Chapter 15 #2
“We’re leaving,” Abaddon declares as Raven lands back in her mother’s arms with her thumb embedded in her mouth. She looks for all the world like a normal toddler apart from her wings and the little horns peeking out from the abundant curls on her head. “Now.”
The rest of my family stands up from the table.
Beside me, Phoenix shudders. I understand last night’s performance more than ever. She’ll never give Vlad what he wants. I feel her hand brush against mine under the table. It’s brief, maybe seeking comfort, before she pulls it back.
If I’m really her friend, and I am—friend before hungry monster, always—then I’ll do everything in my power to aid her cause.
“That’s hardly necessary,” Vlad says nonchalantly from his throne-like chair at the head of the table. His tone is no more bothered than if a fly had just been swatted in his presence.
“Father,” his son says again. “What about Avram?”
Vlad looks annoyed for the first time since breakfast started and turns a stone face toward his son. “We’ll have a far-superior replacement for your fool brother soon. If Avram had been quicker-witted, he’d still be with us, wouldn’t he?”
His son is astonished and obviously furious, but one look from Vlad has him swallowing it back. He bows his head to the floor. “Yes, Father. Of course, your wisdom prevails.” He backs away to the corner.
Abaddon is already shuffling my family out of the room. I’m glad to have them out from under this man’s roof and sphere of control. I’m just sorry I can’t get Phoenix out with them. I hate that she’s under his thumb in any way.
I hurry over to my brother as he ushers the last of my family out and pull him aside. “Will you go back to the castle?”
I can feel Vlad’s eyes on us. It makes my skin crawl. I pull Abaddon into the hallway, even though I hate to have Phoenix out of sight for even a moment.
“I’m not sure that’s possible now that it’s been discovered, even if we tried to hide it again with more runework,” Abaddon says. I hear the regret in his voice.
“I might have a possible fix.”
Abaddon rolls his eyes. “Let me guess. Magic.”
“You’ve witnessed Phoenix’s mage at work.”
Reluctantly, Abaddon nods. “I found us a villa in the city for the time being.”
“I’ll start working on it with Sabra immediately. She’s in the city, too.”
He nods and cuffs me on the shoulder as his face softens. “Good night last night?” His eyebrow arches up.
“As if I’d tell you,” I glare, and he laughs good-naturedly.
I turn away before he can read anything else on my face and almost run straight into Phoenix.
We both pull back before colliding. For a second, we’re close enough that I can smell her shampoo again. I can see the flecks of darker blue in her eyes. Her lips part slightly in surprise.
Then she composes her face into its usual mask. “Come on. If we don’t hurry, I’ll be late.”
“Right.” I blink, still processing our nearness. “Your lecture.”
We just witnessed the sort of complete control Vlad exercises over his family.
I’ve never seen him willing to sacrifice any members of it before, but then, they’re unkillable.
All that nonsense about stakes and beheadings is just lore to make humans feel more in control in the face of the unthinkable.
Vlad and his sons are immortal in the true sense of the word, like my brothers and me.
Slice us and dice us, and still, we continue on.
I learned this the hard way when I climbed out of my grave after I’d painfully regenerated.
Vlad has learned more creative means of controlling his family over the centuries.
Phoenix told me he locked one son in a pit for three hundred years for disrespecting him.
Mostly, his methods involve breaking them from childhood while they were still human, a process he got to repeat every twenty-five years.
He experimented with making blood slaves of his own progeny until they became vampires themselves. Apparently, it made them dullards when they came of age and turned into vampires instead of the killing machines he was looking for.
I can’t imagine how Phoenix possibly “came to an understanding” with him. He’s intractable and ruthless in ways that defy comprehension.
After learning the lengths he’s willing to go, it’s nearly impossible to imagine the strength it took Phoenix to become the woman she is today.
She survived him with not just a scrap of humanity but an ocean of it.
She’s the kind of person who sees a suffering creature in the woods and stops to help it even though she has plenty of her own problems to worry about. Who does that?
She helped me believe that goodness was possible anywhere in this or any other plane. She grew up with an evil to rival my father.
As she strides confidently down the hallway in front of me, I have to fight the surge of emotion in my chest. The way her ponytail swings as she walks catches my attention. The determined set of her shoulders tells me she’s built a life for herself here apart from his control.
I vow silently to not allow myself to be a means of his manipulation. He’s trying to tighten his leash on her and bring her back in. That’s obvious to anyone with eyes. But unlike ten years ago, maybe the solution isn’t leaving. Maybe it’s staying and fighting at her side.
Or is that my hunger talking? Look how strong she became without me.
Phoenix is quiet as she drives us into the city. I follow her lead and keep to myself. I hate this awkwardness between us when I once felt closer to her than I ever did to any being in the universe.
There’s also the fact that I’m busy gripping the handle on the door with white knuckles.
I don’t think I’ll ever get used to these motorized vehicles, even though we used them all the time when I first lived at Vlad’s compound with Phoenix.
I have more of an affinity with human transportation devices like planes and helicopters, probably because flying comes naturally to me.
I spent the first two thousand years of my life in the air.
The dip and sway of the metal beast in different air pockets felt familiar since I navigated it with my bare body for so long. It felt like second nature.
But this is different. Wheeled vehicles fly down the road with so many other vehicles jostling for space.
The lines on the road are treated as mere suggestions in this country.
A three-lane highway can be choked four cars abreast. Occasionally, cars even jump on the sidewalks when it gets a little too tight. Honking is the music of the highway.
Phoenix is adept at it. She leans on the horn as she slips into a pocket that opens up between two other cars. Her hands are confident on the wheel. She doesn’t hesitate or flinch.
I find myself watching her instead of the road. The way she bites her lower lip when she’s concentrating catches my attention. Her shoulders relax slightly once we’re past the worst of the traffic.
She catches me looking and raises an eyebrow. “You okay over there?”
“Fine,” I lie. “Just not used to the driving here yet.”
A small smile tugs at her mouth. “You’ll survive.”
She zooms into a parking lot and hauls the car up onto the sidewalk in the usual way of parking here.
“Come on, we’ve got to hurry.”
“Right behind you,” I say as she all but leaps out of the car.
She jogs across campus with a backpack over her shoulder. I keep at her heels. The morning is bright. Students are scattered across the lawn between buildings. Some sit under trees with books open. Others walk in clusters and talk animatedly.
We don’t slow down after sprinting up a mountain of steps to one of the bigger buildings. Phoenix shoves through the double entrance doors into a soaring rotunda. The entire building is designed around a massive circular atrium that rises five stories high.
At ground level, a wide ring of polished marble floor encircles a central glass-enclosed display area.
The display sits like an island in the middle of the rotunda, maybe fifteen feet in diameter, showcasing a scale model of an early religious temple about the size of a car.
The glass walls reach from floor to ceiling, turning the exhibit into a transparent cylinder that you can walk completely around.
Curved staircases hug the outer walls on either side of the entrance, spiraling up to the upper floors. Each level has an open walkway that overlooks the central display, creating a dizzying view straight down to the marble circle below.
Students flow around us, some heading to the stairs, others cutting across the circular floor to reach hallways that branch off like spokes from the central hub. The space echoes with footsteps and voices, the architectural acoustics amplifying every sound.
Phoenix shoulders her way past students as she takes the stairs two at a time. She only seems to take a breath once she slides into a seat at the back of a huge auditorium-like room that is packed with students and faculty alike.
Her cheeks are flushed from the run. Her breathing is elevated. She pulls out a notebook and uncaps a pen with her teeth. There’s an excitement in her eyes I haven’t seen since we arrived at Vlad’s compound.
This is her world. Her passion. Separate from blood oaths and grandfathers.
Only minutes later, a man pulls out his earbuds and walks up to the podium. A camera casts his image onto a large screen behind him. He looks to be in his early to mid-thirties, handsome in that academic way with glasses and a slightly rumpled shirt. His posture is confident.
I glance over at Phoenix. She’s watching the screen with rapt, excited attention. She leans forward slightly in her seat.
“That’s Professor Rossi,” she whispers with warmth in her voice.
“He’s at the top of his field and one of the reasons I was so thrilled to study here with him as my advisor.
” She rolls her eyes. “Vlad did tempt him here with a huge endowment, but for once, I wasn’t mad about letting his money work for me.
Professor Rossi is an absolute genius in the field. ”
There’s an odd curdling in my gut as she gushes over this man. The way she says his name bothers me. The light in her eyes when she talks about him makes something dark twist in my chest.
But then she waves at me to shush as Professor Rossi leans over the lectern to speak, even though she’s the one who’s been talking.
“Signs and wonders used to be a regular part of daily life. It’s easy to write off these historical descriptions in the ancient texts as people without scientific explanations simply describing natural phenomena.”
He clicks through the slides reflected on a screen behind him to show a demonic mask.
“So-called ‘demons’ were merely people with schizophrenia. Sudden storms weren’t manifestations of the gods’ anger but simply warmer ocean waters creating weather patterns.
Moving tectonic plates caused what seemed like divine wrath. ”
He clicks through to another slide that shows how the flow of warmer ocean waters evaporates to become hurricanes.
“But while yes, our ancient forefathers might have had only a proto-understanding of certain scientific phenomena, in other ways, their understanding of mathematics was far more advanced than we give them credit for. Their grasp of physics was astonishing.”
“These are the people who built the great pyramids!” The screen flashes with slides showing images of the structures he describes. “The Parthenon!” More images appear before the screen comes back to his face.
The professor speaks with such passion that it’s easy to see why his audience is enrapt.
“They might not have cracked germ theory at the time, for which many in our modern age judge them as barbarians. But they still had an astonishing ability to thrive and invent. They nurtured artistic talent. They created vast civilizations with astounding communication networks.”
Beside me, Phoenix scribbles notes furiously in her notebook. I can see how much this means to her. This world of ideas and discovery feeds something in her that nothing else can.
“Since Freud and Jung, it’s been commonly accepted among the scientifically minded that religions were created as mere manifestations of mankind’s neurosis or shadow selves.
Or, to put it in the framework of Marx, religion was merely an opiate of the people.
It was meant to keep the masses drugged and unaware of the fact that they were pawns in the machine of the more powerful.
“The thesis I present to you today, however, especially in light of the supposed hoax,” he uses air quotes for the last word, “that we all collectively witnessed with our own eyes this past month, is that some of the signs and wonders our ancient brethren witnessed were real.”
I sit up straighter in my chair and realize that I’m not the only one reacting. Some of the other professors in the room stand up and heckle him for buying into conspiracy theories. Just as many students stand up in his defense.
Finally, Professor Rossi holds his hands up. The shouting dies down. “Is this not a university where we gather to discuss new ideas? New theses?”
Students eagerly nod. Some professors join them. Others stare stonily ahead.
Professor Rossi leans forward and clutches the sides of the lectern as he continues.
His voice becomes intimate as he speaks into the microphone.
“There were ancient powers that occasionally visited or even inhabited this world for a time during the ancient era. Ladies and gentlemen, I am suggesting that ancient man did not invent the gods but merely documented their presence among us with papyrus and ink. Just like we’re doing now, capturing video on our phones of the phenomena we’re witnessing as these unknown beings visit again. ”
This time, when the crowd erupts, there is no bringing back order. Factions shout and argue all around the room. Professor Rossi has to be shuffled off the stage.
“Come on,” Phoenix whispers excitedly.
Her hand wraps around my forearm and pulls me toward an exit off to the side, away from the chaos. Her touch burns through my shirt sleeve. Her eyes are bright with excitement.
“I want you to meet him.”
I frown as I follow her. Her hand is still on my arm, guiding me through the crowd.
I can’t think of anything I want less.