Mona felt sick to her stomach. Her hand remained clenched, her chin high, as her stomach rebelled against the suddenly influx of blood that was most unwelcome to her diet. It was unnatural, not something that her human body had evolved to accept, nor that she had ever become used to. She felt that she might throw up or double over in pain. It was a strange sensation to have the thick liquid sitting heavy in her stomach.
As the chant rose around her, the pain alleviated, and a tingling sensation emanated from her stomach and out to her limbs. A magical force carried through her veins to every part of her body, from the tips of her fingers to the tips of her toes, tops of her ears and her scalp. Her body temperature rose. Mona began to sweat, her fear from before coming to fruition as beads of sweat ran down from her hairline, over her slender neck, and down under her dress. And then, second later, she was not worrying about the stench of her skin at all, but about whether she could remain standing. She was feverish, light-headed. In the small stone room, the voices of the vampires around her echoed, reverberating off the walls and growing in volume, rebounding, voice upon voice, until the sounds became a vibration and she could not longer discern one voice from another.
Mona knew they were not chanting in a fae tongue, that much was clear. Neither was it human, none that she knew at least. It sounded old, and evil. A language born in a time when humans lived in mud huts and were little more than apes who knew how to sharpen sticks, and would wait in caves, behind the light of their fires, row3 upon row, to survive the night from those who had come before them: the true descendants of God. His fallen angels, who had inherited the earth and had it stolen from them by the human race.
It was too much. The sound, the blood roiling in her stomach, the tingling sensation through her body…
Mona doubled over, fell to the ground and only kept herself from face planting with an outstretched arm. But she hurled the blood onto the pentagram and the stone floor, a large amount of it but not all. She stifled the urge to keep throwing up, wiped her lips, stood, and did her best to be straight-backed and stoic in the face of strange magic, and the oncoming transformation.
Her head began to spin. Her eyes unfocused. Her dress was soaked, as if she had been walking in the rain, by how much sweat her body was producing. And then Augustus was behind her, unclasping his red cloak with its high collar and pulling it around the both of them, so that they were inside of it with only their heads poking out.
Augustus softly touched Mona’s arm and shoulder, the nape of her neck, running his fingers over her smooth, pale skin.
Mona knew what was coming. She trembled in anticipation. She felt a stirring between her legs and tried to ignore it. Part of her was terrified and part of her was excited, beyond anything she had previously felt. She wished that Augustus would calm her, give a soothing word or hush into her ear. But he continued to murmur the incantation in that old language that made her feel very much like an animal that had been caught by its predator. And she let him take her, grab her arm with one hand, push her head to the side and bite down, fangs puncturing through her skin and flesh, into her artery, where its hollow tips sucked out her blood, drawing Mona’s life force out from her body and into Augustus’s own. Penetrating her, taking her, claiming her as his for all the others to see.
Mona wept from the pain of it. The fever and the blood in her stomach made her want to lay down and sleep for weeks.
Augustus was not gentle with her. He dug his fangs in deeply, hurting her flesh more than was necessary to draw the blood. Clenching down hard with his fingers into her arm, holding her still and tight. Pulling her to him, closer and closer, until he leaned over her body, his tall muscled figure bearing down on her, towering above, forcing her to hunch and pressing with his chest against her back, crotch against her spine.
Even in that state, Mona felt the pressure of his erection pressing against her flesh. She had no idea if it was part of the ritual or not. If his erection was caused by human or vampire desires, or a mix of both—whether it had anything to do with Mona, or if it was because he was claiming her as his property, which was now a fact that Mona was sure of.
The elderly servant had not been wrong; there was a contract, a bond being forged between vampire and gifted human.
The chant continued around them. The light of the pentagon flared up, illuminating everything in a blood red light.
Mona opened her eyes and gasped, feeling fire through her veins, and yet a coolness that washed away her fever. It was as if her body temperature had permanently raised a few degrees.
I’m adjusting to my new form.
Instead of strength, Mona felt weakness. Augustus continued to drain her blood, sucking it straight from the carotid artery at the side of her slender neck. So foolish now, it seemed to Mona, that she had worried about her sweat and the smell of her skin, when there was so much going on in the ritual—so many other sights and sounds, from the pentagram on the ground, the stone dais in the shadowed corner, to Augustus’s mouth, currently latched onto Mona’s neck.
The overwhelming metallic, unmistakable smell of blood permeated the air. The taste of blood from the goblet, which had come from who-knows-where, coated the inside of her mouth and throat. Her lips were sticky with it. The taste cleared out all of her thoughts, except for the pain from Augustus’s fangs.
Mona’s knees wobbled. She might have gone limp if Augustus had not been holding onto her so tightly, hugging her under his huge cloak from the onlookers. It felt to Mona as if she had been taken away from the room, from the mansion and Lodum, to another place entirely. A dream world. Or perhaps that she was like a snake, removing herself of an old skin and donning a new one.
The fangs retracted, pulling smoothly out of her flesh and eliciting a gasp from Mona, who immediately slumped forward. Augustus still held her, and pulled her upright and to him, still under the cloak. He drew the curved knife that Mona had seen earlier, with the runes etched onto the blade. With it, he cut a line into his palms and held it out in waiting for Mona, raising it in front of her mouth and inviting her to sip from his lifestream.
Mona grasped his hand with her own and brought it to her lips. Her neck was weak and injured from the ravaging that Augustus had given her, but she managed to hold her head upright and suckle at the wound on his palm, completing the bond between them.
The fire continued to grow in her body, and suddenly Augustus’s blood took on a new taste. It was different from the blood in the goblet, richer, as if a higher quality of blood. A different brand. She began to notice details, intricacies of the taste. All of her senses heightened: the chanting of the cloaked figures rose in volume, clearer than ever before. Even the stone beneath her feet took on a different solidity.
When Augustus drew his hand away, she knew for certain that she was more powerful than moments before.
Augustus unclasped the golden chain holding together the front of his cloak and parted it like a curtain. Mona stepped out, staggered into the middle of the pentagon. She felt infused with an essence that was changing the chemistry of her body.
The blood in the goblet, she thought. That’s why he had me drink it beforehand, so that it would be ready in my stomach for when I completed the transformation.
Her mouth ached. She raised a hand to her upper teeth and quickly took it away when she felt her canines elongate, taking on a predatory form. Weapons that she would use to ambush and feast upon her prey, and get the blood essence that she required for survival.
Being a vampire did make her stronger, but, as all knew, it did mean that she would have to feed regularly.
It did not seem to Mona that she would have to worry about that at the Hyde mansion. Lord Hyde, Augustus and his many visitors were always sipping on blood from their goblets. But then, Mona thought, I wouldn’t mind prowling the streets.
The commoners, gifted and ungifted, that she had seen during the horse ride to Turndour Keep would be easy to feast upon. None would be the wiser.
T
he chanting continued. Augustus left Mona, no longer holding her upright and leaving her to stand on her own two feet. She weaved back and forth like a tree in the wind, caught up in a trance and bound by the lines of the pentagram.
Mona thoughts went down dark alleys. Daydreaming about how she could fly above Lodum’s streets in a bat form and pick out the lesser beings. Fae, human, it made no matter. They would all be her night’s meal.
While this went on, the first cloaked figure, who had approached Augustus at the beginning of the ritual, came to Mona’s side and softly touched her shoulder. Mona barely registered the physical contact, and did not so much as flinch away as he drove a spike of metal into her wounded shoulder. At least that was what it felt like. The pain was not there, neither was the pain in her neck. It had all faded to a numbness, as if she had been drinking heavily for the better part of the day.
There was wait hanging from her shoulder. That was enough to pry Mona’s gaze from staring dumbly at a rune on the floor and see the metal arm. The hooded man had both hands on it and was murmuring a new spell under his breath. Warmth began to flow up from the metal and into Mona’s body, as if the metal now hosted a map of veins carrying her life force through and into it, connected the metal to her body, making them one and the same. A unification of metal craftsmanship and flesh. She found that she could flex her fingers, rotate her wrist and bend her elbow. It was difficult at first and required her to fix all of her concentration on making the movements happen.
I’m powering it by magic, not muscle.
To Mona’s relief, it was not the same model of arm that she had seen in the artificer’s room. Rather it was made from platinum and gave off a silver sparkle, making it seem at once both hard, expensive, and exotic in a fashionable kind of way. It was sized so that it was the same dimensions as Mona’s other arm, but she would have to check in her bathroom mirror to be certain. It would not do to have anything less than a perfect duplicate of what she had once had. Not for this. In her trance state, it did appear that House Hyde, who had commissioned the work, knew well the importance of Mona having a replacement piece that reflected her standing within the city and among the nobility.
It will confirm my status to the people at the ceremony, and to Lord Korka.
The chanting reached its crescendo and a dreariness came over Mona. She rubbed her eyes with both hands, the old and the new, and teetered. Before she could fall a strong arm caught her across the back and gripped her shoulder, picking her up and cradling her in a way that felt oddly familiar.
The last thing she heard before falling asleep was Augustus’s hushed voice. “It’s done. You’re one of us now.”
12
Mona
Mona woke to the chirping of birds. She looked over from her bed, groaned, feeling the softness of her satin sheets.
The servants had forgotten to reapply the enchantment of silence on her bird cage. She eyes the yellow canaries as they flitted about behind the bars. It was exactly why she had the enchantment done in the first place—to avoid being woken up by their incessant chirping, an annoyance that she quickly learned when she had first requested the bird cage from Yonafrew.
Which servant is in charge of the reapplying the magic?
There were only a few servants in the Hyde household who were gifted, and not many among those capable of producing such an enchantment. Not that she claimed to know much about the inner workings of the Hyde family. She had been in the estate for less than a month, and been Yonafrew’s apprentice for even less than that. But during that time she felt that she had come to have a sense of the order of the place. The different servants and the little politics between them. Still, one pale, haggard face was not so different from the other. They were hard to tell apart, all pretty much the same in clothes, features and temperament. And now Mona could proudly say that they were of a different species entirely. Not only was she gifted and magically powerful, but she was a vampire as well, setting her further apart from the common rabble.
While Mona remembered the ceremony that had taken place the night before, she had forgotten about her metal arm that had been attached when she was deep into the trance of her first blood feast.
She was surprised to find herself propping herself into a sitting position with both arms. A wave of a hand parted the curtains on the wall, revealing the large window that looked out over Lodum. Sunlight flooded inside, hitting every corner of the bedroom. Mona stepped onto the fur rug at the side of her bed, wiggled her toes as she did every morning, and walked into her bathroom, to the mirror, where she normally fussed about her appearance but now only cared about one thing: how she had changed overnight.
Mona inspected her mouth first, remembering the feel of her fangs coming out as elongated canines.
I was wrong. It’s not my canines. These are new teeth, coming out in front of them and pushing the canines back.
They stuck out long, but because they were out front they did not interrupt the normal closing of her jaw; she was able to bite down without any discomfort.
But when I do that my fangs stick out past my lower lip.
It would be obvious to any onlooker what she was. And Mona had come to know from being on the estate that vampires did not show their fangs. Not noble vampires, unless they were going to use them.
Tentative prodding at her magical well revealed that a new line of magic, like a vein, had opened up, leading from the well situated in her torso to her mouth and new pair of fangs. By her willpower, she was able to retract the fangs, shrinking them to a size that, excepting close inspection, would go unnoticed. She appeared to be human again.
Is that all that’s changed? Mona thought, slightly disappointed, but realizing that publicly appearing as a vampire would hardly be a wise move.
How long that might be is another matter. Lord Hyde had said that many things would change, a New Order coming to Lodum, brought by the new King. Maybe soon I will not have to retract my fangs at all, and vampires will walk openly through the streets, feeding on whoever they wish to take. Perhaps the King will announce such changes at his wedding.
Before she had been filled with trepidation. Now she felt an excitement about receiving a medal. It was no longer the case that she was unworthy. She wasn’t so narcissistic to deceive herself into thinking that she had played any kind of role in the defense of Turndour, or in the assault on the city. But neither was it required for her to receive accolades. She was one of ‘them’ now. Augustus’s final words before her brought her back to her room last night echoed in her mind. The ceremony my as well be a public display of ushering her into the class of nobility.
A particularly sharp chirp of a bird, followed by a chirp from one of its partners, interrupted Mona’s thoughts. She twisted her lips into a frown and turned her head to look back toward the main bedroom. She really had no need of the canaries. They were a nuisance. She had more important things to do now than watch them flitter about, and she could always go to the solarium for that form of entertainment.
Mona opened the door of the bird cage, only partially so none of the birds could escape.
They were completely defenceless, and without any survival instinct, unknowing that Mona was a predator. That annoyed her no small amount. She had hoped for some kind of reaction, a natural instinct telling them to evade her hand and escape to the far end of the cage. No such thing happened. The canary let her take it in her grasp and take it out of the cage.
It could have been struggling, for all Mona knew, when she ahold of it. But it was so weak and she was clutching it in a way that its wings were pinned, so that even if it was trying to flap its wings she would not have been able to notice.
Prey. That’s all it is. That’s all anyone is. Eat, or be eaten. The food chain encompasses all.
It was a line of thought that Yonafrew might have said, in one of his lessons to Mona, or during a dinner time monologue. He loved to talk about the order of the world—the “natural order” as he called it—by
which he claimed nobility had the right to rule.
Mona smiled to herself, wondering what shape her lessons would take now that she was more than human. Certainly there would be much to learn about her vampire powers.
She raised the canary. Her fangs elongated, hollow tips ready to drive into its breast, when a knock came at the door and a servant bustled into the room.
It was the elderly man who had done the job of fixing Mona’s hair the night before. He wore a concerned expression, eyes meeting Mona’s for only a moment then quickly glancing away, and moving to retreat back into the hallway.
“Stop!” Mona ordered. “Is it your job to enchant the cage?”
“It was, my lady,” said the elderly servant. He wrung his hands together nervously. Glanced up at Mona again, then lowered his chin and dropped his eyes before he reached her gaze.
Mona said nothing, standing in the same place holding the bird in the same way as when the servant had interrupted her. She stared at him, burning a hole through his chest, that he surely felt even without seeing it.
The servant could no longer stand the silence. “My deepest apologies,” he stammered. “There has not been a ritual in the Hyde mansion for many decades.”
This was an interesting bit of news to Mona, but she remained silent and let him continue.
“I as so caught up in the excitement of it that I forgot about my task. You see, it is not normally I who enchants the cage, but another servant, who is now tasked with Lord Julian. I was assigned to take his place.”
“I see,” said Mona coldly.
In truth, she realized that the chirping birds were of little consequence. It had not been an unpleasant way to wake up. The greater fact still remained that the servant had been lax in their duty, and that spoke to a disrespect towards her person, and towards the Hydes who were her hosts. It was such infractions that, if left unpunished, would gather and become more frequent, eventually leading to a purge of all the servants, and a decline in the Hyde family’s reputation as visitors saw how the servants behaved. And then, in time, the fall of the house itself.
Faerie Queen: An Urban Fantasy Novel (Vampire's Bane Book 3 : Part I) Page 8
