Chapter 37
CHAPTER 37
“Family mealtime” was what Anton called the ritual he initiated the night after Katie moved into the mansion. He insisted that the five of them should have their “breakfast” together every night, no matter what. Often, Seamus excused himself after a brief appearance, but they were together each night for a short time.
They would gather in what Anton had dubbed the “dining room.” Instead of the usual setup, it was an irregular living room with couches and chairs. The high-end couches were covered in plastic, and the floor had a wall-to-wall plastic layer. Though there were a couple of normal chairs, there were a half dozen chairs that Zack had only seen in his family literature about “twisted” vampire practices. They were designed to restrain a victim while leaving plenty of the mortal’s arms, torso, and legs accessible. No way would it be comfortable; the person trapped in it would have to feel incredibly vulnerable.
On the first evening, Anton had clapped his hands to begin the meal. Servants had brought out the first “course” of humans, and he had declared that it was time to teach the “babies” how to eat.
Over the next two weeks, mealtime became lessons in how to use vampiric abilities to “season” a mortal’s blood, how to drain victims, and practice on personal restraint from killing a mortal. Anton, Seamus, and Takashi had different tips and techniques, often related to the same concept but different in their execution.
“Breakfast” wasn’t the worst of Anton’s ideas. He and Seamus seemed to have no idea that Zack and Takashi had explored the basement. If Phyrull had made a visit in Zack’s dreams, he didn’t remember it.
Zack bit the mortal bound to the chair in the tender part of his upper arm. The wound bled slowly, which let him savor the coppery taste before swallowing. Flickers pressed against Zack’s consciousness, and he threaded together letters of longing, trying to keep them on the mortal’s mind. His prey relaxed, and he moaned as he drew another deep drink in.
Blood just tasted so freaking good.
“Zack’s going to kill again,” Katie said in the singsong voice she had a habit of using whenever she thought she was doing better than him. Her pleated black plaid skirt, black knee-high socks, and red dress shirt made for a very vampire-meets-private-schoolgirl look. He wasn’t sure if she’d chosen the attire herself or if Anton had stocked her wardrobe full of things just like this. She’d been wearing similar attire ever since she’d risen from her grave.
“I am not.” Zack pulled back from feeding. But as soon as he did, he realized she was right. The mortal’s heartbeat was too weak. “Shit.”
“Zackery,” Seamus chided. He was sitting in the high-backed chair that Anton had labeled the head of the table, though there was no table in the room. “Language.”
“Sorry,” Zack said reflexively.
Seamus made a noise of acceptance, then bit his victim again. The fact that he killed most of his prey wasn’t seen as a fault of control. But when he was drinking like this, Zack could taste the dry burn of his hunger through their bond. Was he in control of his need to feed? Or was he faking it?
Anton and Takashi murmured to each other while they went over their planning materials for the upcoming party. According to the invitations, Katie was being presented as Anton’s sireling. Anton had included Takashi in the preparations, especially when Seamus brushed him off as too busy to do menial work.
Zack was glad his opinion wasn’t needed. Party planning was awful. However, his gut twisted when Anton and Takashi sat too close to each other. He wasn’t fond of the wrenching in his stomach or the way Takashi relaxed around Anton. They had to act like they hadn’t learned about Anton’s experiments, but that didn’t mean cozying up so close to Anton, did it? I don’t like how Anton looks at him .
“Do you need to finish mine, too?” Katie motioned at the human in front of her. She must have perfected being a mean girl in life because she was too damn good at it.
“I’m fine, thanks,” Zack drawled.
“Are you sure? I wouldn’t want you to go hungry.” Katie picked up the bloody wrist of her human and waved it at him.
Honing his senses to pick up the heartbeat of her mortal, Zack listened to the waning rhythm. He leaned forward. “Looks like I’m not the only one who overdid it.”
“What?” Katie lifted the head of her human. The mortal wasn’t opening her eyes. “Shi—oot.”
Anton rubbed his brow. “Perhaps we shouldn’t accept any pet in their debuts.”
“But you promised, Papa!” Katie whined.
“If you’re able to go three nights in a row without killing. You’ve only gone one, and Zack hasn’t been able to manage that,” Anton said. “I don’t want you to offend our guests by immediately killing their gifts. We’re still a week out. No one’s arrived. We can easily tell everyone that it’s too soon for pets.”
“We’re not even sure anyone’s planning on presenting you with any,” Takashi added. “You might be getting your hopes up for nothing.”
“But Papa said he’d get me someone if that happened,” Katie said.
“I will find you a pet when the time is right. Not a moment before,” Anton declared.
Katie pouted.
“I think waiting’s a great idea,” Zack said smugly.
“Way to be a jerk,” Katie replied.
Zack shrugged one shoulder.
She stuck her tongue out at him.
“Children, if you’re finished, go elsewhere so I can eat in peace,” Seamus growled.
“Yes, master,” Zack and Katie said in unison.
On the nights when Zack didn’t wind up going with Seamus on his errands, he would spend as much time as he could in the occult library. Katie joined him whenever Anton was too busy for her magic lessons. They headed down the long hall together.
Katie got a mischievous look in her eye. “Bet I’ll get there first.”
Then she took off at vamp superspeed.
Zack ran after her. The first time they’d had a race, he outdid her by a margin big enough that she accused him of using secret passages to get there. He was just outright faster than her, so he’d started challenging himself to arrive a fraction ahead of her during their impromptu races.
Because Katie had made one thing abundantly clear.
Zack wasn’t normal . Takashi had told him so his first night upon rising, but Katie had a level of control that Zack still lacked. Her eyes often faded back to their mortal color. She didn’t always kill her prey. She wasn’t overwhelming anyone with her ability to read them.
It wasn’t like she was a weak spawn either. Both Seamus and Anton seemed impressed with her bursts of speed, her casual strength, and, of course, her magic. Her arcane power was the only thing that set her apart from a typical fledgling of a powerful vampire, though.
New generation. The words became stuck in Zack’s mind anytime a difference between them came up. What was that supposed to mean?
Hopefully, a hint was in the library somewhere.
Zack reached the library doors just before Katie, zipped in, and opened the left one wide. She had a habit of zooming too fast to stop herself from hitting it.
“Shoot! Not fair!” Katie declared as she came to a halt.
“How is it not fair?” Zack asked.
“I had a head start. I know your sire’s a gajillion years older than mine, but come on!”
“You’ve got to stop saying shit like that, or you’re going to slip up in public next week,” Zack told her.
Katie rolled her eyes. “And you have to stop saying ‘shit.’”
Fuck, I miss Amber . Zack waited for Seamus to make a remark. Nothing came.
They’d set up working at the two tables in the middle of the library a few nights back. Hers was strewn with books while he kept his work in orderly stacks. The books deserved respect. Some went back to the Middle Ages, and Zack suspected a few might be older than that.
“I didn’t find Richmond’s Guide very illuminating,” Katie said as she neared her seat. Growing up in schools run by the Enduring Circle of Chicago Mages, she had the benefits of a magic-based education. Where Zack’s focus had been monsters and how to kill, her studies had focused on how to craft spells and brew potions alongside the typical mundane studies for private schools of wealthy elitists.
Hunters tended to drop out of high school—Zack had graduated, but Cal had dropped out at sixteen—but mages went on to prestigious colleges, some going so far as to get doctorates. From what Zack understood, getting a degree in advanced magical theory was usually attributed to either physics, chemistry, or philosophy, depending on the student’s area of focus in order to keep mundanes from asking too many questions.
Which meant Katie was pretty great at doing the math for how much salt was needed for a binding circle of whatever size, but she didn’t have specialized knowledge of how shifters worked. She’d been curious, so Zack had suggested his default since she hadn’t read it.
“Shifters are as different as vampires are.” Zack flipped open the notebook where he was compiling his dragon research. “What were you hoping to learn?”
“I don’t know. Something new.” Katie sat in her seat with a humph. “I didn’t think being a vampire was going to be boring.”
Zack waved his arms around at the massive number of books around them. “I’m sure you don’t know everything in the library.”
She sighed as she dragged the nearest book closer and opened it. “But some of us don’t get off on reading musty old pages.”
“I don’t?—”
“Just an expression, Zack. Lighten up.” She disregarded him to stare at the page in front of her.
He settled into his own stack of books. Treating the books with care meant not reading things at incredible vamp speed. If he relied on that power, he had a habit of accidentally moving a page with too much strength. He’d ripped more than one page. Whoever was keeping the collection had laid some basic enchantments, and the books had repaired themselves, but he didn’t want to tear up books and hope that’d keep happening. Plus, if he overdid his vamp ability, he wound up extra hungry.
However, he didn’t take long to work through his current stack of dragon lore. Most of the books kept repeating the same information. The dragons had left the world after making enemies of just about everyone on the planet and spent their time in the fey realms. Mages had a tendency to blame the lack of magical prowess in the world as a fault of the dragons’ departure. In their theory, dragons were literal magic made flesh. A shifter philosopher was pretty sure that the Age of Reason had dampened abilities, positing that the increasing population of humans who began to reject the supernatural as part of their reality was creating a psychic field that suppressed all magic.
The theories were great, and he was thinking of starting up a paper, only he wasn’t sure where he’d try to get it published or if Seamus would even let him. One, he’d probably love it if I built a reputation as a scholar. And two, why the fuck should I let him stop me ?
Once again, no Seamus remark.
He took the stack of dragon books and put them back in their original locations the best he could. Then he went into the section he’d discovered the night before.
Turned out that the library did have books on vampires.
Using his mind’s eye, he moved through fighting maneuvers. Seamus probably hadn’t lied when he said he didn’t constantly watch Zack’s mind, but Takashi had said that building a mental shield of other thoughts would be good practice. Keeping up the buffer also helped Zack remember his training.
Unfortunately, the book he’d been reading didn’t have any answers. He reached for the next, discovered it was in French, and went for the one after that. Flipping open to the title page revealed a stark, serious font that declared, A Translation and Continued Examination of the Theories Proposed by Beatrice the Profane Sorcerer by Edmund Weldrick .
The text was overdramatic, and the author was clearly trying to show off his language skills and vocabulary. Apparently, Beatrice the Profane Sorcerer believed vampires inherently had a connection to the Shadow Realms. Weldrick was adding on that the fey realms were tied to the shadows, which was what made all vampires abominations.
The book was theory without evidence, but Beatrice hypothesized that all vampires should be capable of moving within shadows along with a myriad of other powers. She agreed that the mundane world’s attempts to quash magic were working and that even supernatural species were not immune to having their magical abilities clipped. Weldrick claimed that was utterly preposterous—and from there, he began to argue with everything Beatrice had to say.
True power will not return to the world until true dragons return , Beatrice claimed. Weldrick took affront to that and spent three pages describing how his grandfather Ross Weldrick had performed some of the greatest feats of magic in written history.
The flaw in that point was that there was no way Edmund could consult all of written history, and he didn’t address the idea that such things could have been written and then lost or that powerful magic could have happened outside of written history. The Wrights and the Gladwells had lost many homes in their fights with supernaturals. Valuable tomes and even personal journals were destroyed nearly every time. That was information about magic lost, and Edmund probably hadn’t considered his hunter contemporaries as a source of knowledge. He seemed to put all his respect into mages, and he was making disdainful remarks about warlocks.
“Forgive my intrusion, Master Zackery,” Grimsby said smoothly. He was only a few inches away.
Zack jumped. Somehow, he’d missed Grimsby walking up to him. He scowled upward into Grimsby’s thin, bony face. The guy had a habit of popping up. In fact, Grimsby had likely snuck up to him just to test his senses.
“Ah, hello, Grimsby,” Zack said, doing his best impression of a chill, powerful vampire. Giving an attitude of no fucks to give took practice, and Zack was pretty sure Grimsby was holding in a laugh. But that might not have been about him. He had that kind of smile a lot.
“Master Anton has requested that I see to your needs this evening, should you have any,” Grimsby replied.
“Then I’ll call for you if I need anything,” Zack replied.
Grimsby clasped his hands behind his back and then admired a nearby shelf.
“Odd that you’re hanging around.” Zack slowly shut his book. Hopefully, Grimsby didn’t know which book he’d been reading. Would he report it to Seamus if he had seen? Zack still wasn’t sure where Grimsby’s loyalties lay. “I wonder what might make you linger.”
“You have discovered an interesting section of the library. One might conclude that you’re investigating your own kind, which would be strange considering your upbringing and nature,” Grimsby said.
So they were playing the skirt-any-questions dialogue game again. Zack leaned against the bookshelf behind him. Faeries were living creatures, so Grimsby had a heartbeat. It was slower than the average human’s and subtler. He couldn’t be certain if all of them hid their emotions as well as Grimsby could or if Grimsby was skilled at protecting his feelings from prying minds.
Either way, he had no cheat code for figuring out what Grimsby was up to.
“You could conclude that my education was poorer than people believe,” Zack said. “Or that I’m eager to have access to books I’ve only heard referenced.”
“I could.” Grimsby trailed his finger along one dust-free shelf and discovered no evidence that housekeeping had skipped a spot and then grinned at Zack. “I think I would be wrong to assume those answers.”
“Yet you’re free to do so.”
“You’re better at concealing your interest, young master,” Grimsby said.
“I couldn’t possibly know what you mean,” Zack said, lifting his chin.
The toothy smile Grimsby gave him told Zack he hadn’t thrown him off any. Grimsby drew a book off the shelf. It had a deep blue cover, and he nonchalantly opened the book and drifted his fingers down a page. “Mortals have such limitations in their histories. Their short lifespans make the passing of information from one generation to the next so very vital. If no one repeats an event, it becomes utterly lost within a few years. I believe that to be quite tragic.”
“Admittedly, I am sort of looking forward to being a repository for knowledge,” Zack said.
Grimsby’s smile took on a wistful, sad twist. “Ah, but even your kind may not last forever. You are not impervious to death, only extremely resistant.”
Zack tried not to think about Anton’s torture room. Denny was still down there. What if Anton managed to make him invulnerable? Why the fuck am I getting jealous he might gain more power than me instead of upset that my cousin’s suffering ? “The same could be said of the fey, Grimsby.”
“A keen observation, young master. However, also like yours, pieces may yet remain.” Grimsby closed the book and held it out to Zack. “You may find this account enlightening, should you be able to read it.”
Slowly, Zack took the book from him. Like the one in his lap, it had no title on the outside. He turned the page to the front. The Fal of the Undede-Kynge by Thei Who Loved Him . The words were printed in a stark font. There was a quick note that the text had been copied and printed to the best of the publisher’s ability with a lament that the beautiful illuminations hadn’t been able to be transfered. Then the book launched into a poem that looked like English but had misspellings and confusing words.
Because it’s not Modern English. It’s Middle English . Zack raised his gaze from the book. He was formulating his next not-question question, but Grimsby was gone.
Okay. For some reason, this book might hold something of value. He scooped up the Edmund Weldrick book. Part of him screamed to hide the book. He started to follow the impulse and then caught himself. His mother had been the one to insist that books about vampires, particularly fictions, were a corrupting influence.
But he was already undead. She’d already disowned him.
So what’s the point in trying to hide it? Zack pulled the Weldrick book back from the shelf, slipped it into the same hand as The Fal of the Undede-Kynge , and perused the shelves for a couple more reads. Takashi might be curious about these, too. The idea that one of his partners might love reading as much as him buoyed his spirits, and he indulged the greatest of whims: book shopping.