Page 19 of Dishonor Among Thieves
“Tell me everything.” Neo sat beside me on the settee, his back straight and his eyes boring into mine. “Start at the beginning. When you learned of my kind, how you first encountered us.Everything.”
I reached for the embroidered pillow and gripped it between my clammy hands. It didn’t bring the comfort my sister’s touchstone provided, but I picked at the threads and savored the smooth, luxurious fabric, wishing I had a way to ease the confusion and indecision of this moment. I’d not prepared what to say. I didn’t know quite what to do.
“By the gods, Brexia.” Neo raked a hand through his hair and released a sigh. “Please.” His voice was more gentle than it had been yet in the very short time I’d know him. “Let’s start over, shall we? Equalize things between us. You know my secrets—some of them, at least. I want you to trust me with yours. Please.”
I had no way to evade the truth. I didn’t have the heart to lie about things so tender, so true. If he were patient enough, I would speak, and this wealthy, titled man, this vampire would see me laid bare. And that terrified me from the tip of my head to my toes. What might he do once he knew everything? I was not in such a rush to balance things between us, unless in so doing, I had some kind of guarantee I would not be cast out. Shamed or rejected beyond what I already had been. I nervously twisted the pillow between my hands.
“Brex.” His voice was surprising. Gentle. “Why don’t we start by setting down that abused pillow. If you need to tear something to shreds while you talk, I offer this.” He set the pillow aside, and he set one of his hands atop mine. He grinned, an unexpectedly kind gesture that lightened the burden of indecision in my chest. “You know I’ll heal just fine, no matter the damage you might do to my fingers.”
I lightly squeezed his hand and returned the smile but then pulled my hand away and laced my fingers together, forming a tight fist in my lap. “I admit, I am afraid.” His body shifted beside mine, but I didn’t look at him. Didn’t want to face the reactions he would make to my honesty. “I’ve had few friends in life. And I don’t yet know whether you might become a friend…or a haughty adversary.”
“I have been called worse,” he said with a chuckle. “By my own family, no less. I’ll do my best to keep my bad attitude in check if it will help you speak freely.”
I stood from the settee and paced toward the window. Beyond the confines of the manor walls, the sun was shining. Outside, the shire of Omrora was blessed with a beautiful fall day. I was certain Sara would be grazing the free-growing sweet grass beyond the stable. Common folk would be readying for work. Of course, in my mind I imagined the ideal, the kind of routine that I’d always imagined other people lived. Children running off to chores with full bellies and hearts. Loving spouses sharing kisses and the quiet intimacy of shared lives. I put a hand against the cool glass and thought back to my earliest memories—which were nothing like my fantasies.
“My mother was a vampire,” I said simply. “Not my birth mother. I know nothing of my people before my mother saved me. I only know that she would not speak of the conditions she found me in. Where or how I was born…to whom. I was just a babe of three, and as far as my memory reaches, I remember only one mum.”
I pictured my mother as vividly as if she were standing behind me. Smelled the scents of the smoke she used to anoint our one-room cottage with sacred burning wood. The cloudberry tea she steeped with a touch of wild honey as a special treat when I was sick or cross. “She was a wonderful woman,” I said, a surge of longing and affection making it difficult to speak. “How she thought a vampire alone could raise a child…” I shrugged. “She was so beautiful, so kind.” Her hair a rich vibrant brown, coiled in perfect curls. Her eyes were as dark as the midnight sky, alive with loving sparkles that rivaled the stars. I smelled the perfume of her skin as strong as if she were standing behind me, the physical memory bringing tears to my eyes.
Neo didn’t move, didn’t speak to interrupt, but I felt his gaze upon me, watching me.
“I grew up understanding that my mother needed blood to survive.” I turned to face him. “She told me the origin of the vampires. Was always very honest about what she was, and I believed with all my soul that the vampire was a holy creature. Descended from the gods.”
“What did she tell you?” he asked.
I claimed the velvet armchair before leaning back and settling in, holding on to my charm for comfort. I recounted the history that my mother had shared. The parts that most people knew, but which time and the rules of jealous monarchs had forced the common people to suppress. As if suppression and forgetting could ever completely erase truth.
Back in the earliest days of creation, a goddess gave birth to a son. The babe’s father was a jealous god, believing the child was not his. He accused her of infidelity and threatened to destroy the child before its mother’s eyes as a test of his paternity. The goddess had not been unfaithful, but fearing the wrath of her mercurial lover, she hid the babe, banishing her son to a cave nestled deep in a fertile valley to be raised by loving nymphs. She would take no chances with her beloved child.
The nymphs, creatures of wood and water, forest and mountain, were attentive guardians of the infant god, but they struggled to feed him. All the milk the nymphs could spare was not enough for their own children and the voracious child-god. Even the milk the animals of the land could provide was not plentiful enough for the insatiable infant. His surrogate mothers feared that the child would die of hunger and bring the wrath of the goddess upon them. Before they lost him to starvation, in desperation, the nymphs fed the baby the one resource they had in abundant supply: their blood.
While at first they feared the consequences of such a meal, the child didn’t just grow—he thrived.
I flushed as this part of the story Neo knew no doubt knew, despite its more intimate themes.
“He grew up to be a powerful lover,” he supplied, a wry grin on his face.
I nodded, thankful that he’d spared me the embarrassment of saying it.
“You know the rest of the story, then. When he was fully grown, the young god fathered the first of his children with nymphs who had grown up alongside him. Not with the sisters and mothers who’d raised him, of course, but the daughters of those powerful beings.”
When the god grew up, he left his sanctuary with the nymphs forever. By then, he’d spent years perfecting the art of making love. It was said that his offspring numbered in the hundreds. But the selfish god abandoned his children to the care of their mothers. The nymphs quickly learned that what had been created could not be undone. The offspring descended from the blood-drinking god were destined for long lives, exceptional strength and healing, and an unquenchable need for the blood of the living to survive.
“My mother told me that the children born of those unions eventually left the sanctuaries of the nymphs. At first, some sought to find their father. But over generations, they scattered among the various Realms of Efimia and assimilated into the human world. Unfortunately in many places, like here in Tutovl, they found they were not loved by their common brethren.”
“Many of us would say we are hated, despised,” he said quietly. “We are both of Efimia, of this physical world, and yet not entirely part of it. Destined to hide what we are, to do what we must to survive in secret, even though we have no more choice in the matter than we do over the beating of our hearts.”
“My mother spoke of other powers, as well. Powers that are different for each vampire.” I licked my dry lips, my mother’s whispers echoing through the vast distance of memory.
“Descending from nymphs means that most vampires have other unusual gifts. For some, a siren-like talent for song. Others connect to the natural world—the air, water—in ways I cannot imagine,” he explained.
I lowered my eyes, defying the danger of speaking of this long-buried truth. “The vampires of Tutovl have been hidden and suppressed for so long, my mother never knew if she had other abilities, other gifts. She always longed to learn. To live someplace where she could discover her talents and freely develop them.”
“This is the not the Realm for any like us to be free.” Neo’s voice was raw with rage and something heartbreaking. Regret? “Our own bodies, the very makeup of our souls is the stuff of gods, and yet, we are cruelly judged. Shackled by fear which is emboldened by law.”
My heart raced as he described feeling exactly the way I had my entire life. We were not so very different, and that awareness made me feel oddly connected to this man. This vampire.
“I agree with that, but my mother taught me the most powerful truth in the universe is balance. No amount of suppression over the generations could kill one incredibly powerful gift,” I reminded him. “One that you all possess.”
