Emily McKay - The Lair

The ceilings here are high and there are transom windows over the doors. This is the only room in this hall with a light on in it. From where I’m standing I can see a tiny sliver of the room. I can see a huge, four-poster bed, with a red, velvet coverlet and another piece of furniture on the opposite wall. A desk, maybe. None of that is particularly helpful. Then I catch a glimpse of a man as he walks past. He’s tall with distinguished salt-and-pepper hair. And I see a phone in his hand. Not pressed to his ear, but held out in front of him like he’s got the other person on speaker.

So he’s alone after all.

Suddenly, my heart is racing and my throat is dry. I shift the two stakes to one hand so I can wipe my palm on my pants. Faced with the reality of killing Roberto, I’m unexpectedly nervous. Then, I hear a door open somewhere on the first floor. Reinforcements are on their way. And whether it’s nervousness or excitement or what, I don’t know, but I am suddenly on fire to kill him. Some primal drive inside me has kicked in and I itch with the need to destroy him. I’m alive with it. I don’t question it or wonder about it. I’m out of time.

I charge through the door, stakes raised.

The man on the other side is exactly how I pictured him. Tall, stately. Dressed in a pristine suit and glossy, black shoes. He is the very picture of the debonair gentleman vampire. I expect more of a fight. I expect the kind of crazy acrobatic martial arts that Sebastian pulled. Instead, he just stands there, an expression of absolute shock on his face as I race toward him. He screams as I bring him to the ground, and I plunge the stake into his heart.

His arms flail for a second, and I jump away, passing my second stake into my right hand, just in case. I stand over him, desperately sucking air into my lungs as I watch him die. As his eyes go blank and his mouth foams with blood.

I don’t know what I expect. Elation? Happiness? Joy? At the very least, I expect a release from this angry rush of adrenaline. Instead, as I stare down at his body, I feel . . .

The need to destroy. Not just him, but everything.

There are footsteps on the stairs. Someone is coming. Fast. I whirl to face the door and broaden my stance, ready to fight off the guards I expect to pour into the room.

But instead of guards, a boy runs into the room.

He’s about my age, maybe younger. He’s shorter than I am by at least a few inches and his build is lean. There’s something delicate about him. Something youthful and unfinished. Like he hasn’t quite reached his full height or grown into the man he’ll become. He has hair so blond that it almost gleams in the pink light of the setting sun shining through the window. He pulses like the tinkling of a Mozart concerto. He is, quite simply, the most beautiful, most angelic boy I’ve ever seen.

Surprise flickers over his expression as he looks from me to Roberto’s dead body on the ground. He stumbles back a step, like he might turn to flee.

Automatically, I drop the stake. Instinctively, I don’t want to hurt this boy. I don’t even want him to fear me. I hold up my hands in a gesture of surrender and speak slowly, calmly.

“I mean you no harm,” I say. “I came here to kill Roberto. I’m not here for you.”

The surprise on his face morphs into confusion as he looks from me to the body on the floor. “You’re here to kill Roberto?” he asks.

I nod, trying to look non-threatening, but it’s difficult because my pulse is still pounding and hate-fueled adrenaline is pumping through my veins.

He straightens, bracing his stance, as a smile creeps across his lovely face. “You came here to kill—” Then he gestures toward the man on the floor. “Roberto?”

“Yes.”

The blond boy tips back his head and laughs.

It’s a high-pitched, musical laugh. It’s like one of Mozart’s concertos: light and airy, and though the sound itself is lovely, I hate it. I hate him for making it. That furious flood of adrenaline from stabbing Roberto has not let up. My body is almost shaking with it now. With the need to kill and destroy. And somehow this boy, this boy’s laughter, is making it worse. It’s like the adrenaline is a fire in my blood and his laughter is a chemical accelerant. It is painful to listen to him. It’s excruciating. Deep inside. Like my blood is actually boiling.

My head throbs and my knees start to buckle. I press my palms to my ears, trying to block out the sound of his laughter, but it doesn’t help.

And then, the boy is walking closer to me. His laughter has mellowed to a chuckle now.

“Sebastian,” he says, shaking his head as if in sympathy. He rolls his eyes. “Will you never stop trying to kill me? How many innocent young pups will you send?”

He stops in front of me, studying my face. Even though I’m taller than him, I feel smaller. Tiny. Helpless.

He reaches up, grabs me by the throat and lifts slowly until my feet dangle. I grab his wrist but his arm isn’t like flesh and blood. It’s like iron.

His smile broadens as he looks at me. I kick at him, but my lungs are already screaming for air and my knees feel weak.

“You came here to kill Roberto and instead you killed my valet.” He glances at the body, and a frown mars his perfect beauty. “Such a shame. I liked Rodrigo. He was with me for fifty years. I was beginning to get rather attached to him. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find a good servant like that? One who’s willing to dispose of bodies and overlook habits that many humans find unpalatable? You know, the more I think about it, the more annoyed I am.”

The boy tosses me onto the ground. I land hard enough to rattle my bones. The impact is much less shocking than the realization that I didn’t kill Roberto at all. That this boy—this beautiful, angelic boy— is Roberto.

Which explains why I heard no music from Rodrigo. He was as silent as his corpse is now. How stupid am I that I only now realized this.

I suck a deep breath, extinguishing the fire in my lungs. It doesn’t ease my trembling or alleviate the burning need for violence.

Of course it doesn’t. Because this isn’t mere adrenaline. This need to launch myself at him, to destroy him, this is my vampire spidey sense kicking in. I don’t know why now or why here, but this must be it.

But I feel completely unprepared for it. I thought it would make me stronger. Instead, I am crippled by it.

But of course, as I attempt to stand and Roberto looms over me practically cackling with delight, another thought slams me: Sebastian knows Roberto. He must know what he looks like. The angelic, blond beauty. The youth. Roberto made Sebastian, even if it was two thousand years ago. That isn’t the kind of thing you’re likely to forget. Two thousand years from now, I’ll still remember what Sebastian looks like.

And Sebastian must have known how far off my expectations were. After all, how often had he told me that Roberto was older even than he? That Roberto had been in this part of the world since the early days of the Aztec empire. Surely, he must have known what I thought. He must have. I couldn’t believe that after all the careful planning, after all he did to prep me for this, that he would forget to mention that Roberto was sixteen and as blond as a Nordic snowboarder. When you’re talking about Aztec god-vampires, surely that’s the kind of thing that would come up.

So Sebastian deliberately misled me. He didn’t send me in here to kill Roberto. He sent me in to fail. I am not an assassin. I’m a distraction.

After all these months, I thought I knew him. I thought I understood him. I knew I couldn’t trust him, precisely, but I thought I knew his endgame. And I thought he respected me and what I could do. I was wrong. About everything.