[Dominion 01.0] Dominion

by S. E. Lund

  "God may have abandoned me, but that doesn't mean I need abandon Him. To the village square. There's a witch to burn."

  "She's not a witch," I say in weak protest.

  "If anyone is a witch, Marguerite is," Michel says. "She killed us both, Julien. She turned us both into monsters. She's bewitched me so that I am her slave."

  "You enjoy her. I know you do."

  Michel shakes his head and when he speaks, his voice is close to breaking.

  "Can you even begin to imagine how that makes me feel?"

  I shrug. I distanced myself from the Church after I left, but I now realize Michel hasn't, despite pretending to do so.

  "How many humans has she killed?" he says. "Thousands? She'll never leave us. She must die. Surely you can see that?"

  "And how many humans have you killed since you were turned?" I say, trying my best to argue her case, but in truth, I can't see any other way out. Both of us are compelled to serve her. Both of us unable to refuse her demands. "Are you going to kill yourself as well?"

  Michel closes the door behind us as we leave the rooms.

  "Not until I can find a way to kill us all."

  A small crowd gathers in the village square. In the center, workmen raise a post and stack wood around it. The guards tie Marguerite to the post and then the priest joins Michel and together, the two say prayers in Latin and circle the pyre, anointing it with holy water while the guards pour pitch on it.

  Finally, one of the guards lights the bed of wood and sticks with a torch. Marguerite appears still drugged, her head bowed forward, her long fair hair obscuring her pretty face. I hope that she doesn't regain consciousness for it will be a horrible death if she does.

  "She was far kinder in the manner of death she chose for us," I say to Michel, unable to keep reproach from my voice, hating myself for not fighting harder to save her.

  "What?" he says, almost sneering. "She denied you a knight's noble death, taking you off the battlefield, stealing your soul. She corrupted me, killing me on the altar in God's own house while she debauched me. She's tortured me. She wasn't kind, Julien. Not at all. If you think so, then you truly are besotted. When she's dead and we're both free of her compulsion, you'll see. You'll feel differently."

  The flames leap around Marguerite, growing in intensity, and then I see her awaken, her head straightening. She glances around in a panic, her eyes wide. She screams but the sound is muffled due to the gag, and my heart squeezes at the thought of her suffering.

  Yes, I've hated her at times, angry that she turned us both, angry that she used us, that she played with us, that she manipulated us using her greater powers, but she was only a young girl of eighteen when she was turned against her will and has apparently been abandoned by her Sire. She survived using her wits, and now she'll die because of her need for attention and affection, her willingness to believe she could corrupt a priest and make him into her slave.

  "For God's sake, won't you do something?"

  "Do what?" Michel's arms are folded as if he's watching an amusing performance rather than the death of someone he's fucked a thousand times, but his face is tense, his jaw clenched.

  "Ease her suffering – kill her quickly!"

  "She deserves to suffer."

  Michel seems immune to her pain, and so I find a long pole with a sharpened end stacked against the wall next to the blacksmith's shed and run to the pyre. I kick some burning embers aside and step onto the pyre, ignoring the flames licking at my breeches, and thrust the wooden point into Marguerite's heart so that she dies quickly, instead of slowly from fire.

  I fall back off the pyre and roll on the dirt to extinguish the flames on my clothing. I go to where Michel stands mesmerized by the fire, his shoulders shaking. Is he laughing?

  I turn his face to me. There are tears in his eyes.

  "You have to understand," he says, his voice breaking. "She destroyed me." He shakes his head. "I'll never be the same."

  Then he covers his eyes with his hands and I take him into my arms.

  In a few hours, there's nothing left of Marguerite except a charred corpse and a gold chain with an ornate cross that she enjoyed wearing out of some sense of irony. I gather up her ashes, placing them and the remnants of her bones into a pail, picking the crucifix out from among the bones and teeth mixed with cinders and ash, wiping off the blackened soot. Besides her charred bones, the only thing left of her is a tiny crucifix – a symbol she loved to hate.

  I take her remains and go to where Michel sits in the dirt, his head in his hands.

  "I'll place her ashes in our family crypt. She deserves that much." Then I hand him the crucifix. "Here." I say, holding it out. "It was hers. Take some solace that once she wore it with true belief. Before she was killed and turned against her will by her own Sire. "

  Michel looks up. His tear-streaked face is stained with soot from the fire. He accepts the thin gold chain and cross.

  "When I find him," he says and places the chain around his neck, kissing the crucifix. "I'll kill him as well."

  I put the manuscript down and go back to bed, but sleep eludes me for a long time.

  When I wake later in the afternoon, I check my email and there's one from Agent O'Neil, inviting me back to the SCU for the interview we had to cancel yesterday. There's also one from Michel, which I open and read, eager to see what he's written.

  Eve,

  Please excuse my indiscretion last night.

  I realize you are unused to being in the company of vampires – indeed, there's no reason for you to feel anything but hatred for my kind. You must understand that I mean you no harm, either physically or emotionally. Had I been able to erase your memories of me and of the manuscript, none of this would have happened and you would be living your life as you've always lived it but ignorant of our world.

  But I'm weak. I'm also unable to change what happened between us and therefore, we must move forward. When I realized you were an Adept that night in the office, and that I couldn't just wipe your memory of me, I knew that we'd have to use you no matter what I feel. Your kind is far too valuable to let waste away in some hallowed hall of academe and if I didn't claim you, someone else less moral would. This battle is too important and personal sacrifices must be made.

  As for my behavior, all I can say is that I am used to exerting total control over mortals. I couldn't with you, and more important, I've failed in the simple task of controlling my own emotions. I assure you that it won't happen again and that from this day forward, our relationship will be conducted with the utmost respect and professionalism.

  Yours,

  M.

  What? Professionalism? Respect?

  I don't want professionalism. I don't want him to respect me if it means nothing more will happen between us.

  And then, once again, reality rears its ugly head and I'm filled with guilt. Vampires killed my mother. They're my enemy. I should be thinking of ways to eradicate them, not how I can become Michel's lover.

  So it feels as if Michel thought better of 'us' and is trying to bow out gracefully from whatever 'us' might mean. The thought that I won't ever actually get to experience him makes me sad, disappointment flooding through me.

  I was looking forward to going back to the SCU so I could see where this goes, but now, I feel like crawling back into bed and hiding from the world. Instead, I shower and get ready, fix something left-over in my freezer for a breakfast of supper, and have to drop by the university once more to finish up some paperwork for my next semester.

  On a whim, I drop into the Linguistics Department and go to Room 304. The door is ajar and inside sits an older man with frizzy grey hair and thin metal eyeglass frames.

  I stand at the doorway.

  "Professor Cormier?"

  He glances up.

  "Yes," he says, rising and coming to the door to meet me.

  "Do you know a Professor Michel de Cernay, by any chance?"

  He frowns. "Doesn't ring a bell. Sor
ry."

  "Thank you," I say and leave.

  Michel must have compelled his way into the office so he'd have a place to meet me. I realize that he's the consummate actor, the consummate liar, as he said in the manuscript. As I go down the stairs where I fell and over to the bus stop where he came to me, I remember my scraped palms. They're almost perfectly healed, due to the healing properties in Michel's saliva.

  Michel wants us to remain professional. I try to console myself that this is what my mother would want. Not to be some vampire's trifle but it does nothing to soothe my disappointment.

  Chapter 10

  "Excessive sorrow laughs. Excessive joy weeps."

  William Blake

  I arrive back at the SCU at about 7:00, and enter the boardroom where Ed, Terri and Michel sit. I avoid Michel's eyes and wait for the interview to begin.

  "My apologies, Eve, for the disruption yesterday," Michel says and I'm forced to look at him. "I wasn't myself."

  "I understand," I say. But I don't and already, my cheeks heat.

  He avoids my eyes and I can tell that what I suspected about his letter being the brush-off is true. A sense of renewed sadness fills me. I feel close to him despite only knowing him for a few short days because of everything that's happened – our psychic contact, the manuscript. The pity-orgasm didn't help, either.

  It hurts to think he's shutting 'us' down before we even happened. He said I had no idea. Now, I'll never know, but this is like Pandora's Box – once opened, you can't put that question back in.

  I swallow hard and try to wipe my own mind of these thoughts, for he's going to have to 'read' me and there's no point in trying to deny how I feel. He'll know as soon as he touches me. But I do try to be a grown-up and take in a deep cleansing breath.

  He comes over to me and once again leans down over me as I sit in the chair.

  "Now, I'll just do a quick read and then I want you to try to read me."

  He takes my hand in his and despite everything, my heart skips a beat from his touch. After a moment, I feel him at the edges of my consciousness, warm and strong. Then something floods through me and I know he's using his powers to take away my sadness and it's a relief not to care any more.

  I do care, but now it's in an abstract, intellectual way, not a deep emotion.

  He looks up at Ed and Terri. "She's clear," he says. "I've checked back on her recent associates and none of them are connected in any way to Blackstone."

  Ed nods and writes something down in his files.

  Blackstone?

  "Now, Eve. I want you to try to search my mind for my last unauthorized kill. As an Adept, your mind is primed to detect violence and although you've had a very peaceful life, it's there, if you can learn to tap into it. So just let your mind free when you connect with me. Let it go where it will. You'll find it."

  I blink and try to do as I'm told, but what he's said makes me frown. My mind is primed to detect violence?

  "How do I know when I've found your last legal kill?"

  "You just have to let your mind go like you did in the dojo."

  "Can't you just block me?"

  "Not everything. Your gift is that you can sense violent memories, either in objects or in us – see our kills. I can try to block other memories, but not of my kills or anything associated with them."

  "Some gift," I say and close my eyes. I blank my mind for a moment, focusing on my breathing, and when he enters my mind, I almost gasp from the connection that forms. It feels so intense and disorienting… I'm aware of his senses, as he leans over me, touching my hand. I can tell he doesn't want to look at me, but can't help watch my face, his eyes moving over my mouth with a sense of longing, going to my cheeks and remembering my dimples. His sense of regret that he can't – that he shouldn't – have me.

  "Concentrate," he says. "Focus."

  Then I seem to fall into a memory, like I've tripped over the entrance to a deep well. When the memory comes into focus, it's late evening, moonlight, a woman with garish makeup and a low-cut bodice, and beneath it is a long skirt. She stands in a dark alley as if looking to turn a trick. Another century. London. 1896. I'm in his point of view, and I feel his feelings, think his thoughts as he experienced them.

  That night, he's hot for human blood, and there's still a part of him that's reluctant to reveal how base that lust was and still is. He still lusts after humans, our bodies and our blood, and even now, getting one is almost all he can think of like some junkie for a hit.

  But that night, he sees the whore standing there, her ample bosom and flesh suggesting she's full of blood. With only a tiny hint of remorse, he slips to her side and pulls her into the doorway in a dim alley before she can even protest. He's so fast, unnaturally fast, and in the dark she can't see him.

  His blood lust builds, his heart pounding, and the woman bared her neck, willing Michel to touch her. His eyes are so acute he can see the tiny capillaries in her fair skin. When he touches her, he feels her pulse like it's his own. But more than this, he searches her memories and relives them as he prepares to bite her and the memories are almost as important as the blood. He bites down, draining her blood, taking it in, lost in the sensations.

  I feel everything he does – the woman's blood draining out of her and into him, warming him, the pleasure in the sensations so intense. He's reliving some memory from her past when she was happiest, in the arms of her first lover. I see and feel the moment just before the woman dies, her body going limp in Michel's arms. Then, just before the woman's heart stops, he drops her to the ground and is gone, no more than a shadow in the darkness, his bloodlust slaked but a renewed sense of self-revulsion building in his consciousness.

  "That's enough," Michel says and I ignore him, not wanting to break the connection. I keep it between us, unwilling to stop and just like he says, he's unable to prevent me from staying. Despite what I've just witnessed, despite what I've just felt, every fiber in me screams out for him to let me continue. I want to prolong that moment of connection for as long as possible. I try to find more and he feels so much affection and desire for me but also guilt and fear and then he physically pulls back, blinking, stepping away and our connection breaks because we're no longer touching. He leans against the table and runs a hand through his hair, breathing hard.

  Nothing I've ever experienced can match the need vampires feel for human blood, for that connection with the human is overwhelming. How they manage it and function, I have no idea.

  I cover my face with my hands, trying to get hold of my emotions. Finally, I breathe normally and sit back up, avoiding Michel's eyes, my cheeks hot from the intimate moment we shared.

  "I saw you kill a woman." I swallow as I remember the scene. "I felt it. London. 1896."

  "She was the last human I killed illegally," he says, his voice soft. "Now, like all other vampires who are part of the treaty, I subsist off donors."

  Terri pours me a glass of ice water from the pitcher. "You passed the test." She offers me the glass and I spill a bit in my eagerness to drink. Ed turns to me.

  "Welcome to the Special Cases Unit of the Council of Clairveaux, Boston Division. You're hired," he says. "Not that there was ever any doubt once you beat poor Michel." Ed grins at me. "I think his pride is still smarting."

  "Not at all," Michel says, not meeting my eyes. "If she couldn't beat me, she couldn't work as a witness." Then he does meet my eyes. "We need you, Eve. You must be able to protect yourself from my kind. You're very valuable. Vampires will kill each other to get you on their side."

  That's what Julien says. "Why?"

  "You can kill us. Some want to use your kind as assassins against their enemies."

  Terri speaks up. "Michel can fill you in on the politics of this unit and why it started some other time. For the next six months, you'll train to be a blood witness. You'll help on special cases – those that involve vampires killing outside the law. You'll gather evidence to help us find those they work for. When we get a sus
pect, you'll read them – see their kills. Judge if they were sanctioned or illegal."

  I shake my head. "I thought I was going to do research."

  "You will, but you need to train as a blood witness, because you're very rare. When we get one, we don't let go."

  "I know it's a lot to take in," Ed says. "Come with me. I'll show you your new office." He leads me to a room at the back of the building. "The cubicle in the corner," he says and points to a small alcove by the window. I check it out. A small desk and filing cabinet. A laptop computer. A partition that separates me from the rest of the room. At least I have a window.

  "The case files for each murder are there as well as background information on the SCU are in the filing cabinet," he says. "Everything you need to get up to speed. I trust your university courses have made you a quick study." He buttons his jacket. "We'd usually just let you do some reading on your first day, but we have a new murder to investigate."

  I raise my eyebrows. This is a surprise and I turn to see Michel standing in the office, leaning against the wall. He's put on his cassock-coat and has his hands in his pockets. He looks like a blue-eyed long-haired very pale Neo and I can't shake the sense that I've truly swallowed the red pill and there's no going back.

  O'Neil hands me the River Man case file. I opened it up once more, my hands shaking just a bit. I flip the pages, the crime scene photographs, autopsy diagrams, the witness testimony.

  "Get your coat," Ed says and pulls on his trench. "We're going to the crime scene."

  In the sedan, O'Neil reminds me to keep quiet around the Boston PD detectives and uniforms who are there on the scene. No mention of any special skills or of vampires.

  "Hopefully, the killer left a bit of himself behind so you can get a better sense of him and what drives him."

  "What should I look for?"

  "Anything," he says, shrugging. "Could be a cigarette butt, a coffee cup. Who can tell? They often leave some trace. Trick is finding it."

  "Do I touch the body?"