Brothers to the Death (The Saga of Larten Crepsley) (17 page)

Wester was talking about Larten becoming a Prince, and the possibility of war with the vampaneze. He was animated, making grand promises and pledges. The other vampire looked dubious.

Larten sent a mental burst to Wester. Vampires couldn’t communicate at length in this manner, but they could exchange short messages.
I need to speak with you
, Larten transmitted.
Meet me on the roof.

Wester paused and frowned, then carried on as if nothing had happened. After a minute he made an excuse to leave and said he would return shortly. As Wester exited, Larten crawled up the outside of the building, digging his nails into the bricks, climbing swiftly. He hauled himself onto the roof before Wester got there. When the guard arrived, Larten was standing close to the edge, staring out over the city, his back to Wester.

“What’s up?” Wester asked.

“It will be a fine night,” Larten replied, gazing at the clear sky.

Wester laughed uneasily. “You didn’t come here to discuss the weather.” He could tell something was wrong by the way Larten stood so stiffly.

“You have always been a brother to me,” Larten said. “Along with Seba, you are the closest family I have had since turning my back on those who brought me into this world.”

“I feel the same way about you.” Wester’s face twisted into a worried frown. “Is something wrong with our old master?”

“No.” Larten cracked his knuckles and changed the subject. “It is strange how Randel Chayne disappeared. Vampires and vampaneze often die in the wilds and are never discovered, but if he had been trailing me, he would have been frequenting the cities of Europe. There should have been
some
trace of him.”

“I suppose he tried to hide after…” Wester cleared his throat diplomatically.

“That is what I imagined too,” Larten said. “I thought, after he killed Alicia in Paris, that he fled and lay low for a while, and was either in hiding or had died in an accident at some point over the years.”
Larten turned and looked at Wester calmly. “When did you kill him?”

Wester blinked, caught off guard. “What?”

“I assume you killed him before you slaughtered Alicia, so that you could be certain of being able to point the finger of blame at him. Was it days before? Weeks? Months? How long had you been planning it, Wester? How long did you have it in mind to kill the woman I loved, pin the blame on Randel Chayne, turn me against the vampaneze and use me to lead our people into war?”

Wester gulped and desperately searched for a way out of this dire predicament. But he quickly realized that nothing he said could have any impact on the stern-faced General. Larten would not have leveled such an accusation at him if he wasn’t one hundred percent sure.

“How did you find out?” Wester asked softly.

“Sylva saw you after you killed her mother, as you were fleeing. She was at the show last night and recognized you when you came backstage.”

Wester sighed. “I should have killed her in Paris. When I looked back on it later, I regretted being merciful. I often meant to track her down and eliminate her, but I didn’t want to hurt you any more than I
already had, and as the years passed it seemed as if I had nothing to worry about. I stopped thinking of her as a potential threat.”

“You are an amateur villain,” Larten noted cynically.

“Aye,” Wester grimaced. “Like Tanish Eul, I was never cut out for murder. Clumsy assassins like us should leave it to the professionals.” He was calm now that his deception had been revealed, calmer than he had ever thought he would be when he’d imagined this scenario. And he had imagined it countless times over the years, haunted by memories of what he had done and fears of what would happen if his crime came to light. “How much do you want to know?”

“Not a lot,” Larten answered curtly. “I have been able to work out most of it. When you saw that you were losing the support of the clan, you made one last attempt to convince me to join you. When that failed, you killed Alicia and framed Randel Chayne.”

“Having already executed him,” Wester nodded. “I’d been keeping tabs on Randel for years. I have contacts among the vampaneze who yearn for war as much as I do—we’re strangely united by our hatred of each other. They kept me abreast of his
movements. I killed him before I came to you, knifed him while he was asleep. An ignoble end for a child of the night, but he was an ignoble individual, so I didn’t worry too much about it.”

“Did Desmond Tiny put the idea in your head when he came to visit you at Vampire Mountain?” Larten asked.

“Not directly,” Wester said. “He told me that I needed your support to lead the clan to war, and he mentioned the fact that if you hated the vampaneze as much as I did—if you lost someone close to them as I had—you might sympathize more with my cause. But he never mentioned Alicia specifically.”

“He did not need to,” Larten said. “He knew you were clever enough to put two and two together.” For the first time a bitter edge crept into his voice.

“I had to do it,” Wester said, staring down at his hands, remembering that awful night, the bloodstains on his fingers, sobbing uncontrollably as he took Alicia’s life, hating himself but pressing on regardless.

“
Had to
?” Larten snarled.

“The vampaneze must be eradicated,” Wester said. “You were the key. That’s become more obvious with every passing year. It was your destiny to lead the
clan to glory, to destroy our enemies and secure our future. But sometimes destiny needs a helping hand. I didn’t want to do it, but ultimately she was only one woman. What’s a single life measured against the lives of everyone in our clan?”

Larten trembled with rage but said nothing, waiting for the emotion to pass. He didn’t want to get into a war of words with Wester. It was too late for that. Nothing either of them said could change what had happened or what must be done now.

“It will be a fine night,” Larten said again, returning to the subject of the weather.

“I suppose,” Wester frowned, glancing at the sky.

“A good night to die,” Larten added.

“Oh.” Wester’s features clouded over. “You plan to kill me?”

“We will duel,” Larten said. “I am your superior in combat, as we both know, but perhaps I will make mistakes in my current unsettled state. Either way it will be a fair fight.”

Wester nodded. “Will you give me an honorable burial if you win? Will you tell Seba I fell in battle and praise my name in the Halls of Vampire Mountain?”

“No,” Larten croaked, tears springing to his eyes.

Wester had been waiting for the tears. As Larten blinked them away, Wester thrust forward. His fingers twisted into a hook and he lashed at Larten’s stomach, hoping to slice it open and end the fight early.

Although Larten was temporarily blinded, he heard Wester close in on him and shimmied aside as the guard struck. Wester’s nails cut through the material of Larten’s red cloak but didn’t even scratch his flesh.

Larten caught Wester’s outstretched arm and twisted it up behind his back, snapping the bones in several places. Wester screamed and spun away, his arm hanging uselessly by his side, face pale with pain and shock.

Larten darted at the injured guard. Wester tried to drive him back with his good hand, but Larten caught his fist midair, then chopped at his wrist. He had only meant to shatter the bones, but he struck harder than intended and his nails tore through Wester’s flesh and severed the guard’s hand.

They were close to the edge of the building. Wester watched as if in a dream as his hand bounced off the roof and fell into the abyss beyond, the fingers still twitching as they dropped upon the unsuspecting city below.

Wester staggered and almost toppled off the roof after his hand. Larten grabbed the guard and held him by the pale gray cloth of his jacket. Wester was defenseless now, unable to strike back. Blood spurted from his wrist, soaking the pair of them. The fight was over and both vampires knew it.

“I… love… you,” Wester moaned pitifully.

“I love you too,” Larten whispered, then dug his fingers into the soft flesh of his best friend’s throat and crushed it. As Wester’s dying gurgles were whipped away by the wind, Larten wrapped his arms around him and howled at the sky like an agonized wolf, floods of tears streaming down his cheeks, clutching his blood brother tightly as the warmth seeped from his limp, lifeless form.

“This was his destiny.”

Larten buried Wester in a field far beyond the borders of New York, having flitted for a couple of hours, the corpse slung across his shoulders. He said no words of mourning and put up no marker, just dug a hole, laid Wester in it, and filled it in again. He stood over the grave for a long time, head bowed. He wasn’t crying now but he felt hollow inside. Finally, without warning, he turned and jogged away. Soon he was running, and then he flitted, leaving Wester to cool and rot in the earth behind.

He never returned to the grave in the years to come, but in his dreams he went back often.

Larten knew where he was headed even before he consciously decided on his path. The future gaped ahead of him like an ugly, open wound. He had no idea what he would do once he recovered from this terrible night, if he’d ever return to the clan, if he’d even find the strength to carry on living. But he knew the perfect place to hole up while he tried to deal with his shock.

Larten had wandered the globe idly in the past when he’d felt lost, but now he had a place where he would be welcomed, where the outside world could not intrude. He would never be able to call the place home, and he knew he must move on in the end, but for the next few months, or years, or however long it took, he could rest there and suffer silently within the peace and quiet of the crumbling monastery walls.

Laurence was waiting for Larten when he returned from his night’s activities. The monk was an old man now and he didn’t sleep much. He often sat with Larten late at night when the vampire had finished his chores. The men rarely spoke, just enjoyed the darkness and the silence, the sense of being all alone in the world yet connected to something bigger than either of them.

Larten had been digging a ditch. It was work that
the monks could have done, but he liked to keep busy, so they were always looking for jobs for him. He had pushed himself hard, as he did most nights, and was sweating through the dark clothes that he had worn since coming to volunteer at the monastery. He hadn’t shaved in the last decade and his beard was long and thick, flecked in a couple of places with gray streaks, at odds with his head of orange hair.

Laurence was seated outside the monastery walls. There was a chair to his left and a small cage on the ground to his right. He nodded pleasantly at Larten as the vampire sat beside him.

The pair studied the countryside in comfortable silence. It was a clear night but there was a chill in the air. Winter would be upon them soon and the sea would rage with storms. The Skelks had already moved on ahead of the changing season and it would be spring before they returned. Laurence hoped that he would be alive to welcome them back, but he was an old man and he took nothing for granted.

“I love the smell of salt water,” Laurence commented. “We live so close to the sea, it’s in the air all the time, so I often forget how much I cherish it. Every once in a while I make myself stop, clear my nostrils, and breathe in deeply.”

“I like it too,” Larten said. “It brings back sad memories sometimes, but I enjoy it regardless.”

Laurence nodded understandingly. Larten had told him about the ship, when he’d killed all those people. He had told the monk everything over the course of the past ten years. He hadn’t meant to confess when he came. For many months he said nothing to anybody, merely worked silently and slept. But eventually he found himself confiding in the patient, kindly monk. As their friendship strengthened, he gradually unburdened more of his secrets and sins until he had nothing left to hide.

Laurence never passed judgment on Larten or recommended ways in which he might atone for his crimes. The vampire didn’t want advice, just company, and Laurence was pleased to offer that without any strings attached. He didn’t even pray on Larten’s behalf, as the vampire would have considered that deceitful. He had learned a lot about the clan during their talks, and while he didn’t think he would ever understand vampires fully, he knew they were creatures of great honesty and respected those who valued the truth as much as they did.

“This is a night for Madam Octa,” Laurence said, reaching for the cage by his feet. A huge, multicolored
spider was crouched in the center of the cage on long, hairy legs, a green, purple and red ball of unconcealed menace. Laurence had been given the spider by one of his visitors a couple of years earlier. The woman had come to visit the Skelks and the gift was her way of thanking the monk for looking after her.

A tin whistle—Laurence referred to it as a flute—hung from the side of the cage. Laurence handed it to Larten. The monk had taught him how to use it and Larten now played a tune as Laurence unlatched the cage and took out Madam Octa. He petted her as she rested in the palm of his hand, then nodded at Larten. The monk couldn’t control the spider, but Larten had a special way with animals. At his gentle mental bidding, Madam Octa crawled up Laurence’s arm and over his face. She spun cobwebs across his eyes and scratched his nose. She tickled his lips until he smiled, then wove a web around one of his teeth and pulled on it as if she were a dentist trying to remove a rotten molar.

The pair continued in this fashion for an hour, playing with the spider like a couple of schoolboys. They never grew tired of her, and although they repeated familiar tricks most nights, they always experienced the same sense of delight as when she had first performed for them.

Laurence was sad when he returned Madam Octa to her cage. He would miss her when she was gone.

“Have you enjoyed your time with us?” he asked Larten.

“Yes,” Larten said, surprised by the question.

“The years have passed quickly, haven’t they?”