by Renee Ahdieh
The fighting turns fierce as the half giant picks up the half puck and shoves him through the mud. Bare-chested, he slides into a group of men along the sidelines who topple over like chess pieces, vulgar invectives hurled into the night sky. The puck swipes away the tufts of bloodied sawdust from his bearded face before charging at the giant, his hands like clubs as they pummel his opponent’s thin face.
“Rip his horns off, you useless sack of bones!” an elderly man with the grizzled jaw of a shifter growls through the crowd. “I won’t lose my hard-earned coin again, goddamn you.”
My uncle’s eyes shine like gold as he watches the half giant spit a mouthful of teeth into the muck.
I want to ask him why we are here. But I know all too well.
The fighting continues as a rusted dagger is tossed into the ring. Both the half giant and the half puck lunge for it, the fighting descending into chaos.
“When the enchantresses discovered what the blood drinkers were doing—the wealth and influence the vampires were amassing—they bided their time,” Nicodemus continues, his tone conversational, despite the calls for violence rising around us.
I listen, my eyes glazed, my lips pursed.
He tilts his head toward me. “Instead of instigating an outright rebellion, the enchantresses began spreading lies about the blood drinkers. How the vampires had turned their backs on our world, favoring that of the mortals. Eventually they claimed we preferred mortals outright because humans were easier to control, for they treated us like royalty. Revered us like gods.” His sneer is laced with bitterness. “And everyone knows that is what a vampire craves most . . . to be loved above all.” He turns toward me, his expression fierce. “Tell me, Sébastien, what is the most elegant weapon in the world?”
I answer without thinking, my eyes locked on his. “Love.”
“A wise guess.” He nods. “But no. It is fear. With it, you can send armies to their deaths and rule a kingdom on high.” A smile coils up his face. “With enough fear, you can stoke hatred until it becomes a wildfire, burning everything that stands in your way.”
Shouts of triumph echo in my periphery. I turn just as the half giant yanks the rusty dagger from between the ribs of the half puck, who bellows, blood gushing from the wound.
My uncle’s fangs shine in the torchlight, his irises blackening. “Wielding this most elegant of weapons, the enchantresses declared that the blood drinkers belonged in the mortal world, if they yearned for the love of such wretched creatures so desperately.” He stops to applaud when the puck collapses into the sawdust, chest heaving. Money changes hands around the ring, the shouts turning even more feral. A brawl erupts to our right, sweaty bodies squelching through the mire.
Nicodemus ignores the tumult, flicking mud from his shoulders. “Then the leader of the enchantresses—the Lady of the Vale—uncovered information she knew could ruin us. A vampire had offered to sell a powerful human the gift of immortality, for an exorbitant price. For the chance to rule the kingdom he desired more than anything,” he whispers, his eyes leached of all light. “A most grievous offense. Immortality is a gift to be granted to the most deserving, not bartered about like chattel. It didn’t take long before the whole of the Otherworld united to exile vampires from the Sylvan Wyld, along with the traitorous wolves who’d protected us for centuries. Our guardian dogs,” he says, hurling the words through the air like an epithet.
A squat man with a belly round as the moon marches into the center of the sawdust ring, stamping the ground flat as he walks. He raises his arms, spreading them wide, beseeching the crowd to fall silent. “And now”—he pauses for dramatic effect, his oiled mustache twitching—“we come to the match you’ve all been waiting for.”
My fists curl at my sides. I am no fool.
“For the glory of his kind and a hefty stake in the winnings, our very own undefeated Cambion of the Swamp has been challenged by an outsider,” the portly man continues, “in a match for the ages!”
The crowd parts behind him as a tall young man with arms like cannon barrels makes his way into the center of the ring. His eyes are black with lines of yellow through their centers, his hair flame red, his skin the color of sour milk. Instead of fingers, his hands end in sharpened claws that gleam like polished jet in the torch fire.
I eye my uncle, rage scalding my throat, fear gripping at my insides.
“And his challenger?” the announcer continues with a flourish. “An elegant blood drinker from the very heart of the Vieux Carré!” he crows. Jeers of disdain echo in the wake of his cry.
Nicodemus turns to me, a look of supreme pleasure on his face.
I glare at him sidelong. “I refuse to—”
“This is your first lesson,” he interrupts with a dismissive wave. “My maker was Mehmed, Lord of the Sylvan Wyld. It is your family who was forced to cede their territory. It is your royal blood that was declared fallen. Exiled from its home, despite having ruled the Wyld for almost five hundred years. We lost everything. We are the only immortals cursed to kill in order to create more of our kind. Damned to darkness for all eternity.”
The cheers grow louder around us, the taunts like the swipe of talons against my skin.
My uncle takes me by the shoulders, his fangs curling snakelike from his mouth. “I did not want to believe there might be a purpose to your mortal death. To the end of my line in the world of mankind. But now I know the truth. You will take everything back for us, Sébastien. You will return us to our rightful place on the Horned Throne. This is only the beginning. Show them how powerful you are. Make them fear you.”
Then he pushes me into the ring.
BASTIEN
There is no time for me to think or argue.
The instant I set foot in the ring, Cambion charges at me, his yellow pupils like vertical slits. I blur to one side before his claws slice through the air a hairsbreadth from where I once stood. My mind is a jumble of thoughts, none of them coherent, all of them cloaked in fury.
He is much larger than I am, but I have the advantage of speed. I try to lunge for his back, thinking to bring him to his knees, but my coat constricts my movements. I tear it off as I evade another attack. Rage colors my sight red, my white shirt and waistcoat falling to the mud in tattered strips of linen and wool.
Thoughts are for the foolish. If I wish to win, I must become fear. I must become Death.
Cambion aims a punch at my stomach. I manage to twist away, my motions like those of a coiled asp. I do not recognize his feint until it is too late. Before I can redirect myself, Cambion’s right hook lands against my jaw with a crack of thunder, the reverberations ringing in my skull. I blur backward to buy myself a moment to clear my head, pretending to stumble and overcorrect in the process. Then I charge at him, my fangs bared.
He is a foot taller than I am. As wide as an ox, his blood mixed with that of a demon I do not recognize.
But I am a Saint Germain. Running through my veins is the blood of the oldest immortal in the American South. The blood of vampire royalty.
And I have never run from a fight, in either of my lives.
Fury seething beneath my skin, I launch a series of punches at his stomach, doubling him over with the intention of sinking my teeth into his throat and ripping his windpipe from his body. As I pull him close, instead, he grabs me by the waist and lifts me above his head. The night sky and all its twinkling stars flash across my sight as I pry back the fingers of his left hand, a dark satisfaction winding through my limbs as his bones break in my grasp. He howls, the sound causing the cypress branches around us to shake. Cambion spins in place, hurling me through the warm mid-March air. The moment he lets go, I drag my clawed hand across his meaty shoulder, drawing blood as I fly above the mud-filled ring. I land upright in a pile of sawdust, my feet sliding through the muck, my arms raised at my sides.
He glares in disbelief at the gashes on h
is upper arm. At the ribbons of torn flesh dangling from his shoulder. At the shattered fingers of his left hand.
Then the wounds on his shoulder begin to darken. Begin turning into stripes, which grow and multiply across his back and down his arms. The lines in his eyes become starbursts of black and gold. Both rows of his teeth begin to lengthen and form fangs. His skull widens. His scarlet hair lightens to burnished copper, whiskers bursting from beside his lips. When he howls again, it is no longer the howl of a man.
It is the roar of a tiger.
Incredulous, I take a step back.
Concentrate, Sébastien.
A voice blares through my mind as if it were my erstwhile conscience, though I know that to be far from the truth. It is a voice I know all too well. I blink again in shock.
Concentrate! the voice demands once more.
My uncle. As my maker, we are able to communicate without words. I’ve witnessed him issue orders to Odette and Jae and Madeleine in such a fashion, though he has never attempted to do so with me in the month since I was turned into a vampire.
I don’t know why he would choose now—of all times—to make use of it.
What in hellfire is this thing? I shout back without words. For I have never seen a half man, half beast like this. The shifters I know—the Grimaldi wolves—take full form when they change, resembling the earthbound creatures that hunt the forests in fleet-footed packs. It is why they are able to blend into the night and move about without anyone the wiser.
But Cambion is not a tiger. Nor is he human. He is a creature of both worlds, one with the face and fangs of a jungle cat and the body of a man.
A thing of the swamp.
It does not matter what he is, my uncle replies. You must destroy him or be destroyed.
One of these days, I will give my uncle the sound walloping he is due.
Cambion roars again. His claws—longer and sharper than they were before—gleam as if they have been dipped in molten glass, a liquid as dark as ink dripping from their razor-sharp tips. He charges at me again, and I am frozen still for half a beat.
Move, damn you! my uncle yells into my head. Not as a man, but as a vampire.
I remember how Jae dodged me the night I first woke to my second life. How he spiraled through the air, defying gravity. I close my eyes and leap. For a second I am suspended in darkness, the branches of the swamp flashing around me, the night sky twinkling beyond. Then I arc my body through the damp heat, landing in a crouched position, my fangs bared, an inhuman hiss ripping from my throat.
Cambion snarls and attacks, his fangs dripping with saliva. We clash in the middle of the ring, the crowd around us in a frenzy. He growls and snaps his jaws at me. My fingers wrap around his thick wrists, preventing him from slashing through my skin with his inky claws.
It is exhilarating, allowing the fury to control me. Granting leave for the monster in my blood to take hold. I want nothing more than to rip Cambion limb from limb. To crush his bones in my hands and drain him dry. To destroy before I am destroyed.
I can hear my uncle’s laugh in my skull.
My blood sings as the demon caged within is fully unleashed. The veins in my arms bulge, and another bestial howl punctuates the night.
It is me.
Then I snap to one side and hear Cambion’s left wrist break in my grasp. His cry of pain brings a smile to my face. Before he can recoil, I leap onto his striped back and bury my fangs in his neck, ready to make good on all my promises. He swipes at me with his uninjured hand, and when his claws break through the skin of my forearm, I relish the pain. Laugh as I take in a hot draft of his blood.
Good, my uncle says. Drink, my son. Drink. Lose yourself in this creature’s memories. Let his life become yours.
I close my eyes, ready to drown in thoughts of blood and fury.
But it is not images of violence I see in Cambion’s memories.
It is a woman with tiger eyes and a kind smile. One who brings him food and sings him songs in a language I do not recognize. It is the memory of his mother, who hid her son from his angry, drunken father. Of a tired woman who bore the scars of her husband’s rage so that her child would not be subjected to it. I watch as she teaches a younger, smaller Cambion to control his shifts. To fight only when it is necessary. To protect.
Through his eyes, I see her succumb to a wasting disease. I listen as she tells him, with her dying breath, how much she loves him. How he should seek out his great-aunt Alia or her friend Sunan the Immortal Unmaker, if ever he has need of guidance.
I watch her funeral in Cambion’s memories, his sight dampened by tears and despair. The way the flames licked at his mother’s body from atop the pyre, deep in the swamp. I witness him search and search for another family. Another place to call home. I take note of all the people who shunned him, both in the mortal world and among the half bloods. For he is not one of them, and he never will be. These worlds that turned their backs on Cambion for being half of one thing and not enough of the other.
Through the eyes of the beast, I see the humanity.
I blink, a tremor running down my spine, the heat of his blood boiling beneath my skin.
Stop when his heartbeat slows, my uncle says. Only then can you ensure his death without losing yourself to it. If your mind is lost in the wasteland of death, it is difficult to return.
Struggling to subdue Cambion’s thoughts, I take another draft. A trail of something wet glides down one of my cheeks. When I avert my gaze, I catch sight of the coquí inked above my left wrist, the design symbolizing my father’s Taíno heritage. My arms shake, my fingers turning white as they clutch Cambion’s shoulders in a twisted approximation of an embrace.
He loved his mother as I loved mine.
He searched for another family as I searched for mine.
Neither of our parents wanted this life for us.
My body trembles. I stop drinking, letting Cambion fall to the ground. His chest heaves as he struggles to breathe, the stripes fading from his skin, his hair turning flame red once more. Black ichor stains his fingertips when his claws retract.
I know he will live.
“What are you doing?” my uncle demands aloud.
I whirl toward him, my vision blurring along the edges, blood tears trickling down my cheeks. The cuts on my forearm ooze, the smell strange. Noxious.
“I don’t want this,” I rasp.
“What?” He steps toward me, anger sharpening the angles of his profile. His gaze flicks to my open wounds, his golden eyes widening. My injuries should have healed by now.
I sway unsteady on my feet and blink hard.
“This life you wish for me to lead,” I say through the cries for blood swelling through the crowd around us. “Take it back. I don’t want it. Take all of it back,” I yell to the heavens. “I want no part of this.”
Then I fall to the ground, wrapped in a warm blanket of darkness.
CELINE
It was too soon for Celine to be wandering the streets of New Orleans on this late March evening. Every corner she turned—every footfall she heard over her shoulder—caused a tremor to unfurl down her spine.
Celine stopped midstride. Lifted her chin. Straightened her back.
She was tired of letting fear rule her every waking moment. It was Good Friday. Almost six weeks had passed since she’d been kidnapped by the now-infamous Crescent City killer. Forty days and nights since the evening she’d sustained multiple injuries, tied atop the altar in Saint Louis Cathedral. Contusions to the head, a nasty gash in the side of her neck, three broken ribs, and a dislocated shoulder.
Everyone said it was a miracle she’d survived. A blessing that her head injuries prevented her from recalling anything in the way of details. How the entire night seemed shrouded in shadows, candlelight and incense wavering through her mind.
“Celine?�
�� a patient voice inquired from beside her.
Michael Grimaldi. The youngest detective of the New Orleans Metropolitan Police, he was also the one who’d rescued Celine from the clutches of a murdering madman. In the ensuing tumult, Michael had shot Celine’s unknown attacker in the face. For these actions, he’d been crowned the Crescent City’s newest hero. Wherever Michael went, glances of appreciation followed. Men shook his hand. Women gazed at him covetously. Twice this evening, Celine had been sent murderous glares by some of the young ladies strolling past them. A fact that had not gone unnoticed by Celine’s attractive escort, though he appeared to pay them no mind.
“Are you all right?” Michael asked, concern lacing his tone.
Celine tossed her ebony curls and aimed a smile his way. “I’m fine. I was just momentarily . . . disoriented. But the feeling has passed,” she finished in a hurry, looping her arm through his, angry young ladies be damned.
Michael studied her for a beat. She could see him considering whether or not to press the matter. Truth be told, there had been several instances in the last few weeks when spells of dizziness had overcome Celine. Twice she’d stumbled over nothing or found herself lost in a flash of feeling, caught up in a strange memory. The last time, Michael had been there to catch her, as if Celine were some fainthearted milquetoast. A character from a penny dreadful, destined to die.
Infuriating. What kind of silly little fool couldn’t stay on her own two feet?
Just this afternoon, her friend Antonia had remarked on how romantic it was—to be caught mid-faint by the dashing young detective. The girl from Portugal hummed a love song to herself while arranging boxes of grosgrain ribbon in Celine’s new dress shop. Antonia’s behavior had irritated Celine beyond measure. But not nearly as much as her own inability to recall even the most insignificant detail from that night.