We emerge on the main street of the Margadh Sióg, the hour is still early and it’s crowded enough that no one seems to notice our sudden appearance. I had requested we go directly to the Archives, only for Muir to tell me ‘ah, we can’t do that, my sweet. The Archives are shielded against such means.’ And so, we enter as close as we can, which is to say not entirely close at all. I suppose with the amount of knowledge stored in the Archives; they would have extravagant defenses far surpassing even the Order’s.
“Here is where we part ways,” Muir says and I turn to him in dismay. “Don’t fret, I’m going to the black market. If Vasilisa can’t help you with the relic, there’s bound to be someone or something in the black market that can.”
“...Very well,” I concede. I would feel better not going alone, considering what happened the last time I ventured to the Archives, but his idea has merit, and quite honestly, I have no desire to ever return to any part of that hidden area of Margadh Sióg, despite my memories of it being hazy.
“Don’t worry, baby,” he grins, then taps the spot on his neck that I sank my fangs into the night before. “I’ll be keeping an eye on you, so to speak.”
It is a reassuring thought. He then catches me by surprise when he slots his arm around me, pulls me in and kisses me again. The scent of him so close, the blood flowing through him, has my hunger stir acutely…as does the kiss itself, but I am relieved it is quick as it strikes that chord of discomfort again. I cannot help but think of Riley with every intimate gesture Muir makes. If he suspects this, he does not show it in his expression, and winks before offering a sly smile as means of his farewell. I watch his tall, lithe form disappear into a crooked alley, bracing myself for what tonight will bring. I’m trying not to feel too expectant, too hopeful of immediate success with Vasilisa. I do not know if she can destroy the relic, but it feels right to venture down this path. I grip the case Muir lent me more firmly, within is the relic – a fact I confirmed before we left his flat – and begin the trek down main street and towards the looming building of the Archives.
If anyone pays me heed it is brief, a glance in my direction as I stride with resolute steps towards my destination. I hardly see those around me, convincing myself that once the relic is destroyed everything else will fall into place. Most importantly, it will somehow lead to knowing exactly what happened to Riley and whether he is truly safe. I want to believe Chiaki, I have to believe Chiaki, but there’s a niggling doubt that eats away at me all the same. I know, however, that I will have no success attempting to break into the Order’s headquarters, especially after Muir’s infiltration.
I am so focused on putting one step in front of the other that I do not realize the streets are emptied until the Archives are straight ahead. I slow, looking around in suspicion at the eerie quiet that’s fallen over this section of the Market. While some distance from main street, it’s not so far to account for the quiet.
I feel the same hyper awareness I possessed as a child, and for once I am grateful for it, because the sudden whoosh! does not catch me unaware and I jump from the assault that otherwise would have taken me down. Landing nimbly to my feet, grasping the case tight, I see the two shadow creatures that accompanied James the last time we met here. I do not see my uncle, and peering at the strange creatures I see they don’t seem as tangible as they did before. Their form stutters, drips, fades and distorts more regularly, suggesting that they are not…well. Whether it counts as encroaching death, I do not know – I’ve no idea if they are at all sentient – and furthermore, I cannot let myself care.
One of them rushes towards me, a shadow racing across the cobblestone road. I let my instincts take over, for once not fighting my vampiric nature in some desperate bid to cling to my humanity. I move faster than the dark creature, side-stepping its lunge and swiping at it with fingernails that are hard as diamond. Part of me expects to pass through the thing as if I struck at smoke, instead, my fingers catch at inky flesh and rend it, darkness staining my fingertips like blood, more if it splashing out against the ground.
The creature buckles, but its companion is leaping forward to take its place. I move backwards, eyes trained on the shadowy form, unblinking. It lowers to a crouch, then merges with the street below and darts towards me. I dodge, and form a fist which I punch into the creature, only to wince as my knuckles hit stone hard enough to form a small crater. The creature is unharmed, but seems limited in its capabilities whilst acting the shadow on the ground.
I don’t ignore it, but I turn most of my attention back to the first, which warps and flickers in disturbing patterns. Almost sluggishly it comes at me, and I strike just as it stumbles, catching it where a person’s jaw would be. I hit it with all my might, and watch as the headlike shape is torn from the neck and lands in a blotchy splash against the street. It does not move again. There’s a shriek behind me which halts me from celebrating at all, and I turn quickly and hold up the case as a shield. The sharpened point of the creature’s hand splashes into a mess against the heavy siding.
Before it can recover, I put my fist through its chest. There’s no heart, of course, there’s nothing but more of that inky darkness, and yet the blow proves fatal all the same. It collapses in a puddle of tarry liquid at my feet.
I’m breathing heavily, although my body is keyed up and not at all tired. The adrenaline has me trembling, and I stare at the two disintegrated forms on the ground in awe. Had I still been human, I would have been defeated on the first attack. Despite my gratitude that I won, there’s still a sorrow tugging at my heart with the thought.
“Henry?”
I whirl around, facing the road that leads back to main street and seeing Vivienne there. She looks surprised, and I can only assume she saw the end of my fight against those creatures. She approaches me now, her gaze shifting to look at the remnants of the shadowy assailants as if expecting them to rise again.
“Are you alright?”
“Yes,” I reply. “But I cannot linger, I must get to the Archives.”
“The Archives? What is going on?” Vivienne asks.
“I really can’t explain,” I feel impatience creeping over me. “I have to go before more of these…things show up,” I gesture to the nearby puddle.
“Are you sure I can’t convince you to come to Sanguine Sweet instead?”
“No.” She sighs suddenly and her posture shifts. So subtly that had I not been on high alert I probably would have missed it. “Vivienne?”
“I was hoping it wouldn’t come to this,” she says before she seems to vanish.
I feel a sudden rush beside me and I duck just in time to avoid her fist crashing into my temple. I feel it graze off my head and even that elicits sharp pain. I drop into a crouch, then push against the street with all my might to spring away from her. “What are you doing?!”
“My duty to my coven,” she replies.
“What do you mean?”
She does not answer, instead she goes in to attack again. I am not so fortunate this time, feigning to the right of her suddenly appearing before me was something she anticipated, and her leg catches me in the ribs in a tremendous blow that brings me down. I’m sure my ribs are broken, and I grimace as I feel them attempting to reset immediately.
Evidently she is not out to kill me, because she doesn’t continue her assault as I scramble painfully to my feet. She’s not trying to get the relic either, because she’s made no move to try and take the case which holds it from me.
“You’re…buying time,” I murmur. “How long have you been in on all this madness?”
“I’m not,” Vivienne scoffs. “I’m only looking out for Charlemagne, as I’ve been doing since we met. I knew you were his progeny the moment I laid eyes on you. After all our centuries together, of course I would recognize his power in you.”
Clapping resounds nearby and we both look to the shadows of a nearby alley to see Charlemagne himself appear. He pauses briefly at the remains of one of the shadowy creatures and wrinkles his nose. “What a wasted fortune,” he sighs. “It just goes to show that even the most powerful and forbidden of magic is useless to those who don’t have the means to wield it properly.”
“What is this?” I demand, backing away from both of the older vampires.
“The end,” Charlemagne replies. He steps in next to Vivienne and circles his arm around her waist. “Well done, my love.”
“Thank you, Master Charlemagne.”
My anger and fear at the situation has me wanting to lash out at her, but I cannot accuse her of betrayal. She told me the first night we met that she is Charlemagne’s lover, why shouldn’t her allegiance be to him over a vampire she barely knows? That she knew he was my sire only solidifies her motivation further.
“These are things you should have thought about before,” Charlemagne points out, obviously reading my thoughts once more. “Too bad, so sad, it’s too late for all of that. Now then,” he levels his gaze at me and a bolt of terror surges through me. All it takes is a single command, I don’t have the means to fight the power he wields. “Sleep,” he orders, and darkness closes over me.
⋅•⋅⊰∙∘☽༓☾∘∙⊱⋅•⋅
I wake with a start, and find myself on my back on an uncomfortable stone altar, stripped to my briefs. If I did not feel such anxiety coming over me I may have been exasperated to find my wrists once more shackled, as well as my ankles this time. I have nothing but fear, however, because I see four figures nearby and I recognize all of them. My father, my mother, Uncle James, and Charlemagne. We are in an underground chamber, the walls made of uneven rock formations. There is nothing in the room save for the altar and those present, but when I turn my gaze upwards, I see a circular opening above me, a natural skylight. Directly overhead is the full moon, glaring down at me.
“What do you want?” I hate the desperation in my voice.
“You dare to even ask us this, after you abandoned us for all those years!” Mum snaps.
“You let me go!”
“We expected you to come to your senses, welp,” my father growls. “Especially after that fucking ponce died. But no, instead you stayed away and look at you now,” he sneers,” taking on his name. Mimicking his accent. Did you think it really separated you from us, boy?”
“It did! It does! Because he wasn’t a monster!”
“Oi, come on now, son, you want to go calling us monsters when you’re the one sporting fangs, then?” James cuts in.
“Excuse me?” Charlemagne affects outrage.
“I don’t want to fucking hear it from you,” James retorts with a roguish smirk. “I know what you ask for when you come lurking down here.”
“I have delicate tastes,” Charlemagne replies.
The pair grin at one another, comrades in brutality. I try to twist free from my bonds to no avail. “If you didn’t want me to leave, why did you let me think I was free of you?” I ask.
“You were never free of us, boy,” Dad replies. “We kept track of you, in our own way, there was no point dragging your whinging arse around until we had the other part of the puzzle,” he glances towards Mum.
“What happens now?” I demand.
“Now we finish what we started,” she says. She steps closer and I see she has the relic in her hands. “Now we may fulfill our destinies.”
“I still think we’d have better luck going with someone who didn’t fucking hate us,” James says. “Maybe there’s something to the whole willing sacrifice, eh?”
“Shut up,” Dad grunts.
“At least tell me why…” I’m stalling for time, trying not to give entirely in to hope. Muir should know I’m in trouble, and yet…I’m also wishing that Riley will somehow come for me.
There is also the dreadful curiosity of what this ritual was always meant to accomplish. They have me, is there any reason they should deny me the knowledge now?
My mother draws herself up, she looks excited to speak the truth, to revel in her ‘destiny’ with a captive audience present. “We call forth the Nathir, the Harbinger,” she whispers. “It is our family who has kept the memory alive, who has prepared the way for the return…through you,” she looks down at me when she says it, her lip curling up as if she looks at something disgusting rather than her son. Did I ever truly think her kindness all those years ago was genuine? Did she always hate me this much? “It was always meant to be through you.”
My eyes widen and I feel cold terror sweeping over me. “Through me?” I know about their calls to the Nathir, I bore witness to them that one night as a child out on the dark moors, but they never mentioned this before. I always assumed I was only meant to carry on the rituals when they passed, that they meant to involve me in the dark sacrifices when I was older. Now I think my lying on the table in the tavern had been my part all along. Their expectation in returning from the moors was born from their hope to see that the Nathir successfully took me over.
“A vessel,” Dad speaks up, missing my mother’s annoyed look that he takes her spotlight. “Sacrifices under the moon, blood shed to pave the way, to lead the Nathir to a suitable vessel. But it was always too far, hidden away…”
“Not anymore,” she cuts in, holding up the relic. “We always had the vessel, now we have the key!”
“I am not a vessel!” I shout. “I am my own person! You cannot do this!”
“I thought they couldn’t,” Charlemagne says, glancing at his nails. “They almost botched everything. Humans,” he scoffs the last word.
“It wasn’t our fault!” my father exclaims. “This fucking nancy tore down those shadows easily!”
“What did I tell you about the time limit? You let the spell wear off almost to nothing,” Charlemagne points out. “And take care how you speak to me, Charles. I think you forget yourself.”
That brings my father up short, and he seethes in furious silence. Knowing my family is a lost cause to their obsession, I focus on my progenitor instead. “Why are you involved in this at all?” I ask. “What could you possibly stand to gain from this? Why do you believe anything they believe in?” I remember what Muir said, that there is something within the relic, but how could anyone say that the force is what my parents claim it to be?
“Because I know it to be true, my young friend,” Charlemagne quips. “The Nathir is very real, and I very much want this ritual to succeed.”
“But…why??”
“Vampires cannot do magic,” Charlemagne says. It is something he said when we first met, only now the bitterness in his voice is tenfold. “Nasty little trade for immortality, really, especially when you could confidently boast of being the most powerful sorcerer this world has ever seen.”
I stare at him, lost for words.
“It was Charlemagne who told our ancestors about the Nathir in the first place,” Mum says. “The Bishops and my family, the Burkes, have been attempting to free it for generations, through the fruit of both our families, through you, Henry, we will succeed.”
Burke, it’s the first time my mother ever refers to the name in front of me. She’s been such a fervent advocate of the Bishop bloodline that it’s like her time before marriage didn’t merit consideration. I begin to understand Billy’s involvement in all of this, but it is distant and far away beneath my growing panic. No one is coming.
“I still don’t understand…”
“You remember Paradise,” Charlemagne says. “The True Source? This relic, the Nathir inside of it, it’s more than enough power to open the way. Frustrating, since I could have reached it myself before the turn…anyway, your friend Riley ruined my attempt to open it and restore my magic through the enchantress—”
“Elena…”
“I wasted such a fine thrall on her too,” Charlemagne sighs. “He didn’t survive when he Mad Maxed his way to running her kid over. At least I can imagine the mangy wolf's face, small victories. Now, however, I get what I want and your parents get their Harbinger.”
“Let’s just hope you turning the boy won’t fuck up everything we worked towards,” Dad grumbles his interruption.
“The Nathir is no sorcerer, nothing will be lost,” Charlemagne says with a nasty smile.
“How can you be so certain?” my father demands.
“How can you be so dense as to question me after everything?”
James sighs, interrupting my father who swells up to continue arguing. “All this bloody bickering…I knew I should’ve nipped to the pub instead.”
“Hold your tongue you insufferable cur!” Father shouts at his brother instead. “You may have never been truly invested in this in the first place, but you will not show blatant disrespect now! Just stand there and be quiet! You are all but useless at this point anyway!”
“So that’s how we’re playing it,” James scoffs. “Drag me through all this bleeding shit for years, then tell me to fuck off right at the end? Fuck the lot of you.”
“As if you could be surprised at this outcome,” Mother sneers.
I feel as if I am watching this cold drama unfold like it’s a staged play. How did I become a spectator in my own fate? How am I so caught up in this tempest with such little control over anything? I thrash against the shackles now; my lips pull back to reveal my fangs as I use all of my strength trying to liberate myself. I cannot rely on anyone coming in time, so I must free myself. I feel the shackle around my left ankle give and I focus all my might there, letting out a roar as I pull my leg free.
“NO!” Mum screams.
A much stronger grip clasps over my briefly freed limb and I look down to see Charlemagne has a single hand pressed against my shin. “As proud as I am of seeing how much strength I passed along, I can’t let you interrupt this. Now then, Ines my dear, hurry it along.”
She clutches at the relic, as she stands on one side of the altar, my father takes place on the other holding a knife, and James –looking mutinous– takes his place next to Dad. Still I struggle, even when it feels as if my shin bone is splintering under the might of Charlemagne’s strength.
“Tonight, we gather together,” my mother begins, looking up at the natural skylight, at the moon.
“Under the rustic moon,” Dad continues. “We pay tribute to the liberation…”
I do not see a sacrifice in the chamber, but the knife flashes as my father holds it aloft.
“A release from bondage,” Mom’s voice quivers in anticipation as she holds up the relic. “A tribute of blood.”
Dad lashes out with the knife, and while I expect the sting of the blade it does not come. Instead, I see the deadly weapon puncture the side of my uncle’s neck. My eyes widen just as James’ do. His hands lift to his throat, trying to catch the blood pouring from the gaping wound. My mother holds the relic out over me, smiling as a robust spurt of blood splashes over the artifact. “Take our tribute,” she whispers.
“Let it strengthen you,” Father adds, unperturbed at the violence he committed towards his own brother.
I see the relic’s color change, from pitch black to a deep red, matching James’ blood. He falls to his knees and I catch his gaze. There’s something of an apology in my uncle’s eyes, and I wonder how different life would have been if we had broken away from the hold my parents had on us both. James collapses to his side and I can no longer see him, but I can hear his heart. It beats more slowly, slowly, and slower still…
“We call to the Nathir,” Mom continues.
My father brings down the bloody blade, and I hiss as this time it tears through the flesh of my chest. He does not swing the blade wildly, I know he cuts a pattern, some sigil of their unknown king. His cuts run deep, so much so that my skin does not have a chance to quickly stitch itself together again. There will be a circular shape on my chest, with lines branching out of it like some crude drawing of a sun. I feel each gash like fire ripping through me, but as much as I writhe on the stone altar, I cannot free myself.
Blood pools on my stomach, drips over my sides and stains the gray stone beneath me red. Overhead I see the relic, my mother holding it high and it’s no longer opaque, I can see through it faintly…I can see the moon, which is as red as my blood due to the relic’s changed color. Something stirs within the relic, and I get the sense that an unformed, dreadful eye is looking at me. I look away, my eyes cast downwards to see Charlemagne, his lips pulled back into a horrific grin and his eyes gleaming. He’s planning…something, but I am incapable of knowing what.
I feel my blood not only spilling from the wounds, but as though there’s suction, a pulling from the relic. It feasts on my blood with all the insatiable hunger of a vampire. It does not only take; however, I feel a sickly darkness, malignant in my veins…spreading.
My father brings up the knife one final time, as if he means to plunge it into the relic.
Or into my heart.
The sword that suddenly bursts from his chest stops him and his jaw drops, eyes bulging as he gapes slack-jawed and wide-eyed, his free hand scrambling at the deadly blade as if testing that it’s truly there. Mom screams, Charlemagne growls, and my father is tossed aside like a rag doll to reveal Muir, wearing magnificent armor. It looks light, but durable, a faint glow emanating from the breastplate and pauldrons. I see him clearly now, the sharper features, the elongated eyes and green skin.
“You,” Charlemagne hisses.
“Me,” Muir replies.
My mother shrieks and runs to her husband, who is still gasping wetly in the corner of the chamber. Muir and Charlemagne ignore her, squaring off against one another, hatred reflecting in both their eyes.
“This time I will tear you to fucking pieces,” Charlemagne sneers.
Muir matches the scornful expression and twirls his sword, leaving a streak of Charles’ blood against the floor. “You know how much I love to see you try, vampire.”
