At Death's Door (Wraith's Rebellion Book 1)

by Aya DeAniege

  We tried it with Lu, and we know where all his threads are. Still, he has an empire and those who serve him. He’s bound to the house only physically. Though, he’s no longer allowed an internet connection.

  Art was my start.

  It is where I will always turn to because I love it. It also happens to be in the heart and soul of every mortal. I’ve yet to meet anyone who hated all the arts. Music, literature, fine art, each person has a weakness for one of those things.

  As for my art, I do still paint when the notion comes over me. Most of my pieces are still burned or destroyed.

  At the end of the day, it’s not about being humble or vain. It’s been about safety.

  Can you imagine some mortal finding one of my paintings?

  Then finding another, painted centuries later?

  Each artist paints in such a way that our paintings are like fingerprints.

  The world would be in shock or think forgeries were being made. It would confuse the entire history of art if my pieces were to suddenly start resurfacing. I’ve continued to destroy them for just that reason.

  Those portraits I had done over the centuries have been carefully tucked away. Given the genetic predisposition for faces to re-emerge over the millennia and the close breeding of the nobility, we might have been able to pass off the similarities as blood relations.

  Thankfully, with us going public I no longer need to hide either my artwork or the portraits.

  “And that’s how that works,” Quin said. “See? Nothing untoward going on here. Just a regular interview. She asks some questions, but they’re mainly standardized.”

  Lu eyed Quin suspiciously. It was very much the look I expected to see on a man’s face shortly before he started to scream at the children on his lawn.

  I had a nagging suspicion that Lu was trying to make sure Quin didn’t tell me something. That little voice at the back of my mind told me that I knew what it was, but I wouldn’t suggest that to him. I wouldn’t even think it loud enough to really register it. I stomped the voice down and slammed a door on it as I tried to consider other possibilities.

  Whatever it was would have to have been worse than all the other stuff I had already been told. Or Lu thought it was worse.

  Perhaps the secret Quin was keeping explained the trouble with his story, the bits that I didn’t feel worked right with everything else, which meant that Quin hadn’t done anything to break Lu’s precious rules.

  “Can I go get that thing now?” Quin said.

  “Yes, of course, go. Oh, wait, I need to get you the key.”

  The two got up and walked out of the room. I grabbed my phone as they left and loaded up the recorder. It may have been rude of me to do, but Lu had spoken another language multiple times, and I wanted to get that one on recording.

  Vampires couldn’t hear better than mortals, I think. Their ears didn’t change any during the process that made them immortal. Though, they hadn’t grown up blasting loud music into their ears, so they probably did hear better than most humans.

  I snuck very, very carefully.

  I could hear hushed words, but couldn’t understand what was being said. I peered around the corner, curiosity getting the best of me.

  Lu had Quin pinned against the wall. They were pressed close, Lu up on his tiptoes so that his face was almost at the same level as Quin’s.

  There was no denying the need in Quin’s face, the instability as his voice shook. He wanted it but was fighting with every fibre of his being.

  I ducked back into the living room and tiptoed to the couch, where I sat down and immediately texted Jerry. I sent the audio recording and an S.O.S.

  Whatever was being said, I needed it right then.

  Even though it was early morning, Jerry replied almost immediately.

  “On it,” he sent back in text form.

  The linguists we were working with typically slept through the night and translated bits during the day.

  From my understanding, Jerry had three other interviewers that he worked for. None of them spoke much outside of English or the occasional French or Spanish. Given that all four of Jerry’s interviewers were in North America, these were standard languages to be heard.

  Yes, there are a lot of languages in North America, but vampires living on the continent seemed to only speak three while around mortals.

  Quin might have been the first to slip so fluidly into another language without realizing it. Let alone to slip into so many different ones in one night.

  A text from Jerry came back, reading out as follows:

  Older voice, “Come back to me. I will not make the offer again.”

  Younger voice, “No, the price is too high.”

  Older voice, “We could be gods.”

  Younger voice, “A god of a dying world holds no power.”

  The snippet of conversation might have been the most interesting bit of the night. If I didn’t get eaten for it, that thirty seconds of recording would be so worth sneaking about Lu’s place.

  I emailed the whole thing to myself on an account that wasn’t linked to my phone. Then cleared my text, recording, and download history. Lu had to be clever if he survived all the centuries, let alone if he was planning some kind of world take over.

  I assumed that’s what their conversation was about, though I wasn’t certain what to do with that information. Did I go to the Council? Or the police? It wasn’t like the police could do much more than arrest him.

  And then what?

  If the Council could have just put Lu in a cell and throw away the key, they would have done it already. He was protected by his big brother, Death.

  Lu came back in as I looked up. As he walked in, I emailed the files from my writing so far, but I emailed them to a secondary account attached to the phone.

  The problem with having everything linked to a phone was that it was easier to get at everything. Anyone who stole my phone could, in theory, hack into it and take all my personal information and have access to my accounts.

  While my phone had a thumbprint lock on it, that didn’t mean it was safe. Without a doubt, ripping off my thumb to get it to work would not make a vampire hesitate.

  “What are you doing on there?” Lu asked. “Taking pictures?”

  A phone is, apparently, not just a magic rock to him. He knew the possible uses. Or at the very least knew enough to know that cameras were attached to them.

  My grandmother couldn’t tell that there was a camera attached to her phone. Occasionally she’d end up calling me with the camera turned on. So, I would get video of my grandmother’s ear instead of her face.

  Yet Lu, who claimed not to know his way around a remote control, knew that my phone took pictures.

  We weren’t supposed to take pictures.

  If one of them asked about it, though, surely that was well within the rules. Or if I asked if I could, and they agreed. That didn’t mean I had to use the picture in the document, just that I had it.

  “Have you ever had your picture taken?” I asked.

  “Suppose I must have,” he said.

  “Would you mind if I took your picture?”

  “Certainly.”

  Ask if an exception can be made, any exception at all.

  Lu smiled awkwardly like he was posing for a regular photo. He had no idea that I had asked to take the picture to try to spread it as far as I could, to distribute it to law enforcement.

  Maybe to get him on the registered sex offender list. He had obviously gotten his hands on a child during the internet age. I’m sure that meant that he should be on that list and that the people in the neighbourhood had to be told that he was living there.

  At the very least, his image being bandied about would help mortals avoid him.

  He was so evil, so wrong, so devoid of morals that other vampires wanted nothing to do with him.

  I sent the image to the secondary account.

  “Is it in the clouds now?” he asked.

&nbs
p; “Clouds?” I asked.

  “George said that files go into things called clouds. Which are sort of up in the air so that mortals can move things like files and videos between devices.”

  “Oh, yes, it’s in the cloud. Most phones automatically back things up in case the phone gets lost or stolen.”

  “Ah.”

  I saw that glint in his eyes, though. The one of disappointment. He had hoped that I didn’t have a cloud. Not everyone did.

  In fact, I didn’t, or if I did—don’t laugh—I didn’t know how to use the damned thing. I simply backed up pertinent information by emailing it to myself.

  Seeing that look in Lu’s eyes, I disconnected the secondary account from my phone. Thankfully all my passwords were different. The services I used required logging into yet another account to retrieve the reset code.

  I wonder what people did if they only had one email account?

  “Do you write on there as well? I’m always surprised by what phones can do these days.”

  “I can, yes.”

  “May I see?”

  There were only little bits on my phone. I figured they were safe enough, certainly backed up already. So, I stood and unlocked my phone, handing it to Lu with the text on the screen. He touched the screen and seemed to be reading.

  Then he started tapping.

  “Oh dear, oh no, something happened. Oh no!”

  I snatched the phone from Lu and looked at the screen. The file hadn’t been deleted, but it had been overwritten with a jumbled mess of letters.

  “That’s all right, I already had that backed up,” I said gently as I walked away.

  I hit the menu button and brought up other applications. Contacts and messengers were open in the background. I flipped through, but no one on my contacts list was labelled as family. I had no I.C.E. Contact either.

  Just a bunch of names.

  In the logs, however, was Jerry’s number. I had deleted the text history, but not the log of that history.

  As a precaution, I made a face and tapped idly at my phone.

  “Is everything all right?”

  Besides my concern that you might show up on poor Jerry’s doorstep? Everything was peachy!

  I sent Jerry a warning text, then waded into the secondary account and sent the image of Lu. Jerry’s response was short but to the point.

  “Fuck... me.”

  Jerry was in the city for the night. He was supposed to leave in the morning for a one-on-one with a vampire from a completed interview. The vampire had agreed to read out the interview in a dead language for Jerry.

  “It’s fine,” I said. “Just, it turns out. I didn’t have the file backed up.”

  Then I recalled that Quin could read body language and probably learned that from Lu. At that moment, I decided ‘fuck it,’ and looked up to meet Lu’s eyes.

  The vampire almost smiled.

  “Let’s drop the pretense,” I said.

  “This is the first time he’s brought one of his whores around.”

  “Aw, like that’d scare me?” I asked. “I am not a five-year-old boy. You can’t bully me.”

  “Would you have that strength of resolve if not for the Council’s protection?”

  “Would you be so cocky if Death hadn’t threatened life and limb of everyone on Earth to keep you out of the deepest ocean?” I asked. “You’re lucky he needs you, or you’d be on his list like so many others.”

  “Why do you think Death needs me?”

  “I don’t think he makes the plague, I think you do,” I said boldly. “I think he’s capable of killing vampires no matter what, but to have a duel power, he’d have to, what, be the most special-est vamp in the whole world?”

  “Yet you sit in my living room without special protection.”

  “With treatment, the bubonic plague has something like a ten percent death rate. I’ll take the chances. It’d prove my theory, and then all the mortals will be looking to drop you to the bottom of the ocean.”

  “Did the boy tell you that?”

  “Quin hasn’t told me what you’re afraid that he’s told me,” I said. “He’s told me that you’re a child rapist, a murderer, and overall too sadistic for others of your kind to stomach.”

  “Oh, but he left out the part where he participated willingly?”

  “To get an art tutor.”

  “In the kidnapping and rape of children.”

  A cold washed over me. Quin hadn’t mentioned that.

  That wasn’t true, though, was it? He had mentioned children, then had said he didn’t want to discuss it further.

  “What else have you made him do if only to make the pain stop?” I asked. “How many times did he ‘participate’ before he started ‘accidentally’ killing them?”

  Lu went a bright red colour.

  “I’m betting you cast him out because he started killing your playthings.”

  The red turned to a scarlet of rage, and I knew that I had hit the nail on the head.

  Quin hadn’t been thrown out because Lu was done with him, or because he was weaned enough. He had been cast away as punishment.

  “You thought he’d come crawling back, better behaved, when he ran out of blood, didn’t you? You didn’t count on Sasha being the one who found him. Or that Lucrecia would take him on. You didn’t cast him out. You grounded him.”

  “That woman should have left well enough alone!” Lu shouted as he leaped to his feet.

  “Then why is she still alive?” I asked. “Why didn’t Death do the deed? What, did Wraith utter a threat? Did Death make an attempt on her life?”

  Lu threw the coffee table. It was the first sign of aggression I had seen from him. The table clattered across the living room, causing me to leap to my feet.

  I almost bolted. I had had a confrontation with my father in a similar manner. Except I had run, and things hadn’t gone well.

  So, I stood my ground.

  “Is that why the tool was taken and broken? Because you tried to have Lucrecia killed! That’s why you’re powerless, why Death hasn’t been seen in centuries! You did something stupid!”

  “It should have worked!”

  “What stopped you? Sasha? She was on the Council during the attack. Surely to hurt Lucrecia, you’d take her Progeny from her the way she took yours.”

  “The bitch had already learned Lucrecia’s power!” Lu roared. “Lucrecia taught her to fend him off. When he finally found her, she commanded he go away. Crying like a pitiful child, a weakling, but still, the compulsion was felt through the family. The only one of us who can stand to be in the presence of those women is Quin. He’s the only one they’ve forgiven.”

  “Forgiven for what?” I asked.

  “For my Maker’s complete execution of Lucrecia’s beloved fucking family. Living not as gods, but as lords and ladies of Rome, they crossed the line when they began encouraging advancements. When the first computer appeared, primitive as it would be to yours, we knew the cull must begin. To keep the rats submissive.”

  Lu was planning another cull. As that idea sunk in, the world did a funny sort of spin. I swallowed hard and sat.

  “The tool wasn’t stolen to release a plague,” I managed to get out.

  “To release a plague? I don’t need powers to do that. Mortals have all but perfected biological weapons. And the tool was never required to spread the plague. It was only there as protection. Vampires believed they should interfere with the culling of humans. The tool was used by the Great Maker to cull our kind the first time. Their deaths imbued it with a special power, one no vampire can wield, but the strongest.”

  I desperately needed Quin to walk back into the room.

  And where was George?

  I glanced down at the bandage on my arm and wondered. If Quin hadn’t insisted on cleaning the blade himself, what MRSA might Lu have released on the mortal population?

  My life might have been saved by a pissing contest between Quin and Lu.

  “The onl
y thing you’re missing is Wraith, isn’t it?” I asked. “You don’t need Quin. You’re hoping he’ll lead you to Wraith.”

  “Even after all this time, I don’t want to see the boy dead. He was always the strongest of my children. His powers are more than threefold. That which he had during life, he carried on as an immortal, completely immune to all sickness, able to tell the future, and those he inherited during the turning. My boy is the only one who might wield the tool outside of Death himself.”

  I had to force myself to breathe.

  Quin had been with me all night.

  Except when Gerald died. The Elder Council had been found dead later. That didn’t mean that Quin couldn’t have done the deed, then slipped back to Sasha’s before anyone was the wiser.

  Had I been travelling with the murderer all night? I’d be the perfect alibi, considering we had been together all but an hour or so, perhaps less.

  Someone else could have stolen the tool while Quin and I had sat in the cafe, waiting for one another.

  “If I was in possession of the tool,” Quin said as he walked back into the room, “my whole reason for finding Lu would be to kill him.”

  “I didn’t—” I started.

  He pointed a finger at me and scowled. Of course, he had read what I thought, it would have been all over my face.

  That jabbed finger swung to encompass the coffee table.

  “Where’s George?” Quin asked. “Your temper or not, he should have checked to make certain that you are not taking advantage of Helen.”

  “Busy, I suppose,” Lu said in annoyance.

  “Stop planting ideas in her head,” Quin barked at Lu. “I came here to check on you, but don’t you ever mistake that for concern for your well-being.”

  “Of course you care for your Maker.”

  “Only so far as it is I who drains your life’s blood and rips that black coal you call a heart out of your chest, to show it to you as you die.”

  “Such abusive words!” Lu protested.

  Quin’s response was to point at the coffee table, tossed against the far wall.

  “You and I were done centuries ago, old man. Now I’m taking Helen home and you a aren’t going to try and stop us, or we’ll see just how exhausted you truly are.”