Page 14 of Plug and Tame

Chapter 5

Henrikk’s Son

Kira

They appeared at the far end of the children’s long bedroom. They were far from the bloodshed, but the metallic smell assaulted Kira’s senses, making the memory feel very real.

Nathaniel guided her so she faced away, but not before she’d glimpsed the far end of the room. The made vampires were gone. Small bodies lay around the room as if they’d been tossed aside carelessly. The floor was bathed in red.

Kira tore her eyes away from the heart-wrenching scene. A few feet away, the young Nathaniel was sitting in a shadowy corner. His knees were drawn up, his head bowed, and his hands scrunched his hair, mussing it up as if he were ready to tear it out.

“What is he…I mean, what were you doing?” she asked.

“Just watch,” Nathaniel said.

A clinking sound made young Nathaniel look up. He wore a harrowed expression, it looked as if he’d been crying. Suddenly, his head whipped around as a brief scuffling sounded near him.

Wiping his eyes, he rose and crept silently to a dumb waiter on the back wall. He slid the door aside, revealing the source of the noise: two dark-furred pups curled up on a tray of plates and cutlery.

The adult Nathaniel beside her spoke. “The two of you that got away.”

The pups startled when they saw the young vampire, and the fierce wolf leapt before the other and growled, sending a metal goblet clattering to the floor.

“Shh, it’s all right,” young Nathaniel said, his soft tone strikingly familiar. He extended his open hands to the pups. “Let me help you.”

The shy one whined, her tail tucked beneath her. The fierce one stopped snarling, but remained wary as Nathaniel leant inside and craned his head to peer up the shaft.

“Do we go down, or up?” young Nathaniel murmured, before leaping up into the dumb waiter with the pups.

“We went down to the servants’ quarters,” Nathaniel explained. Blue smoke swirled around them as he skipped forward in his memory.

“Hey,” Kira complained, batting at the smoke between her and Nathaniel. “I wanted to see what happened.”

“It wasn’t important,” Nathaniel told her.

“Yes, it was! It was a chance to see you being nice for a change.”

“Am I often not nice, Kira?”

“I think you pretend to be someone you’re not.”

“Don’t we all?”

She shrugged a shoulder. He had a point. Wasn’t that what she’d been doing from the moment she stepped foot in the academy? Trying to reinvent herself?

Except Nathaniel had gotten in her way.

Now, he was finally sharing his deeper secrets with her, like the fact that he was ashamed of his past. All this time, she’d condemned him for his involvement in the Revolution, never imagining how heavily it weighed on his heart.

“You’ve gone quiet,” Nathaniel murmured.

The clouds still surrounded them—was he waiting for her answer before taking them to another memory?

“You are a mystery,” she finally whispered. “And I think I’ve been trying to figure you out from the first time I met you.”

“And?”

Kira didn’t respond. She didn’t have an answer, not yet, but seeing his younger self speak kindly to her childhood selves had made her heart yield a fraction.