But as he looked up, it wasn’t his mother that he saw. There was another woman, her face similar, but instead of being hollow, her cheeks were full and glowing. Her hair was silver, streaked with ebony where it peeked out from an elegant pink head covering. Another face took its place, similar again in features, but also different and this time younger. Then another face and another and another, female faces old and young, morphing and slipping into the past until the woman before him was a stranger with familiar dark eyes, elegant arched eyebrows, and curling ebony hair that tumbled down her back and over her shoulders. She smiled, and he saw the fangs peeking out from her mouth a second before she lunged at his throat.
He woke, gasping on the floor of a red stone passageway. The sky above him was streaked with flames so dense that the stars could barely show through.
“Boy, you are faithful. Your time is now.”
He turned and saw Saba resting on a stone bench, her back to the rock and her eyes on him.
“Mother.”
“Destroyer.” She stared at him. “There is no life without me; I give birth to death.”
Ben shook his head. “I don’t understand.”
Saba looked up at the fire-stained sky, and when she looked back at Ben, his mother’s face stared back at him. “My stolen son.”
“No.” He backed away from her. “You gave me up.”
Her face was the picture of agony. “No.”
He didn’t trust it. She had too many faces.
“They stole you.”
Ben blinked, and Saba stared at him again. Her smile was wide and her fangs were gleaming.
“Thief!” She laughed. “She taught you well.”
Ben turned and saw a roaring fire tumbling and twisting down the passageway. He turned back to Saba.
“Thief,” she whispered. “What are you waiting for?”
Ben woke with a start and felt the sun slipping beneath the horizon. Tenzin was beside him and turned when he gasped.
“What it is?”
“I was dreaming.”
“You’ve been dreaming a lot. It’s probably because of my blood. Instead of keeping you awake like Beatrice, it’s allowing your sleep to cycle more like—”
“That was the weirdest fucking dream I’ve ever had.” He turned to her. “Do you know where my mother is?”
Tenzin frowned. “What?”
“My human mother. Do you know where she is?”
Tenzin shook her head. “Do you want me to find her?”
No. No, of course he didn’t. What was he thinking? Unlike his father, he hadn’t seen his mother in years. Giovanni might know; he might have kept tabs on her, but he wouldn’t have bothered telling Ben the details unless he asked.
Who was he kidding? The way she drank, she was probably dead.
“Why are you asking about your mother?” Tenzin asked.
He put his hands over his face and rubbed hard. “This… this dream.”
“Explain it to me.” She rolled to her side and gave him her full attention. “How much do you remember?”
Your eyes are like mine.
“Sadia was in it. I’m probably… It’s probably because I’m afraid of her being here. Part of me really wishes that Dema would take her back to LA.”
“Giovanni and Beatrice won’t let anything happen to that girl,” Tenzin said. “Neither will I.”
“I know.” He grasped her hand. “I know that. And I’m not powerless either, I just—”
“You’re far more powerful than you realize,” Tenzin said. “I’m trying to be patient with you, but it can be frustrating.”
She taught you well.
“My mother was a thief,” he said. “Did I tell you that?”
“Yes. But you said she tricked people and lied to them. She didn’t steal directly.”
“I mean, she did whatever she needed to get high and get enough vodka to make it through the day.” Why was he talking about his mother? He hated even thinking about her. “I never met her family and I don’t remember her ever calling them or anything, so I think they were normal. I mean… not like us. Not thieves. I don’t think they even lived in the US. I think she was born in Beirut and emigrated. She told me once she was a ballet dancer who performed before the king of Lebanon, and a German count wanted to marry her.”
“That’s quite a story.”
“I think…” Ben tried to think back to some of the few pleasant moments of his youth. Stolen moments when he remembered smiling. “I think she might have actually been a dancer. She loved dancing to the radio.”
Tenzin laid her head on his shoulder and put a hand over his heart. “Did she dance to Louis Armstrong?”
He covered her hand with his own. “No, that’s just for us. She’d put on classical music sometimes and dance. I think it was ballet, so maybe part of what she said was true.”
It was the first time he’d remembered something positive about his mother in years.
“She was beautiful. My mother was beautiful.” Had she studied dancing? What turn had she taken in life to leave her alone in New York with a kid and no one who gave a shit about her?
Why did he care?
Tenzin was quiet for a long time. “Do you want me to find her for you?”
“No.” That part of his life had been dead since he was twelve. “She’s probably dead anyway.” And what did he feel about that thought?
Nothing. He felt nothing.
“The best thing she ever did for me,” he said, “was give me to Giovanni.”
“If she’d never given you to Giovanni, you’d probably still be human.”
There is no life without me; I give birth to death.
“If she hadn’t given me to Giovanni” —Ben tried to rid his mind of the crazy dream— “I’d probably be nothing. Just like her.”
30
Ben steepled his fingers and fought back the urge to break something—anything—to relieve the tension that had been his constant companion since nightfall. Images from his dream kept flipping through his mind.
Sadia in a burning cave.
Tenzin bowing down to his mother.
Saba whispering thief.
What are you waiting for?
He rubbed a frustrated hand over his eyes. “Why would Saba want Tenzin and me to find the bone scroll?”
Giovanni sat next to him in the library. Tenzin and Beatrice were across the table, and Doug appeared to be reading a magazine in the corner.
Giovanni said, “I think the obvious answer is that she doesn’t want Arosh to have it. She can’t bring herself to destroy it, but she doesn’t want him to find it either.”
“Why not just give it to us?”
Beatrice answered, “That would upset Arosh and damage the council in Alitea. You have to find it on your own and negotiate for it. Put her in a position where she has to grant you ownership of the scroll.”
Giovanni added. “And do it in a way that Arosh can’t criticize.”
Ben wanted to groan. Fucking vampire politics. It was all lies, manipulations, and face-saving gestures. It didn’t matter if it was Don Ernesto in Los Angeles, Zhang in Penglai, or Saba in Alitea. All of them were the same.