Chapter 24

CORDELIA

Present Day

I stand amongst the bodies of my unconscious children. I am not one for nerves, but as I stare down at their strangled expressions, my stomach churns and twists in on itself.

The blood monks hum and sing their chants, pacing around the outside of the stone beds, praying for my children's return.

The Chief appears at my side. "Wondering if this was such a good idea?" she asks, her blue eyes staring into mine.

My jaw flexes. Years of hatred seep into my bones, reminding me she is my enemy. Every hunter is. They always have been. They always will be.

"I still believe the Mother of Blood will reveal something of us to them. You forget, she too had power. She too was a dhampir. She would want magic returned."

"Perhaps."

"We must get through that border, Chief. Last night, there was another attempt to break in. I lost three vampire guards."

"Was the boundary penetrated?"

"No. And the amulet is safe and under twenty-four-hour guard surveillance, too. I'm not concerned."

"More annoyed you didn't catch who was doing it?"

I nod. "If we were faster, I wouldn't have to put my children through these trials. Do you really think I want to put them through this kind of mental anguish?"

The Chief's eyebrow rises.

"Don't look at me like that. I am capable of love."

"Are you?"

I turn away. "I was. Once."

She sighs, a heavy breath full of unspoken words. She shifts her footing. "Is everything prepared?"

"Quiet. We're not to discuss that when there are others present."

"Fine," she huffs. "What would you face if you were in there?"

"You know exactly what I'd face," I say a little too sharply.

"The witch-god?"

I nod, bile licking up my throat.

This is the real reason I hate the church. The secret that plagues my soul. I would face the Mother of Blood herself. The biggest mistake of my life. And the only lie I've told for a thousand years.

This is the lie I tell:

Once upon a time, there were two families, the St Clairs and the Randalls. And like any respected families of nobility, they were at war. For petty things, land and property, the economy and legacy.

Those things are true. We were at war.

But here is where the lie begins. It wasn't a local witch that took issue with our dealings. It wasn't a witch that cursed Eleanor and me to become mortal enemies.

It was our families.

They wove their secret betrayal in the depths of midnight. They spoke tales of curses and horror to the witch. Begged her in whispered promises and hapless lies to make our love stop.

Our families.

Our very own families.

How could they? All because their broken hearts were sick of our love, sick of the shame.

So, as midnight struck, they gathered together under the golden glow of candlelight.

As darkness enveloped the world, they forced a witch to sign a contract in bloody prints.

A scarred scroll thick with the fibrous rot of a curse.

And so it was that as the twelfth bell rang at midnight, all our fates—mine, Eleanor's and the witch's—were sealed together for eternity.

I think it's time to confess.

Let me tell you what really happened.

* * *

One Thousand Years Ago

H ope is an insidious little thing. It makes a mockery of reality. It makes you believe the impossible. Eleanor and I thrive on hope. For all the years we've tried and failed to stay together, it was always hope that kept us trying again. Kept us fighting for one more night, one more kiss. Despite the threats and warnings, hope made us ignorant.

It made us believe the impossible.

Tonight, we are finally free. Tonight, we fled our families for the last time.

That's how I find myself at midnight, curled under a blanket tucked into Eleanor's side.

Neither of us knows where we are, but it doesn't matter. We're leaving to find a new city. Perhaps the city with magicians, or perhaps one with the fae people. It matters not. What is important is that we're not going back. Not ever again.

Eleanor's breathing is heavy and deep beside me. The rhythmic exhalations lull me into a reverie. My eyes flutter shut, and that is when the pain wrecks my body.

I lurch out of her warm grip. The loss of her heat is instantaneous. I roll away, a strange sensation trickling through my body. Everything tingles and cools until I'm shivering.

It's a cold that leeches into bones and grows in graves. It creeps up my fingertips and crawls down my arms.

Inch by inch, my veins chill until they ache. I glance back at Eleanor, still sleeping sweetly under the stars. My eyes flick to her throat, the soft pulse of her blood through her arteries. My mouth fills with saliva. I frown, unsure why I have the urge to bend low and kiss her in the same spot where her skin flutters with the beat of her heart.

No, not kiss. Bite.

Bite. Bite. Bite.

Drink. Drink. Drink.

Drain her of life. Of magic. Of her blood. I want it.

Need it.

I slap my hand over my mouth and stagger back. What the hell is wrong with me?

I fall to my knees, my hand wrapped around my stomach as I lurch forward and throw up.

Eleanor's eyes shoot open.

"What's going on?" she says, her voice shrill.

"Stay back. There's something wrong with me," I say, putting my hand out to stop her from getting any closer.

I shake my head as a loud beating fills my ears. But it's not like the roaring of blood in my ears when I've run across the city. It goes ba-dum, ba-dum, ba-dum.

I glance at her neck. The sound moves with the same rhythm as the flutter in her neck. I'm hearing her heart.

I have to leave. Thoughts of consuming her fill my head. She's in danger, from me, and I'd rather leave and flee than see me hurt her.

"Cordelia, talk to me. What's wrong?" she pleads.

But my body is getting worse, the pain wracking my fingers and arms is flooding my entire system. It's like my insides are shrivelling, decaying, dying. And the awful knowing that the only thing that will cure it is her.

Not her.

Her blood.

There's no time to kiss her. No time to say goodbye.

She shakes her head at me, tears flowing down her cheeks. "Don't do this. Don't go. Not after everything."

But how can I explain what I feel in my bones: that I will hurt her if I don't leave? I can't explain what I don't understand.

So I turn and run.

I run to the screams and pleas of Eleanor begging me to stay. Not to leave her. That she will do anything.

And then, just as suddenly, her cries stop and the woods are silent as I stagger my way through them.

I trip and cut my knee on a stray branch, but as soon as it bleeds, it heals. I scream in shock as I watch the skin knit together. What is happening to me?

My feet pound the dirt as I run and run, but after a time, I become aware that I'm not really running away. I'm being led. Drawn to the source of my pain. The magic that has bewitched my veins.

All night, I run until the sun rises, and my skin begins to itch and blister. I don't understand why my body is rejecting the sun. But as my skin starts to bleed, I find shelter in an abandoned property on the outskirts of Sangui City.

I pace the rooms all day, unable to sleep. Half the hours I lay on the floor screaming and writhing as my body contorts and twists like a dead spider. Sharp pains lance through my bones, hot then cold as the depths of the ocean. I throw up everything in my stomach. I sweat half the day away until I am sure I should have died from dehydration.

I eat my way through the stores. I consume everything, mouldy bread, jars of dried beans, grains, flours that crawl with bugs. But it matters not. I throw everything up and even the bits I keep down cannot satiate the hunger gnawing in my veins. It consumes me.

It makes my teeth ache and my tongue twitch. Nothing helps.

The pain ebbs away for a while, and I pace again. And then, as the sun sinks in the sky, I finally leave the building and make my way towards the source.

I take a week of searching, hunting. I live off rats and rabbits and scraps of meat, even drinking down their bloody fluids. My mind vomits everything, but my body keeps it down. I want to claw my skin off in disgust, and I consume the rodents like I consume the air. But still, nothing satiates the pains in my stomach.

Finally, after a week of seeking shelter in the day and trudging on at night, I can feel I'm close now. I can sense the connection. Under the dark of night, I enter a small village on the edge of the city, a rather quaint gathering of bungalows and thatched cottages. There are no people around. It's like a ghost village. I steal fresh bread and milk, only to drink it all down and gobble it without tasting. But like all the other nights, I throw it up and hunt for a rat instead. I find some scraps of chicken in a bin behind a larger bungalow. But even that doesn't satiate the pain in my belly.

I continue on.

But the further I go, the sicker I feel. It's not only the hunger, but the bodies.

At first, it was only one. A young girl, dead in the street, a dhampir—a healer. Her hands have shrivelled as if someone sucked the magic out of them.

The deeper I travel into the village, the more bodies I find. They litter the streets and doorways. I peer into windows and find corpses riddled with maggots. It's a stark contrast to the herbs and planting troughs that fill the front gardens. Their windows have jars and jugs of picked flowers and herbs. Specimens and creatures.

The witch village.

Was I cursed? The realisation hits me hard as I peek through window after window. But nothing in there is what I seek. Then, I reach the last house in the village and warmth settles in my belly. I found it.

The door throbs with more magic than any other building in the village. It hums the same rhythmic beating that weaves its way through my veins. A beat that dies with ever successive pulse. And I have to wonder if this is where I meet my demise.

I knock on the door as another fresh wave of agony curls my stomach in on itself. The hunger now is like nothing I've ever experienced. It threads its way into my mind until the only thing I can think of is that I need to drink.

Drink blood.

The door opens, and a young woman stands before me. But I'm weak and I can barely see her face. Long raven-coloured locks covered much of it.

She gasps when she sees me.

"What did you do to me?" I rasp.

"It... it wasn't me," she says, "Your family. They made me."

"Made you what?" I bark, though it comes out as a choked cough. Blood splatters her white dress. I think my insides are disintegrating.

"They made me curse you and your lover, Eleanor. They didn't want you together."

"What did you do?"

"I..." her head hangs low. I want her to look at me. To stare into my eyes so I know the face of my killer. But she won't, she refuses. There's a rustling in the background, but I ignore it. I'm fully focussed on her.

"What did you do? Why am I hungry?"

"I'm sorry," she weeps. "Curses are fickle things, and the wording... I don't understand what you are. But I know what you need. The curse was wrought in blood magic. It ruined everything. We have paid the price because it destroyed all our magic. The dhampirs are dead. I am the only one left…"

"Then how do I survive?"

"I suspect unless you consume blood, you, too, will perish."

That is why Eleanor's neck, the pulsing of her heart, drew me in.

"Your family asked me to curse you, to make you hate each other, to never love one another again."

Something cracks inside me. We fought for so long to keep each other. Through beatings and burnings. Through the hate and betrayals, only to have this fucking witch take it all away, anyway.

My stomach screams, hunger consuming me. She took everything from me. Hot, putrid fury seeps into my chest. She needs to pay for what she's done.

I grab her neck and yank her to me and sink my teeth into the fleshy pulp of her throat.

As my teeth graze her skin, they sharpen and sink into her flesh. Her screams rend the air as the first drops of her blood kiss my tongue.

Sweet, sweet blood flows down my throat, and that is when everything changes.

The stars wink to life, as time stands still. The wind silences, the rustling of leaves and plants ceases.

There is nothing but the slowing beat of the witch's heart and the wet slurps of my tongue lapping against her neck. Blood pours down my dress, splattering and staining my chin, my jaw, my chest.

But with every gulp I swallow, my body relaxes a little more. The agony coursing through my body loosens. The itching in my veins ceases. Cold settles. No longer a burning ache, but a cooling peace that wraps my heart into a new rhythm.

Power floods my system as my muscles reform and reshape themselves. My eyes sting like they're pinching and sharpening.

I am becoming something else.

The witch weakens. She sags in my arms. She's a full-grown woman, but I find her weight to be that of a feather in my arms. That's when I glance down and notice her tummy is rounded.

The soft paunch of post birth.

I startle as I lay her down. She is not long for this world. I have drained her of almost all her blood. She will not survive the hour.

She glances up at me. "Please," she begs. Her voice is barely above a whisper and yet it is loud. It's like she shouts at me. "Don't hurt her."

"Hurt who?" I ask.

"Octavia." It's the last word she says.

I glance up at the kitchen door, and there, beyond the entrance, is a crib. I step over her body and make my way to it.

Cradled in a yellow blanket is a baby. It can't be more than a couple of days old. It cries, its eyes opening as it screams.

I gasp. It's the most beautiful and wretched thing I've ever seen. Staring back at me are crimson eyes unlike anything I've seen before. No human has eyes like this. And I realise that this was the witch's penance. Curses require dark magic. If she was pregnant when she cursed me, it was her baby who paid the price.

A curse made of blood.

A baby born of a curse.

This creature is like me. That she hungers for the same blood I do.

I cradle her to my chest. "It's okay, sweet thing. I will look after you, Octavia," I say. "Mother has you now."

I take her from the cottage and leave the body of her birth mother bleeding what little remained in her body onto the kitchen's stone slabs. Her lips mutter prayers to her gods. Her body is already pale and growing paler and more contorted as death consumes her. I don't wait around. What's the point? I've consumed her life force. Despite never turning around, the sting of her eyes boring into me as I stole her baby away still torments me a thousand years later. I step into the night, the fluttering and stuttering of her heartbeat slowing until it's faint and weak. Her fate sealed.

She had wrought hell upon me; I sent her to hell in kind.

Or so I thought.

It wasn't until many weeks later that I discovered she hadn't died. While I never had confirmation, I am certain that it was her. There were too many rumours that a monster ran through the woods of the territory on the western side of the city.

Too many bodies bled dry. And at that point, I hadn't worked out that I could turn others to become like us. That took another few years and happened by accident. There were no others, only Octavia and me. And it wasn't me bleeding the humans.

I loathed myself for years for not paying attention to the witch as her skin paled and her body morphed. I thought it was death coming for her. Not the hand of her gods saving her. And how would I find her now? I fear she wouldn't look as she did.

I don't know what magic the gods cast to save her life. But she became like me.

I spent weeks in fear that she would come for Octavia. My Octavia, who stole my heart.

She never did.

What kind of mother abandons her daughter?

Eventually, she disappeared. She formed the Montague territory and turned enough vampires to carry on her legacy. Her true origins never surfaced. No one ever discovered what I'd done. I decided to create history the way I saw fit.

Her story became a myth, she became a god.

And I became a monster.