Page 32 of Blood Gift

And I leaned against the wall to my back and asked myself again how I could’ve been so blind.

The night he came to me rushed back, clear as if it were happening all over again. His panic. He hadn’t meant for things to go that far. The bomb was supposed to go off after the club closed for the night, when only the vampires who lived beneath the club would be present. It was supposed to be his biggest triumph.

And I had railed at him. Oh, how I had eviscerated him with my words. How could you do something like this in my territory? You should’ve kept this to New York, on your side of the country where nobody could blame me for it. No, you coward, you did it here so you could blame it on me if things went south.

Please, please, Gentry. Sweat had rolled down his face in rivulets, soaking his hair, the collar of his unbuttoned shirt. For the first time in forever, he had looked unkempt. You know what something like this could do to all of us. I sit at the head of our world. I’m the only thing keeping us all together, all the clans. It would devolve into utter chaos if anyone found out I was responsible for this.

What about my clan? I had demanded, taking him by the collar and hurling him against the wall. You know how hard I’ve worked to keep things together, to keep us unified. Just when things were going well, you pulled something like this. How could you?

It was to be a gesture of strength! Something to unify all the clans under our family name. One grand gesture to put us back on top, where we belong!

Right. And look what happened. Everyone scatters like cockroaches with the lights flipped on, I had snarled, dropping him to the floor and spitting on him before walking away.

Please, brother. Please, do this for me. When I tell the rest of the clan leaders that you planted the explosives, please. Confess to it. I’ll give you the details. You only have to repeat them when the time comes.

They’ll kill me, I’d pointed out.

No, they won’t!He had struggled to his feet, shaking his head like mad. No, I’ll make sure of it. Remember, I have the final say. And I’ll refuse to take your life. We’ll only strip you of your powers.

You’ll what?The very thought of it had made my blood run cold. No powers? How could I possibly survive? I had never known any other way of living. I had relied on magic for everything, my entire life. I didn’t even know how to fry an egg, and he wanted me to live without my powers?

It’s not a death sentence. He had changed then, from a man begging for help to babbling, wily, desperate con man fighting to convince his mark of something that could mean the difference between life and death for him.

And damn me for a fool, I had listened. I had bought into the entire story of how our entire family, all fourteen branches of the original clan, would crumble into dust if Dominic’s crime came to light. His twisted, pointless crime. Even then, he had started sliding into insanity. It was the only excuse for what he did. I wouldn’t have considered such a scheme, and he was the only sorcerer who’d killed more vampires than me.

I had listened, and I had allowed him to bring me up in front of the other clan leaders and accuse me of being a murderer, of endangering the rest of us by bringing our activities to the public eye. I had risked our safety, according to him. I could’ve brought us all down.

The memory of his hypocrisy was enough to turn my stomach, but I forced myself to replay every memory then and there, sitting under a tree across from Mt. Sinai Hospital while he visited our dying mother. The hateful glares of the other sorcerers, men I had known my entire life. Men who had respected me. The ritual Dominic had performed to strip me of every ounce of magic. The feeling of dying, almost, or what I would imagine dying felt like. A light going out inside me. The sense of lessening, of shrinking.

And he had the nerve to act as though it was his duty. Like I had deserved it. He had fooled himself into remembering things the way he wished they’d gone. I didn’t know whether to pity him or plot his death.

I couldn’t do it, and not because he was my brother or even because I doubted I’d be able to harm him. He had power that was only a distant memory for me. I couldn’t do it just then because Mother was still alive. I wouldn’t break her heart that way.

Once she was gone, however…

He appeared on the sidewalk and didn’t look around for me before walking back in the direction of his home.

I watched him, and for the first time in my long life, I felt nothing toward him. Not even hate. He was nothing to me. Barely even worth the air he breathed.

When I was sure he had gone and wasn’t coming back, I crossed the street and went inside.

The lobby still had that death smell, or it might have been my imagination. I kept wanting to return to my dream of Vanessa, but that time was gone. I could fight as hard as I wanted to get her back—and I did want to, I wanted to so badly, we hadn’t even gotten a chance to be together—but with a vampire standing between us, there was no chance. Not when he knew I’d killed so many of his kind.

I bristled when I imagined how satisfied he was with himself. He hadn’t trusted me, and he was right. And he was very likely reminding her of that very fact as I rode up to the third floor in the elevator.

When the doors opened, a scene of chaos greeted me. Nurses and doctors rushed down the hall, muttering and asking questions, and when I stepped off the car, I saw where they were headed. I followed them to her room.

One of the doctors stopped me outside the door. “I’m sorry, Mr. Duncan. Your mother passed away a few minutes ago. It looks as though you just missed it.”

I stared over his shoulder into the room, where medical professionals surrounded the bed. It was oddly silent in there without the monitors making noise.

“Mr. Duncan? Can I do anything for you?” he asked.

“No. No, thank you.” I cleared my throat, turning my gaze back to him. “Her arrangements were already made, if I remember correctly?”

“Yes, sir. There’s nothing to worry about. Everything’s taken care of.”

“Thank you,” I said again before heading back down the hall, to the elevator.

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