Brothers to the Death. Darren Shan

      On a grassy bank in a park on the outskirts of Paris, a young man lay beside a middle-aged woman, holding her hand. They were talking softly, shielded from the setting evening sun by a large umbrella. Those passing by thought they were perhaps a mother and son. None suspected that the orange-haired gentleman in the blood-red suit was more than twice the age of the woman.

      “What do you think people would say if I kissed you?” Larten murmured.

      Alicia giggled. “There would be a scandal.” Much about her had changed over the years, but her giggle was the same as ever.

      “I relish a juicy scandal,” Larten said, leaning closer towards her.

      “Don’t!” Alicia laughed, pushing him away. “You know I don’t like it when you tease me.”

      “What if I was not teasing?” Larten asked with a smile. But the smile was for Alicia’s benefit. He was serious — he did want to kiss her.

      “That’s sweet of you,” Alicia said. “But I’m an old woman. You can’t have any real interest in me after all these decades. I’m a wrinkly hag!”

      “Hardly,” Larten snorted. Alicia looked much older than him now, but in his eyes she was as beautiful as when they’d first met almost thirty years ago.

      Alicia rolled away from him, into the sunlight, where she stretched and lazily studied the clouds. Larten’s smile never faltered, but inside he felt sad. It had been a decade and a half since his reunion with Alicia. They had met often over the course of those years. Each time he hoped she’d kiss him, declare her love for him, accept him as her husband. He wanted things to be like they were in 1906, when they were engaged and madly in love.

      But Alicia felt that she was too old to marry again, and if she ever did give her hand to another man, she wanted to give it to a man her own age. It didn’t matter that Larten had been born almost eighty years before her. He looked like he was in his twenties and that was how she thought of him. To Alicia he could never be more than a friend. Larten had accepted that – he had no choice – but he couldn’t help wishing he was more.

      “The children are having fun,” Alicia noted, nodding at a boy and girl playing by the edge of a small pond.

      The girl was almost eighteen, a young woman who would probably marry soon and have children of her own. But Larten still thought of her as little Sylva. She was a tall, slim, pretty maid, but to him she would always be a cute, chubby baby.

      The boy was in his thirties, but didn’t look much older than Sylva. He was a vampire like Larten, ageing only one year for every ten that passed. He was of medium height, but broad, built like a wrestler. He could have thrown Sylva to the far side of the pond, but he always handled her gently, as Larten had taught him, careful never to squeeze too hard when he was holding her hand, knowing he could shatter every bone in her fingers if he did.

      Gavner hadn’t wanted to return to Paris. He had left under a cloud, swearing loyalty to Tanish Eul, a weak, selfish vampire who had killed an innocent woman to save his own thickly-layered neck. When Larten caught up with them and herded the killer to his execution, Gavner thought his world had ended. He hated the man whom he’d known since childhood as Vur Horston, and yearned to strike him dead.

      Larten had granted him that opportunity. Handing Gavner a knife, the General told him that he had killed Gavner’s parents. He said that Gavner had every right to extract revenge and he offered himself to the bewildered teenager.

      Gavner would never forget how close he’d come to stabbing Larten. His mind was in a whirl. Tanish Eul’s sudden death had shocked him. When he learnt that Larten had killed his parents too, it seemed like the only way to end the madness was to murder the orange-haired vampire. His fingers tightened and he tried to drive the knife forward into Larten’s heart, stopping it forever.

      But something held him back. He still wasn’t sure why he hadn’t struck. Maybe it had been the calm acceptance in Larten’s eyes, the fact that he wasn’t afraid of death, that he felt like he deserved to die. Perhaps it was because the vampire had been true to him for the first time in his life, and Gavner couldn’t kill a man for telling the truth. Or maybe he just didn’t have a killer’s instinct.

      Whatever the reason, Gavner had let the knife drop, collapsed in a weeping huddle and given himself over to confusion and grief.

      “I wish you could spend more time with us,” Alicia sighed as Gavner chased Sylva around the pond, threatening to throw her in. “Sylva misses you when you’re not here.”

      “I suspect she misses Gavner more,” Larten remarked wryly. He had never been much of a father figure. He’d always been distant with Sylva, and especially with Gavner. It was a mystery to him why the pair liked him so much.

      “Gavner’s like a brother to her,” Alicia admitted, “but she’s fond of you too. She thinks of you as an uncle.”

      “Uncle Larten,” the vampire chuckled, blushing slightly. “How ridiculous.”

      “Don’t be so stuffy,” Alicia growled, pinching his left cheek until his scar burnt whitely. Then she smiled, kissed one of her fingers and pressed it to the scar. “You still haven’t told me how you got that,”