"I, Vampyre" - Chapter Twenty

CHAPTER TWENTY: Revelations

 

            ‘V’… Vo-something… Vorenus.  Of course it was him, why couldn’t I have remembered it sooner!?  That name, spoken aloud by Katya, was like a finger pulled from a leak in a dam… a flood of old memories flowed forth…

 

Philadelphia, 1774…

 

. . .

 

            Llewellyn turned around, and again her wet tongue slid across her white teeth in a way that I found infinitely interesting.  “Which brings us back to that favor… I need a ‘date,’ to a ball that these delightful American colonists are throwing next week.”

            I rolled my eyes.  “Delightful, eh? Some might call them traitors to the Crown.  And I thought you needed help killing another vamp…”

            “I do… a Scion…” she whispered conspiratorially, “one that was hired by the British Parliament to assassinate the delegates to the Continental Congress…”

 

. . .

 

My tentative smile vanished when I eyeballed a thin, sharply-dressed man, leaning against the edge of the fireplace on the far side of the hall.  “I think I see him,” I said in an urgent hush to Lew, spinning her around as we continued to dance.

            She smiled happily, pretending she didn’t hear me �" but she snuck a long look over my shoulder.  Sure enough, she too spied the other vamp… hat pulled low on his head, shifting shadows partially obscuring the sharp-edged features of his face.  But his inhuman, pitch-black eyes were unmistakable… intently watching our every move.

            “What’s he doing?” I wondered aloud.

            “Watching us…” Llewellyn replied, her voice hard.  “And… wondering…”

            “Wondering what…?”

            “Wondering how to kill us, without compromising HIS mission…”

“Oh…” I muttered, dumbly.  I pulled Lew a little closer to me, suddenly filled with an intense, cosmically ironic urge to protect her.

Llewellyn held on to me tightly, and I became vaguely aware that we were beginning to disrupt the sweeping ebb and flow of the other dancers.  I started to lead her off the floor, throwing one more clandestine glance over my shoulder… but our mysterious antagonist had disappeared, for now.

            Lew’s fingers drifted down to the small of my back; her hand jerked away when she brushed against the slight bulge of the hidden ‘Bane, as if burned by something hot.  She grabbed a goblet from the tray of a passing servant, surreptitiously poured the wine into the soil of a nearby planter, and then pretended to drink.

            “Why didn’t you kill me?” she asked… not exactly flirty small-talk, that.

            I was gobsmacked for a spell…  “I… I don’t think… now’s not the time to…” I stammered.

            “Now’s the perfect time,” Llewellyn insisted, taking another fake-drink.  “I know that Scion… his name is Vorenus, and he’s a very strong Elder Vampire, a clan-leader. The chances of us leaving this building alive are… well, not great.  So, answer my question!”

I gulped softly, my mind racing.  Scions… Candidates for the empty ‘seat’ on the Shadow Council… Elders, all of them… ambitious, powerful… and very dangerous.

 

. . .

 

With one last, dawdling drink, Llewellyn pulled away from my torn throat.  She gave new meaning to the phrase ‘sealed with a kiss,’ fondly pressing her ruddy, glistening lips to the twin holes… they partially healed, just enough to stem the steady flow of blood.  She pressed her pale, now-pinkish cheek to mine, her skin lukewarm.

            “I think I drank a little too much, my sweet,” she whispered in my ear, “but your strength will return, quickly enough.  And remember… he doesn’t know what you are…”

            “He?” I repeated, dizzily, the blood-loss a natural high.  “Who…?”

            But then I recollected… the assassin, Vorenus… and, feeling a slight onrush of displaced air, I sensed that we were not alone anymore…

            “Oh, Lady Llewellyn, my dear…” came a male voice, a clipped baritone.  “Your blood-slave, I think you might’ve broken him…”

 

. . .

 

Lew took a bold step forward, licking her lips.  “I’m not going to let you murder these colonists…!”

            She was taken aback as Vorenus let loose a short but intense belly-laugh.  “I have no intention of doing so, you beautiful creature. It’s a sad commentary on the state of the British Empire that they were willing to pay a vampire to do their dirty work for them…

            “But… it’s given me an idea…” he continued, dark eyes staring at her flatly, like twin singularities.  “What if other Kindred were to pay me… in blood, of course… for arranging bounties?  A vampire hit-list, if you will.  The Edict was clear… the Vampire War is begun, the necessary winnowing of our kind is well underway.”  He thoughtfully scratched his pointed goatee.  “I rather think the Shadow Council would heartily endorse such a thing, don’t you?”

 

. . .

 

            “NOW, NEVIK!!” Llewellyn implored, but I was already throwing off my coat, the Kindred’s Bane uncoiling as I whipped it with all of my diminished strength.  The glorious vampire-slaying weapon wrapped partially around Vorenus, cutting deeply into his side and belly… a small waterfall of blood gushed forth, spilling to the floor, staining the wood a dark crimson.

             Llewellyn charged at Vorenus, icy-hot licks of shadowfire dancing on her stiletto-like fingertips.  Clutching his side, he rounded on her, and there was a dizzying blur of motion… then, in the next heartbeat, the mortally-wounded vampire was diving through the window, which exploded outward in a storm of brick, glass, and splintered wood. Just like that, he was gone…

            I caught Lew as she stumbled, falling into my arms.  A shaky smile was on her face as she looked up at me, her face suddenly turned ghost-white.  “We… we did it…” she whispered, and I nodded enthusiastically in response…

But my feeling of elation was short-lived, as I felt a spreading wetness across my chest.  I looked down, and I saw blood… so much blood.  I dropped to my knees as Llewellyn sagged heavily against me, her head lolling, green eyes rolling back… her lovely dress is in tatters, and her torso has been… sliced, dozens of times… cut nearly to pieces…

 

* * *

 

            “WHERE IS HE!?!” Bellissima demanded, and her frantic scream finally stemmed the tide of my recollections.  Belli held her precious dagger in a literal death-grip.  “Where is that duplicitous b*****d Vorenus now!?”

            I helped Adrianos to his feet, and I recognized the look in his eyes… I could almost see the reflection of a scrap of vampire-hide with a small ‘V’ tattooed behind the ear.  He wanted the same thing I did, the same thing Bellissima did, in spades.  Vorenus hadn’t killed my dear Llewellyn �" Reybeart had done that �" but I still wanted payback for what he did to her.  Indeed, we all wanted the same thing.  We wanted revenge.

            “He is in Japan, we think,” Katya said, answering Bellissima’s query.  “Our influence over the Pacific Islands is weaker… now that ‘Veris is gone.”  Katya sounded rueful over the former, but not the latter, and for good reason… the demented Samoan Elder, Andilaveris, had had designs on usurping the entire ‘Council and ruling as a tyrant.  I thought about again reminding the remaining Superiors that we had been the ones to thwart his plot… but a warning look and a tiny headshake from Siren made me hold my tongue.

            “My spies tell me that Vorenus has been seeking the geisha assassin, Kyoko,” Katya continued.  “For… reasons as yet unknown.”

            “He wants to recruit her,” Bellissima spat out, disgust dripping in her voice.  “Just like he did me.”  Spike jumped up and wrapped Belli up in a comforting embrace.  Makenna, meanwhile, was just staring at the floor, her eyes glassy and her face oddly expressionless.

            “Can you create a Portal to send us to Tokyo?” I asked Sagaan.  I wasn’t surprised when he shook his head… of course he could, but apparently he wouldn’t do it.

            “We can not interfere,” Sagaan said.  “The last of the Scions must do battle, it is their destiny.  We have… done too much already.”  He narrowed his eyes to twin red slits, and his monkey screeched in Katya’s direction again.

            “You do not want to go to Japan anyway,” said Katya.  “By the time you got there, Vorenus will be gone…

            “But…” she continued, a faint smile appearing on her face.  “We know where he will be next, at least for one night.  He certainly would not miss the grand opening of his new casino.  You will find him in… where else, da?  Las Vegas, Nevada, U.S.A.”

            With that, Katya turned away from us and started to walk back toward the dais.  She paused to whisper to Belli �" “Your crime… is pardoned…” �" and then she clapped her hands loudly.  The wounded werewolves began to walk/stagger/crawl after her, throwing contemptuous looks at Makenna and Adrianos.  Fedor tailed after her as well, although his body had only partially regenerated.  I smirked as I saw the Inquisitor actually sketch a short bow of respect in Lord Adrianos’s direction.

            Sagaan and André also walked back to their respective seats; Lord Superior Montrenault had one last ugly look to give me, but I just grinned back.  Then I saw Lillith actually give Siren a peck on the cheek before girlishly skipping off in the other Superiors’ wake.  I slid over to Siren, a look of incredulity on my face.

            “What was all that about?” I asked her, in a nearly inaudible whisper.

            “It’s nothing,” Siren professed.  ‘I’ll tell you later…’ she pushed into my head.

            Mind you, trying to whisper around vampires is fairly pointless.  Trying to be secretive around vampiric telepaths, even more so.  “She’s my ‘granddaughter,’ in a way,” Lillith called from across the room.  Lil snapped her teeth at Katya before settling into her seat to the right of the center throne.  Katya, who had been moving to sit in the throne again, instead walked past Sagaan and sullenly sat down in the chair to the far left.

            I peered at Siren, but she just sighed and shrugged.  “Lillith was asking about my Sire… that’s what we were talking about earlier.  Turns out… he was her childe.”

            “Well… that explains some things,” I said.  I glanced at Siren again, noticing the healthy-looking glow to her skin.  “We’ve all been drained nearly to death… why do you look so damn chipper?”

            Siren ran her hand down her neck, and the opal rolled across her breastbone.  “Mmm… let’s just say that Lil wasn’t the only one who wanted a little taste.  Let me know if you ever want a ‘rematch,’ Lady Lillith!”

            Lillith just smiled… and, before she refastened the front of her half-jacket, just before she faded away into nothingness, I thought I saw two faint, telltale bite marks on her left breast.  Sagaan and André vanished, too, and Katya said something before she and her ‘entourage’ disappeared… directed at Belli, in what sounded like Bulgarian.

            So it was just the six of us again.  At some point during the recent battle, a hole had been knocked into the ceiling, all the way through the roof… a shifting shaft of sunlight was shining down through the gap.  It was past dawn here in St. Petersburg, but it would be past sunset in Las Vegas, halfway around the world again.  If we could just figure out how to get there.

            “What did that mean?” I asked Bellissima.  Spike was still holding on to her tightly, as if afraid that Belli would fly apart if she let go.  “Katya… what did she say?”

            “She said ‘good luck’…” Belli whispered.

            “Oh,” I said.  “So… everything is forgiven between you two, then?”

            Bellissima nodded, but the dark look in her eyes said differently.  “Sure it is… just as long as she never crosses my path again…”

            “Everyone!” Adrianos called out.  “Gather around me!!”  He moved to an undamaged portion of the floor, and gestured emphatically.  He coughed, blackish blood splattering at his feet.  “I’m going to… ‘port us to where we need to go.”

            I walked over toward Ad, and the others followed �" Makenna, still, strangely looking like a zombie �" but I was skeptical.  If Aussie D’s magic Tim Tam had revived him earlier, it sure looked like the effect was starting to wear off.  “Are you sure you’re up for it, Adrianos?”

            Adrianos bobbed his head, and Siren nearly crushed my hand in hers… I could almost detect Ad’s wavering confidence, through her.  “Yes… and besides, what other choice do we have??”

            I nodded in return.  He was right, and we were running out of time.  For him… maybe for all of us.

            We all joined hands.  I had Siren’s in my left and Bellissima’s in my right.  Adrianos scrunched up his face, almost looking like he was furious about something, and then…

            We teleported… passing instantaneously through a hellish dimension, nearly overpowered by the smell of fire and brimstone.  But… we arrived at the wrong location, Akem be damned, we were in Paris, where it was still daytime!  We were atop the Eiffel Tower of all places, bright light surrounding us from all sides.

            We were doomed.

 

* * *