Grief For Heart: The Vincent Du Maurier Series, Book 4 Read online

  My son-in-law’s mouth drooped before he hung his head.

  “My daughters mean everything to me,” I said. “As do their children. I’m not numb to the fact they sacrifice much for this arrangement.” I glanced at Andor, whose head was still down. “As do those who love them and keep them safe.”

  Gerenios caught my eye, nodding his approval as I spoke. He leaned forward on his stool, as many of them had, prepared to hear what I had to say.

  “I will not stand here and say you can’t understand the bond we have with my kin, my daughters, Netta and I. But I must insist our ties cannot be broken.”

  Some of them sighed, others hissed. Only a few raised their stamp with a “Here, here.”

  “But I promise you, I’ll investigate this discovery. My kin and I will seek out more about Finn and his people, and even where he comes from.” I told them a boldfaced lie because I could do no other. The things I’d discovered about Finn’s colony were too new to make public knowledge. I could only hope the colonists didn’t insist on making their own discoveries. It had been many seasons since they’d set out on expeditions, the last of them arriving before Saba was born.

  “We hold you to that, Dagur.” Andor’s voice stood out from the crowd. “Don’t we?” He turned to them and raised his hands. They banged on the tabletops, using their mugs to voice their assent.

  I left it at that, slipping out the first chance I got. Gerenios caught me as I made my way up the path toward my home.

  “Impossible,” he said. “This will not end here.”

  “Then what am I to do?”

  “We must honor these New Men, and be respectful of what they ask.”

  I was surprised at his show of loyalty for them over me. Had he forgotten Béa so easily?

  “I understand,” I said.

  I turned on my heel after he greeted me with the bear hug I’d grown used to receiving. He slapped me on the back and said, “It is a new day, Dagur. Times are changed. You could be headed for a storm.”

  His words grew heavy as I carried them with me to bed, dropping down beside my sleeping wife, peaceful in her rest, without a care in the world. Our children were healthy, ever blooming, evolving and learning. That was most important to her, and I envied it. My heart rested with the others, my true kin, those who couldn’t thrive without me. I played Gerenios’s words over and over again, as I drifted off to sleep.

  Times are changed. You could be headed for a storm.

  When did times change, I thought, and how am I to weather a storm alone?

  * * *

  The moment was quick. The behemoth crept up, out of the deep, his mouth open wide, as he sucked the vampire down with a gush so forceful the slender figure couldn’t use his own strength to save him. The blue whale swallowed the vampire whole, tightening his throat about him, bringing him down into the refuse pooled in his belly.

  The young hunter, struggling to stay afloat, was the last thing the vampire saw before the darkness, a pitch like no other. Too somber for his gift of sight, he closed his eyes and prayed to his god.

  Time slipped away, the belly of the whale filled with rotting fish. But still the vampire smiled in his darkness. This will not be the end of me, he thought. This is nothing.

  He waited for the boy, wondering when he’d be swallowed next. But his body never slid down the slippery gorge, and that made the vampire fear like nothing before. No blood. He needed blood. His blood was gone.

  He didn’t wait long, for soon he raised his talons and let fly his mouth of metal, armed with the only tools he needed. He jabbed all ten of his fingers into the whale’s blubbery side, expecting the behemoth to reel with pain and open his throat wide. But the opening never came and the vampire’s impact had been nothing short of a pinch on flesh.

  He took to the coat with his irons, cutting into the whale’s stomach lining with his sharpest edge. He gnawed at the blubber barely making a dent in the soft muck, setting off his own stomach in the process. He gave up, he gave in. His cell was locked tight.

  He looked up in the darkness, recalling his blindness.

  He’d lost sight in one eye when he was mortal. A war was on then and he was one of its finest warriors. There’d been a cavalry from another land, a War Chief, and a pact. The war wasn’t long, the women and children sent away, the lands taken. He was assigned to kill the General, a man with no worth beyond the gold medals lining his coat. His handlebar moustache wasn’t the thing that made the vampire angry. It was the scalps on his belt buckle that tore up his insides. He wasn’t born to blood yet, but his muscles were toned for wrath. He crept into the General’s tent after killing six of his men with a single arrow, pulling it out each time and reusing it anew. Five shots to the heart, one to the head, and a slick slice across a single neck, that was the price of admission. The General was in his long johns, a silly one-piece cover the vampire couldn’t understand. Skin, he thought, skin is our layer. He wore his skin with pride.

  He crept, he crawled, he swooped in, taking the unsuspecting man from behind. An arm around his neck, he pulled him down and back, wanting to scalp him of his moustache before anything else. He raised his blade and drew it across the General’s face, slow and steady. He’d see the mask of death before he became one.

  He spoke in his native tongue, a word, a phrase, an epitaph for his headstone.

  The vampire got his wish, taking off the man’s whiskers, but he also suffered for his indulgence. The General’s left hand was the thing. He’d reached for the taper that fell with him, still glowing flame on the ground. It had caught on a bit of grass, keeping itself alight. For the General’s last hope, with his dying breath, as the vampire slid the blade across his neck, watching the blood run up his chin, away from his cotton skin, he drew his hand upward with the taper gripped tight, and stabbed the vampire in the eye.

  The burn of his man-flesh was nothing to him now as he sat in the darkness recalling that particular snippet of life. But at the time, when he was simply mortal, it made his soul cry. The enormous surge of power that ran through his head brought him to the edge of madness, and he swore he’d never be so vulnerable again. It was all nothing once he was transfigured. The sting of his suffering remained a trace upon the landscape of his vast and multitudinous memory. The scars on his eye healed, his sight returned, but only after he was made invincible. No human threat was too great to squash, using the talons he wielded with the precision of an artist’s brush.

  I overcame that, he thought as he reminisced alone with himself in the darkness. “I shall overcome this, too,” he grumbled, his voice a lonely sound compared to the volcano of noise erupting each time the whale blew out his blowhole.

  The vampire thought of many things in the darkness, her face the brightest of them all. Their time together had been too short for his taste, and he had shared her with the other. But this time he would find a way to keep her all to himself. She was his little one, and she would remain so until the beginning of time.

  * * *

  Peter watched Saba from afar. This was her third hunting excursion with Finn, the two learning to move together as one. The sting of it rushed at him where he stood. He couldn’t interfere more than he already had, and listening to her inner dialogue had grown painful. He was nowhere there, inside her head. He’d made sure of that, pushed her to the brink of hatred. It hadn’t been intended, but like a schoolboy with a silly crush, he’d shown his object of affection spite instead of love.

  She’d come to the enclave, dressed for battle with a fur slung over her shoulders and her longbow strapped tight across her chest. She’d only brought a handful of arrows, shooting at rabbits as she walked through the forest. She had two tucked under her belt when she arrived. Her face was flush, her hair a nest of knots at the crown. Peter wanted nothing more than to ravage her when he saw her coming over the hill, up the road to their warehouse. The metal walls couldn’t prevent him from running through them to get to her.

  But he held steady, an
d let her seek him out, waiting up on the roof, stalking her every pace.

  Lucia greeted her first, the two like daughters from the same mother. The vampire took her granddaughter in her arms, and patted her back, complimenting her on the catch she’d made.

  “Rabbits are hardest,” Peter heard her say. He could see what she’d come for, and he’d already decided how to handle it. But he lost his courage when he heard Veor from below.

  “Priest,” he called. “Your favorite is here.”

  “Have you come to serve him,” Lucia said, the two remaining on the steps of the enclave, Saba too intimidated to enter.

  Saba shook her head.

  “May I?”

  Transfigured by the venom that made Peter, Galla’s stock and Vincent’s too, Lucia inherited her maker’s spiritual fervor. A seeker of solitude, a faithful creature, and as delicate as any vampire could be, she’s heir to the origin, and his only real daughter. It was difficult for me to consider Lucia a killer. She’d never killed anyone, and her companion, a vampire as innocent as she, was her perfect match.

  Lucia kneeled before Saba, and bent her head in prayer. She always thanked Peter’s god before feeding. My stalwart daughter kneeled, too, pulling up her sleeve to bare the underside of her arm. Just below the bicep, near where pit meets arm, that’s Lucia’s spot.

  Peter watched Saba’s face, the joy that spread over her cheeks, as she fed her kin. He wondered why she’d want to become a vampire when she was the quintessential donor. She’d let the most delicate and the roughest of them have their way with her.

  No longer able to stand their distance, Peter launched himself off the roof, planting himself nearby. As soon as Lucia finished, he called Saba over to him, loving the trepidation he caught in her eye, the excitement her swallow induced. She is for me, he thought.

  “I’m sure you know why I’ve come,” she said, marching up to him, fearless and hungry.

  “Tell me, little lamb.” The moment the term of endearment slipped from his tongue, he regretted it.

  Her eyes brightened and her breath quickened. It took all his force to change his tune. “What do you want?” He added.

  Unnatural for him to use a sardonic tone, he cursed every word inwardly. But there was no going back, no matter what he did, no matter how much he pleaded with Evelina. Saba was the reincarnation of one holier than he, a goddess by right, and so she would remain until her brother could find her. His return was all that mattered.

  “If he’s found her once in Galla,” Evelina had said, “he’ll find her again. If she’s changed, how can we know … we can’t know.”

  “We cannot control the fates,” Peter said.

  “No, priest, we can’t. Stop trying.”

  “But I love her.” His voice evinced the wreckage he’d become. Flotsam drifting over the sea with no one to collect him.

  “You’ll go mad, trust me. Let her go.”

  Peter could barely look at Evelina in that moment, her acid tongue too much. If he hadn’t sped away, he’d have made a move too regrettable to mention. Eventually, he warmed to Evelina’s warning, but only after he renewed his connection to the Christian god, from whom he’d grown apart. That, and a good bout of self-flagellation set him free. His talons had only just grown back since ripping them out one by one. He’d hardened himself anew by the time Saba arrived, ready to make the sacrifice.

  “I want to know what’s wrong with you.”

  “I’m fine, Saba.”

  “Then why are you acting like … like a …” She looked away. The tears she’d promised to keep locked up decided to make an escape.

  Peter’s face was stoic, but his spirit crumbled on the inside. He wanted to take her face in his hands and drink her tears, licking up every last bit of her. Her blood, her ire, her sadness, her soul. He wanted to thread himself through her, turn himself inside out to take her pain away.

  “Like a what, Saba?”

  Each time he said her name, she thought a firebrand were placed on her chest.

  “Why have you stayed away?”

  “Your father feeds me well,” he said, denying her his winsome smile.

  “But you like me best.” She dropped her voice, and lowered her head. “I thought.”

  Peter bit down hard, his will faltering. His eyes tightened and held on to her. “Ah, I see. I must apologize, then, if I made you think …” His voice sounded with a faux scoff. “Blood is blood, Saba.”

  “Not mine,” she mumbled. “I’m from before, I’m …”

  His stone heart cracked, and the only one who heard it was him. “You are.” His voice was as small as hers. He leaned forward, his body pulled toward the beacon drawing him in. He’d no mind to stop it, until he heard the plaint from deep within his core. Let Vincent find me first. He shook his head, rocking back on his heels, holding himself steady. It was the voice of another, the voice of Diomedea speaking to him across space and time, out through the head of the beauty before him.

  “Saba,” he said it softly now, removing the sting of the firebrand. “Go.”

  She looked up at him with eyes betraying all the hurt of the world through the ages, her tears making them twinkle in the sun. Green, he thought, they are the green that defines green.

  “How could you.” Her voice was barely a whisper, her jaw set forward, her eyes flashing with the deity within. “How dare you,” she muttered.

  Quick as a vampire, she raised her hand and slapped Peter clear across the face. His eyes gleamed and his irons shot out, his aspect transformed from angel to demon instantly. He threw his hand up to his mouth and turned away, as Saba stepped back, her look of horror the last thing he saw before she sped off.

  As Peter followed her with his eyes now, hunting with the one he considered an obstacle, he regretted everything. From the moment she slapped him to the day he was formed in the womb of his mother, that Huguenot spy with the rebellious spirit, he was broken, left in a state from which he’d never recover.

  Evelina was correct to counsel Peter, but he hoped his patience would be rewarded. He refused to really give up Saba. In the meantime, he prayed she didn’t give her heart away to another.

  He spied on her, as she touched the side of her cheek, pushing her hair away from her face. It continued to blow about her head, until Finn reached over and tucked the strands behind her ear, as Peter himself had once done. His little lamb was hunted by a fox, and there was nothing he could do about it. As he watched the two, he confirmed his fear. His attempt at brainwashing Finn had failed.

  Saba reached up and touched Finn’s hand, the boy stepping back as she did it. She crinkled her nose, then squinched up an eye. “Should we see if we can’t find some badger, deeper in,” she said.

  Finn shrugged, still struggling with the language. The two had found a way to communicate, using gestures and sounds. She taught him words, and Peter admired her for it. She was like him, a mentor, a guardian, a natural preceptor. But Finn was also a teacher, and he instructed Saba in the hunting arts she’d yet to learn. He was more skilled than her, a hunter by birth, a descendant of historic man, a nomad. There were many things he could give Saba that Peter couldn’t. This too the vampire noticed.

  “Finn is a far better match,” he grumbled, making his way back to his enclave, far from the human goddess who’d crushed his soul.

  “Show me that one,” Saba said, her voice the lone one in the forest. She’d no idea she was being spied on, sensing Peter no more.

  Finn gestured to the knot he’d made in his net, and she nodded.

  “That knot,” she said, again.

  “Knot,” he repeated.

  “Knot, yes.”

  “Kanut.” He dropped his head to the side and pointed at the knot, then pointed at her. “Kanut.”

  “Kah-noot.” She chuckled. “That’s funny. It sounds alike, but it’s so different. I don’t get it. Peter’s taught me some of the languages he knows, but not yours. I don’t really speak them, I just learn to read th
em. So I can translate one day like my father.”

  Her cheeks turned pink when she realized she was rambling. Finn stared at her with a smile, but his eyes were as blank as ever. She’d have given two pelts to know what he was thinking.

  He took her hand, almost as if he read her mind, and pulled her into the brush. The two ducked to get under the leaves, then he pointed to the hardened mud, and said, “Seat.”

  He meant, “please have a seat,” so she forgave him his shortcut, letting her gangly legs fold beneath her, her rear touching the frosted ground. He followed suit, placing his weapon at his side. Her longbow stayed put, never too far out of reach.

  They faced each other, their legs crossed in front of them, both hands on their knees. She grew nervous at first, looking everywhere else but at him. Then he spoke in his tongue, spilling things as easily as she had. She stared as he’d done, until she couldn’t help but smile.

  “Loat may shussa dey,” he finally said.

  “Shussa?”

  “Shuss.”

  “Shuss?”

  He lifted his hand to his mouth and kissed the back of it. “Shuss,” he said.

  Saba sucked in her breath and released it as quickly, “oh my” rolling off her tongue.

  With all the courage he could muster, Finn leaned in, his eyes concentrated and wide, drifting between her lips and her gaze, until he pressed his open mouth to hers. She didn’t close her eyes when he shut his tight, but she moved her lips, schooling him how to kiss passionately.

  When it was over, he pulled back and turned his head to the side, a smile creeping over his lips. “Tak,” he mumbled.

  “You’re welcome,” Saba whispered.

  Peter had taught her “thank you” in every language. “I need you to know it every which way, Saba. There aren’t enough tongues to express my gratitude each time I am given your gift. But all the languages of the old world is a start.”