Dark Heirloom (An Ema Marx Novel Book 1) (12 page)

Chapter 13

The cave provided just enough shade so that I wasn’t completely blinded by the sun. A bright yellow haze leaked from the opening and blanketed the inside, forcing me to squint. I sat in the farthest corner I could fit into comfortably with my knees to my chest. Jesu sat across from me, leaning against the wall of the cave with his legs spread out in front of him. He handed me his sunglasses. I had left mine in my room, thinking we’d be back before dawn.

“Thank you,” I mumbled, and put the glasses on. He nodded and fiddled with his lighter for a minute, opening it and then closing it again, before deciding to light a cigarette. I noticed he didn’t squint like I did.

“How do you do that?”

He inhaled smoke. “Do what?”

“Keep your eyes open in the light. Doesn’t it bother you?”

Jesu shook his head. “I am not using my eyes. I can see everything I need to see right now with my ears and my nose.”

“But, your eyes are open.”

“That does not mean I am using them. You could do it too, you just need to practice.”

What was it with him and practice? I saw no reason why I should have to master vampyre powers. I didn’t plan to stay here, and I wouldn’t need to walk through walls or fly when I got back to Chicago.

We had an entire day to waste, though, and only a short time went by before I got bored. What was worse, with nothing to occupy my mind, my thirst crept back up. I had to do something. Talk, at the very least, but I was sick of talking about myself.

“Tell me something about yourself, Jesu.”

Smoke escaped from his lips while he flicked ash on the ground. “What would you like to know?”

I really wanted to know what he meant when he said his mother had put him in charge of me earlier, but it already looked like a long day. I didn’t want to make this uncomfortable.

“Anything. We spend so much time together, yet I don’t know anything about you, except you’re Draugrian and you can manipulate the elements. What does that mean, anyway?”

“It is exactly what it sounds like. The earth, air, water, and fire are mine to control.”

“Can you make fire out of thin air?”

He chuckled. “I cannot make anything out of thin air. I only manipulate the elements already around me.”

“To what degree can you manipulate them?”

A sly smile stretched across his face. “I can swim through the earth as though it were liquid. I can hold fire in my hands, and create tornados with the flick of a finger. Of course, I am not as powerful as a vampyre.” He shrugged.

“Show me.”

“All right.” He took out his lighter and flicked it open. The yellow flame caught immediately. The light it emanated forced me to turn away and watch from the corner of my eye. Holding the lighter in his right hand, he snatched the flame with his left as though snatching a marble. I held my breath and reminded myself that his hand wouldn’t burn.

Holding his fist out, he opened his hand one finger at a time. In the center of his palm, the little flame flickered and danced, changing from yellow, to orange, to blue, to yellow again. I was awestruck that fire, the most feared and most respected element, could look so innocent, so fragile, in Jesu’s hand.

“If I touch it, will it burn me?”

He snickered. “Of course it will.”

I laughed too. “Yeah I guess that was a dumb question, but it doesn’t burn you. Are you nonflammable?”

He shook his head. “Fire can burn right through me if I do not keep it under control. Look close, under the flame. It never really touches my skin.”

Scooting closer, I saw that he was right. The flame hovered just a centimeter over the flesh of his palm. With our numb skin, he would hardly feel the heat.

“How does it work?”

“Same way your powers work, I suppose, through concentration. It’s like telekinesis, only limited to the elements. It took me a long time to learn to master fire. In the beginning, I burned off at least half my body hair.” He chuckled.

“Do something with it. Manipulate it.”

His smile dimpled his left cheek. “What would you like to see me do?”

“Can you make a fireball and throw it?”

“That is easy.”

I cocked an eyebrow. “Let’s see it then.”

Never breaking eye contact with me, he cupped the flame in his palms as it grew and swelled. Moving both hands in a circular motion, as if rolling dough or packing a snowball, he molded the fire into a perfect, blazing circle without ever actually touching it. He held the fireball in his left hand and pitched it. Thunder sounded as the fireball cracked against the back wall of the cave. Orange embers and black pebbles exploded around us.

Suggesting a fireball might not have been the smartest idea. The cave now glowed bright orange. I had to turn away from the excess light. Jesu turned too and shaded his eyes with a hand.

“What other powers did the Draugrian have?” I asked to take my mind off the bright light as I hugged my knees to my chest and hid my face between them.

Jesu took a long drag on his cigarette before answering. “That is all.”

My head snapped up. “That’s
all
? You can’t fly, you can’t phase, you can’t do anything else?”

Jesu chuckled. “I would say manipulating the elements is pretty good. Besides, not all clans have extra powers. Some have nothing more than sensitive senses.”

“Must suck for them.” I shrugged before hiding my face between my knees again.

“They can be a bit envious, yes.” Jesu licked his lips. “Actually, there is one other thing the Draugrian could do, maybe two.”

“I knew it,” I perked up. “So let’s hear it.”

“The Draugrian vampyres were psychic.”

I shifted my head just enough to peer at him. “You mean they could predict the future?”

He nodded.

“Were they any good at it?”

“Of course. Humans used to pay the Draugrian to tell them their future.”

“Weren’t they scared?”

He shook his head. “The Draugrian were a peaceful clan, the first and only clan to ever openly co-exist with humans. Some say they were too nice, unable to defend themselves, and now they are extinct because of it.”

“Except for you, right?”

“Yes.” Jesu’s gaze shifted to the ground. “But even so, I am just a vampire, not a vampyre.”

I remembered what I read about vampyre reproduction. Only vampyres could reproduce. Vampires were sterile, quite the dilemma. “I’m so sorry, Jesu. I can’t even fathom what it must be like to be the only vampire of your kind. But, can’t you just create more Draugrian vampires through bite?”

“Technically, I could. Unfortunately, we have laws against creating clans of vampires. It would not be the same, anyway. Vampire powers are weak compared to vampyres, and each generation is weaker.” Jesu paused and then chuckled. “We could probably bite our way back to human in less than ten generatio
n
s.”

I frowned. I didn’t want to think about vampires becoming people again. “Does that mean you’re not psychic?”

He hesitated, as if searching for the correct words. “My psychic abilities are… different from what they should be.”

“Different how?”

“Well,” he shifted his weight and looked to the side. “The Draugrian vampyres could see the future any time they wished. Anyone’s future. However, what they predicted was not set in stone. Freewill changes the future constantly. What they really saw was the definite outcome of any single decision. Change your mind about something, and the outcome changed as well. My psychic abilities, on the other hand, work the complete opposite way. I get premonitions that I have no control over. They come unannounced, like bad dreams.”

“At least they can be changed.” I shrugged.

“No.” Jesu put out his cigarette and lit another one. “My premonitions
are
set in stone. Every single one has come true, no matter how hard anyone tries to avoid it.”

I waved a hand at the clouds rising from his lips. “I wish you wouldn’t smoke. The smell is unbearable.”

Jesu put out the cigarette, blowing his last puff into the air.

“Why do you smoke anyway? It’s not like a vampire needs anything to make him look like a badass.”

He snickered. “Yes, I suppose I am enough of a badass without them. I started smoking because it is a sneaky way to keep fire handy. I guess over the years it became a habit.”

I laughed. “Well, knowing what I know now, I guess that is a justifiable reason. But, I’d rather you didn’t smoke around me. It’s not like we need to burn any more walls in this cave anyway.”

“All right,” Jesu grinned. “No more smoking.”

“Thank you.” Smiling, I rested my head against my knees and closed my eyes. I still had a headache from the light, even though the embers in the back of the cave had cooled. “What are we supposed to do for food out here?”

“Nothing. I did not bring any blood, and the animals have an advantage right now.”

“Then you better keep talking to me,” I warned.

“Is it really that hard for you?”

“Yes. Is it really that surprising?”

“It is. You seem rather susceptible to it. Even more so than most new vampyres.”

“Aren’t all vampyres susceptible to blood?”

“Not any more than humans are to food. Forgive me if this offends you, but you seem to take to it like a drug.”

I thought it over even though I knew he was right. “It does feel like a drug. It gives me a high. I feel so alive and full of energy.”

Jesu sighed. “I think you might be part Upioran. Blood has strange effects on them as well.”

“Is that bad?”

“No. It just means you will have to work harder to control your urges. Much harder.”

I groaned. “Let’s not talk about me right now.”

“Okay, what would you like to talk about then?”

“You. Tell me something personal about yourself.”

“Like?”

“Anything, Jesu. You’ve been alive for over two-thousand years, it can’t all be boring.”

“Yes, but you asked for something personal.”

I said the first thing I could think of. “Why is your skin blue?”

Jesu frowned and looked at his hands. “It isn’t.”

“Well, not literally, but you have pale-blue undertones, like you’re cold. Everyone else is just pale.”

“I suppose it is also a Draugrian trait. My mother’s skin was the same color.”

Again with his mom
, I thought, but I didn’t want to touch that subject yet, at least not while we were stuck in a cave. I was curious though. “Tell me about your parents. What were they like? What’s it like being a kid born into a royal vampyre clan?”

“It was… painful.” Jesu sighed and ran his fingers through his hair.

Suddenly, I remembered something I wanted to ask him before. My eyes popped open and I sat up straight. “Did your mother bite you?”

“What?” he snapped.

I shrugged. “You were born human, and now you’re a vampire. You said your mother’s Draugrian, so I figured maybe she did it. I would understand, you know, to make things easier.”

He nodded, but avoided my gaze. “You are right, she did turn me.”

“When you were born?”

“No. She did it when I was fifteen years old. You cannot tell what the baby of a vampyre is until puberty. The human children are not allowed to live after that, a law my own father created.”

“Why not?”

“He feared them. He worried they would one day turn on us and tell the other humans how to defeat us. So he ordered all human-born children to be decapitated.” Jesu paused and glanced around as though deciding if he should continue. “My mother, being psychic, knew what I was before I was born. She spent her pregnancy plotting ways to save me, checking the outcome of each idea until she found one that worked.

“Luckily, my father was usually away, and was not there the day I was born. My mother told him I had died in birth, but in truth, my uncle took me to an old Sami woman who agreed to raise me for a small fortune. She kept me for the first three years. I do not even remember her face. She died in her sleep one night.

“My uncle kept an eye on me from afar. When the woman died, he took me back to the clan and raised me. They told my father he was raising me as a slave. He did not like this. He wanted me either dead or turned so I would not be a threat, but my mother was not ready to see me become a vampire. She wanted to wait until I was old enough to make the decision for myself.

“My uncle managed to buy some time by bargaining with my father. He promised he would turn me when I got a little older. A small boy would not be a very good slave, after all.

“The older I got, the less my father could stand it. The fact that a human lived in his household sickened him. He planned to kill me himself. My mother foresaw this and spoke to my uncle. They decided to give me a choice. On the night of my birthday, they came to my bedside. She confessed to me for the first time that I was her son.