CHAPTER 29

 

 

Ariadne was dimly aware of footsteps, could recognize Po-Mo and his soldiers as figures from a dream. At Liliane’s command, they lifted Ariadne up, hauled her body like an unresisting sack of meat back up the corridor, through the sanctuary, into the bare room with the solitary stone table that she knew so well. Some were shaking their heads in disbelief. Others were leering.

Ariadne found the strength to loll her head, to stare a question into Po-Mo’s eyes.

“Sorry, chickie,” he said, “but Liliane’s the big boss lady. Besides, you ain’t what you used to be. I remember the Ariadne who stood up to me, kicked my ass, made me freakin’ shoot myself. I remember the Ariadne who sliced and diced Roarke’s men like freakin’ horsemeat, bam, bam, down! Now look at you. It’s like I don’t even know you no more.”

Ariadne wanted to shout back to him, but her lips were frozen.

“You ask me, this place needs some new management. Po-Mo’s gonna be numero uno around here. Kinda like the sound of that.”

Liliane ignored his words, called out a command that Ariadne had heard a thousand times before. The Seneschal felt herself being thrown onto the stone slab. She knew what was to come next, steeled herself as best she could for the sharp, piercing wrench of pain as her wrists and ankles were staked to the stone. It was not enough. She tried not to cry out, but some noise escaped nonetheless.

Time passed. She had no idea how much. When Liliane moved back into Ariadne’s sight, the Prince was clean of blood, dressed immaculately once more in her flowing white gown. Liliane beckoned airily with one hand, and Ariadne heard the telltale squeak of the cart’s wheels.

The cart that held the box of ants.

Liliane drew close, smoothed out the hair on Ariadne’s forehead lovingly. “It saddens us to return full circle, after all this time.”

The box opened. Although she could not see, Ariadne knew the ants had begun to pour forth. Ariadne couldn’t feel them yet, but she knew that in moments her boots would be consumed. Then the ants would begin on the flesh of her toes.

Ariadne found her voice at last, the vice of Liliane’s will losening only slightly. “You said I had a chance to repent!”

“Of course,” said the Prince, and, as Ariadne felt a harsh tickle beginning at the soles of her feet, a soldier walked into the room accompanied by someone. She heard their entrance, the sharp footfalls of the soldier and the other’s submissive shuffling. She didn’t look up; the captive had to be Andrei, taken captive again.

Liliane held up Ariadne’s sword, dangling the grip of it lazily above Ariadne’s staked wrists.

The message seemed clear. “You . . . you want me to kill Andrei?”

“Your mortal lover? Why, child, no.” Liliane’s words came soft and sweet. “We have already given you our word that you may keep him as yours, and our word is law. How can we set an example of loyalty if we renege on our own promises?”

Ariadne felt the burn in her feet begin, felt the fire of a thousand tiny mandibles ripping at flesh and bone.

“No,” the Prince said. “A much easier test. Despite ourselves, we love you too much to give you too hard a road.”

Liliane gestured again, and the soldier handed off the person Ariadne had assumed was Andrei to Po-Mo. He walked the captive into Ariadne’s line of sight.

It was Marie.

The young mage walked as if in a trance, her eyes glassy, placid in the vampire’s grip. She showed no signs of recognizing Ariadne, or anything else around her.

Ariadne wrenched, tried to crane her neck for a better view.

“She’s a cutie, boss.” Po-Mo laughed, tousling Marie’s hair. “You sure Ari has to do her in?”

Liliane ignored him. “A simple test, dear one,” said Liliane. “This interloper whom you brought, perhaps she bewitched you. Well, have no fear. The wizards may forget themselves, but we have not dealt with them for centuries without learning their tricks, learning how to stop them from flitting in and out of our holdings like birds. I have already clipped her wings. All you need to do is finish the job.”

The pain in Ariadne’s feet receded. Rough hands yanked the stakes out of her body. She was shoved to her feet, her legs scooped off the table to a shaky stand on the floor. She looked dismally at her feet to see the flesh mostly gone—the pain of standing on muscle and bone was wrenching. Her body was already starting to heal, but not quickly enough.

Ariadne realized the pain had cleared her mind. She could think for herself again, at least until Liliane decided to exert her will once more.

“We are your family,” Liliane was saying as someone shoved Ariadne’s sword into her hand and pushed her forward.

She stumbled. Po-Mo laughed.

“You are our Hand. Your duty is to us. Slay her.”

The room spun and blurred. Ariadne counted four of Po-Mo’s gang here, plus Po-Mo himself. Then Marie, frozen, her face soaked in sweat, and then Liliane, now beside Ariadne, running her hands up and down Ariadne’s shoulder. So many smiles, laughing at Ariadne, as she staggered about the room, trying to find her balance.

Po-Mo held Marie’s arms, frog-marched her to where Ariadne stood.

Ariadne tested the weight of her sword. Her wrists burned and ached where the stakes had been removed. Her arms felt heavy as she raised the blade high. Marie, still half-insensate, stared up at her.

Ariadne was not tall, but Marie was particularly petite. The wizard’s small size, her flushed face, gave her a vaguely non-human appearance. If anything, it seemed that killing her might be easy. Killing had always been easy for Ariadne.

But Ariadne’s blade remained poised before the wizard’s face.

“Kill her, my Silent Knife.”

Ariadne had killed children before. When Liliane had starved her, when she’d had no other choice, when her hunger pulled the reins of her body. This was no different. For her to survive, Marie had to die. It was simple.

So why wouldn’t the goddamn blade move?

Disobeying Liliane’s order would mean nothing. Marie would still be killed, just by someone else. Liliane had been very clear in the early months and years of Ariadne’s tutelage: Your only mandate is survival.

But what good would survival be, as someone else’s puppet?

“Do it. Kill her.”

Ariadne felt the order, almost indistinguishable from the impulses her own brain gave to her limbs.

But her blade wavered in the air and did not move.

Was this Marie’s doing?

No. It was her own.

“No,” said Ariadne, tossing the sword to the ground. “I am not yours. You can kill me, but I am not yours.”

She had no time to see Liliane’s reaction, or anyone else’s. The door to the room had just flown open to reveal Silas.

The elder stood in the doorway, his waistcoat disheveled, his eyes wide with panic.

“My Prince, it has begun! The Council’s forces are here! You must help us!”

Liliane’s expression darkened as she stared first at Silas, then back at Ariadne. The sword lay at Ariadne’s feet and Marie remained alive.

“We are involved in a very delicate—”

“There is no time!” Silas bleated. “My Prince, you must save us!”

Liliane sighed, steadying herself. She beckoned to Po-Mo. “You, come. Take the magician with you. If our ungrateful daughter will not kill her, at least we can interrogate her before we do the job ourselves.”

“What about her?” Po-Mo chucked a thumb at Ariadne.

“She will stay.” The spoken command plowed into Ariadne’s brain, freezing her in place. “We will not be long. If she should stir—” Liliane nodded to the other soldiers “—cut off her legs.”

With a swirl and billow of her white dress, Liliane spun on her heel and strode out. Po-Mo marched Marie out behind her. Silas crept along by in their wake. Ariadne struggled fiercely to bend down and pick up her sword, but she might as well have been a stone statue herself.

The door remained open. After a few moments, one of Po-Mo’s men took a step to close it.

A knife flew out of thin air, piercing his throat.

As he gargled helplessly, the others turned to the door. This was a perfect distraction. If only Ariadne could move! She strained with all her might against her sire’s command. With a suddenness that surprised her, her limbs unlocked.

From here, the Silent Knife’s training took over. Ariadne slipped her wounded foot beneath her sword, kicked the blade into her hand, and, whirling in place, chopped the head clean off the soldier behind her. As the second soldier turned toward her, she cut him in half on the backswing.

Then her unsteady ankles gave way beneath her. She used the momentum of her fall to tumble out of the way of a scuffle drawing close to her. She didn’t see the fight. There was a grunt, then the sound of bodies slumping to the ground.

By the time she turned around she saw Bourne, bloody stake in hand, driving it into the heart of the last soldier.

Ariadne and Bourne were now alone in the room. Supporting herself on the wall, Ariadne dragged herself up to her feet.

“You!”

“Shut up,” said Bourne, glancing nervously back at the door. “We don’t have much time.”

“Then the Invictus Council hasn’t really ordered its troops in?”

“Of course it has,” said Bourne. “But they did it because Silas was the one who squealed.”

Ariadne gaped. “He did what?”

“Yeah. Who would have guessed that, right? It looks like there are a bunch of rats on this here sinking ship.”

A shape appeared at the door, and Ariadne readied her blade. Silas entered, and entered alone. He closed the door behind him.

Ariadne did not lower her sword.

“Liliane will only be gone a few moments.” Silas strode forward, stepping over the fallen bodies of Po-Mo’s brigade.

“Come close, stripling,” he hissed, drawing near to Ariadne. “Let me take a close look at the slip of a girl who has seduced my childe into betraying everything to which he has sworn, dragging me into dishonor along with him.”

He held Ariadne’s face in his wizened, leathery hand. His fingers felt like worms wrapped in sandpaper. It took all of Ariadne’s self-control not to ram her sword through his aged body.

“Hmmm,” said the elder. “You have no idea how long I’ve planned and plotted, how many nights I’ve been unable to find peace in my paintings, because of you.”

Ariadne pulled his hand away forcefully. “You don’t exactly put me at ease either.”

“I should be Seneschal. I’m eldest. I’ve served our Prince the longest, the most faithfully. She chose Roarke because of his brawn, his ruthlessness, and now she has reaped the rewards of her foolishness. Yet it would appear that she needed a second lesson. Hence you, here, now.”

“Oh, and you were so loyal? Betraying us to the Council?”

“I had no other choice.”

Ariadne was backed against the wall. She knew she should have just pushed past him, gained herself some breathing room, but where Liliane froze her with terrifying love, Silas radiated a stench of rotted power, a toxic cloud that kept her where she was for fear that any change of position would make her breathe it deeper.

“I entrust my dim-witted childe with the simplest of tasks: bring about your destruction. He flummoxed it. Why? Because he developed some mad infatuation with you. Well, rest assured, stripling, I have no such fondness. What Liliane has begun in this room, I can easily finish.”

His nails became claws, long and heavy like iron. They hovered by Ariadne’s throat as his other hand grabbed a fistful of her hair, and this time, despite all her pushing, Ariadne could not budge his wrists.

“Sire—”

“Silence, Bourne!”

“Sire, please,” Bourne said. Silas flailed out with his clawed hand, slashing red lines across his childe’s chest. Coughing, staggering, Bourne fell back.

“We have supposedly won the war against Roarke,” said Silas, “but at what cost? Flagrant breaches of the Masquerade, the murder of a member of the Invictus Council, the conversion of our home into a den of anarchy. Disastrous! Thanks in no small part to our incompetent young general. I told the Council as much, and at least they respected my opinions. They’re taking over. Together we’ll get rid of Roarke andLiliane’s mismanagement.”

Roarke? Mismanagement? Ariadne’s mind raced madly. These were the grounds upon which Silas appealed to the Council? Then the Invictus might not know anything about the Almavore statue at all. Bourne had never heard Marie’s explanation. All he could have told Silas, if anything, was that Liliane kept a weird statue beneath her study. There was only one way to find out, and it might be the way to save herself.

“Do you even know about that statue?”

Silas’s rheumy eyes narrowed. “What gibberish are you spilling now?”

“Well played, Bourne!” Ariadne cried out. “It looks like we all keep our little secrets, eh? As you two were planning your revolution, you didn’t tell your sire about what we found down there? It’s Liliane’s, Bourne. You were right. But you have no idea just how bad it is.”

Silas kept his gaze firmly on Ariadne, but she could tell that the low growl issuing from his throat was meant for Bourne alone.

“Um, I was getting to that,” Bourne coughed. “It’s complicated.”

“I’m sure.” Silas’s voice dripped. “Was this another omission designed to obscure your relations with this woman?”

“Why I didn’t tell you is not important,” said Bourne. “Here’s what we saw.” His explanation was quick and remarkably free of his usual levity, which told Ariadne how frightened he was. But Bourne didn’t know the half of it.

Silas did not loosen his grip on her. “A rather bizarre tale. Why should I believe it?”

“Whether it’s true or not, boss,” Bourne said with a smile, “it makes an even better case against Liliane if you bring it before the Council, doesn’t it? Under Council rules, Nadine and Roarke weren’t even supposed to be reading that grimoire. What do you think the repercussions would be if they saw Liliane playing with that statue?”

“You need to think beyond your stupid politics.” Ariadne glared, struggling in Silas’s grip. “That statue’s not just a tool you can use, it’s a threat to all of us. I can help you get rid of it, but only if you start treating me like an ally and not a prisoner. Now.”

“You dare to make demands of me?” Silas reared back his hand, claws flashing.

“I have information. I spoke with that girl, the wizard. I know what the statue is and what it can do.”

The sound of gunfire suddenly reported from the halls. Gunfire and screams.

Silas grimaced, his hand wavering, and for a moment Ariadne saw just how old he was, how many beatings the world had given him. For Liliane, the centuries seemed to have only added to her strength of will, but they had eroded Silas’s. Was it merely a difference in attitude, or was it somehow the Almavore’s doing? Was the statue constantly feeding Liliane power from the souls of both her enemies and those who trusted her?

Silas released her, and Ariadne wasted no time in moving to the far side of the room, her blade firmly at the ready. She then told them what Marie had revealed.

The elder stroked his pockmarked chin, his eyes widening with every detail he heard. No doubt part of him didn’t believe a word she said, but Ariandne knew Silas, knew his paranoia in the end would allow him no other option but to consider the Almavore a threat.

“Troubling,” Silas said at last. “I gather you propose an alliance, then?”

“An alliance of convenience,” said Bourne.

Silas snorted. “As if there is any other kind.”

Ariadne thought of Andrei, of the text message on her phone. He was waiting for her back on campus, promising escape. Bourne and Silas stood before her, promising her an even deeper road into the hell she had known for ten years.

“Damn it!” she cried out to no one in particular. “Liliane’s my sire. When she’s in the room, I can’t even think about lifting a hand to fight her. And if I try to leave, she can always call me back. I’ve got no choices at all.”

“If my suspicions are correct,” said Silas, “and if you and my childe are deviating from your nature and are actually speaking some shreds of truth, then you are capable of far more than you believe—which is all the more reason why it would be wiser to kill you right now, before you realize just what you are.”

“You can try,” said Ariadne, raising her blade.

Silas seemed to consider for a moment, then folded his wizened hands. “Perhaps another time. If we are now deciding on the path of Lucifer, we will need all the fallen angels we can muster.”

“Real poetic, boss,” said Bourne. “Me, I would have just said every conspiracy needs a good-looking babe.”

Gunfire again. Everyone tensed.

“Stay here, in this room,” Silas ordered. “The Council’s agents know where we are. They know we stand with them. As long as we remain here, we will not be harmed.”

Ariadne envisioned the beautiful carpets and tapestries on fire, the communal cistern shattered, in ruins, Liliane’s library torn to shreds. This had happened to the Prince once before.

“What will you do when the Council wins—if the Council wins?” Ariadne asked warily.

“Oh, they will prevail,” said Silas. “Liliane has kept this city running smoothly for a century, through careful manipulation of all the powers that be, but Roarke disrupted that dance. Order must be restored.”

“Roarke only rebelled because of the Almavore,” said Ariadne. “At least, that’s what he told me. He implied that there were certain lines even a Prince shouldn’t cross.”

“If a Prince keeps order, that is all that matters,” said Silas. “But monstrous statue or not, Liliane has failed in her mandate. Roarke caused havoc, and Liliane did not seem to care overmuch.”

“Because she had the Almavore!” said Ariadne. “Don’t you see? She wasn’t incompetent and she wasn’t overconfident. She knew she had the power to crush Roarke or even the Council if she had to.”

“Wait a minute,” said Bourne. “If that were true and she had the power, why is she so confident that the city’s going to be a lost cause? That the only way to build her New Jerusalem is to escape and start over?”

Ariadne shook her head. “The Almavore is a battery. You have to feed a battery with something—in this case, souls. Maybe she’s not leaving the city because she’s being driven out. Maybe she’s planning to leave the city because she’s about to get all she needs. Marie said the Almavore was being charged with a city’s worth of souls.”

“Maybe she was exaggerating?”

“No. We’ve seen black ash all over the place, and there were hundreds of faces in the Almavore. That means she’s harvested a lot of souls already. But that was just the preamble. She’s leaving Boston because by the time she’s through using the Almavore, there won’t be a Boston left.”

She had seldom seen Bourne and Silas silent for so long.

“Liliane loves this city,” Silas said at last. “She is a fool and a dreamer, but she loves this city. She would not destroy it.”

“No,” said Ariadne firmly. “She loves New Jerusalem. Who’s to say that Boston is where she wants New Jerusalem to be? What if Boston is just another of her many ‘necessary sacrifices,’ to give her the power to build it elsewhere?’”

Silas rubbed his chin uneasily.

“A soul eater,” said Bourne. “Never much believed in souls myself—nothing convinced me religion’s the opiate of the masses more than dying and becomin’ Kindred—but I’ve seen some things in my time that make me wonder. Of course, even if there was a soul, you’d think folks like us, vamps and all, wouldn’t we have cashed those in?”

“Call it what you want,” said Ariadne. “‘Life energy,’ ‘death energy,’ ‘pixie dust.’ Marie said that all you need is a sympathetic link, some piece of the person in question, and you can convert their soul into power.”

“Okay, fine,” said Bourne. “In all the chaos of the war, she’s had plenty of chances to snatch blood from enemies and stray mortals. But how would she have blood from members of her own court, like Hera? I mean, we’re hardly a bunch of diablarizers here.”

Ariadne realized then exactly how Liliane had acquired the blood from Hera, from all of them. The answer had been in front of them every evening as they held hands.

Silas spoke her thoughts for her. “The common pool. I always knew that idiotically egalitarian ritual had to have some ulterior motive.”

“She can wipe us all out with the snap of a finger,” said Bourne. “We’ve been fighting the wrong war this whole time. It distracted us from seeing what she was up to. She must have planned it that way.”

Ariadne shrugged. Even if the war hadn’t been engineered as a distraction, it had certainly served that purpose well enough.

Bourne scratched his head under his cap. “Wow. Gotta hand it to the old lady. She’s good. I’ve joined a bunch of lost causes in my time, but this one? It takes the freakin’ cake. How do you think she’s gonna harvest the rest of the city?”

“I haven’t figured out that part yet,” said Ariadne. “But I’m willing to bet she has.”

“Let’s just get the hell out of here,” Bourne said. “This thing’s got to have a range limit.”

Ariadne shook her head. “You and Silas can leave. Maybe you can convince some extremely naïve Prince to take you in. But I can’t. Liliane owns me, body and blood. I don’t think I can ever leave.”

“I told you,” said Silas, “you underestimate yourself. You command magic.”

“No, I don’t,” said Ariadne. “Marie said I had the potential, maybe, if I hadn’t been Embraced. But vampires can’t do magic. Only Roarke can, and that’s because he’s somehow wrapped up with the Almavore.”

“Really now? Didn’t you reveal that secret passage?”

“Yes, but—”

“You are carrying the Prince’s death in your very veins, if only you knew how to use it. Why else do you think she has kept such close eyes upon you?”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

Bourne swallowed. “Ariadne, you said that Liliane told you she was your sire.”

Ariadne nodded, an uneasy feeling forming in the pit of her stomach.

“Well, when I told Silas that, he didn’t think that could be true.”

Ariadne blinked. Her mind raced. No. Don’t take this from me. Whatever else Liliane is, whatever else she has done, she has given me a name.

“I need confirmation,” said Silas. “I need to taste your blood.”

Ariadne leveled her sword. “Oh, no,” she said. “You’ll have to kill me before I let you do that. Besides, plenty of Kindred have tasted my blood and no one’s ever been able to make an I.D. on my sire. Marie said there was some sort of cloaking spell placed on me—”

“Which, according to your story, the magician said is gone now. We can find out.”

“No! I’m not letting either of you get your fangs anywhere near me.”

“There is no need, girl,” Silas said. “We have already established that I have all the blood of yours I need right here, from the others who have already drunk their fill as they dined on you a few minutes ago.”

Silas snapped his fingers. Bourne scurried to the center of the room, retrieved the box of ants, and brought it to his sire. Heedless of any danger, face absent of any disgust, Silas plunged his wizened hand inside, churned the assemblage of ants back and forth, then produced a squirming, swarming fistful.

He leaned back, opened his mouth wide, and shoved them in, so far down it looked as if he would gag himself. Then he stretched his neck and pitched forward again, ants crawling around his lips and jaw as he smiled.

“Yes,” he said, licking some of the stray insects off his cheek with a sickly gray tongue. “Ohhh, yes. I know the stink of this blood well. I’ve barely tolerated it long enough to spit it out during the unity ritual.”

Silas laughed a thin, wheezing, grating laugh. “Little girl, you are Roarke’s childe.”

Ariadne wanted to vomit at the very thought of it. “I know I somehow resisted the order to kill Marie, but Liliane has made me to do so many things against my will. I had to do them. Doesn’t that mean she’s my sire?”

“That means nothing,” Silas huffed. “An elder has many means at her disposal for dazzling and persuading the untrained mind, chief among them the Vinculum. There is enough taste of Liliane in your blood to confirm she’s bound you. Were she actually your sire as well, she might well control you fully. But tell me: if she could just exert her will upon you so easily, why all of the careful initiations she ministered to you over the years?”

Within Liliane’s presence, Ariadne would believe anything that came to her, soaked in the honey of her Prince’s voice. Here, in the cold wilderness beyond the reach of her Prince, the truth started biting into her skin. Ariadne started cursing, finding and calling out every obscenity she knew. Then she made up new ones, mixed and matched, twisted them, until she was screaming and growling like a beast and Silas’s bony hands were pressing on her shoulders, vainly trying to steady her.

“Stop it, you miserable waif, and listen! I have tried in secret to learn sorcery for centuries, to no avail. That Roarke succeeded may be more testament to his blood than his studies. If that is so, then his strength is yours, too. If we unlock that strength, use it to our own advantage . . .”

A wicked gleam crept into the old man’s eye. “This city will need a new Prince. By my side, you can maintain your post as Seneschal, in the new order that will come.”

Ariadne stared at the walls of the room, wherein she had been both victim and executioner, exchanging those masks dozens of times. She imagined herself taking up swords again under Silas’s command to punish Liliane for all the Prince had done to her.

Or else returning to Liliane’s silken voice and the cold, marble hands that would forgive her, grant redemption, and then place her in the vanguard of a holy host waging a war—a war not to preserve the city, but to destroy it in the service of some other dream.

An explosion rocked the house. Chunks fell from the ceiling as the candelabra swung back and forth. Eve’s head tumbled down from the frieze to shatter against the floor.

“I’m done with serving,” said Ariadne. “I have another option. Fight your own wars. Against Roarke, against Liliane, against whomever you want.”

“You . . . you’re going off with pretty boy?” Bourne gaped. “Last time I checked, he wasn’t so pretty anymore. I say we—”

“No!” she cried. “I won’t stand in your way. That’s all the help you’re going to get from me. No, wait. I’ll offer this, too.”

“You—” she turned to Silas. “Liliane was right about you. You have no head for tactics. The Council will never trust anyone from Liliane’s court to run this demesne again. Sooner or later, they’ll take you out. It’ll be sooner if you stay here waiting for them. What you need to do now is get out and go to the last place anyone would look for you. That would mean going to meet Roarke.”

“What?” Both Silas and Bourne spat out the word.

“Everyone knows how much you two hate each other, so no one will suspect you’re there before it’s too late. The fact is you need him. If I have some link with the Almavore because I have Roarke’s blood in my veins and you want my help, then why not go to the source of that blood? Join forces. I’ll even tell you a safehouse you can use: Room 12 at the Fresh Pond Motel. In fact . . .”

She fished into her jumpsuit to the chain she kept close to her skin, tore something from it, and hurled it their way. “Here’s the key. We won’t be needing it anymore.”

“Where will you be in all of this?” Silas sneered.

“I’m going to rescue someone who’s in danger because I once brought her here. When she’s safe, my slate is clean. I’m gone. Hunt me at your peril. But then, I think you’ll have plenty of more important things on your mind.”

“You impudent whelp of a—”

“I’ll miss you too, Silas. By the way, steer clear of weddings.”

Silas stared in confusion. Bourne stared too, but with something else in his eyes. For the briefest of instants, Silas’s portly childe seemed to look his near-century of age. Then his face reformed into its usual mask, with his characteristic leer. He gave a low whistle.

“Shucks. You’re sexy when you take charge.”

“Shut up,” said Ariadne, taking up her blade. “And goodbye.”

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 30

 

 

Ariadne stalked through the halls of Liliane’s sanctuary, certain that this would be the last time she would feel this carpet beneath her feet, see the friezes on the walls. She had tried and failed to leave before, but that had been different. She had been different.

Liliane had trained her well. The Prince had taught her not to care whether she lived or died crossing swords in the night. She had been a tool, an instrument, a Silent Knife, carrying out the work of others. Now, for perhaps the first time, she was wielding herself.

Stumbling through the halls, Ariadne certainly felt like a newly born thing. Her limbs shot pain through her as she walked; it would take time to heal the wounds from the ants and from the stakes.

A man in a flak jacket burst through a door, automatic rifle rising in a reflexive gesture. Ariadne’s grabbed the barrel just as he squeezed the trigger. The red-hot metal scalded her fingers when she turned the weapon aside. The unexpected angle of the recoil threw him off balance, and Ariadne fell upon him, ripping out his throat with her fangs. His blood sent shivers through her veins as she drank deeply, relishing the new strength the liquid gave her.

From behind him, another man—they all looked identical, with their helmets and goggles, their asexual padding—rushed forward, drawing a sword. Ariadne thought she recognized the weapon; it looked just like the one Mister Rose had used, the one that could steal souls at a single touch.

Mister Rose had said there were only two. Liliane had taken Rose’s. Was this the other? Ariadne couldn't take the chance. As he came swinging in Ariadne’s direction, she felt the tightness of the space, especially with his fellow’s corpse right below them. Ariadne rushed in low and knocked into his knees. They wrestled on the ground, Ariadne ducking and twisting so that the blade wouldn’t have a chance to even knick her.

They struggled for long moments, matching strength for strength, before Ariadne simply let go. Propelled by his own force, the man couldn’t help but stagger off-balance, and that was all the opening Ariadne needed to wrench the sword from his grasp.

A moment later, she had buried the sword in his exposed forehead, splitting the enforcer’s face in two. His body spasmed for a moment before falling back, already beginning to curdle into rot. Ariadne pulled the sword loose, studied it in the flickering light. Then she reared back with all her strength and drove it into the wall. Plaster splintered, and as she slammed it home into a support beam she felt the sword bend with a satisfying buckle that reverberated up her arm. Poor workmanship. It seemed unlikely that this was the other soul-stealing sword. If it were, it certainly wasn’t going to be of much use to anyone now.

She slunk away, dissolved into the shadows, ducked inside rooms whenever she heard footsteps. She was not here to fight back all of the Council’s soldiers. All she needed to do was find Marie, and that should have been easy. Under normal circumstances, the smell of her living blood would have shone out like red beacon in a sea of Kindred stench. But the house was awash in blood right now, much of it from the mortal ghouls that served as the Council’s soldiers.

Ariadne strained and sniffed, following the trail as best she could as it led downstairs.

Po-Mo had Marie. Would he be sticking close to Liliane?

The deeper she went, the more Ariadne’s senses failed her. She began opening doors one by one, finding rooms empty or full of corpses. She paused when she reached the door to the armory.

Something was moving inside, although Kindred or kine she couldn’t tell. She edged closer, strained her perceptions.

A sharp pain lanced through her stomach, a fire that blossomed all the way through to her lower back. Ariadne gasped as she saw the hand that had burst through the door, holding the knife that had buried itself hilt-deep in her gut. She tried to pull away by pushing off the door, only to find it opening inward. She lost her balance and fell to the ground, her sword dropping from her hand.

Po-Mo was standing above her, clicking his tongue.

“Huh. Thought you knew better than that.”

Despite the pain, Ariadne thrust her pelvis upward, kicked out at the other vampire, but he jumped back out of her reach. She grabbed the knife and unstuck it from herself as she rose. Po-Mo seized the advantage, barreling into her and knocking her back up against the doorframe. His shoulder pinned hers. One hand seized her throat, and the other, claws extended, ripped into the fresh wound in her stomach. Ariadne gasped as he twisted and tore at her innards. Her vision blurred.

“Ahh,” Po-Mo sighed as he pressed his nose against hers. His shamrock tattoo loomed like a green cloud before her eyes. “This is gonna be good.”

Ariadne screamed at her senses to focus, to shut out the pain. His claws were raking her from the inside out. She could feel the impacts pressing up against the skin of her chest from within.

“Ain’t you the one who taught me that you can’t let stupidity slide?”

His mouth gaped wide, revealing jagged fangs, browned with the stains of dried blood, caked with remnants of rotted flesh from previous kills. He craned his neck to move toward hers.

Mistake.

In baring his neck, he gave her a window—a small one, but it was all she needed. The very pain of her injury gave her the drive to push herself forward, to seek Vitae to heal. She plunged her own fangs into Po-Mo’s jugular, and the sparkle and rush of his blood exploded like lit gunpowder in her mouth.

He bucked, but Ariadne wrapped her arms around his back, pulling him tight, using the press of his own body pinning her to secure the hug.

The fountain gushed up her fangs into her skull, her temples, her eyes. It spread to every nerve in her body, singing a mad song of pleasure and violence. Sharing Vitae in the unity ritual, she and the others had only sipped the blood of their fellows. This was the first time she had ever drank long draughts of another vampire’s blood.

She tasted Po-Mo’s life in flashes, in barely comprehensible fragments of sight, sound, and memory. She smelled corned beef cooking on a leaky gas stove and hungered for it like she had never hungered for any food in her life. She drank him all the faster, heard the cry of babies, the scolding of his mother, the sighs and tears when his father was dragged away by the police.

In the space between seconds she sat through every boring class of high school until he gave up and shared every cigarette from his choking first to his choking last, disappointed at how dead lungs rejected the tobacco, how dead taste buds no longer let the drug calm a restless soul. She shared his first kiss, the awkwardness and fear of his first sex, the pounding need to prove himself and the yearning questions about where love existed in all of this.

His first drug sale, his first murder—again, a panicked, fearful moment, full of desperate questions he never received an answer to in prison. Only more fear, more panic, more need to prove himself.

Po-Mo was coughing and sputtering in her grip as she drank him, but the Po-Mo in her arms was unreal compared with the Po-Mo in her mind and in her blood. She felt his Embrace, underwent all the torment and exhilaration she felt during her own change all over again. Abruptly the memories ran dry and she released him, actually threw him to the ground as the wild orgasm of his life burst inside every cell in her body.

Ariadne collapsed against the armory door, her breath wild and out of control. Po-Mo lay in a heap beside her, silent and unmoving. Ariadne sank beneath the ocean, unable to feel her body. The only sound from the world beyond was a small cry, like a cat, or a bird, or . . .

Marie. The woman lay propped up in the corner against a crate of ammunition, a life-sized rag-doll whose eyes still stared blankly. Still, she was making small murmurs. Ariadne zoomed in on those sounds, narrowed her focus until they were all she could hear, then used them as a beacon in her climb back to reality.

Ariadne rose to her feet. Her hands ran over her stomach and could find no scar, no sign of Po-Mo’s mauling. How was that possible? A wound like that should have taken hours to heal, yet she felt fine—better than fine.

She had never drained another Kindred into destruction before. It was forbidden, called Amaranth or diablerie, a crime Liliane had told her was punished in all Invictus courts. It also wasn’t supposed to be possible unless the other vampire was in torpor, helpless.

In the heat of the struggle, it had seemed the natural thing to do. The power coursing through Ariadne reassured her of that. You’re done with Liliane’s court, it told her. You’re done with the rules.

She approached Marie. “Um, hi?”

Marie gave no response.

Ariadne refused to look at Po-Mo’s decomposing body, trying desperately to sort out present from past, to separate the Gaelic from the English in her thoughts.

“I saved you. Whatever he did to you, he’s not going to bother you again.”

Marie resumed her whimpering.

Ariadne cursed under her breath.

“I’m not sure I ever properly introduced myself. I’m Ariadne.”

Marie inched up against the crate, as if to push herself backward through it. Her wide eyes shimmered as she stared up at the woman before her.

Ariadne slapped Marie across the face, without much effect. She looked past her, up and down the armory, reaching out with her senses. Had Po-Mo screamed? Would help be arriving? Where were the Council soldiers?

“We have to go. Come on, snap out of it.”

As she drew close, Ariadne could feel that magnetic buzz around the perimeter of Marie’s body, an invisible caul. Whatever enchantment Liliane had placed around Marie, Ariadne could sense its presence and map its boundaries. If only she knew how to get rid of it.

“I’ve got magic, too, right?” Ariadne whispered. “I should be able to do something.”

She made a few random gestures to no avail. She tried to “pull” the way she had in the hidden storeroom, but nothing happened.

Ariadne scooped up Marie awkwardly in her arms. Since becoming a vampire, she had seldom held another human being without the intention of harming him or her. Andrei’s return had changed all that. Ariadne tried to determine if Marie’s skin, her smell, felt anything like Andrei’s, but all she could smell now was the rotted cabbage from Po-Mo’s childhood meals.

Footsteps. Real, or in her head?

“I’m going to get you out of here. I promise,” Ariadne said, releasing her. “Just give me a moment.”

She placed Marie behind another stack of crates, then turned.

Invictus Council agents came charging up the stairs. Either they had heard Po-Mo’s scream or they were just making their sweep of the facility. Either way, they put two and two together. Ariadne saw blood in their eyes, smelled the rage in their hearts.

Good.

They fell upon her, one by one at first, then in a swarm. She was a blur, a rage of jabs and kicks and swings of her sword. Here, her fist broke a nose. There, her foot shattered a kneecap.

She felt different. Heavier, but not in an awkward way, as if she just possessed more mass. She assumed this must have had something to do with Po-Mo’s blood inside her. She would ponder it later.

The men pulled back, and the closest one opened up with his automatic rifle. Ariadne braved the hail of bullets, knocked the gun from his hand, kicked him back into a stack of ammunition. She staggered back, blood oozing from a dozen punctures.

There were too many, and they were too well trained. The space was too confined. Even with the heady rush of Po-Mo’s blood singing within her, with the Beast rearing its howling head, some part of her brain recognized she could not win this confrontation. She had to get Marie and get out.

They had her pinned now. She was hunkered down behind an empty crate, and they were shooting at her from all sides. She crouched, hoping they ran out of ammunition and gave her an opening, but they were too savvy for that.

They advanced as they fired, moving as one entity, coming toward her from all sides. She lashed out, swinging her blade, but they kept their distance. The second the sword completed its arc, they pounced.

All five of them piled on, overmatching her strength. A face loomed before her, and she saw a gold tooth flashing in its mouth. Then the back of her skull crashed against the stone floor, and something in her screamed with two voices, hers and Po-Mo’s. The magnetic buzz was back. It seemed to be spreading down her arms to her hands.

Her hands. Her hands felt as if they were on fire. Were her opponents severing them? Ariadne couldn’t tell. She could only feel the flames spreading, engulfing her vision in bright blue flame.

She heard screams. They were not her own.

In a scrambling pile, her assailants fell off her at odd angles, their bodies consumed in azure lightning. She watched dumbly as the blue fire flayed the flesh off their bones in a ridiculously short time, far faster than ordinary flames should have accomplished that grisly feat. Some managed to rise to a staggering stance, while others writhed helplessly.

Ariadne snapped herself out of her stupor, grabbed her sword, and cut them down one by one, easy targets that they now were. With each man’s destruction, the blue flame snuffed into sparkles. The corpses dissolved, leaving a pile of familiar black ash.

Her mind felt strangely quiet. Po-Mo’s thoughts and memories were gone. A strange calm suffused her. She moved to reclaim Marie, scooped up the dazed mage once again.

Across the room, Po-Mo’s body made a small exhalation. She didn’t want to look, afraid of what she would find. Drawing near, her suspicions were confirmed. Black ash lay in a pile where his remains had been.

Was Liliane attacking them from afar? Why would she have destroyed Po-Mo’s body? How would she have a sympathetic link to the Invictus soldiers?

In her arms, Marie gave a long moan, then cursed. Ariadne peered down.

“You’re back?” Ariadne asked brusquely. “Can you walk?”

“I don’t feel so good.” Marie brought a hand to her forehead and blood trickled all down her arm.

Bullet wounds. Who knew how many. Ariadne could feel and smell Marie’s blood pouring all over her own body. Damn it! Ariadne wasn’t used to fights where she had to worry about trivialities such as ricochets. Her own wounds were already healing. Marie’s wouldn’t be.

“You’ll be all right,” Ariadne said flatly. She had no words of comfort; these, too, hadn’t been staples of her training.

“Bullshit,” Marie coughed. “But wow, I’m psyched you tried to rescue me. Never saw a Dracula do that. Especially one of Liliane’s.”

“I’m not one of Liliane’s,” said Ari. “Not anymore.”

“Good,” said Marie. “Because that statue has to go. Or the whole city goes.”

I’m leaving the city, thought Ariadne. She must have thought it too loudly, because Marie, her eyes growing glassy, suddenly made a fierce grab at Ariadne’s shirt.

“You can’t let that thing take everyone’s souls!” she hissed. “You have to promise me that. This isn’t just their lives. It’s their very being, the shards of what makes this world more than just dirt and stone!”

Marie was sweating, her teeth chattering. Her grip on Ariadne’s shirt began to loosen, but her eyes still sought out those of her would-be savior. “Listen!”

Ariadne leaned down to hear, even after she realized she didn’t have to. Her senses worked fine at any distance. But somehow the human gesture just came back to her.

“Promise me! Even if it’s only to keep enough of us warm-blooded types alive for you to feed on, dammit!”

Ariadne stared at Marie, felt the power of her life and her determination seeping away. When Hera died, she had felt nothing, not even after knowing her for ten years. But something in Marie—perhaps that shard of which she spoke—called out to her, made her keep eye contact when every instinct told her to drop the woman and start running.

“I . . . I . . .”

A crackling sound. Ariadne turned to see fire—red fire, real fire. Some stray shot from one of the Council soldiers must have sparked off a pile of ammunition. At once, something ignited.

Flares shot up from the corners of the armory. Ariadne felt her insides seize up.

“Pay attention!” Marie’s hoarse voice demanded. “I think I know what I did wrong. I tried to cut off the flow of souls to the Almavore, but I didn’t have the power to create a big enough dam. I didn’t put my entire soul into the spell. If I did, it could create enough backflush to—”

With a whoosh, the combat dummy caught flame, became a headless angel of fire passing holy judgment on the fallen denizens who had defiled his chapel.

“We’ve got to go,” Ariadne said. Marie in her arms, she began running.

“No!” Marie pounded uselessly on Ariadne’s arms. “Take us back down there! You can use my soul to do it. I’m dying anyway—”

“I don’t know how to cast any damned spells!”

Ariadne ducked around the corner as two Council gunmen ran past, shouting warnings about the fire.

“Besides,” she whispered, “the flames would kill us both before we got anywhere near the statue. We have to get out.”

Marie murmured a protest. Then her head lolled. Ariadne propped it up with one hand as she took off down the hallway.

Ariadne’s life—her unlife—whatever it was she had known, was burning up behind her. Would Liliane be caught in the flames as well?

The fire roared away such thoughts as the panicked Beast inside demanded she flee. Marie in her arms, Ariadne barely outran the flames as they rushed to claim every room in the subterranean complex beneath Eagle Hill. She raced up the stairs, stepping over the fallen and the decomposing. Ariadne flew through the interrogation room, but Bourne and Silas had long since departed; bent and broken brass was all that remained of Lucifer’s offer of the apple to Eve. Only now, in fleeing the flames, did Ariadne truly understand the expulsion from Eden. The thrill, the horror, the newfound power, the uncertainty about what lay ahead and the certainty that there would be no returning.

Flames at her heels, Ariadne fled the garden and stepped out into the world of pain beyond.

She immediately threw an arm up to shield her eyes. The glare of lights from fire engines and police cruisers blinded her. How long had the fire been raging? Long enough to attract attention, apparently. People were running everywhere, shouting orders.

Were they in league with the Council? Were they just arriving to investigate the conflagration? Either way, Ariadne needed to be elsewhere.

“Here!” She shoved Marie’s prone form into the arms of an approaching firefighter. “She’s been shot!”

Then she turned and ran, ignoring the shouts receding behind her. She ran with speed they couldn’t match, ducked into shadows where even their flashlights couldn’t find her. Ariadne knew these streets better than any others, knew every broken wall and open drainpipe, every ripped fence that could be made to look mended behind her with a moment’s effort. She wasn’t used to running from foes, but a fight here would be pointless.

Soon enough Ariadne was alone in the night wind.

Alone. No shelter. No safe haven for when the sun rose.

As the sounds of the sirens faded, Ariadne opened herself to the rush of the wind, the moan of airplanes landing at Logan, the yowling of a neighborhood cat. And beneath it all, the low throbbing of the Almavore, which she could still feel in her veins. It had tasted her blood. If she ran far enough away, could it still claim her soul?

Almavores. Souls. Magic spells. Too much to think about.

Marie might live. The wizards would handle it. Or they wouldn’t. There wasn’t anything Ariadne could do about it any longer. She had winnowed down her responsibilities, one by one, until at last only Andrei remained.

She was free.

 

 




 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 

 

DAVID NURENBERG, PhD, is a teacher, freelance writer, and social activist who lives in the Boston area. His credits with White Wolf include writing for the Vampire: The Requiem, Scion, and Exalted lines. His nonfiction has appeared in the Boston Globe, Newsweek, USA Today, and Multicultural Review, as well as many lesser-known papers, ’zines, and blogs. Silent Knife is his first novel published by a major press. His favorite animal is the wombat.