Chapter Twenty-Seven
“You know him?” Joey asked.
“He’s my ex-boyfriend.” Lu wanted to run to him, but fear rooted her to the spot. “Is he…is he dead?”
“No,” said Joey, carrying Ted toward the elevators. “But he will be soon if we don’t help him.”
Augustine had crossed to the bank of elevators as well, and was pushing the call button as Joey asked him, “What do you know about this?”
Without glancing at the boy, Augustine said, “He came by Lu’s house the day after you cleared out, and the werewolves that were watching the house brought him to me in case he proved useful somehow. I had him locked up in the cells. Actually, I forgot he was in there.”
The elevator arrived then and they all boarded. Lu looked down at Ted and touched his bruised cheek as a sob lodged in her throat.
The elevator stopped on the top floor, and the doors opened to a penthouse studio apartment with sweeping views of San Francisco and the bay beyond. Augustine went in ahead of them, and as Joey tried to step out of the elevator Lu grabbed his arm and exclaimed, “What are you doing? What about the sunlight?” Three of the walls were glass, and bright mid-afternoon light spilled into the penthouse from every angle.
“It’s ok,” he told her. “The glass is obviously treated with a special UV filter, or else Augustine would have gone up in flames.”
He carried the boy to a black leather sofa and set him down carefully, and Lu sank to her knees beside the couch, whispering, “I wonder why he came back to my house,” as she gently stroked Ted’s dark blonde hair.
Joey reached down and brushed a tear from Lu’s cheek with his thumb. She was so dazed she hadn’t even noticed she was crying.
“Do you want me to try to help him?” Joey asked. “The same way I helped you?”
“With your blood, you mean? You can’t, you’re too weak,” Lu said, reaching up and touching Joey’s arm.
Joey turned to Augustine, who paced across the room. “So, Satan, do you have anything to eat around here? I need to get my strength back, and fast.”
Augustine waved his hand at the quiet apartment. “Does it look like I have anyone to eat around here?”
“Where’s your entourage?”
“Everyone is gone. They all left me.”
“So I guess that means you’ll have to improvise.” Joey looked at Augustine pointedly.
“There’s a food source right beside you. Two of them! Pick either human and drink your fill.”
“Uh, no. Here’s what’s gonna happen: you’re either going to feed me so I can help this guy, or you’re going to feed him directly.”
“You must be kidding,” Augustine frowned.
“That’s the deal if you want us to include you in Bryn’s spell.”
Augustine swore and crossed the room to Joey. His fangs extended like two viciously sharp switchblades and Lu gasped. But then Augustine tore open his own wrist and held it in front of Joey’s face with an annoyed sigh. “Not like I’m going to enjoy this either,” Joey said, before digging his fingers roughly into Augustine’s arm and pressing it to his mouth.
He drank deeply for several minutes before Augustine finally pushed him away. “Why did you let me drink so much?” Joey asked, dragging a hand across his lips.
Augustine sank onto a square black leather armchair. “Because you aren’t going to be of any use to me if you’re unconscious. And you’re about to squander some of your blood on that human, so you needed a lot. I did have to stop you before you drained me, though.” Augustine licked his wrist, then wrapped his arms around himself.
“Yeah, thanks for starving us, by the way,” Joey said as he tilted Ted’s head back and carefully pried open his mouth. Then Joey knelt down and nicked his own wrist and held it over the boy’s lips. The blood trickled slowly. A full minute ticked by. Then Ted swallowed and drew a breath. Joey brought his wrist back to his teeth and tore the wound open before returning it to Ted’s lips.
“I didn’t intend to starve you,” Augustine said as all this was going on.
“Yes you did,” Joey told him.
Augustine paused and then said, “Ok, you’re right. I intended to let you suffer for a few days. I wasn’t going to let you die, though.”
“Is any part of you even vaguely sorry for doing that to us?” Joey asked irritably.
“I actually am sorry, not that I expect you to believe me.”
Joey frowned at Augustine, then raised Ted’s lid to peer at the boy’s unfocused eye. After a minute he asked, “Why were we in an office? What is this place?”
“It’s one of my business investments, a recently foreclosed property. I just bought it a couple weeks ago, through a newly formed holding company. It seemed like a convenient place to construct a quick prison since it’s totally vacant.”
“Why’d you bother UV filtering the windows?” Joey asked idly as he continued to hold his wrist over Ted’s mouth.
“The CEO that owned this apartment previously was a vampire, he did that. And all this 1980’s-modern crap was his doing, too.” Augustine indicated the room’s décor with a flick of his wrist. “He was a forced eviction. Wish I could have evicted his furniture too, it’s horrible having to live with this stuff.”
“And by forced eviction you mean you staked him?”
“I had my men do it, but yes.”
“And now you’re living here?”
Augustine nodded. “It’s currently my only option.”
“You own at least fifteen houses that I know of, Augustine. Are you telling me something happened to all of them?” Joey asked.
“All my properties were seized by the IRS three days ago. And most of my assets were frozen, including ones that shouldn’t have been a part of any public records. This building wasn’t confiscated though, so apparently the IRS was unaware of my new holding company.” Augustine ran a hand over his forehead. It was trembling slightly.
“So you’re broke now?”
“Hardly. If that was meant to ruin me, whoever tipped off the IRS should have saved himself the effort. I’ve built, lost and rebuilt more fortunes than I can count,” Augustine said. “It’s an inconvenience more than anything, a minor distraction. Most annoying is the fact that all of the men in my employ cleared out the moment my cash flow was interrupted.”
“What about all your progeny? They’d stick around even without being paid.”
“All what progeny? I stopped siring vampires decades ago, and the ones I sired prior to that have almost all been killed by now.” Mostly by me, Augustine thought with a frown.
Joey raised his brows at that. “You stopped siring? Why?”
Augustine turned his head and stared out at the view of San Francisco as he said, “I have my reasons.”
Joey watched Augustine for a long moment, then said, “And the IRS thing happened the same day Alastair was taken? Some coincidence.”
“It’s no coincidence. Someone’s obviously trying to rattle me.”
Joey licked his wrist quickly, then carried Ted over to a huge white bed and stuck him under the covers. “I’ve done all I can for him,” he told Lu. “I think if we let him rest he’ll be ok.” A bit of color had crept into Ted’s ashen complexion, and his breathing was deep and regular. Even the bruises and swelling were already receding.
“Thank you Joey,” she said, hugging him.
When she released him he shrugged and said, “No big deal.”
“It is to me.”
“Go check in the kitchen for something to eat, Lu,” he said. “You need to get your strength back too.”
Lu crossed the studio apartment and pulled open the refrigerator. Obviously no one had opened it in weeks, judging by the disgusting rotting food smell that assaulted her. She slammed it quickly and turned to the cupboards. The first thing she found was a box of crackers, and she tore into them. She wondered why a vampire would have a stocked kitchen, but was too hungry to give it much thought.
; Meanwhile Joey turned to Augustine. “What aren’t you telling me about Alastair’s abduction?”
“I’m not keeping anything from you, I just haven’t told you all the details yet. He was taken from my hotel in Santa Cruz around eleven a.m. the morning after you were locked up here. And whoever took him used Jin, the young warlock formerly in my employ, and his two brothers to snatch him. I opened the door for the warlocks, and next thing I knew I was waking up with the magic equivalent of a concussion.”
“If you were unconscious, maybe Alastair left on his own, maybe they didn’t take him,” Joey speculated.
“I’m sure they took him. They left a printed note that said ‘I’m going to love watching you suffer.’ What better way to accomplish that than by taking Alastair from me?”
“And you really don’t think Jin orchestrated this himself? You think he’s working for somebody?”
“There’s no way a dumb human kid would bother with something like this. If he was angry with me, all Jin would have to do was cast a spell to set me on fire or something. He’s obviously being used like a puppet by someone, the same way I used him.”
“He’s still human?” Joey asked. “I’m surprised you haven’t turned him into a vampire. Isn’t that what you always do with the specimens you collect?”
“That is normally what I do. Only once, about three hundred years ago, did I resist.” Augustine said the last part almost wistfully, staring back out at the sunlight sparkling off the bay. After a pause he added, “I fully intended to make an exception to my no progeny rule and turn Jin, but not yet. He’s only fifteen, his powers are still developing. If I turned him now, he’d remain locked where he is, he wouldn’t reach his full potential as a warlock. I was going to wait until he was older and then turn him.”
Joey stared at Augustine for a long moment. Then he asked, “Why’d you try to knock over Bryn’s house?”
“I wasn’t trying to knock over the house. I was just trying to distract Bryn before he actually succeeded in breaking the spell.” Then he added softly, “Or died trying.”
“The shaking went on long after Bryn stopped working in Alastair’s mind.”
Augustine sighed. “That wasn’t my idea. Jin is willful, headstrong. It angered him that he couldn’t break through Bryn’s wards, so he insisted on continuing long after it was necessary. And it’s not like anyone can stop Jin once he decides to do something. He only quit when he’d totally depleted his energy, and that was right about when you fled the house.”
“Ok. So tell me how you bespelled Alastair in the first place,” Joey said. “And what were you hoping to accomplish?”
Augustine paused and looked down at his hands for a long moment. His voice was quiet when he said, “When I found Jin a few months ago, right here in a little apartment in Chinatown, and realized all that child could accomplish with his magic, I started thinking. I was forever chasing Alastair. Why not cast a spell to make him come to me? But then, he despises me. There wasn’t much point in bringing him to me if he was just going to fight me like he always did.”
“But wiping his memories, making him forget how much he hates you, that would give you a fresh start with him,” Joey said.
“Exactly.”
“So,” Joey said, “You find an insanely powerful warlock, and all you can think to do with him is manipulate Alastair. Really?”
Augustine sighed and said, “Pathetic, I know.”
Joey frowned as he said, “Go on.”
Augustine pushed his hair back from his face with both interlocked hands, then said, “Well, like you said, I wanted a fresh start with him. But blocking his memories was far from simple. I didn’t just want to obliterate his mind, I didn’t want to destroy the essence of what makes him Alastair. He means far too much to me to simply wipe away his entire personality.”
“No? I thought you’d enjoy having him as a mindless slave.” Joey’s voice had a hard edge to it.
“Of course not. What makes him special isn’t just what he is, it’s who he is -- his character, his inner strength, his personality. Destroying that would be a tragedy, like defacing a priceless painting.” Augustine shook his head.
“Why didn’t you just make him think he was in love with you? That has to be simpler than erasing his memories.”
“Why would I want that? It wouldn’t be real,” Augustine said. “It’s the same reason I stopped siring vampires. They think they love you, but all they’re feeling is the maker bond. It’s empty, meaningless.”
“Ok, so you decided to wipe his memories,” Joey prompted.
Augustine nodded. “And magic like that needs to be accomplished up close. So the first part of the spell brought Alastair to me, and then we rendered him unconscious and went to work.”
“I looked everywhere. Where did you take him?”
“We called him to our room at that big hotel in the girl’s town. The Ashland Springs, I believe it was called.”
“But I looked there!”
“I know. You were right outside our door at one point. Very thorough, by the way, searching every floor of every hotel in Ashland. But of course I’d had Jin wipe away any trace of Alastair’s scent, ensuring you’d never find him.”
“Why didn’t you kill me if I was so close?”
“Why bother? You’re no threat to me.” Augustine’s voice was quiet, level. “Besides, if the spell failed and Alastair learned I’d killed you, he’d never forgive me.”
Joey watched Augustine for a long moment. The ancient vampire seemed uncharacteristically subdued, almost melancholy. After a while Joey asked, “Why did all of this take place in Ashland? We were just passing through there.”
“Actually, I’d tracked you down in Seattle, but got there just as you two were taking off for San Francisco,” Augustine said. “My men and I followed you, and snatched Alastair when you got snowed in. That little town was as good a place as any to work the spell, I thought.”
Joey kept his expression composed, though the muscles in his jaw were working as he ground his teeth. “How did he wind up at the creek?”
“After we erased Alastair’s memories, we woke him up. And he was -- well, rather combative. He immediately went into attack mode the moment he regained consciousness, even without knowing who I was. It was his basic survival instinct taking over.
“I decided to give him a few days before I tried approaching him,” Augustine continued. “The spell had been more disruptive than I’d intended, and he needed time to recover. And I knew I couldn’t be anywhere near him when he woke up. So we stuck him out by the creek -- a nice secluded spot, but not totally without food sources. I figured he’d wake up and gorge himself on the few humans that came by there, and that would help him rebuild his strength after all that blood loss. It would also give him some time to get his bearings. And of course I had werewolves watching him constantly to make sure nothing happened to him.”
“You drained his blood?”
“Absolutely. You know it’s no ordinary blood, and we were working an incredibly difficult spell. We needed all the help we could get, even with Jin’s innate ability.”
Joey’s voice was dangerously calm when he asked, “Did you burn him on purpose when you put him out by the creek?”
“Well, yes. I couldn’t think of another way to make him regain consciousness while keeping my distance from him. But my werewolves tucked most of him under some trees where the sun couldn’t reach him. Only a little of him was in the sun, just his hand, and there was water nearby so he could extinguish the fire quickly, before it did any real damage. I made sure he was safe.” Augustine looked guilty.
“Safe.” Joey’s voice was dangerously low as he shook his head, his fists clenched so tightly his knuckles turned white. “How did you know he’d seek shelter after he put the fire out? How did you know he wouldn’t burn to death in the sun because he didn’t know what to do?”
“I wouldn’t have let that happen.”
Joey pressed hi
s eyes shut. “Even just burning his hand hurt him so much. You must have stripped away all his defenses when you were messing around in his mind. You left him incredibly vulnerable.”
Augustine’s voice was surprisingly soft when he said, “I know we made mistakes. That memory block would have been hard enough to accomplish on a regular vampire. But Alastair’s mind, the part he got from his father, is like a labyrinth. It’s almost beyond comprehension. We had to make a lot of guesses when we were working the spell, and obviously not everything went according to plan.”
“You could have destroyed him!” Joey yelled.
“I know.” Regret was heavy in Augustine’s voice.
Joey wanted to leap at Augustine and tear him apart. But instead, he crossed the apartment to Lu, hoping she’d calm him, and she rubbed his arm soothingly. She knew Joey was on edge, struggling to keep from attacking Augustine, and held his gaze for a long moment. He rested his forehead against hers as he let some of the tension drain from his body.
After a while Joey turned back toward Augustine and asked, “What happened after he was burned?”
“Shortly afterward, he climbed into the girl’s car. I hadn’t been expecting that. But then I thought, why not? I’d already been planning to give him a couple days to heal and rest. I decided being taken to someone’s house was even better than seeking shelter at the creek. He could drink the girl and her family dry in the privacy of their home, with even less chance of being discovered by some rogue vamp or by the local authorities.”
“And then what?”
“I was going to make contact when he’d recovered a bit,” Augustine said. “Once he was well-fed and rested I planned to approach him, tell him I was an old friend, and we’d start with a clean slate.”
“But I got there first.”
“That surprised me. I thought I’d severed your bond when we were working the spell, and Jin still had Alastair’s scent obscured. I didn’t think you had any way of finding him. Obviously I was wrong.”
“Why did you send the werewolves after us at Lu’s house?”
“The night I went to get Alastair I saw you through the windows, talking to him,” Augustine said. “I knew you were telling him far too much, and I had to shut you up quickly. I couldn’t run in myself and kill you in front of him, not when I was going to try to make Alastair think I was one of the good guys. So I stayed hidden and called in the pack. A couple were already there, and it only took a few minutes for some reinforcements to join them.”
Magic & Memory Page 18