Immortal Confessions (33 page)

“Do something for me,” she whispered.

“Anything,” I sniffled. “Say the words, Love,
and I’ll do it.”

“Bite me,” she whispered. “Send me off with
the pleasure of your kiss. I’m in so much pain, Dev...”

I kissed her gently, and then bit down into
her throat. She sighed, and clasped me tight to her. As I slid my
fangs deeper, she let out a soft moan. I drank from her, and a
moment later, her heart stopped.

A few minutes later I withdrew, and sank my
fangs into the other side of her throat. I drank a little, and then
removed them.

Rene’s body was already cooling. I picked it
up, and went to the door. Titus opened it. Ravel stood beside
him.

“What are your commands, Master?” Titus
rumbled.

“What guards are left?” I said.

“Forty bears, give or take a few wounded.”
Titus replied. “And myself.”

“Do you know where Joshua’s money is?”

“Yes,” Titus said, nodding once. “I can take
you to it. There are rooms filled with treasure, a good deal of it
stolen—”

“Do not bother. Take it all, and teleport it
back to my home. Ravel will show you the way. Take the bears, too,
use them to carry the bodies of my men, so that they may be given
to their families for burial. Then return here, and raze this
building to the ground. I want it destroyed utterly, especially
this dungeon.”

“It will be done,” Titus said. “And
after?”

“Make my home secure. It is an estate called
Hayden, in New York. Shaker can show you the way. Use whatever
money is necessary to do that. After that is done, wait there for
me.”

“Where will you be?” he rumbled quickly. “You
should not be unguarded.”

“Ravel will be with me,” I said emptily. “We
are going home.”

After showing Titus where my home was
located, Ravel teleported us to his cottage. It hurt just saying
that, that it was his alone now.

He and I walked in the lightening night. Dawn
was not far off.

With his magic, he helped me dig a grave
beside Anna’s. Together, we lay Rene in it, and covered her with
stones. Afterwards we sat there a while in silence, as the night
lightened around us. Then he got up, and told me it was time to get
indoors.

I looked up at him and didn’t move.

He looked down at me, and then hit me. Before
Joshua, it would have knocked me flat. Now, I just took it without
flinching.

“Damn you,” he said. “Do not let her have
done everything she did for you for nothing. Now get up and get
inside.”

I followed him back to his home. Across the
hill at Hayden, my new bearmen were already moving around, Titus’s
burly form directing them. I looked away, and followed Ravel back
to his house.

We got inside just as dawn broke. He built a
fire, and then sat down before it.

I saw belatedly that Rene’s blankets were
still there on the floor from our lovemaking a day ago. I went and
sat by them, putting them to my face that I might commit her scent
to memory.

“She took an oath to you, didn’t she? That’s
why you marked her.”

“Yes,” I said in a cracked voice. “Should I
get a choker, to place in her tomb? Would she have liked that?”

“Yes, she would,” Ravel said after a moment.
“She loved you very much.”

I didn’t reply.

“Do you want me to stay on as your guard?”
Ravel said after a pause. “She didn’t tell me what she saw for me,
after this fight. She didn’t tell me much about that either, except
that she was going to die making you King.”

“Ruler,” I corrected gently. “I’m Vampire
Ruler.”

“Ruler, Lord, Master, what difference will it
make?”

“I don’t know,” I replied. “But it is what I
will be, just the same.”

* * * *

The months passed as expected. Samuel and the
other rulers of countries around the world sent letters, formally
congratulating me. I hired another bodyguard, at Titus’s request, a
highly ranked one. I was very rich now, and could well afford
it.

There was much to do, in those first ten
years. The Chief and Lord Vampires in all the existing states all
had to be replaced, i.e. killed, and better managers found.
Treaties had to be brokered with the various native were
populations, of which there were far, far more than there had been
in Europe. There were many who tested me, both vampire and
non-vampire, and they had to be disciplined. The states were little
more than colonies then. The bulk of what is modern day America
hadn’t yet come into being. There was much that was wild that had
to be bent to my will.

The next ten years were easier, mostly
because I corrected a long-standing dilemma. A large part of the
problem with enforcing vampire law was that it had never before
been written down in entirety. Most of the commandments and
legislation was in oral form, what vampires remembered of it. The
only available accounts of reference were scattered in various
books, mostly of them obscure. So I spent two years meeting with
Samuel, Perseus, Ebediah, and a few other interested Vampire Rulers
of Countries, hammering out a rule book of sorts that defined the
vampire laws as we knew them. Though I offended Perseus and he
never forgave me, I made sure I was the one who wrote most of the
edicts on Oathed Ones, in case I ever did find that woman Rene had
spoken of, so I could protect her.

Not that there weren’t women in my life, even
then. There were many, so many Ravel grew sickened, and left me for
a time. Some of them came to me as gifts, and some came on their
own because of my wild reputation, from tales of my handsomeness or
my power. Some I sought out, as they pleased me, at least for a
night. But none interested me for longer than that. I did not take
oaths from any of them, though many offered. A few even betrayed
me, and I punished them as men, making my reputation for brutality
and cruelty even more infamous.

L’Amour died in 1836, and I laid her to rest
with Anna. Though I searched, I could not locate any of the
families to whom I’d given her kittens. But other stray cats did
show up at Hayden over the years. Most moved on due to Titus’s
ever-present blackness, as I called it, yet once in a while, one
elected to stay.

Ravel and Titus were good guardsmen. When
Ravel died in 1863 in my service, I laid him to rest beside his
sister.

Finally, about 1878 or so, news came to me of
Danial, from a state ruler. He was living out west, in some small
town. I summoned him at once, knowing he had to come, or face being
executed for treason.

It was a cold winter night when he finally
arrived, his head and shoulders covered with snow.

Danial shook it off and came inside. He
complimented me on my home, though he was careful to say nothing of
Anna, despite the fact that the many pictures of the woman who
graced my walls were clearly pictures of her that he had drawn or
painted.

“This is how you found me,” he said after a
while. “Through my art gallery.”

“Why did you draw them?” I said to him.

“I felt bad, for what I had done to her,”
Danial said without emotion. “I did care for her. I should not have
hurt her just to hurt you.”

“So you are sorry then?”

“I am sorry for hurting her,” he said flatly.
“I am not sorry for hurting you.”

Sixty years ago, I’d have stood there and
taken that kind of talk because he was my brother. I’d gotten a lot
harder since then. I belted him in the face, and the force of the
blow knocked him to the floor. He looked up at me with a trace of
real fear.

“If you want to kill me, go ahead,” he spat.
“Why not?You’ve led everyone else around you to their deaths.”

“I don’t want to kill you,” I said, giving
him an evil grin that was probably a twin of the departed Louis’s.
“I want to keep an eye out for my brother, as I always have. And I
intend to do just that.”

He got to his feet. “I will leave your
country,” he said. “I will depart in a month, Devlin. Give me
enough time to travel home and close up my shop, please.”

“No, you will not leave,” I said with a grin.
“You are staying in America. I have told the Rulers of all
neighboring countries your name and that I have plans for you, not
to interfere. They have agreed.”

He looked at me with horror. “What are you
saying?”

“That you cannot leave. And should you, you
will be returned here at the earliest convenience, no matter where
you go.”

“Why? What could you possibly want with
me?”

“I know you,” I said, baring my fangs. “I
knew you cared for Anna, or she would never have believed you
enough to be seduced. She was no fool—she would have seen through
false words. There will come another time, brother dear, when you
will love another woman, even if it takes decades or centuries. And
I will be there waiting, to take her from you, when that happens.
Every time it happens, forever.”

Danial’s eyes went completely red, and he
went for me. A couple of my werebears grabbed hold of him, stopping
him easily.

“Titus, take him back to his home via
teleportation,” I said, turning away. “I am done with him, for
now.”

* * * *

I learned later that Danial had closed his
art gallery. Truth was he burned it, though he did it in a way that
he was thought to be a victim, and not the arsonist. He used the
money to get started in a sort of detective line of trade, helping
people with problems, though it was mostly businesses he helped. I
thought it ridiculous, but just about his speed. Since it kept him
confined to the West where I could watch him, it was
acceptable.

Hayden was burned utterly and rebuilt a few
times after various attacks on me. Sadly, the elegant wooden room I
had shared with Anna was utterly destroyed in one such
conflagration shortly after my rise to power, and I did not rebuild
it. After ten times of raising the house from ashes, in 1901, when
Hayden partially burned once more, I switched to stone, that it
might not be ever be utterly destroyed again.

You might wonder why I was not killed by the
flames, especially after so many attempts. The reason was that for
the rest of the nineteenth century, I often did not stay in my
elegant beautiful mansion. My memories of Anna there were too
strong. In my loneliness, I often sought solace elsewhere.

After Rene died, Ravel moved out of their
house and into Hayden, saying it was too lonely to be there without
his sister. I told him I understood that, even as I was grateful to
him, because I knew that wasn’t the reason. His real reason was he
was surrendering the house to me.

I went back there many times in those first
few decades, sat before a fire of my making, and slept in the bed
Rene and I had shared, even when the scent of her was long faded,
and the dust was thick on the mantle. Finally, around 1900, the
house fell down and collapsed in a storm, and I left it that way.
But I still went back sometimes to the ruin, and sat where the fire
had been, the fireplace still mostly intact, while the rest
moldered and rusted and rotted away.

Sometimes I went instead to Rene’s grave. By
1850, a huge monument housed both the remains of her and Anna in
elaborate stone crypts. A few times, I thought I felt a presence
there, though I was not sure in those first years. But not knowing
which woman it was, I was hard-pressed to know what to say. And it
always faded away, before I could come up with any words.

I did make Rene a choker, one of gold that
contained my blood, though I gave the bear on it some green-blue
sapphire eyes in memory of hers. I had placed it around her neck
gently, even though I closed my eyes as I did it, as I had wanted
to remember her the way she had looked, not as her body was then, a
week after her death. It was hard to fasten, and a bit, well, wet,
for lack of a better word. But I did it, as I knew she would want
me to. After all she had done for me, I would be damned if I could
not bring myself to do this for her, to honor her as she
deserved.

Some may think I was crazy, to do that for a
woman who’d been my lover for two days, who by my own admission I
hadn’t loved, at least, not as I’d loved Anna. Some may think it
obscene that I interred them beside one another, and didn’t give
them separate graves. But just as Anna’s love had given me the
impetus to transform my meaningless existence into a consequential
life, Rene’s words and her sacrifice had given me the hope that was
now my sole reason for going on. I believed that the future she had
seen was true, that I would find love again in time. I also
believed that there had to be another reason I had triumphed
against such overwhelming odds, some fateful destiny that waited
for me like a brilliant gemstone glowing in my future.

I ruled, expecting every day that this might
be the day that held my anticipated providence. And the years
passed. Little by little, my hope began to fade. It was easy to
keep my faith in the beginning, to sit before the fire and remember
Rene’s words. But after a century had passed, when the house was no
more than a thickly brambled ruin, it was hard to sustain hope.
Inch by inch, I let myself slide into melancholy, and for the next
sixty years, it kept me in its grasp.

One good thing came of the many years that
passed me by: science. With the emergence of genetics and DNA
sequencing, much has been discovered about vampire physiology,
debunking many of the famous alleged vampire fallacies that were
once so prevalent about mirrors, silver, and the like. With the
help of a team of geneticists, I discovered how my body is able to
sustain itself, which I shared with my fellow Vampire Rulers. They
and I kept our findings under wraps, of course. It is not good for
enemies to know of our real weaknesses, much less the ins and outs
of how a vampire’s body uses blood to stop the aging process, not
in this modern age of biological weapons. So you’ll understand, I
hope, if I leave it at that.