With bellies full of a stew’s ancient ancestor and Eddie’s cane, the quintet made their way into the garden with fresh outfits. Eddie wore his police uniform without a jacket, having nothing else ready. Sulis wanted to say it was typical for men. But she didn’t do the washing either. Deliah wore one of Livia’s dresses, scrounged from her bedroom as the closest fit. And as ever, Sybil wore a plain black dress with a long silver chain of charms. Her knight carried her swords, wary of Sulis’ expression as she read through the texts she’d received. The sireless herself bit her lip with consternation. Things truly had been boiling over in her absence. She doubted the Fulcrum would listen to her after being thoroughly trounced by Sigrun, but hope sprang eternal as she came to a stop before the archway of her home.
Placing her fingers on the door, Eddie whistled as the carvings began rearranging themselves into an entrance. Waving off Sybil’s kind hand, he hobbled through the portal. Sulis sent a final few words to her wives, hoping to temper their righteous anger. All it would take was a word from Ansa and the problem would be solved. Assuming her brother could keep a rein on his chieftains.
She entered the castle with a relieved breath, ensuring Eddie had locked the door before they were underway. The portal had led them to the rotunda, the most convenient place to move the castle. Sulis’ vampire companions ushered the castle’s inhabitants back with warnings about work being done. The practitioner had literally done it in her sleep, but rust was still a factor. Their ailing policeman made his way to the edge of the room, eyes searching every flourish and facile decoration. He even spied the entrance hall and its statues to through the southern doors. No doubt he thought her arrogant, Sulis thought with a smile as she plied her craft.
With a slow sweep of her left hand, plumes of bluish white light began to trace themselves throughout the domed chamber. Lines manifested that skated through uncounted winking stars like a night sky strewn with galaxies. Focusing her mind to avoid going somewhere completely random, the sireless grasped for any red stars she could see. As she motioned with her hands, the entire spherical illusion rolled like a colossal bowling ball to bring the right stars into alignment. She saw Sybil and Judith’s home reality, dismissing it with an enticed expression. There were many others the Lady permitted her to travel to, something Deliah and Eddie both noticed loudly as the stars paraded past them. She flinched as her concentration was threatened, lashing out a hand to grasp her own home. Should have been under favoured worlds. Dammit Ansa.
With some struggle, her mind wandering toward the Francians’ home once again, she directed her right hand toward the wall before her. A wall that held a seemingly pointless arched cubbyhole with a statue of an angry black cat. From the rim of that archway, a new portal began to form with the sonorous whirring of the castle’s inner workings. A lot of the refugees looked about in sudden horror, as if the castle moving every few days was going to be commonplace from then on. But Sulis was unconcerned, grinning broadly as she began manifesting the portal.
She’d seen it before. Right now, the assembled youngsters who’d never even heard of her let alone the castle, would be able to see the world beginning to distort. Bricks would rise from the ground, perfectly clean and hewn before the wooden doors themselves grew into place. Then, with a crash like distant lightning, the castle would open its doors to those who needed shelter. Shouting with triumph, Sulis allowed the stars to blossom outwards into nothingness, breathing a little raggedly from the effort.
“I should warn you all that the outside world is a little dangerous and filled with very angry vampires. Best not let curiosity get the better of you, eh?” Sulis instructed to her guests as her entourage began to crowd around once again. Eddie was surprisingly nimble as he pointed with his stick toward the ceiling and their shared rooms. Fanciest place he’d ever seen, apparently. “It’s the same principle as Sam’s shack. Just way bigger because I like strays,” the sireless answered him with a low voice before tapping the portal experimentally. “I made it, so I’ll go first. Kinda curious to see what happens if a sireless gets shredded into atoms.”
Before they could lodge any objections, she ducked her head into the archway and fell into space briefly. It was a vertigo-inducing falling sensation that was made worse when she shoved her head back through to declare it safe and to tell Agata she could reconnect with her former buddies, if she fancied it. She’d probably arrive before the cardinal and his plane. Deliah heard her instructions and raced off, not quite ready to see the modern world by her estimation. Which suited the remaining four just fine.
“Alright Renfair let’s get on it,” Eddie teased her other guests as he emerged from the portal. His mirth was soon stripped as a dozen scared people arrayed shotguns, knives and what was probably a BB gun by the looks of it at them. Sulis stood looking nonplussed, eyes searching the crowd for any familiar faces. “Ya’ll just never stop fightin’ do you?” he marvelled as a few of the vampires caught the scent of his blood. Their confusion only seemed to mount.
The crowd began to part as several grumpy figures made their way through it, wanting to see what the fuss was about. From the tenor of his voice, Sam clearly thought someone had been shot accidentally. The look on his face was priceless as he saw his sister, bold as brass with her hands in her pockets standing before him. He looked at her unarmed form over as if she were mad, turning to a few faces Sulis recognized. The friendly chiefs who’d help her murder Leofric. As well as quite a few other nefarious European vampires. Eivor was a particularly nasty woman, if she recalled correctly. Which she rarely did these days.
Not bothered to listen to the rundown, Sulis began her march toward the house with a calm expression. One enforced by the cocky Francian and her wife holding naked swords. A shotgun was nasty but the damage a vampire could do with a sword wasn’t to be sniffed at. Like getting hit with a cheese wire at lightning speed.
“Not being funny brother but I left specific instructions for Ansa and if they’ve been followed you won’t be fighting tonight,” Sulis asserted with confidence. The authority on her tongue stalled his diatribe, forcing a look of confusion onto his features. “I have a sudden and inalienable compulsion to return home” she explained loudly enough for the chiefs and clan mothers to hear. She then looked over her shoulder at her companions. “Find my wives. I need to talk to Sam” she almost pleaded in a low tone to the Francians, who nodded in response. Eddie however took the opportunity to throw his arms about the Native sireless, chuckling at their reunion.
“Wonderful to see you too Eddie,” Sam said almost automatically, still thrown for a loop by the whirlwind that was his sister. “I need to speak with you too!” he directed toward his sister’s retreating back, which seemed to be looking for something beyond the battle lines. As her eyes came to rest on a blot in the distance, a relieved sigh escaped her. Sam turned his eyes upon the yurt set up in a field, scratching his head. It was from the beyond, they could both sense that. A small round tent constructed of wooden branches wound together, canvas thrown over the spars to create a suitably warm and homey shelter should it be required. Ansa had always preferred to keep her hideaways simple rather than the grand monstrosity her former love had divined. “She bound Tallas. She’s harbouring some of the worst kinds of people. You have to do something about her, or I will,” Sam informed his sister firmly, almost daring her to let her love off the hook again. “She even took Mary and Hana hostage!”
Sulis paced as Eddie vented his spleen at this new adversary, eyes raking over the fulcrum busses as if sizing up his chances. He wasn’t fast but he was skilled. Unfortunately, so were they. And what a fine mess they’d dropped onto their progenitor’s lap. Her oath not to kill was looking more and more idiotic by the day.
Ironically, from the lips of the Lady herself, her solution was presented. They all wanted progress, never the cost. If she was going to dole out good advice on the regular, Sulis was going to have to revise her opinion of the spirit. But in that moment, she began her journey toward the tent with a steely expression. One Sam completely ignored as he grabbed her by the bicep.
“There has to be justice for what she’s done. Not just now but through the centuries,” he glowered with a disdainful glance at the yurt. “So think very carefully before you let her go” her brother advised, releasing Sulis’ arm as she gave him a challenging look. She made a dismissive comment about it being her tribe only to have her brother snap once more. “I ask again, how many times are you going to be disappointed?” he repeated with an exasperated tone.
“If all goes according to plan, once more. After that, I can finally wash my hands of this” Sulis replied with a distant expression. She resumed her walk then, leaving her confused brother in her wake. Eddie took him by the shoulder and guided him back toward camp. She could feel his reproachful gaze. Like him, she understood there was nothing more tempting than a narrative. Rail tracks to keep you sane. But the sireless was coming to enjoy her insanity. People had accused her of it a lot lately.
Ansa’s yurt was just as homey as it had been during their adventures. Her tribe had been partially nomadic, moving up to Wales when it was summer. It certainly explained Welsh practitioners like Seren. Practically bathed in the spirit world since birth. Sulis parsed the curtains that acted as a door, looking at the familiar interior of rush mats hidden by rich rugs from across the world. She’d even found more pillows that seemed to be from the Golden Age of Islam. Her experiments in Baghdad had been popular, then. And then there were the bottles, jars and tools of a witch held in open boxes. They always resembled absurd sewing kits to Sulis. She stopped suddenly as her eyes fell on Ansa. She sat cross-legged on her cushions, her grimoire in her lap. As she finished making alterations to a spell, she laid the pen aside.
“You wanted to see me” she noted, slender fingers drifting to a goblet she’d pilfered on her travels. She took a long drink, eyes searching the taller woman. “Modern clothes never suited you. I still see the wild woman in white hides most days.”
“Would that be in your dreams or nightmares, Annie?” Sulis managed through a bone-dry mouth as she settled next to her former love. She took the goblet, sniffing at it briefly before taking a mouthful of the blood within it. She’d worry about where it had come from later. Ansa humoured her with a smile before their moods soured. “This can’t keep happening. One of us is going to have to buckle eventually.”
“Why must everything be a war with you?” Ansa questioned with a saddened expression.
“Because you consistently wage it like one,” the sireless answered, a note of irritation hitting her tone. She soothed it back as her former love’s expression creased. “Besides, I didn’t mean our recessed love. I meant the Fulcrum. We need them out of the USA before an all-out war begins.” Sulis knew it was silly but had to try. And the surprised expression on Ansa’s features vindicated that small seed of faith.
“It’s not like the new you to give us orders. Or even acknowledge us” she commented suspiciously, her hand coming to rest on Sulis’ cheek. She didn’t immediately shrug the contact away, her eyes boring into those of her ex. “Dare I dream my old flame has reignited?” Ansa asked with a teasing tone, leaning closer. Sulis imagined it to be intimidation and held her ground. “Or is this because you’ve seen what I did? A black goat wreathed in purple flames.” She spoke inches from the sireless’ face in an oddly sultry tone. She felt her assumptions break a little, blinking rapidly before sliding from beneath the ancient witch.
“I’m not sure what you think is happening but no I didn’t. The Lady warned me about that spirit,” Sulis stammered out. Her ex smirked confidently before standing and crossing the room, gladdened it seemed to hear the confession. “You’re welcome by the way. I paid your debt, so I’d say you owe me.”
The mood in the room changed then. A light, almost courting air shifted to become bitterly cold as both women realised. Sulis’ eyes shifted downward, drinking what remained of the blood while Ansa seemed to mull something over. She seemed conflicted and her hands were clasped. Her finger was tapping away, jostling the sireless’ nerves. It was only when prodded that the shorter of the two relented.
“Your intervention almost made me lose control of a spirit. I had to fight with it for three days,” Ansa breathed as if controlling her anger. But her sire was cannier than that and narrowed her eyes with growing irritation. She stood, towering over the witch with a firm expression. She seemed to visibly shrink, looking ashamed. Another trick perhaps? “In my eagerness to find you I bound Tallas” she confessed as if it physically pained her.
Sulis sucked in a breath to shout, to condemn. She wanted to join her brother in the briefest of moments. Such a stupid choice had almost doomed her! Hell, if Tallas were feeling particularly vindictive it could have doomed everyone in the manor. Her caustic touch had a way of eroding anything a practitioner did. As if she were the very touch of entropy. But of course, she’d dug the knife into each of them. Why torture their bodies when the mind would last so much longer? And poor unlucky Lucy was the bystander in her psychic car bomb. Sulis wrapped her arms around Ansa, pulling her close with a saddened expression. She briefly squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to think of the guns being oiled as they spoke.
“You incited this. You have to stop it” Sulis advised with a grim glare downwards. Ansa looked up as if confused, looking toward the manor with a recalcitrant expression. “I thought you loved vampires. Why won’t you save them?” the sireless questioned. The shorter woman pouted almost petulantly before breaking the embrace, fingers braced against her forehead.
“Sigrun thinks I’m weak. Ranjit and Amara are acting on her orders. They want to conquer the American vampires just like the good old days,” Ansa ranted. Sulis nodded, stomping on a glowing ball of pride that grew in her chest. “I had a few of them demanding Lucy become leader because she’s sireless and isn’t you. Forgetting that I sired her” she continued, using the older term for awakening. It didn’t escape her former love’s notice, who smiled despite herself. “Oh and let’s not forget you making a spectacle of yourself and blowing up my whole narrative!”
“Doesn’t it drive you mad?” Sulis asked with a laugh. Ansa joined her, giggling at the silliness of it all. “Twelve thousand years and here we are aping what made us vampires in the first place,” she observed as her mirth died down.
They stalled in their conversation then as Sulis thought over their similarities. It was to be expected in the end. Their formative years had been spent in that very yurt. Bearskin blankets swaddling them against the winter. A different time and place. A different country where death was common, and blood slathered the hands of every soul. As it still did, to those who were honest. She looked at Ansa with an expression so wracked with sorrow that her old flame allowed shock to enter her expression. She’d come so far, all she had to do was take a moment’s courage. And deal with the centuries of fallout.
“I want to love you so badly, Ansa” Sulis admitted with a defeated expression. “But I can’t love what you became. That war out there? That’s us. Two sides refusing to admit defeat. Or even give ground” she continued, holding a hand up to quiet the immediate response. It would be kneejerk, an unthinking confession. It had to be real. “I can’t go back to what I was Ansa. It almost destroyed me” she laughed reluctantly. What a sorry pair they were. “I suppose I’m asking for your surrender. To let me go. I need to deal with Fulcrum as what they are. And I can’t do that while someone I love leads it.”
Ansa sank to her knees, bringing Sulis with her as she waded deeper into her thoughts. Or more likely, despair by the look of her. Neither of them wanted it to end, the sireless could admit that now. But she had no right to ask more of a most brilliant colleague. A general and spymaster, a confidant and the scaffolding that had held her up through the harshest, longest winters. What a sorry state she was. Needing four engineers to bear the weight of her.
The ailing witch in her arms stirred eventually, fingers opening the yurt’s curtain to reveal the manor. She was staring intently toward the upper floors, raking the windows with a thoughtful stare. She eventually leant back a hand curled on her chest. It didn’t ache for her, Sulis knew that much.
“There is a solution. I allow Sigrun to take what she wants,” Ansa eventually said, her eyes flitting to the sireless. The conflict in her eyes brought a pang of sympathy to Sulis’ chest. She tried reinforcing the splintering palisade of the other woman’s confidence. Her mistake was obvious. “Livia would have burned Rome for you. And you would have torn down your castle if Francheska asked it. Auset held European vampires together as best she could because she knew you’d want that. And when the council asked for my help, I freely gave it. Because I saw how much it withered her and how much it meant to you,” she expounded with a passionate tone. The sireless recoiled slightly, remembering Auset’s comment about the council doing something ironic. So that had been it. Turning to their most dire and reactionary element to shore up their support. Then something stuck in her shocked mind, almost as if a pale hand had lashed out and grabbed it for her.
“Why would you care about Auset?” she asked almost fearfully. The answers were many and few were benign. But that was what this was all about.
“I supposed they’d failed. That they’d forced you to some awful end,” Ansa sighed, looking to her lap with a thoughtful expression. “Their pain was just punishment at first. But as the decades wore on, I saw myself in their suffering. Compassion grew, no matter how readily I tried to kill it,” she recounted with a look into the early 20th century. Those days of steel and blood, the seeds of horrors many had feared. The vampires had seen the eugenicists and their mad nonsense and prayed it was a passing fad. Or advocated for it with bloodlust in their eyes. “When I saw you returned broken and haunted, I wanted to steal you from them. Help you back to yourself.” Ansa ran her fingers over the braids in the taller woman’s hair, allowing herself a tender look up at Sulis.
“It’s alright. I know who I am now,” she responded. Ansa seemed surprised for a moment before resting her head against her companion’s chest. The heartbeat and warmth were all the evidence she seemed to need. “I’m a builder. Really handy with an axe if someone starts messing with my projects,” Sulis joked with a mischievous grin. “Though if it’s alright with you, I think I’ll hang up the axes when we get home. Enjoy a bit of fishing.”
“Lucy likes fishing” Ansa noted, slightly bewildered as she considered her own course. Sulis was patient, despite the hatchet-happy soldiers outside. It had to be her decision. She could give that much at least. “When I took her back to Scotland I thought ‘wonderful, another whiny human’. But she grew on me. I wanted to protect her, guide her. She’s like a daughter to me.”
The confession visibly surprised Sulis who gave her a sheepish elbow in the ribs. Fulcrum wouldn’t like such sentiment towards a human. Good thing she was a vampire now. Though probably not how she saw it. But the admission dragged her back to the castle, to what Agata had asked her. To her own thoughts before breaking the circle in Michigan.
“It might be selfish, for both of us, but you can always change.” Sulis spoke falteringly. It wasn’t an invitation to the polycule just yet. But she’d be the vilest hypocrite if she didn’t at least offer contrition. “If you’re willing to walk away from them, to let Lucy be a lesson…. Oh fuck it.”
The sireless leaned down, pressing her lips to Ansa’s with a grunt of relief. The smaller woman yipped in surprise, her body tensing before she relaxed into it. It was a moment of weakness for both of them. But in that moment, neither thought of anything besides their shared relief. To act on what had never been severed, embers smouldering in the dark for centuries while they grew apart. They flared, illuminating the dim confines of their psyche before the shadows of their concerns reasserted themselves.
“We’ll have to tell them about that,” Ansa breathed after breaking the kiss. Sulis nodded weakly, swallowing her nerves as she realised her error. “I’ll order Fulcrum to stand down. Send them after Kariwase and Cavendish. Anything to keep her safe” she added awkwardly. Their eyes met once again, giggling like schoolgirls before getting a hold of themselves. “If you’ll take a word of advice from a repentant sinner, though,” the shorter woman piped up. She stood to follow Sulis from their privacy. “Some people don’t want forgiveness. They’ll bite your hand for even offering it. Don’t let what’s good stand in the way of what’s necessary.”
Reluctant to spoil the mood, Sulis merely nodded and guided Ansa toward the tent with a hand on her shoulder. A neutral gesture somewhat ruined by the other woman draping her arm around her hips. It was nostalgic, the sireless hoped. If Ansa wanted her, she needed to at least tolerate the other three. Which wouldn’t take long if Livia allowed a few lessons. As the manor grew closer, the arm dropped, and a firm expression fell onto the ancient witch’s face. And quite right too.
“Sulis and I have come to an arrangement. Take the convoy back to our previous positions,” Ansa ordered in an authoritative voice toward Sigrun. She narrowed her eyes but reluctantly obeyed, climbing into her RV. She seemed to have trouble starting it. The pair of them then looked toward the house, noting the presence of Sulis’ wives in what had once been the bar. Kariwase didn’t do anything by halves. With the encouragement of her complicated partner, the sireless made her way toward them with a faltering step and hammering heartbeat.
“Hey, sorry I was gone so long” Sulis smiled weakly.
