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

  Another cackle tore through the forest to meet her where she stood. She dropped to her knees, and plucked at the grass. Then she closed her eyes, and sucked the air in through her nose, tasting the frost, the cold season in full bloom. She touched the fur at her shoulders and tightened it about her, as she hemmed and hawed, unable to get up, the reality of her burden too much to face. I am still young, she thought, I have time.

  The grass grew moist about her, but still she didn’t stand. Instead she let her upper body collapse, planting her hands on the ground in front of her. She smelled the earth, the grubs beneath the dirt, the lime in the cracks. She lived for the hunt.

  Saba wouldn’t survive a world of domesticity, one to which her older sisters had taken a shine, each of them built for motherhood. She couldn’t stand the sound of the crying newborns, the squeal of the children, bent on enslaving those around them. Whenever she heard the sobbing of babes, her skin crawled, and for that, she kept to the forest, to the trees, to the scape of the woods.

  Another raven squawked overhead. Another cackle echoed through the trees. Saba wasn’t alone. Her heart raced, her stomach twisted, her ears tingled.

  A rustle of leaves arose in the brush in front of her. The fox, she thought, has returned for my pleasure. She hesitated, her knees locked to the clearing floor. Her hands spread out before her. Another growl, another cackle. A brush of air against her cheek, a frosty kiss at the tip of her spine, the point of a claw at her neck, a hand to her lips.

  She gasped, and opened her eyes to witness the one who’d be the death of her.

  The beast pounced, knocking her off her knees. She landed on her back, her longbow crushed beneath her. She stifled the cry that rose in her throat, and tightened every muscle. It will all end soon, she thought. The ravishment won’t last.

  The points of the animal ripped at her flesh, plunging his tips beneath her skin. The blood gushed to the surface and she held on. Her body writhed with pleasure, as the huntress became the hunted. She grew lightheaded, the blood gushing out more quickly now, his strength ten times hers, his body pressing her to the ground. Her gaze was upward to the sky, to the sparks of fire lighting the cobalt sphere. The moon was there, too, bright-faced and shining down upon her as she gave herself to the one who’d stalked her through the woods.

  She groaned with heat, as he buried himself deep into her, culling her essence up inside of him to make him stronger, fiercer, the predator she dreamed to be. Her gaze dimmed, the light faded. Then silence rushed in, as she slipped away. If death could be so pleasurable, her final thought before the darkness.

  When she came to in the clearing, before she opened her eyes, she sensed him there. Still, waiting, taut with his high. He held her in his arms, tickling her crown with his fingertips.

  “Ah, Saba, my little lamb.” His voice a peaceful melody, sung for her ears only. “Shall we head to see your father?”

  “My father may not like to see me arrive in your company,” she said, cupping his cheek in the palm of her hand.

  Peter softened his gaze, searching deep into her eyes.

  “I see,” he said. “You and Dagur have had words about this.”

  “Are you reading my mind again?”

  He smiled. “No, little lamb, I’ve read his.”

  She pouted and pulled herself from his embrace, standing anew, poised like the huntress she was. “You should respect the privacy of others,” she said, turning her back on him.

  He patted the ground beside him. “Come, little lamb, let me enjoy you a while longer.”

  “They’ll put an end to this, you know.”

  He hung his head. “I know,” he whispered.

  She touched the markings his bloody kiss had left, safely tucked beneath the pelt she always wore. No one will be the wiser, she thought.

  “Dagur may be reasoned with, but Evelina,” he said. “Ah, she won’t allow it to go on.”

  “How can I not be free to do what I want with my own body?”

  “Little lamb, please sit.”

  For Saba, Peter’s allure defied every bit of reason given to her. She couldn’t resist him. She loved him, she wanted him, she could’ve died for him.

  “I blush,” he said, searching her eyes again.

  “Stop it. We must do something about this.” She dropped down beside him, and rested a hand on his shoulder.

  “Shall I make you my bride?”

  Her mouth grew taut. “If you make me your novitiate first.”

  Peter chuckled warmly.

  “What’s so funny?” She scowled at him, a trait she’d inherited from her ancestors. “Isn’t that the word? Novi-chiate.”

  “Yes, that is the word. But it means many things, little lamb. Not all of them as dangerous as what you ask.”

  “Make me yours, and I will love you forever.” She grinned and cocked her head to the side.

  “Ah, believe it or not, you already are mine. You are all of ours, and I must continue to share.”

  “Please.” She dropped her hand from his shoulder to his back, unable to sever the contact they’d insisted upon for months. “Give me my inheritance. Make me like you.”

  “That, I may never do.”

  Saba looked away, though she kept her hand where it was. Their need to touch defined their relationship, the only true physicality they could muster. Peter had brushed his lips against hers once, but hadn’t taken the forbidden step. To seize her body with his own would’ve brought on his doom. Evelina would’ve cut the head from his shoulders if he crossed that line. Of that, Peter assured me.

  “Besides, I respect you too much, Dagur,” he’d told me. “My love for Saba is true, but I will never violate our agreement. She’s a source of sustenance, no more.”

  I trusted Peter. He wouldn’t lie to me despite his nature. I wasn’t able to read minds, but I could read postures, and he posed no threat to our way of life.

  Saba was another story. My precocious daughter was worlds apart from her sisters. None of the them showed her spirit. Unique in many ways, she was the tyrant my wife and I adored.

  Her induction to the life of the vampire was different, too. It was Peter’s first, Evelina having initiated all four of Saba’s older sisters. We decided together Peter would be the best choice for Saba. I should’ve known their blood pact would only reinforce the connection they’d already forged. I’ll never forget how sensually Peter caressed my daughter’s skin, witness to what I thought was their first encounter, watching the five-hundred-year-old vampire seduce my daughter. I wasn’t sure I’d live to see the initiation of my three younger ones, so I embraced Saba’s nevertheless.

  She placed a hand on my forehead, as I sat near. “You must go back to bed, Dag. Peter and I can do this alone.”

  I smiled at the nickname. Only she called me that. The others had taken to the traditional name for fathers, but Saba was special. Her round face defined her so. She’d grown into her looks, her features most similar to Evelina’s. Even Lucia was too different from her mother to share the looks Saba made hers. The two could be twins, though Evelina seemed ages older.

  “An aspect to stop a dead man from dying,” Peter had once said.

  I was gracious about his attachment to my middle daughter, a bond I’d spent hours fostering. She was to follow in my footsteps as our colony’s archivist, and for that she was attached to Peter. Despite his being centuries older, he looked a few years her junior, and the two were well paired in many ways. Unlike her sisters, Saba hadn’t taken a liking to any of the colonists. Netta and I didn’t push her, wanting her choice to be a free one. For a time, I thought she’d grow out of it, but she continued to shun the advances of some of the finest Gen H, which Gerenios chewed my ear about daily.

  “What about Jón or Ólafur, or Dion. Any of them would make a good match.”

  “She doesn’t love them.” I told him. “I can’t force her to join if she isn’t in love.”

  “Impossible,” he huffed. “What’s love got t
o do with it?”

  Gerenios and I had fallen into an easy way, directing the colony together, me in charge of mine, and he the head of the Hematopes.

  Perhaps I was at fault for Saba’s interest, for I had engaged my guardian to teach her the ways of the scribe. I forced them to spend time together, steeped in the romantic atmosphere of historytelling. Saba fell in love with Peter instantly. I could hear it in the way she said his name, the look she gave me when I asked of their time together. I didn’t expect him to feel the same, but his devotion was fierce, love’s hold on him inviolable. Their bond was most obvious on the day of her initiation, in the studio at the top of the tower, in the privacy of my sanctuary, where Vincent Du Maurier, the father of all, had inducted me to blood. Each of her older sisters had been initiated in the same place, and I still recall the shriek of the eldest at the sight of Evelina’s points. She stood up from the stool with a flush, her bottom lip quivering.

  “Calm, my child,” I said. “You are made for this. Only after can you bear children. This union must be.”

  “Your kindness shall be rewarded,” Evelina told her. “Your children will be strong and rugged, women made for this new world.” She used the voice of a seductress, soothing my daughter, helping her join the clan for which she was made.

  I can’t say it was easy to see my girls suffer that first bite, but with each induction, I knew what was to come. The adoration my daughter would develop would be like nothing else. The bond she’d forge with her kin, it alone would keep her safe for eternity, and I longed for my family members, vampire and human, to live forever. With Evelina’s power to induce obsession, all the Bijarnarson’s were possessed by their benevolent foremother.

  But Peter’s hold on Saba was quite another thing, something unexpected and untamable.

  “Ah, my darling Saba,” Peter said at her induction, “you are nervous. I see it in your eyes.”

  She swallowed, and his grip tightened about her wrist.

  “I worry for Dag,” she said, glancing at me, sitting an arm stretch away.

  “It is nothing, my Saba. I’ve witnessed all of your sisters bear the same burden.”

  Peter shot me a look, his disappointment clear. It is not a burden, but an offering.

  “But you don’t like it Dag,” she said. “I can see it in your eyes.”

  “You read me wrong, darling girl. This is your birthright.”

  Peter brought her hand to his mouth, and brushed it against his lips. He kissed her skin, then said, “Give your father some credit, Saba. He’s endured more difficult things, I am certain of it.” He gave me a wink, and I returned it with a nod.

  He spoke the truth. My time with Vincent had been far more difficult than anything since, and I still ached for his loss.

  “Ah, he is missed,” Peter said, seeing my mental picture of our shared god. “In many ways, we do this for him.”

  “We do.”

  “Tell me about him,” Saba said.

  She’d yet to be introduced to the most important character of my story. “Not today,” I said. “But soon.”

  “Don’t tease the girl,” Peter said. “Let her into the light.”

  I narrowed an eye, and the vampire showed a fang. “You don’t frighten me,” I said in jest.

  Peter sighed. “If only.”

  “Forget I asked,” Saba said. “Shall we get on with it?”

  I should have suspected then. Her lack of trepidation, her relaxed posture, her eagerness, all evinced the truth of their unlawful acts, their dalliance pre-induction. My guardian had been feeding on Saba for a season, which meant before she’d come of age.

  “Absolutely,” Peter said, dropping his gaze to her vein.

  In one swoop, his fangs were buried in her skin, her crimson gore pooling about his mouth. He tempered his feeding, but her look of pleasure shocked me.

  I recalled it often, especially when I awaited her arrival at our hearth. She’d promised to meet me before the night was over, but the fire had died and Netta had kissed me goodnight, shuttling our younger ones off to dreamland.

  “Don’t wait for her too long,” she’d said. “You need sleep more than she does.” My wife touched my brow, concern darkening her olive eyes. “I’ll have your tea ready. Drink it before sleep comes.”

  I kissed my wife’s hand, holding my lips to her skin a touch longer, inducing a sigh. She dropped to her knees before me, and put her head in my lap. “I will miss this,” she said.

  “Hush, my beloved. No one needs to see you fret. Go to bed, and wait for me to come for you.”

  I sat alone by the fire, watching the embers fight for air. The red coils dulled, as the oxygen seemed to fade from atmos, strangled by his sphere. Darkness came and I slipped into sleep, Saba standing me up once again.

  * * *

  Lucia stood on my doorstep, my young daughters dangling from the arms she’d made into swings.

  “One, two, three,” she said, raising my three little ones up and over the rocky path. “To the ravine?”

  She was cloaked from head to toe, her robe a common accoutrement in the daylight. My children were used to the sight of their great-grandmother’s heavy robes. She and her mother stripped off their coverings at night, gracing us with their full beauty after sunset.

  My girls giggled with the pleasure only a child could ooze. Luisa and Erra were bigger than the littlest, my Isabelle. But I loved each of them with a fiery heart. Our newest was a blessing, too, though we hadn’t imagined a boy possible. Together Netta and I could only produce girls. We couldn’t bring ourselves to name our first son Vincent, but settled on honoring another. Evelina’s eyes tightened when she saw Netta’s gift, the bundle of man strapped about her chest, sucking on her teat.

  “A boy?” Her deep voice was hushed at the sight of him.

  “I am calling him Byron,” I said. “I refuse to see him cursed. He shall find his match, and give life as I have. If not he will be our savior, too.”

  “He shall be made one of us,” she said, “when his time comes.”

  I didn’t like the thought of my only boy becoming a vampire, but I couldn’t tell my kin that, so I put the conversation away, knowing it wasn’t something Evelina and I had to discuss at the moment.

  Lucia stood tall with my children, carrying them to the stream which had bounded with their laughter for seasons, and would for forever to come. “Your sister needs grubs for her lines,” Lucia told them. “Let’s make her proud, shall we?”

  The children squealed with joy when Lucia’s partner swooped down from the trees, offering each an acorn from the branches above. The Viking’s years without violence softened him, or perhaps he’d always been a giving soul.

  “Come, Veor,” Lucia said. “Pick these children up and make them sorry they ever wanted to touch ground in the first place.” Her voice was tender, maternal and loving. Lucia adopted her role as grandparent quite readily. Wrath never owned her, as it did her mother and father. She was far from the girl who bore her, and the god who engendered her. She was more like the one who raised her. We didn’t talk much of Muriel, but I was certain that’s why Veor clung to Lucia. She was more Muriel’s daughter than any other, and he loved her for it.

  I imagined the passing of that line more than once. Long ago Evelina had told me how Muriel died. “Natural causes,” she’d said. “The woman died from humanity.”

  I interpreted that to mean disease, only becoming more curious about it in my later years.

  “She was sick for a time, but in the end she gave up.” She told me Lucia had come of age by then, and was pregnant with my mother. “Muriel died shortly after the child was born. She was grateful to meet the one who’d carry on our line.”

  “Muriel didn’t live long afterward?” I asked.

  “She named your mother, you know. She insisted we call the child Béa.”

  “And my family name? Where is it from?”

  She smiled, her bright fangs still dripping with my blood. We often
communed as she fed, she telling me stories of my ancestors, all the things I’d missed. “For your histories,” she’d tease.

  “She found Béa Bijarnarson in Veor’s family tree.”

  My eyes spoke my surprise.

  “Vincent had given her the book, something he’d found long ago.”

  “Where?”

  Evelina shrugged. “I can’t say, but it wouldn’t surprise me if he’d had it all along. He is the maker of our fate, and scribe of our story. But also the god of our destiny.”

  After reading my notes, she decided Vincent Du Maurier was Lázoros. She believed he created us, he made each and every one for his own amusement. Like pawns on a board, we served at the pleasure of his hand. But still she pined for him.

  “Why didn’t Muriel want to be transfigured? She could’ve been with Veor forever.”

  Evelina turned away, her face hardening at the thought. “For him,” she said.

  “Veor?”

  She looked at me again, her eyes tightening, sadness tearing at her insides. “For Vincent.” She looked down, touching the holes her points had left in the crook of my arm. “She refused to break their communion. She said she’d rather die than live a life severed from him. She’d witnessed my regret firsthand.”

  The thorn of jealousy pricked Evelina anew, her competitive side winning out. She had Vincent, all of him. He was her, she him. But still her jealousy festered, her pique born from the one who took her place as his source of life.

  “Stop,” she said, her voice laced with anger. “Do not judge me, boy.”

  She only spoke to me that way when she was angry, her wrath the most frightening feature she wielded. I’d never seen her act out of violence, but I’d witnessed it on the page, and cringed whenever her face showed rage.

  She repented. “Forgive me, Dagur.”

  I reached out and touched her cheek, softening her scowl as she had done to Vincent all those years ago. “You’re much more beautiful when you smile,” I said.

  She broke, her lips curling upward. She knew I’d stolen that line from her. She recalled it, reading his journal again and again. She knew it by heart.