Page 26 of My Master
He looked amused. “Ah, yes. I recall a particular speech of yours that I quite enjoyed. You mentioned something about loyalty and cowardice in it.”
Isis said nothing, mainly because she couldn’t remember what speech he was talking about. Usually she remembered everything about her past, no matter how hard she tried to forget it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, yes, I nearly forgot. You weren’t the one who gave me that speech, it was someone who looks a lot like you, I remember now. It was a rather endearing speech; maybe he can recite it to you sometime, if you care to meet him?”
Isis waved him off with a flick of her hand, turning to look away from him, she said, “I have no interest in meeting any of your friends.”
Caesareon gripped her chin and pulled it to the side so that she was staring back into his golden eyes, now flecked with small specks of red. “He is not just my friend,” said Caesareon. “But an acquaintance of yours as well; I think you’ll find that you and he have much in common.”
Isis shook her head and moved his hand from her face. “I think you’ll find that that’s where you are wrong.”
13
“Start from the beginning…”
It was an odd sight for Ezzy, seeing Marco Santiago sit cross legged on the floor, next to her and Maria and Antonio. She had never seen him sitting in a chair, much less on the floor, and his movements were so casual and so precise when he began to gesture at the start of his story, she could only pay attention and grasp on to every word he said as if they were a life line to help her get to Isis.
“First I will tell you this: I was sworn to secrecy, so everything I say here will have to stay between us, understood?”
Antonio snorted. “Not if it endangers Isis’s life. If there’s someone else we need to tell in order to save her, then by God, we’ll do it.”
Marco sighed and continued, “I met Isis years ago, sixteen, to be exact. I had just finished my work here at the office and I was walking outside, unescorted, when I saw her. She was in sweatpants and an oversized T-shirt; her hair was wild and she was out of breath; it looked as though she had just run a marathon.
“She approached me, uncertainty in her stride, and when she reached me she asked, ‘Are you Marco Santiago, head of the Santiago vampire coven?’ I stared at her for a moment, wondering if she were a homeless vampire, or worse, on the Blood Drug. I nodded and told her that I was. She seemed to breathe a sigh of relief, but her tone was still serious and urgent just the same. ‘I need protection,’ she told me.”
“Protection from what, exactly?” Maria leaned forward, obviously way more interested in the situation now than she had been earlier.
“She told me that she had escaped from her creator, who was in an entirely different country. She said she feared he would come for her and she had no doubt in her mind that he would find her; but that she couldn’t keep running. Isis wanted protection from him, and that she could only find the protection she sought from within a vampire coven.”
“But why was she running from her creator?” Ezzy asked, confused.
“And why you, of all people?” Antonio asked, a note of bitterness lacing his words.
“We all know that only a Natural Born vampire can create other vampires, correct?” They all nodded. “Well, this vampire—Isis’s creator—was a particularly old vampire, an ancient one. He was one of the first to ever exist, I believe. His name is Caesareon…”
Ezzy mulled the name over in her mind for a second, hoping to find some familiarity with it, but she came up blank. She didn’t recognize the name; she had never known anyone with that name, to be honest.
“He traveled the world, searching for humans he thought could benefit him and he’d change them and take them away with him. Isis said that he keeps them hidden and fills their minds with poison about humans being low life scum. What he basically does is create an army.
“He took Isis away from her homeland in Egypt after killing her family and turned her into a warrior, made to lead his armies into a battle against the humans. Caesareon is ruthless and determined. Isis was lucky to get away when she did, or else she would have been dragged into a war.” He paused, taking a deep breath, before continuing.
“She said she needed protection from him, because he was crazy and powerful and she said she would be willing to pay whatever for my help. I felt sorry for her, her story moved me, you see, and I told her I would help her, free of charge. Yet, the only way I could help her was by her becoming an official member of the coven, but she didn’t want that. She knew I would put down documents with her name on them and she wanted no trace of her anywhere. She wanted to live here in secret, so I let her in. After a few years, around the time Esmeralda was in the coven, she allowed herself to have a little more freedom, and she seemed less scared than she was before.” He looked directly at Ezzy, who was starting to feel uncomfortable.
“So this ‘Caesareon,’” Antonio started. “He killed her family and turned her into a killer? How do we know it’s him exactly?”
Marco sighed again, he did that often, Ezzy noticed, and, opening his coat, he reached into his breast pocket and pulled something out. It was a square paper, folded in half. He handed it to Antonio and watched as he opened it. Ezzy leaned over to look at it, too.
It was a wrinkled picture of her and Antonio, one that she had given to Isis as a gift. In the photo she was leaning against him, her arms wrapped around his waist. Her eyes were closed and she was smiling widely at the camera. Antonio had his arm slung over her shoulder and he was looking down at her, his curls strewn over his forehead. Across the photo were words in black ink:Found and Caught.
She recognized the cursive scripture as Isis’s and she felt her heart tumble downwards, like on a snowy avalanche, tumbling and tumbling, her fear growing bigger with each roll until it scattered to the bottom, breaking apart.
Antonio looked at the picture angrily then back up at his father. “What is this supposed to mean?” he demanded.
“Isis managed to leave it behind for me. And I think the answer is obvious…” said Marco.
“Caesareon threatened to hurt us if she didn’t do his bidding, didn’t he?” Esmeralda wondered aloud, finally realizing what was going on.
What better way to get someone to do what you want than by threatening the thing you loved most in the world? Her hands went to her stomach, which had suddenly begun to hurt.
