“You can’t tell them you’re a vampire,” I said through numb lips.
“They would see me coming from a mile away. My folks know all about you, and your world.” A world of pain darkened his eyes. “I’m not being dramatic. I’m being literal. They would see their son had fangs, and they would plunge a stake through my heart for the sake of my immortal soul.” He spread his hands. “That’s why I’m here. I have nowhere else to go.”
A human with working knowledge of our world was rarer than hen’s teeth, at least one not confined in a cell for life, but he wasn’t human. Not anymore. Thanks to me. “How…?”
“I come from a family of hunters.”
“Hunters,” Linus repeated softly.
“Break it down for me.” I massaged my temples. “I feel like my head’s about to explode.”
“That’s why he was in Atramentous.” Linus raked his gaze down Corbin. “Few humans are sent there. He must have committed a major crime against the Society. Killing vampires is the worst offense, due to the loss of revenue. It’s punished more severely even than the murder of a necromancer.”
The Grande Dame had once mentioned I might be surprised by the diversity of my cellmates. I don’t recall her ticking vampire hunters off her list, but there was a lot the night she reinstated my title that I had been too stunned to retain.
“I got sloppy. I was recorded beheading a vamp who had been preying on homeless kids. The clip went viral, and the Elite showed up at my day job two days later.” Corbin examined me with naked curiosity, his gaze roving my face. “If you hadn’t done what you did, I wouldn’t have seen the sky again. Granted, in my fantasies, it was blue, but I’ll take black.” A sigh moved through him. “That makes me the worst kind of hypocrite. Death over undeath is the family motto, but I didn’t hesitate.”
The twisting in my gut eased. “You…chose this?”
“Yes.” He looked at me oddly. “You let me decide my fate.”
Eyes pinched closed, I exhaled through the knot of guilt unfurling in my chest. “I didn’t know.”
A portion of that white-hot anger in him fizzled when he understood I had no idea what I had done.
“I don’t remember doing it.” Yet here stood the proof I held power over life and death in my hands. “Not that patchy memory absolves me from responsibility, but I didn’t know you existed until the Grande Dame informed me I had progeny.”
“The drugs.” Corbin raised his lip then tapped one of his fangs. “For a long time after, I thought these were a hallucination.”
Clear in his tone was the wish they had been. I had turned him into what he must hate the most.
Funny how relieved I had been a moment ago to learn he had chosen this life.
That small reassurance hadn’t lasted for long.
Linus derailed my guilt trip before I traveled far. “Mother will be searching for him.”
“The Grande Dame will be desperate to get him back,” I agreed. “He’s proof of what I am.”
“Clarice Lawson is your mother?” Corbin took an involuntary step back. “The Grande Dame?”
“Try not to judge him too harshly.” I smiled over at Linus. “You don’t get to choose your parents.”
“No,” Corbin agreed slowly. “You don’t.” His shoulders loosened. “She told me about you.”
Too bad she hadn’t returned the favor on my end. “I’m sure it was all very complimentary.”
“She explained what you are and how I came to be.” Laughter twisted in his throat. “She wanted me to understand, to be grateful.”
Having been on the receiving end of you can thank me now talks from her, I could sympathize.
“She told me you live in Savannah.” He raked his gaze over Woolly, the garden, and the carriage house. “I knew your last name, so finding you was easy.”
Woolly swung the front door in a questioning arc that helped me remember my manners.
Oscar shuffled over to me and latched his arms around my legs, his eyes heavy with sleep he had never required until now. I palmed the small knife I kept finding reasons not to return to Linus and pricked my index finger. I touched Oscar between the eyes, drawing on a crimson sigil supplied by genetic memory.
“Grier,” he rushed out on a shocked breath.
“I’m here, kid.” I kissed the top of his head. “Feel better?”
“Mmm-hmm.” He reached for me, and I boosted him onto my hip. “I’m sleepy.”
Pulling back, I fretted at the dull glow in his cheeks. “Do you want me to tuck you in bed?”
“Nah-uh.” He curled his fists in my hair. “I wanna stay with you.”
“You got it.” Holding Oscar close, I waved Corbin in. “This is not a conversation for the front porch.”
Behind him, Hood caught my eye and gave a tight nod while Lethe trotted off into the yard.
As soon as Corbin stepped across the threshold, Woolly snagged him in her wards like a gnat on flypaper. His eyes flared with betrayal, pinning me on the spot like we were trapped together. Loathing morphed his features next, and that he hurled at Linus.
“This won’t take but a minute,” I reassured him. “I have to know I can trust you before I let you in.”
A quiver rose through my feet from the hardwood, a tremor of anxiety from Woolly that she would pick wrong. Again.
“You got this.” I placed my hand on the nearest wall. “Volkov tricked his way in. That wasn’t your fault. Trust your instincts.”
The tremble beneath me eased, and she refocused her energy on scanning Corbin from top to bottom.
After much hemming and hawing, she concluded he wasn’t a threat. And with his energy signature humming at a similar frequency to mine, we couldn’t deny he was my creation.
Corbin stumbled upon release, but he recovered before tipping into me. “Your home is alive?”
“You’re a vampire, he’s a ghost, I’m a necromancer, and a haunted house is what you find odd?”
“We all have our hard lines.” He scanned the room. “Guess mine gets drawn at animate buildings.”
Welcoming our second-ever vampire guest into the living room, I indicated the sofas. “Have a seat.”
Warily, he sank onto the cushions, muscles tense and ready to uncoil if the couch so much as twitched beneath him.
I could have explained the phenomenon was limited in scope to Woolworth House herself, not her contents, but I figured keeping him on his toes was a good idea.
Eyelids lowering, Oscar levitated out of my arms as if he were a feather blown on an air current.
Woolly rustled the curtains in the nearest window, and I nudged him in that direction. She wrapped him up tight in the scratchy fabric, allowing him to drift nearby while I returned my attention to our guest.
Linus indicated I should take the chair, and he perched on the armrest. Bracing my elbow on his thigh, I propped my chin in my palm and awarded Corbin my full attention. “Start from the top.”
“Like I said, I got caught taking out a vampire.” His voice came out strained. “The Elite arrested me, tried and convicted me, and then they tossed me in Atramentous.”
Black edged my vision, and the room shrank until I was back there, sitting in my familiar cell.
The cold seeps into my bones. The putrid stink of my own filth clogs my nose until I part my ragged lips and suck in rank air swirling near the floor where I press my cheek.
With a violent tug, I wrested myself out of the memories before they sucked me down into oblivion.
Cool fingers brushed my cheek, smearing tracks while hot tears dripped off my chin.
The stairway into my mind, the one curving away from my problems, loomed. The path was a quick escape from what I longed to forget even when I barely remembered the details. But instead of retreating, I set my jaw and linked hands with Linus. Tears wet his skin, and I used his touch to anchor me in the present.
The time for burying my head in the sand had passed. Chin up, I had to see where this journey took me.
“You claim you escaped.” Linus addressed Corbin while tracing an absent line from my elbow to wrist. I wasn’t certain he was aware he was doing it, but it soothed me. “Where were you held?”
“A facility in Reno.” Corbin clenched his hand around the keys, and blood leaked between his fingers from the strength of his grip on the jagged metal teeth. “The Grande Dame offered me a deal. If I allowed them to study me, my condition, they would call my time served in one hundred years.”
“You took the deal.” Otherwise, he wouldn’t be sitting here. He would be chained in a cell.
“What choice did I have? One hundred years in the span of forever is…” A shiver rippled through him, like the thought of eternity chilled him to the bone. “I obeyed their every order and smiled while I did it. Faking compliance earned me extra privileges. Laundry detail got me access to the docks and the trucks.” He noticed his hand and wiped the blood on his pants. “One night, I wheeled in my last cart of dirties then crawled under the semi and worked out hand and footholds. The trailer skirt hid me, and I held on until the driver stopped for the night.”
“They didn’t search beneath the trucks?” Linus cocked his head. “What about the dogs?”
“Cadaver dogs.” Corbin snorted. “I don’t smell like a vamp to them. I noticed it my first time in the yard, and I tested the theory for weeks before I tossed away my only avenue of escape.”
“A soul has to leave the body before it can return,” I said, thinking it through. “You died, and I brought you back. You ought to smell the same as any vampire, or close enough for the dogs to point when they scent you.” I shared a look with Linus. “Woolly recognized similar notes in his energy to mine. Do you think that might have altered his scent as well?”
Linus pursed his lips in consideration. “We’ll have to ask the gwyllgi for their opinion.”