by Unknown
“I understand, hon. You didn’t want to face her, knowing what she’s like towards me.”
She smiled weakly at me.
“That’s about the size of it. I just don’t know what’s happened to her, to make her so...cold.”
I shrugged. Aside from serving an ancient aristocrat with a superiority complex, the answer was quite simple.
“She hates me, because of my name. To her, I’m a living reminder of something awful, and for whatever reason she can’t see past that.”
“But it’s been a thousand years!” she half-snapped, then sighed in frustration. “I just...I just wish she’d give you a chance.”
“I’ll settle for her leaving us alone, but I doubt that’ll happen somehow.”
She shook her head, and we stood in silence for a moment.
“I should get a harp in here,” I said randomly. “I still haven’t heard you play.”
That brought a welcome smile to her face, and she hugged me with one arm, resting her head against my shoulder.
“One day, husband, one day.” She brightened suddenly, and straightened up again. “Ooh! I forgot to tell you, some of the staff are planning a, um, ‘surprise’ party for us, to celebrate our wedding - I think they forget I’m the most powerful psychic on the base.”
“When?” I figured a party couldn’t be a bad thing, since shortly I’d be busy doing all sorts of work and staying at my own little base of operations.
“Tomorrow evening. We will go, won’t we?”
As I may have mentioned before, I never could refuse Corvi, but even less so after our wedding.
“Of course, Sythan’en. It should be a pleasant evening, as long as we can keep the kids separated.”
Corvi sniggered at a thought, something I only caught the edges of.
“If what I’ve picked up is true, Lev will be too busy to be annoying Kalin.”
My curiosity piqued, I decided it should definitely be fun if my friend was going to be kept...occupied.
As it turned out, it was.
I sat beside my wife for the duration of the evening, while various friends and acquaintances approached us and wished us well, or brought us drinks, or tried to spill drinks on us, depending on their level of sobriety.
Lev, however, was probably not having such a good time, as every five minutes - literally - she was on her feet, chasing a black-clad blur around the room. The tall, elegant brunette Lev was currently attempting to pin down had suddenly decided to find out which piece of furniture would best suit her as a hat, regardless of whether or not it was in use at the time.
Until, inevitably, her eyes settled on Corvi and myself, and she bolted over with the speed only a vampire could manage.
“Ooh!” she squealed, pointing at us wildly. “Issat them?”
Levaertes took the opportunity to seize the woman’s wrist, looking thoroughly exasperated.
“Yes, sweetie, that’s them, you’ve met Corvi before, now please-”
The taller woman almost snapped my neck as she pulled me into an extremely vigorous hug, which was only broken by Lev and Corvi forcibly pulling her arms away.
“Ow,” I gasped, as the brunette shoved a hand at me.
“I’m me, how are you!” she announced cheerfully.
“Deimos Black, please meet my cousin, Corinne Grey-DeVaughan. She’s...not well.” Lev seemed genuinely saddened as she said that, and I shook Corinne’s hand.
“Hello Corinne, it’s nice to meet you,” told her, and something fixed in her hair caught my eye. “That’s...a very fetching parasol.”
She nodded energetically.
“It helps keep my aura dry when it rains, see,” the charming woman beamed, and I wondered if what she said ever made sense to her.
“Sorry D, we’ll chat later, okay?” Lev told me, then began to guide her cousin away. “Come on sweetie, let’s go get something to drink.”
As soon as they had left us, I turned back to Corvi.
“Why does she have a cocktail parasol in her hair?”
“No idea,” she replied, sipping a spirit she clearly disapproved off - her expression spoke volumes. “She’s been like that ever since I’ve known her. It’s an old affliction, tends to happen to some people who get turned against their will. We just call it Immortality Sickness - the concept of living forever just...drives them mad.”
“That’s tragic,” I said, watching the pair as Corinne began to pout like a petulant five-year old. “Who turned her?”
“Her own lover, a man named Severus. Arrogance and selfishness drove him to turn her, and then...that happened. There was a theory that if she killed him, taking revenge for her ruined life, it would heal her psyche somehow, but...it never worked.”
Further conversation was cut off as Corvi’s phone rang, and she swore under her breath.
“God, even at my own wedding party...excuse me, my love.”
She moved away to somewhere quieter to take the phone call, and I got talking to some more of the command staff. One of them, a young (relatively speaking) vampire woman sat by me and told me of how she had know Corvi for around a century, and in all that time she had never seen my wife so happy as she did since being with me.
She also threatened to remove my eyes with a shrimp fork if I ever hurt her, and I assured her that if I did ever hurt Corvi, I would personally surrender myself to such punishment.
“I am truly sorry, my dear,” Corvi said as she returned, sparing my newest acquaintance a nod, “Ops are having some issues and need me to go and make sense of it. Will you be here?”
I thought for a moment, and realised I could use a break from the revelry.
“Actually sweetheart, I think I’ll take a break. I’ll be back at your quarters.” I stood up, giving Corvi a kiss (to the cheering of the gathered crowd) and headed towards her room, as she herself went to sort out the problem at Ops.
If only I had known what was waiting.
I was foolish to think I could get away with not running into her again.
Irenae Delacore leaned against the door to Corvi’s room, nonchalantly picking her nails with a slim knife.
“Good evening, Mister Black,” she said without looking at me, and I could hear the threat in her tone. I decided that, since she was now my sister-in-law, I would attempt to be civil. I owed that much to Corvi.
“Lady Delacore,” I replied, bowing slightly. “Can I help you?”
“Oh you can help me alright, Sa’thahd,” she hissed, straightening up and advancing towards me. The knife in her hand was held backhanded, as if she meant to plunge it into my neck, which I fully expected her to attempt.
“I told you we were not finished, boy. And now, your over-exuberant friend is not here to save you. I am told you have a fondness for our rituals, so let us see if you know this one.”
She stopped in front of me, spun the knife in her hand and used it to slice open her palm, near the base of her fingers. That done, she slapped me once with the bloodied hand, then took hold of my face, forcing me to look her in the eye.
“You have one hour. Be there, if you have any honour at all.”
With that she stormed off, knowing that I would have little choice but to follow.
She had invoked the shivan donai - an ancient form of honour duel, one that required the challenged party to step up...or suffer a forfeit of the challenger’s choosing. I couldn’t imagine what fate she would dream up for me, and so I was honour-bound to face her, in our own duelling ground, outside the base walls. Unfortunately, by following tradition, it meant I would be at Irenae’s mercy - it was deliberately unwatched, so that any duels could be fought in peace, without int
erruption.
She was almost definitely going to win, so I had to think of something, anything that could save my life.
I wasn’t hopeful.
I approached the duelling ground, eyeing the other two people present. Irenae herself, a self-satisfied smirk twisting her severe features into something even less beautiful, and Sergeant Colwin, from my old unit. Colwin looked concerned, even nervous, as I approached the black line marked in the grass that signified the boundary of the duelling space.
“Careful, Sa’thahd,” Irenae mocked, “once you cross that line, there are not many ways to leave it.”
I kept my eyes on her as I stepped over the line, and Colwin opened the case he had been holding.
Two identical blades lay inside, and we both picked one at random. We took our assigned places, twenty paces apart and facing each other, and Colwin closed the case as he started to speak.
“I’m sure you both understand the rules, so I’ll be brief,” he told us.
He never finished.
My throat went dry as Irenae stood facing me one moment, the next she was behind Colwin, fresh blood dripping from her blade as my former sergeant’s head rolled free. His body collapsed, the stump of his neck pumping warm blood into the ground.
“Now we can talk freely, little man,” Irenae told me, plunging her blade into the ground beside Colwin’s body.
I had one option, although her blatant disregard for the ritual code meant I doubted it would help me.
I dropped my own sword on the grass before me, a symbol of surrendering any defence.
“Whatever I’ve done to wrong you, Irenae, I’m sorry, but this-”
She cut me off with a backhanded fist, as she had the first time we met, this time no longer holding back. The strike knocked me to the ground, cracking my jaw and breaking two of my teeth, the ruin of which I spat out.
“What do you want, Irenae?” I asked, the pain in my jaw making it difficult to talk.
My only answer was a swift kick to the stomach, followed by another. Suddenly her vice-like grip was locked around my throat as she hauled me back to my feet, locking her eyes with mine.
All I saw in her silvery pools was hatred and rage, a thousand years of wrath hammered into a weapon and directed solely at me.
Her face twisted with that rage as she pulled me close.
“Do you know what it was like, when your family came to mine? Have you any idea?!” A punch to the other side of my face broke the bones of my cheek and eye-socket, sending me reeling. Somehow I stayed on my feet, and I turned to attempt to fight back-
- only for Irenae to grab my wrist, holding my arm outstretched, and dealing a hammering blow to my forearm.
I screamed in agony as the bone snapped like dry wood, the splintered end tearing through the skin. A kick caught me off-guard, slamming into the side of my left knee and dropping me onto it. Irenae stood before me, fists bunched tight, and spoke to me again.
“My mother and father were beaten, tortured and killed. My sisters and I were beaten and raped, mutilated and left for dead. My sisters. Not that simpering fool you cling to so pathetically, my darling younger sisters. Rissa. Serina. Do you know how old they were, Deimos Black? Hm?”
Another punch to my face, and more broken teeth. Somehow an open wound had formed across my cheek.
“Rissa was thirteen, barely a few days from her fourteenth birthday. Serina was sixteen. They were still children, yet your kin beat them, raped them, mutilated them!”
She slammed the heel of her hand into my sternum with the force of sledgehammer, and I felt that break too. Something inside me ruptured unpleasantly, but I no longer knew what it was.
I tried, with all the strength I could muster, to send a plea for help through the link to Corvi, resulting in a feeling like daggers in my brain. That was when I felt the cold absence in my mind - a hole in my thoughts, where Corvi’s mental voice would be.
Irenae was blocking me, a chilling testament to her psychic strength if she could silence a blood-bond link.
She was going to kill me, and I could do nothing but let her.
The cold, steel grasp clamped over my throat once more, and I silently begged for her to snap my neck and be done.
But I was not to be so lucky.
“Do you know something, Deimos?” she half-whispered to me, her voice sounding as if it came from a mile away. I was rapidly losing consciousness, and I begged for it.
“There is a particular phrase that has echoed through the centuries, which is so wonderfully perfect for this moment,” she told me, and I think her voice was filled with manic glee.
“An eye...for an eye!!”
I tried to scream, louder than I had thought possible, as I felt her forcing her fingers into places they shouldn’t go, but her thumb pressing against my larynx strangled such cries. I could feel, with grotesque clarity, the moment her fingernails shredded my eyelids, the blood and fluid pouring down my face, the invasive push of her slender fingers.
I cried, begged, pleaded with every deity to let me die or make it end, but the burning agony and the ripping sensation gave me no such solace.
Eventually there was a momentary resistance, the feeling of something snapping, and finally Irenae released me.
I lay on the ground, retching and gulping in air by turns, wanting to be left to die. All I could sense was agony, the ghostly vestiges of the damage she’d done to me, and even thinking of Corvina, my raven, my beautiful wife, even that could do nothing to take my mind from the fire burning in each of my wounds.
I heard what sounded like a crash of thunder, wondering why I couldn’t feel the rain. Then another crash, and another, and another, each thunderous sound moving closer and tinted with a metallic ching sound...
Thunder. Metal. Gunfire.
Specifically, a pair of specially-crafted Desert Eagle .50AE’s, wielded by my best friend.
Something heavy thudded to the ground near me, and far gentler hands cradled my broken body.
“By all that’s sacred, D...what has she done to you?” I heard. I whimpered in fresh pain as Lev shifted me, and something - a lot of things - sparked fresh pain.
“Irenae Delacore, you will stand your ground!” someone else shouted, a woman filled with as much wrath as Irenae herself. She sounded like my torturer too...
Oh no, I managed to think numbly, as I realised Corvi had seen me in my probably-awful state.
“What do you want, Corvina?”
“What do I want? What do I want?! Are you fucking mad?!”
I could hear the tears in my wife’s voice now, and all I wanted was to be at her side, to comfort her...instead I’d just be bleeding on her, drooling into her shirt.
“I want an explanation, you madwoman, as to why you felt the need to mutilate my husband!”
Had I been fully conscious, I would have delighted in Corvi’s protectiveness of me.
“Why do you think, you pathetic creature?!” Irenae shot back. “The blood of our family is on his hands!”
There was the sound of a strike, not a slap but a full-on punch.
“How many times must you be told? He. Wasn’t. There! He is not his ancestors, he is not his family, he is my husband! My kin!”
“You are a Delacore!”
“I am Mrs Corvina Black now! Or are you uncertain how marriage works?”
A moment of silence passed. Either that, or I lost consciousness for a moment. Both were plausible.
“You would choose him, over your own family?”
“If you are an indicator of what it is to be a Delacore these days,” Corvi said, her voice a low snarl, “then yes. Gladly. I
would sooner die a Black than live another second as a Delacore, if you are the legacy of our family.
“Throw her in the cells, until she can be tried. Do not be gentle.”
The steady pound of several booted feet thundered past me, and Irenae’s protests were drowned out as she was dragged away.
Another weight settled next to me, and a trembling hand ran softly over my forehead, one part that apparently didn’t hurt.
“Oh...my darling, Deimos...what has she done to you?”
Something hot, stinging and wet hit my cheek, and for a moment I thought it was raining at last.
Then I realised Corvi was crying, and attempted to move a hand to comfort her. Unfortunately, at that point I couldn’t even remember which one worked, or even if both were still attached.
“She’s destroyed him, Corvi,” Lev said softly, gently passing me over to Corvi’s care. “He’s...he’s dying, sweetheart.”
The last thing I heard before the darkness fell was Corvi, screaming in tormented anguish.
CHAPTER 13
Hell hath no fury
I awoke to pain and darkness.
The pain was distant, muted, as if it was an echo of a greater sensation. The darkness was not the complete black of blindness, more the same dark when you have your eyes closed in a softly-lit room.
My mind was slow and sluggish, clouded and incoherent. It was a chore just to remember my own name.
I focussed my lethargic mental processes, trying to coax them into achieving something useful.
They obliged by giving me coherent memories of the vicious assault I had endured.
I whimpered, twitching in instinctive response to try and escape the torture that had long passed. The sudden movements caused most of my injuries to flare up in protest, sending shocks of fresh pain, clear and white-hot, through my body.
I tried to cry out, but something was restraining my jaw. All I managed was a strangled sob through clenched teeth, several of which also hurt.