Dark Ascension

by J. D. Brown

  “Did you look into Jalmari’s lead?” I said, daring.

  Naamah and Maria both stared at me a moment, frozen in indecision.

  I lowered my gaze. “I talked to him a bit. Just now. I thought he might know something useful.”

  Maria arched her brow in her husband’s direction, and then sighed. “Yes, I had the same thought. I talked to him yesterday.”

  “Was that what the Tibetan journals were about?”

  Maria nodded.

  “So the lead was a dead end,” I murmured to myself.

  “Not exactly.”

  “Maria,” Naamah warned.

  “Don’t ‘Maria’ me. She has a right to know.”

  “Know what?” I demanded, looking at them both.

  “We didn’t want to say until we were sure, but she could be the real deal,” said Maria while narrowing her gaze at her husband.

  “She?” I said. “She who?”

  “Her name is Shénshèng.” Naamah glanced at the ceiling and sighed. “She’s a vampyre. We think she may be somewhere in Shanghai, but all we really have is an address to her last known place of employment.”

  My brow furrowed. “Then what makes you think she’s an alchemist?”

  “Naamah did some digging,” said Maria. “There are fragments; pieces of her history recorded here and there that suggest alchemy.”

  “But you don’t know for sure. That’s why you didn’t tell me.”

  Husband and wife nodded. “That, and China’s a long way for a young mother to travel.”

  I looked at Naamah and squeezed my fists. “Book it. I’m going.”

  “What?” He looked at Maria, then at me. “Ema, we don’t even know—”

  “I say we find out. My babies’ lives are on the line. Jalmari wants to...” I lowered my voice. “Jalmari thinks they need to die. What do you think he’s going to do the moment he’s free? He’s all healed, Naamah. We can’t keep him locked up much longer. And besides, I don’t know what Lilith wants with them, or with me, but I am not going to sit around waiting to find out. So either you book it, or you watch me go it alone, but I am going.”

  Naamah gave his wife a glum look. She grinned cheekily.

  “All right,” he said in defeat. “I will book a flight and accommodations for three.”

  “Three?”

  Naamah looked at us. “You two and Prince Jesu.”

  “Better make it one,” I said, and then explained the situation with Tancred.

  Maria paced the room as I spoke. When I finished, she growled. “That vampyre doesn’t know who he is toying with.”

  “So you understand why I need you to stay? To help Brinnon fight for the contract while I’m gone?”

  Maria clenched her jaw and narrowed her gaze. She understood, but she wasn’t happy about it.

  “Perhaps there is something I can do,” said Naamah.

  I shook my head. “You’re Jalmari’s Hand. You’re covering a scandal and keeping the clans together. Believe me, you’re doing enough.”

  Naamah grunted. “I still don’t like the thought of you traveling so far alone. We should wait.”

  “No. Soon I won’t be able to travel at all,” I said, looking at my stomach. “We need to stay ahead of Lilith. If I have a chance to save my children, I’m going to take it.”

  “And Jesu?” said Naamah. “I don’t understand why you do not wish to travel with him.”

  “Naamah,” Maria whispered, but it sounded like a scold.

  “It’s okay,” I told her. I drew a deep breath and lowered my gaze. “I can’t ask Jesu because I broke up with him, and it wouldn’t be fair. I have to let him go. Completely.”

  Neither Naamah nor Maria liked the idea of me going to Shanghai on my own, especially since we knew nothing about the alchemist Shénshèng, but they understood why Maria needed to stay at the castle, and why I couldn’t ask Jesu to come with. Still, Naamah insisted on hiring a guide to meet me at the airport. I went to my room to pack, and to figure out how to tell Brinnon I was leaving.

  Mom was awake and dressed when I entered. She sat in one of the plush armchairs, spooning soup to her mouth while gazing at a photograph on the table. The glossy black and white photo was a copy of my last sonogram with Dr. Gordon, and it clearly showed the twins. Years of conditioning caused my spine to stiffen, my hands to clench, and my blood to run hot in defense. I drew a deep breath then released it slowly.

  “You can’t tell anyone,” I reminded her.

  “I want to keep this one,” she said. Her gaze didn’t waver from the photograph.

  “Sure.” I shrugged then turned toward the dressing nook.

  “Did you sleep at all last night?”

  My nose wrinkled as I faced her. How much did she know? Enough to worry about having the blood sucked out of her—but not enough to realize I didn’t need sleep or sunlight. The question burned on the tip of my tongue, but I couldn’t risk it. If she didn’t know... if her knowledge only went so far as Bela Lugosi’s Dracula...

  “You snore.” It was the first excuse that popped into my head. “So I slept in another room.”

  She glared at me. “I do not. Why would you say such a thing?”

  “Joking.” I grabbed a piece of toast off the breakfast tray and nibbled on the black crust. “I just missed having an entire mattress to myself.”

  Mom set her spoon down. “There’s something I need to tell you.” She gestured to the bed. It was already made, though slightly wrinkled. I wondered how many centuries it had been since anyone actually slept in it before my mother. It was a miracle the sheets didn’t crumble to dust.

  My brow rose as Mom sat on the edge of the bed and waited for me to join her. A sense of doom churned in my gut. Mom never talked. She complained and criticized, but she never just talked. On the rare occasion that we spoke at all, the conversations tended to end in mutual hatred. Still, for some insane reason, I sat next to her and listened.

  She held the sonogram in her lap, fingertips pressed gently to the edges, as though she’d rather get a papercut than risk getting a fingerprint on the glossy side. She looked at the two grainy doll-shaped peanuts, each one surrounded by its own little pool of placenta, and sighed.

  “It’s my fault you are the way you are.”

  My breath caught in my throat and I coughed. “I’m sorry, what?”

  Mom looked at me, her brow furrowed. “I always blamed your father for your stubbornness, but the truth is you get it from me.”

  “Oh. My stubbornness. Right.”

  She faced forward, staring at nothing. “It’s time I told you why I left Hungary.”

  “Better quality of life?” I shrugged. “You immigrated with Nagymama when you were eight. I don’t think you had much choice.” They’d gone after my grandfather passed away. Nagymama—my grandmother—moved back soon after I was born. I had no memory of her.

  Mom shook her head. “I grew up in Hungary. I was eighteen when I immigrated to the United States with your father.”

  My brow shot upward. “What? But... What?”

  Mom lifted her hand, palm forward. “I know what I told you before.”

  “So you lied? Did grandpa even pass away?”

  Mom narrowed her gaze.

  I pulled both lips between my teeth and stared at my lap. Inside, my chest was a tornado of questions and accusations, and a lecture about how wrong it was to lie to her own daughter—but exploding wouldn’t get me anywhere. Mom was finally opening up about her past—about what she knew—and I needed to hear it. I needed to shut up and listen.

  Her gaze went to the photograph again. “My aunt Petra used to make pálinka. Moonshine. I used to help my cousin Sandor deliver it to bars in town. One day, I was stacking bottles behind the counter when your father walked in. He sat at the bar, looked at me, and started talking. He probably ordered a drink, I don’t know. His Hungarian was terrible.” Her lips curved in a faraway smile. “I had never seen a Native American before. He was so handsom
e, and very brave. He flirted mercilessly. We talked until the owner threw us out the next morning. I don’t think either of us knows what the other said, even to this day, but it didn’t seem to matter. I was in love.” She frowned and then amended her words. “I thought I was in love.”

  “What happened?” I prompted.

  “Sandor told your grandmother I was out all night with an amerikai bűnözők. An American delinquent.” Mom laughed. “To be fair, your father looked the part. He was a fan of that terrible rock and roll racket.” She paused a moment as she looked at the photograph again. “Your grandmother used to tell me stories when I was little. About monsters that looked like men. Monsters that drink the blood of the innocent.”

  I held my breath. This was it. Mom was going to tell me what she knew about vampyres, how I became one. After this, we wouldn’t have to lie to each other anymore. I could tell her everything. It wasn’t breaking the rules if she already knew.

  “When I got home, your grandmother demanded to meet him. I didn’t even know if he’d show up again, but I went to the same bar the next night, and there he was. I had no way to tell him where we were going. No way to warn him. I just took his hand and held it all the way home. My mother,” Mom drew a deep breath, “took one look at him and started screaming. She called him a mullo, a strigoi—the monsters from her stories. She kicked him out of the house and forbade me from seeing him again.”

  “What did you do?” How did my grandmother know Dad was a vampyre when the Jumlin were—strangely enough—human? Did his eyes glow somehow, despite looking like the most normal shade of brown I’d ever seen?

  “I did what every stubborn eighteen-year-old does when they think they’re in love. I ran away with him.” The nostalgia in her voice was gone. Resentment took its place.

  “You ran all the way to the United States, after only knowing him a day?”

  Mom nodded.

  That seemed a bit extreme, even for her.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, hoping she’d get to the important part now; the part where she realized her mother had been right, that my father was a little more than just human. Maybe that’s what broke their marriage.

  Mom gave me a pointed look. “Are you?”

  “Am I what?”

  “Are you sorry? Are you really sorry, Ema?”

  My brow dipped. “What?”

  “I called my mother the moment we landed to let her know I was okay. She told me never to contact her again, that I wasn’t her daughter anymore. I was so angry, but at least I did the right thing. At least I was decent enough to call.”

  My jaw fell open. “She disowned you? That’s horrible.”

  “I was horrible. It was wrong of me to leave. You don’t understand what it’s like until you become a mother yourself and are forced to watch history repeat.”

  My brow pinched in confusion. “You think I left on purpose? I was kidnapped, Mama.”

  “You got free, didn’t you? And you still didn’t call.”

  I bit my lip. She was right; I could have tried harder to contact her.

  Mom straightened her spine, and her expression turned cold. “I didn’t want this for you. I wanted you to marry a doctor.”

  My insides clenched. The doctor thing started the day I told Mom I wanted to be a historian. It was never good enough. Then Anthony wasn’t good enough. Funny, I guess she was right about history repeating.

  “It’s my fault,” she muttered to herself in that accusatory tone I’d grown so accustomed to. “I didn’t tell you the stories when you were little. Maybe if I had—”

  “Why didn’t you?” The question was out before I could stop myself, and there was nothing kind about it.

  She looked at me and narrowed her gaze. “I thought they were fairytales. Silly stories to scare children. I didn’t believe a word of it until...” Mom scanned me. Her eyes darted back and forth, and something in them softened. It wasn’t remorse. Not for me, anyway. Mom was too selfish for that. Fear, maybe. Fear of being right, that I was actually the monster from grandmother’s stories. The fear that they were real. She reached up, as though to touch my cheek, but she stopped herself and withdrew her hand.

  “You let those creatures corrupt you,” she whispered, still searching my face. Her gaze widened until... Yes. Fear. Cold and crippling and sweet. I closed my eyes as it rolled through my every sense, enveloping and entrapping me. It raked over my skin, entered my lungs, burned in my gut, and whispered—ever so seductively—to the real monster within. “You carry the devil’s seed.”

  My eyes snapped open, and I shoved her.

  Mom fell from the bed and landed somewhere on the other side. Her words were a slap in my face. She didn’t know anything. Anything. She didn’t know what Dad was, what her ancestors were, or how it all led to me. To this. And yet, she was completely right. Whether my children belonged to Jalmari or Apollyon, it didn’t matter because it didn’t change the fact that they were spawned of evil demented inhuman sociopaths.

  Mom looked at me from where she landed on the floor, mouth open in shock. My hands trembled. I could have hurt her. Or worse. Heat stung the backs of my eyes and my vision blurred. I turned away and ran out of the room.

  My skin buzzed as I took the steps in the tower two at a time, my essence threatened to rip apart at the seams. I wanted to give into instinct and phase out of the castle, maybe even out of the country, but I couldn’t. I wouldn’t let myself. No matter how terrible my mother was, I would not be like her and risk the safety of my children for my own satisfaction.

  How could she?

  “Ema?” Jesu’s voice echoed somewhere behind me, but I didn’t slow down. I only went faster, taking the stairs three at a time, until the toe of my right shoe hit a loose stone and gravity pulled me over. I reached for a handrail that didn’t exist. My fingernails snagged at stone crevices and broke. I tensed for the impact. My eyes squeezed shut. But the crash never came.

  Strong hands gripped my shoulders and pulled me upright.

  No—that wasn’t quite right. He pulled me up high.

  I opened one eye and then the other. Jesu’s sparkling green irises, dark like an ocean storm, looked up at me. There was a gap between us. We touched only where his hands held my shoulders—a light, gentle touch—and my feet dangled beneath me. I looked down and saw that I was floating. Jesu wasn’t holding me up. If anything, he kept me from flying away. I was levitating. My skin tingled all over, and I gasped.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  I closed my eyes and focused on tensing each individual muscle. My legs, my torso, my arms. Until I felt the full weight of myself standing firmly on the stairs again. I looked at Jesu, now looming above me, and nodded.

  “How did you know?” I asked.

  His gaze flickered over his shoulder, back the way we came. “I may have overheard.”

  I wet my lips and looked away, ashamed. “How much?”

  “Enough,” he said, and I could feel his gaze on me again. “Come.”

  Before I could ask where, Jesu took my hand, and we jogged the rest of the way to the foyer where he pushed open the castle doors.

  “I don’t have my sunglasses,” I said. And I was pretty sure at least five vampyres behind us didn’t appreciate the glaring sunlight that instantly flooded the room.

  “Don’t worry.” Jesu laced his fingers more tightly around mine and we ran like two excited kids down the brown cobblestone steps, around the expanse of the mighty palace walls, to the rickety wooden gate at the back. Jesu shoved the gate aside and we took off running again, past the creek, the barn, the fields, and into the woods.

  It felt good, running freely with no destination in mind, the wind in my hair. Jesu let go, and we stopped somewhere under the shadows of the mighty oaks and maples, surrounded by nature. I took a deep breath, inhaling the sweet scent of sun-kissed flora, and thought of how the woods only stood to amplify Jesu’s scent. His very essence, in fact. It was a thought that made me infinitely
curious and enormously sad all at once. I clenched my jaw and refused to think about it, enjoying instead the way the forest called to my inner instincts. The urge to hunt welled within, but it wasn’t violent. More like a purr of interest. I mentally counted sixteen targets, most of which were birds and a few squirrels.

  Eventually, my gaze found his. Jesu stood near a large oak, the leaves of which cast patterns of light and dark over his handsome features. He was watching me, and my cheeks warmed in response.

  “So what are we doing here?” I asked, hoping for casual conversation.

  Jesu lifted his face to the heavens. His gaze squinted as beams of sunlight filtered through the layers of branches. His left hand moved. A twitch of some sort. “I thought the air might help. I can always think better when I am outside.” A shadow fell over him, as if nature had decided to snuff out a few candles.

  Clouds, I realized.

  Jesu lowered his gaze and looked at me. His lips moved, like he wanted to say something, but then his gaze slid past me and darkened. I turned and followed his line of sight, but didn’t notice anything other than the leaves swaying.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  “Nothing.”

  When I faced him, the moment had obviously passed. Whatever Jesu saw had been wiped away. His gaze lightened with the hint of a friendly smile on the left side of his mouth. Perhaps he was trying to make things right between us, but neither of us knew where to start.

  Or maybe he really did just bring me out here to decompress, and was trying not to impose.

  Only, we’ve been staring at each other to the point of awkwardness now. I looked away. He cleared his throat.

  “Your mother—”

  “Don’t.” I shook my head. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  In a way, I understood why Mom was never able to move past her anger. My grandmother disowned her. How could she go back? Especially if Nagymama was anywhere near as ruthless as her daughter. But Mom had other family. Her aunt and cousin. Where were they?

  Thunder shook the forest and the sky ripped open. Rain poured down in buckets. I squeaked in alarm and ran toward the oak tree for cover. We stood shoulder to shoulder with our backs pressed against the tree trunk, bark biting into my spine. Despite the thick branches, we were both soaked in seconds. Our hair and clothing clung to our bodies.