Don’t bite her. Don’t hurt her. He handled her like a porcelain doll that could break at the slightest pressure because she so easily could. He wanted release, he wanted sex, he wanted… the crystalline rubies of her blood. He thought like that now. Blood transformed from red cells to jewels. Lorenzo’s pulse raged in his head as he heaved ragged breaths into the pillow, unable to see through the sparkles invading his vision.
‘Lorenzo, what’s the matter? Are you okay?’ but Jean-Ashley’s voice came from far away, fading along with her familiarity. She, a thing, bone and yielding flesh, thirst-quenching liquid. His mouth lost all moisture, desperate as a man lost in the desert, catching sight of water. And like that man, ready to kill whoever got in his way.
A metallic tang as his fangs shot out, piercing his lips, drawing blood.
Memories died in this place between hunger and lust. He was only vampire. She was only food. Badly needed food. He lifted his face and looked at her. She yelped and fought at him, horrified by the sight of her boyfriend, his pupils far too dilated, his teeth far too long, red treacle spilling down his chin. Lorenzo became impassive as his girlfriend kicked and flailed helplessly, watching her with complete detachment. All thought frozen into blades of ice.
He latched his jaw around her neck, the blood coating his parched throat like the purest honey. Protest turned to sobs. He was still hard as she went limp. Lorenzo flashed back to the Red Hawk, to Theo asserting his belief that vampires equated sex and blood, his own rebuttal. But the warlock had been right. Why had Lorenzo stopped with Grace? Why hadn’t he killed her?
His mind raced, thoughts bleeding together. Who is Grace why am I thinking? Theo is an idiot what does he know about me and vampires and my girlfriend and what I did with Grace I didn’t kill her I wasn’t hungry I’d been feeding all night already with Malachi and that bitch Penny why was she even there with us?
Jean-Ashley I love her I didn't want to fuck Grace just because Theo did doesn't mean I have to because I want her blood I’m so hungry now shall I keep drinking who is this girl?
Lorenzo staggered back and stumbled off the bed, fighting for air as his memory clicked back into place. Painfully, agonisingly aware now of where he was, who he was with.
‘Oh my God, Jean!’ Even as he rushed back onto the bed, lifting her into his arms, he licked at the blood on his chin. She drooped in his hold, unconscious but alive, like a wilted flower waiting for rebirth.
No time or explanation for an ambulance. He had to try what Malachi had shown him when he’d killed that man on the first night. His maker – Pater Sanguinem was the title Malachi used – had healed the bite wounds on the victim’s body using a few drops of vampire blood. Lorenzo pierced his finger with a fang but the wound healed too quickly. He cursed and this time tore at his wrist, gashing the flesh enough to give him a few seconds to smear Jean-Ashley’s lips. Terrible moments, as her heart marched on in a sluggish rhythm.
Please, please. Anyone but her.
Her eyes snapped open and she struggled, trying to spit it out, but Lorenzo clamped her chin shut. Covering her mouth – what if she screamed and alerted the neighbours? – he debated options while her tears wet his fingers.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, his voice husky and desperate. He wanted to cry with her but it would only scare her, for his tears would be red now. Malachi had warned him about emotional displays in front of humans, a different species. Lorenzo understood it as he watched his girlfriend reaching the apex of her panic, falling deathly quiet, staring up at him with wild fear. He met her gaze with anguish, this was so much worse than that first kill. Although her heart thumped hard again, he could see it was broken. ‘I do love you. I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I don’t know what to do!’
‘Kill her.’
Malachi’s deep hum penetrated the thick walls of Jean-Ashley’s house. The grass-insects froze around Malachi’s boots, life resuming its business farther away from the vampire.
Lorenzo shook his head. ‘No, no I can’t.’
‘She’ll talk.’
‘No, she won’t.’
‘You think she’ll protect you now, when you almost drained her of blood?’
‘I didn’t though.’
‘I’m sure she’s grateful.’
‘Shut the fuck up!’
Jean-Ashley flinched. ‘I’m not talking to you, babe.’
She thinks I’m schizo.
‘Do you want my help or not?’
Lorenzo huffed. ‘That depends on whether you have any useful suggestions.’
Malachi appeared in the room, a draught spilling in from the window behind him. His laugh, rich with malice, summoned terror in Jean-Ashley, a honey-eyed devil come to torment them both. ‘I see the thirst has got the better of you.’
‘Don’t hurt her,’ Lorenzo growled, his throaty threat dying in the cold air. Malachi could do what he wanted. Malachi’s DNA corrupted Lorenzo’s will, stringing his limbs into those of a puppet, to be manipulated by mere command. He hated it.
‘You can Enthral her to believe anything you want. She won’t know anything happened.’
Why didn’t he tell me that before? ‘How?’
Malachi waved Lorenzo from the bed to get at Jean-Ashley, who scurried back so fast against the headboard it reminded Lorenzo of a mouse trying to escape a cat. ‘It’ll be okay, babe,’ he pleaded, as he watched Malachi prowl across the sheets and grasp her face, locking their gaze. His honeyed eyes directed her pale green irises onto a fixed point.
‘Your boyfriend came around tonight and you made passionate love. He went home and you fell asleep. You won’t remember seeing me either.’ He slid Lorenzo a dirty look. I’ve done you a favour and you owe me, it seemed to say. ‘Even though I make you wet as India in Monsoon season.’
‘Hey!’
Malachi snickered as Jean-Ashley blushed, aware of her bare breasts and naked limbs, and moments later she dozed off. He’d learnt already that eye contact with sapiens made them sleepy. Within a blink, Malachi grabbed Lorenzo and they glided toward the window, gracing the grass with light feet, ready to move across the landscape like shadows of an eclipse. Lorenzo looked up and saw his girl walk over and shut the window, her face serene and untroubled in the moonlight.
‘She doesn’t remember anything?’
‘Here endeth the lesson. Enthral her if you don’t want to kill her.’
‘Why would I want to kill her?’
‘Lust is deadly. Tomorrow, next week. A year from now. It won’t be long before it consumes you both. Once her mother is dead, why not put the girl out of her misery?’
‘Excuse me? How do you know about Anna?’
‘She’s stunk the whole street out with her cancer. She’ll shed her mortal coil soon.’ Which meant Malachi had been hanging around before Anna had left for her date. It frustrated him that he couldn’t sense Malachi’s whereabouts – a one-way street, the blood providing a screen Lorenzo couldn’t see through.
‘How can so many sick and twisted things come out of your mouth?’
Malachi pointed in feigned shock. ‘This mouth?’ He gave a lopsided smile and grazed Lorenzo’s cheek with his fangs. ‘Don’t question it, boy. We’re death. The sooner you embrace it the happier you’ll be. A girl like that will never accept you.’
‘You underestimate her. She loves me.’
‘Ah, the great first love. It always works out so well.’
‘You’re a sarcastic arsehole.’
‘Come back in five centuries and tell me that. You might see things differently.’
Lorenzo walked with Malachi, jaw clamped shut, avoiding the argument he wished he could win. How had things gone so wrong? He was just supposed to sit down and talk. Explain what had happened to him and that she was safe. Instead, he’d fucked her in five minutes and almost killed her in seven. Yet another quote surfaced; every piece of literature Lorenzo had read sparkled in his supercharged memory. The road to hell is paved with good intentions. The sensible course would
be to avoid her until he mastered self-control, so why was he reaching for his mobile and sending her a text? What was he trying to prove?
I’ll see you tomorrow. We can pick up where we left off. He sent the message without consideration, excitement building as the hunger burned in the back of his throat. The night smothered his conscience with primal yearning as they scoured Hellingstead for suitable prey. But Lorenzo’s hunt had already started. He wasn’t done with his green-eyed girl yet.
END OF PART ONE
Interlude: Raphael
I fly without wings. I flitter and dance like a butterfly. My journey, like theirs, is solitary. But unlike the butterfly it does not end. I seek what is to be sought until I find it and reveal it to the worthy. My mission is singular and sacred.
I am distracted.
The whims of fate move me along as surely as instructions from heaven, who am I to refuse? Another night, I would not have been in Oakley Park, sitting in that ancient oak tree – though it does not rival my age – sheltering the birds and insects from the raging storm. I would not have seen the young man’s death and rebirth by the fangs of his monstrous maker.
No, my concern is the death and rebirth of another kind, yet I follow the pair who feed from humanity’s vital spirit. They know not me. No one really does. I trace their steps, feeling the strings that pull Lorenzo into desolation, and want to pull back. A tug-of-war with destiny when I am its servant!
The canopy is my home. Branches are my structure. I rely on birdsong as my morning alarm even though I do not sleep. It marks the passage of time, faithfully and tunefully, superior to any clock. It quells the loneliness, encapsulating it in a sonnet I can study rather than feel. Why, I watch the mistakes people make, over and over. I understand Lorenzo’s defence of his love, appreciate Malachi’s sarcasm. They are both right, both stuck in the same loop of reasoning. Come to me in a few millennia and tell me what you think, vampire.
I need not a map to find my path. The forces of the earth wrench me about as strong and true as the moon pulls the tide. The storm calls me. It is a beacon I cannot resist. This morning, it honed in on one specific location, the home of the Clemensen warlocks. It’s the most heavily warded estate I’ve seen for centuries, but such trivialities do not disturb me. You cannot prevent a force of nature. The Clemensens should know that, with their special abilities. But it concerns me, this over protection, this heavy fortification. If I have noticed it, many others have too. I am not an enemy nor a friend. I am neutral, like fire, like a flood. I come and come until the job is done, and I always succeed. There’s no stopping me.
I, Raphael, linger in the aftermath of battered foliage and ruined nests. I find a spot on the edge of the magnetism and close my mind. I curl into myself as I rest in a sturdy redwood and the images flash past, a dream without sleep. I think of Jean-Ashley. It is not for me to intervene in her fate.
Theo is another matter. I must lean forward when he leans back. I must rise as he falls. We must balance or all life will fail, I will fail my animal friends, and Earth will perish.
So why, why, do I care about a single vampire?
EXCERPT
Coded letter from Akhenaten, Imperi Ducis of the Praefecti, to the Cultri Argentei ‘Silver Knives’.
I have catalogued the districts extensively and analysed the meta-data. I have dispatched prior teams to the major hotspots, but we have been deceived by smoke screens. My patience is wearing thin. You don’t want to feel the heat of my anger. The amulet is of cosmic significance and its location must be ascertained. The wind-sprite is our compass. You have your orders. The cost is irrelevant.
II
Tangled Webs
THEO | MENELAUS | LORENZO | JULIAN| AVA
8
Descendants Of Thor
Days passed in the library, punctuated by family mealtimes and listening to Ava’s album, plugging in the earphones of my iPod so no one else could invade the bubble I made for my thoughts of her. I re-read the faded storybooks of my childhood, which glorified the adventures of Thor as he protected Asgard from giants, and argued with the other gods.
At one of those mealtimes, on my third heaped plate of spaghetti, I paused from shovelling down the calories – being the Gatekeeper was like being chained to a treadmill 24/7, and I was constantly hungry – and started asking the questions that had been simmering away.
‘Why do we worship Thor specifically? Sure we’re warlocks, and from Norway, but not all Scandinavian Pneuma follow Asatru.’ Asatru translates as ‘Aesir faith’ – the Aesir being the Alphas of Norse mythology – and like many of its followers, we made devotions to Odin and Freyr too.
Uncle Nik jumped in first, itching to start telling his infamous tall-tales, and I prepared myself for a dose of fantasy. ‘Ah! Our myths are full of superstition and are largely symbolic. Theo, I think that you never really believed giants once terrorised the Nine Realms. No, life is rarely so exciting. Even a boy of five knows that!’
He leant back on the picnic bench in our kitchen and straightened his spine, not leaving much of a gap between the top of his head and the strands of rosemary hanging from the beam-hook. I had already wolfed down my plate of spaghetti and started to eye his up, but he either didn’t notice or ignored it in favour of continuing his excited explanation. ‘Thor was a real person, yes, but it’s an insult to call him a mere man! He was… I’ll give you three guesses, Nevø, and I’ll not ask who he was, but what, hmmm?’
My father and I exchanged an indulgent look. Uncle Nikolaj was prone to fits of enthusiasm, and we couldn’t help but love him for it. ‘Pneuma?’
‘Duh,’ said Nik, digging his fork into his pasta and twirling it elegantly around the prongs, a habit he picked up from his excursions to Italy. ‘Be specific.’
It hadn’t escaped my attention that every time I looked in the mirror I’d transformed into the quintessential Viking a bit more, accelerating to Incredible Hulk status as my muscles strained against the fabric of my clothes. Crimson accents, inherited from Mother, highlighted my golden curls. I started to see myself as the spit of Mårten Eskil Winge’s Thor, a painting we had in the temple, – the original lives in the National Museum in Stockholm, sadly. In the most self-depreciating way possible, my body was turning into a god. Just like Thor. The day named after him, Thursday, was the day I was born on. I should’ve made the connection sooner, and I answered my uncle like admitting to recently noticing that 2 + 2 = 4. ‘A Gatekeeper.’
‘Bingo.’
‘Why doesn’t everyone know that Thor was a Gatekeeper?’
My father interjected. ‘Some did. He was a great tribal leader and a wise one. As you must realise, we are Thor’s direct descendants and thus are privy to those secrets, passing the burden of our truth to each generation. Thor was powerful, magical, and he became a legend. The role of a Gatekeeper was different in those times, the portals between the Nine Realms less rigid than they are today. His life evolved into a story that continued after his ascension to Valhalla, and the mortal man was forgotten.’
‘That’s why we wear his emblem,’ I said, clutching the pendant of Thor’s hammer, Mjölnir, under my shirt. ‘It should be secret code for Gatekeeper.’
I stopped asking questions, leaving them to it in the kitchen, stuffing the pockets of my jeans with a bag of nuts and a flapjack to last me the journey back to my room. All those years I’d wondered how my father ate like a horse and stayed wiry and athletic, in the end attributing it to good genes and his habit of daily runs around the estate. Oh, the sweet innocent lamb that I was.
Compared to me, in the past two weeks, he’d eaten like a bird, and he didn’t seem so tall, although it was hard to judge when I was practically building bone and cartilage as I eyed him up for measurements. By the time I dived onto my bed, and into my pile of books, the flapjack was ancient history and the bag of nuts already opened.
The only time I didn’t eat was when I was asleep. I crashed out hard, waking after twelve-hour stints to
agonising hunger pangs and shooting pains in my hands and feet – growing pains, the bane of my teenage years and now of my twenties. This time, magic and not hormones was responsible.
I read about Thor and the gods and goddesses of Asgard, wondering which characters were once real people like my ancestor, and which ones pure myth.
A prophecy stopped me chewing Brazil nuts and struck me like one of my own lightning bolts.
A seeress told Thor’s father, Odin, about a war to end all wars. She predicted the end of the world, the death of the gods, and the destruction of the Nine Realms. Thor would die in this final battle, called Ragnarök, and life as we know it would end.
The weight of Mjölnir… Rip it aside and magic is cast asunder. Chaos ensues. The Life-Spring runs dry and the World Tree crumbles. Death rides the earth. The Gatekeeper Book’s warning, forever engraved on the back of my eyelids. And it sounded so similar to Ragnarök!
Thor the mortal may be dead and the earth still revolving around the sun, but his dynasty of Gatekeepers was still alive and currently binge-eating if not kicking – Thor’s legendary appetite sprang to mind, though – so maybe this prophecy didn’t refer to his death at all, but the death of the Gatekeeper. I read in graphic detail about what would happen if I failed in my mission to pass magic to the next generation.
Fimbulvetr – ‘the great winter’. For three years, great storms will batter the land. These sections of the Poetic Edda seemed written for me. It got worse from there, pretty much horse-riding apocalypse, War, Famine, Death. Families turning on each other, the sun and moon swallowed whole, and the entire universe consumed in fire. Let alone the earthquakes, eruptions, and tsunamis.
The Descendants of Thor Trilogy Boxset: Forged in Blood and Lightning; Norns of Fate; Wrath of Aten Page 8