by J. A. London
“Would you care for sugar?”
“Yes, please. Three teaspoons.”
“Ah, you like a little tea with your sugar.”
“Sorry. Sweet tooth.” I shrug. “And hot tea’s not really my thing.”
“Oh, my.” The china rattles as he quickly picks up the tray. “My apologies. I should have asked what your preference was before I assumed—”
“No, it’s fine.” I hold out my hand, trying to reassure him.
“It’s not fine. My responsibility is to see to your comfort. Instead, I’ve managed to put us both in a very awkward spot.”
“Maybe I’ll like your tea.”
He shakes his head. “No, I’ve made quite the blunder.”
“Truly, it’s not—”
Victor strolls in. Thank God. He studies us both. “Is everything all right?”
“My apologies, my lord. I have not adequately seen to her comfort. She does not favor hot tea.”
Helplessly I look at Victor. I don’t know how to console Eustace. Victor’s lips twitch as he gives his head a small shake.
“It’s all right, Eustace. I appreciate your attempt to make her feel welcome.”
Eustace straightens his shoulders. “Who does not favor hot tea?”
“I know. It’s quite impossible to comprehend.”
“What shall I bring?”
“Nothing. We’ll be leaving shortly.”
“Very good, my lord.” He begins walking toward the door.
“Eustace?” I call out.
He freezes, his back stiff. “Yes, miss?”
“Thank you very much for your kindness.”
“It is my job.”
With that he walks out, closing the door behind him.
“My father would have lashed him for bringing the wrong thing,” Victor says. “Sadly, he hasn’t gotten used to the fact that I never would.”
“Your father got angry over tea?”
“He got angry over everything.”
I realize he looks tired.
“Did everything go okay?” I ask.
“We have adequate blood for now. It’ll keep the Lessers content until we return, but after that”—he shakes his head—“I’ll deal with it when I get back.”
He glances over at the pouch. “Did you open it?”
“No.”
“It frightens you. Why? What is it that you think your father was talking about?”
“Not frighten exactly.” I can see the earnestness and worry in his eyes. I feel like I’m treading water, on the verge of drowning.
“That ancient vampire in the mountain—” I begin. “His family name was Montgomery.”
Victor grows still, processing the information, and I’m not even sure he’s breathing. I force out the words—
“Victor . . . I’m a vampire.”
I don’t know what sort of reaction I expected, but it certainly isn’t a smile followed by a quick laugh.
“That’s not possible, Dawn. I would know.”
“Okay, maybe not a vampire, but a dhampir.”
“They’re a myth. Like leprechauns, faeries, and werewolves.”
“You thought Day Walkers were a myth, too.”
That sobers him a bit.
“Think about it, Victor, think about my blood. If it contained vampire, it would explain why for a time you had a craving for it after you tasted it.” Once vampires taste the blood of their kind, they risk becoming addicted to it until they are infected with the Thirst.
That totally wipes the smile from his face.
“And our ability to share dreams,” I continue, pressing my point. “Faith said that only happens with Old Family.”
I can tell that I’ve left him speechless. I’ve never seen him like this—he seems lost, whereas he usually takes command of any situation. Which means he’s as confused and unsettled by all of this as I am.
He turns his back on me and takes a couple of steps away. Can he hear the thudding of my heart? Vampires have such keen senses that he must be aware of my anxiousness. Finally he faces me.
“What exactly did that old vampire say?”
I take a deep breath, not even sure where to begin. “That symbol in my dreams, the one on the document that my father discovered, the one you said was written in ancient vampiric—it’s the name of the fifteenth Old Family—Montgomery. What legend referred to as the lost family. Apparently they had the ability to produce offspring with humans. The document was a death warrant against the Montgomerys, signed by the other fourteen families.”
“Why exterminate them?”
“Why does Old Family do anything?”
He sighs. “Fear of change. Fear of things becoming different. Fear of anything they don’t understand. It’s why they hated Sin.”
He walks back over, pushes my hair behind my ear, and trails his finger along the crucifix tattoo on my neck. “You always hated the thought of becoming a vampire.”
I force a smile. I imagine it looks pretty pitiful. “Ironic, huh?”
“Did Sin know about your heritage?”
I nod, swallow past the lump in my throat. “He shares it. His mother was a Montgomery. Esmerelda. I think that’s why he—and your father—were obsessed with my family.”
“Jesus, Dawn.”
“I know. I—” I’m so overwhelmed with emotions that I can barely think. I wanted him to find a reason that my being a vampire was impossible. Victor cradles my face between his powerful hands. “This changes nothing,” he says. “And it doesn’t change what I feel for you.”
“Oh, Victor.” I wrap my arms around his shoulders and bury my face against his neck. “I’m so afraid that it changes everything. That I’ll be alone. Not fully vampire, not fully human. Some half-breed freak. Like Sin.”
“You’ll never be like Sin,” he growls. He threads his fingers through my hair, cradling the back of my head. “You’re not like Sin.”
Then he covers my mouth with his, kissing me desperately as though he has the power to change what I might be, as though he is just as afraid as I am of what all this might mean.
When he pulls back, his smile reassures me of everything, and suddenly all of this feels inconsequential. And I remember what my dad said, his final message to me: You will always be Dawn.
“Let’s see what your father kept from you for so long,” Victor says.
He holds out his hand. I slip mine into it, drawing strength and comfort from his touch. We walk over to the sitting area. Instead of selecting a chair, I drop to the floor in front of the table and fold my legs beneath me.
I take the band off and slowly unfold the leather. It cracks and whines as I lay it flat, then curls back slowly in protest. Inside are an assortment of papers, some original documents, some that appear to be copies, and some handwritten notes. I immediately recognize my father’s handwriting on those. And at the top, a tiny piece of paper:
In some way, I always knew this was true.
And I suspect you always knew the same.
—Dad
I carefully take out each piece of paper, arranging it slowly and methodically on the table. To my surprise, I find a photo of all four of us: Mom, Dad, Brady, and myself, sitting around a table. I didn’t know there were any photos of us all together.
I only look at it for a moment, not letting my memories go there just yet. I place it very carefully off to the side and return my attention to the documents.
The more I dig, the older the pages become. Until I get to the end and pull out a very, very ancient parchment. The writing on it is remarkably clear for the weathered state of the paper, the infinite folds and creases that come from hundreds of years of moving from place to place.
“Octavian Montgomery?” Victor asks.
“That’s what he said.”
Victor points near the top of the page and the name is clearly written out, both in Latin script as well as vampiric and others from the time.
“What is this?” I ask.
“A family tree,” he says, tracing a line from Octavian upward to his ancestors, then following it down along a branching tree. Octavian is in the middle of these branches, his brothers and sisters and cousins . . . but then they all end, and only his line continues.
“The death warrant,” I say. “The Montgomery family was almost wiped out.”
“Octavian survived, and so did his son, and his son’s children.”
I follow the line down, but the branches never extend very far.
“It ends here,” I say, at the final entry: Maximillian—1802.
That’s when I notice what the other documents are. They’re hospital records. And Maximillian Montgomery is listed as the father of a boy named Abraham Montgomery, born in 1832. As the records go on, they become more modern, including the names of the hospital, the names of the entire family. Then I recognize the name Lloyd Montgomery.
“My grandfather,” I say. I don’t have many memories of him. He came to our house once for the holidays, but the war was still raging. How he made it there I’ll never know, or why he thought it was so important to risk his life in order to visit with us.
Unless he knew. I think about the note on top of the documents: In some way, I always knew this was true.
I try to imagine my grandfather talking to his son—my father—in the dark of night. They discuss what they always knew, what their years and years of vampiric studies pointed toward. They talk about being drawn to the night, just like their ancestors before them. Am I making this up? Is it imagined? Or is it a memory?
“Why have this?” I ask. “I thought the Montgomerys wanted to keep their heritage a secret.”
“It’s tradition to keep very detailed family records,” Victor says. “In case there’s ever a doubt as to who is the legitimate heir to the family. At least, that’s what they say. We vampires, sadly, are obsessed with purity of the blood. This helps us keep a record of that.”
“The Montgomerys weren’t pure,” I say. “And that’s why they were hunted down like dogs.”
I’m surprised at the anger in my voice. Until now, this always seemed like a strange conspiracy theory to me, dreamed up by Sin in his dark mind. But my father’s voice telling me, his notes, all of this . . . It’s true. I am the last Montgomery. And the anger comes from the realization that all these people, these dhampirs, were slaughtered. I can touch their names and know that the other Old Families wanted them dead. Especially the Valentines.
“Wow, look at this,” Victor says, pulling me out of my thoughts. He holds up a piece of parchment, very similar to the family tree but shortened. It only contains Maximillian’s name and those immediate family members surrounding him. It’s in English and Ancient Vampiric.
“This is a Confirmation Decree,” Victor says.
“What’s that?” In all my vampire studies I’ve never heard of one.
“It’s used as evidence to the legitimacy of a vampire’s heritage; in this case the heritage of one Maximillian Montgomery. I’m not surprised. By this point, there would have been so little vampire blood in Maximillian that his father would’ve worried that no one would have believed he was a vampire. So he wanted to make sure he had a Confirmation Decree. And in order for this to have any weight in the vampire world, it must be signed by a vampire from another family.”
“Why?”
“Because no one would believe a Montgomery if he said his son was an Old Family vampire with the same rights and privileges as other Old Family. By having another family put their reputation on the line, it makes their heritage claim legitimate. It’s a dangerous undertaking. If you sign one of these and are proved wrong, then you’re practically exiled, never to be trusted again in the vampire community.”
Wow. Someone stood up for my family? Someone risked his life to make sure that Maximillian’s heritage as an Old Family vampire was forever legitimized, as were his children’s heritage?
“So who signed it?” I ask, needing to know who this one friend among the sea of adversaries was.
Victor traces down the page but can’t find what he needs. He starts looking through the other papers on the table. I’m about to lose hope when he pulls out the second page and continues reading. And then he stops, his finger on the name.
“Lilith Ferdinand.”
“Who’s that? And why did she sign this?”
“You can ask her yourself,” Victor says. “She sits on the Vampire Council.”
Chapter 8
“That’s absolutely impossible,” Faith says calmly.
We’re in the car, racing toward New Vampiria. While I was sitting here in a daze, trying to puzzle things out, Victor explained to Richard and Faith about my heritage and the documents.
“Old Family are tall, elegant . . . beautiful,” Faith continues.
“Dawn’s beautiful,” Victor grounds out.
“She’s short.”
“I’m not short,” I say sharply, “and don’t talk about me like I’m not here.”
“Are you even five and a half feet?”
I clench my teeth.
“Most women are short compared to you,” Richard says.
“Which is my point. If she had Old Family blood in her, she’d be tall or at least taller.”
“She also has human. So that’s where her height comes from.”
“Okay, maybe, but she has no fashion sense. She wears cotton and flannel and . . . and hoodies.”
In rebellion, I draw my hoodie up over my head and slouch down in my seat. The tone in her voice indicates that the only thing that could be worse would be if I wore clothes I took off dead people. I feel like my world is crumbling around me, and Faith is worried about my wardrobe?
Richard laughs, clearly amused. “You can teach her all she needs to know.”
“I don’t know that I have enough to work with. Remember those makeover shows they had on television years and years ago, before the war? Did you ever see one, Dawn? Maybe the Denver archives had an episode.”
“No.”
“The ones doing the makeovers were mostly vampires. We have such extraordinary fashion sense. But you have none. I just don’t see Old Family in you.”
“Really? That’s where you’re taking this? Victor tells you what we discovered and all you can focus on are things that don’t matter?”
“Better than focusing on your death.”
That has me tossing the hoodie back, sitting up, and twisting around. “What are you talking about?”
“Have we forgotten that there is a death warrant out on the Montgomerys?”
“I haven’t forgotten,” Victor says. “It’s the reason that I told you and Richard what we found—so you’d be prepared for what we might face.”
“What? You think they might try to kill me? That death warrant is archaic.”
“Archaic—the very definition of Old Family,” Richard says. “At least this explains Murdoch Valentine’s interest in you. He knew what you are.”
“As well as his interest in my father. Maybe that’s why he requested him. But what did he hope to accomplish?”
“Maybe he just wanted to keep an eye on him,” Richard says.
“Or maybe he had plans to secure your father’s place on the Council,” Faith muses. “You know, use him as a puppet whenever he wanted a vote to go his way.”
“Wait a minute. Can I have a seat on the Vampire Council?”
“No,” Victor says briskly.
“Why not?”
“Because it’s too risky. With the death warrant still active, we have no way of knowing how the Council will react. So for now, we need to keep your heritage a secret.”
“But my name—Montgomery—could cause questions.”
“It’s common enough, no one will make that connection. Our purpose has to stay focused on persuading the Council to mobilize against Sin. Your role is to provide an accounting of everything you’ve seen so we can convince the Council that Sin poses a danger to us all.”
Reac
hing across, Victor squeezes my knee. “I know it’s hard. I’m sorry we couldn’t give you more time to adjust to what you learned.”
“I know. Our priority has to be Sin. I get that. It’s the reason I didn’t say anything to you sooner. Well, that and I didn’t want to believe it.” I force a small smile. “So, who is this Lilith Ferdinand anyway?”
“She’s head of the Ferdinand family,” Victor says. “The only woman on the Council. I haven’t seen her in years, but she’s strong, smart, always three steps ahead of anyone else. In fact, she’s probably the only one on the Council who understands anything. No offense to Montague Carrollton.”
“None taken,” Richard says. “My grandfather is more interested in wine and human girls than governing.”
“And she has to be strong,” Faith says. “The Ferdinand family is split into two very distinct sides, each one thinking it should rule over the family. I mean, every Old Family has tensions like that, but the Ferdinands are particularly vicious.”
“Why?”
“No one likes to speak about family matters,” Victor says, “especially ancient ones. But from what I’ve gathered, about two thousand years ago, Lord Ferdinand was murdered by his own brother, and that brother took the throne.”
“I thought that was pretty common,” I say.
“It is, but remember how Richard served as my witness when I fought my father?”
“Yes, it was to ensure the fight was fair.”
“There was no such witness in this case. The family was split down the middle between those who thought it had been a fair fight and those who didn’t. That fracture has never healed. Lilith has to watch her back every day.”
It sounds like the one ally I have, the one vampire who might have stood by the side of the Montgomerys, is in constant danger. Why should I not be surprised?
But it seems like everyone’s life is at stake these days. We’re heading into dangerous lands, into the maw of the beast, looking for help. Behind us, a new monster, an ever greater monster stands on the horizon.
As the moon shines its ominous glow on the ever-wasting road, I realize we may not stand a chance against him.
The sky is beginning to lighten when we reach a monstrous Gothic manor outside Chicago. A dozen vampires in black trench coats stand guard. They’re holding machine guns. I guess this far to the east, their only enemy is humans.