by Lily Levi
“The Master,” Cain growled.
“The Master,” said Nikolai, slowly as if to measure his words. “The Master is on his way out and he won’t begrudge me for saying it.”
I folded my arms. “Then what?” I said. “The game is shit, so then what?”
Nikolai touched the small patch of hair at his chin and took a long, patient breath. “Do you know what Serena Moon is, what she really is?”
I watched him and waited for the answer he would inevitably give.
Outside of the warehouse, the sirens died down in their fiery blaze. A dog barked off in the distance. Nikolai’s own beast of a dog pricked her ears up at the sound.
“Miss Moon is a weapon,” he said, smiling as though he had said something remarkably clever. “She’s a tool to use. She’s a silver scythe, a slivered moon to pluck from the sky. ‘Moon Scythe’, they call her.” He paused to pick something imagined from the air in front of him. He opened his mouth into a wide ‘O’ as though he’d actually caught something of great value and not nothing at all. “Yes, Miss Moon is a silver scythe to cut our brothers down.”
“Orlando,” I started to say. Cain had killed him on his own and he hadn’t needed Serena as a weapon to do it.
“Orlando,” said Nikolai. “Orlando. Orlando was pitiful in more ways than one. He was the weakest of us all. He was a disgrace to us all.” He frowned at Orlando’s memory. “Even Theron was stronger than him when he was but a boy. And Cain, well, we all know his strength.”
Cain looked at him like a dog who had heard his name.
“Orlando was our weakest and Cain is our strongest - by leagues,” said Nikolai. “The rest of us are as far apart as marks on a ruler, barring Ambrose of course, but even then.” He stepped forward and his dog stepped with him. “Let me ask you, brother.”
“Ask,” I said.
“Would you dare to strike me?”
I looked from his tall frame to the muscled dog at his side. “If I thought I could kill you, I would be happy to do it.” And in saying the words, I understood what I had already known.
Even with Cain at my side, a fight entailing just the three of us would last years, if not decades. Hiding; striking; skulking about through the shadows; employing clever tactics only to watch them fail, one after the next; losing our grasp on each other’s necks; stalking the earth around and around. It was why feeding Orlando to Cain had made sense - if he could be made even stronger over the rest, then I stood a chance at being the last one standing as long as he remained under my command.
With him, of course. The last one standing… with him. Destroying him was still a step in the process that alluded me, but if I was anything, I was quick on my feet. I would figure it out when the time came to do it - when the others were dead and Serena was at my mercy and my mercy alone.
Cain stood, monumental in stature even next to Nikolai. He clenched and unclenched his monstrous fists. “Where is he taking her?” he asked, the first real string of words he had uttered in nearly a day.
Nikolai lifted his hands in the air. “A stick is just a stick until you fashion a grip to make a club. You may add spikes to the sides, if it suits you. A gun is a metal tube, a fascinating mechanism, but altogether dangerous when loaded with the right sort of, let us say, fuel.”
Cain frowned deeply at him. He didn’t understand, but I did.
I took a step forward. “What use is a dull knife except to spread the innards of berries on your bread?” I said, spirits rising. If the end saw fit to harbor myself, Serena, and Cain - and if what Nikolai said was true, that she could be a weapon - then it would be possible to turn her on Cain and be rid of him that way.
Nikolai nodded approvingly at me. “Serena is a weapon who must be prepared, sharpened, fitted, and secured to her wielders’ liking. We know she’s a vampire, we know that much. But she’s also something else. Something darker. Something stronger. Can’t you feel it?”
“She’s from hell,” said Cain without any emotion at all. He was growing soft and nonchalant. I didn’t like it.
Nikolai’s dog tipped her head up towards him.
“Yes,” said Nikolai, slowly as though placating him. “And vampires need what?”
“We’re not children,” I said, but my defiance was overridden by the shifting of shadows rising up from the warehouse’s steep stairwell. For a moment I was sure the pathetic human hunting party had found us out in their black and blue uniforms, but it was much worse than that.
“Blood,” said Darius, arms wide. He stepped onto the planks with a lightness borrowed from lifting the heel of his boot upwards wherever he stepped. He smiled so wide that his glaringly white teeth glinted like they would in a child’s picture book.
Darius. If there was one I would’ve loved to watch Cain kill more than Orlando, it was Darius.
Remus stalked just behind him, eyes downcast. He only lifted his broken face to glare at the dog that had marred him. He scratched the back of his neck. “Your dog smells like shit,” he said.
Nikolai sniffed the air. “So she does.”
Darius opened his arms wide again. “Your carriage awaits, my sweet, generous highness.” He made a deep, dramatic bow, still smiling in that terrible way he had. “I killed them all, all of them, on the plane, if you’re wondering. If any of you are wondering. If you need to eat, there won’t be any bodies. I killed them all. Drank them. All gone.”
“Very well,” said Nikolai. “Come.” His dog raised herself heavily from her thick haunches and followed him between the wooden crates.
Cain stared after him.
“Where are you going?” I asked, panic welling. I hated when others knew their plans better than I did, or had one at all. Nikolai had always been unduly confident, but this time felt different. He knew what he was doing or else his confidence had very much improved.
“Why,” he said, turning. “To seek Serena, of course.”
“To Iceland,” said Darius, eyes wide with a strange excitement that I’d only ever witnessed in the very sharply drugged. “Straight there, a straight trajectory, nowhere else for them to go but there. It’s where they’re going.”
He took one step forward in a straight line forward and then stepped back again. “Yes, straight line there, to Iceland.” There was only one way Darius could know where Ambrose was sailing and it did not bode well. It meant that Zane was with them - had he and Darius not been lovers long ago? He had loved to chase men then; perhaps he still did. In any case, they would’ve bitten each other in a moment of crazed lust, that much was certain. Zane could be sensed, even if Ambrose and Theron could not be.
“Yes,” said Nikolai. “To Iceland. How many nests are there in the world now? Four? Five? And he takes her to the one who fears her the most. An accident, surely. Ambrose never cared for his histories or his prophecies.” He descended the warehouse stairs as he spoke. “He will kill us all with Miss Moon by his side. His Moon Scythe, yes.”
“The final heir,” said Remus darkly. “He’ll kill us all and end the game.”
“Fuck the game,” Darius cried, eyes gleeful. “Don’t you want to live? Don’t you?” He latched onto the stairwell railing and swung himself down the steps.
I followed them down the stairwell with Cain at my back.
“That’s right,” said Nikolai, voice echoing off the sheet metal walls. “The Master will pass from this earth soon enough. He is entirely bored. Wickedly bored. And we will only bore him further when our deaths don’t come as expected. Eventually, he will leave us to our devices.” He laughed. “And why have only one master? Have you ever asked that question, any of you? We can rule together, dark kings over dark things, all of us. Even you, Pollux.”
“Even you, Pollux,” echoed Darius. “The others are waiting, come along, come along.”
“We must find her, take her, and keep her alive,” said Nikolai. “We will turn her on all who oppose us. We will be like one, together. Princes united as kings. Or perhaps we kill her and end
the threat once and for all - who knows? But together, well together we shall do anything we like. Anything at all. Together.”
I pressed my hand to my temple to stymie the growing ache in my head. “Fucking communist,” I whispered, but still I followed them out into the glittering daylight.
The game was more convoluted than ever, but I would figure it out. I always did.
Serena
The sun touched down below the watery horizon and disappeared beneath the cold sea. The wind had blown for days on end, a steady stream of air, and it was bound to settle.
So it had.
I took out a long white cigarette - an aged carton had been found below deck - and lit it without needing to protect the flame from the winds. The evening was still and the darker it grew, the more stagnant it became.
Theron tapped on the thick glass from inside of the vessel’s cockpit and shook his head at us. The engine refused to work and the navigation system had threatened to flicker out more than once.
Zane took a cigarette from the open carton on the floor of the deck. He lifted his head up to the stars that crowded the sky and pushed against the moon. “Never learned how to read those fucking things,” he said. “At least Theron will come in use for once.”
He looked back down at me, but his eyes were as flat and pale gray as they had been the morning he joined us. There was no reading him. He didn’t seem to want to kill me, so that was good and well, but there was nothing to know beyond that.
I took a seat beside him and together we watched the boy, propped up against the wall of the square cockpit.
He stared back at us, eyes white and darting in his small skull. He tugged sleepily at the bindings at his wrist as he seemed to do every minute or so, as if he were testing their strength.
I took in a long lungful of smoke and then freed it back into the cold air, slowly, thoughtfully. “He was going to die,” I said, defending once more what I’d done. Seeing the boy like that - was it guilt that I felt? Yes, but also no. Even monsters deserve to live and despite everything, he was still only a child.
Zane shrugged. “He was dead then and he’s dead now.”
Ambrose emerged from below deck with a gray blanket and set it gingerly over the boy’s hunched shoulders. He looked up at me. “Cold?” he asked.
“I’m fine,” I said quietly. I liked the cold and I always had. It helped me forget that the blood in my veins would never be warm. It helped me forget that I was dead, too; that we were all dead in one way or another… and if any of us found ourselves alive, we would be dead soon enough.
Ambrose knelt in front of the boy and waved his hand in front of his eyes, but there was no change in his demeanor.
“Maybe we should untie him,” I said. He didn’t seem to be a threat and even if he turned into one, he was still only a small child.
“Bad idea,” said Zane.
“They’re called ‘grave walkers’ for perfectly good reason,” said Ambrose. He crossed the deck and looked out over the still, black water. “He wants nothing more than to walk to his grave, the grave you stole. He’ll find it at the bottom of the ocean and he won’t stop until he gets there.”
I stared at the boy and he stared back, but I couldn’t imagine what he was seeing, if anything at all. The boy was hardly my first encounter with a zombie, but I had only ever witnessed them in passing, moving over bridges and through tunnels in the deepest part of the night. They were harmless, more like flora than fauna, and I had always thought of them as peaceful creatures above everything else.
“I didn’t know,” I said. “You should’ve stopped me.” I’d never considered that the zombies I’d seen were shambling towards a purpose, only that they were shambling, still alive in some way.
Ambrose turned from the railings. “Lie to me and say you wouldn’t have been terribly upset were we to have stopped you.” He moved his fingers through the air as if to dismiss what had been said. “In any case, it’s harmless enough.”
The boy pulled his wrists forward and was stopped by the short length of his bonds. He rested back against the cockpit’s wall and let out a long hiss from the pit of his stomach.
Theron exited the cockpit in time to hear the sound and he paused to examine him.
“Are they supposed to make sounds?” I asked, realizing I didn’t know the answer. They had always been silent in passing. No amount of hissing, or growling, or any sound at all had ever emanated from them. There was nothing.
“Sss,” said the boy.
Zane stood and edged forward. He crouched beside Theron. “Say it,” he said.
“Sss,” said the boy.
Zane put his hand on the boy’s small shoulder and squeezed. “Say it,” he said. “Go on.”
Silence filled the deck and I held my breath to listen, but there was nothing.
Ambrose clicked his fingertips against the railing, breaking the quiet. “They can’t speak,” he said.
“Stormmm,” said the boy, dragging out the word.
Ambrose lifted his hand from the rail. “Ah, well, there you are. So they can. Very good.”
Zane stood and searched the edges of the world from side to side. “Over there,” he said, pointing opposite where the sun had set. “Do those look like clouds to you?”
“It’s certainly not land,” said Theron.
“Fantastic,” said Zane. “Fucking fantastic. Well, come on then.”
I stood. “What?” I asked and flicked the butt of my cigarette into the water below. “He thinks there’s a storm?”
“Zombies don’t think about storms,” said Zane. He kneeled again to untie the boy’s bindings. “But apparently this one still knows.”
Theron reached out to help him and together they lifted the boy to his feet. “What do you mean knows?”
“Boy was a psychic,” he said. An undertone of reluctance filled his voice. He hadn’t wanted to say it before. “And if he says there’s a storm coming, there’s a storm coming. Help me take him downstairs, will you?”
Ambrose took up a cigarette from the open carton and lit it with care. He gave it to me and I took it. “Very strange times,” he said. “Wouldn’t you say? Zombies, vampires, psychics, storms. You must miss your quiet nights.”
“You certainly don’t,” I said. “I swear this whole thing is a game to you, every part of it.”
He gave me his half-smile. “Don’t be sore, Serena. Even games can be taken seriously - am I not taking it seriously? I certainly take you seriously.”
Leagues away, a thin crack of white lightning illuminated the sky. I half-expected the silhouette of a ghost ship to frame itself above the black water, but there was nothing beyond the waves.
“At least the wind is dead,” he said, lighting his own cigarette. “Perhaps the storm will stay over there and we shall stay over here.”
A cold finger of wind brushed through my hair and despite everything, I couldn’t help but laugh. The world was terrible and cruel. The only humor was in how contradictory the whole thing could be and so I would not miss the chance to find what little joy there was, never mind the origin.
A second gust set the sails billowing above our heads.
Ambrose closed his eyes and touched a hand to his forehead.
“You’ll be sick,” I said, taking a small amount of glee in the taunt masqueraded as concern. If I no longer hated Ambrose - in fact, I found myself liking him and the thought of it was terrifying - I still found some small pleasure in his discomfort.
“Well then,” he said. “Well then.”
I eyed the profile of his face, long and angled. He was wickedly handsome for what he was, though I wondered if the quiet danger he embodied was partially to blame. How many countless women had swooned over him through the centuries and then, having satiated his lust, died to his bite? There was no question that he had broken hearts left and right, both literally and figuratively.
He was dangerous, yes, but he wasn’t dangerous like Cain. He was quietly wicked
. He was charming in his way. He was unremorseful but still kind. He was strong too, that I could feel. He was like the storm threatening to break out over the ocean, quiet and gray, often hard to read. He could turn even now and rip my heart from my chest.
He was a monster.
And he cared for me. Could I not feel it?
I moved the cigarette between my fingers and reached out to touch his shoulder.
He turned to face me, eyes glazed over with anticipation for his next bout of sea sickness. “It’s not funny at all,” he said. “I don’t see why you’re smiling. It’s terribly cruel of you.”
“Shut up,” I whispered and pressed my mouth against his.
He did not pull away. Instead, he dropped his cigarette into the ocean and wrapped his arms around me.
Thunder bellowed in the distance, but it felt too far away to matter. I closed my eyes and let myself fall deeper into his kiss. I moved my hand up into his hair and ran my fingers through its thickness.
His tongue caressed mine, tasting so strangely like hot cinnamon and oranges. Half of me cried out to stop, but the other half couldn’t be stopped. What was it about him?
It was everything, everything. I had spent the better portion of three years fearing him, waiting for him to show himself and carry out the Master’s inevitable command to destroy me, and here he was, calmly leading the expedition to save me. Even if it was a game to him, he’d still taken my side.
Quietly dangerous, venomous, charming Ambrose had taken my side.
His hands clutched into the back of my jacket and pulled me closer. “I want you,” he whispered with a ferocity that I hadn’t heard since that dark night in the Deadmourn Mansion.
“Not yet,” I said. I wanted to tease him; to draw it out. Something told me that he wanted me beyond my body, but there was no certainty to that and it was as susceptible to change as the clouds above.
I kissed him again, this time lightly. “Don’t you know there’s a storm coming?”
Theron
The vessel titled violently against the waves, first one way and then the next. A coiled rope thumped against the wall with each downturn of the boat. Sideways, backward, sideways again. Thunder and lightning cracked overhead, but it was dry. The rain would not come. Instead, the sails snapped with the wind and we rocked helplessly with the sea.