War of the Chosen

by Elizabeth Dunlap

  Knight ran a hand through his hair and looked at me. “Crazy is going crazy. We should probably…” He stopped mid-sentence, froze, and grabbed my shoulder in a death grip. “Pizza.”

  I looked around at the city around us. “What?”

  “PIZZA!” He reached his large arm in front of my face, effectively blocking my view of the road. I looked over at where he was pointing: a building with the words ‘Pizzeria Bathory’ in gothic font.

  Oh god. Was this a tourist town devoted to the mother of a crazy person, who in and of herself was also a crazy person?

  It was.

  Staring at me when we walked into the pizzeria door was a large painting of the Countess. Her eyes stared at me no matter where I moved.

  “Relative of yours?” Knight joked. Blood drinking jokes. Fancy.

  Lucas walked up to the painting and spoke some sweet words before planting a finger kiss to the painting’s lips. He looked back at me with a happy smile.

  “Lisbeth, come. Meet the countess.”

  I approached the painting with caution. I’d initially thought her eyes were creepy, but now that I saw them up close…

  Lucas smiled at me, and back at the painting. “She was much prettier in real life. She had a class to her. She was a stately lady. I miss her.”

  Those eyes… did I have… a memory of them? No. That was impossible. I stepped away from the painting to a respectable distance.

  “Nice to meet you, Countess,” I told her. Lucas clapped his hands in joy at me meeting a painting.

  “I was promised pizza,” Knight said right behind me. He plunked his chin onto my head and stared at the painting too. “She’s creepy.”

  Lucas deflated. “You’re creepy.”

  Knight laughed and held out a fist. “Solid insult. You’re learning.” Lucas hesitated, but like his puppy personality suggested, he loved fun. He fist bumped his enemy.

  A waiter walked up and spoke in the language Lucas had been speaking in the car. Lucas answered back smoothly and motioned for us to find a table.

  “Good thing we have a native speaker,” Knight said, sitting down next to me. I scooted away nonchalantly. “I’m surprised you don’t speak the language, Lis. Isn’t that like, vampire 101? Learn to speak Romanian so you can get your vampire badge.”

  Lucas looked upset for some reason. “She has never been here. She is not from here. Do not speak of what you do not know, peasant dog.”

  I grabbed Lucas’s collar and pulled him as close to my face as possible without giving the impression I was going to kiss him. “Don’t ever speak to him like that.” Lucas gulped and his eyes grew wide in fear. “And I am from here. Transylvania at least, not here here. I was born here, but I was raised in England as an orphan of the Order.”

  “Who told you this? Who said you were from Transylvania?” Now Lucas looked offended. This guy had more moods than a mood ring.

  “Balthazar,” I answered. “Tall, gorgeous, amazing hair.”

  “Humph, I know of Balthazar.” He muttered several curse words under his breath. Then he said, “stupid little scheisse can’t keep his mouth shut” in German.

  I let Lucas go and responded also in German. “Why is the father of my child a scheisse?”

  Engrossed, he responded, still in German. “He swore on his life, on his soul, to the Countess to keep the secret. He swore…” Lucas’s face went blank as something I’d said sunk in. “You… had a child with Balthazar?” Then he laughed the biggest belly laugh I’d ever heard, slapping his hand on the table so hard I thought it would break in half.

  “What’s so funny?” Knight asked with his mouth full of breadstick. I shrugged.

  Lucas was still laughing when the food came, and he managed to eat around the chuckles. By the time we were finished, the napkins had all been used to wipe his eyes from the tears.

  “I wish I spoke a different language so we could have secret conversations,” Knight told me after he’d sat back in his chair.

  “What would you say?” I asked him curiously. “I don’t think our friend is listening.” And he wasn’t. He was still laughing.

  Knight glanced at Lucas, and leaned into me. “I’d say that…” He reached a hand up and stroked my earlobe, making me shiver against my will. “I’m glad you’re not dead.”

  My breath was fast, my face was heating, and I wanted to cry. “You thought I was dead?” He nodded, and his hand moved to rest on my neck, the perfect position to pull me in for a kiss.

  A kiss I wanted so badly, and didn’t deserve.

  “Hey!” Lucas shouted. “You will keep your hands to yourself, sir.” He shook a finger at Knight like a scolding parent.

  Knight looked like he was about to give Lucas the finger. “Romance police.”

  I pulled Knight’s hand away from my neck and stood up. “We umm… we should get going.” Knight sighed and stood up as well. “Lucas,” I addressed. He smiled at me with as much seriousness as he could muster. “We need you to tell us where Anastasia is.”

  In lieu of an answer, Lucas walked outside and started trekking down the street. Knight and I followed close behind, ready to bolt if he took off.

  “You can find him again, right?” I asked in a whisper.

  “I’ve smelled both his blood and his scent. I’ll never not be able to find him,” Knight assured me.

  Lucas bobbed and weaved through the small town, going over fences, and under bridges, even back tracking a few times like he was trying to confuse anyone following him. If there were humans or vampires following us, Knight and I would’ve known, but we played along with Lucas’s games.

  It was almost time for dinner when Lucas finally stopped at one of the houses. It was small and the white paint was starting to fade. There were flowers in the garden and all the window boxes.

  “This is her?” I confirmed, and Lucas nodded. Finally. I’d get some answers. I’d find out if Anastasia was a hybrid, and if she was, if my daughter was destined to repeat her carnage. I gulped slightly and the door to the cheerful house grew smaller and smaller. Knight took my hand to steady me.

  “It’s okay,” he soothed in his gentle voice.

  “I’m so scared,” I admitted quietly, and moved closer to Knight so I could be further from the door. “I know I don’t deserve a hug from you, but…” He wrapped me in his arms before I could finish asking, and I hugged him back for a few precious moments. I let myself pretend that we could be together again. It soothed me enough that I pulled away and took his hand again. Lucas was still waiting at the door, looking bashful for some reason as he scratched his ear. “I’m ready,” I told him.

  Lucas knocked on the door and we waited for the answer with baited breath. A few seconds passed with no noise from inside, until we heard footsteps coming from the middle of the house. It sounded light, like a woman’s, and she shuffled like she was wearing slippers. I focused on the sound and held my breath when the door handle clicked, the door opening.

  A blonde woman stood in the doorway wearing a simple black dress with a faded white apron. Blonde? Anastasia wasn’t blonde. She had raven black hair. James’s journal was very clear about that detail. The woman looked at Knight and me, and then saw Lucas. Her face lit up with a gentle smile. I noticed the color of her eyes was the same purple as mine. That was weird.

  “Lucas,” she said, holding her hand out to him. He took it and kissed it tenderly.

  “Clara” he breathed against her skin, almost like a prayer.

  Clara? Who was Clara?

  I stepped forward, pulling Knight with me. “You’re not Anastasia?” She looked up at us and took her hand back from Lucas kissing it. “We came here to see Anastasia.”

  Clara was staring at me like she’d seen a ghost. She stepped off the single stair without looking down and came closer to me. “Who are you?” she asked me. Her chin turned with slight caution.

  Lucas wiggled his hand at me. “Show her the photo. Your child. Show her.”

  I obeyed,
confused, and handed Clara the photo of Kitty. She gasped and stared at it, back at me, to Lucas, and back to the photo.

  “It cannot be,” she breathed.

  “What’s happening?” Knight said very close to my ear, so close that only I could hear him. I shrugged in genuine confusion. Why were they so focused on the photo of Kitty? Was it apparent she was a hybrid? Maybe they were afraid of her.

  Lucas touched Clara’s shoulder. “Where is she? I can’t hear her heartbeat.” I hadn’t thought to see if there was more than one heartbeat in the house, but I also could feel no other person here.

  Clara handed me the photo back. “Anastasia is at the tower. She goes there sometimes when I’m gone at the market. I’ll take you to her. By you, I mean Elisabeth.” She pointed to me.

  What. “How did you know my name?” Lucas hadn’t said my name to her. Did he tell her when he sent her a message asking where Anastasia was?

  “You didn’t tell her?” Clara reproached in Lucas’s direction. He flinched.

  “I wanted Anastasia to tell her.” He tried to pet Clara’s arm in apology, but she pulled away in anger.

  “I can’t with you today. Go inside with the boy. We’ll be back.”

  Knight squeezed my hand, kissed my forehead, and went inside Clara’s house with Lucas. Clara grabbed a shawl from inside and wrapped it around herself after shutting the door. She stared at me with a mournful look.

  “It’s time for you to meet Anastasia.”

  CHAPTER 12

  “Elisabeth, this is your mother, Anastasia Bathory.”

  That was the moment where this story really began, the moment when I had searched the world to find answers for my daughter, and instead I discovered the answer to the question I’d wondered my entire life.

  Who was my mother?

  The answer was simple, it was the dead woman in front of me, the one who had not moved since we’d stepped across the broken floor to the edge of the crumbling tower.

  It was also then that I realized my quest for answers about Kitty had failed, just like Castilla predicted. If I was Anastasia’s daughter, then she wasn’t a hybrid. Now I had no way to know what my daughter would become, but in a way, at least I could say there wasn’t a certainty she would become a psycho vampire killer. Maybe. And now that I measured that thought, I felt a sense of relief on that aspect. I’d convinced myself that Anastasia was probably a hybrid, and now that proof had been false. She was just a psychopath who murdered almost every vampire and Lycan in existence.

  And she was my mom.

  Clara had taken my stunned silence a different way, so she left me to process the news of my parentage and was trying to coax Anastasia to stand up. Then I realized I’d just believed her without question.

  “How do you know she’s my mother?” I asked Clara skeptically.

  Clara looked surprised, like she didn’t realize I wouldn’t just simply believe her. “It was the photograph, the one of your child. She looks exactly like you did when you were born, and Anastasia, and our mother. You all looked the same. There are portraits of each of us as babies, and I saw them often enough for them to be burned into my memory. You are the daughter of the house of Bathory, I swear it. Plus, there’s this.” She put a finger up to her eyes that were the same shade as mine. “And you know Balthazar, the incubus that mother made swear to protect you. I have no doubts of who you are. None.” She stooped to stroke at Anastasia’s cheek to try and rouse her.

  “Let me,” I offered. I picked my mother…no. That was so weird. I picked Anastasia up and carried her out of the room on the unstable floor, out the tower, and down the wooden tourist stairs. Clara was right behind me, holding a pair of shoes she’d found in one of the passages, Anastasia’s I guessed.

  “Lucky the site is closed,” she said, out of breath from trying to keep up with me. “Sometimes she comes in the daytime in front of all the tourists. That’s always horrid. They take pictures, they put it on the internet, and it gets messy.”

  “Funny, I’ve never heard of the creepy lady in Bathory-ville.” I jumped off a small ledge and Anastasia made a small noise in my arms. Her face was still blank when I checked it.

  Clara caught up and bent over with a wheeze. “You think I’d be in shape after chasing her for all these years. Vampires walk so fast. One second, please.” She breathed in and out and bent backwards to crack her spine. “Anastasia is rarely lucid. The only times I can get her to respond is when the humans are threatening our safety. She can command them with a single word. A flick of her finger. It’s terrifying sometimes, but its effective. One word and the humans delete the photos and never speak a word of it again. It’s how we’ve lived here for so long and no one notices us. Anastasia’s power blankets their perception.”

  I’d never heard of such power. Did she binge? If she binged blood all day, I still wasn’t sure she could have that kind of power. It seemed effortless, from Clara’s descriptions.

  “How can she be that powerful?” I pondered out loud.

  “There are many stories to tell today,” was Clara’s answer. She pulled up the hem of her dress and started walking again. “Come. The men are waiting.”

  I slowed my pace so Clara wouldn’t have to jog to keep up with me, but I didn’t want to. I wanted to put this creature down as fast as possible. Even in my thoughts, I couldn’t accept that she was my mother. Every molecule in my body rejected that reality. Plus she smelled horrible.

  Finally, we made it back just as the sun was setting, and Clara threw the door of her cottage open for me. I stepped inside and searched for Knight. I needed to see him. I needed his strength. He was standing in the kitchen next to an open window, the sunset casting a light on his face, and I felt myself break inside when I saw him.

  Lucas stood from the rocker he was sitting in, and he looked from my face to Clara’s. “And now you know?” I nodded. “Everything?” he asked, glancing at Clara. She shook her head. He nodded back, and stepped forward with his arms out. “I’ll take Anastasia.”

  I pulled away, for no reason, and held her closer like my broken dolly I didn’t want anyone to take away. “No,” I said before I could stop myself. Instantly feeling foolish, I bowed my head so no one could see my face, and walked to place Anastasia on the rug in front of the fire. Clara had come closer to tend to Anastasia, like her little wounded puppy, so I asked her where the bathroom was. She motioned in the direction of one of the doors, and gripped Anastasia’s hand, speaking to her in Romanian, in a gentle soothing tone that had no effect on the woman.

  Knight’s hand stopped me from backing away from the scene, and he slowly guided me to the bathroom. My last image before he closed the door was Lucas standing in the corner watching the two woman on the rug.

  Behind the privacy of the closed door, I couldn’t speak, I couldn’t think, I couldn’t anything. I was as frozen as Anastasia, and when Knight pulled me against him, I was powerless to stop him. At that point, I didn’t care anymore. If I could have time with Knight, even a few moments, I was going to take it. When the day came that I would never see him again, I wanted something to remember.

  This wasn’t like the night with Balthazar. This was different in entirely different ways, and I definitely wouldn’t regret a second of it after the fact.

  I pulled away from Knight, I stared into his deep brown eyes, and I kissed him on those lips that haunted my dreams. Suddenly, I didn’t care that this cottage probably had paper thin walls, and there were three people on the other side, one of which was my…mother (still no). All I cared about was my sweet precious Knight.

  “Lis,” Knight said between kisses. My passion for him rose and I deepened the gentle assault on his mouth, silencing all protests. He picked me up mid-kiss and slid me onto the small bathroom counter, knocking over several bottles of product. His hands moved to my waist and he roughly pulled me flush against him. I responded with a deep growl and pulled away from his lips to show him my eyes starting to glow in excitement. He breathe
d heavily and swore, then captured my lips again in a hurried fever.

  When I reached for the edge of his shirt, he swore again, and moved his hands to stop me. I felt instant shame, like I’d forced him into something he didn’t want. The glow I’d been feeling was shattered.

  “Lis,” he said again, before he saw my mortified expression. “Woah, no. No.” He kissed me again with the heated passion we’d just shared. “That wasn’t a, get your hands off me, crazy. That was a, I don’t want to go further with your parents in the other room.”

  More kisses, less protests, I thought as I pulled him in for another long kiss. I was about to start for the shirt again before I realized what Knight had said.

  Parents.

  As in two parents.

  As in.

  Mother. And father.

  Knight stepped away a little when he saw the rage building on my face. “Lis. Lis, calm down.”

  I jumped down from the sink, ripped the bathroom door open so hard I almost tore it off the hinges, and I didn’t stop marching until I had Lucas against the wall with my hand around his throat.

  “You scheming lying little pig!” I said through clenched teeth.

  “Elisabeth, please,” Clara shouted. I felt her hands try to remove mine from Lucas’s neck, but she had the strength of a human and couldn’t even budge my pinkie.

  “I got it,” Knight said, his voice right over my head. His hand covered mine and slowly uncurled it from Lucas’s throat while his other hand tightened around my waist, pulling me away.

  Lucas coughed a few times and simpered at me. “Ungrateful child. I bring you here against my better judgement and you try to kill me.”

  “When were you going to mention that you’re my father? Or do you only tell other people that little tidbit? Equally important, how long has Knight known?”

  “Lis, come on, he literally just told me,” Knight pleaded. “You know I would’ve told you if he’d said it sooner.”

  “Which is precisely why I didn’t until now,” Lucas said with a cough. “I knew his loyalty was only to you. I kept everything close to the chest to protect both of you, but also to protect Anastasia and Clara. What if the other vampires had found us and you had known everything? I had to choose protection over knowledge. Also, yes. I am your father, and I love you. Not telling you was very difficult, so don’t try and make me feel worse about this. And what about you?” He turned on Clara, who looked surprised. “You didn’t tell her you’re her mother’s twin.”