by D B Nielsen
Dark magic.
The ground beneath her seemed to yield and tilt, and Aislinn felt like she was sliding down a slippery slope. No wonder she couldn’t pinpoint the species who claimed the authoritative voice. The dark magic was playing havoc with her senses. All she could smell was the pungent zing of ozone and brimstone.
“She’s waking up. How is that possible? I thought you said the absorbed radiation was in the ultraviolet region of the spectrum.” This voice, she instantly recognized as belonging to Marcellus, the slimy bastard. “Should we use more nightshade?”
“Don’t be a fool,” the voice of authority rebuked, moving from somewhere beyond Aislinn’s vision to the edge of the stretcher. She stiffened as if in pain.
She couldn’t see his face, but she would know that tattoo on his neck anywhere. Three concentric outer circles enclosing within them three dark points from which three straight lines extended like rays of light. He belonged to the same order of dark mages who were responsible for the death of her beloved sister.
But was he the one?
The Druid they’d killed near Tower Bridge Mortuary wasn’t her sister’s killer. Perhaps he had been Sergei’s drug dealer, but his face wasn’t seared into her memory. She could never forget the triune of Druids who had resided within her clann. Their faces would haunt her for all eternity.
She closed her eyes as his voice roared in her head as ferocious as thunder. “I told you, she’s perfect. No impurities.”
Her eyes snapped open. A thin, bony man was leaning over her. He moved in and out of her range of vision, adjusting the medical equipment. His bald head gleamed under the glaring light like an exoskeleton. His milky eyes glanced at her briefly, dismissing her. She struggled against her restraints.
He’s the one. He killed Sorcha. He stole her blood. He took her lifeforce. Bastard.
Through clenched teeth and the vise-like restraints which oppressed her, she spat, “I’m going to kill you.”
“I doubt that. You had your opportunity,” the Druid replied, unfazed. “But you are going to die here, though it would be nice to keep you alive. Sadly, all my test subjects die.”
“Oh, I’m going to live. You’re only saying that because no one ever has.” Aislinn continued to struggle against the barbs. There was a fire in her eyes that spoke the truth. “But be prepared for disappointment and death—your death, you miserable, stinking turd.”
Marcellus glowered at her as she lay flat on the stretcher. “Don’t you listen? I told you, she’s the daughter of Kayne, one of the Twelve elect. Don’t underestimate her. Her blood is one hundred percent pure.”
It suddenly made sense to her. Hadn’t the Minter told her as much?
The dark mages had targeted the blood of the most ancient vampires, but their dried blood failed to retain the same potency as fresh blood. The fresh, untainted blood of Kayne’s direct descendant.
She felt the sharp bite of a needle as another catheter was placed in her left forearm.
Aislinn, you idiot, you walked straight into their trap.
Pity it was also the plan.
Note to self: next time, fuck sticking to the plan.
“Within the blood of the twelve Originals runs the blood of the Father,” explained Marcellus, staring down at Aislinn with a combination of spite and envy, making her inwardly shudder. “Even they do not understand the gift that has been bestowed on them by our Creator, Kayne.”
Aislinn knew only of one other instance when the most potent vampire blood was used for experimentation. To enhance a human. Kayne’s blood had been used for the Immortal Huntress.
Julius claimed that the Immortal Huntress was an abomination. Somehow the blood of Kayne had been stolen and comingled with human and shapeshifter in a foul experiment to create an immortal being, a human hunter who had the power of vampire and shapeshifter bestowed upon her.
Who had done such a thing?
Such brutal, volatile powers to perform such an experiment were otherworldly, originating from Esper or perhaps Etherean, though the angelic host had no need to steal the blood of the other species for their superior powers. No, all evidence pointed to the mages and Esper.
The confidential and heavily redacted report provided by Styx implied some rogue organization of dark mages were at work on Earth now. They drained the life force of living creatures to boost their magical powers, stealing it through pain, blood and death. It was for this very reason they were banished and branded outcasts.
Aislinn knew that sooner or later she would need to venture into the other realm to find the answers—but first she would need to survive this ordeal. Her skin felt like it was burning, tingling all over with a strange sensation of a hundred eyes watching her. Her mind whirled chaotically.
Marcellus continued, demanding of his co-conspirator, “You will inform Melchior that I have done exactly as you asked? I expect to be well rewarded for this, you understand?”
“Do not worry, Marcellus. You have served us well. Melchior will be informed. You will get exactly what you deserve.” The sinister tone in the Druid’s voice was lost on Marcellus, who only heard what he wanted to hear, such was his greed and ambition.
Aislinn knew she’d been right all along. He had always been unimaginative. Even now, he couldn’t conceive that they were humoring him, playing him for the fool he truly was. She would have given a mirthless laugh if the vise-like restraints weren’t pressing down into her chest with a thorny bite. Her lungs were punctured by the sharp metal teeth, keeping her flesh open and unable to heal.
A strange slithering sound like serpents gliding along the ground entered her mind. Turning her head, which took immense willpower and concentration, she saw coils of plastic tubes and tunnel catheters crawling in her direction. They extended from a machine which looked like a remnant from the Industrial Revolution and snaked toward the stretcher. An icy finger of foreboding traced down her spine, and suddenly, she knew she wasn’t lying on a stretcher at all but a bloodletting table.
“Let the bloodletting begin. We open the arteries as wide as possible so that they are unable to repair the damage. We can’t even claim to have come up with this invention. These manually retractable full-pronged hypodermic needles and re-sheathing syringes were designed by the Church as a means of prolonged torture. For our purposes, this allows for efficient flow and maximum productivity, like this,” the dark mage said, as the machina sanguinem exhauri hissed to life around her as if it had a will of its own.
The slithering tubes had reached her ankles by then. At a flick of the dark mage’s hand, as if they could sense her anxiety, they abruptly and silently creeped under the table beneath her to fuse with the open drains where her blood would collect.
“One can appreciate the ingenuity of the humans at times.” Marcellus leaned down so that his lips were at Aislinn’s ear. “I promised you would suffer, Aislinn. This will eventually kill you, but I assure you, your death will be agonizingly slow.”
A wave of dizziness assailed her as she fought against the dark magic pinning her to the bloodletting table, feeling as exposed and vulnerable as a butterfly under a magnifying glass in sunlight. It was as if she was sprawled on a display board, her wings pinned and torso wriggling, but unable to free herself.
“Let us discover the daughter of Kayne’s blood secrets, drop by drop. Ephphatha. Be opened.”
Chapter 14
The dark mage’s hands motioned intricately in the air, drawing from the living energy within the makeshift surgical area underground. The spell took shape and dimension, glowing a wicked, fiery red as it threw off sparks as if fashioned from a live wire, spiraling in the air before his outstretched fingers. He mumbled an incantation beneath his breath. Then flicking his fingers in the direction of her right forearm, he released the spell he had crafted on a surge of raw, unrestrained energy.
For the first time in the Underground, Aislinn screamed and bucked wildly beneath the tight restraints. The rows of spikes drove deeper into
the soft tissue of her flesh, but it wasn’t the barbed restraints that made her cry out in agony, but the hypodermic needles as they attached to Aislinn’s wrists and into the carotid arteries on either side of her neck to drain every drop of her blood. Like fanged snakes unhinging their jaws before they struck, full-pronged tips which were layered in dark magic opened wide her arteries. They remained open, unable to heal over.
Despite the excruciating pain in her neck, Aislinn spat out expletives between gritted teeth, refusing to beg for mercy or show them any fear. “Asswipe. Putrid vomitous guano. I knew what would happen when I came here, and I didn’t need to use magic or a seer.”
It was only partially true. She knew she had been walking into a trap, one that might lead to her torture and possible execution. What she didn’t know was that it would hurt this much.
And Vlading hell, it really hurt.
“If you knew so much, then you’re the asswipe,” Marcellus said with a smirk. “It’s not what I’d call great survival instincts to come here of your own free will.”
But the dark mage wasn’t malicious like Marcellus. He moved to stand beside her, checking the placement of the needle in her arm. “Keep her still, Marcellus. Don’t engage with the subject.”
Black blood began to trickle from her exposed arteries. The dark mage watched the flow of vampire blood, mesmerized. It was like how Julius had watched the flow of his victim’s blood from the Iron Maiden gifted to him by Dorian, with a fascination and savage greed. Aislinn would have given a laugh if she could. Perhaps Dorian should have stuck around for some payback of his own for his Iron Maiden punishment, but Dorian only found pleasure in pain when he was the one inflicting it, and right now, it was the dark mage who was in control.
Though the truth was, the dark mage just didn’t care about any of them. He simply wanted his pound of flesh—or rather, his five liters of blood. Aislinn was simply the main ingredient he needed for his magical energy drink, the caffeine boost in his enchanted Gatorade. He would drain every drop just to enhance his own dark powers.
She had no doubt that her blood would not be lacing the Black Magic drug for sale on the streets—only an idiot like Marcellus would think as much. The dark mage didn’t have to make it agony for her, but it mattered little to him. He wanted her blood, and Marcellus wanted her to suffer. Killing her painlessly would be a mercy, but the dark mage was indifferent to her agony.
“No.” Aislinn refused to cooperate with the dark mage’s plans for her blood. Out on the streets, every vampire knew it was better to die than to be taken alive. “You want my blood? You’ll have to do better than that, bald Gandalf.”
She used the white-hot blood rage to drive out the wooziness in her mind. With a supreme effort, she fought against the dark magic. Managing to tear her left arm free from the clawed needle which ruthlessly ripped off a small chunk of flesh, she broke the magical hold with her left hand and punched as hard as she could into the center of the dark mage’s chest, hoping to break his sternum and drive the shattered bone into his heart, stopping it. It was like ramming her fist into solid titanium. The bone cracked but did not break.
Marcellus slammed his hand into the restraints at Aislinn’s chest. The spikes bit so deeply, they were virtually embedded into her flesh now.
It didn’t matter. The dark magic surged back with a relentless power that had her feeling suffocated. Her vision was a stream of fuzzy images, blackness clouding the frame. She had no more fight in her.
“How much proof do you need that we saw this coming?” Marcellus gloated. “He’s warded, bitch.”
“Hold her still.” The dark mage ignored Aislinn’s futile attack, her pitiful rebellion, instead choosing to use magic to close the large, jagged gash in her forearm. It was almost ironic when he then placed the full-pronged needle back into the same, now-healed and flawless spot. There was a sizzling sound as flesh burned. Her flesh. The dark mage sealed the edges of her open arteries to the hypodermic needles at her neck and forearms.
“Let’s start again, shall we?”
She blacked out.
“There’s rosemary. That’s for remembering. Please remember, love. I’d give you some violets, flowers of faithfulness, but they all dried up when you died. But here’s daisies for you too, for loyal love, and innocence and purity. And here’s rue—it symbolizes repentance. They call it the merciful Sunday flower, though there is no mercy in what I have planned. I place it here for a different reason. I should have been there to protect you, sister. Forgive me for my weakness. But I will not fail in avenging you.”
Aislinn was perched high among the bony slopes where the soil was poor, but the blackthorn hedges grew wild. The moonlight glinted on her alabaster skin as she placed the fragile flowers around the base of the funeral pyre and bent to kiss the waxy forehead of her sister’s corpse. Kayne had left her there to mourn. He scoffed at her sentimentality.
What was the use of pining for the ephemeral world when she had transcended mortality?
He could not understand. He did not know love. He only knew wrath.
There was a frightening ferocity in his anger. His followers spoke in hushed tones of his blood rage. He had passed this onto his disciples—she had experienced it herself. A red veil of rage descended upon her after her turning. It accompanied an overwhelming desire to attack, maim, kill, and destroy her people for their collective sins against her and her sister. All rational and human thought vanished. Suddenly, she was out of control. The image of her sister’s throat slashed wide open assaulted her mind. She thought of her clann, jeering and crying out for her sister’s blood, waiting for the moment of her death with savage expectation. And she struck them down like a cruel goddess meting out justice.
She had dared damnation for vengeance, and Kayne had made her a monster. But she could not leave her old life behind without laying her sister’s body to rest.
It was Callum who had fled with her sister’s body, cradling it in his strong embrace after the Druids had cut her throat and departed their village. She remembered his face as a pale mask. He howled in horror, overcome by what he had done. Then he’d sprinted for the shadows on the eastern edge of the village, still clutching Sorcha’s lifeless, doll-like form as if he would outrun the storm overhead.
But at the time, Aislinn had barely noticed. She was too drained of emotion to notice. Her hand had clutched the bright, silky rope of her sister’s hair as if it were the only thing that was holding her to the Earth.
There was nothing. She fell into a pit of nothingness, and she felt nothing.
Until Kayne had turned her into one of his children.
Later, after almost a week had passed in crazed grief, she finally had tracked her sister’s body by its sickly stench of death, like rotting flowers in the summer heat. Beside where her sister lay, next to the stream where Callum had first declared his love, the ghastly gray of her sister’s waxy skin matched his ashen, lifeless face. There was no need to seek vengeance on her sister’s fiancé—he had taken his own life, unwilling to live without Sorcha and filled with the same guilt, horror, and grief over Sorcha’s death as herself.
But it was she who was filled with vengeance. And now she continued to stoke the fire of her rage against her sister’s murderers so that it would be the flame that would burn them all to ash.
“It is time.” Kayne had returned.
She heard the roar of a wild animal but did not turn around to face the village. Flames rushed the wattle-and-daub circular buildings, raced over dry grasses, and started at the penned and fenced paddocks where the slaughtered livestock decomposed. Within seconds, a great flaming wall sprang up, rising to the night sky, a whirl of fire blazing behind them. The fire spread across the village in violent waves, devouring the dead and rotting human bodies in its path—those she had once named friend or kin.
As the smoke and the fire rose, she looked over at Kayne. His midnight-blue eyes shone piercingly in the darkness.
He held aloft
the torch he carried in one pale hand.
Against her will, she turned toward the village and saw a lighted ridge of flame as patches of tinder from the burning buildings fell all around them.
The fire bellowed like an animal unleashed, savage and feral.
Let the village burn. Let them all burn.
She tossed the torch onto the funeral pyre, lighting Sorcha’s and Callum’s bodies, united in death as they should have been in life.
“By the blood of Kayne, I will avenge you, sister. I promise.”
Without hesitating or turning back for one last glance in farewell, she strode away from the blaze which erupted behind her, lighting the night sky with a false dawn.
It’s time. Wake up, Aislinn.
Her eyelids fluttered. Consciousness filtered back like tiny air bubbles surfacing from the darkness of a bottomless pool, but the light seemed so very far away, beyond her reach.
Aislinn, wake up.
But she resisted the voice. Sleep seemed so attractive, so tempting, so human.
Vampires did not sleep. When they awakened to their new life, reborn as immortals, there was no necessity to sleep. Maybe it was an evolutionary imperative, but vampires remained awake. It was the price of survival. Children of the moon, they began each new day at night. They left the safety of the coven every night to hunt and patrol their territory.
They could slumber if they wished. Hibernate in a mummified state. When time and life held no meaning for them any longer, an endless Groundhog Day, they could sleep. But it wasn’t the peaceful, revitalizing sleep of mortals. That time had passed for them. They were no longer human.
It was an irony that being immortal wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. It was a huge disappointment to learn they had to share their sandpit with the other kids, humans and shapeshifters. And then there were the other realms and species. No one had told them what to expect before they’d been reborn. Though to be fair, they had some knowledge of the other species, but these were considered the stuff of fairy tales and legends—not real—just some nonsense parents told to sleepy children when they were tucked into bed at night to make them stay in bed and go to sleep.
