Chapter 13
CHAPTER 13
The body remained in the graveyard. Zack had been too numb when they first walked away from the corpse, but when he tried to go back, Seamus caught his arm. He murmured something about ghouls and whisked Zack away from the cemetery.
Seamus didn’t force a conversation during their ride to the mansion. In fact, he spent his time on his phone, periodically typing. Since words had fled Zack, he tried to study Seamus’s minute reactions to whatever he was doing, but Seamus had a schooled, calm expression. He was unreadable.
But not entirely unknowable. Even when Zack wasn’t looking at him, he could feel Seamus. It was like knowing where his dagger was, but more like having a rope tied around his waist and the other end being tied to Seamus with no slack in the middle. They were connected. Bonded.
I will never throw you away . Zack hated that there was an ounce of comfort in those words. Hated more how some emotion was tickling at the edges of his mind. It wasn’t his. It was like a pop-up ad that just kept showing up in front of his thoughts. This calm nugget of peace was an emotion from Seamus. Zack wasn’t sure what that desire was supposed to mean, only that it wasn’t sexual. He’d thought vampires could only feel and manipulate fear and lust, but desires could run to other stuff. Academically, he’d known that but figured vampires trained themselves to feel and manipulate the other stuff.
Instead, he was just sitting there, on the other side of the limo’s back bench seat from Seamus, and that weird desire for calm kept springing to mind.
Zack’s gaze drifted toward the window. Old memories joined the confusing mix of his concentration. In vivid clarity, he remembered Cousin Denny’s tenth birthday party. He’d been allowed to play with the big kids for the first time, only to wind up as the “damsel” and tied up in the tree house for an hour. Then he relived prom his sophomore year of high school; atypical for teens that grade, but an older girl had asked him. Turned out she was hoping to meet and hook up with his older brother—which Cal had been into—and the night had been a disaster for Zack. Then there was the time during his first and only semester of college where he’d handed in a persuasive paper for an English course. The professor had praised his creativity but given him a D. All those preventable pains if only he’d been that bit smarter, that bit cleverer—just that bit more .
The external desire for calm pushed into him as if someone was attempting to steal his phone from his hand and shove a book into it instead. With a quick glance, he saw that Seamus wasn’t typing on his phone, only looking at it.
“Do you want a son or a puppet?” Zack asked, his voice rasping from a renewed thirst and dryness. Now I want more blood. Awesome . “If the answer is ‘son,’ stay the fuck out of my emotions.”
Seamus lifted an eyebrow and slid his phone into his coat pocket. “I was attempting to steady you.”
“Then fucking talk to me.”
“Please stop swearing, Zack. It’s unbecoming.”
“So is raping your way through the centuries, you fucking shithead asshole.”
A flicker passed over Seamus’s features, and a sudden violent desire popped into Zack’s mental screen with an almost audible chime. But that window closed on its own, and Seamus managed to retain his calm demeanor.
But Zack had seen the thin gap in Seamus’s mental wall, and the tiny victory buoyed his spirits.
“Did that feel good?” Seamus said smoothly.
A little too smoothly. Zack narrowed his eyes and waited for the other shoe to drop.
“I asked if intentionally upsetting me made you feel good, Zack,” Seamus said.
“You’re not going to try to make some parallel between pissing you off and raping someone, are you?” Zack replied. “Because they are nowhere near the same ballpark.”
“You pushed to find power, and you reveled in it.” Seamus continued to hold Zack’s gaze. “And what confirmation have you had that I raped anyone?”
“Roger—”
“Who talked you into sparing his life because he wanted to kill me,” Seamus said. He motioned at Zack’s neck. “He nearly tore out your throat. You managed to turn the tables on him, and he needed some way to convince you to stay your hand. He spun a story about his evil sire.”
“I’ve seen with my own eyes what kind of asshole you are,” Zack growled.
“Nice vampires do not live a decade, Zackery. I am what I need to be in order to survive,” Seamus said with a sigh in his voice. “I do hope that you’ll realize this petty mentality is standing in the way of your greatness sooner rather than later.”
There was no point in trying to hold a conversation with him because Seamus kept spinning everything. Zack didn’t believe a word of it, but clearly, Seamus wasn’t going to be swayed either. With a huff, Zack folded his arms and slumped against the corner. Bound by blood to another fuckhead with an explanation for everything. Fan-fucking-tastic .
Every angry thought slipped to the back of his mind as Seamus’s mansion came into view. Zack researched what he could on the building, but he hadn’t found much.
And holy fuck, was it a flex. The building was massive, stretching out hundreds of feet on either side of a central entrance. The damn thing would barely fit onto a football field. Built in the 1920s, it had the sharp, elegant beauty of an art deco palace. Sporadic lights were on and providing some illumination out into the darkness, but that didn’t take away from the impressive, foreboding feeling the mansion exuded. Statues decorated the long circular drive; each one was a figure seductively offering themselves up for a dramatic bite—their wrist, their neck, their inner thigh, anywhere that could bring intense pleasure.
Zack was suddenly too aware of his new fangs and the thirst drying out his throat. Despite the stone nature of the artwork, he was straining to hear a heartbeat. But there wasn’t one; even their driver was a vampire. I’m getting blood-horny because of freaking statues. Greaaaaaat .
Seamus smirked. “Don’t worry. I had a few meals brought for you tonight. You won’t go hungry.”
“I’m not killing anyone else,” Zack said. “You can’t make me.”
“I didn’t make you kill the last one.”
“You turned me into this!” Zack gestured at himself and glared at Seamus.
The limo came to a stop underneath the central entrance’s overhang. Seamus leaned toward Zack and lowered his voice. “I gave you a choice, and you took full advantage of it.”
“Because—”
“Because you were on death’s door,” Seamus said. “If you don’t like the deal, then walk out into the dawn. But before you consider that, I would like to know one thing, Zackery. What, in your entire existence, have you chosen for yourself ?”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Zack snapped. “I’ve made plenty of choices.”
“In the pursuit of others’ approval. First your family’s, then Roger’s, then Nell’s.” Seamus leaned in farther, and the world seemed to narrow to his blue and red mottled eyes. A bubble of some desire touched the edge of Zack’s mind, but Seamus didn’t push it into him. As they remained locked in their staring contest, Seamus continued. “You drank from me, and you knew exactly what you would become. I felt the way you drew my power into you. You were eager for it. You wanted it .”
The last words were a whisper that Zack wanted to deny, but those final moments of his mortal life flickered into view.
And Seamus wasn’t wrong.
But he couldn’t be right. Zack blinked, bloody tears pricking the corners of his eyes. “I didn’t want to die. That’s all.”
“The longer you lie to yourself, the longer you hurt yourself,” Seamus said sadly. “There is no shame in what we are. You can cast aside that pain, son. You have the power to become whatever you want.”
“Not an eighty-year-old grandfather,” Zack replied. “I can’t become that .”
“Not in the mortal fashion you’re talking about, but why have such a limited idea of how to create an experience? A life?” Seamus licked his thumb and then brushed away a piece of dirt stuck to Zack’s cheek. “Explore your potential, and you’ll discover a world full of depth and wonder that you’ve never dreamed of.”
By that point, the limo driver had gotten out and opened the door. Seamus stepped out into the night, shoulders back, head held high.
Talking to an archvillain wasn’t supposed to make Zack want to be like him. He hated Seamus. Hated everything he’d ever done. Ever. Well, except for turning Roger into a vampire. But he hadn’t given Roger a choice, and he hadn’t given Zack a real one either. Death or vampirism? No one was going to pick death.
But you didn’t even hesitate, little bro , the Cal voice said.
Shut the fuck up .
You’ve been reading those fucking books and fantasizing about this night for fucking years. You’ve always wanted to be this. Monster .
Zack ground his teeth, and his fangs pricked his gums. He forced himself to climb out of the limo as his mental war continued. I didn’t have a choice. I was dying .
A few thousand more times, and maybe you’ll believe it .
I do .
Some part of you clearly doesn’t .
The double doors to the mansion swung open and revealed a grand foyer. White veins stretched across the deep red marble floor and matched the color of the walls. A sweeping, elegant double staircase curved on either side of the hall up to the second floor. Since the ceiling went all the way up to that floor, a few of the paintings took advantage of the huge space. They depicted a wide array of scenes: a snowy landscape, a busy street, an artistic rendition of a vampire orgy. The overwhelming scent of roses greeted Zack, and there were a half dozen vases on the ground floor alone. They were in shades of soft yellow, subtly blending in with the décor.
A tall, spindly man stood to the left of the foyer’s center. His white skin was the shade of bleached paper, lending him an unreal quality. Everything about him fell into that same category. His limbs were too thin to have any substantial musculature. He was eight feet tall. His hair was black and gray, though one streak of gray seemed to be changing to a stark white right before Zack’s eyes. The strangest part was his smile, which seemed to literally stretch from ear to ear.
Zack made the mistake of meeting his gaze.
The shade of the man’s eyes was somewhere between a howling abyss waiting to devour the entire planet and the darkness that came from closing one’s eyes and praying that the monster under the bed was just a series of sounds one hadn’t figured out yet.
Fuck this guy. I just crawled out of my own grave . Zack squared his shoulders.
The man continued to smile and held his gaze for a moment longer, then chuckled to himself as he dipped his head in a respectful semi-bow. He had a voice like dried leaves rustling along concrete in a fall wind. “Ah, Master Zackery, a pleasure to formally meet you.”
“You’ve informally met me?” Zack said.
The man lifted an eyebrow and ran his gaze down the length of Zack.
The clothes. Someone would have had to change him out of the ruined tuxedo and into the black funeral suit. An odd incongruity happened in Zack’s head because he was embarrassed, but no heat was coming to his cheeks. Guess it’s harder to blush now. Yay ?
“Oh.” Zack threw his next question to Seamus. “You have a fey butler?”
“Grimsby is the estate manager,” Seamus replied.
“What’s that?”
“A fancier title for a butler with a few more responsibilities, young master,” Grimsby said. He turned toward Seamus and slightly bowed as he spoke. “Master Seamus, your inferiors have arrived. I’ve shown them to your conference room.”
“Fantastic. Take Zack to his rooms?—”
“ Rooms ?” Zack echoed.
“—and ensure that he has anything he might need. Zack, freshen up and then join me for the meeting,” Seamus said without stopping for Zack’s interruption.
“I’m freshly dead, and you want me to go to a meeting?” Zack asked.
“You were planning to help Roger take my coven. I thought you would want to see what it takes to actually run the thing so you could understand how ill-equipped Roger was for the position. However, if you’d prefer to pout in your room all night about the best thing that ever happened to you, be my guest.”
Seamus’s tone alone drove needles under Zack’s skin. The fact that another little pop-up was crawling toward Zack’s conscious thoughts drove the needles in further. Seamus wanted him to understand something, but picking up on exactly what he was feeling from someone else wasn’t obvious. Screw him. He’s had a thousand years to get used to his power. I haven’t had a thousand minutes to understand mine . Zack puffed up, a growl in his throat.
“Perhaps the young master would benefit from your newest guest,” Grimsby said.
Seamus narrowed his eyes. “Fine. But I expect both of you down at the meeting in no more than two hours’ time. Do you understand, Zackery?”
“Do I understand that you’re a maniacal bastard who thinks that he can somehow manipulate me into believing my boyfriend wasn’t monster enough to run the coven? Yeah, I get that,” Zack replied snidely.
Seamus grabbed him by the chin, fingers wrapping up around his jaw, and held him painfully tight. “You are wearing my patience thin.”
Zack couldn’t help a grin. “What about ‘I’ll never throw you away?’”
The gap in Seamus’s mental armor was widening. The outline of his desire for violence was growing brighter. But then it vanished. He released Zack with a small shove and stalked away. “Grow the fuck up, Zackery, before our world grinds you into ash.”
Zack wanted to claim that as a win, but he was scraped out and hollow inside. The biting remark hadn’t filled him with any real sense of glee. At least when he used to push Cal’s buttons, Cal would actually pop off and say something awful, and Zack could double down on his anger at his big brother. Seamus was taking the higher road. He wasn’t supposed to do that. He was supposed to be all evil and asshole and give Zack a fight for his life. Not tell him he needed to grow up and then just walk away like he was too busy.
And oh, fuck, Zack was never going to physically change. I’m going to be scrawny, baby-faced, and five foot six forever. He tried to run his hand through his hair, but his fingers caught on dirt. Suddenly, every speck of filth covering him was worse than a million spiders crawling along his skin.
“If you’ll follow me, young master,” Grimsby said. With his hands clasped behind his back, he started toward the left staircase.
Since his only other viable option was to run out into the night without a clue of where to find Roger or Takashi, Zack hurried after Grimsby. They went up the grand staircase and then down a long hall. Every once in a while, bouquets in ornate vases decorated the space while providing a pleasant floral scent. There was something underneath of it that smelled, well, a lot like Zack currently did. Dirt and dust and musty oldness. Zack took a sniff of his clothes. The oldness wasn’t clinging to him.
Paintings hung on the walls along their path. Zack had never seen this many. Visiting Chicago, even for a school trip, had been out of the question. Mom had been too paranoid to let him go to “the heart of the enemy.” And since coming to Chicago, he hadn’t made any time to do anything besides train and research. I have the time now .
Fuck, he could learn how to paint if he wanted, and he could spend centuries perfecting his art. Takashi had learned ten more languages after becoming a vampire and was on his eleventh, bringing the grand total up to fourteen with what he’d known as a mortal. Zack could do that, too. Or he could learn how to code. Or he could tackle his giant to-be-read pile. What have you chosen for yourself ? Not a whole lot, but he had the time to do everything he’d ever dreamed of.
Seamus wasn’t supposed to make sense. He was the fucking bad guy.
Zack cleared his throat. “Why is a fey working for Seamus? Does he pay you, or did Anton bind you?”
Grimsby glanced over his shoulder, and in his gaze was the scream of a terrified child. “As you are, ahem, newer to this side of interactions with the supernatural, young master, I will do you this one favor. One small lesson. Do not ask fey such impertinent questions. Rudeness finds swift consequence among my kind.”
“Crap, you just called it a favor,” Zack muttered. “So I owe you.”
Grimsby chuckled as he turned his attention forward. “At least your parents didn’t fail you completely. Don’t worry, young master. I won’t ask for anything outside of your capabilities when the time comes.”
That time could be in a minute or centuries from now. A cold stone dropped into Zack’s stomach. Forever seemed like fun, but it also stretched ahead into an infinity of consequences.
“Here we are.” Grimsby opened a door. “I can bring your guest now, or I can give you the chance to clean up first.”
Were all questions rude to the fey? Zack suddenly wasn’t sure. But if the “guest” was someone he would wind up killing, he wasn’t ready for that. His hunger was a growing ache, but the woman’s limp body came to mind. He had panicked in the moment. Would he have given her his blood to try to save her? If he bled someone else without supervision, would he wind up making an accidental vampire? He didn’t think so, but he hadn’t felt like himself when he fed. What if every time was like that?
Grimsby was a servant and treating Zack like he had some control over what happened in the house. So if he followed along those rules, then some questions shouldn’t be in the realm of disrespectful. In fact, Grimsby might be the one to break etiquette if he didn’t answer.
“Who is this ‘guest?’” Zack asked.
“I can’t say, young master.” Grimsby’s smile became strained.
That was an odd reaction and specific wording. Zack tilted his head. Was there some magical condition on Grimsby? He’d have to find out. “Okay. Do you think I want to see this guest?”
“I imagine you’ll be pleased and distraught.”
Seamus kidnapped me. Something must have happened to Kit, Vincent, Roger, and Takashi. The guest could be one of them . Zack steeled his nerves. “Then go ahead and bring the guest here, please.”
Grimsby gave a nod-bow and then headed back down the hall from the direction they’d come, though he made a turn they hadn’t taken.
Preparing for the next level of mindfuck, Zack walked through the open door of his suite.
The first room was a living room, complete with couch and multimedia setup. A large flat-screen was mounted to the wall, and the cabinet underneath it housed every latest-gen gaming console and a VR headset. Along with a Blu-Ray player, there was a bona fide VHS machine. Tall cabinets on either side of the big screen held dozens of 4ks, Blu-Rays, a couple VHS tapes, and two whole shelves of one cabinet were dedicated to hard copies of popular video games.
On the other side of the room was a record player and a slew of cellophaned vinyl records. In addition to the long, dark brown leather couch in the center of the room, there were a few deep chairs. Each of the Twilight movie posters was framed on the walls, one in each corner of the room, and there was a basket of orange-scented potpourri sitting on an end table beside a chair.
What captured Zack’s attention were the three bookcases on the wall next to the door leading into the bedroom. A good percentage of the spines didn’t have titles on them; their bindings led Zack to believe they were older texts. He did spot Sun Tzu’s Art of War and Machiavelli’s The Prince and other titles from mortal war strategists.
There were also books that had been written by supernaturals for supernaturals. One was written by the Dracula—or supposedly written by him—detailing methods for blending into modern society and taking it over for vampire kind. Hunters had always assumed it was a myth. Mom claimed it was the vampire equivalent of Mein Kompf. Was it? Or had everything his family ever told him a lie?
Holy crap, the bedroom was just as awesome as the living room had been. The bed was a four-poster king bed with curtains and was made of a beautiful dark wood. The dresser and desk were made of the same material with elaborate, decorative woodworking. On the desk was an onyx leather journal. He explored the room further to discover a closet filled with fine, handsome clothing in his size. Most of it was black.
The dresser had boxes of accessories on top and more clothing inside. Again, black was a predominant color. One black hoodie was soft and had a graphic of a pair of fangs and the words “I Bite” written in the shape of teeth between the fangs. Two little illustrated blood drops were dripping from the fangs. It was funny, and a little too on the nose, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to laugh, cry, or ruin everything in the elegant bedroom.
He had just a little more left to explore. Besides the closet door and the living room door, there were two more doors in the bedroom. One led to his own bathroom, fully stocked with high-end products. The shower was big enough for three or four people, and the claw-foot tub was deep and could easily fit two.
The other door led to a small closet with a coffin in it. The black wood gleamed in the low light coming from the bedroom.
Had the one he’d been buried in looked like this? It was sleek and stylish for being something to hold the dead. Slowly, Zack lifted the lid and felt the satin inside it. The touch of it was the same. It had to be a duplicate; he’d ruined the one he’d actually been buried in.
When he closed the lid again, he caught the subtle glimmer of paint near the head. He let his fingertips drift along the smooth wood as he moved to take a closer look.
Vampires had a heraldry system, though not all vampires had a crest. Having one seemed to go in and out of fashion, and only old, arrogant vampires made their own. They had to be given, though some vampires eventually updated theirs as they went, adding little symbols of accomplishments in the image.
The crest on Zack’s coffin was a stylized dagger, tip pointed downward. A snake was wrapped around the hilt and the blade, its head near the hilt with the mouth open wide in a hiss. It had long fangs. Above the dagger was Seamus’s crest, a snake eating its own tail with a crown over its head. It had one red band near its head, marking Zack’s connection to him as a first generation.
Zack had been obsessed with vampire heraldry when he was a preteen. Blades were an uncommon image—the hunter theory was that since vampires had fangs, any sign of weaponry was a weakness—and he wondered what it meant among vampires. Snakes were commonly interpreted as traitors or as very clever vampires. The dagger snake’s tail was just starting to curl up, as if it, too, might eventually grow and twist around and up to form an ouroboros.
The design was beautiful. The whole fucking suite was what he’d dreamed of. What, in your entire existence, have you chosen for yourself ?
I shouldn’t want this , a small voice whispered.
Why not ? Zack lightly touched the edge of his crest. What’s wrong with wanting to be young and immortal and powerful ?
You know , the Cal voice said.
There were footsteps in the living room. Whoever his guest was had shown up.
The Cal voice kept going. Fucking little monster .
Hey, asshole voice in my head? You can suck it . Zack slid his hand down the length of his coffin as he headed back toward the living room. I didn’t take the blood to beat myself up. I took it to live. And I’m going to do that .
He was a vampire. He was going to use these fine gifts Seamus had given him, soak up every bit of knowledge that he could, and then murder the bastard. I am going to be the greatest vampire to ever vampire. So choke on that, Cal voice .