Peggy did not stop in front of Celestine. With her weapons of light and darkness, she did not reach down and set Celestine free. There was a flicker of love on Peggy’s face, but she did not save the ancient vampire. Celestine was not turned back into the woman she once had been.
Instead, Peggy turned and looked directly at me.
Even as a spirit, I shuddered.
Who was I to think that this magnificent creature—clad in wings brighter than angels, enclosed in runes, and golden armor—wasn't able to see the ghost that I had become? All that was left of me was a wisp of courage and stubbornness.
Even that frayed at the edges.
Peggy looked at me. For the first time since this horrible night had begun, I saw her smile. it was still terrible, terrifying to see her, revealed as a powerful being in her own right. Her seeing me, a spirit barely tethered to the mortal world? I almost blinked out of existence.
She whispered, “You'll not be going anywhere. Not now,” she declared, “It’s not your time.” With that statement, the winged woman grabbed me by the lungs and the shoulder, by my invisible head and my transparent back, grasping my innards through and through. Wadding me up into a ball of spirit, the supernatural creature brutally shoved me back into my body.
I uncurled inside myself like the opening of a sea anemone after the fish swim away. Stunned, I could barely move my own arms. In truth, I couldn't say anything to her. With my eyes, I pleaded. I didn’t need words for her to understand.
Instead, I simply looked to the one soul who bound us together—to Celestine.
Between us, the chain of Icarus’s links were barely visible. The artifact had grown dull—as metal does when it's heated and then left untended. Without fire, it had gone to ash with my death.
But as I struggled to bend a finger or move at all, I demanded magic help me.
Help her.
I forcefully re-acquainted myself with the chilled, clumsy clay of my ruined body. My link to Celestine dimmed even as I revived. With the slightest whisper, I murmured her name. Barely a breath, no human would have heard my call. “Celes-tine…”
She did.
I felt the chain of Icarus spring to life, heating the length of links between our hearts, rekindling the dying ember. My hand twitched.
I dragged the flesh of my body across the inches that separated her and I. Determined, stubborn, rebellious, I succeeded an inch at a time. By sheer force of will, I almost reached Celestine’s still form.
Casually, Peggy reached down and brush off every dagger hilt that stuck out of my back. She acted like they were house flies—no more than a nuisance.
With one dismissive gesture, she denied the metal and the blade their target. “These weapons were made for killing vampires,” she glared at the remaining hunters. “They have no right to touch a human. They were not made to harm you.”
The ones in my back and arm dripped in a rivulet of deep, red blood. The eyes of every vampire in the room turned to the smell of a fresh injury.
Celestine inhale deeply—the copper in my blood woke her faster than any words I spoke. Her fangs extended like a coiled viper. Her slited eyes narrowed as she watched my face, eerily unmoving. Every nerve flushed with fear.
Celestine focused on her prey.
And I did not cover my neck. A vampire this old? Garlic or not, no amount of onion or herb was going to save me.
Not from Hunger like that.
Her glowing red eyes hardened. I could feel every muscle in her body tense. And then she struck, ripping out of my arms like lightning in a bottle released at last. My mortal eyes couldn’t tell where she went. In my arms one second, gone with the next breath. Startling. Graceful, the vampire move so quickly I could barely track what was happening.
I waited to feel her fangs in my throat.
After the night we had had, I welcome the idea of feeling anything. If this helped her, my blood was worth it.
Just like that she was gone. My arms were empty.
But it wasn't my neck that felt the touch of vampire venom. It wasn't me that she sprang towards.
Startled, I looked at my hands spread wide, holding on to nothing but air. Slowly, I turned my head. It took a few precious seconds to see her. For my eyes to find her silhouette in the dust.
The vampire students still stood around me. Those who had not been released by Peggy from their venom, all of them moved to the side, parting like the Great Red Sea from Moses.
At that exact moment, every single vampire in the room launched themselves in one counteroffensive, straight at the throats of the hunters.
When I saw her, Celestine was already drinking the blood of a second hunter.
The first woman she emptied fell to the ground in a pile of bloodless clay. Emptied faster than I could perceive. Celestine drunk deeply, slurping up gulps, wrapped like a tiger around the jugular of her second victim. She didn’t hesitate. She didn’t waste time considering right or wrong.
Eagerly, the vampire drank, taking every bit of life she could. In one pivot, the hunters became the hunted. She fed.
As if we were in a stop motion film, too late, the surviving hunters began to react. Only eight men remained. Six of them stood in a circle, defending themselves from more than a hundred fangs and claws.
Their eyes widened and then closed, as Celestine inhaled the life in their eyes. Too late, they reached for silver weapons, they readied their muscles to fight. To a man, they snarled and cursed their sacred oaths. But before they could react and do more than stand defensively, before they could attack anything or anyone, the remaining six hunters fell.
In one wave, they were covered by the horde of vampires. Faster than piranhas could eat a cow that stumbled into the river, quicker than forest ants could strip a body that fell on the jungle floor, six hunters died.
They had never attacked me. They weren't the ones who threw the silver daggers.
“T-thought that... you... would’ve saved... ‘em,” I labored to ask Peggy.
Her decisive actions left me confused, appalled. I needed an answer. Something had to make sense. “Didn't they deserve to live, too?”
“They had fallen.” She retorted, like she didn’t have to explain. But she did. She really did.
“I dispense the justice in this place. I decide,” Peggy stated, “who lives or dies in this room. I decide which warriors rise with me. Only some have earned valor. Many are still learning. And these,” she gestured to the writhing pile of vampire bodies that covered the location of the six hunters—the six dead men. “These few will have a second chance to make things right before I judge them.”
A supernatural all-powerful winged warrior had the power to stop the vampires. Shouldn’t her purpose be to act as a defender of humanity? It made sense that she would value and keep mortality safe above all else.
But Peggy didn’t move.
She should have tried to protect at least one of them. Overwhelmed, surprised, the hunters all died, whether by her hand and the sword of oblivion, or by the fangs of vampires.
Rather abruptly, every single human hunter was gone.
Dead.
I could hear the sound of slurping. My stomach flipped over.
Turning my head, I vomited the remains of my garlic drink. It was a miracle that I had kept that much of the noxious oil down for that long.
Sick at the murders I witnessed, enemy or not, and by the stench of blood, I averted my eyes as the bodies were drained of every drop. Humans were a crop, a bounty to be harvested without remorse.
Suddenly, I realized I was nothing at all—a drink in the moonlight.
Then the horde turned to the corpses of the dead hunters that Peggy had struck down and beheaded with the otherworldly sword. Like a crashing wave, the vampires fell upon the remains, licking the blood, gnawing on the bones. Recently deceased blood still answered their hunger.
Calmly, Celestine dropped the desiccated body of the second hunter. Crumpled like a used napkin, the corps
e fell to the ground. The weight of its death sent a flurry of ashes and dust into the air.
Like a goddess, Celestine finished her meal, every movement she made was full of graceful perfection. Only one drop of blood on her lip marred the beauty. That bit of red was the last mark that remained of her insatiable hunger.
With a flick of her tongue, even that was gone.
Then she stood still, stronger than even the chain of Icarus could have remade her.
Weirdly, that was when I realized that the artifact no longer bound us, heart to heart. I had given my life to raise a supernatural creature from the dead. That was over. No time for regrets now. A powerful being had returned to full health. A monster who thirsted after human blood more than anything else, Celestine was nothing I really knew. Certainly, she was a creature I should’ve deeply feared.
In my veins, primal emotions that had enabled my ancestors to survive for thousands of years screamed only one word, over and over: “Run!”
There was nowhere to go. There was no place but right there.
I set my shoulders to the task of resisting the powers of a vampire. Celestine was my place, for better or worse.
I wouldn't leave her when she needed me.
I wouldn't leave when she was injured.
I wouldn't leave when she was dying, no more than a beautiful statue buried in a legend far beneath the city lights.
Certainly, I wouldn't leave now. In the depths of the historic building, even when she looked at me with eyes full of hunger and hatred, ready to destroy anyone or anything that had broken into her crypt.
Not even then.
Ready to rip to shreds any intruder that had hurt her newborn family in her absence, she was more monster than human. And I knew, when she fought, it wouldn't be to the death—it would be to the pain, to cause the greatest suffering. Celestine’s revenge would be monstrous. Her rage would outshine every bit of evil that anyone had ever accomplished in recorded history.
It was the least she could do to guard her children, to continue the species Immortalis. I had no doubt that she would fight with her venom to the very last breath. Destroying the entire world just to protect her only home.
I understood that. I even admired it. And I didn't care whether she killed me or not. I’d already died once. At this point, did it matter?
“You forgot to release these children,” Peggy growled. The judgement in her voice demanded Celestine’s response.
The vampire’s eyes flashed red in indignation. “Your freedom was all that mattered to me,” Celestine protested, hands held open at her side. “You. Your freedom, and your fairness may be the only bridge that mortals and the Immortalis have. It is in your nature to choose. I will sacrifice anything and anyone to keep you alive.”
Celestine begged for forgiveness without ever apologizing.
Meeting Peggy’s heavy gaze without blinking, she did not back down. Instead, Celestine continued to plead for her to listen, “Only your kind can decide who can judge. How many undead should roam the earth? And which humans are worthy of the honor? Which are horrid, despicable men and women with money, ready to steal their immortality and scheme in the dark?”
“Those are our real enemies.” The echo of Celestine’s words amplified the truth wrapped within their weight.
“For that reason Vlad and I researched and then set out to find your prison. I searched for you. I was not the one who left you, abandoned, asleep for a thousand years. Even after they killed Vlad, I did not stop looking until I finally found you, buried far away in the temple shipyards of the frozen north.”
Peggy’s eyes did not narrow. But she wasn’t satisfied with the explanation. Not yet.
Celestine smiled, ice cold before she continued, “For that reason, I walked through ice and tundra, past blizzards and all the dangers of ice floes and perpetual winter. I had to find a solution.”
Answering pointedly, the ancient vampire explained years of painful history. Both Peggy and I needed to hear those words. “You are the last chance this sorry world has. You stand between a rising tide of organized vampire councils bent on harvesting humans and the ignorant remains of mortal men.”
She offered an explanation to the cold and demanding gaze of the creature that had arisen from the mortal form of her child. Celestine gave the only answer she had.
“You are the judge we need, Valkyrie. You. In your wings, with your sword, you and your sisters carry justice.”
Valkyries.
Demons of death. Warriors of the battle field, female spirits called to bring the honored dead to their rightful place in Valhalla.
My head spun.
Without pausing, Celestine made her case in front of a skeptical judge.
“You are the answer to the dilemma posed between our hunger and the power of our venom. Between more and more vampires and fewer and fewer humans, the balance is you. Your sisters have slept too long in the dust. Unchecked, the vampires are winning this war. The vampires were always going to win this war. We are the better species. We are the evolution that the humans strain to reach. That is our flaw, what destroys us. We cannot hope to rise above our past, if we only see humans as food. There are always gluttons amongst us. If we eat all the living, then creation has no meaning.”
Simple fact. “Gods and goddesses cannot exist if there are no humble, devoted mortals to worship them. The very coins of deity: truth, love, joy, and the greatest monster of all hope—all that vanishes when the last human dies. You need us. We need them.” Celestine finished. and then she waited.
Peggy listened.
Vampires obviously grasped a principle of survival: respect your elders. Whether it was Bastet or Valkyrie, Celestine gave honor where it was due.
Smart. Pretty sure I’d bow to any cat that crossed my path ever again. Never know where a goddess could be hiding… Just the power radiating off of Celestine and the valkyrie was enough to set most of Southern California on fire. Standing in their way would require a great deal of power, idiocy, or knowledge.
Yesterday, I was ready to die. Today I died. And now?
I chose my side.
The vampires did as well. The undead sensed Peggy’s complete rule over their immortality. Powerful warriors, they all trembled, every single one. Not one undead took its attention off of the golden armored winged woman. They could not afford to look away. She owned them, from their glaring red eyes to their bared fangs.
Peggy considered Celestine’s words. She took a deep breath and—
On the hood of the nearest coffin, a feral cat leapt up.
The hungry vampire ball of fangs and venom reacted like wildebeests at her predator approach: glaring and hissing like cowards. Ready to strike when backed into a corner, the undead paced and reformed.
A stupid cat sent the monsters into a panic.
That I could understand. Sweat broke out on my forehead at the ball of fluff and fur. And Peggy?
She stared at the cat.
9
A Question of Alliances
Tristan St. Denis
“You must notice by now that I have a vested interest in this fight.”
A glowing figure spoke demurely as she stepped out of the rip that formed directly behind the completely disinterested cat, which didn’t pause the dedicated cleaning of its ears.
Bastet.
Her stunning form shimmered out of the portal between There and Here. Exactly the same way the strange spiralling doorway had appeared and dropped ancient Valkyrie armor in our laps.
Because it came from the same source.
“This war between dragons and vampires,” she purred nonchalantly, “between vampires and humans, between vampires and vampires… it has gone on long enough. The gods are tired. The old gods and the new.” She glared at me as if I had offended her somehow.
Just that scowl sent shivers up my spine.
Not sure how I managed to cock that up, but I was warned. And not too subtly, either. What did I do? I scrambled to f
igure out why Bastet looked at me with disgust. The only thing worse than a vengeful woman is an angry cat.
“Before the coming wave of hunger and greed consumes the living planet, there must be a restoration. Hunger for blood cannot lead to this unending quest for power. And…” Bastet paused. Oblivious, the cat purred loudly in her lap as the goddess scratched its ears. Bastet let slip a little truth. “You see the danger. I cannot approach those who do not approach me. It is in the rules. Worshippers must pray and ask for a favor before the forgotten gods can intervene.”
She looked right at me again, a tinge of triumph and regret on her face.
“You asked.”
I had. Even when I barely knew about magic or sorcerers or gods… I had asked. Anything to save Celestine. Marian always said, ‘When darkness falls, a good man will seek the light, even if it is only a match lit on the other side of the world.’ That explained a few things.
Bastet held the cat up in her hands, raising it up to her face, meeting its gaze, eye to eye. But she spoke to us, sounding distinctly bored with the conversation already. “Those of us with enough strength left in our believers scavenged an answer.”
Prayer works? Apparently.
“We would never have disturbed your rest, ancient one,” Bastet purred out a vague apology, as she bowed her head slightly toward Peggy. “But perhaps this vampire has the right of it. A judge of worthiness, sighted beyond the veil of tears and mortal pain… you hold the key we have been searching for. We never saw this.”
Peggy stood there, eyes filled with a terrible power.
Celestine walked towards her, fearless. Right up to the cross formed by the polearm and the sword that threatened to kill anything in its path, the vampire showed no fear. With a steady hand, she reached up to the blade of the halberd and swiped her fingers across the flat of metal. The remains of vampire venom dusted her fingertips when Celestine removed her delicate touch.
The sunlight held within the halberd didn’t kill her instantly.
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