Page 280 of Dragon Slayer

51

EVERYTHING AND NOTHING

Vlad didn’t sleep much. He’d slept for over five centuries, and felt no need to wallow in his bed now.

He forced at least three hours, for basic maintenance. It wouldn’t do to let exhaustion set its hooks in him, not now that so much was at stake. But he usually awakened around four most mornings, and then went looking for something to do. Most nights, he went down to the training room in the main basement, and practiced his sword or knife skills, or pinned up paper targets so he could work on his archery, or worked with modern firearms. He didn’t like the uncertainty of them, but he’d never met a weapon he didn’t want to master. There was a pool in the east wing, and sometimes he swam laps until the muscles in his chest and arms burned. The woods called to him on some nights, dark and alive with the rustle of mammals, wind-tossed, filled with the call of owls.

But then other nights he sought the main house’s rooftop, and the distant glimmering lights along the horizon, a peek at civilization that lay on the other side of the forest. He went to the roof now, drawn there by the scent of something old made new again. A revenant smelled like a human forged of ash and congealed blood, and he fought the instinctual urge to growl as he approached the parapet where a silhouette in a long black coat stood staring off across the compound.

Kolya shifted a fraction, glancing back over his shoulder, his eyes too bright in the dark. When he saw that it was Vlad, he faced forward again, and his shoulders relaxed.

Vlad drew up beside him. “Can you scent me, like a wolf?”

“No.” His voice left his lips as a quiet rasp. The scars on his face, Vlad knew, meant that his flesh hadn’t quite realigned as it had been in life. He imagined scars deep down in his throat, criss-crossing his insides. A patchwork man. “I heard you, though.” Even softer: “I think – I think maybe I could always hear well. It’s hard to remember.”

“Do you remember your friends?”

“Bits and pieces. I – I remember a wolf. It was white. And – blood. War. But. There was a girl. We danced.” A deep groove formed between his tucked brows, and he reached to rub it with absent fingertips. “I don’t know.”

Vlad followed his gaze out across the grounds. The stable lay behind the manor, so from here they had a view of the massive front stair, and circular drive, and the splashing fountain at its center. All of it was lit with torches that looked like the old pitch ones of his time, but which Talbot had told him were powered by underground gas lines.

Everything about the world had changed since he went to sleep.

Andnothinghad changed.

Vlad reached back into the waistband of his pants and withdrew the two sheathed knives he’d come up here to deliver. Kolya didn’t start, exactly, but his head snapped around, and his gaze landed on them as Vlad held them out on a flat palm. “I believe these are yours.”

The revenant studied them a long moment, and then slowly, hesitantly reached for them. He wore fingerless gloves, and even in the dark Vlad could see the faint pink scars around his nail beds. He didn’t touch them, though; his hand hovered. “Are they? How did you get them?”

“Your captain had them when he fought me.”

He lifted his head, and whatever he felt about Vlad, whatever Liam Price had told him, was swept aside in favor of his desperate search for information. “Fought him? That was – his name is Nikita, right? I…” He trailed off, gaze clouding. “He was here?” he asked in a small voice.

“He came to break his wolf loose.”

His brows twitched, and drew even tighter together.

“I am told they are the only survivors of your original team. The vampire and his wolf–”

“Vampire?”

“You died before he was turned, then. Yes, he’s of my kind. Bitten – not bred. He and the wolf, Sasha, live amongst mortals, I am told. The captain was a passionate fighter, if an inept one.”

Kolya winced, as if his head hurt. He brought his free hand up to massage at his temple, and the other shook over the knives. “You – you didn’t kill him, did you?” He looked afraid to know the answer.

“No. I have no conflict with him, so long as he stays out of my way. I had hoped to bind his wolf, but…” The revenant’s eyes were wide, and half-wild, struggling to remember, Vlad thought. “Bound or not, your captain and his wolf are too closely bonded for another vampire to make any use of him.”

“Oh. Alright.” His gaze dropped back to the knives, and he hesitated another long moment before he finally took both hilts together in one grip. “Thank you.”

Vlad let his hand fall to his side. “My brother knows where they are if you want to find them.”

“I work for Mr. Price,” he said, half-heartedly. “I…”

Vlad backed away. “Then stay with him, if that’s what you want.” He turned and walked to the hidden door that led into the stairwell, paused there and glanced over his shoulder one last time.

Kolya held the knives in one hand, down low along his thigh. The breeze stirred the tails of his coat, and his too-long hair. A portrait of the truth that the dead should be left to peaceful graves.

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