“I’m nothing.”
He swallows thickly, struggling to compose himself. With one last desperate, searching glance, his eyes harden, his jaw clenches, and he leaves without another word.
I promise myself then, the tears that fall as I lay back down are the last ones I’ll ever shed for him.
For any of them.
39
AMBROSE
As far as dungeons go, I suppose I’ve seen worse.
Alcatraz in the ‘30s was practically a wellness retreat after spending the Roaring Twenties in Soviet internment camps. Truly, it added insult to injury, surviving the Bolsheviks in St. Petersburg only to end up in the Gulag while my maker rode the coattails of Gilded Age robber barons, swindling socialites out of their fortunes left and right.
1794. The French Revolution. Mon Dieu, I’d almost managed to forget Robespierre’s incessant moaning and whimpering in de Brionne the night before his execution. If they hadn’t guillotined him the next day, I would have killed him myself to put us both out of our misery.
Before that… the golden cage of Versailles. My breath stutters with longing for that simpler time. Well, perhaps not simple, given the politicking and scheming and manipulations… but the innocence, perhaps, is what I truly miss—of debating the finer philosophical points of justice and governance at the salons until the early hours of the morning. Before Reinette swept her old childhood friend with more money than sense along with her to Versailles. Before my maker?—
No. I refuse to relive that part of my past.
I survived it, that’s all that matters.
And I’ll survive this, too.
I will claw and rip and rend my way to freedom.
Now that he no longer claims me, I’m closer than ever before.
Close enough totaste.
Not like the hot, honeyed lifeblood of a doomed man as it pours down my throat.
More like… the full-bodied, dark berry and Hungarian oak spice of the Cabernet Sauvignon my father would import from Bordeaux. The one we’d drink in his study at our home in Le Marais after my mother and younger siblings retired for the evening, when he’d teach me about our family’s history.
Our legacy.
But then Versailles. And Paris. And St. Petersburg. Coming to America, just in time for the Great Depression. Following the summons of my maker, paying for the profits of his sins with my freedom.
Just like now.
I tug on the chains that tether my enchanted manacles to the stone wall of my prison like I have every day since he ordered me to put them on. That was his last command before he released me from three hundred years of servitude. But where the blood-bond between a vampire and their maker is something sacred, immutable, this magic is fallible. It only takes one mistake, one second, and then I’m free.
It’s only a matter of time.
Until then, I just need to be patient.
Even though I can’t see the sun, my body still knows when another day dies. Later that night, the door at the top of the stairs opens, and my jailor appears in a black pantsuit, looking down at me from outside my cell.
“Ambrose.”
“Hello, Vivica.”
She sits down on the chair just out of reach of my cell and crosses her legs. “Are you ready to be civil?”
“I’m doing well, thank you for asking. A little parched though, have you brought anything to drink? Tea, perhaps? I’m partial to a nice chai, myself.”
She tsks. “I’m disappointed, Ambrose. Armand spoke so highly of you.”
