Immortal Confessions (18 page)

It had taken me a long time to learn how to
sing after I was turned. Talking had been painful, too, having both
upper and lower teeth so sharp. It took time to learn, especially
as I hadn’t had a teacher. Anna would have me. That was
something.

“You’ll be okay,” I whispered to her over and
over. “I love you, and you’ll be okay, Anna.”

Sometime in the early morning hours, I fell
asleep. When I awoke the next evening, I saw Anna’s teeth had
returned to normal. Her body had also returned to its usual
temperature. There was no scent about her other than her normal
one.

We had stopped—I had stopped myself—in
time.

I gave her a light kiss, and she awoke. She
looked up at me happily, and then a shadow passed over her face as
she remembered what had happened. She let out a sob, and then
clutched me to her hard. I clutched her just as hard, crying
myself.

“Shh,” I managed finally. “You are okay.
We’re okay.”

“You hit me,” she managed. “You’ve never hit
me before, Dev. You’ve never even raised your voice.”

“I’m sorry,” I said tearfully. “I didn’t know
what else to do to make you come back to yourself. Please, Love,
forgive me.”

“I forgive you,” she whispered. “Forgive me
for attacking you. I wanted your blood, Dev. I wanted it like
nothing I’ve ever wanted before.”

“I know,” I said. “We have to be careful,
Anna. You almost turned last night.”

She used her tongue to quickly check her
mouth, relief on her face as she looked up at me. “Would you still
love me? If I had turned?”

“I’ll always love you,” I said tenderly. “But
I don’t want this darkness for you, Love, this drinking blood and
living only at night.”

“Why not?” she said quietly. “Is it so bad;
the power, and the ability to heal?”

“It isn’t what I want for you,” I said
tenderly. “I want you to be you—gentle and happy and warm. It wears
on a mind, living long years, and seeing so much that you loved and
worked for come to nothing, and be replaced by things you hate, or
worse, don’t understand. For that to happen over and over
again.”

Anna was calm but persistent. “If I don’t
become as you are eventually, I’ll age and die, Dev. I am not
immortal.”

I felt like I’d been stabbed in the heart
with an icicle, hearing her say it so bluntly. I swallowed, and got
control of myself before I spoke. “We’ll be together as long as we
can,” I said lovingly. “When you die, I will go out into the next
dawn, the following day.”

“You will not,” Anna said firmly, with a
faint smile. “You must take care of L’Amour.”

“I do not want to live without you,” I said,
cradling her. “This past year with you has been the best of my
life.”

“Mine, too,” she whispered back. “Mine,
too.”

* * * *

Three years passed this way. I’d like to say
that Anna never got close to turning again. The truth was we often
drank from one another on our anniversaries, and every time, I lost
myself in her until I scented her beginning to turn. But I never
let it go again to the point I had to strike her to get her off
me.

My investments abroad and at home grew
dramatically, some from luck, because of world events, and some
from skill. Mostly, my fortune was increased because of my daring,
my ruthlessness, and my cunning in business matters, both those
that were legal and those that were illegal.

Anna didn’t care for the shady dealings,
despite how much more lucrative they were. We never discussed them,
but I knew she knew of them, from little disapproving quips she
dropped, and several looks that she gave me at certain moments. I
ignored these largely, much as it pains me to admit that now. I
should have talked to her, explained myself, so she understood how
essential they were to our financial security. Instead, I just told
myself it was necessary, that I’d been without money too much of my
life, and I was not going to be without it ever again.

Uther became a good friend over the years, as
did Levi. He mated to Eva that first year in the spring, and she
became wolf for him. Sadly, they never had young, because of some
problem with her body from being with Guy for so long. Levi said he
didn’t mind, that his sisters were carrying on the family name, so
it didn’t matter. I didn’t understand that, but figured it was
another werewolf custom, and let it go.

Uther was a widower, but he had many young;
in fact, he was a grandfather by this time, his eldest daughter
having given birth to a large litter. He often said he intended to
step down from being alpha bat, and retire soon. His role as leader
was not an elected one, but one he had to win by fighting, a test
that took place every year on the summer solstice. Yet every year
found him still the battered and bloody leader of his people.

“I’m too old for this,” he rasped one night
over some blood, as Anna bound his slowly healing wounds. “I can’t
fight these youngsters and win easily; I have to rely on my skill.
I don’t heal like I used to in my youth. It’s not worth the
soreness the next day, to be alpha.”

“Then why do it?” Anna asked, taping up a
hole in one wing. “You always say that this year is the last
one.”

Uther grinned widely. “It’s an honor my
people respect, especially the women.”

“So you do it for the sex,” Rip said,
nodding. “No wonder you have so many offspring. They probably line
up to ride your—”

Uther shoved him hard, knocking Rip to the
floor. “Watch your words, Demon. There’s a lady present. Get out
before I kick your ass back to Hell.”

“Prudish, for a were,” Rip rumbled with a
smile, as he got to his feet and sauntered out.

“But that is the reason, is it not?” Anna
asked pointedly, when Rip had left. “Mating?”

Uther cleared his throat, and then laughed.
“Yes, Ma’am. It’s instinct.”

I hugged Anna. “An instinct not confined to
weres, Love.”

“Indeed,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Almost
all males seem affected.”

“Demons are not immune,” Uther added
thoughtfully. “Despite Rip’s crude words, he is actually quite tame
in that respect. Something to be thankful for, Lady.”

Uther was right that Rip was something of an
oddity. He spoke of carnal pleasures, but he seemed to enjoy
speaking of them more than performing them, even when given the
opportunity. He was often goofy and silly, and yet he killed people
easily, and ate them with relish. I was sickened by that, but Uther
said it was just how demons were, that Rene had said to expect it.
In those first years as Fontainebleau’s Lord that was very useful,
as I often had people to dispose of. Many vampires and human
hunters came testing me in those early years, and Rip didn’t care
if the flesh was vampire, so long as it was a body. I didn’t care
about his strange ways or vile talk. What mattered was that he was
good at his job, saving my back on more than one occasion.

Quentin was Quentin. He worked the money,
enjoyed his women, and was for the most part happy, as living with
me he was well protected. He did have a close shave in the third
year, when an assassin mistook him for me, but some of Uther’s
batmen got there in time, and so things worked out. After I gave
him a raise, he let it go.

There were some negatives, too, mixed in with
the pleasant.

Louis came once to Fontainebleau, and threw
his weight around. He did nothing I could report him to Samuel for,
just enough so we were still picking up the pieces a week after he
left. I told myself that was how things were, and to be thankful
there was no lasting damage or lives lost

I also discovered to my fear that there was
truth in the legend that removing a vampire’s head or destroying
his heart would end his life, when it happened to an acquaintance
of Quentin’s. I killed the hunter, of course, but it didn’t make
the fear go away. I’d thought myself un-killable, save by being
drained of my blood, and to find out that was not the case made me
worry about what else I might be susceptible to. So I experimented
with a few things, Quentin reluctantly assisting me. We determined
with more than a little pain that for the most part, we were indeed
immortal. Fire, sunlight, decapitation, and exsanguination: these
were deadly. But a stake on its own could not kill us, as our body
would push any weapon or bullet out over time as we healed. The
danger lay in having someone on the end of that stake or knife
keeping it inside so our hearts could not heal. We kept that
discovery to ourselves, Quentin and I, deciding it would be in our
favor if humans and others thought a stake, garlic, or cross might
kill us. More interesting, we discovered that we could reshape our
hands into a sort of claw, growing our nails to talons. It was
nowhere near the shape changing ability of weres, but the ability
made the need for a weapon such as a knife unnecessary, something I
thought very useful in a fight.

The worst thing was not Louis’s destructive
tendencies or my own newly discovered weaknesses; it was the change
in my beloved Anna. After that first moment with her when she had
almost turned, she no longer enjoyed my bite as she once had. It
caused her pain, and so we shared blood only when making love. As
we’d always preferred that, it wasn’t a big change. She didn’t
cringe from my ardor, nor hesitate to embrace me freely. Yet I knew
I hurt her now every time I bit her, that her soft whimpers were
not from bliss, but from pain. Her scars, which I had always looked
on as a sign of our commitment and of the pleasure we brought one
another, became instead symbols of the suffering she had endured to
be with me, the suffering she was still enduring.

That troubled me, though I said nothing to
her about it.

It was close to 1817 or so when the event
happened that was the catalyst for the rest of my life. I received
a letter from the witch Rene, telling me my brother Danial was
alive.

How Rene discovered that, I still don’t
really know. She and I were not friends. In point of fact, despite
knowing her for years, she had not once ever let me see her
face.

I was at her door an hour after receiving the
letter, offering her a great deal of currency in my shock and
exuberance.

Strangely, she refused my money. “I can tell
you little enough,” she said solemnly. “I know only that a man
resides at a monastery in Tibet, and that I suspect he is your
brother, from what was being said about him.”

“What is said?” I asked.

“That he has been there many years, almost
fifty some say, though others claim it is three times that. It is
said he looks the same from the day he entered the monastery’s
doors. Sorrow is his constant companion, and he spends a great deal
of his time in his room praying. He is never seen in sunlight,
though he labors at night regularly.”

I worried, hearing that. “Do they know what
he is? Is he in danger?”

“No,” she said. “He seems to be fine. In
fact, I am not sure you should go to him, Dalcon.”

She always insisted calling me by my last
name, another thing that was odd. “I must. I must go just to see if
it is him.”

She nodded. “I suspected as much.” She handed
me a paper in a black-gloved hand. “Here is the address. Rip should
be able to take you there with his magical power, using a process
known as teleportation. It is instantaneous and safe.”

I thought about telling her that I’d already
been teleported numerous times, but did not want to sound arrogant
now, after all she had done for me. “Thank you.”

I journeyed back to my home joyously, only to
discover a substantial setback: Rip had never been to that
particular monastery before. That impeded teleporting, as the being
teleporting needed to have physically visited the destination for
the magic to work. That meant another few weeks of waiting, as my
demon traveled from the closest place he’d been, Nepal, to Danial’s
monastery.

I was glad for the delay. I’d never thought
to see my brother alive. Now that I was about to, I had to come up
with the right words to say that would end our longstanding
rivalry. We’d been given a second chance to be brothers. This time,
I would be the brother I hadn’t been two hundred years ago.

* * * *

The night I waited for Rip to arrive to take
me to Danial was probably the most frightening of my life. I paced
back and forth for hours as Anna tried to calm me. But I could not
be calmed, no matter what she said. My brother was alive. I’d
managed to find love after centuries; maybe I could finally find
forgiveness, too.

Rip appeared a bit after midnight in my home,
teleported me right to the monastery door, and then turned to
me.

“I cannot go in,” he said, wincing a little.
“This is holy ground, Master. I will wait for you a little way down
the road, just out of sight. Come out this door and call for me
when you wish to leave.”

I nodded absently as he walked off. Then I
steeled myself, squared my shoulders, and knocked on the heavy
door.

A monk answered. “Yes?”

“I am looking for my brother,” I said, trying
to not show my fangs as I spoke. “I heard he was here.”

“We have many brothers here.”

“He is my size, but dark instead of fair. I
must see him, if he is here.”

“I know the man of whom you speak. What name
do you know him as?”

“Danial, um...” Shit, what had been his
mother’s last name? I couldn’t remember.

“Come,” the monk replied. “I will take you to
him.”

I followed him nervously, both wanting
desperately to see Danial and also wanting to leave and not face
him. What if he refused to talk to me? What if he hated me?

What had happened to us had been my fault,
all those years ago. I’d lead us into that ambush; I’d said it was
safe, knowing there had been attacks on travelers, that there had
been people killed by some kind of beast. I’d been reckless, sure
that I could handle whatever it was that was killing people. I’d
wanted to return with some monstrous beast’s head tied to my
saddle, positive it would give me both my father’s approval, and
hopefully a position of my own at his level, as I was chafing under
his thumb, and wanted to be out on my own. He had made it clear
that unless I did something memorable soon, I was going to be
married off to whoever had the biggest dowry, to spend my days
stuck in some meaningless post pushing papers for a rich
father-in-law.