Building From Ashes

“Ha!”

“What was that? Where did those coins come from?”

“Catch up now, slowpoke.” Carwyn quickly punched in the cheat code, and his car shot forward.

“You’re cheating at Mario Kart! I thought you were supposed to be a priest!”

“Doesn’t mean I’m a good one.”

The young man was indignant. “Cheater!” Ben furiously pressed buttons to steer around the cars that had bunched up in front of him, but Carwyn only grinned as the checkered flag waved and electronic confetti sprinkled down across the screen. He stood, raising his arms in a victorious pose.

“And I am, again, the undefeated champion of—oof!” Ben tackled him from behind, but Carwyn only laughed and let him knock him to the floor.

“You’re such a cheater! Why do I even play with you?”

“Because I’m the only one here who doesn’t fry the equipment?”

Ben punched his arm and rolled off the giant vampire. Carwyn was still laughing and gasping for breath.

“Well, I’m not playing with you again unless it’s Resident Evil.”

“Oh,” Carwyn pouted. “You always win at that one.”

“Damn right, I do. I kick your ass at killing zombies.”

Isabel’s voice drifted in from the front porch. “Language, Benjamin.”

Ben Vecchio rolled his eyes at her voice, but Carwyn tapped him on the back of the head, shaking his head and giving the boy a look. Isabel may have been the strictest of his children—and the most devout—but Carwyn wouldn’t put up with any disrespect from Giovanni’s nephew, who was staying with Isabel and Gus while Giovanni took care of Beatrice during her first, most volatile year as a vampire.

The Cochamó Valley had changed little in the previous hundred years. Carwyn’s daughter and her husband still brought most things in by horse or boat. There were no roads and only a few tourists during the busy season, which they happened to be in the middle of. The balmy southern air of the valley brought travelers from the Northern Hemisphere to enjoy the rock-climbing, hiking, and horseback trails that still ran through the mountain valley. It was a pocket of wild in a rapidly changing world, and the perfect refuge for a close-knit clan of earth vampires. Giovanni Vecchio and his new wife, Beatrice De Novo, had become adopted members of their clan.

“Ben!” Isabel’s husband, Gustavo, called from outside. “Time to practice.”

The boy’s head fell back and he groaned. “Not wrestling again.”

Carwyn shoved him up. “Go. Practice. Or you’ll never hear the end of it from your aunt.”

The quick sadness flashed in the boy’s eyes. Ben hadn’t seen Beatrice in months, and Carwyn knew any reunion was still months away as his friend learned to control her bloodlust.

“Okay.” As always, Ben immediately complied when Beatrice was brought up. He dragged himself off the floor and stomped outside for his jiu jitsu lesson from Gustavo.

Beatrice was a new vampire and far too unpredictable and hungry to be safe around humans, even humans she loved. So Ben spoke to her on the radio phone a few times a week and saw his uncle at Isabel and Gus’s house for lessons. But Carwyn could tell that the boy was still lonely in the strange place. Luckily, he knew the time would fly. For mortals, it always did.

“He’s been better since you’ve come.” Isabel slipped in the house and sat on the couch, watching as Carwyn put away the game controllers and turned off the television. He took off the leather gloves that enabled him to use the video game equipment and tucked them in with the controllers. “He’s a good boy, but he misses Gio and B terribly. He acts out. I’m glad you’re here.”

He nodded. “I’m glad I came, too.” Mostly. His thoughts still turned to Scotland far more than they probably should. “Ben is a good boy.”

“He is. He’s had a hard life, but he’s very resilient.”

Carwyn grimaced. “Pain tolerance seems to be a requirement in our family recently.”

“We’ve been fortunate. Our clan lived a charmed existence until recently.”

He grunted. “It was not without effort.”

“I know your sacrifices. And Ioan’s, too.”

Carwyn turned and looked at his daughter. Like Tavish, Isabel looked older than him, but unlike Tavish, had always treated him with far more respect. She had been born in Spain and lived a full human life before her change. She had been a wife. A mother. A grandmother, even. In some ways, Carwyn thought Isabel understood him more than his other children because of that.

“You’re different,” she said quietly as he sat next to her on the worn couch.

“How?”

“You are… unsettled.”

He studied her face, frozen in time in her mid-forties. “How did you stand it? When your children died? I lost two as babes. The others lived full lives I wasn’t even part of. With Ioan… it is different, isn’t it?”

Isabel’s sons had been taken by plague as adults, along with their wives and children. He found her in the aftermath, bleeding and terrified. Afraid of the fires of hell for giving in to her despair and trying to end her own life. Carwyn had changed her from pity, a rash decision that was unlike him, but one that he had thanked God for many times over. Isabel had lived a happy and peaceful life in the five hundred years since. Her husband, Gustavo, was another welcome addition to his clan.