by Emma Glass
“It’s too late now!” The woman snapped, her lips frothing with spittle. Her clenched fingers tightened their grasp on me. “Don’t you get it, child? Don’t you understand? Two hours more is all that I needed! Maybe less! But you’ve tainted it, just by being here!”
Her face loomed closer.
“But perhaps I can use you still…” A contorted grin crossed the creases of her old, withered face. “Perhaps I can still set right what you have so easily ruined… Clara Blackwell…”
“How do you know my name?”
Surprising even myself, I yanked my arm free from her grasp. Before she could respond, I turned and bolted. Her surprise wouldn’t last long enough for me to hang around for an answer… No matter how the old, disgusting hag caught up to me so quickly before, I knew this was my one and only chance to escape her clutches.
Just a few more steps, and I cleared the dock’s wooden stairs. Behind me, a powerful roar left her lungs as I turned my footing to race along the side of the lake.
The nightmare rose up from my memories in startling flashes. For once, I thought to pinch myself awake, but the pain was all too real.
All alone…
Racing for my life…
Can’t turn back or I’ll die…
This time, there was no dark hero to save me. Just like in the nightmare, my instincts told me that which I could not explain: if my pursuer caught me, nobody would ever see me again.
Her hoarse voice thundered from behind; the old woman was chasing me now and gaining fast. “Don’t you dare run from me, Clara Blackwell!”
The dream…
Something felt significant about it.
Try as I might, I couldn’t push the distraction away. The memory had always terrified me, but not this time. Now, it felt like a…
Like a warning?
Another flash filled my mind: kicking dust out from beneath my shoes at the cliff’s edge, as the roaring waves below awaited me under bright moonlight. In the distance, that island patiently awaited me. Salvation was over there, but it was always so far away…
The memory passed, leaving me alone in the present with a mad gypsy woman in hot pursuit. I ran, shuddering with the intensity of its warning.
No, not a warning, I realized.
A solution.
My eyes glanced at the huge lake to my side. Once I knew what to do, my pounding feet almost reacted without me. I thought I felt her raspy breathing down my neck as I twisted to the left; I ran two hard strides and cleared the overgrown weeds for the water, pulling my feet up as I curled into a cannonball.
“No!” Behind me, the woman descended into an anguished scream. Her shrill fury was enough to make the Heavens tremble in panic. “Clara, what have you done?!”
And that’s when the incredible happened.
Defying logic, water never touched my skin. As I crashed down against the lake’s surface, the water transformed into a wild, endless sea of swirling lights and shifting colors.
I found myself plummeting without fear, lost to the overwhelming power of a dream-like abyss. Stars shot past; waves of color I could only barely comprehend surrounded me. It felt like entire galaxies were rising and collapsing before me. Reaching out to my sides with both hands, I was mesmerized at the way my outstretched fingers brushed glowing trails in this cosmic void.
There was no panic. There was no fear. As the void cradled me in my beautiful descent, it bathed me in a serenity I had never known. My mind was cleared and filled with wonders as impossible beauty rose and fell before me. All along, my troubles melted far, far away. The passage of time here meant nothing to me; I’d been falling for seconds, maybe centuries.
Everything here began to grow brighter. My clothes whipped around me; I shielded my eyes from the blinding light. It steadily grew in power, threatening to overwhelm me forever…
4
Elliott
My disinterested eyes snapped to full attention in a second’s notice. I sat up straight in my throne, spurred from deep within my apathetic haze.
I did not recognize this sensation.
At a glance, the throne room was clearer now. It shone radiantly with its gilded décor and lavish tapestries. I had become abruptly aware of small details about this familiar hall – details that had not interested me in centuries, if ever.
Despite the mysterious suddenness of it all, I might have even paused to enjoy this renewed awareness – had it not been for the incessantly annoying voice of my guest.
“The uprisings in the east are being quelled as we speak, my lord,” Silas babbled on, clearly ignorant to whatever had overcome me. “I expect news within the week that the ungrateful rebels have been summarily dealt with…”
I glanced at my high chancellor in disbelief.
You’re significantly older than me, Silas. Am I mad? How do you not notice this?
While the thin, withering old man prattled on for a few minutes longer, my mind was occupied with this sensation. It struck me hard, sharp as being yanked awake by a cold pail of icy water. What bothered me most was that there was something to it that felt familiar, somehow.
“…Mining operations, successful as usual. I’d expect no less out of our best and brightest. It’s true, however, that our chrysm numbers are still slipping, but… my Lord?”
My eyes narrowed in suspicion.
“Do you not feel that, Silas?”
The high chancellor politely held back a very clear sign of exasperation. It was a face I’d come to expect from him. “Feel what, my Lord?”
Scanning the throne room with a sweeping gaze, I saw nothing out of the ordinary. Suited for combat and attentively standing nearby, two to either side, were four knights of the royal guard. These were members of the most proven warriors in my entire kingdom. None of them had spotted anything unusual, although they quickly began to uneasily follow my lead.
Silas awaited my answer. He folded his robed arms as his patience began to visibly falter. Hundreds of years my senior or otherwise, the old man knew better than to repeat himself to me.
“I can’t find the right words to describe it,” I finally admitted in annoyance. “But I can feel it… in the back of my mind… something is wrong.”
The royal guards stood tensely. They knew that their superiors would gravely punish them if I noticed a mounting threat before them. But it certainly didn’t feel like a threat. If anything, it felt like… prey.
That was it, I realized. I understood why this odd feeling was so bloody familiar. It’s bloodlust… but like no bloodlust that I have ever felt.
Silas quietly watched me for a moment before letting out a displeased sigh. “My Lord, you are surrounded by guards that clearly sense nothing. I understand that tending to your duties must be frustrating, but we have much more pressing matters to attend to than this little charade…”
At the scathing look I gave him, the esteemed high chancellor abandoned that train of thought. “...Perhaps it is better if I allow Your Majesty to rest, and pursue these matters later in the day.”
I grinned bitterly. “That would be best.”
“Wisdom be to thee,” he spoke the traditional parting words of a royal courtier with a bow, then turned on his heel and walked down the crimson, gilded rug that stretched from my feet to the gate across the throne room.
Without the distraction of his ramblings, I was able to properly concentrate on the creeping sensation in the back of my mind. Like a widening bed of grasping tendrils, it grew from a soiled seed, yearning for more dominance. I drove back the feeling with authority, refusing to dwell on this strange, unexplained bloodlust – no matter how much it aroused my attention.
Lazily, I took in the throne room once more.
It had been less than a year since my mother suddenly abdicated the throne, citing a lack of interest in her position of authority and a desire to “pass the torch.” Of course, that was a complete lie. Although she had never admitted it to me, I sensed something else in her surprise cha
nge of heart, and I didn’t like it.
Neither did her subjects.
I was an unfit ruler, and we all knew it.
The vampire lord of Stonehold had ruled her kingdom for over five hundred years, overseeing one of the most prosperous eras in its history. Beneath her ever-watchful eye, this hold began an era of enlightenment spanning centuries as it swept the entire world into a new age.
Our discovery of rich chrysm mines jumped vampire society hundreds of years forward. All of a sudden, the latest advancements of our greatest minds were no longer idealistic dreams that were stunted by lack of resources… they were practical.
We were a separated world no longer.
Thousands of kilometers had separated the ruling families of the Eight Holds of Earth for millennia. The sheer distance between holds had kept communication and trade to a limit. Before, it took our fastest, most durable couriers over a week simply to reach the castles of our closest neighbors, and that was if they survived the dangerous wildlife along the way.
Countless, pointless wars had been fought over misunderstandings and petty trivialities, and the relatively low global population made every last vampire death a twist of the knife.
But that all changed with the chrysm…
I rose silently from my seat.
There was no point in staying in this chamber and dwelling on the past, and my backside was already numb from the throne. I made a mental note to summon a capable crafter to reverse the complete lack of comfort in that accursed chair.
To my annoyance, the bloodlust remained.
Casting a glowering look at the royal guards, I watched them dutifully straighten their posture. None of them appeared to have any signs of the looming discomfort I felt.
Why is everyone else oblivious to this?
“Is everything at ease, my Lord?”
The closest guard turned to me. He was one of my favorites – a cheerful, confident knight by the name of Wilhelm, and the latest of a deeply loyal vampire clan. The sons and daughters of the Nettleshire family had served honorably in the Stonehold royal guard for millennia.
“No,” I answered honestly.
His usually unfailing grin wavered slightly. “How can I serve, Lord Elliott?”
The words amused me. That was the routine answer given when a knight was at a complete loss of what to do in the company of a noble.
“Accompany me, all of you,” I ordered.
As I walked around the back wall behind the throne, the royal guards fell into step at my rear. Tucked away in the dark recess was a short-range teleportation node, one of many in the castle.
I needed guidance.
We stepped into the crimson glimmer of the circle, bathed in swirling chrysm. After a few quick seconds of brightening red light, we blinked across the stronghold…
After a brief pass through the subterranean portal hub, I arrived at my destination.
The four royal guards dutifully followed as I stepped down off the glowing portal into the deepest levels of the castle library. My nocturnal eyes easily adjusted to the darkness of these old, musty chambers; they scanned along the edges of every bookshelf within sight.
I had always liked Sebastian.
He meticulously kept an organized library.
A quick gust of wind whipped to a pause in front of me. The Sage of Stonehold gave a polite bow from within his heavy robes, the color of the leaves on our darkest trees.
“My lord,” the elder vampire spoke with polite sincerity, “what brings you to my lair?”
Never once, not since I was a young child, had Sebastian treated me with any less than complete respect. He had always spoken to me as if we were intellectual equals, gently nudging me towards the right answers to matters of philosophy, logic, and morality.
The fact that he was the ancient, appointed guardian of our kingdom’s most forbidden tomes and sacred secrets forced me to offer him a level of deference reserved for very few of my subjects.
But those feelings were stronger than that. My sage’s lifelong commitment to treating me as something approaching an intellectual equal, no matter how differently we both knew otherwise, made me not only respect him, but admire him. It gave his wisdom a weight I made a point to never underestimate.
“I ask for your expertise,” I answered.
Sebastian smiled. “How may I serve?”
By now, I’d had the time to put my thoughts into proper words. “Something troubles me,” I spoke confidently. “It’s an unusual sensation, one that I’ve never felt before. Nobody else seems aware of it at all. I feel a danger and bloodlust that I can barely describe. It spurs me to action, but I don’t know what to do.”
The sage nodded thoughtfully to himself, turning away. “Ah, yes. I suspected as such.”
“Oh?” That piqued my curiosity.
“Allow me a guess: this feeling struck you less than, say, half an hour ago. Correct?” With one look at my face, he smiled again. “You were not the only one. Her Royal Highness is here as well. Come, my lord.”
Mother is here?
I shoved that thought aside and walked with him across the library, my knights right at our heels. Staircases rose and fell, corners twisted and turned, and within minutes we had stopped in his private study.
He hadn’t lied. Seated comfortably, Lorelei Craven set her teacup and saucer down on the end table and rose from her armchair at our arrival.
The many years had been kind to the former vampire lord of Stonehold. From behind her dark, flowing curls and radiant green eyes, the woman didn’t look a single day over four hundred.
“I’ve been expecting you, Elliott.”
“Happy to oblige,” I remarked apathetically. It took a moment for the implications to truly dawn on me. “Mother… you feel it too, don’t you?”
She laughed. “You act surprised.”
“I don’t think I understand.”
My mother glanced over my shoulder to the royal guards. “Excuse us.”
Their undying reverence for Lorelei caused them to obey her every order without question, even Wilhelm. I would have been annoyed had I not held her to a level of respect. Then again, I had mixed feelings at the beloved ruler’s swelling disinterest – not to mention how carelessly she dropped the responsibility of running an entire kingdom into my unprepared lap.
Once only the sage and us remained, Lorelei gazed upon me with maternal superiority. “One day, you will finally heed my words…”
I knew the next words out of her mouth as she began her tired old spiel once again. “Elliott, I am progeny of the Sanguine Ones. As my son, their blood runs in your veins.”
“Mother, the Sanguine Ones are creatures of myth,” I replied patiently but coolly. “The First Great Vampire War, the Cataclysm… there has never been any proof to any of it. I think I’ll never figure out why you so desperately cling to those old stories.”
As usual, Lorelei was unfazed. “The Sanguine Ones are the ancestors of all sitting vampire lords, the bloodlines that rule our world. The stories are all true, Elliott,” she smiled serenely. “I know this in my heart.”
I hated it when she started speaking of faith. For all of her wisdom, this was her weakness: always hearsay, never proof. If our kind had relied purely on faith, we would still be clawing at each other’s throats and scrambling for fresh blood in the untamed wilds.
“Fables and nothing more,” I insisted.
“Then explain this feeling that only you and I possess,” she countered patiently. I had to admit that she had me there. “It’s hunger, isn’t it? You can’t explain it, but it’s an unfamiliar hunger…”
“Yes,” I agreed cautiously.
“Sebastian has a theory,” she turned to our sage, already buried in an ancient text. “Though knowing you, I expect that you’ll scoff…”
I crossed my arms. “Enlighten me.”
The sage lifted his gaze, hesitating. He knew I valued his opinion, but he also understood how little I tolerated speculat
ion without evidence. The world did not run off of blind belief; all of our greatest advances were based in science and logic, and I would not let my feelings cloud my already shaky grip on how to rule my people.
“From what Her Royal Highness explained to me before you arrived,” he chose his words with delicate care and grace, “I deeply suspect that the impossible has happened…”
My eyebrows rose.
“…There is a human in the castle.”
I was blindsided with laughter.
The last thing I intended was to show a lack of respect to the most knowledgeable, well-read member of the castle, but this was preposterous. I was surprised that he’d even entertain the notion.
“A human?” I turned to Lorelei. “First, you spoon-feed me your classic take on our imaginary ancestors, and now you expect me to believe that a human has waltzed undetected into the castle?”
“It makes sense,” she shrugged apathetically.
“No it doesn’t!” I exasperatedly threw my hands in the air. “Do you two even dare to listen to yourselves, or am I the only sane one here? Humans don’t exist! There’s no evidence that they have ever existed!”
They shared a contemplative glance.
“Legend states that the Sanguine Ones came from a mythical time before humans became extinct,” my mother ignored my outburst. “If it’s true that one has appeared here… could it be possible that the bloodline remembers?”
Sebastian stroked his beard. “Even within this library, most of this knowledge is lost to the ages. I will have to consult the tomes. I wonder if any of the other holds have more accurate details, but I fear what they’d do with that information…”
“I am not willing to have this conversation,” I grunted in annoyance. “I do not entertain stories told to children.”
“My Lord,” the sage turned to me. “Remember that there is no hysteria in the castle. Whatever this sensation is you experience, only you and Her Highness feel it. I find myself unaware of other explanations…” He carefully looked me in the eye. “If these suspicions are correct, then this human visitor could be in grave peril. You should give out an immediate order before the creature is found.”