Page 7 of Silent Stalker
He laughed and offered me another small scrap of his bacon. “I have a better understanding of why. It is because the sun is very comforting to you, so it is like being wrapped in a warm blanket. You have difficulties waking up when you are wrapped in a warm blanket. You dislike having to leave cozy places. Magic has always worked in mysterious ways. I believe the magic that made you and sustains you attempts to make up for the violence and pain of your turning. It does its best to comfort you. It is reflected in the protective nature of your stakes. I also wonder if other stakes will hesitate to hurt you.”
“Stakes paralyze me, and I can’t breathe,” I informed him. “Even mine.”
“But yours pop out the instant you no longer try to pierce yourself with them. And if you enter a stasis type of state, while you would become paralyzed and unable to breathe, you wouldn’t die. You would resume normal life as soon as the stake is removed.”
We had talked at length about my attempts to end my undead life, and while it had upset him, he had also understood.
He had chosen his eternal life. I had been forced.
“Yes. I never understood that,” I admitted.
“Magic is often about possibilities of the future, and that same magic likely saw the beauty of what your quest for vengeance could become—justice for those who were likewise abused. And that is why I want you to resume your hunt as the Silent Stalker. The miscreants you find hunting the innocent will be killed and drained at your hand. Their bounties will be paid to you as you’re owed. I will, of course, offer my blood for you as a dessert so you can get that disgusting taste out of your mouth. But while you hunt, you will hunt with an additional purpose. Your hunting grounds will be where the women have been found. With luck, we will find one of the women in the process of being turned and try to save her.”
“By turning her?”
“I have a list of volunteers who would share their blood with an unwilling turn to give her a chance at a life. Or at least a choice. If she does not wish for the life of a vampire, she will be given the right to choose her end in as gentle and kind a way as we can. Likely, she will be staked during the deepest part of her sleep during the day. But we will do everything we can to save any victims. Chances are, we will find them during the turn, as she is being buried. We might have a chance to supplement the blood she should have been given.”
The idea of saving someone only to kill them horrified me, but I also understood the reason why. “But ideally, we rescue them before the turn begins, right?”
“Yes, ideally. But the chances of us succeeding at that is very slim. And even if we do find one before the turn, her body will be so broken that the only way to save her will be to try to turn her.”
My heart hurt for the women being targeted, understanding the reality of what she might face if she woke as a vampire. “Do you think my father is involved with this?”
“I think there is a strong possibility, but more importantly, I believe you are the key to us learning the truth. While I do not want to awaken the memories of your turn, we may be able to solve the puzzle through looking through your past.”
“Like my diet as a child, which changed and might be consistent with a child being fed vampiric blood.” At the rate Emerick scowled, his expression ran a risk of being fixed into place permanently.
“We do not feed our children blood. All children born into the brood are aware we are vampires, and they are taught the truth about us, but they are human and are treated as such. They are treated as children, given toys, and allowed to play, grow, and learn. They have odd parenting at times, as their fathers are asleep for much of the day, but the parenting is handled with care. If a mother is tired, one of the older vampires will babysit and tend to her children so she can rest. We have many vampires willing to watch children during the day when they don’t sleep often. There is no lack of people to keep a close and careful watch.”
I expected he would need to take his temper out on something soon at the rate the situation riled him up. “So, it’s likely my father has more secrets than I thought possible.”
“It would also make the issue of your gender more important to your father, if his intent was to make an immortal empire. He would have known turning a daughter is far harder than turning a son—and that his wife might not survive the process of being turned into a vampire. It’s possible his love for your mother is such he was willing to sacrifice you in a hope of finding out how to safely turn your mother. It could be that he views you as expendable while he views your mother as priceless.” Emerick scowled. “The amount of control he exerted over your mother is consistent with men who view their wives as their owned property rather than living, breathing people. And that sort of thinking could lead to that situation. It would explain why he behaved as he did following your disappearance—he would have known you had good chances of being turned due to his preparations, and a rival vampire beat him to the chase.”
“Do you think my father is a young vampire?”
“I think he might be a different breed of vampire, one who has worked hard to avoid detection. It would be difficult to hide a vampire in his empire. He rigs his operations to be unfriendly to vampires who cannot operate during the daytime. But if he dabbles in certain magics, or he is of an older age, he could hide what he is with ease. And his cooks? His cooks could all be vampires. I have been told cooks live in their kitchens, and it is trivial to coat windows with the appropriate protections so they can grow their herbs and see the sun. It would cast the perfect illusion for those believing he does not value vampires.”
“That doesn’t explain his behavior,” I replied. “Why would he make a point of calling me out as a monster if he is one of us, too?”
“Simple. He believes himself to be the right kind of vampire, where you are not. You were not turned as he intended, so you would not match his expectations for a perfect heir. That is his loss, because however you came to be a vampire, you are as perfect as we get.” When Emerick gestured towards my collection of stakes, I held back my protest, waiting to see what he would say.
My father liked to believe he was methodical, but I’d learned he barely scratched the surface of what it meant to be a true strategist.
Emerick played a different game, a challenging one with ever-changing rules.
When he refused to elaborate, I sighed and asked, “Why do you feel that way?”
“I wanted to see if you would continue to protest your perfection.”
Color me unsurprised. “You, sir, are something else.”
He smirked. “Now that I have tricked you into accepting your perfection, the why of it is simple. You are attuned to the sun, one of our most lethal weaknesses. You can carve stakes, and you are attuned to them. You survive when you hunt those who sin against humanity. You thrive when you only drink the blood of the willing. It is my honor to be your preferred dessert. For someone who plays at hating the preternatural, had your father known of your perfection, he would have reacted differently, I think. You would be the perfect vampire for his empire, a heroine among the preternatural—a symbol for humanity. You would have been his jewel if only he realized what he let go. You would have been perfect for the image he wishes to present to society.”
It clicked. “I would be an enforcer, and he would paint his operations in the light of trying to keep the preternatural community policed so humanity and preternaturals could survive together without fear. But under his control. Always under his control.”
“You catch on. But the waters might go deeper yet. I am learning not to underestimate your father or the empire he is trying to build. I would like you to evaluate his operations through the eyes of someone approaching it for the first time but aware of everything that is in public view.”
“I don’t know if I’ll find anything new, but I can try.”
