The Wicked: A Love Story

He heard a thumping. In the dark there was thumping, and was it at the door? There was no door. No, there was the inside of this coffin. Someone was banging on it. Was it Rosamunde? Was it Carter? But should he not simply wake when night came? When had he ever had to be awakened? There was thumping again. There was screaming, and now a sharp rap over his head.

As Sunny pushed up the coffin lid, he saw Mitch on fire, dancing about like a whirling stick man in the sunlit streets. He saw Abel and Carl exploding into flame and following the fire dance.Luke had leapt out of his coffin, and even as he came out the sun was scorching him, his hair blazing. There was a blond man cutting Nick down, and a dark haired man on Abel. There were hands on him as Sunny leapt out into the scorching heat. He lunged out, still strong with the feasting of last night, and took this attacker of his by the throat. Feeling the sun like a furnace, he dragged him under the shadow of an awning, and while this one tried to stab him, Sunny pushed up his arm and sank his fangs into his throat. He crushed his windpipe, and in his fury, rolled up his hand into a fist and then punched through the man’s chest. As he died, Sunny drained him.

By then he sensed others on his back in the empty street. God what a bleak area of this town they must have been in! And sure that was an abandoned house where they had been kept. The blond one and the dark haired one were coming for him. Sunny did a handspring and kicked the dark one in the face, and then sprang across the burning surface of the street on his red hands, and into the shadow of his house, leaving behind the scene of dead vampires and open coffins. He came into the house where Carter, or rather Carter’s body was on the floor, and Rosamunde was trembling, and the man from the other night, the man whom Sunny did not know was Kruinhwas holding Carter’s severed head, and now released it at the sight of him.

Sunny and Kruinh looked at each other, and in this moment the blond man who had been chasing him came back and wrapped his arm around his throat.

“Get the fuck off of me,” Sunny growled.

“He killed Orlando!”

“Christopher, let him go,” Kruinh said.

“What?”

“I do not need to repeat myself. You are not deaf,” Kruinh said. “Let him go. He will be the only one to be let go. And apparently he can fight. He is strong. He survived you and Lawrence.”

Laurie was coming into the old abandoned house now, and Kruinh said. “Lawrence, take Rosamunde with you. She must be dealt with. This is the last time she will do what she has done. Take Orlando’s body with you.”

“Orlando?” Lawrence began.

“He killed him,” Chris said, accusingly.

“Is Orlando the fucker who was trying to murder me?” Sunny asked. “Because if he was, fuck him too.”

Chris snarled and stepped forward, but Kruinh snapped, “Enough!” and everyone froze.

“Orlando was of my sister’s clan,” Kruinh said, composing himself. “We all knew the risk. If you attempt to kill, you face being killed. No crime was done. For my sister’s sake I am grieved, but I cannot pretend private sorrow. Orlando volunteered himself for this, and he was always quick to kill.”

“Miriamne will not forgive this,” Chris said.

“Of course she will,” Kruinh dismissed this. “She knows the ancient codes even better than I.”

“Who are you?” Sunny demanded, looking down at Carter’s head. “What’s happening?”

“Those are both fair questions,” Kruinh said, distractedly.

“I… I made a great mistake. I really should have had them be on the outlook for you. How could you have been part of any other gathering but this one? I should have… I almost got you killed. Well,” Kruinh seemed distracted. “Come with us.”

“I’m not going anywhere with anyone.”

“You will,” Laurie growled.

Sunny hit him in the face.

“Stop being a bully,” Kruinh said to Laurie who was picking himself off the floor and rubbing his jaw. “All I need you to do is take Rosamunde to Tanitha. She will do the rest.

“You’re right,” Kruinh said, turning to Sunny. “You shouldn’t have to come with us. I suppose you’ve earned that right. And much was done to you that shouldn’t have been done. But I would prefer it if you did come. At least for a little while.”

In the hotel room, Chris held out a glass of water to Sunny and said, “Sorry about—”

“Trying to kill me?”

“Yes.”

Sunny took the water.

Chris held out his hand.

“What the hell is that?”

“A handshake. A peace offering.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Sunny said,

Sunny drank the water and looked to Kruinh. “Who the hell are you? You show up at my restaurant, tell me where I can feed and feed happy. And then the next thing I know you’ve got these two assholes trying to kill me.”

“I would say it’s not as simple as all that except it almost is,” Kruinh said. “As I just said, I wasn’t thinking clearly or else I would have been on the lookout for you. I would have told Chris and Lawrence to save you. The way they were able to save—well, that’s another story. Drink your water.”

“You killed my…” Sunny began.

“Family?” Kruinh lifted an eyebrow.

“No, but… Those guys were as innocent as I was. And you killed them.”

“I read the thoughts of two of them,” Chris said. “They had taken to killing anyone in order to live. One killed a homeless girl last night.”

“So you killed him because… you enforce the law?”

“Not that law,” Chris said. “I’m just telling you, none of us is innocent. Not really.”

“Go fuck yourself,” Sunny said dismally.

“I will explain it to you, then,” Kruinh said. “And I do not expect you to respect the explanation, but here it is. I am a blood drinker. I am what you would call a vampire. As are you. Because Rosamunde and Carter took you and made you. That is a forbidden thing.We all, all blood drinkers exist in houses, in clans, and each clan has a rule about how to kill, who can be killed and who cannot, who is allowed to make a new drinker and who is not. It stops us from murdering the whole world indiscriminately.A drinker at full maturity can go without killing for a long time, but a young one cannot. If one does not kill—”

“They go mad,” Sunny said.

“Yes?” Kruinh looked at him strangely.

“It was done to me. I went mad and they … They made me do things,” Sunny said.

Kruinh nodded, and Sunny could tell that he was not the sort of person who pried.

“Also,” Kruinh said, “Only the head of a clan can make a new drinker. It is forbidden for someone not the head of a clan to make drinkers without the head of the clan’s permission. In the past, enemies went about dragging people off the streets, creating new vampire clans to rival their old families. Wars began this way. People unprepared, which are most people, were made into drinkers. Human life was wasted. And so now, if one attempts to create a renegade clan, then that renegade clan is destroyed and so is the one who made it.”

“That’s what you were doing,” Sunny said.

“Yes,” Kruinh said. “It is a hard law, but hard laws tend to be obeyed. Rosamunde is my niece, so I cannot kill her. But she made Carter. Carter is no blood to me, so he is dead. And so are the others.”

“But you could kill me.”

Chris spoke now.

“No. You could give fealty to out house,” Chris said. “and then be part of us.”

Sunny looked to Chris then looked to Kruinh.

“Ordinarily,” Kruinh said.

“That is… medieval.”

“But I am medieval,” Kruinh said. “Literally. And Chris is over three hundred years old.

“However,” Kruinh said. “There are older laws. You proved yourself. You proved your nobility. You survived two vampires older and stronger. I have no need for your fealty. But you must learn from me for a time. I must know you know how to live and know the rules, know our history, before allowing you to go out into the world on your own. You could be a danger to yourself as much as to others. As much as to us.”

Sunny understood this. When Kruinh spoke, he understood everything.

“Stay with us for a time,” Kruinh said.

Sunny heard Stay with me. Everything in his body vibrated with the words in his mind. If Laurie and Chris were not in the room, he would have gone immediately to Kruinh. He saw in his beautiful brown face, in his composed body and hands the same trembling. Could Laurie and Chris even tell.

Sunny only nodded.

Because he couldn’t say, Go to bed with me, he said, sullenly, “I still don’t think you should have killed them.”

“If I hadn’t, someone else would have,” Kruinh said. If I had not taken care of it another clan or a member of mine would have, and it would have been my responsibility. And if I had not taken care of it or we had not, then they would have, in time, ruined themselves. One reason drinkers cannot be made… willy nilly” Kruinh seemed to be searching for the term, “is because most do not live very long. It is hard for a human to become a blood drinker.Most who are made die quickly, or at least in the first century. Most make a really miserable time of it.”

Chris Ashby tired to speak again and hoped he wasn’t about to be sworn at again.

“Stay with us,” he said. “Help us to help you not make a shit time of it, alright?”

“Fine,” Sunny said. “fucking fine.”

They left for Lassador the next day.Sunny came a day behind them. Neither Laurie nor Chris said anything, but Kruinh had made one and was the maker of the maker of the other, and so he knew they were thinking Sunny had lied to them and gone his own way.

“Do you think I am stupid?” Kruinh said.

“Master?”

“Do you think after all my time my mind is slipping?”

Laurie had cleared his throat while driving.

“Kruinh, I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.”

The vampire was seized with a sudden desire to knock Lawrence Malone in the back of his head and, probably, Laurie already knew this. They drove on in relative silence.

When they arrived back at the old Victorian, Dan Rawlinson was the first down, though it was Tanitha who first embraced her father and then the others.

“So Rosamunde is put down?” Dan said, eagerly.

“She has been put down,” Tanitha said. “I gave her into the hands of Miriamne, and I’m sure she’s been very creative.”

Miriamne was Kruinh’s older sister and that was all that needed to be said.

“And you ended the clan they had been making?” Tanitha said as if a bad weed had been dug out.

“Mostly,” Chris reported.

“Mostly?” Tanitha raised an eyebrow above one blue eye.

When Chris looked to Kruinh, whose face was impassive, and then told Tanitha everything about Sunny, it was Dan who said, “Well, that’s great.”

“How is it great?” Laurie eyed him with disgust.

“Because they were people just like us,” Dan said. “And in case you forgot, I was made by Rosamunde. I was made like that. And you were too, though you like to forget it.”

“I don’t forget anything.”

“Do you forget that you were made by a lesser vampire and should have been put down by the old laws as much as me, or tbis Sunny?” Dan said.

When Chris looked at him, Dan said, “I meant your sister who gave Laurie the death blow, not you when you saved him. But still, both of you are lesser vampires than Rosamunde.”

“Well,” Chris considered before being insulted, “that is true.”

“We don’t even know if this guy is going to show or not,” Laurie said. “He could have given us the slip.”

Kruinh, who had hung up his great jacket, headed up the stairs, still well dressed, murmuring, “You’re just mad because he hit you.”

“I’m telling you,” Laurie almost stage whispered to Tanitha, “this guy has some sort of hold over Kruinh.”