by Lynn S.
He spoke softly but decisively. Though deteriorated, he was willing to take a stand against her if necessary. Above them, a black bird perched on a tree, its beady eyes keeping score of the exchange below. Annand, it was said, was as curious as her sisters. However, where Mikka and Bansit risked being seen, Annand sent her ravens.
Adriana stepped closer to the man before her with her brow furrowed in question. With a steady touch, she placed her opened palm against Esteban’s neck. The young man’s heart seemed to skip a bit, be it from fear or uncertainty, but he never wavered. Allowing himself to relax, even after catching a glimpse of row upon row of teeth, Esteban allowed Adriana to explore. So close was she that he could feel the flare of her nostrils upon his skin.
Adriana had the right to doubt. Possessed as she was, the better solution was to tear him apart. She couldn’t tell if the smell of old and bitter death came from O’Reilly, the place he had been, or the one where they stood. He was doused in Isabel’s venomous blood and the iron he’d carried within him had turned his insides vile as well, the exposed skin and muscle on his leg looked perilously close to gangrenous. His Sidhe side was doing its best to repair the damage, and failing miserably. She couldn’t trust his skin, but her ears knew the beating of a human heart, and his was steady, accelerating only when hit by a wave of pain or whenever his eyes made contact with her daughter. Still, even as Marissa suffered, she delved deeper until she found the familiar scent of Esteban blooming through his pores.
She opened her veins once more. Another bloodletting weakened her further, to the point where her instinct receded and Adriana felt close to collapsing. Esteban tore at his clothes, revealing the full extent of the damage. Iron had not just poisoned the blood and festered the skin, it corroded the bone, making it porous and thin. Just to walk toward them was a risk for an irreparable fracture. He observed with incredulous eyes as Adriana’s blood performed a miracle. Drop by drop it healed and sealed, making him whole. Still he writhed in agony, even if briefly. It was one thing was to be gradually exposed to Marissa’s sweet essence in an intimate setting, but quite another to be splashed in blood meant to destroy his kind in a process that worked against its nature. His skin, parched for life as it was, ended up taking greedily until there was not even a hint of a wound.
Esteban didn’t think twice. As soon as he could stand, he ran to Marissa. Unhooking the silver chain off the elder tree, he threw it as far as he could from both women. Adriana helped him carry Marissa to safety, out of the Circle. As they laid her down, Esteban took care her head didn’t touch the ground. He held her, comfortably cradled between his legs, combing away the sweat drenched blonde tresses stuck to her face. Adriana asked him to turn Marissa on her side, which he did with most care. The vampyr lifted the young woman’s blouse, which was starting to cake with blood. Her back had small but deep cuts where the lesser Heralds had pricked her skin to feast on her life force. Esteban held Marissa’s body against his own while Adriana cut the back of the blouse and doused her daughter with even more of her replenishing blood.
“You’ll faint,” Esteban warned her.
“I’ll have time to recover. You have been in a coma, and haunted by magic. You don’t want her to slip that deep.” Adriana kept using her blood as a balm while secretly cursing the damn portal that had closed. Had it left but a sliver, she’d make sure to cross and tear House Alexander from its foundation.
“Come back to us, Mariushka!” As everything with Adriana, it was a plea that sounded like an order. She called her daughter by the nickname she abhorred to wake her up either by blood healing or the need to fight her, whichever worked the best.
An almost imperceptible moan escaped Marissa’s lips and they knew the blood had taken root, as it had with Esteban.
“You can do it. Don’t flutter your eyes, just open them. Will yourself back to us!” Adriana looked at Esteban as he spoke to Marissa. He was as desperate as she was weak, and there was not much they could do but wait. The vampyr felt as if she had given more than she could. O’Reilly started looking blurry and distant, but she kept on.
“Esteban…” Marissa’s voice trembled but it was enough for both to know she’d made it through.
Adriana held onto both, her face resting upon her daughter’s back, now neat and perfect as it had been before. Marissa called once more to Esteban, of course, and Adriana, though she felt beaten to a pulp, could do no more than laugh and hit O’Reilly on the shoulder. “This third wheel is sort of flat right now. I’ll just lie down here for a little bit and you remind my ingrate daughter that I did a little. Just a little. No worries.”
He chuckled while the mantle of a starry night covered all their sorrows. Mother and daughter were spent, beyond tired, but happy to have him back. The three were delighted to have found their way to safety. Neither of them paid attention to the caw of a bird that took flight, hurrying home.
Hours went by and the darkest of the night was pierced by purple, announcing the imminent arrival of day.
***
Marissa sat on a bench, covered in a heavy blanket. As tired as she was, the idea of being left alone in the house worked up her anxiety, so she stayed, waiting for Adriana and Esteban to finish. Her mother had hunted—small game, enough to help her gain a bit of strength. She had given so much even the gulps of blood taken from a rabbit were just enough to bring her back to some semblance of mortal strength. Nevertheless, she stayed, helping Esteban through his gruesome task. Both his mother and the woman he had known as his grandmother were thrown in a pit and burned, their ashes mixed with dirt, and the Circle had been destroyed.
Adriana kept an eye on him. O’Reilly had confessed to being exposed to the evils of House Alexander, and even if he was doing the right thing by destroying the remains of his wicked elders, there was something about the way he did it, much like an automaton, without the least of feeling, that worried her. She was never one to keep her own counsel, so she simply asked, straight forward.
“Are you all right, dear? Whatever happened in the inter-world might have changed you from the inside. I know you didn’t hate these women. You had no reason to. So if you want to stop and grieve, I won’t hold it against you.”
“I didn’t know,” he replied, “but the things they showed me there, when they were trying to wake up the worst in me…I know it all.” He kissed her forehead, and his lips felt cool and dry even against her inhuman skin.
“What will you do with the O’Reillys’ ashes? Your father and another two generations are resting here.”
Esteban cleaned the dust off his face with the edge of his sleeve. He clenched his jaw and soon the tension was evident as the stiffness ran down to his neck. There was a sign of…aggravation? Rebelliousness? Indignation? Tormented as he was, Esteban allowed for an expression that was not there before. His answer became evident, as he had dug up the ashes of his predecessors.
“They all belong in the past. This is the type of business I must force myself to forget. For Marissa’s sake as well as for myself. All about this house brought us too close to the edge; even the innocent.” He opened the container, allowing for ashes to mix with the remains, and eventually, even the urns burned.
“The sun is about to come up, Adriana. If I understand what has happened to you, then you must sleep soon. Don’t worry about me. Go to your daughter, talk to her. Marissa must have a thousand questions. Do what’s best with the time you have, we’ll all have more time tonight.”
Adriana retreated, still trying to determine if that sour smell on his skin had died out completely, but the smoke and burned flesh, salt, iron, and ash, confused her senses. She sat on the floor near the bench. Her head rested against Marissa’s knees. Adriana’s hair looked ashen with cinder, grime, and blood, but still Marissa patted her head reassuringly. The young woman kept silent, still surprised to see her mother free of the artifices of makeup and magic. Dirty and tired as Adriana was, she looked not a minute older than twenty-five and could easily pass for
her sister.
The idea made her tremble. She remembered that strange mirror-like game Carla and Isabel used to play and was grateful that her mother was a free spirit who didn’t encourage co-dependency. But what of it now? When nature dictated they should? Could Adriana reshape her to her will? Her mother always hated her insecurities and fears.
Adriana seemed to be focusing on something a bit more trivial. Looking up to her daughter, she asked, “If you could have a wish come true right now, what would it be? Humor me.”
The question made Marissa face all that had happened. She gave serious thought to how declaring herself innocent of it all had almost cost her life. She looked up to Esteban, who looked as gray as his sooty clothes and double as tired as she was. Even at a distance she saw the concentration on his brow, the tension evident even in his breath. He had suffered even more than she had.
Adriana sighed, guessing at her daughter’s thoughts. She spoke carelessly, perhaps believing the moments they had been through together were enough to make up for a lifetime of differences in character.
“My saintly daughter. Dead daddy’s little girl that you’ve always been. If you could only think about you for once. Being just a little selfish won’t kill you, you know.”
Marissa was quick to answer. Snapping, she gave herself the chance to be a tad sarcastic.
“Sometimes I wonder if you have ever been truly happy, Mamma. I think the time you spent with Dad was a crash course in cynicism. Sure. Let me have a wish. I wish you had kept your word. Soon enough you will be blaming me for forcing you to take that dreaded vampyr step and it will be as it always has been between us.”
She wanted to hurt her mother. As much as Adriana did it all to save her, the vampyr turn had set a dhampyr shift in motion for Marissa. It had all come to a halt when the fairies opened the portal, but now the thirst was coming back. Soon enough, just like Adriana was once forced to drink from her dying mother, Marissa would be required to drink from the one she loved the most in order to become a dhampyr in full and serve her mistress. Just to think of hurting Esteban, even in the slightest, was something impossible to justify. It filled her with horror, and she gladly blamed her mother for it.
It was obvious that a couple of minutes would not be enough. Mother and daughter had been disparate characters for too long to pretend to solve it all in a couple of sentences. Adriana stood and announced she was leaving. Before doing so, she gave her daughter a kiss. As all between them, it was not perfect. She left a smear of lipstick, blood, and dirt on Marissa’s immaculate skin.
“We’ll talk about this later.”
Esteban told her that the attic of the house might serve her as a safe place to spend daylight hours. The house, being a sturdy edifice, had been constructed with all care. The attic was sealed tight and heavily insulated, perfect in all ways. As Adriana opened the hatch, it looked like a dark vacuum, silent as a proper grave.
Absence of light was no problem. Adriana found a discarded twin bed set up against the wall and, putting it in place, made use of it. It was dusty, and she snorted at the idea of needing to carry around a bit of soil where she was turned into a vampyr. Her father was dramatic about it, carrying boxes across the Atlantic. At least I’m doing this right, she thought to herself. I have enough New York dirt on me to last a lifetime. She crumpled on the thin mattress, exhausted.
“You have to sleep on the ground, for our sake. It is not just mocking the grave, there are things that…” The voice of her instinct drifted as the sleep of the dead took over her limbs. Adriana turned, involuntarily, until she was on her back, pretty much the picture of a corpse in the morgue.
Dawn broke and she felt it in her bones. Her body temperature lowered even further, and eventually it robbed her of movement. The sleep of a vampyr was a reminder that death was ever present, even if only for hours, to haunt their immortality.
Adriana was a prisoner of her own body. Unable to move, her hearing was starting to fade as well but it was there enough to perceive the echo of footsteps on the rung of a ladder. Through closed eyes, she felt a thin ray of dusty gold invade the dark of her lair and she knew someone must have opened the hatch.
Against the odds, and perhaps because it was just her first day as a full-fledged vampyr, she managed to open her eyes. Esteban was on the edge of her peripheral vision. His expression was blank; there was a crack of a joint when he moved his head slightly to the side. Otherwise, she would have sworn he was a ghost, or a dream. He looked at her the same way he had been looking at those bodies and ashes in the pit. What Adriana took for torment now revealed itself as scorn. It was all too quick. Esteban hit her chest with one swift motion.
Pain and blood exploded from her center. Esteban had pierced her chest with a thin ash wood stake covered in silver. Once. Twice. Until he kept her heart in place by encasing it between to pieces of wood and metal.
Vampyrs, unlike other night breeds, were not completely dead. Their hearts functioned sluggishly, but enough to pump blood and allow for them to conceive, among other things. Adriana felt like she was being ripped apart from the inside. Each heartbeat made her cardiac muscle slide back and forth against wood and silver, while her body, trapped in an unresponsive state, wouldn’t even allow her the release of a scream.
Esteban leaned over her with a smirk on his face. His hands closed over her eyes, to help her quivering eyelids find a way back into the dark. “Oh well. You grew up to be twice as beautiful as your mother. But your daughter…she is a work of art.” Before her eyes were forced closed, Adriana could see him. Hair so dark that it seemed conjured out of night, and eyes shimmering green.
Chapter XXI
The House That Alexander Built
Marissa opened her eyes. For a moment her whole body tensed. The nightmare had transformed the soft mattress underneath into the cracked bark of a thirsty tree. She felt a rush of nausea that lasted until her senses adjusted to the idea of it all being just a bad dream.
She didn’t recall how she got to the bed. Esteban must have carried her. All she remembered was being sort of cross with Adriana and wiping her mother’s kiss from her forehead.
The place she lay down was not particularly well lit; heavy curtains on top of tightly sealed windows kept the morning light at bay. Marissa knew this was not the room the women had assigned to her. It must have been the extra room they had prepared, a place she now understood was meant for Esteban.
It surely was. Though the rest of the rooms were white, this one was adorned with the soft earthy color palette O’Reilly loved. If felt familiar, very much like their little nook in Brooklyn, except this room could easily fit half of their apartment.
To her right, an archway connected to a private bathroom. Marissa heard the stream of a showerhead. Esteban said something, but she couldn’t make it out, even though the door to the bathroom was opened. He turned down the pressure and yelled, “Stay in bed, lazy head. Or just turn on the lamp, whatever!” A grateful smile formed on her lips. The dhampyr in her was completely gone, buried within. She no longer heard the instinct. In fact, the water didn’t even let her hear someone in the next room. Normal. Mundane. Happy.
Kneeling on top of the mattress, she peeked into the open archway. Esteban was finishing that shower and the misty heat dissipated. She could see his outline against glass. He stepped out, drying his hair with a towel. There was something odd about him and then she noticed he had opted for keeping the shadow of a beard he had brought back from the inter-world.
It was peculiar, taking into consideration he had destroyed all things reminiscent of his misery at the gates of Aval. Even his clothes had been burned. Gone was everything he brought back, including the remains of dagger that killed his mother and saved both their lives.
He kept the beard and he had the right to, all things considered. The facial hair streamlined his features and gave a new, sensuous edge to his smile.
“And now that you are up, Sleeping Beauty…do you mind telling me what hap
pened between you and your mother yesterday? Adriana reads tough, but she is quite sensitive when it comes to you.”
In a moment he was right beside her. Esteban knew her well and didn’t want Marissa to feel he was being judgmental. She’d had her share of anguish, after all. Swinging the towel over his shoulder, he sat next to her. Marissa lifted her chin with a shy smile and he obliged, kissing the corner of her lips with a soft brush against her skin.
She wanted more. It was not only the waking from a nightmare and finding he was no longer gone. There was something in the back of her head, a terrible pounding that was eased just by touching him. She had never been impetuous before, her shyness patent even in intimacy, but there was something about the scent of his skin that asked her to take bold steps. She looked for him once more, not letting go, and when their lips met for a second time the kiss was deeper, demanding, hungry. She teased him with the tip of her tongue, running her fingers over his exposed skin.
Though pleasantly surprised, Esteban broke the kiss. Still holding her, to continue where they had left later, he wanted an answer.
“You are deflecting. And as much as I love this bad girl phase of yours, I need to know.” He nuzzled the curve of her neck to let her know he’d rather have an answer than an argument. “Come on. Adriana in three, two, one…”
“Okay. We didn’t necessarily have a fight. We just…” Marissa sighed, defeated. “Well, I blamed her for a whole bunch of stuff I shouldn’t have; we were both tired and still half in shock. She said we’d talk about it tonight.”