by Lucy Lyons
Viktoria nodded, and watched him glide away.
For lack of anything better to do, she went into Desmond’s room. Soft footsteps and a sharp scent confirmed for her that Peter was following her even there, but she ignored his presence and sat down on Desmond’s bed. The sheets were unwrinkled and didn’t carry a single trace of his scent, but she felt a little bit better just being there.
She couldn’t stop worrying, though. Would she be able to hear what was going on from deeper in the fortress?
Ten minutes later, she got her answer when the first gunshot rang out, echoing for a very long time. Nothing more came for the moment, and Viktoria gripped the bedsheets. Peter was staring over in her direction, and when her gaze met his, he said smoothly, “Don’t worry.”
She couldn’t stop though, because that was when all hell broke loose. A downpour of gunfire began, short and high cracks of pistols, and the loud roar of rifles. Every new shot made her flinch, and she gripped the delicate sheets so hard that her fingers tore through the fabric. She imagined blood jetting in geysers from bullet wounds, fangs flashing in torch light. The weight of her imagination pressed in on her shoulders, terrifying and oppressive. Desmond… the hunters… her heart ached, and she didn’t know which one to think of so as to cause her the least amount of pain.
This battle was unlike anything she had ever imagined. There was no pausing, no breaks, no intermission. The sounds of guns never ceased.
Her eyes closed tightly. Desmond filled the dark, negative space behind her eyelids. His pale, handsome face and broad form made her tingle, but she imagined a knife protruding from his heart. She imagined his silky hair, but then it was soaked with blood. She tried to hear his voice, but the only thing she understood was the death rattle filling his lungs. She was choking on fear, terrified for him, terrified for everyone, but mostly him. Why had this fight started? Where were the answers?
The hunters clearly had reasons for this, whatever they might be. However, the vampires had reasons of their own. The hunters chose to be what they were, but the vampires had to deal with what they were given. They had risen up from the darkness to shape the world in a way that allowed them room to exist.
Viktoria knew what she had to do.
Peter stood with his back to her, looking down at the book in his hands as he read. Viktoria stood up, her legs stiff with tension. If the vampire sensed even the slightest thing awry with her behavior, he would take it upon himself to put her straight. He wouldn’t harm her, but she had no doubt that he could hold onto her and restrain her all day without so much as a break.
Unfortunately, she’d never really been one for acting natural in bad situations, so the moment she started walking on her wobbly legs, Peter glanced over in her direction. She steadied herself with one hand on the foot of the fed and gave an uneasy smile.
“Legs are asleep.”
Understanding and amusement crossed his face. “I’m glad I don’t have that problem anymore,” he commented, and then went back to his reading.
I can’t believe that worked.
She had to act fast. In a minute or two, he would get suspicious of her rapid heartbeat and continued wobbles.
Staggering, her heart in her throat, she made her way over to the bookshelf. Again, Peter glanced at her. “Hello,” he remarked, with forced cheer.
Viktoria swallowed hard. “Hi.”
“See something you like? Desmond has many interesting books. It’s a pity he won’t let anyone borrow them.”
“I… I guess he’s just too proud of his collection,” she said, feeling like she was stumbling over her tongue with every syllable. Peter gave a brisk nod, and she reached out to blindly snatch at the first binding her fingers touched.
“I didn’t know you could read German,” he commented.
Her fingers trembled, and she dropped the book. His hand snatched out to catch it in midair, simply because he could, and she reacted.
Even though vampires were nearly immortal, she knew they still had weak points. A body is a body, no matter the state it was in, and being undead didn’t get rid of pressure points.
Viktoria slammed the side of her hand as hard as she could on Peter’s hand, jabbing deep into a soft point at the base of his wrist so that his fingers seized up, immobile. He was so stunned that he couldn’t react, and she jabbed her fingers at his throat. When she had done this move on Desmond before, her aim had faltered; now, however, her aim flew true as she nailed him right beneath his chin.
The vampire didn’t flinch much, but he did flinch. Stepping inside his reach, Viktoria grabbed his head in her hands and wrenched it around as hard as she could. Peter’s eyes rolled back in his head with the whiplash, and he collapsed.
Normally, at this point, she was supposed to bring out her gun and blow his brains out, or stab him in the heart. His paralysis wouldn’t last longer than a few seconds, after which she had no idea what he would do to her. Even now, he started to twitch and groan.
There was only one thing left for her to do.
Viktoria turned on her heel and ran for the exit. Her arms pumping, she shoved her head down into the run. Her breath rasped in her lungs, and then she broke out onto the cliff and sunlight slashed across her face.
Turning her head to meet the light, she saw that dawn was fully in bloom. The sky was covered in swathes of floral tones, like a rain of springtime petals blowing in from the horizon. Pink and red and golden, streaked with pale cloud, it was almost enough to take her breath away when combined with the scene below.
Then, the peacefulness of the mountainside was shattered by the realization that some of the red in the sky was echoed by blood on the ground. Splashes and streaks of it wet the grass, dripped down the lower cliffs. She saw human hunters battling in groups, guns flashing and swords drawn against pairs and individual vampires. The vampires flickered like flame, dancing in and out of sight with their sharp nails out to inflict swift sounds. In some areas, the humans were surrounded by dead vampire corpses. In others, the vampires threw torn body parts atop a growing pile. There was no clear winner, and Viktoria had a horrible suspicion that that was how the rest of this battle was going to go. She was too far away to see features or facial expressions, but there was such fury and feverishness to the movements of both sides that she knew they wouldn’t stop until they were all destroyed.
A high-pitched scream tore into her thoughts, breaking her from her reverie. Any second now, Peter would be chasing after her. There was only one thing to do, and it was the stupidest thing anyone could have done.
Lowering herself down, she slid off the edge of the cliff and clung to its face with all of her strength. Last time, she was an idiot. She was still an idiot, but she was going to be a different sort of idiot this time. Rather than try to descend all the way down on the cliff, all the way to the bottom, she was going to head for the nearest entrance. It lay far below and to the left, which meant she would move at a diagonal and have more options available to her if she got blocked in one direction.
Not allowing herself to think, or hesitate, Viktoria started to work her way down. It was a terribly slow thing, and her hands ached badly, but she made sure that she always had three solid grips before moving either a hand or foot. She also tried to find deeper holds so that she wasn’t dangling by her fingertips, either.
Her whole body ached just like last time, with her shoulders taking the brunt of the abuse, and her newly-healed hands protested this torture, but she kept going anyway.
How long she climbed, she had no idea. She didn’t think, and most of the time she even had her eyes shut to make it easier.
Then, suddenly, her reaching foot found only empty air. Breathless, she drew that foot back up and tried with the other. Nothing.
That means…
Her arms trembled. The strain was unbearable. Her vision started to swim with exhaustion. She could barely breathe. When she tried to think, to remember if there was a ledge
at the entrance she’d been aiming for, she couldn’t remember.
Should I let go? Or should I try to climb around so I can see?
Her body made the choice for her, as her hands cramped up and slipped. Her left foot snagged in its hold, and she cried out in pain in an instant before dropping like a stone kicked off the mountaintop.
Her scream abruptly ended as she hit the cliff face several feet below, and pain lanced down her side. She was the one paralyzed now, her brain buzzing with sharp jolts that shook her whole body. The adrenaline coursing through her veins didn’t help matters, either.
Only after laying there for a while did she try to move, blinking rapidly and reaching out. Her fingers encountered empty air, and she blinked harder and lifted up her head to get a better look at where she was.
She had indeed landed on a cliff, and the tunnel before her was wide and imposing, full of blackness. However, she was also almost dangling off the edge. Hurriedly, she backed away even though it hurt her.
How hurt, though?
Pushing herself to her feet, she realized quickly that it was only her ankle that really hurt. It had to be wrenched or sprained, but the rest of her pain was already fading from sharpness into a nagging, dull throb.
Any other person might have taken a moment to be proud of themselves for making it so far, but Viktoria could now hear far more of the battle than before. Screams and shouts were just as frequent as the gunfire, mixed with vampiric roars and snarls. She could also hear the ringing sound of blades being drawn, or the crashing of metal against stone.
Have to be careful now, Viktoria thought, and shuffled off down the tunnel. The mountain’s bowels rang with more of the cacophony of battle, but none of it seemed nearby yet. Maybe Desmond had been right; the hunters would never get anywhere near the top of the fortress.
Desmond. All she wanted to do was find Desmond. She could help him. She knew it.
Suddenly, she heard voices coming from further down the tunnel, accompanied by a blaze of harsh light that she hazily pinned as a flashlight beam. It was so far from the natural light of fire she’d grown accustomed to that it almost hurt.
She pressed herself against the wall, heart pounding. Voices reached her now as well.
“I think we’re lost,” a female’s voice said angrily. “How do these monsters navigate?”
“That doesn’t matter,” a male replied hurriedly. “We have to get back to the others. I can’t believe those things drove the rest of our party away!”
“Probably they thought we were the dead ones! We almost were, don’t forget.” A frown entered the woman’s tone. “I just hope we get back to Max in time.”
Max?
It couldn’t be… could it?
“I know,” the man replied. “Poor bastard wants revenge for what happened to his family. I want to be there to see it.”
The unseen speakers moved away, still murmuring to themselves.
Viktoria grabbed at her heart and leaned forward, breathless and blind with a mixture of panic and fear, and relief.
Max. Maximus Willow? Her father? It couldn’t be! He was supposed to be dead! She had heard over and over that none of the Willow hunters had survived the breach of city walls that night! It had to be some sort of mistake. After all, Max wasn’t all that uncommon of a name. It made sense that there might be other men named Max who would also be hunters who lost their family to vampire attacks.
Yet, in her heart, she didn’t believe it was a coincidence.
Viktoria ran on, hurrying now. She had no idea how to navigate in this part of the mountain. She was just as lost as those hunters had been, but she figured if she kept heading towards the sound of fighting, she would come across it eventually.
After what felt like an eternity, she found herself at the auditorium where she had first stood before the vampires. Her mouth opened with shock as she looked around, taking in the writhing scene before her. Humans were everywhere, fighting for their lives.
So, Desmond was wrong after all. They really did breach the fortress, and more than just a few.
Just then, someone roughly grabbed her arm and she spun around to look up into the burning, hate-filled eyes of a vampire. Their mouth was open wide, lunging down for her neck to deliver what could only be a killing blow.
Then, suddenly, the vampire lurched backwards and stared at her. She had never seen this one before, didn’t recognize his dirty blonde hair or sleek build, but it was apparent that he knew exactly who she was.
“You!” he said. “You’re Desmond’s slave. What are you doing here?”
“I’m looking for Desmond,” she blurted out. Something happened to her that she didn’t quite understand. Standing up taller, she wrenched her arm away from the blonde vampire and stared right back into his eyes. “Where is he fighting?” she demanded.
The blonde vampire eyed her warily, and then nodded. “Towards the entrance. There’s some sort of standoff. I can show you.”
“No,” she said. “Don’t worry about me. Fight.”
At her command, the vampire lunged back into the fray and was swallowed whole by the shifting masses.
Viktoria turned in the direction he had pointed, and she took off running again. For the first time in her life, she felt invincible. Finally, she understood that part of being a vampire. The human hunters saw her and assumed that she was on their side, and the vampires who dared lunge at her quickly reeled away with confusion once they recognized her. No one touched her.
She also felt the strangeness, and understood the devastation of that invincibility. Chaos whirled around her, and she wasn’t part of it. It just felt so wrong and detached. Her heart wrenched as she thought of Desmond. How must it feel to watch the world around you change and grow, and you could never really be part of it again?
No time to worry about it, though. The throng around her grew wild, crazed. Bullets that didn’t hit their target blasted the walls and floor near her, scattering gravel at her legs and exposed hands. At one point, the air around her face whistled as someone very nearly hit her by accident. Still, she kept on.
After yet another turn, as she fought to push her way through the crowd, she suddenly realized that there was light up ahead, and that the figures all around her were vampires, standing motionless. They were watching something, and as she broke out through the tunnel mouth that had swallowed her up all those days ago when she first arrived, she saw the reason why.
Desmond stood before his force of vampires, the members of which Viktoria recognized as the main Swift family which had been at the meeting before. Her concern wasn’t with him, however. She was too busy looking across the war-torn forest floor, where there was a gathering of hunters of all ages and sizes and colors, their faces harsh. A man stood before the hunters. He was clearly their leader, and Viktoria recognized him.
Dad! her heart and mind shrieked as one.
The word that came from her mouth was, “Desmond!”
Both men turned to see her as she shoved her way through the last rank of vampires separating her from the standoff so that she was plainly visible to them. Two sets of eyes widened; both were equally shocked. She didn’t know who to turn to first, but her body kept pointing her towards Desmond.
“Viktoria!” Desmond said, alarm and panic crossing his features for a moment before anger crashed back down over them. “What are you doing here?”
“Viktoria!” her father cried, dropping his drawn pistol down to the ground. He took several steps forward, while behind him, his hunters watched warily. “You’re alive!”
Her chest felt full of bees. She opened her mouth to say something, but all she felt was panicked buzzing in her throat instead of words, so she shut her lips again and swallowed hard several times. At last, she managed, “Dad. You’re alive?”
Desmond grabbed onto her hand. His eyes were very harsh. “Your father? That’s your father?” Another realization seemed to crash into him and his
body jerked slightly. “Wait. A Willow? We led them here? But they were all supposed to be dead! How can this be?” The last of his demand was aimed at his fellow vampires. He wanted explanations, but judging by their perplexed expressions they hadn’t seen this coming either.
Maximus Willow looked as though he’d been shot. Viktoria watched his eyes track down to where she was holding hands with a vampire, his mortal enemy, and she saw from the horrified look on his face that he assumed she’d been charmed.
This is going to be very ugly, and very confusing.
“Viktoria?” Desmond said again, a little more uncertainly this time. “I don’t understand what’s going on here and I’m not sure I like it. Explain to me.”
Already, behind her, she could hear the vampires murmuring amongst each other. They were ancient and clever so they understood that something was amiss, and more than a few had already deduced that Viktoria was indeed a Willow herself. Behind her father, the hunters were going through the same sort of confusion. Viktoria recognized a few faces, though no one she had been particularly close to, and she saw that they recognized her in return.
Her voice still struggled to get out, but eventually she managed to say, “I don’t understand, either. Desmond… I thought… Dad was gone. I was told my father was dead. That all the Willows were dead except for me. I don’t understand.” Suddenly, she realized something. “You told me that, too!”
“I was told the same as you, Viktoria,” Desmond said, growling. “I don’t know what to tell you.”
“I know what to tell you, scum,” Maximus spat. Snatching up his gun and not quite pointing it at Desmond, he advanced several paces forward until all three of them were close enough together that they didn’t have to shout to be heard. “We hid from you. Do you think that we didn’t have precautions set in place for just such an attack? Only a few of us made it, but we did. It’s a pity that you used fire so you couldn’t identify the bodies, but it was good for us that you were so foolish.”
“But, I don’t remember a hiding place,” Viktoria said.
