Chapter Four

Death upon her eyes

A fter half an hour or more had passed, Ravyn spoke without looking at Sebastian. “I was born an ordinary girl about two thousand years ago, by my best estimate.” Feeling more than seeing him startle, she let out another small, uneasy laugh. “Yes, Eva’s books weren’t exaggerating that—assuming you’ve read them and remember those details. But she did take some creative liberties. I wasn’t born a princess, or royalty, or even to any sort of nobility. I was born in a small village, dirt floors and everything. I played along the river delta; I imagine it was perhaps the Nile although I didn’t have the knowledge or even the memories to be certain. I don’t even remember the name I was born with.

“Sometime by or around my tenth year, I was taken from them—my parents—to live in a temple. I don’t remember having any siblings, and perhaps after I was taken, they went on to have more. I don’t know. I just know the day I was taken was the last time I saw the people who gave me life.” Even that memory had faded over the years. Instead of a clear recollection, what remained was a more visceral feeling, fear and tears, but also a hint of excitement.

The beans slid on the glass tabletop as she bent over them, silently counting as they left streaks of blackened dust in their wake. As each count finished, she deftly swooped the beans back into a pile to resort and count, once again blowing away the residual dust.

“For years, I wasn’t sure why I was chosen to serve the goddess Nephthys in her temple on the perhaps Nile.” The goddess of twilight and death, a deity who embodied death, decay, and destruction.

“Later, I learned that they visited every village across the land every few years, testing the blood. I went on a two such trips as service to the goddess. The priest would prick the finger of every girl entering her tenth year or greater, stealing a drop of her blood to taste.”

Shuddering, Ravyn recalled the grotesque priest suckling up each bit of blood offered to him, rolling it across his tongue as he pondered its taste, its essence, before rendering a verdict. Her face, as well as the faces of the others who accompanied him, remained stoic and impassioned while he conducted his trials, mostly sending the scared, crying girls back to their families. Rarely in the two years she traveled with him did a girl pass whatever test he administered in the name of the goddess and join them on their journey back to the temple. It became Ravyn’s job to soothe the tears of a crying young girl who was leaving her entire life and family behind in service to a goddess that she’d never seen and most likely never would.

“We were acolytes in the temple for Nephthys, a temple hidden away from others. We grew much of our own food, drank and swam in what I still assume was the Nile, but to be honest we could have been anywhere; it could have been a lake or a small pond even. The world was so large and we were so small. But there we learned her ways, offering worship and sacrificial offerings to the goddess of death. We were divided mostly by the years we were found. Twelve in my group; some groups were only two or three and we were by far the largest. We were all about the same age, some a few years older and some a few years younger. I always assumed I was the youngest in our group; I was the smallest, so it seemed possible. We didn’t have a way to gauge time and mostly our minds couldn’t grasp the counting of time. We could count items we could see, but the passage of time? Not comprehensible to a bunch of girls from small villages. Seasons came and went as did the girls. Groups would age out, and younger girls would join us. It was a cycle, and eventually I was among the oldest.”

As far as Ravyn could determine, they’d been in service of the goddess of darkness and decay for well over a decade, more than half their young lives. But despite the sounds of it, their days were filled with endless sunshine and warmth. Eventually, as with all little girls, they grew and evolved into young women, filling in and out with the curves of women everywhere. Worldly as she was now, Ravyn would have had other fears as a young girl serving a handful of old priests in a temple, but their bodies and virtues had been safe and, in fact, uninteresting to the residents of the temple. Mostly their day in and day out remained unchanged. Occasionally their fingers would be pricked again, and the single drop of blood would roll around on the old priest’s tongue as he considered each morsel, before roughly shoving them to be on their way. Chores, prayers, meals, chores, prayers, meals, prayers, rest, and repeat. Unless the symbol had been drawn out.

The symbol. Really, none of them knew what it meant. None of them could read; at best they could decipher a bit of the hieroglyphics that surrounded them in their temple life. But on a rare special occasion, someone in their group would silently draw out the symbol—a slash of a few lines, really—passing along the invite to all the young women within their grouping. That night, they would gather. The location varied and wasn’t spoken out loud; somehow it was just known and they would all show up, wandering in after their day was done and the temple had fallen quiet. It was a time and place to let their hair down and laugh aloud and freely among themselves.

Sometimes a brave girl would swipe an offering for the goddess: a bottle of watered-down wine for their meeting. Stealing from the altar made it all the sweeter. They passed it around, each taking tiny swigs and, as the hours passed, pulling longer drinks as their courage grew alongside their raucous laughter. For a time, they could be young and imagine a bit of freedom to laugh and dream.

“Suddenly we were the oldest group remaining. We assumed the others had finished their training and were set loose in the world to share the teachings of the goddess or sent to other temples to serve the order. The end was surely in sight for us. Exciting times.” Ravyn’s tone said the exact opposite was to happen and even without looking, she knew that Bash listened to every word she spoke.

“The priests prepared a feast for us. A graduation ceremony of sorts, I suppose. Younger acolytes waited on us, just as we had to previous groups. Ah, the food! The food was nothing like any of us had ever tasted. A last marvelous feast for us to partake in. And the watered-down wine we’d secretly stolen away over the years was nothing like what we were served. Deep reds, full-bodied, and the flavor just rolled around your tongue before warming you through. After serving us, the younger ones left, just as we had over the years. Off to sleep soundly through the night, unaware and most likely drugged, waking up late in the day to yet another group of girls gone.”

Ravyn took a deep breath, pausing in her ruminating before continuing, “We stuffed ourselves with foods the likes of which none of us had seen before, and drank deeply from the offered wine. After one cup, we were dancing between the tables and after two, we were on the tables. My sisters and I were nearly identical to each other if you didn’t know us. Beautiful, really; long, black hair that had been oiled and brushed to perfection for the evening's celebration. We’d used blackened bits of charcoal from the fire to darken around our already dark eyes. The priests had been generous with the oil that night and encouraged us to rub our bronze skin with it, letting it soak into our skin. We were things of beauty that night.”

The drink, along with the deep, rhythmic beating of hidden drums, coaxed them into more frenzied movement. First, they tapped their fingers, then a foot, and before long, their shadows twisted and floated around the flickering fireplaces as they found themselves throwing their bodies to the mercy of the music, losing control as the music took hold. It was hazy and blurry, but Ravyn could still recall the freedom she felt as her body swayed while the music ran through her.

The food had been drugged—or the wine, or both—to ensure their compliance, ironically, more than likely with her beloved blue lotus. Despite suspecting that, Ravyn couldn’t blame the beautiful flower for what happened next. It only eased what was to come.

When each group of young women reached the age of maturity, they weren’t sprinted off to the corners of the known world to worship and share the stories of Nephthys. No, the priests of Nephthys had an agenda that no one knew about, not the village parents from whom they procured the young girls, not the girls themselves, and most likely, none of the various temples that surely knew of their existence. They didn’t want to worship the revered Nephthys; their goals were much more sinister. They wished to conquer the goddess; they wished to conquer death.

“To them, we were experiments, ‘lab rats,’ they might call us today. We were disposable. Who would miss a bunch of poor girls sent off to serve a goddess? Most thought it was a blessing and it was, of course, it was. Until it wasn’t.”

Ravyn turned her focus on Bash, who looked at her with a combination of horror and pity. She understood the horror, but she despised the pity.

“Don’t.” She shook her head in warning at him, sending a flash of fang to remind him that she wasn’t a weakling to be pitied. Whatever had been done to her, she’d survived.

“What did they do to you?” Sebastian’s gentle tone was laced with his horror. “What did they do to all those girls?”

All those girls. Yes, generations gathered, trained in compliance, and then had their souls ripped from them. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, eleven, twelve. Twelve went in.

“The priests were special too. Mages or witches or warlocks, whatever you wish to call them. Those special, special men.” Disdain dripped from her voice. Those terrible times she never spoke of, and now that she’d begun, it was a like a dam burst and Ravyn found herself unable to stop.

“They tested, tasted our blood,” she amended, “to check our humanity, but more importantly to see if it contained any traces of demon blood. They were gathering the girls who had any sort of demon blood in their veins. Some had a little, some had more, but they weren’t picky. They were happy to take any who did.”

Puzzled, Bash asked, “Only the girls? Why no males?”

“I wondered that myself for many years. What made us, but not our brothers, so important? It was, in fact, Oliver’s friend Malthazar who explained it to me. Accidentally, of course; as far as I know, he has no idea about my creation, my heritage, so to speak.” She took a long, slow sip on her wine again, before pulling her legs up into the sofa and leaning back to stare at the ceiling for another moment.

“As you know, Malth is half demon, half human. In a nutshell, most demon-human hybrids are male. Not sure of the percentage; obviously, no one is really tracking that stuff. So, when a girl is born, like Eva, for example, they mostly go unnoticed, because they’re not expected. But sad story short is that the male babies, the boys, are collected and taken to the demon plane to live out horrible lives there. Malth is one such hybrid and until Eva, he’d never even seen a female hybrid, especially a first generation.

“The birth of a girl could be from an overlooked male hybrid several generations removed or a rare female demon birth that went unnoticed. I could have one percent, ten percent demon blood, or even more. But we all had something. I’m sure I had a decent enough amount, since I survived the… process… but I don’t care enough to find out or even know if it’s possible to find out after I transitioned to basically another demon variant.”

“Are you saying all vampires are made from demons?” A hint of disbelief entered Sebastian’s voice, so slight he probably didn’t even notice the invocation in his voice, but Ravyn did.

“Originals, yes. A mix of demon blood, witch’s magic, and some very heinous men who did horrible things to children are what created the originals, the night walkers, the creatures of the dark. The undead.” Ravyn didn’t even try to hide the sarcastic anger in her voice. She reminded herself that the story truly was unbelievable. The legend made it sound as if vampires chose and embraced their evil, their creation, but the truth was much worse. It wasn’t their fault that they’d never been told the truth. The truth had been buried, much like all the bodies of the young women who were the unsuccessful experiments of evil men who wanted to cheat death. “They didn’t truly worship the goddess; they wanted to defeat her. They wanted to defeat death on the backs of children.”

Ravyn had no idea if any of the past trials had been deemed successful, but she always assumed some earlier experiments somewhere were or that other temples carried out the same horrifying experimentations. What she did know was that one moment, she’d been filled with laughter, gorging on a feast of food and wine the likes of which she’d never imagined in her wildest dreams. Dancing while linked hand and hand with her sisters, overcome with what they thought was joy for their mother goddess. Moving through corridors deeper into the temple with flashes of candlelight flickering in and out while the music slowly faded.

Another flash of memory, floating in and out of darkness and light deep under the ground, surrounded by the cold earth, while the priests chanted incantations in unknown tongues. Grasping hands with one of her dear sisters, while darkness shot in and around them, the priests touching and tasting their skin before something cut through her body like a blade. It cut through one side and exited the other, stabbing in her torso, her arms and thighs, before blasting through. The shadows swirled faster, punching through her body, piercing her eyes, harder and harder as the incantations grew fevered.

The screams. Dear goddess, the screams. Ravyn hadn’t been sure where her screams began and the others’ ended. Their throats grew raw and then their screams grew silent because they couldn’t make any more sounds. Barely a breath could be drawn before they collapsed one by one onto the floor, while the circle of dispassionate priests continued their chants.

Then Ravyn rose from the blood-slick floor, blood barely flowing from her wounds so empty was her body. She looked down at the girl next to her, blood-splattered and so pale, so very pale, before the girl’s eyes began to flutter and finally open with a strange glow to them. Six other girls stood, while five lay still on the floor. The body nearest her stared up with unseeing open eyes, a scream still lit upon them, but Ravyn found she no longer cared. She had an awareness of who stood around her, the ones who’d survived—if you could call it that. The names of those who stood were etched in her mind and the ones who had fallen etched in her heart. But that was later. In those first minutes and hours, she could only focus on one thing.

Hunger.

The sweet, sweet smell of the last of their human blood filled the air, and hesitantly at first, then with renewed vigor, she licked the blood from her hand. The taste. Oh, the taste. Ravyn didn’t think she could ever find the words to describe the explosion in her mouth or the feeling of satiation as it coated her throat. It was like the stars had exploded in her mouth. Moaning with both pain and pleasure and nearly mad with the change, she barely noticed the other girls around her as they suckled from those who lay on the floor or dipped their hands greedily in the puddles of their own blood. The more they drank of it, the more they wanted.

“Then almost like it was the first time, I noticed the priests. It had gotten so quiet except for a strange thumping that echoed in my head. The looks on their faces was a combination of fascination, excitement, and then horror. Had they not expected this? Was this not what they wanted? The drumming in my head was their heartbeat, faster and faster. I could hear their withered hearts beating under their decadent fancy robes, the special robes they wore while they killed us.”

Thump , thump , thump , thump echoed through the cave of horror. Ravyn could still remember hearing the blood run through their veins as it called its siren song to them.

“And gradually it got all of our attention, the seven of us who still stood, who lived in this manner. We watched them, some standing upright, some on all fours, dripping and covered in our own blood as well as the blood of our sisters.” Thump , thump … The sounded echoed in her head, the beats rattling faster, louder even than the earlier drums as the men gradually noticed the predatory eyes settled on them. No longer were they priests of a temple, but prey.

It was over within minutes, the priests ripped apart and their blood filling the gluttonous bellies of the former acolytes. No conversations, no cares for the begging or pleading, just one need. The women didn’t speak to one another yet they worked together, silently trapping and herding the men to their ends before snarling and fighting over the bodies. Moving like a flash while the flames of the fire flickered around them. One second a dozen cubits away and in a heartbeat, ripping out a throat with growls and cackles. The damned had defeated death, but not their own.

“We broke free from underneath the temple and slaughtered every single child we could find within the temple walls. It wasn’t until later, much later, that I even felt a shred of regret for what we’d done. Those first days were filled only with darkness, rage, and blood. Then we all ran—different ways, of course—along the rivers, through the deserts, or hid in the trees. The seven of us, the survivors, I suppose you could call us.” Ravyn covered her mouth when a sharp harsh laugh barked out. “And by the time my mind had settled, I’d wiped out countless small settlements, traveled miles upon miles, and that was the end of our sisterhood.”

So much death. The death of the priests she had no qualms about, but the others? The others would haunt her always. The chosen girls hadn’t been given a choice to be there, but that didn’t change the fact that in the thralls of hunger they’d been slaughtered and left for the carrion eaters to pick apart. Despite the fact that Ravyn barely remembered the minutes, hours, and days after the change, she’d never been able to deny the flashes of memories that rose up unexpected in the calm moments.

Finally touching the letter, she picked it up and turned it over slowly in her hands, examining it as if perhaps the message might be seen without even opening it. Tapping the symbol in the lower front corner with a long nail, she said, “Until now, I didn’t know for sure if any of them had survived the years.”

Ravyn could feel Bash’s warmth easing toward her. How she wished she could turn to him and forget the horrors the letter represented. Fall into his warmth, his embrace, and forget the last few moments. How easy it would be to fall into him.