You are a fool. You will die, all of you. You with your self-
righteousness, all your misguided followers. The girl. And your
Julian jolted awake to find Lorelei’s warm body spooned against
his back. She was sleeping soundly, her breathing slow and steady. He
rolled toward her and watched her for a few minutes, absorbing the
familiar lines of her face, her soft smells, the sounds of her breathing.
Finally he leaned forward to kiss her gently, tasting her mouth without
waking her.
Reluctantly, he rose to get dressed.
Lucien wasn’t in his office, so Julian went on to Aanu’s room in
the hospital wing. Lucien was, of course, there.
So was William.
Julian hesitated at the door. William sat in a chair next to Aanu’s
bed, where Aanu sat listening intently as William spoke. Lucien leaned
against the wall, watching.
Apparently, William was teaching Aanu English. Or trying to. From
the sound of things, it wasn’t going very well.
Silence fell as Julian stepped into the room. Lucien pushed away
from the wall and met him at the doorway, waving him back into the
hall.
“What’s up?” Julian asked.
“We’re trying to get Aanu up to speed.” Lucien laughed a little.
“Not that there’s much chance that’ll actually happen. But Aanu can
use the company.”
“Where did William learn ancient Sumerian?”
“Ask him yourself.” Lucien’s gaze slid sideways, toward him.
Julian tried not to be irritated by Lucien’s too-obvious subtext.
“Yeah. I should talk to him.”
“Lorelei says you’re having difficulty accessing the Senior’s memories
of Ruha.”
Well, at least he’d left the subtext behind. Text was always easier
to deal with. “You think talking to William will help?”
“You’ve let this thing with William go on way too long, Julian. Get
it past you. Particularly if it’s keeping you from Ruha.”
Julian wanted to argue, would have done anything to avoid the
excruciatingly awkward confrontation he knew any heart-to-heart with
William would be. But he couldn’t justify cutting himself any slack, not
with what he was demanding from the others. “All right,” he said. “I’ll
talk to him. But it’ll have to wait. We need to talk—all of us. I’ve been
having dreams.”
Lucien eyed him questioningly. “There’s no time like the present.”
He pushed the door open, and Julian followed him into Aanu’s
room.
“William,” Lucien said in English. “Desist for a bit. We need to
pow-wow.” Then, to Aanu, he added, “The three of us need to talk.
There are things you need to know.”
Aanu sighed, obviously relieved. “This language of yours is very
difficult. I need to rest, anyway.”
William laughed. “I have to say, I’m getting something of a headache,
as well. You’re not the easiest student.” He touched Aanu’s
hand. “I’ll come back later.”
Julian noted that, as William slid past him and out of the room, he
avoided his gaze.
When the door closed behind William, Lucien gave him a wink. In
English, he said, “I thought he and Aanu might hit it off.”
“What are you saying?” Aanu said, his voice edgy. He’d seemed
more at ease in William’s presence.
“Nothing,” said Lucien. “I was just being rude.” He settled into a
chair. “Now—we need to talk about Ialdaboth.”
Aanu nodded. “Tell me what I need to know.”
Julian spun out the story as best he could, fighting through the
second-hand memories that allowed him to speak Aanu’s language.
Lucien stepped in from time to time, correcting his word choice or
phrasing. Aanu listened attentively, becoming more and more grim as
the story unfolded.
“Do we even know for sure what we’ll be facing?” he asked
finally. “Ialdaboth has been in hiding. Do we know why?”
Lucien steepled his fingers under his chin. “I killed him in Romania.
It will have left him weak. He’s regathering his strength.”
he’s gathering. Dark power. Death power.”
“You should have killed him, Lucien, when the opportunity was
there,” said Aanu. “He was weak after you attacked him—the two of
you together might have been able to destroy him.”
Julian shook his head. “We didn’t know where he was. Eventually,
I realized he’d gone underground. But even with the connection he
and I seem to have developed, I don’t know exactly where he is.”
“You should have hunted him down.”
Aanu seemed to know an awful lot about what should have been
done, Julian thought, especially for someone who had been dead for
the last four thousand years of plot development. Biting back his irritation,
he said, “That would have left this place too vulnerable. It was not
an acceptable risk.”
“We did everything we reasonably could,” Lucien put in. “We
took the information we gathered in Romania, gathered additional information
from Rafael and Lilith. I believe that if we wanted to, we
could invade Ialdaboth’s stronghold directly and expect a high degree
of success.”
Aanu shrugged. “Then we should do it.”
“No, we shouldn’t.” Julian’s voice was firm and grim. “‘A high
degree of success’ isn’t enough. We have to eradicate him completely,
before he destroys everything.”
A moment of silence passed, during which Julian endured Aanu’s
judgmental regard.
Finally, slowly, Aanu said, “The Dark Children have existed longer
than there have been vampires. Ialdaboth has existed as long as Belial
and myself. Why is it so important now that he be eliminated?”
“The power Ialdaboth wields is different than it was in the past,”
said Julian. “It’s stronger and much darker. This argument—this war—
has become more than a mere philosophical conflict. It’s good against
evil. What he grows inside him could destroy everything good that ever
existed. And he intends to do exactly that. We have to stop him.”
“He feeds off evil,” Lucien added. “The same way you and I
feed off positive emotions, he feeds from negative ones. From hatred,
war, pain. He foments it and teaches his children to foment it. So not
only do they feed and kill without remorse, they cause as much pain as
possible, and when they see an opportunity to cause mass chaos, they
take it.”
Aanu nodded. “He was sliding even four thousand years ago. I
should have known something like this would be the result.” He mulled
a moment, then looked at Lucien. “Is it even possible to kill him?”
Lucien nodded. “I believe so, yes.”
“Ialdaboth and Ruha conquered me, but I wasn’t destroyed. As
you see.”
“Maybe if they had cut you into pieces instead of leaving your
skeleton intact?” Julian offered. It was a quandary, he had to admit, but
there had to be some way to kill these creatures, these Firs
t Demons.
Otherwise what had been the point of his own transformation?
“There has to be more to it than that,” said Lucien. He regarded
Julian narrowly. “It has to do with you, with what you’ve become. It
has to.”
“Him?” Aanu protested. “He’s just a vampire. And only eight
centuries old.”
Lucien shook his head. “No, Julian is more than a vampire. He
drinks no blood, hasn’t for over two hundred years. He eats solid food
and can live in the sunlight. And his lover is pregnant with twins. His
biological children.”
Clearly astonished, Aanu looked at Julian. “But how—”
Julian started to reply, but Lucien waved him off.
“We’ll tell you all about it later, when we have time. What’s important
now is that Julian can do one more thing vampires can’t do. He
can restore life to the mortally wounded. And we have yet to see the
extent of his powers.”
Comprehension washed over Aanu’s features. “The one who
feeds from life without diminishing it,” he murmured.
“Yes,” Lucien replied. “We wrote it in the Book. And the Book
has the other answers we need, as well, I’m certain. But so much of it
has been lost.”
“The Book,” Aanu repeated. He frowned, thoughtful. “There is
something. I know what it is, what we need to know.”
“Please tell us,” said Julian.
Aanu shook his head. “I can’t. Not yet. But I will.” He stood. “I
have it here, somewhere in my head. I have to go think until I find it.”
He went to the door. “Give me time.”
Julian watched him go, then looked at Lucien. “That’s something,
then.”
Lucien nodded. “Let’s hope so.” He slapped Julian’s shoulder
lightly, encouraging. “I’ll talk to William. He’ll be by to see you in a
couple of hours. Then I think we’ll be well on the way to getting this
thing done.”
Julian paced his living room, waiting for William, nervous to the
point of nausea.
It was his own fault, of course, that he was so distraught over
what was about to transpire. He’d put it off far too long. He should
have dealt with it right up front. But he’d had other things on his mind,
and it had been easier to shove the hard things aside, hoping they would
remain irrelevant.
He should have known better. After eight-hundred-plus years of
living, he at least should have learned that things he tried to ignore
eventually came back to bite him in the ass.
Briefly, he wondered how much Lucien had told William—if William
had some idea what was coming, or if this was all going to be a
horrible revelation for him. Julian wasn’t sure which would be worse.
He nearly jumped out of his skin when the knock finally came.
Opening the door, he found William on the other side, looking even
more nervous than he was.
“May I come in?” William asked.
Julian stepped aside. “Of course.”
William eyed him warily as he entered. “Lucien told me. Some of
it, anyway.” He stopped, swung around to face him. “Why the hell
didn’t you talk to me about this a long time ago?”
Julian gave a short laugh. “Good question. I was just asking myself
the same thing.” He gathered himself, studying William. William
frowned. The light caught the lenses of his glasses, making it difficult
for a moment to see his eyes. “Have a seat,” Julian said.
William sat, still watching him with obvious discomfort. “How
much?” he asked cautiously. “How much do you know?”
With a sigh, Julian settled into another chair. “Everything. He gave
me his memories with his blood.”
William’s eyes widened, then his expression hardened, his face
closing on a myriad of emotions Julian was hard-put to read. Anger,
shock, pain, embarrassment.
Julian looked away, feeling many of the same emotions, himself.
“I’m sorry,” he ventured. “This has been difficult for me, too.”
“Why bring it up now?”
“I have to get to Ruha. He and the Senior were lovers several
centuries ago. For some reason that I don’t understand, I have to go
through you to get to him.”
William laughed a little, the expression on his face more wry than
amused. “All the lovers filed in the same mental cabinet?”
“Something like that, apparently,” Julian replied.
The room reeked with awkwardness. Suddenly Julian had no idea
what he should do with his hands. Strange. He so rarely thought about
his hands.
“How much of it have you . . . seen?” William said finally.
“Glimpses. I’ve shied away from it. It’s too strange, seeing you
and seeing . . . what he remembers.” He dared a sideways glance, but
William wasn’t looking at him. “I’m sorry, William.”
Now William did look at him, and something flared in his eyes.
“Are you?”
“Yes. I am.”
“For what, exactly?”
Taken slightly aback, Julian paused to consider. “For being . . . the
way I was.”
“And why were you that way?” William’s voice had become tight
and brittle. “Was there a real reason, or just plain old-fashioned homophobia?”
His tone made Julian inexplicably angry. But was he really angry,
or did his reaction come from the Senior within him? That the question
even occurred to him fueled his anger—and made him afraid. It was
the thing that scared him the most—feeling as if someone else were
living inside his body, affecting his thoughts, guiding his emotions.
Regardless of whose anger he felt, though, William didn’t deserve
it.
Carefully, Julian said, “When he died . . . you were so cold. Like
you didn’t give a shit. Then I found out what he was to you. What was
that about?” The anger grew as he spoke, becoming harder to control.
William’s taut expression had given way to surprise. He blinked a
few times, and when he spoke his voice was soft. “He knew he was
going to die. He told me to do whatever I had to do to protect myself.
For all I knew, you were going to kill us all.”
Julian frowned in thought as he began to understand. “Like when
you tried to protect me with his bones, all over my desk, right after he
died. I thought you were just being a suck-up.”
“I was. It seemed expedient.”
Julian swallowed and looked at the wall. “After that, when the
rest of the memories started coming, the emotions—when I found out
what you meant to him—” He stopped, swallowed again. “It was hard
to like you. I felt like you had betrayed him. And he was me—sort of.”
“I assure you,” William said in strained tones, “I loved him.”
It struck Julian suddenly that this was as hard for William as it
was for him. Stupid—incredibly stupid—not to have realized that from
the outset. He’d been so wrapped up in his own problems, and the
problems of the enclave in general, that he hadn’t even considered
William’s loss. His pain.
Julian dragged his gaze away from the
wall and looked at William.
He was staring at a spot on the opposite wall. “But I was the one
left behind, and that was harder,” he said.
Yes, it would be, Julian thought. “I should have talked to you before,”
he said. It was just . . . so strange to me.”
Silence settled for a moment, less strained than it had been.
Finally William said, “You have to go through the memories. You
have to find what Ruha knew. Otherwise we die. Am I right?”
“Yes.” And, at last, Julian understood what he needed to hear. “I
need your permission.”
William laughed dryly. “My permission? You need my permission
to rummage through your own mind?”
When William finally looked in his direction, Julian caught and
held his gaze. It was easier, now. “Those memories don’t belong to me.
They’re his. Yours. When I go there, it’s a violation.”
William’s jaw clenched, but he didn’t look away. “Do what you
have to do. You should have done it already, instead of wasting time
with me.”
“If we live, I still have to be able to look you in the eye. That’s
important to me.”
“You need to learn to be more ruthless. We’re not going to get
through this if you act like a pushover.”
Julian smiled a little. “I know. I’ll try.”
William’s eyes were flinty. “Don’t try,” he said. “Just get it done.”
They’d reached an understanding, Julian realized, but forgiveness
for the months of evasion and awkwardness between them—and for
killing his lover, however necessary it may have been—would likely be
a long time coming.
“William, I’m sorry,” he said.
William’s face softened, but only a little. “I know.”
There was little left to do, then, but watch William leave. When
the door closed behind him, Julian leaned back in his chair and stared at
the ceiling.
Four
He was ready. He was sure of it. With Lorelei holding his hand,
Julian leaned back in their bed, closed his eyes, and once again dove
deep into the vast sea of inherited memories.
His first discovery surprised him. The Senior’s relationship with
William had spanned nearly a century. That pool of memories hadn’t
appeared that deep the last time he’d tried to get past them. But maybe