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Story: This Violent Light
Sebastian
I t is a coward’s end.
In all my years of rule and all those nights of paranoia, I never imagined losing like this.
If I fell, I believed I would at least be bloodied, beaten to the bone, in the midst of a violent battle.
Instead, I stand in the dusted shadows of my manor, carefully peeking between mismatched curtains.
They’re blankets, technically. As soon as darkness fell last night, we stripped all the beds in this place and haphazardly hung the multicolored quilts over each and every window.
Now, with the sun high above the Echo, I watch the world go on without us.
Through the curtains, I catch glimpses of the gathered crowd.
Men and women, even children. Humans and witches, fae and harpies.
They’re all here to taunt us, to mock the great and fallen rule of their vampire king.
Near the center, a human tips her head back, cheering along with the crowd.
She stands on the lawn of my manor, her throat exposed, jugular begging for my teeth.
I would kill her first, I decide. If I wasn’t trapped in these shadows, victim of the witches’ petty hatred, I would drain the blood from her body. Then, I’d do the same to the men and the children and anyone else I caught before they escaped the Night Realm.
I’d engorge myself to death, just to ensure they pay for their sins.
“Master.”
I startle, turning to look at one of my long-time followers. Oskar Duluth is younger than I am, but he’s trapped in an elderly body. Silver hair, wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, and spots from years of sun exposure. They’re afflictions from his mortality, forever frozen on his skin.
If he stepped outside now, he’d fare far worse than sun spots.
“You are the only man capable of surprising me,” I tell him. I’m not sure why. I typically keep weaknesses to myself. It must be the hunger. I haven’t fed since the witches cursed us two nights ago. Condemned us to this darkness.
I glance down the hall, opposite the direction of Oskar. Three corpses litter the elegant marble, their bodies caught in sunlight and scorched to the bone. The smell of death permeates the air, and the stench will inevitably linger for decades.
When I return my gaze to Oskar, his bloodshot eyes study me. He’s as hungry as I am, but like always, he’s less affected. More controlled. He doesn’t acknowledge my confession, and I pretend I didn’t make it.
“Freja?” I ask. I heard she was one of many caught in the sun without a place to hide. Oskar spent the last two nights looking for her among the bodies. This is the first I’ve seen him since it all began.
He swallows hard and stares at the heavy drapes, rather than replying. It’s answer enough.
“They will pay,” I say carefully. I never understood Oskar’s affection for Freja. She was his wife before they turned, and it’s the only reason I imagine he loved her now. Vampires aren’t meant for love or romantic titles. We feast. We fuck. We do as we please.
No, I’ve never understood Oskar’s affection, but I’ve known him long enough to acknowledge it exists.
“Perhaps tonight, once the sun sets, we will find their villages,” I say. “Burn them to ash. Do to them as they’ve done to us.”
Even as I speak, I know it’s a foolish idea. The witches are smarter than I often credit them. It’s the reason we’re in this mess in the first place. And, temporary as I expect this to be, it’s a reminder not to underestimate them.
I can’t afford to tear across the Echo with a half-formed plan to murder every coven we find. If I fail, it will inevitably bring more unease amongst my followers, and right now, that’s not something I can afford.
I sigh. It will likely be days before we put an end to this. For now, we are trapped during daylight hours. Quiet, hushed, ashamed. We are caged animals, locked away by mere mortals.
“The responsible will pay,” I say. I look over my shoulder at Oskar.
He stares blankly through me, to the point I don’t expect him to respond. When he does, my attention has already drifted back to the slit in the curtains.
“Yes,” he finally agrees. “They will pay.”
We remain in silence for several minutes. Just when I’m readying to leave, to force myself to plan, rather than simply wallow, it strikes.
A raging heat spreads through my chest, then deeper, burrowing into my bones.
I feel it everywhere, a tortuous burn, like a flame loosed inside my veins.
It explodes beneath the skin, infecting each organ like a rabid parasite.
Stomach. Lungs. Brain. I’m positive the sun has somehow broken through the curtains, that I’m being burned alive where I kneel.
“Hells,” Oskar gasps. It’s barely a whisper as he falls to his knees, both hands clasping his sternum.
It lasts seconds, minutes, hours. I can’t be sure. Time ceases to exist. Everything but this roaring pain disappears, until I find myself begging for death.
Then, it stops.
All at once, the pain vanishes as abruptly as it appeared. It feels as though I’ve pulled a curtain around my insides, protecting them from invisible sunlight. I gasp for breath, an instinct I thought I’d forgotten. Only now do I realize I’ve fallen, face flat to the marble.
The sour stench of urine surrounds me.
“Fuck,” Oskar mutters. “I think I pissed myself.”
“Those cunts!” I roar. I shove to my feet, legs buckling as I rise. “I don’t know what they’re doing—or how—but it’s them. Those fucking witches are trying to kill us!”
“Maybe it’s the curse breaking,” Oskar offers weakly. “Maybe it’s done.”
It’s a stupid, childish hope, but I act on Oskar’s theory anyway. With my shoulder propped against the wall, I slide my hand between the curtain and the window. Sunlight falls over my skin, and the hellfire I felt moments ago is back, scorching my palm into thick welts.
“Cunts!” I scream. I clutch my hand to my chest, glaring at the rapidly forming blisters. Back in the shadows, I’m already healing. The pain disappears, but the anger only pulses faster. “Round the inner circle. Meet me in the theater.”
“Master,” Oskar says. He’s knelt to the side of his piss, staring absently toward the window. “Do you think they’ve sealed it?”
Oskar is the only vampire in my manor who was born with witch blood.
It’s rare for full-bloods to survive the transition.
Both he and Freja were born into covens, and they’d worked their way into leadership roles, only for it all to be torn away.
A random attack left Freja turned and disoriented, disowned by her kind.
Oskar brought her here. He’d begged us to save her, to change him too, despite the risks.
In exchange, Oskar told us everything we needed to know about the witches. Their loyalties, their practices, their weaknesses . Freja never played a part, but Oskar was largely the reason we stole power as quickly as we did.
“Sealed,” I repeat, looking down at him. “You’ve never mentioned this.”
“It’s an ancient craft,” he says, still gasping for breath. “Not something I’ve ever seen. It’s supposed to be near-impossible. If they did it, if they pulled it off, our chances of breaking the curse just disappeared.”
“You’re wrong,” I say. I don’t let his words settle into my brain. I shove them far, far away, deep into the recesses of my mind.
I step closer to the curtain, carefully viewing the street from the safety of shadows. They’re all still there. Grinning. Proud. Viciously pleased with themselves.
The streets should be empty. Only days ago, they were. People were terrified. They knew their place: far below us on the food chain. So far below, I ruled with reckless fists: violent, but loose enough to let power slip right between my fingers.
I glare at those fragile creatures, at their foolish celebrations. So breakable, so arrogant and sated.
“I will kill them all,” I hiss. “As soon as I’m out of here, I’ll kill every single one.”
Table of Contents
- Page 1 (Reading here)
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