Night Blessed

by Megan Blackwood

  If I were to be a force of nature, then I was meant to act.

  With the sun on my shoulders, my power came easily to me. I leapt to the top of the balcony railing and then stepped off, placing my feet on the stone edging that marked this story of the estate. The exterior of the Durfort-Civrac manor was crafted of stone and red bricks comingled, as if the grey bedrock of England had risen up and to touch the sun, sprouting the home in the process.

  I needed no claws to find purchase against the walls as I crept around, angling up a story and east, toward the wide balcony that led into Adelia's office. Emeline's office.

  It was hers, now.

  Their voices drifted up to me on the early autumn breeze, low enough not to be heard by anyone in the hallways, but tight with anger. I found a place safe from prying eyes on the balcony railing as it curled around the porch like a lazy cat's tail, and crouched there in the shadow of one of the great oak trees that dotted the estate's grounds.

  "We're still recovering," Emeline said. Her voice resonated warmly against the heavy bookshelves built into the walls, but even her gentle tone could not hide her exhaustion.

  "It's been a month," DeShawn said. Never willing to sit still, he paced the length of her office, grubby boots thumping against the thin rug—probably some priceless antique—that warmed the cold wooden floor. Back and forth, back and forth, in front of Emeline's desk. A pause as I heard her take a drink, then set a cup back down on the desk, china clattering. The faint, tannic scent of tea wafted on the air.

  "And we are and institution that has stood for thousands of years. We existed long before your job's progenitors, and we will exist long after whatever modern form the constabulary takes. A month is nothing to the immortal."

  "No, but it's a hell of a long time for a city full of terrified mortals."

  "Things aren't so bad as that." A slight strain in her voice. She lied there, even to herself.

  "There are ghouls running—literally running—up and down the streets of London at night, kidnapping people right off the sidewalks and taking bites out of necks and wrists while laughing. I know you're overworked, girl, I know, but there's only so long the media will keep on buying what we're selling.

  "The big conspiracy channels are already yapping about government medical experiments, and not a few have mentioned the word vampire. Shit, I saw a hustler on High Street selling handmade stakes and bottles of fake holy water off a blanket. People are scared. And we can tell them it's some new recreational drug called 'blood' all we want, we can't control their instincts. Humans freeze up with they see ghouls. While their logical modern minds are telling them it's just a druggie, every cell in their body is screaming 'monster' at them and begging them to run."

  "The situation is being managed."

  "You say that with the same conviction I tell the media we're dealing with a new street drug. Saying it doesn't make it true. You're struggling. We want to help."

  "You want to take over." Her words lashed out, sharp enough to force DeShawn into temporary silence, his incessant pacing coming to a halt.

  "It's still your organization. I won't take that away from you." The gentleness in his voice startled me, I had not known he had such care in him. "Adelia wouldn't have wanted you to flounder. She'd want you safe. And that means asking for help."

  "My mother," her voice quavered over the word, a top spinning on a precipice, "would have been horrified to see the mess we've become. I will not deny that. But that does not mean she, nor I, would ever ask for help. The guard has provisions, inspector. It has systems and rules in place that have been adapted and strengthened over its thousands of years of existence. Though we are wounded, we are not yet broken. I cannot in good conscience put the structure of our order at risk by reaching out to another branch of mortal law for assistance."

  "Miss Durfort-Civrac." He leaned against the front of her desk, the joints creaking as his palms slapped the wood. "If you don't ask for help, it may be extended to you against your will. Do you understand?"

  A sharp intake of breath. "Her Majesty granted you the authority to make such threats?"

  "I don't want to do this. I don't want to force your hand. But the people who went with me into Ragnar's hive understand the risks of what we're dealing with, and they want to help. Hell, they're asking why the police haven't been involved in this nightmare sooner and, honestly, I don't have an answer for them except that it's tradition.

  "Sometimes traditions have to change for the safety of all. We've got resources you don't. We gave Seamus access to the network, sure, but there's more than that. Roland has been working overtime fashioning new weapons with gold poisoning, and we have tactical gear you can't exactly order out of a catalog. It's the right thing to let us in. Let us help you."

  "Inspector." The soft whisper of skin against skin as she laced her fingers together. "Do not think for a moment that I'm not grateful. I am, and I know all of the guard would be, too, if they were privy to what you offer. But our sunstriders are our primary weapon. Modern technology has very little to offer against a predator created, and evolved, specifically to battle this threat."

  "What do you mean, created?"

  She hadn't expected that question, and neither had I. The word had been spoken so smoothly I almost missed it. What did she mean? The origin of all our species—nightwalker, sunstrider, human—was unknown, so far as I was aware.

  "Oh, you know." Her rings clinked together as she flapped a hand through the air. "Emerged out of the primordial soup, so to speak. That's not the point, though. The point is, we have the perfect weapons already."

  "Are they so perfect? Seems they're capable of making some colossally big mistakes."

  I winced. My fault.

  "And your mortal weapon-wielders would be immune to mistakes, I presume?" Her tone was so dry it made me parched.

  "All right, that's fair, but my mortal weapon-wielders can also take down half a dozen ghouls in one shotgun blast, if the shot's alloyed with gold."

  "Again, we thank you for your weapons. Our sunstriders are better, and faster shots."

  "Goddamnit, Emeline. If you don't get your head on right about this, you will lose your whole order. You don't have the heart for this, and I know you've been through a lot since your mother but—"

  "The metal of my heart has been tempered in the flames of my mother's bier. I am quite prepared."

  "I didn't mean—"

  "Thank you for your concern," she said, but what she really meant was: Get the fuck out of my office.

  "Have it your way." His voice faded slightly as he approached the door. "But don't be angry with me when you lose it all because the powers that be decided you couldn't hack it."

  He slammed the door and stormed off, boots thumping down the stairs. The exit would lead him to the front of the estate, away from where I crouched, but I hastened to climb back to the wall and make my way to my room. It was one thing to eavesdrop on a conversation, and quite another to overhear a young woman's private moments.

  "Come in, Mags," Emeline said, her voice drifting through the gauzy curtains that hung in the balcony doorway.

  Six: What's Left Behind

  Shoulders hunched with guilt, I dropped onto the balcony and nudged one curtain aside, peering within her office. Natural sunlight did most of the heavy lifting, but a large chandelier fractured the light and cast dark lines across her cheeks where she sat behind her desk, fingers tightly intertwined on its surface. A desk lamp sat to the left of her hands, currently dark, and to her right a folded laptop half covered in scribbled upon pieces of paper.

  "Forgive me," I said, bowing my head as I entered the room.

  "Forgiven, but you must understand that I presume no conversation in this house will go unheard, so long as your people live under my roof."

  "How did you know I was there?"

  She licked her lips and glanced to her wrist. "I sense you, sometimes, ever since you began drinking my blood. There is some sorceress blood
in the family line, I think. I have no real magic in me, but small resonances remain. It is not a strong sensation, but when you're close enough, I know you're there."

  Interesting. Normally that ability only went one direction: I could find her anywhere in the world. "I wonder if Seamus can sense me as well."

  She shrugged. "I have not asked. I am more interested in why you have been avoiding feeding from me."

  "You need all your strength," I said, but as soon as the words were past my lips I knew them to be a half-truth, though I had not dwelled upon my reasons before that moment.

  She arched a pale brow at me and leaned back in her seat, resting her hands across her stomach. "You don't believe that any more than I do. But I had hoped..." Her gaze drifted toward a drawer in her desk, tension wrinkling the skin across her forehead.

  After a moment's hesitation she turned a key in the drawer with a heavy clink and slid it open. From within she retrieved a wooden box stained with a dark red gloss, its hinges and body strapped in verdigris-tinged copper. She placed it in the center of the desk and opened it. Red velvet, a little threadbare from age, cushioned a set of tools I recognized at once. Polished steel phlebotomy instruments, the tools of bloodletting carefully crafted with yellowed horn handles.

  "The guard has since developed more refined equipment for bloodletting," she said, trailing her fingers over a horn-handled razor. "But I discovered these in mother's drawer shortly after... after taking command."

  I settled into the chair across from her and peered at the instruments. Many like them had been in use in the time before I went to the oubliette. Then, they had been shiny and new. The velvet container plush, the copper polished. Those instruments wore the years better than I.

  "They're very well made," I said, unable to bring voice to the dissonance I felt at seeing something that had been new at the time of my prime rendered an antique.

  "They are. But it is not the objects themselves that I'm concerned with. This note was slipped inside the lid." She drew a yellowed envelope from the case and opened it, the golden wax seal of the Sun Guard had already been cracked, and pulled out a simple card of parchment, no larger than a calling card. Across it was scrawled in a flowing hand, the ink brown with age. She passed it to me.

  "The commander shall not give," I read the words aloud, and frowned. "What does it mean?"

  Emeline shook her head. "I haven't the slightest clue. When I realized you were avoiding drinking from me since my early promotion, I had thought you might enlighten me. My mother did not write this, nor do I recognize the hand as any from the family."

  "I wish I could help, but I don't recognize the handwriting either." I handed it back to her, and she tucked the card away in the case.

  "Then the mystery remains." She sighed and laid her hand on top of the kit, as if she could absorb the information of ages through her fingertips. "And I suppose I shall heed the warning of the card, for the time being, but I still must ask: Why have you not come to me for sustenance? Surely Seamus cannot taste that much better." She shot me a sly glance.

  I cracked a smile. "It is not something I thought about, to be honest. I felt only that... That you had given enough already."

  Her fingers, previously relaxed across the box, tensed. "Though my mother failed to teach me many things, I always had free reign of the guard's library. This is, perhaps, why I am more versed in the guard's little rituals and histories than I am of its modern inner workings." She glanced to the box. "One of the many things I learned in my scrabbling between the stacks as a child was why the Sun Guard offer their blood to the sunstriders. Do you know the reason?"

  "So we can find you, if you are ever in danger?"

  The corner of her lips twitched in a half-smile. "That is what I thought, too. Though it is part of things, there is more... meaning, involved. It is the physical manifestation of your oath, what bonds you to humanity. We offer you the continuance of your unlife via the sustenance of our veins. In return, you offer physical protection—guardianship. It is a mutually beneficial arrangement."

  My reflection stared back at me from the clean face of the glass-encased bookshelves behind her, the silver mote in my eye shimmering as if laughing. "And so you worried that something fundamental had changed in me, when I no longer sought you out."

  She inclined her head, but said nothing. This had been an interrogation, of a sort. Emeline pressing me from the sides, approaching the core of the information she needed without ever letting me see that I would damn myself, if I were not careful. I wanted to be irritated with her, but warm relief filled me—and something like pride, too. She may be wounded, but she had what it took to lead the Sun Guard. She just needed the time to grow into it.

  "I did not come to you out of respect for your loss. Nothing more." Harsh, maybe, but it was the truth as I felt it. Deep in my bones, I had sensed the burden of grief in her and not wanted to add to her sense of responsibility. She took the truth in stride, accepting it with a slight nod, and rapped her fingers against the phlebotomy case. A mystery, maybe, but a tool to distract me from the real information she had wanted, too.

  "I take it you overheard DeShawn's grievances?" she asked.

  The shift of topic wrong-footed me for a moment. "I—yes. He means to take control of the Sun Guard."

  She stiffened. "He, and his superiors do not understand the nature of the powers that be. He would launch rockets into hives, use riot squads to mop up ghoul crèches. It is not safe.

  "Though the Venefica is dead, her powers linger still. We cannot say for certain how complicated, or extensive, is the web of spells she left behind. Nor can we predict with any certainty how DeShawn's mortal contingent will react upon being brought into further contact with the supernatural. We tried such techniques in the past." She waved an arm to indicate her bookshelves, where the history of the Sun Guard was written. "And always, inevitably, failed catastrophically. Mortal armies are not meant to stand against the forces of the night. This is why we keep the mortal Sun Guard numbers to a minimum."

  "You don't have to convince me, Emeline."

  She pinched the bridge of her nose between two fingers, rubbing the spot where her glasses once rested. When she'd taken over her mother's post, she'd started wearing contacts.

  "I know. I know. But no matter how many words I throw at DeShawn, they do not stick. I fear we will have to curtail the ghoul problem, and quickly, lest he find out first hand why such arrangements always failed in the past. Modern weaponry is too powerful to make mistakes with."

  So was ancient sorcery, but I decided she'd had enough contrariness for one day.

  "Do you know that you and Roisin are the oldest of the awakened?"

  "Yes," I said softly. To discuss such things amongst the sunstriders was taboo, the equivalent of bragging about how much weight one could lift. Our strength was directly correlated to our age, and Roisin and I... Well, it was safe to presume we could wipe the floor with every sunstrider left standing, which did not bode well for future skirmishes with the older, more powerful, nightwalkers.

  Our superior strength, I suspected, was a large part of why the younger sunstriders—the awakened, as Emeline called them, always hopeful that we would wake more—avoided us.

  Her phone lit up, the screen indicating a text that she swiped open. Her face creased with some inexplicable emotion. "Talia has accepted an invitation to a party at the Hensford House tomorrow evening. Discuss your plans with her and Maeve, then go rest. I will have some blood sent to you."

  I inclined my head. "Thank you."

  She picked her face up and locked gazes with me, not flinching from the brightness of my eyes even though it must be like staring into the heart of the sun for her. "Rest well, Magdalene. We need you at your best. Now, more than ever before."

  Seven: Roses in the Air

  The Hensford House didn't look like much from the street, but then, none of the houses in this row did. The people of Kensignton had refined a subtle elegance over
the decades, their aesthetic given more to high-quality materials than the outrageous ostentation of the nouveau riche.

  The shift was one I was still having trouble adjusting to. Stately elegance was one thing, but I was used to sitting rooms packed with gilt and floors and walls covered in fine tapestries and oil paintings. I hadn't seen a single elaborate flower arrangement since my awakening. The Durfort-Civrac estate held onto the old styling, and though I had not seen the palaces of the royals I presumed they did as well, but every fancy flat or house I'd stepped in since had sported that half-moved-in look of austere minimalism.

  Decorating has never been a particular hobby horse of mine. But, things got tricky for me when the room had only a few sticks of furniture in it, and the windows were shaded with some sort of smart-light sensing technology instead of curtains. There weren't a lot of places to hide in those houses, and that was exactly what I'd planned on doing.

  Basil parked the car against the curb just outside the house's walkway. This wasn't the Hensford House, Talia had assured me. It was just a townhouse—bigger than most single family homes—that the family kept in the city. The real manor house was out in the country, just like the Durfort-Civrac's.

  Some proclivities of the wealthy hadn't changed since my time. They still liked to get away from the bustle of the city and pretend they were closer to the earth for a little while. This house was home to the youngest of the Hensford brood, their daughter Raina. A champagne-headed party hound, Talia had called her. The kind of inconsequential child that pops up occasionally in a long, rich line, that already has children older and better suited to managing family matters. Soon enough she'd do something embarrassingly public—like crash a car or nearly die from an overdose—and then she'd turn her tail and play straight.

  If she lived that long. Even from the curb, I could scent the sticky-rot aroma of nightwalker. Intense and stark, not just the diluted hint of a ghoul. Though I'd have to get much closer to pinpoint the owner of the scent, it had the subtle profile I associated with Ragnar's hive. And that included Lucien.