I watched her sleep from the shadows, waiting until her breathing slowed to languid waves. I stayed there for moments–or hours. Time ceased to interest me. Given how much I’d screwed up tonight, it was reassuring to see her at peace. But I didn’t trust myself to let her sleep if I stayed in bed. A naked Thea was far too tempting a thing to resist. Instead, I lingered, not wanting her to wake up alone. Then again, finding a vampire hovering over the bed and watching you sleep was creepy. In the end, I opted to slip out and deal with my mother.
The lights in the corridor had been dimmed to mimic the flickering glow of candlelight. My mother, not fond of having to find matches, had never relinquished her preference for firelight. Even with the modern heating and cooling systems that had been installed decades earlier, hearths could be found blazing day or night, summer or winter. It wasn’t a matter of warmth, since vampires required none. It was a matter of habit, a nod to our past lives. But despite the remnants of the past, I wouldn’t consider my mother sentimental. She didn’t have time for it.
Tradition was another story, as I’d been reminded earlier. I’d left that conversation enraged, which, in hindsight, might have made my blood-lust a bit worse than usual.
When Sabine found out Thea had stayed the night she was going to be livid. It was better I told her, before a member of the household staff. There were still partygoers lingering about in various states of undress as I made my way to the lower levels, unwilling or unable to waste even a minute before sunrise. By dawn everyone would leave. It would be safer to speak to my mother when the house was empty, but I couldn’t risk waiting.
I found her sitting quietly in the morning room, watching the world through her window. Sunrise was still a ways off, so the sky felt heavier and darker than when I’d taken Thea to bed a few hours ago.
She didn’t look up. Sabine had traded her party attire for a silk lounge set and had taken off her makeup. Even without the added glamour she was beautiful. When we were children, she used to tell my sister and me that at least three wars had been started over her–before my father won her heart. Now I knew better. She hadn’t been at the center of those wars because of the choices of other men. She’d been there because she started them.
“Good morning,” I said, staying near the door and out of Sabine’s immediate reach. Keeping a room between us–or preferably a country or two–when disagreeing was a wise tactic. A servant misinterpreted my pause and hurried over to offer me a selection of breakfast items ranging from pastries to fresh blood. “No, thank you.”
“You should eat,” Sabine announced as the man disappeared from the room. “Or have you found other ways to sate your thirst?”
“Thea is my girlfriend,” I reminded her. “I attended with her.”
“Girlfriend? Cortigiana? Gold digger? It’s all the same thing.”
While Thea and I remained in San Francisco, I would be civil, even if my mother wouldn’t. Moving toward the fire, I stood near the hearth and drew off my gloves. Placing them on the mantel, I turned to her with bare hands.
“That was quite the show. Are you planning to fight me?” she asked.
At least she’d gotten my hint. It was a subtle warning among our kind. Even humans knew what it meant when the gloves came off. I shook my head. “Not now. But if you insist on insulting her…”
“Julian.” She said my name with a sigh that carried nine hundred years of maternal disappointment behind it. “She is not like us.”
“She’s human. That’s hardly revolutionary.”
“For a switch, perhaps. They don’t know any better.”
“And what about all the human lovers vampires have had over the years–that you’ve had over the years?”
“I didn’t hang off their arms at social events,” she hissed. “I didn’t show them off, and I never called them my girlfriend!”
“What is it Sebastian is always saying?” I asked with a yawn. It had been a long night, and this wasn’t how I wanted to start a new day. “Welcome to the twentieth century.”
Her lips curled into a cruel smile. “It’s the twenty-first century.”
“Exactly. Things have changed.”
“Things haven’t changed that much!”
“I just waded through two dozen naked, writhing vampires and familiars–I know.”
“How are you going to meet a nice familiar if she’s here to distract you?” She pressed. “The Rites can’t be ignored.”
“I realize that.”
“Do you? Because you’re acting like a teenage vampire. Now is not the time to think with your fangs or your cock.”
I bit my tongue to keep myself from reminding her that she’d just hosted a party where I was supposed to do just that.
“Humans have become–”
“Stop! Don’t even say it,” she cut me off. “You are a Rousseaux.”
“You keep telling me that, but it doesn’t change my relationship with Thea.”
“She is la belle dame sans merci.” Sabine spat out the term like an unsavory bit of gristle.
I groaned. Now she was just being dramatic. She was going to whip herself into a frenzy if I wasn’t careful, and that was the last thing I needed while Thea was under the same roof. She’s survived my blood-lust. I wasn’t about to introduce her to blood-rage in the same twenty-four hours.
Still, it didn’t hurt to be prepared. I stepped closer to the fireplace–and the collection of swords displayed above it.
Sabine’s eyes narrowed on the weapons cache behind me. “Those are antiques and no way to win an argument.”
I wasn’t certain there was a way to win an argument with her. Centuries of wisdom kept that comment in my throat. “Dad says it’s best to have a sword within arm’s reach at all times.”
I left out the rest of that bit of advice–around your mother. Sabine was known for her temper as well as her beauty.
“Your father clings to the past.”
“And you?” My mother perceived herself as the progressive of the Rousseaux sires. To humans, her beliefs changed at a glacial rate. But for a vampire of her vintage, she was a fucking radical. That was the difference between most humans’ reckonings and a vampire’s. When you have a thousand years behind you and forever ahead, change is never urgent. Still, she came around. Usually.
“You’ve chosen a mortal consort with no ties to magical bloodlines. She’s been on your arm at two social functions now! The Rites don’t exist for our amusement, Julian. They are a matter of survival. She can never…” There was more she wished to say, judging from how her lips thinned into a line, somehow helping her contain her next thought. “She can never be your wife.”
“Why?” I challenged her. It was ridiculous to keep pushing this. I barely knew Thea. I certainly had no intention of marrying her. But I hadn’t expected such an aggressive reaction from my mother.
She pinched the bridge of her nose between her fingers, which remained gloved. “You can’t be serious.”
“You know better than most that we vilify what we do not understand–what is not like us. She’s only human. There’s no harm in it.” I’d known it would take considerable effort to sway her feelings toward Thea, but I hadn’t expected an almost violent prejudice. After nearly a thousand years, she still didn’t trust my judgment. Maybe mothers never did.
“Spoken like a human,” she said. “She’s already infecting you.”
“Human? Vampire?” I shrugged. “We share more similarities than differences. They outnumber us, so we hide. We persist in the idea that if they knew, they would hate and fear us. Humans believe we’re monsters. All a mechanism of prejudice.”
“It’s a mechanism of survival–as old as the sun that gives us life and the moon that gives it rest. Dualities exist to complete us, my son. Humans fear us because they should. They remind us that there is something superior in our blood–that we top them on the food chain.” The words spilled from her, even though she remained as motionless as an ivory statue. Nothing but Sabine’s lips had moved in over a minute. So unlike the woman who had been in my arms a few hours ago. It was an eerie reminder that there were discernible differences between the two species.
“Then why the blood banks and the rules and the Council?” I countered her. “I thought we were over all this bullshit.”
“Over the fact that we are above them? That we feed off them?” Her dark hair swung around her shoulders as she shook her head. Finally, a movement. “Blood banks and etiquette do not erase the fundamental fact. We are the superior creature. It simply means we learned to coexist. We’ve risen above our baser instincts, but they are still there. Never forget that.”
“Careful, mother, you’re beginning to sound like Freud.” My eyes flicked to the clock–an astronomical prototype from fifteenth-century Prague. If it was broken, it could never be fixed. The clockmaker was long dead, but his work remained to remind me that soon the sun would rise.
“And you sound like a fool. A lovesick one at that.”
“I think–”
“You aren’t thinking. That is precisely the problem. You think that I’m revealing my bigotry, but you’re missing the bigger picture.”
“This should be good,” I grumbled. “What am I missing?”
“What is above us in the food chain?”
“Nothing.”
But she shook her head. Her voice teetered on the edge of a whisper, but her words filled the room as she quoted, “I saw pale kings and princes too. Pale warriors, death-pale were they all…I saw their pale lips in the gloam with horrid warning gapèd wide.”
“That was written by a human.” It seemed important to point out.
“An unusually perceptive one.” Sabine had been fond of the fragile Keats. She hated the girl he was meant to marry, too. But Sabine was not wrong about Keats or his poem. “Her blood sings you the canticum ad infinitum. You know what the trouble is? It’s not that you’re screwing a pretty little human. She’s something more than human.”
Sabine had always seemed closer to the gods than most vampires I’d met. Some said Hecate herself had given her otherworldly sight. I imagined she’d lived long enough to always have the measure of those around her. It was better than thinking she could read minds. Still, there was something about Thea. Something even I didn’t understand. If Sabine thought she heard…
I had hoped the vampire in the loo was a coincidence. Now…
No, I stopped myself. It was a game, meant to draw me away from a companion my mother found unsuitable. I’d almost fallen for it. I’d almost forgotten that my mother had won as many battles with her wits as her weapons.
Thea was human. I’d held her in my arms. I’d touched her. I’d watched pleasure overcome her fragile, mortal body.
“Every vampire thinks they hear the blood-song from time to time. You’re probably hungry,” I drawled, even as my fingers tapped a frantic beat on the mantelpiece.
I blinked and found an antique blade at my throat.
It seemed my mother was taking matters into her own hands.
