Cheating Death (Wraith's Rebellion Book 2) Read online

  The new split figure was one that I didn’t understand, not until years later.

  What Lu did to me as I grew was to break me in two. On the one hand, I was his victim. I was Quintillus. A boy who had been kidnapped yet saved by him, educated and finally turned. Then there was Wraith, a monster in his eyes, a weapon created to do his deeds and be his subservient companion.

  Quintillus, he thinks, is the one who questioned him. Quintillus is the problem. Which was why he sought to destroy everything I was, over and over again.

  His little figure was more correct than he could know, however.

  Unlike Death and Lu, I do not consider my two halves as separate, they are wound together through so much. There are instances when I am only one or the other, but for much of my life, I was both.

  These past three hundred years might be described as Wraith having been asleep. I didn’t have to lie to the Council when I said that he was in hiding, he was. Nor did I have to stretch the truth very far when I said that I didn’t know where Wraith was.

  I’ve tried to wake the slumbering beast, and he has continued to slumber.

  Kind of lumped that all in.

  Hold on, shoot, sorry, dropped the damned thing. There. Okay. I’ve got the wireless piece in my ear. You’d like that, probably makes me look like a douche.

  Oh, wear the fedora too!

  … I am. Need to cover my face just a little and it was the only hat I had in the car. This person has never met me, only knows the reputation. Once I’m in the door, I’ll introduce myself properly.

  With a knife to the face?

  No, you start with the meaty area. Hit them in the face and you risk killing them or doing damage that prevents them from answering. You’ll learn though.

  Anyhow.

  Wraith is a weapon for Death, or was. He was given the hound mask because he was the attack dog.

  He had made his first kill before the Council knew he existed. I don’t know the vampire. I just know that he attacked Lu’s home one night. He stayed dead when I killed him, so I buried him out in the country. Lu never knew, but I recognized him just as he recognized me. We were two of the same race.

  Of course, I didn’t know the significance of what I did until centuries later.

  But if you knew you could wield the tool, why do everything else? Why listen to Lu at all?

  I didn’t wield the tool. I told you, I can kill people with my mind.

  Did you think I was being sarcastic about that?

  People and vampires are not the same. People is everyone. Vampire is a whole bucket of worms that sends Lucrecia to the bathroom.

  I can also do it to mortals. It’s how I do my work for the Council so effortlessly. Among vampires it’s not polite to ask about powers, it’s like politics and religion.

  … uh, so, the bodies Wraith left behind? Did you kill them before or after doing that?

  Those ones were mortal, Wraith isn’t recorded as killing a vampire. I may have been young, but by the time I knew what I was doing, I knew I had to keep it a secret.

  So, after, or technically during the events, I did the killing. I had a lot of rage when I was younger. By giving me those victims, Lu was redirecting my hatred from him, onto an innocent body. I took my time with them, revelling in their pain and how I was finally in control.

  My power doesn’t work on the one person I wanted to use it on. Those myths about not being able to kill one’s Maker, I believe stem from the fact that vampires with powers cannot use that power on their Makers.

  If they could, for example, Lucrecia would have been free a great deal sooner. She would have known what her Maker had planned for her.

  In another example, Margaret cannot do her mimicry on Sasha. She can only use it around Sasha with her Maker’s permission.

  Whatever power you have, you cannot use on me without my express permission. And the only permission I grant you is the ability to transfer my base power to yourself. Which is the same permission most Makers grant their Progeny.

  What about to save your immortal life?

  If it doesn’t end your life, I don’t see why that would be a problem.

  Anyhow, Lu experimented and had me kill a mortal because several servants died the first week or so that I was turned. They died without a mark on them, and a few did so after he hurt me. He saw that connection. It’s one few make about power.

  Killing mortals with your mind isn’t overly fancy. It may be that he knew I would learn to do the same to vampires, but I’ve never shown that around him because I feared he would use that against me. Instead of just being a hound, I’d be forced to kill all those he wanted dead.

  Because I probably don’t need to be in the same room as a vampire, so long as I can see the room, or see them. Or know what they look like.

  Apparently, in life, I had so much wanted him dead, that I had somehow carried that forward into my immortal life. It’s been proven several times that an intense desire among those who are turned can result in a specialized power.

  He thought that, as far as vampires went, my powers only extended to ripping into them. The movement of objects. I maintained that ruse for the safety of all involved.

  Mortals are such delicate creatures, however. I killed fourteen children over the course of a year. Some he had purchased, a few he had me kidnap. But I killed them to keep them from ending up under him.

  It turns out, that’s why he cast me out before I was weaned. It is a fact that he never told me, possibly because he didn’t want to seem like he wanted or needed me back. I had to go crawling to him and not the other way around.

  After casting me out, he called maybe a year later. The Council had contacted him about that point.

  I don’t want to talk about that visit.

  My next call was three years after that. We went out to the Council.

  It’s always been my understanding that the smell of my mask was added to keep those who could sniff out others like a bloodhound from discovering who I actually was. Now I wonder if it was about punishment instead.

  As I told you, you really must go out of your way to spoil Maker’s Blood.

  The scent to other vampires is disturbing. They can’t put their finger on the why or how, but some of the older ones recognize it. If Lucrecia is back in the room, you may have noticed a change in her expression.

  I believe she knows the smell of rancid Maker’s Blood, but like much of her life before she served on the Council, she doesn’t share. As it’s not uncommon to pull a name no one recognizes, no one has pressed her for answers. Within the family, we respect the history of others.

  She’s still puking in the bathroom.

  Oh, okay. Let me know when she gets back. Anyhow, you will instinctively react to spoiled blood. Your reaction to my blood being spoiled will be worse than your reaction to another vampire’s spoiled blood.

  The reason older vampires recognize it is because it was once a form of discipline. Forcing the Progeny to drink the bad blood. You survive, but you wish you could die. Even once you heal, for years afterwards, you just wish you could die already.

  Please don’t do that to me.

  I have no intention, not even if you ask me for it, for the sake of experience.

  The smell in the mask was both punishment and reminder. If I caused problems again, I would be subjected to that.

  Again.

  Yes. Suffice to say, that the threat alone was enough to make me come when called.

  The Council created a writ. I belong to him, but you know what? Lots of dogs bite their owners.

  Technically by that writ, if I succeed tonight my life is forfeit.

  You can kill vampires with your brain!

  So? Oh, no, I get what you mean. The problem is if I fail. I’ve been working up to this point for centuries. Talking to mortals who have left bad people, I recognized that it was something I had to do. It’s never as easy for us to move on or to let go of something.

  Perhaps that’s how we e
nded up in this situation in the first place.

  One second.

  Lookin’ for Morris, tell him it’s an old friend.

  Where are you right now?

  If I told you that, it’d be caught by the phone and the tablet. As I just said, technically what I’m about to do is illegal. Don’t worry. He always makes me wait once I get in the door.

  I thought you said you didn’t know him.

  Where was I? Right, the writ.

  I’d just like it on record, you clearly stated that you didn’t know him.

  I’m telling a story, Helen.

  Liar, liar, pants on fire!

  Are you done?

  Maybe, for the moment. I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me.

  Baby vampire hormones, let’s say. Now, about that writ from the Council.

  Hearing the writ, my heart sunk so fast. Until that moment, I had been gearing up, talking myself into telling them what he was, and what he had done to me. I wanted them to know. I thought they would protect me.

  The first lesson any vampire must learn is that no one in this world will look after you, if not for your Maker. He set the whole tone for my life, and he was damned smug about them signing me over to him.

  He even called me.

  That was about the time that Lucrecia believes I first visited him. I returned several years later, a husk of who I had been. He used me at his pleasure so, of course, I couldn't resist what he gleefully called willful participation.

  Lucrecia and Sasha call my returns crying over daddy, but neither of them tried to stop me from going. Neither ever asked what was done, perhaps they assumed he gave me the attention that I needed, and for some small time, I felt like that as well.

  The training of Wraith didn't begin until I was fully weaned. Which only really means that I no longer needed the Maker's Blood to fix my stomach problems. I went ten years without before he called me on as Wraith.

  He took me out into the woods with the tool. There he dabbled, using animals as his play things. I’ve seen some of the diseases in his library, none of them is pretty.

  That’s what he called it, a library. Like he could just check out certain viruses and check them back in. The bubonic plague was not the only creature in that library of his. It was not the only one he used on me. Both while mortal and a vampire.

  We are susceptible to very specific viruses. He owns them all. I don’t know where he got it from or how he did it. I do know that I heard him muttering about Pestilence one morning when he thought me sleeping like the dead. He spoke to himself of others, arguing back and forth.

  I had known about the split before, but I don’t think I quite realized how bad it was until that moment. He argued with himself in two different voices. The one was his, gravelly and quiet, he pleaded with the other at times, as if that’d make it all better.

  “Don’t hurt the boy anymore. We like the boy. We want the boy to come back.”

  He meant me, of course.

  “Take that big rope, string him up by his neck and see how smug he is with his feet dancing in the air.”

  Death always thought I was smug. It didn't matter what I did. That other personality of Lu’s was determined to find fault in everything I did. Sometimes that fault was just in the fact that one day I would be distracted by a siren and forget my duty and who had made me, what I was made for.

  A siren because you aren’t gay?

  Correct. Oh, hello, took you long enough. Where’s Morris? This? No, it’s a hands-free headset. I have an interviewer on the other line and need to get this book done.

  … and say what? That Morris has the best drugs this side of the border? Come on, you know that’s not going in no book. Just hook me up.

  I’m sorry, are you hunting your dealer?

  Of course, I’ll wait here. You just get me something.

  First you don’t know him, now he’s your dealer.

  He doesn’t hook me up with drugs, calm down. I can’t get high unless I feed off a human who is high. Don’t even know why, other vampires don’t have that problem. Just, Sasha doesn’t approve and somehow that ruined it for me.

  Fine, I’ll ask Sasha.

  You do that. Can I get back to my story now?

  Yes, the siren?

  Death was certain that once I was stolen away by the call of a siren, it would be the downfall of everything they had worked towards. I have no idea what he meant, but Lu’s just insane. He really is that old man standing on the lawn, shouting at others.

  As Wraith, I was broken in, is what Death called it. What that meant was that he attempted to desensitize me to the pain that the tool caused.

  The tool isn’t just used to kill. It can be used to cut as well. The scars take almost a decade to fade, and the pain is like feeling pain for the first time. It cuts right to the nerve and burns you to the very core as if it is trying to drag your soul away.

  I suppose, in a way, it is.

  I was repeatedly told that my power was only telekinesis. He tried to break me of my ability to kill mortals, or to keep me from expanding that power into killing vampires. I don’t know why he’d do such a thing, considering the use as a weapon in that case. However, I was more than happy to let him believe that he had broken me of that power altogether.

  There is one upside of that. Wraith is still able to use that telekinetic power. He held onto it and kept it strong. If I can feel even a smidgen of him, I can use it. If he’s not about, or I want to avoid murdering someone, my power presents as telekinesis.

  Sorry, what’s that?

  I can move stuff with my mind. Not as impressive as killing people, sure, but adapting my original power allowed me to hide in plain sight. The Council knows I can move things with my mind and given the lack of witnesses for most of what I do…

  They made an assumption.

  Yes. I allowed them to keep that assumption to protect myself. Living separate lives as Quin and Wraith allowed me some freedom. The painful thing wasn’t growing up in the cage. The painful thing was tasting freedom and having it ripped away from me time and again. It was knowing the gentle touch of a partner and then having to submit to him.

  Even though I knew I still had to go back to him, I did everything I could to avoid going back permanently. That meant hiding both of our identities. It meant keeping secrets and listening to the family talk down at me for constantly returning to daddy when they had so proudly left their abusers and joined Lucrecia.

  You must understand, in the early centuries of my life, Death served a very important role. Both for the Council and in maintaining humanity. Once we realized just how out of control things were getting, that’s when things changed.

  His methods were violent and destructive, yes. But they got the job done and kept it from having to be done again.

  Culling the human race was simply viewed as one might prune back a bush. Except with the stall on new vampires, we strove to up the numbers of the race to allow us to spread.

  Only Death was to control the library, at the end of it all. He was the start and finish of the entire thing. Him and that damned tool.

  Because of myth, I thought it impossible. Then he attacked the Council and tried to kill Sasha. I couldn’t let it stand, and I went to deliver a warning. I meant only to take the tool, but her words to me in the chamber, before I woke back in the box and was subsequently freed, rang through my mind.

  “Make him pay for what he’s done. Kill him if you can.”

  For my sister, for the one person who has ever shown me mercy? True mercy, not traded or bought with my body? Of course, I tried.

  I visited under the guise of prostrating myself before him, giving in to serve to keep Sasha alive.

  Upon arrival, his stock—your ancestors—stripped me down and washed me. They presented me in nothing more than a dog’s collar, which I suppose was symbolic of my worth to him. He saw me as nothing more than a hound, or a guard dog.

  Dogs have more loyalty.

&nbs
p; I didn’t have a plan. What I knew was that I’d need the tool, not my power. Unfortunately, I had no idea where the tool was upon going in.

  So, I did play along, even put my newly learned acting skills to work.

  Acting will get you a long way in the immortal life.

  Anyhow, having located the tool, I didn’t have to plot my escape. It was a simple solution once I had the plan to get my hands on the tool because Lu thought I was completely subservient.

  Lu called it the breaking. The point where the Maker finally makes their Progeny into the being they want. He even seemed kind.

  Said the same thing happened to him. Though somehow I doubt it took as long. Then again, he didn’t have a way to escape and re-center.

  Don’t you dare make him out to be a victim in this.

  Sorry, I suppose like pities like at some point.

  He didn’t bind me or anything of that sort. One day, he offered me his neck. Lu heals at an extraordinary rate. That may have been his original power, so to speak. He may not have been affected by a wound for more than a few moments. That power was twisted as he attempted to twist mine.

  Except his Maker was successful in the remaking.

  I bit him, and I didn’t let go. He fought me, but he had only fed off his stock. His last visit to his Maker must have been centuries away. Perhaps he was cut off, and that’s why he declined in ability.

  I drained him, leaving his struggling body in a pool of his own blood.

  At a certain point, the blood loss keeps you from healing. There is some magic in vampire blood, I’m told. The less we have inside of us, the weaker we are, the slower the healing process is. Lu couldn’t quite die, but he couldn’t get back up either.

  I retrieved the tool from its place in his library, and I took it back. What brought my hesitation was centuries of history. Try killing your father sometime. Even if you think he deserves it, you cannot.

  Because despite all else, he had raised me to be a good man.

  Fuck.

  So, I hesitated. I hesitated, and then I heard something behind me.