Night Blessed

by Megan Blackwood

  "Talia..." Raina gasped, blood foaming at the corners of her lips. "Why?"

  "You've always been obsessed with power," she rushed the words out, held them in front of her like a shield against her guilt. "You'd never stop. Never. The Venefica. Ragnar. It didn't matter to you who—or what—granted you strength, just so long as you were stronger than us all."

  Raina choked-laughed, sputtering blood, and leaned sideways, propping her body against a piece of wall. In the distance, sirens broke the night. DeShawn's people were coming, but too late. Too late for Raina. Even if she kept that dagger pressed into her heart, the blood loss would be too fast. And I doubted DeShawn had thought to bring anything but weapons with him.

  "Is it so wrong to want to live forever?" Raina asked, eyes glazing.

  "No," Talia whispered, "But you would have had a monster remake you in his image."

  Raina's face split into a red grin and she lolled her head to the side so she could better see me, her face pale as Greek marble. When she spoke to me, her voice was a strange commingling of hers and the Venefica's—borrowed knowledge, Raina's words.

  "We cannot all choose our makers, can we, Magdalene?"

  I blinked at her, not understanding. My sire had... Had...

  Black halls of memory. Snipped lines—history lost. Evidence of the oubliette, crawling through the forgotten pathways of my mind.

  Who had been my sire?

  Raina's body began to laugh, but I knew the sound for the Venefica's. Bloody drool rolled over her chin, and her lungs rasped in a slow, heavy rattle. "Think, Magdalene Shelley," the Venefica said, clinging on though the body she'd borrowed had already stepped over death's door. "Who made you what you are?"

  I half-staggered, half-crawled across the rubble and dropped to my knees beside Raina, taking that woman's shoulders—colder now than mortal flesh should ever be—in my hands to drag her head up and face me.

  "What do you know about my sire?" I demanded.

  But she was gone. The body—for that was all that it was now, not Raina nor the Venefica—limp as a loose rope in my hands, her head dangling against her chest with that bloodied grin locked in place, eyes open and glazed with the mist that indicated emptiness.

  I dropped her and stood, shaking. Over and over again I dug into my thoughts, struggled to remember something—anything—of being turned into a sunstrider.

  Sebastian had made Roisin.

  And I... I had been made by...

  Fog. Nothing but fog in my mind. Fog that filled an endless void, an emptiness where there should be something, something important. Our sires taught us. Reared us to the duty as if we were children born again. The lessons taught to a sunstrider had stuck with me, the rules locked into place, but the source, the teacher... Nothing. Gone. Not even a vague impression remained.

  Thirty-eight: Judgment of Blood

  Figures moved out of the night. They came before DeShawn and his people, moving gently through the wooded grounds, little more than slips of shadows darting in-between the trees. The others. The sunstriders that Roisin and I had rescued from Ragnar.

  I could smell their blood on the eddies of the air. In coming here, they had been wounded. Without communication via the earpiece, I could not have known, but I could guess, for the stink of nightwalker ghoul mingled around them, mixed with the fresh-sunshine scent of their blood.

  Ragnar would not have come here if he could be overrun. He'd set traps. Distractions. Of course he had—the ghouls he'd made were bound to his mind. I should have thought to warn them, to warn Emeline.

  I should have thought of a lot of things.

  My kin held back. Stuck to the darkness, sensing Ragnar dead and the corrupted magic fading on the breeze. In the rubble, Roisin aided Seamus and Maeve. I could hear their subtle movement, the soft words spoken back and forth.

  Roisin: "Are you all right?"

  Maeve: "My ribs..."

  Seamus: "Just blood loss..."

  I did not want to turn to them. I did not want to see their faces, to see any hint of the pain I had caused lingering there. I would have to look, eventually. Would have to face what I had done and ask forgiveness. Beg forgiveness.

  I did not think they should give it to me.

  Tires crunched across the road, blue and white lights bringing their own kind of magic to the scene. DeShawn shouted something to his people—orders to hold back—meaningless noise, and he jogged across the rubble and the blood. Jogged toward me.

  How we must look, Talia and I, circling the broken and bloodied body of Raina. Battered to hell and back, but living, if what I did could be given such a name. Talia made a soft sound, and I caught her gaze. Terror flickered across her features, her bloodied hands held out before her as if they were some kind of dangerous snake.

  For a breath I thought her terrified of me, and my heart ached, but, no. That wasn't right. It was DeShawn who had sparked that soft noise of fear. DeShawn, and the laws he represented.

  Talia had killed a woman. In self-defense, yes, but such things meant more to mortals than they did to me.

  "Baby Jesus in heaven," DeShawn said with a sharp whistle as he crunched over the rubble toward us. "What happened here?"

  "I did this," I said, too quickly, gesturing toward the crumpled body of Raina at my feet. "She had invited the Venefica to possess her. There was no other way. I'm sorry."

  DeShawn's eyes narrowed. He put his hands on his hips, knocking his coat away from his body to reveal a uniform of midnight blue. Slowly, he scanned the scene. Raina's hands had fallen away from her chest, leaving the dagger's grip sticking up toward the sky. Her body had slumped against the rubble, bent over backwards as she had been on her knees, eyes open and left staring at a cloud-riddled sky.

  Though I stood above her, my hands drenched in blood, his gaze lingered on my fingers, noting the lack of cuts. I could argue that. Could say that they had healed—I was supernatural, after all—but then his gaze shifted to Talia, kneeling with her damaged hands out before her, a splash of heart's blood soaking through the front of her shirt, and his whole stance softened, a concerned frown wrinkling his brow.

  "Talia." He took a knee beside her and placed one hand on her shoulder, taking her wrist gently to turn her hand so he could examine the deeper of the injuries. "Roland's out there at the cars, he's a trained EMT. Go and have him look at this. Can you walk?"

  She nodded, shakily, and he helped her get to her feet and orient herself toward the waiting cars. We said not a word as she stumbled off, hot tears carving canyons in the stone dust on her cheeks, her whole body trembling like a frightened mouse.

  Once she was out of earshot, DeShawn said under his breath. "She's been through enough."

  "Yes," I said, then louder, "I did this."

  He sighed and fidgeted with the snap on the holster strapped to his hip, starring down at the broken body of Raina. "It looks to me like this was self-defense."

  "It was. And in defense of Talia."

  "I'll vouch for that," Seamus said.

  He and Maeve tottered toward us, leaning on each other, both covered head to toe in blood and grime. "Raina wanted us all dead. She tried to kill Talia."

  "Saw it myself," Maeve worked up some spit and let it fly at Raina's dead feet. "Mags here was working to save us all." She met DeShawn's eye. "Working harder than any mortal ever has."

  DeShawn stared at me, hard. He knew I was lying. Knew that it might mean death for me to take the blame for Raina's destruction. Possessed by the Venefica or not, she had been mortal, as yet untainted by nightwalker blood. She hadn't even passed the threshold of becoming a ghoul. She was, by every definition of my oath, out-of-bounds for a sunstrider to kill unless in the most dire of circumstances. Circumstances that would be hard to prove.

  But Talia didn't enjoy the same protections, and putting that woman through a trial for the death of her childhood friend would be cruel beyond measure.

  "Liar," a broken voice hissed.

  We turned a
s one, following the voice to a crumpled heap of a human wedged into a corner of the stone walls. Her long blonde hair, so perfectly curled before, had gone limp and wild with frizz, covering her chest in a dirty wave of corroded gold. Her tanned face was lifted, though her arms wrapped around her knees and huddled her legs against her, perfectly manicured toes scraped and filthy.

  Sonia. In the chaos, I'd forgotten about her. She trembled, but she set her stare on DeShawn and wet her lips. "Talia murdered Raina. I saw her do it. Raina hadn't raised a hand to her and Talia jumped out from there—" She stuck an arm out like a spear, pointing one broken-nail finger at the corner Talia had hidden herself behind. "—with a dagger and plunged it straight into her heart, no hesitation. Didn't even try to stop the bleeding." She swallowed the start of a strangled wail. "Didn't even try to save her at all."

  "You are in shock and mistaken," I said coolly, turning toward her.

  Oath or not, witnesses or not, every fiber of me wanted to squash this woman, to drive her back into the earth so that some better creature—a worm or a tree—could make use of the nutrients of her body. After all she'd done, how dare she try to throw Talia to the wolves.

  Her chin tilted up—defiant, and though her arm shook she kept jabbing it at the place Talia had hidden as if she could force DeShawn to understand her by the sheer force of her insistence.

  A low growl rose in my throat—my claws extended.

  The figures in the shadows, outside of the light of DeShawn's forces, shifted, watching, attentive. Roisin was out there among them—injured but alert. I sensed her will, recalled her fingers diving into my chest, and knew that if I broke and took Sonia to the grave, she would not miss my heart again.

  DeShawn put a calming hand on my arm. He spoke too low for Sonia to hear, counting on my supernatural hearing to pick up the words.

  "You can't give her justice, girl, but I can."

  He dropped his hand away from me, and tension eased out of my body as he strolled toward Sonia, squinting down at her as if seeing her for the first time.

  "Sonia Rossi, is that right?" he said in a slow, calm drawl.

  "That's right." She brought her hand back to push her hair out of her eyes and straighten her top, as if that would make her more presentable. "I'm well known in certain circles. My word as a witness will be respected, inspector."

  "Huh," he said, and toed at a piece of broken table. "I don't know your name from those circles, miss, but I know it from a warrant."

  "A what?" Her jaw hung open, eyes going wide.

  "A warrant, miss. Used for a lot of things, but in this case it was issued for your arrest."

  "Arrest? What on earth am I guilty of? I am a victim here, inspector. These people invaded my property and—"

  "I wouldn't try that," he said.

  "Excuse me?"

  "Lying to an officer is quite the bad look, girl, and somehow I'm sure Talia will be able to provide proof you invited her."

  "Seamus has Raina's agenda," I said, "proof these meetings were scheduled in advance."

  He gave me a side-eye. "I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that, because I'd hate to have to look into just how Seamus got those records."

  I took the warning and clamped my mouth shut—leave the police work to the policeman.

  "You're framing me," Sonia snarled. "My lawyers won't stand for this."

  "Not framing you for anything, miss. Truth is, this warrant was put out long before I got the call to join you out here."

  "What on Earth for?"

  DeShawn smiled, slow and easy over at me, then turned his attention back to Sonia. "Insurance fraud. Little birdie told me you burned down Club Garnet because you didn't want to pay for biohazard cleanup." He tutted and shook his head. "Didn't believe it, myself, but I sent out an arson investigator just in case. Turns out, there was plenty of accelerant to be found."

  Slowly, as if revealing a grand work from behind a sheltering cloth, DeShawn pulled the handcuffs from his belt and clicked them open with a dramatic flair.

  "Need help up, miss?"

  "This is preposterous," she blurted, but real fear was back on her face, her already washed-out skin green with sickness at the edges. DeShawn took her upper arm in one hand and, not too gently, hefted her to her feet, then spun her around and clamped the cuffs over her wrists.

  As he passed by, I placed a hand on his arm and whispered so that only he could hear. "She may have been manipulated by other powers. Go easy."

  He winked at me over his shoulder. He and I... Maybe we could be friends after all.

  Thirty-nine: Arrangements

  Emeline gathered us all in the library. The glass had been restored, the remnants of battle swept away, and the scent of fresh paint hung heavy on the air. Roisin and I sat side-by-side, but isolated from the rest of our kin. The other sunstriders fanned out around the benches and chairs, bruised from their battles over the last few weeks, watching us with wary, golden eyes.

  Already they had not trusted us—we two elders of the species who had not been trapped in the Venefica's spell as they were—and now they would hardly speak to us.

  They did not need to hear our account of events to know what had happened in Sonia's ancient house. The last of what they'd seen had been enough.

  Roisin's claw marks, thick puncture wounds in a crescent moon around my heart, had been enough.

  The mortals mingled with the other sunstriders, Seamus and Maeve sticking close together—close to me and Roisin—but Talia had been given leave to take this meeting off. Her hands were still healing, and her mind... That would require more than stitches.

  Emeline stood in the center of us all—the sunstriders, the mortal Sun Guard, DeShawn and Roland. There was something of her mother lingering in the way she held herself—tall, proud, and straight-backed. She was in complete control of the room before she ever said a word.

  "Ragnar is dead," she said, letting the words hang heavy on the air. "And the Venefica vanquished. But our work will not be any easier. The ghoul problem remains, and Victoria's Veil is in shambles. Already, Miss Shelley warns us that other powers have taken notice of the chaos brewing in the mortal world. Darker eyes turn toward humanity. And yet, working together with Inspector Culver and his people, I believe we can save this city. I believe that we can restore the veil before greater powers take notice.

  "To do this, I need agreement from all of you—not a decree from me. Will you of the Sun Guard help me work with Inspector Culver to create a better, safer London?"

  "What of her?" A sunstrider, Julian, said, gesturing toward me with the point of his chin. "Forgive me, Magdalene, I honor you as one of our elders, but you must admit that we cannot trust you. Not with that eye. It is debatable if you should even be suffered to live. The oath tugs at us all, every time we look at you."

  He slid his gaze, snake-like, to Roisin, as if to ask her silently why she did not feel the same pull. She flashed him a fanged smile and said nothing.

  "Mags is on our side," Seamus snapped. He tried to burst to his feet, but Maeve grabbed the back of his shirt and yanked him back down.

  "It's all right," I said, inclining my head in acknowledgement to Julian. "He has every right to be concerned. You all do."

  I turned my head slowly, taking care to meet the gaze of everyone in the room—mortal and sunstrider alike. Though I received various levels of aggression and suspicion, none flinched in fear from me. That was a balm, a relief. They were wary, but not afraid. Not yet.

  "I mean you no harm. I wish to do as I have always done, and uphold my oath. But I have become something... different, and how that fits into the Sun Guard, I cannot say."

  "I've made Mags an offer," DeShawn interjected, crossing his legs by swinging an ankle up onto the opposite knee. "She's going to be my roommate, for a while. Until we can get this straightened out and figure out just what that silver eye means for her. Don't you all worry, I'll keep a good eye on your girl."

  I inclined my head. "I have
accepted his offer. I do not wish to cause you all undue distress by staying here."

  "This arrangement is agreeable to me," Emeline said.

  "Sorry, inspector," Julian said. "We know you mean well, but there is no way you could control Magdalene if she went rogue."

  The sunstriders nodded in agreement. My heart sank.

  Eleanor, the sunstrider who Lucien had taken from Chatham house, stood up. Her dusky face was drawn, severe, and she clasped her hands in front of her as if to keep them from trembling. Though I hadn't had time to get to know her, I had read her file along with all the others we'd recovered from Ragnar's hive. She'd been turned young, around seventeen, and did her best to serve the crews dedicated to rehabilitation of the ghouls. She'd been the only one of her coterie to be found.

  "I will speak for Magdalene." She swallowed as the sunstriders turned their gazes upon her. "If she and Roisin had not intervened, we would none of us be here to have this conversation."

  "People change," Julian said smoothly. "And while I thank our elders for their service, a great deal has happened since we were awakened. Perhaps it is time to consider the oubliette."

  I closed my eyes, recalling the shredded pathways of my mind. How many times? How much could one mind be flensed and remain sane?

  "I object," Eleanor said, standing straighter as Julian cut her a harsh look. "And such decisions must be unanimous amongst the members of the guard not charged with the crime."

  "Our kind would be wise not to let friendship muddy the waters of our oath," Julian said.

  "Friendship? I have hardly seen Magdalene since my awakening. You cannot accuse me of bias."

  "Enough of this prattle," Maeve said. "I will monitor her, keep an eye on the girl. If she gets into trouble, I can mitigate the damage until we call for you lot of brutes." She met their gazes with all the confidence of a cat staring down a canary. "Or do you believe I'm as poorly equipped to handle her as DeShawn is?"