Prologue Sebastian #2
Someone needs to watch over the little shit.
I could have argued. I could have told him that Ruth is beyond redemption, that his loyalty is a chain that will drag him to ruin. But I have known Arescaine for over a thousand years. His mind does not change once it is set.
Han and I left together.
We traveled for a long time. Centuries. We crossed oceans and deserts and mountain ranges that did not exist when we were human.
Han collected languages the way other men collect coins.
He picked them up in weeks and spoke them as if he had been born to every tongue.
I envied that ease in him. Everything is lighter in Han’s hands.
He settled eventually. A small school in a valley where the river forks.
He teaches there now. Languages, mathematics, history.
To his students, Han is merely a young teacher with an easy smile, endless patience and more knowledge than any one man should possess.
None of them know he has lived for more than three thousand years. So have I.
I keep wandering. There is no destination and no purpose. I am not searching for anything. I simply have not found a reason to stop.
Sometimes I wonder where Arescaine is. Whether Ruth has driven him to madness.
Whether he still governs whatever shadow of Morsvyenn remains in the dark corners of the world.
Ruth’s offspring are everywhere now. Numerous and vicious and utterly without the gifts that mark Vlad’s bloodline.
Rumors move through the darker channels that Ruth’s faction is reforming.
They are hunting the remaining descendants of Vlad for dominion over all vampire kind.
Vlad’s line carries abilities that surface unpredictably through the generations. Some of his distant progeny are stronger than vampires five times their age. That makes them targets for Ruth’s offspring.
The last of the tourists are leaving now.
A guard in a fluorescent vest ushers a young couple toward the gate.
Nearby, the woman closes her guidebook and slips it into her bag before rising from the bench.
Beneath the gargoyles, the man takes one final photograph, then walks toward the car park without looking back.
The ruins belong to me again. For a few hours at least, until the morning shift arrives and the ticket booth opens and the humans file through in their lines.
Footsteps sound behind me, heavy, graceless and unmistakably human.
I do not turn around.
“Wallet and phone. Now.”
He must see a lone figure standing in a ruin at dusk and think easy prey. I almost admire the confidence. The knife he holds is a crude thing and it would not pierce my skin even if he drove it with both hands. I consider telling him to leave.
I do not get the chance.
Something drops from above and takes the man so fast that his shout dies in his throat. One moment he is standing behind me with his knife out. The next he is gone. A blur of motion carries him upward over the broken parapet toward the gargoyles that still line the upper terrace of the palace.
I follow.
The rooftop is open to the sky. Three gargoyles remain of the original twelve, crouched at the edge like sentinels keeping watch over a kingdom that no longer exists.
A young vampire crouches among them with the mugger pinned beneath him.
His teeth are buried in the man’s neck, one hand holding him firmly in place while he drinks.
No theatrics. He is simply hungry.
I stand at the edge of the terrace and wait. The city below is settling into night. A thousand years ago this view showed a kingdom alive with torchlight and voices. Now it shows streetlamps and rooftops and the distant hum of a world that has forgotten us entirely.
The young vampire finishes. He lets the body settle against the stone and wipes his mouth with the back of his hand. When he looks up and sees me, something passes across his face. Recognition, not of who I am, but of what.
“Oh.” He straightens and clears his throat. “Sorry. Was that your meal?”
“He’s all yours,” I tell him. “I have no interest in feeding.”
The young vampire stares at me. A vampire who allows himself to pass for an easy meal is apparently worth studying.
“Right.” He wipes his mouth a second time and gets to his feet. “I’m Arthur.”
“Sebastian,” I reply with a slight nod.
“There’s a village south of here.” He gestures vaguely in that direction. “I know the people there. I’d appreciate it if you left them alone.”
“I told you. I do not wish to feed.” I glance at the body beside him. “Your villagers are safe from me.”
He studies me quietly and I let him look. After a moment something in his posture loosens and he nods, accepting it.
“Unless they’re the criminal sort,” he adds. “Like this one. The village can spare a few of those.”
A faint smile crosses my face before I can stop it.
He sorts humans into columns of deserving and undeserving.
As if the universe maintains a careful ledger.
Vlad used to do exactly the same thing, standing in the middle of some conquered hall delivering his verdicts with that same expression of absolute moral confidence.
Arthur is one of his. The blood is diluted through many generations of sires but the inheritance sits unmistakably in his bearing, in the politeness and even the way he stands.
I turn from the gargoyles and walk toward the staircase. Arthur hesitates a moment and follows.
“You shouldn’t be out in the open like this when you haven’t fed,” he says.
“I have it well in hand,” I assure him. “You do not need to rescue me from any more muggers.”
He is quiet for a few steps. We descend through the broken corridor where the ceiling has long since given way and the last of the evening light stretches across the cracked stone floor.
I step over the velvet rope carefully. Arthur steps over it too, then glances back at it with a small expression of guilt.
“It’s not humans you need to worry about,” he says.
I stop walking.
“The Duskborn Covenant has been building for decades.” Arthur’s earlier ease vanishes, leaving him tense and watchful. “They’re killing every Nightwalker they can find.”
Ruth’s faction.
“I will be all right,” I tell him.
He looks at me carefully.
“You’re not one of them,” he says slowly, studying me again. “But you’re not one of us either.”
He takes a small step back. “What are you?”
Arthur is perceptive and possibly gifted. Whatever remains of Vlad in his blood has found the right places to settle.
“I am not one of Ruthven’s vampires,” I say, meeting his gaze without moving toward him. “You have nothing to fear from me.”
The tension releases from his shoulders.
Arthur nods once and falls into step beside me as I continue through the palace.
We pass through chambers I have not entered in centuries.
The banquet hall lies open to the night, its collapsed ceiling exposing a floor overrun with weeds.
Beyond it, the old armory stands empty after generations of looters stripped its racks.
We eventually reach the corridor that once led to the lower wards, where I treated the sick, the wounded and anyone else who found their way to my door.
“Do you believe it was real?” Arthur asks. He gestures at the walls around us, the carved stone and the faded remnants of something that was once considerable. “An actual vampire empire. Right here.”
A private smile touches my mouth. “Some stories contain more truth than humans realize.”
“Humans erased us from their records,” he continues, running one hand along a crumbling pillar as he walks. “Turned this into a tourist attraction. Ropes and plaques and a gift shop.”
“They charge too much for the snow globes,” I say.
Arthur smiles, but the expression fades almost as quickly as it appears. “There are rumors,” he says, his voice dropping again. “That the Duskborns are attempting to go beyond the veil now, taking elves and fae to feed upon.”
He pauses, as though deciding whether to commit to the next part. “If such a place even exists.”
Oh, it exists.
Balthazar once showed me one of the passages. A giant ash tree stood at its entrance, its roots forming a tunnel into the land beyond the veil. A world belonging to the fair folk.
I have never crossed into their realm, though I have encountered some of its warriors and assassins in the human world. They hunt the creatures that prey upon mortals and drive beings like us away from regions under their protection.
For centuries, the veil prevented vampires from retaliating.
Ruth once tested the passage by forcing one of his offspring through the hollow beneath the ash tree.
The vampire burned the moment he crossed, consumed as though he had stepped into sunlight.
Others who tried were absorbed into the tree itself, their bodies dragged beneath its bark before they could retreat.
“They believe the blood of fae and elves makes vampires stronger,” Arthur says. “One captive can sustain them far longer than any human.”
I keep my expression still. The thought of elves and fae being dragged from their lands into a vampire war is not a comfortable one. I know what lies beyond the veil. I know what it would cost those people.
That blood also allows Ruth’s offspring to compete with Vlad’s gifted descendants.
The abilities carried through Vlad’s line have strengthened with every generation.
Some can manipulate minds or move through shadows.
Ruth’s faction is frightened. Their slaughter is not only a campaign for dominion.
It is an attempt to destroy Vlad’s line before it produces something they can no longer defeat.
“They are becoming bolder,” Arthur continues. “A few years ago, they hunted only isolated Nightwalkers. Now they attack entire households and covens.”
Arthur is still talking when I see her.
A straggler near the gate, the last tourist making her unhurried way out through the arch. Red hair.
I move toward her.
Gwyn.