by Lily Levi
“The game isn’t who wants her,” I continued, already congratulating myself for discovering the easiest way to keep Cain from destroying her at the next opportunity. “That’s not it at all. The game is who she wants. Do you see?”
His pale eyes flickered and for a moment I was worried that he didn’t see what I meant at all.
“Yes,” he said, assuaging my fears.
I pressed my hands together. “Very good. So we see that our dear brother is currently in the lead; we do see this, don’t we?”
Cain’s face grew dark at the mention of Orlando. “I will kill him,” he said.
I tilted my head to the side. “No, you see, that won’t work.”
Killing Orlando would mean a break in what had held the hierarchy together since before time was known. The punishment would be unearthly, but I couldn’t expect Cain to fully factor in the consequences. It was a wonder that he had lasted so many centuries, but each one had been like the last until Serena had ruined our twilighted monotony.
Cain was already unraveling to her unintended influence which was not ultimately a terrible thing for me, but I needed him intact if I stood chance in the Master’s little game, as vague as it was.
“You’re lucky to have me,” I said, gently guiding him from the window. “I’ll keep you on the straight and narrow, always have, always will.”
He took a seat next to the folded bodies of our last meal and stared blankly at the muted television. His jaw shifted as he chewed on his own tongue; it often meant that he was either trying not to bite someone to shreds or that he was thinking, though quite usually it was the former.
“We’re wasting time,” he said with a reserved finality that I hadn’t expected.
I folded my hands and gave him my best, most patient smile. “Not at all,” I said. “We’re gaining it.” I met his gaze and held it to show that I meant what I said.
“How,” he said, only it wasn’t a question. It was a word of defeat in the tone of a moody little boy.
“How,” I said. “How? We know that Serena has loved many men, some more than others, but the fact remains.”
In truth, I was inclined to think of her as more succubus than vampire, though she was more bitter and less oiled with honeyed gazes than the succubi I had known, few in number as they were.
“A women with so many lovers becomes disenfranchised after so long,” I continued. “One after the other.”
Cain’s eyes shifted to the side of me and then back again, as if the meaning to my words could be found behind me.
“Orlando,” I said.
Cain’s attention sharpened at the name and I felt for a moment that I was speaking to an unruly dog who had had his interest piqued by the mention of a walk to the park.
“Orlando will try his luck with her and he may succeed. In fact, he will. I can feel it, can’t you? But see here, after success comes failure. One misstep and Serena will turn on him and never gain back the feelings she’s lost. Women who have all men rarely have them for long and it’s not because they’re not wanted.” I turned around to turn off the apartment’s television. “It’s because one mistake spells the end and then they’re straight on to the next. We won’t be the next, do you see? You and I will be the last.”
Cain pressed his lips together until they were white and then he opened them again. “We will be the last,” he said.
“Precisely,” I said, relieved that he understood. I had few enough ways to metaphorize Serena’s supposed relationship habits and was glad to not have used any of them. “It’s a soft kind of game,” I continued. “A gentle game, really. Subtle, very subtle. I know it’s not quite in your wheelhouse, but…”
“I will be the last,” he said, interrupting me.
I groaned quietly at the spark of realization that flooded his eyes until they were full more of his ideas than I had seen them in a long while. “Yes,” I said quickly. “Perhaps. But we have to work together, you and I, me and thee, us, brother and brother. If you’re to seduce her, to woo her, to win her, you’ll need a delicate touch - god knows you’re lacking - and here I am.”
He stared first at me and then back towards the open window. “I will have Serena Moon. Not you.”
Ambrose
The waitress in her pink and white set the wine glass on the table and nodded at me with the silly smile that had been plastered across her plump lips since I’d entered the cafe.
“Thank you,” I said, waving her off.
“De rien, monsieur,” she said with a kind of hot silk that stuck to the words in an accent that clearly wasn’t her own.
I looked up at her. “Darling,” I said slowly, quietly. “You’re not French. It’s embarrassing for both of us. Just, you know, be what you are, whatever that is.”
Her thin eyebrows pulled together at the center and she moved away to the next table without any appreciable response.
“Was that necessary, Ambrose?”
I reached for the glass stem and took in the scent of the wine, red and full. “Do you know what a pest is?” I asked him.
Theron’s face maintained its usual serious demeanor. “Orlando has her,” he said. “And you’re breakfasting on wine.”
I waved my free hand around to show him the street-side patio, decorated with hanging lights and tiny French flags. “It’s an American pseudo-French cafe. How could I resist?” I took a long draught of the wine. It was satisfying, but not particularly wonderful by any forced moulding of the word. It was, in fact, as French as the waitresses they employed.
“In any case,” I went on, “Orlando doesn’t have her.”
“He does,” said Theron, leaning forward with an earnestness that I hadn’t seen in him for nearly half a century or more, not since the wolves of Madagascar, at any rate.
“He doesn’t have her,” I repeated. “If anything, our dear Serena has him.” I’d watched them through the night. It was impossible to help myself from it. The way he took her had lacked a certain finesse, but she had moved gracefully enough.
Still, it had only been gracefully enough. She wasn’t enthralled with him, that much was obvious. Keen, perhaps, but not enthralled, enraptured, enamored. Not at all. And the slope of her voice when she had spoken of him protecting her - ah, that had given her away entirely. She didn’t believe him and was right not to.
Orlando wouldn’t have been able to sense her mistrust, of course. He was dull to words, though he pretended to use them well. He’d never quite acquired their power no matter how often he practiced them.
Theron looked to the street.
A commuter bus passed, fouling the air. Several honks erupted around the corner. A woman pulled a screaming, curly-haired toddler down the sidewalk.
“So we let her go,” he said. “Is that your plan?”
“Mmm,” I said, pressing the tip of the glass against my tongue. “No. Not my plan. Yours, perhaps, but not mine.” I set the glass back down on the table between us. “Does it seem to you that we’ve been here before, sitting face to face, a table, wine, worrying over Serena - does this ring any silver bells for you?”
“You know where they’re going,” he said flatly.
I smiled with a coyness I nearly felt. “Don’t you?”
“There’s no time,” he said.
I rolled my eyes in a long dramatic arc to make sure he wouldn’t miss the movement. “There’s always time, brother. Time for wine, that is.” I took another long drink and set the glass back down again. “The key - and this is very important - the key is to have others do the things for you that would otherwise take up the time you’d use to drink wine. Does that make sense to you or shall I explain it in another way?”
Orlando would take her to Pennsylvania because I had suggested it to him. That was all he’d needed, something intelligent to hold onto in this frantic mess of a puzzled game.
It was too simple, really. I suggested what ought to be done and he did it. Every time.
Theron stood from the t
able and I imagined how he might fume away if he were at least two hundred years younger. “I’m wasting time,” he said and I could almost taste the helplessness in his voice. He didn’t know what to do or where to go.
It was utterly delicious to watch.
“You’re harried,” I said. “Your skillset is not quite… suited to this game, is it?” I tilted my head to the side to show him that I would allow for the exception. “The science of species is rather practical for a hunter, but you don’t know what Serena is and so you don’t quite know what to hunt or where to hunt it.”
“She’s a vampire,” he said, tapping his fingers against the laminated table, but I could tell by the way he forced the word vampire that he wasn’t so sure of it. I noted his hesitance to fully commit to her dark biology. I had suspected she wasn’t quite like us or any of the lesser vampires that huddled in their sad nooks and crannies, but there was nowhere to go from that supposition. I needed to spend time with her. I needed to listen to her speak, to inspect her words and the way she said them, to compare, to contrast.
But I needed her alone where she could let both her words and her walls down freely. Orlando was an obstacle, as was Theron, though to a lesser extent. I could feel the others mulling about as well, though only vaguely. They had an even lesser idea of how to play the Master’s game than I did and that was good.
Still, it was the land that made it difficult to know for certain where they were. America was not suited to us and never had been. The earth was consecrated with a darkness more unholy than even the Master himself, and older, too. It interfered with our senses - mine, at least - and I would be glad when the game was through, if only to leave the place far behind in a time I would soon forget with the passing of aeons.
If I survived my brothers.
Which I would.
Of course I would.
I finished the wine and watched the waitress who had pretended to be French for my benefit. Theron had left and I sat alone. If I had been in another mood, I might’ve waved the girl over and had some small amount of fun with her, but seeing Serena again - speaking with her - had somehow spoiled what small pleasure I could still take from the short lives of mortal women.
They were boring. They were vacant. Not all of them of course, but enough of them that it was hardly worth the gamble to approach them at all unless I were truly bored myself.
But Serena was none of the things that they were - what was she?
Loathsome in a handsome way and very nearly beautiful. She despised herself; her every word betrayed her, one after the next. It was easy to see that she was the type to keep secrets from herself, not for the sake of survival, but because she couldn’t bear the things she truly felt and thought.
She was flawed and she would not survive. A shame, really.
I pushed the empty wine glass off the edge of the table and watched with a tired amusement at how the waitress in her pink and white uniform rushed to fold the broken glass between two napkins.
Nothing was ever as enjoyable as it had been.
I stepped away from my chair and crouched beneath the table. “Merci, mademoiselle,” I whispered.
She glanced up at me and I could still see the angry hurt in her eyes from my prior offense.
“Allow me to help you,” I said, and lifted her hand from the napkin.
She dropped the glass back down onto the cement patio and I wasted no time in pressing her wrist against my teeth.
She didn’t scream.
They never did.
Serena
“Are you going to miss it?” Orlando asked.
I moved my gaze lazily over the passing suburbs with their overgrown lawns and chainlink fences. We had left the gray edge of the city behind us. If I remembered Chicago, I hoped it would be fondly as the start of a new life, but I remembered few things with any semblance of fondness and something deep and dark told me that Illinois would be no different.
“No,” I said with a flatness I hadn’t fully intended. “I won’t.”
Orlando flicked a knob on the dashboard and cool air swirled between us. “Have you ever missed anything?”
I pulled a cigarette from the dashboard. “No,” I said, pushing it into the corner of my mouth. “Just these.” I lit a match from my pocket and took in the familiar, smoky heat. “They taste like home,” I added, tapping the new ash into the rubber cup holder between us.
He moved one hand from the wheel to push it through his dark hair. “You were raised in fire,” he said. “Was wondering about that.”
I gave him the small laugh I knew he would be looking for. If he wanted to amuse me or make me feel comfortable with him, I would let him believe that I was.
I moved my gaze back out the window. Long clouds streaked the morning sky and it was a wonder that they kept themselves up beneath the weighted heat of the sun instead of folding down onto the earth.
“I wasn’t born in fire,” I said. “Though I wish I had been I was born in a small house in Castel San Giovanni.” It was strange to say the words. It was a small detail that there was no use in sharing other than to act as a show of faith, false or not. I had found myself growing irritable since we’d emerged from the city and I couldn’t afford to push Orlando away so soon.
“Your mother?” he asked. “Vampire?”
I shrugged and blew out a thin billow of smoke against the car window. “She hid me away beneath the floorboards and then she died.”
I felt his eyes search the part of my face that wasn’t turned completely away from him. “You remember?” he said, though the question was marked with curiosity more than pity and I almost liked him more for it.
“No,” I said, though part of me always thought that perhaps I did remember some of it. It was a trick of the mind, of course, it had to be, but there it was. “The priest remembered and he told the nuns who told me.” The memory of how their sweet faces had turned sour was full of nostalgia. “To watch me cry,” I added.
He reached for the cigarettes and I handed him a match. “A priest found you,” he said.
I watched how he lit the cigarette with one hand and then waved the match out with an expert flick of his wrist.
“Yes,” I said and pulled back the smile that threatened to overtake my face. It was my favorite part to tell, if only to myself. “He killed my mother.”
Orlando eyed me from the side and then smoked his cigarette in a kind of deep thoughtfulness. “Oh,” he said.
We drove on. The hours passed quietly. Houses dispersed. Oak trees and sugar maples rose to take their place. The sun lifted itself to meet the middle of the blindingly blue sky above us and I held my tongue until I could hold it no longer.
“So where are we going?” I asked, lighting another cigarette. I wanted to sound as casual as I could, like I didn’t care where we were going, so long as I was with him.
“Avella,” he said, but not before a short pause. “In Pennsylvania.”
“This appointment of yours,” I said and stretched in the seat to appear disinterested in our destination. “It’s in Pennsylvania?” I could think of little that would connect Pennsylvania with Master Deadmourn and the uncertainty was almost comforting. Perhaps it would have nothing to do with him at all.
“Yes,” he said and turned to eye me for a quick moment before moving his attention back to the road ahead of us. “An appointment with a place, not a person. Just, there’s something I want you to see. You do trust me, don’t you?”
I took a long breath. “Hard to say.” He needed to believe that I was on the verge of trusting him - and I was, wasn’t I? - but not so close to marrying my trust in him that he no longer needed to try for it. I had to keep him fighting. I’d made it too easy, following him into the sedan and letting him take me where he would, but my choices were as limited as they ever were.
“Do you think they’re following us?” I asked. Some strange, convoluted part of me hoped that he would say that they were, even though the image of Cain sta
lking us from Illinois to Pennsylvania with a single, razored intent sent a quiet shudder through my body.
Orlando narrowed his eyes on the long road and nodded almost imperceptibly. “They’ll never stop following you,” he said with a softness that was almost sad. “So long as you’re Serena Moon and free of their grasp, they will never stop seeking you like the treasure you are.”
I leaned back in the leather seat. “Is that what I am to you? A ‘treasure’?”
He glanced at me. “Of course,” he said. “But their minds are too narrow to see the possibilities that reside inside of you. I can, though.”
I touched my hand to my stomach. “You mean this possibility.”
“Yes,” he said. “It’s my favorite one.”
We rode on in a silence that I let myself believe was comfortable. I hadn’t had a proper, comfortable silence with another creature in too many years, long and short. Despite the overhanging threat that Orlando would betray me or that the others would reach down over us, I found myself lost inside of a kind of peaceful white noise for the first time in a long while.
I closed my eyes despite my better judgment. I was tired. I was exhausted. And, more than anything else, I was quite literally dead. It was no different than it had been before that night in the mansion with the thirteen of them, huddled around me, taking my blood for their own, except now the end was different in that there wasn’t an end at all, at least not like there had been.
My life - if I could call it that - was no longer roped to the throbbing veins of creatures greater than myself. They hunted me, but their success was no longer certain and my end was no longer clear.
But things would become what they would become. I had no power over any of it. Orlando was my only asset and I had to be glad for it.
Nightfall brought us to the edge of the the Mahoning River.
Orlando unrolled the windows of the car to let the night air filter through and we shared our cigarettes in a kind of peaceful silence.
“I’m going to protect you,” he said quietly, perhaps not wanting to break the soft spell between us and the world as much I didn’t want him to. “Please know that I will.”