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

  “Do you think … no, he can’t be. Can he?”

  “I wouldn’t be so quick to decide,” Peter said. “There’s nothing our god can’t do.”

  He left me wondering to which god he referred. His, or all of ours.

  * * *

  Peter watched Saba and Finn from the windowsill, staying at my side in the tower until the headache passed. He’d encouraged Saba to take a walk with Finn to show him around, so at that moment, as he sat with me, they rambled through the colony, up to the market. I could hear my daughter making chitchat with the foreigner, her exasperation at his language apparent in her voice. I shut my eyes, and let Peter do the spying for me.

  The colonists greeted Saba with the courtesy owed her, and Finn was treated with the coolness I expected. Strangers didn’t often show up on our shores and when they did, if they were bipeds, they were Gen H. By then, those from Gerenios’s clan had spread the word. The newcomer was a kinblood. They used the term incorrectly, granted, but they implied he was one of us, not them.

  “Do you like berries,” Saba said, pointing out the purple fruit at one of the stands.

  Finn wrinkled his nose, and they moved on to another cart.

  “How about that,” she tried again, pointing to a drying rack covered with Freyit’s meat. It was a delicacy to be sure, but Saba couldn’t stand it. “Too salty,” she’d say.

  Finn wrinkled his nose again, this time bringing up his shoulders, too. The language confused him, but so did his surroundings. Our colony was nothing like his.

  “I don’t like it either,” she said.

  They walked past the marketplace, toward the edge of the forest of birches. Saba wouldn’t enter without her longbow, but she took Finn along its edge.

  “I wish you could tell me something,” she said. “Anything.”

  Finn loved hearing her voice, the delicate sounds her lips made, like the giggles of a child. He found it amusing their mixed languages frustrated her. He didn’t care. He could listen to her nonsense all day. His fears had passed in a blink, ever since the girl came into his life. She stayed at his side almost every moment, and he loved her for it. As they walked along the forest edge, he longed to touch her lips with his. He’d kiss the words straight out of her mouth, and swallow them whole. That would do it, he thought.

  “Do you remember where you’re from?”

  The young hunter looked at her with a silly grin and Saba loathed him for it. His arrival had touched her at first, but after some time passed she started to get bored. His inability to speak with her drove her mad. She missed Peter, too. Ever since the reincarnation business, he’d kept his distance. She wondered if it had changed his desire, though she longed for him still, pining for his touch, his mouth on hers again. They hadn’t spoken since the kiss, since her discovery she was someone from his past. She didn’t understand it but knew it scared him.

  She hated that Peter burdened her with the responsibility of showing Finn around. He’d told her she must follow him wherever he went. She was to be his hostess, he told her.

  “Treat him like he’s a god in disguise, come to pay us a visit,” Peter had said to her. “Do you understand me, Saba?” He’d taken her hand in his but his grip was stiff, like he didn’t want to feel her skin on his.

  His overt rejection confused her, but also drove her to fits of jealousy. Before taking Finn out, she’d gone to the ravine with her longbow and shot down a nest of unborn wren. The eggs cracked at her feet, the dead chicks, unwanted, stained her boots. She looked at them, waiting for remorse to soak her up, but it never came. It wasn’t the first time wrath paid her a visit, and it wouldn’t be the last.

  “Jeya ga deu?” Finn said, breaking up the faint trace of Peter’s voice still heavy on her mind.

  “I don’t understand you,” she said.

  He scratched the side of his head, his lips coming together in a pensive gesture. “Jeya ga deu?” He smiled, realizing he’d just repeated the same words. He couldn’t figure out how to ask her if she enjoyed the hunt, too. He could see it in the way she walked, how she held her shoulders, the way she eyed the tree line, just like he’d been taught.

  He bent down and picked up a stone, holding it tightly in his hand, then he launched it at a load of branches above them.

  She shook her head and smiled. “Do I hunt?”

  His face returned a blank stare, as confused by her words as she was his.

  She narrowed her eyes, then took a firm stance on her thighs and drew back her hand, imitating her posture when taking a shot with her longbow.

  Her mime was successful, for Finn dropped into his own expert stance and showed her how he shot his javelin. This made her smile, and his belly grew warm.

  “Let’s get my weapons,” she said, pulling him by the hand.

  She led him along the path, toward her arsenal.

  Like me she had a shed, but hers was for more than storing grain. Gerenios had erected hers too, but he’d also filled it with hunting equipment and weapons only a granddaughter of his could wield. Her longbow was there, and her fishing lines along with many other assorted impalers and pointed sticks. She kept the door locked, unwilling to share her spoils, or the blame for her younger siblings falling upon her arsenal.

  Peter followed Saba with his mind, his eyes tucked beneath his lids, closed in contemplation. I recognized his posture, the meditative state he’d fallen into as he sat on the windowsill, praying my Saba, his Galla, Vincent’s Diomedea, wouldn’t fall in love with another.

  Saba took her longbow in her hand, and slung it over her shoulder. She dressed her hip with her satchel of arrows, then she handed Finn her crossbow. He looked at it and smiled, his face lighting up, charming her anew. He examined it, turning it over in his hand, feeling its weight, holding it as he’d been taught by his father. If he’d had the weapon when he was abducted, he would’ve put an arrow through the vampire’s heart.

  “What?” Saba said.

  His complexion had gone bloodless at the flash of memory, the pointed teeth, the shorn head, the hunger of the one who’d attacked him. He felt his want deep in his gut, lower too. The storm raging below his waist, the pinch in his thigh from the bite.

  “What is it?” She said again, stepping back a pace. She couldn’t know he was thinking of the vampire, some snippets of memory returning. Had Peter not been glued to Saba’s mind, he would’ve seen it, too. The face of the one who’d returned.

  Finn shook his head, and forced a smile, his aspect hardening. He looked rugged armed with the crossbow, his face stoic now. Saba embraced the slight thrill his mannerism stoked.

  “In enting,” he muttered. “Loat os jeyaga.” He held the crossbow taut in his hand.

  “Jeyaga,” she said. “Does that mean hunt?” She repeated the two words and he smiled.

  “Hunt,” his tongue tripped on the word, but she repeated it for him, facing him so he could see her mouth.

  She pushed her chin up, her lips closer now. “Hunt,” she said, pointing to her mouth. She said it again and again, until his mouth mirrored hers and he made the sound she wanted.

  Her face was inches from his, her lips a lick away, the heat in his belly almost made him wild. The only girl he’d ever kissed was his mother, and he knew this was nothing like that.

  “Hunt,” he said.

  Saba watched his mouth, his tongue wetting his lips between tries. He had thinner lips than Peter, but they were rosy like her vampire’s. She didn’t know why, but at that moment she thought she’d like to know how Finn’s tasted.

  Peter was ever transparent, seeing my daughter’s designs as though they were his own. I’m sure it was then he turned to me and said, “I must go, Dagur. I’ll send Freyit up with more salve for your head.”

  He sprang from the windowsill, no time for the stairs, launching himself toward the party of two in the hunter’s shed.

  Saba reached for Finn’s hand and pulled him from the arsenal, letting the idea of the kiss die at the though
t of Peter never tasting her blood again. She couldn’t risk that loss. She’d designs of her own, desires she wanted to see fulfilled. She hoped to one day be his novice, as her grandmother had become. Saba knew Peter had made Lucia, he’d told her as much. What she didn’t know was that it’d be another hundred years, give or take, before he could share his venom with another. She, unfortunately, would be long gone by then.

  “Let’s head to the clearing,” she said. “Jeyaga fox.”

  “Hunt” was all Finn understood, but he followed her without a care.

  The two rushed through the birch trees, their legs in stride, as she showed him the way to go. She was reinvigorated with a partner at her side, one that fit her to a tee. The colonists she hunted with, even her grandfather, lumbered, taking their time. They blamed their speed on precision, but Saba knew it was their nature. They didn’t get stirred by the same thrill as she, a huntress who lived for the kill.

  Finn grabbed her arm, stopping her in her tracks. “Rev,” he said, rolling his R. He pointed a few legs ahead of them.

  She narrowed her eyes, following the line of his finger. For a moment, she only saw the brush, then the bushy tail of a fox peeked through the leaves, a reddish silver streak in the green. She smiled. “Fox,” she whispered.

  Finn watched, as she steadied her bow, plucking an arrow from her waist as though it were another appendage. He held his crossbow up, too, but this was her shot. He decided he’d rather see her take it than steal the kill from her. The fox was nothing to him.

  Saba held the string taut, her other hand locked on the arc. She settled into her breath, one eye held on the target, the other squinched up tight. She took in a final draw of air, and loosed her fingers, letting the arrow go with a simple opening of her hand. Second nature to her, the arrow a gift she sent to the gods each time.

  A yelp rang through the trees, and the crows overhead split their conspiracy, half going one way, half the other.

  “Snigged skot,” Finn said. The open palm he placed on her back translated for him. He patted her twice, then let his hand hang on her shoulder.

  His touch was lighter than Peter’s, but warmer too.

  “Shall we grab it?”

  She pulled away, rushing to collect her kill. The arrow struck the fox in the heart, a shot only a skilled huntress could make. She pulled the redcoat up by its tail and turned to show it to Finn, but he was gone. Her brows drew together, as she scanned the woods for her hunter. His crossbow was gone, too. He’s fast, Saba thought.

  She searched the ground for tracks, knowing he was wearing a pair of borrowed boots. When she saw a break in the branches, leading away from the fox’s hole, she headed through the brush. She called his name more than once, but the woods were silent. She couldn’t know he was there, squatting between the trees, Peter’s hand over his mouth. He’d pulled Finn away quickly as could be, whispering too low for Saba to hear.

  “She can’t know I’ve come,” Peter said, speaking Finn’s language like a native.

  “Why?” Finn moved closer to the vampire, unknowingly drawn to him.

  “I need to speak fast, do you understand?”

  Finn nodded.

  “Look at me, into my eyes.”

  Finn obeyed and let the vampire pull him inside.

  “Saba is mine.”

  “Saba is yours,” he repeated.

  “She belongs to me.”

  “She belongs to you.”

  “Her blood is mine, her heart, her soul, all mine.”

  “Blood, heart, soul, yours.”

  Peter put a hand on Finn’s chin, and pulled his mouth up to meet his. He ran his tongue across the young hunter’s lips, attempting to draw his desire out of him. Peter worked to rid Finn of his want like a man who’ll suck poison from a snake bite to survive another day. He can’t rid the world of snakes, but he can salvage the day at least.

  “Finn!”

  Her voice shook the young hunter from his reverie. He’d wandered away but had no idea how. He was alone some yards from her, hidden in a bush. He stood up and collected himself, touching the edge of his lips. They were cold.

  “Yoy har,” he shouted in return.

  “There you are.” She held up the fox to show him. “Why’d you take off?”

  He returned her question with a blank stare, wondering what it was he’d wanted from her.

  “Come,” she said. “Netta’s got dinner soon. I’ve got to get this stripped and hung.”

  He followed the huntress, trying to remember why she reminded him of his mother.

  * * *

  The hearth was lit, and the banquet table set. The head of each family was there, the Hematope leaders breaking bread together on the eve of the full moon. Heorot swelled to bursting with male ego, boasting lips and unruly stories about pelts and skins, and even the odd whale. They chatted in jest mostly, laughing as if built for companionship.

  I attended at my father’s request, though I didn’t often go to the clan meetings. None of us frequented Heorot as much as we used to. When my kin first arrived with Netta, things were easy, more joyful. We lived different times then.

  I’d enjoyed Heorot as a young man, when I was alone in the world, different but not separate from the colony that kept me safe. I liked to think most of the Gen H saw me as a common man, a brother whose life was fatefully tied to theirs. Four of them were married to my daughters, which made them sons. We’d shared cups of lager at wedding feasts and to celebrate births, and I’d always considered them an extension of my ever-growing family.

  But I kept to myself mostly, too, a bit of a stranger among them. They understood my destiny, and their part in it. They knew my god brought them together, forged them in his crucible, giving them life among a barren wasteland. They were familiar with some of the stories, and others they carved out for themselves from catalogues and files granted at their genesis. They remembered the nimrod that wreaked havoc on our colony, and they recalled the one who saved us all, understanding his sacrifice.

  The differences between us couldn’t be seen on the outside. Despite their strapping figures, they mostly looked like me, some version of me anyhow. But the single most remarkable polarity between us was my birth. I was born from the womb of a human woman, descended from historic man, a link to the kin who fed off me to survive. That remained our biggest point of contention, and for obvious reasons we kept it off the table.

  But in Heorot, on the eve of the full moon, before those who gathered, my son-in-law spoke candidly about the newcomer washed up on our shores only days before.

  “He is a child of historic man,” Andor roared. “He bleeds as they do.”

  Hannah’s husband had a stern face, and a gift for raising clout. He was a respected member of his clan, with two brothers and three sisters who’d stood by him since I’d known him.

  “This means change is on the horizon as another day dawns for New Man,” he bellowed.

  Hematopes, or Gen H, never referred to themselves as such. We never thought of these as derogatory terms, but once they started calling themselves New Men, I suspected the old moniker no longer suited them.

  “Another bloodline means there are more,” he continued. “We must know how this has come to be.”

  Several colonists banged their fists on tabletops to express their assent.

  I looked to my father, his eyes steady on Andor. I studied him, his lips seeming to anticipate the speaker’s words. They’d consulted on this, I could read it on his face. He wasn’t surprised in the least. That’s why he wanted me at their gathering. I was to defend our ways, and my kin.

  “If there are others,” Andor continued, “and we’ve proof now there are, there’s no need for this line to carry on as it has.”

  He searched for me in the crowd, landing on me with a nod of his head. “Dagur’s kin now have the blood of others to drink.”

  I anticipated the second half of his speech. Free my wife and children from this curse. Let them keep their bloo
d, and their health.

  Andor banged his fist on the banquet table, where he sat with seven other heads of families. Freyit was there, but he remained quiet, a listener if ever there was one. He was a natural healer, and though a skilled hunter, his heart was never bent on aggression.

  My ancestors and descendants were outnumbered to be sure, but that wasn’t something I thought about then. War wasn’t on the horizon, nor was rebellion brewing, but still I collected allies as my eyes roamed the room.

  “Let Dagur speak,” one of them said. “Enough of Andor. Sit, beast, sit.”

  A shout of boos and hisses broke out, and my son-in-law was forced to sit despite his unfinished speech.

  Some of the colonists laughed, and Andor paid their insolence with a javelin sent clear across the room. Again, it was in jest. They laughed and cackled at the spear stuck in the wood of the wall they’d erected.

  “Dagur!” Another shouted, as more joined him in his call.

  I looked to Gerenios again, my father’s eyes steady on me now. He dropped his head in a nod, sending me the courage to stand and speak.

  I rose to my feet, my legs trembling beneath me. I couldn’t say what made me so nervous. I couldn’t have been more protected in that hold, there among my partial-kin. I suppose I was worried for my true kin, the ones for whom my heart could stop. They’d the potential to be killers, capable of razing Heorot and everyone in it, but they were also misunderstood in their plight. The Hematopes were only there because of them, the two indelibly linked by their maker.

  “I don’t know where to begin,” I muttered.

  “Louder,” one shouted with a roar.

  “Come, Dagur,” Freyit said. “Take my place at the front.” He got up and pushed his stool aside for me to stand at the table, before the hearth, and all of them.

  “Start again.”

  “I’m not prepared to lay out a plan just yet,” I said. “As Andor has told you, the newcomer—Finn, is his name—he is a descendant, from a line like mine. But he isn’t kin, from what I know. Until we know more, I can’t make a fair assessment.”