Never Show Fear

by Nicola Claire

  In another realm, in one not quite like this but so very close to it, he greets me.

  “Nosferatin,” he says, and imbues it with power, with his Sanguis Vitam.

  It calls to me.

  I dance and spin, and he laughs, and something in his aura sings; a song it has sung before but not for centuries. It is sad and joyous, lonely and complete.

  It changes everything.

  * * *

  The second time I met the vampire who killed my father’s brother, I’d been eight. Eight going on eighteen. I’d thought myself invincible and the vampire charming. My uncle had glowered.

  My uncle’s kindred had laughed and made a joke of me.

  The vampire who eventually killed my father’s brother had laughed with him.

  Suddenly, he hadn’t been as charming.

  The vampire across the courtyard from me, now, however, is extremely charming.

  Gregor crouches down beside Lucinda as she and Jett hide behind a large planter which doesn’t offer nearly enough cover for what’s happening tonight. The dagger I hold in my hand is for the humans; humans related to Luce by birth but hardly acting like family should. The odd gunshot sounds out, making my hand tighten on the hilt of the dagger, as the gunmen try to get a line of sight on Lucinda and Jett.

  I stare at the blade in my hand again and then go back to watching Gregor comfort Luce. Who brings a knife to a gunfight? I do.

  I narrow my eyes at the Master of Wellington City.

  And then I feel him. Scent him. Am surrounded by him.

  “Little lotus,” Nero says at my side. “What have you got yourself into now?”

  I smile at my mentor, still feeling that pinch in my chest when I stare into those cinnamon and copper coloured eyes.

  “You know how it is with Lucinda,” I tell him. “If it’s not a rogue, it’s a long lost cousin out for revenge, and if it’s not the cousin, then it’s the Queen of Darkness.”

  “She is here?”

  “Oh, she’s here, all right,” Erika snarls behind us. She can’t see Nero; he is Dream Walking. But she can hear him just fine.

  I’m glad I’m not as hindered by vampire preternatural senses as Erika is. I soak up the sight of my former trainer and friend and feel a part of me that has been missing the last few weeks in New Zealand slot back into place again.

  I miss my family. I miss the Nile. But I miss Nero like a lost limb.

  “They are shooting at someone else,” Nero announces a second or two later.

  “She’s here!” Erika sings in a creepy tone of voice.

  “She comes for Lucinda,” Nero says.

  “Jett will protect her,” Erika assures him.

  “So will Gregor,” I add, sounding to my dismay a little put-out by that thought.

  Nero stares down at me and smiles.

  “You have found your sun, little flower,” he says.

  “Or he’s a weed in my garden, and I want him pulled out.”

  Nero’s face splits into a wide grin. And if I’d needed another reminder that he does not look at me the same way I look at him; then I have it.

  I swallow my disappointment and look at Gregor instead.

  The gunshots stop suddenly, and an unnatural silence fills the air. Auras swell with forgotten things and power rolls through the square. I shudder. Gregor’s eyes meet mine from across the courtyard. I’m not sure what the look means.

  And then they are here — the vampires who reek of Darkness. And Gregor is jumping up and racing out to meet them; a warrior vampire hellbent on vengeance. He is musical to watch. A performance perfected over centuries.

  The Enforcer of the Iunctio fights tonight, and all will bow before him.

  But I have my hands full and cannot enjoy the scenery — my stake in one hand, my dagger in the other. I spin and dance, and Nero dances with me.

  We are a sight to behold; I know this. But Erika is wielding her Svante sword. And Jett is restraining Luce who seems not to be herself, and Gregor is the only one who notices anything.

  Like Erika, he cannot see Nero, but he knows he is here. Unlike Erika, he watches me. Intervening when a vampire attacks from behind — saluting me with a victorious shout when I stake another. If I am not careful, he will distract me.

  But I was raised by a prince of Minya. I am a Minyawi. None can distract me in battle. I raise my stake and hear it sing. Nero raises his beside me.

  We spin.

  The fight turns into a long battle. At some stage, Lucinda has freed herself from Jett. She wields her Svante with a style and grace someone so young should not possess. But it is not until she unleashes her stake that I see the beauty that is the Sanguis Vitam Cupitor.

  Lucinda is Light personified, and she dances through the throng of Dark vampires like a firefly flitting around their heads. Nero watches her with pride. I feel a stab in the heart that his eyes are filled with such devotion when he looks at her. And then Gregor runs past and winks at me.

  I am fighting, and he makes me laugh.

  Dust swirls on the air and blood drips from wounds, and I have never felt so alive in my entire life. This is what I was raised to be. This is what all the long hours of training were for. This is what we do.

  We hunt.

  We kill those who kill indiscriminately.

  We are Nosferatin; Nut’s chosen; the vessels who carry her Light.

  And then the world simply stops spinning.

  I am aware it has stopped, but I have no recourse. Luce is some distance away. Nero is nearer her. Gregor is close to me and his eyes, I realise, are on me and not what is happening to Lucinda.

  I scream inside my head. I bang imagined fists against an invisible barrier. My heart pounds, my blood pulses inside my head. My throat feels raw, and my eyes sting with tears.

  But nothing moves. Nothing can move. The Dark creature who stands before Lucinda has us all in her thrall.

  And then I see it. The shot that aims to take Lucinda’s Light from this world.

  I scream.

  I hear Gregor shouting.

  Erika and Jett are roaring like wounded lions.

  I think I can even hear Michel, but he is miles away from this moment.

  A moment that doesn’t want to end.

  And then it does. And I’m falling, and the concrete is rushing up towards me, and I feel every bruise in my body and know if I move now, I’ll discover something broken.

  I hear her crying first. Then I hear someone trying to soothe her.

  And then I hear the gurgle of blood.

  I push myself to my knees, my body swaying. Gregor is there, and he steadies me with a hand to my shoulder. I blink away sweat or blood; I’m not sure which, and then my eyes focus, but they’re reluctant to do so as if they’re reluctant to let me see what I already know.

  What I have already seen.

  Nero throwing himself between Lucinda and the Queen of Darkness. Right at the end. Right when the world came back into motion.

  Nero taking the blow that was directed at Lucinda.

  Nero.

  Nero is dying.

  And then he is gone.

  Not back to Nafrini as his Dream Walk should have taken him.

  But gone from the world.

  Completely.

  A Light has died, and I can’t breathe through the loss of it. I fumble for my cell phone. Gregor helps me. I don’t have it in me to be thankful.

  Nero is gone.

  The line rings and rings and rings and then finally connects.

  And I hear the song of mourning.

  I throw back my head and wail along with my brethren. Wail the loss and heartache of a death as monumental as this. Nero Al-Suyuti is dead.

  Gone.

  But the mourning song is not just for a long-lived Nosferatin

  Cairo mourns its lost vampire tonight as well.

  Nafrini Al-Suyuti was close to seven hundred years old and had ruled Cairo for six centuries. She died in her palace without warning as her
Kindred Nosferatin’s shade died in a battle across the other side of the world.

  Nero. My Nero is gone.

  Luce staggers across the space between us, fear and heartache and loss and pain etched on her beautiful face. She collapses beside me, and I collapse into her arms in return.

  It should be raining, the heavens broken-hearted, but we cry enough tears to soak Wellington completely.

  I don’t remember leaving the square. I do remember Michel appearing out of thin air. There is an honour guard of Gregor’s vampires.

  And there is Gregor Morel’s sorrowful eyes as they meet mine.

  * * *

  The third time I met the vampire who killed my father’s brother, I was ten. He was arguing with Nafrini, and I had been playing hide and seek in the grand hall. My hiding spot was a good one. None of my cousins could find me. I’d tamped down my Light just like Uncle had taught me and they had all run through the grand hall without checking behind the Battle of Tell El Kebir.

  I listened to the argument, not really understanding the nuances just knowing Nafrini was mad and the vampire I spied on through the worn threads of the tapestry, who enraged our Queen to fuming, was an idiot.

  No one got away with making Nafrini mad.

  But he must have won the argument because she let him leave.

  And then she had sighed and told me to come out of hiding.

  It was only afterwards, after my uncle’s death, that I realised she’d let the vampire leave because I was there.

  The vampire who killed my father’s brother may well have met the final death that evening had I not been playing hide and seek behind the tapestry of the Battle of Tell El Kepir.

  It was a hard lesson to learn and a harder memory to banish. But the vampire before me now simply smiles a dimple-filled smile and blows my ill thoughts away.

  “What will you give me for it, ma ange?” he asks in a silky smooth voice layered in milk chocolate.

  “A black eye if you don’t take your hand off my knee,” I tell him, keeping the smile I wish to wear to myself, but Gregor can see me.

  “Ah, you wound me, ma ange de lumière.” He places a hand on his heart and dramatically grimaces. He is theatrical, the Master of Wellington City. “But seriously,” he adds, the light glinting in his eyes, “you need a place to stay when in my city. I take care of my own.”

  “I am not officially yours, Master of the City.”

  “Does that mean unofficially that you are?”

  “It means I have yet to decide if Wellington is for me.”

  He studies me in the way he has; his attention keen. No one else in the world exists for Gregor Morel in this moment. Just me.

  It is difficult sometimes to remind myself that he is evil. That everything he does, he does to hunt his prey. Gregor has decided I am his prey, and until he catches me, he hunts. And nothing hunts more deviously than a vampire.

  “You forget,” he murmurs, his voice wrapping around me, his Sanguis Vitam flowing across my skin like fine silk. I am shivering. “That I have seen inside your heart, and it is mine.”

  “You are arrogant and overconfident in your abilities, Master,” I tell him. “It is unbecoming in one so old as thee.”

  “Old? You’re calling me old? I am but a spring chicken.” He clucks at me.

  I am nonplussed. This vampire is ancient. Almost as old as Michel. Not quite as old as Nafrini was when she met the final death.

  My heart momentarily misses a beat as it always does when I think of Nero. My former trainer did not turn to dust as Nafrini did. But he died anyway.

  Symbiotic the relationship of kindreds. If one dies, the other dies also.

  “Ma ange,” Gregor says softly. “Please. I need to provide this for you. I need to know you are safe.”

  I am never safe, but we don’t say it. I am Nosferatin. I work for the Master of Wellington City. I stake rogue vampires every night of the week. I will be twenty-five in a few short years, and if I do not tie myself to a kindred vampire before then, I will not see the next full moon past my twenty-fifth birthday.

  And if I do tie myself to one, I will die if he does.

  I stare at the vampire before me. His hair is artfully tousled. His eyes sparkle with sly humour. Lucinda’s Sigillum still adorns his eyes and taunts me. Even if his own mark on Auckland’s Nosferatin has been erased by Michel and Lucinda together, Gregor will always wear Lucinda’s Sigillum for all to see.

  Unless it is replaced by another.

  I pull away from that thought.

  “Will you accept it as the gift I intend it to be?” Gregor asks me.

  “No gift is without a price, Gregor.”

  “This price is safety.”

  I’ve been staying in a hotel. It’s expensive, and there’s only so much a bartender earns a week. It is less than safe where I am staying, but the apartment he has presented me with is expensive. In the most expensive building in the city.

  It is also only a short walk to Desire de Sang.

  I am torn. On the one hand, is convenience, and dare I say it, safety.

  On the other is owing this vampire a debt.

  “You will not owe me, ma ange. Your service to my city is payment enough.”

  He calls me his angel. Sometimes his angel of light. It is endearing. And yet another way vampires hunt. It’s easy to be swayed by these sweet sayings.

  But then the knowledge that he can sometimes hear my thoughts if they are too loud inside my head reminds me with whom I am tangling.

  I will owe you nothing in return, I mentally shout at him.

  “Not a thing, Angel,” he says aloud.

  I nod my head, accept the keyring he is holding out to me, and then push him out the front door to my newly acquired apartment.

  “I rescind your invitation,” I say to him.

  This is my home now. I can do that.

  He smiles at me and says, “You have accepted my gift. Your honour would not allow you to return it.”

  He knows where I grew up. He knows how I’ve been trained. Only those Nosferatin trained in Paris, his former home, would behave as honourably as the Egyptians. Even Luce would ignore the rules if the rules no longer worked for her.

  “Your gift is safe with me, Master,” I tell him.

  And then he grins a boyish smile and steps back over the threshold.

  Leaning down, he whispers in my ear, “My home; my rules.” Pulling back, he adjusts the cuffs of his suit sleeves. “If you need me, you can find me in the penthouse.”

  My eyes meet his.

  “Oh, didn’t I say? I own the building. Sweet dreams.”

  And then he vanishes.

  I hate it when they do that.

  I slam the door and fume for a moment and then let the anger slip away.

  He bested me this night. But I can play dirty. I will have my revenge when I next mix his favourite drink at Desire de Sang.

  I wander my apartment and take in the bright coloured decor. Gregor knows me better than I had thought. He is observant and treacherous. He is a worthy opponent.

  I smile as I fall gracelessly onto the king-sized bed.

  It smells of him. I roll over with a groan and bury my face in the pillow.

  Sneaky vampire.

  Before I know it, I am asleep, and he comes to me in that other realm. The realm he tested our kindred compatibility in. Here the rules are different, so there is no telling if, in our realm, the affinity exists or not. He would have to test our compatibility again. So far, he has not.

  And I cannot do it for him.

  He watches me as I watch the sun set over the Nile. Felucca boats sail downwind, their white triangles flapping steadily in the breeze. I inhale and smell the Hapy. A shadow crosses in front of the sun, and a chill washes down my spine. I hear screaming.

  My eyes connect with Gregor’s, and then I am awake and panting and alone in my room. The sun is high here in Wellington. In Cairo, the sun has long set.

  My pounding
heart reverberates around the room before I realise it is someone knocking on my door. I stagger toward it, but it opens before I reach it.

  Gregor stands on the threshold, his eyes blazing platinum. The scar down his cheek lending weight to the frightful look on his face right then.

  “Cairo is under attack,” he says. “News of the deaths is filtering through the Iunctio.”

  The Iunctio is the network all vampires can link into. It is also the governing body. Gregor is on the Iunctio Council. But this news would have reached him through the network. Frightened vampires calling for help or warning others to stay away from the city.

  “I have to get there,” I tell him, gathering up my coat and wallet. I have nothing else with me. It is all at the hotel still. I paid for another day I did not need, but that is the least of my worries.

  Cairo is under attack.

  It is still my city even if it is not. Even if Nafrini no longer controls it. Even if my uncle no longer prowls the streets.

  Even if Nero is dead and buried.

  It is still my city.

  Gregor stares at me for a suspended moment and then nods his head. We are running for the lift in the next heartbeat. A car greets us on the street, and soon we are whisked away to the airport.

  I am sure Gregor could get there faster than me. But I am Nosferatin and limited to mundane means of travel. Although Gregor’s jet is fast. But not quite fast enough for me.

  I fidget during take-off. I decline sustenance or conversation. His presence is all that keeps me from pacing. It would not do to show such emotion. Vampires prey on the weak.

  “You are not weak, ma ange,” he tells me.

  Stop it. Regrettably, he acquiesces.

  The trip is long and arduous, even if all I do is stare out the window at nothing, or hide behind the shade when the sun rises to greet us. Gregor sleeps. But it is a feigned sleep. His eyes move behind his closed eyelids as if he is having multiple conversations at once.

  He’s on the Iunctio network, trying to discover what is happening to my home city.

  There has been a power vacuum in Cairo City. Filling Nafrini’s shoes has been daunting, I should think. But sooner or later, someone will rise to the top. I have heard things. My family have told me things. But mostly, they keep their troubles close to their chests.