Brothers to the Death (The Saga of Larten Crepsley) (10 page)

“They admire you too much,” Arra said. “Sometimes, when you love or respect someone, you mistake their lies for truth. Most vampires don’t question their leaders. If Vancha or Paris Skyle said that the sun was no longer harmful, many Generals would walk by daylight to their death, simply because they accept anything that a Prince says.

“So,” she added, “does this mean you’re putting thoughts of war behind you?”

Larten shook his head. “I still despise the vampaneze and believe that war is necessary if we are to safeguard our future. But I realize now that I am not
a politician. I always knew that, but I let Wester convince me otherwise. Vancha did not attack me because of my beliefs but because I was not being true to myself.

“I will do no more campaigning,” Larten said. “I will make it clear that I still approve of Wester and, if anyone asks, I will tell them he has my full support. But I will not try to convince others to rally to his cause. I am not meant for such a role. Wester will not like that, but it is time I followed a path of my own choosing. I will let him use my name if he thinks there is profit in it, but I will no longer push directly for war by his side.”

“What do you plan to do instead?” Arra asked.

“Hunt and fight,” Larten said grimly. “It is what I should have done all along. Randel Chayne killed Alicia and he is the one I must focus on. I will scour the world for him, track down every vampaneze I can find, ask after him and challenge each to a duel.”

Arra frowned. “Why the challenge?”

“To be truthful. No vampaneze would tell me about Randel if they knew that I had hidden motives for seeking him. I lied to those I spoke with before, and pretended I simply wanted to duel with Randel. I will not lie again. By being open, I hope they in turn
will be open with me. By giving them the opportunity to kill me in a fair fight, I will be giving them the chance to protect Randel Chayne. I think they will respect my honesty, and if anyone knows where he is, I hope that they will tell me, seeing that I am a man of honor.”

“It could be a long quest,” Arra noted. “If he doesn’t wish to be found, it will be hard to unearth him. You might have to fight a string of vampaneze.”

“Aye,” Larten sighed. “But it is the right thing to do. A vampire should never turn his back on a path simply because it is difficult. A General of good standing does not look for shortcuts.”

“What if you die in one of your challenges?” Arra asked.

“Then that will have been my destiny.”

Arra stroked Larten’s cheek as he had stroked hers. “You speak like a Prince.”

He shook his head. “I do not think I am cut from such noble cloth. I am just a man who has made many mistakes and is doing his best to make no more.”

Arra sighed. “I might be about to make a mistake of my own, but if so, so be it.” She trained her gaze on Larten and said, “It is time for us to mate.”

Larten grinned—he thought that she was joking.
But when her gaze didn’t waver, his grin crumbled. “You cannot be serious.”

“I said that I would take you for a mate one night,” she reminded him.

“But why now?” he spluttered.

“There might not be a chance later. If Randel Chayne continues to evade detection and you fight as you mean to, one vampaneze after another, you will be defeated within a matter of years. Even the greatest warrior will fall if he engages in an endless series of battles. If we do not mate now, we might never have the opportunity.”

“It is too soon,” Larten said. “I think about Alicia all the time.”

“I’m not asking you to forget her,” Arra snapped. “And I don’t care if you don’t love me. Most vampires don’t love in the way that humans do—we live too long for such follies of the heart. All I’m asking for is a seven-year contract. Be my partner. Let me hunt and fight with you and be your second in duels. Let me cleanse your wounds when you are injured and dispose of your remains in a fitting manner if you are killed.

“We complement each other,” she continued. “We see the world in a similar way. I can learn from you
and you can draw comfort and support from me. In seven years, if we’re both alive and have had enough of one another, we can go our separate ways. Better that than we never mate and wonder for the rest of our lives what it might have been like if we’d tried.”

Larten blinked. “You would never make a great romantic,” he noted wryly.

“I don’t want to be,” Arra said. “I’m a vampire, a warrior, a creature of the night. And, if you think highly of me, I will be your mate.”

“I
do
think highly of you,” Larten said softly. “And I would be proud to pledge myself to you. So if you are certain that Mika will not object…”

“I wouldn’t care if he did,” Arra smirked. And then, leaning into the coffin, she wrapped her arms around Larten and kissed him, locking her lips on his, pledging herself to him with all of her spirit. Some of his wounds reopened as she hugged him and he tasted blood in his mouth, but he didn’t care. The pain of love was no real pain at all.

Later that night, in the presence of Seba, Wester, and Mika Ver Leth, Larten faced Arra over his coffin and spoke softly but firmly. “I ask that you be my mate for the next seven years. I vow to be faithful during that time. I will fight in your name, do all that
I can to honor you, and die for you if required. I will claim no hold over you once the contract has elapsed. Do you accept my terms?”

“I do,” Arra said simply.

To a chorus of cheers they kissed again, and in that moment the mating ritual was concluded. It might not have been the most romantic night of Larten’s life, but it was without doubt one of the happiest.

“Randel Chayne can damn well wait.”

When Larten left Vampire Mountain shortly after the end of Council, he knew he wouldn’t return in the near future, as he didn’t want to get mixed up in Wester’s political games. But he had no idea that it would be almost half a century before he’d gaze upon the peak of the great mountain again. If he had known, he might have paused to glance back and savor the sight. But probably not. He was a vampire, and the children of the night had little patience for sentimental nonsense.

The next few years were a bloody time, both for Larten and for the world. He and Arra crossed an endless array of grisly battlefields that had scarred
the soil of so many countries. Even the war-weary Larten had never seen such mounds of corpses before, or watched humans fight so savagely, destructively, inhumanly.

They encountered almost no vampires in their travels. The members of the clan wanted nothing to do with the atrocities. This was not war as they knew it—it was plain, bloody butchery.

Larten sometimes wished that Vancha hadn’t just threatened the Nazi leader, but killed him when he had the chance. Maybe this could have been avoided if the vampires had been harsher. Nobody had predicted a war on such a scale, but they’d guessed that the Germans would drag the world into battle. Perhaps they should have done more to prevent this from coming to pass.

Arra argued against that when he told her of his thoughts. “We can’t intervene in the affairs of humans,” she said. “We put their ways behind us when we were blooded. Humans and vampires were not meant to mix. If we involved ourselves in their problems, more would learn of our existence, and that would lead to trouble. Millions would want to be blooded, to enjoy long lives and extra strength. But they wouldn’t care about honor or our laws. They’d
only want power. If we refused their advances, they’d seek to destroy us, so that we couldn’t enjoy what had been denied to them.”

It was the old argument for why vampires didn’t meddle and it was as valid now as it had always been. But Larten still sometimes studied the ruined landscape and wasted lives, and wondered.

One thing he never wondered about was his quest. Randel Chayne had crossed all lines of decency and deserved to be punished. It didn’t matter to Larten that so many others were committing even worse crimes than Randel’s. He couldn’t solve all of the problems of the world and he wasn’t fool enough to try. But he
could
do all in his power to make sure that the rogue vampaneze paid for what he had done.

Larten made no headway for a long time. The vampaneze, like the vampires, were keeping their heads down during the calamitous war, harder to locate than ever. Larten only found two in the first couple of years. Both accepted his challenge and died at his hand, but neither knew anything of Randel Chayne.

With the third he got his first sniff of a break, though in many ways he wished that he had never met this particular vampaneze at all.

Her name was Holly-Jane Galinec and she was a few decades older than Larten. She was the only female of her breed that he had ever encountered. The vampaneze were even stricter with new recruits than vampires were and almost never admitted a woman into their ranks. Holly-Jane must have been a warrior of high standing for them to have accepted her as an equal.

But Holly-Jane’s nights as a warrior were behind her. She was holed up in an under-fire city when Larten tracked her down, and her left leg had been blown off at the knee. She was waiting for the battle to end, planning to drag herself out of the rubble to seek an honorable death. She was delighted when Larten confronted her. She had assumed that she would have to perish in a fight with a pack of vile Nazis. The chance to die at the hands of a vampire filled her with glee.

“It must be fate!” Holly-Jane kept whooping as they drank from a bottle of wine that she had been holding back for a special occasion. She was living beneath the streets, where bombs couldn’t strike, and had only left her den in recent months to feed.

“I drank from the dead,” she explained. “It would have been wrong to kill one of the living when there
are so many corpses lying around. It’s not our way to feed without killing, but in this crazy time I felt it would be unjust to add to the woes of these poor people.”

Larten could see that Holly-Jane must have been a good-looking woman once, pretty in a tough way, like Arra, but now she was filthy and wild-eyed. Disease had eaten into the stump of her leg and she’d had to cut it shorter on four different occasions. “Or was it five?” she mused aloud, studying what was left of her thigh. “I had to get drunk—the pain would have been too much to bear otherwise—and I think I may have operated twice one time. I get carried away when I’m excited.”

Although they were not overly sympathetic by nature, Larten and Arra felt sorry for the fallen vampaneze. She had a cheerful manner, which was uncommon for one of her kind. They didn’t want to like the one-legged wreck but instinctively found themselves warming to her.

It took Larten a few hours to tell Holly-Jane of his mission. When they first discovered her in her putrid hole beneath the earth, Holly-Jane wept with joy and insisted they dine with her and share her wine. Larten tried to explain about his quest, but Holly-Jane waved
his explanation away and said it could wait. “It’s not like I’m going anywhere soon,” she quipped. Not wanting to refuse her hospitality, they chewed on the stale bread and scraps of rancid meat that she had saved up, and pretended to savor the disgusting wine.

When Larten finally broached the subject of Randel Chayne, Holly-Jane stunned him by saying, “Randel? Of course I know him. He’s one of my best friends. Why are you interested in that old bear?”

For a long moment Larten couldn’t respond. He and Arra shared an astonished, skeptical look. Holly-Jane saw that they didn’t believe her. She laughed and described Randel Chayne in detail. By the time she’d finished, Larten doubted no longer.

“I wish to challenge him,” Larten said. “He killed someone close to me and I seek revenge. I will face him cleanly, openly. It will be a fair fight. If you wish to protect him from me, I understand, and I will not press you for—”

“No, no,” Holly-Jane said quickly. “Randel loves a good fight. I’m sure he’d want me to tell you all that I know. But I fear you’re too late. I was due to meet with him several years ago in Venice. Have you been there? It’s my favorite city. If only I could have been trapped there instead of this cesspit!

“Anyway, Randel set a date and place. I got there early—he was always punctual, and I didn’t want to annoy him by arriving late. But although I waited for a month, there was no sign of him, and nobody’s seen him since. I hate to admit it, but I think Randel might be beyond your reach.”

Larten gaped at the invalid. He had imagined many scenarios over the years since Alicia had been taken from him, but never this. He should have considered it—the vampaneze led harsh, testing lives, and many were cut down in their prime. But he’d never stopped to think that Randel Chayne might already be dead, that destiny may have conspired to rob him of his revenge.

“Are you sure that he is dead?” Larten wheezed.

“No,” Holly-Jane said. “But before my accident I met a few others who knew him. They all mentioned the fact that they hadn’t seen Randel lately. I’d be very surprised if he turned up alive.”

Larten began to tremble. Arra tried to think of something to say but couldn’t find words that might offer any comfort. In the end Larten cleared his throat and asked Holly-Jane where Randel might have gone if he was alive, perhaps wounded like the female vampaneze.

Holly-Jane listed a number of places that Randel had frequented—Paris was one of them—then beamed. “So, are you ready for the grand finale? I’d rather fight on the surface, beneath the light of the moon, but the crawl would exhaust me and I think we should act as if I have a glimmer of a chance.”

Larten didn’t want to fight the one-legged vampaneze, but if he refused to duel, Holly-Jane would be disgraced. So he fought brutally and without mercy, treating the wounded warrior the same as any other opponent. Holly-Jane died with a smile on her lips and Larten truly meant it when he made the death’s touch sign over her corpse and said, “You were a credit to your clan.”

After they’d buried Holly-Jane, Arra glanced at the subdued Larten and said, “What now?”

Larten thought for a long time before answering. “We carry on as before. Randel might be alive. Until we have proof that he is dead, we continue.”