“Sir,” the guard tried again.
Vlad growled, deep and threatening. Val felt it rumble through his cheek.
There were no more protests from the guard.
Val drifted, teeth gritted against the pain of being moved, but lulled by the rhythm of his brother’s familiar gait. Vlad seemed to walk forever. Through the labs that, only a few weeks ago, Val had broken through. They rode in the elevator. Went up more stairs.
He fell asleep at some point, or maybe passed out. When he managed to pry his eyes open again he heard the rush of water, the sound contained within a small space, and his eyes were filled with…with…
“Sunlight,” he breathed, voice the barest croak of sound.
“Hmm,” Vlad murmured. He set him down, gently, gently, on a hard surface, sitting upright, his back braced against something smooth and cool.
He blinked and let his head roll to the side, scanning the room. It was a bathroom, all white tile and black marble. He was sitting on the counter, leaning against the mirror. To his right was a massive claw-foot tub filling with steamy water. And above it, a leaded-glass window. Sunlight spilled in, a pure white shaft of it, gleaming across the clean, expensive fixtures.
He’d seen the sun in all its iterations while he dream-walked. But seeing it in person, now, falling through the diamond-shaped panes of a window, glimmering on the surface of the water, was like a religious experience.
He lifted one shaking hand and held it up before him, fingers spread so the sunlight slipped between them, limned them in silver.
“Why?” he asked, and looked to his brother. His voice shook, his body shook.
Vlad’s cruel features were as implacable as always. But his eyes hinted at warmth and softness. “When was the last time they bathed you?”
He wet his lips. “I…I don’t know.”
“Can you stand?”
“No.”
Vlad nodded and went to turn the taps off. The rushing of water left behind a bristling silence, filled only with the occasional plunk of a stray droplet, and Val’s unsteady, open-mouthed breathing.
Vlad returned. “Here,” he said, and reached for the tattered hem of Val’s shirt. He undressed him efficiently, but carefully, his sword-callused hands gentle. And when Val was naked, lifted him into his arms again and lowered him slowly into the full bath.
The water was startlingly hot, and Val clutched at his brother’s arms, hissing when it touched his skin. He was sore all over, bruised and tender, and at first it hurt badly.
“Wait,” he breathed when Vlad started to lift him back out. “Just…” And it began to ease. Began to soothe him. Vlad settled him all the way in, so his head rested on the edge of the tub, his body submerged beneath the surface.
The water clouded with dirt and grease almost immediately. His long, knotted hair floated, golden kelp waving gently as he fidgeted and the water lapped around his knees.
Val shut his eyes, tilted his head back, and tried to breathe slowly through his mouth. The heat, and the wet, and the tender way his brother had carried him up here…it was too much. He…
His chest hitched, and his throat ached, and he didn’t understand any of this.
“Why are you doing this?” he whispered. “Vlad, if you’re just going to hurt me…” Then he couldn’t stand this small kindness first. Going back to pain and filth after this – it would kill him.
He was aware of Vlad settling down on his knees beside the tub. Of him leaning in, pressing his face into the side of Val’s head, breathing deep through his nose. “It’s gone,” he said.
“What? What’s gone?”
Vlad’s hand settled over his, where it gripped the edge of the tub. “Val, do you remember meeting the mage they call the Necromancer?”
He struggled to think, eyes opening again, searching Vlad’s face for cues. His brother looked so soft. As soft as he ever could, the mean bastard. Without the mustache he’d adopted as an adult, he looked more like the narrow-faced, pale-skinned brother Val had shared a bedchamber with for the first five years of his life. It grounded him.
“It was before they found you,” he said, remembering. “They had me – had me at the New York facility then. He came to see me. Red hair. Cocky smile. He smelled old.”
“He is old,” Vlad agreed. “And very powerful. I smelled his magic on you the first time I came to visit you in the dungeon.”
“You smelled his…” Val felt his mouth drop open, and his eyes sprang wide. “What?”
Vlad nodded, mouth a thin, grim line. “He cast some sort of spell over you. I don’t know how. But he was spying on your dreams. How else do you think these idiot mortals found your friends? The mage was walking behind you, your constant shadow.”
Spied on. And he hadn’t known.
He hadn’t known.
Nauseated suddenly, he pitched forward. Tried to. His hand slipped on the wet porcelain and the water rushed up to meet his face.
Vlad caught him with one steadying hand on his shoulder. “You didn’t know.”
“I didn’t…I didn’t…how…” He hyperventilated.
“It’s gone now,” Vlad said. “I burned it out of you.”
Val lifted his head, hair dripping water, and met his brother’s gaze. “You burned it…” And then he understood, breath catching. “You burned it out of me.”
“I did. And he won’t get the chance to cast it again.”
Emotion crashed over Val like a wave. He drew his knees up and pressed his face to them. Closed his eyes tight, but the tears came anyway, hot and relentless, dripping down his face and into the bathwater. He opened his mouth to take a breath, and a sob spilled out, painful and choked.
Vlad didn’t speak, but his arm was strong and grounding around Val’s shoulders. He held him, and Val cried and cried, until he cried himself to sleep.
~*~
He came to warm and dry, curled up on his side amid downy sheets, head resting on a pillow that smelled of lavender and his brother’s skin. He knew Vlad was there beside him, and opened his eyes to find him sitting propped up against the headboard, legs stretched out in front of him, reading a book with a thoughtful frown. His expression reminded Val of their boyhood, of long tutoring sessions bent over tomes written in Greek and Latin and Slavic, trying to make sense of the tangled knots of history, religion, and art.
“Did you dry my hair?” Val asked, feeling it soft and silky and fresh-smelling against his neck.
Vlad closed the book on one finger and looked over with the mildest interest. It was probably a look that sent the humans running, but it was a rather sweet expression, Val knew from experience. “It was wet. The humans have this device–” He made a face, and a gesture with his hand that mimicked a gun.
Val felt a smile tug at his mouth. “A hair dryer?”
Vlad frowned, shrugged, and glanced away. “It’s useful.”
“So I’ve heard.” He chuckled, just a weak little gust that tweaked at sore muscles in his chest. He felt a pull at the edges of his healing wound, and winced. “It’s funny,” he said, breathless now as the pain tugged at him, “all these humans think I’m the liar, and you’re the straightforward one. They’ve got it all wrong.”
“I’m not a liar,” Vlad countered, turning back to him. “I’m only patient.”
“That’s one word for it. And you never met a grudge you couldn’t hold forever. Atlas carried the world on his shoulders, but you carry all the world’s grudges, brother.”
“I’m patient,” Vlad repeated. “I waited five-hundred years to pay you back for this.” He reached to pull the collar of his shirt aside and reveal the faint white scar across his shoulder, a near mirror-image of the wound he’d given Val.
“That’s not patient, that’s vengeful!” Val countered with a disbelieving laugh.
“Revenge requires patience,” Vlad said seriously, and Val lost it.
He pressed his face into the pillow, wincing as each laugh shook his battered body, but una
ble to stop. There were tears in his eyes when he finally managed to come to a gasping, snorting halt, still chuckling. “God above. You are an unchanging asshole.”
“I count it among my strengths.”
“Of course you do. What is it you used to say?”
“An eye for an eye,” Vlad stared, and Val chorused along on the rest: “A scar for a scar, a knife for a knife.”
The last of his laughter melted away, leaving him achy and hollow. “I put you in the ground to keep them from killing you outright.”
“I know you did.”
Val’s next breath left his lungs on a shiver. “They’ll never let me go, will they?” He hated how small and pathetic his voice sounded, but there was nothing to be done for it. At the moment, he felt small and pathetic, too.
Vlad’s dark brows slanted low, shifting from their usual sternness to outright hostility. “Do you trust me?”
“I have always wanted to trust you, brother.”
“Trust me now. And be patient.”
“No one is as patient as you.”
“No. But try.” Vlad leaned over to put the book on the nightstand, and then slid down until he lay on his back, head on the neighboring pillow. When he reached for Val’s hand, Val gave it up to him with hesitation.
Vlad’s mouth twitched; it could have been a rueful smile. “Here,” he said, and pulled Val’s hand up so that the palm was pressed to his forehead. “Take me walking with you. Into the past. I think…” A note of uncertainty stained his voice, foreign and unsettling. “I think we misunderstand each other.”
Dread and excitement flickered under Val’s skin; chased like lightning through his veins. “I don’t think I’m strong enough for that now. I–”
Vlad’s other hand was suddenly shoved under his nose, tipped back, the wrist exposed. Blue veins twined together like vines under his pale skin, throbbing with a strong pulse.
Val clenched his jaw and felt his fangs descend; saliva pooled on his tongue.
“Drink,” Vlad said, like a command. “And then show me.”
“You still think you’re the boss of everyone, don’t you?” Val huffed.
“That’s because I am.”
“Insufferable.” Val reached to curve his slimmer, more elegant hand behind his brother’s and brought the tempting wrist to his lips. He looked up, one last time, searching Vlad’s face for a lie or a trap. But Vlad stared steadily back, the same quietly encouraging face he’d used when they were boys in the training yard back home.
Home. Oh, he wanted to go home.
He bit, slow but sure, and when his fangs pierced flesh, velvet blood welled up to fill his mouth.
The guards he’d drained a few weeks before had hit his starved system like a narcotic. But this was on another plane entirely. This was home, and brother, and family, and strength, such impossible strength.
He only took a little, until his skin was buzzing and his lips were throbbing and he thought he could have scaled the façade of the manner house with nothing but finger- and toenails for support. Then he eased back, licked the wound until it started to seal.
Vlad’s forehead felt warm and grounding beneath his other hand. “How far back do you want to go?” he asked.
“How far did you get with your mortal?”
Val sighed. “You know about her?”
“Everyone here does. The spell, remember?”
“Damn it.”
“Talbot sent minions to fetch her.”
“He–” Val made a flailing move to leap out of bed.
Vlad grabbed him around the waist and pinned him down, pressing Val’s hand tight to his forehead. “Later. Right now you need to show me.”
Val forced himself to take a breath. Vlad was right. If they were going to work together…
A hysterical laugh bubbled to life in his chest.
“What?” Vlad demanded.
“Nothing, nothing. Alright.” He resettled. They were closer now, close enough to see what Val had always known: that though they looked sometimes brown, or sometimes gray, Vlad’s eyes were in fact the color of hammered gold. Like a wolf. He would have made a spectacular wolf; vampirism was a genetic waste.
“Alright,” Val said again. “To Adrianople, then.”
Vlad bared his teeth in a silent snarl, but Val closed his eyes. Thought about going down, down…and then up, and then back.
Back to the place where the real hell had started.
15
HONORED GUESTS
Adrianople, called Edirne by the Ottomans
Capital of the Ottoman Empire
1441
Their captors knew they were vampires. That was the panic-inducing thought that continued to cycle through Vlad’s brain.
He’d come to the first night in a tent, chained to a stake, and in the light of a brazier had seen that his cuffs were of a heavy, solid silver, and that Val still lay unconscious beside him. Who bound a ten-year-old boy with silver? Someone who knew he was a vampire.
The men who had entered the tent wore the garb of Ottoman foot soldiers. Some looked Turkish, others seemed to be Mongols. One was blond, his nose aquiline, his eyes blue: a Western convert. They had brought him food, but they had not spoken to him. Vlad had roused his brother, though Val whimpered and tried to curl in on himself; he’d been struck in the ribs first, Vlad remembered, and the silver was slowing his healing.
The Ottomans talked in low voices, in Turkish, and Vlad had understood only the occasional word. All that time he’d spent studying Greek, but they weren’t headed for Byzantium now, were they?
The trip took days, and when they were on the horses, rough sacks were put over their heads so they couldn’t see the paths they took, could only sway in the saddle as their party climbed steep slopes and splashed across mountain streams.
The brothers were forced to share a horse. Vlad sat in front, Val behind him, Val’s arms around his waist and cuffed together in front of Vlad’s stomach. Vlad was cuffed too, and unable to hold the reins. Their cuffs were chained together. Ropes had been run loosely beneath the horse’s belly, connecting their feet, ensuring that Vlad couldn’t tip them off the side and onto the trail and make a break for it. Nor, should the rope break, could he run with his brother hugging him like this.
It was a thorough, well thought out containment. All he could so was sit, breath stiflingly hot inside the hood, and try to map their route in his head, trying to remember turns, counting strides, for all the good it would do. He had to try something. Make some sort of plan. When they stopped to rest, he tried to wriggle his hands loose from the cuffs. At mealtimes, he eyed their captors, searching their belts for knives, wondering if he could just get close enough…
But they were careful, and they gave him no openings.
Neither he nor Val had the power to compel, not that Val was any use, alternating between crying and sleeping.
“You have to stop,” Vlad hissed at him one night. “Eat your food. Shut up.”
Val looked up at him with huge, betrayed blue eyes.
“We’re escaping,” Vlad whispered. “But you have to stop being such a baby and help me.”
Val’s lip quivered, and his eyes filled with fresh tears, but he nodded and wiped his face on his filthy sleeve. When he pushed his hair back, he revealed ugly purple bruises at his hairline, one on his forehead, one just behind his ear.
Vlad saw red.
Vampire or not, his brother was just a tiny thing, with slender wrists and a skinny neck, and skin that bruised like overripe fruit. He could be subdued with a word. With a look. And someone had struck him, again and again.
Vlad would figure out which one of these men had done that, and make him pay.
But first he had to have a plan. And he couldn’t form a plan if Val kept crying. His brother’s distress triggered something ugly and primal, a side of him that was all fangs and claws, violence and knee-jerk reactions. A plan required rational thought.
Val made a valiant e
ffort to stop crying, but try as he might, Vlad couldn’t figure out a way to escape.
One night, the blond one brought their dinner, and Vlad spoke to him in Slavic: “Where are you taking us?”
The man’s gaze flicked up; he’d understood. In the same language, he answered, “You’ll find out soon enough.”
Vlad bit back a curse and forced his expression to smooth. He couldn’t snarl, or show his fangs, not now. That wouldn’t help the plan. “What happened to our father?”
The man shrugged and retreated to the other side of the tent, where his comrades were watching the boys with a mixture of curiosity and amusement.
Vlad did growl then, just a little, before he clamped it down tight. He wished Mircea were here; he was the diplomatic one.
Days passed, until his body was ungodly sore from being strapped to a saddle, and he spent so much time under a hood that the sun became too bright. They rode, and they ate their meager rations – when Val tried to starve himself, Vlad reminded him that they couldn’t escape if they were too weak to stand – and finally, they arrived somewhere loud and bustling that stank of humanity.
The horses’ hooves clattered over cobblestones, and they climbed one last hill. Shouts hailed their arrival: staccato, rote greetings from guards, the same as when he reentered the palace grounds after a day spent in Tîrgovişte.
Vlad realized where they must be, and his heart sank.
The ropes on his ankles loosened, and he was dragged off the horse. Val let out a yelp as he was dragged along too, and then fell to their knees on a bed of sharp gravel stones, Val’s arms tightening around Vlad’s waist.
Vlad’s hood was ripped off, and dappled sunlight assaulted his eyes.
They were in a tree-lined courtyard. Vlad saw benches, and reflecting pools edged with spills of bright flowers. A group of stable boys moved forward to take the horses. A set of doors shaped like a keyhole waited at the top of a shallow flight of stairs, and in front of them stood a man in elaborate robes, hair covered by a snow-white turban. He spoke to the captors in Turkish, quick and dismissive. The blond one came to drag them up to their feet, but he left the cuffs attached – a wise move on his part, an infuriating one from Vlad’s perspective.
Dragon Slayer (Sons of Rome Book 3) Page 15