by Rye Brewer
Who was he? What sort of creature had eyes like his? He wasn’t human, that was for sure. He wasn’t a vampire. He wasn’t fae. He reminded me of all I didn’t know about the world, and that wasn’t reassuring.
He tilted his head to the side, away from me, then ran a long finger down the side of his throat. “Here,” he said in that deep voice of his. “This is the place.”
I had no idea what I was doing, but I remembered the way Malory had fed from me. “Can I use your wrist, instead? It seems so intimate, using your neck.”
He nodded, smiling a little. “You’re right. Here.” He held up his wrist, inside up. I looked down and noted the way the veins pulsed. I could see them so clearly. There was blood in them, pumping, waiting for me. For the first time in longer than I could remember, my instincts kicked in. I wanted his blood. I was hungry. It was the only thing that would help me. All I had to do was give in and take what was right there.
I closed my fingers around Steward’s wrist, the sight of his pulsing veins hypnotic, pushing away all doubt. My fangs lengthened without my consciously choosing to make them do so. Centuries of evolution took over, as I closed my eyes and sank my teeth into his flesh.
He gasped, but he sounded just as far away as Jonah had been. Farther. Nothing else mattered but getting blood. Real, fresh blood. I groaned as I began to drink, my head swimming, my heart racing, every nerve in my body humming as I tasted the blood of a living creature.
No wonder so many vampires had risked so much for the taste of real blood. It wasn’t only survival. It was intoxication, the feeling of flying although I knew I was sitting still. I was invincible. I could do anything, be anything, and crush anyone who stood in my way.
But, after my first gulp, things started happening.
Strange things.
Images flashed before my eyes. Images that weren’t my memories. How could they be? I hadn’t been in ancient Rome, had I? Of course not, I was far, far too young. And it wasn’t a memory from a movie, or something I’d made up in my head after reading a book or a play.
No.
It was Steward’s memories.
He was surrounded by others like him, tall, dark-skinned men-who-weren’t-men, whose eyes gleamed the way his did. They were at the Colosseum, watching gladiators fight to the death. The stony expressions of the other Custodians didn’t reveal much, but I felt how displeased they were. Yet they had no choice but to attend Caesar’s events or else risk his animosity.
How did I know that? Because I was in Steward’s head. Or his thoughts. I knew he was just as unhappy as they were, even as thousands of Romans screamed in delight all around them.
That memory faded. There was another, and this was of a fire. A fire unlike anything I’d ever seen—not the vampire Great Fire, either.
It was Rome. Rome was burning. And I watched it through Steward’s eyes, standing in the doorway of a temple high on a hill with the rest of the Custodians. They’d known it would happen. They’d had the luxury of standing apart from the heart of the crumbling civilization, and they’d known it didn’t have long to last if it continued on its course. But none of the ruling class wanted to hear the warnings Steward and the other Custodians had tried to give. So, they’d stood back and watched things fall into place, helpless to stop it. I could smell burning, could hear screams of terror and pain.
That image faded, too. I was no longer dressed in a robe. I was in a suit of armor, astride a horse. We galloped along open fields, little stone huts dotting the landscape. I smelled manure and fresh grass and heard hoofbeats all around me. I wasn’t alone. There were dozens of others dressed like me, all of us on our way somewhere. And we were knights, carrying swords and shields. I knew enough about medieval history to understand what I was remembering. There were men working in the fields, women feeding chickens and tending gardens. And in the distance, looming larger with every step my horse took, was a castle. We were on our way to see the king. Which one? I didn’t know. The memory wasn’t clear or strong enough. I only had the impression of news we had to share with him.
Then, just as quickly, another memory swept over me. A much more modern one—the men and women around me wore jeans, skirts, sweaters. They stood in a large room, looking to each other for answers. I had the impression I was in the middle of a secret meeting. Then, I saw why.
A battle. Blood—so much blood. Humans using human weapons against those of my kind. Stakes and silver blades and silver shackles. Vampires tearing the throats from humans, leaving them dead in moments. Heaps of bodies everywhere, piled high.
And then, a new scene.
I watched as someone threw a lit torch into an open door. I couldn’t see who did it, as it was dark all around me, but I did see the blaze that resulted. It grew and grew, higher and stronger, and it didn’t take long for me to realize what I was watching.
The Great Fire.
I was seeing it set.
I was watching the Great Fire start.
The immensity of this struck me, but I didn’t have the time to dwell on it as images rushed past in a blur. I couldn’t make sense of them. So much fire, smoke, screaming. The smell of charred flesh was enough to turn my stomach.
My mother. I saw my mother fleeing the fighting around the outer rim of the fire—the flames hadn’t quite spread there yet, and Mom ran alongside Sara’s father. I wanted to scream to her, to get her to stop, to see me. But she wouldn’t have seen me. She would’ve seen Steward. So, Steward knew her? Why else would I be seeing that very memory?
Another memory.
I screamed and screamed inside my head, knowing I was only seeing a memory but unable to separate myself from what I saw. It had happened so long ago, so very long ago, and yet it felt immediate.
Nothing could prepare me for the sight of my mother’s corpse—charred, barely recognizable except for the heart-shaped locket around her neck. I knew that locket. How many times had I touched it?
Otherwise, the heap of burned flesh in front of me might as well have been charcoal. I felt hollow inside.
Another memory rushed in, obliterating the sight of my mother’s body. I welcomed it. Anything would be better than seeing her like that.
Only Mom was in this memory, too. Standing in the center of a massive room. No, not a room. A cave. A cave… with walls lined with books…
My eyes flew open, and I jerked away from Steward’s wrist. The entire sequence of visions had flown by in the span of seconds. The blink of an eye. I’d hardly slated my thirst, but that was the least of my concerns.
“My mother?” I asked, searching those amber eyes.
“What?” Jonah asked.
I hardly heard him.
“My mother was here?” I stared at Steward, willing him to answer me—of course, I already knew the answer, but I needed to know more.
He nodded. “And your brother.”
5
Anissa
I reeled back as though he’d slapped me. My face stung as though he had, too. All the breath left my body. Things started sliding around, out of focus.
“Anissa.” Jonah took me by the shoulders and turned me to face him.
I could hardly see. I couldn’t breathe. My brother.
I have a brother.
When I regained my senses, I let out a cross between a laugh and a sob. “I have a brother,” I whispered. “It’s impossible.”
“I’ll tell you everything you need to know, but, first, Jonah must feed. Whether or not he wants to.”
I got up—I couldn’t sit with Steward anymore, not after having seen his memories, not after having lived in his body for the briefest blink of an eye. I could see why Jonah wasn’t a fan of the idea.
I waited in the corner while Jonah did what needed to be done. I couldn’t watch when I knew what was happening to him.
Exactly what happened to me.
It was unnerving, seeing someone else’s memories as clearly as my own. Going back to eras I had only ever read about. How old wa
s Steward, that he was alive during ancient times?
I sensed rather than heard Jonah finishing, and turned to find Steward sliding his sleeves over his wrists again. Was it my imagination, or did his eyes burn a little less brightly than they had before we fed? It could’ve been a trick of the light.
“Tell me,” I begged. “Please. I’ll go crazy if you don’t.”
“Are you feeling well now?” he asked, almost like he hadn’t heard me.
“Who cares about that?” My voice was savage with barely-controlled frustration.
He seemed unmoved by my passion. “I only want to be sure you can withstand what I’m about to tell you. I have to be sure you’re strong enough.”
I backed down a little. Of course, he only had in mind what was best for me. I had to stop flaring up like this if I wanted to get anywhere. “I’m sorry. Yes, I feel better. Much stronger.”
“I think that’s clear enough in your voice.” Jonah stood there, leaning against the wall with his arms crossed. He looked much better already. Strong enough to be sarcastic, at any rate.
I sat cross-legged on the floor, near the fire. The warmth helped a lot. I didn’t feel so lost when I didn’t feel so cold. I knew I couldn’t sit with Steward. I didn’t want to run the risk of him touching me—my rational mind knew he couldn’t show me his memories from a mere touch, but I didn’t want to run any risks.
His eyes bored into me. “You saw, then.”
“I saw quite a lot,” I confirmed with a nod of my head. “From a very long time ago.”
“So, you know how long my memory stretches back.”
“I do. You’ve been alive for that long?”
For the first time, he smiled as he shook his head. “Those weren’t all memories from my past. Not all of them exactly, but rather the collective memories of centuries of Custodians, all the way back to the beginning of time.”
“You don’t just keep books and scrolls,” I whispered. “It’s memories, too.”
“Mine is a tremendous responsibility,” he replied. “The same as any Custodian.”
“Tell me about my mother, please. Everything you know.”
He let out a great sigh that seemed to fill the little room. The flames flickered, making the shadows on the wall leap and dance. “Where should I start?”
“When was my mother here?” I blurted. “Please. Start there.”
“Fifty years ago. After the Great Fire.”
I slapped my hand over my mouth as I gasped. “But… that means…”
He nodded. “She lives.”
She was alive! Hope burst in my chest, filling me with light even though I couldn’t bring myself to believe what Steward had said.
“I saw her! How is that possible? I saw her body!”
And I would never forget it, either, her beautiful hair singed away, her creamy skin black and crisped.
“You saw what was left of her after the Great Fire, yes, but that wasn’t the end of her life. She lived on.”
“How? How, when she looked like that? She’d been burned beyond recognition—I only recognized her from the locket she wore.”
“It was sheer will which brought your mother here,” he explained. “She managed to crawl away from what was left after the flames died down. She must have crawled many miles, until she stumbled upon one of our hidden entrances. She slept for many days at the mouth of the cave, unsure where she was. She only knew she was safe and away from the fire and the death that had surrounded her.”
My poor mother. I wished I could’ve been there for her, but I’d been too young then. I couldn’t imagine the pain she must’ve suffered dragging herself all those endless miles.
“Eventually, a young Custodian found her there.” Steward shook his head. “He was reckless. He was curious about her, too. And I’m sure he felt for her—for all his faults, he was caring. So, he brought her into the Sanctuary and hid her for a long time. A very long time, indeed.”
“How long?”
“It took years of her feeding from him to restore her to a semblance of her former self. In the end, it changed her.”
“How?”
“It’s not easy to explain. She was herself… But she was part of him, as well. A creature, even a powerful vampire, can only feed from another strong creature for so long before they begin to change. They begin exhibiting characteristics of that blood. Do you understand?”
“I do. And I guess after so many years, it was inevitable. She did heal, though? I mean, she didn’t look horribly scarred or anything?” She’d been so beautiful. Her beauty was one of the most deep-seated impressions I still carried of her. Almost all I had left.
He nodded. “She did heal. No, she never was quite the same again, but she no longer looked burned.”
“I see.” I wondered how she’d felt about that. I wondered so many things.
“The Custodian who healed your mother was directly descended from the Archein,” Steward explained. “The original shades.”
“Oh, my gosh,” I whispered.
“I, too, am descended from them,” he added. “That’s why it was so easy for you to access my memories when you drank my blood. The Archein blood is strong, full of the old memories.”
“Are you related to the Custodian who saved my mother, then?”
“I am. He was my cousin.” I noticed his use of past tense and decided not to ask about that. Had this cousin paid the ultimate price for saving my mother’s life?
“You mentioned my brother. Who is my brother?”
“He’s the son of your mother and my cousin.”
I gasped. “They had a child?”
“I know my cousin fell very much in love with your mother over the many years it took to heal her. He was the only Custodian she was allowed to be in contact with, since she was in hiding throughout the time she healed. I suppose it was only natural they develop a deeper connection. And yes, they had a child. A boy.”
She had another child. With another type of being. It was one thing to know she’d first been in love with my father, Gregor, a member of the fae. But this? This was something totally different. I didn’t know what Custodians were, outside of the fact their blood was very old and strong. And my mother had borne a child with one of them?
“So, my brother is half-vampire, then, from my mother,” I began, slowly, trying to feel my way through the situation. “And the other half is…?”
“You’re asking what I am?”
“I guess so. Yes. I didn’t want it to sound rude.”
He let out what sounded like it wanted to be a chuckle. “I don’t blame you for wanting to know.”
“So?” My curiosity took over from politeness.
“I’m a shade.”
“A shade?” I never would have guessed. “But… I thought shades were spirits. I mean, you’re flesh and blood. Everything I learned about them said otherwise.”
“Then you didn’t learn everything,” he explained. “A shade is not a spirit. Rather, we can house spirits. Many different types of spirits.’
“And my brother is half-shade, then?”
“Right. Half-vampire, half-shade.”
“Wow.” I wondered what he was like. Would I ever meet him? Would he want to meet me?
And where was my mother? She was never far from my thoughts. She was out there, somewhere, and she wanted me to think she was dead. Why? What happened to her? Why couldn’t she show herself to me? It seemed like such a terrible waste of time we could’ve spent together. I understood she’d needed to heal, and she’d changed, but could she have changed so much just because she’d drank a shade’s blood? Did that wipe me out of her memory? Did she forget she’d loved me?
“Where is my brother and my mother? Where are they?”
“I can’t tell you. And I can’t help you find them. I’m sorry.” He stood.
“Why not?”
He exchanged a look with Jonah. I hated those wordless conversations. The sort of silent discussions grown-ups
used when they didn’t want a child to know what was really happening. Steward sighed. “Because it’s already a risk to my life that I’ve brought you here.”
“It is?” I gulped.
No wonder he hadn’t wanted to tell me. I felt awful. I didn’t want him to suffer because he’d saved us.
“And if the other Custodians find out I’ve given you blood, I’ll face certain death. Our blood is highly valued.”
“Why did you do it, then? Let us feed from you, I mean? If you knew it was certain death?”
He looked at Jonah again, whose eyes shifted to the floor. “Because Jonah saved my life. It’s a blood debt. I owed him.”
I stood, too. “And now what? Now that your debt has been paid?”
“Now, you’ll stay here,” he said. “You’ll stay in hiding, of course. In my quarters. Meanwhile, I have duties to attend. Lessons are about to begin, and it’s my night to lead the curricula.”
“You teach lessons here?”
He nodded. “To the young shades. I have to be there—even if it wasn’t my night, they’d miss me.” He went to the door, which didn’t take long seeing as how the room was so small. “Remember: do not leave my quarters for any reason.”
“We were outside your quarters earlier, weren’t we?”
I sensed his irritation at my questions, but it wasn’t enough to make me back down.
“Yes, but we tend to sleep during the day. Now, the chance of discovery is much higher. Promise me you won’t venture out.”
“I promise,” Jonah and I replied in unison.
With one more look at us, Steward left.
6
Philippa
I was stunned. Yeah, that described me pretty well. Stunned. Speechless. Jonah had bolted. Just flat-out left our clan, left the league meeting, gave up. All for that half-breed, half-fae, half-vampire, white-haired girl. And now, I was going to be announced. I braced for the proclamation.
Lucian rose and took a few steps forward. “In light of these developments,” he said in a booming voice, “it’s clear Philippa Bourke is now acting head of the Bourke clan.”