Subspecies: Bloodloss -- Chapter Three
Word decided to celebrate Friday the 13th by disappearing about 3k words! Joyously, I was able to fish it out of the temp files, but that's why I'm switching back to OpenOffice. I hope the genuine misery and terror come through.
Subspecies: Bloodloss
Chapter 3/9
Author: memoriamvictus
Rating: R
Summary: Sequel to Subspecies: Bloodlines. Michelle discovers that the weight of obligation can be the heaviest shackle of all as she struggles to retain her hard-won freedom in the face of a fate that will not be denied.
Disclaimer: We don't know who it belongs to, but it certainly isn't me. This work is merely an act of affection and admiration; no offense or challenge is intended. Reader discretion is always advised.
Wordcount: 7,978
Begin at the beginning.
The stone was cool and dry against her cheek.
Michelle laid still for a moment, letting her eyes remain closed as she briefly ran through the tumultuous events of the last night. The hotel, the truck, Ana’s apartment, the firehouse… hard to believe she’d managed it all between dusk and dawn. It was no surprise she didn’t have much sense of her surroundings. The room felt large.
She felt a little slow, almost groggy, as if she’d woken up from a real rest. Was this what relaxation had been like? But there was a strange twinge from her lower abdomen, almost as if she’d pulled a muscle.
Remembering the skittering of the rats, she felt a moment of quiet revulsion at the idea some of them might have gnawed on her during the day. Was it even possible for her to have ‘slept’ on it wrong? She listened carefully, wondering why she couldn’t hear them now.
Someone very near by was breathing. In the room with her.
The bolt of panic brought clarity. She was lying face down. This was stone, not cement, there was no tarp, there was no-
“Ms. Morgan.”
She fought not to flinch, and was pretty sure she’d won. Had she visibly jerked awake? Did she really think she was going to pretend to sleep her way out of this, like a little kid avoiding school? She thought about leaping to her feet with the most terrible snarl she could muster; maybe she could scare them enough to buy time to flee. Maybe she could-
“Ms. Morgan.” The woman’s voice was skin-crawlingly familiar. Carefully, she slitted an eye open, and instantly regretted It as she was bombarded with white light so blindingly bright she couldn’t resist throwing up a hand to protect a retina that almost felt singed.
He'd called her something strange. My chatelaine’s chatelaine. The woman who ran Club Muse during its daylight hours. The human who procured and provided for vampires. Ash’s minion.
“Iris,” Michelle snapped, pushing herself up from the ground and onto one knee. The light burning through her closed eyelids was so intense it was a wonder she hadn’t noticed immediately.
“I’m honored to be remembered.” Her voice was as polished and unctuous as ever, but was there a hint of malignant glee behind it? “I do hope you’ll be able to adjust to the lighting. There’s simply nothing else to be done.”
Michelle levered herself slowly to her feet. Iris was speaking from fairly nearby, perhaps fifteen feet away, but her voice had a sonorous quality to it, not quite echoing. Michelle experimentally cracked her eyes, and was rewarded with a dark human shape, silhouetted by a lighted doorway, standing behind the source of the blazing light, some kind of tall, round lamp. “Could you point that up, or something?”
“No.” The figure’s head tilted; Michelle inferred the humorless smile. “You can turn your back to me, if you think it will help.” She was definitely smirking. “I won’t bite.”
“That’s terribly reassuring, Iris,” Michelle tried not to grate. She kept her eyes narrowed in the increasingly desperate hope that they’d start to adjust. “Why are you here?”
“Hmm.” Iris tilted her head the other way. “You really ought to take a look around, Ms. Morgan.”
She was scared to take her eyes off Iris, but given how little she could see, supposed it couldn’t make things much worse. Slowly, peering out of the corners of her eyes, she turned to take in her surroundings. It took her blasted vision a moment to make out what the spotlight illuminated in the yawning darkness: smooth stone blocks, about waist high, resting on a stone floor surrounded by columns. A ragged white bundle laying between them. Beyond, a short flight of wide stairs leading up to a massively impenetrable door.
The narthex.
She was a mile beneath the streets of Bucharest, in the basement of Club Muse, on the doorstep of the last cage she’d escaped from.
“What the hell is this.” She was barely able to force the words through her clenched throat, incapable of inflection. She spun on her heel, ready to storm up to her impudent captor until the light rendered her nearly blind once more. She bared her fangs in unconscious fury, raising one leather clad arm in a vain attempt to shield her eyes. “Why the hell am I here, Iris?” Her jaw twitched as an awful idea clicked into place. “Is this about Ash? Are you actually loyal?” she spat, bristling at the idea of being held accountable for heroism.
Iris laughed indulgently, as if Michelle had made an attempt at wit during a faculty party. She stepped out from behind the light, slowly advancing while staying as far to the side as the stone walkway would allow until she came to a halt a few paces from the ring of light on the ground. She was hardly more visible, a blur of details; dark hair pulled back, wearing a skirt suit in a light colored fabric that might have been chosen to show off bloodstains.
“I truly did hope we could have this conversation under better circumstances, Ms. Morgan,” she said with apparent seriousness. “I tried my best. I put my resources at your disposal. I found you a souvenir! Don’t you all love relics? I tried to be of service. I attempted to curry favor.” The ugliness that had crept into her voice seemed to shock even her; she took a moment to compose herself before continuing. “But you had plans of your own, of course. Isn’t that always the way? Woman proposes, a god disposes.” She smiled thinly, clasping her hands together before her.
Michelle felt the first tiny thread of genuine terror begin to unravel down her spine. Iris wouldn’t be working for vampires if she weren’t crazy, but this… “I’m not a god, Iris,” she made herself say, hoping her voice was calm. “I’m twenty four. I can’t figure out how to get my passport replaced. I don’t know how to drive on the left. I-"
“Have no idea what it’s truly like,” Iris said, a hint of mocking sing song in her tone. “Do you know why I worked for Ash, Ms. Morgan?”
The silence drew out until Michelle realized she expected an answer. She extended her hands in a shrug. “What’s not to like?”
Iris’s dark red lips quirked in what seemed to be genuine amusement. She was wearing a wide white belt around her waist with a thin gold buckle. It still hurt to open her eyes more than a crack, but the details were starting to come in.
“I am, of course, excellent at it. I’ve made the Club nearly eternally wealthy, and amassed quite a fortune of my own. It’s been quite fun. And, of course, the real treasure is the connections.” She winked conspiratorially at Michelle, a ghoulish parody of girlishness. “I just love gossip. And access! I can arrange almost anything I want. Half of the reason I can tolerate working with people like you is that your problems are always extremely unusual; there’s very little else that can challenge my creativity these days. It makes up for the tedium and lack of comprehension you all so often display.” She clasped her hands once more, as if waiting for Michelle to praise her; when none was forthcoming, her tone hardened. “The problem is, Ms. Morgan, that in the end, all of it amounts to nothing. None of it. Absolutely none of it," she said, shaking her head for emphasis, “can buy me another heart beat.”
She met Michelle’s gaze unflinchingly. “Ash promised to turn me,” she said, then held up a hand as if to forestall a protest Michelle never bothered to make. “I’ve known for years that he wasn’t going to. I don’t hold that against you,” she said with polished magnanimity. “So I began to make other inquiries. None of his brood would ever dare to defy him so openly, but we get quite a few visitors from near and abroad. I had hoped that you and I might find some things in common.”
Michelle stood rooted to the ground in numb horror. “Oh, Iris, no,” she said, waving her arms before her like an umpire. “No. You don’t-you don’t really know what you’re-”
“You don’t know who you’re dealing with.” Michelle’s mouth snapped shut in shock at the pure venom in Iris’s voice, unconsciously falling half a step back. “Some of us didn’t get to go to college, Michelle. Some of us had to do it the hard way.” She advanced to the edge of the circle of light, harsh shadows obscuring the planes of her face. “I have fought and clawed and slaved for everything I have ever had. I have spent years watching the fatuous idiots Ash wasted his gifts upon fail to cope with difficulties I surmounted as a child. I deserve this.” She breathed hard through her nostrils, her clenched teeth tearing her face into a rictus of fury. Michelle watched mutely, scarcely able to absorb what she was hearing, as Iris struggled to regain control over herself. “But that’s not where you come in,” she said finally, her voice low and toneless as she stepped back from the ring of light, her features falling into more forgiving shadows. “Did your master ever speak to you of generations?"
Her tone was abruptly light and conversational and utterly insane, but Michelle flinched from her use of the term as if she’d been burned. “No.”
“You and Ash were… siblings, of a sort. The same generation. It’s no surprise you were able to best him. You were his equal.” Michelle nodded, despite being absolutely baffled by her words. “So you would make an adequate replacement for him… but she’s determined that we can do better.”
“Iris, you don’t need to do anything,” Michelle said, disliking the throatiness of her voice as she tried her best to soothe. She raised her hands innocently. “We can actually just go upstairs and talk about this. I’m not mad. I’m just freaked out.”
The woman’s smile thinned. “Yes, I expect you are.”
Squinting into the light, Michelle strained her remaining senses for some indication of what might be going on. As far as she knew, the only way to get down here were endless flights of steps; surely she’d hear someone coming, and she didn’t think she could make anything out. “Let’s just go upstairs and talk about this. It’ll be less gross.”
“No, Ms. Morgan, it’s important that you remain-”
Michelle launched herself forward, meaning to hurl herself past the overwhelming light and through the open doorway behind Iris, but as her other foot came down at the edge of the circle of light she tripped, her legs tangling as if they’d been yanked from beneath her, crashing to the flagstones with a bone jarring thud she was barely able to protect her face from. Barbed hooks of agony tore through the lower left of her abdomen, as if a demonic hand had reached out and sunk its claws into her waist.
In a frenzy of panicked pain, she tried to melt into the shadows and she couldn’t, she was stuck to her own flesh and she couldn’t get away and it hurt like it was tearing her soul. Failing to muffle a guttural scream behind clenched teeth, she writhed on the ground, as if she could somehow twist herself free of the unholy gyre she’d been trapped in, but the hooks only dug in deeper, confining her to her suffering like barbed wire shackles. She managed to flop over onto her back, clenching her eyelids as tightly as her jaw beneath the light’s punishing glare, panting out of habit, and realized that this wasn’t so bad. As long as she held still, all she could feel was the raving agony of the wound in her side. She forced herself to exhale, and the pain lessened further with the cessation of movement. It started to feel survivable. She clutched at the wound with her hand, but couldn’t quite bring herself to touch it, lest she set it alight again.
“…within the light.” Despite all, Michelle’s lip curled at the obvious satisfaction in Iris’s voice. “We’ve taken some extra precautions for this meeting, as I’m sure you can now recognize the need for.”
Her upper lip peeled back to expose her fangs, but she was too fraught with shock and pain to form a response. Instead, she let her hand slip beneath the tail of her flannel, her fingers working gently upwards to explore an injury far too debilitating to be rat bites. Even the flesh beneath it felt strange, almost spongy, and she couldn’t repress a shiver of revulsion, her throat tightening as she recalled what Cassandra had looked like after a bite from the blade.
Iris had said she. Then we. Michelle could hardly believe it, but… “Cassandra told me where Ash was,” she said hoarsely, hardly able to raise her voice above a whisper. “She knew I was going after the-victim.” She couldn’t bring herself to remind this lunatic there were more potential targets out there. “You can’t trust-”
“Oh, Cassandra?” The derision oozed from her voice like rotting sewage. “No. Of course not.” She forced a dry, brittle laugh at the very idea. “One of Ash’s oldest surviving failures. Still, even she managed to serve a purpose in the end. As will you, Ms. Morgan.”
Michelle’s fingers brushed the edge of something poking out of her flesh, and gave a half-gasping, half-sobbing cry as her hand automatically jerked away. Her head swam, her mouth dry as her throat churned with nausea. There was something inside of her.
“Sit up, Ms. Morgan.”
She quailed at the thought of the pain obeying would bring, but found herself automatically levering herself up on one arm. She could feel whatever it was within her as she moved, implacably digging into her guts, but it wasn’t terrible if she kept her movements smooth and slow. She got herself mostly upright, leaning slightly backward to support herself on the palms of her hands. She forced her expression into as much neutrality as she could manage and looked at Iris.
She raised an arm to point, and Michelle followed the direction her manicured red finger nail indicated. A little less than ten feet away from her, about halfway to the stone slabs, a row of round, dully gleaming items protruded from a crack between the flagstones, nearly flush with it. Were they dimes? Buttons? She studied them intently, unsure what to make of them until her shoulders sagged with the realization that, despite the fact that the spotlight should have had her shadow yawning nearly to the steps of the house, it ended in a strange, contorted pool at what had to be nails.
She’d been sliding along the wall of the main room of the Club when he had sunk his claws into her, had metaphysically dragged her back into an alcove-she clapped a hand over her left side, and immediately flinched away with a wince.
“You’ll need to stay nearby.” Iris patted the side of the light’s housing approvingly.
Michelle’s gaze returned to the unnatural pile of her shadow surrounding the nails. She had no option but to face into the light, which kept her shadow falling behind her. As long as Iris stayed back, there was nothing Michelle could do. She was tethered like a junkyard dog on a chain. She knew a moment of despair, but it was quickly swallowed by the icy chasm of shock that was splitting open in her mind. The ragged white bundle caught her eye once more. “Why do I have to stay nearby, Iris?” she asked with a leaden voice.
“Hmm. What were we talking about? Your outburst quite derailed my train of thought.” She looked down her nose at Michelle through half-lidded eyes. “Access? My aspirations? Surely not; those wouldn’t matter.” She turned her head abruptly, startling Michelle enough for a jolt of pain from her abdomen.
Focusing her attention, she already knew what she was going to hear: someone was finally coming down the stairs with slow, shuffling steps. Still at least two, maybe three stories above them. She couldn’t force herself to remember how many there actually were, only that they had seemed endless even when they were incapable of exhausting her.
Iris turned back to her with a knowing smile, the hint of what was perhaps the first genuine happiness Michelle had ever seen on her face. “As I was saying, I’ve long since been aware that Ash had no intention of fulfilling his obligations to me, so I began seeking other avenues, outside of the establishment.”
Closer now, but still high above, something hit the steps with a solid thud. A moment later, another followed, then another, and soon a whole series as whatever it was tumbled down a flight of stairs on its own. Michelle knew a moment of hope, but it was soon followed by the soft whisper of feet, descending ever closer.
“Honestly, it was utterly obvious. We’ve had our own witch on staff since long before I arrived.”
The Oracle. With whom he’d shared some revolting history so potent it had left him behaving as respectfully towards her as Michelle had ever seen him manage. Who Michelle had been specifically summoned by, who had point blank told Michelle she’d share a grave with him. Her heart sank. She had been so disgusted by the idea of a person who’d willingly choose that for themselves that she hadn’t bothered to listen. She had no idea what she was in for.
The performance on the stairs repeated itself, this time close enough Michelle could begin to hear details. Was that a grunt of effort just before the tumbling commenced again? The Oracle had seemed genuinely ancient; she was probably struggling with manhandling whatever slapped its way down the stairs before her.
“Finding her was a wonderful exercise in my abilities. Do you have any idea how awkward it is to go around knocking on crypts?” Iris smirked. “I suppose you might. But my efforts have repaid themselves in spades; she’s quite amenable to deal with, as long as you understand her.” Iris lowered her eyes in mock humility. “I seem to have surpassed you there, as well. You’re still too young to understand, but someday, the simplest things will seem like sorcery to you. Beepers. Cable. Magazine subscriptions. Miraculous gifts to people who grew up by candlelight." She laughed. “Despite the awful tempest you’ve created in our little teapot, I truly don’t think it will amount to much in the end.”
A muffled curse. A grunt of effort. Michelle rose instinctively, but the scream of the wounds kept her on one knee as she fought against panic. She was right at the top of the stairs; Michelle could hear the slither of fabric against stone as whatever it was began its final descent ahead of her.
The edges of her abused sight hazed black, giving her the beginnings of her hunter’s tunnel vision as she tried desperately to figure out what was about to confront her, but it was as if the blaze of the light prevented it from taking effect. Her vision swam in and out of normal and preternatural, unable to focus, leaving her dizzy and disoriented.
Another curse. A muffled thump. A body flailed down the stairs, its shoulder already so broken from its violent trip downstairs that one arm swung unnaturally long, held in place only by its flesh, as it collapsed into a jumbled heap at the foot of the stairs with a gristly crunch. Michelle clapped a hand over her mouth, unsure if she meant to stifle a scream or hysterical laughter at the absurdity of the obscenity, but the soft shuffle of descending feet kept her silent and still.
The figure soon appeared in the doorway, using an arm to support herself as she made her way down. Michelle strained desperately against the light to pick out anything that could warn her; her vision hazed red, almost managing to slip into night vision, but snapping back into normalcy with a painful wrench behind her eyes. She blinked furiously, trying to clear them. Small, stooped, walking slowly-
“Most wretched and accursed of creatures.”
If Michelle had still been capable of dreaming, that shrill rasp would have rung through her nightmares.
“Foulest and most execrable of his creations.”
No. Absolutely not. No. No. No. Michelle couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t close eyes so wide the corners hurt.
“Better that you had killed yourself. Better that you had suffered every torment of Hell.”
Circe stepped into the light.
She was hideous. What had before been a wizened corpse now seemed little more than an animate skeleton held together with dry, peeling flesh. She came to a halt a few steps ahead of Iris, but did not stop moving. These weren’t the tremors of age and weakness she’d displayed before. Now she jittered, her body twitching unnaturally at what seemed like every joint, a bizarre blur of discordant movements. Her bare teeth were visible, but Michelle had no idea if it was a savage grin of triumph, or if she simply no longer had lips.
Circe came forward slowly, her body clicking and popping as she moved, as if her bones no longer aligned correctly. She stepped fearlessly into the circle of light, revealing her decay in more detail as she approached Michelle inexorably. What was left of her weathered skin really was as thin as paper; the dull shine of her skull was visible on her forehead, and at the curve of her jaw as her head twitched unnaturally and caught the light. The fresh linens she’d draped herself with hung from her like a mummy’s wrappings, doing little to conceal the bizarre angles of her body.
Michelle crouched, frozen like a rabbit in the headlights, until the one horror she truly thought she'd managed to escape towered over her like an executioner, like when Michelle had been chained to her work table, like when they’d-
The paperbacks. Michelle choked on the memory of their first journey to Club Muse, when they had passed through Circe’s laboratory and there had been modern, new books sitting on one of her shelves. Iris really had been working on this for a long time. This was really real.
“Better than falling into my grasp once more.”
Circe’s dry, leathery fingers wrapped around her jaw, icy cold, and that finally broke the spell. Michelle gave a thin, strangled shriek as she attempted to scramble backwards, but the witch’s fingers held her in an unnatural vise grip, her broken, ragged nails beginning to tear through Michelle’s skin as she struggled to free herself. Circe gave a sharp yank, pulling her head down; it unbalanced her enough that she fell to both knees, as if in supplication. Maybe that would work; maybe if she held still, maybe if she could think of something to say… she couldn’t think, this couldn’t be happening, this couldn’t be real…
Circe wrenched her chin to the side. Michelle watched frantically from the corner of her eye as Circe gave her an appraising look.
He ripped her head off and she burned.
The dark brown line that must be what was left of her upper lip curled in disgust. “More of my work, squandered!” Her other hand flew forward, and Michelle could barely register, let alone comprehend the source of the tearing pain in her earlobe until Circe forced her head in the other direction and ripped the second earring out, the wire effortlessly slicing through her flesh.
He'd bitten her ears, right before they went to Ash’s exhibition. She thought he’d just been decorating her. She’d thought-
A stinging slap across the mouth drove whatever the thought had been away, the force knocking her back on her heels and infuriating whatever was buried in her side. She raised a defensive hand to her mouth, the tips of her fingers brushing the dry, bloodless divots Circle had dug into her jaw.
“Your blood diminishes them.” Circe fisted her withered hand around the grey stone earrings possessively. “A manipulative fool with no idea with what you interfered.” Her voice was nearly intolerable, an accordion wheeze of tattered lungs across vocal cords like broken glass.
She tucked them away within a fold of her wrap, her feet scraping against the stone as she made her way past Michelle with remarkable speed. She soon reached the white bundle. Awkwardly squatting down, she retrieved something from within it before carefully levering herself back upright and rounding on Michelle. “And what is this?”
Circe was holding a-wand? A flail? A short, club like object with something dangling from one end, multiple things that bounced as Circe stormed back.
She shoved Radu’s severed left forearm at Michelle, the long, nerveless fingers dangling in her face.
Michelle leapt to her feet with a full-throated shriek, already whirling for the door, but Circe stomped a foot and the hooks in her side hauled at her as if she were being reeled in. Her knees hit the stone with a sharp, painful bark, shocking her enough to throw her hands up in time to protect her upper body. She rolled instinctively, but froze on her side when she saw that Circe’s callused bare foot was standing on an impossible pool of her shadow. She gave a low, inchoate moan as she realized she’d been yanked up short, a disobedient dog being forced to obey.
Circe closed the distance quickly, brandishing the arm at Michelle until she was forced to sit back on her heels and lean away to keep it from touching her face. “He has been desecrated,” Circle hissed, flipping the arm so that the hand was palm up, the clawed fingers flopping apart like a diseased flower unfurling. Michelle ducked away, but it was impossible to miss: his left hand, the one she’d ripped the pinky joint from. It had healed over into a smooth nub, and remained so now. “He has been divided. What manner of defilement has caused such an aberrance?”
Circe loomed over her, teeth bared, wisps of frizzy white hair trembling around her face as she lowered her head to meet Michelle’s gaze with what passed for her eyes. One was mercifully lost in shadow; the other was completely covered by thick, tumorous tissue that had grown as dry and withered as the rest of her, seeming as if it were beginning to crack and crumble. Michelle cowered before her for too long before realizing that it wasn’t a rhetorical question. “I-I don’t know,” she said softly, shaking her head helplessly. “I truly don’t-”
"Worthless. Bastard. Thing!”
The first blow hit her cheek with solid force, knocking her back onto her buttocks and scraping the palms of her hands as she caught herself from falling further backwards. More blows rained down, thudding against her skull. It was only when a claw caught the edge of her jaw and sliced her open to the chin that she realized what was happening, and she couldn’t even scream, she whimpered and moaned and choked on her sobs while she frantically wrapped her arms around her head in a vain attempt to protect herself as Circle beat her with the hand in a way he’d never done himself. She couldn’t act, couldn’t think, couldn’t imagine a time when this might be over, scrabbling desperately for sanity in the seconds between slaps.
Finally, Circe wrenched it away with a tearing pain against her scalp; it had gotten tangled in her hair. Michelle might never open her eyes again, but she heard the soft thump that might be Circe dropping it to the ground. Stillness. Quiet. If it stayed like this, she might be able to stop shaking. The terror was so pervasive she couldn’t even begin to think of lowering her arms.
“Then you shall have to find a way to ask him.”
Just that easily, Michelle whipped her head upright, her eyes wide and her mouth open in horror. “No!”
This time, Circe slapped her herself, knocking her to the side onto an elbow. It was incomprehensible how strong the seeming bag of bones was; she raised a hand to her aching jaw, but Circe kicked it away. “You are a perversion. The penultimate expression of his deviance, of the ruinous weakness that sent him to his death in this whorehouse after centuries.” Circe drew herself up to her full height, her body jerking with unnatural fury. “The chufch. War. Plague. Half the devils in hell. But not you!” She kicked Michelle’s arm out from under her, sending her thudding to her side excruciatingly. She spun on her heel and strode a few paces away, as if afraid of what she’d do if Michelle remained within reach.
Michelle lay on her side, trying to remain frozen, but there was no way she could tilt her head that kept the thing laying on the floor beside her from her field of view, and she couldn’t stand to look at it. Moving so slowly she could barely be seen, using every bit of her vampiric dexterity to keep even a sound like her leather jacket creaking silent, she sat back up as Circe continued to rage.
“I cannot summon his shade. I cannot enter his house. I cannot pass among the incoherency of his wards. And yet, here he remains!” She flung a hand to indicate the white bundle that could only contain his body. “You have stolen something from him, bastard.” She rounded on Michelle, shaking her fist. “Serpent. Delilah! And I mean. To have. It. Back.”
She reached a twisted, shaking hand into her wrappings and produced what appeared to be a small bronze bowl, filthy and worn with use. “The only value you have ever held is his blood running through your veins, and his indulgence can no longer protect you from your refusal to be of use.”
Michelle realized she was shaking her head slowly. She couldn’t help it. “But I can’t do the things you do,” she whispered. She felt foolish, but couldn’t stop babbling. “I didn’t do anything to him. He never showed me-”
The bowl connected with her jaw with a ringing thump. Either a tooth or her actual jawbone cracked beneath it as she collapsed to the ground, curling up into the fetal position. The bowl hit her side as Circe dropped it on her; it slid down the leather of her jacket and hit the ground behind her with a metallic clang. “There are only so many ways,” Circe growled, “and none of them have availed me. You are the one that he wasted himself on. You are the one who twisted his mind in pursuit of you. You are the one who butchered him. You will be the one to call him back from the dark to pay his penance. Or.” Circe drew close once more, her gruesome face a mask of backlit shadows as she stared down at Michelle from her full height. “I shall return for you.”
Michelle regretted looking at Circe as much as she had; she squeezed her eyes shut, curling around herself protectively. She wasn’t sure if she was nodding or trembling. She would have said anything, done anything to make this stop, if only she could have thought of what it was.
“Attend your labors well.”
She could hear Circe walking away; a second later, the click of Iris’s heels startled her so badly that she jerked. She’d completely forgotten the woman was present.
A grunt of effort from Circe; a crunching, meaty thud a few feet away from her.
The door slammed shut, reducing the light a fraction. She could hear the heavy metal clunk of locks shooting home from the other side.
She was sealed in.
Michelle wasn’t sure how long she lay there, clenched and unmoving, before she could so much as begin to stretch her legs. Finally she was able to roll on her back, easing the pain of the wound she’d been lying upon. The light burned so brightly through her closed eyelids that she couldn’t be bothered to open them.
She seemed to be alone.
With a shudder, she raised an arm over her eyes, giving herself an approximation of darkness and an iota of relief as she fought to put her whirling, panicked thoughts in order.
She couldn’t. Iris. Iris had kidnapped her while she was unconscious, and held her captive with a light, and…
First things first.
Very slowly, keeping her eyes closed, tensing her muscles cautiously to keep from aggravating the wound, she eased herself upright, and then to her feet. Briefly cracking one eye to make sure she was oriented correctly, she made her way over to the light.
The metal housing was surprisingly hot to the touch; she jerked back in dismay, shaking her hand as she remembered Iris’s lack of reaction. She fisted it inside her sleeve, pushing the leather up over her palm, and braced it against the light’s housing. It wouldn’t move, nearly tipping over backwards. She caught the stand and steadied it, then tried again. With an ear splitting screech, the light rotated upwards, the horrible glare finally departing.
With a sigh of relief, she stumbled a few steps over to lean against the wall, turning her back on the light and rubbing her eyes with the tips of her fingers. Colorful ghosts swam against the blackness of her vision, but the tension headache was already beginning to ease. As the psychedelic paisley began to recede, she risked opening her eyes.
Still too bright, but not bad. She immediately looked for her shadow pooling along the floor and while it had grown a great deal more diffuse, unfortunately, it was still there, hung on its nails. She glanced around the well lit floor and frowned. She may have extended her leash, but she was still shackled.
She had lunged at Iris, and then… it had hurt so much…
Michelle shifted so that her back leaned against the wall. She clenched her jaw to try to steady her nerves, and instantly regretted it as pain from Circe’s last blow tore through it. She squeezed her eyes shut once more, willing the awful sensation to subside. Once it had begun to fade, she took the tail of her flannel and gingerly lifted it.
It took her a moment to make sense of what she was seeing. The whole lower left of her abdomen, spilling out onto her side, was angry and red, as if she’d been burned, or had boiling water poured on her. Nearly centered in the abused flesh was a row of small, grey circles. Buttons, she thought again. Had Circe installed buttons to press?
Michelle’s eyes slid to the floor. To the end of her now delicately gray shadow.
Nails. They’d put more nails in her.
She shuddered convulsively. If she’d had anything in her stomach she’d have thrown up, and was grateful for that small mercy. It would only have hurt more.
Nails. There were nails inside of her.
She wrapped her arms around her breasts and squeezed her eyes shut, swallowing thickly against the nausea that fought its way up her throat. It wasn’t a big deal. Conventional injuries didn’t seem to matter much. She just needed to get them out.
Her courage was difficult to muster; it took a few moments before she could once more raise her shirt. The heads appeared to be flush against her skin, but they were thick and uneven. If she could work a fingernail under there, it might be like pulling a bee sting.
The next thing she knew, she was facedown on the floor, her arms sprawled in front of her, her shirt hiked up around her rib cage.
It had been blinding. She still couldn’t bring herself to roll over with the lingering agony. But the cool of the stone felt good against her exposed, infected flesh, so she simply lay there, letting the swollen, rotten ache recede like a fading pulse.
When she could open her eyes again, her gaze immediately flew to the matching ones projecting from the crack in the flagstones. They weren’t quite flush with the stone. She might be able to get her fingers around them.
This time she rose merely to her knees, and awkwardly crawled over to them, one hand hovering protectively over her injury, her attention fixed solely on the nails and not the thing on the floor she had to pass.
Steeling herself for whatever horrific suffering she was about to inflict on herself, she pried at one experimentally. She felt nothing, but discovered that they were much better seated than her first impression. She wished for something to pry at it with, but the bronze bowl was far too thick, and she wasn’t interested in examining her environment much further. One thing at a time.
If she’d still been able to sweat, she would never have managed, but she was able to get a fingertip grip on one that projected a little further out than the others. It even felt like it wriggled a bit beneath her prodding, though it was so slight it might have been wishful thinking. She tightened her grip on the nailhead as much as she could manage, and tried not to think about what might happen.
No deep breath. No clenched jaw. No habitual way to steady herself, so she simply yanked upward, as hard and as straight as she could.
After a token resistance, it popped out with a faint rasp of metal on stone, sending her tumbling back on her haunches.
She sat and held the nail in front of her, regarding it with dumbfounded awe. She lifted her shirt to confirm. There was no breakthrough bleeding, no suppurating boils; it only looked as bad as it had to begin with.
There was no way it could be that simple, but with one freed to use as a tool, she made short work of the other four. Pulling the last one loose was terrifying, but carried no consequences. Soon she sat, baffled but pleased, with a small pile of them before her. Did her shadow spool a little further than it had before? She wished she’d thought to check, but she was pretty sure it did. She felt better, even if only because she’d accomplished something without a horrific backfire.
She raised the one she’d been using to pry and examined it. It might have been tarnished silver, but seemed to her to be a fairly standard hand forged nail. She recalled Zachary’s remark about the tableware and felt a brief chill. Having a handful of them buried in her gut was terrible, but her attempt at removal had been so drastically awful she couldn’t bring herself to try once more. She didn’t even have the nerve to try slipping her skin again. Ana would be able to deal with it.
If she could get back to Ana.
Bracing on her hands while she unfolded her legs, she crab-walked backwards a few paces, holding her injured abdomen as straight as possible, so that she could once more sit with her back against the wall. After a moment, she shifted slightly to the left so that there was nothing in her field of vision but the rough stone wall.
The brief triumph of being once more free to roam the seventh level was already fading. She wouldn’t be going anywhere else, ever again.
Michelle braced her elbows on her knees, burying her fingers in her hair as she let that bleak, black tide of knowledge wash over her. There was no way out for her, and there never had been. Circe killing her would probably be a best case scenario. She was fairly certain that even he would be willing to put down his rabid embarrassment at this point. Surely she’d made her point by now.
As if she could. As if she would. She might as well find some straw to spin into gold. A wicked witch had set her an impossible task, and for her failure she was going to starve with a corpse. Two corpses.
Or perhaps that was plan B. Once she got hungry enough, nothing would stop her from tearing into Iris. If Circe could somehow keep her restrained, they could easily effect a transformation.
But they were going to be counting on Michelle already being restrained. Surely the nails weren’t intended as temporary confinement; surely she’d just gotten lucky. She’d have the element of surprise, for whatever good that did.
She carefully shifted her gaze to consider the house from the corner of her eye. Circe had said she wasn’t able to enter, but Michelle had never had a problem. Nor had she had much chance to inspect it, during the brief time she’d occupied it, but he’d had those earrings stored away, whatever their value to Circe might have been. Surely there were more sorcerous objects within; they might be helpful, if she could somehow figure out how to recognize or operate them. She sighed, letting her head lean back against the wall, then thought better of it and looked towards the external door.
She squinted defensively, but the light really wasn’t bad when pointed straight up. The door was the same heavy, steel airlock found throughout the Club. She didn’t recall there being external locks, but that could have been a hasty addition. She doubted it mattered much. This entire building had been designed to keep vampires both in and out. She was unlikely to find a loophole to slither through. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t worth trying.
She turned her head back towards the house, trying to remember if there had been any special trick to the door, but she wasn’t quite quick enough, and it caught her gaze. She saw it.
The arm lay discarded on the floor, ending in a ragged, bloodless stump, the fingers curled like a dead spider’s legs.
She was pretty sure she hadn’t done that. Mostly she remembered stabbing, and the look on his face. Hated it.
Abruptly she forced herself to her feet, hissing in pain and wrapping her arms around herself as she leaned against the wall. It didn’t matter. Even if she had somehow been willing to, what could she do? Ask him nicely? She raised her hands to rub at her still aching temples. She was going to be down here for a long time. She might as well try to get comfortable.
Without letting herself think about it too much, she pushed away from the wall and strode towards the house. She could at least sit in a chair.
The roll of cloth lay before her, barring the way.
Linen. The same thing his mother had been wrapped in.
It hadn’t been down here. The fourth level? She’d already forgotten. One of Ash’s underground storehouses, the temporary home of his most forbidden treasure.
They’d brought it down here.
Michelle stood stock still, failing to make her eyes focus on it. It was just something rolled up in a tarp. She could walk past it effortlessly. She could even swing wide, making her way between the stone blocks and the wall, keeping plenty of distance from it.
The house loomed beyond it, its walls still lost in the shadows of the ceiling above it. She could just make out the rough texture of the roof; this must have been a natural cavern that they’d built into. It was simply everything else that happened here afterwards that had become unnatural.
There could be anything in there. She’d encountered nothing overtly dangerous, but she hadn’t done much exploration. Circe wanted in there, but even she couldn’t enter on her own. Maybe there was a trick to it; perhaps, for once, she really had been safe with him.
She’d heard them locking the external door. She truly didn’t recall there being locks on it, but that seemed more reasonable than them having slapped a few on. What kind of front door didn’t have a lock? Locks could be picked. It was worth a look.
She spun on her heel and propelled herself in the opposite direction, showing herself she had no problem at all turning her back on it; it was fine. Facing the light was still a little too bright for comfort, but her eyes adjusted quickly, and she halted abruptly at the sight of the small, crumpled form laying in a tangle behind it. She half raised her hands before her memory jogged.
So small. A dress or nightgown, dark colored, flower print. A leg pointing in a terribly wrong direction. Michelle blinked stupidly as she took in the details. She had reached a place in her life where having a dead body flung into her prison was the least traumatic thing that had happened in the last hour.
Had they meant to leave her a snack? Something to keep her going while she worked on their impossible request?
This was probably one of the girls who worked at the Club. Would they have infected one just to attack her with? Who would have done it? Michelle wished she’d thought to ask more about Cassandra. Iris had sounded far too happy about that. There should have been at least one other-Anton?-but from the sounds of things, if they'd tried to fight, they’d lost.
A thread of sorrow began to unfurl in her heart, but failed to snag on anything. She considered that probable reality with numb acceptance. An unfortunate outcome.
That was almost certainly just a dead body laying on the floor before her. Another one she could walk past in perfect safety, if only she could make her legs move.
The doors were built to provide security for creatures that feared fire and light but didn’t need oxygen. This place had clearly been here for at least a century, surely more. She couldn’t be the first prisoner. They’d had plenty of time to work out the kinks. She was never going to get through it on her own.
Her mind was blank, but a chill ran down her spine. “Rumpelstiltskin,” she muttered under her breath. The air she had to inhale to do so brought a whiff of sweet amber to the back of her throat. The woman’s perfume.
Just a woman. Probably some poor, relative innocent who’d gotten dragged into this just the way she had.
The flat, hollow bang from behind her nearly sent her jumping out of her skin.
She whirled into a defensive crouch, her vision going white with agony as she twisted her torso, the pain in her jaw knifing through her as she clenched her teeth to keep from screaming. Her eyes darted between the thing on the floor and the thing in the cloth, the red haze of the hunter battling the pale agony clouding the corners of her vision. Neither seemed to have moved. She frantically searched the narthex for the source of the sound. She made a soft, strangled noise in the back of her throat when her eyes locked onto it, scarcely able to believe what she was seeing.
Its hide gleaming a deep, dried blood mahogany, its curling ram horns seeming freshly sharpened, a homunculus-her homunculus-stood at one end of the shrouded figure, just behind the massive, leather bound tome it had slammed onto the flagstones.
Subspecies: Bloodloss
Chapter 3/9
Author: memoriamvictus
Rating: R
Summary: Sequel to Subspecies: Bloodlines. Michelle discovers that the weight of obligation can be the heaviest shackle of all as she struggles to retain her hard-won freedom in the face of a fate that will not be denied.
Disclaimer: We don't know who it belongs to, but it certainly isn't me. This work is merely an act of affection and admiration; no offense or challenge is intended. Reader discretion is always advised.
Wordcount: 7,978
Begin at the beginning.
The stone was cool and dry against her cheek.
Michelle laid still for a moment, letting her eyes remain closed as she briefly ran through the tumultuous events of the last night. The hotel, the truck, Ana’s apartment, the firehouse… hard to believe she’d managed it all between dusk and dawn. It was no surprise she didn’t have much sense of her surroundings. The room felt large.
She felt a little slow, almost groggy, as if she’d woken up from a real rest. Was this what relaxation had been like? But there was a strange twinge from her lower abdomen, almost as if she’d pulled a muscle.
Remembering the skittering of the rats, she felt a moment of quiet revulsion at the idea some of them might have gnawed on her during the day. Was it even possible for her to have ‘slept’ on it wrong? She listened carefully, wondering why she couldn’t hear them now.
Someone very near by was breathing. In the room with her.
The bolt of panic brought clarity. She was lying face down. This was stone, not cement, there was no tarp, there was no-
“Ms. Morgan.”
She fought not to flinch, and was pretty sure she’d won. Had she visibly jerked awake? Did she really think she was going to pretend to sleep her way out of this, like a little kid avoiding school? She thought about leaping to her feet with the most terrible snarl she could muster; maybe she could scare them enough to buy time to flee. Maybe she could-
“Ms. Morgan.” The woman’s voice was skin-crawlingly familiar. Carefully, she slitted an eye open, and instantly regretted It as she was bombarded with white light so blindingly bright she couldn’t resist throwing up a hand to protect a retina that almost felt singed.
He'd called her something strange. My chatelaine’s chatelaine. The woman who ran Club Muse during its daylight hours. The human who procured and provided for vampires. Ash’s minion.
“Iris,” Michelle snapped, pushing herself up from the ground and onto one knee. The light burning through her closed eyelids was so intense it was a wonder she hadn’t noticed immediately.
“I’m honored to be remembered.” Her voice was as polished and unctuous as ever, but was there a hint of malignant glee behind it? “I do hope you’ll be able to adjust to the lighting. There’s simply nothing else to be done.”
Michelle levered herself slowly to her feet. Iris was speaking from fairly nearby, perhaps fifteen feet away, but her voice had a sonorous quality to it, not quite echoing. Michelle experimentally cracked her eyes, and was rewarded with a dark human shape, silhouetted by a lighted doorway, standing behind the source of the blazing light, some kind of tall, round lamp. “Could you point that up, or something?”
“No.” The figure’s head tilted; Michelle inferred the humorless smile. “You can turn your back to me, if you think it will help.” She was definitely smirking. “I won’t bite.”
“That’s terribly reassuring, Iris,” Michelle tried not to grate. She kept her eyes narrowed in the increasingly desperate hope that they’d start to adjust. “Why are you here?”
“Hmm.” Iris tilted her head the other way. “You really ought to take a look around, Ms. Morgan.”
She was scared to take her eyes off Iris, but given how little she could see, supposed it couldn’t make things much worse. Slowly, peering out of the corners of her eyes, she turned to take in her surroundings. It took her blasted vision a moment to make out what the spotlight illuminated in the yawning darkness: smooth stone blocks, about waist high, resting on a stone floor surrounded by columns. A ragged white bundle laying between them. Beyond, a short flight of wide stairs leading up to a massively impenetrable door.
The narthex.
She was a mile beneath the streets of Bucharest, in the basement of Club Muse, on the doorstep of the last cage she’d escaped from.
“What the hell is this.” She was barely able to force the words through her clenched throat, incapable of inflection. She spun on her heel, ready to storm up to her impudent captor until the light rendered her nearly blind once more. She bared her fangs in unconscious fury, raising one leather clad arm in a vain attempt to shield her eyes. “Why the hell am I here, Iris?” Her jaw twitched as an awful idea clicked into place. “Is this about Ash? Are you actually loyal?” she spat, bristling at the idea of being held accountable for heroism.
Iris laughed indulgently, as if Michelle had made an attempt at wit during a faculty party. She stepped out from behind the light, slowly advancing while staying as far to the side as the stone walkway would allow until she came to a halt a few paces from the ring of light on the ground. She was hardly more visible, a blur of details; dark hair pulled back, wearing a skirt suit in a light colored fabric that might have been chosen to show off bloodstains.
“I truly did hope we could have this conversation under better circumstances, Ms. Morgan,” she said with apparent seriousness. “I tried my best. I put my resources at your disposal. I found you a souvenir! Don’t you all love relics? I tried to be of service. I attempted to curry favor.” The ugliness that had crept into her voice seemed to shock even her; she took a moment to compose herself before continuing. “But you had plans of your own, of course. Isn’t that always the way? Woman proposes, a god disposes.” She smiled thinly, clasping her hands together before her.
Michelle felt the first tiny thread of genuine terror begin to unravel down her spine. Iris wouldn’t be working for vampires if she weren’t crazy, but this… “I’m not a god, Iris,” she made herself say, hoping her voice was calm. “I’m twenty four. I can’t figure out how to get my passport replaced. I don’t know how to drive on the left. I-"
“Have no idea what it’s truly like,” Iris said, a hint of mocking sing song in her tone. “Do you know why I worked for Ash, Ms. Morgan?”
The silence drew out until Michelle realized she expected an answer. She extended her hands in a shrug. “What’s not to like?”
Iris’s dark red lips quirked in what seemed to be genuine amusement. She was wearing a wide white belt around her waist with a thin gold buckle. It still hurt to open her eyes more than a crack, but the details were starting to come in.
“I am, of course, excellent at it. I’ve made the Club nearly eternally wealthy, and amassed quite a fortune of my own. It’s been quite fun. And, of course, the real treasure is the connections.” She winked conspiratorially at Michelle, a ghoulish parody of girlishness. “I just love gossip. And access! I can arrange almost anything I want. Half of the reason I can tolerate working with people like you is that your problems are always extremely unusual; there’s very little else that can challenge my creativity these days. It makes up for the tedium and lack of comprehension you all so often display.” She clasped her hands once more, as if waiting for Michelle to praise her; when none was forthcoming, her tone hardened. “The problem is, Ms. Morgan, that in the end, all of it amounts to nothing. None of it. Absolutely none of it," she said, shaking her head for emphasis, “can buy me another heart beat.”
She met Michelle’s gaze unflinchingly. “Ash promised to turn me,” she said, then held up a hand as if to forestall a protest Michelle never bothered to make. “I’ve known for years that he wasn’t going to. I don’t hold that against you,” she said with polished magnanimity. “So I began to make other inquiries. None of his brood would ever dare to defy him so openly, but we get quite a few visitors from near and abroad. I had hoped that you and I might find some things in common.”
Michelle stood rooted to the ground in numb horror. “Oh, Iris, no,” she said, waving her arms before her like an umpire. “No. You don’t-you don’t really know what you’re-”
“You don’t know who you’re dealing with.” Michelle’s mouth snapped shut in shock at the pure venom in Iris’s voice, unconsciously falling half a step back. “Some of us didn’t get to go to college, Michelle. Some of us had to do it the hard way.” She advanced to the edge of the circle of light, harsh shadows obscuring the planes of her face. “I have fought and clawed and slaved for everything I have ever had. I have spent years watching the fatuous idiots Ash wasted his gifts upon fail to cope with difficulties I surmounted as a child. I deserve this.” She breathed hard through her nostrils, her clenched teeth tearing her face into a rictus of fury. Michelle watched mutely, scarcely able to absorb what she was hearing, as Iris struggled to regain control over herself. “But that’s not where you come in,” she said finally, her voice low and toneless as she stepped back from the ring of light, her features falling into more forgiving shadows. “Did your master ever speak to you of generations?"
Her tone was abruptly light and conversational and utterly insane, but Michelle flinched from her use of the term as if she’d been burned. “No.”
“You and Ash were… siblings, of a sort. The same generation. It’s no surprise you were able to best him. You were his equal.” Michelle nodded, despite being absolutely baffled by her words. “So you would make an adequate replacement for him… but she’s determined that we can do better.”
“Iris, you don’t need to do anything,” Michelle said, disliking the throatiness of her voice as she tried her best to soothe. She raised her hands innocently. “We can actually just go upstairs and talk about this. I’m not mad. I’m just freaked out.”
The woman’s smile thinned. “Yes, I expect you are.”
Squinting into the light, Michelle strained her remaining senses for some indication of what might be going on. As far as she knew, the only way to get down here were endless flights of steps; surely she’d hear someone coming, and she didn’t think she could make anything out. “Let’s just go upstairs and talk about this. It’ll be less gross.”
“No, Ms. Morgan, it’s important that you remain-”
Michelle launched herself forward, meaning to hurl herself past the overwhelming light and through the open doorway behind Iris, but as her other foot came down at the edge of the circle of light she tripped, her legs tangling as if they’d been yanked from beneath her, crashing to the flagstones with a bone jarring thud she was barely able to protect her face from. Barbed hooks of agony tore through the lower left of her abdomen, as if a demonic hand had reached out and sunk its claws into her waist.
In a frenzy of panicked pain, she tried to melt into the shadows and she couldn’t, she was stuck to her own flesh and she couldn’t get away and it hurt like it was tearing her soul. Failing to muffle a guttural scream behind clenched teeth, she writhed on the ground, as if she could somehow twist herself free of the unholy gyre she’d been trapped in, but the hooks only dug in deeper, confining her to her suffering like barbed wire shackles. She managed to flop over onto her back, clenching her eyelids as tightly as her jaw beneath the light’s punishing glare, panting out of habit, and realized that this wasn’t so bad. As long as she held still, all she could feel was the raving agony of the wound in her side. She forced herself to exhale, and the pain lessened further with the cessation of movement. It started to feel survivable. She clutched at the wound with her hand, but couldn’t quite bring herself to touch it, lest she set it alight again.
“…within the light.” Despite all, Michelle’s lip curled at the obvious satisfaction in Iris’s voice. “We’ve taken some extra precautions for this meeting, as I’m sure you can now recognize the need for.”
Her upper lip peeled back to expose her fangs, but she was too fraught with shock and pain to form a response. Instead, she let her hand slip beneath the tail of her flannel, her fingers working gently upwards to explore an injury far too debilitating to be rat bites. Even the flesh beneath it felt strange, almost spongy, and she couldn’t repress a shiver of revulsion, her throat tightening as she recalled what Cassandra had looked like after a bite from the blade.
Iris had said she. Then we. Michelle could hardly believe it, but… “Cassandra told me where Ash was,” she said hoarsely, hardly able to raise her voice above a whisper. “She knew I was going after the-victim.” She couldn’t bring herself to remind this lunatic there were more potential targets out there. “You can’t trust-”
“Oh, Cassandra?” The derision oozed from her voice like rotting sewage. “No. Of course not.” She forced a dry, brittle laugh at the very idea. “One of Ash’s oldest surviving failures. Still, even she managed to serve a purpose in the end. As will you, Ms. Morgan.”
Michelle’s fingers brushed the edge of something poking out of her flesh, and gave a half-gasping, half-sobbing cry as her hand automatically jerked away. Her head swam, her mouth dry as her throat churned with nausea. There was something inside of her.
“Sit up, Ms. Morgan.”
She quailed at the thought of the pain obeying would bring, but found herself automatically levering herself up on one arm. She could feel whatever it was within her as she moved, implacably digging into her guts, but it wasn’t terrible if she kept her movements smooth and slow. She got herself mostly upright, leaning slightly backward to support herself on the palms of her hands. She forced her expression into as much neutrality as she could manage and looked at Iris.
She raised an arm to point, and Michelle followed the direction her manicured red finger nail indicated. A little less than ten feet away from her, about halfway to the stone slabs, a row of round, dully gleaming items protruded from a crack between the flagstones, nearly flush with it. Were they dimes? Buttons? She studied them intently, unsure what to make of them until her shoulders sagged with the realization that, despite the fact that the spotlight should have had her shadow yawning nearly to the steps of the house, it ended in a strange, contorted pool at what had to be nails.
She’d been sliding along the wall of the main room of the Club when he had sunk his claws into her, had metaphysically dragged her back into an alcove-she clapped a hand over her left side, and immediately flinched away with a wince.
“You’ll need to stay nearby.” Iris patted the side of the light’s housing approvingly.
Michelle’s gaze returned to the unnatural pile of her shadow surrounding the nails. She had no option but to face into the light, which kept her shadow falling behind her. As long as Iris stayed back, there was nothing Michelle could do. She was tethered like a junkyard dog on a chain. She knew a moment of despair, but it was quickly swallowed by the icy chasm of shock that was splitting open in her mind. The ragged white bundle caught her eye once more. “Why do I have to stay nearby, Iris?” she asked with a leaden voice.
“Hmm. What were we talking about? Your outburst quite derailed my train of thought.” She looked down her nose at Michelle through half-lidded eyes. “Access? My aspirations? Surely not; those wouldn’t matter.” She turned her head abruptly, startling Michelle enough for a jolt of pain from her abdomen.
Focusing her attention, she already knew what she was going to hear: someone was finally coming down the stairs with slow, shuffling steps. Still at least two, maybe three stories above them. She couldn’t force herself to remember how many there actually were, only that they had seemed endless even when they were incapable of exhausting her.
Iris turned back to her with a knowing smile, the hint of what was perhaps the first genuine happiness Michelle had ever seen on her face. “As I was saying, I’ve long since been aware that Ash had no intention of fulfilling his obligations to me, so I began seeking other avenues, outside of the establishment.”
Closer now, but still high above, something hit the steps with a solid thud. A moment later, another followed, then another, and soon a whole series as whatever it was tumbled down a flight of stairs on its own. Michelle knew a moment of hope, but it was soon followed by the soft whisper of feet, descending ever closer.
“Honestly, it was utterly obvious. We’ve had our own witch on staff since long before I arrived.”
The Oracle. With whom he’d shared some revolting history so potent it had left him behaving as respectfully towards her as Michelle had ever seen him manage. Who Michelle had been specifically summoned by, who had point blank told Michelle she’d share a grave with him. Her heart sank. She had been so disgusted by the idea of a person who’d willingly choose that for themselves that she hadn’t bothered to listen. She had no idea what she was in for.
The performance on the stairs repeated itself, this time close enough Michelle could begin to hear details. Was that a grunt of effort just before the tumbling commenced again? The Oracle had seemed genuinely ancient; she was probably struggling with manhandling whatever slapped its way down the stairs before her.
“Finding her was a wonderful exercise in my abilities. Do you have any idea how awkward it is to go around knocking on crypts?” Iris smirked. “I suppose you might. But my efforts have repaid themselves in spades; she’s quite amenable to deal with, as long as you understand her.” Iris lowered her eyes in mock humility. “I seem to have surpassed you there, as well. You’re still too young to understand, but someday, the simplest things will seem like sorcery to you. Beepers. Cable. Magazine subscriptions. Miraculous gifts to people who grew up by candlelight." She laughed. “Despite the awful tempest you’ve created in our little teapot, I truly don’t think it will amount to much in the end.”
A muffled curse. A grunt of effort. Michelle rose instinctively, but the scream of the wounds kept her on one knee as she fought against panic. She was right at the top of the stairs; Michelle could hear the slither of fabric against stone as whatever it was began its final descent ahead of her.
The edges of her abused sight hazed black, giving her the beginnings of her hunter’s tunnel vision as she tried desperately to figure out what was about to confront her, but it was as if the blaze of the light prevented it from taking effect. Her vision swam in and out of normal and preternatural, unable to focus, leaving her dizzy and disoriented.
Another curse. A muffled thump. A body flailed down the stairs, its shoulder already so broken from its violent trip downstairs that one arm swung unnaturally long, held in place only by its flesh, as it collapsed into a jumbled heap at the foot of the stairs with a gristly crunch. Michelle clapped a hand over her mouth, unsure if she meant to stifle a scream or hysterical laughter at the absurdity of the obscenity, but the soft shuffle of descending feet kept her silent and still.
The figure soon appeared in the doorway, using an arm to support herself as she made her way down. Michelle strained desperately against the light to pick out anything that could warn her; her vision hazed red, almost managing to slip into night vision, but snapping back into normalcy with a painful wrench behind her eyes. She blinked furiously, trying to clear them. Small, stooped, walking slowly-
“Most wretched and accursed of creatures.”
If Michelle had still been capable of dreaming, that shrill rasp would have rung through her nightmares.
“Foulest and most execrable of his creations.”
No. Absolutely not. No. No. No. Michelle couldn’t move, couldn’t think, couldn’t close eyes so wide the corners hurt.
“Better that you had killed yourself. Better that you had suffered every torment of Hell.”
Circe stepped into the light.
She was hideous. What had before been a wizened corpse now seemed little more than an animate skeleton held together with dry, peeling flesh. She came to a halt a few steps ahead of Iris, but did not stop moving. These weren’t the tremors of age and weakness she’d displayed before. Now she jittered, her body twitching unnaturally at what seemed like every joint, a bizarre blur of discordant movements. Her bare teeth were visible, but Michelle had no idea if it was a savage grin of triumph, or if she simply no longer had lips.
Circe came forward slowly, her body clicking and popping as she moved, as if her bones no longer aligned correctly. She stepped fearlessly into the circle of light, revealing her decay in more detail as she approached Michelle inexorably. What was left of her weathered skin really was as thin as paper; the dull shine of her skull was visible on her forehead, and at the curve of her jaw as her head twitched unnaturally and caught the light. The fresh linens she’d draped herself with hung from her like a mummy’s wrappings, doing little to conceal the bizarre angles of her body.
Michelle crouched, frozen like a rabbit in the headlights, until the one horror she truly thought she'd managed to escape towered over her like an executioner, like when Michelle had been chained to her work table, like when they’d-
The paperbacks. Michelle choked on the memory of their first journey to Club Muse, when they had passed through Circe’s laboratory and there had been modern, new books sitting on one of her shelves. Iris really had been working on this for a long time. This was really real.
“Better than falling into my grasp once more.”
Circe’s dry, leathery fingers wrapped around her jaw, icy cold, and that finally broke the spell. Michelle gave a thin, strangled shriek as she attempted to scramble backwards, but the witch’s fingers held her in an unnatural vise grip, her broken, ragged nails beginning to tear through Michelle’s skin as she struggled to free herself. Circe gave a sharp yank, pulling her head down; it unbalanced her enough that she fell to both knees, as if in supplication. Maybe that would work; maybe if she held still, maybe if she could think of something to say… she couldn’t think, this couldn’t be happening, this couldn’t be real…
Circe wrenched her chin to the side. Michelle watched frantically from the corner of her eye as Circe gave her an appraising look.
He ripped her head off and she burned.
The dark brown line that must be what was left of her upper lip curled in disgust. “More of my work, squandered!” Her other hand flew forward, and Michelle could barely register, let alone comprehend the source of the tearing pain in her earlobe until Circe forced her head in the other direction and ripped the second earring out, the wire effortlessly slicing through her flesh.
He'd bitten her ears, right before they went to Ash’s exhibition. She thought he’d just been decorating her. She’d thought-
A stinging slap across the mouth drove whatever the thought had been away, the force knocking her back on her heels and infuriating whatever was buried in her side. She raised a defensive hand to her mouth, the tips of her fingers brushing the dry, bloodless divots Circle had dug into her jaw.
“Your blood diminishes them.” Circe fisted her withered hand around the grey stone earrings possessively. “A manipulative fool with no idea with what you interfered.” Her voice was nearly intolerable, an accordion wheeze of tattered lungs across vocal cords like broken glass.
She tucked them away within a fold of her wrap, her feet scraping against the stone as she made her way past Michelle with remarkable speed. She soon reached the white bundle. Awkwardly squatting down, she retrieved something from within it before carefully levering herself back upright and rounding on Michelle. “And what is this?”
Circe was holding a-wand? A flail? A short, club like object with something dangling from one end, multiple things that bounced as Circe stormed back.
She shoved Radu’s severed left forearm at Michelle, the long, nerveless fingers dangling in her face.
Michelle leapt to her feet with a full-throated shriek, already whirling for the door, but Circe stomped a foot and the hooks in her side hauled at her as if she were being reeled in. Her knees hit the stone with a sharp, painful bark, shocking her enough to throw her hands up in time to protect her upper body. She rolled instinctively, but froze on her side when she saw that Circe’s callused bare foot was standing on an impossible pool of her shadow. She gave a low, inchoate moan as she realized she’d been yanked up short, a disobedient dog being forced to obey.
Circe closed the distance quickly, brandishing the arm at Michelle until she was forced to sit back on her heels and lean away to keep it from touching her face. “He has been desecrated,” Circle hissed, flipping the arm so that the hand was palm up, the clawed fingers flopping apart like a diseased flower unfurling. Michelle ducked away, but it was impossible to miss: his left hand, the one she’d ripped the pinky joint from. It had healed over into a smooth nub, and remained so now. “He has been divided. What manner of defilement has caused such an aberrance?”
Circe loomed over her, teeth bared, wisps of frizzy white hair trembling around her face as she lowered her head to meet Michelle’s gaze with what passed for her eyes. One was mercifully lost in shadow; the other was completely covered by thick, tumorous tissue that had grown as dry and withered as the rest of her, seeming as if it were beginning to crack and crumble. Michelle cowered before her for too long before realizing that it wasn’t a rhetorical question. “I-I don’t know,” she said softly, shaking her head helplessly. “I truly don’t-”
"Worthless. Bastard. Thing!”
The first blow hit her cheek with solid force, knocking her back onto her buttocks and scraping the palms of her hands as she caught herself from falling further backwards. More blows rained down, thudding against her skull. It was only when a claw caught the edge of her jaw and sliced her open to the chin that she realized what was happening, and she couldn’t even scream, she whimpered and moaned and choked on her sobs while she frantically wrapped her arms around her head in a vain attempt to protect herself as Circle beat her with the hand in a way he’d never done himself. She couldn’t act, couldn’t think, couldn’t imagine a time when this might be over, scrabbling desperately for sanity in the seconds between slaps.
Finally, Circe wrenched it away with a tearing pain against her scalp; it had gotten tangled in her hair. Michelle might never open her eyes again, but she heard the soft thump that might be Circe dropping it to the ground. Stillness. Quiet. If it stayed like this, she might be able to stop shaking. The terror was so pervasive she couldn’t even begin to think of lowering her arms.
“Then you shall have to find a way to ask him.”
Just that easily, Michelle whipped her head upright, her eyes wide and her mouth open in horror. “No!”
This time, Circe slapped her herself, knocking her to the side onto an elbow. It was incomprehensible how strong the seeming bag of bones was; she raised a hand to her aching jaw, but Circe kicked it away. “You are a perversion. The penultimate expression of his deviance, of the ruinous weakness that sent him to his death in this whorehouse after centuries.” Circe drew herself up to her full height, her body jerking with unnatural fury. “The chufch. War. Plague. Half the devils in hell. But not you!” She kicked Michelle’s arm out from under her, sending her thudding to her side excruciatingly. She spun on her heel and strode a few paces away, as if afraid of what she’d do if Michelle remained within reach.
Michelle lay on her side, trying to remain frozen, but there was no way she could tilt her head that kept the thing laying on the floor beside her from her field of view, and she couldn’t stand to look at it. Moving so slowly she could barely be seen, using every bit of her vampiric dexterity to keep even a sound like her leather jacket creaking silent, she sat back up as Circe continued to rage.
“I cannot summon his shade. I cannot enter his house. I cannot pass among the incoherency of his wards. And yet, here he remains!” She flung a hand to indicate the white bundle that could only contain his body. “You have stolen something from him, bastard.” She rounded on Michelle, shaking her fist. “Serpent. Delilah! And I mean. To have. It. Back.”
She reached a twisted, shaking hand into her wrappings and produced what appeared to be a small bronze bowl, filthy and worn with use. “The only value you have ever held is his blood running through your veins, and his indulgence can no longer protect you from your refusal to be of use.”
Michelle realized she was shaking her head slowly. She couldn’t help it. “But I can’t do the things you do,” she whispered. She felt foolish, but couldn’t stop babbling. “I didn’t do anything to him. He never showed me-”
The bowl connected with her jaw with a ringing thump. Either a tooth or her actual jawbone cracked beneath it as she collapsed to the ground, curling up into the fetal position. The bowl hit her side as Circe dropped it on her; it slid down the leather of her jacket and hit the ground behind her with a metallic clang. “There are only so many ways,” Circe growled, “and none of them have availed me. You are the one that he wasted himself on. You are the one who twisted his mind in pursuit of you. You are the one who butchered him. You will be the one to call him back from the dark to pay his penance. Or.” Circe drew close once more, her gruesome face a mask of backlit shadows as she stared down at Michelle from her full height. “I shall return for you.”
Michelle regretted looking at Circe as much as she had; she squeezed her eyes shut, curling around herself protectively. She wasn’t sure if she was nodding or trembling. She would have said anything, done anything to make this stop, if only she could have thought of what it was.
“Attend your labors well.”
She could hear Circe walking away; a second later, the click of Iris’s heels startled her so badly that she jerked. She’d completely forgotten the woman was present.
A grunt of effort from Circe; a crunching, meaty thud a few feet away from her.
The door slammed shut, reducing the light a fraction. She could hear the heavy metal clunk of locks shooting home from the other side.
She was sealed in.
Michelle wasn’t sure how long she lay there, clenched and unmoving, before she could so much as begin to stretch her legs. Finally she was able to roll on her back, easing the pain of the wound she’d been lying upon. The light burned so brightly through her closed eyelids that she couldn’t be bothered to open them.
She seemed to be alone.
With a shudder, she raised an arm over her eyes, giving herself an approximation of darkness and an iota of relief as she fought to put her whirling, panicked thoughts in order.
She couldn’t. Iris. Iris had kidnapped her while she was unconscious, and held her captive with a light, and…
First things first.
Very slowly, keeping her eyes closed, tensing her muscles cautiously to keep from aggravating the wound, she eased herself upright, and then to her feet. Briefly cracking one eye to make sure she was oriented correctly, she made her way over to the light.
The metal housing was surprisingly hot to the touch; she jerked back in dismay, shaking her hand as she remembered Iris’s lack of reaction. She fisted it inside her sleeve, pushing the leather up over her palm, and braced it against the light’s housing. It wouldn’t move, nearly tipping over backwards. She caught the stand and steadied it, then tried again. With an ear splitting screech, the light rotated upwards, the horrible glare finally departing.
With a sigh of relief, she stumbled a few steps over to lean against the wall, turning her back on the light and rubbing her eyes with the tips of her fingers. Colorful ghosts swam against the blackness of her vision, but the tension headache was already beginning to ease. As the psychedelic paisley began to recede, she risked opening her eyes.
Still too bright, but not bad. She immediately looked for her shadow pooling along the floor and while it had grown a great deal more diffuse, unfortunately, it was still there, hung on its nails. She glanced around the well lit floor and frowned. She may have extended her leash, but she was still shackled.
She had lunged at Iris, and then… it had hurt so much…
Michelle shifted so that her back leaned against the wall. She clenched her jaw to try to steady her nerves, and instantly regretted it as pain from Circe’s last blow tore through it. She squeezed her eyes shut once more, willing the awful sensation to subside. Once it had begun to fade, she took the tail of her flannel and gingerly lifted it.
It took her a moment to make sense of what she was seeing. The whole lower left of her abdomen, spilling out onto her side, was angry and red, as if she’d been burned, or had boiling water poured on her. Nearly centered in the abused flesh was a row of small, grey circles. Buttons, she thought again. Had Circe installed buttons to press?
Michelle’s eyes slid to the floor. To the end of her now delicately gray shadow.
Nails. They’d put more nails in her.
She shuddered convulsively. If she’d had anything in her stomach she’d have thrown up, and was grateful for that small mercy. It would only have hurt more.
Nails. There were nails inside of her.
She wrapped her arms around her breasts and squeezed her eyes shut, swallowing thickly against the nausea that fought its way up her throat. It wasn’t a big deal. Conventional injuries didn’t seem to matter much. She just needed to get them out.
Her courage was difficult to muster; it took a few moments before she could once more raise her shirt. The heads appeared to be flush against her skin, but they were thick and uneven. If she could work a fingernail under there, it might be like pulling a bee sting.
The next thing she knew, she was facedown on the floor, her arms sprawled in front of her, her shirt hiked up around her rib cage.
It had been blinding. She still couldn’t bring herself to roll over with the lingering agony. But the cool of the stone felt good against her exposed, infected flesh, so she simply lay there, letting the swollen, rotten ache recede like a fading pulse.
When she could open her eyes again, her gaze immediately flew to the matching ones projecting from the crack in the flagstones. They weren’t quite flush with the stone. She might be able to get her fingers around them.
This time she rose merely to her knees, and awkwardly crawled over to them, one hand hovering protectively over her injury, her attention fixed solely on the nails and not the thing on the floor she had to pass.
Steeling herself for whatever horrific suffering she was about to inflict on herself, she pried at one experimentally. She felt nothing, but discovered that they were much better seated than her first impression. She wished for something to pry at it with, but the bronze bowl was far too thick, and she wasn’t interested in examining her environment much further. One thing at a time.
If she’d still been able to sweat, she would never have managed, but she was able to get a fingertip grip on one that projected a little further out than the others. It even felt like it wriggled a bit beneath her prodding, though it was so slight it might have been wishful thinking. She tightened her grip on the nailhead as much as she could manage, and tried not to think about what might happen.
No deep breath. No clenched jaw. No habitual way to steady herself, so she simply yanked upward, as hard and as straight as she could.
After a token resistance, it popped out with a faint rasp of metal on stone, sending her tumbling back on her haunches.
She sat and held the nail in front of her, regarding it with dumbfounded awe. She lifted her shirt to confirm. There was no breakthrough bleeding, no suppurating boils; it only looked as bad as it had to begin with.
There was no way it could be that simple, but with one freed to use as a tool, she made short work of the other four. Pulling the last one loose was terrifying, but carried no consequences. Soon she sat, baffled but pleased, with a small pile of them before her. Did her shadow spool a little further than it had before? She wished she’d thought to check, but she was pretty sure it did. She felt better, even if only because she’d accomplished something without a horrific backfire.
She raised the one she’d been using to pry and examined it. It might have been tarnished silver, but seemed to her to be a fairly standard hand forged nail. She recalled Zachary’s remark about the tableware and felt a brief chill. Having a handful of them buried in her gut was terrible, but her attempt at removal had been so drastically awful she couldn’t bring herself to try once more. She didn’t even have the nerve to try slipping her skin again. Ana would be able to deal with it.
If she could get back to Ana.
Bracing on her hands while she unfolded her legs, she crab-walked backwards a few paces, holding her injured abdomen as straight as possible, so that she could once more sit with her back against the wall. After a moment, she shifted slightly to the left so that there was nothing in her field of vision but the rough stone wall.
The brief triumph of being once more free to roam the seventh level was already fading. She wouldn’t be going anywhere else, ever again.
Michelle braced her elbows on her knees, burying her fingers in her hair as she let that bleak, black tide of knowledge wash over her. There was no way out for her, and there never had been. Circe killing her would probably be a best case scenario. She was fairly certain that even he would be willing to put down his rabid embarrassment at this point. Surely she’d made her point by now.
As if she could. As if she would. She might as well find some straw to spin into gold. A wicked witch had set her an impossible task, and for her failure she was going to starve with a corpse. Two corpses.
Or perhaps that was plan B. Once she got hungry enough, nothing would stop her from tearing into Iris. If Circe could somehow keep her restrained, they could easily effect a transformation.
But they were going to be counting on Michelle already being restrained. Surely the nails weren’t intended as temporary confinement; surely she’d just gotten lucky. She’d have the element of surprise, for whatever good that did.
She carefully shifted her gaze to consider the house from the corner of her eye. Circe had said she wasn’t able to enter, but Michelle had never had a problem. Nor had she had much chance to inspect it, during the brief time she’d occupied it, but he’d had those earrings stored away, whatever their value to Circe might have been. Surely there were more sorcerous objects within; they might be helpful, if she could somehow figure out how to recognize or operate them. She sighed, letting her head lean back against the wall, then thought better of it and looked towards the external door.
She squinted defensively, but the light really wasn’t bad when pointed straight up. The door was the same heavy, steel airlock found throughout the Club. She didn’t recall there being external locks, but that could have been a hasty addition. She doubted it mattered much. This entire building had been designed to keep vampires both in and out. She was unlikely to find a loophole to slither through. But that didn’t mean it wasn’t worth trying.
She turned her head back towards the house, trying to remember if there had been any special trick to the door, but she wasn’t quite quick enough, and it caught her gaze. She saw it.
The arm lay discarded on the floor, ending in a ragged, bloodless stump, the fingers curled like a dead spider’s legs.
She was pretty sure she hadn’t done that. Mostly she remembered stabbing, and the look on his face. Hated it.
Abruptly she forced herself to her feet, hissing in pain and wrapping her arms around herself as she leaned against the wall. It didn’t matter. Even if she had somehow been willing to, what could she do? Ask him nicely? She raised her hands to rub at her still aching temples. She was going to be down here for a long time. She might as well try to get comfortable.
Without letting herself think about it too much, she pushed away from the wall and strode towards the house. She could at least sit in a chair.
The roll of cloth lay before her, barring the way.
Linen. The same thing his mother had been wrapped in.
It hadn’t been down here. The fourth level? She’d already forgotten. One of Ash’s underground storehouses, the temporary home of his most forbidden treasure.
They’d brought it down here.
Michelle stood stock still, failing to make her eyes focus on it. It was just something rolled up in a tarp. She could walk past it effortlessly. She could even swing wide, making her way between the stone blocks and the wall, keeping plenty of distance from it.
The house loomed beyond it, its walls still lost in the shadows of the ceiling above it. She could just make out the rough texture of the roof; this must have been a natural cavern that they’d built into. It was simply everything else that happened here afterwards that had become unnatural.
There could be anything in there. She’d encountered nothing overtly dangerous, but she hadn’t done much exploration. Circe wanted in there, but even she couldn’t enter on her own. Maybe there was a trick to it; perhaps, for once, she really had been safe with him.
She’d heard them locking the external door. She truly didn’t recall there being locks on it, but that seemed more reasonable than them having slapped a few on. What kind of front door didn’t have a lock? Locks could be picked. It was worth a look.
She spun on her heel and propelled herself in the opposite direction, showing herself she had no problem at all turning her back on it; it was fine. Facing the light was still a little too bright for comfort, but her eyes adjusted quickly, and she halted abruptly at the sight of the small, crumpled form laying in a tangle behind it. She half raised her hands before her memory jogged.
So small. A dress or nightgown, dark colored, flower print. A leg pointing in a terribly wrong direction. Michelle blinked stupidly as she took in the details. She had reached a place in her life where having a dead body flung into her prison was the least traumatic thing that had happened in the last hour.
Had they meant to leave her a snack? Something to keep her going while she worked on their impossible request?
This was probably one of the girls who worked at the Club. Would they have infected one just to attack her with? Who would have done it? Michelle wished she’d thought to ask more about Cassandra. Iris had sounded far too happy about that. There should have been at least one other-Anton?-but from the sounds of things, if they'd tried to fight, they’d lost.
A thread of sorrow began to unfurl in her heart, but failed to snag on anything. She considered that probable reality with numb acceptance. An unfortunate outcome.
That was almost certainly just a dead body laying on the floor before her. Another one she could walk past in perfect safety, if only she could make her legs move.
The doors were built to provide security for creatures that feared fire and light but didn’t need oxygen. This place had clearly been here for at least a century, surely more. She couldn’t be the first prisoner. They’d had plenty of time to work out the kinks. She was never going to get through it on her own.
Her mind was blank, but a chill ran down her spine. “Rumpelstiltskin,” she muttered under her breath. The air she had to inhale to do so brought a whiff of sweet amber to the back of her throat. The woman’s perfume.
Just a woman. Probably some poor, relative innocent who’d gotten dragged into this just the way she had.
The flat, hollow bang from behind her nearly sent her jumping out of her skin.
She whirled into a defensive crouch, her vision going white with agony as she twisted her torso, the pain in her jaw knifing through her as she clenched her teeth to keep from screaming. Her eyes darted between the thing on the floor and the thing in the cloth, the red haze of the hunter battling the pale agony clouding the corners of her vision. Neither seemed to have moved. She frantically searched the narthex for the source of the sound. She made a soft, strangled noise in the back of her throat when her eyes locked onto it, scarcely able to believe what she was seeing.
Its hide gleaming a deep, dried blood mahogany, its curling ram horns seeming freshly sharpened, a homunculus-her homunculus-stood at one end of the shrouded figure, just behind the massive, leather bound tome it had slammed onto the flagstones.