Arc 1: A Second Death (Part 2)

I turn to the thrall, and he lowers his head, expectant.

‘Your master,’ I say, “where is he?”

He steps back, gesturing to the door closest to him.

‘It’s unlocked,’ a pleasant tenor calls from within.

A smile comes unbidden to my lips. I adjust my dress, slightly self-conscious of the glamour I’ve put over myself, then walk through the door. It opens onto a minimalist bedroom done in soft greys and deep reds, lit only by the light of the city filtering in through the balcony doors. I don’t pay the room much mind, however, as my entire being is focused upon the man sitting in an armchair, reading in the near-darkness.

He looks to be in his late twenties, though that is of course a meaningless measure for us vampires. He bears a strong resemblance to my Sire in his features—sharp-boned and well-proportioned. He has a slightly more masculine air, however, as he is of a more powerful build. His colouring, too, differs from Canus in a crucial way—his hair is more fair, a honey blond instead of pale brown, and he has eyes to match—pale yellow irises that shine with an inner glow. His eyes have always seemed familiar to me, paler than my own, bright cream instead of harsh gold. Otherwise, it’s clear that this man and my Sire are related, brothers of a more primal blood than the undead connection I share with Scintilla—this is Lord Chryseus, elder brother to Lord Canus.

Chrys sets aside his book and stands, welcoming me with open arms. His embrace is warm and firm around my shoulders, and he kisses me chastely atop my head, an action made slightly awkward by the loose twist I’ve put my hair in (because it’s blonde right now and I kept startling when I saw it out the corner of my eye).

I tilt my head back so that he can kiss me properly, which he does, licking into my mouth and gently scraping his teeth against my lips until the fire of arousal rises within me. I pull back reluctantly, and he releases me with even greater reluctance.

‘I’ve missed you, my dear,’ he says.

I look up into his eyes, so warm and affectionate. ‘I’m sorry I haven’t been around as much. I’ve been making the final arrangements.’

‘Everything is ready, then?’ Chrys says, a little sad.

I feel bad about it. ‘It’s not too late to back out, you know. He doesn’t suspect anything yet.’

I know that Chrys is conflicted over the role he has to play tonight. For all that he loves me, he must love his brother too. Canus’s death would haunt him for a very long time even under normal circumstances, let alone like this, when Canus will be dying by his very own hand.

It’s true that I hate my Sire. I hate his arrogance, hate the suffering that my sisters and I must endure to sustain him, hate the control that he holds and exerts over us all.

But I also love Chrys. I don’t want him to regret the way in which we finally find our way together—truly together, openly in love and bound by blood, the way all vampires mark their spouses.

Chrys closes his eyes and breathes in deeply. When he opens them, they are filled with determination. ‘No,’ he says, ‘I’ll still do it. I’ll kill him. For you, my love.’

I tilt my face up and meet Chrys in another kiss, and this time the kiss deepens even further than it did earlier. Vampires don’t need to breathe, but still I begin to feel breathless. His hands cradle my waist at first, but then they begin to stray, cupping lower and lower until he reaches the hem of my skirt, lifting the thin silk and caressing back up beneath it.

I push him away when I feel his thumb push under the edge of my knickers.

I groan. ‘Please, Chrys, I want to, but we can’t.’

For a moment, it seems as if he doesn’t hear me, his fingers digging possessively into the flesh of my hips, but then he returns to himself and shakes his head. He groans as well, long and pained. ‘Damn my brother and his paranoia.’

What he’s referring to is, of course, the fact that my Sire begins every night by drinking from his most valued progeny. With our blood within him, he can sense certain things about us. This is true of most vampires and their progeny, of course, but Canus is special in his own way.

For you see, our bloodline is cursed such that the vast majority of the population has blood that is anathema to our sustenance, and it manifests differently in all of us. Personally, as far as I have discovered, my curse is that I can only sustain myself on those who are pure of heart, those who are gentle and kind and morally virtuous. (It’s only slightly ironic, considering how great of a monster I’ve become over my past three decades of immortality.)

A similar inclination exists in my sire, but more strictly, for the bloodline is more potent in him. I’m unsure of the specifics, but for some reason he seems to avoid drinking from mortals. (That, or he just takes a perverse pleasure in drinking from his own progeny. I don’t know and I don’t care.) More importantly, he selects the vast majority of his progeny according to the limitations of his curse—all of us are women, most of us relatively young, and, from what I’ve been able to tell of my younger sisters, all having led very sheltered lives. And because Canus sets certain bizarre rules for our behaviour, I have a vague idea of the manifestation of his curse; I think he can only drink from those who are pure in body—virgins, to put it bluntly.

The point is, every evening, Canus takes in the blood of my sisters and I, and thus, if we ever taint our blood to become anathema to him, he’ll be able to sense it. Four of my younger sisters have been cast out of our clan for such a trespass, and, considering how much more he seems to value the loyalties of Scintilla and myself, his eldest progeny, I fear what Canus might do if either of us ever betray him in a similar fashion.

This means, of course, as long as my Sire remains alive and well (undead and well, rather), kissing is the most I can allow myself to do.

‘I’m sorry,’ I say again, ‘but not yet. We can do it when he’s no longer an issue.’

‘Surely he won’t be able to tell which of you it is,’ Chrys complains. He rubs a thumb in circles over my hip bone, wheedling.

I consider it for a moment, then say, ‘I don’t know if he can. But, even if he can’t, it takes all of a minute for him to contact each and every one of us. Even if I don’t answer his call, he’ll know it was me who did it once all of my sisters deny the deed.’ Among other indignities, it’s impossible for a vampire to speak an untruth to her Sire—at least, it’s impossible if the Sire is paying adequate attention.

Chrys seems disappointed, and I feel guilty to be the cause of it, so I distract him by confirming with him the details of our plan for later tonight.

By the time we finish, it’s getting late, and it’s well past time for me to return to Canus’s estate with a meal for Scintilla.

‘I know I’ve told you about my own limitations, but how did you know about Scinty’s diet?’ I ask on my way out.

Chrys looks startled for a moment, but then he looks to his thrall. After a moment of silence, the thrall says, ‘Mistress Claudia mentioned having seen Mistress Scintilla drink from him before.’

So it had been Chrys’s eldest progeny who’d been tasked with procuring the humans. My appreciation for the gesture deepens. I thank Chrys warmly with a parting kiss before I press the unhealed bite mark on my wrist to the human man’s tongue, enthralling him. It won’t last long, but it’ll be enough to get him back to the estate.

The man rouses slowly, and I take the chance to sink into a brief trance, directing some of the blood within me towards my wrist and commanding the wound to regenerate. The sorcery that had transformed my body to resemble Scintilla’s has faded by now, so the skin of my wrist is pale again as it slowly knits back together. As I leave out the back door of the club, all that remains of my Sire’s nightly brand is a faint crescent outline marked by traces of dried blood.

﹒

Scintilla eyes the thrall I bring her with mild disgust before thanking me, only slightly begrudgingly. Her bloodline curse is much easier to deal with than mine, but also more distasteful—she can only sustain herself on those who are attracted to her. She once told me that, theoretically, she could drink from any human so long as she enthralled them first, but that it didn’t taste as good when the attraction is artificial. Instead, she tends to have a preference for skeevy men, and she very often drinks them half to death. I don’t know if her choice is entirely according to her curse, either—she’s a through and through misandrist.

She entrances him once my enthralment fades and digs in with dainty distaste. After the poor man fades into unconsciousness from blood loss, we ring for cleanup, and two members of the household staff (Canus’s thralls) show up, carrying him away when we tell them to take him to a hospital.

‘I think I’ll finish my recuperation at the shrine,’ Scintilla says once they all leave.

I offer to accompany her, and we make idle small talk along the way. We’re still under our Sire’s roof, so we don’t dare to speak of tonight’s plans, but Scintilla does wish me well on my current mission—the Knightsbridge murders.

‘Do you think it’s the work of hunters?’ she asks.

‘Actually, I’m starting to think it’s the work of a Desecrant.’

She blinks. ‘Really?’ She does a bad job of sounding surprised.

‘You know how the victims were all dismembered and burnt? Well, we realised last night that none of the victims had their hearts.’ I fake a shudder.

It’s not all lies. The dead vampires are true enough, but it’s the work of Chrys or his subordinates, rogue vampires murdered in a fashion that mimics the work of a Desecrant—the term we use for those vampires who commit sin beyond what the rest of us deem acceptable, those who don’t just stop at feeding from fellow vampires, but instead go so far as to consume their hearts. It allows them to amass a kind of power that is considered unholy even by us undead monsters of the night.

‘Here, then, as you requested.’ Scintilla takes out a phial of murky fluid and presents it to me. It’s the potion that I’d asked her to make, the one that had taken exactly one month to prepare—her greatest part in this perilous plan of ours. Though Scintilla doesn’t have the same facility with sorcery that I do, she has a knack for witchery and a patience to match, which makes her much better at things like potions.

‘Thank you,’ I say, and I leave her at the shrine to her prayers.

I pass by Scintilla’s door again on my way out, and I startle slightly to see Canus emerging from her room.

He seems taken aback as well.

‘Favilla,’ he says. ‘Were you with your sister just now?’

‘She’s praying to Nox.’ The goddess of night is a common patroness for us vampires, be it Nyx or Nox or Nott that we call her. Scintilla is especially devout, so it’s not strange that she would seek the goddess’s aid in her recovery tonight.

Canus doesn’t react much. ‘She’s fed enough, then?’

‘Enough that she can go out on her own again later tonight. I didn’t realise how taxing my request was,’ I add with genuine regret.

‘Do you suspect your task to be very dangerous?’

‘It seemed like it could have been a rogue hunter at first’—it wouldn’t be the first time that a hunter went against the agreement their council has come to with our court and tried to act in vampire territory—‘but we finally did an inventory of the remains we found of the deceased. Of the three whose ashes weren’t completely scattered by the time we got to them, none of their remains contained the ashes of their hearts.’

Canus’s placid expression finally twists into a grimace as he realises the implications of the evidence. ‘I was going to task one of the others with resolving this matter, but maybe it is best that you continue with it after all. Will you need any help?’

If I were human, I might blanch. As is, I respond a little more quickly than I intend: ‘I’d hate to trouble anyone. Besides, the deceased vampires all seem to have been fairly weak, so even if this is a Desecrant, I should be able to handle it. I think I’m getting close to finally pinning them down.’

‘Very well,’ he says. After a bit of an awkward pause, he adds, ‘Best of luck.’

It takes me a second for me to work past the rising fire in my chest, but then I say, ‘Thank you, Sire.’ I try to soften the hitch of anger in my voice, to seem touched by his well wishes. I’m not sure how well I succeed, but it doesn’t matter, for he turns away and walks off without even a second glance.

What a joke! Good luck, he says. Good luck, as if I were a newborn who finally managed to feed without killing anyone, as if it was only natural that I go out into the edges of his territory to slay a Desecrant on his behalf, as if I ought to put my life on the line for him!

It takes a moment for me to swallow it all down. It won’t matter, I tell myself. After tonight, it will no longer matter. After tonight, he will be dead.