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Certainly Laurice would be on my side… She was the one closest to me of all my siblings. We were temperamentally opposite but complemented each other’s personalities. She was bubbly to my sober reflectiveness, yet we seemed to understand each other on a deeper level.
I couldn’t accept that she would forsake me, believing the terrible lies that had been told about me and what happened while I was in San Francisco.
When a guard opened the door to my cell, I sat up, wondering which one of my brethren had come to visit.
Jerome Montague, my family’s solicitor.
I recognized him despite the fact he was now clean shaven and had his head shaved, wearing clothing that was unfamiliar to me. A vampire did not age once they were turned, but they could grow pale and thin if they did not drink enough blood. He looked plump and flush. Well-fed, in other words.
“Kier,” he said and came into my cell, pulling a chair with him. He held a file under his arm and a bottle of blood for me, which he handed over before he sat on his chair.
“Why are you here?” I asked, drinking down the blood, in need of its healing properties. I leaned forward. “Where is my brother and why am I being imprisoned?”
“You must know of the charges against you?”
“I do, and they’re all false,” I said, anger boiling up inside of me once more. “I had no trial. There was no solicitor to represent me. I saw none of the evidence they brought forward. I was set up.”
“That may be but you were found guilty in absentia based on the evidence we saw. Evidence that put you in the house where the two young mortals were murdered, drained of their blood without lawful permission.”
"I had nothing to do with it. I never touched either one."
"You were the only new person in the home at that time."
"Any one of a number of vampires present could have killed her. I assure you, it wasn't
me."
He shrugged, unconvinced. I could not fathom why he would not believe me but would instead believe those who falsely accused me.
"Evan intends to maintain you in a prison in the city, now that we've found you again."
"I demand to speak to him. I demand to speak to the city magister."
He stood, and adjusted his jacket. "You have no power to demand anything. Laurice is coming to visit you – against advice. You can speak to her, have her plead your case, but that's all. You'll be moved to cells as soon as one has been prepared for you. You'll stay there for the rest of your sentence."
I frowned. "Which was?"
He went to the door and held onto the knob. "Two life sentences. You have at least another fifty years to go on the original two. More, once you're prosecuted for the death of several mortals in California."
"What?"
"Three dead, all within twenty miles of your cell."
I thought back to the man who rescued me and the two men I had drank from immediately after escaping. All three had been alive, but weak, when I left them.
Surely they would have survived?
”I killed no one,” I said in protest. “I made sure the mortals I drank from were all live when I left them."
He raised his eyebrows. "After one hundred years of incarceration, I'm sure you had no control over your bloodlust. You can expect another three life sentences. You'll be gone for at least another two hundred and sixty years, depending on whether we find any more victims."
With that, he closed the door, leaving me alone to stew.
I had done nothing. I killed no one.
I hadn’t purposely killed anyone since the wars of the sixteenth century among my kind that put my father on the throne. Since that time, vampires had divided ourselves into those who abided by The Law and those who were outlaw. As King of the McDermott coven, which included minor families in Scotland and England, plus everyone in Upper and Lower Canada (now, Eastern Canada), our family protected all those under our domain, including mortals.
We didn’t kill.
