by Jade Alters
“What…have you let that fiend do to do you?” Deliah blurts, clamping one hand over her neck.
“More than you ever did for me!” I cry back. A single red pearl slides down from the corner of my lip. Deliah’s mortified shudder fills me with exhilaration.
“You don’t get to weigh in on what we do anymore,” Serge agrees. Lucidous tries to zip in from the side to flank us, but crashes into my bloody guardian angel first.
“You have bigger scores to settle,” Darius grunts.
“Much bigger,” Bart follows up, appearing at Lucidous’ other side. Both of them fight with all the strength their extended limbs and taut muscles can muster to push him back. Our battlefield is clear. All I need now is a nod from my brother. He gives me the signal.
Serge snaps open two portals. I shoot through one faster than a blink, to appear behind Horace. An illusory blade forms in my hand as I swing it. Horace manages to deflect my first two strikes with a crystal-shard shield. But then I feel the blood coursing through me, hot against the undying cold of my flesh around it. I channel it like rocket fuel. Serge keeps Deliah at bay with a rapid hurl of crystal daggers while I unleash a flurry of strikes. Horace can’t keep track of them, let alone block them.
I clip a few off the sides of his shield, but not even half as many as slice through his gut. Horace hobbles backwards toward his wife. But her hands are full keeping Serge from ripping her to ribbons. They press their backs together to fend off the children they ruined. I wonder if regret can sink any deeper into their bones. Then they rotate, so Deliah faces me. I pull back my blade for the fatal swipe.
“Enough!” she screams.
When the light clears from my pupils, I can’t believe where I am. The trap I’ve fallen into. But there’s no mistaking this whirlwind of teal mist. I’m inside Deliah’s illusory conference space. The place I had to report to in my time as her chess piece. In here, the laws are what she makes them. And right now, the first law is that Deliah does not want to be seen.
I feel a sting across my back without seeing or hearing a thing. Then one crosses my chest. Blood drips down into the eternal mist swirl below me. But Deliah can cleave and chop me all she wants. The curse of Vampirism seals me back up again and again. It hardly matters how much blood I lose. Not when there’s such a plentiful supply in here with me.
I close my eyes to focus. Really, it’s more to make my peace. Taking the conscious step to end it, I find now, is not the same as risking a fatal blow in the heat of battle. It’s an unspoken goodbye. It’s a silent understanding that what’s broken will never be fixed. But, after everything Horace and Deliah put us through, I can’t let the world end for them. What choice do I really have?
I listen. I let her warp and cut me all over. Each time brings me a step closer. I hone in on that horrendous, unmistakable sound. That leaking hiss that intensifies for a second with each pump. Her blood flow. Her heartbeat. Deliah’s ability not to see what she doesn’t want to is finally her undoing. She can’t accept what I’ve become? Good. Then I’ll embrace it. My Vampire hearing finally locates her wounded heartbeat through the illusion. I spin around as she closes in.
I impale my glassy blade through her stomach. Deliah completes the motion of her own strike before she can help herself. She slides all the way to the hilt of my trick. She drapes over my shoulder. Her sickest illusion yet. A hug. Or maybe she’s just making it quicker for herself, exposing her neck. I plunge my fangs all the way to her vital arteries. I rip them loose. Deliah falls limp in my arms. Even sicker still is how I can’t help myself. How I hug her right back.
“Deliah!” Horace sounds for the first time like he actually loves someone too late. Serge brings down a crystalline claymore directly on his spine. Horace goes down in a lifeless heap.
I can’t believe we’re crying. Neither Serge nor myself can bring ourselves to give even a single-word eulogy. But we cry. I lay Deliah on the ground, beside her husband. If there’s one positive thought I can stomach to give them, it’s that they’re together.
We’ve erased the Dalshak legacy behind us. All that remains is the one before us. Serge and I share a grave nod. We both know what that legacy starts with. Closing this damned gate.
“Helena,” I sniffle, as I appear beside her. My friend wears a cloak of mist and ice crystals as she launches blades of vengeance at Ferres Haruman. “I need you to do something. I’ll take care of everything else.”
“Anything,” says Helena.
Cece,
Dorian’s claw comes down like a super-sized sledgehammer. I cross my scaly gauntlets to block it. I tremble under his might. My snout pokes through to unleash a blue burst of spirit fire. It forces Dorian to shake the flame from his eyes. By the time he refocuses, I’m at his flank. Or at least, one version of me is. Dorian swipes his scaly tail through my Astral afterimage, which dissolves. He turns to find himself surrounded by shimmering blue clones. At my command, four of them converge a flood of spiritual energy on him. I hover above, watching. He must sense it somehow. Dorian spins upward. The flame of his wings furls out to erase my clones. He comes straight for me.
I unleash a blue burst of spirit-charged wind to rise. Dorian pierces through it into a backflip. He arcs his armored tail up at me. I spin and swipe it away with a claw before he throws himself at me again. Blow by blow, we rise high above the carnage below. Children slaughter their parents. Vampires seek revenge. Students clash with idols. And when I look into Dorian’s eyes, I don’t see drive for his goal. Not anymore. I see pain. Pain that’s twisted him into something else. I don’t know if he can stop. My eyes wander down to the boiling blood of the Origas. The altar that keeps this horrific ritual running.
I flutter backward in the air, two claws flaring to strike. Dorian opens his. Ten talons scrape together with a bone chilling screech. I push against him hard enough to rattle my scales. Dorian returns the force in kind, and then some. We unleash identical blasts of flame, his red hot, mine charged with spirit force. Crimson and blue fizzle out in diagonal bursts of smoke. I arch my head back to bite his collar, but he shakes me off.
His claws inch towards mine. But I have more strength than just my own. I swing my head back in a wide arc. Blue flame sprays into the air over me, birthing an Astral clone every few feet. They surge forward into my back, bracing my scaly elbows. They crash into Dorian to loosen his hold. A small army of translucent blue Dragons helps me meet him in perfect equality. What tips the scale is the portal that opens on my chest. The tiny body of a girl I know appears to perch on my collar.
Emery looks up at me before Dorian can notice her. My crystal blue eye descends to see what she has in mind. Her face says it all. A confirmation is all she needs. She sees how hard I’m fighting to turn the tide. She sees what I’m willing to do. I give her the subtlest nod I can, not to tip Dorian off. Emery nods back. She swings up onto my shoulder effortlessly with her new Vampiric agility. She heads as far back on me as she can, and launches.
Emery sails across the gap between me and my father. She clicks her heels together into a human battering ram. Her legs crash hard into Dorian with the strength of a Gray Fiend. She bends and kicks off of him just hard enough to tip the balance in my favor. Dorian tips back. His strength concedes to ours. My Astral clones rejoin my body through my back for a sapphire burst of might. It lights the space between my scales while I hurl Dorian back. Emery lands back on my shoulder.
Despite the enormous opening at my opponent, I turn my head straight down. I rain a blue torrent of fire around the stone altar running the spell. It rattles the bowl of blood. More than a few drops spatter around the ground. It also clears the area around it. That’s when Helena Bartos moves in. She spreads both her arms wide to concentrate every ounce of natural energy flowing through her from the blue moon overhead. Emery leaps from me while Helena summons a blizzard.
The icy wind whips around the altar and concentrates into a tornado of snow. Even Dorian’s dragonsfire wavers at the intensity o
f it. The veil of light enclosing the True Realm flickers dim. Helena brings her arms together to focus the tundra even more. What’s left in the bowl of blood stops bubbling. The altar rocks. The fire thins to a few stubborn, flicking tongues. While Helena fights with the last of it, Emery slaps her palms together, mid fall. Shards of light launch from her in every direction, to become portals. One hangs near each of us. Her friends and allies will be the only ones to escape.
Dorian cocks his head down and dives to stop Helena. He surges faster than I can hope to keep up. But another blue light blocks his way. One that’s even more paralyzing than anything I can do. Stephanie fully materializes before him. Every detail is sharp. She is the woman she was.
“No,” she says to Dorian, she begs. His wings snap open. He stops dead in the air.
The flame of the altar whooshes out with hardly a whisper. A gigantic white crack runs up the length of the veil of light around us. Then another. Then those cracks begin to spiderweb out. In seconds, we’re encased in a blinding show of many realities, broken from one. The True Realm collapses before our eyes.
Everyone makes one last move. A decisive moment of life or death. The Kyrie leaders sprint for Emery’s portals. But our allies and friends are quicker. They slide, jump, float and plunge through. The portals close behind them instantly. Even I inch back, toward the one meant for me. Everyone at least tries, but Dorian. He hangs in the air, completely still, until Stephanie floats up to kiss his scarred, armored cheek. Then something pulls me backward.
Emery steadies me on the ground, but I still fall. The portal shrinks and seals before I can dive back in. My knees hit the ash on the ground of the Epicenter. We’re back in San Francisco, in the wreck of the Academy. Emery and the others crowd around me, arms all over. Every last breath drains from my chest as I shrink and change, back to the frail body of a girl.
All that wakes me from my breathless trance is the glowing blue hand of Stephanie on the side of my face. She lifts it to smile down at me. Her tears trigger mine. At least I didn’t lose both of them. And yet…there’s a void in my chest emptier than any rift to a between-dimension.
The tower of light over us crumbles from the top. Its shards fall away from the blue moon overhead and disintegrate. The wind swirls them away. When the stardust clears, there’s no sign the True Realm was ever reopened. There are no bodies left behind. There’s just us, in the middle of a crater, in the middle of San Francisco.
It’s over. They’re all gone. Dorian’s gone. The only sound in the silent center of destruction is my blood-chilling scream at the moon.
Epilogue
Emery,
San Francisco, The Epicenter
I drag my feet through shards of glass and fractured window frames. Some are the steel of the city. Some are the stone of my home. The place that made me feel more welcome in a handful of years than the Dalshak Estate did in the rest of my life. The place that lays in irreparable pieces all around me.
I wander through the smoke and wreckage until I hear more moans for help. Not that I need them to find the suffering under the rubble. I can smell the blood. I can feel their pulses against my skin like some kind of human sonar. Still reeling from the battle in the Epicenter, the thirst is only just starting to come on. It frightens me. Even while I use my vampiric, pale new muscles to hoist fragments of walls from bodies, I can’t stop thinking about how thirsty I am. How easy it would be, just to bend over and take a drink from the pools on the floor. Even easier, to take a sip straight from the tap.
“Th-thank you!” stammers the man beneath the wreck. He stumbles out. A single red drip trickles down the side of his chest, inside his shirt.
“No problem,” I tell him. There’s a huge problem! I can’t keep my wide eyes off his damn wound! What’s wrong with me?
“Hey.”
I spin around, fixed to strike the voice, stupid enough to speak so close to me. Until I see it’s Darius. He leans in to inspect my dilated eyes. “Alright. That’s enough rescue duty for you. Go trick some Normans into thinking there was a gas leak under the city.”
“But…” I struggle. In my brain, human compassion and Vampire hunger compete to urge me towards one goal. The injured.
“Em, trust me,” Darius bears down on me, “Soon enough, you’ll have to feed. That will be hard enough on you. Don’t put this on your conscience, too.”
“A…alright,” I concede. “Darius,” I stop him, when he tries to turn and go. I catch his hand in my new strength, strength I owe to him. “Thank you. For saving my life.”
“You think that’s enough?” Darius teases to hide how nervous he is. About what I am now. What he made me. “You can actually thank me later. When you have the chance to organize the whole three-act ordeal.”
“Deal,” I smile. I pull him in for a long, chilled kiss. My heart is still there, whether or not it beats as hard. Then we split. Darius joins the others pulling debris off of survivors. I join the surviving squad of Magicians I trained. Those who allied more with Horace and Deliah have either scattered, or regard me with mortal terror. “You heard the story. Huge natural gas leak under the city. All it took was one fire code violation, a dry day, and the whole place went up. Get tricking!” I hiss. But a handful of Magicians remain.
“Emery…what about the supernatural refugees? Where will we take them?” one of them asks. A valid question. Without the Academy, where will we go? One place jumps to the front of my mind. It’s never felt like home before, but that was because of the owners. It’s under new management now, by right of blood.
“For now, just bring them to the northern border of the Epicenter. I've got a place in mind,” I smirk.
Lee
The Epicenter
I return after every group yanked from the rubble. I peek through shattered window panes at the barren circle of the Epicenter. Every time, she’s still there. Cece kneels in the dirt, right where she has since we escaped the True Realm. Bodies fell away from her a little at a time, to help with evacuation and brainwashing duty. Only one remains with her now, who can hardly be referred to as a body. Stephanie’s radiant blue arms wrap Cece like a cloak of mist.
At least, they have, until now. Stephanie peels away from her daughter to float over to me, of all people. Two neon streaks of mourning line her translucent cheeks.
“I…I don’t know what else to say to her,” Stephanie says. “I can’t get her to move. The Norman first responders will make their way in here soon. We can’t still be here, or-”
“I’ll try,” I manage to tell her. I’ll try what? Me and my damn instincts. Stephanie leaves me with no choice but to follow through. She phases through me and vanishes to help with the rescue effort. I take the first of many, crunching, heavy steps over the wreckage to my broken lover. “Hey,” I hum as I kneel beside her. She’s not crying anymore, but tears already shed have etched lines down the dust on her cheeks. I can hardly tell she’s breathing, with how shallow her chest moves.
“You don’t have to do this,” Cece says, voice numb. Her crystal ball eyes are fixed on the sky. On the hanging blue moon that once connected with the True Realm. It was, after all, the last place she saw her father.
“I just…don’t want to lose you too,” I admit. This is hardly the time or place to wear masks. Not after everything we’ve seen, and done.
“Too?” Cece echoes. She’s so numb, so spent, she actually doesn’t know what I mean.
“He wasn’t my father, but…Dorian was a big part of my life. I left the only home I ever knew to follow you to him. He taught me things about being a Dragon…that they never would have taught us at the Academy,” I tell her. The tiniest, weakest hint of a chuckle escapes her. She knows that much is true. “I’m sorry it came to this. I’m sorry he…” That’s somewhere I shouldn’t go, if I ever want Cece to pick her knees up from that dirt. “Think about the things he taught you. You both stood for what you believed in, and he respected that. He wouldn’t want you to give up now.”
We’re both surprised when a second hand lays on her other shoulder. I turn my head to find Serge. The only man who can really know what Cece means. What she feels. He doesn’t need to say a thing to emulate it, either. Cece’s eyes spill over with a new flood of emotion. She throws an arm around each of our necks. She clasps us tight to her chest. What else can we do, but unify into a blanket around her? If anyone deserves to feel safe, it’s the girl who just saved us all.
“Come on,” Serge whispers. “The police are almost here.”
“Where the hell are we going to go?” Cece whimpers.
“I’ll show you,” he says.
Emery,
The Dalshak Estate, Grand Dining Hall
“Is everyone comfortable?” My voice struggles to fill the vast openness of the dining hall. Heads bob all around. Our ridiculously long familial table holds me at the head and Serge at the foot. We’re the stewards of our ancient family estate now, with only Ori left to guide us. She chooses a seat near the wall along with Sasoen and Cain, who have come to bear witness to the latest new stage in supernatural history. What to do without the Academy.
Those who have come together to decide includes all races. It includes all formerly opposed alliances. Academy and Kyrie divisions hardly mean anything with both strongholds lost. With our numbers so scant. The only way to survive now is together, and no one needs to say it to know it. To feel it in our bones. The only question left is how?