The Ruby Blade Page 9

  Jeffries filled both glasses, bowed and left.

  I devoured every last sandwich before grabbing my glass of wine. “Oh my god, this is amazing,” I said.

  “It ought to be—it’s even older than your other two companions.”

  “It must be worth a fortune!”

  “Not now that I’ve opened it. Now its only worth is in our drinking of it, so we must finish the bottle.”

  “Well, if we must.” I smiled.

  Jeffries reappeared to clear my plates and refill our glasses. “Please tell everyone they can retire for the night,” Raj said. “If we need anything further, we’ll fend for ourselves.”

  Jeffries bowed—a man of no words apparently—and exited.

  I settled back in the chair and looked expectantly at Raj.

  “You know a bit of it,” Raj started. “I was born in the late tenth century in India and turned in my physical prime, I’m the leader of the Pacific Northwest vampires—the North American sector that is second in power and prestige only to the Queen’s southern territory, and I’m handsome, charming, rich, and incredibly powerful. But do you know anything else?”

  I racked my brains but realized that he’d covered the extent of what I knew.

  “My name was Rajyapala, and, according to the Encyclopedia Britannica, I was the last important king of the Gurjara-Pratihara dynasty in northern India. I don’t even have my own page on Wikipedia—just a note that I’m the king who lost my kingdom and my honor to the invading Muslim army in 1018. That’s all more or less true. I was cut down in battle by the Sultan Mahmud, but I did not perish on the battlefield. That night someone—I know not who—turned me. I woke chained to a wall in the midst of my vampiric death throes. I knew I’d been mortally wounded in the battle, and since I’d woken in a dungeon, suspected I’d been taken prisoner for some reason, and would shortly die. Becoming a vampire does require the physical body to die. It’s quite painful, especially when you’re doing it with a gut wound. My body shed its human ephemera and rebuilt itself. Every night for three nights, a dark figure appeared and drained me of my blood, then refilled me with his or hers.”

  I interrupted at that point because I couldn’t help myself. “Is that necessary? Three days? I thought one draining and refilling was all it took.”

  “One is all that’s necessary. I suspect my sire went through the three nights to make me more powerful—for that was the result—knowing he or she wouldn’t stay around to guide me through the first few days and months and years that are so difficult for a newly risen vampire. At dusk on the fourth night, my mysterious sire, who’d never once spoken a word to me, unchained me, shoved a dying human into my cell, and left. I never saw him again.”

  “Him?”

  “It’s easier to stick to one pronoun. Saying ‘him or her’ every time is tedious.”

  “Why not her, then?”

  Raj laughed. “You’ve caught me, my sweet. From now on, I will use the female pronoun.”

  “Thank you. Please continue.”

  Raj poured me more wine and crossed his legs. “Of course, I immediately killed the human in the messiest and most unnecessary fashion possible. I was deep in bloodlust and couldn’t get enough. It’s like that with new vampires. It takes a while to control the thirst, longer to drink without killing, and longer still to drink without leaving a physical or mental mark. Most vampires are unable to take the small sips they need to sustain themselves without traumatizing their meals somehow until they’re at least a score undead.”

  “Undead? I don’t think I’ve ever heard you use that term before.”

  “I try to keep up with the times.”

  “Zombies are all the rage now, you know. Vampires are passé.”

  He grinned, then went on with his story. “Every evening, a new victim would appear at my door. Someone would unlock my cell, shove the unfortunate soul in, and lock it back up quicker than I could wrench it open. I’m certain that if it wasn’t my sire, it was another of her issue. Finally, after a few weeks, the bodies were piling up, and the stench was really too much for my newly keen sense of smell. I could barely consume what was given me without gagging from the odor of rotting corpses. Only the overwhelming bloodlust of my new self kept me going. It was about a month after I’d transformed that I drank from one of the donors, and he lived through it. I was so pleased that I hugged him in my exuberance and accidentally snapped his spine. I hadn’t quite gotten used to the superhuman strength or the unregulated emotions. By this point, though, I was beginning to come out of the blood-lust fueled blackouts that happened every time I smelled a living human.

  “The next night, I made a good attempt to ignore my meal for as long as possible. I held out for ten minutes before falling on him and drinking my fill. I did leave him alive, though. When I woke the following night, he was gone, and someone new was in his place. This time I waited thirty minutes before drinking, and in a week, I was able to go most of the night before having a few sips and not significantly damaging my meal. I didn’t know how to glamour them into forgetting I’d fed, or how to pump out the pleasure hormones to mask the pain of being bitten, or even how to use my own blood to heal the wounds I’d made, but I could drink with control and purpose.

  “A few nights later, when I woke, the door to the cell was open, and a note was pinned to the door with a sword—my sword, inset with the blood rubies of my family, the sword that I’d inherited from my father and that I’d thought lost on the battlefield. That sword was the one item I valued more than anything else on this earth. It had been in my family for generations, and although its origins were unknown, there were legends. Blood rubies are extremely rare, extraordinarily valuable, and are oft-rumored to have supernatural powers. It was the only possession from my former life.”

  “The note?” I prompted.

  “Ah, yes. The note read, to the best of my recollection:

  “Rajyapala, Your kingdom is gone and will soon be dust and memories. Your name will also be nothing but dust and memories; you will be remembered only for fleeing the battlefield in cowardice. You cannot save your kingdom or repair your name, but you have the opportunity to go on. You are strong, you will be powerful, and you can do many great things. You are now a creature of the night. As you have no doubt discovered, you must drink the blood of humans to survive. Be careful not to leave a trail of bodies in your wake and arouse suspicion, for you are vulnerable during the day. You must stay out of the sunlight, for it will kill you. In addition, you will find it very difficult to stay awake during daylight hours, and therefore will be hard pressed to defend yourself should humans become suspicious of you and seek out your hiding place—for you must have one. You are vulnerable to laurel wood—though there is little of that in this area of the world, silver, and fire. If you are not burned, staked through the heart, or decapitated, you can live forever. Take this gift that I have given you and prepare to do great things. We will meet again when the world breaks, and then you will repay me. — S.”

  I stared at Raj in amazement. “You believe that note was from your sire?”

  “Yes.”

  “And your sire had foreseen that you’d live until the breaking of the world, at which time you’d meet again?”

  “Yes.”

  “So, that’s nowish. Have you run into him?”

  “Her. And no. Not yet.”

  “But you think this has something to do with your upcoming betrayal? This feels very biblical.”

  Raj cocked his head to one side. “How so?”

  “Well, you know, Jesus is immortal, right?”

  “I guess, in a manner of speaking.”

  I waved away his semantics, “And didn’t Peter betray him three times with a rooster?”

  Raj’s lips twitched. “Not much of a Christian, are you?”

  “And you are?”

  “From time to time, I’ve needed to present the façade of a true believer. So, your catechism: Jesus was betrayed by Judas for thirty piece
s of silver. Peter denied knowing Jesus three times in the night between when Jesus was taken by the Romans and the next morning when the cock crowed at sunrise.”

  “My version sounds more backwoods.”

  “I think you meant blasphemous.”

  “Yeah, that, too.”

  Raj filled the glasses again, pouring out the last of the Rothschild.

  “So, tell me how your sire and your origin story relate to how you’re going to betray me?”

  Raj sighed. “I spent the first few decades of life searching for every vampire I could find to learn as much as I could about who I was and where I’d come from. Now, new vampires with no sires are killed immediately because of the potential for disaster. You saw what Rasputin was like.”

  “We could see what he’s like again, if you’d like, once we get back to my motel. I still have his head in my ball bag. Heh.”

  “Have you checked on him recently?”

  “It’s a head. I haven’t felt the need to check on a head.”

  “It’s no ordinary head. It might not be a bad idea to give him a quick glance when we return. Once we get to New Orleans, we can hand him off to the Queen, and he’ll be her problem.”

  “Best gift ever!” I said.

  “She’ll be delighted. I promise,” Raj said.

  “I’m not familiar with either vampire customs or royal gift-giving, but is giving a queen a head in a bowling ball bag really the best way to curry favor? Because I’m not sure I’d be thrilled.”

  “You’ll be a queen soon,” Raj reminded me.

  “Possibly,” I agreed.

  “Imagine someone bringing you Finn’s head in a bag.”

  I pursed my lips. “I’m not sure how I feel about that. We were friends. I kind of want to kill him myself.”

  Raj laughed. “Fair enough.”

  He went back to his story. “As I was saying, I searched for knowledge of my past and my present and chased rumors of old ones who had a habit of siring and leaving. I followed every lead, hunted down every old vampire I could find, and learned very little. Finally, I decided to turn my attention to the prophecies and determine when and where the world breaking was going to happen. When it seemed I had roughly a millennium to go before I had to worry about that, I developed new goals. Or one goal, really: to have an obscenely delightful time being immortal. I amassed wealth and lovers and power. I dabbled in politics. I messed with the Vatican and the Holy Roman Emperor. I sought out every war I could and usually ended up allying with the losers. You could tell who was going to be victorious just by seeing who I opposed. After initially being on the losing side of the Battle for Constantinople, I was sent to spy on Mehmed, switched allegiances, and joined his court. I created a family for myself. One of my children sired one of the most famous vampires in the entire world, which is my biggest claim to fame.”

  “You’re Dracula’s grand-pappy?”

  “I am,” he agreed.

  “And General Mircea is Vlad’s brother, is he not? Are you his grand-sire, too?”

  “Sometimes I forget how very clever you are.”

  “That’s super insulting.”

  “It’s because you are ignorant of things that I consider basic knowledge—like the tenets of the Christian crucifixion—and then bust out with the lineage of the Basarab family.”

  “My knowledge is diverse and weird.”

  “I like it.”

  “Please continue. We’re about 500 years into your second life, and I’m not feeling imminently betrayed yet.”

  Raj held up the empty bottle. “We’re out of wine.”

  “I’ve never been here before, and you sent your servants away so I can’t ring your twee little bell to summon your minions, but I’m guessing there’s another bottle of wine somewhere. Possibly one that is a little less expensive.”

  “Yes of course. I’ll go grab it.”

  “Super. In the meantime, point me towards the bathroom?”

  A few minutes later, I made my way back to the living room and found my wine glass refilled and moved to the end table next to the opposite end of the loveseat from where Raj was sitting.

  “Where was I?”

  “Boasting about your grandkids,” I said.

  “Ah, yes. The grandkids.”

  Raj leaned back into his corner of the loveseat and stared contemplatively at the fireplace for so long I began to feel drowsy. “By this time, of course, I was getting to be quite powerful. I’d skipped a lot of the newborn angst. I’d controlled my bloodlust in an unprecedented six weeks and had learned to control my senses in the same amount of time. Because my sire had exchanged blood with me three times instead of the traditional one, certain of my powers appeared almost immediately instead of taking decades or centuries to appear.”

  When I cocked my head to one side inquisitively—and winsomely, I might add, Raj laughed and elaborated.

  “Most vampires, if they live long enough, develop certain psychic powers. Telepathy and telekinesis are the two most common. In addition, almost all of us have some level of skill at mental manipulation—glamour—and can convince people that they’ve not seen us, or that they’ve seen someone else, or that they really, really, really want to invite us into their homes. That last one is the hardest, as you really have to be able to go deep to convince them to ask a predator to cross into their den. The first couple are easier. Most humans really want to forget us or believe they saw something else. The most powerful can control whole groups of people with nothing more than a mental command. The least powerful need blood and physical connection just to convince someone that they didn’t really understand what just happened.

  “Other gifts are rarer. Some vampires can control certain elements. Those that can whip up wind are the most common of these rare creatures. And the rarest power of all is the vampire that wields fire.”

  “That seems dangerous for the vampire in question, being so flammable and all,” I said.

  “It is, and maybe it is as common a gift as the wind wielders, but they burn themselves up the first time it manifests, and we never find out what’s going on.”

  “Seems a good theory.”

  “Back to my story. By the time I’d seen my first century, I was already one of the strongest psychic vampires that I’d ever encountered. From what I’ve seen, I believe that the gifts follow the bloodline, meaning that it was likely my sire was also telepathic as opposed to telekinetic or something else. As you know, I can read minds as well as I can hear conversation. Even at that young age, I could pluck the thoughts of the unguarded out of their mind. Now, there are no mental barriers that can keep me out if I want in. I am one of the most skilled at glamour. I can make most people see me as anything I want and make them do anything I want. I mostly use this to have them forget they’ve seen me if I need to eat and don’t have a willing donor about. By the time I was two hundred, I was sleeping less and could stand to be outside at dawn and dusk. By the time I made my Turkish child, Mehmed, I was as powerful as any vampire who’d reached the millennium mark, though I was only four hundred years and change at the time. Mehmed met Vlad and his younger brother Radu when they were prisoners of his father. He was taken with Radu as I’d been rather taken with Mehmed, he was a beautiful young man. He begged and begged to be allowed to transform Radu so that they could continue their mad love affair for all eternity. I advised against it for two reasons. The first being that when I went from lover to sire, our relationship had changed completely, and I surmised that by siring Mehmed, I had changed our interactions from the intimacies of partners to the complexities of the parent/child relationship, and thought the same would happen if he were to sire Radu. The second reason was that I didn’t think he was old enough to be out having children of his own.”

  “Every parent’s thought, right?” I asked.

  Raj’s lip quirked up, and he continued. “I forbade the transformation; he sulked like a teenager and conquered Corinth. He was a great sulker, that one; very producti
ve.

  “Radu had been Mehmed’s constant companion for years. He’d been with him when he conquered Constantinople—which is when I met Mehmed—but I hadn’t noticed him because I was so taken with Mehmed himself. To be honest, Mehmed fooled me completely. He made me believe he loved me, but in hindsight, he loved no one but Radu, and of course, himself. He saw something in me that he wanted, and he went after it. I gave him immortality when he was about thirty. He was my first child. After I nursed him through the initial stages of the transformation and helped him overcome his bloodlust, which he did almost as quickly as I had...”

  “Did you do the three blood exchanges?” I interrupted.

  “No,” Raj shook his head. “I knew by then only one was necessary, and I did not improvise on my first child. Mehmed waited a mere five months before giving in to his desires and changing Radu. In hindsight, I’m impressed with his self-control. He loved that boy passionately, and there was constant warfare and fear of someone falling in battle. You know, if he’d begged me to transform Radu, I would’ve, and then things may have turned out vastly different.

  “I helped Mehmed shepherd Radu through the change—an unwilling grandparent to what I saw as my child’s ill-advised teen pregnancy—and it was rough. Radu did not have the strength and will that Mehmed and I had. He was impulsive and lacked certain self-control that is necessary to thrive as a powerful creature of the night.”

  I laughed and poked Raj’s leg with a sock-clad foot. “Powerful creature of the night? You’re stepping on Edward’s toes now.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous, genuine creatures of the night do not have sparkle magic,” Raj said.

  “Radu went a bit crazy, and of course the relationship between Mehmed and Radu ended. Vlad had been released from the Ottoman prison on the death of his father a few years earlier and was currently the voivode. Mehmed was devastated at the loss of his love, but could not stay angry at Radu, and Radu wanted his family’s throne. They invaded Wallachia, and a coalition of principalities, one led by Mircea, Radu’s eldest brother, and one led by Vlad met them in battle. The battles were long and ugly. Vlad was vicious on the battlefield, and Radu and Mehmed were only less so in comparison to Vlad’s extreme brutality. Eventually, Vlad was betrayed by a friend and thrown in a dungeon.