"I, Vampyre" - Chapter Eighteen

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: Judgment

 

            December, 1777… An ancient castle in the Balkans… one that used to belong to Lord Darius Leone…

 

            “Darius!  I’m home… time to come eat some real food!”

            Bellissima called out, her words echoing through the banquet hall of the castle as she misted back into solid form.  She dropped the two frail, sickly-looking humans to the stone floor, still pleased as blood-spiked-punch that she had been able to carry them with her in Mist Form.

            “P-please,” said the half-naked man, shivering violently even as the snow on his body began to melt from the heat of the fireplace set into the wall.  “K-kill us n-now…”  He hugged the other human, a young woman, against him.  Her throat was bloated and blackened by the plague that afflicted them �" she whimpered softly, but couldn’t speak.

            Bellissima knelt down next to the two dying people, her blue eyes shining unnaturally bright, even in the firelight, soothing their distress with the power of her vampiric Glamour.  “There, there… it’ll be alright.  Your suffering will be over soon, I promise…”

            Standing up again, Belli tilted her head as she stared at the long dining table in the middle of the hall.  Their ‘dinner’ from earlier in the evening �" a pair of extremely rare steaks �" was still there on the table.  How unusual… surely their cook or one of their other blood-slave servants would have cleared away the leftover food and dishes by now?

            Leaving the man and woman huddled miserably on the floor, Bellissima walked quickly toward the nearby kitchen.  It suddenly seemed much too quiet in the drafty old castle.

            “Bonjour?  François?” she queried, breaking the increasingly troubling silence.  She relaxed somewhat when she rounded the corner, seeing François in his usual white chef’s outfit, although she was a touch irritated that he was apparently catching a catnap in the kitchen.  He was resting his head on the food preparation table… sound asleep, not even snoring as per usual.

            “Rise and shine, mon ami!” Belli said, reaching for his shoulder.  “If Darius finds you like this, there will be Hell to… pay…”  Her words petered off, and a sick feeling permeated her heart as she pulled the cook’s body back… but his head remained on the table.

            “Darius?” she called out again, backing slowly away from the decapitated body. “DARIUS!”

            Bellissima turned into red mist, rematerializing quickly as she sensed another corpse in the courtyard.  It was their majordomo, Slava… lying on his back, staring sightlessly up at the stars in the winter sky, a deep slash through his chest.  A broken long-sword was on the ground nearby, but it had not killed the servant, for it was bloodless.  Even in her rapidly-escalating panic, she recognized the sword… it was one of the weapons from Darius’s personal armory.

            Belli melted into mist again, following the invisible trail of a battle that had ended not that long ago.  The footsteps of a frantic fight… drops of blood, human and vampire… unintelligible snippets of words, like faint echoes in the ether.

            She coalesced once again, on the spiraling staircase of the highest tower, the steps that ultimately led to a certain solarium.  There, she discovered another shattered weapon, the remnants of an ancient Arabian scimitar.  She also detected the telltale scent of a human female, getting closer �" was it the doomed plague victim, still seeking a release from her misery?  Not waiting to find out, Belli sprinted up the steps… feeling like her heart was sinking lower, the higher she ascended.

            When Bellissima reached the top of the tower, she finally saw her Darius, lying on his side.  She sighed with a shaky sense of relief, but she wanted to scream at him, to kill him, for playing such a hoax on her!  Surely it was all just a cruel joke, right?  Right!?

            Belli walked slowly toward Darius, his familiar form illuminated by the moonlight flooding the tower solarium.  The hilt and broken blade of his favorite katana lie near his open left hand.  His right hand was clenched into a fist… resting near where his head had once been.  Now, there was only a diffuse pile of dust, with a few long, light-blond hairs.

            “Darius… oh, Dari… no…”  Bellissima fell to her knees, reaching out for the dust-pile, but not wanting to touch it.  To touch it would be to feel it, to know it, to make it real.  But the reality of it all was crashing in, all the same �" threatening to crush her.

            Her fingers shaking uncontrollably, she lightly touched his right hand.  She almost screamed when the fist popped open, revealing a small white object; she bit down hard into her lip instead, drawing a trickle of blood.  She tried to pick up the revealed item, dropped it, and then tried again.  It was an ivory broach, in the shape of a vampire bat.  Belli had no idea what it meant, but she stared at it for a very long time… staring at it saved her from having to look at Darius’s corpse.

            Then, she heard a diminutive, plaintive voice, speaking to her: “Mistress Belli…?”

            Bellissima lowered the bat-broach from her eyes and turned to look at the owner of that voice.  It was a human girl… the adorable little servant girl, her very favorite, the one who was closest to an actual friend… Suzette.  The girl walked slowly toward Belli, staring fearfully at Darius’s body.

            “Bellissima… what happened?  I heard a terrible commotion, so I hid down in the dungeon.  Is Master Darius… is he? …oh, no!”  Suzette held her tiny hands to her face, her cute, curly ginger hair bouncing as she bobbed in head in despair.

            Belli looked down at Darius, the love of her unlife.  He was dead.  Truly dead.  Slain by another vampire, and she hadn’t been there to fight with him.  The guilt was an instantaneous, crushing pressure on her heart, like she was at the bottom of an abyssal ocean trench rather than way up in the mountains.  And, why... why was it... she couldn’t even remember his face anymore?

            “Belli,” Suzette asked, her dark eyes quivering.  “What are we going to do?”

            At that, Bellissima felt a bitterly ironic, utterly humorless, crooked, jagged smile split her face like a chasm straight into the depths of Hell.  She knew exactly what she was going to do next �" she was going to scream.

            Bellissima let out a soul-rending shriek, a banshee’s wail that rattled the stones of the castle tower and could be heard for miles and miles.  Suzette dropped instantly stone-cold dead, blood trickling out of her dainty ears and her gaze glassy like a doll’s eyes.  Belli screamed and screamed, until she had nothing left in her.

Until she was empty.

            Much later, Bellissima took Darius’s body and laid it in a stately tomb, deep within the catacombs underneath the castle.  She set an old knight’s helmet on his neck, smoothed out his clothes, and placed the broken blade of his precious katana on his chest.  She tenderly kissed his left hand, and she could barely stand to look as she backed away.

            But she did look.  She committed everything to memory, burning it permanently into her mind… every stone, every crack, every cobweb, the way every shadow was layered in the near-perfect dark.  She needed to remember it all, because she knew she would never be here again, would never see him again.  Not like this, not ever.

            Bellissima Bladedancer ran her fingers over her silver dagger, and then dissolved into mist… floated back up to the castle, out into an unsuspecting world…

            Her never-ending hunt had begun.

 

* * *

 

            I pulled away from Bellissima’s leg, a red ribbon of blood briefly binding us, gasping and shaking my head to clear it of the vivid scenes of the blood-memory.  I imagined I could still hear the echo of her bereft scream in the Great Throne Room.

            Belli blinked at me rapidly, tears in her eyes, slowly coming back to reality as I pulled her up off the table.  Free again of Lillith’s insidious Glamour, I pulled Bellissima into a firm, but platonic embrace.  “I feel the way you would,” I whispered in her ear.  “This just… can’t be understood.  I’m so sorry, Belli.”

            I let Bellissima slide down to the floor, and then I looked at Siren.  She was not doing well… she appeared as though she was about to wail herself, as Lillith’s unrelentingly intense green gaze bored into her.  “Fight it, Siren!” I said aloud, only too aware of the hypocrisy of turning her desperate plea to me back on her.

            Lillith let out an ugly laugh, and I could feel her poking around in my now-clear head.  “Oh, boo-hoo, Belli lost her so-called true love,” she sarcastically commiserated.  “HA!  Suck it up, we’ve all got issues.  And your little Dani O. here is on the brink of feeling very UN-Glamorous.”  Siren let out a mewling whine, almost as if in agreement.  “That’s what she gets for messing with an eight-thousand-year-old Superior, the Mother of Temptation, the…”

            “Well, frag it all,” I interrupted with deliberate rudeness, “if it was simply a matter of who was closer to old-as-dirt, why didn’t you both just whip out your death certificates, compare numbers and be done with it!?”

            Siren giggled softly at that, and a wisp of a half-smile wafted onto her pretty face.  She sat up in her chair, a tiny bit of sparkle in her blue-green eyes.  And sometimes a spark was all that was needed to start a roaring blaze.

            “Eight-thousand years old… really, darling?” Siren asked.  She tapped her own lips thoughtfully, and I swore that Lillith very nearly broke eye-contact to look.  I know I did… as ever, Siren’s lips were lush, plump, and eminently kissable.  “You must be somewhat of an expert on love and loss, then, ja?”

            A sneer crept onto Lillith’s flawless, deceptively youthful face.  “Love??  There’s no such thing, little girl.  What humans call ‘love’ is just hormones and endorphins… and for baby vampires like yourself, it’s just the faint memory of that particular high.”

            “Oh, really?  So, then, how do you explain your love… for Caine?”

            Lil was silent for a long moment, although so much blood was coloring her face she almost looked human again.  I could sense the tide was beginning to turn, so I walked past Lillith and approached Spike and Makenna.

            Spike’s eyes were back to their usual blue, I was glad to see, and she was gently shaking ‘Kenna, trying to rouse her.  “Makenna!  ‘Kenna, wake up… pretty please, with blood-and-sugar on top!?”  Spike bit into her own wrist, and held it to Makenna’s slack mouth.  “Hey, remember when Rodger almost tickle-tortured us to death?  Those were the days, huh??”

            Makenna began to drink from Spike’s bleeding forearm, and when her eyes opened, they widened in distrust and fear.  I bent down, putting a calming hand on her forehead.  “It’s okay, ‘Kenna,” I said.  “Spike wasn’t herself before… but she’s fine now.”  Spike nodded emphatically, showing that lovable wicked-grin of hers, and Makenna relaxed somewhat.

            André hopped up from his chair again, twirling his cane-blade as he walked down the steps toward Spike, Makenna, and me.  “Ah, Monsieur Nevik,” he said, a snide grin on his face.  “Did you not get the point last time?”  I glared up at him, and then had a devilish notion as to how to make him think twice about molesting us again.

            And so, I transformed.  Somewhat… horrifically.

            Lord Superior Montrenault stumbled, fell and crab-crawled back to his seat as my demon-form loomed threateningly over him.  “BACK OFF, you INSIGNIFICANT little FROG!” I sternly advised, the words filtered past my mouthful of fangs such that they dripped pure hate.

            I was more than ready to chase him all the way back to France, when… I felt a sharp pain in the tip of my left wing.  Spinning around �" causing Spike to duck as my right wing zipped over her head �" I saw Superior Jeremy King, a.k.a. the ‘Collector,’ now wide-awake, holding a pair of silver shears and a roughly triangular piece of my wounded wing.

            “Black Devil’s Hide,” he said, scissoring the shears at me with a sly grin on his face.  “I know people who will happily break the blood-bank for a little bit of this…”

            Roaring in anger, I prepared to lunge at Jeremy, but Spike got my attention by pounding insistently on the knotted muscles of my leg.  I glanced down at her, and she was gesturing frantically at the table where Siren and Lillith were seated.  I looked, and an evil-sounding chuckle escaped me… the bloody tide had turned, indeed.

            Now Lil was the one seeming to retreat into the back of her chair, and Siren was kneeling on hers, bending down with her elbows on the table.  If I (or, really, any male with or without a pulse) had been in a staring contest with Siren, I would’ve been doomed the second her punky little schoolgirl skirt began to climb a few inches up her amazing legs.

            “You loved him… mmm, yes you did… and you still do,” Siren said.

            “That’s ridiculous… you’re grasping at straws now…”

            “Am I?”  Siren put one knee up on the edge of the table, causing the bottom of her pleated skirt to ride up a bit more.  I noticed that Katya was now repeatedly stabbing the tip of Bellissima’s dagger into the arm of the throne.  And as for Sagaan, to Katya’s immediate right, his Portal had gotten us to Australia, and his obnoxious simian familiar had, intentionally or otherwise, helped break the spell that Lillith had over us… but I still wanted to break him in half for the way he was staring at Siren’s a*s at that moment.

            “Why exactly did Caine, the almighty Dracul, leave the ‘Council?” Siren asked, quizzically tilting her head as she finished climbing on top of the table.  “Could it be that he wanted to get the hell away from you, Lil?”

            “I said that’s Lady Supe… wait… WHAT!?”

            “You heard me, you b***h,” Siren seethed, her nose now just inches from Lillith’s.  “Maybe he adored you back… maybe it hurt him to hear you denounce love, to sleep with anyone and everyone… maybe, just maybe, he couldn’t take it anymore…”

            Lillith shuddered in barely-restrained rage.  “Couldn’t take it anymore?!?  Lord Caine was… is… the King of Darkness, the Father of Murder… the very first Vampyre, do you understand me, you insignificant whelp!?  For you to even suggest…”

            “I’m not suggesting anything,” Siren not-so-pleasantly insisted, “I’m telling you, telling everyone here, how it is, ‘Mother.’  I’ve seen your heart… and it screams out for your lost love…”

            “And what about your heart, Daniela?” Lillith whispered.

            “Why don’t you have a look…?”  At that moment, Siren’s opal pendant rolled out of the front of her top, dangling innocently as it swung back and forth below her neck.

            Lillith blinked as she glanced at the gemstone.

She looked away.  She lost.

            “Fedor… STOP!” Lady Superior Ivanov yelled, upon seeing the unlikely result of the now-concluded staring contest.  “Put down your new toy and come here.”  Fedor, the Inquisitor, gave Adrianos one last punch in the chin, then turned away and walked briskly toward Katya.  I dug my black-as-Death claws into the palms of my hands as I saw Ad sag to the ground, his face resembling the raw, bloody steaks in Belli’s blood-memory, the werewolves around him chuffing in cruel amusement.

            “Comrade Lillith,” Katya said, standing up and picking at her talon with Belli’s dagger.  “We’re eagerly awaiting your tie-breaking verdict… what is it to be?”

            Lillith sat up in her chair, combing back her long red hair, while Siren slid back across the table, squatting on the seat of the other chair with her feet underneath her.  Lillith peered at Siren for a while, and then she looked at Bellissima.

            “Guilty…” she said, an almost sad-looking little smile on her face.

            “WHAT?!?” Siren shouted, springing to her feet atop the chair.  Spike and Makenna gasped in unison, I blinked my enraged demon’s eyes in utter disbelief, and a loud clinking of chains communicated Bellissima’s reaction.  “You unfair, deceptive little…”

            “I’ve upheld my end of the bargain, child.”  Lillith stood up, the wobbly chair toppling over behind her.  “I seem to recall that you said that if you won, I had to vote the way you wanted me to.  Well, I’ve heard your heart, Siren, and it spoke plainly to me.  You want Bellissima dead… because she’s standing in the way of your ‘love’…”

            “THAT’S NOT TRUE!!” Siren screamed.  She looked across the room at me… but I could not read her eyes.

Katya cackled with glee.  “Fedor!  Carry out the sentence… execute the prisoner!”

Fedor stomped over, throwing the table out of the way and knocking Siren onto her behind in the process.  Lillith backed up slowly, wringing her hands together as if trying to wash them clean.  The Inquisitor raised his arms, and a huge, silver-edged, double-bladed axe appeared in his gloved hands.  I could see Bellissima’s mostly-bare skin ripple slightly, like she was trying to turn to mist �" to flee, to escape �" but her building panic (plus the constant pain of the silver shackles) was keeping her from doing so.

3-to-2 guilty verdict or no, I wasn’t very well going to stand idly by and watch Belli get executed.  Stepping past Spike and Makenna, I walked up behind Fedor, flexing the claws of my massive right hand �" wishing for the familiar feel of my whip, angrily wondering why Aussie Donna had apparently moved it �" and then… I abruptly ceased thinking of the Portal-Keeper, Sagaan, as one of the ‘good guys.’

His pet monkey, with the white hair on its head vaguely resembling a Capuchin monk’s cowl, leapt through the air, landing on my shoulders, and sank its disproportionately large fangs into the back of my neck.  I immediately felt very weak, and I dropped to my knees, punching two starbursts in the marble floor.  The damn monkey didn’t seem to be sucking my blood, it was more like he was… ‘porting it out of me…

Sagaan walked down and stood before me, next to Lillith, who was still watching Bellissima crawl frantically and futilely away from the Inquisitor.  “Sinto muito, Senhor Roc.  I am truly sorry… but our laws are sacrosanct.  Without them, there is only anarchy.”

“Fedor… wait,” Lillith said, out of the blue.  To the surprise of my already-blurry eyes, he did exactly that.

“LIL!  What are you doing!?” Katya shrieked.  “I want that little assassin’s head on a platter with a glass of blood-vodka on the side, and I want it NOW!”

“And you’ll get your chance… perhaps.”  Lillith smirked.  “However, as the Eldest Superior of the ‘Council, I reserve the right to dictate the terms of the sentence.

“Dear Belli here has some sort of real grievance with you, Katerina.  I think she deserves the chance to… express it, properly.  And if you want her dead, you’ll have to do it yourself…” �" Lillith walked in front of the dais and, surprisingly, reached down and helped Siren to her feet �" “…in a fair fight.”

“With pleasure!” Katya growled, shoving Lillith and Siren out of the way as she stalked across the floor toward Bellissima.

Sagaan’s monkey familiar hopped off of me, but the damage was done.  I could hardly move, and I felt Makenna and Spike grabbing me by the arms just before I would have likely fallen flat on my misshapen face.  I saw Katya point at Belli, and the silver chains suddenly turned transparent, instantly transmuted into ice.  Bellissima flashed quickly into mist, and the now-harmless restraints fell through her vaporous form and shattered against the floor.

Turning solid once again, Bellissima glared viciously at Katya.  She spoke slowly and evenly, her voice filled with unmistakable malice: “Give… me… back… my… dagger!”

Katya held the silver weapon in front of her, blade pointed at Belli.  “You want this? Come and get it, youngling…”

 

* * *