by S. W. Clarke
But I did.
And they weren’t men.
No—men didn’t use their teeth. Not like this.
They ripped into flesh with gleaming, pointed canines. They drew the sustenance from beneath that flesh in quick, curdling sips. They threw the bodies high into the stands with a clang. They pulled arms from bodies as easily as plucking flowerheads from stems, and they beat people with them.
For fun. They did it for fun.
Vampires, I thought and didn’t think. My subconscious processed it without my conscious mind even voicing the word. I just knew.
In the midst of it all, a throwing knife sang through the air. It lodged in a vampire’s forehead, sent him falling back.
And when he fell, I saw my father.
He stood over my mother, who lay unmoving on the ground. He had more throwing knives in his hands, and he was launching them at every vampire asshole he could see.
GoneGods, he was strong. My father was so strong.
“What are you doing, girl?” A man grabbed my arm, yanked me back. “They’re killing everyone. Get out!”
I didn’t know the voice. I only knew he was dragging me to safety, and I was screaming for him to let me go. I had to find Thelma. I had to help my mom and dad.
But for the third time that day, a man overpowered me.
And soon enough, I found myself outside the main tent, the moonlight drenching the stranger who was holding my arm.
“Let me go,” I spat, twisting out of his grasp.
He finally let me go, and he ran. He ran as far and fast as he could until a form leapt from the shadows and landed atop him and began feasting.
A moment later, that form stopped. The head turned toward me, dark, gleaming eyes locking on.
I turned, fell into a run. And I could run fast, even over churned ground, even through mud. That terrain was my specialty after so many years with the circus, and I could have outrun any normal human.
But I wasn’t fast enough to outrun a vampire. Not nearly.
I didn’t even hear his feet as he came up on me. The vampire simply landed atop me and knocked me straight to the ground with a thud.
The air went out of my lungs, and I thought—not for the first time in my short, risk-taking life—that this was it.
I’d always thought I would fall from the trapeze. That I would take an accidental knife to an artery. That I’d die a carnie’s death.
But I’d never thought I would die to a vampire.
↔
What might have been fingernails or might have been claws dug into my back, and I raised my face to scream. But I still hadn’t caught my breath, so a strange, breathy noise came out of my mouth, like a wheezing chew toy.
I had never felt so helpless.
In that brief, infinite moment, I understood what it meant to be overpowered. It was a feeling I’d never forget—never stop feeling, somewhere deep down inside. What it was like to feel completely out of control, at someone else’s mercy. At their whims.
It was terrifying. Infuriating. It could make a person insane.
He grabbed my hair, lifted me up from the dirt. He yanked my head aside to expose my neck, bits of earth flying away from me. And he enclosed me like a wreath of shadow.
“Don’t kill her,” a voice seethed from somewhere in the darkness.
All movement ceased—except my breathing, which had at some point returned fast and furious in my lungs. It rattled out of my throat, dying to be heard. To be acknowledged. I was a person, and I was still alive.
“Is this a descendant?” my captor asked.
"No, you fool—we've only found three of this generation's crop. She's not among them."
My captor’s claws tightened. “Then she looks like reusable meat to me.” He found my neck again.
A hiss. “Do not speak of Mariana in such vile terms.” With those words, he tore away from me, staring at my crying face with … with … what was it? Fear?
Was he actually afraid of me? Why?
What had the other one said? The descendants? Mariana?
I’d hardly had time to process the words before he arrived. The monster who would be known by the name Valdis.
In a rush of air, a single face appeared under the moonlight. His eyes found mine, and I sobbed. I didn’t recognize that pale face and that dark hair, but I did recognize those eyes.
Black. So black they didn’t even have whites to them.
They looked like the boy’s eyes.
But it couldn’t be the boy. This man was too old. The boy had worn a simple shirt and jeans, but this man wore a cloak and tall boots and a suit. He must have been in his thirties or forties.
But those eyes. I couldn’t reconcile the similarity.
“By all means, Aemon.” He stepped toward us, hair gleaming under the moon. As he did, my captor released me. “You were saying? Reusable meat—what a quaint term for them …”
I staggered two steps forward, turned to see my captor shrinking away, his hands clasped before him. He looked so frail. So pitiable. And two seconds ago, he had been about to kill me.
“I’m so sorry, my lord,” Aemon whispered.
The man whom he had called his lord—the man I would come to know as Valdis—removed something from his cloak, tossed it to him. It hit the ground, and I squinted down at it.
It looked like a short, narrow piece of wood.
Valdis turned to me, his bootsteps squelching through the mud. “My snowdrop—I have sought you for millennia, and here you are.”
I straightened, staring up at him. Those black eyes fixed on me with a strange and palpable adoration. Not the adoration of love, though—something fiercer. Something incendiary and powerful.
Lust?
For every step he took toward me, I took one step backward. Behind him, Aemon picked up the narrow piece of wood, gripped one end of it with both hands, touching its pointed tip with his finger. He looked so sad holding that wooden stake.
His hands gripped harder, and they shook as he slowly urged it toward the center of his chest—right where his heart lay.
“What’s he doing?” I whispered, my eyes flicking between Aemon and Valdis, still walking toward me.
“He is punishing himself.”
“You mean killing himself,” I breathed, still backing up.
“Of course.” Valdis didn’t bother to turn back, or even to glance over his shoulder; he kept approaching. “All my children know that to cross me and to offend you means death, my snowdrop.”
Death. That vampire with the stake could have run, he could have fought, he could at least have begged. How terrified must he have been of his lord to accept the equivalent of seppuku?
I was afraid, too. But I would never let myself die that way. Never.
My eyes narrowed on the vampire before me. “I’m not your snowdrop.”
“Oh.” His head tilted a degree to the left, and a small smile emerged. “You’ve forgotten. The problem with souls is how finicky they can be. Sometimes they don’t remember. But I have a way to give you back your memories.”
He was toying with me. Instead of killing me outright, he’d decided to play with his meal before he devoured me. Maybe he got off on fear. Maybe he liked the taste of his meat laced with adrenaline.
I kept backing up, my right hand sliding behind my back. My father had always told me to carry something to defend myself with. Always, no matter what.
It was like he’d been anticipating this night.
Maybe he had felt what it was like to be so helpless. It was the worst feeling in the world. And after that taste of it in the dirt, I knew I would never die without a fight.
My hand slid over the grip of the throwing knife tucked into my waistband. As it did, a voice echoed around us. It sounded like it was coming from the heavens.
“Thank you for believing in us,” the voice said, “but it’s not enough—”
Whatever came next was drowned out by Aemon’s screams.
He had stabbed himself in the heart with the stake, but he wasn’t dying the way I’d expected a vampire to go. Blood was everywhere, and he flailed and cried and fell to his knees and then to his face in the dirt.
I screamed, too, one hand flying to my mouth.
Before me, Valdis’s face had turned skyward. He wasn’t moving anymore, and his lips had parted as though seeing something impossible. His arms went out, and he, too, fell to his knees.
Darkness seeped from between his lips, issuing into the air. It rose toward the sky, and as it did, the pale skin on his face and hands changed color in the moon’s light. His face gained lines it hadn’t possessed before—around the eyes and mouth. And his breath went in and out of him with an audible sound.
To that point, I hadn’t actually heard him breathe. I suppose vampires don’t need to—but humans do.
As the darkness left him, he slumped forward, head on chest.
Meanwhile, Aemon’s dying wails tapered off as his heart stopped. He, too, had become human. He’d become “reusable meat.”
I know now that the moment the gods left, all half-breed creatures turned human. No more vampires, zombies, werewolves, were-anythings.
Just humans. Again.
It was also the moment Others came to Earth to live amongst us. Others like Percival.
They called it the GrandExodus.
But when I looked up that night, I only saw the moon. And I saw something else, too.
My escape.
In the distance, the endlessness of the cow pasture beckoned. I could start running right that moment and keep going. I was in good shape; I could swerve past the longhorns, through the tall grasses, make it all the way to civilization before I had to stop and catch my breath.
But I didn’t.
Instead, I turned, started back toward the main tent. I had to know if my sister and parents were still alive.
Chapter 12
On the way to the main tent, I passed through a sea of death.
I ran with one hand pressed to my nose and mouth, keeping my eyes off the carnage. I had never seen a dead person, and now I was surrounded by them, veering past bodies and parts of bodies.
And the blood. It was as red as the stripes on the tents, and it was everywhere.
The only people still alive were the ex-vampires. They staggered and screamed and gripped their heads. Some lay on the ground and moaned. Each had his or her own way of processing the gods’ departure, the loss of immortality—and none of it was pretty.
When I finally got through the flaps into the main tent, I was greeted by the harsh spotlights still shining through the interior. Partially blinded, I rushed inside, shielding my eyes. I knew it was worse in here; I slipped in a puddle, nearly fell before I caught myself. In that moment, I glimpsed an enormous pool of blood beneath me.
I staggered on toward the center ring.
“Mom,” I called. “Dad? Thelma?”
I kept repeating their names—Mom, Dad, Thelma, Mom, Dad, Thelma—as though they were what tethered me to sanity. As though repeating their names enough times would make them OK.
But they weren’t OK. They would never be OK again.
When I got to the center ring, I dropped to my knees and sobbed.
My mother lay where she’d fallen. At some point, my father had found my sister, and he was cradling her with his back against a stool. But nei ther of them were moving, and blood ran down my father’s shirt.
The two of them had throwing knives sticking out of their chests.
More unnecessary cruelty.
There I caught the first glimpses of my grief, and also of my hatred for vampires. Both began to seep into my veins in the same moment, and I did not know that they began a slow and subconscious entwinement.
Grief for my family. Hatred of vampires.
Numquam obliviscar. Nunquam propitius eris.
Never forget. Never forgive.
Footsteps sounded behind me. A sickly voice croaked, “My snowdrop.” He spoke in an odd way, as though he carried marbles in his mouth. I had only ever heard a deaf person speak that way.
My next sob caught in my throat. My chest stopped, held its breath. And by instinct, my hand reached toward the grip of the whip under my mother’s fingers. I slipped it out from her grasp, brought it to my chest.
When I stood up, the thong dropped away toward my feet, the cracker hitting the ground.
This was my mother’s favorite whip. At one time it had no name, but she’d named it Thelma after my sister was born. And she had given me Louise as a birthday gift. When she got old enough, my mother had joked about my sister inheriting the other whip, and the two of us performing together with Thelma and Louise.
But I hadn’t seen it as a joke; I had seen it as a promise.
We would have been unstoppable together.
The footsteps approached from behind, but with none of the assuredness from before. He wasn’t a vampire any longer, after all. And we humans were clumsy. We were uncertain.
We were simply mortal.
I gripped the whip harder and didn’t turn. “Stay away from me.”
“Mariana,” he said, as though he hadn’t heard me. He was coming closer. “I have sought you for a thousand years.”
I kept staring down at my parents and sister. Rage filled me. I wanted to kill the man behind me, and it was possible I could. I was only fourteen, but we were both human now. I had a chance.
But I kept hearing my mother’s voice over my anger. She was kind; she was always better than me. “It’s OK, Tara,” she used to say as she picked me up, crying, from the mud. “This feeling isn’t forever. They all pass. Let it pass.”
Let it pass.
Let it pass.
But this wasn’t falling in the mud. I sensed, even now, that it wasn’t a feeling that would pass. My hands shook as the two forces contended inside me, and through it all, the man approached. He had killed my family. He had killed everyone in my life.
He deserved to die.
“Let it pass,” my mother’s voice returned.
My breathing came faster, hitching in my throat. My eyes filled with tears, and I knew I had to choose now or lose my chance.
His hand fell on my arm, gripped my bicep. “My—”
With a scream, I spun on him. The whip went out and over both our heads, and my arm moved so fluidly, with such grace, I could hardly believe it was under my control.
I had never swung in rage. But it came as naturally as ever.
The whip’s end gained speed as it swung around. I caught sight of those eyes—regular old human eyes, I thought with a start—in the moment before the cracker slit his face from nose to hairline.
A perfect strike.
He screamed, those perfectly ordinary human hands flying to his face. Already, blood dripped down to his jawline. Whatever had happened, for as long as his powers were gone, he would carry that wound.
He would carry it prominently on display—a reminder of what I had done to him.
One hand lashed out at me, fury mixing with his pain. But he was slow, imprecise.
I stepped back and swung the whip around, slashed him across the chest. After that, I didn’t know where I hit him; I only know I kept swinging through my tears and rage. Until he fell to his knees. Until a voice called out—“Stop!”
I blinked, focusing on Valdis. He was covered in blood, maybe unconscious, and one of his lackeys had rushed over and fallen down in front of him, taking all the hits in his stead.
“Stop,” he begged, eyes wide on me as his hands lifted before him. “Do not kill him.”
Let it pass, Tara.
Let it pass.
I took one last look at my family. At my mother. Tears blurred everything, and I swiped them away. Then I ran past the bleeding ex-vampire, past the carnage and death.
When I came out of the tent, I didn’t stop running.
I was getting my fourteen-year-old wish.
I was leaving the circus life.
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Chapter 13
“Patience,” a woman’s voice called from somewhere far above me. “Patience Schweinsteiger.”
In the field with the longhorns, I looked up into the sky. I still held Thelma in one hand, her thong trailing behind me through the grass.
“Wake, Patience. You must wake now.”
Strong hands kneaded my back. And a thought slowly crept in: I’m not here. I’m not here in this field at all.
My eyes opened in the cradle.
I was in the massage parlor.
My heart was galloping.
I jolted on the table, and the old woman’s hands flattened on my back. “You are safe. You are here, Patience.”
I could barely catch my breath. Tears of rage or grief sprang into my eyes, and I forced my head out of the cradle and sat up to wipe them away. “What in the GoneGods did you do?”
In the semidarkness, the old woman gazed at me with an expression I couldn’t quite read. Pity, maybe. “I allowed you to see.”
I stared back at her. I had seen memories I didn’t think I had—things locked so tight I thought they’d been buffed from my brain. I’d seen the deepest, darkest moments. And I didn’t know whether that was a good thing.
“Did you see it all?” I whispered.
The old woman gave a single nod. That was why she’d been gazing at me with pity. She was infuriatingly quiet. I couldn’t stand that look in her eyes.
I pursed my lips. “Quit looking at me like that, would you?”
She averted her eyes. “I saw a symbol.” She turned away, began rummaging through a desk set in the far corner.
As she did, I stared into nothing. My heart slowed enough for me to think on everything, and my hands dug into the massage table.
I understood now why Grunt’s phrase had stuck with me.
“The descendant,” I whispered.
One of the vampires had used that phrase on the night they’d attacked our circus. It couldn’t be a coincidence. But I still didn’t know what it meant.
The old woman picked up a piece of paper, began drawing something on it. When she finished, she turned it toward me.
I squinted at the shaky drawing, held up by a shaky hand, in the candlelight. It looked like an upside-down tree. Awfully similar to something I’d seen yesterday, but I didn’t have the presence of mind to connect the dots quite yet.