Ancient Blood: A Novel of the Hegemony (The Order Saga Book 1) (12 page)

Draco and his Revenants were right behind me. I heard other pursuers as well but tried not to think about them. Panting with exhaustion, I turned and ran down the corridors of the maze, trying to remember the routes Ash had shown me. As I turned a corner, I knocked over a table of crystal glasses and priceless China and panicked, knowing I’d be flogged or have my genitals cut off for it.

That was the feeling I was left with as I woke.

Caroline says Vampyrs don’t dream, or they at least sleep so deeply that they never remember dreams. Another vestige of mortality I’d soon outgrow. But dreams and nightmares were always a source of creativity for me, so I wasn’t sure whether this was something to look forward to.

When I got back to my room after my shower, I found Mrs. Kai, the housekeeper, hanging a freshly-pressed suit on the back of my door. She was a pretty Korean woman only a little older than me but she had a calm, settled quality to her. “Ah, Mr. Avery,” she said. “I was just about to leave you a note. The Judicis has called down for his breakfast but he requested that you serve him. So, hurry up and get dressed and go straight there. I’ll see there’s something ready for you in the kitchen when you’re done.”

“Oh, okay.” I’d dried off in the bathroom, so I was in nothing but boxer shorts. I would have been embarrassed but I was enjoying the novelty of having a lean, muscular body and couldn’t help wondering if I was turning Mrs. Kai on. “Did he mention what he wanted?”

“No. He seemed uncomfortable speaking about it over the phone,” she said, moving past me to leave. She shrugged, giving me a smile. “Maybe he just wants the privilege of your service.”

I snickered. “Yeah, sure. Nothing but world class here.”

“Just keep your calm and I’m sure you’ll do fine.” With that, she headed back downstairs.

* * * * *

Iago’s suite is interesting because it’s so ordinary. It’s located in the wing above the library and Sebastian’s study, along with Geoffrey and Jade Tiger’s suites. Jade Tiger’s is the largest, taking up the entire last third of the wing. It used to be Iago’s but shortly after World War II, Jade Tiger complained that her suite wasn’t large enough to accommodate her staff. Since Shen don’t sleep, she spends a lot more time using the space. She must have worked something out ahead of time, because Iago volunteered to give up his suite and move to hers. He claimed it was an example of how status and privilege should not be an impediment to simple practicality.

Speaking of Jade Tiger, guess who I saw coming out of Iago’s suite? She was back in her contemporary red silk and strolled from Iago’s door to her own as I approached from the gallery. I waited, letting her get out of sight and added it to the mental list of things to tell Caroline the next time we talked.

Continuing to Iago’s door, I knocked and lowered my eyes, rehearsing my “lines” in my head as the door opened. “Uh, hail and good evening, Judicis Medici. I was told you wished to see me?”

“Yes,” Iago said, drawing the word out a bit. “Tell me truly, did your noble master instruct you to dawdle if, perchance, I should call upon you?”

“N-no, sir—I mean, Majes—Your Exaltedness? Seba—Hegemon Blackwood didn’t say anything to me about anything like that, he just—I mean, I just got up and got dressed as soon as I found out you wanted—”

“Peace, my good man,” he said, using his hand to try to hold back my flood of words. “I was curious but it is of no consequence.” Almost the whole Gathering, Iago wore the same gray satin Victorian suit with its darker velvet vest, white shirt and gray silk necktie. It was very wrinkled and even had patches of dust on it that he didn’t bother to brush off. Up close, I smelled the mustiness of his clothes and a faint odor of his own that reminded me of sun-faded leather. His sunken, smoke-gray eyes seemed to shine out at me with a speculative twinkle not unlike Geoffrey’s.

I remember I kept looking for the fine lines and wrinkles that he should have but doesn’t. Like a seventy-year-old celebrity who just had the full round of face-lifts and Bo-Tox, there’s an unnatural quality to some Vampyr’s agelessness when you get too close. You can see their age in their eyes and perceive it subconsciously in some subtle quality of their movements and it’s unnerving. While Julia’s eyes are like an old person who’s still got all their marbles, Iago’s are honestly more like one of those prodigy kids who seem way older than their years.

He stepped back a pace and invited me to enter his suite. With slight trepidation, I did.

The place was as musty as Iago’s suit, if not more and looked like it hadn’t been dusted in months. The Victorian décor, with its heavy velvets and ornate woodwork and rich colors only added to the sense of decay and neglect. With the lighting as dim as he kept it, the place looked like a richly dressed mausoleum and I couldn’t imagine someone being comfortable in there.

I also realized something else, Sebastian just let this place sit and rot aside from a few perfunctory dustings and Iago de’ Medici, Judicis of the Hegemony and head of The Order, just sat back and let him. Or didn’t have the power to stop him.

And this was the guy we were resting our best hopes on?

“You are quite new, are you not?” Iago asked as he shut the door, dropping the level of light in the windowless room to a minimum.

“Yes, Sir. Uh, I mean yes, Your Exaltedness.”

He waved his hand as he shuffled to an over-stuffed armchair and sat. “You may use ‘sir,’ if it pleases you. I do not feel particularly exalted this night.”

A sense of irreverence beneath the weariness of that liquid baritone kept his comment from crossing into self-pity and made me like him.

“You wanted me to bring your breakfast, sir?”

“So I did.” He pulled a cameo broach from his vest pocket, motioned me over and held it for me to see. “I would have a young woman brought from the cellar, as closely resembling this portrait as can be accomplished.”

The portrait was a miniature painting of a pretty, young woman with brown hair piled in a period style and eyes just like Caroline’s.
Go down into that damn cellar again
, I thought.
Face those eyes again, just to drag some innocent girl up here, so she could be breakfast for some vampiric Mrs. Haversham?

“I see you do not approve.” Long, bony fingers with long, dull nails closed over the broach. He studied me with those inquisitive eyes.

“No, sir,” I managed. “I mean, that’s not what—”

“It is passing strange,” Iago said, stopping me short. “But clearly I see in you the very seed from which our Sebastian sprang. That once fine man of my earliest remembrances…” He turned away and waved me off. “Go about your duty now, boy.”

I walked to the door, turning back once to find Iago staring off into the darkness and left feeling more than a little confused. I didn’t want to think about his remark about me and Sebastian, so I concentrated on being pissed off about having to go down into the cellar again.

* * * * *

My mood didn’t improve when I crossed paths with Valmont on the stairs. His Three Musketeers costume was in a spectrum of blues this time and he carried a naked four-year-old boy in his arms.

“Ah, there you are,” he said as I stopped on the landing. “I was quite put out when they told me you’d already been summoned by the Gray Eminence.” He continued up the steps, fondling the boy with one of his hands. The boy’s expression was happy but dazed, as if he wasn’t aware of what was going on.

I stepped to the side but he changed course and kept walking toward me. “Do you like my
aperitif
? He is a delectable little morsel, no? So fresh and tender, he’s sweet with innocence and untainted
joie de vivre
.”

I stepped back again until my back hit the wall and still he came forward. I smelled his flowery perfume coupled with the musk of recent sex and the talcum powder-and-caramel smell of the boy himself.

My mouth began to water.

I couldn’t tell whether I was going to cry or throw up but the power of his gaze held me. His eyes are dark green and sharp-looking, eyes that bring people like Leonardo DiCaprio, David Bowie and John Malkovich to mind: an intensity of confidence, a smoldering sensuality and a sparkle of gleeful malevolence. I was angry in a hollow, disconnected way, the same way my fear was a distant fear. In my heart, I knew what he was going to do to that kid but all my human life experience shouted that I was overreacting. I was frozen.

Jean-Paul Valmont leaned forward and inhaled deeply, moving his nose around my face and neck. “You were fat prior to your Creation, weren’t you? A glutton.”

It was such an odd non-sequitur that it broke my mental deadlock and I tried to move away. Valmont ignored my efforts, stepping to block my escape. “How you must detest forsaking all those wonderful flavors.”

“Excuse me, please,” I whispered with a bit of a lisp, trying to force my canines back up into my gums.

“No,” he said, blocking me again. “Do you know that this boy’s innocence imparts to his blood a flavor not unlike fine vanilla custard with the faintest hint of, oh, comb honey drizzled atop?” He spoke like an experienced gourmet describing the perfect wine to compliment the evening’s dinner special.

He cooed something in French to the boy, making him giggle. Everything in me wanted to beg Valmont not to do whatever he was planning, to shake him and demand to know why he could want to do something like this to such a gorgeous little child. But I knew damn well why he wanted to do it. After all, how many times have I laughed with Tom Cruise as he sang and danced around Brad Pitt’s misery at drinking little Claudia?

Valmont leaned the little boy toward me, placing his soft brown curls under my nose. “Sample the bouquet of that soft spot just at the crown of the head. Is it not heavenly? Like the fragrance of love, joy and sunshine itself.”

And, of course, I
could
smell it and it was wonderful. In my hunger the scent was everything he’d said and more. It was like baking bread or freshly cut grass on a summer morning or the smell of the grilled cheese sandwich and tomato soup my mom would make when I was little and in bed with a cold.

I turned my head away and squeezed my eyes closed.

“Now, if it smells that good, just imagine how it will
taste
. I invite you to come and sample him with me. I promise a culinary delight unmatched in your experience. I’ll even instruct you in the proper way to do it, so there’s not a drop wasted and the boy feels nothing but bliss to the end.”

As repulsed as I was by his offer, I was also stimulated and tempted, more tempted than I’d been by the girl in the cellar. Why didn’t I just shove him away? Hell, why didn’t I grab the kid and kick Valmont’s decadent, child-molesting ass to death right there on the stairs? I couldn’t have but I didn’t know it then. So why didn’t I at least
try
?

It was him, pure and simple. I wasn’t the kind of person who believed in pure, capital-E Evil but I’d never met anyone like Valmont before. I could feel something different in him. Feel it in the way his persuasive power wormed its way into me and struck a resonance with those new genes in my body. He made me realize I was no longer the human being I had been and could never be that person again.

“That’s still the way Pina prefers them,” he continued, just making conversation over the pounding of my heart, “innocent and unsullied. There’s some kind of nostalgic quality to it for her, I suppose. Still, it’s the best way to start with an unrefined palate.”

My knees were getting weak and it felt like I had warm water running through my intestines. I tried to get back my anger, some weapon to use to fight off the feelings Valmont was bringing out in me but I knew somehow that with the anger would come the hunger. All I had left was fear, fear of myself, fear of him, fear of reacting.

Then his voice was in my ear again. “I’ve removed every unpleasant memory this child ever held in his mind. There is nothing in him but joy and wonder. Your woman hasn’t given you the secret, has she? There is more to blood than sustenance, or we would all drink Geoffrey’s processed blood. When we drink fresh, we drink
life
. You will feel as you did in mama’s arms: safe, warm, joyful and innocent of all things. Do you not hunger to be so again?”

It was his offhand mention of Caroline that did it. My heart leapt and the warnings she’d given me the night before rose to mind.
“You’re new to them, so they’re going to consider you a novelty. Sebastian’s made you a servant, so hide behind a servant’s mask.”

It wasn’t her words that made the difference but the thought of her. I thought about her and how she was depending on me. I grabbed onto my love for Caroline and used it as a beacon, shoving aside my thoughts of anything else. I heard and felt Valmont take a step back and turned back to him, opening my eyes.

His eyes were cool now and he held the boy closer. “You insult me with your indifference,” he said. “Do you have the faintest notion what your master would allow me to take from you in payment for such behavior?”

“I’m sorry, Majesty but I have to finish serving His Exaltedness, the Judicis.”

“Well, you’d best be about it then.” He whispered something to the boy and stroked his belly, making the child chortle.