Lethe's Kiss (Ari & Soren Book 3)

Chapter 4 - Soren

"So, not all vamps can make other vamps?"

"Yes. Typically, only the masters. It's a matter of honor to take responsibility for the result, one way or the other."

"Meaning?"

"If the new-blood is...unfit, it's the blood-father's, or blood-mother's, duty to put an end to it. It's only merciful."

"I see."

Ari finished the rest of his routine in silence, wrangling his hair into something like order, and then dressing in slacks and a pale, rose-pink shirt I'd selected for him once. In our day-to-day life he tended to have a...casual...sense of fashion, but it was difficult not to feel underdressed around my father.

I readied myself as well, and then, together, we went downstairs.

As usual, when he had human guests, my father was in the kitchen. This morning he presented Ari with freshly baked pop-over muffins, with soft yellow butter and strawberry jam. He'd also made freshly pressed coffee and scrambled eggs whipped with sour cream and topped with a sprinkling of dill. It looked and smelled delicious, but like him, I was unable to partake, and could only watch as Ari enjoyed the fare.

While he ate, we talked of mundane things; or my father talked, to be precise, and we listened. He talked about Matt, mostly, and I kept casting Ari apologetic glances, although he seemed quite all right with the whole...whatever it was that was going on between my father, Matt, and Ben. He'd told me to think of my father's feelings for Matt as an extremely close kind of friendship—a deep love without physical desire.

I just smiled and told him I would do my best. It wasn't that I didn't believe such love existed; I just wasn't convinced it was in my father's repertoire.

Once Ari was done eating, we retired to the library. It was a spacious room, filled with books on magick and the occult, on history, philosophy, religion, mythology, and any other topic my father (and in later years, I) had deemed relevant to his (now our) work. There were other things as well: shelves of mystical objects, crystals, and alchemical ingredients; a variety of ancient skulls; a wall of ritual knives and a rack of swords engraved with runes.

There were also less useful things that my father simply enjoyed collecting: an entire case filled with dead butterflies (lepidoptery being among his numerous hobbies), a variety of antique scientific apparatuses, and an array of outdated maps and globes.

It was a collection that had taken centuries to build, and that my father continued to curate even now. Ari said it was both fascinating and a little creepy—like a fantastical serial killer's lair.

I'd refrained from pointing out that, to a certain extent, that's exactly what it was. My father might prefer to avoid unnecessary violence, but his hands were not bloodless, by any means.

Neither were mine.

There were things I'd done under the direction of the Custodians that I had not told Ari about, even now. I preferred to leave such things in the past, and to forget.

Leading us to a group of chairs situated below the windows, my father invited us to sit. He himself remained on his feet, standing with his back to us and staring out at the courtyard on the other side of the glass. Being on the lowest floor, the library did not have the best view, but looked out on a small, private space with dark, moss-covered stones, a small pool of water filled by a natural spring, and a tree with a gnarled trunk and delicate, fiery red leaves. Some of these had already fallen into the dark water at its base, like drops of blood.

I had not been a vampire long enough to have my father's sense of time—to stretch a moment into an eternity, or to let days pass like minutes—and he was trying my patience.