Page 42 of Besieger
How did one say goodbye to the living… her throat tightened, and Silvio’s hand locked on her shoulder. He pushed her through the door, forcing her out of sight as Emerick moved next towards her mother. Out into the streets of snow and blood, and fireworks and drunken cheer.
“Do you want to see her?”
A hand wiped at the tears running down her face. She was crying, the rivulets of blood oozed from her eyes into her mouth, and dripped on the pages of the forgotten book in her lap. Mihaela jerked back from Emerick’s hand, but there was nowhere to go.
“Do you want to see her, theBasilissa?” he repeated, and his black eyes locked her in. The familiar pull and scrape against her mind no longer frightened her. He had taken that fear first.
In the same way he had taken all her memories and will.
“Yes,” Mihaela heard herself say.
“Then you should ask your father for permission.” TheComte’s smile widened, and she could see his teeth glisten with saliva.
MIHAELA, 2017
Mihaela’s stay with theBasilissaand thePatrikialeft her hungry for more. She had entered the Regent’s territory on a quest for answers, and had returned to Berlin reeling under the weight of the unknown. Vampires continued to be a mystery. Each territory and coven had its own set of peculiarities, often verging on the grotesque.
Passing through the familiar marble columns and halls of the Berlin Coven, Mihaela made her way up to Ingenuar’s study. TheBasilissa, old as she was, did not know how Ingenuar had been made, how he had come into being. Scarlett had described him asthe First of their kind. No one had come before him.
“So he just popped up into existence one day? Like the fish who walked out of the ocean billions of years ago?” Mihaela had flung her hands in the air, making the Greeks laugh.
“Orlike a mole he dug his way from the wet, warm embrace of the earth,” thePatrikiahad offered without a hint of seriousness, playing along with her guest’s theories.
Hunger.
It had been the hunger for blood that had driven all of them to crawl from the darkness and walk in the shadows of the living.
Back in Berlin, Mihaela revisited the archives and libraries, read the books with a fresh set of eyes, her mind readjusted to better accept, or reject, the knowledge. The German language no longer an obstacle, but a welcome lilt after spending so long abroad. Latin also helped; the little volume of Virgil’s poetry always tucked in her suitcase, its margins overcome with scribbles. On the back cover she had writtenMemento Amerigoas a reminder of his lessons. Mihaela hoped Emerick never saw the booklet and how horridly she had misspelled his name. Or how shaky and broken her handwriting looked.
Learning the Coven’s history and its masters was impossible, Ingenuar had not kept a written record. At a loss of how vampirescame to be, Mihaela first travelled to Greece and was now preparing for Turkey. While in Athens she had received a letter from theSultana—she would allow for Mihaela to visit, but only if she was alone, and she must not bring anything back with her. Like a traveller in the fae-land she must not touch or disturb this enchanted realm, or she would answer to a faceless ruler.
“I hardly see you anymore,” Ingenuar welcomed her into his study, closing the door after her. Her father was wearing a suit in the usual red for him; the tones reminded her of rust and red wine dried at the bottom of a glass.
He had lit the fireplace, and dimmed the overhead lights so the room had comfortable but dry warmth. His desk was littered with papers; a laptop screen flickered. Mihaela stopped herself from making a comment: most vampires either rejected technology entirely or tried to incorporate some aspects of it into their routine.
She was confident that she did not want to receive texts or emails from Ingenuar, or anyone else from the Coven. The only reason she owned a mobile phone was convenience, there was no one she could call. If she needed to speak to another vampire she used the mind gift. Sometimes she forgot and did the same with mortals. The servants at the covens were used to these intrusions, but humans on the streets were not. She needed to control her impulses better. Her vampire brethren had assured her that in time she would grow strong and measure her vampiric gifts. But Mihaela was already strong. And she had been from the day Ingenuar gave her his blood; it took her years to realise how different she was from the others. How unnatural.
The All Father ushered her to a pair of armchairs, blessedly away from the fireplace, and Mihaela sat down.
“Has any vampire ever made a deal with a devil?” she asked straight away.
Ingenuar’s eyes grew wide so suddenly and with such genuine confusion that Mihaela almost laughed. From all the vampires she met, he continued to be the one with the most animated, mosthuman reflexes and expressions. And to think he was responsible for creating all of them—these stone-like creatures with faces frozen in caricatures of humanity.
The All Father composed himself and sat down, crossing his legs. “Are you having a crisis of faith? With all your recent excursions I would not be surprised if you were off to Mecca next.” His hands gripped the armrests of the chair as he frowned. “Or are you having trouble feeding? You can drink blood without killing, I have taught you this.”
“What? No. Look—” Mihaela was too exhausted from prolonging the truth. She also knew Ingenuar could easily get it out of her if he wanted to.
She told him about her devil. Feeling overzealous, Mihaela did not want to share Astra’s name, referring to her only asa devil. A fiend who had promised Mihaela to grant all her wishes, and Mihaela had accepted without hesitation, thinking it was all a joke, a bad flirtation. They had shaken hands, and Astra’s mouth on hers had tasted heaven-sent.
The more she talked, the more vampiric Ingenuar became. She noticed a shift in his features, those so human and mobile lines now stood frozen; the eyes studied her, trying to see through her.
“A devil? What did he look like?”
“He?”
Mihaela had gotten that often about Astra, this strange shift in perception as if the speaker was seeing something or someone different from how the lady of hell presented herself. But she had not referred to Astra as a ‘she’ or ‘he’, nor had Ingenuar seen Astra. Astra had never met the All Father, as far as Mihaela knew.
“The devils of my homeland had many names,” Ingenuar ignored her question. His face had hardened like stone. It was the first time she was seeing him as he was meant to be, like the rest of them—inhuman and appalling. “They played tricks on villagers and milkmaids; they stole goats and sheep. The onesyou should be wary of, we calleddraugr. Petty, evil creatures. I know of demons and devils, but I have never seen one. It is extraordinary that a vampire so young, and of my bloodline, should have a demon do her bidding.”
