Bloodchild (3 page)

“How… How do I stop? You have to
teach me. I can’t…”

His throat tightened, and he
couldn’t say another word. Aedan sighed.

“I know,” he murmured. “I’m trying
to teach you, but it all depends on you. It’s going to take time.”

Time? Bradan mouthed the word.
Since all this had started, time was the one thing they’d never had enough of,
and while he had yet to hear what had happened with Rhuinn, he doubted it was
any different now.

CHAPTER THREE

Changes

Under the light of the moon, each
ripple on the lake seemed magnified. Aedan’s emotions felt the same way.

Sitting with his back to the slim
trunk of a small tree, he watched Bradan by the side of the lake. He’d cleaned
the blood off his face and neck, and was now washing his shirt.

Blood stains wouldn’t show on the
black fabric. Bradan had said so when Aedan had told him to wash off the blood.
What Bradan didn’t understand yet was that it wasn’t about stains. The issue
was the smell.

After so many years, the scent of
blood did not bother Aedan anymore, but he did remember his first days—his
first years—as a vampire. Blood back then, whether the scent or sight, had
always drawn out his fangs, made the hunger within him roar louder, and made it
harder to resist his impulse to hunt and feed.

It would take time for Bradan to
learn to control the hunger and himself. The trouble was, they did not have
time.

Bradan rinsed his shirt one last
time, then wrung it out and came back toward Aedan, barefoot, bare-chested, his
pants rolled up almost to his knees. He looked different, and it had nothing to
do with his appearance. It was all in the way he moved.

That morning, he’d been human.
Strong, agile, and graceful: a fierce fighter, but nonetheless human. Now, he
was a predator, and he moved like it, each step secure, his body coiled as
though ready to attack at any moment. Aedan wasn’t sure whether Bradan realized
it yet, or even understood the depths of how he’d changed.

For that matter, even knowing what
he’d done, Aedan still had a hard time wrapping his mind around it. He watched
the silver pendant on Bradan’s chest, absently touching his own through his
shirt. After years of being twins yet different, they were back to being the
same. That had never been part of their plan.

“It doesn’t feel cold,” Bradan
said, sitting down next to Aedan. “The water, I mean. Why doesn’t it feel
cold?”

With a shake of his head, Aedan
pushed away the grim thoughts echoing through his mind.

“Why should it?” He plucked a
blade of grass and twirled it between his fingers. “Water only feels cold to a
warm body. I’ve told you before when you warmed washing water for me that it
wasn’t necessary.”

He didn’t ask whether Bradan
understood now; he knew he did.

“I’ll never do that again,” Bradan
murmured as if to himself.

When Aedan gave him a questioning
look, he shrugged.

“Warm up water. Or channel. When
we were hunting, I tried… I mean, I
know
I can’t channel anymore, but I
just didn’t think. It felt so weird not to find the Quickening when I reached
for it.”

Aedan dropped his gaze to the
blade of grass he held, only to realize he’d shredded it.

Bradan had lost the Quickening,
yes; Aedan had taken it from him. And even if the alternative had been death,
Aedan knew from personal experience that the loss was shattering. They’d still
been children when they had learned to grasp the Quickening and channel. It had
become as normal, as instinctive as breathing. Aedan remembered it well.

“It took me years,” he said, his
voice even quieter than Bradan’s. “Years before I stopped trying to channel
without thinking about it. It’s hard. But eventually, it gets easier.”

He didn’t add that, even when he’d
stopped trying to channel, he’d still felt the loss as acutely as ever. Bradan
wasn’t even a day old; there was no reason to trouble him with what would
happen in the next decades. The next few weeks would already be complicated
enough.

“How’s the hunger?” he asked,
raising his gaze to meet Bradan’s again. Bradan’s eyes were still silver; they
wouldn’t go back to blue for more than seconds at a time for months, maybe even
more. Not until Bradan learned to control his hunger.

“Never mind that,” Bradan said
gruffly. “Tell me—”

“I asked you a question,” Aedan
cut in, his voice mild but bearing no contradiction. “I’ll be asking it a lot
in the next months. And you will answer your—answer me when I do.”

Answer your Maker, was what he’d
been about to say. How many times had Ciara asked him the same thing in the two
or three years after she’d turned him? It had taken that long before she
trusted him around humans.

Bradan’s eyes widened slightly
before he inclined his head.

“It’s better,” he said, “but it’s
still there. I drained one ceash fully, and most of a second one. Is that… is
that normal? It seems like a lot of blood. You don’t eat that much, do you?”

Without thinking, Aedan looked to
the side, where he’d dropped the body of the second ceash after carrying it out
of the woods. Bradan had killed that one on his own, and they’d fed from it
together. It was a fine animal, too fine to let its meat go to waste. They’d
take it back to the castle for Doril to cook. It was smaller than the first
one, but both combined had held far more blood than a human body.

The issue wasn’t how much blood
Bradan had drunk tonight. He could drain three more ceashes and still feel
pangs of hunger. What his body needed, what it craved, was human blood.

The one thing Aedan had to forbid
to him.

Thinking back about his own
awakening, about Ciara explaining all this, Aedan considered using the same
words to explain to Bradan, but he couldn’t make himself. Aedan had chosen this
life for himself. He’d thought he knew what he was agreeing to. He’d been
wrong, but at least the choice had been his to make. Bradan had not had any
such choice.

“You’re right, I don’t eat much,”
he said instead. “But I used to. You’re going to be hungry just about all the
time. Drinking from animals will help, but it won’t feel like it’s enough, not
for a long time. So, when it gets to be too much, whenever it dulls your mind
because you can’t think of anything else…” He drew up the sleeve of his shirt,
much like he had done earlier that night. “I want you to come to me. And tell
me. Don’t wait for me to ask. Do you understand?”

Bradan’s gaze was fixated on the
bite marks visible on Aedan’s wrist. They were healed already, and would
disappear within a day at most, but at the moment they were still very obvious
on Aedan’s pale skin. After a few seconds, Bradan shook his head and looked
away; it was clear that doing so cost him.

“I can’t bite you every time I’m
hungry,” he protested, his words rough. “Wouldn’t that weaken you? If I’m not
at the top of my form, you should be. For our dame.”

When Aedan let out a snort,
Bradan’s eyes flew back to him, his brow already set in a deep frown.

“So, what you want to do,” Aedan
tried to sound teasing, but his voice came out too cold for that, “is guard her
while you’re so hungry all you can think about is her blood. Oh, yes, that
sounds like a wonderful idea.”

“I’d never hurt…”

Bradan’s voice and outrage tapered
off when Aedan brought his wrist to his mouth and ran one fang where his skin
was the thinnest. No more than a trace of blood beaded to the surface of his
skin, but Bradan’s nostrils flared and, probably unconsciously, he started to
lean forward.

“You’d never want to hurt her,”
Aedan murmured. “I never wanted to hurt anyone, either. But my first year as a
vampire, I bit three humans. Came close to attacking nine more.”

And without his Maker to stop him
every time, he might have killed all of them without ever meaning to.

Blinking several times, Bradan
tore his gaze from Aedan’s wrist to look at his face instead.

“Why… why didn’t you ever tell
me?”

Aedan shrugged, but his discomfort
clung to him.

“Because I didn’t want you to be
afraid of me.”

Also because he’d been too ashamed
of himself: too scared that he’d never get control over his hunger, and never
be worthy of being part of the QuickSilver Guard.

Without warning, Bradan shoved at
his shoulder. Aedan glared at him and received an identical glare in return.

“You idiot,” Bradan said, but the
hint of a smile was soon tugging at his mouth. “Like I could ever be afraid of
you.”

A retort rose to Aedan’s lips, but
he swallowed it back. This wasn’t about him or about the past. It was about
Bradan right here, right now.

“Well, maybe I was an idiot, but I
won’t let you be one. So. Whenever you’re hungry, what are you to do?”

With an excessively deep sigh,
Bradan yielded.

“Fine. If I get too hungry to
think clearly, I’ll tell you.”

Aedan raised an eyebrow and
waited. He didn’t have to wait very long.

“I’m hungry,” Bradan said with
another sigh. “Which you know because it filters through the bond.”

Tugging his sleeve higher up his
arm, Aedan held out his bare wrist to Bradan.

“Like with the ceash,” he said.
“Make the conscious effort to drop your fangs. And this time you’ll stop at the
exact moment I tell you to. Got it?”

Bradan’s nod seemed a little
impatient. Both his hands clasped Aedan, one on his wrist and the other higher
up his arm. His brow furrowed in concentration, and it only took him a handful
of seconds to let his fangs out. His bite was more controlled than when he’d
first awakened, and it didn’t hurt as much. It was a good first step.

“And yes, it does filter through
the bond,” Aedan murmured, watching his brother drink from him. “But just the
same. I want you to tell me. That way you’ll be on the look-out for the signs.
That’s how you’ll learn. Stop now.”

He didn’t tug his arm back as he
said the words. This, too, was how Bradan would learn. And he had so many
things to learn in so little time…

The suction stopped, but Bradan
tightened his hold on Aedan’s wrist rather than letting go, and his mouth
didn’t leave Aedan’s skin.

“I know it’s hard,” Aedan said
quietly. “I know you’re hungry. But you’ve got to learn to control your hunger
rather than let it control you. That’s the only way you’ll be safe around
humans.”

Bradan’s eyes closed and, still
holding on tight to Aedan’s wrist and arm, he pushed himself away. The effort
seemed to take all he had, and when he let go, he lowered himself to the grass,
lying there, panting.

“The only way humans will be safe
around me, you mean,” he said after a few seconds. “The only way
she
’ll
be safe around me.”

Only when Bradan’s eyes opened
again and sought his gaze did Aedan reply.

“Yes.”

Bradan folded his arms behind his
head. He stared up at the sky above them, devoid of stars because the shield
masked them, and Aedan focused on what was filtering through the bond. The
hunger was there, would always be there from now on, a background note that
would grow louder at times, and at times recede until it almost—but not
quite—disappeared.

Right now, the hunger was a
presence but not overwhelming. What came through much more clearly was Bradan’s
love for their dame, mixed with worry. It was good that he worried. Aedan did,
too.

“How is she?” Bradan asked after a
few moments, turning his face back to Aedan. “What happened with Rhuinn? Did
she go to the party at all?”

Aedan nodded absently.

“She did. I wish you could have seen
her. She marched in there like she was already the queen, called him out for
having you and Anabel murdered, and challenged him to a duel. I don’t think
I’ve ever seen Rhuinn that shocked. Or angry.”

But Rhuinn wasn’t the only one
shocked. Bradan sat up again, his eyes wide and gleaming like silver coins.

“She challenged him to a duel?” he
repeated, choking on the words. “But she just learned to channel! How could you
let her—”

He fell silent when Aedan burst
out laughing. There was no joy to the sound, however, and soon Aedan quieted
down again.

“Let her?” Aedan said. “There was
no ‘letting her.’ She told me what she wanted to do, and it was pretty clear
that I could either go along with her or watch her go on her own. And yes, she
just learned, but she’s strong. She has five days to practice and get even
better.”

“Five days.” Bradan shook his
head. “That’s not much time at all. I’ll start sparring with her tomorrow using
nothing but the Quickening and…”

Aedan didn’t have to say anything.
Already, Bradan had remembered that, no, he wouldn’t be able to do that. He
could still coach their dame into using the Quickening, but he wouldn’t be able
to channel with her anymore.

The look of loss that flickered
over his features, matching the painful pang that came through the bond,
reawakened Aedan’s guilt. He wanted to apologize, but what words would be
enough to make up for all that he had taken from his brother by making him a
vampire?

Reaching for Bradan’s knee, he
patted it twice a little awkwardly.

“We’ll figure out some way for her
to practice,” he said. “She’ll be fine, you’ll see. She’s strong. She was
devastated after… after what happened to you, and still she stood her ground in
front of Rhuinn.”

“You’ve stopped calling him the
king,” Bradan noted, a small smile touching his lips. “It took you long
enough.”

Looking away, Aedan pushed himself
to his feet.

“Like our dame said, he deserves
the title of murderer more than he does the name of king. Come on, let’s go
back.”

Bradan stood and picked up his
shirt from the branch. It was still wet, of course, and Bradan’s hand flicked
toward it in the familiar movement that had accompanied his channeling. Aedan’s
insides tightened, and he pretended not to have noticed, nor did he comment on
the feeling of frustration that resonated through the bond.

Had he been able to restore
Bradan’s life, give him back his heartbeat along with his ability to channel,
Aedan would have gladly given his own life in exchange. But what was done was
done, and there was no changing it.