Page 28 of Until the Heart Stops
“Stay near me. I’ll do my best to cover the scent.”
So that was the reason for the incense. Before Mateo had been turned, he’d been a seer in his village. Just as with many of us, a fraction of those abilities had come with him into this new life and he’d honed them unbeknownst to our maker until they were almost as strong as when he’d been alive. But his power was an imperfect skill. He’d known I’d gone to see Lilith, but hadn’t known the reason for my leaving. He knew that the incense he’d burned next to his robes would mask the intoxicating scent of Lilith rolling off me in waves within the ritual chamber, but did not know if it would be enough.
We stepped from the shadows, moving quickly up the next flight of stairs toward the obsidian double doors at the opposite end of the hall. Inside were hundreds of hearts, beating as one, and the scent of blood slipped through the crack in the door. It was so thick I wouldn’t have beensurprised if when Mateo tugged one door open a wave of it came crashing down on us.
Candles burned bright in their iron holders from the chandelier overhead and it took only a moment for my eyes to adjust. We slipped soundlessly into the crowd, tugging up our hoods and keeping our chins low. A low murmur of chanting covered the door closing behind us, but I hope my Mael wouldn’t notice had died when Mateo had been sent to find me.
Henry took one step to the side while Gabrielle did the same, allowing Mateo and I enough space to join the first rank of the circle surrounding the center of the room. My stomach twisted at the sight before me and I found myself reaching for Lilith in the bond.
Her sweetness settled the acid creeping up my throat, her sad acknowledgment of my reaching out to her a reassurance in and of itself. She couldn’t know the danger I’d put her in by going to her tonight, the danger I’d put her in when I’d sent her the phial of my blood.
The danger she was in merely by breathing.
But at each and every turn I could not resist her. For over a year I’d watched her after I first caught sight of her standing before her mother’s pyre. Her face had held the most perfect expression of grief. For the first time in over eight hundred years, I’d felt sorrow for someone outside of myself and my family. The selfish shroud I’d wrapped myself in had ripped irrevocably. That night I’d followed her from the shore where most of the city’s dead was burned, through the market next to the Rachay. She’d stood at the bridge for a long time, staring at the water below, and I did not need to read her mind to know what she was thinking.
It was the same thought I’d considered for years.
But unlike me, she had not attempted it. Instead, shehad finally given herself over to her grief, holding onto the iron railing as she sobbed. Her great intakes of breath had made me wince, blood tears had welled with the rasp in her throat and her pitiful moans. My hands had burned with the need to touch her, to wrap her in my arms and soothe what I knew I could not. I had not known who she was to me that first night; the scent of burning flesh and incense had overwhelmed me.
Only two nights later, while she sat at her small counter, staring off in a daze at the cobblestones, did I catch her scent.
Lilith Searah had derailed all my best-laid plans. But she had also given me so much more to fight for.
Almost every night for the next year I’d taken a moment to find her. I’d told myself it was merely to check on her, to ensure she was safe, that she had not succumbed. But I watched as her brittle smiles broke, as the furrow in her brow became a permanent fixture. I’d heard the discussions with her two friends over finances and her stubbornness at receiving any sort of assistance.
It was why I’d sent her the ink after watching her dilute the little she had left. The sight had been so heartbreaking I could not stand idly by any longer. I’d told myself it would be a gift and nothing more, but I hadn’t been able to stop myself from writing that small note, the plea for notice.
That night Henry had finally realized who it was I’d been pining after and everything had gone completely out of control. But it had also been the night I’d finally allowed her to see me and…goddess, I hadn’t been ready for her reaction, for the signs that instinctually she felt what was there between us.
Then the Vyenur, Noah Iyer, had been injured in a swarm and Adrienne Valois had caught the influenza thathad taken Lilith’s mother a year prior. Both would have been dead within days if I had not intervened, as they hid their true suffering from her.
She loved those two more than she loved herself. It had been easy enough to see that she clung to them like a raft within a storm. And so I had acted without thought, purchasing the items that would save them. Crossing Solange’s wards had been nothing, merely a small bit of blood with the promise I intended no harm upon her granddaughter. I’d left the gift with yet another note I couldn’t resist.
Mateo’s heel pressed down on my foot, hidden by our flowing black robes, and I blinked. The circle before us was not empty. A round stone table sat in the very center upon which a human woman lay, naked save for the diaphanous white gown leaving little to the imagination. Her curly black hair hung in ringlets off the side of the stone, olive skin flushed with the wine they’d given her.
The figures beside her were as grim as the tales my human mother had told me as a child. Seven figures clad in blood-red robes surrounded the woman, chanting in the old language. An offering to Keryes, the god of death, who they had turned to centuries ago, forsaking Amayah and her blessed night.
As one, their hands rose, as one, they tugged their hoods back, and as one, we all did the same. Here stood the seven members of the Covenant: Atticus, Balthazar, Juno, Iris, Darian, Hartley, and of course, my maker, Mael. Most believed the seven were equals, governing with an even hand, but they were wrong. The other six were merely strings within my maker’s elaborate web, pulled this way and that to create the image he desired.
He stood at the head of the table—for wherever he stood was always the head—his shock of white hairstreaming over his shoulders and down his back. Pure white, whereas mine held a hint of blonde. A silver dagger was clutched tight in one hand, similar to the one Lilith had wielded tonight, but larger, sharper, and much more deadly. He held it high above his head, his booming voice filling the room, the world even it seemed, with his declaration in the old language:
“Nochtuvar lan serang.”
Power and blood: the old sentiments twisted until they were unrecognizable.
Before the woman could do so much as move, he plunged the dagger into her heart. She screamed, hands flying up as if to pull it from her chest, but he was too precise. Blood poured from the wound, from her lips, running through the tunnels of the table and dripping onto the floor.
We watched in silence as her arms fell limp, hands hanging off the edge, and I forced myself to track the tears sliding from her temples into her hair. My throat clenched and I wished I could find the wall I’d built for centuries to hide behind, but I could not. I witnessed the horror as if it were the first time.
When I’d first been made, All Souls had not been this monstrosity. In fact, it had been so similar to the celebration with my human family I hadn’t batted an eye. But when I had been ninety-two years into this new life, Mael had a dream during his daylight hours that we would remove ourselves from our human past, our human weakness. A new world in which we would instead celebrate the power of our immortality.
The change had happened slowly, slow enough that by the time the first human was sacrificed, no one batted an eye. Not even me and my brothers, though even if we’d wanted to, we could not act against our maker. Gabriellehad been the one to realize the depravity and it was she who had pulled the wool from our eyes. One wouldn’t guess it now, not with the bland expression on her face, but I knew her well enough to see the anguish beneath.
Blood wept into the stones, the scent overpowering everything else, and it was a testament to Mael’s power that not a single vampire succumbed to their thirst. And at the very core of all of this, we knew was what it was: a display of the power Mael held over our people.
His attention slid deliberately toward the four of us and from the outside it must have appeared as if he was gazing upon his progeny with pride. We knew better. He had not made us out of love or loyalty. He had made us as a blacksmith might a sword: forged through fire, sharpened against stone. We were not his fledglings, not his children as I knew many considered those they made to be.
We were his soldiers, and unless he was stopped, we would be used to bring the other supernaturals within our world to their knees.
