by Tanith Frost
Bethany starts walking again, slowly enough that I can take the lead. Even without my fire, I feel it now. Maybe she’s right. If the void is enough for her, maybe it could be for me if I gave it a chance to work alone—especially if I can keep it this strong.
“It’s not just about me.” She’s speaking quietly now. I sense it, too. We’re getting close to something. “These energies oppose the void, which hurts all of us. You’ve felt how clear and strong it is here compared to your old territory. How pure it is. That’s because we don’t tolerate the presence of enemy powers. The energy you feel now was once a constant issue here, but we’ve as good as eradicated it, in part thanks to my ability to track it to its sources. My work benefits all of Tempest’s vampires. And someday soon, the entire world will be better off because of my gift if we can only do the same in every clan’s territory.”
Her voice is filled with a desire I understand all too well—that of a powerful being who has had to fight for every scrap of recognition she’s received, who knows she could be and do so much more.
I could ask more—slip the questions in casually. Hey, so about that ‘entire world’ thing, any concrete plans there? Maelstrom seems like a likely target for expansion, eh? Yes?
Yeah. That definitely wouldn’t sound suspicious. At least she’s talking now.
We reach the edge of an icy pond and stop. Bethany gags.
“It’s in there,” I say softly.
“So go find it.”
I turn back to her. “You’re joking. Is this because I laughed at you?”
“Not at all. Prove yourself useful. Show me what you’ve got.” She presses a clenched fist to her lips and closes her eyes. “Remember when I said I felt like I wanted to punch something? Please don’t become that thing. We’re doing so well together.”
I sigh. “Got any spare clothes in that backpack?”
“No.”
Fuck it. The cold is unpleasant, but it’s not going to kill me. I strip my coat off and hang it on a bare tree branch, then take off my boots and socks. My pants and sweater follow, leaving me goose-pimpled and shivering in the black satin bra and panties that appeared in my wardrobe during the day with the other clothes.
The thin layer of ice covering the pond shatters easily when I step onto it. I can’t even dive in—the water may be deep in the middle, but the slope is gradual. There’s nothing to do but to walk forward, breaking ice as I go, letting myself feel grateful when my feet go halfway numb and I can’t feel the arctic mud squelching between my toes.
The ground drops out from under me, and I slip downward, water covering my head before I can so much as close my eyes. I want to scream but hold back. No sense frightening whatever’s down here.
Or angering it.
My body is demanding that we get out of here now. I ignore it. There can’t be cold or pain or numbness, only the pull of that fascinating new power. I resist the urge to draw on fire to help me focus and instead dig deep into the shining black depths of the void—the true source of my gift. The feeling is stronger below me and ahead. When I swim closer, the source becomes clear. I can’t see it, but I feel it hiding among a pile of rocks.
The energy grows. It senses me.
Grabbing blindly seems stupid, but it’s also the only way I’m going to get out of here any time soon. I reach forward, letting the slippery rocks guide my hand into the crevice as it slides over them. I barely feel the soft little body as my fingers make contact. My perception of its power grows, though. I wrap my fingers around the whatever-it-is and pull back.
It comes free easily. If it’s struggling, I can’t tell.
I could leave it. Lie and say it was too well hidden. Bethany would come back, though, to root it out. And if what Chester told me about creatures left behind after their rifts close holds true, it doesn’t have long to live anyway.
It’s time to start earning some points with Bethany.
I break the surface again and pull myself back to the shore, breaking ice and swimming with one arm while the other remains submerged, holding my prey. I’m covered in mud by the time I’ve stumbled onto dry land, but I’ve done it.
“Well?” Bethany asks.
I look down at my hand. My mouth feels full of salty water, but when I open it to speak, nothing spills out. “I’ve got it.”
The creature lies limp as a rag doll, its back arched over the palm of my hand, arms and legs dangling. It’s alive, though. I feel its heart racing beneath its slimy grey-green skin, and when I hold it up to examine it more closely, I find myself looking into massive fish-like eyes, widened in panic behind the scraggly black hair plastered to its skull. Thin lips open and close as if it’s trying to speak, but there’s no sound coming out.
It’s not fighting. It’s either too weak or too scared.
This was a mistake. I know I can’t let myself think that way, but I can’t help feeling like shit.
Bethany steps closer. She looks a little green. “Turn it over.”
I gently transfer the creature to my other hand, exposing a thin, knobbly spined back that would look eerily human if not for the weird skin tone and what appear to be stumpy wings protruding from below its shoulder blades.
“Fairy.” Bethany breaks a twig off a tree and uses it to lift one of the creature’s spindly arms. “Adapted to water, obviously. Those wings are vestigial, and look at the webbing between the digits here.”
“You’ve seen this before?”
“No, I’m guessing. Not that it really matters, but I like to know the enemy.”
The enemy. I get why she sees it that way. I’d probably hate it, too, if it made me as sick as she looks. But for me, it’s fascinating. How the hell does something feel turquoise, and why is that feeling creeping up my arm? Why do I taste salt on my lips?
“We could get to know it better,” I say as I turn the fairy back over. It’s not a pretty creature, but it’s interesting. I know it’s dying. Bethany’s not going to let me return it to the pond, but surely it could pass away more comfortably than this. “Take it back with us, try to keep it alive while we study the power. I’ll do it myself if you don’t want to.”
Bethany’s frown feels more dangerous than her threat to shoot me did earlier. “Killing it would be the fastest way to deal with the problem.”
“But what about our long-term goals? Knowing the enemy?”
“Put it on the ground, Ava.”
I set the fairy on the flat stone that rises from the earth beneath my bare feet, careful to smooth its stubby wings down so they won’t make it uncomfortable. The fairy lets out a noise that sounds like a tiny, depressed rubber chicken.
“It’s still anchoring its energy,” she says, “but without a larger supply, it will starve. It’s suffering. I have no objections to you drawing that out for the sake of discovery, but we have a job to do here. Better to get it over with.”
The heel of her boot comes down on the fairy’s head. Its limbs stiffen, then go limp again.
The body remains, but every trace of the creature’s energy vanishes as though it never existed at all.
I look away.
Bethany pulls a wool blanket from her backpack and wraps it around my shoulders. The void fills me—the portion that I anchor, the darkness Bethany carries in her, and the vast ocean of energy we draw from. With that other power gone, it’s clearer. Crisp and sharp as if a filter has been removed from my perception of it.
And it is astonishingly beautiful.
“You feel it?” Bethany murmurs. Her hands on my shoulders aren’t warming me, but the connection to her power is strangely comforting. And overwhelming. When I look into her eyes, I have to fight the urge to pull her closer and kiss her, seeking a deeper connection I know lies down that path.
Another weakness I can thank my gift for.
“You’re right.” I step away and gather my clothes, pulling the blanket tighter around me. “It does feel stronger.”
I dry myself, rubbing hard, lettin
g the rough fabric bring feeling back to skin that isn’t going to warm up until it’s back in the car with the heater blasting. Pulling my clothes on is unpleasant, but I’m not going to face the drive back practically naked.
By the time I’m finished, Bethany’s got the body scooped into a jar that she places in her backpack along with the muddied blanket. We walk back to the car in silence.
At least she thinks I was being a cold-hearted bitch when I wanted to keep the thing alive. I shouldn’t have even mentioned it. This is all a test. No matter how forgiving of my past mistakes Bethany might be, current compassion isn’t a weakness she’s going to overlook.
Close call, but I think I’m okay.
Bethany tosses the bag in the trunk and slams the lid closed. I’m waiting for her to unlock the doors, but she’s just standing there, thinking.
“I’m going to offer you one more piece of advice.” She clicks the lock button and opens my door for me. She’s giving me that frown again. “You could have a bright future here, but only if you remember what I said about turning weaknesses into strengths.” I sit, and she leans in closer. “And only if you forget about saving anyone’s ass but your own. Consider your priorities carefully.”
The door slams with the finality of a coffin’s lid closing.
She knows. I don’t know why she lied to herself about my motivations, but she knows.
“I’ll do better,” I say when she slides into the driver’s seat.
She grips the wheel tight. “I didn’t see you do anything wrong. I’m just saying. And we’re done talking about it. Put your blindfold back on.”
She doesn’t say another word on the drive back, but at least the car is warm.
11
Every time I think I’ve got this place figured out, it throws me another curveball.
Paige helped me change after Bethany and I returned from our excursion. Tonight’s dress is easier to move in, thank whoever, but still feels wrong. The knee-length skirt’s range of motion is offset by the stiffness of the fabric, the lower height of my heels ruined by the way the shoes pinch my toes. The elbow-length gloves are classy as fuck, but it’s weird to have my sense of touch so dulled. The pearls are a nice addition, though.
I feel like a 1950’s lady ready to go out to a luncheon, but no one has told me yet what’s actually happening.
It’s not hard to find where I’m supposed to be going, though. All I have to do is follow the shouting voices and the pulsing void power that comes from a gathering of vampires. Whatever is going on, it’s happening in the ballroom.
I descend the stairs slowly, gathering information with my perceptions that lower senses can’t offer me. The energy is strange. Things have seemed so peaceful here, for everyone else if not for me. But tonight, I’m reminded of the energy in the courtroom before Miranda sentenced me to oblivion, a sacrifice to appease vampires to whom she needed to offer a display of strength. I don’t sense emotions, exactly, but something about the pitch of the atmosphere is the same.
And the energy is all vampire tonight. Not like the last time I visited the ballroom, when humans mixed in with my kind.
I pause by the waterfall, remembering a smaller fountain in another underground space, trying to claim a little of the peace I felt there. I shouldn’t remember, though. I have to believe I hate the clan I left behind even as I continue to fight to save them.
It’s easy to let go of the memory, which feels more like a dream. Everything around me feels so much more real, pleasant, and appealing as I crouch to examine the figures carved into the stone that surrounds the water. Woodland creatures hide among vines and flowers. Fairly mundane decoration, though it’s surprising how lifelike they seem given the simple shapes and sparse detail. But when I look closer, there are humans set deeper into the stone images. Tortured. Dead. Skeletal. The proportions are all wrong, turning the frolicking rabbits and birds into giants, their blank stone eyes somehow sparkling with blood lust.
“What do you think?”
I stand and spin around to find a vampire watching me—the one I didn’t quite meet the other night when he sat in the dining room with his human companion. He’s wearing an emerald-green suit tonight with pinstriped pants and a matching top hat, looking like a ringmaster from the Land of Oz. He gestures to the carvings.
“It’s… disturbing,” I say, “and beautiful. I don’t understand how I’m seeing so much detail that isn’t actually there.”
He strokes his pointed beard. “This is the artist’s job. To offer a detailed canvas that will guide other minds in creating their own masterpieces.”
I take another look. “I guess this artist knew what they were doing, then. A person could walk by this every night for a year and not see all of it but wonder the whole time why they were having nightmares about robins and squirrels.”
The vampire chuckles. “I’m glad you like it. Some nights it seems no one stops to notice the details.”
“You did this?”
“This, that, and everything else.” He bows low, one arm swept out beside him. “Randolph, master architect of every aspect of this glittering hive of supernatural activity.”
Humble, too.
I curtsey awkwardly. “Ava. Not from around here.”
“Oh, I know. We all know.” He offers his arm. “May I escort you?”
I could say no and use everyone else’s distraction as a chance to look around, but Aviva’s task is hardly a temptation now, and Ava’s interest has taken over. I haven’t forgotten the now distant world I promised to save. I’m just… exploring. Staying safe.
I take Randolph’s arm and he leads me toward the ballroom. “What exactly is happening?”
“You’re in for a treat. Tonight’s event will be something truly special.” He nods a greeting to a vampire who stands next to the wall of the wide corridor, glaring at me. It’s the same one who made that comment about me when I was with Lachlan last night. He now sports a healing gash on his right cheek and marching purple shadows beneath his eyes. His nose clearly took a solid hit, too.
And I thought Lachlan wasn’t listening.
I’ve rarely been one to take pleasure in another vampire’s pain, but my unbeating heart warms as my enemy turns and walks away with a slight limp.
The energy around us grows more intense with each step. “Do you have events here every night?” I ask Randolph.
“Sadly, no. But as the winter solstice approaches, we do like to celebrate. One might say this is the perfect time and place to be a vampire—the right kind of vampire, anyway.” He pats my hand. “And you may be just that.”
We enter the ballroom and find it transformed.
The chandeliers still glitter above us, but the room is now set up with wooden bleachers rising upward and out from around a circular space on the floor. The mirrored wall is covered in black cloth, the floor with sawdust.
“A fight?” I ask. I have to speak louder now to be heard over everyone else.
“Indeed.” Randolph leans in to speak as he leads me up the steps to seats in the fourth row. Everyone who’s already seated shuffles over, bumping a pair of vampires from the end. They glance down at us and seem to reconsider any ideas of kicking up a fuss. “A regular event here. Lower vampires come in to fight. Those of us who belong here watch, place bets if we wish, and enjoy the spectacular violence of perfect fighting machines tearing each other to shreds. We have nights when humans with the potential to become vampires fight to prove themselves worthy, but tonight it’s strictly vampire.”
He sounds a little disappointed.
“I can only imagine this crowd’s frenzy when living blood is added to the mix,” I say.
He grins. “It’s delightful, but we’ll get a show out of the audience either way.” He nods toward the other side of the ring where a group of vampires in the front row are leaning forward, watching the closed doors at the far end of the room. “You’ll notice that some here get more emotionally involved than is appropriate, but
at least this gives them an outlet.” Another nod, this time toward Lachlan, who occupies a chair on a platform above the back row, looking down on the show. “You can be sure he notices all of it.”
I smooth my skirt and try to make myself comfortable. “I wish I’d had you around to guide me on my first few nights.”
Randolph’s dark sapphire eyes sparkle. “Well, we couldn’t make things too easy for you, could we? And I wasn’t about to step in when your uncertainty was so lovely, like a fine thoroughbred foal taking its first ungainly steps into a new world.” He thinks for a moment. “After its mother has been slaughtered. And vultures circle overhead. Such potential for both victory and tragedy.”
I’m spared the need to offer a response when the far doors swing open with a bang and the room falls silent. One of the front-row vampires rises from her seat, hands pressed to her stomach as she tries to see who’s coming in.
She doesn’t have to wait long. The first contender is a young vampire. Female. Her eyes dart about nervously, taking everything in. She’s small, but there’s a determined look in her pale eyes that I like. I want her to have a chance.
That hope is dashed as her opponent enters and the crowd lets out a cheer. This vampire is a different kind of monster entirely. She wears her short green hair spiked like an aggressive porcupine’s quills. The colour matches her form-fitting workout pants and the stripes on her tank top. She lifts her heavily defined arms and pumps her fists in the air, and the crowd roars louder.
She’s dyed her armpit hair green, too.
I’m waiting for a referee to show up to tell them to fight fair, but of course there isn’t one. The round begins the moment both fighters are in the ring.
“Leila,” Randolph says. “That’s the green-haired one if you were wondering.”
“And the other?”
He gives me a sly look. “I doubt it matters.”
Leila’s entirely focused now, circling the smaller vampire, grinning broadly.
“So, humans who fight here get a chance to become vampires if they win,” I say. “What do vampires get out of fighting?”
