by Debra Dunbar
“Good. You asked last night about our next step? Whether we were going to abandon Leonora’s house now that it had been attacked?” He waited until I nodded. “We’ve decided to hold fast and defend the house if it’s attacked again. The gang members we killed the other night were involved with the robbery, and we found they were tangentially involved with the magician who is sending the spirits to attack us, but the rest of the gang is innocent. We’re still trying to track down this magician and kill him, but in the meantime we’re going to present a strong front and gather what information we can. I want you to know so you’ll stay clear. I’ve got to get back there soon and help set up our defense, and I’ll probably be out of contact for a while.” He reached out a hand and ran his fingers through my tangled mess of hair. “I’ll let you know as soon as this is resolved.”
I felt sick. I knew who was doing this, what Russell had planned, and here I sat letting Dario drive away to a possible death. I couldn’t. As much sympathy as I felt for Russell, a fellow human, I just couldn’t.
“How badly did things go last night? I mean, how many died and how many were injured? Is this something you think you can defend against? Do you have any way to effectively fight these spirits?”
He twisted his mouth downward. “It was bad. We lost ten, and at least a dozen more are suffering wounds that will leave them immobile for several weeks. We can’t continue to experience this level of damage every night, and we can’t defend ourselves without upping our consumption levels. And no, we don’t know how to fight these things. They appear to run out of energy after a few hours and leave, but nothing we do seems to hurt them. It’s all a game of who can outlast who at this point.”
I got the unspoken part of his statement. The vampires needed to find who was doing this and stop him, or they’d eventually all die. There was only so much damage a vampire could take before he’d succumb to his injuries, and only so much blood they could consume each night to help them heal. Upping their consumption levels would put them at risk of attracting human attention and jeopardizing their ability to hold this territory.
“I need to help. I’m…I’m worried about you.”
He laughed. Laughed. This was the first time I’d heard that noise from him and it was in response to what I considered a very serious matter. “I’ll be fine. I’m tough. I’ve survived worse than this in the last three and a half centuries. We just need to hold tight for a few days until we find the magic user.”
I knew the truth he was trying to hide from me. I knew how bad this was going to get. I probably knew that more than he did. Russell had the ability to raise murdered humans from centuries ago as well as those outside the territory where the rogue bands of vampires didn’t take such care to preserve human life. All those angry specters wouldn’t care if the vampires they killed were involved in their murder or not. How long could Leonora and her Balaj hold tight against dozens? And how long would it take them to find Russell, a forgotten child from a family murdered decades ago?
I scooted closer to him. “Dario, I’m going to take a huge leap of faith here and trust you enough to tell you something. I need you to be absolutely honest with me in return. Do I have your word?”
Ever since the fiasco over Linguini Alfredo, he’d been remarkably open with me when I questioned him about vampire matters, about personal topics. I just needed to make sure he’d continue to be, that I knew the truth before I decided what to do tonight.
“You have my word,” he replied solemnly.
I turned to face him on the bed, folding my legs into a half-lotus position. “Forty years ago a fourteen-year-old girl was preyed upon by a vampire, not once, but multiple times. He eventually took her and made her a blood slave.”
He nodded. “We try to enforce a minimum age of our prey now, but this was not always the way things were. I know it sounds horrible, but many older vampires came from a time when fourteen was considered well into adulthood. Marriage, sexual relations, and pregnancy were common in young teens not too long ago, and some vampires find it difficult to adapt to modern ideas regarding the age of consent.”
I’d read enough history to know he was right, but it still made me rather sick to think about. “We can argue about that later. This particular girl was killed.”
He looked at me blankly. “I would assume so. As much as we try to prolong the life of blood slaves, average life expectancy can be anywhere from a few weeks to a few months. Only the strongest of us are able to keep our blood slaves alive for over a year.”
And that was the life he’d offered me, admittedly in the heat of the moment and in blood lust. My heart sank.
“She was killed right in front of her father. He didn’t even get to keep her body. Months later the whole family was killed in their home by vampires, their throats slit to cover it up.”
Something flickered in his eyes. Shame? Or perhaps just regret that this dark secret had been discovered. “I’ll be honest with you, Aria. These things happened and more than once. We don’t do that anymore. I know you’re not a fan, but Leonora isn’t the sort of Mistress who would allow that to happen in her Balaj.”
His reassurances went right over my head. All I could focus on was that these things happened. And more than once. A child was taken as a blood slave, murdered in front of her family, and this had occurred more than once. An entire family was slaughtered, more than once.
I jumped to my feet. “Did you recognize the spirits that attacked last night? Did their faces mean anything to you, or has every person you’ve killed become blurred together by this point? Are there so many you can’t even count them, or remember who they are?”
I pushed past him and marched into the living room. He followed me; I knew he did, even though his footsteps were silent on the carpet.
“Shay. Does that name ring a bell? The Robertsons?”
I felt his hands on my shoulders as he turned me to face him. “I was honest with you. If you really want stories of blood and violence, then I’ll tell you what happened during the centuries we spent making our way north to Baltimore. I’m not proud of the things my Balaj has done, but that is the past. We don’t do those things today.”
I thought of babies preyed upon, bodies blood-raped by multiple vampires until there was no liquid left in them to spill. And then I thought of our Order’s past—of babies murdered, of old men, women, non-combatants killed so the Templars could claim their lands and treasures for their own. All in the name of God. We didn’t do that today, and I would hate to be judged for the actions of my ancestors.
But this wasn’t Dario’s ancestors, it was him and his contemporaries. And forty years ago wasn’t the same as nine hundred.
I pulled from his grasp and opened my laptop, clicking on the obituary photos. “The Robertsons. Surely you must remember them. Please tell me you remember them.”
I was practically pleading, because worse than murder was the thought that their deaths had meant nothing, hadn’t even left a lasting impression upon him. I didn’t want the Robertsons to be yet another in a too-many-to-remember string of violence.
He shook his head, swiping through the various photos without recognition until he came to one of Shay—the picture her parents had given the police for the missing persons folder. “Her. She was Jean-Marc’s blood slave.”
I let out a breath I hadn’t realized I’d been holding. “I know who is summoning the specters. If I can arrange for Jean-Marc to be handed over to justice, then I may be able to end this now.”
Dario had me against the wall so fast I hardly had time to register he’d even moved. “You lied. You lied to me and to Leonora. I trusted you, told you things no Templar has ever been privy to, slept vulnerable here in your apartment. I trusted you and you lied to me. Did it not bother you that my family died Saturday night? Last night?” He pushed me against the wall, his eyes dark with anger. “I’d thought you were different, that maybe you’d actually care about vampire lives.”
“I didn’t
know then,” I protested. “I suspected who it might be, but I didn’t know for sure. You were positive Saturday night’s attack was gang related and…”
He was right. I had known, but how could I have told them and stood by as they slaughtered Russell? Did I put the necromancer’s life before that of the vampires? If I was totally honest with myself, I had.
Dario’s knuckles whitened as he gripped my shoulders. “How long have you known who this magician is?”
My heart thumped in my chest. “Since last night, right before I went to see Leonora. You killed his elder sister, his entire family. Doesn’t he have a right to justice? If I had told Leonora, she would have hunted him down and killed him. You know she would have murdered him in cold blood. I couldn’t allow that.”
The vampires would have killed him in cold blood, so instead I kept silent and let Russell kill them in cold blood. Suddenly I didn’t feel so righteous.
Dario let me go and took a step back. “But you couldn’t trust me? No, of course you couldn’t trust me. Stupid of me to think otherwise.”
I bit my lip. No, I hadn’t trusted him. I’d immediately thought him guilty, and tonight didn’t seem to be proving those initial assumptions wrong. He hadn’t even flinched when I’d shown him the photos of the slain Robertsons, had said murders like these had been common. Didn’t he feel even the slightest bit of guilt over what his family had done?
Dario gave a bitter laugh at my silence and turned away, running a hand over the top of his close-cropped hair. “Brothers and sisters of mine died last night. They died Saturday night. You knew who was behind this and you just let my family die.” Walking casually over to my kitchen table, he shut the laptop. “Well, your necromancer friend is thirty years too late. Jean-Marc is already dead.”
Thirty years. That clicked in my brain and spurred a memory from the conversation we’d had at Sesarios. “He died with your previous Master?”
“Yes. Aubin was our master, my sire. He turned me in Haiti. I as well as his other children and several of his blood siblings followed him when we were exiled.”
My mind whirred trying to figure out a way to resolve this thing without being able to deliver his sister’s killer to Russell. “So I can assure the necromancer that all the vampires who participated in the murder of his family are dead?”
“Hell if I know,” Dario huffed. “Jean-Marc is dead. Aubin is dead along with his siblings and eight of his offspring. Still, over two thirds of the current Balaj were turned at the time.”
I frowned in confusion. “But did any of them participate in the Robertson murders? If I can turn over those at fault to the necromancer, then I might be able to resolve this without further bloodshed.”
He turned to me, his eyes cold. “No. We are a family. There will be no turning over of anyone. Jean-Marc is dead. The master of the Balaj at the time of the murders is dead. If that doesn’t satisfy this necromancer of yours then we will hunt him down ourselves and kill him.”
I had a feeling just the knowledge of Aubin and Jean Marc’s deaths wouldn’t be enough. Although maybe there was some way I could spin this. “How did they die? Rogue vampires outside the city? A savvy human? Drank bad blood?”
“We killed them.”
That, I did not expect.
“It was decades in the planning. Some of us didn’t like where Aubin had been heading with the Balaj, but as his blood-children, we were sworn to obey him. I won’t go into details, but suffice it to say there was a coup.”
I was already thinking about how I could relay this information to gain Russell’s buy-in for a peaceful resolution. Could I claim that the current members of the Balaj not been involved in the murder of his family, had ousted those who were and killed them?
“I’ll help resolve this without bloodshed, and come to a solution that works for both your family and this necromancer.”
“Like hell you will.” The vampire snarled, and I felt a return of that fear I’d felt when I’d been locked in the basement last night. “There has already been bloodshed. This human has attacked my family, murdered my brothers and sisters. For that, he’ll die.”
It sounded eerily like what Russell had said. “How about nobody else dies? This guy lost his entire family to your Balaj. He’s got reasons for what he’s doing.”
Dario turned so all I could see was his back. “That was forty years ago. What’s happening right now is my concern. I won’t let any more of my family die at this man’s hands. And as much as I respect your abilities as a Templar, I can’t put my faith in your reassurances that you can ‘handle this.’”
Everything was falling apart right in front of my face. No wonder Templars just stood back and let God sort it all out.
“What if I help you defend against the spirits? I’ll neutralize them each night until I can manage to come to a peaceable solution.”
The vampire’s laugh held three hundred years of bitterness. “Oh, like you did last night? Your pathway-of-light spell severely burned two of us. Any vampire who falls into that light is going to wind up cooked, and there’ll be no coming back for them the next night like there is for the spirits.”
He was right, but I had a few other ideas up my sleeve. “I can banish. It won’t create a holy area like the pathway blessing, it will just return the dead to their graves.”
Dario turned to face me. “Us too? Because we’re technically dead, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“But not really,” I argued. “Your spirit selves haven’t been released from your bodies. If I can come up with something that—”
“No.” He slammed a hand down on my table, cracking the wood. “You’ve done enough. Stay out of it. Just…just stay out of it.”
I wasn’t sure if he was worried I’d do more harm than good, if he didn’t want me to interfere with the massacre that was about to commence, or if he just wanted me gone from his life.
“Please.” I had no reason to ask him this, but still I did. “Please let me try first. Stay out of Leonora’s house tonight so the necromancer has to search for you. Give me twenty-four hours.”
Dario’s eyes met mine. “There are reasons why we can’t abandon Leonora’s house, reasons that have nothing to do with this. And a lot of my brothers and sisters could die in twenty-four hours. More if he finds our daytime resting spots.”
“Please.” I let the word hang between us and held my breath.
“No. This is an internal matter between us and this necromancer. Your services are no longer needed.”
Ouch. I needed to do something to buy time. I needed to help fix this, to redeem myself in his eyes.
“Let me help. There will be repercussions if you do this your way. You’ve already killed a whole bunch of people who may have had nothing to do with this. What if you get the wrong guy? Or what if you get the right one? Continuing to kill in retaliation is going to set up a chain of events that might not end with his death.”
“What, if the Templars get involved, you mean?” Dario’s voice was soft. “Are you threatening me, Aria? Be very careful where you’re going with this. I doubt even your own family is going to care about a Balaj and a practitioner of the dark arts duking it out, and you are only one Templar. One. How much can you do against so many of us?”
I winced, knowing full well I didn’t have the strength to take them on solo, and that there would be no Knights to back me up in this. Still, I wasn’t the only human who would take exception to a series of murders. “What if your gang partners join forces to take your Balaj down? What if they partner with some of the rogue vampires outside the city? What if the feds get involved?”
He raised an eyebrow. “You think we can’t handle that? I can’t say either of those scenarios would be pleasant but neither would damage us more than letting this necromancer live.”
Threats were clearly the wrong angle. “Give me two nights, Dario. Tonight and tomorrow night and I’ll make this right.” I wracked my brain, trying to think of something I could p
ropose in exchange. An alliance with the Balaj seemed a paltry offering given I wasn’t even a Knight. Plus I wasn’t convinced I could partner with them long-term and keep my sense of morality, as shaky as it might be.
He laughed. “Oh yes. Please go ahead and take a few nights to work something out while I lose a dozen or so brothers and sisters. No problem, we’ll just sit back and accept our losses. It’s a small price to pay to save the life of one necromancer.”
I had nothing. “Please, Dario. I don’t want things to end like this, with you hating me and blaming me for the deaths last night. Evacuate Leonora’s place. The necromancer will need another day or two to find another one of your houses to attack. I’ll try to get him to call things off, and I’ll work on a spell that will banish the spirits without harming any of your family.” I blinked, ignoring the sting of tears in my eyes. “Please. Give me a chance to redeem myself, to make this right.”
A muscle in his jaw twitched. “Twenty-four hours. I’ll give you until tomorrow night to get him to back down, otherwise we’re going after him. I can’t guarantee what we’ll do with Leonora’s house. Just be aware that if things go bad tonight, I might not be able to hold them back.”
I let out the breath, knowing this was the best I could hope for.
“I know you need to head out to feed and to safeguard the Balaj, but can you stay just a few more minutes? I want to try something. Are you up for being my guinea pig?”
Yeah, like that was going to happen. I needed a vampire to see how these spells might possibly affect them, though. Dario was the only vampire I was somewhat friendly with, although after tonight I wasn’t sure how friendly we were going to be going forward.
He hesitated, looking at the sword at the end of my table before he replied. “No.”
I bit back a smile, realizing humor wasn’t really appropriate at this moment. “Not that. I want to try a non-Templar spell, one that deals with banishment of the dead but is more specific and without the religious slant to it.”