2. Lord Tristan Sinclair of Glenhaven Castle
Chapter two
Lord Tristan Sinclair of Glenhaven Castle
Understand this.
I think about blood every single second of my existence.
It's no longer a craving in the ordinary sense of the word. Ordinary cravings in humans ebb with time, diminish with distraction, or eventually surrender to reason. They come and go.
This is nothing like that. Blood is simply … everything.
The need is always there, like memory, like breathing once was.
It's somewhere beneath every conversation, every piece of music, every civilized ritual I have built around myself. Bloodlust sits inside me, a living thing.
I notice every scent of blood carried on the evening air. The memory of warmth. The impossible sweetness of living blood passing through human veins. The sound of a heart beating, fluttering, or pounding.
It never leaves me.
Not for an hour.
Not for a minute.
Not after six centuries. Especially not after six centuries.
When I first awoke to immortality, I discovered that hunger was not merely an appetite. It was identity. It stripped away reason and everything human in me. It stripped away courtesy and mercy.
I had been raised to become Laird of Glenhaven Castle. My father taught me that a gentleman's first duty was restraint. My mother taught me kindness, honor, and patience.
Then my Maker gave me immortality … and blood washed all those lessons away.
For almost a century I became something I scarcely recognize even now. I ran away from Glenhaven and traveled with my Maker. The Highlands whispered of our kind. Parents warned their children not to wander after sunset. Entire villages disappeared as we ravaged the countryside.
I eventually learned the truth. My Maker had an affliction. Among our kind, there are rare bloodlines burdened with hunger beyond the ordinary curse of vampirism. I must feed on human blood every five days, or the monster in me awakens.
Left unfed for more than five days, the hunger in me ceases to distinguish between innocence and guilt. Friend and stranger. Love and prey. It simply consumes me, and I become something else. Jekyll and Hyde. A monster.
I abandoned my Maker. I was disgusted with him and what I had become, what he passed on to me. I returned home, a century after I left.
I learned to fight it and manage it. For centuries now, I developed discipline and routine. Routine in my home of Glenhaven Castle. The home I was born in, a human and the laird-to-be. The home I returned to a hundred years after I left it.
Every civilized ritual here became a stone laid against the monster inside. Tea. Books. Music. Gardens. Cooking, though I don't eat. Vampire politics. Letters answered by hand. Stargazing. A fire lit every evening whether I needed its warmth or not.
None of these things mattered to the beast. They mattered to the man, to whatever exists in my soul.
Each small act reminded me who I had once been before blood demanded everything.
Civilization is not decoration. It is armor.
And so, Glenhaven Castle became my sanctuary. It remembers the man even when I fear only the monster will remain.
The MacLeods understood long before I did. Their family has served this house for generations beyond counting. They are caretakers. Stewards. Secret keepers. They provide me with fresh blood.
They know my schedule better than I do, and they know the rule: I must be fed fresh blood on time and never let five days lapse.
The MacLeod brothers, both in their twenties, are the current donors. Liam cares for the gardens, and Justin cares for the horses.
Their mother runs the house, and she knows the signs should I wait too long. They know which doors must be locked. Which windows barred. Which tower has never again been opened since the winter of 1712.
They have never once failed me. They are part of life here for me, one of discipline, routine, and control. And secrets.
This is my immortality. I have settled into it.
And yet, there is another responsibility that comes with Glenhaven.
One I have never spoken of beyond the Keepers and those few solicitors entrusted with preserving the Accord.
The castle has never merely been a home. It has always been a vault. Beneath the oldest stones, below even the original foundations, lies the Chamber of Accord.
I negotiated the end of the Vampire Wars. I wrote the Accord. Every one of the nine Scottish vampire Houses signed it. And they placed two things within the Chamber five and a half centuries ago. Their blood and their truth. Their blood sealed the peace, and the truth preserved it.
Each House recorded its greatest crime during the Vampire Wars.
Every betrayal, every massacre, every unspeakable act before civilization prevailed.
These journals were not meant to punish but to remind.
If any broke the Accord, the information would be released.
If any tried to claim moral superiority over another, the truth would be released.
It's why the Chamber has remained sealed.
There is a rule. If the Chamber is ever violated … the Accord dies with it. Because every House swore that peace would exist only while those confessions remained untouched.
There are secrets beneath Glenhaven capable of destroying every great House.
And Glenhaven has guarded this, solidly, for 550 years. I guard it. It is an honor and a burden.
Sometimes I think that burden has weighed upon me far longer than the curse of blood ever has.
I believed I understood that responsibility completely. I was wrong, though I would not learn how wrong until an American woman somehow purchased Glenhaven through an online auction.