by Ilana Waters
No. I looked on in horror as I leaned on the wall for support.
The sole person who could have been Sabine’s murderer was . . . Sabine.
I don’t know why I was surprised. Sabine had casually mentioned her family dying in much the same manner, though she never specified the exact means. Perhaps suicide was hereditary, like eye color. Or perhaps Sabine thought it was.
Did she know what was coming with Vesuvius? Is that why she did this to herself? But, if so, why didn’t she at least try to warn me? Surely, she cared about my life, if not her own. Or was I been wrong about that, too? Was the “permanent” thing she felt coming Vesuvius? Or had she had some even worse premonition of what the blood in the chalice would bring?
So many questions. Desperately, I glanced around, but there was neither note nor letter. No explanation or apology. Just an angry, empty hole in my heart and mind. Sabine had left me with nothing.
I wanted to shake her awake. To jerk her out of her stupor. But furious as I was, I could only think, Sabine, my darling. My voice cracked even in my thoughts. How long had she been dead? Days? Hours? Her skin was already the color of Vesuvius’s ash, the dark pink draining from her lips. It couldn’t have been days; someone would have noticed. Hours, then? When had she done it? Before Vesuvius? Or just as the eruption started? If I had made it back earlier, could I have stopped her?
I did not weep. I did not know how. I mean, I do, though if you ever share that, I will deny it, then kill you. But, in that moment, I seemed to have forgotten how. My body and soul felt like a dried-up husk. And you cannot squeeze tears from a husk.
Still, my chest heaved. I reached out one trembling hand to her. My lips tried to form words, but they could only soundlessly mouth her name. Sabine, Sabine.
I barely had time to yank my hand away before the ball of fire came through the roof.
Chapter 7
The force of the fireball—and the subsequent ceiling collapse—threw me back against the wall opposite the bedroom. From a distance, I saw Sabine’s room engulfed in flames. The air was knocked from my lungs. The fresh pain in my head had me seeing stars. Still, I struggled to my feet. My only thought was to rush in to save her . . . till I remembered there was nothing to save.
The blast renewed the chained slaves’ begging and screaming. I ignored them again as I stumbled to what was left of the bedroom door frame. Everything inside was burning and crackling, unrecognizable. Then, the edges of the hole in the roof collapsed into the room. With them came ash that doused the flames. The ball of fire had come down right on Sabine, as if to deliberately obliterate her body.
You hateful bitch. I didn’t know if I meant Sabine or Vesuvius.
Even the room’s lamps had been snuffed out, their iron stand decimated. Now, the fires that had provided light were swiftly being extinguished by the rising ash. I hardly had a moment to react to the new horror of Sabine’s complete erasure. Renewed cries arose from the slaves. Far from moving me to pity, they reminded me that more balls of fire might be on the way. And even if they weren’t, I had no time to tarry here—not for mortal lives or sentiment. My own life was at stake.
Then, the room began to sway.
I could no longer deny the extent to which my injuries were taking their toll. Everything seemed shrouded in darkness. I couldn’t tell if it was because my eyesight was growing dim, or because the light from the fires was going out. I could barely keep my balance, and had to pat my way along the walls to remain upright. My stomach roiled like a sea at storm. Now that Sabine was gone, I had no idea what I was going to do. I had only vague, wavy thoughts that I had to find a way to heal so I could escape Pompeii—if another fireball didn’t kill me first.
But it was impossible to get far, let alone do it quickly. The ash was knee-deep, now. I groped my way to the ancestral shrine, where I saw more of the fireball’s handiwork. The shrine’s statuettes—including the genius—had been knocked over. There they lay, broken and destroyed, in the swelling ash.
So much for the protective power of those gods, I thought bitterly. Damned if they did anyone who dwelled here a bit of good. Not even Sabine. There is no one who can protect a witch from themselves.
But the ball of fire had done something else: blown a sizable hole in one of the adjoining walls. The hole was about half the size of a man. Through it, I could see the partially demolished painting of some dancing fauns.
The chalice room. Sabine’s secrecy spell had been no match for Vesuvius’s fire. Whatever was in the chalice might be able to heal my injuries, if the chalice itself was still intact. Sabine said those who drank from it exhibited rapid regenerations and increased strength. But they had taken only sips. Perhaps downing the whole draught would save me. Or would it turn me to stone, the way Sabine thought it momentarily did to the others? I had to take a chance. In my heart’s wild panic, I thought anything would be better than death—even the life-in-death of a statue.
But getting into the room was more difficult than I anticipated. I had to crawl on my hands and knees through pools of ash. My body was growing heavier; the back of my head still hadn’t stopped bleeding.
What if the chalice isn’t there? I thought in horror. What if it was obliterated, too—claimed by Vesuvius?
I finished creeping through the hole in the wall. Light from the fire-lit atrium shafted inside, allowing me to see a little. There was less ash covering the floor here. A surge of relief washed over me: the chalice still stood, in the center, untouched on its podium. But would I be able to reach it in time? The nausea was gone; in its place was more heaviness in my limbs. It was as if I carried the weight of Vesuvius with me.
I am dying, I thought, in wonder. After all these years . . . this is what it feels like. Pompeii is dying, and she is bringing me with her.
It took all the strength I had just to keep breathing, to draw myself up to the podium, clawing at its sides. Even then, I was too weak to stand. I didn’t know if my feeble grip would hold the chalice. Still, I reached for it with outstretched fingers. One of them hit the cup, and the chalice shook violently. My eyes bulged.
No!
I saw the chalice go over the other side of the podium. I squeezed my eyes shut, and with the last burst of magic I could muster, pulled it back within my grasp. I barely managed to wrap my fingers around the stem. I didn’t so much lift the chalice to my lips as I let the liquid spill over them. I fell backward and onto the floor, the now-empty chalice clattering next to me.
I remember thinking it would taste like wine.
I’m sure you all know how vampirism works by now. A vampire drains your blood and replaces it with their own. Then, you’re essentially immortal—ageless, and frozen in time. Of course, it would have been helpful to have this information before I drank from the chalice.
But the myths and legends surrounding such things were not as prevalent then as they are today, dear reader. This much you have already seen. And frankly, at that moment, I would’ve drunk the lord of the underworld’s blood if it allowed me to live.
At first, all I tasted was iron, as if my mouth were full of metal. No different than the times opponents struck my lips or teeth and made me bleed. I was quite accustomed to the flavor of my own blood.
But this was different. Almost immediately, the flavor changed to something I couldn’t identify. My grip on the chalice tightened. I found I had the strength to stand. I did so tentatively, still incredulous.
It healed me. It actually worked.
That’s when I felt something take hold of me. As if my throat were a long rope, weighted at one end by my head, and someone yanked the rope—hard. I clutched my chest and doubled over. There was another yank—in my stomach, this time—and I dropped to my knees. Then, the pain wouldn’t stop. My entire body was host to malicious contractions that seemed to go on and on and on.
It is amazing what suffering one can endure, and not yet die. One would think the heart or mind would give out from
sheer agony. Collapse under its weight, like a roof under ash. But often, it does not. And soon, you are little more than a corpse that moves, unsure why. I thought I knew this from being a soldier, then a general. Again, the gods seemed to delight in smacking these false ideas from my hands.
I remembered what Sabine once told me. Illness can invade our bodies if we’re not careful, if we’ve lost too much magic. I had all but spent my stores trying to placate Vesuvius. Was this then a sickness? Had I contracted some foreign disease the moment my lips touched the blood? But I had never heard of illness—or even poison—taking hold so quickly. Or violently.
Also, illness and poison did not increase one’s vigor just before killing them. I know not how long I lay on the floor, begging death to take me. I only know that, as the pain subsided, it was replaced by a loud thumping noise. In my confused haze, I thought rescuers were pounding on the front door. Or maybe looters.
They sound so close, I thought, my cheek pressed to the stone floor.
It’s my own heartbeat, I realized. I listened for a few more moments in mute fascination. My heart is beating. I am alive. Then, I found my pain was completely gone. The yanking feeling throughout my limbs, my head . . . everything. I sat up with no effort whatsoever, stretched out my arms and legs, and examined them. The burns, cuts, scrapes, bruises . . . all gone. In fact, my skin was not my skin anymore at all. It was still porous, but now colder and harder, like movable stone.
I touched the back of my skull, but found only dried blood there. I scratched my head. The sound was so loud. Like someone raking leaves. And I could feel the sound, not just the impression of fingers in my hair. My senses had run amok. Is it going to be like this all the time? What if the blood’s effects aren’t permanent? They could wear off, leaving me the dying shell of only a few moments ago.
I stood up and brushed from me what little ash the room held. My tunic was now nothing more than a large rag filled with holes, belted and draped over me. But that didn’t matter now. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the chalice on the floor. This time, I called it easily to my hand. I looked at my reflection in it. A pale man, his blue eyes glistening like new coins, stared back at me. His skin looked as hard as mine felt, except his had blue veins running along the temples. I opened my mouth as if to speak to him. That was when I saw the fangs. Nothing as protruding and gauche as your penny dreadfuls would suggest. Just ordinary human canines, but sharper, and I’d wager a quarter inch longer.
Fangs? I furrowed my brow and lifted my upper lip to better examine my teeth. The man in the chalice did the same. Sabine didn’t say anything about the worshippers having fangs. Then again, none of them had drunk the entire contents of the chalice.
I let out a bitter laugh, and the sound of it came clanging back to me. Sabine was right: it didn’t sound like human laughter. My voice was still somewhere beneath it, but laced with a strange echo . . . very much like shattered pottery.
I could see even better now, which was odd, since so many fires in the house had been snuffed out. I was sure there was less light than before. I spotted a small hole in the secret room’s wall opposite me, no doubt newly created by Vesuvius. I heard more thumping noises from outside. They sounded like the tapping of drums. The thumping noises grew louder as I approached the wall. I pushed on the stones around the hole to see if I could enlarge it. To my surprise, they fell away with a mere brush of my fingertips.
One lifted an enormous column of broken marble beside him with his bare hands. With one hand, Titus! Was this the superior strength Sabine had meant? I pushed on a few more stones, and made a hole large enough to step through without bringing down the wall. Which didn’t really matter, since the whole house would likely fall soon, anyway.
Pompeii truly looked like the pits of hell, now. The small fires I’d seen breaking out before were larger, and everywhere. Rooftops were dissolving, accompanied by crackling sounds that dwarfed the ones I’d heard in Sabine’s room. These sounded like dozens of tree branches breaking at once. Gray-black smoke billowed everywhere, but it no longer stung my eyes like before. It was actually easier to breathe. Perhaps some of this noxious fog was lifting. I could still smell the gas, but its scent was different, somehow. And I could smell death and other foul things everywhere.
And something else. Not foul, but like that strange metallic taste I experienced when I first drank from the chalice. With it came the terrifying tugging at my chest, like I felt right before the chalice healed me. I froze in place; I would do anything not to feel that agony again.
But it never came. Nor did any familiar pain, in fact. Even the hot ash that fell stung me in an unfamiliar way. Through the pandemonium, I heard sounds crisply, distinctly. I could even make out a dog barking from inside the fuller’s house. And it was brighter out, now. Shielding my eyes from the falling flames, I glanced up, and saw that the sky had cleared a little. Perhaps the worst is over, or soon will be.
Though my head was spinning from the sensory onslaught, I could still read mortal thoughts. But none were helpful. All around me were panic and terror, pain and confusion. I could hear their hearts pounding: that was what the thumping noise was. Like blood strumming through my ears. Pounding even as they screeched in their dying, as their throats were closed by foul gas and ash.
I saw a woman in the street stumble over the edge of a fountain. She fell, and ash blew and piled up so quickly, it was as if a sheet had been pulled over her. Lumps under the sheet fought to break the surface. But layer after layer of ash and pumice kept on piling, and she was still.
Was she suicidal, running straight into the fountain’s path? I wondered. Quite the opposite: she seemed to be intent on getting away. Then, it dawned on me. They can’t see. The fountain that had been obvious to me was all but invisible to her. What I thought had been dusk was still near-pitch blackness. Vesuvius’s temper hadn’t abated at all. It was my eyes that had changed. They’d become the eyes of a hunter.
But I still had to get out of Pompeii. The streets were clearer now of living people, but not of bodies and debris. I thought of the nearest exit gate of the city and moved as quickly as I could across the street, to the smashed countertop of a food stand. I had the idea to go from street to street through various intact buildings. I’d break into them, if I had to, rather than take my chances with the rabble outside.
But I approached the counter so fast, I almost doubled over and fell onto it. How did I get over here that quickly? An experienced soldier, I was hardly one for misjudging distance. Had part of the building fallen forward, shortening the space between us? It was hard to tell; everything was disintegrating around me. I glanced up, but the food stand, though damaged, was still upright. It didn’t lean at all. I stared at it in wonder. It hadn’t moved. I had. I’d run up to it in the blink of an eye. Less than the blink of an eye. But how was that possible? It seemed I had a hunter’s speed now, too. I stared at the chalice in my hand.
Then, some clumsy oaf plowed into me. The chalice was knocked from my grasp. I gave a cry of indignation as it was quickly swallowed by a greedy mound of ash. The clumsy oaf escaped down the street. I reached out my hand to retrieve the chalice, then thought better. You have to get out of here, Titus. Whatever the chalice means, whatever magic it still contains, it isn’t worth your life. It’s already saved you once tonight. Reluctantly, I let it go.
That was when I felt my head and shoulders start to burn. I don’t just mean from the little pinpricks of ash that were falling; I mean really burning. Like someone was pouring boiling water onto me. I thought it was another ball of fire, that Vesuvius had finally come to do me in. But when I looked up, all I saw were a few rays of sunlight peeking through the dense black clouds. The clouds moved in front of the sun, and the agony vanished. Then, the clouds shifted once more, and I was lashed with pain again.
I heard a noise like tearing metal—so close, I thought some kind of ironwork was crashing on me. I felt vibrations in my throat. The sound ca
me from me. I was screaming in pain. Like my new laughter, these cries were something other than human. Of course, no one heard me in all the commotion. I huddled under a merchant’s tattered awning, crouching and cringing like an animal. I dared to peek out at the street again. Although the mortals were still scurrying about, shrieking and dying as before, they seemed unaffected by the sun’s rays.
Why is it only me? I tried to figure out a way to get back into the street without getting burned. Why does Sol Invictus, the sun god, suddenly hate me so? If he exists, and I am still a witch of fire, shouldn’t we be brothers, he and I?
I lifted my eyes to the heavens. As if by way of answer, Sol Invictus, or some force, whisked the sun behind a sheath of black clouds again. I exhaled. I was safe—but not for long. Now, I not only had to escape Pompeii, but I had to do it while remaining under her rain of fire, which provided the only cover from the sun.
I could fly away. There seemed no reason to hide what I was any longer by concealing my powers. Hell, soon, there might not be anyone left to conceal them from. But fly where? Devastation poured down in every direction. Who knew where it ended, or if it ended? For the first time, I realized the destruction might extend beyond Pompeii. I supposed I could always pick a direction and follow it, in the hopes that Vesuvius’s wrath wouldn’t find me. But that led me right back to the problem of the sun. Until nightfall, there was no escaping that.
It’s impossible, I thought. I’m completely trapped. If I remain in Pompeii, I die. If I try to leave Pompeii . . . I die. Had I indeed offended the goddess Carna, and this was my punishment? I cursed myself for mocking her.
I couldn’t go back to Sabine’s house—it would soon drown in ash, like everything else. I needed to get underground somewhere, in a cave, or under something heavy, like stone, that would not yield to Vesuvius.
The tombs. The cities of the dead lining the roads to Pompeii. That was where I needed to go. Ironic, that a burial chamber might be my only chance at survival. With my newfound speed, even falling ash wouldn’t be enough to stop me. I might be able to make it to the tombs in time.
