The Vampire's Heir

by Ellery St. James

  We studied each other a moment in silence. Dmitri was holding a glass of some dark liquid, and he lifted it to his lips and took a gulp.

  He didn’t appear to be in any hurry to leave.

  I might have been frightened, but the Xanax was already kicking in. I felt calm, but not impaired. Able to think through my next moves.

  But what Dmitri said next caught me off guard completely.

  “You know,” he said.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “KNOW WHAT?” I asked, playing dumb.

  But Dmitri wasn’t falling for my act.

  “You know what we are. What I am.” He sighed. “Don’t pretend. We might as well talk about it since I know you aren’t going to leave this party without being given Lethe. You won’t remember this conversation in a few hours.” He looked weary, and angry, and frustrated.

  “And what are you?” I wanted him to say it. Not me. Just in case he was talking about something else, although I knew he couldn’t be.

  His eyes darkened. He took another gulp of his drink. “You know we’re vampires.”

  I considered pretending shock, or confusion, or like I thought he was joking, but after a second of deliberation, I decided against it. I wasn’t fooling him, and maybe this way, I could get some answers.

  “I know,” I agreed. I cast a glance at the direction Trace had gone. Was he still working on whatever his mission was? Or was he waiting for me to get rid of Dmitri? I didn’t see him. Sweat broke across my palms. I focused on Dmitri and staying calm.

  “You’re armed with a stake, aren’t you?” he continued, lifting one brow.

  “Maybe. Don’t try to find out.”

  Dmitri’s mouth quirked in another self-loathing smile. “Don’t be afraid of me. I won’t hurt you.”

  “I have no reason to believe that’s true,” I countered. “You obviously hate me.”

  He laughed under his breath and finished the rest of his drink. “I’m sorry,” he said after another silence. “I’ve been an asshole, and you don’t even know why.”

  “You have been an asshole,” I agreed, even though his confession had mollified me a little. “Why?”

  He blinked, startled. I guess he’d thought he could apologize without explanation, but I didn’t play that way. “Why?”

  “Yeah. You’ve been weird around me since we first saw each other. What did I do? Or are you like this to all humans?”

  “It isn’t your fault,” he said, looking chagrined. “I apologize.” He tipped his head back against the doorframe and exhaled. He looked like a young, tormented demigod, I thought, and immediately chastised myself. I should not be finding the vampire attractive. Bad Alex.

  I looked over my shoulder again for Trace and still didn’t see him.

  Dmitri noticed. “What are you looking at?”

  “What isn’t my fault?” I pressed, ignoring his question. “Why do you hate me, Dmitri?”

  He flinched when I said his name, but it was almost a flinch of pleasure, and his eyes fluttered closed for a second. He shook his head. “I don’t… I don’t hate you. I just hate what you do to me.”

  “What do I do to you?” My chest felt so tight that I could barely get the words out. A knot of something like fear twisted in my stomach.

  “Didn’t Victor tell you yet? Didn’t he warn you away?”

  My pulse accelerated. “Tell me what?” I demanded.

  “We’re cursed,” Dmitri whispered. “Your bloodline—Victor’s bloodline—and mine. I can feel it now, like a vise. Like a thousand tiny strands.”

  “Feel what?”

  Dmitri’s eyes darkened. “This wretched pull. This… this protectiveness. The moment I laid eyes on you in that bookshop, I knew what you were. I knew whose family you were from. The blood in your veins calls to me. Calls for me to protect it, keep it safe. And I’m powerless against it. It makes me a slave to you.”

  I felt a little dizzy. This didn’t seem like a good development. But hearing the hot vampire say he was a slave to me, well.

  “Something happened at the first party, didn’t it?” he demanded. “I had an overwhelming urge to find you. It was like a vise clamped around my head, and every minute I wasn’t trying to rescue you from whatever was wrong, the pain got worse.”

  I remembered seeing him in the crowd as Khalil and Victor had rushed me away to a private room after Antoinette tried to attack me. I thought at the time that he’d looked angry. Maybe he was just in pain.

  “Yes,” I said. “Another one of your kind tried to eat me.”

  “Antoinette?” he guessed with a scowl. “She is, ah, unruly around humans.”

  “I guess that’s one word for it,” I said.

  He looked at me more closely. His eyes were dark, his pupils wide like he’d been doing some kind of drug. My heart skittered to have him so close, looking at me like that. I probably should have felt unsafe, but I didn’t. What was wrong with my sense of self-preservation, I wondered, that I felt so safe around Khalil and Dmitri? Could I trust that feeling? Or was I being lulled into false security by some pheromone, some psychological trick?

  “Here in this room with you, it’s like a buzzing in my head. I can scarcely think of anything else—”

  “Do you mean that I’m in danger now?” I interrupted, casting an uneasy glance at the doorway. My heart thumped. I half expected another vampire to come bursting in, fangs out, lunging for my neck. Prickles of fear cascaded over my skin, and I put my hand on the pocket that held the wooden chopstick, as if that would do much.

  He barked a laugh. “Aren’t you in danger as a human in a house full of vampires?”

  I kept my eyes on his, waiting for a better answer. He sobered. “I am not in pain,” he admitted. “So I don’t know what it is. Maybe there is another part of this damned curse. I just want to be close to you.”

  “Can’t I…” I fumbled for the right words. “Can’t I turn it off? How do I break this curse?”

  Dmitri laughed bitterly. “Believe me, many members of my family have tried. Only death will sever the connection. Or you turning into a vampire.”

  Death. Turning into a vampire. Neither was an option. I took a step back in alarm, my hand straying toward the wooden chopstick in my pocket. Would he try to end it himself?

  Dmitri saw my motion and added, “Not death by my hand, so have no fear of that. I would sooner kill myself than hurt you. As I said before, it is a curse. I am powerless against it. I could not consciously hurt you. I could never summon the strength to even try.”

  My head was spinning. A curse on my bloodline? I felt dizzy. I had a thousand more questions, but motion flickered at the edge of my vision. Trace. Dmitri was facing me, and he didn’t see it. I had to keep him talking.

  “Aren’t you afraid I’m going to use this information against you?” I asked.

  “You’re going to forget it,” Dmitri reminded me. “But there is relief in confession. It’s good for the soul, I hear.” He took a half step toward me. “I half wish you wouldn’t forget.”

  My heart was thudding despite the Xanax. His eyes had that silvery tint to them again.

  “Dmitri,” I said again, not sure where I was going with it.

  Trace was halfway to the door, moving on silent feet. He paused, lifting a sculpture from where it sat atop a pillar beside the door. He looked at me and gestured with one hand to indicate that he wanted me to keep the vampire distracted.

  I kept my eyes fixed on Dmitri. His gaze was glued to my face, almost as if he were mesmerized.

  Then he started to swing around as if he sensed Trace behind him, and I acted on pure impulse. I grabbed him by the face and pulled him back to me, and I kissed him.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  DMITRI FROZE AS I kissed him. Behind him, Trace froze too. All oxygen seemed to suck from the room, and sound ceased. A shock went through me from my lips to my toes, and for one moment the whole universe seemed to spin around us. I wanted to gasp. I wanted to sink my hands
into his hair. Dmitri, as if compelled by the same force, raised his hands as if to cup my face, but stopped just short of touching me. He pulled back and stared at me, astonished, and I felt like I couldn’t bear not to be kissing him.

  Then, Trace brought the sculpture down against the vampire’s skull, and Dmitri dropped to the floor like a rock, leaving my mouth tingling and my whole face flushed as I stared down at his body. His handsome face was still and pale, and his dark eyelashes lay like feathers against his cheekbones.

  “Did you kill him?” I gasped to Trace, who was already replacing the sculpture with enough calm to make me believe he clocked vampires every morning before breakfast.

  “No. He’s unconscious. He’ll be fine—vampires heal quickly. Now come on, we have to hurry,” Trace whispered, and then he turned for the door. “Hurry, Alex.”

  That snapped me out of my trance. I hustled after Trace and into the hall, where he pressed the key fob into my palm.

  “Good work,” he said. “And that was quick thinking with the kiss.”

  “Thanks,” I murmured, flushing again.

  “Now, get this key fob back to Jean-Claude. We’ll talk again later.” He turned to go and then spun back to look at me. “Good work,” he said again. “Really, Alex. I’m impressed.”

  His praise warmed me. He smiled at me, and I realized what a nice face he had when he smiled. Like a boy I might have met in college were I a normal girl living in a normal world. The kind of boy who played frisbee golf and doodled fake tattoos on my arm while we pretended to study.

  In a flash, my little rumination was over, and Trace disappeared down the hall, leaving me to return to the party alone. I headed for the opposite end of the hall. I wasn’t sure where I was, exactly, but if I found a staircase, I could probably find my way back to the rest of the party.

  I spotted a spiral of stone steps, and relief flooded me.

  I was almost to the top when an explosion shook the house.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  THE EXPLOSION KNOCKED me off my feet. I pitched forward against the wall, striking my head on a stone ornament. Pain sliced through my skull, and bands of white danced across my vision. I put my hand up and felt something sticky. My fingers came away red with blood.

  Uh-oh.

  My ears were ringing as I stumbled down the stairs. Smoke poured from somewhere high above me. Dimly, I heard the sound of screams.

  Someone blocked my way. A vampire in a suit that looked straight out of the roaring twenties. He stared at me with a hungry, pained expression.

  “Do you need any help, little one?” he asked in a husky purr.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t. Please move out of my way.”

  “You look like you need help. You’re dripping on the carpet.” His tongue darted out and touched his lower lip.

  I reached into my pocket. My fingers closed around the chopstick. It felt pitifully inadequate against a vampire, but it was all I had.

  “I’ll say it again,” I growled. “Move out of my way. I’m warning you.”

  He didn’t move. He leaned closer, his hands reaching for my waist, his mouth opening.

  “Just a taste,” he murmured.

  I yanked out the chopstick and shoved it into his chest.

  The vampire hissed in pain, and his face went gray. I don’t know what I was expecting—that he’d turn to dust, like in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or that he’d immediately desiccate into a mummified corpse.

  Instead, he ripped out the chopstick and came at me with a snarl, his teeth bared.

  A buzz of terror filled my head. I drew out the scissors, my other defense, and brandished them at the now-furious vampire. “Victor will have your head if you kill me,” I said.

  The vampire laughed. “Victor will never know.”

  “Alex!” A voice called above me. I looked up, and Dmitri was standing at the top of the stairs, holding the sculpture that had previously rendered him unconscious.

  The other vampire looked too, and Dmitri threw the sculpture in his face. He went down hard.

  Dmitri leaped over the rail and landed in front of me. “Did he hurt you?” he asked, scanning my face and body for signs of damage. His hands hovered over the blood on my head, and his eyes darkened dangerously. “Fuck this curse. It’s like a rope on fire that tightens around my neck if I’m not actively trying to rescue you when you’re in danger.” He glared at me. “Your accomplice who knocked me out—who was it?”

  “I’m not going to tell you, and you can’t threaten to hurt me to find out.”

  I had him, and he knew it. His lip curled. “If I find out who it is, they’re going to regret that.” He scrubbed both hands across his face. “But all I can think about is whether or not you’re injured. So tell me—did he hurt you?” He placed his foot on the unconscious vampire’s neck.

  “No,” I said, breathless. Was Dmitri going to try to retaliate for my part in knocking him out? “I stabbed him with a chopstick, and then you knocked him out.”

  Smoke continued to fill the air around us. I bent over, coughing, and Dmitri’s face twisted as if something inside him was hurting him. He clutched at his chest, then he stepped forward and swept me into his arms. “Can smoke hurt humans? Because the curse is going crazy right now.”

  “Yes,” I managed.

  “Let’s get out of here.”

  Despite being a vampire, he was warm, and his arms felt good. I went stiff, but I didn’t feel unsafe. Actually, I felt the complete opposite. Peaceful. Infinitely peaceful. A cool calm spread through me, soothing the anxiety swirling in my head, clearing my mind. I felt drugged, almost, but in a way that didn’t make my thoughts cloudy. I blinked, seeing everything more clearly.

  Was this part of that curse he was talking about?

  “The wood was a good idea,” he said as he took the stairs fast. “Was that a chopstick?”

  “Yeah,” I said. He stumbled, and I wrapped both arms around his neck. We were nose to nose, and then I turned my head.

  “You have to actually get it in the heart,” Dmitri said. “You stabbed in the middle of his chest.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  We reached the bottom of the stairs. Dimly, I heard a fire alarm ringing. Victor appeared from a smoke-filled doorway, his face laced with displeasure at the sight of Dmitri. Then he spotted the blood gushing from the side of my head, and he made a sound of alarm.

  “Keep a better leash on your human,” Dmitri snapped at him before dropping me like he was eager to stop touching me. He took two steps back, quickly putting distance between us, although I saw how his hands trembled as if it physically hurt him to do so. “Someone almost made a snack of her.”

  The calm I’d felt when I was touching him vanished, replaced by gnawing panic. I ground my teeth together and pretended I was fine.

  Khalil stepped to my side.

  “Take her to safety,” Victor said to him, and then we were moving toward the door, Khalil’s large hand closed around mine.

  I remembered the key fob, still in my possession, and I saw Jean-Claude across the room, nearly hysterical. “The art,” he was saying to those around him. “The art!”

  I jerked away from Khalil and grabbed Jean-Claude’s sleeve. “What is happening?” I gasped. “What’s happening to the art?”

  I slipped the fob into his pocket as I said the words. I was wearing gloves, so there would be no fingerprints. With the smoke and the confusion, no one noticed.

  Jean-Claude turned toward me, but he didn’t seem to hear my words at all. His gaze fixed on the blood on my face, and he looked entranced.

  “My dear,” he murmured drunkenly. “You are injured.”

  The guests near him snapped their heads around to look at me, their nostrils flaring. One took a step in my direction, opening her mouth to show fangs, and fear lanced through me.

  Then Dmitri was there again, his posture a clear warning to the others to back off. He growled in his throat, showing his teeth. They hesitated
long enough for Khalil to wrench me away, heading toward the door. Then we were outside, with the night air slapping us in the face, clear and crisp.

  “Into the car,” Khalil clipped out, and I saw that it was waiting at the curb. I slid into my seat, and he slid into his, and he peeled away from the curb just as a few figures came sprinting through the doorway toward us.

  I leaned back against the seat, my heart pounding.

  “What’s going on?” I gasped. Should I be playing dumb, since they’d given me Lethe before? I was a bright individual. I at least should realize that my blood was causing an issue. I twisted in my seat to look behind us. “Khalil… Those guests… Were they going to try to eat me?”

  “Sometimes the bloodlust takes over,” Khalil said grimly.

  We weren’t pretending, then. At least not now.

  He drove at breakneck speed through the streets until we reached the apartment. I sat rigid in my seat.

  “Am I in danger now?” I ventured, cutting a glance at him. “From you?”

  I still had my scissors, although I didn’t know what good they would do me. And I still, irrationally, felt safe with him.

  “You are not in danger,” Khalil said firmly. “I am not one of them. I do not crave your blood.”

  “You’re not—?” I stopped short. The word hovered on my tongue.

  “I am human,” he said. “Mr. Branaugh keeps me alive, and grants me some superhuman strengths in order to better serve him, but I am not of his kind.”

  “Not a—a vampire.” I stared at the road, feeling dizzy saying the words out loud to him. I hadn’t anticipated having this conversation with him. And yet here we were.

  A lot of unexpected things had happened tonight.

  “They call themselves immortals, but that is one word that has been used to describe their kind,” he said.

  He’d told me a lot, but I decided to keep asking questions. Maybe I’d get even more answers, more insight into Khalil and Victor’s world. Right now, Khalil was speaking with a candor I didn’t think he’d use with me again. They were undoubtedly planning to dose me with Lethe again. Like Dmitri earlier, Khalil seemed willing to talk.