From beneath his long coat he pulled out a soot-smeared length of sword, and for a fraction of a second, I thought the movement a threat before I recognized the blade. It was my own, the one I'd left behind when I fled Club Garnet.
"I believe this is yours?"
I set my glass aside and took the blade from him, running my thumb along the top of both edges to test its condition. There were a few nicks from striking the man's spinal column, but nothing that couldn't be repaired. "Thank you."
He nodded. "Keep it to yourself, all right? Londoners aren't used to seeing sword-wielding goddesses running up and down their streets. You caused one hell of a stir."
I inclined my head and sat back down, resting the flat of the blade across my thighs. "I will be more discreet in the future."
He snorted, as if he didn't think me capable of such a thing. "I'll show myself out. Remember, Adelia: Call me first!" He shouted the last over his shoulder, then jogged down the rest of the steps, the door shutting behind him with a heavy clank.
"Miss Shelley—"
"I liked Mags," I said. It was certainly better than Adelia calling me Miss-anything, and if the man in the club had been correct, then my full name would not fit in this new world. Irritating as Culver had been, Mags would be a suitable alias for the time being.
Adelia cleared her throat. "If you insist. I'm sorry for that interruption. Inspector Culver means well, but his manner is sometimes excitable."
"Passion is warranted, and he had many interesting things to say. I would like to know more about Victoria's Veil. Such a thing did not exist in my time. We had only The Accord to keep us from drawing the attention of more powerful beings."
"In due time, Miss—Mags. You must rest."
"You will tell me about the veil now, or I will drag that man back here and make him tell me everything."
A deep weariness passed behind Adelia's eyes.
"Very well," she said. She set her glass aside, adjusted her glasses, and began.
Seven: Lifting the Veil
"We have written records of the incidents I am about to relay to you, if you would like to read up on them yourself. Firsthand accounts can be far more illuminating than mere oral history. No, I see your impatience. I am not stalling. Only, I suppose I am. To gather my thoughts, you see. This is not something I have spoken of since I was a young woman and I took the helm of the Sun Guard from my father.
"It was not long after you went to your oubliette that the strangeness began. In the year 1837, shortly after Queen Victoria took the throne, the Sun Guard noted a marked decrease in nightwalker activity all throughout London. Our intelligence agents reached out to branches across the continent, and the few we had established across the oceans, and heard the same story everywhere we turned our ear: The nightwalkers were withdrawing.
"At first, we believed that they were gathering their resources, centering themselves for a grand attack. Security was enhanced across all Sun Guard compounds. Many great leaps of technology in that day may be traced back to Sun Guard inventors scrambling to get ahead of whatever the nightwalkers may have planned.
"Victoria herself, concerned with our heightened presence on the streets, reached out to the head of the Sun Guard and commanded an audience to discuss what was amiss. We explained our concerns to her, and she agreed that such matters were dire. She lent us use of a great number of her soldiers and we thought, for quite a while, that we had successfully secured our streets.
"At the time, Roisin Quinn and Sebastian Arias were working independently of each other, though they both reported to Somerset House—along with a handful of other coteries. I do not remember their names; you would have to check our records for that.
"Roisin had been tracking a particular nightwalker of interest ever since your internment, an ancient being named Ragnar Varangot. He was suspected of turning more than the average number of ghouls into full nightwalkers. Roisin wanted him gone if he were going to prove such a risk to the balance.
"She tracked him to his hive. It was daylight, and so she was in her full power and the nightwalker at his weakest. She could have sent for Sebastian, but she had worked independently for so long that I'm not certain the thought occurred to her. She entered the building alone and sought the hive's crypt. What she found there... Well. She left sketches for our records. You may view them yourself, if you so wish. I have often wondered if she drew what she saw to cleanse herself of that moment. If that was the case, then I pray that it worked for her, and that she was able to find peace through her art.
"In the center of the hive, strewn across the floor on twisted sheets of silk—red, she said, always red—lay dozens of corpses of nightwalkers. Not piles of ash, as one would expect, but twisted, desiccated things. Like mortal bodies left too long exposed to the desert.
"She checked them, all of them, one by one, for any sign of undeath at all. They bore no blood, no heartbeats. When staked, their bodies refused to transmute to ash. And yet, every last one carried the nightwalker stench, too strong to be the taint of a ghoul. They were nightwalker, and they were dead, but they were whole, and no one could understand why.
"The man who had turned them, the one she hunted, she could not find amongst the dead. And so she waited nearby hoping to catch him leaving or entering the hive. He never showed. But the one Roisin followed was not the only nightwalker to know of that hive.
"A nightwalker named Araline, a French woman of the ancient lines, spotted her. Curious as to what would draw a sunstrider's attention, she entered the compound after Roisin left and discovered the carnage there herself.
"Blaming Roisin for the strange deaths, she returned to her own hive to tell her nightwalker children that the sunstriders had developed a new weapon to use against them. That it did not end them, as a stake or other means would, but that it would shrivel their capacities and lock them into the shape of a mummified corpse for all eternity.
"Horrified, her hive took up arms and waged war. Word spread quickly throughout the immortal holdings, and soon all nightwalkers believed what Araline had claimed. Our denials, of course, were brushed aside.
"It did not help matters that, very soon, Araline herself began to show signs of illness. And then her hive, and all those messengers she sent out to the rest of the nightwalkers.
"They staged a desperate revolt, terrifying all of London and other major cities where the immortal presence was strong. Thousands of mortals lost their lives in those battles, and many sunstriders went to the endless light alongside them.
"Carnage reigned for a full year, until between our order, and the strange illness, the nightwalker numbers dwindled to near-nothing. We feared that the illness would jump to the sunstriders, but that never came to pass, and we still do not know its origin. Many believe it divine punishment. I don't know the answer.
"But I do know that after the nightwalkers retreated and died off one by one, Queen Victoria summoned all heads of the Sun Guard to a meeting. The war, brief though it had been, had traumatized the mortals of the world. We assured her that our goals were as they had always been: the ultimate protection, and preservation, of mortal mankind.
"As the nightwalker presence was no more, she requested that we withdraw ourselves from the mortal realm and fade into myth and memory. The sunstriders were weary from the experience, and most readily agreed to do so.
"Though the nightwalker presence was perceived to have died off, we did not want to risk leaving humanity unprotected, and so we arranged a slow closing of our order. Every year, until there were no more, a certain number determined by need went to their rest with the understanding that they would rise again and fight for humanity's sake if the nightwalker presence was ever to return.
"Roisin was the last to go rest in 2010. This year only, we have detected nightwalker ghouls in the city. Just London. The other compounds have, thankfully, not shared our experience. We expected your people to rise when the balance was sufficiently tipped—as you inevitably did—but the
y never did. I was, in fact, preparing to petition the Queen later this week for the right to awaken one of you to be certain the oath was still functioning.
"I did not think he would agree, but I had to try. Though we exist behind the veil, our mission remains the same: Protect humanity. And I fear you may be the last of us."
Eight: Sweet Light
I woke the next morning on sheets of pure silk and stretched languorously beneath the warm slant of a glorious sun beam. My dreams had wallowed in the darkness of Adelia's tale of what had happened to the immortal orders after my interment. Twisted corpses, and sunstriders vanishing from their barrows, haunted every moment of my rest. But to sleep a sleep that was restorative, and not the endless drifting of the oubliette, I would suffer endless nightmares.
I opened my eyes eagerly, eager to bask in the sunlight for the first time in centuries. The sun's sweet beauty did not sting my gaze as I rolled to my side to stare out the open window. She and I were old friends, and seeing her now—even sheathed behind a blanket of London fog—made my chest ache with joy.
For one stupid moment, time shifted and I reached across the bed, expecting the warm place where my Lucien had slept. I may have been sunstrider, but that mortal man had always beaten me to waking, leaving his living warmth and the faint scent of hay behind to rouse me. Cold silk met my fingertips, and I shuddered. Right. 2020. Mortal loves do not wait for you on the other side of the oubliette.
A soft scratching at my door pulled me out of my reverie. I sighed and threw my sheets back, swinging my legs over the edge of the bed as I fumbled for the robe Adelia had lent me the night before. After a long shower—a marvelous invention—I had opted to sleep nude. There was nothing in the world quite like clean skin against silk sheets.
"Come in," I called, when I'd tugged the robe shut and tied it. Modesty had never been a worry of mine, but I was getting a feel for these modern mortals. They were not much changed from their ancestors.
A petite woman entered, wearing a simple shift dress with her honey-blonde hair tucked into a low, conservative bun. She carried a large wine glass filled with a thick, red liquid. My nostrils flared, recognizing the fluid at once. Blood. And not just any blood—it smelled of Durfort-Civrac, though not Adelia's.
"Good morning, Miss Shelley. I've brought you breakfast."
The young woman rested the tray on the nightstand by my side. It was all I could do to keep from devouring it immediately. Despite the restorative benefits of both sunlight and sleep, my abused body needed something more potent to finish mending.
But I was sunstrider. I did not drink any chalice brought to me. I must know its owner consented, willingly and passionately, and though the fragrance of blood overwhelmed my senses I suspected this girl was the source.
"I am to be called Mags. Which Durfort-Civrac are you?"
Her pale brows arched. "You can tell?"
I winked and touched the side of my nose. A little smile creased the woman's face. She was lovely when she dropped the serious-and-severe act. "I'm Emeline, daughter of Lady Adelia."
"Ah," I said. "That explains the hair."
She blushed scarlet. "Pardon?"
"Your hairstyle." I waved a hand at her low bun and stood, arching my back like a cat as I stretched. "I've been in the grave a long time, but I was with many women your age last night and every one of them had their hair down. Something tells me that's not your preferred look. I can smell the Durfort-Civrac in you, and I'd bet my fangs she taught you how to tie your hair up like that."
Emeline touched the bottom of her bun with the tips of her fingers as if it might bite her. "It's practical. It stays neat and keeps out of the way when working."
I grinned at her. "So your mother did teach it to you."
She let loose with a startled laugh. "Well, yes."
"Emeline, I am..." I paused, tried to do the math, then gave up. "Some centuries old, and I'm not even old enough for that hairstyle. Let it go."
Her eyes widened. "Right now?"
"If you'd like. The point is: Make your own decision. Try it out. Figure out what you actually like, then do that."
She turned to the mirror, hesitant, then reached up and pulled the silver pin from her hair. Waves of curls cascaded past her shoulders, covering just the tops of her breasts, and framed her face so that she shifted from a young woman to a vixen in a heartbeat. I whistled low.
"I can see why your mother likes your hair up. I'd worry myself senseless if I were in her shoes."
"Oh," she said, and grasped the ends of her hair. "I don't want to be a bother."
I covered her hands with mine, stopping her from putting the locks back up. She flinched from the coldness of my touch, but it was only a startle response. She did not pull away after that. "Your presence is never a bother. Be proud of yourself. Body and mind."
She pursed her lips, staring at herself in the mirror with a tilted head, then nodded firmly. "I've never thought about it that way before."
"Mothers," I said, shaking my head, "can be a force of nature. I scarcely remember mine, but I remember the echoes of fear and guilt well enough."
"And love, too, surely?"
I was not so certain I recalled my mother's love, but I nodded all the same. It was what she wanted to hear, and the vagaries of immortal memories was more than I wanted to delve into at the moment. Now that I was certain that she was willing to step from beneath her mother's shadow, I rested my palm on the edge of the nightstand, near the glass, to draw her eye.
"It's a hard thing, duty. It is so very easy to conflate one's commitment to one's duty with one's real desires."
She smiled a slow, happy smile. "I give you permission to take my blood, Magdalene Shelley. No—I know you're worried I'm just doing this to please my mother, but I asked her if I could do this, when she told me this morning that you had shown up. It is an honor for me. Truly."
"And you understand that, upon tasting your blood, I will be able to find you anywhere in the world? I need but follow the scent of your veins."
She nodded. "If you need to find me, I want you to do so with ease. Please, drink. I was told that you were shot last night. You must still hurt."
How true that was. I inclined my head in thanks and took the glass from the tray, then turned my back to her. It was one thing to offer an immortal monster a taste of your blood. It was another, I suspected, to see the absolute ecstasy on their face when they drank it.
Emeline gave me privacy, stepping aside to fiddle with her hair in the mirror while I pressed the warm glass to my lips and drank deeply. Sweet and bold, lush and rich, the blood of Emeline was pure brilliance across my tongue, a bursting sweetness so unlike anything a mortal tongue had ever touched, or ever would.
I shivered with delight, clamping down on a moan as I swallowed the last drop and licked the remnants from my lips. In this, we sunstriders were in agreement with our nightwalker counterparts: The blood of mortals was the drink of the gods. Never mind what that said about us.
"If you're finished," Emeline said as I placed the glass down upon the nightstand with a clink, "Talia has some things she wishes to discuss with you."
"Bring her in," I said, and paced out the large semicircle of my room. Living blood pumped through my veins, fresh sunshine poured down upon me, and I felt as if I could take the whole of the world and bend it across my knee if I so chose.
Talia swept into the room, a glowing, rectangular object grasped tight in both hands. "Good morning!" she sang, and grinned at me. "How was your rest?"
"Perfect. This place you've made is beautiful."
Talia beamed from ear-to-ear. "I picked out the furniture myself. Now, we weren't quite prepared for your arrival, so we're lacking many things you might need—clothes, for a start. I went through the archives and found your old measurements. Are they still correct, do you think?"
I stared at her a moment to see if she were joking. "My body hasn't changed a sliver since the day I was turned."
&nb
sp; "Oh! Well. That makes things easy." She squinted at the glowing thing in her hands and poked it a few times. Phone, I recalled the word from the crowds on London's streets. Curious, I stepped to her side, but forgot myself and moved with absolute silence and immortal speed. Talia gasped and clutched a hand to her chest.
"Apologies," I said quickly, but she waved me off.
"No no, I have to get used to that." Talia tugged on one earring. "Now, your measurements mean we won't have to drag you down to Lord and Taylor, but I need to know what kind of things you like. Fashion has changed quite a lot over the years, as I'm sure you've noticed."
"There seems to be a lot less fabric involved."
"Ah, yes, that's... true. You were Regency era, correct?"
"When I went to rest, yes."
"Oh. Well, uh, how do you feel about trousers?"
I patted the girl's shoulder. I struggled to think of Talia and Emeline as women, though I knew that they were by mortal standards. They were just so very young compared to me that it made my head spin sometimes.
"Anything you pick will be fine. I must be able to maintain a full range of motion, and anything that adds extra protection without drawing attention to myself would be ideal. Leather, wool, any thick fabric."
"I can do that."
"Want some help shopping?" Emeline asked. Talia lit up.
"Yes! This will be so much fun, creating a whole wardrobe. Will you come with us, Mags? I'm sure I could scare up some clothes for you to wear out for the day."
I shook my head. The girls' excitement was contagious, but I had things to attend to that could not wait. Before I'd gone to rest last night, Seamus had taken me aside and promised me he would do everything he could to get in contact with the other compounds to discern the fate of their crypts. I wanted to join these girls, to live like a mortal just for a little while, but I couldn't turn my back on my oath. Not for a second.
Sun Cursed (Shades of Blood Book 1) Page 4
