Heather Brewer - Tenth Grade Bleeds

Vlad helped Henry to a nearby chair and turned to face his worst enemy, a man whose motives he was no longer sure he understood. He pressed the journal protectively to his chest. “Why aren’t you trying to kill me?”

Vlad could make out D’Ablo’s smirk even in the dim candlelight. “ The Pravus can’t be killed.”

“Yes, but…” Vlad struggled to find the words. “I mean, why are you being… practically nice to me? It’s unnerving.”

“It has been my lifelong dream to see the Pravus come into being. And here you are.” D’Ablo managed an honest smile and held his arms outward. “And here I am, willing servant of he who shall rule over all of vampirekind and enslave the human race.”

Vlad thought he detected a note of sarcasm, but at the same time, he wondered if D’Ablo meant it. “I have a really hard time accepting that my father would have been friends with you.”

D’Ablo’s gaze dropped-but only for a microsecond, barely long enough for it to register-to the journal. “He was my mentor, my teacher, in many ways. I had the utmost respect for Tomas. Friends… yes. I suppose we were that too.”

Vlad wet his lips and squeezed the journal to his chest, feeling the comfort of its worn leather against him. “Why the journal? My father had many possessions, hundreds of things you could have to remember him by. What’s so special about this one?”

“I’m sure you never knew this, Vladimir, but most of your father’s belongings were left behind when he fled Elysia. Items that he had spent centuries collecting. Things that held real meaning for him. The trinkets in your house were not much older than you, my boy. They hold no history, no real worth. When he left, the council ordered all of his possessions confiscated and burned. The journal you now hold is the only thing that remains of Tomas Tod the vampire.” D’Ablo’s posture relaxed some. He looked conflicted. “From before he was Tomas Tod the traitor.”

Vlad furrowed his brow. He couldn’t help but wonder if that was really how all of Elysia viewed his dad now.

“And besides, that book holds some sentimental value for me personally. You see, Vlad, I was the one who gave it to him.”

Vlad shook his head curtly. “ That’s a lie.”

“I assure you, it is not.”

“I don’t believe you.”

D’Ablo sighed indignantly. “See for yourself. Open the front cover. Lower left corner.”

After a doubtful pause, Vlad opened the book as D’Ablo had instructed. There, in the lower left corner of the inside cover, right where he said to look, was a small, ornate letter D. Vlad had never noticed it before. He had spent so much time reading the words between the covers that he had never taken the time to look at the covers themselves. He closed the journal and ran his hand lovingly over the front cover. “So I guess you guys were pretty close then, huh?”

“You might say that. And all I really want is something to remember him by. To remember him as I knew him.” By the end of his sentence, D’Ablo’s voice had dropped to a whisper.

With a shuddered, uncertain breath, Vlad gripped the journal tightly, then loosened his hold and held it out to D’Ablo. Maybe he was making a grave mistake, but he didn’t think he was.

D’Ablo met his eyes and bowed his head slowly as his hand closed over the journal.

Vlad had to fight the urge to rip it away from his grasp at the last second. But he managed to resist. He cleared his throat. “Now that I’ve given you the journal… will the nightmares stop?”

“Nightmares?” D’Ablo raised a questioning brow as he flipped through the journal’s pages. Then he smiled. “Ah, so it worked. How delightful to know.”

Vlad blinked, confused. “What worked? I thought you sent the nightmares as a way of convincing me to hand the journal over.”

“In a manner of speaking, it was your uncle who sent those horrific images to haunt your dreams.”

Vlad swallowed the lump that had suddenly formed in his throat. “Otis?”

D’Ablo offered a nod as he flipped through the pages of the journal. Finally he seemed to find what he was looking for and stopped on a page dated September 21. With a distracted voice, he quipped, “Every single bloody thing you saw was by his doing.”

Vlad shook his head. He didn’t believe a word. “Otis wouldn’t.”

D’Ablo met his eyes. “Wouldn’t he? After all, he takes his leave of you repeatedly, doesn’t he? And hasn’t it been difficult to reach him with your mind? Haven’t you even once questioned why Otis has kept his distance all these months?”

Against his will, a sliver of doubt jabbed its way into Vlad’s mind. His bottom lip shook at the possibility of such treachery. Was Otis capable of such a horrible thing? He hoped not, but then, how well did he really know his uncle? “He said he had to stop you from finding some ritual.”

D’Ablo laughed heartily. “He’s been working with me this entire time, so to speak.”

Then in Vlad’s mind an image appeared. It jumped forward, like a grainy reel-to-reel film image-it had to be a memory, like Otis had shared with him last year. The image was a mirror of his nightmare. Vlad was strapped to a table, half naked and bleeding. D’Ablo leaned over him with a blade, cutting. But then… Vlad noticed the mark on the inside of his left wrist. Clear as day in Elysian code, Vlad read the name: Otis Otis.

Oh no.

The film stopped, and Vlad glanced about the room. In the corner behind him was the table with leather straps from his nightmares. The floor beneath it was stained with blood. It smelled too familiar. And Otis… Otis had been the one being tortured. Actually, physically, painfully tortured. It hadn’t been Vlad’s bad dreams at all, but Otis’s reality, reflected in Vlad’s subconscious. Otis had been sending him memories all year, begging for help through nightmarish images. What’s more, he was here, somewhere in the building, punching through D’Ablo’s hold over his telepathy long enough to warn Vlad that D’Ablo hadn’t changed.

Relief and horror swirled through Vlad’s veins together in a gale-force torrent. After a brief pause, Vlad regained his composure and said, “Where is he?”

D’Ablo set the journal on the table to his left and turned back to Vlad. “He’s here, actually. Would you like to see him?”

At a loss for words, Vlad managed a nod.

D’Ablo seemed to search Vlad’s expression for a moment before nodding in grave satisfaction. Perhaps he thought Vlad would finish his own uncle off, saving him from breaking the highest law. Whatever he thought, Vlad didn’t care. He just needed to see Otis again. And, somehow, figure out a way to get free.

D’Ablo nodded again and said, “Wait here.”

Once D’Ablo stepped through the large metal door, Vlad grabbed the journal and stuffed it into his waistband, then helped Henry to his feet and headed for the second door on the opposite end of the small room. “Come on, Henry. We’ve gotta get out of here.”

Henry muttered, “It’s about time you had that idea.”

But when Vlad opened the door, he found Ignatius standing there, snarling. As quickly as he could move with Henry leaning hard against him, Vlad shuffled back to the metal door, which opened to reveal D’Ablo, whose lips were curled in a cruel smile. D’Ablo stepped inside and lifted Vlad’s shirt, snatching the journal back. “Now, now, Vladimir. You can’t leave without first saying hello to your darling uncle.”

Behind D’Ablo was a face that Vlad recognized with a glance-Jasik, the vampire who’d bitten him last year and brought a vial of his blood back to D’Ablo, healing him. But what stopped Vlad dead in his tracks, what almost made him drop Henry, what nearly made him lose it completely, was the sight of the man that Jasik all but carried into the room.