by Heather Knox
From without, tales spread of a cult dedicated to Ismae. Their purpose and her role in its inception varied wildly between versions, but the gist remained the same: her empire existed under her protection so long as those within remained loyal. To some, she became a savior, having delivered her people from their wicked king after suffering his wrath for their transgressions and protecting them from other wicked men who sought only to conquer. To others, she basked in the attention of her so-called cult as an aspect of the Goddess Aphrodite herself, or an oracle or something like it, gaining power from their worship and holding them captive under a spell or out of fear, to ends unknown. And to others she became they and they—her supposed mortal bloodline—kept control of their empire by strategy and strength, defending themselves against incursions but not wasting the resources or lives to take what wasn’t rightfully hers, no magic or martyrdom required.
Regardless of the form, the fairy tales breached this world and pierced the shadow kingdoms of the Everlasting, most of whom could not rule or live as openly, as boldly, as Ismae and thus were forced to rule by proxy. A few such powerful Everlasting came together to lead a multi-kingdom assault against her empire, out of fear or jealousy, cloaked in the flimsy chivalry of saving her from herself. Looking back, the Keepers would cite the need to hide one’s nature from humanity and her open, repeated violations of this law as justification for their assault—as justification for the emergence of their sect. History is written in retrospect, after all.
What no one knew: she anticipated this, having had a vision some centuries prior. What no one knew: this battle would mark the start of the war between the Keepers and the Praedari. What no one knew: Ismae never intended to mother a revolution, only to protect and assert her right to rule, just as every ruler before her.
What no one knew: she didn’t just command her and her husband’s armies, but trained them and fought alongside them in disguise since before they were betrothed.
What no one knew: to what lengths this woman would go to protect her empire.
So she Ushered the entirety of her army. The mortal forces of those who rallied against her were met with legions of Everlasting, against whom battle after battle was fought and lost. Still, they persisted, and the war continued for many years, changing shape and purpose and giving her time to amass another mortal army to lie in wait should her Children fall.
In the aftermath, the thing most remembered wasn’t that the newly formed Keepers asked Ismae to serve as their warlord, nor that she declined, nor even that she instead turned her army of Everlasting against them. In the aftermath, the thing most remembered wasn’t that she fought alongside her army, her Children, the blood of her Blood—but instead, the thing most remembered is how she then turned herself against her army, single-handedly destroying the legions of Everlasting she had Ushered and now had no use for; who fought for her, who owed their unlife to her. This is how she earned the moniker “Ismae the Bloody” and the gift-curse of her berserker Bloodline.
There she stands, blood-drenched, bare hands clutching the sloppy entrails of another just like her, one of the Everlasting. The battlefield now covered in the thick muck of ash and blood and fragments of those fallen but not quite dead, those left encircling her, closing the distance between themselves and their progenitor. In an instant she spins on one who’s crept behind her, unaware that though she doesn’t see him she needn’t see him; in the next his comrade’s intestines, still attached to an opened gut, are wrapped once, twice, three times around his throat as she pulls in opposite directions, hard enough in a single tug to choke the breath from a mortal but that’s not her objective, that’s not good enough, so she keeps pulling. Amazing, the strength of something meant to stay tucked away in this weak fortress of flesh, hidden in our guts. The sinewy muscle cuts into the throat of the man whose hot life-force gushes forth, spraying her but indistinguishable from the blood of hundreds as nameless as he, to whom she lent the Gift of Immortality only to take it again in an instant.
Ismae the Bloody awakens face down in the cooling putrid sludge of ash and blood, alone, and weeps. The predator within slinks, satisfied, to a far corner of her soul and, though she has no recollection of the past few hours, a feeling like molten iron knots in her gut builds up the skeleton of a cage around her heart. She can taste their blood, the metallic choir that sang on her tongue and down her throat. These were the people who were willing to give their lives to protect what she’d built. And they had. After all, the empire could not support so many predators.
At her throat, the Stone of Nyx hangs matte and black, spent.
This story, of course, would be lost to time—were it not for the ravens.
I COME TO WITH QUINN STRADDLING MY CHEST, MY arms pinned above my head by my wrists. I am strong and still startled by her strength, her form seeming to contain more mass than possible by the laws of physics. The neckline of her top stained with more blood than before, a sniff confirming that it is hers—I must have caught her off guard initially, landing a lunge and tearing into her neck with my fangs. Not me, but my inner Beast. Of course, no trace of the wound adorns her throat.
As the haze subsides I realize she speaks to me.
“Have you calmed, Oracle?” Her voice seems to come from nowhere and everywhere at once, echoing in the empty parking lot and causing my predator within to slink back into the recesses of my psyche.
“Get off me!” I snarl and she does, launching backwards with startling grace and maintaining the readied stance of a warrior a few feet from me.
I stand. She doesn’t speak for several moments, her posture relaxing; she looks on me as a mother who hopes she needn’t reprimand an errant toddler in the checkout line of the grocery store, coolly and expectantly.
“Tell me. Tell me how you did it. Tell me why,” I manage to choke out. I cannot say his name. His name rings in my ears with the same rhythm as the blood that has rushed there.
“We don’t have to do this now,” she offers.
“Tell me!” My shout fills the night, scaring his name from my veins.
“Ezekiel Winter made a choice that night. I merely carried out his wishes.”
“Liar!” I snarl again.
“I am a Valkyrie. He could have chosen to join the Honored Dead in Valhalla or he could have chosen to die forgotten. He spent most of his unlife searching for what stood before him in that moment. I won’t say his choice was easy, but it was his to make.”
“We hail from a line of warriors. The fight is in our blood. Our blood! He’d never roll over to die like a dog whose master abandoned him,” I spit. “If you are truly one of the Valkyries”—a flimsy argument borne of desperation, but I commit nonetheless—“why meddle? Why seek me out? Why—?”
“So the Seeker did share his research with his beloved?” Quinn proposes with a wry smile. “It is true that we rarely meddle in the affairs of others as we prepare for Ragnarok. I sought you out because you have a role in all of this—beyond what you know, beyond what you may ever truly understand. But above all, I promised Ezekiel.”
A promise, the sucker punch. My field of vision narrows, blackness tinging the edges and creeping like tendrils to obscure the back of the coffee shop, the parking lot, the woman standing with sword and shield before me as if we stepped out of some History Channel special—Quinn the Valkyrie, Quinn the Murderer, Quinn the Keeper of Secrets, of Promises, of Zeke’s Final Moment.
“He—he wouldn’t. He wouldn’t choose to leave me . . . ”
“Delilah, Ezekiel chose to join the Honored Dead in Valhalla, but he didn’t leave you. That’s why I’m here.”
“Take me to him.” The words take me by surprise but merely elicit a slow shake of the head from the Valkyrie.
“Do you know what it is you ask?”
I nod.
“His fate is not yours—but you, too, will face a difficult choice when the time comes.”
“Enough!” I spin on my heel and start for the back door of the co
ffee shop only to find Quinn falling quickly in step beside me.
“I can’t take you to where Ezekiel is—but I can take you to where it is you need to go,” she offers. I do not slow down. She sighs. “Where are you going?”
I stop, turning my head to glare at her.
“The Council of Keepers charged me with discovering Zeke’s murderer—which I have—so now I fulfill my obligation to my sect by tying up loose ends.” I take a step towards her. “Then I will seek you out. Whether it takes me weeks or decades or centuries, I will drain you of every last drop of your Lifeblood. In your Final Moment I will be the last person you see. My fangs in your neck will be the last thing you feel. You will remember his name and you will remember the choice you weren’t given. I will be your Ragnarok.”
“You could kill me now and it would be over—but that won’t bring him back.”
“Vengeance is its own reward. You will die when I choose,” I snarl, stepping towards her. “Until that moment I will be every creaky stair, every flicker of shadow, the thing that lurks inside you and never lets your inner Beast rest.”
I think of the moment I learned he’d died, and the endless stream of moments thereafter.
“Every night you will rise, exhausted, and think of me. Every sunrise you will fight to keep your eyes open so that your dead heart might keep its phantom metronome another moment longer.”
Had she merely honored his request? Did it matter? No. Ash is ash.
“You will forget this promise: when you die you will see my face.”
And when I die, I will see his. Just as I do every night I rise and every sunrise I return to slumber.
“Live knowing by whose hand your Final Moment will be delivered.”
“Be that as it may,” she sighs, “your beloved died a good death. And if I die by your hand, I will, too.” She falls in step with me again.
“What honor is there in a death you choose?” I challenge, her story of Zeke’s Final Moments still not making sense to me. Though I know less of the Valkyries than Zeke did, I poured over those notes as diligently after his death.
“Where else would honor dwell than in the bloodswell of an enemy?”
“But Zeke didn’t view you as an enemy.” The truth is, she—they, the Valkyries—might be the one thing he loved that rivaled his love for me. Not who they were, but what.
“You’re right. He didn’t—and I wish you wouldn’t. But every time a warrior enters battle they have decided how they will die. The battle Ezekiel fought that night wasn’t by combat; his decision wasn’t to die a physical death—nonetheless, he chose to die the moment he gave them Ismae the Bloody. Look, if I explain, everything will be undone. Don’t you see, Delilah? Everything unfolds as it must, as long as I do not meddle. You’ve vowed your revenge and I respect that you will honor that. For now, let me help you. Let me honor the promise I made,” she implores.
MY JAW ACHED FROM CLENCHING, MY HEART FROM grieving the unknown. Looking back, the fate I wished on Quinn mirrored my own from the moment the news of Zeke’s murder reached me until that moment when she confessed to it. Until then I flinched at every car backfiring, poured over shadows of clues that weren’t clues at all, chased feelings and hunches as though they might hold the key to unlocking the secret of my beloved’s death. In a way, I died every night upon awakening. The truth is, her confession delivered me from that purgatory in which I lived and relived his Final Moment as though it were my own.
A part of me, even in that moment, was grateful.
Of course, I’d never tell her this—not until I fulfilled my vow to her and brought her to her Final Moment. But that is a story for another time.
“I WAS WONDERING WHY I SUDDENLY HAD ACCESS TO your quarters,” Lydia says, taking a cross-legged seat on Kiley’s bed. The patterned coral bedspread in stark contrast to her rather drab signature style.
Kiley shrugs. “I convinced Victor that if your pack was going to be on security detail you might need it. He didn’t seem to want to grant access to that Pierce guy, or John—” she pauses a moment before struggling to continue. “I—I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—I just mean—”
Lydia shakes her head and offers a slight wave. “It is what it is. We’re not immortal and he had a good run.”
“Had a good run? Lydia, he was your packmate. You guys seemed kinda close, in a weird way, you fought like brother and sister the entire drive out here.”
“Well, aren’t you Ms. Observant?” Lydia retorts.
Kiley shrugs. “I observe. It’s what I do. People aren’t as interesting as they think they are. When it comes down to it, we have the same impulses, the same fears. The same responses to grief. Like, I see that you didn’t sleep,” she gestures, indicating Lydia’s puffy and red-rimmed eyes. “And I have no doubt that if Victor hadn’t granted the three of us sanctuary you’d have bitten Hunter’s head off—quite literally—when he asked you about giving him a tour last night.”
“I did sleep, actually. Sun goes up, vamps go down—no matter what. We can’t fight it. But—” she squirms, picking at a loose thread in the torn-out knee of her jeans. “But I guess not well. I mean, I was out, I couldn’t move, but I feel like I was up all day.”
“That’s grief,” Kiley murmurs.
“Yeah, I guess.”
“Tell me about him,” Kiley offers.
“What?” Lydia’s lip curls up in something like a sneer. “No—really, that’s unnecessary. Not much to say—you met him.” Her eyes dart to the ceiling, a signal that she’s lying which doesn’t go unnoticed by Kiley. “I’m fine. It’s not the first time I’ve lost someone I cared about. Pierce either. You can’t live almost forever without sweeping up some ash once in a while.”
“You know I can’t help but conveniently ask who . . . ”
Lydia sighs. “Yeah, I know. I guess this is how people bond or whatever.”
“You didn’t have to come tonight. I actually didn’t expect you to.”
“Yeah, me either. After last night it’s a nice change of pace, having some down time—Victor’s taken my pack’s security detail so we have time to mourn or whatever.”
Kiley’s features betray her as she attempts to hide a look of surprise. “Really?”
“Sure,” Lydia shrugs. “Most Praedari observe the Rite of Mourning when a packmate ashes. Whether he wants to grant us the time or not, he will—to keep up appearances.”
“That sounds political. So . . . have you?”
“Not yet. The pack hosts others for the rite and honestly it’s the furthest thing from my mind right now.”
“What has you distracted?”
“Revenge.”
Kiley offers a knowing nod. “It sounds like the rite would provide some closure.”
Lydia slumps to her side and stretches out her legs on the bed, grabbing a pillow to prop herself up with. “Aren’t you all wise all of a sudden, human.”
“I went to parochial school. Catholic parochial school. Most of our curriculum is about death.”
“Ashes to ashes, right?” Lydia quips.
“Is that really what happens when you die? You turn to ash like on TV?”
“Yep.”
“Have you ever killed anyone?” Kiley asks.
“Sure.”
“I mean vampires,” Kiley elaborates.
“Sure.”
“Why?”
“Lots of reasons,” she shrugs as if they’re discussing why someone might choose a Nissan over a Ford. “It’s frowned upon, though—at least, Praedari do not kill one another. If a Keeper starts with us all bets are off. It’s pretty brutal between our factions. ‘Survival of the fittest’ and all that.”
“So you’ve killed another vampire? A Keeper?” Kiley reaches under her pillow and pulls out her small black journal and a pen.
“You’re taking notes? Seriously?”
“You promised me interviews.”
“Fine,” Lydia sighs. “And I was a Keeper. But yes, I’ve killed them.
”
“Why?”
“Ugh, Kiley, we could go at this all night,” Lydia groans.
“Fine. What about the first time? Who, why?”
“Why are you so fascinated by this?”
“What else have I got to do?”
“I mean, about my story. I get why vampires are interesting.”
“I’m interested in who, not what,” Kiley says softly.
Lydia cocks her head to the side a moment before continuing. “I guess I owe you story time. I kidnapped you, after all. So, the one who Ushered me—made me a vampire—she was a Keeper. She was old even then and that was just a few decades ago. Keepers are like—you know what, it doesn’t matter. I’d be here all night explaining our screwed-up political system, but soon it won’t matter at all.”
“How did she make you?”
“You mean, like, biologically, scientifically, step-by-step how did she do it?”
“No, no, no—I change my question: why did she make you? You don’t look any older than me.”
“Because I’m charming?”
Kiley scowls.
“Rude!” Lydia throws a pillow at Kiley without much force. “Alright, alright—I came to work for her. I’d been bounced around foster homes and living on the street for as long as I could remember and her operation was going to be my last stop.”
“What kind of operation?”
“Recruitment. Anyway, she saved me from myself, I guess.”
“So you killed the one that made you?”
“What? No. You don’t live this long pickin’ fights you won’t win. She’s scary—but she made others, too, and we all lived together for a while. I grew really close to another woman who happened to be Temperance’s favorite pupil. She was my best friend.”