by J. J. McAvoy
“Because we are the strongest,” he corrected. “Like Africa, no one family controls China or India. They lack the power. My family is the longest-ruling vampire family there is. Just like the humans have wars between each other, and even rebellions, we have gone through those, and our family has never faltered because of our gifts.”
“You mean your true immortality?” I wanted to know just how many times he had been killed, how many wars he had fought in.
“Yes, the fact that I can never remain dead makes others not even attempt to bother our family most times. My gift is a deterrent. However, I alone am not the reason my family stands strong. After all, I do die, even if it is only for a period time, and return. It is possible that someone could attack my family while I was dead if that were the only gift we had to protect us. But each of us is strong. My sister-in-law, Melora, the mate of my eldest brother, Ulrik, can control water. On the surface, it does not seem so grand until you’ve seen her part seas or drown cities.”
“Drown cities?” I repeated.
He nodded. “Not every flood is the work of nature. And the gifts do not stop there. My younger brother, Arsiein’s gift, is cloaking. He can hide the presence of himself or others, even things, preventing them from being discovered. Full armies have moved in plain sight because of him. Everyone can do something grand in my family. There are many more, too. Due to our gifts, we have maintained power, and in doing so, there is order. And if you ask me, peace in Ankeiros.”
“And humans have no idea there is a different society all-around them, ruling over creatures that could end their life? In books, there is always one ruling group or family for vampires. Who would think there were nations?”
“Why would they know? The lines were drawn before them, and if they were to shift, they would most likely be causalities of those wars. Besides, it is ridiculous to think one vampire or one group of vampires could control the world. By the time they were to find out who was causing a problem in one part of the world, the humans would most likely already know as well. But I digress,” he said, lifting his pencil to move back to his maps. “What I wanted to show you was this. Apparently, I left Ankeiros in July of 1920, three days after my mother told me of you.”
He lifted the map of the Americas. “I first came to pay my respects to President Swan, here in Montréal, a month later in August. I told him of the lie Taelon explained.”
“And then?”
He pointed to spots all over the map. “I arrived here. I was met by vampires who all recalled the last time they saw me.”
“You got around,” I said, staring at the dozens of dots with dates all over the Americas.
“I was searching for someone important.” He smiled, and I ignored him to point to the east coast.
“You were on this side a lot.”
“I was. Now, look at these series of dates.” He pointed to one date in particular.
“August 25, 1997.” Four days after my fourth birthday.
He pointed to the next one. “September 30, 1997?”
“Look how close they are,” he explained before moving his pencil across the map at another point. “Everywhere else, I would leave and not come back for at least five years or more. Yet, all of these points—”
“Are within a few weeks. The longest, two months.” I slowly understood. “You were staying close.”
“There is only one reason for that.” When I looked to meet him, our lips were almost touching. He looked over my face and smiled. “I found you, Druella.”
“You found me,” I repeated; that was the only reason I could think of, too.
“So, why do you not remember me, either?”
Chapter 14
What?
“Of course, I don’t remember you, Theseus; I was four.” I wanted to laugh at how silly his question was, but he was serious, deadly serious.
“And you were sixteen when I came this year,” he said, pointing to a dot directly where the one where I was at four-years-old. “It is logical for you not to remember me as a child. But in your teens, you would even if in passing.”
“You might not have said anything or come close.”
“I would like to think that I have that kind of self-control.” His eyes fixated on the page. “But I cannot imagine that I do. How could I have not spoken to you at least once? You, who I had spent so long waiting for, spent so long searching for; there you are in front of me, and I do not approach? It is unlike me. I would need to hear your voice, see you look at me. If not, you would have felt me looking. The living have a way of knowing when they are being watched, and their instincts tell them. For me to be around and for you not to notice, on top of the fact that I have lost all of my memories of these times, does that not seem strange?”
He had just told me there were vampire nations, that he was the son of one of the most powerful and oldest-ruling families. We were sitting in a Japanese-styled penthouse in the heart of a Montréal cityscape as guests of the American president, after escaping a murderous coven of witches…And he thought the fact that I did not remember him stalking or staring at me was strange?
Seeing my expression, he forced himself to smile, shaking his head. “Never mind—”
“Please don’t do that.” I quickly grabbed his wrist when he moved to the maps. “Don’t ever force yourself to smile for me. I hate when people do that. Whatever face I’m making that made you do it, I’m sorry. It’s just that everything is strange to me. So, I can’t tell you what is strange. If you had told me last week that I’d be unemployed, sitting next to a vampire I barely knew but for some reason was attracted to, I would have told you that you were insane. Whatever you’re thinking, tell me, and I’ll make a face, but still tell me, okay?”
He twisted his wrist around to take my hand, grinning. “You are attracted to me?”
I fought the need to roll my eyes. “Seriously? That’s all you’re going to focus on?”
“It is a very big revelation.” Theseus kissed the back of my hand. “What else have you discovered of your feelings toward me?”
I pulled back my hand. “Don’t you want to go back to showing me these pretty maps?”
“So stubborn. So beautiful,” he muttered, giving me a glare, though a smile was on his lips. A real one. “Shows you are perfect for me for I like a good chase.”
“What is the capital of Ankeiros?” I side-stepped his comment like I never heard it, lifting the map of his home. Though I did feel the urge to smile.
“There is none. My mother thought it would be ridiculous to just have one centralized point.” He sat up a bit. “My family has homes throughout the nation. Sometimes we stay as one family until we are all tired of each other, and then we all live alone in the places we are most comfortable. When I go, normally I stay in Olympia, Athens, or Thessaloniki when I wish to be alone. I cannot wait to show you. It is not as beautiful as it was in the past, but it is still a sight to behold.”
A vision of me walking through Greek ruins with him began to form in my mind, but I pushed it back. “How many siblings do you have?” I asked.
“Four. All male. You did not have any?” he answered and asked back.
“When I was among the living? No, I was an only child. Now in my rebirth, I have no idea if do or not.”
“Do you wish to find your maker?”
“Doesn’t every vampire wish to know where they belong?” I muttered just reading the maps, the dates, and everything before me. “Though seeing as how they haven’t been here, maybe it’s for the best that I don’t see them. I’ll survive.”
“You do not ache?”
“Ache?” I didn’t understand.
“Yes, I have seen vampires who were abandoned, pardon my words for I have no better one, and they were…aching.”
At that, I stopped and gave him my attention. “Explain, I don’t really understa
nd.”
“From what I was told, it was like an emptiness. A hole in them that drove them mad with sadness, and they roamed the earth to find their maker. Most go mad. And yet, you have not broken down, nor lost your joy. It is almost as if you would be perfectly satisfied if you never met them.”
“Of course, I want to find them.” Though I had never really thought to look. Why? Why hadn’t I thought to look? I had eternity. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s because I never clung to the idea of being a vampire very much. Part of me knew it, understood it, but I still felt like me, just hungrier…prettier. So instead of looking, I just wanted to get back to my life.”
“You are not upset at being reborn?” he frowned, and I saw something, like a brief moment of pain in his eyes.
“Sometimes, but—I don’t know what to say. It was just a new normal for me. I didn’t hate it. I didn’t love it. It was just the reality of my situation. I was alive. To stay alive, I needed blood and money. So, I hunted and went to work.”
“How can someone who lives between the covers of romance novels and ancient paintings have such a scientific view of your rebirth?” he chuckled.
But I just shrugged. “I don’t know. It’s just how I am. Why? Did you hate your rebirth?”
“I did.” He frowned, and he reached up to twirl one of the ends of my hair. “I had a life, a wife and two children. I was a droungarios.”
“A what?”
He smiled. “It was a title given to a commander of a formation known as droungos. Essentially, it was a unit in the Byzantine army. We were military units detailed to the mountainous areas in Greece. I worked my whole life to rise above my station. To be something worthy of honor and respect. I received it. I had four hundred men under my command. For a bastard son from Athens, later an orphan, it was as if I had become king. I never lost when we invaded from the north or when the east descended. I was fair when judging men and women in my city. And do you know who betrayed me?”
“Who?”
“My wife.” He snickered bitterly with a grimace on his face. “It is often said that men seek out a version of their mother in their wives. I do not know if that’s true for all of us, but it was my fate. Orspina was very much like my mother, not in looks, for her hair was golden but in her selfishness. She wanted more than one man could offer. I gave her the status, the honor of being a commander’s wife, but she was not pleased that I could not give her all of my attention. Maybe I was wrong for focusing so much on my command and less on her. But she was wrong for laying with another man, and lying about whom her children belonged to, as was my mother.”
My mouth dropped open slightly. “They weren’t your children?”
“No, but I loved them even so, and even as they grew and saw they looked less like me, I loved them even still.” His voice became softer. “Had I found out, I would have forgiven her. I would not have abandoned the children we were raising. However, the man she slept with, her lover and the children’s true father, was hiding in my home. I assumed he and Orspina were together that night, and I returned sooner they had expected. It was late; I kissed the top of my children’s heads and returned to our chamber to rest with her. Like she always did, she removed my armor, but this time with my own sword. They slit my throat.”
I gasped, eyes wide as they shifted to his Adam’s apple, wanting to touch it, but he did instead.
“I do not think the man had ever killed before, for the cut was not deep enough. Nor do I think Orspina would do it, for she screamed in horror. I remember the look on her face as I fell to my knees. I reached out for her, trying to tell her to run only to watch this strange man pull her into his arms, kissing her. Telling her he would take of it, and he instructed her to stay with the kids. She did not even look back at me once. He left to tell the guards who had heard her not to worry.”
“You watched all of this as you were bleeding out of your throat?” I questioned, moving closer to him.
He nodded. “When he began to grab the linen, I closed my eyes. I went still, and I prayed to the gods. I swore that I would forgive her for this, too, had I lived. That I would go and do as they command. I just needed to live. I would hold on until they sent help.”
“And help came.” Obviously.
He nodded. “Yes, in the form of my mother.”
“Your mother?”
“My mother had left me when I was fifteen in Thessaloniki. I knew she was alive. I knew she was often watching. I would find food or silver left for me wherever I was staying. And all those who would try to harm me would vanish. But in my boyhood innocence, I thought she had simply remarried and didn’t want her son complicating or angering her new husband. I thought he must have been very wealthy. I was happy for her, although I hated her for leaving. Little did I know, she had been changed into a vampire.”
“So, your mother made you again?” I never thought that could be possible.
“No, she did not, but she snapped the neck of the man in my room. I remember her staring at me with tears in her eyes. I mentally joked that money truly cured everything, for she was so beautiful; no longer dressed in rags and covered in dirt. She told me to hold on and lifted me—a grown man twice her size, as if I were a child—from my home and ran. The breeze, the stars overhead, I honestly thought I had died already. She brought me to her mate, Sigbjørn Thorbørn, who happened to be the commander of all of Greece. He ruled the cavalry and was one of the first Vikings who swore allegiance to Emperor Basil I, the Macedonian, for land. She wanted him to change me.”
That bothered me. “You were bleeding out. You could have died. Why didn’t she just change you herself?”
“Because my mother is cunning, wise, and selfish. I love her dearly, but it is the truth. She risked it because she wanted me to have a father and because she knew that of all of his children, I would be the one that was of her and of him. Lastly, because Sigbjørn is an ancient and mighty warrior. Before he was a Viking, he was a Dane, before he was a Dane, he was a Visigoths, before even the Goths. He was born and reborn in the Dawn of Iron. My mother wanted me to be of that bloodline. And just like I had when I was younger, just like I had done without her, I survived. I may have even survived the cut to my neck had she simply nursed me, but she wished for me to join her in eternity. She was tired of watching from a distance. She did not ask. She did not tell me what was happening; she simply had me made into the creature she was. Part of me thinks she had been waiting for me to come close to death just so she could.”
I felt a tug on my heart. His mother had harmed him, his wife had harmed him. “Why the hell would you go looking for another woman after all the hell one put you through?”
He laughed outright, his head going back.
“I’m serious! If it were me, I would never want to look at another woman or trust them again.” I sulked.
“Forgive me, my second brother, his mate is a man, and he told me the same thing years ago, centuries ago when I spoke to him about finding a mate. He tried to convince me that I should choose a man and spare myself the heartache again.”
“Why didn’t you listen?” I joked, pushing his chest.
“I do not think we can control that.” He smirked, amusement clear on his face. His hand drifted to my waist, and I allowed him to bring me closer, until I was in his lap with my chest on his, looking down at his face. “There is something about the feel of a woman’s body against mine that I crave no matter the danger or pain it causes. Call me a fool, but I am not alone in this.”
“Oh, so anyone woman will do?” I grumbled.
“Any woman has done until I met you. And now, all I can see, think of, and crave is you, Druella.” His hands dropped to the back of my thigh right where the hem of my dress was, and he held on tightly; it felt like it was burning through my skin. “I wish to feel nothing but your skin and your skin alone on me. I wish to see you underneath me, on top of me, beside
me, I ache for it.”
He leaned forward and kissed my chest, and I was so grateful I didn’t need to breathe because, in this moment, I didn’t know how. Unable to stop myself, I bent over and kissed the side of his face, my hands going to the bottom of his shirt.
“I want you,” he whispered, wrapping his arms around my waist and hugging me to him. “But I do not want you because you pity my past. I rather battle your stubbornness and denial for years before you give yourself to me than it be based on anything but your true desire for me and me alone.”
“When I throw myself at you, you reject me? That’s going to bruise my ego for at least a decade.” I slowly sat back down into his lap.
He lifted my chin, holding it up.
But I ripped my chin from his grasp. “What?”
“Do you desire to be my mate right now? Or do you desire to just be a woman in my bed.” Now he asked? He had all but declared it done, but now that I was ready to sleep with him, he was asking me these questions. I desire the former.
“I just,” I started to say but then became annoyed. “Why did you kill the moment?”
“Because lust is fleeting, and mating is forever, young one.” He cupped the side of my face, his thumb brushing my lips. “I would gladly take you here and now, but afterward, should I see regret, or should you pull away, I will not know what to do. Instead, let us talk of you. I have shared much. I wish to know of you. All I know is your love for art and that you were alone.”
“That’s pretty much it.” I tried to move off him, but he didn’t let go.
“Doubt it.”
“I should go shower and get ready,” I told him.
“You are trying to run from me or from telling me of your past?”
Annoyed, I glared at him. “Both, but whose fault is that?”
He leaned over and kissed my cheek. “Yours for not saying yes to being my mate.”
My jaw set, and my hand balled into a fist. I wanted to strangle him a bit, but this time I pushed away and got up myself.