Saved By Blood (The By Blood Vampire Series Book 3) (15 page)

“Of course not, dear, but you will.  All in good time.  Gordon, I’m assuming that you haven’t told her anything?”

“I’m sorry, boss, very sorry.  I didn’t get the chance yet.  I will.  I’ll do it right now.”

“No.  You won’t.  I think I can handle it on my own.  You’ve already shown me what you can do.”

Megan felt her heart jump uncomfortably in her chest and thought to herself that there were a limited number of times she could stand to be surprised like this before she had an actual heart attack.  At this point, there was just too much stimulus for her to take in all at the same time.  She was standing in the most awe inspiring library she had ever come close to seeing and out of the massive windows she was looking at the Eiffel Tower. 

She was so taken aback by the whole thing that she had completely missed the fact that there was another person in the room with her and Gordon.  When she heard the voice, she couldn’t believe that she had ever missed it.  It was the most beautiful voice she had ever heard, and there was danger in that beauty.

It was the kind of beauty a person could get entirely lost in, so lost that he wouldn’t be able to climb back out of it and into reality again.  Part of Megan wanted to shove her fingers in her ears and shut it out completely while another part of her wanted to listen to it forever.

And when the speaker turned to look at her, all she wanted to do was curl up into the fetal position and go right back to sleep.  The woman looking at her was the woman in Philip’s portrait.  The woman looking at Megan Wright could have
been
Megan Wright.  It was like looking into a mirror and Megan got the feeling that if she looked long enough, she would never be able to look away.

CHAPTER EIGHT

“Christ, Caroline, this is killing me.  It’s taking too long.  Too damn long, and by the time we get there-”

“It’ll be OK.  She’ll be OK, Philip.  She will.”

Philip felt like screaming, like ripping his seat right out of the first class of this god forsaken plane and tossing it down the aisle.  He knew Caroline meant well, but that didn’t mean that it wasn’t all a bunch of bullshit.  Because it was.  It most
definitely
was and he thought that Caroline probably knew that, too.

When people said that everything was going to be OK, it was almost always in times when they knew things were out of control.  It was at times when they had no idea if things were going to be alright or not but, in Philip’s opinion, it was far more likely to lean on the side of not OK. 

Caroline was trying to keep him calm, which he supposed was the best thing she could do in the given situation, but she was falling woefully short.  As if to prove the point, he felt his incisors break through the skin of his gums with that little prick of pain he felt every time, every time they came out to play.  She saw it, clamped one hand down over his, and shook her head slowly.

“Philip,” she said in a low voice, “this is just about the worst possible place for you to lose your shit.  You go all medieval in this tin can and we’re going to have to do a whole hell of a lot to change the way we live our lives.  Do you get me?  Things like going underground, and if we’re really lucky, that’s it.  If we aren’t lucky we’re going to be chased down.  It’s going to be the witch hunts all over again, OK?  Only with vampires.  Do you hear me?  You get what I’m saying to you?”

“I get it,” he growled, wanting to ignore every word coming out of her mouth and knowing that doing so wasn’t an option. 

She was right.  Sometimes he allowed himself to believe that he was above the instincts of a vampire but at the end of the day, he was like a loaded gun waiting to go off.  This plane was the last place he needed to be going off; it would be the end of many lives, and probably get Megan killed in the process.

Megan.  Her name was beating in his blood along with his pulse, driving him mad and keeping him sane all at the same time.  She was the only real thing driving him at this point and he still had no idea what it was he was walking into.  Caroline was being disgustingly stingy with the information she would give him and the cynical part of him was starting to wonder if all of this wasn’t just some sick ploy to get him back to Paris, a city he swore he would never set foot in again.

The city of lights, the city Caroline loved so well, the city Philip credited with the majority of the worst things that had ever happened to him.  It was in his blood, too, beating right along with Megan’s name, but the way he felt about it was far more complicated.  Ghosts were real, that he knew, and there were ghosts in Paris he would rather not encounter.  Things that he hardly dared to encounter for fear of what it would do to whatever was left of his immortal soul (if he still had one; God, did he still have one?).  But for Megan, a woman he hardly knew but couldn’t seem to shake himself loose of, he would take the risk.  He didn’t understand why but it was more than just being willing to do it; he felt a compulsion, like not going would destroy him entirely.  Still, he was far from comfortable with the idea and as the plane touched down he felt his skin prickle like a sheet of live wires.

It would have taken almost nothing to set him off.  If anything or anyone had touched him he would have broken them into pieces but somehow, through some miracle, Caroline navigated the two of them through the airport (which was mercifully empty due to the strange hour) and once he was outside in the chilly night air he could feel himself loosening up a little. 

“Better?” she asked softly as she led him to her expensive Italian car.

“A little.  I’ll be even better when you tell me exactly what this is, what we’re dealing with.”

“I wanted to take you back to the house, to see Antoine.”

“No,” he said quickly, a little too quietly, “I don’t want that, not yet.  Just tell me what this is.”

“OK, I can do that, but you need to be prepared.  It’s not going to be easy for you.”

And she was right.  She had a tale to tell and it was one that was almost beyond his comprehension.  He wanted to be mad at her for not having told him before but he couldn’t muster the energy for it.  And honestly, he couldn’t blame her.  Had the positions been reversed, he wouldn’t have wanted to deliver that kind of heartbreak to his sister. 

He wouldn’t have expected her to believe him anyway, not with the kind of story she was laying on him now.  He felt quite a bit like his head was going to explode and without realizing it, he was shaking it slowly from side to side in a resounding no, he was not going to accept these things as real.

Finally, when he felt like he could take no more (and to be honest, he had stopped listening several blocks back), he put his hand gently over the one Caroline had on the gear shift and squeezed.

“You OK, Brother?”

“I am, or at least I think I am, but I need to ask you for something before we do anything else.”

“OK, but Philip-”

“I know, Caroline.  I know we’re on a timetable.  I just have to do this first, OK?  It feels like I’m supposed to.”

Caroline looked for a minute like she was going to say something, but then shut her mouth firmly as she thought better of it.  Philip wasn’t surprised by that.   Caroline had spent year upon year upon year trying to convince him that things like destiny were real and that his was to serve some kind of a greater good.  She couldn’t possibly do that and then tell him that his feeling that something was supposed to happen was wrong. 

And she couldn’t have stopped him even if she had wanted to, something she was probably well aware of.  They were silent for the remainder of their car ride but the feelings between them were thick. 

Philip wondered to himself if Caroline was thinking about her own sad history, how she had arrived at becoming the thing that she was, and supposed that she must be.  For the first time it occurred to him that this city was full of ghosts for more than just him.  Caroline loved Paris and she had made that clear, but when he glanced at her face now he could see that the city also haunted her. 

He felt slightly stunned, something he certainly wasn’t used to, and realized just how strong and devoted this woman beside him was.  He felt a surge of brotherly love for her and marveled at his own selfishness for not really seeing her before now.  A hundred years (give or take a decade; really, how could he be expected to remember a thing like that?) and he was just now really seeing her. 

She and everyone else had been depressingly correct in their assessment of him.  He had been a brat, for all of his life he had been a brat.  Really feeling the weighty truth of that now, he knew that it was something he would never allow himself to be again.  He felt a hot shame grip him and resolved to find a way to make up for all of his dismal behavior.

He would find a way to make amends and maybe even make a difference the way that Caroline and Antoine had always implored him to do.  He would do that, but first he had to let go of his biggest ghost of all; the ghost of his origins.

“It looks so different here now.  So terribly different.”

Caroline had put her little speedster in park and the two of them were now walking along the Seine, nothing but the twinkling lamp-posts to keep them company.  Another blessing.  The whole city was sleeping, affording brother and sister the most privacy they were ever likely to get in a city as alive and bustling as Paris. 

For the most part, they walked wordlessly, Philip taking Caroline by the hand and her holding him tight, showing him that she was there for him the only way she could.  They walked until they got to a particular spot, a spot marked by nothing but an old park bench with a littering of trash tucked beneath it.  It wasn’t a remarkable spot, not a remarkable bench in any way, but Philip stopped and let out a slow, heavy exhale.

“Do you wish that he had let you die that day?  Is that why the two of you butt heads so fantastically?  Should we have let you die?”

“No, Sister, no.  I used to think that maybe that would have been better but I haven’t wished that in a long time.  No, what I wish is that I had never met her.  I wish I didn’t still have more questions than answers and I wish that she was gone.  All of this time, one of my consolations has been knowing that despite the terrible thing she did, I would have outlived her by so many years.  Now you’re telling me that isn’t so.  I’ve believed that she was dead and gone for a long time.  It’s difficult to adjust my thinking, you know?  It’s difficult to try and wrap my head around the idea that she is what you’re saying she is.”

“I know.  Or I don’t know, maybe I don’t.  God, I can’t imagine.  It’s a lot.  I can see that.  I guess that’s what I’m trying to say.”

Philip wrapped an arm around his sister, knowing that the gesture would be enough to tell her that he was OK and that, perhaps more importantly, they were OK.  They stood that way for many minutes, just looking at the ordinary spot on the Seine that thousands of people passed by every day without ever thinking that the place could have meant something to somebody.

This place had looked different, back in the days when Celia had led him to it and to his mortal death, but it was still the place and looking at it was still strange.  Here was where he had told her how deeply he loved her, and although now he saw that it had probably been a selfish kind of love, it had still been the truth.

Here was where he had told her that he wanted to make her his wife and she had laughed her musical little laugh and asked him what had taken him so long.  Here was where he had kissed her, feeling his blissful pleasure turn into a blinding pain and then that was all there had been. 

Pain radiating through his body as he slumped forward, fell off of the bench and to the ground.  Pain and deep, earthy smelling blood bubbling out of the wound piercing his chest from the blade that had been shoved between his shoulder blades from behind.  He had looked up at the gray sky and wondered to himself if it was going to rain.

It was a silly thing to think when one was dying but it was the thing he had thought first.  Then he had wondered why he could still hear the sound of her tinkling laughter and had struggled to comprehend when she had leaned over him, dipped her finger in his blood and traced some unknown symbol on his forehead. 

He could smell the sweet scent of lavender and vanilla that he would forevermore identify as hers and had wanted to reach up to her and stroke her hair even as she had been giving orders to the ones who had ended him with their rough knife. 

He couldn’t believe it, even though it was becoming so painfully clear.  He couldn’t believe and probably never would have believed that she had betrayed him so fantastically until she stuck her finger in his blood once more and then licked it off like it was some kind of particularly delicious sauce.

“I wish I could say I’m sorry, love, but it wouldn’t do to lie to you at a time like this.  It’s not that you’re bad, nothing as clear as all of that, it’s just that you had the qualities we needed.  These things come at a price, I’m afraid, and this time that price was you.  I would say that I wish you the best and no hard feelings, but not much of a point in all of that, not now.  You’re not long for this world.”

And then she had been gone and there was nothing for him to look at but the cold gray sky that had begun to spill fat little rain drops onto his upturned face. 
“It’s crying for me,”
he thought
, “the heavens are crying for me and this is how I shall go.”
  He would have gone.  He would have died on the street if it weren’t for Antoine and all of what had come after was a gift given by him.

And by her?  He would not have this life if it weren’t for Celia’s betrayal.  He supposed he might owe her some kind of a warped thank you, but that was something she would never get.  Celia, the woman he had believed was dead; the woman who now held the key to the world’s future and also the first woman Philip had liked in a long, long time.

“Did you get what you came for?”

Caroline spoke quietly, reverently, as if they were paying their respects in a graveyard instead of standing beside a bench in dimly lit light.  God bless her and her willingness to understand how complicated this must be for him.  He didn’t think he would have been able to do any of what he needed to if it hadn’t been for her.