by Ash Krafton
"Leave her alone," said Jared. He sounded sleepy, distracted. "Leave Sophie go, or else."
"Or else what? There's only one thing you're going to do, priest. You will die." Still-Heart backed away with a bow. "Horribly, painfully, agonizingly, at the hands of this beast, who, ironically, was also our dear Sophie's lover."
Still-Heart mounted the steps backwards as Marek advanced, rumbling deep in his throat, a lion warning its prey of its imminent end. "Jealous lover, it seems. Your soul will cleave the skies with the terror of your passing. Your god has forsaken you, priest. Marek will not grant you a peaceful death."
His words trailed off into gloating laughter. Frantically I called Jared's name and he turned to me, calmly, his mouth silently forming one word.
Infinity.
Marek fell upon him. Bones cracked in Marek's savage grasp.
"No, Marek!" I screamed. This would be a slaughter in the truest sense of the word. My lover would kill my best friend. "Marek! Stop! Don't do this!"
The panic, the horror, the emotional overload ripped away whatever insulation I kept wrapped around the core where Sophia slept. No limits. No barriers. Sophia uncurled itself and drenched my mind in cold honey.
I could feel Jared as clear as crystal. He'd resigned himself to death.
Marek's mind was a tangle of blind rage. He knew blood was near and wanted it. He'd lost all sense of who he was, lost in the maelstrom of the deaths he'd endured at Still-Heart's hands.
I summoned all I'd ever felt for him—my love, my gratitude, my longing to save him, my need to bring him to spiritual safety. I crumpled it together, clumsily flinging it at him like a mental rock. "Marek! Resist him!"
The clumsy rock worked, stunning him. He withdrew from Jared, who fought to hold up his head. His knees buckled and only Marek's grip kept him from crumbling. I couldn't see Jared's face but I knew he still lived. The Sophia sensed his weakened presence, his emotions tangled with bewilderment.
Marek took a step back, shaking his head, holding Jared out at arm's length. "No. I... will... not." His voice was desperate and weary but I felt his iron-clad will behind the words. Marek fought the tide of evolution that threatened to crush him.
Enraged, Still-Heart glided from his dais, the movement much faster and more menacing than footsteps. It reinforced the fact that Still-Heart was a monster, no matter how ethereal he looked. The vampire seized both men and pushed his face close to Marek's, who bowed his head away. "You will. And you will turn, Thurzo. With this death, I command it!"
Jerking Jared's sagging frame toward him, the vampire closed on his wounded throat. The priest's arms jerked once, twice, before falling limp and still.
Sinking to his knees, spine bent and head thrown back, Marek echoed my screams. Jared's limp body hung from the vampire's arms before dropping to the ground. I stretched out with the Sophia and felt only Marek.
Jared was dead. I closed my eyes against hot tears. My fault.
Sudden silence made me wary but I didn't want to see anymore. I cracked my eyes and fought to focus on the slate ceiling.
I didn't want to see the body in black, crumpled on the floor like a used bath towel. I didn't want to see Still-Heart wiping his mouth with the back of his hand like a greedy kid. I didn't want to see Marek regarding me with a new strange interest in his eyes. He sobbed for breath and shook his head as he warred with himself and struggled to keep his soul.
Jared's soul was somewhere safe. Grief would have to wait. For Marek, there were no guarantees. I was the only salvation he had left. I had to focus.
I prayed Jared had died at peace with himself. The chance remained his death wouldn't have changed Marek, wouldn't have given him the energy he needed to evolve. Jared had never been afraid to die. He said infinity, whispered it like a protective spell the way he did as a teenager. He remembered. He wasn't afraid.
Please, God, I prayed desperately, spare Marek from his fate. Forgive him. He doesn't know what he's doing.
I'd become the new focus of attention. Everyone watched me, their dead eyes glinting in the uncertain light. The only sound was Still-Heart panting and laughing softly, awash with blood. His stare penetrated me, pushed past my resistance, probed my possibilities.
He watched me but spoke to Marek in a whisper, his voice fluid and hypnotic. "Yes, that's it. I feel it too, what you want. Take her. Finish this."
Marek's eyes flashed as he licked his lips.
"Infinity," I whispered and prayed I'd be brave enough, too.
Marek stalked toward me, coldly evaluating me as he approached. Nothing about his eyes looked familiar. There was no restraint in him. He'd plunged past reason. The torture of soul-ripping power buzzed in his head and drowned out thought. The Sophia was still bared, hypersensitive, and the menace of his intentions scourged me.
He didn't know me anymore, despite the nights we shared and the countless ways he'd discovered me. Marek had come to know me better than anyone else, had shared my own skin, had revealed the incredible secrets of my own spirit to me.
And now, he didn't know me.
A hundred memories flashed through my mind, all the times I had felt the danger he held back like a mighty dam. Now, the flood gates were thrown open. No more holding back. As he paced closer, closer, too close, I knew. Fear surged through me like the bite of an electric current, my desperate prayers forgotten.
He dropped onto me like an animal, devoid of reason and recognition. His arms circled my ribs and crushed me against him. A terrified scream ripped from my throat and he drank it in, smiling, pinning me against the wall. Ragged gasps for air made his chest heave against mine and his heart pounded like a machine.
His face hovered over my body, smelling the blood coating innumerable small hurts. His other hand palmed my forehead, pushing it into the wall hard enough to dim my sight. Lips brushed my throat once and I swallowed his scent, leather and sandalwood, dirt and blood.
His jaws closed on me.
The pain—indescribable. I'd never been bitten before, not even by an animal. His teeth ripped into me, tearing skin and vein, and his mouth worked against the wound. His hair lay between my jaw and his, and he pulled my blood from me with a savage, hungry sound.
Marek used all of his body to hurt me. The pain that responded to the fire of his mouth unstrung my thoughts and pushed me all the way past sanity.
There is nothing seductive about a vampire's kiss. All the books and movies had lied. I fought to escape him, fought to be free of him. I kicked because my legs were the only things that could still move. I fought to get past the pain.
How can you get past so much pain all at once? He's dead, for Chrissakes. I could never get past that.
Marek's hand released my head and slipped up along my arm to my wrist, jerking it free from the manacle, stripping away the skin when the metal didn't yield. His mouth lifted and I cried, begging him for release, begging him to remember me. My other arm slid from its cuff as he used his power to free it, the impossible weight of my hand flopping it over his shoulder.
I struggled to remember my feet and tried to push away.
His eyes were green fire, so much greener now that his cheek and chin were slick with red. The return of his teeth, biting down into the damaged skin, stole my voice. He shook his head like a wolf and pain exploded as the muscles snapped. My head fell back against the wall.
My body sagged in his arms as my life bled into him, my heart beating faster, shallower. Cold. So cold. How could someone forget me after all we'd shared?
He shifted the arm that restrained me, holding me up to his mouth instead of holding me down. My feet left the ground. He used to kiss me like this. Now he killed me.
I'd tried to save him. I failed. Ironically, my death would be the one that turned him into the very thing he tried so hard not to become. I would be his undoing.
I tried to speak but it took several attempts before my voice worked. I reached a cold, tired hand up to cling to him, to the hair that lay
across his shoulders, to the touch of tangles, the stiffness of matted blood. Such beauty and grace, ruined. All would end here at my ruined throat where he fed on my dying pulse.
"Marek," I whispered. "I'm sor... please... f'give..." And because I couldn't talk anymore, I put the last of my energy into a single thought of love and regret and pierced him with it.
His tongue slid over my throat before he drew back, a final taste of my essence.
"No." It was a whisper, clear and human-sounding. "Never."
There was a long space between heartbeats where I hung precariously before crashing back to Earth like a broken star. The Sophia fell silent and deaf and slipped away, abandoning me. I was alone in my mind. I struggled to breathe and waited for him to finish me. My consciousness slipped, my body becoming a distant sensation. No light at the end of my tunnel. Please wait, Jared. I'm lost. Take me with you...
Marek didn't seize my throat again. He pulled back further, his eyes searching my face. My vision had clouded and his green eyes became headlights in the fog. When he released me I dropped from his grasp, banging against the wall as I crumpled. He loomed high above me and I felt so small, gazing up at the giant who had forgotten me.
My head hit the wall as it drooped back but it didn't hurt. Nothing hurt. I slipped all the way down to the floor, my cheek slapping against the stone. My arms spilled down beside me and I hoped I wouldn't fall off, because I had nothing to hold onto now. The stone was cold and my cheek cooled against it.
Marek approached Still-Heart who sat on the carpeted steps, watching his ambitions bear bloody fruit. He started to applaud slowly, cruel slaps of sound, sliding to his feet to meet Marek at the center of the room.
Unblinkingly, I watched them both. Not that I could blink anyway. The little things I took for granted were slipping from me, one at a time. I saw Marek, washed in crimson. My crimson. My blood. My doing.
"I'm sorry." If I'd made sound, I didn't hear it.
Marek turned to give me a blank stare before disregarding me altogether. He turned to look around at each and every vampire in the room. They had all fallen still and silent as Marek had taken me. Now they watched and waited.
Marek roared. He let his power unfold like great leathery wings. I dimly felt him, silver and green and solid. His eyes flashed a gleam of icy blue and the air hummed with his presence.
Blue eyes. The Sophia's eyes. He had taken something from me and it had made him stronger. It would be my fault if he used it to hurt others.
He pulled it all back, leaving only a chill in its place. As he did so, his appearance changed, like movie magic. The dirt, the blood, his hair's bedraggled appearance all faded, leaving clean smooth perfection in its place. Smooth glossy hair spread out like a veil, perfect white skin on a clean-shaven face. Even his clothes changed, looking cleaner, undamaged. He assumed the same kind of perfection the Master had worn, a layer of illusion.
When he spoke, his voice was forged in steel and no ears could have blocked the sound. "All hail the Master."
As if on cue, everyone dropped to a knee in silent salute. Marek turned slowly, surveying the scene, noting each one with grim satisfaction before once more facing Still-Heart.
The vampire smiled, coldly and triumphantly, folding his arms across his chest and surveying Marek's command over his legions. As he turned back to Marek, however, an indecipherable look glinted across his cruel face.
"What are you waiting for?" Marek's voice was neutral, his tight smile giving the words an amiable disguise. "I said, all hail... me."
He struck like a viper, too fast to follow. One moment the vampire stood and the next he sank to his knees, holding Marek's arm to his chest in a parody of a salute. Marek pulled back violently, leaving Still-Heart on the ground. The Master stared at Marek, disbelief and rage blasting from him like a geyser. Lowering his hands from his chest, he looked down for a long moment at the stream of black sand pouring from a hole in his torso.
Still-Heart fell face forward with a muffled umph.
Marek held out the vampire's heart, displaying it to the legions. Disdainfully he tipped his hand to let the heart fall. It hit the ground with a meaty slap. He brushed his fingers together, condescendingly, before crossing his arms over his chest. Challenging. Daring.
The legions sprang to their feet and began stomping, gaining sound and force as they beat a cadence in tribute. From the back a voice called, "All hail! Thurzo, Downfall of Masters!"
One of the vamps stepped forward, taking a knee before Marek. "What is your command, my Master?"
Marek smiled, triumphant and arrogant and gleaming with dangerous teeth.
"I have but one." Raising his arm, he swept his hand about the room in a gesture that included everyone, before glancing back down at the supplicant before him. "Die. Now."
He swung his arms together and clapped his hands once, sending out a smacking pulse of power that dazed every vamp in the room. They sank to their knees, many holding their heads.
Lucky for me, I was already on the ground. Being mostly dead seemed to have at least one advantage. It couldn't, however, block out the sudden shockwave. It felt much like being in a parking garage where someone had just detonated a bomb.
At the sound of his mighty clap all the doors banged wide open, hitting the walls simultaneously. The hells broke loose as swarms of DV poured in, attacking the still-dazed vampires.
Greco led the Demivampire, his cries of vengeance scalding my ears. He was a butcher, driving what looked like hunting knives into every vampire neck within reach. I recognized several other faces from the security forces at Folletti's; even Caen, bloodied and laughing like a demon as he hurt whatever he could reach.
At once Rodrian took Marek's back and the two men, swords in hand, mercilessly cut down every vamp who rushed them. Rodrian, the younger but not lesser. They moved like reflections of each other, echoes dancing.
My eyes drifted closed in relief. Rodrian. He would take care of his brother. I didn't need to hold on anymore. A cold wetness crept along the edge of my cheek where it lay upon the stone floor and I bled away the last beats of my life.
The floor tilted and I cried out, panicked. Wait. The floor became soft and warm and not really floor at all. Someone had lifted me. I cracked my eyes enough to see the face of a strangely familiar stranger.
"Shh." The woman backed out the room carefully. "Nothing like a good diversion."
She moved without taking her eyes off the ones fighting closest to us and bolted to the door. I could feel her spirit as easily as I felt her body's warmth. Her power shone like a sun through copper gauze. She was strong and beautiful, with hazel eyes and hands yearning for a weapon. Brianda?
I tried to focus on her face as she sped down a corridor, away from the sounds of fighting and death. Her movements, though careful, rolled my head away so I couldn't see her. Brianda. She needs to be in there with the fight and the dance and the blade with teeth. . .
Her eyes were wide with surprise as she set me into another set of arms at the door. "Hurry," she commanded. "She's fading. Do not let her die!"
With a last look that seemed both puzzled and reverent, she sprinted back toward the great hall, drawing a sword from its sheath on her back.
"Unfortunately, this is going to hurt you. Close your eyes," the new stranger said. I couldn't turn my head toward the harsh voice. No matter. I was way ahead of him.
The pain that had been holding me aloft tore like a tissue paper floor. I careened down and out into the beckoning blackness. A few moments of falling, one last regret for the dead, and I finally, gratefully, knew nothing more.
I didn't know where I had been.
I remember it only in the vaguest, fuzziest of senses. When I had my wisdom teeth removed in high school, the dentist gave me a shot and told me to count backwards, and the next thing I knew I woke up in the recovery room as if nothing had happened.
This was nothing like that. Wherever I went, I was there forever. And it hurt,
everything hurt, the entire time. I struggled to wake but I just kept waking up over and over into the same dream. I never realized I was dreaming but I felt flattened by desperation because I knew I had to get out. I was in Hell.
Then one time, I woke up and knew it was real. I was in bed. I felt boneless and hot and nauseous. Vaguely, I noticed several people in the room. Some I'd seen before, some I hadn't. None of them belonged in my bedroom.
I couldn't feel any of them and I thought I was dead, finally free of whatever made me so aware of these people who weren't people. They spoke in muted tones and water splashed.
Rodrian, keening softly, scooped me up against him.
A harsh voice scolded and he let me sink gently back into the pillow. Cold strange fingers touched my neck, unwrapping a cloth and prodding the flesh. I felt mentally and physically numb and the touch came at me from a distance.
"You're lucky you didn't tear out the stitches," said a harsh voice, vaguely familiar. "There's not enough intact skin to repair it again."
Although it took some effort, I eventually focused my eyesight. Rodrian sat next to me on the bed. His eyes seemed to be on fire and I zeroed in on them, the sharpest thing in sight. They were damp with tears that amplified the glow of his irises, making the flames within them appear to drip.
"Why are you crying?" It hurt to talk and I wondered if I'd been ill.
"Because I thought you left me," he whispered, and wiped his cheek with his sleeve.
His brother would have used a handkerchief. The half-thought confused me but my head hurt too much to think about why. I rolled my eyes toward one of the strangers, the owner of the harsh voice. "Who?"
Rodrian took a deep breath. "Sophie, relax for a moment. I need to remove the compulsion so you can remember."
"Don't do it too fast." The stranger's warning came from somewhere behind Rodrian. "I don't want emotional shock setting in. It can still kill her."
"Who?" My voice, weak but insistent, crackled.
"He's a healer. You'll remember why he's here in a minute."