50. Alaric

CHAPTER FIFTY

ALARIC

Callista: I grow impatient. The Witching Hour approaches. Where is my killer?

W innie runs back to her friends. Those tears spilling down her beautiful cheeks haunt me – tears I know I caused.

I hid these things away precisely so I didn’t cause her pain. And still, I have caused her pain. I broke the two vows I made to her when I asked her to stay.

I long to go after her, to attempt to explain, to see if what I have broken between us can be repaired. But she is right about me. I am a monster. She is right to run.

My castle is in uproar and I am needed. Gideon comes for me, his face grave. Reginald takes us to my study, where he brought Baylor. I dig my fang into the pad of my thumb, relishing the pain, for I deserve it for the hurt I caused. I rub the wound against his lip, rousing him from the stupor Gideon had placed him in – my friend is a fellow adept at an ancient form of vampiric martial arts that can subdue one of our kin. Gideon and I pin his arms and drag him to the ballroom. He barely has the energy to struggle.

As we enter, the room falls deathly silent.

Silent as a tomb.

The band has been dismissed and Callista stands on the band dais, her arms raised for attention. Perdita stands behind her, holding a tablet towards the crowd where Isis’ camera footage plays on an endless loop. The only sounds in the room are the scrape of Baylor’s body against the marble and his voice rasping on the tape.

“I want to taste you as I take your life. I bet you are the sweetest delight.”

Disgusting.

He deserves the hell that awaits him.

But I cannot help but feel that I deserve it, too.

Hundreds of vampiric eyes watch as we toss the struggling Baylor at my mother’s feet. I scan the room for Winnie and see her huddling in the corner with the women from the Nevermore Murder Club minus Arabella and Dora, who are taking Isis home. I admire the grim set of her jaw, her determination to witness this justice for her friend even though she is upset and frightened and I have broken her heart.

My body knows it’s too late – I have broken us. But my heart leaps when her golden eyes meet mine.

She quickly looks away.

“A grave crime was committed during our revels – the third such crime committed within our community within the month.” My voice booms around the vast room. I let my words drip with the blood and dust of the battlefield, with every vile act I’ve committed and every torture I’ve endured. They must all know that I will not tolerate monsters in my house. I’m the top beast here. “Our justice must be swift. I call upon the ancient Rite of the Mora to judge this man.”

“Yesssss.” A hiss echoes through the crowd, the vipers coiling to strike.

“Who will judge our court?” I call.

“I will judge.” Callista steps forward, her features alight with relish. “Lady Callista Valerian, of the Blood Valerian, for the Nightshade Court.”

“I will judge.” Perdita’s staccato voice rings like music through the silent hall. “Princess Perdita Chastain, of the Blood Chastain, for the Midnight Court.”

I draw back in surprise. I didn’t know Perdita had undergone the rites to administer the Mora. She has more bravery than I credit her for.

“Have we a qualified representative from the Dusk Court?” calls my mother.

It’s a loaded question. Members of the Dusk Court usually prefer not to reveal themselves–

“Here,” a voice calls from the back of the crowd.

Vampires shuffle aside, granting the representative a clear path. A woman in a midnight dress dotted with a galaxy of diamonds and a diamond-studded mask over her face steps forward into the light. Something about her is familiar to me, although I cannot place it. She lifts the mask to reveal?—

“Lilac?” I hear Winnie gasp from across the room.

In my pain, I’m not guarded enough to keep the shock from my face.

The Rose & Wimple bartender turns to me with a sad smile. “Hello, Alaric. I’ve been impressed with the cocktails at this party. No wonder you always complain about the blood I serve. Next time, though, I think you should go lighter on the truth potion. It leaves an aniseed aftertaste that isn’t to my liking.”

“Truth potion?” Bernard cries.

Spitting sounds echo around the room as vampires spit out their cocktails.

“A necessary evil to unmask the killer in our midst,” Callista says. “Dusk Court, will you judge?”

“I will judge.” Lilac’s voice rings clear. “Lilac Elisaria of the Blood Ptolemy, for the Dusk Court.”

Blood Ptolemy? That means ? —

“This man is my sire,” Lilac adds, her mouth twisting into a grim smirk. “I will see him brought to justice.”

A gasp circles the room. It’s rare for a vampire to turn against her sire. But the Mora allows for those of the same blood to judge. I catch the eye of Eleanor Mock of the Blood Alexandre, Komal’s suspect. She nods once to Lilac. A nod of accord between them.

So Lilac’s siring was nonconsensual. Another vile crime for which Baylor should suffer.

Lilac steps onto the dais alongside Callista and Perdita. Gideon appears behind them, placing two goblets onto a small table, and lays a long blade across them. Callista’s blade. I’d recognise it anywhere.

Callista carries the tools of the Mora with her whenever she travels, lest she be given the opportunity to wield them.

I turn to the shocked faces of the crowd. I have seen my mother administer the Mora so many times that the rite is burned onto my soul, but many of them in this room have led privileged lives, sheltered from the brutality of Upyr justice.

My eyes find Winnie again, but her golden eyes are focused on Callista and that shimmering blade.

I long to go to her, to hold her close and assure her that Baylor’s evil is behind us. But she’s no longer mine to hold. I thought I had torn down every wall between us, but instead, I buried our love in rubble.

Very well. If I am the monster…

I kick Baylor’s slumped figure, seizing his neck and thrusting it upward. He stares up at the judges, his lip curled back in an impertinent sneer.

“This man has broken our first sacred law,” I cry. “He took blood from a human woman, who was in my employ, without her consent and with the intention of drinking her dry. He has dared do this tonight, in our presence, beneath the roof of a fellow Upyr, because his thirst prevents him from thinking clearly. Because he has already husked two other humans.”

Baylor tosses back his head and laughs. The harsh whiplash of the sound echoes through the ballroom. He doesn’t say a word in his defence, just cackles and chortles until his cheeks redden and his whole body convulses.

“You’re fools and liars, every one of you.” He licks the dried blood from his lips. “You sit up here in your lofty houses, with your courtly rituals and your high ideals, and you think yourselves civilised. But civilisation is a human concept. We are predators, and they are our prey . You all wish you had the stomach for what I did, for what this other has done?—”

“Enough.” My mother presses her foot into his face. The heel of her glittering shoe drives straight through his eye. Blood splatters across the marble, and Baylor does not laugh any longer. His cackles become shrieks of pain.

Callista calls over his cries, “Midnight Court, you may now pass judgment.”

Perdita steps up to the goblets. She raises her left hand, stretching out her long, delicate fingers towards Baylor. She brings her wrist to her mouth and bites down.

She holds her wrist over the left cup, allowing droplets of her blood to splatter over the blade of the sword before collecting inside the chalice.

“Guilty,” Perdita announces, her clear, musical voice ringing out over Baylor’s cries.

Lilac goes next. There is nothing delicate about her as she slashes a long cut across her arm with one fang and squeezes a gush of blood over the sword and into the left cup.

“Guilty, you vile bastard .”

My mother takes her turn, taking her time to smear her blood along the blade before dribbling it into the left chalice. “Guilty,” she announces. “Dusk Court, would you like to do the honours.”

Interesting. The Lady of Agony is softening. This is one of her favourite parts of the Mora.

“Hell yes.” Lilac picks up the sword. “I’m going to enjoy this. I think I’ll make you eat your own testicles, you fucker.”

The wound in Baylor’s eye has already started to heal over, but now his screams are those of terror. His bravado cannot hold in the face of what’s about to happen to him. He crawls over the floor, trailing blood from his eye. I jerk him back and pin him down while Gideon forces his mouth open. He laughs and shrieks as we force him to drink the blood of the Mora.

“You have flouted the sacred laws of the three courts, and now you carry their justice within you,” Callista intones. “You have been judged and found wanting. What is about to happen to you is your fault.”

Lilac’s pretty lips curl back into a snarl as she draws back her arm and drives the blade straight through Baylor’s chest.

The blade slides through easily, a perfect thrust that slides through the gaps of his ribcage. The tip emerges out of Baylor’s back, sending a spray of crimson in an arc across the marble. He falls to his knees, trying to speak, but blood bubbles up between his lips.

“The rest of the ceremony will be performed in the dungeon,” Callista declares as Gideon and I start to drag Baylor away. “Those who wish to observe it, follow us. Those who do not may continue the festivities.”

Lilac practically skips behind us, singing a traditional Dusk song that’s laden with unspoken magic. I lose sight of Winnie in the chaos as a line of vampires follow us like pied pipers of carnage out the double doors of the ballroom, along the hall, and down the narrow staircase into the castle dungeons, where Reginald has already prepared a room for the final piece of the ceremony.

“Are you staying for this?” Gideon asks as we haul Baylor onto a wooden rack and secure him. The sword still protrudes from his chest. The wound will not close because of the blood of the three courts on the blade.

“I must find Winnie.”

“Right answer, friend.” Gideon’s hand rests on my shoulder. He opens his mouth to say something then seems to think better of it, which is just as well because everything Gideon has ever said about Winnie makes me want to poke a straw through his back and sip out his spinal fluids.

He pats my shoulder again and turns back to his grisly task. I hurry up the stairs. The band has started up again, and sounds of merriment echo through the castle. I scan the ballroom, but she’s nowhere to be seen. None of the other book club members are there, either. Poor Reginald is trying to hold down the fort while angry, thirsty vampires surround him, demanding another round of cocktails without the truth serum.

Where is she?

I hurry through the castle, fearing it may be too late when I hear Beth’s distinctive laughter from the entrance hall. I arrive as the remaining members of the Nevermore Murder Club and Smutty Book Coven are pulling on their coats. Winnie doesn’t have a coat on the rack, so she pulls my winter cloak from the cupboard and drapes it over her shoulders, fiddling with the silver clasp. Her golden hair has fallen loose from its stays, cascading over her shoulders in dishevelled waves.

“Winnie.” I reach out to her, but she holds up a hand to stop me, her features drawn.

“That was quite a show,” Komal says. “I don’t suppose you’d consider administering the Mora on my good friend Counsellor Durant, for the crime of being a complete bellend.”

“What will happen to Baylor?” Beth asks.

“Do you truly wish to know?”

All the ladies – even Winnie – nod furiously.

“He has been taken to a room in the dungeons, where Lilac will use the sword to dismember him. He’ll be cut into nine pieces. Each of the three who administered the Mora will take three pieces of him back to their Court to be placed in a special Hall of Justice they reserve for such things. The blood he drank and the blood smeared on the sword will mean that he cannot heal from the wounds but also, that he will never truly die. He will continue existing, severed from his body, with no chance of being put together again, as the ages of the world pass him by.”

“Good,” Mina growls. “He deserves it for what he did to Danny and Patrick, and what he tried on Isis.”

“It’s brutal ,” Beth breathes.

“That is vampire justice.”

“Remind me never to piss you off,” Komal murmurs.

“You humans do that simply by existing, but as long as you are friends of Winnie, you are safe.”

My joke falls flat, with only Komal managing a faint smile.

“With that cheery note, we’ll be on our way.” Mina checks Oscar’s harness before tipping her beret to me. “Alaric, thank you for your hospitality, and for helping us to catch the murderer. And thank you for saving Isis.”

I shake my head. “The credit for saving your friend goes to Winnie and Gideon.“

“That’s not true. We never would have found Isis in that secret room if you hadn’t sniffed her out,” Winnie says stiffly.

The other book club members exchange a look.

“Ladies, I think we’ll just…admire the pointing on that stone wall over there.” Komal shoves everyone out the door, and throws a hard glare at me over her shoulder. “Come outside when you’re ready, Winnie.”

A moment later, Winnie and I are alone in the entrance hall. She tugs on the corner of my cloak as she kicks off her heels and shoves her feet into a pair of Reginald’s Wellington boots, refusing to look at me.

“You should get to bed,” Winnie says, her voice full of faux cheer as she braces herself against the chill of the night air. “It’s nearly sunrise.”

“I can’t leave us like this. Winnie, about that room?—”

She shakes her head. “I’ve had my fill of secrets tonight. I’m going with them. I need to see if Isis is okay.”

“Winnie, please, stay with me. We can talk about this.”

“I’ve already talked.” Her voice rises. “I told you about my mother, about why I am the way I am. You’ve seen my nightmares about the bugs and the piles of things falling on me. I actually believed I was safe with you. That I could make a home here. But you took a part of that home and turned it into a nightmare . A nightmare that you expect me to clean up. Just once, I wish I could trust someone in my life. I wish I was worth making a change?—”

“You are worth everything, ” I growl. I’m desperate, my pulse pounding in my ears. Her strawberry perfume reeks of fear and anger. How can I make her stay? How can I make her see me again? “I would give anything to make things right, Winnie. I’m not the same as your mother. Nothing in that room was junk. That’s what I’m trying to tell you. I was making you a gift to show you how I feel. A wedding gift?—”

“But that’s not what I need!” she cries. “I told you what I need. You made an oath, remember? You keep this place tidy and you tell me the truth. And one night later those promises are ashes and dust. You can’t speak of marriage if you don’t treat me as an equal. The best gift you’ve given me is to show me who you truly are.”

“I didn’t tell you about the Kiss because I will never do it to you.” I reach for her, craving her warmth, certain that in my arms she’ll remember that I’m hers. “And I was right to refuse it, since you do not wish to become a monster.”

“No.” Her eyes flash. “I don’t.”

And there it is – the wound that she had stitched closed in me bursting open.

Monsters don’t hurt as humans do.

We hurt worse, because our skin is tougher, our hearts harder, so the knife that cuts deep must be drenched in poison.

Who can love a monster?

“You have made your decision, then.”

“I have.” Winnie tugs the hood of my cloak over her head, her eyes flashing.

“But I love you.”

The words crack on my tongue. Words I never imagined possible for me, that she dreamed into existence with her golden eyes. They’re supposed to be the most powerful words in the world, but the moment they fall from my lips, they collapse into dust.

“How can you even know what love is, when everything you have is forever?” Winnie shakes her head. “None of this was real. We were never supposed to find each other. You’re all wrong for me, and I’m all wrong for you. The person you love should make you the best version of yourself, but we make each other worse . And I can’t spend the rest of my life cleaning up your mess.”

“Winnie—”

She gasps as a well of tears spring from her eyes and pour down her cheeks. She whirls on her heel and sprints outside, desperate to get away from me.

I can smell the salt of her tears.

She doesn’t look back.