day on earth in Cassidy’s empty bed. The hunters wouldn’t come for him during the day. Or if they did, they wouldn’t destroy him. It was Kambyses they would want, and Kambyses they wouldn’t find. For that, they would need him. To make sure this was clear, he penned a note to that effect and taped it to the bedroom door.
Dying while oblivious had once been his wish, but no more. He wanted to know the exquisite delight of being fully alive when death found him. He wanted to welcome it with arms thrown wide. Above all, he wanted to feel the beast’s panic and laugh in its face.
All of this would be his. Tonight.
Tonight, five-thousand years of terror would end.
With only the shades drawn, the upstairs room was far from light-tight, but even this he was willing to risk. Wrapped in blankets saturated in his love’s fragrance and zipped head-to-foot into an old sleeping bag that still carried a touch of his father’s earthy aroma, he was content as he slipped into unconsciousness.
The feeling still suffused him when he woke and listened, as he always did, for her heartbeat. Silence. Jackson had kept his promise. She wasn’t here. Dominique would never see her again.
He stayed where he was, lying still, letting his mind wander over his life. Memories of sunshine and laughter were countless, but others of darkness and horror soon overwhelmed them, weighed them down, obliterated them.
Know me.
No one would. Not ever again. And that was all right. That was as it should be. What he had told Cassidy was true. He was done fighting.
A footfall approached the cottage. He recognized the quick, staccato cadence of a not-so-stealthy blood-drinker. The source came inside, hesitated in the living room before it moved up the stairs, and paused again in front of the bedroom door. The accompanying heartbeat thumped in his sensitive ears. Then the knob turned.
With a sweep of his arms, Dominique ripped the layers of his cocoon open and sat up. Serge stood at the foot of the bed, wringing his hands, trembling. “It is happening, blood-child. Do you feel it?”
The solemn whisper slipped around Dominique like an icy draft from a crypt. Suppressing a shiver, he got up and pulled on his gym pants. “What happened?”
“The prophecy is upon us.”
“Not yet. He still lives.” He raised the shade on the window that overlooked the front porch roof. Kambyses’s limbs had met the day out there. The sun should have reduced the arms and legs to a shimmering ash residue on the brittle tar shingles. Instead, they lay withered and gray, but solid.
Kambyses was the oldest of their kind. How different did that make him? Dominique had left him buried in a shallow grave, safely out of the sun’s reach. Since his limbs would have burned in the sun today, had he died anyway? Since part of him burned in the sun today, had he died anyway? If so, how long before his death pulled the rest of them under?
He scrubbed his face with both hands and turned to Serge, whose mouth wavered somewhere between a bare-toothed grin and white-lipped apprehension. “Is this what you meant when you said I would not keep my promise to Jackson? Is Kambyses already dead?”
Serge shook his head. The sandy curls sticking out all around his head quivered. “You won’t deliver him. That is not your future.”
The ire he typically felt toward his contrary friend sputtered out before it fully flared to life. He refused to spend his last hour on Earth debating nonsense.
Serge dropped onto the side of the bed as though his knees caved in. He stared at Dominique, the light in his eyes more mad than ever. In an awed tone, he pronounced, “You are about to become the lock, blood-child. She will be your key.”
Leave it to the madman to make it impossible to have any sort of meaningful farewell. Nonsense to the very last of his existence. So be it. He reached out and squeezed Serge’s shoulder in mute appreciation of their too-brief time together.
Serge grabbed his hand with ferocious intensity. “You can do it, blood-child. With her.” His voice dropped further, beseeching. “You must.”
Dominique waited for the mad fire to ebb from Serge’s gaze before he pulled his hand free. “Of course,” he murmured. “Of course, I will.” Everything he did of late, he did for or with Cassidy. Delivering his sire to the executioner would be no exception.
On his way out, he pocketed the keys to the Striker van from the kitchen counter. That vehicle had proved invaluable in transporting both Kambyses and Dominique’s bike this morning. Now it waited in the driveway for the next and final leg of their journey.
A figure with bright, unbound hair swirling around her shoulders hurried up the driveway toward the cottage. Dominique suppressed the impulse to vanish before Samantha noticed him. It would be the last contact he would have with her. He owed her a farewell.
She didn’t spot him on the porch until she was halfway up the stairs and pulled up with a small gasp. “Dominique. Have you seen Serge?” When he didn’t respond right away, she continued. “He acted strange this morning—well, stranger than usual—and didn’t tell me much of what happened last night. I think he’s still having visions. Bad ones.”
She drew her fringed shawl tighter and hugged herself as though bracing for something unseen. An unexpected new sorrow pricked at Dominique. Samantha cared deeply for the old pirate and would grieve his death. Through Serge, she had touched eternity. Without him, she would never be the same—because of what Dominique was about to do.
Unwelcome doubt welled as he held her troubled gaze. How many humans would discover their blood-drinker friends and maybe even lovers mysteriously dead tonight? And how many would find themselves free of cruel blood-drinker masters? What was it he would deliver to the world of night? Overdue justice? Unspeakable anguish? He knew why he was breaking Cassidy’s heart—it was the only way to keep her safe—but what about all the others and the mortal lives they affected?
Samantha’s tentative touch on his forearm brought him back to the moment. “Dominique? Where is he? What’s going on?”
On impulse, he pulled her into his arms, this gentle, courageous woman, his erstwhile enemy’s sister. She went stick-stiff with surprise. “Merci,” he whispered. “Thank you.”
She relaxed a little. “For what?”
“For your faith in us. Serge and I don’t deserve it, but we are better for it.” He pressed a kiss to her forehead and released her.
“You don’t deserve to suffer,” she said, gathering her shawl around her, along with her rattled composure.
“Our suffering will end soon.”
“That sounds…not good.”
He dragged a small smile to his face. “Serge is inside.”
When she glanced at the door, Dominique silently vanished.
At the beach, a cold winter wind blasted from the northeast. Dry sand flew across the ground like swarming snakes, and the sea, blacker than night, boiled with silvered foam beneath a full moon. He didn’t have far to go. The gnarly old sea grape that marked the spot shivered in the wind as he dug into the soft soil underneath.
It wasn’t long before the rug lay exposed, quietly oozing a smoky scent. Dominique knelt over it, contemplating. All he had to do now was pick it up and carry it away, the same way he had carried it here this morning. Put it in the van, drive to the airport, hand it over. That was it. The end. He had seen the last of Kambyses and his world of horrors.
Also, the last of life.
And the last of hope.
His hands fisted on his thighs. Becoming a blood-drinker had not been his choice. Countless times since then, he tried to end his nightmarish existence, but the beast never allowed it. So, instead, he had dared to hope. Hope for some small measure of redemption, and of seeing the sun again.
This time, the choice was his. Nothing would stop him. This time, he would succeed. His life would end, and with it, all his hopes.
For so long, Dominique had been sure about this decision he no longer believed was his. Now that it was at hand, the finality of it reared up before him with staggering power. For himself, he thought he was still sure—maybe—but what of the others he was about to condemn? The untold thousands who would never know what happened and had no choice at all? Would he, in death, be the monster he fought so hard not to become?
A dizzying wave of fury blasted through him. Dominique’s entire body vibrated with a deep growl as he seized the edge of the roll and ripped it open, fully intending to do the same with the contents. A simple death at the hands of mortals was too good for this creature who had taken his body, gutted his soul, and made him his puppet.
Then the head appeared, and he stopped, uncertain again.
No black-eyed glare met him, nor cold indifference. The eyes were closed and sunken, and the face…the face was gaunt as an old corpse, the web of dark veins beneath the translucent skin denser than ever. Was this how ancients died slowly? Desiccate the way the arms and legs had desiccated in the sunlight?
Dominique tore more of the rug, revealing the chest. This, too, was thin, almost birdlike, with ribs and hide wrapped in a fine silk shirt. His anger ebbed further, replaced by a new sense of nameless dread. Kambyses’s blood was a fiery sludge. It didn’t flow, and hadn’t left him in great enough quantities to explain this. Not last night, and not since, judging by how little of it marred the rug.
Hands shaking, he ripped the thick fabric all the way across, and had his answer. Kambyses hadn’t wasted away so much as redistributed himself. This was how blood-drinkers recovered from severe injuries. Tissue in one part of the body dissolved and re-formed elsewhere in whatever form was required. He had witnessed this several times, but never like this.
The ancient body had healed the “injury” of his missing limbs.
New matchstick arms and legs extended from the hacked-off shirt sleeves and abbreviated pant legs. They looked impossibly delicate, these new appendages, but they would be more than enough. Kambyses was essentially restored.
Dominique scrambled out of easy reach. How foolish not to bring his blades. By the time he went to fetch them, Kambyses would be long gone.
Of course, Kambyses could have been long gone before Dominique ever got here to dig him up.
The withered body lay still in the dappled shadows cast by the moon. Fingers of wind teased at his thick hair and torn clothing. He seemed to listen, entranced, to the crashing waves.
Alive.
Dangerous, Dominique corrected himself, but there was no conviction behind the thought. Stealing over him was the same serenity he felt earlier, freedom from all doubt and struggle…and complete certainty about what he intended to do.
No, that wasn’t quite right either. He tipped his head as though he could hear what he suddenly knew had always been there, just beneath his conscious mind. The heart of the beast, his vampire soul. It was this that now surrendered to peace.
Exactly like the living corpse lying before him did.
Know me. You hear my call every time you pierce a vein…
“It is your will we obey when the beast takes control,” Dominique murmured as he comprehended the mind-numbing true extent of that fact. “Your will, your…soul. These are what we are. You are…the beast in us all.”
No reaction.
Dominique reached for the duct tape still stuck across the mouth, pried up an edge, and pulled. There was nothing Kambyses could do with his voice now that he couldn’t already do without it. His mouth opened a little, and his wasted ribcage rose in a deep, savoring inhalation of the salty-wet air, but he didn’t speak.
The eyes of the beast met Dominique’s, but not as he had ever seen them. The desperate hunger receded. In its place, something like gratitude emerged. It hummed in the telepathic web holding them bound to each other—and all their kind. A web Dominique noticed only now that it was changing.
One of those bony arms extended across toward him. Kambyses’s mouth moved. The voice that emerged was as dusty and strained as the wrappings of a mummy and sounded just as foreign. The words bore no resemblance to any language Dominique could name. Yet, he felt their meaning as if they were his own thoughts.
You are the chosen one, Nico. You always have been.
With a small shock, he realized Kambyses no longer blocked him from his mind. The one-way link established when Dominique fed from him over a week ago was weak, but it was far from gone.
“To be your eternal companion?” Dominique could summon no rancor. Only curiosity.
Companion. Lover. Prodigy… Heir.
Heir? The implication of that one word flat-lined his mind.
A thousand years of searching has brought me to you. You are the most worthy, my ultimate champion. You are…my better.
He said nothing, trusting neither his voice nor his thoughts as he experienced what Kambyses had felt the previous night. Dismembered and pinned beneath his youngling’s heel, he was outmaneuvered and more thoroughly defeated than he had ever been. Defeated, but not defenseless. Spinning illusions that would have tricked them into restoring him would have taken little effort. Ending them all after that, no effort at all.
But after that first attempt, he knew there was no point.
Nothing would have changed.
Nothing ever…changed.
Kambyses inhaled again, savoring the air, the moment, in utter contentment. This time, he spoke in French. “I would have liked more time with you, Nico. I would have liked to become the man you would have been proud to call your sire.” Another breath. A smile weighted with regret. “But I am so very tired of the darkness. I can bear it no more.” Switching to English, he finished, “Dominique, you never accepted me as your master because you have none. You bow down to no one, and you never will. My brave young one. I cede you my kingdom. It is yours to tear from my body at will.”
Dominique’s mouth was dry as the sand flying over the ground in ribbons. In his mind, Kambyses showed him exactly how this incredible thing was to be done—the way it had been done before, so long ago. He felt the fire-blood burn through him just thinking about it. Not merely in his gut this time, but in the deepest caverns of his being. His canines lengthened at the very idea of drinking such blood to the death.
“I want nothing of yours,” he said, though he couldn’t deny the horrified anticipation stealing over him. It belonged to the beast. It belonged to Kambyses. “I never did.”
“But it will not be mine once you claim it, will it? It can be anything you want it to be.”
The words were a lightning strike down Dominique’s spine. Without Kambyses at its center, the world of night would no longer thrum with the fear and desolation of his insatiable, lonely spirit. Without Kambyses, the world of night could truly be anything Dominique wanted it to be—anything he and Cassidy wanted it to be. It would be changed as Serge had prophesied.
Forever.
He moved closer. His hands shook. If he was compelled, he didn’t care. “What if what I want is for it not to exist?”
That would be a forever change, too. All he had to do was deliver Kambyses to the hunters as agreed. Or he could finish him himself now with his bare hands. This time, the beast wouldn’t stop him.
“If that is what you choose, then so it will be,” Kambyses said with a sigh of reluctant acceptance. In his heart, he had already abdicated his throne of blood and darkness. He no longer cared. “But I don’t think you will.”
Fiercely cold wind swept over Dominique’s bare chest and back, but the promise of the eternal blood warmed him. The last of it—the very last blood he could pull out of Kambyses before he died—would be the most potent blood of all. It would brand his soul…and reshape it.
The beast as he knew it would be no more.
He leaned forward, eyes fixed on the sinewy neck and the fat vein he had tapped there before. He inhaled the ancient one’s scent. The smoky essence sparked only the barest memory of fear. Something new held him captive now, something quiet and considering. Something waiting. Waiting for him.
“Why is that, old man? Why do you believe I won’t end us all?”
Kambyses caressed Dominique’s cheek with bony fingers, the tender touch of a father. Millennia of ghosts haunted his smile. “Because you want to live, Nico. You want to live…for her.”
“Oui,” he whispered. A simple truth. The only truth that mattered. Gently, he cradled the old one’s head in one hand. “I do.” His lips slid over the paper-smooth skin, mouth throbbing with hunger. “I want to live.”
And he knew that he would.
Forever.