Page 7 of Once Upon a Dark October

Chapter Seven

I t seemed my life wasn’t the last thing the vampire had tried to claim.

Her scent ambushed me when I neared the bed, blooming stronger, sharper. I latched onto the careless bloodstains on the floorboards beside it, dried and crusting, first mistaken as merely shadows. “Morrigan…her blood.”

“There’s stains over here, too. She slipped in through the window.” Her fingers ran along the large gouges in the sill. Instead of breaking the glass and alerting my neighbors, she would’ve used a blade to pry at the lock. “Her scent is recent, though the bloodstains are old enough to have dulled. She needed somewhere to shelter from daylight. To stay away from her coven-house until she finished her task or decided on what lie was best to tell Sonia.”

“There’s a repetition to it.” I lowered to the floor, feeling the rough stains with my fingertips. My blood seemed to stir at its mere presence. Senses keen, I inhaled its aging scents, peeling it back layer by layer. The skin across my fingertips prickled. My own blood sorcery, unfurled, awakening like a slumbering beast. “ The scent overlaps between hours and days ago. A sense of…waiting.”

Morrigan was rather pleased. “Blood can whisper its secrets, if we listen.”

“I was studious once, ahead of my peers,” I replied. “My father used to call me his little library mouse.” The vampire’s scent was beginning to drive a pounding headache into my skull. “Do you think Sonia knows that she’s failed?”

“If this vampire wants to stay within her coven, if she’s desperate enough for Sonia’s favor, then I doubt it.” Morrigan considered, moving away from the window, disturbing the water pooled around her feet. “I think she’s attempting to finish her kill before her mistake comes to light. I’m doubtful she’s gone back to her coven since she came for you.”

“And she won’t know she’s being hunted. Though she must know her own coven might be after so many days,” I thought aloud. “Perhaps she thinks I’ve been laid up in a healer’s ward.”

“One thing is for certain: her death will not be swift,” she told me. “I want her useful before I kill her.”

The calmness in her surge of anger, of her promise for vengeance, was disquieting. I stared at her a moment too long while she took no notice, attempting to reconcile her bloodthirsty nonchalance with the gentle care she’d shown me. The tempered manner in which Morrigan could tease out her rage was more frightening than what I might see when she finally unleashed her sorcery to claim an immortal’s life.

I couldn’t deny that something about it filled me with a terrifying wave of desire for her.

“Would you like to take anything with you?”

The vampire’s scent invading my living quarters roused me back to the present, quashing whatever I’d felt the moment before. How fast the tides of my blood could ebb and flow without warning. My senses were left reeling and overstimulated .

Collapsing into a chair, I steepled my fingers against my forehead, ignoring the wobble in one of its legs. “There’s nothing valuable left here. The last sentimental thing I owned was lost that night.”

Morrigan rubbed my shoulder. “Your chatelaine.”

I offered a hum of agreement. “I should tell them I’ve moved on and the room can be made ready for a new tenant.”

“I’ll take care of it,” she promised. “But you really should write to your relatives, they’ll be—” Her body went rigid behind me, fingertips clawing at my cloak. “Did you hear that?”

It was an effort to shove aside the other scents and feelings and sounds. Beyond the steady trickle of water, the cat’s ceaseless meowing downstairs, creatures scurrying in the walls to escape from the night’s cold, and the noisy lovemaking going on down the hall, I searched outward as Morrigan flew to the window.

Along the wharf not far from here, a woman’s scream cleaved the dark. Then something—or someone —restrained it. A vampire cornering its prey, holding it down for the killing bite. The wharf could be busy with tavern noise and drunken carousing late into the night, but I recognized the fear in her screaming, the terror that would be drowned in the waves breaking upon the shore.

Morrigan shoved the window up with such force the glass pane rattled. She disappeared over the ledge of the sill, the end of her coat gusting in her wake. I charged across the room in a few strides after her and leaned over, a little wary. She was already halfway down the street.

Cloak and all, I clambered onto the windowsill, fighting my bulky skirts. I envied Morrigan’s trousers.

I leapt from my third floor window, the night air flowing around me, tugging at my plaited bun. Landing in a crouch, whole and unhurt, I was already springing to my feet before they’d fully settled on solid ground.

Morrigan had forgotten her earlier promise to keep me within her sight, but I scented the path she’d taken. Her frantic heart sprinted somewhere ahead. And so I ran, learning the boundaries of my vampiric body as I raced through the wharf. Hoping my fledgling clumsiness wouldn’t toss me into a gutter. The wind shrieked against my ears as if I’d been pulled into a wind tunnel. But it was me —the world had blurred and I was near flying, almost weightless, exhilarated despite the dangers.

A rumbling noise rattled the ground and brought me to a skittering, inelegant stop. There was a body lying prone just a few feet from the docks, cast in silvery moonlight. Another thunderous crash, and I saw the blur of motion that was Morrigan as chunks of brick came tumbling down around her.

For a moment, I thought she’d been hurt. But as the cloud of brick-dust settled, I saw her clutching someone else, their body carving out a ragged pit in the wall of a storehouse. Pieces of smashed brick continued to fall around them, scattering in all directions. We were in a quieter part of the docks, away from the taverns and brothels, where the merchants and sailors did their business during the daytime. Even if someone nearby felt the earth tremble in the wake of Morrigan’s anger, the people of the harbor knew better than to interfere in whatever took place along the wharf after nightfall.

And they knew to never get involved in the affairs of vampires.

Morrigan seized fistfuls of the vampire’s cloak and slammed her against the bricks again. Another tremor that vibrated in my ribcage, another violent avalanche wrenched from a poor bricklayer’s nightmares. I remembered what it was like to be cornered like this. I only hoped Morrigan’s looming presence wrought the fear the vampire deserved.

The vampire must have chased her latest prey along the docks. Her blood marred the brine and salt, stinging all the same. Fading, growing colder. I knew we were already too late. There was a blackened, pooling stain growing under her that found the grooves between the cobblestones and mixed with the seawater dappling the wooden planks. She must’ve fought, because otherwise her attacker wouldn’t have left such waste.

I only counted two heartbeats aside from mine.

“Morrigan,” the vampire hissed. Her cloak’s hood was thrown back, her hair wild and black as pitch across her face. “Good to see you again. You look weary, as usual.”

“Effie.” Morrigan threw her against the bricks and I heard the back of her skull crack. “I should’ve known it was you, lustful as ever for violence. Haven’t changed, have you?”

Morrigan backpedaled a few steps, her eyes alight with a vengeful fire. Effie sagged into the crater, trying to find purchase, yet the bricks kept toppling out from her grasp. Morrigan’s fingers circled idly at her side and Effie’s entire body went taut, her limbs contorting into revolting angles. She was held there, pinned in agony, blood dripping from a cut above her eyebrow and streaming from her nose. The scent of her made my stomach heave. All I could feel was the tearing of my skin beneath her fangs, her blood coating my fist.

Within, I heard bursting, snapping—veins and arteries being severed and crushed without care. Like a dam releasing, flooding everything in its path. Her body, her blood bending to Morrigan’s will.

Effie groaned around a scream she was too stubborn to unleash into the night. “You’ve been practicing,” she relented through gritted fangs. Unkempt strands of hair fell across her eyes, sparkling with mist.

“What’s the matter,” Morrigan drawled, twisting her wrist with a flourish as she stepped in closer, “not enough blood on your hands?”

Effie finally let go of her scream. “You’re one to talk, sorcerer.” She spewed a mouthful of blood between them, flecks of red pelting Morrigan’s cheek.

I’d been so entranced by the violent spectacle of Morrigan’s power that I’d almost forgotten to breathe. It was shocking how easily it could be done, the perverse act of manipulating and destroying the very fabric of someone as if you were snipping loose threads from an embroidery hoop. Uprooting myself at last, I went to the woman lying still in a grim canvas of moonlight and scarlet.

Her brow was cold and clammy to the touch, her lips a pale, bloodless shade of blue. Worse, I knew her, though her name had been lost to me in the shock of seeing her there, eyes open with no light left in them.

“She’s gone.” I stood, and Effie—the one who scarred me, left me maimed and bleeding for Death’s abyssal embrace—seemed to realize only then that Morrigan wasn’t alone.

Her eyes widened. “ You. I thought you’d walked off into the sea to die. I was waiting on your body to get washed ashore.”

Morrigan pushed an elbow into her chest. “You know the consequences for draining someone in the harbor. Your murderous rage might’ve gone unpunished over the last century and a half elsewhere, but not here. Not while I’m on watch. And now you have two bodies to account for.”

She choked on her own blood, coughing and forcing air in and out of her lungs with painful wheezes. “I didn’t kill her .” Effie tried to laugh, but it came out wrong, sputtering and gurgling around a fresh wave of bright red. “Best count your days. Not many of them left now that Sonia’s returned. Killing me won’t change that. There’s plenty more of us, and only one sorcerer fit to rule.”

Morrigan growled and shoved into her roughly, though she didn’t need to. Her sorcery still had Effie held prisoner, limbs askew. More coppery-red brick dust rained down onto her shoulders, gritty as sand.

“Why did Sonia want to Turn Elspeth?”

Effie lifted her head, weak and trembling, cocking it to one side. She glared at Morrigan, gaze narrowed, sarcasm on her bloodied lips. “ Who ? ”

“You know stars-damned well who.”

Something else within Effie ripped apart, a shredding of blood vessels and sinew, Morrigan’s power lashing into organs and muscles. I didn’t see her hands move to command it this time, but I noticed Morrigan staggered on her feet a little. She hid her grimace, fangs bared, burying whatever she had felt in her anger, drawing on its unflinching strength.

“Why did Sonia want me made a vampire?” I repeated.

Effie’s nostrils flared, still determined to watch me wither beneath her gaze. But I wouldn’t let her have that power—not this time, not ever again.

Morrigan’s strength was my strength.

“You’re not human anymore.” Her laughter rang across the cobbles. “Isn’t that interesting.” She scented the air, her lips parted in malicious amusement. “ You Turned her, didn’t you, Morrigan? I can smell her on you. Sonia’s going to have her fun picking you both apart piece by piece.”

“Enough,” Morrigan shouted. “Answer her.”

“Sonia wasn’t going to have her Turned, not yet,” she said, spitting out another mouthful in a gasping wheeze. “But she wanted her kept employed at the house.”

I scoffed. “Scrubbing your floors and doing your laundry for an eternity? If that was her plan, I would’ve preferred death.”

“A housekeeper for a coven-mate.” Her blood speckled onto Morrigan’s boots. “Can you imagine? None of us agreed with it, not once there was some talk going around about Sonia getting her an alchemist’s education. She’s been obsessed with getting us one for the past twenty years. All her other options ran dry.”

The breath clouded in front of my face. “What?” I exchanged a look with Morrigan, who kept her expression guarded.

“Not any of us, who’ve been beside her longer than your mother’s mother has been alive,” Effie groused. “But the housekeeper . We couldn’t have it.”

I searched her eyes for a lie. “Why would she do that? ”

“Only the stars know.” She glanced up to the constellations peeking out from behind thin, wispy clouds. “I made my decision, defied her, for all the good it did me. And then you attacked me—that was the reason I needed to kill you.”

Her dimming eyes returned to me, and I found the same hunger and malice that had been there that night. “You were a decadent little thing. I’ll bet my immortal life that Morrigan’s enjoyed you, hasn’t she? It was so hard to stop, I should’ve let myself have you. Should’ve drained you to the last warm morsel while I felt your heart slowing down. Would’ve given it to Sonia—your dead, bloodless heart.”

Morrigan’s vengeful anger spilled over. She elbowed me, protective and cautious, so I’d move from harm’s way. The power that washed over us felt like a twenty-foot swell cascading onto a break wall. I could’ve sworn the ocean wind burned with the scent of it, carried on Morrigan’s primal scream. Everyone sober enough within two miles of us would’ve heard that ringing clear as a bell across the wharf. But that didn’t concern me, not when Effie’s laughter became tortured yelling, when her body began leaking crimson, exhuming blood from every orifice.

I heard it all, the gruesome cacophony of her body collapsing from the inside. Fleshy squelching of organ and tissue, bones splintering, blood vessels splitting open. Until it reached a gory crescendo, and she was nothing more than pieces flung against the bricks, a dark stain under pale moonlight.

She’d been wiped completely from existence.