by E. M. Knight
I see Beatrice pick up the crying creature and rock it in her arms. The motion soothes it, and the crying slows down, and then stops.
“There, there,” she says. “You will feed soon.”
She puts the creature on the ground, outside of its enclosure. She clicks her tongue and points to me.
“Go.”
The naked, decrepit thing hobbles its way over. It passes through the magic barrier as if it doesn’t exist. Then, on the outside of the cage, it takes hold of one of the silver bars and starts to hug it.
It hugs it, it humps it, and then it wraps its body around the silver in the most disgusting display of affection I’ve ever seen. My gut churns. The creature’s tongue comes out, and it slathers all over the metal bar, licking every last inch of it.
“Hey,” Beatrice snaps. “That’s enough. You have real blood to drink.”
The creature goes still. Its head snaps to me.
Greed fills its beady eyes.
And then it launches itself at me, as if shot out of a cannon.
It lands on my chest, fitting through the bars with ease. I try to fight if off, but the damn thing is slippery. It moves much faster than I could have ever imagined, clambering all over me. Wherever my hands go to try to rip it off, it’s already gone, taunting me with its quickness.
It bites into my neck. I scream and swat at the spot. The creature has already leapt off, but the bite it left is profusely bleeding.
I growl, ripping around to face it. A mischievous look is fixed on its face.
I lunge at it. Too slow. The creature jumps up, hangs off the top of the cage, and then propels itself onto my back.
I buck to throw it off, but it hangs on tight with its little claws. Another quick series of bites go all over my back. I don’t know how much blood it actually drinks.
All I know is the wounds it leaves are not healing.
“Hey.” Beatrice clicks her tongue again. “Enough. Come back.”
The creature darts through the bars, running back to her obediently.
“Well done,” she says, patting its head. “Now give your sisters a turn.”
The creature hops up over the barrier into its cage and taps one of the others. The second one jumps out and runs straight for me.
This time I’m more prepared. I wait for the last moment, then, as it launches itself through the air at my chest, I step aside and land a punch right on its little body.
I expect the frail-looking thing to crumble. The force of my blow does change its trajectory, but it quickly corrects itself so that it absorbs the impact against the bars, quite adeptly. No sooner do I have a chance to prepare my next defense than it’s on me, biting little holes all over my skin.
My back bleeds, my shoulder bleeds, and blood drips down my arms. I feel my strength failing. The force of the silver, the rapid blood loss, all of it is compounded by Beth’s betrayal.
It makes me lose the will to fight.
I slip on the blood and topple over. The creature takes the chance to jump on my chest. My hands swing through the air to throw it off, but it’s too fast. It ducks and bites into my chest, small teeth leaving little incisions, and leaps off.
It runs to the safety of the outside, leaving me bleeding on the ground in my silver cage.
The wounds are not healing. I feel myself fading very quickly. It’s not only the blood loss. I suspect there’s some sort of poison in the bites, one that both saps my strength and makes the wounds remain open.
Beth is still standing stiff, facing away from me, trying her best to ignore what’s going on.
By the time the third hybrid creature arrives, I am too sapped to fight. Again, it does not actually drink my blood—it simply makes a few more unhealing incisions all over my body, then happily hops away.
The humiliation of being so badly beaten gnaws at me. When the fourth arrives, I draw upon my very last reserve of strength, and, as it jumps onto my chest to dip its claws into me, spring my hands to both sides of its head.
The thing tries to pull back in surprise, but I have it caught. Every single muscle in my body tenses as I force my hands together, crushing its skull. It screeches and whines, trying to emit that horrible debilitating sound, but my rage is too much. I hear a satisfying crack, followed by a crunching sound, as my hands break the skull and mash the brain into goo.
Beatrice gives a startled cry. “You bastard!” she screams. I fling the discarded body out the way and, fighting through the pervasive weakness, turn over and struggle to my knees.
My clothes are soaked in blood. I can taste more of it on my tongue, but I manage to give her a sickly smile.
“One down,” I tell her.
She shrieks in rage. “Beth, how could you let this happen? Stop him, bind him, don’t let him move!”
The other woman, now a stranger to me, turns around to look upon me for the first time.
She sees the blood, sees the condition of my body—sees the broken corpse of the creature.
Something changes in her eyes.
“Bind him, trap him, DO NOT let him move!” Beatrice continues in hysteria. “He killed my son, he killed one of them, HURT HIM!”
Beth takes a step toward me. For a splintering second, I recognize the fleeting humanity in her eyes.
“Hold him down!” Beatrice continues. “I shall unleash all of them on him, all my children will feed, feed and grow strong—”
“No,” Beth says.
Beatrice stops short. Rage fills her vision. “What?”
“I said, no,” Beth repeats, and a glorious, strong blue light envelops her.
She sweeps her hands through the air, and the cage over me is thrown off. I gasp, as the vampiric essence inside is restored, and start to convulse as the healing process takes hold, going three times as fast as ever before, as if to make up for the lost time.
The cage throttles through the air and lands on top of Beatrice. She is boxed in.
“No!” she screams. “No, you idiot, what have you done? Children—” she addresses the half-formed creatures, “—kill her!”
A horde of the things descend upon Beth. She tries to fight them away with magic, but, somehow, they are immune. The sparks, fire, lightning bolts she throws at them simply dissolve when they hit.
The convulsions keep coming. I don’t know what’s causing them, and I can’t fight them off. But with each one that passes through me, more of my strength returns.
Urgency takes me. Beth is not constrained by any silver cage, but fighting off five of those devious things is testing her vampiric gifts to the max. They are fast, they are crafty, and they work as a single unit to overwhelm her defenses.
Beatrice continues screaming in an incoherent rage.
A few more of those healing waves pass over me and, suddenly, I’m strong enough to stand. I rocket up and barrel over to throw myself into the mix to protect Beth.
The creatures dive in and out, snapping at us, always remaining just out of reach. “The three that took my blood are strongest,” I yell. “Focus on them!”
Beth nods, having at least the grace to look ashamed for her grievous lapse in judgment earlier.
But she pushes that aside to fight with me against the swarm.
The things dart in and out, in and out. They’re too fast to catch directly. I get lucky and manage to grab one by the foot, but it twists around and snaps at my hand, sinking its teeth into my skin just hard enough to cause me to let go.
Fighting out in the open like this, we have no advantage. We need to box the five of them in. I’ve already proven they are not invincible. Enough force applied the right way can kill them.
I search for a more advantageous location. I hone in on the narrow tunnel outside.
“In there!” I yell, and grab Beth’s hand to race for it.
She grips my palm extra tight, as if to reassure herself this is actually real.
We duck out of the room and dive behind an exposed boulder. The screams play on in the background.
I’m breathing hard, and so is Beth. I glance at her. Her face is flushed.
“Do not let up on the Elemental Forces holding Beatrice’s cage in place,” I tell her. She nods vigorously.
I peek out from around the rock, see the creatures milling around their master’s prison, unable to do anything to break her out.
We have a few seconds before their attention turns back to us. Something tells me they are not very smart—that works to our advantage.
My heart is beating hard. All sorts of conflicting emotions boil through me.
But one prevails above all.
I grab Beth by the shoulders, pin her against the rock, and hold her there.
“You betrayed me,” I say.
“Yes.”
“But you changed your mind.”
She looks down and nods.
“You have to decide what side you’re on. Right now, Beth, this is your only chance!”
She bites her lip and abashedly looks up at me.
“Yours,” she whispers.
“I thought so,” I say, and tip my head down to kiss her.
She looks at me in an utter daze when I release her. I quickly move on, as if nothing at all has happened between us.
“We’re here to kill Beatrice,” I remind her. “The others don’t matter. As long as Beatrice is alive, she controls them.”
I peek out into the room. The creatures are surrounding the cage, coming into some sort of coordinated formation.
I turn back to Beth. “You can kill her from here.”
She hesitates.
“Do it!” I say. “We’re here to destroy her. That is what we have to do.”
“Dagan… she knows things. About the prophecy—”
I grab her by the shoulder and push her into the wall. My eyes sear into hers with overwhelming intensity.
“Do it, woman,” I say. “We will find a way to deal with the prophecy later. There is nothing Beatrice can do that you and I cannot!”
She looks into my eyes, obviously conflicted.
I don’t relent. I maintain my conviction, the eye contact.
Finally, she swallows and nods.
“You’re right,” she says.
A blue glow explodes from around her, and she steps into line of sight of the cage. She readies a blast of fire, the sparks coming to life in her palms…
She throws her arms forward and a massive pillar of flame jets out. My breath catches as it shoots toward the cage
Three of the creatures, faster than I thought possible, jump in the way of the flame. The stream dissolves when it touches them. Something recoils through the weaves, and Beth is thrown back.
I curse. Beth lands hard against the rocky wall. Her head bangs against the stone, and I hear a horrifying crack.
She slumps down, unconscious. I race to her and fall to my knees. I pick her limp form up.
“Beth,” I say. “Beth. Beth!”
She’s out cold. Terror grips me as, for a flicker of a moment, her presence ceases to exist.
“No!” I scream. “No, Beth, don’t you dare leave me!” I bite two marks into my wrist and press it to her lips.
“Come on, come on, drink,” I urge, trying to force her back to life. “DRINK, DAMN YOU!”
Beth’s lips part oh-so-slightly. A few drops of blood drip inside.
I wait a few anxious seconds that seem to last a lifetime.
Then she sputters, and coughs, and opens her eyes.
“Seven hells,” I say. I bring her to me, holding her tight.
“I’m okay,” she manages. Her voice is barely above a whisper. She is so weak!
I hold her out in front of me. I brush her hair out of her face.
“What happened?” I say.
“The creatures… they don’t just cut through magic. The weaves don’t work on them. The Forces rebounded off them back into me. I can’t… Dagan. I can’t feel the Elements anymore!”
“You’re alive,” I say. “That’s all that matters.”
“Dagan—the cage!”
I whip around in time to realize what’s happening. The moment Beth lost consciousness, that trapping of Air around the silver cage ceased to exist.
The creatures have joined together to hoist it up and let Beatrice out.
All-encompassing rage fills me. Rage at being so badly played, rage at falling for the trap.
And rage at Beth for deceiving me.
Although that is counteracted by the strong feelings of affection I have for her coming back.
My warrior spirit is awakened. The vampire comes roaring back.
I will not let Beatrice get away with this.
The creatures, despite their speed, are not particularly strong. Even with five of them working in unison, they are struggling to lift the cage up. Beatrice is screaming at them to hurry, to protect their mother.
She’s not a strong enough vampire to handle silver directly.
My eyes latch onto her. I see only red.
All the anger, the fury, the conviction builds to a tipping point. I rip away from Beth and barrel forward.
The creatures are all invisible to me. I have only eyes for Beatrice. She urges them on, to lift the cage faster so she can get out.
I run straight at her, crashing through the vampire hybrids who dare get in my way. My shoulder slams into the cage, knocking it backward. Beatrice is thrown around inside.
It comes to a stop with the open side toward me. Beatrice stumbles out, but I’m on her before she has a chance to regroup.
Terror flashes across her face.
“Dagan,” she begs. “Dagan, please, I can help, you don’t have to do this.”
“Like hell I don’t,” I snarl. The creatures are dropping in around me, piercing their little teeth into my skin. But for all their special gifts, they are not yet fully developed. They can nip at me as much as they like, but they cannot match my raw power.
I push through the discomfort caused by the nearby silver, and hold Beatrice down with one hand. She struggles against me, but she is like a caught fly.
She’s never compared to me in strength.
“Dagan—”
The claws of my other hand come out, and I sink them straight into her chest. I feel the crunch of bones, and then my hand is wrapped around her still-beating heart.
I rip it out with a savage roar, blood spurting everywhere. Her brain has not yet received the signal that her life is forfeit, so, for a moment, she stares with shock at the beating heart in my hand.
“Goodbye, Beatrice,” I growl, and crush the life-giving organ.
Her eyes roll back, blood streams down my arm, and she drops back, dead.
No sooner does that happen than the creatures start to shriek.
I spin up in a rage and swing at them. They’re too quick, too nimble, and the sound they emit disorients me. The sound waves pulse into my head, and I’m left reeling, all my senses going haywire.
But the creatures do not attack. Instead, they retreat back, out of the room.
Beth! I think in alarm. It’s the only lucid thought I’m capable of.
The screams continue. I fight through them, and, like a drunk, stagger toward her.
My knees give out halfway. The screams, the nearby silver, all of it combines into a forceful assault against my senses.
With a pained groan, I push myself up. The screams are getting more distant. I look up and, to my relief, see Beth right where I left her.
The creatures have gone the other way.
She is on the floor, hands clasped over her ears, writhing against the screams. Weakened as she is, she has much worse capacity to handle them than I.
I crawl for her. My mind is jarred. I cannot see anything clearly.
As long as the screams continue, it all just gets worse.
I manage to get halfway to her before my body gives out. The screams are so distant now, but they still exert their damned effect. My body starts to convulse from the horrid resonance.
But then, without any warning, the sound simply cuts off.
My muscles give out. I roll over to my back and moan. The screams are gone, but it still feels like there are jackhammers pounding away at my brain.
I give myself only a second of self-pity before forcing myself up. My vision spins, but it is not getting any worse. I cast a look around. All the blood and all the destruction stare back at me.
I realize I’m still holding Beatrice’s heart and throw it away in disgust.
Then, as fast as I can manage, I scramble over to Beth.
She is staring at the ceiling, eyes wide, breathing hard.
“Beth,” I manage. “Did they touch you? Are you all right?”
The words don’t seem to register. I try again.
This time, she turns her gaze to me, and minutely shakes her head.
“They ran past,” she mutters.
“Thank the gods,” I mumble, and fall next to her.
Our hands find each other, and we hold on tight.
Slowly, the effects of the screams start to fade. I don’t know if it takes minutes or hours. There is no way to tell.
But eventually, the jackhammers dim to a distant hum. I take another few moments to collect myself, and then I sit up.
Beth looks like she’s further along in her recovery than me. She pushes herself up and stands on wobbly knees.
She offers me a hand, which I take.
“We did it,” I say.
“No.” She shakes her head. “You did.”
We wander out into the room with Beatrice’s corpse. Still in a bit of a daze, we reach the upturned cage.
I look at the ruined body inside.
“She got to you first,” I state plainly.
Beth looks away from me, ashamed.
“I did not know you then,” she whispers. The regret and the shame are obvious in her voice.
I tilt her chin to me.
She will not look me in the eyes. “Dagan,” she begins. “I’m sorry. She promised me a way out. I did not want my life bound by prophecy. We made a pact, and I—”
“And you broke it,” I tell her firmly. “You cast your loyalty to me.”
“Yes, but not right away. I’m so sorry. You don’t know how awful I felt. I never wanted to hurt you. I—” her voice breaks, “—I didn’t know if I could do it. When we came in. I knew what awaited us. She wanted your blood, the blood of a stronger vampire, to feed her children. I didn’t know—I didn’t know she wanted to kill you. No.” She shakes her head. “I did know, but I refused to believe it. I almost led you to your death.”