Pain and memory were close companions in Johnathan’s life. Now, as pain ate at him, the two bled into one another, mirages wavering around him, until he couldn’t tell past from present.
Johnathan didn’t want to go home. Sir Harry’s temper was high last night. His touch rough, the press of his teeth edged in pain. He took too much. Left Johnathan lightheaded and weak. There was a flicker of regret in the older man’s eyes.
“I’m sorry, Johnny sweet. I’m not myself tonight.” He’d held Johnathan to his chest long after, whispered apologies long after the sun rose, but the damage was done.
Johnathan crouched on the broken brick wall, long legs dangling past the cuff of his pants. Growing sure as weeds, Sir Harry would say. His neck ached, the bite still raw. How could he? He promised he would never bite Johnathan in anger. Promised he’d never take too much. Except it was harder and harder for Johnathan to lure the pretty maids and concerned matrons, his frame too long and lean to pass for an unfortunate youth. How long before he was no longer useful to Sir Harry? What would he do then? How long until Sir Harry took and took, until he took it all?
He hugged his knees tight. He didn’t want to go home. In the shadows of the building, a man watched him, a faint glint shone off the spectacles on his face. “Hello, boy. What happened to your neck?”
The brick beside him crumbled to dust. Long fingers painted in soot curled over the top of the wall. Johnathan didn’t remember this part.
“Don’t look.” Mary Elizabeth grasped his chin and turned his face to her. Lovely dead girl, what was she doing here? She looked so sad. “Are you strong enough, sweet Johnny?”
The scene crackled at the edges. He could smell burning. “What’s happening?” he whispered.
“You’re dying,” said Mary Elizabeth.
The world wobbled at the edges.
“Don’t you dare die on me, John!”
“God, Vic, he’s burning up.”
“Vic?” Johnathan looked up, seeking the vampire’s face, but the sky was full of fire. The flames licked and dripped from the belly of the horizon, a silent storm of flame that roiled above him, eclipsing his vision. He shivered. Why was he so cold?
A shadow fell over him, blocking the flames. “Tell me, boy, what would you do to be free of this fiend?” Johnathan’s attention snapped to the figure before him, not the sweet dead girl but another, a shadow of memory. Dr. Evans stood before him, a sentinel in tweed and leather, his head wreathed in cigarette smoke so that only his glasses could be seen, round orbs glinting from the fire above. The wooden cross swung at Dr. Evans’ waist, even though he stood still. That flaming glass gaze pierced Johnathan through to the scared little boy who cowered day in and day out in a monster’s lair.
No, he loved Sir Harry. The man was his father, his brother, his friend. How long until Sir Harry drank him down?
He wouldn’t!
The bitter memory of the bite ate away his resistance. He just wanted to be safe. He wanted to live.
“You were only a boy,” said Mary Elizabeth at his side. Her words echoed as she slipped her hand into his, her fingers icy. Because she was dead. A ghost companion through the dark pantomime of his memories and an anchor to the present. “A scared little boy and a monster who took advantage of your fear.”
“He’s not a monster,” said Johnathan.
But the words felt confused. He wasn’t sure who he defended.
Dr. Evans kept a hand on the back of his neck during that long walk. Johnathan once thought it comfort. Iron fingers circled his throat, a living collar to contain a street dog or a human scrap. It was a lead, to control. Dr. Evans’ steps never faltered. He knew where Sir Harry slept. He must have watched Johnathan for days before he approached, waited for a boy’s moment of weakness.
“He’s a predator,” said Mary Elizabeth.
“He’s my mentor,” said Johnathan, again caught by the sense that he didn’t know who he defended or to which side he belonged.
They were in the moment, the worst moment of Johnathan’s life. Evans pressed the knife into his hand. “First lesson, you must aim for the heart. You can’t jab straight on; you’ll just scrape bone and get your throat torn out. Best to stab up through the stomach, twist the blade to inflict as much damage as possible.”
“I—I couldn’t possibly—”
“Don’t lose your nerve now boy. Do you want to die?”
“He’s my family,” whispered Johnathan.
Dr. Evans shoved him forward by the scruff of his neck, so hard his teeth chattered in his skull. Sir Harry lay before him. It didn’t occur to him then how unnaturally still Sir Harry was. Vampires were not dead to the world when they slept. To catch them unaware required stealth and care, yet Sir Harry did not wake while Dr. Evans bellowed and berated Johnathan. He didn’t move when Johnathan pressed the blade to the soft, vulnerable flesh beneath his ribs. The blade began to slide into his flesh, chill blood oozing down the length of metal, coating Johnathan’s fingers.
Why didn’t he move?
“Do it, boy!”
Johnathan froze. His body shivered with sobs, but he couldn’t, wouldn’t, shove the blade further. Sir Harry didn’t so much as flinch in his sleep.
“I can’t. I can’t do this,” he sobbed.
Blackened fingers curled around his. The memory fractured, wavered. He could hear the crackle of fire in Dr. Evans’ voice. “Do it now!”
“It wasn’t your fault,” said Mary Elizabeth. She stood on the other side of Sir Harry’s coffin; a twin spill of tears painted her mournful face. But her ghost couldn’t erase what happened next, or excuse it.
Johnathan looked up into Dr. Evans’ face, pleaded for him to stop. His vision flickered. Dr. Evans morphed into the skull-masked creature of the wood, though the cold black eyes remained the same, glowering down at him, full of hunger.
“You will do this.” Evans’ voice echoed with shadows. He bore down, his breath tinged with sulfur. The vision snapped back as Dr. Evans wrapped his hands around Johnathan’s and shoved the blade up through Sir Harry’s rib cage.
Johnathan cried out at the gush of fluid, shocked by the sensation of the blade piercing through tissue and muscle. Sir Harry never opened his eyes. Johnathan never saw that last look of betrayal, though he imagined it a thousand times.
“He was already dead, sweet Johnny,” said Mary Elizabeth.
The truth of her words rang through him, far too late for the guilt and shame he’d carried deep in his heart for so many years.
“That will do, boy,” said Dr. Evans.
The blade slid from his blood-coated fingers. Johnathan stared as his hands, unable to take a breath. Dr. Evans’ hand collared the nape of his neck once again. “Welcome to the Society, Prospective Newman.”
The man’s fingers were sharp, like teeth as they dug into Johnathan’s bruised neck.
The fire crackled overhead, a lick of heat, the breath of an expectant, waiting beast. It spilled down onto him, wrapped him in a blanket of blazing agony. It singed his veins. There was a furnace in his chest, his breath a bellows that fanned the intensity with each drag of his lungs, hot coals stuffed inside his skin. He looked down, watched the flesh of his chest blister and crack. The glow of fire blazed through the seams.
“I’m dying,” he said.
“Don’t.” Mary Elizabeth grasped his hands. “Don’t give in.”
Her cold hands were a relief against his fevered flesh, a balm to the raging heat. Her smile so sad until she crumbled to ash at his feet, but the cold pressure of her grip remained.
“I don’t know if you can hear me.” Vic’s voice.
Johnathan wanted to turn to it, longed to clasp the man to him and follow through on all the little gestures that had budded between them.
The flames roared all around him, but he clung to Vic’s voice, their bond an intangible line as the fire consumed him.
“You owe me nothing, John, but please, please live. This isn’t fair.” Vic’s voice broke. “We aren’t finished, you and I.”
Johnathan’s blood boiled and steamed into a crimson haze. His nerves crisped and dissolved, nothing more than black soot.
“This is my fault. I didn’t see—I didn’t realize until it was too late. They warned me, and I couldn’t piece it together in time.” Vic’s words tethered Johnathan, but the fire continued to eat him alive.
His flesh peeled away from bone, charred flakes swept up in the rush of the inferno.
“Come on, come on. Don’t succumb, John. Come on!” That beautiful voice was so insistent.
The flames coalesced, funneled into a torrent that poured into his chest, soaked into the struggling muscle of his heart. His pulse fluttered, battered by the heat. It sputtered and skipped, the fire wrapping around his bones, melting the marrow. Heat seeped into every pore. His heart stopped.
The pressure shifted, blanketed him, a cool darkness, but it did little to smother the fire.
“LIVE, DAMN YOU!”
Vic’s shout pierced him, drove through the burnt remains of his being until they chained him to the physical plane. Each syllable rippled through him, an anchor he clutched in desperation, a scared boy who only wanted to survive.
His heart shuddered. The fire bloomed up from his bones, through the sizzling construction of muscles and tendons. New nerves and blood vessels crackled and snapped into place, bled up through his skin, baked from within. Johnathan exhaled a breath full of sparks and steam.
The flames receded at last, drawn back to the furnace inside his chest. The fire was still there but contained. His vision swam.
Vic’s face appeared in sharp relief above him. His hands still gripped Johnathan’s shoulders. He drew in a breath of surprise. “John?”
A haze of smoke wreathed the lens of his gaze. Through it he saw Mary Elizabeth, a hovering specter on the other side of a room, both familiar and strange in the diminishing grip of flame. “You survived,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry.” She shimmered and vanished, where she had never been.
Johnathan bolted upright, his body curiously light. Without a second thought, he pulled the vampire into his lap.