“Among other things.”
“Such as?”
Lucius sighed, walking to a wet bar that stood discreetly in one corner of the room. “Where to begin?” he asked absently, turning a tumbler upright and dropping three ice cubes into it with a delicate clink, clink, clink.
When his pause stretched on and it didn’t seem as if he was going to speak, my impatience got the better of me. It was either prompt him or let loose the frustrated scream that had been clogging my throat for several hours now.
I began with what I felt was the most important question.
“Why do you think Bo’s alive? How did he survive?”
Slowly, almost too slowly, Lucius poured amber liquid from a crystal decanter into the glass. I wanted to hit him in the head with it.
Finally, he spoke.
“I never believed the stories, lass. I always thought they were nothing more than myth. Conjecture. Fairy tales.”
“What stories?”
Lucius carried his glass to an armchair that faced the couch on which I sat.
Gracefully, he sank into its deep seat, crossing his legs and resting his elbows on the thickly padded arms.
“For hundreds of years, vampire legend has spoken of a man, a boy really, who cannot be killed, a boy that God Himself commissioned with the destruction of vampires, or at least one in particular. Of course, this boy’s existence was never confirmed. In over two thousand years of vampire history, no one has ever seen or met this fabled creature. You can imagine that, after a while, he’s become something akin to a ghost story.”
Lucius paused, swirling the golden liquid in his glass, staring into its shimmering depths. When he didn’t continue, I spoke.
“So, what? You think Bo is the boy who can’t be killed?”
Lucius looked up at me, an inscrutable gleam in his sparkling emerald eyes.
“It’s certainly a possibility.”
“But why would you think that? I mean, you’ve only known Bo for a few years. What would make you think he’s that boy, that he survived that fight with Lars?”
“For one thing, I went back for Bo’s body and it wasn’t there.”
“Should it have been?”
“Of course.”
I had wondered about that, what had happened to it. That night, when the first ambulance had arrived and the EMTs had set to work on Savannah, I’d walked back to the spot where Bo and Lars had fallen. I’d wanted to touch Bo’s invisible face one last time, but their bodies were no longer there. I had just assumed that they’d turned to dust and blown away, disintegrated or something, like in the movies.
Then an alarming thought occurred to me.
“What about Lars? Does that mean he’s—”
Lucius started shaking his head, interrupting me. “No. I moved his body so that the police wouldn’t discover it.”
“Oh,” I said, relieved. Then, when what he’d said really sank in, a kernel of nervous excitement began to grow in my belly. “So Bo’s body wasn’t there?”
“No, lass.”
“So he is alive?”
“I believe so, yes.”
I laughed, a sound that, even to my ears, bordered on the hysterical. I couldn’t help myself. My relief was that profound.
I closed my eyes, a shaky smile still on my lips. “Thank God,” I whispered.
Suddenly, I felt like crying. A lump formed in my throat, but it was a happy lump, as were the tears that I felt burning the backs of my lids. I’d never felt such overwhelming gratitude.
“But that’s not the only reason I think Bo might be the fabled boy.”
Lucius’s words brought me back to the present. I knew what he was saying was important, relevant, and that I should pay attention, but it was hard. Nothing seemed to outweigh the importance of the news I’d just been delivered. Nothing.
Bo was alive; that was the only thing I really cared about.
“What else?” I asked, clearing my throat.
“The first night I met Bo, the night he turned up on my front porch, he wasn’t human.”
“I know. He’d just been bitten.”
“No, lass, he wasn’t human, but he wasn’t newly turned either.”
“He was already a vampire? How is that even possible?” Lucius merely watched me, silently. “How could he not have known that? How could his family not have known?”
“I believe his real family, whoever and wherever they are, did know.”
“You think his parents, the Bowmans, aren’t his real family?”
“That’s exactly what I think.”
“But his nickname, Bo, it’s too—”
“A coincidence, plain and simple.”
“That doesn’t even make any sense. You can’t just fake an entire life, an entire history.”
“You can if you have very powerful blood,” Lucius said, looking at me meaningfully.
Pieces started sliding into place and I gasped. There was only one really powerful vampire that I knew of, and I had no doubts that he was both capable enough and evil enough to perpetrate such an atrocity.
“Lars.”
I remembered the way Lars was able to influence my mother and Trinity, the effect he had on people without even trying. I couldn’t imagine what he might be able to accomplish if he put forth more effort, put forth more thought and energy, more planning into his deception.
Lucius bobbed his head indecisively. “Eh, possibly, but I was thinking of someone even more powerful. This person would have to be able to control the memories of not only humans, but another vampire as well. And, if Bo is who I think he is, he himself is very powerful. It would take someone incredibly old to subvert him.”
“Wouldn’t they have had to feed Bo blood in order to do it?”
“Yes.”
“But I thought it was kind of an ongoing thing? I mean, three years is a long time. Wouldn’t they have to feed him blood continually, over the years?”
“Yes, they would.”
“Well, then how could someone have been feeding Bo vampire blood without his knowledge? And his mother, too?”
“It wouldn’t be as hard as you might think. Bo’s mother would’ve been the easier target. Humans always are. And she worked at the hospital, correct?”
“Yes. Why?”
“Well, if someone was rendezvousing with her fairly regularly, enough to keep her under their control, then that same person could’ve been infecting the bags of blood she was taking to Bo.”