Twice Bitten

by Diana Greenbird

  Emerson saw the sincerity in my eyes. He wanted to resist on my behalf. I knew he did. But he would never overrule my own decision. I was my own person. My body was my own and no one else’s.

  ‘Fine. If Liv agrees, fine,’ Emerson said. ‘But you’re not making her go through what she had to with Eliza with a stranger. If she’s doing this for me, then I’m the first one she bites for your study.’ I tried to protest, but he kept on talking. ‘And if it doesn’t work, that’s it. We consider Eliza as the end of it. Eliza took my portion of the choice, the spell was only intended for one, whatever you have to say to make the case closed. But it’s done after me if it doesn’t work.’

  Neither the witches, nor the official looked like they wanted to agree to those terms. I could see the vein in the official’s temple throb, like he was angered at the mere suggestion a vampire was going to try and influence the Order’s decision. The Order may work to protect the lamia secret, but they considered themselves equal and separate from the Blood World. I had a feeling that some, like this man, thought of themselves better.

  The room became thick and hazy. It was the same feeling I’d gotten in the car when we’d driven to Blaise’s cottage. That’s when I realised it was Blaise. She had moved closer towards the Sons and I. She was obscuring us. If they didn’t agree, she would help us run from them, and they would have nothing. I’d never seen her as a friend until that moment.

  ‘On behalf of the larger Order, I accept those terms,’ the official said, feeling his lab rat slipping from his fingers. ‘We will get back to you with further details.’

  The official looked like he was going to take his leave.

  ‘Wait,’ Charlotte stopped him. ‘What about Eliza?’

  ‘She made no such deal,’ he said.

  ‘I don’t mean about the experiments.’ Charlotte said. ‘Is she being tried for her crimes?’

  The younger of the two witches from Blaise’s coven snorted. ‘What crimes? Vampires dissociate from absolutely every memory of their supernatural life. The last thing Eliza remembers is her front door being kicked down, and her mother being torn out of their home bed and burnt at the stake by hunters.

  ‘She chose to become part of the Mors Exercitus to avenge her mother’s death and was fuelled by that pain and hatred for centuries.’

  Unbidden sympathy rose in my chest. For as much as I hated everything she had put me through in my life, and what she had done to Emerson, I had the ability to see past that. Just as Charlotte and Emerson had been perpetually trapped in the pain and anger over the loss of their coven’s and choice, Eliza had been suspended in a need for revenge, at a time of horror where the lamia race were being wiped out. I could understand why she had never been able to see the immune as anything other than hunters if her dissociation constantly took her back to the moment she laid down her oath, the memory of her mother burnt at the stake fresh in her mind.

  ‘We are put in a rather unusual predicament. To punish a witch for the crimes she committed as a vampire who no longer exists, or to let free the lamia who was once an assassin responsible for the murder of hundreds, if not thousands over her lifetime,’ the official said.

  ‘And your response is to experiment on her?’ Blaise asked.

  ‘In the meantime, until a sentence is decided upon,’ he said, no hint of remorse or understanding in his tone.

  ‘You could help,’ the older witch said. ‘Don’t you think Eustace? The Order are calling a jury, but these three are particularly suited to being witnesses. They’re the only ones who might speak on behalf of her victims. No one else lives.’

  The official pondered for a moment at the doorway, unsure whether he wanted to hear our opinion or if he wanted to get away and tell the rest of the Order our ultimatum for letting them experiment on me.

  ‘I will hear you out,’ he said, turning around, but not sitting down as he had done before.

  ‘Kill her,’ Charlotte said, immediately. ‘Like John. Like the rest of the Mors. It’s what the Order decreed. It doesn’t matter what she is now, or whether she remembers what she did. She still did it. Experiment on her for however long you need to, to get answers, but when it’s over: kill her.’

  The Order official readily accept that answer. With how swift they had killed John, and the decree for the deaths of all Mors Exercitus existing since the mid-seventeenth century, it seemed as though that was their intended punishment, anyway. They were just stalling using the bureaucracy excuse so they could experiment “in the meantime”.

  The official turned to Emerson. He hadn’t moved from rigidly standing by my side, like any moment the witches might spell us all and let Eustace take me far away where I might never be seen or heard from again.

  ‘I would have said the same,’ Emerson started. ‘If my mind hadn’t been able to change because of Liv. Every time I dissociate, I would return to that first moment of despair realising I’m no longer a witch and my whole coven is gone, all because of Eliza and John.

  ‘But I’m not. It’s only been three months, but I’ve had time to process and grieve and change because the dissociation hasn’t been able to keep me in a stasis state.’

  Charlotte gave Emerson a pointed stare, one which said: what are you saying?

  ‘I hated Eliza and John with every fibre of my being. If I believed I was strong enough and hadn’t been reliant on them when I first turned, I might have tried to avenge my family the way Eliza did by seeking out the hunters and killing every last one of them. I would have killed her with my own bare hands and possibly enjoyed the catharsis of it.

  ‘The Mors were turned at a point in time where survival was everything. They were given one mission to keep them going; something that they would never be able to move on from because of the nature of what being a vampire means.

  ‘You can’t create something one day with one purpose, and then once they have completed that task expect that same thing to be able to change when it was hardwired specifically with no other role to fall back on.’

  Emerson ruffled his hair. ‘I’m not using the right metaphor. I’m not explaining it right,’ he let out an exasperated sigh.

  I took over, knowing what he was meaning because it was the same thoughts that had been going through my mind.

  ‘The Order and the Blood World were responsible for creating the Mors Exercitus. What the Mors Exercitus did, how they did it-’ I pushed back the visions my dreams had given me. ‘Was gruesome, but as awful as they were: they were soldiers in a war, given directions from someone higher up fighting to stop the extinction of their species.

  ‘Yes, out of the twenty, most who volunteered probably did so out of a need to satisfy revenge for the family they’d lost. But it was the decision of those higher up in power back then to accept those applicants to be Mors, knowing what they did about vampires being unable to change once they transformed, who should be held accountable.

  ‘Killing John was necessary; just like it had been for the other Mors assassins the Order managed to find over the years, because that was the only way to stop them. But Gabriel – a Mors Exercitus vampire – stopped killing and hunting by himself when he had a chance to move past the oath his dissociation kept him beholden to. He changed enough that other lamia decided they would try and help him, knowing that it put them in danger of being found by the Order for not turning in a wanted lamia.’

  ‘The… vampire, who fell for one of the immune humans?’ the Order official asked for confirmation; he definitely hadn’t been listening to the spell talk beforehand.

  ‘Yes. I think if you have to try Eliza for her crimes, you have to see vampirism not just as a choice she made in a desperate time for lamia, but also as a mentally inhibiting state. If there was ever a plea case for madness, vampirism is it.’

  ‘You agree?’ the official asked Emerson.

  ‘Yes, that’s exactly what I meant.’

  He looked taken aback that two people who had suffered so much at the hands of Eliza might be s
o lenient. I doubted he had a shred of empathy or even sympathy in his body. If Emerson had his witch gift, I had a feeling he’d feel a void where that man’s emotions should have been, quite like a vampire’s.

  ‘I will take your comments back to the trial,’ the Order official said. With that, we were dismissed once more.

  Charlotte and Emerson didn’t move from their position, protecting me, until both the witches and the Order official had left.

  ‘I can’t believe you both defended her,’ Charlotte spat, the second they were out of the cottage.

  ‘It’s not as if it will change their verdict,’ Emerson said. ‘But she deserved someone to speak on her behalf. I hunted with them for years before I was able to break free. I’d like to think someone would take the situation into account if I was tried for the crimes I committed.’

  Charlotte’s face paled, like she had forgotten Emerson had ever been involved with their hunting before he’d found salvation with her coven. She opened her mouth to speak, but disappeared instead.

  ‘How long do you think it will be until they reach out to you again and ask to begin Liv’s experiments?’ Blaise asked.

  Emerson and I shared a look.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘But I have a feeling they’ll want it to be soon.’

  Since the Order didn’t run on vampire time, I figured I wouldn’t even have days before this slice of normality was taken from me.

  The experiments were nothing like the invasive evil the lamia had experienced under Cassidy Grimm’s surgical knife. I didn’t know whether it was because I had the Sons protecting me, because we were in a more modern era or whether it was because the Order actually were more humane than I had been led to believe from the casefiles.

  The human ones, at least, were simple tests that I had routinely gone through a thousand times over my many stays in hospital. Blood works, CAT scans, x-rays – the list continued. The supernatural ones… I didn’t understand them at all. Most of the time, I had to lie still, in a semi-unconscious state, with my eyes closed. I simply had to trust that Emerson had my back and wouldn’t let them do any more harm to me – more in a sense that I was a tangled web of spells whose threads would never disappear in my lifetime.

  Eliza, throughout all my own tests, was equally being experimented on. I didn’t know if she’d been offered the same humane treatment. She didn’t have anyone alive who cared about her to look out for her. But she didn’t decline in health. Every test that came back showed signs of her being a regular eighteen-year-old woman, healthy, mentally stable, with no memories of what had happened to her over the course of her life as a vampire. It had been as if she had taken the oath to become Mors, made her choice – and woken up in a strange, futuristic world, not a vampire at all, but a witch.

  Eventually, from what I had learnt of Eliza’s stability and health, and the lack of anything new turning up in my tests, the next stage was required. I needed to try and transform another vampire with my bite.

  Emerson was steadfast in his decision. It was him, or no one. And if it didn’t work, I would be left alone to return to my normal life. He wasn’t taking any chances, either. He had the Order bound by lamia oath to swear that would be the case. I didn’t like the negativity of it all. That he wouldn’t be there to protect me himself if it didn’t work and they continued to try and use me.

  We were to attempt the transformation in one of the Order’s labs. They’d wanted to watch, be in the same room as us and monitor with machines and a whole load of other things, but thankfully the lamia half of those who ran the experiments said that it would soil the sanctity of the magic that worked within me through the covens’ spells. Spells were conduits for magic. And magic was sacred above all else.

  I giggled nervously, my hands shaking. I couldn’t even work up the right amount of energy to be embarrassed that I had giggled in front of Emerson or the cameras that were no doubt secretly hidden in this room.

  ‘What’s so funny?’ Emerson asked me. I knew he was nervous, too. He’d not stopped ruffling his hair or messing with his cap that Grayson had brought to England with him.

  ‘Once I was very, very scared you were going to bite me and finish the job the Mors Exercitus started. Now I’m biting you.’

  That science class back at NRHS seemed lifetimes away.

  Emerson smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes. ‘I’ll admit it’s going to be a strange sensation. Turned vampires only ever have to experience it once. Not sure what it’s going to be like getting bitten as a vampire.’

  Eliza certainly hadn’t enjoyed it, I wanted to say, but I didn’t like bringing her up into conversation.

  ‘Let’s hope it’ll cure you of some of that cockiness,’ I said, instead. ‘The first bite didn’t seem to have the desired effect.’

  ‘What are you on about?’

  ‘You know, the saying: once bitten twice shy. You’re a lot of things Emerson Lark, but I don’t think “shy” has ever been one of them.’

  He gave me a genuine smile, grabbing my hand. I’d not worn my silver rings since I’d bitten Eliza, I only had on my mom’s ring.

  ‘What do they say about being twice bitten?’

  I thought it over for a second. ‘Once bitten, twice shy. Twice bitten… try not to die?’

  With that final plea, I held his hand tight and kissed him one final time before I moved those kisses across his jaw and down his neck to the smooth curve there.

  ‘Please work,’ I whispered into his skin, right before I bit down.

  Epilogue

  I sat in the garden of Blaise’s cottage. The New Year had come and gone, but time had an oddly meaningless sense to me now. As Blaise no longer needed to obscure my location, she’d taken back up her uni classes. She rarely came back to the cottage except on the weekends to check that Charlotte was doing a passable job at keeping me alive.

  ‘Your moroseness is withering the plants,’ Charlotte told me.

  ‘Winter withered the plants,’ I said.

  ‘Yes, that tends to be how nature works.’ As always, her face was expressionless, but I felt that she, too, was feeling Emerson’s absence, even if she could dissociate on the most part.

  She didn’t sit with me; just stood at the edge of the Yorkshire wool blanket I’d taken from the basket by the front door. The snow from Christmas had melted and it had been mostly dry over the New Year. The ground was frozen and cold – but I liked the feel of the air outside. It was less claustrophobic. The house seemed oddly empty and all too crammed with memories of Emerson now that he was gone.

  The view from the garden was the same as from my bedroom window, but I could at least watch the clouds from here, and see the murmuration of starlings dancing in the sky. It was endlessly quiet out in the middle of the country and I often wondered if it was peaceful for Charlotte, or jarring, to finally experience true quiet or whether even in the middle of nowhere, her vampire senses picked up so much noise there was no such thing. I’d never asked Emerson that. I wouldn’t get the chance to now.

  Since I’d bitten Emerson, and completed the last act the spell demanded from me, I’d not had any preternatural moments. The sounds of the birds were as distant as it would be for any other human, just as the view of the clouds and fields became blurry after my normal twenty yard-vision. My birthday was in three days. I had absolutely zero worries I would be required to choose a lamia-state to exist in for the rest of my days. I was just… Liv. Human. Alone. Liv.

  ‘It’s too hot inside.’

  ‘You broke the thermostat,’ Charlotte said.

  ‘It was already broken. I just broke it more.’

  Charlotte didn’t argue with me. ‘Blaise told me to call her if you looked depressed. Is this you looking depressed?’

  ‘No, this is what I generally look like when I’m overwhelmed with joy,’ I said, sarcastically.

  ‘I’m not ridiculously inept at reading humans to know the difference between “joy” and “depression”,’ Charlotte s
napped. ‘I meant you’re difficult to read. I’m dissociated, not dumb. You could really enjoy sitting in a garden doing nothing for all I know.’

  I didn’t bother to tell her that usually I would have a book with me and that the lack of one probably meant I was leaning a little bit towards depression. Only in my low periods did I refuse to find an escape in a fictional world. This was one of those times. Especially since all my favourite books reminded me of Emerson.

  ‘I much preferred it when Emerson was here to deal with your moods. You never seemed this bad. Just a bit… odd.’

  I snorted. ‘That’s because I was annoying him, not you. And he didn’t mind my sarcasm as much as you did.’

  ‘I’m sure he did. He just liked you more so he’d put up with it.’ I didn’t say anything. I leaned back on my elbows and looked up at the clouds. It was miserable, so rather than fluffy white blobs I could interpret the shapes of, it was one seemingly endless sea of grey.

  ‘Did you at least remember to eat?’ Charlotte asked me.

  ‘Yes.’ I’d had the last of the Christmas candy Blaise had bought me.

  ‘Actual food, not just candy?’

  I stared at her, rather than answering. She was almost as bad as Maybelle since she’d been given charge of “looking after” me whilst the Order decided what to do with me.

  Charlotte cocked her head. I readied myself for a Charlotte lecture or a threat that she’d call Blaise, but instead she smiled. The starkness of an expression gracing her face took me back before she disappeared altogether from my eyesight. It took me several moments before I understood why she had disappeared.

  In the back doorway of the cottage, Emerson stood. He looked different. His skin was imperfect, and stubble was growing from his cheeks. His hair was messy, but looked less silky and curlier, thicker, wilder. Most notably: there was no vamp-glamour.