Arc 1: A Second Death (Part 3)

The rendezvous point Chrys has chosen is a denture-like block of abandoned townhouses, all whitewashed façades hiding decrepit insides. It is almost comically stereotypical to think that a crazed Desecrant might favour such a residence.

Chrys has stationed a few trusted subordinates at strategic locations for ambush, but they have orders to slow and wound rather than to kill. After all, few vampires in this city are strong enough to stand against Canus in a fight. In the end, it will still come down to me distracting Canus and Chrys surprising him.

At five to seven, the sky outside is lightening already, deep violet edged with palest gold at the eastern horizon. Anticipation churns in a stomach that I no longer use. I’m nauseated, but I’m also not, because I don’t think it’s even possible for vampires to vomit the way humans do.

‘I’m scared,’ I say to Chrys, who is sitting beside me in the cellar of the centre-most townhouse.

His chest is firm and strong behind me. Above the musk of dust and rot around us, I can smell his signature scent of ozone and tobacco. ‘Don’t be,’ he says. ‘You won’t have to do anything but stand aside and watch.’

His words aren’t actually helpful, but I smile anyway. I eye the phial of potion that Scintilla gave me. The liquid within is thin, more sticky than viscous. In the gloom of the cellar, it glows with a very faint light, a dirty blue-green that reminds me of rusted copper.

I unstopper the phial, and a sweetness begins to drift from it, deep and decadent like cacao or coffee. I breathe in. Then, in a single gulp, I drink it all.

For a suspended moment, nothing happens. Then, just as I was starting to worry that something had gone awry on Scintilla’s end, something rises within me, an abject terror that engulfs my entire being. Alongside it is pain. It wracks my very soul, flooding me in waves. Its ebb and flow seem to dance in synchrony with the rise and fall of my adrenaline, demanding that I choose to stand my ground or flee into the night.

It’s the worst I’ve felt since I first woke up to this existence, scared and alone and buried beneath an impossible amount of soil. Distantly, I feel myself collapsing, but the impact of my body against the floor is nothing in comparison to the all-consuming pain that courses through my veins. There’s an awful grittiness against my cheek—the floor grinding into my face—and, beyond the fog of fear clouding the air around me, the scent of a floor so dirty that dust was starting to develop into soil.

Then I feel hands on me—Chrys’s hands—and I remember where I am. I remember our plan. Only, this isn’t the plan at all. The plan was to induce fear in me strong enough that Canus would sense it, to draw him out to seek me, to lure him inside and ambush him as I tried to hold his attention.

But I can’t do anything like this. Fear is one thing, but this pain—this pain is debilitating. I can barely stand up, barely speak. I can only see in blurs, hear a muffled rumbling that may or may not be a voice.

There must be something wrong with the potion after all. Scintilla hadn’t mentioned that the backlash she experienced would have any adverse effects on it, so she must not have realised, but the potion must have been corrupted, for me to feel pain as well as fear.

As I consider this conundrum, my senses slowly begin to resolve. I realise that Chrys has his arms around me, and he’s murmuring, ‘Oh, you stupid, stupid girl.’

Only, it doesn’t sound like him at all. It sounds cold, detached. Cruel.

I whimper and curl into his touch.

His hands stroke over my skin, which makes the pain of the potion even worse. Then, the haze of abject fear within me sharpens, and I belatedly realise that it’s because there’s a hand undoing my belt.

At first, I don’t understand, flinching away on pure instinct. It’s good that I’d thought to top up on blood before I arrived, too, because fear drives me to overpower my movements, and that’s probably the only reason I manage to wrest myself out of Chrys’s grasp. In a flash, I move to the other end of the room.

‘I’m trying to help you, darling,’ Chrys says, crooning. His voice approaches me at a sedate pace. ‘You said that Canus will be able to feel it if his precious little progeny got sullied, didn’t you? We’re trying to get his attention, after all.’

There’s a part of me that doesn’t understand. This is Lord Chryseus, the kind and benevolent son of the Prince, the jewel of the London court, all that is bright and good about this city of ours. He loves me, doesn’t he? What’s he doing?

There’s a smaller part of me that understands all too well. As I am poisoned by a potion I chose to take, afraid and in pain, instead of trying to comfort me, instead of preparing for the inevitable arrival of Canus, my Sire, his brother twice over, Chryseus is trying to have sex with me.

Chryseus is almost upon me now, and a primal part of me has realised that flight has never been a choice for me. So instead, I fight.

I gather all the sorcery I can muster within me, and I channel it into my most innate spell—light. It’s not the witchlight that most vampires learn to wield for sight, nor the firelight that they learn to wield for battle, nor even the light of divinity that the priestesses of Nox call upon for guidance, but something unbound, more potent, something akin to purest starlight.

It erupts from me, hurting my eyes but, hopefully, if he didn’t close his in time, temporarily blinding Chryseus.

‘You bitch!’ he cries. ‘No wonder everyone likes Scinty better.’

I lose grasp of my spell.

Scinty. Scintilla. The potion. Finally, the pieces start snapping into place—not only how that thrall of his had known what human to prepare for Scintilla, but that he’d known to prepare a human for Scintilla at all. They must have been in contact at some point, and Scintilla must have known she would be unwell tonight.

Of course! It wasn’t backlash; it was intentional. It’s an offensive potion, a poison, really, so any mistakes would make it less potent, not more. Scintilla would have had to expend a greater cost in blood for this potion than the regular fear potion would have required. That’s how she’d known she’d be unwell, why she must have told Chryseus about it, how Chryseus had known he’d need to send a human home with me.

Scintilla has betrayed me. Chryseus has betrayed me.

The sense of heartbreak pushes out the fear for a moment, and the pain recedes with it. I’m able to make out the gloom of my surroundings again—the rotting beams and cobwebbed corners. Chryseus was hurt by the light, but he’s recovering now, blinking and jerking his head angrily as if blindness were a physical thing to be shaken off.

‘You…’ I bite out, ‘and Scin—Scinti—Scintilla.’ Her name is long and difficult to form into syllables. Moreover, feeling the shape of her name fill my mouth makes my heart ache.

‘Did you know that her birth name was Arianwen? Strange, isn’t it? She went by Ariana before Canus renamed her.’

Chryseus has stopped trying to approach me, but I’m also stuck in a corner with nowhere to retreat to. My hands are braced against the grimy walls, ready to expend even more of my blood to reattempt that light spell if Chryseus approaches.

‘You don’t know what I’m talking about, do you? Did they never tell you about the prophecy?’

I’m getting distracted, and it’s letting back in the fear and, with it, the pain. It washes over me in a wave. I double over, landing on my knees. I don’t know which I’d rather, the pain of the potion tearing through my body or the pain of betrayal tearing through my heart.

‘Why?’ I manage. ‘Why are you working w-with her? What did she offer you?’

The thought of Chryseus and Scintilla plotting together sends another wave of sadness through me that chases away the fear. Better still, it’s accompanied by something else. The room fills with a strange light, and it takes a moment for me to realise that I’m its source. I’m glowing softly, bursting with a golden light and incandescent with rage.

‘What are you planning?’ I demand.

Chryseus has the audacity to laugh.

‘It really is a pity,’ he says. ‘I think I would have liked you, Favilla, but you and I just weren’t meant to be. We’d clash too much.’

I rush him, but I’m slow and clumsy. He steps aside, and I crash through a half-rotted support beam. Splinters of wood erupt and fall to my feet as I whirl around, scanning the room for where Chryseus might have gone.

A voice emerges from the shadows behind the beam just ahead of me: ‘Scinty really suits me much more, don’t you think? She realised that you’d never have the stomach to do what’s needed. She knows that the only way to become my equal is to claw her way up to my level.’

I want to rush at him again, but the light within me is receding. Instead, the fear and the pain has returned, and an overwhelming sense of dread falls upon me like a ravenous beast, tearing away my will to continue. I know its source.

Chryseus steps out from behind the beam. His fangs are out, and his pupils glow red with bloodlust. ‘Scinty asked for a heart,’ he says in dramatic singsong, ‘and I promised to give her my brother’s.’

Oh. Right. I suppose that’s something I haven’t mentioned yet. You see, the reason most vampires fall to the temptation of Desecration isn’t really just the power boost that they get from consuming the hearts of normal vampires. No, the greatest application of Desecration is this: if a vampire consumes the heart of her Sire, she will become her Sire. She will permanently gain all the power and potency of the blood that originally gave her this unlife, rule over all that once was ruled by her Sire.

It’s sacrilege beyond sacrilege.

It’s also nearly impossible without one’s Sire’s explicit consent. Except, Scintilla has plotted a situation that might just avoid that hurdle. She’ll stand aside and wait for Chryseus to kill our Sire, and then she’ll take his heart after he dies.

He’s right.

I don’t have the stomach to do it.

I’d never even considered it to be a possibility.

Horror and fear attack me in waves, and suddenly Chryseus is on me again, undoing my belt and tearing at the clasp of my jeans so violently that the button pops off and the zip bursts into its component metal teeth.

I shriek, half in panic and half in outrage, and I tense for the next step, for my jeans to be torn off entirely.

Only, nothing happens. That is, nothing happens to me.

The next thing I hear is a deafening crash, grinding and dusty like stone clashing against stone. Chryseus’s hands are suddenly no longer at my hips and waist.

Canus. Canus is here.

My Sire is here.

For the next several moments, all I know is confusion and pain and an inescapable dread. I see flashes of elemental sorcery, of fire and ice and static. I feel the reverberations of force, hear the tear of flesh and the crunch of collapsing beams, smell the fragrance of ancient blood being spilled.

Vampire blood doesn’t have the same allure as human blood. Even as injured as I am, it doesn’t incite me to bloodlust. However, Chryseus and my Sire are no regular vampires, and the potency of their blood has a certain pull to it. That thread of desire is enough for me to remember myself: sure, the poison I took was self-inflicted, but it’s still a poison, and if it’s a poison, then surely I can heal from it.

I force myself into a healing trance, using what blood I can spare to flush the toxin from my system. It’s hard-going at first, the corruption of the potion refusing to let go of my blood, but eventually it works, and I feel my physical faculties returning once more, feel the flex of my fingers as they relax from the stiff claws they’d been stuck as, the slide of grime against my shoulder.

My other senses, too, return one by one. First my sight, as I take in the shifting shadows around me, as I discern the flashing movements of the two lordly vampires locked in a struggle that is both physical and magical. Then I begin to hear things—not just the fight, but the sounds beyond, the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps.

I snap out of the trance.

‘Sire!’ I yell. ‘My Sire, did you bring anyone else?’

Even as I ask, I know that it’s pointless—worse than pointless, even, since the last thing I want is to distract Canus from his fight. Instead, I turn my attention to the stairway that leads down to the cellar, and I throw all my might into creating a barrier of magic across the opening.

I no longer know what I want from tonight, but I do know that I don’t want to wake up at sunset only to find myself bound to Scintilla’s will. Part of me still loves her, still sees her as a sister, and that part of me is furious, reeling from the discovery of her treachery. Another part of me, however, is able to set aside the ugly sentiments, and I can almost understand why she’s doing it. Scintilla is proud, prouder than I am, even, and she would never be content to continue her unlife in relative obscurity as one of the nameless, Sireless offshoots of a vanquished vampire lord. I should have known that.

She should have told me.

I hate her, a little, for not telling me, and the emotion fuels my sorcery, weaves my intent into reality. I slice open a wrist, and blood streams from it, twisting into an expanding shadow that completely obscures the opening of the stairway. Unless Scintilla has managed to hide a talent for sorcery greater than my own for the past three decades, she won’t be getting down here without help. She’ll have a hard time even approaching the barrier.

As I finish, however, the smell of ancient blood suddenly intensifies. I turn my attention back to the fight between Chryseus and Canus, and I’m horrified to see that they’re grappling about on the floor like human wrestlers, both of them severely wounded.

I know now that my hate for my Sire had only ever been a shadow of the real thing, because there is a rage in me now, focused entirely on Chryseus, one more potent than I have ever felt for anyone else.

I loved him. I trusted him. I thought he loved me too.

But he lied. He lied to me, and, even as fearful as I am of interfering in their fight, I want to tear him apart. I want him to hurt the way he has hurt me.

Their extended grappling has waned in its fury, but Chryseus has the advantage of natural strength over Canus, and he has him pinned more often than not. Eventually, he manages to manoeuvre the two of them so that he can brace against a corner of the cellar, using the wall’s leverage to hold Canus’s hands behind his back.

A sickening crack reverberates through the air. I’m confused for a second, but then I realise that Canus has broken the elbow of his left arm, swinging the limb across Chryseus’s face in a last-ditch effort to knock him out of the hold. It works, just barely, but I can tell that it was a mistake. If Chryseus was able to find a way to almost immobilise Canus with both arms intact, then it’ll only be a matter of time before Chryseus overpowers him if he has his left arm broken.

In the split second that I realise this, I make a rash decision.

I reinforce my limbs with what little blood I have left, and I lunge. The distraction that Canus provided with his arm is enough that I manage to catch Chryseus unawares, and, with a reverberating clash, I tackle him sideways, sending him careening through one of the walls and into the cellar of the next townhouse over.

On instinct, I go for his throat, tearing through it with my fangs. It’s both a mistake and not—the throat is a vulnerable point, and I manage to savage it so badly that Chryseus begins to spasm beneath me, fighting to lift his hands to cover the gaping wound in his neck. However, biting him there also means that his blood spurts out onto my tongue, and it is the most disgusting thing I’ve ever tasted.

I recoil in shock, and Chryseus doesn’t even take this chance to attack me. Instead, he clutches desperately at his throat, trying to staunch the faltering flow of his blood.

He doesn’t have much left in him, I can tell—his blood is tepid and sludgy. It smells potent, of course, and I know that if I focused, if I had enough time, I could force it down and use it to exert some sense of power over him. But I don’t have time, and I don’t have the focus. I cannot bear to swallow the vileness that has spilled into my mouth. All I can do is try to spit out as much as I can.

Just as I almost recover from the assault that Chryseus’s blood wreaked upon my senses, I hear a rush of steps. Before I understand what’s going on, something hits me from the side, crushing me into the wall (not the wall I destroyed just now, but the back wall that is supported by the weight of the surrounding earth).

It’s Scintilla.

I use what little leverage I have to turn us around, trying to pin her in turn, but she bursts out of it with unlikely strength—she hasn’t been using up her energy to cleanse poisons from her system or make apparently useless barriers out of sorcery, so she has more of her natural vampire advantages right now than I do.

I am helpless against her power, so I resort to the one thing that I can do: ‘Scinty,’ I gasp. ‘Scinty, why?’ I struggle fruitlessly.

Her eyes meet mine, and I can see a sadness in them, reluctance and regret and pity. But I can also see a chilling resolve.

‘I’m sorry, Fav, I really am,’ she says, and I can tell that she really does mean it, but there’s a strange simmer of resentment to her voice now, a coldness that I would have never thought her capable of. She continues, ‘But this is for the best.’

Murderous intent colours her last sentence, and I struggle even more to free myself from her hold. She’s too strong, however, too fresh with blood and vital essence.

‘I’m sorry,’ she repeats, and she wrenches back my neck, her teeth lengthening into wickedly sharp fangs as her mouth descends upon my neck.