Vampire Babylon - Break Of Dawn Part 27

"Had you not been turned away from where you felt safe, you might not have embraced the Underground, Dawn," Costin said, clearly having eavesdropped on what she'd already told Kiko and Frank. "It shames me, what was necessary. Yet it was most effective in the end."

"Then you don't regret it."

"I cannot."

Frank stared straight ahead, the former bar bouncer taking it all in. Kiko looked mutinous. Dawn toughened herself up, knowing Costin was never going to fully apologize.

And she wasn't going to arm him with any of the information she'd discovered about the Master. She still had no idea what Costin was about.

Yet . . . was that the right thing to do? Weird, but knowing more about the Underground vampires than she did about Costin made it hard to decide who she should be helping here.

In the darkness, Costin's eyes grew even brighter as he came to the edge of the light. "I do not expect you to forgive me for what I have done. Just know that, when I leave this house, I will be fighting for a prize that is much more serious than you can imagine."

"More serious than 'saving the world'?" Dawn asked.

"Not in the big picture." Costin blinked. "But it means everything to me."

Dawn narrowed her eyes. "Is your prize this Underground? Are you going to add that to a collection, just like the Friend portraits or your war artifacts?"

It was vicious, but there was no punch behind her bl.u.s.ter.

"No, Dawn," Costin said, stepping into the room, light bathing his scars. "I will be fighting to win back my soul."

And, as he began to tell his story, the phrases wrapped around her like gauze, a thin veiling that covered while letting in a hint of illumination. His words separated her from Frank and Kiko until she wasn't sure they even existed or were hearing the same thing she was.

His sentences took root in her; his voice becoming image; his life becoming hers. . . .

WHENEVER Costin slept, he dreamed of fire.

It consumed him, replacing the soul he had forfeited for the promise of glory, of long-lasting life serving his sovereign. His dreams were lit by h.e.l.l, tortured by the screams of the forsaken.

But as of late, when he awoke, it was always to darkness.

Eyes blasting open, Costin sucked in the fetid air of the pitch cell, his hands clawing dirt. A shrill cry echoed from somewhere- another prisoner in a far cell?-and he tried to sit up, to sustain himself against the stone wall.

Soon, his heightened vision parted the blackness around him, thanks also to an irregular spot on a wall where the stones had fallen to ruin. It allowed a gush of dull light-enough to make the young vampire cringe out of its path due to practice.

Fury welled within Costin, as natural as the blood he sucked from the rats that dared brave the corners of his cell.

As if summoned, the persistent scratch of little feet on dirt stirred his senses. Costin sniffed, then darted out a hand to grasp his meal. At the scent of blood beneath skin and fur, the change came upon him, his teeth lengthening, his form tingling as he pierced the rat's hide, then drank.

Blood. Not enough to increase his strength to where it had been before, but enough to mock his cravings and keep him alive. If that was how one could describe Costin's state.

The taste of it conjured memory: the crazed yells of a night battle. Cries of death from the foe, cries of joy from Costin and his fellow warriors as they tore out necks with their teeth and grew stronger with each swallow. After taking the blood vow, Costin had indeed followed his sovereign on their journey to eternity, yet . . .

He hurled the rat against the wall, its bones shattering as they hit stone. Horror consumed him as he dwelled upon what he was, what he had become.

Even though there had only been one battle for Costin, he was still accursed. He had been given over to the darkness of a cell, all but forgotten, yet he remained d.a.m.ned.

Just before he had been put here, he had joined his sovereign in defending against the sultan's invasion of their land, killing his first man in the brutal style of a low creature. Amidst the moonlit chaos, the thunder of cannons, many of his companion soldiers had been doing the same, all like starving wolves let out of cages to feast.

Yet Costin's enjoyment of his kill had been short-lived.

It was all so clear: his victim's throat constricting as he attempted to scream. Costin lifting his head from the feeding and seeing how his prey's dark eyes accused him of being the very devil himself.

Beast, he had thought at that moment, backing away from his victim on hands and knees. I am not . . . human. Not anymore.

Horror had pushed him away from the battle, that and the still-lingering taste in his mouth. His long teeth had contracted, his will draining from his beast body.

Not human . . .

Time blurred. He found himself wandering in a marsh, sinking to the ground as if being sucked into it by a higher grief. In his ears he still heard the far battle, the screams. In his eyes, he still saw his victim's gaze . . . the beast reflected back at him. . . .

Before the light of day, Costin heard the thud of horse hooves on earth, and he attempted to raise his head. Yet the men- underlings of a n.o.ble who sided with the infidels-were upon him before Costin arose. When they stabbed him, he merely laughed.

They watched in fascination as he began to heal.

Enthralled, they brought him to their superior's castle, where Costin found himself in this dark cell, where, upon occasion, he heard men outside, attempting to summon the courage to enter and test him again.

He found himself too weak to escape, possibly due to the lack of the good blood his body craved. Or perhaps they had used a curse he was unaware of to keep him here.

Or, perhaps, he was not moved to return to what he was.

Nevertheless, Costin often used his Awareness to call out to Benedikte, but not to his sovereign. Yet it did no good. Perhaps his companion had been instructed not to answer due to Costin's betrayal of the brotherhood. Perhaps Costin was even too weak to send a proper message.

He let out a tormented moan, his body heavy.

"Despair not," came a thready voice from the next cell.

Costin glanced at the lone opening high in the wall. "Sleep more, old man. I will not suffer you this night." That was not true. The self-proclaimed "raving man" who was kept next to Costin could be quite diverting to a beast who did not wish to think too much.

"First I am tucked away here because I trouble those who have the loudest voices," the old man said. "Yet, now, with you, I am nothing."

The old man, or The Whisper, as Costin had come to call him, claimed to be so ancient that he had forgotten his own name. He also said he had been driven out of a village and held here because no one knew what else to do with him. He refused to tell Costin the particulars of his imprisonment-Why? How? When?-other than to announce that he was on a quest.

If Costin was not a beast, himself, he would fear for The Whisper's health of mind.

"You are hardly 'nothing,' old man," he said. "You are the only reminder that I am not in the true void."

"Oh, my friend, but you are. You very much are."

Through conversation after conversation-For how long? How many nights?-the old man had somehow sensed that Costin was not pure. In fact, The Whisper had attempted religious counsel, which felt to Costin like hot pokers shoved beneath his skin.

Perhaps this was the reason Costin dreamed of h.e.l.l: listening to tales from the old man seemed to conjure fire.

Tonight was no different.

"Once," The Whisper said, "you could tell the void from the light, Costin. Once, you possessed a soul."

"Another attempt to convert me, is this what I must endure?" There was no rancor in his tone. There was actually the hue of a plea.

"You abhor what you have become. Do not deny it."

Costin stood, legs so weak that he stumbled toward the wall with the missing stone and slid until he was sitting. "There is naught to do. This is how I live; this is how I last."

The Whisper came closer, as if he were at the wall, as well, reflecting Costin's position: hand to hand with stone as the only thing separating them.

"What if this raving old man told you," he said, "that he could offer redemption?"

Where the word should have caused agony, now it brought odd comfort. Costin looked to the faint light of the hole. "There is none of that for me. Or have you forgotten?"

"You are a soldier, ripe for the fight." He paused, as if deciding a definite fact. "It is time."

Before Costin could grasp what was happening, a breeze whispered through the hole in the wall, whistling down to circle his head.

Terror bolted through him, and he cowered, arms barring his face.

"Harm is not my intent," The Whisper said.

"What do you wish of me?"

"No, Costin, what do you wish? The answer is not impossible to guess."

What did he desire? Blood? Costin instinctively choked. No, no. If he could have anything, anything at all, he would take back the moment he had become a beast.

"Yes," said The Whisper. "It is yours." "My soul?"

The breeze soothed around Costin's head, as if it had become the hands born to cradle him.

"Costin, your fight begins here. Yet, to win your soul, there would be conditions."

He could not believe this. Was he in a fever dream?

The breeze rested on Costin's shoulders. "This brotherhood you are joined with in blood . . . Every creature who took part in the ritual must be hunted down and destroyed."

"Every . . . one." His brothers.

"Especially the one who birthed you. The dragon. The wily creature who struck a deal with the devil himself."

Costin's thoughts were still far behind this talk of his maker.

His brothers. Benedikte. They had all become something not of this world, not human. None of them had the soul that Costin might take back if he . . .

He willed himself to wake up. But there was no flash of fire in this dream. This was very real.

"If they all should die by my hand," Costin whispered, testing, "would I be human again?"

"No, it is too late for that. When every last creature is vanquished, you will be granted a true and peaceful death, your soul whole and finally yours. You will not face fire if you succeed. However, there is a boundary to this hunt."

A boundary? Costin's mind was tattered.

The old man continued, as if offering terms such as these every night. "Someday, the dragon will sleep for years and years after he commands your brothers to create societies where they will build in number and power. Then the dragon will rise to dominate humanity just as he sought to in life. You, Costin, must destroy the dragon before this later rising."

Yes, this was only a dream, after all. It could not be true in any shape or form. Yet Costin found himself carried along with the madness. He had nothing else.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"That is not a question that matters."

What mattered was that Costin was a creature being offered back his soul, and there was something like a spirit in the room doing the deed.

"How long would I have, old man?"

"Centuries." The Whisper sounded pleased that Costin was not denying him. "And though that sounds sufficient, it might not be.

Winning back a soul that was willingly cast into darkness is a terrible matter, Costin. This might be all but impossible."

"And if I fail?"

"Your soul will be forfeit to the place you cursed it to. For eternity."

He would dream-feel-fire forever.

Images of his teeth slashing through skin, breaking through the bone that mixed with the blood he wished to consume . . . "What else?" Costin asked. "What else must I do?"

For the next few hours, The Whisper laid out the rest with the care of a battle well planned. Costin put aside any thoughts of madness, and he found himself believing. Completely, desperately believing.

Costin would be a "traveler," The Whisper explained. A traveler just as The Whisper itself was. He must leave his vampiric body behind, because their captors would never unleash a beast like Costin from its cell, so he would have to discover another way out to begin this quest-a quiet way.

"This requires," the old man said, "you to be loaned your own soul so that you might use it in another body since you will never see this old one again. Yet do not think that this soul is yours just yet."

And there were rules for "traveling," Costin discovered. So many rules. Still . . .

"I accept," he said, out of need, pure and all-consuming.

With the words, his abandoned soul awakened from the flame-ridden prison it had been in. It rushed and joined with his thoughts to cleanse him out of this sin-ridden body, like water through a bloodied valley.

Reborn.

He left that other deadened body behind. Then he flew, flew around the cell unrestrained, in joy, consciousness rejoined with his true spirit. He slipped through the hole in the wall, then arrowed down to the body of the old man who had been deserted by The Whisper traveler and was sitting against the stone with his arms spread open to welcome his new traveler.

With a shattering crash, Costin took refuge, blackness exploding as his soul expanded to fit its new body, pushing the old man's own being down as a fellow companion in this new crusade.

Then Costin opened his eyes to the dark of the old man's cell and held his hands to his withered, tear-stained face-