundred years,” he said, shaking his head.
He was right. And I didn’t really care about everything.
“Tell me about Morta Fox. About Hammer and Morta Fox.”
It seemed impossible, but he lost the little blood he had left in his face.
“She’s the reason you’re in this position, Hammer.”
I flinched at the sound of the name.
“Let’s just stick to Matias.”
I wasn’t ready to be called Hammer. Who the hell called themselves Hammer anyway?
Dublin sighed. “You made a deal with her. A promise,” he said. “She would help you find her Doyen, and you would kill her in return.”
“Kill her?” I asked, incredulous. “Why would I want to kill her?”
“She wanted to die, but she couldn’t kill herself. No vampire can.” He shook his head. “So she promised to help you find her Doyen, and in return, made you promise to kill her.”
“Why did I want to find her Doyen?”
“Matias, the sun is about—“
“I don’t care!” I shouted. “Tell me, why did I want to find her Doyen?”
“Because your mate, Chandra, disappeared, and she was last seen with him. You wanted to find her.”
Chandra was my fucking mate? I started to laugh.
“It’s too much for you to handle, all at once,” Dublin said, and for once, I considered that he might be been right.
The sun was about to rise. I fell on the chair next to him as my legs grew weaker.
“Go on,” I said.
“Doyen Everard was impossible to find, and you wanted to use Morta to find your way to him.”
“What happened?”
“You grew…attached to her,” he said. He hated to have to tell me this, but I didn’t care. He owed that much to me. “You lost your head over her, and you decided that you wouldn’t kill her, even after you ran into Everard.”
“And?” I would’ve shouted if I had any more strength left.
“She killed him. Killed her Doyen, but you’d already seen him. Her part of the deal was done. It was your turn. You didn’t…you didn’t kill her. So you were sent to the Red Dimension.”
My eyes closed all by themselves. I wished I could have just a few more minutes. But the sun didn’t ask questions. It took my consciousness before the next word left Dublin’s lips.
***
Dublin was wrong. It didn’t get any better the next night. It got worse when consciousness breathed back into me. I saw his face and realized that it was all true. It was all real. This vampire in front of me was my father. I had been Hammer, a man I couldn’t remember, and three hundred years of life had been wiped from my memory.
I’d loved her. I’d loved Morta. Dublin didn’t need to say it. I knew what attached meant, and out of everything, that was the easiest thing to believe.
As Dublin watched me looking ahead at the wall across from me, lost in thought, I cried. Internally, because no tear came out of my eyes. I guessed Morta was the only one who had that privilege among the undead. I cried for my mother, my sisters, and my wasted years. My memories.
What the hell had happened? I squeezed and squeezed my brain for answers, but I had nothing. Nothing at all to even point me in the right direction.
“Tell me about the Red Dimension,” I said after a long time of sitting in silence.
“Do you need to feed?” Dublin said.
“Just tell me about the Red Dimension.”
Hunger could wait. I’d never felt less craving before in my new life.
“It’s hell,” he said, but he wasn’t laughing. “A second hell for vampires, one that claims us if we break our word.”
“And Hammer got there because he broke his.”
“That’s right,” Dublin whispered.
“If what you’re saying is true, how could I have possibly gotten out? How can a vampire get out of hell?”
It didn’t make any sense to me.
“I don’t know,” Dublin said, and sighed. “I’ve heard of it happening before. They say that Mohg came back from there three times in the first few hundred years of his life. I never really thought about it until I saw you.”
“There were two people with me when I woke up,” I said reluctantly. “Ray, who turned me, and Ignis.”
“Ignis?” Dublin asked, his brows narrowed. “Never heard of that name before.”
“I think her real name was Harley.”
I remembered how she’d looked at Ray when he’d first presented her to me.
“I haven’t heard that name, either.” He hadn’t, but he knew as well as I did that Ray and Ignis knew something. They were right there, with me. “It doesn’t matter now, Matias.”
“Of course it matters,” I hissed. It was my life. My memories. I was simply floating out of being ever since Dublin told me the truth. I didn’t feel like myself. I didn’t feel like anyone or anything. Useless. “I have to get my memories back.” Without memories, nobody would be anybody.
“What you need is to come with me,” Dublin said.
“I can’t.”
I needed to go after Ray. He was my Doyen, and the last thing I wanted to do was find him, but I had to. And since he’d turned me, a
ll I needed to do was follow my gut until it led me to him.
“Matias, the war…” Dublin said.
“I know about the war, Dublin. But you can’t expect me—“
“Yes, I can. It’s going to be a bloodbath up here,” he said.
“I think that Mohg will handle it just fine.”
I didn’t even dare think about Chandra yet. I wanted to know so much more, but making Dublin speak would mean hearing about all the things I couldn’t remember. The less information I had, the less I knew I’d lost. Speaking thoughts out loud made them more real somehow, and I wasn’t ready for all of it yet.
“He won’t, Matias.”
The way he said it, like a warning, made me look up.
“What does that mean?”
“It means he’s not going to handle it.”
“She’s right,” I whispered. It was as clear as day. His face said it all. Morta was right about Mohg. Dublin took his time, but he finally nodded. “And you didn’t help her?”
“There is absolutely nothing we can do, Matias. Nothing,” he hissed.
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
“They’re too powerful to fight. Do you hear me? There’s not going to be a lot of vampires standing after they’re done,” he shouted.
“How can you even sit here and talk like that?”
“What the hell am I supposed to do?”
“How about try to stop it? How about agreeing to help Morta?”
“Don’t be foolish,” he hissed.
“You didn’t even tell her that she was right, did you?”
I knew it without needing confirmation. Somehow, I knew Dublin’s ways better than was reasonable. Maybe because I’d known him for three hundred years, years I couldn’t remember. Maybe because he was my father.
“It doesn’t matter. She won’t be able to stop it. No one will.”
“Of course they won’t if they don’t try. You won’t, either, if all you do is sit in your bunker and hide.”
“Do you have any idea how much power Mohg has? How many weapons, bombs? Nobody stands a chance against what they have in store,” he said, and he had the decency to seem mad for having to say it.
“So you’re just going to continue to sit and hide, and do nothing? This is your world, too!”
“Yes, and my life. I’d like to live after all is said and done,” he hissed.
“If Mohg is really going to attack the humans, put up bombs like last time, do you think there will even be life here anymore?”
I’d seen what the last bombs had done. Others would destroy this place completely.
“It doesn’t matter. Everything can be redone.”
“What about humans?”
“What about them?” he said, so emotionlessly that I began to laugh. There was nothing in his face that said he even regretted saying it. Even a little bit. No mercy, no conscience.
“Well, for starters, you were one, too. This world belongs to them. They were here first.” There wouldn’t have been any vampires if there weren’t humans first. “And what about the blood?” I asked, before I remembered that Mohg had already found a solution.
“Mohg has taken care of it.”
“Do you really believe that?”
It had been too long, too damn long for him to just now realize that there was an alternative.
“Yes, I do.” He nodded.
“Then why is he lying to everyone? Why not just tell everyone that he’s working with Chandra?”
Dublin sighed. “Because he needs vampires. All that he can get. And he fears that if he told the truth, most would disagree to do his bidding. Half of them probably think like you do, and the other half would run to seek shelter, like me. He can’t risk that.”
“So he just fools everyone instead.”
The words tasted sour in my mouth, especially when I remembered Morta’s face, her voice while she’d told Bugz of her suspicions. Nobody was going to believe her. Even if they did, nobody was going to help her do something about it. Maybe Dublin was right. Maybe Mohg had too much strength, and no one stood a chance against him, but how could he know if he never even tried?
“I’m going to help her,” I whispered.
He stood up and came to me. “You’ll die,” he hissed.
“I already died once, didn’t I?”
It was meant as a joke but it didn’t come out that way, and Dublin flinched.
“Matias, listen to me. There is nothing you can do.”
“I’ll at least try,” I said. Maybe I would really get killed in the process. At least I would know I didn’t die waiting.
“You’re out of your mind!” Dublin shouted, and grabbed both my shoulders.
“I’m not going to sit there and hide while the rest of the world falls apart!”
“You think you can do anything to Mohg?” He let me go and started to laugh dryly.
“Yes, we can.” I didn’t really believe that, but I had to say it.
“You and Morta Fox? Two vampires against an army?”
“In case you didn’t know, her teeth kill you as soon as they touch you,” I hissed. “And we won’t be two. We’ll be five.”
“Five?”
“Yes, five. I’ll have Hammer’s vampires to help me.”
I could only hope Tif hadn’t gone too far. I had to go back and find him, then find the other two he’d mentioned. It was the best plan I had.
“You didn’t have any vampires,” Dublin said,.
“I didn’t. Hammer did.”
“Hammer was never a Doyen.” He looked completely honest as he said it.
“Yes, he was,” I said. “Maybe he didn’t tell you everything.” And maybe that had been for the better.
“It doesn’t matter, even if he does have vampires. It won’t be enough to stop him,” he hissed.
“It will be enough to try.”
“No,” he said, and shook his head.
“I’m not asking for your permission.”
“Well, good, because you don’t have it.”
It didn’t matter what he thought. Right now, I needed to find Tif, find the other vampires, and find Morta. Tell her everything. I couldn’t wait to see the look on her face when I told her who I was.
Would she hug me? Kiss me again? Would she talk to me then?
She would. I was sure of it. She’d loved Hammer, just like I knew I loved her. Yes, I’d only met her three times, but I knew it. It was written in my bones. There was no running away from it, and I never planned to. I just wanted to hold her, and I didn’t give myself any explanation when my own thoughts asked for it. It was her. Just her.
“Hammer please. Just think about it.”
Dublin sounded desperate. I didn’t tell him to stick to Matias again. I told myself to stick to Hammer instead.
“Why Hammer?” I asked him. I didn’t understand how that name came to be, or why I would ever choose it.
“You killed Ray, your Doyen, with a hammer,” Dublin said.
“Do you think Ray is the same Ray who turned me the second time?”
“He looked different than what you described him to be,” Dublin said, shaking his head.
It didn’t matter. I was going to find him, too. I was going to make him tell me everything. Just as soon as I found Morta.
XXV
Dublin told me where his bunker was. Deep underground. So deep that you couldn’t hear, or smell, anything if you walked right on it, which I’d done a few times while I searched for him. He and six other vampires were going to stay there. They had enough blood and poison to last them for more than a year. I didn’t even ask how they’d gotten the blood. I was sure it wasn’t a happy story.
He told me his secret because he still hoped I would go back. In fact, he was sure that I would go ask for his help when I saw what I was really up against. His words.
But I wasn’t going to. I was sick and tired of running and hiding. It was more than time to take action.
So I ran
back and searched for Tif. Hammer was a Doyen, that much he’d told me. I saw no reason why Tif would lie to me. I could only hope he would agree to help me.
I found him two nights later. He was with two other vampires, and I had to wait a few hours until he was finally alone.
When I fell in front of him, he nearly screamed. Seriously. I didn’t think anybody was as young and inexperienced as he seemed to be. Which just showed how much of an asshole Hammer had really been.
“Do you always just pop around people like that?” he said once he recognized my mask.
“How about that drink you promised me?” I said instead.
“Right now?” He looked behind at the vampires he was with, but they were long gone.
“Yes. Do you have anything better to do?”
“Not really.” He flinched. “But I don’t have any poison with me right now.”
“Don’t worry. I do,” I said. “Follow me.”
I took him to a building close to where I was staying. Once we were on the roof, seven stories up, I made sure nobody was within hearing distance, before I turned to him. This was going to be really awkward. I had no idea how he was going to react.
I gave him one small bottle of vodka, and took the big one for myself.
“What’s up, man? Did you do the stuff you had to?”
He looked so comfortable, so unsuspicious of anything around us that for a second I wondered whether this was a good idea.
“I did, actually. What have you been up to since I last saw you?”
“Nothing. Walking around, meeting up with guys. The usual.”
“What if I told you a secret?” I said. There was no point in going in rounds. The sooner I got it over with, the better.
“A secret?” Curiosity lit his eyes.
“A secret,” I said with a nod.
“What kind of a secret?”
“A very secret one.”
He grinned.
“But you’d have to promise me two things. One, that you will not freak out. And two, that you won’t tell anybody about it, unless I tell you to.”
“I’m not going to promise you shit,” he said, shaking his head.
“Trust me, it’s worth it. It’s a pretty awesome secret.”
“Doesn’t matter. I’m not making any promises,” he said. For once, I was happy with his answer.