A Taste of Crimson

by E. M. Knight

  “Why…?” he begins. He shakes his head. He turns his head toward me, giving me a dark look. “Why would you… enable her?” He takes a deep breath. “Why would you RISK EVERYTHING WE’VE BUILT?” The miasma storms across his eyes.

  I hold my hands up. “Easy there. Blood Magic is dangerous, remember. It’s corrosive. Don’t let it take hold of your soul.”

  “I will not,” he snarls, “be lectured by the likes of you!” He slams a fist into the cavern wall. The rock splinters under the blow.

  He pushes off and advances on me. “The darkness is your fault,” he hisses. He looks down at his hands. “I feel it growing, Phillip. I embrace it now. I won’t be weak, I won’t be stupid. Not like you.”

  My hackles go up. “What do you mean, exactly?” I ask in a dangerous tone.

  “I mean that you were consumed by the abyss and fell head-first into it. You acted without thinking. You didn’t give a rat’s ass about the consequences, nor the long-term effects.”

  He turns his back, all-but heckling me to strike. “You think you embraced the darkness?” He scoffs. “You didn’t embrace it. You became a slave to it. It clouds your judgment. Look where you are now.”

  “Where I am now, exactly?” I inquire. My body aches for a fight.

  “In purgatory,” he says. “Look how many deals you had to make, how many awful situations you placed yourself in.”

  “I’m here, now, with you, aren’t I?”

  “Yes, but by the skin of your teeth.” Raul chuckles. “If it weren’t for Eleira’s mercy, you would be in an infinitely worse place. Even now, her kindness is wearing out. I warn you, Phillip, be very careful in your future interactions with her.” He turns around, squaring his body to me, and lets a smile come across his lips. “To whom does your loyalty belong?”

  I curl my lips back to show my fangs. I don’t like the way he’s speaking to me.

  I step up to him, stopping short, just a hair’s breadth away. “My loyalty,” I whisper, “is to myself, first and foremost. And then to whomever I give my allegiance to.” I stare into his eyes. “Recall that I gave it to our Queen. And I gave it to you. This is a different scenario now, brother. The tides have changed.”

  “Have they?” he wonders. He doesn’t back off an inch. “With Mother awake, what will she think of your oaths to her enemy?”

  “To hell with what Mother thinks,” I spit. “Eleira has power. That is all that should matter to us.”

  “And what about The Forsaken Sisters?” he asks. “What about Allura… and you?”

  “What about her?” I snarl.

  He gives a laugh. “Come on. You think I’m that naive? I’ve seen the way you look at her. The way she looks at you.”

  “Now you’re sounding like a woman.”

  “Now, you’re deflecting,” he says.

  “Don’t test me, Raul,” I say. “You’ve made your point. This is far enough.”

  “Far enough for what?” he challenges. “Far enough for comfort? No, no, little brother. Because for us, there are no limits. No soft euphemisms. We’re laying it all out on the line. You either step up to the challenge… or you bat out.”

  I snicker. “Do you think you’re scaring me?”

  “I don’t want to scare you. I want to know where you stand.”

  “You know goddamn well where I stand!” I snarl.

  “I don’t.” He shakes his head. “You kept the burning of the prophecy from me. What other secrets do you have?”

  “None for you to know!” I spit. “This is becoming tedious. Get on with it. Mother is awake. Eleira is waiting.”

  “Eleira can handle herself.”

  I take a deep breath, trying to calm the storm of emotions threatening to erupt.

  Then, very carefully, very deliberately, I ask, “What exactly would you like to know?”

  “Why you betrayed us,” he says. “Why you went to Mother’s side, against your own brother. Against the entirety of the prophecy?”

  “Because, unlike you,” I snarl, “I was grateful for what Mother did. She revealed to me who I truly am and what I am capable of. She gave me unimaginable gifts and powers. She was our first Queen. And you were willing to throw that away, for what? For some girl you didn’t even know, some teenager whose affection for you changes on a whim, some fledgling who had no right—absolutely none—to rule us?”

  I laugh. “And then I saw Mother burn the prophecy, and I knew there was more to the story than we’ve been told.”

  “Eleira has every right to rule,” he says softly. “She is our Queen.”

  “Yes, now,” I agree. “But should a random girl have been given precedence before she ever had a chance to prove herself? I provided the trials we needed to judge Eleira. In the vampire world, only strength is accepted. Do you think the others, Elite and Incolam alike, would have bowed down to her if she hadn’t gone up against Mother—and won?”

  “The vampires can feel her strength,” he says.

  “Are you really so naive?” I challenge. “Do you really think they would have accepted her, just like that, because she is slightly higher on the hierarchy?”

  “Of course,” Raul says simply.

  “Then you’re a fool,” I scoff. “Oh, they might have kept the peace for a few years. Maybe even a decade. But sooner or later, factions would splinter our coven, and they would seek to undermine the Queen’s rule.”

  Raul purses his lips, considering.

  “What I did was give her a great advantage!” I continue. “She could have floundered or flown. And she flew, Raul, she soared, and all our vampires see that. I bought her centuries of peace, all by helping her at the start.”

  “Don’t be so certain,” he mumbles.

  “What?”

  “Don’t be so certain that I believe you,” he repeats. “You said your loyalty is to yourself first.”

  “Of course, it is. That means all that I do, I do in my self-interest. A safe, secure Haven with a strong Queen is in my self-interest. I had to pit Mother against Eleira, to let the stronger woman become Queen.”

  He searched my eyes for a moment, looking for any signs of insecurity.

  I give him none.

  “Very well,” he says after a while. “That is good enough for now. Let’s go. We have a gathering to attend.”

  Chapter Four

  Eleira

  The Haven.

  I cast an impenetrable barrier of air around Morgan. Then, just for good measure, I block the light from reaching her eyes, so that she won’t be able to lip-read what we say.

  On the off chance she knows how.

  The barrier of air seals all the sounds of the room off, and the bonds I set on her keep her in place. I don’t tie the weaves off. Instead, I continuously feed magic into them.

  I know Morgan is capable of many tricks, and I want to have full awareness of the spells I set around her to make sure they’re not tampered with.

  When that’s done, and I feel a little safer, I turn on the Forsaken Sisters.

  Allura, Sute, and Lorne are standing together in a neat row, watching me with inscrutable expressions.

  I feel a simmering anger within me, just beneath the surface. I don’t like it. The witches did not do anything wrong. Not exactly. My deal with them was to keep Morgan alive, and I agreed to let them revive her as part of that, predicated upon them draining her of demon blood.

  I glance at the corrosive splatter on the wall. All that from Morgan’s body. Even like this, no longer fresh, it makes the stone hiss and crumble.

  The stink of it is nauseating.

  I have no right to be angry with the Sisters. They saved me when I needed help most. If it wasn’t for them, I would never have been able to extricate myself from Morgan’s trap.

  Yet the new developments make me uneasy. The witches told me that I was born in the Demon Realm. They won’t reveal any more. I have endless questions: Who were my real parents? Who brought me back to earth? Did they come with me, are t
hey still alive, do I have a chance of meeting them, and on and on and on…

  I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and try to gather my thoughts.

  “Okay,” I say on an exhale. “Okay, she is awake. Now what?”

  “We must question her,” the witches answer as one.

  “Would you stop doing that?” I exclaim, my frustration with everything boiling over—the stress boiling over. “You are not a single entity any more. You are three separate beings, three separate vampires. I can feel your individual presences. And I don’t like not knowing which of you is speaking to me.”

  They look a bit taken aback at my explosion. But then, after a moment, Allura steps forward—just half an inch, no more—and inclines her head.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “I have the lead, and I am too used to speaking through the others. To survive what we endured, we had to combine our collective powers. They had to be controlled by one person—else there would be no unity. It’s a deeply ingrained habit, Eleira. I will try to avoid it, but chances are I will slip back to it from time to time.”

  “Just don’t make it the norm,” I mutter, pressing a hand to my head. “And thank you.”

  “Certainly.” She steps back in line, then motions for Sute to speak.

  “Allura is right, we need to interrogate Morgan,” she says.

  “About what?”

  “She has been dabbling with the occult for centuries, severing spirits from bodies. It is dark, dark practice. We suspect--” she looks back at the other two, “--that Morgan was the one who set the specter on us.”

  I furrow my eyebrows. “What specter? What are you talking about?”

  “Our resting place was haunted. A spirit stalked the caverns beneath the mountain. It was not there when we went to rest. Someone called on it to materialize in our physical world, using condensation found in the air.”

  “What, like clouds?” I ask.

  “Exactly like that,” she answers. “A spirit should not be able to make contact with this world. They exist on a different plane, a higher dimension. Yet… the ghost was there. It was with us. Phillip and Raul fought it—and won.”

  “So it was a spirit with unnatural access to the physical world.”

  “That’s right,” Sute volunteers. “It should be an impossibility. Yet it was not. Someone was able to bring it there, to manipulate the fabric of reality and allow the spirit to appear as a physical entity.” She glances over at the stone slab Morgan is bound to. “We know of only one witch who had experience with such things.”

  “So you think Morgan set this spirit, who then appeared as a specter, on you. Why? Why would she do that? Why would it be important to her?”

  “Easy,” Allura says. “To watch over her sister.”

  “Cierra,” I breathe.

  “Yes. Cierra fooled us. She managed to convince us of her heart’s purity. Looking back, it’s so obvious we were being used, but, in the moment…?” She trails off.

  “It was a bit like being subject to the vampire influence,” Lorne says.

  I frown. “And now Cierra is free, loose upon the world. There is probably no one better alive than you three to try to understand her. What does she want? I know she’s dangerous, but--”

  Allura cuts me off with a sudden glare. “She is not simply dangerous, Eleira,” she says darkly. “She is the devil incarnated. Never has a single person been responsible for so many deaths, so much suffering.”

  “What about…” I start to say, then simply trail off. Hitler, I was going to say, but I realize they wouldn’t know him.

  “What about the war lords of the past?” I correct.

  “They might have commanded armies who did their bidding. But none destroyed so many lives with their own two hands. Cierra used to go from village to village, telling the inhabitants to surrender to her or face the consequences. She had the face of a young girl, so each time she would get laughed out the room. Of course, that was her entire goal. She would return, in the night, and use her magic to destroy.”

  “How do you think she got so powerful?” Sute asks. “Any skill can only be developed through practice. Us witches usually do it in peaceful terms, but there is nothing quite like the exhilaration of power you get when you use magic to destroy.” Her tone shifts an octave lower. “The thrill of it, the majesty, is a drug unlike any other.”

  A shiver runs down my spine when I realize how right she is. When I unleashed the Elements to rain down on the Tentoria, I felt more alive than at any other point in my life.

  I clear my throat. How can I be a just Queen if I fall for the same temptation that ruined Cierra?

  “So what does Cierra want?” I ask again, in a voice barely above a whisper.

  “Domination,” Allura says. “Total control. She wants to rule the world, to burn it down, and recreate it in her vision.”

  Another cold chill runs down my spine. “And what is her vision, exactly?”

  “Death. Destruction. And suffering. She wants to be the most powerful being on this planet. And she wants to use that power to assert her control. Destroying villages will not be enough for her. She will begin to level whole cities, turn nations to dust. She will do it until there is nothing and nobody left.”

  “Why?” I ask, the words coming out as a whisper.

  “Because once this world is cleansed, it can become the new home of demons,” Rebecca says.

  I jerk back to look at her. I had almost forgotten she’s still there.

  “Demons?” I say. “How do you know?”

  She exhales heavily. “Long ago, I used to confer with Morgan about this very thing.”

  She averts her eyes.

  I look at the Forsaken Sisters. “Is this true?”

  Allura opens her mouth to answer. At the same time, I notice the two other witches replicating the motion.

  She stops herself before she can speak through all of them and tries again.

  “It is as plausible a theory as any other,” she admits. “And if it’s true, we must, we must take the proper precautions.”

  “Like what?” I ask.

  She looks up. “The wards you set are very strong, Eleira. But they are only made from one type of magic. If Cierra were to achieve what Morgan set out to do, and drink demon blood…”

  “Cierra is still human,” I say. “What would drinking demon blood do to her?”

  “It would kill her. But if she managed to convince a vampire to give her the dark gift beforehand?”

  “No,” Lorne interrupts. “Cierra hates the creatures of the night. She would never convert.”

  “But she might bring demons to this world,” Allura says, “while having them under her control. A demon would be able to tear through the wards without a problem. The magic of this world is as flimsy as a silk sheet to them.”

  “Are you saying that The Haven is unprotected?” I ask, suddenly aghast.

  After everything I went through?

  “You have a worthy deterrent against many threats. But not the most important one.”

  “What do I do?”

  “We can help you,” Allura says. “The key to it is in The Book of the Dead. Do you know it?”

  “Yes, of course,” I say. “I used it to—or I triggered it—to summon a Narwhark into this world.”

  Allura nods. “We felt the disturbance of that in the Demon Realm. What you will need to do to counter Cierra is build your own army.”

  I blink. “What?”

  “You need a force of demons here, on the inside,” Sute volunteers. “We can help with that.”

  “You want me to… bring demons… into The Haven?”

  “Yes,” Allura replies.

  I look at the Forsaken Sisters in turn. They do not flinch after having given the suggestion.

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?” I say in a small voice.

  “This is not something we would joke about, Eleira.”

  “Yes, but… demons? Here? Can we control them?”


  “It will be difficult, I admit,” Allura says. “But--”

  “But what?” I demand. “You expect me to risk all of my vampires just at the moment they have found safety again? I remember what the Narwhark did. What it was capable of and how it terrorized us.” I shake my head. “I will not bring more of those vile creatures into our midst. There has to be another way!”

  The Sisters’ eyes flash. They communicate with each other telepathically for a few moments, while I wait in silence.

  Finally, Lorne steps forward to speak.

  “I know the most about defensive spells,” she tells me. “There might be a way of strengthening the wards so that they become sufficient defense against creatures not of this world.”

  “Then let’s do that!” I exclaim. “Anything would be better than bringing more demons like the Narwhark in here.”

  “You misunderstand me. The demons will still be essential. But we may be able to get away with caging them and feeding their power into the existing wards. Your wards would then be infused with the powerful essence that animates all demons of the other realm, and that, in turn, when woven in with the Elements precisely, could be enough to make them immune to attack.”

  A sense of dread comes over me. “So you still want demons here, on the inside.”

  “Yes. There is a chance we could get away with just one. It may be easier with two. It all depends on the creature’s intelligence, its resilience, its strength.”

  I shake my head. I just cannot fathom willingly bringing a demon into the coven.

  “I’ll have to think about it,” I tell them. “We have time for that, at least. Right?”

  “Time is never on your side. You have enemies plotting against you, Eleira,” Allura says sagely. “But yes, of course. You do not have to decide now. Only you, as Queen, can know what is right for your coven.”

  “Well, I’d like to think so,” I mumble. I glance over at Morgan—and am surprised to see her skin in much better condition than just a few minutes ago.

  I take a step toward her. “Is she healing?” I speak in absolute wonder.