Blood Solstice: Part Three in the Tale of Lunarmorte

by Samantha Young

  “No, no. You did fine. Most vampyres do not have your restraint.”

  “What are you doing?”

  “Getting you out of here.”

  At that he began yelling at the top of his voice, screaming for help. When they heard shuffling of feet drawing closer, the Prophet turned away from the entrance so their captors would not see the neck wound, only the blood on his hands. Kirios lay on the ground, his mouth wiped clean of the blood, pretending to be as weak as ever. It was a masquerade that would end once the Midnights looked close enough to see the fullness in his body, the healthy sheen of his skin and hair.

  “What is all this yelling?!”

  “I’ve been hurt,” the Prophet grumbled.

  “Let me have… dear goddess, man, what the Hades have you done?”

  “I slipped. I’m bleeding badly.”

  “Can’t you fix that yourself?” The magik sighed in irritation.

  “You haven’t fed me for days. I don’t have the energy.”

  “Fine.” The first magik turned to the other. “Take the spell down.”

  There was only a moments silence and then a rush of sound like waves crashing on shore.

  “Go, Kirios!” the Prophet yelled.

  He was gone before they even knew what had happened, running like the wind itself, brushing by blurred magiks and out of their citadel. Yes, he was a different creature from the one that had been thrown into the prison. He was an altogether new breed; a new breed of justice.

  ***

  Paris, 1385

  “I have something to tell you.”

  Kirios turned slowly and narrowed his eyes on the beautiful woman in his bed. Her long elegant lines were enticing as all Hades and any other time he would have been perusing them languidly. But her tone was not something to be dismissed. The faerie in his bed had been keeping secrets from him.

  “Are you going to spoil the party, love?” He asked lazily, deceptively disguising how tense he had grown. The party he referred to was the one going on as they spoke. The young Charles VI of France had just been wed to his even younger bride, Isabeau of Bavaria, and France was holding its first ever court ball to celebrate. The faerie in his bed was a Daylight spy he had met a few years ago when tracking a rogue vampyre. She had been gathering evidence that the vampyre was a dog working for the Midnights and the two of them had collided on the hunt. Collided and then fallen straight into bed with one another. Theirs was a casual relationship, but one of mutual respect and trust. Or so he had thought. She had told Kirios the Coven had reason to believe the Midnights would use the celebration of the king’s marriage as an opportune time to attack the Daylights, who had set up one of their largest branches of the Coven in Paris. Kirios had been in Scotland at the time, hunting a particularly nasty lykan with his gang of hunters, when she had appeared asking for help. He had gladly acquiesced. They had just heard word that Richard II of England was sending a small army invasion force against the Scots and Kirios really hadn’t wanted to get stuck in the middle of his idiocy. It seemed he was forever dodging the battles involving the English and the French. Now after twenty-eight years the English were trying to pull the Scottish back into another damn war.

  Dear Gaia, one war was enough for Kirios.

  His people had assured him they could find the lykan without him and off he’d gone. It was, after all, a break from the tedium of hunting rogue Daylights. He much preferred the chance to cut down Midnights, whether magik or faerie, loving the complete shock on their face when they realised he was impervious to their magik; another beautiful gift from the Prophet’s blood.

  “We did not just meet by chance,” she said softly, drawing the bed coverings over herself nervously.

  Kirios shook his head. “I’m not sure I understand, Saffron.”

  Saffron sighed. “I was captured within the stronghold of the Midnight Coven when I was spying. I was careless. Or maybe I wasn’t. He was a Cassandrian after all. He knew I was there. He told me to call him the Prophet. That he had seen me in his visions. That I would play a part in bringing the war to an end… 700 years in the future.” She shook her head in amazement. All the time she had been speaking Kirios’ heart had been racing. He stumbled over to the bed and plunked down beside her, his eyes wide with excitement. All these years and nothing. He had almost gone crazy with frustration because nothing had pointed him in the right direction. Finally, here was something.

  “Only the strongest of us live that long now, Kirios. He says I am strong too.” She smiled a little shyly.

  Kirios chuckled and stroked her cheek affectionately. “I’m not surprised. You’re just a baby and already you’re one of the greatest spies the Coven has.”

  She blushed. “You really think so?”

  He tut-tutted. “No more compliments for you until you tell me what else he said.”

  “He told me about you. Nothing more… just where to find you.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me this when we first met?”

  “I was afraid. I didn’t know if I could trust you.”

  “And now…”

  She laughed. “Kirios, I brought you all the way to France with false information in order to speak with you about this.”

  He snorted. So that was why things had been so quiet around here; why they couldn’t find any signs of an imminent attack from the Midnights.

  “Why did you not speak with me in Scotland?”

  Saffron bit her lip and ducked her head, her long silver blonde hair falling in front of her stunning face. “I wanted to be on home ground for such a declaration.”

  Kirios struggled not to laugh at her logic. “Of course. How silly of me.”

  She shrugged off his teasing and looked up at him with wide pleading eyes. “Why did he tell me to find you, Kirios?”

  He sighed heavily. “Because he once visited me too.”

  With that he told her all he could, about the Prophet, about his visions, of what he thought Kirios’ help would do. And now Saffron too,

  “So.” She frowned in thought. “What does that mean for us?”

  “I think it means that you and I are stuck with one another for a very long time.”

  ***

  St. Petersburg, Russia, 1725

  Kirios waited impatiently for Petrovsky, burrowing into his fur coat. He wasn’t cold. He was never cold. But the city was charged with apprehension. Peter, the Emperor of Russia, had died the night before, and with no heir apparent a sense of foreboding hung above St. Petersburg like an omen of what was to come.

  His ears perked up and he spun around at the sound of approaching footsteps. Petrovsky.

  “Reuben,” he whispered, coming towards him. Kirios had caused a lot of suspicion over the years, legends of a vampyre who couldn’t be hurt by magik had begun to circulate. He had found it necessary to change his name and stay out of the magiks’ way so the legend could die. For some reason his instincts told him he should remain a shadow until the time was right.

  “What took you?”

  “Anna’s father. He thought we should properly mourn the emperor.”

  Kirios frowned. “I forgot he’s quite involved in human affairs.”

  Petrovsky nodded. Theirs was a strange and unexpected friendship. A few years back, when Kirios had been on a hunt in St. Petersburg, he had come across this young Midnight trying to help a Daylight. At first he couldn’t believe what he was seeing so… he stalked him for a while. Petrovksy was of lower class descent amongst the Midnights and seemed to go out of his way to find Daylights; spending his nights searching the underworld of St. Petersburg with the determination of a bloodhound. Finally, Kirios actually concerned for the over eager young magik who was most certainly going to be killed by the supernaturals who intrigued him merely for being a Midnight, had enough and revealed himself to the boy.

  Petrovsky was fascinated by other supernaturals, had no ill-feeling towards them whatsoever. And for some reason, Kirios believed him. Petrovsky hated the mindless pr
ejudice of the Midnights who had never treated him well anyway, and like a young soldier desperate to join the war, accepted Kirios’ command. After all, a Midnight working for the Daylights was an unimaginable gift. First Kirios had masked Petrovsky’s trace so that the Head of the Midnight Coven would never know his true intentions, and then he had set about making the boy wealthy. Kirios spread rumours that Petrovksy had killed many Daylights and that, alongside the boy’s quirky charm, made him a great favourite with the Head of the Midnight Coven. Certain sacrifices had to be made in order to prove himself. Petrovsky had to kill some Daylights but Kirios compartmentalised that issue as a necessity of war, and was proven right when Petrovsky was given a position on the Council. It was not long after he married Anna, the daughter of a prominent Midnight and a member of a very old, influential family within the Coven.

  “I came here because you said you had urgent news,” Kirios snapped.

  “I am sorry. I could not get away.”

  “Fine. What is the problem, Alex?”

  Alex grinned. “Anna. She is with child.”

  The vampyre’s heart picked up speed. Yes. This was it. This would help change everything.

  “Then we must work out a plan.”

  The young man smiled cheekily. “I thought that was what you would say. You want to teach him, don’t you?”

  Kirios nodded. “We have to. Your children must know the truth of this war, Alex.”

  Petrovsky suddenly grew very serious. “Of course, Reuben. No child of mine will be contaminated with Midnight insanity.”

  ***

  New Jersey, U.S.A 1950s

  “Holy!- ”Kirios yelped, his glass of blood going everywhere as he jumped. His gang of Rogue Vampyre Hunters were all out and about in New York, prowling the night for its varied predators. He was taking a moment for sustenance when a familiar magik had popped up before him, inches in fact from his face.

  The Prophet smiled sheepishly and took a few steps back. “Sorry, I’ve never quite got the hang of a communication spell.”

  Kirios shook his head. “What… how?”

  The Prophet looked like a sixty year old man now but his bright blue eyes convinced Kirios that the magik in front of him was definitely the seer he hadn’t seen in almost two thousand years.

  “Still as articulate as ever, Kirios. Or is it Reuben now?”

  He nodded shakily. Not many things could unsettle him but the sudden appearance of this guy definitely did. “What are you doing here?”

  The Prophet tapped his head. “Had a few more visions I thought you might be interested in hearing about.”

  Excitement immediately rushed through every cell in Kirios’ body. “Seriously? No joke… things are finally going to happen? Jeez, I almost gave up hope-”

  “I liked you better when you couldn’t talk.”

  He scowled at the Cassandrian. “Fine, what’s going on?”

  The magik raised an eyebrow at him before settling himself onto Kirios’ sofa. “Nice place you have here.”

  The vampyre itched to hit the words out of the magik’s mouth but he tried to remember this was the guy who had saved his life.

  After a few minutes of awkward silence the seer finally smiled. “OK. Here’s what’s going on. I’ve seen this girl. A Midnight. The daughter of a Council member to be more precise. She is, shall we say, against the war. Her name is Atia.”

  “What has she got to do with anything?”

  He shrugged. “Don’t know.”

  “Is she… the mother of the child?”

  “Don’t know.”

  And just like that he was gone.

  Kirios stared open-mouthed at the empty space on the sofa.

  “Fucking fortune-tellers.”

  ***

  Some fifty-odd years later

  He watched the girl as she stared up at the moon from her bedroom window, her pale hair like a beacon drawing him in. Kirios sighed. He had found her. At last. After seeing the evidence at the house in the woods of her powers, of what she had done to her uncle Ethan, Kirios knew that Caia Ribeiro was what he had been waiting for. All these years. All the mistakes.

  When the Prophet had come to him about Atia he had followed her, watching her for any sign of what was to come. She was beautiful and powerful. Petrovsky told him she stayed clear of the war, suggesting she was, as the Prophet had said, against it. But her beauty was enough to entice the Head of the Coven, Devlyn, to ask for her hand in marriage. Her family wouldn’t let her say no. Kirios had known at that moment; had seen his chance; she was going to be the mother of the child from the prophecy. So he had revealed himself to her, and along with Petrovsky’s help, explained all they had planned. Through her they received information direct from Devlyn himself, and he never knew because Kirios masked her trace. Atia helped willingly. She despised Devlyn.

  For a number of years life went on that way, and during them she mothered two children to Devlyn, playing her role as mother and wife and her other role as spy for the Daylights. Kirios on the other hand was growing despondent. He had no idea how to proceed. Atia was supposed to mother a half-breed child. And there had been no sign of that eventuality so far.

  Then one momentous day Saffron had come to him and told him about her mistress, Marion, and the affair she had had recently with a member of a small lykan pack. Saffron felt sure there was something about this pack, something important, and since her instincts had always run true, Kirios had listened attentively. She told Kirios of their Alpha, Mikhail, how special, how strong he was. He had an aura. At her description Kirios had smirked; if it had been three-hundred years before Kirios would have put it down to the fact that Saffron was susceptible to a handsome face, but she had been gravely hurt by a warlock since then and was a little frosty to almost every man she encountered. So Kirios had believed her and had set about planning a meeting between Atia and Mikhail. He knew what he had to ask of them was cold and clinical and completely degrading. But if it would bring an end to the war?

  Sighing in remembrance, Kirios leaned against a tree, his eyes still glued to the girl up in her room. Perhaps it was his fault. He had pushed Atia into the decision, settling her anxiety by utilising mesmerism. He had never done that to one of his own before. With Saffron’s help, Kirios managed to convince them both to sleep with one another. But after a few years of arranged meetings between them no child was ever born. Kirios’ frustration was the least of their problems. Devlyn was not as naïve as Kirios would have liked. He was a jealous husband and had been tracking Atia’s movements through faeries, despite no sign of duplicity in her trace. By the time Kirios got wind of the information and warned Atia and Mikhail… it was too late. Mikhail, without giving the details, warned his pack, Pack Errante, but Atia panicked. She killed Mikhail, assuming that Devlyn would have mercy on her. He slaughtered her anyway.

  His eyes glazed over with the memories. So much loss. And all for nothing.

  Or so he had thought.

  When it felt as if it was time to give up and give in, Saffron came to him with the news that one of the members of Pack Errante had arrived home with a magik he believed to be a member of the Daylight Coven. Saffron knew in fact that the girl was Atia and Devlyn’s daughter, Adriana; that she was there to infiltrate the pack under her father’s orders. His instincts told him to let Adriana’s seduction play out, ordering Saffron to keep quiet.

  Kirios smiled softly and raised his eyes back up to the window.

  Caia was born.

  A feeling of overwhelming anticipation rushed through him. He had done everything to protect her, masking her trace when Adriana hunted her, making sure Saffron kept a close eye, to make sure that Marion was protecting Caia. For a while his attention had been diverted by Devlyn and his growing tyranny; his unbelievable madness, his camps for behavioural modification for magiks, his desperation to have them under his complete control. Nikolai, the present son of the Petrovsky family, had grown so concerned that Kirios had masked his trace and
sent Nikolai in to Kill Devlyn. The Midnights had no clue as to who had done it, supposedly a member of Daylight of course.

  And now Caia was the Head of the Coven! He had laughed when he and Nikolai realised the truth. But the laughter hadn’t lasted long. Devlyn’s irritating brat of a son had tried to continue his father’s work and was a little too pre-occupied with finding Caia and destroying her. His distance from the Coven had allowed Nikolai to solidify an important, authoritative position within the Coven, but Kirios had worried over Ethan’s ever increasing obsession with his niece. Not that he need have worried, he thought smugly, watching her, remembering all that… mess… he’d found a few days ago in Ethan’s lodge. Now Nikolai was Regent of the Midnights and halting attacks against the Daylights under the guise that Ethan’s disappearance had weakened the Coven. Not to mention he said he was close to completing the Septum.

  But what of Caia… he mused desperate to come out from the cover of the trees to reveal himself to her. He needed to know more about her. He needed to be able to trust her. Somehow, he had to insinuate himself into her life.

  The girl. Yes, he thought. The lykan that Ethan had kidnapped. Jaeden.

  He had watched her for a while, yesterday, wondering what on Gaia’s earth had happened to her down in Ethan’s basement. He could guess he supposed. He scowled. She should never have had to go through that. And now… well… she had a secret too. As he had watched her he had seen her grow visibly upset and items in her room had started flying around of their own accord. A telekinetic. Untapped magikal power in a lykan. She was like a two-for-one special. Not only would she be a useful soldier but he could use her to insinuate himself into Caia’s life. Another misfit to add to his crew. Yes. Tonight he would send a few impulses her way, suggest perhaps she run away from the pack. Then he would appear; Reuben the vampyre with his gang of hunters. Yeah. He’d make sure Jaeden wanted to join him. And then he’d have it all. Jaeden. The Septum. And Caia.