Chapter 14
I COULDN’T LOOK AT HIM, couldn’t bear witness to what I had created. I stayed in my room, bound to sitting on the edge of my bed for hours on end, regret making a prisoner out of me.
“Darling, you must eat,” Nicola had said through the crack of my door.
“I’m never eating again,” I declared, but she only laughed at how ludicrous I was.
“Cassius, if you didn’t do it, he was sure to die. You and I knew this from the start.”
“We made a promise, Mother!” I shouted, back stiffening, head in my hands.
It was too risky to create vampires, a part of our oath.
Create only out of necessity, for a mate, for companionship.
Doing so was a great commitment. Time and energy had to be poured into the newborn, teaching them, assuring they didn’t put our existence in harm’s way.
New vampires were to be carefully selected and should be responsible humans. Something Bastian clearly was not.
Being a solitary creature, I wasn’t meant to be a father. It was something I never wanted. I had done the worst thing a vampire could do. Create a child only to be abandoned, just a mirror of what my own father had done to me.
The pain barreled through me again, and I rose, pacing as if that would get it out of my bones.
Nicola pressed her hands against my chest attempting to soothe me. “We make mistakes, every day we make mistakes.”
“I can’t be a father to a grown man! I won’t!” I shouted, and Nicola’s eyes squinted.
“Would you rather I stake him?” she asked, and I stopped in my tracks, the idea disgusting me.
“Don’t,” I said, and she sighed.
Grabbing my chin, she forced me to meet her gaze, her face hard as steel.
“I made you. Do you hate me so?” she asked, knowing the answer to an absurd question.
“I begged you to turn me. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Look, it will be our secret. We’ll tell every vampire we know I made him. He will be my son. And you will be his brother. Do you understand?”
“We can’t keep a secret like that,” I exhaled, and she only smirked.
“Who are you kidding?” she said with a wink. “We are the creators of secrets. It’s how we survive. Now get your behind to Nightwalkers and feed.”
She kissed my cheek then, willing to carry my burden for me, willing to erase what I had done and make it hers. And I allowed it, I did. That became the night Nicola had not one, but two sons.
It was our secret. I couldn’t be the maker Bastian needed, so Nicola mercifully stepped into the role. Bastian and I would always be linked by blood and hold a special bond, but Nicola would be the mother every newborn vampire needed, deserved. Just how she was that mother to me.
I kept my distance as she taught the new world to Bastian, as she trained him how to feed, as she gave him all the knowledge he needed to survive his new existence.
I stayed away from Comey’s and the speakeasy that month, and if I saw them walking in my direction on the street, I turned the other way.
I worried how Bastian would feel about me, if he hated me, if the vision of me taking his life in the bathroom haunted him as it haunted me.
Until one night, as I sat at my piano playing a slow tune I had been composing, they walked through the door, and I was forced to face what I had done.
My heart spasmed with anger at Nicola. For not warning me, not preparing me for what I anticipated as an ambush, but the moment I met his eyes, the anger faded and was replaced by something else. Something close to wonder.
Bastian made a breathtaking vampire. Green eyes that glowed.
A complexion smooth as marble. Dark hair perfectly mussed.
A chiseled jawline and cheekbones that looked as though they’d been carved by an artist. He wore a navy shirt tucked into slacks, the sleeves rolled up revealing intricate veins now filled with vampire blood.
My brother.
It hurt to look at him, yet I found it impossible to look away.
“Sit down, Bastian,” Nicola commanded, and Bastian listened dutifully. Maybe, just maybe he could be the kind of vampire that listened.
Yet, I scowled at her, my temper once again flared from the unannounced invasion.
“It’s time to set things in order, to come out as the new family we are.
Bastian has been tucked away for too long.
He will be re-introduced as my son to anyone new.
Isn’t that right, baby?” she said turning to Bastian.
“Your name is now Bastian Delacroix,” she said with a gleam, and produced a new ring for him, sliding it up his finger.
My gaze cast to the nearly identical one on my finger that read “CD,” and it seemed to burn upon my skin.
Bastian and I still refused to acknowledge each other surely because my shame was so evident between us. I finally stood from the piano bench, feeling his stare follow me until I sat before him.
“I’m…” I couldn’t finish, couldn’t seem to find words. The last time I saw him, he thought I was just a regular man, one who only emerged at night because that’s what my job required. Now he knew the truth. He knew what I was because he was one too.
Nicola witnessed my struggle. I was never good at apologies. I was stubborn to my core.
“What’s done is done. Bastian understands what he is, has fed very well for a newborn, is learning to curb his temptations.” It was like we were both in the principal’s office, and I was the aggressor.
I looked back and forth between him and Nicola, hesitant to confirm.
“He is your brother, and you are my son. This is more than words, Bastian. You are now a part of this family I started hundreds of years ago. I only had one son in my human life. I am blessed to have two in my vampire life.”
I stared silently, grappling with my regret. What if he didn’t want to be my brother? What if he hated me?
“Why don’t you look at me?” Bastian asked, and my gaze flew to him, I was surprised to be called out in such a way. “Are you ashamed of what you made? Does this change our friendship?”
“He’s not ashamed, Bastian. No. But remember, I made you. I cared for you, and I taught you our ways and will continue to do so.”
“I can speak for myself,” I interjected, my hands clasped tightly.
“Then speak!” she yelled, the fire that appears every so often burning in her eyes.
“You were going to die. I knew it from the moment I got close enough to smell you. You were killing yourself. And that night, on the floor of King’s, all I saw was your eventual death. And I lost control. I am sorry for that. I—”
“Cassius,” he interrupted. “Nicola explained that I was drinking myself to death. And deep down, I knew that. I knew that something would give eventually. I would rather be this than be dead.”
One would think that’s all I needed to hear to free me from the shackles of my remorse. But the guilt would never go away nor the grief that I created something I couldn’t care for. I was never good at letting things go.
“Well, that is good to hear,” I said, sighing heavily. Nicola blinked, shaking her head. She knew I couldn’t forgive myself because she knew the burden I had just put on our family.
As if she read my mind, she said, “We’ll make it work. That’s what we do. There’s still so much for Bastian to learn, and I cannot do it all. He’s made great progress, but you will have to be with him when I cannot.”
“Of course,” I said, and Bastian laughed.
“I’m not a child.”
“You are in vampire terms. Don’t worry. This will be fun.” She winked, and I couldn’t have disagreed more.
It wasn’t fun. Not in the beginning. It was horrendous and dangerous. Bastian was not a vampire who listened, not even close. He remained reckless and careless, but this time he was a treacherous predator, and his mistakes were aplenty.
“Let’s eat out tonight,” he would suggest from his coffin, his charming face serious with hunger. I was forced to share a room with him on the nights Nicola wasn’t around to keep him and the French Quarter population safe.
“You ate out last night and the night before that. You can’t bite people in public. You are on restriction.”
He smiled. “I’m a twenty-six-year-old man.” Did he ever get angry? It infuriated me how cheerful he could always be.
“A newborn is what you are. A child.”
“You’re a boring teacher, a real square, do you know that? We need to have some fun.”
Fun. It was all Bastian seemed to want in those early years of vampirism. I would later watch a severity take over him, and he matured during that time. But in the early years, I felt like I was herding a pack of wild wolves, just trying to keep his hunger and desire for fun under control.
In the beginning, he sought out drunks in the alleyways.
Liquor no longer affected him, but drinking from an inebriated person seemed to scratch that itch for alcohol.
So I let him have some fun, feasting on the plentiful drunks in the city until one night, a run-in with a neighborhood witch put us both in jeopardy, and I knew I would have to put my foot down.