by E. M. Knight
Maybe that bit of bone she planted into him as a parting gift has something to do with his waning resolve.
I turn and head back and look at the quiet, absolutely still cavern. The vampires sealed her in only to protect her. Chandler—do I believe he was my kin?
The mere suggestion would have been enough to make me laugh at one time. But now, having seen what I have, having been triggered by Victoria into unleashing that magical blast, I am…
More amenable to the suggestion.
After all, Chandler claimed to be Cierra’s son, said the Black Sorceress is my own Mother’s sister. And I am part of the bloodline—a line that is, if all that is true, very strong in magic.
What if there are males able to control these forces out there in the world? What if the only reason we don’t know about them is that their talents lie hidden so deep in their mind that they are never aware of them.
Only by fluke did I realize my ability.
Well, the answers to those questions will come. As soon as the rest of the vampires wake, we will be on the move.
I glance out, once more, into the dimming day. I have hours to kill. I can either waste them dawdling here, or I can go out and explore.
With so much time on my side, I think it prudent to go examine Cierra’s lair one more time.
That seals my decision. If another vampire wakes before nightfall and discovers me gone, so be it. I don’t need to babysit all of them.
That would be suffocating.
So, without further thought, I jump out from behind the waterfall and dart into the trees.
Right away, I feel the searing rays of the sun against my skin. Even if most of the forest is covered in shadow, the mere presence of that fiery ball in the sky is enough to torment any vampire. The sensation is in many ways similar to being exposed to silver, although it manifests itself in a different way.
I take a moment to concentrate and lock the pain away in a far corner of my mind. Then, I purposefully slow to a leisurely walk.
Even though there is no audience, I want to appear at ease.
When I’m far enough away from the hideout that I feel sufficiently alone, I strip out of my shirt and cast it over my shoulders. Then, I purposefully stride into a ray from the sun.
I grimace against the sudden onslaught of pain but force myself to endure it. I close my eyes, still my features, and do not move.
If Victoria could do this to herself, so can I.
But after a few minutes it gets to be too much. The pain is overwhelming. The light is burning me alive. I want to run and hide. I want to holler in agony.
Yet, I dare not make a sound, not a single move.
I have to prove my own inherent strength to myself.
The seconds tick by at the slowest pace imaginable. I look up past the trees, and then, in a moment of utter stupidity, direct my eyes toward the sun.
Pain shoots through my eyeballs and sears into the back of my head. It crushes all my resolve.
With a strangled curse, I leap for the safety of the shadows. No sooner am I out than relief comes. I feel my skin start to heal. The burned, inflamed skin calms down and morphs into its former self, leaving me with nothing more than a hint of a tan.
But that tan does not even come close to the splendor of Victoria’s when I first saw her in The Crypts.
The thought of Victoria brings with it concern about that secret she told me about my fledglings and the source of their strength.
Concern that my strength is being subverted into the vampires I made.
Even if it’s utter crap, I have to uncover the truth of that before making more offspring.
I start again through the woods, heading to the area where my group was ambushed by Chandler’s.
I reach the edge of the clearing leading to the stump. I take a tiny first step toward it—
And stop.
Something just moved in the trees.
My vampire senses flare. There are animals and rodents and birds all around.
But none are in the spot I thought I saw movement.
I look up, shielding my eyes against the light. It’s difficult to see those branches clearly.
All of a sudden, I catch the muted scent of human blood.
My hunter’s instincts explode to life. I’m one with the forest, fully aware of everything that happens around me.
I feel the rodent scurrying away. Animals are particularly sensitive to threats. Even if I am cloaked, they still know danger when it’s close.
But where did the smell of human blood come from?
I walk slowly toward the one tree. I peek up into the branches.
They are completely still.
In a flash, I jump up and grab onto the trunk. I scale the tree in seconds. I’m at the top… but there’s nothing there.
Nothing, nobody, not a thing. Yet that bit of movement that I saw…
I taste the air. The blood scent is weak. Weak, but fresh, as if coming from a human still alive.
I scan the ground and find no evidence of anybody having been near. My eyes zero in on the stump.
When they do, that sense of preternatural movement takes me once more.
Could the Black Sorceress herself have come?
Quickly, I leap forward. I hit the ground without a sound. I run to the entrance to Cierra’s lair.
Here and there I get a whiff of that human blood. But something about the sensation is wrong, something is very much unusual, because one moment it’s there, and the next, it’s not.
It’s almost like something is trying to hide it from me, and intermittently failing.
I slow down as I get close. My hunter’s instincts are telling me to be on high alert.
I do one more scan of my surroundings. I find nothing troubling.
So, I duck inside.
No sooner am I beneath ground, the blood smell hits me with full force. And I realize I was wrong before… The blood is fresh, but it does not come from a body still living.
It’s been spilled from someone newly dead.
I turn the first corner, and there I see it:
Fresh, human blood, covering the walls. Splatters of it, as if thrown upon the rock like water out of buckets.
A spasm of pain shoots through me. I buckle over. It’s gone in a flash, and I straighten right away, breathing hard.
I’ve never felt anything like that before.
I do a quick search of the lair. It’s more or less the same as when we were here last.
But the blood on the walls tells me somebody has been here.
I take one more look at the wall and realize, in a moment of shock, that these are not random splashes.
They are crude and evil-looking markings writ in blood.
A shiver crawls down my spine.
“What am I dealing with here?” I whisper.
I take a step closer and reach out to touch the blood.
My fingertips brush against it.
I bring them to my mouth.
Gingerly, I taste the blood.
Immediately, I choke and spit it out. It’s foul. Awful. Ruined. Disgusting!
What could have been done to it to make it like that?
As if on cue, I hear footsteps behind me. I spin back.
An old, haggard-looking woman emerges. She’s holding one long glass pole, using it as a walking stick.
I cannot sense her.
Immediately, I am alarmed. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out who this is.
“Hello, James,” says Cierra.
I could rush her, I think. I can get to her before she can so much as blink.
But for whatever reason, my feet are rooted in place.
She hobbles closer, leaning on that strange and fragile-looking shaft.
“You’re not surprised to find me here?” she asks. “Not surprised that I know who you are?”
I open my mouth to answer—and find that I can’t.
Some sort of force has wrapped itself around me.
It makes it impossible to move.
She chuckles. “You’re in my domain now, little vampire. Don’t presume your power will aid you here.”
As if to show the truth of those words, she jabs the top of the walking stick at me.
A burst of energy hits me in the chest, and I go flying. I hit the back wall hard.
But as I fall down I feel myself slip out of the restraining force. I correct my angle and land on my feet.
Then, in a fit of fury, I leap at her.
The briefest surprise flickers over her decrepit face. Then I collide with the witch and am about to sink my fangs into her neck when another enormous blast of energy explodes from her body.
This one throws me back with so much more force than the last one did. I hit the lair wall hard enough for it to crack.
Pure rage covers the sorceress’s face.
“You dare?” she screams. “You DARE attack me?”
She points the staff at me, and a beam of pure white light streams out. It collides into me, just like in the dream.
Pain as I’ve never felt before flares, and I scream. The light is combined with a physical force that pins me to the wall.
The assault lasts no more than a second. But to me, suffering through the agony seems a lifetime. When the light finally winks away, and the surrounding force dissipates, I drop down, gasping as my body desperately tries to repair itself.
“Never again,” the witch warns, “will you raise a hand against me. I can destroy you, vampire. I can snuff out your candle without so much as lifting a finger. You are a stain, you are filth, you and all your kind. So don’t think to test me again. Because next time, you will not survive.”
I force my head up to look at her. I realize the hobbling old woman act was just that: an act.
She may look decrepit, she may look older than the Sahara Desert, but beneath the facade is a strong and powerful being.
“Then why relent?” I croak out. I hate how flimsy, how weak my voice sounds. But with all my body’s energy devoted to the healing process it’s all I have left.
She smiles. “Why? Because you will be useful to me.”
I narrow my eyes at her. I’ve recovered from the worst. I feel strong enough to try standing.
I will not cower before this horrendous thing like some lowly worm!
So I force my hands and legs to move. I plant a foot on the ground and push up. The force is still there, it’s still exerting its constriction on me, but it is not as strong as before.
Maybe she exerted too much strength in the second blast.
The witch’s eyebrows creep up as she watches me stand. “You have a spine, after all,” she observes. “Good. That makes you even more important.”
“I will not be controlled by you,” I snarl.
She laughs. It’s a strange sound, coming from one so old. “No? You think not? My, but you don’t know how easy it would be for me to simply wipe your mind. To eliminate your consciousness. To make you a puppet dancing on my strings.”
She gives me a particular look. “I’ve done it before, if you must know. To a vampire belonging to your coven. Let me think, what was his name…?” He eyes sear into me. “Oh yes. Carter. A friend of yours, unless I miss my guess.”
She watches me closely for a reaction.
“Never even heard of him,” I scoff.
“No?” She looks me up and down. “Oh, but you lie. I can see it in you.”
She flies at me, all pretense of weakness forgotten. I stiffen in surprise.
She moves as fast as any vampire!
Her hand juts out, and she takes me by the jaw. Her bony, spidery hands possess impressive strength. She applies pressure with her fingers and pulls my head down toward her.
“You killed my son,” she accuses.
I look right into her cold, dead eyes, and try not to give an outward reaction. “That’s why you’ve come?” I ask. “To get revenge?”
She looks into my face… and lets go.
“No,” she says, and with a flick of the staff sends me skidding away.
I try to dig my claws into the ground, but it’s a lost cause.
“I came here to find strength,” she continues. “And I think I have it now, with you.”
The force presses me against the wall, but, again, it is not as strong as the first time. If I really try I’m certain I can escape and get out of it.
Yet the masochistic part of my curiosity is piqued.
“Release me, then, and let us speak as equals,” I propose.
Cierra chokes back another laugh. “Equals?” No, no. Vampires are the scourge of the earth. You are all hideous creatures. Your whole existence is an affront to nature. You and your kind disgust me. You feed on innocent humans to satisfy your thirst. You are parasites. You are all leeches! Worse yet, you are thieves. You steal the blood from humans. Fine, that is fine—I have no great love for that despicable race either. But your true crime, your greatest fault, is that you rely on the theft of magic for everything you do.”
My eyebrows come closer together. “Explain what you mean.”
“I don’t have to, not to you… but you might as well know. The vampiric essence that sustains you? It is intricately linked to the Elemental Forces. You know what those are, don’t you? You must, you were raised by my pathetic excuse of a sister.”
So it’s true? I think.
“Magic and vampirism are intricately linked,” she continues. “The force that animates you, sustains you, gives you life, relies on you drawing on the Elements just as much as it relies on you drawing blood. It is the offensive, disgusting fusion of the two that makes you who you are. You steal from living people. You steal from the Elements of this world. Everything you do is foul, corrosive, against nature. And still, after all these years...” She shakes her head. “Still, somehow, your kind continues to linger, as the most awful parasite on Earth!”
I look to her without speaking. Who would have thought she has such strong feelings on these things?
She turns away and strolls over to the bloody wall. She touches the stains.
“This is what drew you here, isn’t it?” she murmurs. “Like a fly to honey. Except your sweetness is iron-tinged and red. Very fitting, for all you represent.”
She looks at me once more. “I know who you are, James, because I saw you through Chandler’s eyes. When you killed him, the bond between my son and I was broken. I need to forge a new one.” She smiles in a maniacal way. “My, but how my sister would hate me if I used her son!”
I feel a very stark and inexplicable stab of fear. “What do you mean?”
She laughs again, and then that laugh descends into a series of giggles.
“I mean, you’re going to become my most perfect soldier,” she says. “I am going to build a vampire army. I will unleash it on the world! And when the Earth is cleansed of filth, when it is pure, when chaos has ruled and only the strongest emerge, I will become the Goddess Empress. The one true ruler over all!”
“That’s insanity,” I say.
She shakes her head. “No,” she tells me. “That is proper thinking. Why would I be satisfied with what I have? Why would I have put myself into the Earth for hundreds of years? Why would I have forsaken my beauty, my youth, to emerge as this hideous thing?” She gestures in disgust at her body. “Why would I have sacrificed all my powers? Why would I have given up years and years and years of existence when I could have seen the world evolve and grow, when I could have shaped the path it was on, through fear and coercion and yes, even love? Why would I have sacrificed all of that, gone into a hole in the ground, gone to sleep in this very lair, if I did not know that I was born to a higher purpose?”
“You sound mad,” I say softly. “But you don’t need to coerce me. I will help.”
She sneers. “You think too highly of yourself if you believe I need your help. I need your body, James. I need the powers that a proper bond can give me and nothing else.”
My mind work
s at a frantic pace. If Cierra is even one-tenth the witch everybody seems to believe she is, then I desperately need her on my side. Even if her vision for a world order is lunacy, I need to convince her that our interests align.
That she would be better served by cooperation with me and my coven than by going at it alone.
But how—how? What can I say that would appeal to her, that would appease her, and that would speak to her own sense of self-importance and absolute gratuitous self-aggrandizement?
In short, what sort of argument would convince her if she were me?
I decide on a singular approach.
“You’re right, you have been asleep,” I say. “You have missed the formation of the world. But I was there. I can help you.”
Again, she scoffs. But I sense a certain… curiosity… within her.
“You, and every other vampire who has lived through the last hundreds of years of my sister’s rule.”
“No,” I say. “Not that. They would not understand. They are concerned with small things. With mere trifles! They do not respect the vampire’s place in the world, because they are blind to it.”
“Do you hear yourself, James? Don’t lecture me. Vampires have no place in the world. You and all your kind will be tools to aid me in my purpose. And when it’s done, like any tool, your lot will be discarded.”
“What if I told you there was a cure?”
She stops. She looks at me, judging, sizing me up. “A cure for what?”
“A cure for Vampirism.”
She laughs. “Ha! What, you suggest I take mercy on you beasts?”
“No,” I say. “I suggest that you use what we possess to your advantage. What we have here,” I force my hand through the thick, oppressing force, and it’s like moving it through nearly-dried concrete.
I end up with it on my chest.
“Here,” I repeat. “Inside us.”
She looks at me in a quizzical way.
Since she does not speak, I take it as good reason to continue.
“You say we cost you your youth, your beauty, most of your life,” I tell her. “You think you sacrificed it all for whatever purpose you claim for yourself.
“But that’s not true. You can have all of it back.”
With supreme effort I force myself to take an agonizing step toward her.