Chapter Text
The headache hits while he is halfway downstairs.
“Mr Winters,” comes Agnes’ voice, “the antibiotics were in the fridge after all. How did you know?”
“Guessed.” Ethan rolls the pad of his finger against his temple. “Donna Beneviento would have been ill all the time. Makes sense that she’d have antibiotics stored away.”
Pounding—pounding, against the back of his eyes, and the front of his forehead. Pounding, like a fist against a door. What’s inside his skull, and under his jacket, is a chimeric mass of malleable fungal material that for all intents and purposes should conform only to what is immediately useful to the organism named Ethan Winters, and yet the thing that should be his head is still hurting.
“Fevers are settling.” Through the rain-shimmer of his vision, he sees a figure clasp the hand of another lying on a mattress in the living room. “I think they’ll pull through.”
He nods, managing a smile through gritted teeth as he drags himself into the kitchen. The hubbub of activity fades away as he closes the door.
Ethan stumbles to the table, as the noise builds in his head. Abstractly, he knows it shouldn’t be happening. Daniela Dimitrescu had tortured him beyond what a human being could possibly endure, kicking the goalpost of his pain tolerance well into the stratosphere, and yet here he is, hunched over a kitchen table over a headache.
The kitchen drawer slides open as his fingers fumble with the handle. What am I doing? The vestigial reflex of a flesh-and-blood man reaching for the bottle of ibuprofen that used to rattle in the drawer of his own kitchen, back in his old life.
The kitchen floor is slick with grease, the air saturated with the scent of broiled meat and sauteed vegetables. A small mountain of pots and pans wallows in a soapy ocean in the sink, the crusted remains of edible food now a fertile breeding ground for the bacteria drifting in the air like nomadic hordes. It is familiar. It is sickening. It is—
False.
The kitchen floor is slick with blood, the air saturated with the scent of innards spilled out onto the kitchen table and leaking their gastric juices onto the tiles underneath. The bodies are draped over the stove, limp arms cradling the piles of plates and pans on the counter. Their heads, heads—stacked in a heap in the sink, glassy eyes staring—
Ethan’s vision goes white. He reels, as the shock of the punch overcomes the pain of his headache. His arm dangles as his knuckles ache.
What—
It’s not there. The kitchen is as it always was. He turns to the mirrored surface of the cabinet. A split-second, as his eye seeks the fangs and trisected face of a hellish creature—seeing nothing apart from his own pale visage, and the quivering eyes.
—How utterly cliche, Ethan.—
He stumbles. The edge of the table saves him from falling.
“No—” he manages to murmur.
—Did you think you’d only see me in a mirror? Like a demon from a shitty, self-published paperback novel?—
The door was locked. Is locked. His mind is his, and his alone. And yet.
—I don’t need mirrors. Or dreams. Or sticky notes on the fridge. I’m inside your head, Ethan. I—am you.—
“Rake.” He steadies himself, as the headache recedes ever so slightly. “Was wondering when you’d show up.”
—Save the bravado. I know when you’re putting up a front.—
Yes. But his mind distinguishes something else—a gap between Rake’s animalistic heartbeat and the surface of his own psyche. A chasm, or a wall. Walls can be reinforced.
“What happened down there,” Ethan wheezes softly, “that wasn’t personal. You know that.”
—I don’t care that you fucked me over. It’s just business. That’s the Ethan I know; hell, I would have been disappointed had you not.—
“You seemed pretty intent on tearing me a new asshole yourself.” The image of Rake charging at him, fangs and claws gleaming, is seared into his mind.
—Like you said. Nothing personal.—
Ethan snickers. “So what brings you to these parts of my brain? Why do you care?”
—I care that you went all this way to save a bitch that you absolutely should have killed.—
“Donna Beneviento chose to save the maids. That was our third option.” Ethan inhales, as the pressure in his skull eases up even more. It seems Rake’s presence can exert physical pain on him, or communicate—but not both. “She did the right thing. I did the right thing.”
—Right? Right according to what? What possible standard of morality could apply to something like you, Ethan? What tether to humanity is still holding you down?—
“We’ve been through this. I’m doing things my way.” Ethan stands straight, staring his reflection in the eye in the clouded mirror. He briefly ponders if Rake would be able to hear his inner thoughts without speaking them out loud—no, no. The bigger the distance, the better.
“I’m not going to take someone’s life while they’re helpless. It doesn’t matter how many times you go off about what I am.” Ethan keeps his voice slightly above a whisper, while listening for anyone behind the kitchen door. “I might be a monster, but this tangle of mold and tentacles is drawing a line in the sand, and I’m not crossing that line. I have to have that line. Without it—”
Without it, I lose what’s left of the human that could be worthy of raising my daughter.
—Helpless, Ethan?—
A mental shiver, like a repressed laugh. And the image of Donna Beneviento flashes in his mind.
—You know, I have to admit that I’m not the smart one. I thought that it was stupid of this Miranda bitch to leave one of her biggest assets in a place with next to no defences. We didn’t even hesitate to sink our teeth into the bait.—
“Bait?” Ethan repeats.
—Donna Beneviento isn’t a conduit. She’s a landmine, laid in our path. And she’s right under our foot, ready to blow us both away.—
“Fuck are you talking about?” he grunts.
—How do you think I managed to break through? Claw my way out of the part of your brain that’s locked away?—
An open door. No, not opened—torn, hanging by a single hinge.
—It’s Lady Beneviento. Specifically, the toxin that hijacked your brain and nearly sent you into a coma. She might have taken control of the Moroaice, saved the maids. But she’s secreting that same toxin from every pore of her body—and pouring it into your nervous system.—
Ethan’s retort never leaves his lips. His hands pat the lining of his jacket—and the brass key inside the pocket.
Victory. That’s what he felt, once he ascended the staircase to her room. Victory—and he lowered his guard.
—Think about how perfectly she was set up. A damsel in distress, saved by your hand. Keeping you talking, breathing the air inside a closed room. Enticing you to touch her and make skin contact. And every time you leave, there’s always something to draw you back soon—too soon, to build up immunity. A promise of more information. A tickle at your misplaced sense of fucked-up compassion. And let’s face it, she’s not that bad-looking, is she?—
“You said my body was immune to the spores.” Ethan glares into his own eyes in the mirror. “That’s why I could fight it off. Take control. Get into her brain.”
—Yes, and that was then. Now, she’s adapted to your immunity. She probably doesn’t even know she’s doing it—her body’s coming up with newer iterations of the toxin each time you go back to her. Wearing down the defences of your mind. You’re both locked in an arms race, and right now she’s a little bit ahead.—
“That’s why you’re up here now,” Ethan hisses, gritting his teeth. “The walls are down, and you’re crawling up through the breach. Invading my brain again.”
—WRONG!—
The force explodes behind his eyes. Ethan flails in the grey of blindness, his hands fumbling for the wall. As his vision creeps back, the image of a snarling monstrous face sears itself into his retinas.
—You keep getting it wrong. Donna Beneviento is the one breaking your mind down. Leaving it open to suggestion. Maybe even direct control by Mother Miranda.—
A mental snarl, like nails on a chalkboard.
—I’m not the invader, Ethan; I’m your fucking immune system. And you need to let me back in.—
“And trust you to stay quiet, at the back of my head? Pop up only when I need some helpful tips for surviving impending death?” Ethan exhales, fighting off the thunderclap in his skull. “Well, thanks, but no thanks. I’ve seen exactly what your idea of sharing my headspace is.”
The chasm widens. Rake’s presence is beginning to recede. “I can feel it. Like you said, I’m adapting to the toxin—” her toxin, he almost says, “—and that means the door is closing. You’re not staying here.”
—I know.— Its disembodied voice begins to fizzle, as if overlaid with radio static. —Your body’s immunity means I only get to do this once. Once your cells have adapted to this iteration of the toxin, the door will be locked. For good.—
Ethan pauses, staring at his own dilated pupils in the mirror. “Why are you telling me this?”
—Because you keep thinking that it’s a good thing. Make no mistake, Ethan. Without me to protect you, you’re easy pickings for Donna Beneviento—and Mother Miranda.—
An image flashes in his brain. His body shifting and mutating, an endlessly-fluid construct of claws and tentacles and all manner of biological monstrosities.
—Look at what you can do now with your body, now that you really understand what you are. The most powerful bioweapon this side of the Carpathians—and you’re about to hand the keys over to Lady Beneviento.
By now, the creature’s presence is a fraying strand clinging to the edge of his consciousness, diminishing each moment along with what remains of his headache.
—You want to win this thing, get your daughter back? I don’t care if you let me back in or not. Just do one simple thing. Get your claws out, go upstairs, and kill Donna Beneviento. Right this hour, right now. You want to be merciful, fine; I’m sure you’ll find a way. But do it. You need what’s in her head, and if you give her another chance to adapt her toxin, you’ve already lost.—
“I’ve lost when I decide to give up, and I most definitely won’t fucking do that,” Ethan replies. His heartbeat is slowing down, the flushing of his skin receding. “And if I fight, it’s going to be on my terms.”
—Then I’ll see you next time.— Rake’s voice—intent—is barely a whisper.
“Won’t be one. You said it yourself,” Ethan retorts, “you won’t be able to break out anymore.”
—I won’t have to.—
And he’s alone in the kitchen, staring down at the long crack down the edge of the table where his grip has fractured the wood. Staring, at the ten cruel talon-like claws sprouting from his knuckles.
The air wafting in from the half-open window is crisp and dewy with the scent of perspiring leaves and imminent sunrise. Ethan exhales, tasting the air passing between his lips; nothing heightens his alarm, nothing tastes out of the ordinary. Has Donna’s toxin dulled his senses—or is his mind wholly his, at least for now?
Donna?
And when did he start referring to her by her first name in his head?
Focus. Concentrate. Arrange priorities and tackle them. Donna Beneviento, whatever Rake says, is a minimal threat so long as he stays out of range. The best actionable piece of intelligence is the brass key in his coat, and the name of Salvatore Moreau. Unless, of course, he decides.
Consume, absorb, become.
What could he do with her abilities?
Speed, raw strength, and durability—those he already has, with the proviso of access to ample biomass; yet the debacle at Castel Dimitrescu proved that he could succumb to subtler threats that circumvented his ability to weather insane amounts of physical punishment.
But with Donna’s toxin?
His toxin?
The possibilities cascade in his mind as he parses the intricacies of her powers combined with his own. An image—Ethan in the midst of a seemingly-endless pack of lycans, slashing and tearing with his own fangs, all the while emanating a steady output of toxin from his pores. Those lycans closest to him that survive his claws suddenly go limp, their eyes blank—before turning on their heels and savaging their former packmates. At his command.
I’ll save Rose, with an army at my back.
A double-knock. When the door swings open, Ethan’s claws are flesh-and-blood fingers once more.
“Mr Winters? Are you okay?” It’s Magda, the young maid. She’s still wearing the same faded shirt and ill-fitting jeans that have been the few remnants of a life before the Dimitrescu nightmare, but her hair is now tied up in a ponytail. “You seemed unwell. I thought—I thought I should check up on you.”
“I’m good. Thanks. I appreciate the concern.” He spots the pistol—his pistol—tucked into the front of her jeans. “Been getting a lot of practice with that?”
Magda glances down, cheeks suddenly white. “Yes—yes. Agnes has been teaching me how to hold it properly, aim it, fire it. It’s not loaded,” she adds hastily. He doesn’t miss the twitch of her hand towards the firearm.
“Relax.” He can’t summon up any malice even if he wants to. “If I were you, and something like me was around, I’d definitely want to be armed. No hard feelings at all.”
“No—no. I don’t think that. We don’t think that.” Magda shakes her head a little too vigorously. “It’s just—I want to see you, up close.”
“Well—tada.” He gestures vaguely at his face. “Plain old Ethan Winters. In better lighting this time.”
Magda inhales, her lower lip quivering, and he is suddenly struck by the memory of her panic in the tunnels. When she realised that her sister was left behind in the castle—and most likely already dead, or in the process of being killed.
Ethan sighs. “Magda. I’m sorry about your sister.” She flinches, as if from a knife-wound, and he hurries to add: “There was nothing you or I could have done. There wasn’t any time. You would all have died if we had turned back.”
Dimly, he wonders if her sister—Nadia, that was her name, right?—was already dead by the time they had made their egress via the passageway in the cellar. None of her potential ends would have been pleasant, if his own torture at the hands of Daniela Dimitrescu was any benchmark—restraint is clearly not one of the tenets of House Dimitrescu. A second thought—if Bela Dimitrescu, the turncoat and architect of their escape, had murdered Nadia herself to cover their tracks.
Somehow, Ethan finds that hard to believe. And, curiously, isn’t surprised by his disbelief.
Magda looks at her feet, a hand cupping her mouth. Ethan doesn’t interrupt, not until she lifts her eyes and whispers, “why?”
“It was either that, or let all of you die.” Ethan cushions his words in the softest tone he can manage. “Bela made the call, and honestly—if there had been a way to save your sister, she would have done it. But—she didn’t. We didn’t. You’re not to blame, Magda.”
“No—” She shakes her head. A sniff, and a clearing of her throat, as she blinks the red from her eyes. “Why do it? Why save us at all?”
She massages her arms nervously, her voice cracking as she raises it above a whisper. “You could have left us to die. Escaped on your own. It would have been faster, easier.” She coughs. “The why—it’s important to me.”
Ethan raises his eyebrows, but stops himself from interrupting. Magda seems to want to keep talking.
“I grew up in a poor part of Estonia. Ever since I was old enough to remember, I was surrounded by men—men who always wanted something. Always, behind every action, every word, was a why, that I wasn’t supposed to know or ask about. Only accept.” She drops her hands by her side, the pale skin of her forearms now chafed red. “When you left us in those tunnels—and came back, as that thing—I thought I saw your why, clear as day. We were ballast, to slow down the ghouls in the tunnels so you could slip through.”
“I came back,” Ethan interjects.
“You came back,” she accedes. “If you were a man, I’d laud you for your bravery. But you are not—and I must wonder. I wonder if there are more games to be played, more purposes you are hiding. I wonder—if you will ever reveal your why.”
Her heartbeat quickens, and his heightened senses pick up the subtle contracture of her hamstrings—the urge to run, barely suppressed. Ethan inhales, blinks, and chooses his next words.
“My why—is my daughter.” He flicks a strand of dust from his fingers, peeled off from the table. “I thought it was about saving her at all costs, being willing to do whatever it takes. Now, I realise that it’s something more. It’s about me.”
Rake’s words hiss in his ears as his thoughts organise coherently for perhaps the first time. “There was a man called Ethan Winters who loved and cherished Rosemary with all his heart, who was human and wanted to be nothing else. And now there’s me, this thing of flowing grey fungus and claws and teeth, that disobeys all laws of biology and physics to do whatever it wants. But it can’t—I can’t—because if it does, then the last bit of Rose’s father will be gone forever.”
Magda’s eyes are wide; he has her full attention. “I need to draw a line in the sand. I need to choose to do the things that Ethan Winters would have done. Helping people, choosing the hard way, always going forward. It’s what’s left. Otherwise, the thing that finds Rose won’t be much better than the one I’m trying to save her from.”
“Then, the line is what makes the man,” Magda murmurs.
He nods. “I’ve seen what happens otherwise.”
“You are sure you have control, then?” Magda licks her lips nervously. “Over this thing that you are?”
Ethan crosses his arms, exhaling softly. “I can’t be sure of much of anything lately. I talk about a line in the sand, because that’s what it feels like right now. Like I’m standing on sand, always shifting, never sure. But some things are solid, and I plan to hold on to them.” He looks at Magda. “I won’t let any of you get hurt. I promise that.”
The fear has not faded from her gaze. But creeping in, round the edges of her eyes, is defiance. Simple, stoic, the common quality of a hard people born from a hard life. “I have heard the same promise before. From dozens of men, dozens of times.” She nods tersely. “Maybe you will be the first one to actually keep it.”
Ethan dips his chin. “I’ll try.”
Magda’s brow furrows suddenly. “You have always talked about your daughter. Rose. About how she’s all you have left in this world.” She pauses. “What happened to her mother?”
“Her mother?” he repeats.
“The mother of your daughter. Your wife.” She squints. “If you don’t mind me—”
“Wife.” Ethan mulls the word. He is a father, with a daughter, his flesh and blood. He must have a wife. The idea rolls around in his mind, smooth, without edges—nothing triggers alarm, nothing betrays a flaw in the semantic logic of his brain.
He is aware of Magda’s breathing, slow and deliberate. Her anticipation at his answer; her growing unease at his lack of one.
“Who?” he mutters, under his breath. “When?”
And why are the edges of his vision suddenly blurred?
The noise draws a yelp from Magda. Ethan barely stops himself from unsheathing his claws again. Both pairs of eyes turn to the door, at the pile of shattered plates on the floor just past the threshold. And at the maid, pale-faced and eyes wide, backing away slowly from something upwards and to the right.
Ethan steps towards the door. “Stay behind me,” he says. Magda, grim-faced, pulls the pistol from the front of her jeans, and snaps a magazine into its well.
The living room has fallen silent. Ethan pushes past a pair of terrified maids, clutching each other with trembling fingers. His body struggles against his restraint, eager to shift into the familiarity of utilitarian violence. To his right, a maid clutches a rosary, reciting a prayer under her quivering breath.
He rounds the corner, and turns to confront the threat.
Instead, he stares at the staircase, and sighs.
“Fuck me.” He strides forward. “I told her to stay inside.”
“You are something that shouldn’t exist. A mass of insects held together by electricity. Or at least, you used to be.”
Bela presses herself against the wall of the corridor, fingers creeping like spider-legs over the cracks in the brickwork.
“That means you’re sensitive to electromagnetic fields.”
Her skin tingles as her hand passes over the gap between two loose bricks. Bela pauses.
“Use your senses, and find what I told you to find.”
Any moment now. Any moment, before Ethan Winters’ escape is discovered, and all hell breaks loose. Her task seems insurmountable, trapped as it is within the margins of such a narrow timeframe, but Bela knows better than to give in to panic or helplessness.
She pulls the brick loose, pushing her hand gingerly into the narrow rectangular space in the wall. A million phantom ants swarm over her palm, as her skin puckers. There.
The wire is loose, dangling from an orifice drilled through the ceiling just behind the wall. From the little she understands of electrical circuits, fortresses built six hundred years ago do not tend to lend themselves well to modern wiring. The paths of the wires would be haphazard, boring through areas where the walls or ceilings are weakest. She looks up at the bare ceiling of the corridor, mapping out the path of the naked wire. The storeroom of the upper floor, and the broom closet just beside it. Directly above that—her mother’s bedroom.
She closes her eyes, imagining the layout of the rooms of the floors above, threading the possible path of the wire that would lead to her mother’s telephone—that precious source of information.
Yes. Bela withdraws her hand from the hole in the wall. Now, she moves with purpose—down an adjacent hallway, and a roughly-hewn flight of stairs leading further down. She knows where to go: a broom closet lying out of the way, partially hidden by an alcove—a narrow hiding space from which she had once dragged a maiden, kicking and screaming, to be bled dry for the vats.
I can’t remember her name.
The closet is half-open; she tosses the few rotten broomsticks out, and squeezes in. The ceiling above the closet had long since been worn away by nearly five centuries of water damage. Above, a narrow shaft yawns into the upper stories of the castle, crisscrossed by the faint glints of water pipes and metal struts. The buzzing signal is louder now. Here.
Bela reaches for the wall, pulls herself up, and begins to climb.
The claustrophobic space gives her just enough room to move her elbows. Progress is slow, but the shoddy eroded brickwork provides ample handholds to aid her ascent. Halfway, she pulls the hood of her dress over her nose, shielding herself from the shower of dust dislodged from above.
The droning sensation over her skin is so intense that she no longer needs to actively feel for it. A colony of ants swarms over her skin, worming under her dress, throbbing with a rhythm that sets her teeth on edge. Hazily she recalls the tiresome voice on the electrical device speaking about ‘alternating current,’ and while she had tuned out most of his chattering, the undulating frequency he had described matches the ebb-and-flow of the vibrations upon her skin. I’m close.
Her cheek brushes against something thin, and the vibrations explode into a cacophony. Bela checks her ascent, reaching upwards cautiously to find a rubbery cord hanging loosely in the void. She traces its path to the main body of cords visible through a hole in the wall, snaking up a parallel shaft towards her mother’s bedroom.
“Don’t bother trying to connect the wires manually. This bug is designed to be idiot-proof.” The loathsome voice rings in her memory. “EM induction will do the trick. Just attach it close enough to the wiring, and the software will filter out interference to get what we need from.”
Bela extends her legs as she presses her back against the wall, bracing her feet against the opposite wall. She fishes out the small metal disc, peels off the adhesive backing, and presses it firmly against the tangled knot of wires.
The ear.
The second piece. She retrieves the sleek electronic device from the makeshift satchel fashioned out of her shawl, and detaches the metallic stylus from a groove along its long edge. Stretching out her fingers to the opposite wall, she finds a gap between the bricks directly opposite the tangle of wires, and jams it in.
The eardrum.
Finally, she grasps the rectangular device in her hand, and taps the smooth black screen.
The nerve.
The screen comes to life, bathing the narrow tunnel in garish blue light; Bela is suddenly aware of how much dust chokes the air in the musty hollow space. The screen lights up with a series of illegible letters and numbers in small print, followed by a message in larger print: CONNECTION ESTABLISHED. AUDIO FIDELITY 84 PERCENT.
Bela taps the screen.
“MOTHER MIRANDA I MUST INSIST—”
Her heart slams into her ribs as her mother’s voice explodes from thin air. The rectangular device slips from her sweat slick hand and her fingertips—just—close around it in time. Her thumb bumps against a protrusion on its side; suddenly, her mother’s voice is clamped off by silence.
Volume: 0
Bela swallows, pushing her heart from her throat back down into her chest, as her fingers grip the glowing device. Her mother had been speaking, her voice emanating from the electrical device much like that of the braggart whose instructions she had begrudgingly followed. Which means—which means—success.
She glances down at the screen; the undulating waves of parallel lines mean nothing to her. Fumbling with the side of the device, she finds a pair of small knobs, and bumps the topmost one. Her mother’s voice re-emerges, now scarcely above a whisper.
“—we have done all that duty demands of us, and even more!” The tone of her mother’s voice is unfamiliar. Not a matriarch commanding—but a subordinate, imploring.
A pause. And then a reply, in the coldest voice she had yet heard. “And what would you have me do?”
Mother Miranda. The sound of her voice seems to plunge the temperature within the narrow shaft even lower.
“I ask for us to be honoured, as we deserve.” This tone does not suit her mother. Not one bit. “Grant the boon that I have requested, all these years. You know my loyalty is yours—allow me to serve you better, Mother Miranda.”
The countess of House Dimitrescu is a pillar of authority, not a supplicant at another’s feet—Bela can almost hear her mother holding her breath, in the silence that follows.
“Have I not granted you the desire of your heart?” Cold contempt, tinged with regal power. “Are your daughters not my gift to you?”
Bela’s breath cuts off, as she grips the device in numb hands.
“Were they not everything you dreamed of? Have they not served your every need, Alcina?”
Her mother interjects. “Yet, so many years ago, there was—”
“By your own fault.” The goddess sounds furious for the first time. “Do not dare lay your failure at my feet. That indulgence I will not grant.”
“I understand—yes, Mother Miranda. Forgive me.” Her mother backpedals. A serpentine hiss—the voice on the device had warned of this. Fluctuations in the strength of the signal. “It was never my intention—I remedied that error. And we have served you faithfully since.”
“Not faithfully enough,” Mother Miranda says. “What is this I hear about an intruder from the outside world?”
Her mother pauses. Bela can almost hear the fingers clenching around the receiver of the ornate black phone.
“He has been dealt with, Mother Miranda. A foolish man-thing, like many before him.” The confidence creeps back into her mother’s voice, as her refined enunciation drips from each syllable. “We saw fit to bleed him dry. I will personally deliver you a cask of his blood—the best vintage I have yet to sample.”
“Yet you did not see fit to inform me.” Accusatory. Sanctimonious. “My instructions were clear. Kill all your castle maids, secure the village, and ensure all intruders are killed on sight. Who is this interloper who managed to escape your purge?”
Meekly, quietly, her mother responds. “He called himself Ethan Winters. Said he was in search of his daughter.”
Silence is merely the absence of noise, the gap between spoken words. Yet the silence that falls—Bela is sure the silence drips with venom.
“Where is this man?” Mother Miranda asks in a growl.
“The dungeons, Mother Miranda. Impaled upon a stake, being bled dry.” Her mother’s tone is upbeat. She has yet to sense the danger that Bela—eavesdropping through the phone line—can sense with every screaming nerve in her ears. The goddess is enraged.
“And who was the one who captured him? Who failed to butcher him on sight?”
Her mother is silent.
“Answer me, Alcina.”
The answer emerges from reluctant lips. “Bela. My eldest.”
The sound of her own name drives her heart into panic. Bela’s limbs creak in the darkness, stiff and numb, as she adjusts her grip on the brickwork.
“I will come to your castle. Make ready for my arrival.” The cold voice is that of an executioner. “I will see your prisoner myself. And your daughter—I will have words.”
“Of course, Mother Miranda. Bela would be glad—” Her mother cuts herself off. “We would be honoured. The favour we ask—”
“The favour I will grant, Alcina,” replies the cruel goddess, “is the hope that once I have passed judgement, you and your house may still be whole.”
Click.
The device flashes. Duration of call: 4 mins 23 secs.
Mother Miranda had never visited Castel Dimitrescu in living memory. A goddess does not deign to grace the homes of her subjects—they, the lords of the village, were the ones who had to attend her court, held in a place that few knew about. For the supreme mother of the mountains to come here, here, to their home—
Death comes to hold court.
Bela stuffs the device back into the folds of the makeshift satchel, and begins her descent. All the while, wondering whether she has finally accomplished what so many sappers and rivals had failed to do all these years - to bring about the fall of House Dimitrescu.
Woman and man, crossing the snow. Struggling against hypothermia and the failing light, desperate for shelter.
The man stumbles; the woman’s weight is too much, after the hours of trekking with her in his arms. He kneels, whispers something. She whispers something back. He summons his strength and continues.
They struggle onwards, towards the distant refuge of the castle. Salvation for her—damnation for him.
He sees all this from a distance, his hands clutching a weapon capable of annihilating them both. He watches the woman as she clings like a limpet to a rock, the bandaged stump of her severed leg glistening a sickly bronze in the waning light. He sees all this without scope or lens, from nearly a mile off, with eyes keener than that of any mortal man.
Summon your sisters, he offers to the air. Summon your mother.
One of them was there, the day the light went out from his life. One of them had left their blood underneath the fingernails of his wife’s lifeless body; their breath, on her ribboned neck.
The pair keep moving, trudging through the snow, tracing a straight line up the white-topped hill with their progress.
There is time to watch and observe. To render judgement. The foolish priest would not agree with his method of dispensing justice, but perhaps he would soon no longer be present to argue his case. When the witches have drawn close, when the entirety of House Dimitrescu has arrived—then, it will be time.
And Leonardo Lupu has never wanted for patience.
Keep moving, Strigoi.
Keep moving for me.