by E. M. Knight
“So, what did they do?”
“They were lured Outside by a rivaling coven. There was a time when The Haven wasn’t the most prosperous one in the region. Other, smaller covens existed, too. Some of their leaders were jealous of our prosperity. Others simply envied the peace that we had. The equilibrium that existed between us and our humans. All vampires are driven by the instincts that blossom inside of them when they are made. Our vampiric essence, if you will.”
“Yes, I know all about the essence,” I quip.
He smiles. “You’re a sharp girl. Yet you wouldn’t believe how many of our kind turn a blind eye to the wonder of their creation at first. How many fail to appreciate, or even think about, the enthralling nature of the Dark Gift.”
“I guess not everyone is a scholar,” I say wryly, looking around the room.
Felix chuckles. “True enough. Especially those who are made and then thrown into a chaotic world with no guidance, no teachers, no mentors.” He gestures in an off-handed way to the far wall. “Most of the vampires, for example, who were made out there.
“As I was saying,” Felix continues. “All of us are driven by the same guiding force. But you must remember how few of our kind were actually criminals before they were made. Most, I presume, thought themselves as fairly ordinary men. And women,” he adds hastily, giving me a look.
“But as soon as they are turned, these new, awful instincts erupt inside of them. They become murderers. You, most of all, should know how difficult that is, being so close to your own transformation.”
“That’s right,” I say softly.
“The Haven vampires had the privilege of first being chosen as worthy and then being made. And we had our humans, the villagers. We always had The Hunt. We had the bloodbanks, for those who were opposed to killing, at first.
“Now that you are on our side you can understand how being made a vampire does not fundamentally change you. Yes, your perspective shifts. Your character traits are amplified. But you are still you. You do, to a certain extent, exert control over your own actions.
“Vampires made outside The Haven go through the same moral struggles that you did. The same ones we all face when we are newly made. Yes, I understand that the bloodlust takes hold of a fledgling, and makes it near impossible not to feed, to sustain the dark force… but what happens after? What happens the following night, once a vampire is satiated, once the thirst is gone, and once they are forced to come face-to-face with what they’ve become?”
I shake my head. “I never thought it was such a prevalent struggle.”
“All of us think our own trials are unique. In many ways, they are, but not in this. Some new vampires are keen to fully embrace their nature. Maybe they’ve been oppressed in their human lives and now lust after new power. But even that loses its luster after a while. So the internal struggle that accompanies being turned is universal. And we are uniquely positioned here, in The Haven, to guide new fledglings into their new identities, to make them come to grips with who they are and with the new desires ravaging their bodies. Not all are so lucky. Not all have that privilege. And so, many on the Outside, who were made, look upon us in The Haven as shielded, protected from the harsher world—while we were, have no doubt—but they looked at us in a mix of ugly jealousy and resentment and hate.”
“What does that have to do with the portraits, though?” I wonder.
“I’m just getting to that. There was a time, early in The Haven’s creation, that the Queen welcomed those from the Outside. The Elite are all part of her original band. Some have joined our ranks over the long years, but most newcomers were relegated to being part of the Incolam.
“No, after a time, it became known, and expected, in fact, that any new vampires made in North America would make the pilgrimage to us and ask for entry. This went on for maybe sixty, seventy, eighty years.
“It ended when the first traitors colluded against the Queen.”
I’ve never heard this history before. “What happened?” I ask, rapt by genuine fascination.
“The Incolam were increasing in number every year. But what the Queen thought were disjointed stragglers when she let them in were actually part of a concentrated effort by the weaker covens to undermine us. They sent their vampires here in a slow trickle. One or two came every few years, each claiming a different story and seeking sanctuary. The Queen granted it to them.”
“But they were colluding against her,” I say.
“Precisely. The link was not discovered for some time. Carter, in fact, was the first to bring up the possibility. That is part of the reason he’s remained on the Court, despite his constant disagreements with our ruler. The Queen is loyal, sometimes even to a fault, and I believe she felt she owed him for turning her attention to it.”
“You were being infiltrated,” I say. “But why?”
“To learn our secrets. To bring information out to the covens these vampires first swore allegiance to. Remember that it was a different time back then. There was no technology of the sort we enjoy today. The human world was fragmented: the vampire one, even more so. Nothing of the sort could have happened in this era. But the experience made the Queen—indeed, it made a great many of us—extremely wary. That is why there was so much anger for letting the Wyvern coven in. And why the Queen was blamed so harshly when that whole venture failed.”
“But the attack wasn’t related to the coven,” I say. “They know that, don’t they?”
“Few really care about truths, Eleira,” Felix tells me. “The events are linked to one another, securely, in their minds.”
I nod slowly. “So what’s the story of the vampires in the portraits?” I ask. “The real one?”
“The vampires in the portraits that Carter showed you,” Felix says. “The ones who had their souls severed entirely from their physical bodies? They belonged to the group who infiltrated our ranks. The Royal Court watched them, after we were alerted to the trickery. When they tried to run, we caught them—and used that as evidence of their crimes. So they were sentenced, and the Queen did what she had every right to do. Because, Eleira, those vampires all violated the sacred trust placed upon them when they were allowed to join rank with us.”
I shiver. I still hate the idea of such a cruel punishment. Better to kill them outright than have them suffer for eternity.
“You’re troubled,” Felix notes. “You do not think it was the right choice.”
“I don’t know enough to make a fully-informed decision,” I say. “But overall? No. My gut tells me that…” I trail off, suddenly embarrassed that I would give such a feeble explanation for feeling the way I do.
“It tells you what?” Felix presses. “Your natural tendencies are just as important to access as being ‘fully-informed,’ I assure you.”
“It tells me no,” I say with a sigh.
Felix nods. “That’s what I thought. And I agree with you.”
I blink. “You do?”
“Don’t think for a single moment that I was complicit in letting it all occur. But you know what I told you about the Queen. Once her mind’s been made up… once she has made a hard choice… she will not be dissuaded. And this was a grave insult to her, a slap in the face, a rebuttal of all her generosities. It is what closed our borders to others. In a way, I think it is what made the Queen start to distrust the Royal Court.”
We’re interrupted by a soft, almost timid knock on the door.
The elder vampire looks up. “Cassandra’s here,” he says with a sudden smile. “And I think you’ll be very interested in what she has brought back.”
Chapter Twelve
Carter
The Paths
I take the last of the three-thousand, three-hundred, thirty-three steps. I stop, pivot, and wait for the portal back.
Nothing happens.
My teeth grind in frustration. Emphatically, I stomp my foot on the ground, waiting.
Nothing.
This is the sixth time the
trick has failed me.
Maybe others would give up. But I have full confidence in that I know what I’m doing. I’ve devoted decades of research to studying the Paths. The way out, this metaphorical escape rope, was assured to reveal itself after one took the necessary steps!
But that is not happening to me right now.
My mind works feverishly. I must be doing something wrong. I must! The Paths are infallible, the magic that creates them pure, and the mechanisms by which they operate are grounded in mathematical fact as physics!
And yet… and yet something is going wrong.
I can take full blame. I can take full responsibility. If I was sure it was only my mistakes that were holding me back…
But that confidence is wavering. Six times I’ve tried the procedure. Six times it failed.
The only thing I can think of is that the fall, the descent, into this part of the realm is why I cannot escape.
I refuse to look back over my shoulder, for fear of seeing the forsaken city again. It’s haunting me, trailing me wherever I go. Maybe it is the cause of the mishap. Maybe it is what stops the trick from working.
If it’s always the same distance behind me, am I really taking the three-thousand, three-hundred and thirty three steps? Or am I simply walking in place, no better than a gerbil on a wheel?
Again frustration mounts. I refuse to let it take complete hold.
But, of course, there are other things preying on my mind.
The mysterious disappearance of Deanna’s body, for example. By all rights it should have been right where I left it. Nothing about this otherworldly plane expedites the process of vampiric decay. When one of our kind is killed, then yes, over time, all that of the body disappears. But that happens over a matter of days, of weeks, not… hours.
Unless time is skewed here, too.
I tilt my head up. I cannot see the top of the cavern. It’s covered by that thick mist. The one that makes routine escape impossible. The one that thwarts all of my efforts to return to the outer world.
For a brief moment of insanity I almost envy Deanna. At least she found her way out.
But then determination takes hold. I will not be made a victim of this place. I will find my way out, and curse all those witches who created this realm! The miniature city, the fog, the strange, floating fall… none of it makes sense, and none of it was ever hinted at in any of the tomes that I procured and read on the subject.
Maybe book knowledge has failed me. But my own instincts, my own observations, my own insights about his place have yet to be tested.
I fix my eyes on a far point on the wall. If I can make it there without stumbling… I’ll know that at least I am not running in place.
I take my first truly determined step toward it, focusing, concentrating hard. My foot touches the ground. I push off and take the next step. Then I do it again. Again, and again, and again.
I dare not look back. I remember what happened last time I did. Perhaps that is the trick of this place: maybe it requires absolute faith in what you’re doing.
Maybe, otherwise, you are doomed to wander, lost, forever. It could be the test designed to trap those with weaker minds and less faith in their abilities.
I don’t know. I am essentially grasping at straws here. Nothing I’ve done could have prepared me for this… this catastrophe.
Because, so far, it’s been nothing short of a disaster.
I keep my eyes straight forward, approaching that distant spot. Every step I take has a solidity to it. Each one receives my full attention, all of my concentration, my entire vampire might.
I’m not just thoughtlessly walking toward the spot. I am doing so with full conscious effort.
Step, pivot, push. Step, pivot, push.
The wall ahead seems to be getting closer.
The first hints of triumph start to rise up in me. I push them down without mercy. I cannot gloat in my success yet. I cannot be over-eager, cannot assume victory when every time before, I’d failed.
What an odd position for a vampire of my strength to be in. I’m little used to failure.
Maybe this is the price I pay for being too arrogant. Everyone needs a little reminder, now and again, of their own flaws.
I grit my teeth and keep going. Such defeatist talk ill suits me. It does not match who I am—nor what I aspire to become. If anybody knew that I harbored such doubts…
Without willing it, laughter bubbles out from my throat. There is nobody around to know! Nobody around to care! There is nothing really grounding me here at all.
In the Paths, I might as well not exist. If I am doomed to wander endlessly down here; is that a type of death?
Gah. I shudder. Morose thoughts, nasty thoughts, bad thoughts.
And yet isn’t this exactly what purgatory, in the Christian religion, is defined as? A place that traps a soul in between two worlds, not quite here and not quite there, and that soul stays conscious, ever-cognizant of its own suffering?
I close my eyes briefly and shake my head. No, I cannot allow such desperate thoughts to take hold of me. They are—
I stagger to a halt the moment my eyes come open.
The wall has just shifted a hundred yards farther away from me.
Alarm flares. A tugging compels me to look back. To glance over my shoulder, and see that damnable city behind me, and lose all pretense of control—
I fight the urge down with blistering ruthlessness. This place is meant to play tricks on me. It is meant to do things to the mind.
I am sure of it, and because of the assurance, I starkly refuse to succumb.
It’s obvious I was not meant to ever be down here. The Egyptian witches who designed this place must have had their own secrets. Maybe—no, not maybe, definitely—the miniature city behind me houses them.
I lost concentration for but a moment, and that was enough for this place to alter.
But what kind of reality am I in, where the laws of physics no longer apply? Or, perhaps, more accurately, I am dealing with different laws altogether. Ones that have not been discovered or been exposed in the real world.
The Paths… gah. I shudder again. A trickle of sweat forms on my neck. This place has so many possibilities, it holds so many secrets… but I am blind to them all.
If only I could do magic. If only I had somebody with me who could give some insight into what is happening here. Damn, even the Queen would have proven useful at this point!
I don’t look back. I cannot allow myself to. That has been my failure every single time so far. That has been the deterrent halting my escape.
The three-thousand, three-hundred, thirty three steps have failed me. Down here. There is a disturbance—there must be!—between the crater where the city is and the other level of the Paths. The one that I had professed to know so much about…
If I had a witch, if I had somebody who could do magic, here with me, I would combine that with my superior knowledge of the place. Surely, then, I would not be in such a predicament.
But no matter. I cannot succumb to that folly of wishing for things that do not exist. That is the path to misery. And I cannot allow my mind to travel down that treacherous road.
In reality…? In reality, I am stalling. I’d lost concentration and that let this place change shape.
Two ways of looking at that. The first is with despair. The design of this level is obviously meant to trap someone down here.
But the other… the other is with a sense of optimism. After all, if this place reacts to me… isn’t it only logical that I can influence it in such a way as to benefit me?
I don’t have a witch. But I do have my wits. And no matter how much the distortion plays havoc on my mind, I will not succumb to despair.
Yes, so I lost focus as the wall shifted away. What of it? I have nothing if not unlimited time to regain my concentration and head forward again.
So that is what I do. I focus my gaze on a spot in the distant rock. And forcefully, methodical
ly, I begin my trek there, one step at a time.
Chapter Thirteen
James
Somewhere in the Rockies
I lead the way down from the mountain, all members of my coven following me. Our two prisoners are in tow.
The woman—Sylvia, I learned her name is—has been stubbornly mute. Victoria and I conducted a hasty search of the facility to see what more we could find… but, unfortunately, there was little of interest.
Most of the Order’s possessions were destroyed in the blast.
I would have liked to remain there another night, at least, but Victoria insisted on leaving. After confirming with Sylvia that yes, the black streak we saw shooting out of the mountain really was Cierra, the Black Sorceress, Victoria immediately decided we had to go. I would have argued… but, seeing the state we found Smithson in, and equating his condition with fallout from the fight with the witch, I saw reason behind Victoria’s argument.
Cierra could come back at any time. Not that she had reason to, as far as I could tell. But the mere chance of it meant that in staying, we risked getting the Nocturna Animalia involved with her… and that was not something I was willing to do.
Yet.
“We should kill her,” Liana hisses at my side. Ever since seeing me feed my blood to the former Crusader, Liana has become particularly petty. “She’s going to betray us if we keep her alive.”
I glance over my shoulder at the young girl. So certain, I think. It’s a wonder that she can be so absolutely convinced of her opinion despite having her eyes open to the supernatural world for less than a few days.
“We’re not going to kill her,” I say in annoyance. “She’s our prisoner, Liana. We won’t give her the opportunity to betray us, either. But I’m not throwing away prematurely the knowledge that she has.”
“You sound like her.” Liana shoots a nasty look at Victoria. “How much knowledge can a vampire take from a human? You are the one with all the experience. You are the one with all the years of life!”