The City

by Rachael Byrd

  "Ridiculous.” The speaker had snow white hair and grey eyes, although he appeared to be no more than perhaps seventeen.

  Kshatriya turned to him, his obsidian eyes sparking. “And why is it ridiculous, Caligula? You've seen the transporters, they with the blunted fangs who live by the grace of others. You've seen their eyes; you've seen the mindlessness. Let Arjuna speak."

  "We are dying the slow, mindless deaths of parasites and there is nothing we can do to stop it,” Arjuna said. “We can prolong ourselves with the oils and lotions that revive the flesh but we cannot save ourselves. All we can do is try to push back the shadows a bit, tell others what we know, and hope that there are enough Chaotics to carry through until the end. Do you understand what I am saying?"

  "I do."

  "Thank you, Hadrian."

  "This is ridiculous, Arjuna!” Tyrhennia spoke again and Jonathon rolled his pale purple eyes. She continued, her voice clear and direct, slightly darkened by some foreign accent. “We have seen long-lived vampires and vampiras frequently, and other than their hunger for sanguinities, they have suffered no ill effect."

  "They have, and they are, and so are you.” Arjuna ignored her stricken look, or perhaps didn't see it, and turned to a boy with shaggy brown hair and laughing blue-grey eyes. “You said that you understood me. Hadrian, will you please paint a picture for us?"

  Hadrian paused a moment, then nodded. He opened his satchel and poured a stream of paints and brushes onto the floor. Moving with quick certainty, he brushed the face of a human onto the black wall. The skin was tanned, flushed with vitality. The eyes were sparkling, deep with understanding and humanity, and every feature was perfectly proportioned. Intrigue watched, fascinated.

  The painting was beautiful, flawless, and she half expected the boy whose face was painted on the wall to stand up and walk into the room. She had never seen an artist so talented, nor one so incredibly fast. As she watched, Hadrian's brushes flashed again.

  Perfectly white fangs stretched toward the bottom lip and some of the depth of the eyes dissolved to pay for them. The cheeks narrowed, pinched a bit, and the skin lightened just a shade. The fangs stretched further, slightly yellowing, and the vampire took on an inexplicable beauty. The face thinned and paled still more, the eyes narrowed, all signs of age faded and gave the face a look of perfect and unimpeachable youthfulness. The eyes lost still more of their understanding. In their place were two ice blue rings that led down into the endless black abyss of winter. The face paled more—still more, and the hair was clipped, losing much of the look of human carefree beauty.

  Intrigue cried out, leaping to her feet and propelling herself backward. Hawk caught her, and all eyes turned to her. Hadrian's brush froze, hovering motionless in midair.

  "It's Angel ... oh my God, it's Angel..."

  Hadrian glanced at his work with a critical eye, frowned, and then looked back to her. “Yes, I guess it does look a bit like him, doesn't it?"

  "Flawlessly..."

  Arjuna coughed, a deep, hacking sound that silenced the others. He doubled over, his body wracked by wet, painful-sounding coughs. Jonathon raked his hand nervously back through his dark blond hair and stepped forward, but Arjuna waved him off. He swayed for a moment, his eyes closed, then stood and looked apologetically at the others. “The oil ... it's as bad as tuberculosis.” He wiped his blood-spattered hand off on his jeans. “It gets in your lungs, if you're not careful, and ... but it doesn't matter; none of us have much time left anyway.” He glanced back at Hadrian. “If you would, please finish your painting."

  Tyrhennia sighed, leaning back and kicking one long leg up onto the opposite knee. “Is that really necessary, Arjuna? You've shown us what the beautiful Angel might once have looked like, and you've shown us what he looks like now. Although entertaining, I hardly believe it's beneficial—"

  "Oh would you please shut up?” Caligula glared at her darkly. “You've nothing helpful to say."

  Tyrhennia turned away, her darkly enchanting features drawn in a pout. Hadrian paid her no mind; his brush was already a blur of movement and colors.

  The eyes lost the remainder of their depth, becoming flat and soulless. If eyes were the windows to the soul, the eyes of this painting looked in on an empty room in a long deserted mansion, a ruin of warped grey wood and hungry termites. The skin paled still more, somehow turning almost translucent, and almost all of the softness was gone. The lips were hard pink lines that curved upward in an undying expression of hunger and lust, the eyebrows were sharp angles that conveyed nothing; the face itself had become hard and emotionless.

  Looking into the black centers of those flat, soulless eyes, Intrigue could feel herself being drawn in, captivated. She pulled back, looking at the picture as a whole, and shuddered. The painting was still fantastically beautiful, perhaps more so than it ever had been, but it was also monstrous, a canvas of hatred, fear, and pain. Looking at her from the wall was a dangerous face, not the almost-kind face of the Angel she had known, but the hard, hungry countenance of a savage, mindless animal. There was no understanding there, no capacity for thought or individuality.

  The painting had gone from human to vampire, and from vampire to—what? From human to diseased to damned, and the Chaotics had simply taken a different, slower route; they were aimed for the same end.

  "Do you see it? Do you all see the difference?"

  Adrienne was trembling almost uncontrollably. A boy of about her own height settled uneasily next to her, pulling her into the circle of his arms. His eyes were a warm hazel and his hair was exceptionally dark brown. His face was still littered with shallow pockmarks where acne might have resided before his death. Adrienne rested her head on his shoulder. “Thank you, Aurelius."

  Carmine's warm blue eyes were wide with fear and understanding. “This is what we have died to become?” She pulled her own bottle of oil from her pocket and fingered the cool metal. “This is the inevitable?"

  "If we are indeed destined to become damned, why bother?” Belle piped up. Jonathon bit his lip, and Intrigue wondered whether it was only Tyrhennia that he disliked.

  "They're taking every human they can, Belle."

  "You remember the old vampire stories? Dracula, ‘Salem's Lot, and the like? I never read them personally, but I'd heard people talk. Remember the fear they used to strike in people? That fear's faded ... for the most part, anyway. People are being lax, not doing their best to take all the precautions, because the disease is intelligent. The vampires are not damned, not yet. The infection is leeching their souls out, little by little."

  "You have to stop them.” Talon's voice trembled. “Please stop them.” Her eyes flicked nervously to the painting on the wall. “I renounce my place at Asylum. I'd kill myself if I ever saw something like that coming for me—I'd kill myself and hope the gun or the knife could end my life before that thing could get its mouth onto my throat."

  "We're going to try."

  "No, Crow.” Intrigue's anger blazed. “We're going to stop them."

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  20

  Her throat ached; her head ached. Phoenyx could not remember a pain so deep, so complete. It swelled up in her throat, stretching tendons out through her body. Her fangs throbbed and her neck was swollen where Melissa's barely pointed incisors had torn it. She stumbled to her Haven. Wobbling, she collapsed onto her bed.

  Her stomach heaved dully; she could not recall ever feeling so miserable. A number of the slaves had recently been afflicted in the same way, but she had paid them little mind. Now a worrisome thought had occurred to her: what if there was a disease that could afflict the undead? Sleep washed over her, paralyzing her thoughts.

  The dream was painfully familiar. Déjà vu clouded her senses as she walked up the rotting wooden steps into a building from which paint that might once have been white or grey peeled in large flakes.

  The heavy wooden door closed behind her, and she knew she would not walk through that doorway
again. Not in this dream. She could see the worn lines of the warped grey floor and the cracks in the rickety steps of the weary staircase that led up to the apartment where he would be waiting.

  She welcomed the thought.

  Phoenyx moved slowly to the foot of the stairs, thoughtfully running her hand over the peeling grey wallpaper. She was frightened, but at the same time, she wanted to see what Angel had waiting for her. She could hear the insistent chattering of mice and rats from behind the plaster walls, see their beady black and red eyes staring at her from the cracks. It didn't bother her.

  She reached the top of the steps and saw the broken egg carton and the spilled milk. Human food, the sort of stuff Angel fed to the slaves each morning; nothing of any concern to her. The door to her apartment was wide open. The room inside was dark. A wave of fear washed over her and she hesitated.

  "Help me now, War-Child,” Phoenyx whispered, carefully stepping over the mess on the floor.

  The apartment was much as she'd expected but something deeper than fear now seemed to be mixed with the fading pink paint. Unreality washed over her as she realized that this was somehow her house; she knew everything that had happened here, and she dimly knew what was going to happen here. It was not a pleasant thought. The olive grey carpet was torn, ripped ragged with jagged slashes, and she dimly remembered Clayton turning into a wolf-thing, coming for her...

  Shaking it off, Phoenyx entered the bathroom and flicked the switch. The dim, naked light bulb suspended from the ceiling flooded the room with wan light. She looked at the mirror and saw a face staring back at her.

  Bloody tears streamed down the dead face of her reflection. Three deep gashes cut across her forehead and crimson liquid trickled down her cheek. Her skin was pale and yellowed and her eyes were dull and lifeless. Clayton had murdered her and Phoenyx was looking at her own corpse. The reflection glanced at the open door, turned, and fled. Phoenyx blinked, then walked out of the bathroom, her heart in her throat.

  She could now hear sounds other than the squeaking rats coming from the bedroom. Surprised, she stepped into the hallway. It sounded as though a child was sobbing. The hall seemed endlessly long and each step she took seemed insignificant. She moved slowly through the hall, glancing at the pictures on the walls. The first few were as she remembered them; after that, they began to become bizarre.

  She paused in front of one. The glare of the camera had made her eyes appear red in that photograph, but this crimson tinge was caused by more than poorly developed film. Her eyes were bleeding. The next one was equally startling; there were several gashes on her photographic self.

  The pictures grew more intensely disturbing until Phoenyx realized that the blood was no longer in the photographs. It was on them. Blood dripped from the wounds, spattering onto the glass and collecting at the bottom of the frames.

  The last photograph featured Clayton, still human, leering up at her out of the paper, while her photographic self bled to death. There was a machete shoved through her chest and blood trickled from the bottom of the picture frame to puddle on the carpet.

  She shuddered and forced herself to remember that she still slept safely beside the others on the ground in a vast field beneath the endless stars—or was it in her Haven? The thought was comforting, but fear still held her close. This did not feel like a dream.

  Phoenyx reached the door of the bedroom and the sounds of crying grew louder. Suppressing her worries, she pushed the door open.

  Clayton stood opposite her, clutching a massive knife. His sallow, sagging skin melted from his body even as she stood there, stunned. He smiled, his mouth filled with long, yellowed needles. He took a step toward her and the flesh slipped off one side of his head, hitting the floor with a sickening splat. For a moment, half a skull grinned at her from the cover of the remaining flesh.

  The rest of his skin fell off almost simultaneously. It separated from his skeleton and fell onto the floor in large, rotting, liquid chunks. The yellowed skeleton convulsed and collapsed into dust. A thin, frail girl—faintly blue and glowy—shook some of the blood from her foot. Phoenyx could see through her, although the images on the other side were warped and distorted.

  The ghost-girl looked quietly up at Phoenyx, then bent to lift the knife from the floor. The instant she touched it, the immense blade melted and took the shape of a very odd-looking gun. The child smiled up at her and raised the gun to shoulder level.

  "Hello, ‘Nyx. Melissa came with you here, didn't she? You were too afraid to come alone. All of you were too afraid to come alone.” The ghost paused and tilted the barrel of the gun toward Phoenyx. “Isn't alone a nice word?” The girl whispered as she pulled back a lever on the heel of the gun.

  "To be alone is more terrifying than murder, I think. Once, on the other side of a river, we were left alone in a freezing shack in the middle of winter. But if she'd come here alone to pay her debt, only one would die.” The girl looked at Phoenyx, her expression quietly resolute. “I have to kill her,” she said conversationally. “She murdered me. I'll have to kill you first, though. She didn't come alone."

  Phoenyx didn't hesitate a moment longer. She turned and fled into the hallway behind her. A huge, pale grey rat tumbled out of a gaping hole in the wall. Phoenyx raced past it, but it darted ahead of her, toward the door. The rat was suddenly dazzling white; the pink tail glittered in sharp contrast. The massive creature glanced back at her, its red eyes sparkling.

  It was headed toward the door.

  She struggled to move faster; she could almost feel Hera's presence moving behind her, a malicious, bloodthirsty shadow that still clung to some remnant of an unlife worse than the vampiristic existence she herself kept. Her body seemed to be bound to the earth by some weights she could not see. The faster she tried to move, the more insistently the invisible weight pulled her back down the hall.

  She heard Hera's giggle, high pitched and giddy. For the first time, she realized that she knew the child's name. Hera. The knowledge sent a jolt of fear through her; the name was strikingly familiar although she could not have said where she had heard it before.

  "Fly from me, Phoenyx. Take to the air, firebird. No matter how high you fly, you can't get away this time. You're not the first, love of Angel; he went long before you and you'd never even understand it!"

  The house dissolved around her.

  Phoenyx coughed weakly. Her head was throbbing and she felt nauseous. The light was so bright. Why was the sun so bright? She stumbled into a dark alley and the atmosphere changed again as soon as she did so. A few flakes of snow swirled through the alley on an icy breeze and she looked after them thoughtfully.

  They were red.

  She coughed again and her stomach growled. Searching her pockets, she found a pouch of blood. Frantically, she tore the package open and threw back her chin, devouring the liquid.

  Immediately afterward, she grabbed the side of a trash can and vomited into it. She felt starved, but she could not bear the flavor of the cool blood. It didn't matter now, the hunger didn't matter. The light hurt; she was hungry and in pain. She wanted sleep, not remembering that she slept already.

  She stumbled around a corner, and an old man leered up at her. His gaunt, sallow face was vaguely familiar. The blind eyes rolled onto her and she remembered.

  She remembered the shredded leaves and the powders. She remembered Clayton's addiction to a narcotic that had not been sweet blood.

  The old man struggled to his feet and pulled a long needle from behind his back. He shoved her against a crumbling brick wall. She tried to pull herself free but he was stronger than she had anticipated. He smiled again, the same hideous sneer, and pressed the needle into her arm.

  "Don't struggle, now, ‘Nyx. That's not what he would have wanted for you. That's not what you want. Even if you hadn't come here, it would have happened to you. It's inevitable for all of you.” He pushed the plunger and hot pain lashed through Phoenyx's body. “This isn't a drug you've tried before,
little bird. You know what a catalyst is, right? It speeds things up. That's all this is, just to speed it up. Don't worry, little bird. Angel's Phoenyx is coming back to him."

  As the pain in her arm grew, Phoenyx stopped struggling. Surely it wouldn't matter anyway. And the pain felt ... nice. She didn't want it to stop. She looked into the blind, milky eyes of the old man and nothing seemed to matter anymore. Her head hurt worse, her stomach churned, her flesh burned. The light seemed so much brighter, and suddenly all she wanted to do was go hide somewhere dark. Hide and sleep.

  Her eyes opened. The headache was gone. Her mind dissolved around her, into her and away from her until there was no thought left, no instinct, no goals or aspirations.

  The brilliant black eyes that opened on the world were free of soul. Here stood no Nest Queen, no beautiful vampira. Here stood Nosferatu.

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  21

  Myst headed for her bed. The sounds from downstairs were subdued, undoubtedly from the fiasco of the night before. Aymir was sleeping in her bed but she paid him no mind. She pushed past him, swaddling herself in blankets. He rolled over, his hand brushing the side of her cheek, but sleep had already begun to overcome her.

  The sky was dark and she was falling through it. The stars glittered like jewels and Myst fell from Heaven.

  The cool night wind bit fiercely at her clean skin. This was fantastic, this brilliant, unstoppable feeling of flying. Her eyes gleamed in the soft white glow of the full moon the shadow of an owl passed above her.

  She was almost there—the land where pain existed and anything was possible. As good as Heaven. Better, even.

  Myst hit the ground and lay still for a moment. She ran her tongue over her white, even teeth. The fangs were long gone, barely a memory.

  Tall stalks of corn stood guard around the angel-child's pale form. Myst stood up, flexed her wings, and found their strength was still good. Cool breeze caressed her face and she inhaled deeply, filling her lungs with the sweet flavor of night air. Her silver sandals still glowed dimly and she made her way through the tall rows of corn, delighting in the fresh, earthy smells.