“I guess it’s going fine. For the record though, I still say we should have killed Augustine.”
They walked in silence for a while through the quiet streets. Eventually Lu said, “You know, you never did tell me what was so weird about Bryn’s 80’s theme party.”
Joey smiled into the darkness. “I’d forgotten about that.” He glanced at her. “You didn’t notice anything odd about it, besides the way people were dressed?”
“Nothing at all. Please don’t tell me everyone at that party was a zombie or something.”
Joey laughed at that. “No, they weren’t zombies. And they weren’t really there.”
“Huh?”
“By the looks of it, that party happened in 1985 or so,” Joey said. “Bryn was reliving a memory. He does that a lot. I think he gets lonely, because his boyfriend’s always off somewhere. So he fills up the house with memories.”
“But those partygoers were real,” Lu said. “I bumped into some of them. They looked at us, responded to us.”
They were waiting at a light to cross the street, and Joey turned to Lu. “Yeah, I know. It’s not a static memory, it’s a world Bryn can interact with. He makes it tangible, touchable.”
“Hang on. So, Bryn can easily conjure up a houseful of people, but he almost passes out trying to look through Alastair’s mind? That makes no sense.”
“Yeah, there’s kind of no rhyme or reason to it, why some big things take almost no energy while other seemingly small things take so much that they almost kill him. It’s like going to a store and finding a candy bar for fifty cents right next to a smaller candy bar that costs five hundred dollars. It’s illogical. But that’s the universe for ya.”
“Why do you think he kept the party going even after he went to bed?”
Joey shrugged and said, “I think he just likes the idea of a house full of people.”
Lu thought about the quiet loneliness that had permeated her own home lately and said, “Makes perfect sense to me.”
Chapter Eighteen
Alastair drove around Santa Cruz for a few minutes, trying to find a place to meet his maker. He frowned at that, ‘meeting his maker.’ Let’s hope not, he thought.
Eventually he pulled up beside a sprawling cemetery and decided this would do, since it was deserted and close to the highway Augustine would be travelling on. He got out of the car and wandered into the heart of the graveyard, finally perching on an old tombstone. And then he began calling Augustine to him the only way he knew how.
He relaxed and closed his eyes, and let his guard down. And he thought about what it had felt like waking up burning and alone at the creek just days before. The intense pain. The biting cold. The confusion. The fear – especially that.
He let himself really feel all of that again, giving in to it, letting the fear shake and unsettle him.
After only a few minutes a car screeched to a halt in the street, and he opened his eyes. A black Mercedes sedan was pulled up to the curb facing oncoming traffic, the driver’s side door left open. A tall, thin figure stood silhouetted against the light from inside the vehicle, frozen in place, staring at Alastair.
The figure started advancing toward him slowly, deliberately, pale hair reflecting a nearby streetlamp. Alastair looked down at his hands, which were folded in his lap. He felt an overwhelming urge to leap up and run away, but he forced himself to sit and wait.
In just a few moments this person was standing right in front of him, and Alastair raised his head to look into the face of the one who had made him.
He didn’t know what he’d been expecting, but it sure as hell wasn’t this.
Augustine was ethereally beautiful, with a childlike innocence about him. He had wide-set blue eyes with dark lashes and silken white-blonde hair that swept past his shoulders. Alastair remembered Joey’s warning that his maker looked deceptively harmless, but that had been a huge understatement.
And suddenly this person sank to his knees before Alastair and whispered, “I’m so sorry. God I’m sorry.” He bowed his head and began to cry.
Alastair stared at him for a long moment before he asked, “What specifically are you apologizing for?”
“For everything. For two hundred years of hurting you, chasing you, trying to control you.” Augustine wrapped his arms around himself as tears ran down his face.
Alastair was beyond shocked. He continued to stare at his maker for another long moment. And then, despite himself, despite everything he’d been told about this person, Alastair sunk to his knees too and took his maker in his arms, hugging him gently. That only made Augustine cry harder as he clung to Alastair, and he whispered, “How can you bear to touch me, after all I did to you?” Alastair just went on holding him, letting him cry.
It was several minutes before Augustine got his emotions under control. Eventually he let go of Alastair and wiped his face with the sleeve of his expensive black dress shirt. It took considerable effort to compose himself, but eventually he managed to do so.
Augustine’s voice was as beautiful as he was, soft and melodic as he said quietly, “All of a sudden I could feel your emotions. And I felt you were in trouble. Someone was causing you great distress. What happened to you today?” He had a very slight accent, of an origin Alastair couldn’t begin to pinpoint.
“Quite a lot, actually,” Alastair said lightly.
“Who hurt you?” Augustine’s voice was calm, level. But the inner rage that accompanied those words made Alastair flinch slightly. A knowing look crossed Augustine’s face. “You can feel my emotions too, can’t you?”
“Not by choice.”
“Please tell me who was hurting you,” Augustine said calmly. The part that went unsaid was, so I can kill them. A wave of anger accompanied this thought, pulsing through not only Augustine’s mind but throughout Alastair’s as well.
“I hardly want you killing anyone,” Alastair said.
Augustine’s eyes went wide. “You’re reading my thoughts.”
“Again, really not by choice.”
“But how? And why would our maker bond suddenly form after more than two centuries?”
Alastair just shrugged.
Augustine watched him for a few moments, then said softly, “And you allowed me to find you. You were waiting for me, and now you’re not running away. The only reason you’d let me near you must be because you need my help with something. What is it?”
Alastair returned to his seat on the tombstone before saying, “Someone’s been giving me a bit of trouble. I don’t know who it is, so I thought perhaps you might have some information that would benefit me.”
Augustine stood slowly, dusting off his finely tailored black dress pants. “May I?” He gestured to the tombstone, and when Alastair nodded he sat beside him. And Augustine thought, This is probably a trap. But I don’t care. He said, “What’s been happening, Alastair?”
Alastair debated how much to tell him, and finally decided to just lay it all out. “I awoke alone beside a creek a few days ago with my hand burning and with absolutely no memories.” Augustine flinched beside him. Alastair continued, “I have no idea how I got there. Then a couple days later, I was chased out of the place I was staying by werewolves. I came to San Francisco, where a warlock friend of mine told me I’d had a spell put on me.”
“You went to Bryn Maddock?” Augustine asked.
“That’s right. How did you know that?”
“You’ve been friends for two centuries, so it only makes sense.”
“There’s more. While we were there earlier today, Bryn’s house was attacked by a warlock and two assistants using some sort of powerful magic. It felt like they were going to bring the whole house down. We had to get past not only the warlocks but a bunch of werewolves and vampires when we fled.”
Augustine said quietly, “I felt such overwhelming fear from you.”
“What you probably felt was Bryn going into my mind to try to break the spell. It was difficult to endure.�
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“But he finally succeeded in breaking the spell. Yes?” Augustine was watching Alastair’s profile.
“He didn’t succeed.” Alastair turned to look at his maker. “He couldn’t lift the spell. So I have no memories whatsoever, prior to waking up at the creek.”
“That’s why you’re talking to me then,” Augustine looked down at his hands. “You’ve forgotten how much you despise me.”
“I know I should hate you. I’ve been briefed on our history,” Alastair told him.
“You’ve been told what I’ve done to you, but that’s far different than remembering it for yourself.” Augustine kept staring at his hands.
“Do you know who might have bespelled me, Augustine?”
Augustine looked up quickly. “It wasn’t me. I swear.”
Alastair knew he was telling the truth, could read it plainly in his mind. He nodded and said, “I know. But who then? And why?”
A series of names and faces began to reel through Augustine’s thoughts. “I don’t know who did this. But I have many enemies,” he said. “It could have been an attempt to get to me through you. Then again, you have plenty of enemies yourself.”
“Yes, but I’m under the impression that most of mine would just want to drive a stake through me, instead of bothering with magic.”
“True,” Augustine nodded, his mind still running rapidly through names, little bits and pieces of conversations, rumors, things he’d overheard. His mind worked impossibly quickly. It was astonishing and almost dizzying to listen in on all of that.
Alastair stood then. “But you have no idea who did this to me. I thought you might know, somehow. But I was mistaken.”
“Well, now that I know what’s been happening,” Augustine said, rising as well and standing eye to eye with Alastair. “I intend to do something about it.” He was thinking though at least five or six possible scenarios all at once, ways to get to the bottom of what had happened to Alastair, most of which involved contacting the legions of vampires he commanded and setting them in motion tracking down this culprit.
“I don’t need you to do anything, Augustine. I just wanted to find out what you knew.” And I needed to meet you, Alastair added silently, though now that he had met his maker, he was left with more questions than answers. Alastair took a step backwards, away from Augustine and the dizzying onslaught of his thoughts.
And as soon as Alastair stepped backwards, everything reeling through Augustine’s mind was instantly replaced with: Oh God, he’s going to run again! Augustine’s eyes were wide, panicked, when he met Alastair’s. I’m going to lose him again, he thought. Please, please no!
Augustine’s anguish rose up so overwhelmingly that Alastair actually found himself reaching out to comfort him again. He touched his maker’s arm lightly and said, “Hey. It’s ok.”
Augustine looked at the hand on his sleeve and whispered, “You really don’t remember. You hate me so much. You’d never be able to stand touching me unless you truly didn’t remember.”
“You’ve given me every reason to hate you,” Alastair said quietly, tucking both his hands in the pockets of his jeans.
“Yes.” Augustine turned away, overwhelmed with guilt.
And Augustine decided he was going to help Alastair with or without his permission. As soon as he got to a phone he’d call his own personal army of vampires and set them to work trying to figure out who was responsible for what had been done to Alastair.
After a minute Alastair said, “Ok, look. If you really want to help, I’ll let you. But I don’t want you to call in your army, I don’t want others involved.”
Augustine turned and met his gaze again. “It’s really unnerving that you can read my thoughts. Since when have you been able to do that?”
“Since this afternoon. I guess Bryn accidentally opened up some sort of channel between you and me when he was poking around in my brain. But you’re only getting my emotions, right? You can’t hear what I’m thinking.”
“No, I can’t,” Augustine told him, and Alastair could see he was telling the truth. “And I can’t imagine what Bryn would have done to open a connection like this.” Augustine interlaced his fingers and pushed his hair back from his face with both hands, then rested his hands on the crown of his head.
Alastair cocked his head to the side. “Curious. Joey has that exact same mannerism.”
“Does he? I wasn’t even aware I was doing it.” And then Augustine remembered where he’d seen that gesture before, where he’d picked it up. The habit was Alastair’s. That must have been where Joey had picked it up as well.
And Alastair watched, fascinated, as a memory played through Augustine’s mind: the two of them arguing. Alastair reaching up and interlacing his fingers, pushing his thick tangle of black hair back from his face. Which rattled the heavy chains on his wrists.
“Oh God,” Augustine looked away, realizing what he’d revealed. But then a kind of resignation filled him. “That’s just a small taste of it. Do you want more? You have a right to know.”
And in rapid succession a series of images played out in Augustine’s mind, one more horrible than the next. Alastair beaten, imprisoned, tortured at the hands of this person before him, all seen through Augustine’s eyes as Alastair felt not his own, but his captor’s profound anguish.
The image that lingered right at the end was Augustine kneeling beside Alastair’s broken and bleeding body, sobbing and asking again and again, Why won’t you just obey me? Why do you make me do these things to you? Why?
Alastair swallowed hard, visibly shaken. Seeing those memories from Augustine’s perspective had left him confused, disoriented. Most disturbingly, and as backwards as that was, it had made him feel a tiny bit of empathy for his maker, and that deeply upset him. When he found his voice again he said, “Why would you show me that?”
Augustine turned his back to him again and reached out a hand to brace himself against a tombstone. He said, “As much as I’d love to just be able to wipe the past away, that’s the reality of it. I’m profoundly sorry for the things I’ve done to you. And I know how woefully inadequate those words are.”
“I still don’t know why you’d show that to me.”
A deep sadness settled over Augustine, pushing out the little bit of hope that had lingered within him. He accepted it wearily, as if it was his usual state of being and said, “You would have read it in my mind eventually anyway. This way I won’t have to worry about that moment when you discover I’m a monster. Now you know.”
Silence settled heavily on them.
After several long moments, Alastair said quietly, “That’s a good idea about the werewolves. I should have thought of that myself.” He’d been listening in as Augustine’s thoughts drifted back to ways of finding out who’d bespelled Alastair.
Augustine sighed. He was depressed and tired and hungry, dreading the long drive back to his home in L.A. “I’m glad I could help in some small way. You know where I’ll be if you need anything. Not that I actually expect you to call.” He started to return to his car, not looking at Alastair.
“I can’t believe you’re just walking away,” Alastair said.
“I’m through trying to coerce you, Alastair. I’ve wasted so many years and put us both through hell, and I can’t keep up this exercise in futility.” Sadness radiated from him as he crossed the graveyard.
“Wait.” Alastair was surprised to hear himself say that.
Augustine stopped and turned slowly toward Alastair. He became tense, alert, wondering if this was all some sort of elaborate trap after all, wondering if his own creation was finally going to have his revenge on him.
“If what I wanted was revenge,” Alastair said, “I could have killed you a dozen times by now. Obviously that’s not why I let you find me.”
“I wouldn’t blame you in the slightest for wanting to kill me.”
“But I don’t.”
“You sure about that?”
“I don
’t need to kill you. There’s no possible way you’re a threat to me, now that I can read your thoughts. I’ll be ready for anything you think of.”
“Not that I was planning on doing anything to you.”
“I know,” Alastair told him. Then he said, “Augustine, stay and help me. Or at the very least, stay and get some rest. You’re exhausted.”
Augustine watched him for a long moment. And then he said, “If you really want my help, then I’ll stay. And you’re right, I am exhausted, but I’ll be better after I’ve eaten. Which clearly isn’t going to happen here,” he said, waving a hand at their surroundings. “And why exactly are we in a cemetery, Alastair?”
“You’re not the only one that’s entitled to some melodrama,” Alastair said with a little grin.
Augustine smiled at that, and then he said, “Thank you.”
“For what?”
“For giving me a chance when clearly I don’t deserve it. For speaking to me. For allowing me to help. For not driving a stake through me the moment you saw me.”
“Don’t make me regret it,” Alastair told him.
“Don’t worry. I’m not going to screw this up,” Augustine said with a sweet smile. Then he said, “Ok, give me a half hour and then we can get to work finding out who cast that spell. Where are you staying?”
Alastair gave him the address of the motel, and his maker started to walk away.
But Alastair called after him. “Augustine, what happened to my sister? To Meg?”
Augustine paused and looked over his shoulder at Alastair, saying, “She left me. Just a few weeks ago, actually.”
Alastair watched the memory of a young woman he himself couldn’t remember, a woman with pale skin and long wavy black hair, driving away from a big white house somewhere in the hills above a sprawling metropolis.
“And you just let her go?”
“That was never the Davies I wanted,” Augustine sighed. “She was a pitiful substitute for you.”
Augustine’s unfathomable loneliness washed through both of them as he thought, rather than said, I love you, Alastair. But I know it will never be mutual. He returned to his car then and drove away, pushing down his sadness, compartmentalizing it like he had a million times before.
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