Viviane nods with resignation. “I wish you could understand. Not everything was a lie. My parents really were hunters—pretending to be Brotherhood was an easy charade, because my father was a Persean Knight in the seventeenth century. So were my brothers. I’d have joined, too, except they wouldn’t accept women back then.” A flinty look passes across her eyes. “My sister was married off to some grotesque merchant, a man twice her age with a face like a potato—and while my brothers were out swinging swords and riding for glory, I was learning needlepoint so I could become some old man’s hausfrau, pooping out babies one after another until I died from it.
“It wasn’t a great time for women with aspirations—but I was lucky to be considered attractive, and lucky that my family was respected, because it meant my parents had the connections to send me to Paris.” Viviane makes a face. “Mortals have so many hang-ups about sex, but honestly? Being a courtesan was great. I had to be able to read and write, which meant I received an education, and for the first time I was the master of my own person.”
“Until you ended up on death row.”
“No one ever taught me how to use magic.” Her eyes are on mine, but her focus is somewhere in the past. “I discovered my talent for sorcery when I was fifteen, but I hid it from everyone, because it would have meant a one-way ticket to the gallows. Still, it was impossible to resist.” She waves a hand in front of her face, and the air ripples, her complexion turning rosy, the shape of her cheeks augmenting before my eyes. Suddenly, she’s Daphne again, exactly as I remember her. “My element is wood, which means my natural gifts include glamours, shape-shifting, and speed. At court, I read palms and told fortunes—and I tricked a lot of wealthy clients into believing they were being visited by the spirits of their departed loved ones.
“What I didn’t know was that magic is like a pond, and touching it sends ripples in every direction.” She mimics the motion with her fingers. “The analogy isn’t perfect, but you get the gist. Basically, every time I pulled my little act, I was sending out a homing beacon to other sorcerers—until, finally, I was confronted by a rather powerful woman who ran a black-market operation selling dark magic and killings for hire to influential Parisians. I could either buy into her network or be publicly denounced as a witch.”
“An offer you couldn’t refuse.”
“And I ended up on death row anyway.” Viviane Duclos laughs at the very notion. “I never wanted to be a vampire until I was about to be hanged as a witch. When Erasmus Kramer came to my cell … well, that was an offer I couldn’t refuse.”
I give a distant nod—thinking of the proposition I made to Jude only minutes ago.
“While at court, I met the occasional undead, and I realized that the scary stories I’d heard growing up in a Brotherhood household were mostly nonsense.” She shrugs. “Anyway, Erasmus had heard of me through mutual friends, knew what I could do, and … well, maybe he had a little crush. Either way, he offered me an escape, and more power than I could ever dream of, if I joined his cause.”
“So you did.” I sound absurdly reasonable. “Did you even believe in the Corrupter?”
“Not then, but it didn’t matter,” she says. “Kramer’s group was small, and a shape-shifting sorceress whose glamours could disguise them and shield them from Sensitives was better to have around than another true believer.”
“So that’s how you kept me from being able to tell you and Gunnar were vampires.”
“To be honest, Auggie, I’m still patting myself on the back for that, because I wasn’t even sure it would work!” A goofy, conspiratorial grin splits her face, and I have to fight the instinct to smile with her. “Glamours aren’t true transformations, just an interference with the field of perception.” She waves one hand over the other, the air rippling, and I watch the varnish on her nails turn from black to red to silver. “It’s essentially a smoke screen, and your access to the Dark Star’s power is deepening every day. No matter how gifted I am, there’s no way I could keep him from recognizing one of his own children forever.”
My hands go still. “So you know who the Corrupter really is.”
“Yes.” Viviane hesitates. “I met Azazel once, Auggie—face-to-face. It was in France, more than a hundred years after I was supposed to die, and it changed everything.” Her tone becomes hushed, even rapturous. “He knew me, knew everything about me. He said I had a destiny that … Well, it was the moment that my commitment to the League stopped being about repaying Erasmus and started being about something much bigger.”
“That’s why you want a global vampire takeover, and a … a deathless existence until the end of time?” I glare at Viviane Duclos, wishing I still needed my glasses so I could take them off and make Daphne’s face disappear. “For your destiny?”
“No, Auggie.” She frowns peevishly. “Believe it or not, aside from the Syndicate’s relentless power-tripping, the League is pretty okay with the status quo. If you spent time with Gunnar, you know that the only thing he wants is to go surfing again and flirt with boys on the beach—to live normally. We don’t want humans corralled into farms, and we definitely don’t want hell on Earth. In fact, we seem to be the only ones who don’t want that.
“Take a look around.” She gestures broadly at the mall and everything beyond it. “Against all odds, human beings lucked into a complex nervous system and a sense of self-awareness, the ability to learn—opposable fucking thumbs!—and what are you doing with those gifts? You’re poisoning your own planet! This dumb, blue ball rolling around all alone in the Milky Way has the precise and inexpressibly rare conditions necessary to foster life, and mortals are doing everything they can to destroy it.” She slaps a hand down on the tabletop, her eyes flashing. “You flood your air with deadly chemicals, dump trash into the oceans, and bring back diseases that killed millions when I was still alive!
“Humans are a menace. No matter how many warnings your ancestors left you in your unending piles of history books, you’re all determined to make their same catastrophic mistakes and learn those lessons the hard way.” With an agitated flick of her wrist, she withdraws the Daphne glamour, her cheekbones regaining their dramatic angle. “There are no mortals left on the planet with a living memory of World War I, and even now, as the last veterans of World War II die off, your governments are reenacting all the same conditions that led up to it. The ‘war to end all wars,’ or so we once thought.” Her eyes track the Sunday shoppers crossing the food court. “Humans are born with a self-destruct button and an itchy trigger finger, and you can’t wait to damn us all to hell.”
“You’re…” I try to make sense of what she’s saying. “This is an environmental thing?”
“Everything is environmental!” she exclaims, tossing out her hands. “How are any of us supposed to carry on if you all fuck up the climate so bad you starve to death, or resurrect some mutated strain of smallpox you can’t stop?” A fly circles Jude’s abandoned coffee cup, and Viviane waves it away. “Your leaders know what they’re doing, and they don’t care, because they’re greedy—and because a hundred years from now they’ll be gone anyway, and it’ll be someone else who reaps the whirlwind. It’ll be us.”
I squint at her a little. “Just so I have this straight, your endgame is … solar panels?”
“Our endgame is no end,” Viviane replies with passion. “The League of the Dark Star wants a future where life continues to flourish, side by side with the undead. What we want is nothing more or less than peace on Earth—a new age, where vampires don’t have to hide, and mortals can’t wreck everything we all depend on.” She curls her hands into fists. “Humans are incompetent stewards of this planet, and they can’t be trusted to run it any longer. If you truly value the life you have, Auggie, then the League of the Dark Star is your one hope.”
My mouth is dry from the tips of my teeth to the pit of my stomach, because for the first time? Someone is making a case for my cooperation that isn’t predicated solely on how much worse the w
orld will be if I make the wrong choice—but on how much better the world could be if I make the right one. And I don’t know if I have an argument against what she’s saying. In a wobbly voice, I manage to ask, “Why me? Why is this happening to me?”
“I don’t think there’s an answer to that question.” Her expression is genuinely torn. “The only thing the Risings we know of have in common is that, in each case, the vessel was someone destined for greatness. Kings and queens, warriors and intellectuals … names you would recognize if I told them to you.”
“I’m only sixteen,” I say, my eyes filming over. All I want, I think, is someone to acknowledge how unfair this is. Someone to tell me that I don’t deserve it.
“When she was sixteen years old, Elizabeth Tudor had been declared illegitimate and stripped of her claim to the English throne. No one ever dreamed that she would go on to become one of history’s most well-known rulers,” Viviane rebuts. “Catherine the First of Russia was a housemaid, Joan of Arc was a peasant, Vincent van Gogh was an emo kid and a dropout … You’ve got no idea what sort of greatness waits inside of you!”
“And I never will, either.” It’s a challenge, but she doesn’t rise to it.
“You might be the key to saving this planet for future generations, Auggie. You could easily be the most important historical figure of all time.” Her expression is deadly serious. “I don’t know what’s going to become of Auggie Pfeiffer after the Ascension. I kind of hope you’ll still be in there, because, believe it or not, I really do like you. You’re the little brother I wished I had, back when I had little brothers and all of them were assholes. That probably doesn’t mean anything to you right now, but it’s the truth.” She pushes a hand through the soft waves of her hair. “Regardless of anything else, if you commit yourself to the League of the Dark Star, you’ll be saving the world. We don’t want bloodshed; we want peace. We want a reality where mortals and vampires can be neighbors instead of enemies.”
“Vampires eat mortals.”
“You guys murder each other all the time!” she protests. “You need to have active shooter drills for your kindergarteners, for fuck’s sake. Dogs kill more people each year than vampires do, but nobody makes sad Sarah McLachlan commercials about us.”
“Azazel wants to turn Earth into his kingdom, like Lucifer did with hell.”
“Azazel wants dominion,” she counters. “Humans were given dominion over the Earth, and they’re doing a spectacularly shitty job of caring for it. But if you swear a blood oath to the League, we can make sure past mistakes are corrected. Before it’s too late.”
“If I still have the same blood,” I answer. Then, “Besides, Azazel is an angel, right? What makes you think some puny little spell is going to make him do your bidding for eternity, anyway?”
“It’s not about ‘doing my bidding.’” Viviane frowns. “He wants a better world—he told me so himself when we met, and he said I had a part to play in it. It’s just…” She flings out a hand, rolling her eyes again. “That was over two hundred years ago. Rasputin claims to have met Azazel in his last incarnation, and to have received some sort of benediction from him or whatever. It’s all bullshit, of course, the guy is not dealing with a full deck. But … I can’t leave anything to chance. The moment the Ascension occurs, I need to be able to look the Corrupter in the eye and know he remembers what he said to me. A blood oath binds people as tightly as family, and I need him to feel that.”
“Rasputin has my family,” I blurt, the words hurting my ears.
Her eyes widen and then close, and she curses. “That son of a bitch. I should have just killed him when I had the chance.”
“He gave me five days to pledge myself to the Northern Wolf.” I’m desperate enough by now that my next statement comes out with no trouble at all. “If you save them before that, I’ll … I’ll swear an oath to the League.”
“I see,” she murmurs, studying me shrewdly. “That could possibly be done. We don’t know where Rasputin’s headquartered himself, so we’d have to do some reconnaissance. We’d have to find out where your parents are, and how they’re being guarded. We’d need manpower … It wouldn’t be an easy operation.” Her jaw shifts minutely. “Take the oath first, and you’ve got a deal.”
Tears blur my vision. “If I take an oath to you, and he finds out—which he totally will, because you said magic is a pond, and ripples and beacons and whatever the fuck else—he’ll kill them!”
“If you commit to the League, not only will you earn all of our loyalty and all of our resources, but vampires around the world will jump at the chance to take down Rasputin and earn your favor. Even some of his own acolytes.” She folds her hands together in her lap. “I know this isn’t what you want to hear, and I’m sorry for taking advantage of a bad situation—but together we have a chance to make this the best of all possible worlds, Auggie. You just have to trust me.”
26
I won’t pretend my feet are steady as I walk away from Viviane Duclos and the offer she’s placed on the table … even though I haven’t declined it yet. My parents’ lives in exchange for my body’s endless servitude to an apocalypse cult is an arrangement that’s terrifying, overwhelming—and final. Once I say yes, it is literally the beginning of the end, and no matter how badly I want to save my mom and dad, I’m not sure I’m ready for that. I’m not sure I’ll ever be ready. But as I make my way to the Colgate Center’s exit, I struggle to find even the smallest sign of something better to hope for.
You just have to trust me. What if Daphne/Viviane isn’t lying—this time? I know Gunnar was being honest about his desire to live alongside humans, because I saw the truth of it when I was inside his head at the rave, so maybe saving the world really is the League’s agenda. At least, after a fashion. No matter what, the vision she described is way better than what Jude foretold if the Syndicate gains control, and it’s certainly better than what would happen if I give in to Rasputin’s demands.
So maybe that’s what my vision of Gunnar and the bowl of blood was about. Maybe I’m already destined to take the oath, to commit myself—whatever “myself” is in the approaching days—to Viviane’s cause. Maybe my free will is an illusion, and all of this is already written out in a prophesy no one’s discovered yet.
I’m so preoccupied with my thoughts that I’m not even aware of the man behind me as I push through the exit, until he catches the door before it can shut—and I don’t take any special notice of the woman who gets to her feet from a bench outside the mall’s entrance as soon as I emerge. I don’t think about either of them until a second man steps directly in my path, and when I go to move around him, I find myself flanked on either side.
“August Pfeiffer.” His hair is salt-and-pepper, and he isn’t asking my name—he’s telling me. “You’re coming with us.”
The man on my left and the woman on my right close in until they’re touching my elbows, until a focused pressure against my rib cage from either side lets me know what it feels like to have a gun pressed up against you. My head spins. “You’re with the Brotherhood, aren’t you?”
“We are the ones sworn to protect humanity against the inhuman scourge,” he reports in a tone devoid of emotion. “We are humankind’s first and last line of defense against darkness and the creatures of the night.” The man steps closer, one hand stuffed in his coat pocket—and the way it’s pointing at my stomach makes me pretty sure that everybody brought a gun to the gunfight except for me. “I don’t know how much of you remains August Pfeiffer, but I’m speaking to him right now. The entity that is inside of you is a threat to every mortal being on the planet, and it must be stopped.”
“You’re going to kill me.” This isn’t the first time I’ve faced death in the past couple of weeks, but surprisingly enough, it hasn’t gotten any easier. The moisture that belongs in my mouth is making an icy streak down my back.
“If you live, the world dies,” the woman on my right declares, her voice startlingly soft.
“And we cannot let that happen.”
“We are well past the point of caution.” Salt-and-Pepper’s eyes darken. “So if you resist, you die here, in spite of potential witnesses. But if you come with us, we will give you a chance to prepare messages for your loved ones.”
Nothing about their guns suggests they’re bluffing, and if I cooperate, at least I’ll get a chance to say goodbye to my parents. At least I’ll stay alive for a few more minutes. I nod my agreement, because I don’t trust myself to speak, and the whole time I’m counting my breaths. How many more do I get to take? How much more time do I have to enjoy the smell of fresh air and the color pink?
I expect them to shove me into a van, to take me to a reservoir or an abandoned building, and so my panic redoubles when they lead me only thirty feet away—to a metal door set in the side of the mall, propped ajar with a stone. It opens into an unadorned corridor of painted concrete—a hidden part of the shopping center meant only for employees to use—and before we can encounter another human being, they hustle me through a second door and into a disused storeroom.
The space is confined, reeking of fresh paint, the walls lined by empty shelving units—and when I realize that this is it, the end of the line, my legs won’t support me and I sink to my knees. I’ve never seen a gun so close-up before. It occurs to me to try and get inside Salt-and-Pepper’s head, to see what I can do about exerting my influence on his free will; but somehow, I can’t. He’s protected by armor even stronger than Gunnar’s.
“If you have any messages to impart, now’s the time,” the man says impatiently, my execution just another item on his to-do list.
The woman has her weapon pointed at my temple, and the second man—a sweaty guy in glasses—licks his lips nervously. “Let’s just get this over with.”
“Where are your swords?” I ask, because as long as I’m talking, it’s a little more time to enjoy being on the razor’s edge of explosive diarrhea. Won’t they be surprised. “The last guy tried to kill me with a sword. I thought that was your thing.”
The Fell of Dark Page 23
