Chapter Thirty-Five #2
All he could do was let it out, and while he struggled, a part of him split off from the core and just observed: He couldn’t remember ever being unable to call on his intellect. His mind was the strongest thing about him, and that was going to be true even if he made it through the change.
And he thought the crying would never end, yet no emotion, no matter how strongly felt, was immortal. As with all living things, there was a crest and a decline.
And then it died.
In the aftermath, he dropped the damp napkin into his lap and twisted it. A shuddering breath left him, and then his itchy, swollen eyes returned to the food.
“Is there anyone we can call for you?” one of the two females asked.
He started speaking in a dead tone. And it stayed that way.
“I have no parents. Th-they left me behind. I waited, and waited, for them to come back.” The tears welled again, and he didn’t have the energy to even try to hold them in.
“I sat on the f-front stoop as the sunlight and the darkness came and repeated and came again. I just thought they would come back. I always th-thought… they’d come back. ”
Like the portion of his name that he had chosen for himself, there was truth in the lies, and though he had deliberately constructed the particular parallels, he hadn’t had to work hard to develop the fiction.
His mahmen had been a pill-addled addict hiding behind diamonds and dresses as she anesthetized herself into her own gilded coffin.
And his father? An undisciplined dandy who had spent a fortune keeping up with the Joneses, and then been forced to make a deal with the devil to stay afloat.
Information for money.
It was such a lowest-common-denominator cliché.
And Chritophe’s arrogance had led to his exposure.
He hadn’t wanted anybody to know about the finances. But he’d let the son who stuttered and he did not respect process all the household bills. When $100,000 worth of crypto had come just in time, Allhan had been confused. His sire knew nothing of the blockchain.
But Allhan did.
The wallet it had come from had been untraceable.
When a second infusion arrived the following week, Allhan started to track his father’s movements. Not himself, in person. He couldn’t dematerialize and couldn’t drive.
With a locator signal he bought off of .
And there was no reason for his father to ever go down by the river.
The next level of surveillance was a small audio transistor, tucked into the lapel of his father’s monogrammed coat.
Chritophe’s butler laid out the clothes for the following evening every dawn, and it took a week of swapping the tiny device from jacket to jacket before he heard the discussion with the lesser.
What was sought and promised. The terms of the money.
The threats that the slayer made about Carmen and Allhan, and how it would come to the mansion and destroy everything. His sire’s bored response?
“That will not be necessary. I shall deliver the Audience House’s location to you readily—”
“I want where the King lives, too,” the slayer had bit out. “I want his Queen and son. And the Black Dagger Brotherhood.”
There had been a pause. “Fine, but it will cost you more. For that, I will need ten million. Bribes are going to be necessary if that’s what you want.”
Allhan had been horrified, and not just about the callous disregard, and financial greed. Courtesy of the monitoring, he had had to listen to his father for hours, and in doing so, had learned things that… disgusted him.
Heard things… that terrified him.
His father was not just the shallow egoist Allhan had long known and sought to avoid.
No, he was a depraved male with evil appetites that turned the stomach.
And he had done… terrible things to Carmen.
For a long time. And after she had gone through her transition and was no longer fit for his perverted attractions, he had moved on to others.
Brokered by humans.
It had all been too terrible for Allhan to contemplate. And among the most frightening parts? That the abuse that had happened to Carmen had occurred beneath the very roof Allhan lived under.
No wonder their mahmen had sought such relief in chemicals. She had been trapped by the glymera traditions, unable to control her hellren, unwilling to stand up for her young.
At least, that helplessness was what Allhan edited in.
Given how cold she had always been to him and his sister, it was entirely possible she did not care, either.
In which case, both of them had been monsters.
“I am alone,” he concluded to the two females.
In the silence that followed, he had no idea what he’d said and became paranoid that he had spoken out loud what had gone through his mind as his lips had been moving.
The true story out. Which would blow his cover.
“No, Allhan,” came a compassionate response. “You’re not alone. You’re here with us.”
The other female, the one called Bitty, continued, “We can help you.”
No, he thought. They couldn’t. He was going to have to help himself.
“When was the last time you ate anything, Allhan?”
His eyes returned to the toast. The butter was all melted now, and that meant the eggs were probably cold.
“I don’t remember,” he said hoarsely as he picked up the fork with a hand that trembled.
Which was the truth. It must have been… the night his father had died? Was that possible? Food had been the last thing on his mind.
And when he couldn’t keep the scrambled eggs on the tines, he settled for the toast.