27. Vex #2
“Lazarus,” Soren says his name with meaning, with a thread of purpose he isn’t saying out loud. I’m thankful for it, mostly. “Explain to him where we are going.”
“We don’t have time to teach you how to get permission from a human. We are past that.” Lazarus sounds almost apologetic.
“You wouldn’t be able to hunt even if you wanted to right now,” Soren mutters.
“Why wait so long?” I roll my head to glare at the backs of theirs.
“Control,” Lazarus says like it explains the world. It doesn’t. “To enchant a human to gift you their blood requires patience, control, and empathy.”
I chuckle. “Cute.”
Lazarus spins in his seat to glare at me. “You cannot drink the blood of the unwilling, it will kill you.”
“Lead with that.”
“I’m trying,” Lazarus grumbles. “There’s a bar.”
“A blood bar?” I joke. Because I can’t think straight. “So I’m like this, starving for blood, because you are lazy.”
“I’m not—”
“Kind of is,” Soren cuts in. “You aren’t a great sire, that’s all. Not everybody is good at everything.”
“Soren, don’t fucking start.”
“I’m starting.” Soren defends. “He’s right. You should have shown him sooner when you knew he was stronger than me.” He says it like it’s a fact, but I know what that cost Soren to say. I can hear the pain in his voice.
“He isn’t—”
“He is, don’t sugarcoat it. Teach him what he needs to know now,” Soren states with a lilt to his voice. “Here.”
I peer through the window seeing South Street and a parking lot that I’m pretty sure is more alleyway than lot.
“We will talk about this later.” Lazarus climbs out.
“Don’t let him put it off too long.” Soren unbuckles and turns to me. “Putting off important shit is how things go sideways.”
“Noted.” I fall out the door when Lazarus opens it.
Lifting me the three of us stumble toward a steel door, where he raps a few times. A slide opens and ethereal eyes peer out, vampire eyes. Eyes that glow slightly like a cat when light hits it.
Soren on one side, Lazarus on the other, the door creaks open like some horror movie bullshit and we stumble inside.
The dark lightens when my eyes adjust. It’s quiet as we head down the hallway and though I want to look back something inside of me says don’t.
So I keep them forward as we descend steps to another door.
Again he raps three times, again a slide opens and eyes peer out. Again the door opens and again we step through. This time into a…
“What the fuck are these called?” It’s on the tip of my tongue.
“I believe speakeasy is the word you’re looking for.” Soren walks off toward the bar.
“Let’s sit.” Lazarus pulls me to a table, high-top.
It’s just a long stretch of a room. The bar takes up the entire opposing end. A door on either side. And small high-top tables lining either side. There’s maybe a few people here and there.
“Soren will get us a donor.” Lazarus settles me onto the chair.
“That’s so fucked up.” I tap my head against the brick wall. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?” He sits across from me.
“Anything.”
Lazarus sighs looking at the bar where Soren leans laughing with the bartender. That’s when I notice the decanters upon decanters of red liquid.
“I—” I can tell he doesn’t know where to start, maybe he doesn’t even know how.
“I saw, I saw when you first looked at me.” I’m staring right at him, while he looks anywhere but at me. “Like you saw a ghost and Sophia, she said you were seeing a ghost.”
“Vex.” He closes his eyes wanting to be anywhere else but right here with me, right now. But I’m not about to let him get away with this.
“I’m not him, Lazarus.” That gets his attention.
“Did Sophia say that?”
That is not at all what she said but I need him to understand.
“I’m not Leviathan,” I reiterate. “You can’t look at me like I’m him. You can’t treat me like I’m him.” I pause realizing it now. “That’s why.”
“Why what?”
“Why you’re slacking.” Anger builds inside me.
“Why you locked me up instead of teaching me the ways of the vampire. Why you didn’t take me out to hunt.
To teach. I should have fucking known I can’t drink from the unwilling.
I should have known it would kill me, but you didn’t teach me because you thought, you thought I’d remember. ”
I want to stab him but then I’d be stabbing myself.
“Vex.” He closes his eyes probably counting to ten. “Yes.”
The fight goes right out of me.
“You don’t get to steal my fight.” I want to fight him.
“I hoped you were Levi. I hoped that one day you’d just remember everything. I’d hoped that I wouldn’t have to teach you because if I have to teach you then that means,” he looks away again then back. “That you aren’t Levi.”
“I’m not Levi,” I repeat. And I’ll keep repeating it until he gets it through his thick fucking skull. “My parents are Elsbeth and George Callahan. I have four sisters. Valentina, Pearl, Dot and Ophie. Not three brothers.”
“I know,” he whispers. “I know.” He finally looks at me.
“You lost Dot. You can’t sit there and tell me that a part of you doesn’t hope that one day she will walk through those doors and there she is.
That’s what it felt like for me. Soren and I were leaving for the day and there you were, throat ripped out by Otto, dying on a garage floor and you looked just like him.
Just like him. I didn’t know how to act, how to react because all I saw was my little brother dying on me all over again.
I don’t care that you look like him anymore, I care that I got to save you.
You. Not Levi. I know I couldn’t save him, but I fucking saved you. ”
He stands up and walks away leaving me alone at the table. Exhausted and thirsty. While he chatters with Soren at the bar. Getting drinks that look like Bloody Marys and probably are.
Literal blood from a girl named Mary.
And I don’t know what to do with his hurt, his pain, his suffering.
He did save me.
But I need him to see me as Vex Callahan. Not Leviathan Dagon.
I need to not live in the shadow of a vampire I never met.
That’s when a little door to my right opens and an arm fucking comes through. An arm.
Unfortunately for me. I pick up the wrist, run my thumb across the vein.
“Blood to blood, vein to vein, what flows freely from you, I take, I claim.” I whisper the words before I sink my fangs into the wrist.
Words I know by heart. Words swimming in my head.
Words I’ve never uttered before. Except I have.