“If I’d understood the price you intended to extract from me, I never would have agreed to your bargain,” he said in hoarse tones.
“I know,” Nigellus replied evenly.
Stillness reigned again for several long minutes.
“I require a favor from you,” Ransley said, at length. “It cannot be another bargain, since I have nothing left to offer in return. You’ve already taken everything of value I possessed.”
“What favor is that?” Nigellus asked, already suspecting the answer.
“You must ensure that I forget the terms of the agreement I have just accepted,” he said. “Because—Nigellus. I cannot live with it... and yet, you won’t even let me die to escape it. Not now that I’ve become your bargaining chip against the future. I’ve heard the stories—I could stake myself a hundred times, and you would only bring me back.”
“You think not remembering will be any kinder?” Nigellus asked.
“I don’t know,” Ransley replied. “But it can hardly be any more cruel. You have the power to grant me this. I entreat you on the strength of our centuries of association... please use it.”
Nigellus tilted his head, considering the ramifications.
“Very well,” he said eventually. “I will agree, with two provisions. First, as you have correctly ascertained, I will not allow you to die, Ransley Thorpe. Second, I will not allow your precious blood to go to waste. When the Fae declare victory and I have struck the deal with them I intend to strike... when your safety is assured by a signed and sealed agreement... I will escort you from Hell and alter the weft of your memories. You will have no recollection of what passed between us. Then, whenever I have need of your blood, I will acquire it from you—but you will know nothing of it.”
Ransley’s hands had crept back into his hair as he sat hunched at the base of the wall. They were shaking. “Anything. Anything, Nigellus. Just... not this.”
Nigellus nodded. “It will be done.” He rose, stretching his spine against the confines of his human form. “Edward will be returning here soon, with one of the other demons. Do you wish to wait for him? Perhaps to feed?”
Ransley shook his head sharply. “All I wish is oblivion, Nigellus. If you care for me at all, you’ll grant me that much until it’s time for me to leave.”
Nigellus crossed to him, crouching in front of him. “Then oblivion it shall be.”
He reached out a hand, but Ransley looked up and met his eyes, giving him pause.
“No dreams,” the vampire said, the words somewhere between a demand and a plea.
“No dreams,” Nigellus agreed, touching fingers to Ransley’s temple.
Ransley’s eyes rolled back, and his body slumped sideways against the wall. Nigellus caught him, lifting the limp form easily and carrying him to a quiet room where he could wait out the political machinations that were sure to come in the following weeks and months.
As Nigellus laid his heartbroken burden down on the bed, he reflected that in a lifetime spanning uncounted eons, success had seldom tasted so bitter.
NINETEEN
St. Louis, present day
NIGELLUS SAT IN my grandfather’s armchair, his legs crossed primly and his fingers steepled before him as he systematically dismantled the last two hundred years of Rans’ history, piling the pieces like discarded rubble at our feet.
“And so,” he finished, drawing the story to a close, “once the treaty was struck and your life was protected as part of it, I escorted you out of Hell and removed your memories of the whole thing—as you had requested of me.”
“Leaving him with a hole in his life that he’d never quite be able to fill,” I said in a low monotone.
My hand was still tangled with Rans’, but the man next to me might as well have been a marble statue. His fingers were cold—not just room temperature, but frozen. Meanwhile, I struggled to deal with yet another emotional calamity on top of the mountain of emotional calamities that had already comprised the last several hours.
Though... the word ‘struggling’ might have been too kind. I wasn’t struggling. I was failing to deal with yet another emotional calamity. Aside from the vague, dull sense of achiness I felt on Rans’ behalf, this particular calamity just seemed to sort of be... sliding off. Not sticking properly.
Maybe that was a good thing.
“No wonder you were so livid when you found out about the life-bond,” I told Nigellus, my voice sounding almost conversational. “Bad enough trying to keep one suicidally reckless idiot alive. Much less, two.”
“I wouldn’t care to comment on the matter,” Nigellus said, and while his tone was perfectly civil, I suspected that the retort would have left burn marks if I could actually feel anything right now.
Rans shifted next to me, a tremor taking up residence in the long fingers laced through mine. He leaned forward on the sofa, his eyes burning as they fixed on the demon.
“Why me, of all the vampires in existence?” he asked. “Why me, Nigellus?”
Nigellus’ brow furrowed, emotion leaking into his expression for the first time since he’d taken up the story.
“Because I cared for you... a great deal, Ransley,” he said in a voice gone heavy with things unspoken. “I still do. Unlike incubi and succubi, demons of fate can never have offspring, even indirectly. But... if we did, I would be proud to consider you a son.”
Rans jerked to his feet, his hand sliding free of mine. I let him go, and watched him pace around the room as though ghosts were nipping at his heels. Perhaps they were—the ghosts of ten thousand vampires snuffed out of existence between one second and the next.
He scrubbed a hand through his ragged fringe of hair, ruffling it with an angry movement.
“I can’t... do this now,” he said. “There are too many other things that, frankly, strike me as more important and deserving of my attention at the current point in time than hashing this out with you.” The last word contained venom, but also
