Page 67 of Besieger
Felivar tapped against the glass and wondered what it might feel like to have an actual reflection. His body was liquid mercury, moving at its own mercy, threatening to spill through the blurred lines of his flesh. At his feet, Ingenuar gurgled, his windpipe torn. Felivar narrowed his eyes, concentrating on the tissue and muscle and willed them to collapse together with the satisfying crunching sound of breaking glass.
His son had outlived his usefulness. Ingenuar had lost his appetite for blood, for life, for rule. From a guiding hand of the undead, he had withered into a dry branch, barren and shivering. Felivar thought that the news of a sibling would invigorate his son. Instead, Ingenuar had written to the Regents; one letter had already found its way to theMarquis. Where were the other two? What did the summons to theBasilissaand theSultanasay? Felivar would gnaw at his nails, if he could.
Ever-diligent Silvio had been the first to answer the call. Felivar contemplated going to theMarquis’ chamber and searching for the letter, but why would the Regent carry it back with him? It was too late… there was no time to act, to find out what his son had done. What plot had he set in motion? “Gather them all to rule. Gather them all to end it,” Ingenuar used to say, slurring the words like a curse, like a promise.
The remaining mirrors in the room began to crack and splinter under Felivar’s fury, like a vein running over a frozen lake, picking at where the ice was most fragile. The shards rained down and piled onto the ground and across Ingenuar’s body.
Earlier tonight, his daughter had come seeking an audience with the All Father. He had not seen her since the night of her making. She looked strong, the Blood had acclimatised beautifully in her.
Felivar was tired. Tired of walking between the planes, of compelling flesh to gather and cling to a skeleton that did not exist. Bone marrow and plasma conjured from air and sustainedby the force of his will. Exhaustion marked his features; it dimmed the flame in his eyes and made him wonder, belatedly, if he had been wrong to tear out Ingenuar’s throat. The irony of using a sliver of glass to cut him open and release the Blood he had gifted Ingenuar centuries ago. His son’s hand twitched, the fingers desperate to hold on to Felivar’s leg and pull.
“This is how I found you and this is how I leave you,” Felivar clicked his tongue, the movement made him ache.
A glutton, the demons called him.
He had shed his name aeons ago. The mask he wore now was of his own choosing—a name stolen, a face borrowed.
He would have to start anew. Rebuild the Coven with whatever pieces the All Father had left.
Musing over Ingenuar’s still twitching form, Felivar did not hear the door open and close. There were people moving about out in the hall, but someone had stepped inside, breaking his contemplation. Felivar narrowed his eyes in the direction of the new figure. It took him a moment to recognise Silvio. He was not used to seeing theMarquisfrom this angle, dressed in grey and sepia.
Of the three Regents he was most fond of Silvio, the appetites theMarquisnurtured were closest to thedraugr’s own. Felivar liked what he saw in the face now taking on an expression of confusion and scorn. Yet the Regent did not move to strike or rush to aid the All Father. His green eyes reflected Felivar, confining him for a moment in their mercy, until Silvio took a step forward and dipped his hands into the blood pooled around Ingenuar’s head. The blood had paled in the candlelight to the same colour as Felivar’s burning eyes.
Felivar regarded Silvio kneeling before him amid the ruins of ambition, and smiled. Felivar needed a new vessel, someone who could achieve what Ingenuar had failed to accomplish. Neither of his offspring was strong enough to endure gazing upon him. One had shrunk from him like a child scolded by its father, and the other barely had the time to fix him in the dark. But here stoodSilvio, his eyes took in all of Felivar’s form, frowning, trying to make out the figure before him.
When you have starved for so long,Marquis, all you can see is hunger.Felivar smiled; a strange fondness blossomed in his chest.
Felivar and Ingenuar had tried time and time again, failing to bring back the dead. Of all the vampires in court Silvio had the potential: he had brought his lover back through the veil; Felivar saw the memory written in Silvio’s blood. Emerick dying, Emerick crawling out of the earth… Silvio had always been hungry, mad with need… Now Felivar wanted to feed that need. Make it swell and fester.
“And only a glutton can sate another glutton’s hunger,” Felivar tipped theMarquis’chin with a taloned finger, and saw the slow formation of his reflection in Silvio’s eyes.
PART II: ROMULUS CRAWLED
CHAPTER SEVEN
VICTOR, 1944
WOLFGANG SCHWARZSCHILD HAD NEVER raised a hand to his wife, Elke. He did not need to beat her to break her. Victor and his older brother, Tobias, grew up eating their meals around a dinner table where their grandfather, the old and wizened Dietmar, sat at the head, while his cruel eyes followed his daughter-in-law around the room. He inspected every dish, every plate, how she arranged the silver cutlery and the glasses, serving him and her husband first, before she moved on to the children.
Victor’s mother did not sit at the other end of the table—no. Not even Wolfgang had earned the honour of occupying the place opposite his father. For twelve long years the chair had stood empty, wearing the imprint of Hildegard, Victor’s late grandmother.
As a child, and later when he returned home from the Western Front, Wolfgang took his meals to the right of his father. Across from him, on Dietmar’s left, sat Tobias, while Victor occupied the chair beside his brother. Victor expected to find his mother opposite him, next to her husband, yet there she was, in the corner of his eyes, half-hidden, eating in silence by the empty chair. Across from other empty chairs.
A copy of theVölkischer Beobachter[13] lay folded next to Wolfgang’s plate. The news was optimistic: the Party had matters under control, the front page assured them. Following Victor’s gaze, Tobias frowned at the newspaper and kicked his brother under the table. Victor’s grandfather and father might have fought and bled on the front line, but he did not trust them regarding the actual state of the Fatherland.
After Tobias had given his own gallon of blood in unmarked patches of dirt and forest abroad, the war found him behind one of the many desks in the cellars beneathKaßstraße[14]. He was among the few privileged to leave the offices of the Gestapo once entered. He would limp out onto the street and walk home, dragging his leg, back straight, eyes forward.
Victor disliked remembering the day his brother was discharged and demoted fromSturmmannto V-Person, yet still kept under the watchful wing of the SS. He knew he ought to remember visiting his brother in hospital, watching him slowly heal and learn to walk again. Shrapnel had almost torn off Tobias’ right leg; he could no longer fight with a bayonet, but he knew how to use a typewriter, and he was good with languages. Victor also knew he ought to remember being glad to see his brother back and alive, how they embraced awkwardly at the threshold, the two of them laughing over something silly, likehow the page in Tobias’Wehrpaß[15] on physical ability should now be torn off. Tobias could no longer run, or climb, or jump.
Instead, Victor remembered how his father stared at Tobias and his crutch. Wolfgang’s jaw had worked, his mouth forcing out a low sound. He muttered something; only later did Victor realise what his father had said. What his father had called his own son.
Overnight, Tobias had turned intoder Krüppel, the cripple, his presence at the dinner table an eyesore, a stain on the family’s honour. There was no honour in filing paperwork for the SD or the SS-TV. What good would all that paperwork do, Wolfgang mused, when the country needed fighters, not writers? There was no honour in cowering behind a desk, trying to decipher letters or filling ledgers with numbers.
Honour, Victor turned the word in his mind and examined it. The words were etched into the blades both he and Tobias had received when they swore the oath years ago. Tobias’ dagger was lost, but Victor still carried his every time he put on the uniform.Meine Ehre heißt Treue[16].Honour, Victor chewed the word over and over. Tobias continued to wear a uniform; it was grey, the long coat concealing his limp as he walked, but it was as though he wore nothing. As if hewerenothing. His word, his actions no longer earned him respect.
Neither Dietmar nor Wolfgang ever questioned what it meant to have honour. They had let Victor and Tobias enlist in theHitlerjugend[17], and later inNapola[18]. They read their newspapersand listened to the anti-aircraft station on the radio. They paid their taxes and their donations to the Red Cross and the Reich Colonial League. Sometimes Victor saw his mother do needlework for the Winter Relief Fund. Elke had joined theFrauenschaft[19], but she never wore the badge, nor spoke about what the other women did at the meetings. Victor did not think his mother particularly liked being in the party, but it gave her an excuse to leave the house. So long as she kept herself busy and out of sight, they left her to her sewing.
Victor had grown used to the occasional odd job rousing him from bed and into a car waiting to drive him wherever he was needed. His father made it his mission to raise his younger son into the ranks of theWaffen-SS, in Tobias’ place. Tonight, Victor was called at the train station. They assigned him to help load the workers onto the trains, and maintain order and civility.
