Immortal Dissent

by Mandi Jourdan

  “You should have known better, huntress.” The hiss of the last syllable uttered by the female vampire hung ominously in the air long after she spoke. Even in the darkness, her crimson eyes flashed. Her name was Elisabeta, and she was feared nearly as much by my kind as by the humans she drained of life. Her hair was long and dirty blonde, and her ruffle-sleeved dress was of a deep burgundy.

  Elisabeta was my intended target. Unfortunately, I had made a severe miscalculation in my attack: I had neglected to consider her mate, Lysander.

  “You were foolish enough to enter my territory,” said Elisabeta now, “but to come alone? Are you witches so uncivilized that you lack both training and common sense?”

  At this insult to myself and my kind, I found my voice. “I had enough training to kill Jacques.”

  “And for that,” Elisabeta snarled, “I will rip you apart.”

  I knew I had touched a nerve.

  Jacques was my First Kill. I had driven my blade through his heart when I was only fifteen, though due to my upbringing, I’d already been well-educated in my trade. Within the bloodlines of mages, it was common knowledge that a witch was promised immortality after her First Kill. To me, Jacques was the granter of my future as an immortal witch. Unfortunately, to Elisabeta, his death held no glory. He had, after all, been her brother.

  She made a swift grab for my arm, which I wrenched away from her and drew to my waist. I pulled my knife from its sheath and brandished it protectively in front of me as my eyes flicked from one of them to the other and back again.

  “If you let me leave here, I will not return for you.” As soon as the words had left my mouth, I regretted them. It was not becoming of a witch to allow her prey to escape or to depart for the preservation of her own life. There was much more honor in dying in the hunt. However, as much as I tried to convince myself that I was accustomed to pain, I did not welcome it. Moreover, I knew that I would cease to age when my mortal life ended, becoming immeasurably more powerful upon my resurrection by the magical forces that enabled me. My mind knew these things, but my heart knew that I was nineteen years old and deeply afraid to die. My heart was irrational. It filled my mind with doubts. What if something went wrong? What if I stayed dead? What, then, had my life meant?

  “We do not trust the words of your kind,” said Lysander. His blood-tinted eyes narrowed as he mirrored his mate’s move toward me.

  I reacted reflexively, slashing my blade across his palm. He cried out in what sounded more like anger than pain, and the pretense of cat-and-mouse was rent away. All formality was instantly erased upon the drawing of first blood, and the vampires lunged. I flipped backward, my skirts falling rather unceremoniously around my feet on my return to the ground. I had successfully placed at least a yard between us, and I slid into a defensive stance, blade at the ready as adrenaline coursed through me.

  They hesitated only for a beat. Then, Lysander ran forward, teeth like daggers glinting in the sparse light of the gas lamps. I raised my free hand toward him and willed him to freeze. He halted suddenly, mid-stride. His eyes were alarmed as he stood immobile on one leg.

  “None of your games!” Elisabeta rushed past him, her hand with its talon-like fingernails drawn back and ready to claw at me. I remained still until she reached the perfect distance and brought my knife swiftly upward at an angle, cutting a shallow line across her stomach. Though I expected her to recoil, she charged on with an enraged shout, gripping my knife hand and ripping away my weapon, which she tossed down the street into a storm drain. She then tossed me easily backward, sending me hurtling onto the cobblestones, where I landed on one arm with a sickening crack.

  My head whipped upward to find that in my moment of lost concentration, I had inadvertently freed Lysander. He had retaken his place beside Elisabeta, and the two started again toward me, this time in no hurry.

  What easy prey I must seem to them.

  In a blur of brown hair and blue brocade, a woman appeared in front of me.

  “You need to get out of here. Now.”

  Her face was worried but kind-looking, and she glanced from my obviously broken arm to the vampires drawing ever closer.

  “I’ll hold them off,” she assured me. “Just go, while you can.”

  A million questions flooded my mind, wrestling with one another to be the thought expressed. At last, I managed to ask her, “Who are you?”

  “My name is Lena, and I am strong enough to stop them. That is all you need to know. Now stand.” She reached down and took my hand, pulling me swiftly to my feet. “There is a storm drain a few paces behind you. Follow it down and then take the tunnels. I will buy you as much time as I can.”

  I remained immobile, stunned and unable to take a single step. “Why are you helping me?”

  “You do not deserve to die like this.”

  “I owe you a life-debt, Lena.”

  “Perhaps you will one day be given a chance to repay it. But you will not unless you go, now.”

  I nodded and began to move steadily backward, watching as Elisabeta and Lysander encroached on our location. My fall had deeply scraped my arm, and the scent of my blood was heavy in the air. If they had been determined before, now their resolve was unshakable. My greatest hope was that Lena could manage to buy me time.

  I felt the ground beneath my left foot disappear, and I glanced quickly downward. I had reached the storm drain, and I knew I would find my knife at the bottom. I glanced up then to Lena, who had taken several steps toward the vampires.

  She seemed to sense my gaze had fallen on her. “Go!” she commanded.

  Unnerved despite my training and trembling, I lowered myself into the drain by means of the metal ladder within, watching my protector as she stepped between me and my attackers. Lena raised both of her hands toward them.

  “Enough,” she commanded. “Leave her.” Her tone was forceful and confident, but it did not halt the advancing vampires. She let out a heavy sigh and shifted her posture, slipping into a low crouch strongly reminiscent of those she sought to stop. A low growl rumbled from within her.

  I lost my footing, startled by this display from the woman who was attempting to save me. A sharp gasp escaped my lips, and Lena’s head whipped toward me as I tightened my grip on the slippery rungs of the ladder, using my broken arm as sparingly as I could manage.

  “Get out of here!” she cried. I nodded unsteadily and began my descent.

  As Lena turned to face Elisabeta and Lysander once again, she opened her mouth and breathed a long hiss through her sharp, elongated teeth.

  **

  *

  *

  Neither race succeeded in harmonizing with the other or, likewise, in becoming completely autonomous. Magekind busied itself with striving for a skill in magic superior to our own, despite the futility of its efforts. It has thus far succeeded in its gods-given duty of protecting the humans from over-consumption by the Born, but within my lifetime, I have witnessed a budding corruption among the mages. The huntresses care less for the lives preserved by hunting the Born and more for the honor of the kill, and in the eyes of our kind, this abuse of their magic has made them less worthy than they were at their creation.

  The Born, charged with directing their enhanced lifespans to the betterment of the Gifted Races and establishing a system of governance that would best suit all, have turned inward, focusing on the expansion of their own power and the preservation of their own race at the expense of more humans than would be reasonably necessary to sustain the Born population. The proclivity for hunting given to Magekind and the Born by the gods Artemis and Apollo respectively for the benefit of their races’ preservation has been corrupted. Each race continues to name members for its patron deity, and in the eyes of the fae, this is blasphemy. The races were created to work alongside one another, and their failure to do so has tarnished them in our sight. It is a disgrace from which they will likely never recover.

  *

  Preface to The Noble History of
the Fae and the Gifted Races

  Ismera Rodan

  Fae High-Councilwoman and Historian

  1284 Anno Domini

  *

  The Trade

  *

  1920

  “And where exactly do you stab them?” my mother asked, one black eyebrow raised as she crouched beside me. I surveyed her pale grey gown and noticed with a twist of my stomach that she’d managed to keep herself immaculate, even though I’d stained my full-length black skirt with mud the second I’d moved out of the shadows to join her. I’d told her allowing me to wear trousers would alleviate some of the difficulty of the hunt, but she’d refused to budge on the matter.

  “In the heart,” I muttered.

  I looked down at the man lying unconscious on the cobblestones before me—Not a man, I reminded myself. One of them. One of my people’s enemies. My mother’s magic crackled and sparked around him, solidified into the form of the ropes. She’d bound him before knocking him from his feet and leading him to smack his head against the street beneath him. A bit of blood had pooled at the corner of his mouth. He looked just like one of my people.

  My mother would’ve punished me for even acknowledging that in my thoughts.

  “Do it.”

  I looked toward my mother as she pressed her knife into my hand, and my lips twitched downward.

  “He was your target,” I said. “Don’t you want to—?”

  “Cassandra.”

  My mother’s voice was firm, as was the set of her pale jaw. I let out a quiet sigh, nodding, and raised the knife, holding it over the vampire’s heart. He stirred as I pressed the tip of the blade to his white, button-down shirt, and I plunged the knife downward, unwilling to give myself time to hesitate or second-guess my actions.

  The man seized, his mouth falling open as he gasped for air, and I twisted the blade, catching my breath as he sputtered his last. His blood seeped outward and saturated his formerly crisp shirt. I pulled the blade free and held out my hand, which had been stained red, toward my mother. She took the knife with a sigh.

  “Get up,” she said. “We can’t be here when they find him.”

  *

  I sat up with a deep gasp and realized a few moments too late that movement was the last thing I needed. My lungs and throat and chest ached and burned, and when I scanned the area surrounding me, I found myself on the floor of a well-lit living room beside a crackling fire.

  A dark-haired woman with a small scar beside her right eye sat on the ground beside me.

  The instant I realized her irises were a pale purple, I pulled my knees up to my chest, preparing to spring to my feet.

  Changed, I thought bitterly. Is she why I feel like I’ve been hit by a bus? Did she attack me?

  “I wouldn’t try to get up so fast, if I were you.”

  I froze at her words. Her tone wasn’t angry or forceful—on the contrary, it sounded as though she was trying not to laugh.

  “What did you do to me?” I demanded. My hand flew to my belt in a reflexive bid for my dagger, but when my fingertips only grazed my belt loop, my mouth went dry.

  “Me?” The woman rolled her eyes and sighed, propping her chin on her fist. “I stayed with you, thank you. I know how disorienting it is. Especially since your creator decided to leave you here.”

  My hands quaked violently, ignoring my attempts to keep them still. Thoughts buzzed through my mind, and I couldn’t focus on any one of them.

  Why did she stay? What did she mean “my creator”? Who did this to me? How did this happen? Why didn’t the mages find me?

  “You’re shaking, dear. It’s normal,” said the woman, “but you’re going to need to feed, soon.”

  I studied her face. Her lavender eyes were fixed on me, and I wondered for an instant what color they had been before she had been transformed. Had she been human or one of us? She wore a dark-brown leather coat and a pair of black trousers, which made her seem at home in our time, if a bit ahead of the curve when it came to accepting the new clothing trend, but I had no idea how old she truly was. I knew the Changed froze at whatever age they were when their creators’ venom intersected with their blood.

  She said “my creator” decided to leave me here.

  My stomach turned, and I balled my hands into fists, trying to keep myself from panicking. Still, I was torn between an overwhelming sense of hunger and the urge to vomit, and my trembling was becoming more difficult to control. I knew my legs weren’t likely to support me, if I tried to stand. I dropped my head into my shaking hands and pulled in a long breath.

  This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening.

  “Feed,” I repeated flatly. “No. I’m a witch. I’m not one of—I’m not like you.”

  Legs be damned, I’m getting out of here.

  I forced myself to my feet, but just as I’d feared, I stumbled and nearly fell back to the tan carpet as soon as I managed to stand. I ordered my body to move toward the door.

  “That isn’t going to work,” said the woman with a sigh. “You won’t get very far.”

  “Watch me,” I snapped.

  Though I knew I should be warmed by the fire, I felt nothing from it. I caught sight of a bookshelf full of ancient-looking volumes to my left and a small table laden with painting supplies to my right as I moved for the door. I refused to dwell on the similarities between this vampire’s home and my own.

  I’m not like you.

  I reached out for the doorknob.

  I can’t be. I was raised to kill you.

  *

  I kept a tight grip on my knife and focused the full force of my magic on my other hand, projecting a bolt of electricity directly at the chest of the man I’d been tailing.

  Vampire. Vampire, not man.

  When the bolt landed, the vampire was blasted backward into a puddle. After two days of tracking my first solo target, I’d cornered him in an alley on the south end of London. I hoped no one in the houses near the alley could hear us.

  I deployed a smaller bolt across the damp ground toward him with a swipe of my hand, and I watched as it sparked and sizzled, forming a static net around his twitching form for a moment before it vanished.

  Slowly, I moved toward him. I crouched at his side, my thumb tracing the ouroboros on the handle of my knife.

  I held the blade just over his ribs and cast a glance at his face to find him unresponsive.

  Fingers as firm as iron closed around my throat.

  Never let your guard down, my mother had told me. Not for a second.

  As I was wrenched backward and slammed to the hard ground, I caught sight of teeth flashing in the light of the lamps outside the alley.

  *

  I grasped the knob and leaned all my weight toward the door, hoping to support myself with it for a moment before starting outside.

  Instead, I fell directly through it and landed on hard, wet asphalt.

  Agony shot up my arm, which was pinned beneath me and incapable of supporting my weight at the moment. I bit my lip against the pain until I feared I would draw blood, and then I released it. I had no idea whether I could still bleed.

  As I sat up again, I processed that I was nowhere near someone’s house. I was in an alley, and I vaguely remembered being slammed to the ground and pinned down here by a vampire I’d been tracking. The air was somewhat chilly, but I knew it should be worse in January than it was. I wondered whether the venom had dulled my senses.

  I turned back to find the dark-haired woman watching me with a raised brow.

  “Why did you bring me back here?” I demanded.

  “I didn’t. I was trying to make you feel more comfort-able.”

  She waved her hand, and the living room reformed before my eyes. A moment later, it disappeared to give way to the dark, damp alley.

  I froze.

  “How can you do that?” I asked. “You’re not a witch.”

  She laughed flatly. “Not anymore, no. You think you’re the first one to be tu
rned?”

  My mouth would’ve gone dry, if it hadn’t already felt like a desert. I racked my brain for everything I’d been taught about the abilities of each mage bloodline.

  Borden, electricity. Pike, fire. Johanssen, ice. Lemieux, earth. Silva, DeMornay, Laurent… Illusions aren’t part of an Alliance bloodline. But the other families...

  My breath caught in my throat.

  “You’re a Swann?” I demanded.

  “I was.” The woman shrugged. “I gave that name up long ago. I didn’t particularly want to be reminded of the family I lost or the ‘friends’ who tried to strap me to a stake and burn me to death. Who killed my husband.”

  I rubbed my aching arm and drew my feet closer to sit cross-legged on the dirty ground.

  “What’s your name?” I asked. My voice was much calmer, now. She had been just like me, once. Apparently, though, she’d had it much worse upon awakening. I supposed the least I could do was tone down my hostility.

  “Io,” she said, holding out a hand toward me. I hesitated for only the span of what should have been a heartbeat before I took it, and I did my best not to fall down again at the thought that I couldn’t feel my heart beating any longer.

  As she helped me to my feet, a passage from a book I’d studied several times in school assaulted my memory.

  On the night of Friday, 13 October 1609, Born raided the homes of members of the fourteen Council bloodlines, killing some, immortalizing a few, and turning many others. When the night had passed and it had become clear which mages had been infected with the blood of their enemies, the surviving Council members and those selected to fill the seats of their fallen mothers voted 10-4 in favor of executing those transformed in the attack. The following witches and warlocks were executed at dawn on Sunday, 15 October 1609.