Authors: Meg Winkler
He tossed his head back and a low ripple of
laughter started to roll out of his throat. It was bitter and harsh. "Of
course you do; you just didn't realize it, Leslie. When you turned, you
released that thing into our world, and your maker hadn't a clue what to do
with it. So, it lived."
Leslie looked at him incredulously.
"Jacques, I don't know what you're talking about."
His smile faded as he leveled his empty eyes at
her. Leslie took a step backwards away from him, holding her hands up in wary
apology.
"What's wrong?" he taunted. "Are
you afraid of me?"
"I…uh…"
He suddenly shot over the desk. He pinned her
against the wall as the rest of them backed away from the scene. "You.
Should. Be." His breath spread across her face. Though she was as undead
as he, she felt the chill of the air that seeped from between his lips.
"If you want to remain with us here, you'll
kill your daughter as she should have been killed at her birth," he said.
"But, I…"
"No excuses!" he spat. "You know
you are nothing without this coven. You know you would die within days at the
hands of our enemies. Get rid of her or never show your face here again."
She stared into his black eyes and felt the
edges of the room soften and fade into a haze. "Of course."
Chapter 4
Present Day—The Carpathian Mountains
The ashen gray stones, corroded
with age, reflected none of the light from the sconces flaming on their façade.
The cold echo of footsteps danced off of the cold stones of the floor, the
walls. Emerging from an intersecting labyrinthine hall, she crept into the
crypt and looked at no one. She slowly floated towards the window wall,
overlooking the little hamlet below; the safest little niche in remote Romania with its lofty guardians of darkness overlooking them like lords.
“My queen,” a hollow voice greeted.
Remaining with her black-cloaked
back to the speaker, her raspy voice called out: “Leave us.”
Most of the collective—gathered in
casual groupings around their ancient thrones, languishing in antiquity—began to
disburse. Those who slinked swiftly into the shadows glanced with their dead,
black eyes over their shoulders at the remaining figures in the room as they
made their hasty retreat.
Without warning, she spun viciously
on a heel to face those who remained, even before the door to the circular
chamber had swung shut on its archaic hinges. Her black robes spun around her
frail body, a glimpse of her royal blue gown showing as the cloak shifted on
her frame. The costume was cliché, but it scared anyone around her and that's
why she liked it. Her sharp, violent eyes glared at the one who had spoken, as
he stood in the exact middle of the cavernous crypt.
“Adonis,” she said aside, in a more
gentle tone, to one of the remaining observers. She continued to stare down the
one in the middle of the room.
A favorite, Adonis stepped swiftly
to her side, his black hair cascading to his black draped shoulders, the fire
on the wall reflecting off of his devilishly preternatural skin.
“My queen,” he replied with a swift
bow of his head.
She reached her talon-like hand out
to grasp his arm.
“I shall require your
specific
expertise,” her tinny, haunting voice advised before turning to the one in the
center of the room.
“Cusick,” she quickly said.
He lifted his eyes to meet hers
before quickly bowing his head submissively once more.
“What is your report?” she asked,
without acknowledgement of his obligatory deference.
“They are moving, my queen,” he
quickly answered, his voice heavy with peculiar accent of someone speaking English
for the first time.
“No doubt they have already done
so,” she concluded, unimpressed.
She looked to Adonis as he stood at
her side.
“I would send for the others, my
queen,” her favorite advised.
She turned quickly to the other
observer who had remained.
“Brynja,” she addressed the female
hovering in the shadowed corner, “fetch Sloane and Bennett immediately.”
Brynja bowed, her icy blonde hair
falling forward in sheets, before she spun and spirited from the dank room
before the queen’s eyes left her subordinate.
She turned to Adonis and as a unit,
the two floated towards the window which overlooked the scurrying humans in the
village below. Bowing their heads close together, their lips moved so swiftly
as to resemble perfect stillness, as they conferred with one another regarding
their North American concerns.
“Hero,” Adonis could be heard
informally saying, “You must do what is necessary to save our kind in America. Do
not hesitate to do what you know you must.”
He spoke to her in tones as none
other would have dared, having been an advisor to her from the very beginning
of time and something more for many centuries since.
The air pressure in the room
altered and the queen and her advisor raised their dark eyes to the group
entering the chamber. Brynja entered, and bowing, resumed her place in the corner
once more, as two others stepped forward: Sloane, a tall, well-built man with a
distinguished air, classic features and silver hair, and Bennett, a lithe and
willowy woman with freckles and slightly amber curling hair, to join Cusick
where he stood in the innermost point of the cave. The two additions bowed:
Sloane in a sweeping movement, Bennett in a more reserved submission.
The queen stood before them,
glaring down her nose at them while they waited.
“There seems to be a problem in the
United States with our old enemies,” she began.
Bennett and Sloane nodded in
agreement as Cusick watched his sovereign carefully through dark, skeptical
eyes.
“What has been your assessment of
the situation?” she asked, suddenly turning to Bennett.
She quickly nodded her head in
confident acquiescence.
“My queen, they are gaining in
strength and news of their exploits has spread as far westward as the Pacific
coast. Members of their kind and ours are becoming extremely aware of the
situation and of their…
mission
, as they call it,” she answered in her
tinny and sharp, but ultra-feminine voice.
Hero turned to Sloane. “Are you of
the same mind? Have you come to the same conclusion?” the queen demanded icily.
Sloane offered another swift,
sweeping bow.
“Yes, my queen, I have. Word has
traveled quickly and those within my territory have also heard rumor of their…
work
,”
he answered in a thick, New England accent.
The queen straightened and turned
to Adonis once more. She glared into his eyes for a fraction of a second,
before turning without warning back to Cusick. She flashed in front of him in a
movement that would have gone unnoticed by human eyes; a human would have
simply seen her in one place one instant and mere inches from Cusick in the
next.
“If your man cannot clean his mess
up, you shall have some explaining to do, Cusick,” she warned acridly.
He nodded, understanding the warning was no
empty threat.
Chapter 5
1704—Old Swedes' Church, Wilmington, Delaware
"Are you here?" she whispered into the
darkness. She looked around the corner of the church building, her blonde hair
falling like a shroud before her eyes.
"Of course," he replied in her ear.
"Oh!" she exclaimed; he was suddenly
standing right beside her. "You startled me."
"I am truly sorry," he said.
"No matter, my love. It is time."
He eyed her belly, knowing a child grew within
it. "Astrid," he replied, "you must wait until you are
delivered. I do not know what the transformation will create."
"What do you care of it?" Astrid
demanded, ripping her hair back away from her face. "Are you not
vampyr
?
What do you care for a puny little babe—especially one that has ceased to move
within me?"
"What?" he gasped.
"Yes," she replied, reaching for his
face. "My husband's son is dead. You needn't wait for me to deliver for
fear of what will come forth. I am ready, my love. Take me."
His coal-colored eyes searched her face for any
sign of dishonesty, for any sign of hesitation. She ran her fingers up his neck
and into his pitch black hair and bent his neck towards her.
Vampires weren't supposed to fall in love with
their prey, but she had turned her violet eyes on him the night he was to make
a meal of her, and in that moment, he suddenly remembered something from his
human life, something he couldn't put his finger on. She was familiar and he
longed to have her by his side forever. The one predicating event was for her
to deliver her child—he didn't know what kind of monster might come from a baby
born to a woman who became a vampire, one of the undead. Even worse, he didn't
know what another body within hers would do to her. If it were a living
creature, it stood to reason that perhaps the baby would take the
transformation instead, and in the exchange of blood, the baby could be made
the vampire and Astrid could be lost.
But if the baby were dead already…
She drew his head to her neck, sweeping her long
locks away from her shoulder. Her breasts rose and fell in her inappropriately
revealing dress—as if she'd tried to be as alluring as possible—as her
breathing increased. With the excitement of the situation, her blood coursed
faster, her heart pounded harder, and the veins—always easy for Lisandro to
see—were even more apparent under her delicate skin. The smell of her life was
overpowering and his mouth watered at the thought of tasting her. There was one
last second where he could have stopped what was happening, but it was swiftly
gone and his eyes rolled back in anticipation. His teeth tore precisely through
the sweet flesh and Astrid gasped. She pulled his head harder against her neck
and arched her back into his embrace.
She moaned and let out a delirious giggle as her
knees collapsed. He held her, his tongue lapping at the sticky sweet fluid that
poured from her flesh. Its warmth coursed through his body like delicious
electricity, and he trembled against the sensation.
Astrid's breathing slowed and became shallow. He
pulled away from her neck, wanting more, but knowing that if he were to take
it, she wouldn't survive. He gently laid her on the ground at his feet, her
rotund belly looking like a tiny mountain in comparison to the rest of her
drained body.
With lips still covered in her blood, he tore at
his own wrist and cupped her head towards the wound.
"Drink, my darling," he cooed.
Her tongue swept across it tentatively before
her lips closed on it. In her relative weakness, her draw against the wound as
she sucked the blood from his body felt like the most delicate of kisses. She
pulled harder against the cut; blood trickled from the corner of her mouth and
down her jaw, resting near the wounds he had inflicted.
He watched her eyes carefully, waiting for any
sign of the change, worried that it wouldn't happen. It shouldn't have been taking
this long.
But suddenly, her eyes widened in shock. Her
back arched and she bellowed a guttural, hellish scream. Her body convulsed and
he tried to comfort her, but she lashed out at him, bit at him, threw her arms
towards his face. He could do nothing but stand aside and watch in horror as
his golden angel fought against the convulsions of death.
Suddenly, she folded in on herself and tore at
her belly with still human-weak fingers. And with another convulsion, her back
arched and what seemed like a river of blood and fluid spread out from beneath
her heavy skirts. Lisandro watched in horror. His creator had never told him
the terrible nature of the transformation. He was terrified that something was
wrong. He watched the light go out of her eyes.
And then, he heard something crying. He stared
blankly into the night as his normally swift brain struggled to process the
sound. It wasn't Astrid, who by now was pulling herself up and taking in the
visions of the night with her new eyes.