Authors: Shari Richardson
"What would you have me do this night?" he asked. His voice was a pale shadow of the rough silk sound I loved so much. In fewer than twelve hours, Serina had broken something deep in Mathias' soul. The deep purple bruises beneath his eyes spoke to at least one type of torture to which he'd been subjected.
"I want to watch you feed, lover," Serina said. She snapped her fingers and a door in the curved wall of the tower opened. A tall, olive-skinned vampire dragged a screaming girl into the room. He held the girl's arm grimly, neither smiling nor looking directly at Serina and Mathias. His gaze was blank. The girl screamed ceaselessly.
"No," Mathias whispered. He swallowed convulsively. His eyes burned with thirst and his tongue slipped between his lips, wetting them. "You know I do not...I will not..."
"You will whither, lover," Serina said, caressing Mathias' face. "I will not allow that. I am not finished with you yet."
She motioned for the olive-skinned vampire to bring the girl closer. The girl resisted, planting her feet and pulling against the vampire, but she was no match for his strength or Serina's determination. The vampire stopped in front of Serina and pinned the screaming girl's arms behind her.
Mathias watched the girl pull and twist in the other vampire's arms. His throat worked as he swallowed again and again. His expression was a terrible combination of desire and pity.
"Please," the girl begged Mathias. "Please help me."
Mathias closed his eyes. A low moan slipped between his lips. Serina laughed. "Oh he will help you, little one," she said. She stepped close to the girl and ran her fingernail along the girl's collarbone. The red trail of blood glistened in the dim light of the room and Mathias recoiled. He watched the blood well in the shallow scratch on the girl's neck, hunger obviously paramount in his thoughts.
"I won't do this," he said, stepping back.
Serina held her bloodied fingernail to Mathias' lips and he groaned, backing away until the wall stopped his retreat. "It is as it should be lover. She is food, nothing more. Take her and end the suffering for you both."
Serina beckoned to the olive-skinned vampire who pulled the sobbing girl closer to the place where Serina had followed Mathias. She dipped a finger into the trickle of blood on the girl's neck and then grasped the silver chain around Mathias' neck and pulled him to her hand. The silver chain sank deep into Mathias' neck, smoke pouring from his flesh. "Taste her, lover. Fear sweetens the blood almost unbearably. Take her, feed before you perish."
Serina forced her finger between Mathias' lips and he moaned. His eyes snapped open, hunger warring with anguish in his every molecule. Hunger won.
Serina laughed tauntingly as Mathias grasped the girls shoulders and the olive-skinned vampire released her arms. For a moment, Mathias looked at the girl who had fallen silent when he touched her. "I am sorry," he whispered and lay his lips against the trickle of blood on her neck. The wet rending of flesh when his teeth sank in gave way to the sound of waves pounding against the cliff below the tower.
***
The cool hand on my arm pulled me slowly from the dream.
"Mathias," I whispered. "Is my mother coming?"
"Mairin, your mother is thousands of miles away," Alfred said. His unfamiliar and unwelcome voice snapped me back to reality.
The seat in which I reclined was lumpy. Alfred's hand on my arm made my skin crawl. The dim light of the first class cabin echoed the dim light in the tower I'd just left behind. I wanted to scream.
"Please don't touch me," I said and pulled my arm away from Alfred's grasp. I wrapped my arms around my knees and rocked back and forth.
"My apologies," Alfred said. "You were moaning in your sleep. I only wished to...calm you." I could tell he was uncomfortable admitting he had attempted to comfort me, but I didn't really care about his feelings.
I was still caught in the dream. I knew that girl was dead and that Mathias had done everything in his power to resist. It didn't change the facts. I was always going to have to face facts with Mathias. He was, by nature, a killer. It was only by choice, when the choice was his to make, that he did not kill. Serina had left him no choice.
"Why would silver burn Mathias' skin," I asked in an effort to make sense of something in the dream other than the girl's death.
"Most vampires have a severe allergy to silver. One of Serina's favorite tortures is to put silver chains around the necks of those who serve her personally. The pain is enormous and the scarring permanent." Alfred pulled the collar of his dress shirt to the side to reveal a thick, twisted scar. "I wore that chain for many years before she tired of me and removed it." I heard anger and regret in Alfred's voice.
"You didn't want her to tire of you, did you."
"When you are made by her and in her favor, you do not care what pain she inflicts on you or how cruel she is. It is only after you escape or she releases you that you realize what you've given up to be with her."
I shuddered. For the first time, I pitied Alfred. He had to live with a terrible choice on this trip. Save the man whom he loved as a son or love the woman who had made him. His choices were mutually exclusive.
"What else did you see?" he asked.
"A stone tower. I could hear the ocean outside." I wasn't ready to bring up the girl.
"Yes," Alfred said. "That would be correct."
"Can you tell me where they are yet?"
"No, but I believe you'll be able to find someone at the airport who can. You'll need to check the gift shops." It seemed the closer we got to Mathias, the easier it was for Alfred to get past the injunction Serina had placed on him. He had stammered briefly at the ticket counter when the clerk had asked which airport we were heading to, but he'd just been able to tell me I was seeing the correct location without hesitation.
"Should I ask them where the local vampire castle is?"
Alfred smiled sadly. "No. Play tourist with them. Tell them what you told me and they will give you a name. From there we can make further travel plans."
The flight attendant paused at Alfred's seat. "Can I bring you anything sir?" she asked.
"No, but my companion may wish to have something to eat."
The attendant turned to look at me. I knew she, like the ticket clerk, wondered what a teenaged girl was doing with this strikingly handsome older man, but so far no one had been rude enough to ask. Alfred's obvious wealth and my apparent ease with his company probably had them guessing about distant relatives.
"Can I bring you something, miss?" she asked, glancing back at Alfred who ignored her.
"Juice would be great," I said. "I'm not really hungry."
"Mairin, you must keep your strength up," Alfred said. "You should eat some breakfast." Something in his voice made me look more closely at him. His eyes showed the same bruises Mathias' had in my dream. I realized neither Alfred nor Mathias would have had time to feed prior to their trip to East Hampton's seedier alleyways.
The attendant waited patiently and I finally said, "The vegetarian breakfast would be great." She nodded and turned away. I leaned as close to Alfred as I could without touching him.
"You need to feed," I whispered.
"Yes, but I will wait until we land." He smiled. "It is a little close here, even for the willing donor who is eyeing me from coach as we speak."
I looked down the aisle and caught the gaze of a pretty brunette. She blushed and turned away.
"She thinks I rebuff her because of you," Alfred said, laughing. "I will speak with her when we land."
"She thinks I'm with you?" I shuddered at the thought. Sure, I had offered to donate blood for Mathias, but I did that out of love. The nameless woman who envied me now because she thought I was a traveling lunch box, would give Alfred blood for no reason other than to fulfill some strange fantasy or masochistic desire to be close to death.
"Yes, but do not worry, I will disabuse her of the notion in London." Alfred's tone told me he didn't find me to be any more appealing as a donor as I found him as a companion.
"Do you hate us?" I asked. "Humans I mean."
Alfred considered his answer for a moment. "Sometimes, yes. Such easy lives. Eight, maybe ten decades and you're done. A blink of an eye is an entire lifetime and you need never really live. There is nothing to stop you from taking your own life and bringing it to a close more quickly if you wish. There is no agony in your waking moments, no need to dread the light or the dark, other than the primal fear of us."
Alfred looked back and found the brunette staring again. He smiled. "That one wishes to be like me. She hopes I will bite her rather than cut her. Her look tells me she has begged others like me to give her immortality, but we know that is something one does not do lightly." He looked at me. "You have not asked Mathias for immortality. That surprises me."
I leaned back, shaking my head. "I can't do that to him, or to myself. I've lived with Mathias' regrets, his guilt. I don't know that I could live like that for eternity."
"You might not have Mathias' guilt over your food, Mairin," Alfred said. "Mathias has always been more closely tied to humans and humanity than any other vampire I have ever met. He loves each victim, feels their pain and their death. He takes them because he must, but he does not do so lightly. Most vampires, myself included, see donors as food. Even those we consume completely are no more to us than the cattle who feed your kind."
"Are you trying to convince me to ask for immortality?" I asked.
"If it means my son will be whole, yes." Alfred looked at the brunette again and then back at me. "There was always something missing in Mathias that kept him from being whole. I saw it when I found him cowering in the sewers, hiding from the vampires who delighted in barring him from the sun. I thought when he learned how to live in the light, the hole would close, but it did not. He continued to be only a shadow. Darker now that the sun shone upon him, but still a shadow."
"In the eighty years I have loved him as my own son, Mathias has never been whole. Not until now." Alfred watched my face closely. "When I came to Highland Home, I thought I would find him lying on the beach, watching the ocean and pining for whatever it was that had carved the hole in him. I thought to take him back to California where there were others like us in larger numbers. A place where he could at least live in the open and where I could have him in my life again."
"His house was empty when I arrived. I waited behind the drawn shades, listening for his return and wondering where he was. Never before had he made himself so vulnerable as to spend his nights away from his home. Even when he had lived apart from me in the past, he'd always returned to his own home when the sun went down. So I waited in the dark for him to come home. It wasn't until the sun had already touched the sky that he returned. When he opened the door, the sun streamed through it and I saw for the first time that the hole in him was gone."
I nodded. Mathias filled a place in my soul that had long been empty. He often told me that I had done the same for him.
"When I found out what it was that had healed him," Alfred continued, "I hated you. You had done for him what eighty years with me had not. I wanted to destroy you for that, but I could not. I knew it would destroy Mathias if I did."
I shuddered. Alfred's anger was palpable. "Mathias healed me too, Alfred," I whispered.
He shook himself as though awakening from a deep sleep. "I'm sure he has, Mairin. Mathias should have been a doctor, not a merchant. He has always had a healing touch; the ability to make right what others had rent asunder." He must have realized I was edging as far from him as I could get. "I did not mean to frighten you, Mairin. I only wish for you to understand my point of view. You asked if I hate humans. I do not hate them. I feel very little toward them in general. But you." He sighed. "Your death will likely mean the death of my son, whether he finds a way to truly end his life or if he simply stops living. His love for you means I have only a short time left in which to love my son. I am more than six centuries old, Mairin. The eighty years I have had my son is nothing compared to the eternity my existence will be. To lose him to a human is not to be borne."
The flight attendant brought my breakfast and juice then, stopping Alfred's tale. I considered what he said as I ate.
"I'm sorry, Alfred," I said finally. " I wish there were a way we could reach an understanding with each other, but I don't think there is. I can't ask Mathias for immortality. He's made it clear that he doesn't want me to be...well to be like him and that to make me that way would destroy something in him. I also can't let go of him. Mathias always says he's the selfish one, but after hearing your explanation, I think I'm the one who is far more selfish. I want Mathias for my lifetime, a lifetime that is, as you said, so much shorter than his own. I never thought of what would happen when I had to leave him because of death. I'm sorry."
Alfred nodded. "But you are here with me, likely winging to your own death to save my son. For that, I can forgive a lot." He smiled and I realized the sad smile I saw on his lips echoed the one Mathias had when he believed there was no better choice than the path he was on.
"We'll find him and you'll take him back home," I said. "You'll make him live in the sun and you'll show him how to survive without me. I know I can count on that."
"Yes," Alfred said softly. "I will always find the ways to keep Mathias alive."
The English country-side swept past the windows. I was too tired to watch, even though I'd always wanted to visit England. Truthfully, Alfred was driving too fast for my exhausted brain to take in anything anyway. We'd been moving faster than I could really comprehend since we'd landed at Heathrow. Once the plane had touched down, Alfred had sent me to the news stand on the concourse while he'd followed the brunette from coach. The clerk at the news stand had been cheerful and helpful in translating my vague description into an actual location.