Page 35 of Besieger
Thereitwas again. That feeling of someone scraping, searching through the folds of her brain, pushing away memories and stray thoughts. Mihaela shook her head and looked around for where Emerick had gone. He was standing a step behind Silvio, his hands clasped behind his back. He caught her staring and winked, a smile tugging at his lips. Mihaela frowned back at him and turned to face the All Father, just in time to see him move. He was suddenly there—before her, looming down, his eyes unblinking.
“Let me look at you.”
His voice was so low, barely a whisper, as if he was afraid he would frighten her. There was some eagerness in the movement of his hands, the way he opened and closed his fingers in a fist, restraining himself from touching her.
“Thank you,” the All Father breathed, his voice shook from relief. He made to turn and address the two men behind him, but did not dare look away from her. As if the moment he ceased to behold Mihaela she would turn to salt.
“Silvio… I am in your debt. Please,” he lifted his arm and gestured, beckoning theMarquis, “be my guest, stay as long as you like.”
Silvio looked from the All Father to Emerick, the question hanging in the air unspoken.
“I wait at your pleasure,Marquis,” Emerick said softly, the abandon and intimacy of his words made Mihaela blush.
“Then you shall have us, Ingenuar,” Silvio agreed.
Without further ceremony, his task complete, Silvio turned to leave but stopped and looked at Mihaela, silently allowing her to ask for his presence in the study. After all, was Silvio not the one who found and guided her on this trip? In the short amount of time Mihaela had spent in his company, she felt a sense of belonging, a dark purpose. He appeared to her fatherly, a parental figure who was the first to teach her how to properly drink from the fountain of life. Yes, he came with Emerick, who constantly tugged on the strings of her consciousness, but surely there were ways to block him, methods to lock him and others outside the confines of her mind.
“Daughter,” Ingenuar beckoned, finally offering his hand.
Years ago, a handshake had gotten her into all this mess in the first place. Her measly little soul for all the knowledge Mihaela could physically muster. Astra’s long fingers had closed around Mihaela’s wrist and dragged her down into that bargain—a debt whose payment was not due for decades.
Or never, as Mihaela bitterly observed once she woke up as a vampire one evening. She had found a way to cheat death and death did not like being cheated. Death had caught up to her with a voice coming from above. A rumbling in the earth, a crack spreading on glass, a vein splitting a river of ice.
“I will give you the greatest gift I can bestow upon mankind,” her maker had said many nights ago when he killed Mihaela. “I will give you myself.”
MIHAELA, 1995
Astra had still not returned and Mihaela began to worry.
Back then, when Mihaela had been writing the first draft of her thesis—fighting off the exhaustion of the day’s toils andstalled in her academic progress—she had grabbed at any opportunity for distraction. Astra had answered all her questions, even the ones on what codex of laws governed the circles of Hell, as if that mattered when their deal was already sealed. What bound demons to a soul? Did it anchor them to the mortal plane until the contract was fulfilled? It did not seem to be an issue that Mihaela was no longer human. The vampiric transformation had denied her of simple mundane pleasures but it had not deprived her of a soul.
Astra spoke of her brethren who had become fixated on their chosen, driving them mad in turn.
“The longer a demon resides with a mortal, the more it taints the soul. The corruption sweetens it further, making it ripe—like rotten fruit. That is why a demon might spend years with their chosen, egging them on, encouraging their manias and vices. The more time they spend together, the better,” Astra elaborated. “In the end, all that matters is the feast delivered at the altar of the flesh. Time does not exist for a demon in the same way it does for a human. It does not affect us.”
“What about my soul? How will it taste?” Mihaela asked and hoped her voice sounded as flirtatious as she imagined it did. She was hopeless at this, at flirting, at luring. Yet somehow, here she stood, this mistress of Hell, a general of legions of fiends in the Underworld.
“With eternity to fatten it?” Astra’s breath caught, the words came out wet. Mihaela’s eyes trailed over her mouth recalling the sensation of it on her body.
Astra was a woman like no other Mihaela had seen. Her hair was long and raven-black, her serpentine eyes burning yellow. The androgynous set of her features, the fluid movements of her body, her footsteps were heavy and each time her hands clasped around Mihaela, the grip was firm. A grip that saidmine, and kept squeezing tight. Her clothes looked tattered and worn, leather smooth from years of wear. They did not look like something human hands had stitched or a machine had weaved.Sometimes Mihaela liked to imagine how they would melt into Astra’s skin as she transformed into a beast, a leviathan of the Old Testament, jaw unclenching as a precipice to swallow Mihaela whole. How much Mihaela craved and begged to be caught between those lips, these teeth, and that wicked tongue.
Now, alone, sitting in one of the many music rooms of the Berlin Coven, Mihaela regretted not asking more questions. Not about how souls tasted or how they were wrenched from their flesh sacks, but what Astra normally did in Hell. What were her responsibilities and what devil kept her away from Mihaela? What could possibly make her vanish for years without a word?
How does time pass when you are down there?Mihaela mused, feeling like her soul had fermented enough to earn her at least a nibble from Astra. She had found a King James Bible in the library and was leafing through the thin pages, the English and its miniature font making her head ache. She kept frowning at the pages, willing them to make sense.
Now and then a servant would walk into the room, see her sitting there and exit with a mumbled apology. Occasionally a vampire passed outside, in the corridor, casting her a quick glance. There she was, the Master’s youngest daughter. The protégé of the Blood. Whatever expectations they—and Ingenuar—had for her, Mihaela was going to have to disappoint them. She had no interest or taste in courtly intrigues or learning how to be a better vampire. She could now hunt, eat, hide her tracks and dazzle humans to a satisfactory extent.
She was more interested in when Astra was coming back and if she was going to materialize in this mansion all the way in Germany, or show up at Mihaela’s old dorm room in Tarnovo. A room that Mihaela had abandoned at a moment’s notice, like everything else on that New Year’s Eve.
She did not yearn for Astra. No. Yearning suggested an ounce of self-respect and innocence that Mihaela did not possess. Waiting for Astra had left her ravenous, and she did not think she could be patient and restrained to wait any longer. Her soul mightrequire years—millennia—more to soak in the juices of sin, but Mihaela was hungrynow. She hungered for the prince of serpents, the patron demon of accusers. Demons drove their chosen to madness, Astra had teased long ago, and Mihaela was experiencing the slow fulfilment of that prophecy at the last place she imagined herself to be.
In another life, back when things were ridiculously simple and mundane, when Mihaela had to worry about paper deadlines and enrolling in electives, a shadow creature had given her its true name. Mihaela’s soul for a devil’s servitude. She had been holding on that name for years, not daring to think or mount it against the gush of blood, replacing one hunger with another.
What if I call her? Stand at a crossroad and howl and wail? Call upon her like Mephistopheles, my servant of the flesh—
“Not enjoying the Lord’s word?” a voice said close to her ear and Mihaela jumped in her seat.
A vampire man was at the door, arms folded, smiling at his attempt at a joke. He appeared older than her, the Blood had found him somewhere in his thirties. He had dark brown hair cut short, the locks just brushing his chin, and he sported a goatee, the ends of his moustache twisted and pointed in a fashion that made him look like a dandy. His dark blue eyes shone mischievously. But it was the accent that caught her interest. He sounded French. He certainly appeared French the more she looked at him, the way he moved off the doorframe and walked towards her.
