In the beginning, it was so much work. The castle had half been burned from the inside out. In some places, all that remained were the stone walls. But we lived in the parts that were still intact. We built fires. We created a kitchen, though I very nearly starved us over the years with my inability to cook. We had our bedroom. Our son had his own room.
I came to forgive Cyrus for what he had done. In the end, I would always hate what he had done to the both of us. But he was still the same man who loved me more than anything. He was still the same man with the charming smile. Still the same man who worked harder than anyone I’d known. Still the same man with the incredible drive to become something great.
Roter Himmel. It’s what we named our utopia. Our home. It may have only been the three of us, but we were happy in our Red Heaven.
A family of two vampires and a human son.
He never seemed to crave blood. He ate a normal diet. He played and ran around and was too loud and energetic. Just like any other boy.
He was human.
He grew.
For years we were happy. We were almost normal.
But our son… In the beginning we tried to ignore it, pretend it would go away. But his behavior was strange. And grew more concerning as he grew older.
The way he would crush his toys when he grew angry.
How he liked to play ruler over the army of pinecones he gathered as soldiers.
When he struck the poor cub he had taken in, killing it, when it grew impatient with his ceaseless teasing.
Cyrus and I looked at each other, concern in our eyes. We would sit down with him, talk to him about his behavior.
It should have been more alarming that he never showed remorse.
We thought we could love him into being good and kind. We thought we could teach him right from wrong.
Maybe we were just too distracted.
Cyrus returned to his studies. He continued to learn. He gathered every scroll and tablet he could. On history. On war. On politics.
His desire for new knowledge did not ebb, but Cyrus had learned his lesson.
Our curse taught him where the line was to be drawn.
“Do you believe it, now?” Cyrus said one night as he crawled into bed beside me. Our son had just gone to sleep, now seven years old. “Do you feel it? The time slipping past us, as if we were invisible?”
I had to confess: it was obvious now.
Whenever I saw my reflection, I knew I had not aged since that night Cyrus turned me. “I feel it,” I say. “We haven’t changed. But what if…” I trailed off for a moment, gathering my thoughts. “What if we just aren’t physically ageing? What if our time just suddenly runs out, and we die of old age, looking like we do now?”
Cyrus shook his head. “I feel it though. The sense of perfection. I feel incredible. This… I created this to be the cure for death. I know it worked.”
I rolled toward him, pulling myself into his chest. I breathed him in.
I knew it, too. I didn’t want to accept it, but I could feel it.
Cyrus had done it. He had beaten death.
Chapter 27
“I do not care about the consequences of the blood lust!” our son bellowed. “The world needs to see what kind of potential exists, and the two of you have done nothing with it but hide in these mountains for eighteen years!”
My teeth clenched, my fingers rolling into a fist.
It was the same argument, nearly weekly, for the past six months.
Our son was smart. Brilliant.
He had his father’s curiosity. He read everything Cyrus had ever studied. He understood the world, even if he had never seen any of it. Even if he had never had any kind of interaction with the outside world.
“You do not know what they will do to us when we step out into the light,” Cyrus argued with him. “You did not have to endure those months of being chased with pitchforks and torches!”
Our son shook his head, his face hard. “They were the ones who should have been running. You could easily have shown them what you were capable of. Had you the gall, you could have turned on those people and made them bend to your every whim.”
I breathed his name, horror and disgust in my voice. “People are people,” I said. “History is full of evil rulers and tyrants. Your father made a mistake. This was never meant to be used to dominate others.”
He looked so disappointed.
It broke my heart.
Somehow, somewhere in the eighteen years of his life, I had failed my son.
“Create more of us at least,” he said, looking desperately. “Give me the cure. Bring others into the fold. You forced me to live a life of isolation, but it does not have to be this way. You’re strong on your own, imagine if there were hundreds of you! Thousands!”
“I will never do this to another!” Cyrus bellowed, stalking forward, getting in his face. Our son took a step back, hesitance in his eyes as he pushed his father to his breaking point. “You do not understand the curse we live with daily! You see only through the eyes of arrogance and power!”
With a look of disgust, he turned and walked away from the two of us. He stepped outside into the blizzard raging in the light of day, and the door swung heavily closed behind him.
“I am afraid of our own son,” I confessed as once again, we were cast in darkness. “The darkness in his mind…” I shook my head.
Cyrus crossed to me, taking me into his arms and holding me tight.
He didn’t say a word.
Because we both knew.
Something was not right with our son.
* * *
“Where would he go?” Cyrus said as we trudged through the snow. “He knows no one. There isn’t another town for hundreds of miles. I’m sure he’s just taking some time to cool off.”
I shook my head, pushing through the snow that came nearly up to my knees. “Something isn’t right, Cyrus,” I said. “I just…I can feel it.”
We went to his favorite places, one by one, searching for him.
He had not returned to the castle come nightfall.
He never stayed out in the dark, not in the winter.
Not with the wolves and the below-freezing temperatures.
He was not at the stable. He was not in the hunting perch. He was nowhere to be found in the frozen gardens.
The last place I could think to check was by the lake.
We walked and walked.
My toes were numb. I couldn’t feel my fingers.
“I don’t know why we are even doing this,” Cyrus said, his voice hard. “The boy hasn’t cared about us in years. He’d be better off to go on his own.”
My stomach tightened and my heart gave a twist.
I didn’t want to admit it, couldn’t. It hurt too much.
But Cyrus was right.
He hated us.
But I couldn’t just leave him.
“Mother,” a very faint voice called.
Both of our heads whipped in that direction instantly, and in a blur we dashed toward the source of the sound.
Down at the water’s edge, down a little cliff, we found him.
The ice was broken out on the lake, out twenty feet. A broken line led back to the shore. And there, lying on the rocks, sat our son.
His clothes were frozen to ice. His lips were blue, his skin pale.
Cyrus immediately scooped him into his arms and we dashed back to the castle.
“I fel…” his teeth chattered. “Fell in the water. I broke the…ice as I…came back to shore. But I couldn’t...couldn’t move once I got out.”
“It’s alright,” I said through my tears. “It’ll be alright.”
I repeated the words over and over. Even when his eyes slid closed, and he did not open them again.
Cyrus carried him to our bedroom where a fire was raging in the fireplace. We laid him upon the warm stone floor and broke his frozen clothes off of him. I rubbed his skin, so frigidly cold.
For hours, Cyrus and I attempted to warm his body.
But he did not open his eyes.
His body never warmed.
And I heard it, as his heart beat its last beat.
Our son died right in front of us.
* * *
I couldn’t stop sobbing.
My heart was broken, shattered into a million pieces.
Because I missed him. I couldn’t imagine life going forward without his handsome face in it. I couldn’t imagine not being able to put my hand on his cheek, I couldn’t imagine not looking into his green eyes.
I couldn’t imagine that this was all I would get, standing at the edge of his grave in the side court of the castle, knowing he was down there all alone.
But I also felt such a sense of relief.
No more fights.