by L. C. Davis
"What exactly does preparation involve?"
"Whatever it takes." He gave me a lukewarm smile and raised his glass. "To becoming a man."
I raised my own glass reluctantly to return the toast. "To becoming a man," I echoed. Even if I wasn't going to get to enjoy it for very long.
~
That night, I tried to convince Prentice to let me at least drag my own corpse into bed. He agreed to let me try, but my latest attempt to get to my feet was even feebler than the first. My limbs felt weighed down with lead and this time when I fell it was forward in the direction of the coffee table rather than back onto the padded couch.
Prentice caught me easily and hoisted me into his arms. "You're surprisingly light," he remarked. "Must be because you're short."
"Thanks," I grumbled as he slid me under the covers. The sheets were cool and fresh and the bed was even more comfortable than the one at the hospital. The only thing I missed was the saline drip--my head was foggy enough without the morphine, so I didn't miss that--as the wine had left me dehydrated.
I wasn't usually a lightweight, but at Prentice's urging I had consumed two full glasses of wine, which was more than my body could handle in its current state. Maybe that was why I felt so strange.
He pulled the covers up and tucked me in. As thoughtful as the gesture was, it was humiliating and only drove home the fact that he would only ever see me as his burdensome, weak little brother. No wonder he was so eager for me to go through my transition. At least then I wouldn't be his problem anymore.
"You don't look so good," he mused, feeling my forehead. "Can I get you anything?"
"Water would be great," I said. I was already feeling like I was going to lose the half a slice of pizza I had managed to choke down if I didn't watch it. When he brought me a cool glass of water, I drank it eagerly.
"Slow down," he warned. "You'll get sick."
I obeyed, but it was torture. By the time I was finished with the glass, he had a pitcher in his hand and poured me a bit more. "Thanks," I gasped, wiping an excess droplet from the corner of my mouth.
"You don't need to thank me for taking care of you. I'm the one who ran your car off the road, remember?"
That was true. "Why did you do that, anyway? Why not just wait until I reached the sanctuary?"
"And stir up the hornet's nest before its time?" he asked dryly. "I wasn't going to let you reach wolf territory. That and I was angry."
"Angry?"
"I'll be the first to admit that I took your betrayal a bit personally," he said, smoothing out a wrinkle on his shirt. "Perhaps I wasn't operating fully on logic at the time."
That was the last thing I had ever expected him to admit. "But you knew you'd be able to save me if I died," I said carefully, recalling his words from earlier. "You said you'd done it before."
"Yes," he replied. "I was hoping it wouldn't come to that again, but I wasn't ready to let you die permanently that night."
"Oh," I said, yawning. Sleep was pulling me into its embrace. I turned my head to look at him and it felt like moving a boulder. "When did you save me the first time?"
"It was when you were very young," he said, reaching out to stroke my hair. "My mother had sent me to deliver something to yours and I came in to find that your father had just beaten you to within an inch of your life."
The edge that came into his voice startled me almost as much as his words. "What?"
"You were probably too young to remember, but it wasn't an uncommon occurrence back then. The other adults turned a blind eye to it, including your mother. He had never gone that far before, but he was drunk that night. They were both panicking and arguing about whether they should finish the job and hide the body or ask our grandfather to resurrect you and hope for the best."
He sighed and smoothed his hair back before he continued, "I was hardly more than a boy myself and had only recently gone through the ascension process, but I was old enough to know what to do. I told your parents that I could save your life and save them from disgrace at the same time, but the only condition was that if either of them laid a hand on you again or told anyone of my involvement, I would tell the rest of the Family everything I knew. They agreed out of pure desperation and I took you to our secret spot. Do you remember it?"
I nodded blearily. His words seemed about as real as the hazy memories they were dredging up. I knew I should care more about what he was telling me, but it was becoming enough of a challenge just to process his words. "The old treehouse. By the lake," I slurred.
"That's right. I didn't have a transfusion kit, of course, and I couldn't take you to a hospital, but I had a pocket knife. I slit my own wrist and made you swallow as much of my blood as you could without spitting it up. It wasn't enough, so I made cuts all over your body and soaked them with my blood. You were so far gone you didn't even cry."
I shuddered, not because of what had happened but because I couldn't remember any of it. When I tried, it was like pushing against an invisible wall. "How did you know it would work?"
"William Winters was something of a scientist. He tried a few experiments with hunter vitae, which you would know if you had read the journal I gave you."
I wilted under his judgment. "If anyone had found out about the blood, they would have known you were the next leader."
He chuckled. "The risk was greater than that. What I did that day and in the hospital was blasphemy. To consume another living creature's life force is an act reserved for vermin, not a hunter. If anyone had found out, I would have been thrown in the isolation chamber for a year at the very least and certainly disqualified as the next leader of the Family. That's why it's a secret for us both to take to our eternal resting place," he said, smoothing the blanket over my chest.
"Why would you do that?" I asked in disbelief. "Why would you risk all that for me?"
He looked away. "You were always the one I loved most. When I held your broken body in my arms and felt the weight of all the life that had gone out of you, I knew I couldn't live with myself if I just let you go. In some small way I felt how I imagine the Patriarch did when he looked down on the dying prince he loved so well. All I could do was trust that he would take pity on my similar circumstances and find the mercy to forgive me."
The words seemed too fantastical to accept as truth. Surely this was a hallucination. "Ever since that night, you've been mine," he continued with a distant look in his eyes. "My responsibility, mine to guide and mine to do with as I see fit. You have life because I gave it to you and when the time comes for your death, I'll be the one to give you that as well."
"So you see me as property." My slur had worsened and I yawned despite my best efforts to stay alert. Part of me had already given up on it all as a strange dream anyway.
"In a sense," he replied casually. "I think I've given you more answers than you deserve for one night and it's clear that you need your rest. But first, it's your turn to give me an answer."
He placed another pillow underneath me and pulled the covers down. His hands were cold on my skin as he began to unbutton my shirt, but all I could do was flinch. The heaviness of my limbs had grown immensely.
Prentice stripped off the bandages on my chest with the same diligence and grace he brought to every task and began to change the dressing. I wished he would give me some warning of what he was going to do before he did it.
"I'm going to let you in on another little family secret, only this one you aren't going to remember. The reason we haven't been able to force you through the transition is because the initiate must go willingly in order to have the Patriarch's blessing when he rises."
I stared at him in confusion, but staring was all I could do. My body was no longer in my own possession. Prentice maneuvered me like a doll as he cleaned my wounds and removed the brace around my neck. For the most part, I couldn't feel any of it. It figured that I would be too numb to feel it the one time his hands would ever roam my bare chest.
"Fear or mild hesit
ation is one thing," he continued evenly. "True resistance is a rare strain that centuries of selective breeding have been able to stamp out among our kind--that is, mostly. When a hunter is born with the will to resist, it's usually because the child is something special. Someone with the strength of will to make a truly great hunter. Maybe even a leader. Clive was undoubtedly the backup in case I proved too stubborn."
He gave me a placid smile. "We all know that's not the case with you. Nonetheless, your will remains strong," he said, shaking his head. "Stronger than Clive's, certainly. There's no harm in admitting it since you won't remember this little chat in the morning anyway, but between you and I, your will might be even stronger than mine."
My throat was dry again when I tried to speak and the words came out as a frail, unintelligible moan. There was a mixture of pride and jealousy in Prentice's gaze and the way he loomed over my paralyzed form was vaguely menacing. "Shh," he soothed, stroking my face. "I haven't brought you here to harm you, only to sort you out. You see, all those with our peculiar strength of will have a peculiar weakness to balance it out. A vice, if you will, that must be fully indulged before it can be slain. Only once this weakness has been purged from your soul can the Patriarch manifest himself in your heart. You want that, don't you?"
It took all the will he claimed I had to manage a weak shake of my head.
He smiled knowingly. "That's the vice talking, Arthur. You'll see. Tonight, you're going to tell me what it takes. Clive had to run away. He had to experience the freedom of the road and get a feel for what it would be like to be normal, to be free, if only for a little while. At the culmination of his journey, he met an alluring stranger who gave him a taste of forbidden fruit to satisfy his curiosity for the other side. For vampires. For other males," he said pointedly.
"Of course, that beautiful stranger killed him in the end, but it was all part of his ascension to glory. Now he can move on, find a wife and take his proper role in the Family without hesitation. He has closure. You want that, don't you?"
As Prentice preached his gospel, my head spun and my stomach churned with illness. I still didn't understand why he had brought me to this place. His compulsion wouldn't work on another full-fledged hunter, but I was far from that in my current state.
"You're psychic. Why can't you just take what you want from my mind?"
"It should be that easy, shouldn't it?" he mused. "You can just tell me what it will take now and tomorrow it will be like nothing happened. The drugs will make sure of that. I may not be able to pull the answer from your mind, but I can certainly slip an idea inside. You'll wake up and get to begin your journey to closure none the wiser that it ever has to end. Only when your carnal desires have been fully realized will the compulsion take effect. You'll snap, just like Clive did. Your weakness will overtake you--violence and lust, in his case--until your target has slain you and your sinful heart along with it. It's a poetic death, don't you think?"
I shook my head faintly.
His expression fell. "You never make anything easy, do you? Well, I won't make the same mistake I made last time, thinking drugs alone are enough to make you talk."
My look of confusion caught his attention and he added, "Oh, yes. We've had this conversation before. Why do you think I allowed you to go debase yourself as the Lodge fuckboy in the first place?"
"What?" I croaked.
He sighed. "For someone so adept at evading control, you are obtuse. You weren't my first choice for infiltrating the Lodge. When it came time to prepare for your funeral, I drugged you just as I have this evening and compelled you to tell me what you needed in order to obtain closure and face your death with dignity. Your answer was that you wanted the chance to go to college like a real boy and explore all your perversions. The answer seemed obvious enough, but apparently your deception knows no bounds even when you are entranced. Nothing is ever easy with you, is it?"
Tears welled in my eyes as the extent of his betrayal set in. Being a plant at the Lodge had been one thing. There was dignity in that, if only a little. The realization that the entirety of my time at school and every experience, from classes and parties to meeting Remus and my sessions at the Lodge, had been orchestrated by Prentice was too much to take. He hadn't sent me because he trusted me or needed me in some small way, but because he wanted to purge my "perversions" so I could hurry up and die.
My eyes widened in horror as he opened the bedside table drawer and pulled out a vial of some green liquid and a glass dropper. "Your chest has already begun to scar to the point where you can't even tell there was ever a gaping hole in it, but I'd venture to say that the acid will still feel quite raw," he mused, drawing a few milliliters of the liquid into the dropper. "Before I ask you once more, I should remind you that I can mask your memories with drugs and heal the wounds with my blood and repeat this gruesome process as many times as it takes to get an honest answer out of you," he said calmly. "And I will get an answer. We can waste all our time together, or you can make this easier on the both of us and tell me what I need to know now."
"You're a fucking psychopath," I seethed, turning away. It took all the strength I had left.
"And a determined one at that," he said nonchalantly. "Last chance to do this the nice way, Arthur. What is it going to take to get you in the ground?"
I shuddered as the anesthetic properties of the drugs started to wear off, but the partial paralysis was just coming into its full effect. He had timed it all so perfectly. "I'm not telling you anything," I spat.
He smiled calmly and held the dropper over my chest. A single drop of acid fell and I let out a hoarse scream of agony as the acid ate its way through the freshly scarred tissue. "Suit yourself. I made a promise that no one else would ever raise a hand against you that day I saved you, myself included. Nonetheless, as you learned so well on the roadside, there are many ways in which I can get my message across without ever laying a finger on you. For your sake, I hope this is the last one."
"Now," he continued, poised to sear me with another drop of acid, "I'll give you one more chance before the fun really begins. What is it that you truly want? What will it take to end this?"
I gritted my teeth in preparation for the torment to come. "Go to hell, Prentice." Even knowing what awaited me, it felt so good to say those words.
His mouth set into a line. "Not yet, Arthur." He emptied the vial onto my chest all at once. The acid hit my skin and my screams almost drowned out the sound of his voice as he quietly said, "And I won't let you end up there, either."
Chapter 4
ARTHUR
The next morning, I woke from the deepest sleep I'd had in months. Nothing hurt except my head. Even that felt more like a hangover than a concussion. Prentice must have been wrong about the effects of his blood diminishing, because I felt even better than I had the day before.
The only strange thing was that my heart was racing and my hands were clammy, like I had just woken up from a nightmare. Strangely, I couldn't remember having any dreams at all.
A search around the cabin revealed that I was alone, at least for the moment. I had no doubt that he was close, though. There was a blanket on the couch that had obviously been used. I didn't remember Prentice putting me in bed, but I didn't remember much about the night before. I must have fallen asleep after the wine and pizza. Maybe the alcohol had interacted badly with the morphine lingering in my system.
When I looked down, I was no longer wearing my hospital gown. Someone had dressed me in sweats and a clean T-shirt. Humiliation churned in my gut. The hope that I had somehow found clean clothes and drunkenly changed into them in my sorry state was slim. That left only the possibility that Prentice himself had dressed me.
The cabin door opened and he came in bearing two cups of coffee. He kicked the door shut without a word. Guess it wasn't a good morning, despite what the birds in the trees outside had to say about it.
"I see you're feeling better," he remarked tonelessly.
"Uh, yeah. A little hungover," I admitted. "I'm not in pain anymore, at least. I think your blood is still working."
"I'm sure," he said dryly, offering me one of the cups. "Cream and sugar, as always."
"Thanks," I said sheepishly, taking the cup with both hands. My wrist was far more mobile than it had been yesterday, despite the cast. How Prentice remembered the way I took my coffee was a mystery to me. Since I had moved out of the homestead I sometimes wondered if he even remembered I existed.
"Your arm is better. We'll go back to the hospital soon."
"The hospital? Why?"
"Your breaks will be healed soon, if not tomorrow," he said. "Those casts need to come off and I can't take you just anywhere with my blood in your system."
"I thought you said it was almost worn off."
"It will never fully be worn off," he said. "My blood cells don't die as quickly as a human's do, so even traces of the blood I gave you as a child are still in your system."
"But how can you tell?" I asked, curious.
He smirked. "I can smell it inside of you."
My face warmed traitorously. "You can?"
"It's nothing to look so ashamed of. It was diluted enough that a vampire didn't notice. If anything, it'll make the beasts think twice about attacking you."
"Beast" was the standard hunter term for supernaturals. It applied to everything except us.
"Um." I hesitated before daring to ask the question that hadn't left my mind the entire time. "Did you dress me?"
"Yes," he replied nonchalantly. "Is that a problem?"
"No, I just--it's just kind of embarrassing."
He stared blankly at me. "Why?"
"Never mind."
His eyes narrowed curiously. "You willingly shed your clothes in front of perfect strangers--animals no less--and allow them to defile your body without a second thought, yet you balk over something as innocent as this?"
My cheeks glowed hot. "You make it sound like I'm some kind of whore."