At Death's Door (Wraith's Rebellion Book 1) Read online

  Just like that, millions of people began dying. It raged out of Death’s control.

  See, odd as it may be, Death controlled the plague even after it was unleashed. Wraith didn’t know how to do that. He had never been taught, because who would have thought he could do that?

  Transference is what it’s called, the learning of another vampire’s power. One needs the power to start with, then centuries with another body. Even then, not all powers can be learned across the line.

  There are some powers which should not be learned by others. Anything to do with Death is one of them.

  If I discovered that someone had learned my power, I too would hunt them to the ends of the earth and kill them.

  You have power?

  Yes, I don’t want to talk about it.

  Running theme of this evening.

  Smart asses get eaten. Where was I?

  Death and Lu feared what would happen if one of us, my brother, sister, and I, were to get our hands on the tool.

  I knew what might happen, but was considered still under heel. Protected by Lucrecia and the Council even.

  That didn’t mean that Death couldn’t kill me, just that I had to fall out of favour enough that they didn’t accuse Lu of killing his own children. He didn’t want to be under house arrest. It’s a lot harder to sneak out when one is under house arrest.

  To keep me from telling the others, Death went after them first. Silly thing, as I didn’t know where any of them were, or even that they existed until they started dying.

  I was the only one besides Wraith who had to die. The other dragged me from Lu’s arms after drugging him. I bled him almost dry, that was a wondrous blood haze.

  When I came to, I was on a boat for South America with Sasha. Apparently, I showed up and demanded we take vacation together. For the next two hundred and fifty years, we lived on the run. The only one who knew where we were was Lucrecia.

  Then Sasha’s name was pulled for service to the Council.

  We had to return.

  Lu made it his mission to tarnish my name. Going so far as hiring mortals to follow me around, and not just mortals, but humans. They witnessed my feeding on a baby.

  When one believes eternity is about to end, they act differently.

  I’ve seen a vampire be killed.

  They do not go easily.

  I was not ready to die, so I did something stupid. I did something stupid and ended up in a box for my trouble, put there by this one’s deciding vote.

  I love you. I wanted what was best for you.

  I was in a box for about six months before I was let out because he attacked the Council, trying to get the location of my box out of them.

  Only one of them knew.

  Hehehe.

  You laugh, but what if he had killed you instead of the others? I’d still be in the box.

  When Death attacked the Council, it was too much. Wraith came out of hiding, baiting Death into a trap that ended with Death going into hiding for good, still alive, and Wraith with the tool.

  Just as I believe Wraith could not create another disease, I believe he carried one into Council Chambers. I think that it wasn’t ripping the tool apart that did it, so much as his attack on his Maker.

  Death can make us ill. Perhaps may even be capable of unleashing something like the bubonic plague on us and dwindling our numbers to nothing at all.

  He hasn’t been seen until tonight when Gerald swore he saw Death wearing the cliché vampire tux costume with a cape. The mask was done up like Dracula. Fang, black hair slicked back and all. Like a—what was it?—1960’s horror movie. Even had the red ribbon thing with the medal.

  Death went to a costume shop.

  I’d call around, but they’re all closed until morning.

  Gerald was executed by Death. He is not coming back. The time it takes to kill one of us like that is more than what it took me to get there. Meaning Gerald was dead before his last call.

  Death must have made him record the message, then killed him.

  Can you relate any of your visit with Death?

  His voice was muffled by the mask. I did hear a bit about Wraith. He and Lu talked most of the first night.

  It seems Wraith was also found in a field, though in the testing field. He wasn’t quite full grown by that point. Death kept him around for some time, trying various diseases and dropping Wraith into the middle of it all.

  Wraith is, or at least was, immune to Death’s powers. It is an immunity that kept his family from dying right away. One of his other relatives suffered but came out alive from a disease that was to wipe out everyone. The other was killed, Wraith was kept because he wasn’t ill in the least.

  When Death was unable to make Wraith sick, he was going to kill the young man. But after visiting a place and unleashing his power, Death returned home much weakened. The first member of his household that he found was Wraith.

  Wraith was only turned by accident. I’ve never understood why Death didn’t kill the new vampire. Even if he did it before the change took full hold, it would have been as simple as separating head from body and removing the heart.

  So, killing a new vampire is possible.

  Yes, if a new vampire is made, even by accident, it would be killed. We are very careful, but I’ve heard stories. If you turn someone accidentally, then take their lives, the Council sees it as not turning a person at all.

  It seems the two share similar tastes in bedfellow, though Death prefers them older and a little weepy. Lu suggested I could be offered up.

  Of course, at the time I didn’t know he was a vampire. I knew he was like my lord, that I was like my lord.

  Wraith sat in the corner bound the entire time, so he was of no help to me. He wore a flat eye mask and a gag. He wasn’t even allowed to make sounds. Lu tried to trick him into it, to see him beaten.

  Death said that Wraith’s squeals of pain made the trouble of raising a fledgling worth it.

  Because Lu commanded it, I had to pay favour to Death. His tastes are much more malicious than Lu’s are. He stabbed me several times, thrusting his fingers into the wound as it healed.

  When I didn’t make the sounds that he wanted to hear, he began ripping bits off me. Tearing holes into my abdominal cavity and placing items inside. He’d then manipulate the objects from the outside, once my flesh healed again. Only to tear into my flesh to pull them out again.

  I suppose you could say that he was very curious about the human body.

  He did eventually draw my screams. Red hot pokers are not pleasant, no matter where they are placed.

  I believe my determined resistance entertained him. When faced with pain, many would scream or beg for mercy. I didn’t want to give him the pleasure.

  After the pain, he spoke gently to me, as if he had hurt me to help me. Like a doctor lancing a boil. Murmured words and gentle touches. When his intent grew clear, I resisted once more.

  You are not a small man, not by far.

  And yet I was easily overpowered by the slighter body. We can build and lose muscle. Even grow fat if we consume too much blood. It is an oddity I will never understand, I think.

  At that time, I was slighter than I am now, yet he was still smaller than I. Shorter too, his lean muscle seemed made of stone.

  I’ve never understood how mortals can talk about these things being done to them. It took centuries before I was even comfortable enough to say it out loud. A millennium before I shared with another person.

  I carried that darkness in my heart, thinking the scar on my soul was mine and mine alone to bear. For how fragile we believe mortals to be, there is no denying the strength of emotion that you have. What I could barely handle, I watched mortals outgrow and move on from. Both into bitterness and happiness. I realized that I had to make that choice before it was made for me and I ended up like the old man.

  Housebound. With no friends or family. Even his food is aged before being brought to him because they don’t trust him t
o select his food. They’re too afraid he might try to breed stock again.

  Of course, he always strove for the lighter hair colour, the blue and green eyes, with no care as to how he achieved the end results.

  Death, on the other hand, bred for a taste in the blood. Everyone had to donate to him before they were permitted to breed, or given permission to marry. He believed that a mortal was like a fine wine, and got better with age. He’d keep one or two a generation from breeding, aging them to elders before he supped their blood.

  There’s no denying that the older a mortal is, the deeper the flavour becomes. I do not believe you need to keep the mortal from bleeding to prevent them from losing some flavour.

  What must he have thought of women?

  Death’s stock was all men. Perhaps that is how your family came to be. The women must have gone somewhere, must have stuck close to their brothers and fathers and uncles. It was not such a place in history that one could simply walk away from the paternal lines which created them.

  His stock was known for the square jaw and wide shoulders. For the most part, however, their features were never homogeneous. He kept adding to his stock. You only need to reserve a woman or two, sending her to an area with a name and keep her there until she conceived the son you wanted. Then call her back.

  It’s a method many vampires have used to expand their stock. A man running off with his children was only allowable for a small portion of history. For the most part, it has always fallen on the mother to do the raising, even if the father has died.

  Death visited us for several days, spending much of that time with me. He enjoyed tormenting me. I’d pass out as the sun rose and wake at night to find something gone horribly wrong. I’d rather not discuss that further.

  It is my understanding that he fed on me each day while I was passed out. I was fed just before the sun rose again, but only enough to take the edge off my hunger.

  When he left, I was frightened and yet relieved at the same time. Though, it wouldn’t be until some time later that I would learn the significance of this visit.

  Lu told me at the time that Death was his brother, that their mother was named Bau and they loved her more than the sun or the earth. I think he meant it as an example to me, that I should love him like that.

  The possibility of loving him never crossed my mind.

  They love each other in their own, twisted ways.

  Would you shut up and let me tell the story my way?

  The next time I saw Death was in Council Chambers. He stepped in alone. I had been told his name and Wraith’s name but had never linked the two.

  That the man who visited me might be the hound of the Council was simply beyond my comprehension.

  Seeing that, however, was too much for me to handle. This was, of course, before I came to terms with what was done to me. The events were still fresh in my mind, though they must have been seventy years earlier.

  By then Death was in his new mask. He came alone that time, with a message in his hand. The message was rumpled. He threw it at the feet of the Council.

  They had wanted him to execute Lu. It would be the only time they asked. His response was simply to throw the message back at them and walk away.

  The next time the Council called, he did not come. They knew what it was about, however. Their next message was an apology for asking him to do such a thing.

  I suppose at that point they began to suspect who Lu and Death were to one another. That was likely when the rumours began to swirl. Possibly even when Androgen started researching Death. Having the link to Lu would have helped.

  Or at least, you’d think it would help.

  Finding information on Lu before he was called to serve on the Council is impossible. Before that, all the archives appear to be simply missing. Completely gone. Some of them were transcribed after Lu sat the Council, suggesting that he had snuck in and altered the archives.

  He had been under arrest at the time, limited to a hundred-mile radius around his city.

  And because I had no idea where my village once lay, they could only assume that he had been within the appropriate area. I know he broke the command afterward and on multiple occasions. Lu only pays lip service to the Council.

  The fact that he cannot die, and that Death seems determined not to do the deed hasn’t helped matters.

  But you said—

  I told Margaret I needed to find Lu to protect the old man. That is true, but it’s not Death I need to protect him from, it’s Wraith.

  If Death is coming back, Wraith will soon follow. Wraith has sworn to kill them both. He thinks he knows how.

  Between when Death’s tool was taken from him, and the present day, no one has seen him. There hasn’t even been a rumour of him. Shortly after the tool was ripped apart, the Council made plans to move. When they arrived at the new location, they found Death’s mask and robe. The items were just laying there on the new floor like Death had set them down for a moment then forgotten about them.

  Even Wraith disappeared. Once Death was gone there was no reason for him to stay in hiding aside from Death threatening his life. In which case, Wraith has not come forward. He hasn’t placed a claim on the reward the Council offered him for the tool.

  In his defense, that was clearly a trap on the part of the Council.

  There is nothing a vampire has done to draw the ire of Death, no need for Death to come forward.

  Even in the case of the interviews, everyone was given plenty of warning. We’ve been planning this for years and telling everyone else. All the vampires knew what was going to happen and why. Not some, not most, all.

  During that period, we even discovered a few vampires in hiding whom we thought had asked Death for their end centuries ago. We found a vampire who had been created accidentally and had been living starving for nine hundred years because she thought she was alone in this world.

  But Death said not a word. No message or a peep until months after we come out.

  No, the bastard waited until the night before the Elder Council is to make the drawing to see who will replace him. We have other things on our minds, besides a relic of the world that died the day his tool was ripped apart.

  “That’s the last time I tell a story when you’re around,” Quin said as he spun the empty wine glass on the table.

  “You are way too casual,” I said. “You said before you started talking that Gerald is dead?”

  “I did, and he is.”

  Quin appeared calm as could be. Besides the wine glass turning, nothing about him had changed. Sasha was playing a game on her phone. I could hear the bright, happy little sounds as she collected points. She almost seemed bored.

  “One of you is dead, why aren’t you freaking out?” I asked. “It’s been four hundred years since the last recorded vampire death, hasn’t it?”

  “It has,” Sasha said, her focus still on the phone. “But it’s just Wraith hunting down Lu. No one is going to miss him except Quin. And Gerald? Well, Gerald was always Gerald. He wasn’t a bad person, but he won’t be missed. He’s wanted this for centuries.”

  Was that why the glass kept spinning?

  We all have little tics that give away what we are thinking. As Sasha spoke, the glass paused in its turning. Quin was focused on the glass but seemed a million miles away. He reached and turned that gaudy gold ring on his finger in a habitual way. Like the anxious twisting of a long-instilled habit.

  I suspect a hundred years away would have been a better expression.

  “Wraith killed Gerald unprovoked,” I said.

  “Which is unlike him, I know.”

  Things weren’t adding up. My fingers flew across the tablet screen as I tried to get down as much as I could in writing.

  Review previous files. Are there plot holes, or am I just taking in too much information?

  I was having difficulty what had been said earlier. I had too much information being fed to me and not enough time to think clearly. I wante
d to go back and check, but I couldn’t.

  All I could do was accept what I was told and then continue, hoping that it became clearer.

  Besides the consumption of blood right in front of me, none of them had done anything that was uniquely vampire. No powers, just a good story. If there were holes in the plot, that could be explained by making it up as we spoke.

  If they were truly vampires, the stories told would be more coherent, make more sense. The ones I had read from others made a great deal more sense. Years had been given, centuries included. Some had even given the names of the local lords and the cities they had inhabited.

  With Quin, all I was getting was vague tales.

  If I didn’t know better, I’d think he was lying to the other vampires.

  “So, a couple of hours?” Sasha asked.

  Quin stood, making a sound at the back of his throat as he walked away from the table. Sasha sighed as she watched him go.

  “Is his phone on a unique frequency, or is he pretending to take calls?” I asked.

  “Its pitch is just outside the hearing of many. Some mortals can hear it. Quin can hear it, but I can’t. So, annoying, but it’s a low-frequency hum instead of high.”

  Quin answered the phone and walked out of sight. I sighed and pulled out my phone, checking my messages.

  “Rough translation, a dialect I haven’t encountered,” Jerry had texted. “Women with beauty such as yours make me tremble. Could also be ‘eat’ tell him to enunciate next time!”

  Jerry was the linguist I had sent the clip to, from what was that? Was that before the archives or after?

  I couldn’t recall any longer. That was, of course, why we had both the voice recording software and the ability to type things in. We could catch a lot of detail between the two of them. I was already losing details that Quin had told me.

  Which was why I hadn’t voiced my concern earlier.

  Because I swore Quin had said that Lu was the only man he had ever been with, that his Maker hadn’t ever loaned him to anyone else.

  I must have been mistaken, though.

  “Did you get enough to eat?” Sasha asked.

  I pulled out of my thought with a start.