Dark Ascension: A Generation V Novel

by Brennan, M. L.

  “Do you want me to find out?”

  I thought about it for a second. “No. No, I think that I really don’t even give a shit.”

  She hugged me, and I leaned into her, linking my arms behind her back and pressing my face into her neck. “I just want this to be over,” I said, quietly enough that I could barely hear it myself. “But if it’s over, it means that she’s dead, and I don’t want that either.”

  Suze didn’t try to say anything. She just stood there holding me as the sky darkened around us from the violet and orange tones of sunset to a soft gray, and finally blackness. We could hear the distant sounds of crashing waves from where we stood, and the occasional lonely cries from seagulls. She didn’t complain that it was too cold, or that she had places to be—she simply waited until I was ready to let go.

  * * *

  Another week passed with no change. Then one morning I was walking along the hallway to my mother’s suite, and I saw Chivalry and Prudence standing outside her door, clearly waiting for something.

  “What’s going on?” I asked.

  Chivalry just shook his head. He stretched out one arm and put a hand on my shoulder. I could feel the strength in that hand, and was reminded how much stronger he was than me, how he could probably crush my shoulder without much effort.

  “Wait with us, brother,” Prudence said quietly. Her pupils were larger than they should’ve been, so wide that there was only the faintest hint of the blue of her iris present.

  We stood in the hallway for long minutes; then I felt a sudden yank of the bond inside me that linked me to my mother. Beside me I could feel my siblings flinch at the same moment, and knew that they had felt it as well. There was an electricity in the air, like before a storm rolls in from the ocean, and I could feel every hair on my body stand on end.

  “She’s ready for us now,” said Prudence, and opened the door.

  My mother’s sitting room was the same as ever, innocuous. My hands began to shake as we walked to the closed door of her bedroom. Chivalry and Prudence looked grim, though not as affected as me.

  The first thing that I saw when the bedroom door opened was that my mother was sitting up in bed. Her expression was lucid, alive, and her blue eyes glowed. Power radiated out of her, strong enough that I felt it not just in the bond between us, but along my skin and even in the air that I sucked into my lungs. For a second my heart skipped a beat, and I thought, She’s better.

  Then I saw what was lined up against the wall of the room. The bodies of eight of her oldest, most loyal staff members, lying against the wall like broken dolls. Patricia was there, seated on the floor, a euphoric expression still frozen on her dead face. Her sensible slacks were tan, and her sweater was cream. And her face and skin were paler than they’d ever been, as pale as wax paper, except for the long, ripped wound on the side of her neck that still oozed blood. Beside Patricia was James, who had served my mother since he was a young boy, even after I’d attacked him in a fit of bloodlust a few months ago. The wrinkled skin of his face was smoothed out now, relaxed. And six more beside them, all of whom I knew, had known since I was a child. The ones most devoted to my mother, the ones who had served her longest. The ones who’d been the most distraught over the past week, visited her the most frequently.

  “Are you a pharaoh, Mother?” My throat was almost too tight to force words through, but I managed it. “Demanding that your retainers follow you into the afterlife?”

  “My poor Fortitude,” Madeline crooned. “You still do not understand. They volunteered for this, my darling. Gave up those last few years of their lives for a greater purpose.”

  “I don’t understand either, Mother,” Prudence said, surprising me.

  “Come.” Madeline crooked a finger at us, urging us closer. “Time is short, my dearest ones, my babies. This gift will not last long, and must not be squandered.”

  We shuffled forward, almost pulled, though whether it was by the power that rolled off her or by those old instincts to obey our mother, I didn’t know. Maybe it was both. We lined up beside her, with Prudence the first in the line, standing by Madeline’s pillow, and me third, by her hand.

  “Our lives are long,” Madeline said. “So long that humans think us immortal. And when our bodies begin to fail, many of us fall into a sleep that can last decades, as we struggle to maintain ourselves, to hold on to life. There are periods of waking—hours, then minutes. Eventually moments so brief that the eyes cannot even open before consciousness falls back into slumber. There are those who cling to this, who refuse to pass until they have wrung every droplet of life. But I have tasted that these last days, and it’s not what I choose.”

  “No, Mother,” Chivalry whispered.

  “Hush, my dearest.” She was so gentle in that moment, and so terrible. Like a mother crocodile lifting its hatchling with its mouth. “I have lived long, seen much, and done great things. I am content that this is the end.” Madeline looked at all of us in turn, those bluer-than-blue eyes lingering, drinking us in. “This is my will, my final order, my final wish. It is the last thing I will ever ask of you, and my hope for your future.” She paused, drew a deep breath. “I have no sole heir.”

  We stared at her. Then we stared at each other. Prudence began to open her mouth, and Madeline cut her off.

  “No, listen to me, because there is no time left. I have left the paperwork behind, for the banks and the property, but this is more than that. Each of you will receive a third of my estate, of my interests, and also of my authority. You must remain together, act not as a Nest with a single ruler, but as siblings and equals. We vampires have thought that we are stone, unchanging as the winds of time and humanity swirl around us. But change has worn us down, diminished us. Few see the changes that have already been wrought, even though to an outside eye the damage is clear. I will be gone, my doves, and will not live through the times ahead. You will, and you must work together to see them through. With one of you left to rule, the other two would flounder and move away, regardless of which I chose. Only with this is there a chance that you would stay together, to gain strength through each other, to advise and guide. Swear this, my children.”

  Chivalry was first, speaking without hesitation, even as tears ran down his cheeks. “When have I ever doubted or turned away? You know that I’ll do whatever you ask. I swear.”

  Madeline looked at Prudence. Rage and anguish fought each other on my sister’s face, and then she slid down to her knees and pressed her forehead against my mother’s. “I could’ve done it, Mother,” she whispered, and now the tears were coming for her, the sorrow winning out. “I could’ve protected them.”

  “Whatever waits for me on the other side of death,” Madeline said, one hand reaching up to stroke my sister’s red hair, “it cannot change that I will miss you, my daughter. You were the gift that filled my arms after your sister died, and how I have loved you. Now promise, darling. Promise me this last thing.”

  A long minute passed. Then, muffled, but unmistakable, Prudence whispered, “This last thing, Mother, this hardest thing, I promise.”

  Madeline’s eyes turned to me, and she stretched out her left hand. I caught it, feeling the veins, the dry, thin skin, the chill of the flesh. “And you, my last born, my rebel, fool and foreseer both. Swear.”

  “I don’t understand why you’re doing this, Mother,” I said, my voice breaking. “None of this makes sense.”

  “Trust me, my son, my creation. All your terror, all your love—trust me now.”

  Her hand moved up and cupped my face. How many times, I wondered, had she done this one action since the moment that I was born? And now here was the last time. There were centuries of life stretching in front of me, yet my mother was dying when I wasn’t even thirty. My tears were hot on my face, and I nodded. “Fine,” I said. “I promise. I swear.”

  “Thank you, my little virtues, my great
est loves. Now . . .” She relaxed back against the cushions of her bed, spreading out her arms. “My final gift to you: drink. Drink until nothing remains. Whatever strength, whatever power is still flickering in me, better that it be yours, my children, then be cast aside or preserve a useless half-life.” She smiled at the expressions on our faces, her long ivory fangs flashing. “Yes, I know that this is difficult, dears. But this is the death I choose, rather than lingering and dwindling down to nothingness. This is what I want, and I’ve already given Loren and the staff their other orders.” Her hands stretched out, touching each of us on our heads, our cheeks. “All has been arranged.”

  We arranged ourselves the way that our mother directed us—Chivalry gently carried her over to her chaise longue, then knelt at her left side. I was at her right, and Prudence was at her neck. As my sister turned down the collar of Madeline’s dressing gown, I rolled up her long sleeve, exposing the soft bend of her elbow. Chivalry was echoing my movements, or maybe I was echoing his—this was nothing that I could’ve ever imagined doing, and yet somehow, as we all acted together, there was almost a familiarity to what we were doing. A strange, disturbing, wholly unwelcome sense of rightness.

  Prudence and Chivalry’s needlelike fangs slid out, delicate and precise. I had nothing like that, so it was my mother who did what she’d always done for me—drew one of her sharp nails across the inside of her elbow to split the skin for me. I cupped her elbow in my hands and started to lean down, and I paused for a moment to look at her. Her eyes were focused on mine, and, even as my sister leaned down and bit her neck, my mother’s lips widened into a smile as she looked at me. Across from me, Chivalry was already feeding.

  I leaned down and began to drink at the wound.

  I’d been dependent on my mother’s blood for my entire life, but her blood tasted different this time. It was thinner, for one thing—instead of it being so thick that I had to suck hard to get any into my mouth, today it flowed freely, easily into me. The taste was saltier, and there was a faint hint to it that reminded me, very strangely, of roses—of the smell that cut roses have just before they begin wilting. That bond, the tie between me and my mother was winding tighter as I drank, and it felt like my whole chest was compressing, and that awareness of my parent was a throbbing certainty that blacked out my vision, my hearing, and anything that existed beyond the blood that I was swallowing.

  The blood began to thin, and I drank harder, not letting go. Then it was one last droplet on my tongue, and as it slid down my throat, I felt the bond shatter, like a fluted sugar sculpture that has been spun out like stained glass and is dropped to the floor. The death of the bond, and the death of my mother, cut through me, and the pain was unimaginable, as if a heated knife had been drawn across every nerve ending in my body. I opened my mouth to scream, and it was gone, leaving only an empty well of loss.

  Inside me, somewhere in my head or my soul, whichever I was more inclined to believe in that day, there had been three strings that tied me to my family, that let me know that they were around. Chivalry had once told me that those had existed before I had even been born—that from the moment I’d quickened in my host mother’s womb, he’d felt the beat of my heart, and the bond between us.

  Now my mother was gone, and only two ties remained. They felt fainter, more delicate, as if the loss of my bond to my mother had changed them from the heavy ropes on a ship to strands of a spider’s web.

  She was really dead, really gone.

  * * *

  Madeline had left her orders, and they were carried out.

  A funeral pyre had already been built on the back lawn, in full view of the ocean. There were large logs, and hundreds of pinecones of many different varieties, from the tiny ones that littered the forest floors around us to huge ones that must’ve come from the sequoias in California. There were braided wreaths of pine boughs, rosemary, sage, and things that I couldn’t identify by scent or sight, beautifully woven together. The pyre had been built within a frame of black wrought iron, the design showing birds, and flowers, and the ocean waves. Beneath the pyre was a flooring of bone-white tiles, something that I knew hadn’t been there yesterday, sitting on top of the recent snowfall. Strings of delicate white lights in the shape of lilies had been strung around the backyard between recently erected posts swathed in white silk.

  My mother’s body had been wrapped in a red shroud of some heavy fabric and was now carried on a board of polished rosewood, covered all over in more carvings, and around the edges ran the inscription—Madeline, mother of Constance, Prudence, Chivalry, and Fortitude, sister of Edmund, daughter of Blanche. It repeated a dozen or more times, each time the lettering subtly different, the spelling and presentation shifting from the modern all the way back to what the carving might’ve looked like on my mother’s own cradle, back in 1387.

  We followed behind the body, the chief mourners in a procession that consisted of us and the staff of the house. There were no representatives from any of the races that my mother had ruled—perhaps it was tradition, or maybe she just hadn’t cared to include them in her plans. She was no longer there to give us an answer, if she’d felt inclined to do so.

  There were no clouds in the night sky, and the moon was barely a sliver, leaving the stars to gleam perfectly and coldly above us in all their winter glory. The board that carried my mother was placed gently on top of the pyre, her feet facing the ocean.

  Three torches were produced, and lit, each a masterpiece of wood carving, each with our name set into the sides, entwined with delicately rendered leaves and berries. The tops were dipped into a small container of kerosene, then lit and handed to each of us in turn. We stood at three corners of the pyre and waited for our cue, as one final item was produced. This was a carved wooden candle, this one marked for my dead sister, Constance. It was lit, then gently placed just above my mother’s head, the flame flickering and building in strength.

  Then Loren Noka gave us a subtle nod, and we each brought the flaming tips of our torches down onto the wreaths, letting them catch and the fire spread. Then we slid our torches farther down, completely inside the intricately built nest of wooden logs, the fuel that would allow the pyre to burn long enough to break down bone to ash. The flame built greedily, catching in a fierce and immediate blaze on the pine and the herbs, more sluggishly on smaller pieces of kindling, until finally it built into an inferno that caught even the thickest pieces of wood and wouldn’t go out until everything was consumed. There must have been little pockets of chemicals tucked into the pyre, because the fire was many colors—brilliant scarlet red, a rich purple, sullen green, and even a sapphire blue. The smell was a cacophony—some pleasant and deliberately aromatic, some undeniable as the scent of burning flesh.

  As we stood in the darkness, the heat of the pyre enveloping us and melting the surrounding snow, music began to play. Somewhere, probably back on the patio, a string quartet played for hours—everything from modern pop to old chamber music that had been played for kings and queens.

  The fire burned all night, and we all stood beside it. Once, out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw a white fox and the glitter of many eyes behind her, but when I turned to look there was nothing. Eventually, as the sky began lightening to a pale gray, the pyre began to gutter, even the thickest logs consumed, and the shape of my mother’s body had long since disappeared. And when the lines of delicate pink and orange appeared above us, reflected down onto the churning waves, it was finally over. The coals still winked with ruby lights, the mixed gray and white of the ashes still hot enough that a second fire could’ve started just by placing a sheet of paper or a few pieces of kindling down. I saw now that a few people stood off to the side with what looked like overlarge fireplace tools.

  We hadn’t touched or spoken since our mother died, but we’d stood together, watching her burn. Now Chivalry’s hand closed around my arm, and he said, softly, “It’s over, Fort.”
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  “What do we do now?” I asked. Madeline was dead. She was gone, and we were left without her, to somehow move forward on our own.

  There was no answer, just Chivalry tugging me around, walking back toward the house. Simone, his wife, had appeared on his other side, and Prudence walked ahead of us. The string quartet was packing up their instruments. Staff members had begun taking down the strands of white flower lights, as well as the posts. White silk was being folded, tucked away. Behind us I could hear the wrought-iron frame being disassembled. The new day, the first of my life without my mother, was beginning.

  She was gone, but nothing had stopped, and nothing would stand still.

  Chapter Six

  The next day, I sat and ate breakfast with Chivalry and Prudence. The cook had been one of the fatalities in my mother’s bedroom, and the new cook was her niece, who had been her aunt’s assistant for almost twenty years. I was disturbed to realize, as I ate, that I could discern no difference in the taste of the food whatsoever. Had I not been told about the change, then my only hint that a new administration was in place in the mansion’s kitchen would’ve been that a vegetarian quiche had been served alongside the rest of the dishes, with zero fanfare, something that never would’ve occurred while my mother was writing the menus and waiting for my “experiment” in vegetarianism to come to an end.

  “Stop pouting, Fortitude,” Prudence snapped at me.

  “I’m not pouting,” I defended.

  My sister pointed her parfait spoon at me. “You’re definitely pouting.”

  “You’re sulking a bit,” Chivalry, the traitor, noted. “Just admit that Mother knew what she was doing when she put together her will. If you’d been given immediate access to your inheritance, you would’ve given the whole thing to Doctors Without Borders or something like that just to make a point.”

  “And what a tragedy that would’ve been, if a worthy and selfless cause suddenly benefited from millions of dollars,” I said. My siblings shook their heads, horrified at the thought. Across the table, Simone gave me a sympathetic smile. Slightly bolstered, I continued. “Don’t think that I’m going to feel any differently when the trust finally matures.”