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And, honestly, I couldn’t blame her.
I didn’t even know why I wanted her to talk to me so badly, because what was I going to say? Yell again that it wasn’t my fault? I didn’t see that helping.
Especially since it kind of was.
I flashed back to a half-remembered dream, one of the ones she’d shown me because I didn’t recall the years we’d spent in Venice at all. Mircea hadn’t been sure that this barrier of his would hold; Dorina’s mental gifts threatened it, and he’d been afraid that if I started to get curious, too, it might undermine the whole thing. So he’d made sure I never would by erasing my memories of the place—all of them.
For centuries, I’d had gaping holes in my past filled with absolutely nothing, which I’d put down to the crazy, but which were actually things Mircea had thought might trigger my curiosity. I hadn’t remembered Horatiu, the kindly old man who had apparently been important to me, other than as a servant of Mircea’s. I hadn’t recalled the quirky house on the ocean, where I’d spent much of my childhood. And I definitely hadn’t remembered my child body twisting in agony as Dorina raged inside her little human cage.
Because how was she supposed to develop properly like that?
I didn’t know how she’d developed at all. Vampires didn’t. Not even those taken as children, which was why it was forbidden to change one so young. But it had happened in the past, when the rules weren’t as well enforced, and what had been the result?
Nothing. A child vamp was a child vamp. He got stronger with age and feeding, but never matured, because his growth had been arrested at the moment he was changed. Leaving him as limited in understanding as he’d ever been, no matter how many years of experience he gained, because his brain just . . . stayed the same.
Which had caused some seriously messed-up masters, on occasion, with all the petulance, two-dimensional thinking and tantrums of a child, in a body capable of leveling a small city.
I didn’t think that was true of Dorina—the bits I remembered from her memories had seemed adult enough—but I didn’t know. Like I didn’t know what happened to a vampire’s brain when it did evolve, when it was forced to change and grow, because the eternally static body it was in wasn’t so static. When something meant to be forever the same was ripped apart, over and over again, as the human child it had been welded to in the womb decided to have another growth spurt.
No wonder most dhampirs died in childhood, and the rest went mad!
Or were walled away in a tiny section of my mind, only able to emerge when I was asleep or when my mental grip was compromised through shock, anger, or fear. God! No wonder she hated me!
And once done, the separation had been permanent. Her mental powers had been growing right alongside Mircea’s, because a few decades’ difference in age is no time at all in vampire terms. He’d told me once that he’d been afraid of lowering the barrier, because once it was down, he might never be able to raise it again. At the time, it had sounded like the truth. Maybe it even was.
Or maybe it was a convenient excuse, a small voice said.
I shifted uneasily.
So, instead of a life with occasional wild episodes, Dorina had had only a fraction of one, and had lived it with the knowledge that Mircea, the father she’d loved, the father she’d rescued, didn’t feel the same way. Because Horatiu had been right; it hadn’t been me that night, scouring the streets for him. Mircea had been saved by someone who spoke to him mentally, something I still had trouble with.
So it had been Dorina.
And since she’d also been the one to send me memories of that talk in the kitchen, she must have been listening. Or maybe riding along again, which made it worse. If someone said something hurtful, you could try to pass it off as their having a bad day, and lashing out. Could convince yourself that they didn’t really mean it. But if you were in their head at the time?
She’d known he was serious, that he thought of her as a monster. Or, worse than that, he thought of her as a disease. The same one that had stolen everything from him, from his life to his position to his wife. And was now killing the only thing he had left.
Like he’d wanted to kill her.
I swallowed, and put my arms aro
und myself, because what the fuck did that do to you? Growing up knowing your only parent didn’t just hate you, but wanted you dead? And that, since he couldn’t kill you without killing the daughter he did want, he was determined to lock you away.
Forever.
I felt the old ball of anger and distrust for him well up, the one I’d carried for so long that it felt normal, natural. Mircea had separated from me after I reached adulthood, and the memory wipe that followed had made certain that I thought of him as a cold, distant master vamp, ashamed of the nasty dhampir he’d sired. And who seemed to show up only when he wanted something.
He’d told me recently that he’d been concerned that his growing status would put a spotlight on me, a dangerous prospect, since the deal he’d made with the Senate to overlook my existence was nullified once I grew up. And because he himself might serve as a trigger to all those repressed memories. Maybe it was even true.
But it had left us most definitely at odds, to the point that this recent spate of familial closeness felt strange. Nice in some ways, but strange nonetheless. My default was hating him, or at least seriously suspecting him. I hadn’t known what to do with the other feelings that had been bubbling up lately.
Like I didn’t know what to do with this.
I sat there on the steps, the sun on my face, but my thoughts dark. He’d condemned Dorina and me to a half-life, but what else was he supposed to do? What would I have done, in his place? Kept looking for another solution while the fits tore my kid apart, fits I could stop with knowledge I already had?
It reminded me of those parents with a troubled pregnancy, the ones forced to select one child to die so that the other might live. Lose one, or lose them both; a horrible choice.
But how much worse was it when the one selected out knew it? When she was aware that she’d been made into a sacrifice? That her life had been deemed less important; her wishes discounted; her hopes, dreams, and ambitions stifled, so that her far less talented sister might thrive? What the hell happened then?
