Iron Night

by M. L. Brennan

  I shouted loudly for help, and, already hearing the scattered footsteps of some of the other staff, hopped over Patricia’s recumbent form and ran down the basement steps as quickly as I could. There were plenty of people on hand at any hour who could hold Patricia’s hand and call an ambulance, but whatever was going on down there was something that could only be left to the family.

  At the bottom of the steps was the kind of serious security door preferred by banks or secret military prisons on television. Normally it opened only after it had scanned an authorized thumbprint, but apparently my sister hadn’t been on the short list, because now the heavy metal door had been ripped half off its hinges and hung drunkenly from the ones that remained. I pushed my way past the remains and hurried into the sitting room of my host father’s caretaker, Mr. Albert.

  Mr. Albert was built along the same lines as a Sherman tank, and in the years before he came to work for my mother he had earned a living as a professional wrestler. I’d known him since infancy, and even on my wiggliest days as a toddler, when he told me to be quiet, I’d obeyed. Now, like Patricia one floor above him, he was pulling himself off the ground. One full wall of his sitting room was made completely out of glass so that he could observe Henry’s behavior at all times, and through the glass I could see my sister walking quickly toward the enclosure where my host father lived.

  I yelled my sister’s name, but she didn’t respond. I watched as she walked across the red line painted across the floor that no one except Mr. Albert or my mother were allowed to cross—largely for our own safety.

  In his cage, Henry prowled as Prudence approached him. With his patrician features and dark hair with dignified wings of gray at his temples, Henry could’ve passed for any of the Boston Brahman politicians that my mother regularly entertained over dinner, except for the white surgical scrubs that he wore and the complete lack of sanity in his eyes. While Henry had fathered me in the traditional sense, every drop of blood that flowed through his veins belonged to my mother in a very literal way; he had been bled out and had her blood pumped into him, a process that had altered him physiologically right down to the DNA, leaving him changed enough to breed with my similarly changed host mother, but it had shattered his mind, leaving him pathologically homicidal. Over the years that he’d been imprisoned in Madeline’s basement, even as he lived in a plastic cube with every interaction monitored more closely than the moon landing, he had killed two people.

  And he was my tie to humanity, his life the last barrier between me and the full transition. My host mother, Grace’s, suicide had begun the process, and Henry’s death would finish it.

  A horrible suspicion filled me, and I ran past Mr. Albert, calling Prudence’s name again, but she didn’t even glance backward. Reaching out with both hands, she gripped the edges of the door that kept Henry contained, and with a visible effort ripped it open, peeling it back from its locks like the top of a sardine container.

  Henry was loose the moment the door was wide enough for him to pass through. Prudence reached for him, her deadly intent clear, but the changes my mother’s blood had wrought on Henry’s body revealed themselves when he moved quickly out of the range of her hands, then drove one fist into her stomach with enough power to knock a vampire more than two centuries old back and against the wall. The sight of that froze me where I stood—I’d faced a host before and with Suze’s help I’d killed him, but this was Henry. Respect for his strange twilight part of my existence had always been thoroughly twined with the danger he posed to me. I’d never touched either of my host parents—they’d always been strange, piteous, yet frightening presences behind separating walls. And when Henry raced toward me with a speed that was not quite a vampire’s but all too close, I found myself unable to move.

  But he wasn’t coming for me. I felt the breeze as he moved past me, close enough that I could’ve touched him had I not been as useful as Lot’s wife post-saltification, but his target was Mr. Albert. With the loyalty of twenty years, Mr. Albert had pulled himself off the floor where Prudence had thrown him, collected his stun gun, and come to do his duty and contain Henry.

  There were medals on the walls of Mr. Albert’s sitting room from a grateful nation that attested to his courage, but there was fear on his face as Henry came toward him. I finally moved, realizing the danger, but too late. Mr. Albert’s stun gun did its job, administering a jolt of electricity that filled the room with the smell of burned ozone and singed hair, but even as Henry’s shoulders spasmed, his hands never stopped moving, ripping at Mr. Albert’s chest with unnatural strength, just as his mouth closed on Mr. Albert’s throat, then opened again as he began his best attempt to eat his jailor alive. And then Mr. Albert’s screams filled the room.

  I wrapped my hands around Henry’s broad shoulders and yanked backward as hard as I could, but he gave a low growl and held on with all the stubborn strength of a dog with a bone.

  I couldn’t move Henry, and the wet, masticating sounds he was making were a horrible complement to Mr. Albert’s screams. I threw all my weight into pulling Henry, managing only to shift both of them a few inches, as Henry was not loosening his grip.

  “Prudence,” I screamed, desperate enough to appeal to her. “Help me!”

  She was there then, her face unreadable as she responded to my plea, and somehow the two of us pulled Henry off, and with a grunt she flung him off Mr. Albert and a few feet away. Mr. Albert fell to the ground, and I dropped to my knees, desperately trying to decide where I should press my hands and administer pressure in the mass of blood that was now his throat and chest, even as his eyes rolled horribly and only small, strangled noises emerged from his throat.

  “What are you doing?” I begged my sister, putting my hands over Mr. Albert’s heart almost at random. “Why are you doing this?”

  Then I was suddenly lifted by the collar of my shirt and shaken with enough force to feel my brain slosh in my skull. My sister’s face thrust just an inch away from my own, and she glared into my eyes as I hung from her hand like a misbehaving puppy.

  “This is for your own welfare, Fortitude,” she ground out as she glared at me, “and I will not have you continue to interfere!” With that she threw me hard, and for a second I was completely airborne before I slammed against the wall, my head giving a sickening thud. I slid down, dazed and blinking, all the breath knocked out of my lungs and unable to do anything except watch as my sister stalked forward toward where Henry was crouched.

  Henry fought and even landed a few more blows, but with no further distractions my sister quickly emerged on top. Long cuts on Henry’s face and arms oozed unnaturally dark and viscous blood, and when my sister wrapped one hand around his throat and drew her other back for the killing blow, Henry actually seemed to relax in her grip and wait for the inevitable.

  But the blow didn’t fall—Prudence’s hand was caught and held by Madeline, who had moved so quickly that in my rattled state I hadn’t even registered her approach. Now my tiny, ancient mother stood holding Prudence’s hand, and her rage was so deep that for the first time in my life I saw my mother’s glowing blue eyes change to black pools.

  “My will was clear,” Madeline growled, and neither her Barbara Bush haircut nor her conservative pink housedress could conceal that this was an alpha predator. Those long, fixed fangs gleamed under the harsh fluorescent lights. “Why have you crossed me?”

  Prudence didn’t loosen her grip on Henry’s neck, and her needlelike fangs were fully extended when she snarled back at my mother. “Whether it is sentimentality or ego that holds you back, it is enough. Fortitude’s transition has been held back for two decades, and I am saying enough. Perhaps it is too late; maybe he’s ruined—more human than vampire. But I am putting a stop to your games.”

  With her free hand Madeline swiped at her daughter, and Prudence dropped Henry to block it. Henry lay on his side, not moving as far as I could see, but that dark bloo
d was staining even more of his formerly white scrubs, and I was unable to see from my vantage point whether he stayed still out of passivity or because of injury.

  Madeline and Prudence had now locked hands, each pushing against the other with enough effort to outline every muscle in their arms. Both women were sweating heavily enough that their hair looked like they’d just emerged from the shower, their hands shaking wildly with their effort. For an endless moment neither could move the other and they were locked in place, but then there was movement and it was from my mother. It was so slow that at first I thought I was imagining it, but then I realized what I was seeing—Prudence was pushing our mother’s arms backward. She was winning.

  I saw the moment that Prudence realized it herself—the flare of triumph across her face. But then Madeline gave a low growl that seemed to emerge from the floor beneath her feet, and her black eyes began to glow. When she pushed again, it was with a strength that my sister couldn’t match, and Prudence was forced back and then down. First into a small crouch, then down until her knees touched the cement floor and she was kneeling before my mother, gasping with the effort. Madeline continued pushing, hard resolve on her face, until an awful cracking filled the room and Prudence’s hands flopped backward on identically broken wrists.

  A howl of pain emerged from my sister’s throat and she seemed to fold inside herself. My mother stood still for several heartbeats, her chest heaving as she wobbled on her feet. Those gleaming black eyes bled down again to her natural blue, but somehow her eyes seemed duller than usual, as if the conflict had exhausted her on more than a physical level.

  Madeline stared down at Prudence as if nothing in the room existed, from me crumpled against the wall, just barely able to lift myself to my elbows, to Mr. Albert’s mangled body, now horribly still, to Henry, still crouched where my sister had dropped him. Her rage was gone, and when she spoke to Prudence, our mother’s voice was actually tender. “My darling, my dove, my daughter,” she crooned, looking down at Prudence. “So strong, and almost ready to leave my nest. But not today, love.” And one of her hands flashed out and another crack filled the room, followed immediately by my sister’s agonized scream as Madeline broke her leg at the thigh, the bone protruding horribly from the wound. “And not tomorrow,” Madeline continued, her voice still gentle even as she kicked out with one foot and Prudence’s ribs snapped. “My will is still your law.” She looked down at my sister and then leaned down to run the tips of her fingers so lovingly over Prudence’s cheek. There was a strange, fierce pride written across my mother’s face. “But soon, dearest, very soon now,” she promised. Then she straightened up, or as straight as her age-slumped shoulders could achieve, and with a stern nod said, “Now go,” in a tone that brooked no dissent.

  And Prudence went. There was no walking on her horribly broken leg, so my sister crawled, pulling herself one painful inch at a time across the floor. My mother didn’t say another word, simply watching my sister’s agonizing progression. I pulled myself into a sitting position as she passed, my head finally ceasing its spinning, and Prudence looked at me just once as she crawled out of the room, leaving a long, red trail behind her.

  My sister had once joyfully sent me to what she had hoped would be my death. Over the past few days she had been my strangely willing ally. And now I had stopped her from killing Matt and then Henry. In that one look there had been rage, plus a venomous dollop of bitterness and betrayal, but there had also been something else in the way that she had looked at me, something that my mind shuddered back from even naming. Because what she’d done tonight in defying our mother, she had done, somehow, in my name and for my sake. I shivered at the sight of what I’d seen in that look, because part of it had been the same kind of love that I was used to seeing from Chivalry, and it terrified me. I watched in silence as she left.

  Madeline came over to me, pressing her wrinkled hands against my face and cataloging every injury, clucking as she saw the long slashes that the skinwalker had left in my forearms an hour and a half and a lifetime ago. But apparently finding me in no truly concerning condition, she gave me a small pat on my head and went to where Henry lay.

  Irritation crossed her face as she looked down at him, and she poked at the open wounds that Prudence had given him with one finger, testing how deep and serious they were. Henry didn’t blink even when her questing finger dipped to the second knuckle, instead just lying limply and staring at her. Madeline gave a grumpy huff when she finished assessing his injuries.

  “Back to your cage, Henry,” she ordered flatly. “You’ll need my attention, but I’ll put you back together later.”

  Like a puppet, he stood at her command and shuffled back into his cage, stepped around its ruined door, and crossed to its center, where he sat down heavily. His weird gaze found my mother again and watched her, unblinking. I’d never seen my mother interact with my host parents before, and it was disturbing, as if her presence had removed those last shreds of a personality that still clung like spiderwebs to the inside of his brain.

  Ignoring her creature, Madeline finally crossed over to Mr. Albert’s body, leaning down and pressing her palm briefly to his forehead. “Ah, Albert,” she sighed, “faithful to the last.” The regret in her voice was real. I only wished that the regret had been more than that of the lady of the manor memorializing the death of a loyal hound.

  “Tell me why this happened.” My voice sounded strange in my own ears. It was hoarse, as if I’d been screaming, but I knew that I hadn’t been. And there was no entreaty or request—it was a demand. I’d never used that tone with my mother. I hadn’t been aware that my voice was even capable of that tone in the same room as my mother.

  Madeline swung her head toward me and slowly straightened up from Mr. Albert’s body. Whatever she saw in me was enough that when she answered, she didn’t bother to pretend to misunderstand me. “Your sister wished to complete your transition.”

  “Now tell me the rest,” I said. “Tell me what she meant about my transition being held back. Tell me what she meant by it ruining me. Tell me how you made me different. Tell me everything.”

  “Everything, my darling sparrow?” Her eyes narrowed and became speculative. “Perhaps, my son. Perhaps.” She held out one deceptively fragile hand, the skin pulled tight against the knuckles and age spots dotting it. “Give me your arm, Fortitude. Escort me back to my rooms, and we will have a conversation.”

  I hauled myself painfully to my feet and the room spun around me at first, but it quickly steadied. I touched one hand tentatively to the back of my skull and could feel the blood matting my hair, but after a moment I felt better. Not good by any stretch of the imagination—every part of my body felt battered and various levels of painful or sore. But I could walk, and I went to my mother and offered my arm in the best gentlemanly manner that my brother had drilled into me. We walked out together, and it quickly became apparent that there was more than etiquette at play here—in sharp contrast to how she had come down to the basement, now my mother was distinctly weak and wobbly, more and more of her weight resting on me as we continued. The walk to her rooms was slow, and as we arrived back into the main house we were surrounded by a horde of the staff members, all quietly and efficiently descending with mops and scrubbing rags to remove all signs of the conflict that had taken place. I saw one woman down on her hands and knees, carefully wiping up the blood trail that my sister had left as she passed this same way. It ended at the top of the stairs, so I could assume that some of the staff had carried Prudence the rest of the way to her old rooms. A pair of grim-faced men armed with tranquilizer guns brushed past us and headed down the stairs into the basement, followed at a distance by a small fleet of outdoor staff members carrying sheets of plywood to serve as temporary doors. But there was no running or yelling, and every staff member we passed nodded their heads and greeted us respectfully.

  Eventually we reached Madeline’s mother-of-p
earl-gilded sitting room, and I gently assisted her into her favorite pink satin armchair. She relaxed into it with a grateful sigh, for once relaxing the excellent posture that had been drilled into her from centuries of corsets. There was a red light blinking from a small, innocuous device on her side table that I had never quite noticed before, and I realized that Mr. Albert must’ve hit the panic button in his room at some point, which was how she’d known to come downstairs and save the day.

  I eased myself down onto the sofa, not worrying whether I might leave stains on it. People had died tonight. The sofa could be reupholstered. I watched my mother and waited.

  For a moment Madeline paused, seeming to sink even farther into her armchair. She gestured to the table in front of us, where her favorite Sevres tea service was set up on a tray, the pot still steaming gently. Apparently this was the activity that she had interrupted to come downstairs. Without saying anything, I leaned over and poured a cup of tea, then passed it over to her. She nodded her thanks and took a long sip, then swallowed carefully and began speaking.

  “Our kind has always been slow to mature, slow to reproduce.” Her voice was slow and almost academic, and I hung on every word. “When my grandfather was young, it was not uncommon for a vampire to boast four offspring over the course of a lifetime, but by the time I was ready to leave my own nest and establish a territory, two offspring was something to strive for. I came to this new land, where no other vampires lived, and when I was ready I brooded—and was rewarded with Prudence. I followed all the old traditions with her—when she was born, I killed both of her host parents, and their blood was her first meal when she was less than an hour old. And she is everything that I as a parent could’ve wished for, everything that our kind hold ideal—she is intelligent and vicious and a survivor.”