After the hunt, and after I fed, I had a sick feeling rattling through my body. I didn’t enjoy hunting and hurting animals. It was easy for me to hunt men who deserved to die. Some of the men I stalked had murdered for the pure enjoyment of it. And it was easy then to slay them, but I took no pleasure in those kills.
But the thought of staring an animal in the eyes, and they knowing I would slaughter them and they would whine from fright. This haunted me more than ever.
I remember saying that to my father when he first changed me five hundred years ago.
Then he said to me, “You have to feed on humans in order to live and stay strong. If you can bring yourself to kill an animal then you have to hunt men. The animal’s blood will keep you alive but it will not make you strong and to exist as a vampire you have to remain strong.”
“Isn’t there a different way I can live?” I said to him.
“Yes, but you will never be strong enough to claim your rightful place next to me.” I wanted to please my father until I saw what Aare was capable of and had turned my father’s mind against me. He saw me as soft, but strength takes more than feeding on mortals. That is cruel, and my beliefs were reinforced when I saw the atrocities Aare perpetrated on unsuspecting mortals.
In my father’s eyes power was strength, and to have the power you needed, you had to have control over mortals, and to do that, you had to hunt and feed on them. They were to be at the bottom of the food chain in order for vampires to rise. I argued with him and realized that his mind wouldn’t change. He was too old to change.
Stepping into the castle room there stood Samantha in all her false charms and beauty. When I returned this time she and Aare were sitting alone as if waiting for me. “Oh there you are my husband.” The sound of her voice made the hair on my arms prickle up.
“Now that you’ve returned,” She paused looking to Aare and then to me, “I need a vacation. After all I’ve been watching over everything in your absence. Keeping the peace among the vampires and werewolves.” There would be no need for a truce between them if it wasn’t for Aare and Samantha stirring things up and pitting them against each other.
“Where are you going?” I said dryly. I didn’t want her to know how happy I was to learn that she would not be around for me to carry out my plans. I hid my eagerness. I stared at her without blinking. I held my breath.
“Aare and I are going to Spain. I hear they have this tomato festival every year and there will be lots of young men and women celebrating the Running of the Bulls. You know how the Italians love their vino, and well we thought we could pick up a few boys when they got drunk. Not for me, but Aare of course.” And she reached out to touch Aare’s hand. He looked at her with eyes insensitive to everything and everybody except Samantha.
He reminded me of myself a hundred years earlier.
“Yes of course, Samantha,” I said lowering my eyes. I didn’t want them to see my true feelings.
Aare appeared to be dazed and his dead stare in my direction signaled that Aare had been feeding on Samantha’s blood. She didn’t want to kill him like she did me, she just wanted him to do whatever she required and she didn’t want him to protest. I suspected that she needed some fresh young blood for her potions and that’s why she convinced him to go to Spain.
I welcomed the peace from her and Aare. I had made plans of my own. “You have my permission. Go and enjoy yourself.”
She stood for a moment looking at me and then she walked up to me. She passed her hand over my hair and held my face in her hands. “I didn’t ask for your permission.”
Turning quickly and reacting too hastily, I grabbed her face in my hand, “I give my permission because I don’t give a fuck what you do,” I said with a cold voice, surprising myself and her.
She glanced up at me with narrow eyes.
“I know what you’re thinking Sebastian. You think that it’s easy to kill me now. Aare is useless to me and you can kill me with one hand. But if you do that, my guards will tell my werewolves to kill Zoey and your baby.” My eyes opened wide. I didn’t know she knew about Zoey’s pregnancy.
Not knowing if it was a bluff, I released her face. I walked to my chair and slumped down. I would wait until Aare and Samantha were gone to carry out my plan.
Two days passed and when I discovered they were no longer around, it took a few more days to haul in all the gasoline and pour it in the walls and behind every bedroom and fireplace in the castle.
Then I lit a fire and I stood on the outside and watched as the first fire blazed underneath in the catacombs where my mother lay and no doubt my father was hid somewhere Aare didn’t want me to find him.
When the fire reached the tallest part of the castle, I heard the screams of the dying humans and the newly formed vampires. In my joy, I didn’t know if I had completely lost my humanity. I felt at the time I was liberating those loss souls who had put their trust in vampires. Maybe there would be some way I could redeem my soul, and the only way I saw that happening was through the death of my brother and Samantha. They had caused more misery in a short lifetime than thousands of years of vampires roaming this earth.
The fire had now consumed all the castle, and flames were shooting out of the broken windows. The werewolves were running through the halls with their fur on fire, and throwing themselves out the windows, and some were able to limp into the nearby woods. They appeared to be the only beings to escape. The others, some too weak to move burned to death.
I didn’t know what was worse, to be eaten alive by hungry humans or to fall into my fiery pit. Everything I had done before to maintain my soul disappeared that night when I burned down my father’s castle with everyone inside.
Somehow I thought I should be there too, in that fire with all of those beings, but first I had to kill Aare and Samantha and then I would kill myself.
***
Having the captain of my yacht pick me up was part of my plan. My yacht had anchored and waiting for me to swim out to it, where the captain took off the moment I boarded it. Jack had been with me on many journeys. When I took over his ship many years ago, after I was changed, he was the captain of a warship and it flew under a Spanish flag.
He knew what I was and he begged me to be to change him, but I needed someone to serve me during the day because I couldn’t do it. He agreed that if I changed him and he could live long then he would serve me faithfully and so he has.
“The broadcast of the burning of the Vesper castle has gone out over the news throughout Europe. It won’t be too long before they will hunt for you. What do you think Samantha and Aare will do when they find out it was you?” Jack asked as he steered the vessel in the direction of the mainland.
Jack was the one who got me all that gasoline so as to burn that hellish castle down. I would have done it years ago, but for my mother.
“I hope Samantha and Aare will go off somewhere and leave me and Zoey alone.” But that was wishful thinking. Samantha would go back to the states and hopefully she would see no use in Aare and take care of that problem for me. And when she came for me, I would be ready for her. If it meant that we would die together just to be rid of her I would relish that if my child and Zoey could live in peace.
“Did you make arrangements for the jet to fly to Alaska?” I asked Jack. “Terry said she was expecting a visit from Zoey.”
“Will that mortal be with her?”
“Ryan? Yes he most assuredly will. He’s in love with her.”
“I see.” Jack wasn’t much of a talker but he was a good servant who I could trust. “When I get to Seattle, I need my car. Did you make arrangements for my SUV to be ready at the airport? I have to talk to Ann and Robert first.”
***
I arrived at Robert’s compound after eight pm. I rang the bell and Robert opened the gate after many questions. He had upgraded to cameras. He saw when I arrived at his front door and it opened.
“I see that you aren’t taking any chances lately.” Robert didn’t say anything he looked at me with his usual grim look. He had not been that way before, but since I came into his life and Ann’s life, he has been a little less than cordial. Once he couldn’t thank me enough and now he has this look of why me? I didn’t blame him. It was too much for me to take in.
“How is Ann?”
“Sebastian, don’t try to be what you’re not. You’re no longer human and you don’t have to pretend for my liking.” I felt a pain of hurt. I guess no matter how much I tried Robert would still see me as a vampire. A cold unfeeling soulless creature who was only concerned with one thing. He was partly correct. I was concerned with protecting Zoey and my baby.
“I’m worried about Ann whether you believe me or not,” I said to him.
“He knows that. He’s just jumpy. The news you know,” Ann said pointing to the flat screen television. We were listening to CNN and with their breaking news every few seconds that would unnerve anyone. Your castle burned to the ground.”
“I know. I set it on fire.” My voice hapless and uncaring.
“I hope you took that witch with it and that brother of yours. Those two were making me nervous. Ann is pregnant and this is making me nervous being a new father,” Robert said.
He bent and rubbed Ann’s stomach and listened to his babies. I watched at the two of them and wished for something different. I wanted to be anyone and anything but me—the king of the vampires without out a queen that I love and a burned castle for my home. How good was that?
“Robert,” I peered at him. “I need your help.” My voice low sounding helpless and lost. He didn’t answer he just listened. “I need to find Samantha’s sister.”
“No,” he said and walked into the kitchen. Ann and I followed behind him. He took a beer out of the fridge and offered me one and I declined. I think it was an automatic thing. Robert didn’t want to be hospitable at that moment. He knew I never drank beer. Wine maybe, but never beer.
Sitting down looking at him, he drank that one in a hurry and opened another beer. “She’s the answer to defeating Samantha,” I said.
“I can’t leave Ann alone. She will be helpless.” Ann stood in front of Robert.
“Robbie, I will be okay. That little shifter is more than enough to protect me. He kills anything that comes near the house.”
“That bobcat?” I questioned.
“Yes. But he’s too small to handle that witch and vampire,” Robert said. “How long will it take for me to be away from Ann? I need to know this because I’ve never left her alone. Especially not like this.”
“That’s because it’s the first time I’ve been pregnant, silly,” Ann said. She was trying to help me out. I wouldn’t forget it.
“If by daybreak and we haven’t found her, then I’ll bring you back. Or you will bring me back here.”
“Then I’ll go if it’s alright with Ann,” Robert said looking up at her from his chair.
“Of course it is,” Ann said and bent to kiss Robert. “Go now. And hurry back to me.”