by Lily Levi
From the corner of my eye, I watched as Ambrose, Theron, and Nikolai hurried forward with the swell of the lesser vampires at their backs.
Amun whimpered in Darius’s arms and I planted my feet in the ground. “He’s mine,” I said over the thundering of Cain’s roars as he fought with the others. “Drop him.”
“Liar,” said Darius. “He’s Zane’s. I can feel it. You hurt me, Zane.” His smile faded as quickly as it had come and a thinly veiled pout took its place. “You really made me sad.” He cocked his head. “I didn’t like being sad. Do you like being sad?”
“Darius,” he said. “Put him down.”
But it was too late.
“Why couldn’t you love me, Zane?” He pulled Amun’s arm out through the sleeve of the boy’s raincoat. “Oh my,” he said, turning the arm. “Do they feel things when they come apart, zombies? Do they?” He dropped the arm in disgust.
“Serena.” Ambrose and Theron hurried to my side, but I hardly saw them.
Amun didn’t cry out. He didn’t blink. He only stared at me, his eyes coated over with white. “Moon,” he breathed and my heart broke in places I never knew could break. I’d never known they were even there.
I held out my arms and held back the hot tears that threatened to fall. “Give him to me,” I whispered. I licked my lips and tasted the salt of that strange sorrow. “Please,” I said. “Give him to me.”
Ambrose wrapped a cold hand around my arm and held me firm. I hadn’t realized I was moving forward.
Darius laughed, but he wasn’t laughing at me.
I turned just as Zane broke into a lunge. But he never made it to Darius.
Ivan flashed out in front of him, neck and face coated with his brothers’ blood, and leveled Zane’s body against the rocks. He pressed Zane’s shoulders into the ground and pushed his teeth into his neck before I knew what had happened.
Ambrose and Theron wasted no time in rushing to overtake Ivan, leaving me alone with Darius.
I glanced back at Cain and the others in the middle of the grotto. They had slowed, but otherwise their grappling and biting had not lost its violent strength. Nikolai stood with his hellhound in front of the swelling mass of the silent others, watching, thoughtful, even serene. Remus, his face mauled, stood quietly beside him.
I hated them for it. They were enjoying the scene and there was nothing I could do to stop it. Zane was wrong. Nikolai didn’t want me dead, but he didn’t care if I suffered. Did any of them care?
I looked back to Darius, Amun in his grip. “I’ve never asked for a goddamn thing in my life,” I said as calmly as I could despite the bloody chaos that pulsed darkly through the air all around us. “Not one thing. But I’m asking now. Give him to me.”
Darius showed me his razored teeth, white and gleaming. “No,” he said. “I don’t think that I will.” He looked down at Amun. “Do you think he’ll need his other arm, too? I don’t think so. I don’t think so at all.” He grabbed Amun’s wrist and my vision throbbed uncontrollably.
I couldn’t help myself.
I bolted straight for him and there was no one to stop me. Cain was gorging himself on the flesh and blood of his brethren; Zane was still working himself to his feet; Ambrose and Theron had unleashed themselves on Ivan, forcing his screams to rattle against the rocks; and Orlando was dead. Nikolai and Remus simply watched.
Perhaps he was shocked. Perhaps he was weak. It didn’t matter which.
I ripped Amun from his hands and turned him away. “Go,” I said pointing to the wall behind us. A cluster of stalagmites gave the illusion of cover and I beckoned him to go to it, hoping he would understand.
And he did. He moved slowly away and I turned to face Darius once more.
But he wasn’t where I had left him.
“Hello, Serena,” he said, his face to mine.
I closed my eyes against his breath, sweet like the peppermint candies the nuns used to eat when I was just a little girl. It was a slow moment and I fell backwards into it. Everything was for nothing and it had always been that way. I’d known this.
Darius’s sharp teeth sliced through the thick leather of my jacket and into my shoulder.
I screamed and the sounds of the cavern died behind my own voice. If I died to him, he would take Deadmourn’s place as the new master and the world would crumble.
Not you, I wanted to scream. The world will rot beneath your rule. Not you, please. Anyone but you. But they’d bitten me before with the intent of killing me and it hadn’t worked. I hadn’t died then and I wouldn’t die now.
The cold edge of something - a knife, his nails - ran gingerly against the back of my neck and against the opposite side from where he’d attached his wanting mouth.
“Darius!” someone yelled. “Darius, no!”
I gasped for air but there was no air to take. I choked back my own blood and scrambled to feel the length of the cut he had made into my neck. Blood gushed out in torrents and he drank from it like a sick fountain.
Amun. Ambrose would care for him, Zane, and Theron. They would all care for him.
It was going to be all right. It was going to be as it was always going to be.
Darius dropped my and my knees snapped down against the rocky floor.
I opened my eyes without wanting to. I wanted it to be done.
Nikolai
“Serena!”
I watched with dead amusement how quickly Ambrose hurried forward to her fallen body.
“Son of a bitch,” Remus breathed beside me.
Darius turned away from them and sick excitement flooded his once-handsome face.
Hecate howled and the air shook with her fury.
Silence descended over the cavern. Those who had been ripping and tearing at each other for the sake of foolish ends - stopped. Darius had done the unthinkable, but not the impossible. He had betrayed me. He had betrayed us all.
But I couldn’t hate him for it. I felt so much more strongly than that. No words would do; no amount of narration; no action nor speech. There was nothing.
“Darius,” I said, breaking the silence and my heart tore asunder at the sound of his name on my breath.
He held up his hand to me. “I’ll stop you there, my dear,” he said. His voice echoed against the rocks. “Master Darius, if you please. Or if you don’t please.” His face screwed up at the middle. “Which I don’t think that you do.” He dropped his hand. “Oh, I’m terribly sorry, but I couldn’t help myself, I just couldn’t help it at all.”
“I know,” I said calmly. I was an ouroboros of resentment and there was nothing to be done for it. If Serena was dead, the game was over and so was I. We all were. All except for Darius.
Cain lumbered towards him, covered in blood. Pieces of his skin hung free, exposing the cold, red flesh beneath the surface. The others writhed on the ground where he left them, still remarkably alive.
I eyed Pollux skulked through the shadows at the back of the grotto, thinking himself unseen, a coward to the last.
Someone clapped long and slow. A low sigh followed, like a dark cloud settling.
I scanned the rocks and the shadows for the only thing it could be. “Master,” I said, kneeling. The nest of the Þingvallavatn vampires took a knee with all of us; all of us, except for Darius.
“Forgive my insolence for speaking, Master” said Gauter from just behind me. “But the Moon Scythe.” He didn’t finish his sentence.
The Master moved out from the shadows and into the pale light. His ancient face worked as though he were thinking, but the Master never needed to think. He already always knew. “The Moon Scythe,” he repeated. He turned his back and nodded slowly at Darius.
“Master,” said Darius, suddenly remembering himself and kneeling.
“Stand,” said the Master. He lifted his eyes to the top of the cave, pockmarked with holes to the gray sky. “Master Darius the Deceiver,” he said, lowering his face. “It is a fitting name.”
Darius’s face stretch
ed to accommodate the smile. He nodded vigorously. “A beautiful name, Master, very beautiful.”
“You’ll die before it sticks, of course.”
Darius’s wicked grin turned downwards at the Master. He searched for my face in the crowd and I gave him nothing to hold onto. I saw what he could not.
We all saw it.
Serena rose behind him as soundlessly as any ghost. The others watched her. Nobody moved to help her rise - she didn’t need it. What color there had been in her skin had fled. Her dark brows knit together and her eyes focused on the one thing closer to her than any other.
She raised her hands, her long fingers pressed close together.
“Run,” she said, but before Darius could turn to face her, she snapped his neck and twisted it, tearing flesh from flesh and cracking his spinal cord apart. She held onto his head even as his body slumped to the ground at her feet.
I watched with - what was it? Shock? Enjoyment, perhaps?
Yes, enjoyment. It shouldn’t have been possible. He should’ve sensed her behind him. His reflexes should’ve been sharper, faster.
But alas.
“No true heir,” said the Master. He held out his hands to take the head from her hands.
“No true heir,” she said flatly, dropping Darius’s head to the ground. with a sickening thud.
Ambrose rose beside her. He eyed her sidelong and then turned his gaze onto the Master.
“Ambrose,” said the Master in a tone that was nearly loving. He reached into the heavy folds of his own robes and produced a jagged wooden stake with a long silver handle. It looked much like a sword but was meant for one purpose and for one purpose only.
We watched from our knees - even Cain, bloody and sated. The silver-handled stake for the silver-tongued heir, was it any surprise that Deadmourn would simply hand Ambrose the means by which to kill Serena?
Serena watched the exchange and said nothing.
She should’ve been dead, truly. Her neck was torn and cold blood slid out from the jugular slice that would’ve killed any lesser vampire and debilitated anything greater. What showed of her chest was now red, coated in blood. The wound was far worse than anything we had done to her on that night long ago. She hadn’t died then and wouldn’t die now.
She didn’t waver, even as she stood. She simply stared at the object in the Master’s hands.
“This is not how it works,” I said, standing. I didn’t need to respect or fear the Master any longer. Was my life not at an end?
He turned to face me with the stake still in his hands. “What ails you, my son?”
Countless pale eyes fixated onto mine. Only Serena’s did not. Her focus remained entirely on the Master, even with his back to her.
I set my jaw and shook my head in angry disbelief. “You treat us as toys,” I said. “You set us against one another in a game that only you understand.”
The Master smiled gently and I hated him all the more for it. “Everything is always changing and we are merely passing through the changes.” His face softened. “But do not despair, Nikolai. Rest waits for us all. All except for one.”
He turned his back to me again. “Ambrose Auldthorn Silvertongue,” he said and held the stake out for him to take. “You love her when you should not. Now, prove your loyalty.”
Serena
Ambrose reached out for the stake in the Master’s white hands and it felt as though a thousand claws ripped into my heart at once. If there had been any of the heirs that I had grown to trust in the least, it was Ambrose.
And he would kill me. I always knew it would be him.
The Master pressed the silver handle into Ambrose’s hands.
“Thank you,” said Ambrose, dropping it. It clattered, echoing against the cavern walls and I felt nothing. Not relief. Not fear. I felt only pain from where Darius had cut into me, though that pain was welcome in covering over the torture of waiting for the death of a life that refused to end.
“Do it,” I whispered, though I refused to look at him. I took a long breath. “If you don’t, another will.”
“Serena,” he said and I could hear the heavy sadness in his voice. He knew what I said was true. It had been the game all along. ‘Protect her or kill her’, but there was no protecting me now.
“I’m tired, Ambrose,” I said, turning to face him.
His pale eyes glistened in the cold light. “No,” he said. “I won’t.”
I knelt down and picked up the stake from beside the bottom of the Master’s robes, avoiding his watchful eyes. I pressed it into his hands. “If you won’t, then tell me how I escape this. What choice do I have? What choice do you have?” It was a relief to say the words; to finally ask for death. I’d been running for so long.
Hope was gone. It had never been there at all, but I wasn’t disappointed, no. Something inside of me had always known that hope was a dark fiction that I’d been foolish enough to cling to.
But it wasn’t real and it never had been.
Ambrose wrapped his fingers around the stake’s silver handle and it took it slowly from me. “I can’t do it, Serena.”
I pressed my both of my hands to his face. “You said you would kill me when the time was right, do you remember?”
He stared at me. His chest rose with each weighted breath.
“Ambrose,” I said. “The time is right.” I only wished that it was us alone beneath the earth. I didn’t want the others to watch me die, but here we were. I couldn’t fight them off. I couldn’t run from them. I couldn’t do anything but let myself die with some amount of courage that they could at least remember me by.
“Serena,” he said.
“Ambrose, I don’t want anyone else to do it. I’m not going to beg for my life and I don’t want to beg for my death. Please don’t make me do that.”
The Master hummed, as though thinking. “A stake to the heart,” he said. “It is the most timeworn and honorable way to die. It is what I would like for myself when the time should come and the time is nigh, for the time always comes.”
“Do it,” I said, ignoring the Master.
Ambrose lifted the stake upwards and threw it at the back of the cavern wall.
My heart fell. Why could he not understand?
Amun’s cry filled the silence after the clatter of the stake. “Mooooon,” he moaned. “Moon.”
“Loyalty,” said the Master slowly. “A delicious thing it is. And you will need it.” He reached out his white hands and took mine in his. “Loyalty, Serena. Hell has no loyalty, not even to itself. Remember.”
“Remember,” I said, repeating after him. I wanted his words to make sense but they would not.
“She must die,” said Gauter. He rose to his feet and pointed at me. The mass of silent, lesser vampires pointed at me in unison. “The cost of her life is the doom of this world.”
The Master laughed, though not unkindly. “The world is but a rock. Its surface changes, but it will continue on until struck by a bigger rock, I fear. Although I do agree that the simplicity of it is rather mortifying.” He opened his palms to the air. “And the speed at which Pollux moves is also mortifying, horribly so, wouldn’t you say, Serena?”
Pollux.
Ambrose’s eyes opened wide and he saw what I had not.
The pain was blackening. I lowered my chin to see the tip of the stake poking out from my chest. “Pollux,” I whispered. “Pollux.”
I turned unsteadily to face him. “Not you,” I breathed, gasping for air.
The cave filled with movement, but I could focus on none of it. Time slowed and time sped forward, but still we stood facing one another, Pollux and I.
“You,” I whispered, reaching behind myself. I touched the handle of the stake and ripped it back out from inside of my flesh, unable to stop my screams at the horror of the pain.
Pollux. His eyes glittered with petty hatred and fear and I felt for all the world that I would not give my life to see him at the helm of the world. In an instant,
he was everything that I had ever loathed. He was the selfish disgust in every mortal man that had forced themselves on me before I knew that they were nothing more than food. He was the weakness in my father who had been too fragile of a man to tell me what he was and who I was until my unfed suffering had become unbearable. He was the cowardice in the shadows that had followed me for a hundred years. He was the snake in the grass and the carrion in the sky, taking advantage where he could. He was undeserving of his own life. Why should he live for as long as he pleased when better creatures should die?
“Not you,” I cried, raising the bloodied stake between us. “Not you!”
I plowed the tip of the stake downwards and through his muscled chest, dropping him to his knees. He crumpled like paper.
“Serena,” said the Master.
I looked up at him and the whole cavern about us stood as still as a picture. No one moved and no one spoke. It was as if they had died or had been frozen in time.
“It is good to have a last moment with you,” said the Master.
“Yes,” I said calmly. Was it calmness though, truly? Or was I so afraid that the fear only masqueraded as serenity? Did it matter?
Pollux grappled with my wrists, clawed that them with his nails, and screamed for it to end. I dug the stake in further, twisting it down into the ground and him with it.
“What strength,” said the Master. “What terrible strength. You are like Cerberus, like Fenrir, like any great creature brought up as a lamb to be harmless.” He folded his arms. “Even hell believed you were harmless, that you’d taken more after one father than the other. They’d left you alone eventually. A great relief for me, as you can imagine.”
I removed my hands from around the silver handle and stood to face the Master, the man who had dictated my life from the day of my birth.
“I can’t imagine,” I said, breathing gently through the pain in my chest. “I don’t understand.” I looked steadily around the cavern. Nothing moved. Ambrose stood beside me, arms outstretched to where Pollux had stood before I’d brought him to his knees. It was as if we stood in a cave of forgotten shadows, running thick with blood and hate.