Never Show Fear

by Nicola Claire

  “When?” I ask.

  His cyan-hued eyes meet mine, his Sanguis Vitam reaching out to automatically reassure me. He can’t help it. I’m his Kindred. The joining makes us feel things we otherwise shouldn’t.

  “When?” I repeat, for the spymaster has said nothing.

  He watches me with haunted eyes.

  Smoke will be swirling in mine.

  “Yesterday,” he says.

  “And you led her right here,” I accuse.

  “Have you lost faith in me, Lucien?”

  I shake my head, throw some coins onto the table, and stand.

  If Alain came here, directly from Zelenograd, then Zahra won’t be far behind.

  Two years, I’ve managed to stay one step ahead of my Entwined.

  And all it took was three days for my Kindred to ruin everything.

  I storm out of the tavern and into the night.

  * * *

  Kolomna’s not big, but it is pretty. A miracle considering the state of the world these days. It’s also barely one hundred kilometres distant from Moscow via the E30 motorway. We need to head inland and off the beaten track, but Alain is surprisingly reticent to leave the main routes for some reason.

  “Do you wish for my Entwined to catch us?” I demand.

  “Perhaps it would not be a bad thing,” he murmurs, staring out across the historical centre of Kolomna City.

  The moon hangs heavy in the sky, and I’m aware of the local shifters stirring under its milky gaze. They pose little threat to us, but where there are shifters, there will always be vampires. Alain has been on guard ever since we arrived, and yet he does not suggest we flee.

  Is he tired of fleeing?

  I know I am. But I would never admit it.

  This is not the life I would have chosen for myself.

  It is not the life I was raised to lead.

  I push all of those turbulent thoughts from my mind and stretch out my senses, drawing on the smoke with increasing ease. I have been practicing.

  I could almost fool myself into believing I have a handle on this thing.

  It would be a lie.

  The smoke tries to consume me.

  Sometimes, I consider letting it.

  Alain’s hand on my shoulder stills my rapidly beating heart.

  Even now, two years later, it irks me that he has this influence over my emotions. That he can calm me with a touch when what I’m feeling is just; my right to feel it.

  But he’s not alone in making me feel things I don’t want.

  If it were just the Muska, I could perhaps live with my lot. But it’s the Muska and the kindred-joining and the entwining with Zahra.

  All of it threatens to consume me.

  “There are vampires hunting,” Alain says, unaware of my roiling thoughts. He can’t read my mind as I can read his. Perhaps, one day, if the joining becomes a Bond, he’ll be able to do so.

  I pity him that day.

  For in his mind, I see his heartache. I see his own turmoil. And his worry for me; his need to protect me. Save me.

  I’m beyond saving.

  Tell that to the vampire who was once my father’s Second.

  We all have murky pasts the smoke helps keep hidden.

  “That’s what vampires do,” I tell Alain, wanting to be done with this place and just to be moving again. I’m restless. I pace.

  “No,” he says, shaking his blonde head of hair, his eyes distant; unseeing. “It is something else.” He lifts his nose to the air and sniffs like a hound.

  It’s nothing I haven’t seen a thousand times before. Vampires are creatures of the hunt. Much like their toothier and furrier cousins, the shapeshifters. But something about Alain’s stance sets my nerves on edge.

  Is it not enough to be hunted by a Mhachkay? Must we be hunted by our own kind, too?

  Not that I’m fully vampire. I’m only half. But I was raised with vampires, and I consider them my kind. However, the Nosferatin half of me wants to palm a stake and stab it through their unbeating hearts.

  I’m a conundrum, a puzzle with no answer.

  Smoke swirls around me as if in agreement.

  Alain turns his head and arches his brow. He’s used to seeing the smoke by now, but clearly, I’m more…smokey than usual.

  “Something must be in the air,” I say, scratching at my arm in distraction.

  And then I hear the voices. They call my name in a way only I will be able to hear them.

  “Shit,” I say and Alain stills; preternaturally still. “They hunt me,” I tell him.

  “Is it the Mhachkay?” he asks, his eyes already bleeding to red in preparation of a battle.

  Alain may not agree with my choice to run, but he is my Kindred Nosferatu and will fight to the death — his and maybe mine — should I ask it of him.

  I reach out and initiate physical contact; one of the very few times I have done so since we joined.

  Alain closes his eyes briefly, sighing. When his lids open again, the red has dimmed almost to nothing.

  I’m not sure what our goddess Nut was thinking making kindred-joinings a calming influence on our hearts. ‘Always stay on guard’ is a motto I learned as soon as I could speak. And yet, when Alain and I touch, the kindred-joining soothes us completely.

  It’s a dichotomy I don’t think about too much.

  “Lucien?” he presses when I don’t answer.

  I close my eyes and send out my senses, both Nosferatin and Nosferatu. And then wrap them up in the black arts. Smoke swirls around me; catches on the back of my tongue. My fangs descend, and the pumping beat of nearby Norm hearts calls to me.

  But it’s not the blood life force of those who would sustain me that I seek now.

  I seek that which calls to me; pulls me. Not in the true essence of the Pull, Nosferatin — vampire hunters — feel. But the pull I have felt ever since a Cadı of Muska entwined her soul with mine.

  Zahra is Mhachkay. A vampire with twin souls and twin hearts. A vampire-born, much like Ellie and I were born half-vampire/half-vampire hunter. Zahra is more than a vampire-born, though. More than a Mhachkay. Because she is also a Black Witch; strong, powerful, magnificent.

  And I can feel her when she is near.

  Just like I can feel my Kindred at my side.

  “Is it the Witch?” Alain demands after some time.

  I shake my head. I can feel her, but she’s not close.

  What I can feel, though, surprises me. Not merely the fact that I feel it at all, but the fact that they are here, also.

  “It’s not Zahra,” I tell my Kindred. “But it is Mhachkay.” And, alarmingly, the Mhachkays’ familiars.

  “It’s not the local shifters who stir, spymaster,” I say. “The Erbörü hunt tonight.”

  * * *

  We race down darkened alleys and flash from shadow to shadow, but the sound of the hunt comes ever closer. Claws scratch old cobblestones, howls reach the heavens. The thundering beat of shifter hearts sets a metronome accompaniment to the Norms who are aware of what hunts on the streets tonight.

  Fairies and vampires are out of the closet. Shifters and ghouls are not. But Russia is different from my homeland; here, the Norms know way too much.

  Perhaps it’s the magic they possess. Perhaps it’s the black arts. Whatever it is, doors close and lock as we speed past; curtains and shutters are drawn abruptly, shutting away the frantically beating hearts.

  The Erbörü hiss and howl, sending goosebumps down my arms.

  I glance at my Sigillum. It tingles with my rapidly changing emotions. The colours I have long since lamented as lost are no longer there, but I feel the changes in my parents’ mark.

  They are closing.

  Why has the Kral sent his vampires on this hunt?

  Ellie is entwined with Hakan, the Mhachkay King. She is as much their Queen as he is their King. A hunt such as this would have to be sanctioned by both of them.

  Something has happened to force my sister’s hand.
<
br />   Or she could just be losing patience with my running.

  It’s hard to tell with Ellie. Patient, she is not.

  I smile grimly as we duck down tiny streets and hide beneath overhanging buildings. I can hear the scratching claws of the Erbörü on the rooftops.

  They’re so near now; I can scent them.

  We head toward the Oka River at the southern end of the city. Erbörü, like most land-based shifters, don’t do well in running water.

  Boats clank on moorings, the scent of fish wafts on the air. The river is fresh, not salty, but it hides an abundance of life in its dark depths. I feel them. I hear them inside my head.

  It’s not only human thought I’ve been hearing. But I’ve long since stopped listening to the others. If I hadn’t, I would’ve already gone mad.

  As it is, the sound of our pursuers’ thoughts is deafening. The Erbörü not much better. But where the shifters think of only the hunt, a hunt they have been set on by their Mhachkay masters, the Mhachkay vampires themselves think of much more.

  And for a moment, it makes me stumble. Alain reaches down and wraps a hand around my upper arm to steady me. For the first time in a long time, his touch doesn’t soothe me. He’s worried.

  I consider not telling him what I’ve discovered. But Alain is the Champion’s spymaster, or, at least, at one time he was Papa’s very best. He needs to know.

  “They’re not the Kral’s,” I say to him, my breaths coming in rapid pants now.

  “Not Hakan’s?” He never says my sister’s name anymore. It’s as if she doesn’t exist for him. Where Ellie once occupied a place in his heart and mind, there is now only a vacant space.

  It hurts me.

  It’s destroying him.

  “They answer to a Mhachkay called Ekram,” I explain.

  “Ekram?” Alain says, thinking. His mind is a marvel to witness in motion. Alain is quick of thought, sharp as a blade. He remembers the name. It takes only seconds for him to place it. “The former Kral’s Second,” he says.

  I growl. A hiss too close for comfort responds to my voice.

  We keep running.

  There’s only one street between us and the river now, and I’m sure we’ll make it.

  But Erbörü are not some non-sentient species of pack animal. They are shifters. Ancient and clever; experienced and powerful in their own right.

  They surround us. Work as a unit. Creep out of the shadows. Block our path across the street. Water laps at their backs, and yet they valiantly ignore it.

  For before them is the prize they seek.

  We still. Lamplight glows softly from the streetlights, a mist rolls in from the river. Smoke swirls all around me.

  A Mhachkay steps out from between two Erbörü, laying a hand on the head of the one on his right. The shifter — like all its brethren is in its alternate animal form — rubs its muzzle into the vampire’s hand, seeking comfort. Sharp teeth glint in the dimming light, four-inch-long claws scrape against the stones making a grating sound. Fur stands on end on muscly forearms as they hold up the bulk of its weight while it crouches as if to pounce.

  I keep my eyes on the Mhachkay; Ekram, his thoughts tell me.

  They tell me other things as well; things I would rather not know, but that’s my life now.

  “A good hunt,” Ekram says, and more Mhachkay emerge from the shadows. “But I expected more from the whore’s Entwined.”

  I don’t know Zahra well. But I do know one thing.

  I will gut him for calling her that.

  I growl. Alain growls softly at my side, feeling my emotions as they peak.

  Ekram laughs; a loud sound that threatens to break the night.

  “You have led us on a merry chase for two long years, whelp,” he says. “But the chase ends now.”

  “What do you want?” I demand.

  Alain remains silent. Ekram’s underestimated him, and the spymaster is happy to continue to aid in his error. All the while, my Kindred’s thoughts run through scenarios and escape routes and ways for us to survive this night.

  I let his thoughts become background noise, aware of them but not centre-stage in my mind. I concentrate on the Mhachkay before me.

  He’s still loyal to the former Kral.

  And he holds those around him in thrall to him now.

  Does Hakan know? Does Ellie suspect?

  There’s rot in the Mhachkay line.

  I’ll be happy to excise it for them.

  I draw my sword. It’s a replica of Ellie’s; a replica of our mother’s. Light glints off the silver blade and I smile.

  Ekram screws up his nose in disgust. The sight of my fangs repulses him.

  He thinks I’m a monster.

  I chuckle to myself as if this notion amuses me, and then I’m Nosferatin spinning without having telegraphed my intention to move at all.

  Alain is in motion at my side; sword drawn, red gleaming from his eyes.

  The still night air is shrouded in mist, hiding us from Norms’ eyes, as Kolomna becomes a battleground of blood and screams and deathly silence.

  They outnumber us.

  They outfang us.

  And they have Erbörü.

  It is a rout.

  Or it should be.

  But I’m entwined with a Cadı of Muska. Smoke swirls in my eyes.

  I draw on the shadows. On the black magic that taints this land, that is rooted in its soil.

  It’s not natural. It’s not easy. But it is mine.

  I am a Falcı of Muska.

  What little light still existed in Kolomna disappears, and the night becomes as dark as the pits of hell.

  A pitch-black steeped in ancient witchcraft I can barely control.

  I’m sure I will lose myself.

  * * *

  Screams pierce my mind, and I ruthlessly cull them. Like a surgeon with a scalpel, I excise the rot, one after the other. I drown in their souls. I consume them.

  Or they consume me. It’s hard to tell.

  In the madness that ensues, I lose sight of Ekram and his Erbörü. By the time Alain’s hand on my shoulder reaches through the black smoke that surrounds my heart and soul and mind, the Mhachkay has fled with what’s left of his cabal.

  I’m no longer breathing. I’m no longer thinking. I am smoke. I am wisps on the wind.

  I am death personified.

  “Luc,” I hear Alain say. He’s been repeating my name for long minutes. The abbreviation he rarely uses finally pierces the black that threatens to suck me down into hell.

  I force air through my aching lungs and blink open eyes that haven’t seen for what feels like hours.

  Alain says something in French that is undoubtedly an epithet. I feel his relief. I also feel his worry. I can’t help but feel his horror at what I have become.

  “We’re safe now,” I say, perhaps more for me than him, but my intention was to calm him.

  He grips my shoulder as if he can’t let go; his face pale, his eyes bloodshot, his chest rising and falling too swiftly. It’s a strange thing to see a vampire breathe so rapidly when air is not required to sustain their life.

  Alain may look less human than he has ever looked in this moment, but he’s acting more human than I’ve ever witnessed before in my life.

  Fear coats him.

  “Are you afraid of me?” I ask, feeling detached from the question.

  Needing to hear his answer.

  “I am afraid for you, mon ami.”

  We look at each other. So much said in one simple glance.

  I break the silence; the standoff. “Ekram wishes to use me against Ellie and Hakan,” I tell him. “He wants the Mhachkay throne for himself.”

  “That makes sense.” Political machinations are something the spymaster can comprehend.

  Black magic consuming the soul of his Kindred, on the other hand, is not something Alain can accept.

  “I think,” I say, finding it harder than it should be to say the words. I start again, “I t
hink it’s time.”

  A part of me wants to curl up in defeat inside.

  Another part, surprisingly, comes alive.

  “To Turkey, then?” Alain asks. “Adrianople?”

  I nod, then shake my head. Then I lift my nose to the wind like Alain does and send out my senses.

  I feel her.

  She feels me.

  She is waiting.

  For two years, my Entwined has hunted me.

  Or so I have thought.

  But now I wonder.

  At any time, she could have caught up to me. This pull I feel, she would also feel.

  No, Zahra has trailed me, to be sure, but not hunted me like Ekram did tonight.

  She has been waiting. Watching. Warding, perhaps.

  Like Alain, she wishes to protect me.

  Unlike Alain, she has allowed me to find my feet first.

  Maybe I’m too hard on the spymaster, for kindred-joinings require physical contact to remain healthy. That’s why we touch. Why Alain reaches for me every time he catches up to me.

  Why I let him catch up to me at all.

  The spymaster has taught me well; I know how to hide. Even from him.

  But we are kindred-joined. So, I come out of hiding long enough for him to find me.

  That way, we survive.

  And now…now, I must come out of hiding for my Entwined.

  No. Not just for my Entwined.

  I come out of hiding for Ellie. For my twin.

  For something is rotten in the Mhachkay line, and I fear neither Ellie nor Hakan are aware of it. How that could be, I don’t know. But Ekram’s thoughts revealed a belief in his ruse; a surety that he’s safe from the punishment his Kral would mete out if only he knew what the Mhachkay betrayer has planned.

  And what Ekram has planned is not for the faint of heart. It involves stakes in the ground and bodies impaled upon them, left out for the sun to burn. I think, perhaps, Ekram fancies himself a Count Dracula copycat.

  I would laugh at that if I weren’t so concerned.

  I let out a breath of air and turn to face my Kindred.

  It’s time to step out of the shadows and stop running.