by S. E. Lund
I glanced around, wondering whether I could escape and what I’d do if I could. There was a lot of security. I noticed guards at the door and walking around the perimeter of the building when we drove up. There was probably no escape, but still, I tried to memorize the layout of the house as we passed through a long hallway to the rear of the building and to a set of stairs leading to a basement.
The building was old, with stone walls and smelled of wet rock and damp wood. We passed a furnace room and I saw inside a huge boiler heating system, with pipes clad in aluminum. The next room was a set of jail cells, complete with iron bars, a single toilet and a cot inside each one. The guard unlocked one of the cells and pushed Chelsea inside.
"You're staying in here until we come to get you."
She sat on the cot. The other guard opened a cell and threw Kier onto the cot as well.
“What are we going to do with her?” one of the guards asked.
“She’s his pet, so she goes in with him," Gerard replied.
“But he’ll feed off her and regain his strength,” the guard, his voice doubtful.
“Rules are rules,” Baldy said, his hands on his hips. “She’s his pet. By all rights, she has to be in with him.”
“You,” Baldy said to me. “In with him.” He motioned to the cell and I went inside.
“Can you take these off?” I asked, hoping he’d free me so I might be able to escape. “I need to use the toilet.”
Baldy shook his head in disapproval, but complied, using a knife to cut the plastic ties. “Don’t try anything funny. There are guards outside the door and cameras watching you. You can't escape so don't bother trying.”
He pointed to the ceiling. There, I saw a video camera pointed into the cell.
“I don’t get any privacy when I have to use the toilet?”
“Get used to it,” Baldy said, shaking his head. “I don’t know how long Mr. MacLaughlan will keep you and Kier here so you better just ignore it.”
I glanced up at the camera and sighed heavily. I’d hold it as long as I could. I did not want to be watched when I was using the bathroom.
Instead, I went right over to Kier and checked him out. He looked terrible, his face deathly white – even more so than usual. He was unconscious, or seemed like it, his breathing so slow I was afraid he was dead dead.
“Kier,” I said softly, turning his face to mine. “Are you awake?”
I saw his eyelids flutter and knew he could hear me, but perhaps he was too weak to speak.
“Please,” he whispered. “I need your blood…”
I pulled away, not wanting to really offer him my wrist.
“I don’t know…” I said tentatively.
“Please, Calla,” he said once more. “Just a mouthful. As long as I have this bullet in me, I can't heal. Take it out.”
"I can't take it out. I'm not a surgeon."
"Just dig in and remove it. You must."
I grimaced. When I pulled his jacket open and unbuttoned his shirt to reveal his bare chest, I saw the gaping wound.
"You want me to dig in with my fingers and pull it out?"
He nodded. "Quickly. Give me something to bite on. There's a handkerchief in my pocket."
I removed the handkerchief and rolled it up, then I placed it in his mouth. He bit down and in a muffled voice, spoke.
"Now."
I took in a deep breath and pushed my finger into the wound, feeling around for the bullet. His flesh was cool and wet and I felt something hard just an inch deep. I pushed my finger down along side it and tried to pry it out.
In response, Kier grimaced and groaned. I tried harder, finally prying it up and out. Once it was out of his body, he seemed to improve immediately.
I didn’t want him to drink my blood, but I thought I’d be safer if he were stronger so once he was able to sit up on his own, I relented finally and held my wrist out to him. He reached up and took it in his hand and pulled it to his mouth. I felt a sharp bright pain as his teeth pierced the flesh again and then a sucking at the wound. His grip tightened and he sucked harder, and for a moment, I worried that he wouldn’t be able to stop.
“Please,” I said and tried to pull away, but he held firm. I pulled hard and then finally, he released me, a red stain of my blood on his lips. His eyes were closed and he panted for a moment, but then he opened his eyes and stared into mine. I could see the strength return and even a touch of color in his cheeks.
I held my wrist, examining the wound, but it had already stopped bleeding.
Kier struggled to sit up but then straightened his clothes, his jacket and shirt. He ran a hand over his hair and cricked his neck.
“That’s better,” he said and took in a deep breath. Then he looked in my eyes. “I’m sorry this happened to you. I never meant any harm to come to you.”
I said nothing in return but I was thinking that he put me in danger when he showed up at my cottage. He was on the run from what he thought were his family’s enemies. How could I not be in danger from him?
I turned away and sighed, not wanting to get into an argument. He was a vampire. He could kill me if he wanted. None of the guards or even Kier’s brother would care.
Then, a guard came and unlocked the cell, gesturing to me.
"You," he said and pointed to the door. "You and your friend are to come with me."
"I'm Kier's pet," I said in protest, not wanting to leave Kier.
"You're no one's pet until my Master says so. He'll decide what to do with you. You're in the City now and he's the Prince."
He unlocked Chelsea's cell and the two of us stood, leaving our adjoining cells.
Kier stayed behind, and as I went through the door, I glanced back and saw him sitting there, his dark hair falling into his blue blue eyes.
I hoped against hope that it wouldn't be the last time.
Kier
I spent the entire day in my cell, pacing, wondering when one of my family members would finally come and speak with me, explain to me why I was being held captive.
Had they all betrayed me? Even my sisters?
Certainly Laurice would be on my side… She was the one closest to me of all my siblings. We were temperamentally opposite but complemented each other’s personalities. She was bubbly to my sober reflectiveness, yet we seemed to understand each other on a deeper level.
I couldn’t accept that she would forsake me, believing the terrible lies that had been told about me and what happened while I was in San Francisco.
When a guard opened the door to my cell, I sat up, wondering which one of my brethren had come to visit.
Jerome Montague, my family’s solicitor.
I recognized him despite the fact he was now clean shaven and had his head shaved, wearing clothing that was unfamiliar to me. A vampire did not age once they were turned, but they could grow pale and thin if they did not drink enough blood. He looked plump and flush. Well-fed, in other words.
“Kier,” he said and came into my cell, pulling a chair with him. He held a file under his arm and a bottle of blood for me, which he handed over before he sat on his chair.
“Why are you here?” I asked, drinking down the blood, in need of its healing properties. I leaned forward. “Where is my brother and why am I being imprisoned?”
“You must know of the charges against you?”
“I do, and they’re all false,” I said, anger boiling up inside of me once more. “I had no trial. There was no solicitor to represent me. I saw none of the evidence they brought forward. I was set up.”
“That may be but you were found guilty in absentia based on the evidence we saw. Evidence that put you in the house where the two young mortals were murdered, drained of their blood without lawful permission.”
"I had nothing to do with it. I never touched either one."
"You were the only new person in the home at that time."
"Any one of a number of vampires present could have killed her. I assure you, it wasn't
me."
He shrugged, unconvinced. I could not fathom why he would not believe me but would instead believe those who falsely accused me.
"Evan intends to maintain you in a prison in the city, now that we've found you again."
"I demand to speak to him. I demand to speak to the city magister."
He stood, and adjusted his jacket. "You have no power to demand anything. Laurice is coming to visit you – against advice. You can speak to her, have her plead your case, but that's all. You'll be moved to cells as soon as one has been prepared for you. You'll stay there for the rest of your sentence."
I frowned. "Which was?"
He went to the door and held onto the knob. "Two life sentences. You have at least another fifty years to go on the original two. More, once you're prosecuted for the death of several mortals in California."
"What?"
"Three dead, all within twenty miles of your cell."
I thought back to the man who rescued me and the two men I had drank from immediately after escaping. All three had been alive, but weak, when I left them.
Surely they would have survived?
”I killed no one,” I said in protest. “I made sure the mortals I drank from were all live when I left them."
He raised his eyebrows. "After one hundred years of incarceration, I'm sure you had no control over your bloodlust. You can expect another three life sentences. You'll be gone for at least another two hundred and sixty years, depending on whether we find any more victims."
With that, he closed the door, leaving me alone to stew.
I had done nothing. I killed no one.
I hadn’t purposely killed anyone since the wars of the sixteenth century among my kind that put my father on the throne. Since that time, vampires had divided ourselves into those who abided by The Law and those who were outlaw. As King of the McDermott coven, which included minor families in Scotland and England, plus everyone in Upper and Lower Canada (now, Eastern Canada), our family protected all those under our domain, including mortals.
We didn’t kill.
I didn’t kill.
Hours later, the lock on my cell clanged and the door opened to admit my sister, Laurice.
“Finally!” I stood, my hands still shackled, wanting to embrace her but being unable. “I thought no one from the family would come to my rescue.”
She came to me, her hands on my shoulders, and looked me in the eye. Her expression said everything. She thought I was guilty as well.
“I’m not here to rescue you, brother,” she said softly. “Just to say goodbye.”
“What?” I looked deep in her eyes, unable to accept that she’d believe I could kill. “I haven’t killed a mortal for hundreds of years. How can you even think it?”
She sighed and sat down on the bench. I sat beside her, my chest heavy with sadness that she believed me a killer.
“There was evidence,” she said softly. “Your possessions left in the room where the girls were found. After you escaped, the bodies of the men you killed… There were no other registered vampires in the area. Just you.”
“I didn’t do it,” I said, a sinking feeling overtaking me. “I didn’t kill any of them. I swear to you on my family’s memory — on my sons’ memory — that I never killed them. I never touched the girls. The vagrants I drank from were all alive when I left. They had enough blood to survive, although they’d be weak.”
She looked deeply in my eyes once more. “You swear to me? On your sons’ memory? On our father’s memory?”
“I do swear to you on all of it. My sons. Our father’s name. On our family’s honor.”
She exhaled, and leaned back. “I’ll talk to Evan, but he’s determined to put you in prison.”
“What about my right to a trial? What about waking Father?”
She reached out and touched me. “You don’t know?”
I shook my head, a feeling of dread seeping into my very bones.
Then of course, it hit me. “He’s dead?”
She nodded. “Soon after you were imprisoned. There was a battle… The Spencers attacked the mansion and it was taken. Father’s crypt was opened. He was staked, his body exposed.”
Grief gripped my heart. “Mother?”
“She survived, escaping with Evan and the rest of the family.”
“How did they get into the crypt?”
“Dynamite,” she said, her voice low. “They blasted through the walls.”
I covered my face and tried to comprehend the reality that now, my brother Evan was the Prince of The City. It would have been me, but I had been imprisoned for all this time…
“Evan won’t even see me?”
She shook her head. “He says you’re a traitor. That you arranged the attack with the Spencers before you left and it’s because of you that Father’s dead. He thought it was suspicious that you went when you did instead of sending someone else to set up the new offices. He said it was too convenient.”
“So he thinks I’m a parricide as well as an ordinary murderer…”
She gave me a sad smile.
“Laurice, I went to San Francisco because I love to build. You know that. I went to every new office when the locations were being selected and during the build. I hired the staff…”
“I know that, but Evan said the timing was so suspicious. Your encouragement of our alliance with the Spencers just added to the suspicion. Then, you killed those young girls… It seemed you went rogue.”
“Impossible.”
I sat and passed the whole business over in my mind, trying to determine who my true enemy was — the Spencer family or my own brother.
“What happened?”
“Our forces eventually pushed the Spencers out and the Elder Spencer was sentenced to death. The sons are imprisoned and their children are now in our service. Their family is disinherited. We’ve taken their lands and titles and awarded them to the Campbells, who fought with us.”
I held my head in my hands and tried to absorb it all.
I sat up. “What will happen to the girl who came with me and her friend? They’re innocents in this.”
“Evan said he’d award them to the soldiers who captured you, as booty.”
“But Calla is my pet. I’ve claimed her. I’ve asked Gerard to be her protector in my absence. He’s sworn to return her and her friend to their families. To wipe their memories…”
“You can’t pay his price. Your inheritance has been frozen. You have no money, Kier. If you can’t pay, he won’t take them on.”
I ran my cuffed hands through my hair, exasperated.
“Please, ask Evan to come and see me at least once before he sentences me.”
She stood and straightened her dress. “I’ll try but his heart is hardened because of Father’s death, which he blames on you.”
I stood and went to where she was beside the door. “Is this goodbye? Please come back and see me again, no matter what happens.”
“I will, brother,” she said and stroked my cheek with clear affection. “I still love you, even if Evan has shut off all emotions towards you.”
“Thank you,” I said and she embraced me, and I was helpless to do anything because of my restraints. She kissed my cheeks and then left, her eyes brimming with tears.
Hours passed, and I watched the small beam of sunlight move across the far wall of my cell as the day ended and night came around once more. I lost all hope that Calla and Chelsea would be returned to their homes and families. The fate that awaited them made my heart squeeze for I knew that they would become nothing more than food to my brother’s guards — a rough lot who saw mortals as feedstock rather than people.
Finally, more than twenty four hours after Laurice left me, the guards opened my door and admitted my younger brother, Evan.
They entered the cell with him, their weapons drawn and at the ready — as if I could do anything to him, considering my silver restraints. I’d had nothing more than a small cup of blood since
earlier the previous night and was weak.
“You wanted to see me?”
I frowned, scarcely believing my brother could be so cold-hearted towards me.
“Of course I did, brother,” I said, trying to stand, but having to sit back down again due to weakness. “I want to plead my case with you, and ask that I be given a fair trial with counsel. I’ve not had that. I protest my innocence completely of all charges.”
His face remained like stone, his eyes half-lidded. He so resembled my father despite the fact that his hair had been shorn and his beard shaven. Dark eyes glared back at me, accusatory. His fists were clenched at his side, like he was holding himself back from attacking me.
“I’ve seen the evidence as has the magister. It’s clear enough you conspired with the Spencers, with Mark Spencer in particular, to kill our father and take over as Prince.”
I shook my head vehemently. “I did not. I deny it completely. I never met with Mark Spencer — not in the year before I left for San Francisco. You can ask him.”
“No, I cant,” Evan said, one corner of his mouth turning up in a grin. “He’s dead. Killed when our forces retook the mansion.”
I stared at the floor, not knowing how to appeal to my brother. He truly believed I was guilty of arranging the murder of our father.
“If you won’t grant me a trial, please send the two young women back to their homes for me. They’re innocent bystanders in all this and should have their memories wiped and returned to their families.”
“The guards have already asked to claim them because of your inability to protect them.”
“Please,” I said, my gut in a knot over the fate Calla and Chelsea would face if they became pets for the guards. “Let me wipe their memories and please send them back. I appeal to your mercy, brother. It’s the honorable thing to do.”
He stared at me, a muscle in his jaw tensing. “All right. I’ll send them to you. You can wipe their memories and I’ll return them. But you must promise me that you won’t fight me in this matter. You must swear allegiance to me and accept whatever the outcome of your trial may be.”