by Unknown
I didn’t even know teeth could hurt.
Before anything else could go wrong, I suddenly felt the pain ebb away, the sickeningly clear memories of my torture replaced with more pleasant thoughts of my wedding, and nights spent in the arms of the woman I loved.
“Deimos?” a soft, husky voice asked, a voice which dragged my consciousness back to the waking world.
I slowly became aware of the other sounds, the other sensations, of everything around me.
Closest to me, I could hear the various noises of the life-support equipment, which I could feel was attached to me by a multitude of wires. I could feel a needle, like a thorn in the back of my hand, and I assumed that was connected to some kind of fluid or pain relief.
There were the sounds of muffled voices, as if through a door or thin wall, which meant I was in a private room. I guess being married to the base commander had its perks.
I was also aware of the multitude of bandages wrapped around various parts of my body. My right arm was in a cast, and I felt like my head was being smothered.
Finally, I felt the soft, delicate touch stroking my left hand, the subtle scent of cinnamon in the air. That smell alone was enough to ease my mind, because only one person ever followed it.
“Corvi?” I attempted, but the bandages running under my chin were tight enough to strangle that too.
“I’m here, my love,” she said softly, and the scratchiness of her voice suggested she hadn’t stopped crying since I passed out. “Try not to talk too much, dearest, you’ve-” I could hear her choke, as if fighting back fresh tears. “You’ve suffered a lot. Try and talk to me in here.” She tapped the side of my head gently, and I willed my eyes - my eye, I thought bitterly - to open.
It finally complied, and I tilted my head just a little to look at my wife.
My heart twisted, as she looked a shadow of her usual self. Her hair was disheveled, her eyes red and puffy from the tears she’d shed, and her skin had an unhealthy pallor to it. I wondered if she’d even been taking her regular blood intake.
How...how long have I been out?
“Four days,” she told me, sniffing slightly. “The staff have spent pretty much the whole time fighting to keep you with us.”
I tried to call to you, I told her, fighting back my own tears as I remembered the emptiness, the terrifying loneliness of not feeling Corvi there in my mind.
“I’m sure you did, Sythan’en,” she told me, gently stroking my cheek. For a moment it seemed that she was about to say something more, but changed her mind.
How did you find me?
“I went to find you at my quarters after I’d finished at Ops. Some idiot had managed to screw up some logistics reports, and they needed me to go in and remind them what was meant to be going on,” she explained. “When you weren’t there, I began to reach out to you, to ask where you were, but then the link just....died. I called everyone I knew, asking who had seen you, when someone in Ops told me they spotted you on the CCTV, heading out to the duelling ground. It didn’t take long to piece the facts together from there.”
I attempted to breathe normally, relieved for the moment that my wife now knew I was alive.
However, the look of concern she still wore told me there was something I wasn’t being told.
Darling, what’s wr-
The door to my room opened, and a familiar figure with cascading white hair came in.
“Sorry babe, they didn’t have any decent books in the library, but I got- shit, Deimos!”
It was the first time in a long time I’d heard her use my full name. It actually felt a little strange.
“How’re you doing, killer?” she asked with a grin, and I rolled my eye. It was difficult getting used to that motion with only one eye, and the loss of depth perception was particularly jarring.
I’ve felt better, I said mentally, forgetting for the moment that she couldn’t read me without causing damage - damage I could well do without at that time.
“He says he’s felt better,” Corvi told her, and I silently thanked her for it.
“No surprise there. What were you thinking, you big jackass? Facing that psycho on your own?”
I was challenged, I told Corvi. I couldn’t refuse without risking everything I had.
Corvi relayed the message to Lev, who frowned at me.
“Challenged? As in the shivan donai?”
I nodded weakly.
“Fuck! The bitch set you up for that one!”
I nodded again, and Lev turned to Corvina.
“Have you slept at all, hon? You look like shit, if you don’t mind my saying.”
“I won’t leave him,” Corvi said defiantly, and Lev sighed in exasperation.
“Yes, because you’re going to be so helpful to him if you pass out from exhaustion and lack of blood,” she chided. “I’m not saying to leave him, I’m saying to get some sleep. I can grab you a pillow and you can rest there. While you do that I’ll go and get some of Deimos’ finest blood from stores and you can finally start looking like your usual self.”
“But I-”
“But nothing. I’m relieving you of command until you get some rest and some blood. You’re no good to anyone like this.”
I could tell Corvi still wanted to argue, but she lacked the energy for it. Eventually she forced herself up from the chair, and I could see her weariness in the way she slouched. This was not the noble, elegant peer I married, but a haunted echo of her. I sent a message to her, asking her to go and rest properly for my sake, and she nodded.
“Okay, my beloved. For you. I will be back when I am rested. Be safe until then, Sythan’en.”
On that, Lev took her gently by the arm and led her out, and I very quickly lapsed back into sleep or unconsciousness.
When I awoke again it was some time at night, or so I assumed since all the lights were off, throwing the medical facility into near-pitch darkness.
A sound to my left had startled me, and for a moment I was terrified that Irenae had come back to finish the job - with my left eye missing, I had one hell of a blind spot, and I could hardly move my head.
However, I soon felt the familiar psychic caress of Corvi, although her thoughts were troubled.
“Hello my love,” she whispered, out of respect for other patients. “I know I shouldn’t really be here, but...well, it’s my base, and you’re my husband, so they can get over it.”
Even my attempted laughter hurt, and came out strangled. I sent my amusement to her through the link, and I was rewarded with a gentle hand stroking my hair.
“Deimos, I need to tell you something,” she said, and that husky, scratching sound was back in her voice again. It didn’t take me long this time to realise she was crying again.
“Deimos, the doctors...the doctors say you’re still dying. They fixed much, but there was a lot of internal damage as well, a lot that they couldn’t fix.”
I don’t...I don’t think I’m ready to die, I told her, unable to hold back the tears that began to flow from my remaining eye. Not when I finally have someone to live for.
“I know, my love, but the only way you’d survive is by becoming what you never wanted to be.” Her sobs became more pronounced, her tears falling freely on to my face as she leaned over me.
“I am so sorry, my beloved,” she muttered, as I fought my rising horror. “I have orders to follow too, but I pray that you will forgive me for this...for what must be done. With any luck, you’ll see why this was necessary.”
She kissed my lips tenderly, almost as if she was saying goodbye to me.
Please don’t do this, Corvi, I pleaded silently, and she shook her head.
“It’s already done, Sythan’en.” She kissed me again, brushing her fingers lightly across my forehead.
“I...I need to go now. Please, my love, don’t hate me for this. I just...I can’t live without you. Not yet.” She heaved a long, weary sigh, and moved back toward the door.
“I am so sorry, my love,” she told me again, sending me a loving thought through the link before leaving.
I tried to move, to pull the IV line in my arm, but my injuries and the following surgery had left me weak and lethargic. Nothing moved properly, and my other arm was in a cast anyway, severely limiting any movement. I tried all I could to stop what was happening, but it was inevitable.
My first warning of what was to come was a growing tingle in my arm, where the blood - Corvi’s blood - was entering my system. It started out as a subtle feeling, almost like a tickle or soft touch, but the feeling continued to grow in intensity until it felt like liquid fire coursing through my veins.
I could track its progress by the pain it caused, attempting to cry out as I felt her blood re-writing me. The muscles in my arm began to burn as they started to change, altering to better handle the greater speed and strength that vampires had. The fire spread across my shoulder and down my back and chest, allowing the muscles there to undergo the same changes.
I tried to breathe normally, but that was interrupted once the fire reached my lungs.
Being technically dead, vampires didn’t really need to breathe. Most of the time they did it either to keep up appearances or out of a force of habit, and sighing generally remained an excellent way of showing feeling. So the fire went to work on my lungs, rearranging the cells, unmaking and re-forging them into something more suitable.
I felt the burn coil around my heart, and I attempted to gasp as I felt a hand of liquid flame squeeze my most important organ. I felt it quicken in instinct, then slow as the hand closed around it until finally, agonisingly, it stopped.
As it worked its way down through my gut toward my legs, the flame was also creeping up my neck and coursing through my jaw. I groaned in fresh agony as my broken cheek, eye-socket and jaw began knitting together again at a vastly increased rate, even as my ruined teeth began to be replaced by new ones.
Then the moment I had dreaded most since Corvi’s revelation came, and I tore at the dressings covering my head to scream aloud as my canines were forced out of place. I spat blood and unneeded teeth as the mark of a vampire became evident - the elongated canines pushing their way through my gums, causing me to spit yet more blood over my sheets.
Even my ruined eye wasn’t safe, and the coiling flame took root in the remains of my eye-socket. There was too much damage there to fix all at once, but Corvi’s blood went to work with breath-taking alacrity, starting the process of re-growing the lost nerves, the damaged flesh and muscle, the segments removed by surgery.
Oddly enough, the worst sensation came when the unrelenting heat coursed through my broken arm. The break pulling back together around the metal pin they’d inserted was uncomfortable, to say the least, setting my teeth on edge and sending a shiver down my spine. My skin crawled as I felt the torn flesh healing and actually pushing out the stitches I’d had, and I began to feel some normal sensation in the limb once more.
I felt hot all over, like I was burning up from the inside, and I pushed the blood-soaked sheets away from me. I felt like I was going to throw up, and I tried to reach for a bowl nearby, instead succeeding only in throwing myself to the floor, oblivious of the monitoring equipment falling over. Between all my limbs being re-made and my depth perception being useless, I was hideously un-coordinated, and so I ended up vomiting bile and blood over the tiles. I was shaking all over, every fibre of every muscle still twitching in reflex as it continued to be altered. When the tendrils of fire seeped into my brain and set to work, I cried out in renewed pain, clutching my head and wishing for death or some other reprieve, until finally the darkness came to claim me again.
I regained consciousness by degrees, with my senses coming back to me one by one.
I could hear...a lot. Everything. Or so it seemed at the time, anyway. The sound of everything around me - the water in the pipes, the people beyond my room, the hum of the lights - pressed into my head, giving me a headache worse than most others I’d had.
My smell followed, and I retched again at the stench of myself, the grim expulsion I’d left on the floor, the stench of cleaning chemicals and disinfectant.
I slowly became aware of the fact that I was now huddled under my bed, curled up in a foetal position and shivering occasionally from the aftershocks of my change. My muscles hurt like hell, my gums ached as if each of my teeth had been punched individually, and my empty eye socket itched like crazy, telling me that it was still healing.
Then came the memories...a thousand years of memories in their entirety flooded into my mind all at once, threatening to overwhelm me as I saw so many things I’d never been present for...the burned ruin of her family home, and the rampage of retribution she’d gone on, had been the first I saw. No wonder she didn’t hate me - she’d spent her hate in a single night of bloody vengeance, instead of harbouring it for a thousand years.
It was easy to forget that she too had been turned, and I relived my own experiences by proxy as I saw her memories of her own turning. Unlike me, though, she’d had the benefit of an actual ritual for it, the man who had turned her being ancient and well-versed in the lore of his species.
There were wars that she’d lived through, various people she’d killed, the time she’d spent as a nurse. The losses she’d suffered, the people she’d cared about and who she’d seen taken from her.
She had been honest, at least; from what I saw, she’d never been married, and never loved anyone with the same depth and ferocity as she loved me. I was actually a little flattered by that.
Finally, I saw it - the memory she must have wanted me to see, the one she hoped would explain her reasons.
She had stood before the Countess, just as I had, and even then she had been nervous.
“You will encounter your target while patrolling Oxford,” the Countess had told her. “When you see him, he will be under attack by another vampire. You must ensure he survives, and take him to your facility. Only there will you be able to guide him to our cause.”
“To what end, My Lady?” Corvi had asked, utterly confused by the command.
“While I do not see why I must explain myself to you, as your superior in both status and rank, I will inform you just this once.”
Wow, I thought, the Countess really was a bitch to everyone.
“By guiding him to our cause, you will set him upon a path that will allow him to become more than what he is. He has the potential to become a psychic weapon, and that is what I am intent on crafting - a warrior with the skills of a Sentinel, the superiority of a vampire, and the psychic might of the ancients.”
“You want to remake him as you see fit, and use him like some...tool, to be discarded when he’s no longer useful?” It seemed she was defending me before she ever met me.
“That is precisely what I intend, and that is what will happen. Why should you care, Corvina? He is a mortal. He is a food source at best and part of an enduring plague at worst. His fate should not matter.”
“But I thought we were trying to create trust between us and the mortals, not alienate them further!”
“I do not like your tone, madam,” the Countess had said coldly. “I am done discussing this. You know my will, now see it done.”
I’d thought that was the end of it, but the memory flickered before coalescing into an image of Corvi’s office. Another vampire faced her, one I hadn’t met, but she seemed to trust him implicitly.
/> “She’s growing worse, Mikhail. I swear it’s only a matter of time before she starts leading us into a war against every mortal, not just the hunters.”
“So we need to stop her,” the man had said, his voice slightly coloured by his Russian ancestry. “The question is, how?”
Corvi had drummed her fingers on the desk, chewing her lip as she thought.
“I’m not sure. I think this ‘Deimos’ character will be the key though. If she wants a weapon, let’s give her one - then cram it down her throat.”
“What about the rest of what she told you?”
Corvi had scoffed.
“I highly doubt I’m going to fall in love with a mortal, Mikhail. They’re our allies and food source, but a lover? No thank you.”
After that, there was a mass of images I knew all too well, tinted by her thoughts and feelings instead of my own, but to those I paid no attention.
Instead I focussed on the footsteps I could hear coming toward my door, the sounds indicating the person was wearing heels of some kind. There was no smell of cinnamon, which ruled Corvi out, but I could smell-
- I fought to stop myself from being sick again. I’d never known before being turned, but Levaertes absolutely reeked of sex. It was...difficult being around her after finding that out, for a while anyway.
The door opened, and I could also smell the leather coat she wore, the delicate scent of whatever cosmetics she’d used...which was odd, as she didn’t often wear any.
“D?” she called, and I clamped my hands over my ears.
“Not so loud,” I whispered, even my own voice sounding like a deafening clamour.
Something else I noticed as I spoke was that the new, elongated canines felt...wrong, somehow. It felt uncomfortable and awkward, and trying to talk around them felt like a chore. I think much of it was actually from the pain of my gums, but the teeth themselves certainly didn’t help.