Chapter 18 Ghosts
GHOSTS
Lisette led them out of Nightvallen. She walked unhurriedly, casting only a few cool glances back at them, with a small smile on her lips. When she met his eyes, though, the smile fled and she nodded in respect. She knew who he was. He gave her a brief nod back.
Hue paced beside him while Mairead and Amana were a few feet ahead of them.
Grayson saw tons of these little groups of students all led by a Kaly–who could easily be identified by their all black outfits and erect bearing–streaming from different areas of the city and heading to the same place.
Everyone’s eyes were alight and he heard excited talking and laughing.
Everyone knew that the Kaly Bloodline had great power and they were offering to let them speak to the dead.
While the Mirryr party had been amazing, showing them the carnal and sensual delights of being a Vampire and the Helm game had shown them that there were great rewards to those who were willing to take chances, this was different.
The Kaly gift was truly supernatural. It touched on the very core questions of existence.
Is there something beyond the body? What is that something?
Does that something survive after the body dies?
Where does that something go? The Kaly knew the answers to those questions not because of faith, but because of actual knowledge.
And they were going to share some of that with the students tonight.
Who wouldn’t be excited?
“Who do you hope you get to speak to?” Hue asked him. “I hope to see my grandmother again. Though I should hope that she has moved on, part of me would like nothing more than to hear her voice again. But she died a long time ago. What about you?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” Grayson admitted. His life as Ashyr had been so long.
He’d lost many people. But, like Hue, he didn’t want them to have remained here instead of reincarnating or moving beyond.
It would bring him no joy to have them still here.
So he truly had no hopes for himself and doubted that the Kaly would have brought anyone here for him. “My friend Sam.”
“I thought I heard…” Hue shook her head. “Forget about it.”
“It’s okay. What did you hear?” Grayson asked.
She cut a look at him and then away. “That your father died.”
Grayson let out a breath. “I don’t remember him to be honest. He died when I was very young and it was just my mom and me. I sincerely hope that he moved on… and didn’t see how things turned out.”
It was strange that he hardly thought of his father.
He remembered a smile. A pair of eyes like his.
The smell of warm leather. A sense of love and protection.
But he hadn’t known his father as a man, as a person, beyond the role he played.
He wasn’t lying when he told Hue that it had been just his mom and him forever.
And that had been enough. But then his stepfather had come on the scene and any favorable thoughts he’d had towards another father-figure in his life had flown out the window.
He had no idea what his father would have thought, except grief and rage and horror.
That last bit likely would have been aimed at him.
They aren’t really my parents anyway. They’re just the way I got here, Grayson reminded himself fiercely. They’re human. Neither of them can truly understand what I am.
That rang a little hollow to him, but not altogether. He was Ashyr and Ashyr had bigger problems than mothers who chose poorly in regards to who they let into their lives. Or a father that was more shadow than light.
He glanced over at Hue carefully. She hadn’t been asking about his father, he didn’t think. Not from the way she was dancing around the subject.
“But that wasn’t what you heard, was it?” he asked.
She grimaced. “Partly.”
“And the other part?”
“I heard that you had a stepfather who… died, too.”
That I killed, she means. The reporters got a hold of that.
I’m sure that people are talking about it.
I’ve been so focused on the Sect that I haven’t even considered how I’m viewed by my fellow students really.
Though we don’t have the internet here, there are more rumors flying about because of it.
“Yes, I did,” Grayson answered evenly and it was unclear if he was saying that his stepfather died or that he had killed him, which was the underlying question.
“He was a bad man?” It was phrased as a question, but wasn’t really.
“Yes.” Clipped. Simple answer.
Yes, he was a bad man. Yes, he deserved killing. Yes, I killed him. Yes, I slammed him against the wall like a ragdoll and crushed his skull.
He hadn’t asked Balthazar if the reporters were curious how a boy of twelve could have done that to a full-grown man. Were they starting to wonder if there was something special about him? Or maybe they thought that he’d had Vampiric help.
He’d known of Vampires who met their fledglings as children, watched out for them, and then, when the moment was right, gave them Second Lives.
That would be a far more “believable” story than him having supernatural powers.
But once he officially took on the mantle of Ashyr once more, he supposed the question would have its true answer.
“I don’t want you to think…” Here, she stopped and grimaced again.
Her voice was lowered as she said swiftly, “There was a man who was hurting my little sister back in our town. He was powerful, rich and a pig.” She shook herself as if the word tasted oily in her mouth. “She was only six and I was fourteen.”
“Six?” he breathed, guessing what this man wanted.
“He had the police and courts in his pocket. No one would stand against him. In comparison, we had nothing. We were poor and desperate. Cleaning houses for people like him if we were lucky,” Hue explained.
“My father was dead. My mother was doing her best, but she had to work herself to the bone to feed us all, but many days we went hungry. People told me that we should feel lucky he was interested. He might give us something for my sister. If he was feeling generous. No one thought we could do anything in any case.”
The bitterness in her voice almost had a physical heft. It was thick like tar. It coated every word. He could well imagine the rage those words had caused her to feel.
Give over your six-year-old sister to a pedophile.
Hope he gives you some money or food or opportunities in return for watching him tear her apart.
She’ll never be the same even if she survives it.
Her life will be stained indelibly by what happened.
No relationship she has will ever be free of him.
He’d lived during times when children were not seen as children, but little adults by humanity.
But it had always turned his stomach when he’d seen those with more power prey on those with less.
And that was inherent no matter what in such a relationship.
People may have told themselves differently, but they were wrong.
“What happened?” he asked, swallowing bitterness himself.
Why was he asking this as if it would lead to another ending than the typical one?
This was a story that played out everyday around the world.
Why should he think there would be any justice here?
He and his mother had also been desperate and his stepfather hadn’t been some rich, powerful man, but powerful enough to make disentangling themselves from him almost impossible.
Yet Hue was telling him this story to make a point–to draw a connection–between him and her.
To tell him that she didn’t judge him badly for what he had done.
“Accidents happen everyday. Even to rich, important men,” Hue said without looking at him.
“Or maybe they are helped along. Some heart medicine in his drink. And who is to know? He might have taken it himself! Accidentally, took a third or fourth or fifth dose Especially if he drank, which he did. Quite a bit. He was careless that way.”
He thought about what she said for long moments before saying, “And, even if someone did suspect foul play, they would never suspect a fourteen-year-old girl could have done something like that.”
Hue smiled. “No, they most certainly would not.” They continued on in silence for a moment. But then she added, “The Vampires didn’t choose me just because I am dying. There are many people dying. Everywhere. All the time. More worthy people.”
“I don’t know, Hue. Someone who would go to that length to save the person they love sounds like a pretty worthy person to me,” Grayson told her.
She turned her head to look at him for the first time since she’d told the story. She reached and took his hand. “That is what I think, too. We are worthy, Grayson, not in spite of what we did, but because of it.”
The courage it had taken–the ruthlessness, too–stunned him in some ways.
But this was what they looked for. She would be a very worthy addition to their side in the conflicts to come.
He felt the urge to maybe offer her a place in Ashyr, but he had a feeling the other Bloodlines might have something to say about that.
He’d already snatched Eiji up, even considered Mairead before he’d been asked to back off there, and now Hue.
Some Vampires might think he was using his position as a faux student to his advantage.
Maybe he was. But he was the General. He had some say in where people would be most useful after all.
“Do you want to see him? To see if he’s still suffering?” Grayson asked. “To reveal to him that it was you who put an end to him?”
She considered this. “Maybe. But more I think about what it will be like to be a Vampire and have true power to protect those I love.” She looked at him intently then.
“Don’t you want that? To be strong enough to overcome every villain?
To eliminate those who would harm you and yours? To not be a victim?”