Subspecies: Bloodloss -- Chapter Seven, Part One
Subspecies: Bloodloss
Chapter 7/9
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: 11,677
Begin at the beginning.
The card sat in the middle of the scarred wood of the kitchen table, unassuming and almost decorative. Michelle’s vision hazed red at the corners, narrowing into predatory tunnel vision that rendered every minute detail inescapable: the tiny pores in the smooth cardstock, the slightly wrinkled corner, the faint depressions that indicated the elegant script was hand written.
If she hadn’t been so hyper focused she might never have seen Zachary’s hand move as he snatched the card from the table. With a frown, he held it open to show them that there was nothing written inside.
There didn’t need to be.
“This is what they did to me.” Michelle hadn’t realized she meant to speak, scarcely recognized the low, flat tone of her own voice. “That’s what happened last night. I thought I’d found a good place to hole up for the day, but I woke up back down there.” She raised a hand to her mouth, dragging her palm down her lips as she struggled to keep her racing thoughts from hurtling off a cliff. “I.” She lowered her hand, shook her head, tried again. Nothing came out.
Zachary’s slanted look didn’t quite reach Radu. “Who are they?” he asked, his voice even more quiet than hers.
“Iris.” She slumped back against the worn wallpaper, balancing her weight on her heels as the sick anger of the memories of having to try to talk her down washed over her, but still grateful to have a question she could answer. “The human.” She had just enough self possession to keep from adding, the one who sent you away. “She wants to be a vampire. I ruined it for her.” Something moved in the corner of her eye, but she didn't have the heart to look; she could only pray that Sofia would remain calm. “She found someone else to help her…” Her words ran as dry as her mouth while she contemplated the impossibility of explaining Circe, even to someone primed to accept the incomprehensible.
“Another one?” Zachary asked.
“No. She’s-I don’t know if she was ever a person.” She battled to force the images from her mind, the memory of the dry, desiccated fingers biting into her cheek, but even talking around it was almost too much. “She’s, like-she’s-” She shook her head harder, fingers unconsciously rising to trace the shape of the slap.
“Circe.” She and Zachary whipped their heads around at Radu’s sudden rasp; Sofia flinched, falling back a step until a kitchen chair stopped her with a squeal against the linoleum. “First among witches; inventrix of all sorrows.”
Zachary regarded him for what felt like a long time. A slice of moonlight fell between the parted curtains, illuminating half of his taut, solemn expression. “Surely she has no such pressing need for bacon,” he said finally.
Michelle blinked, uncertain that she’d heard his soft southern drawl correctly, but a corner of Radu’s lip lifted in an unreadable grimace as he shifted his weight against the door. “It makes fine bait.”
This time Michelle raised a fist to her mouth, propping her elbow up with the other. He was right. She’d known it as soon as she’d seen the card, she was simply so horrified that her intellect wasn’t able to catch up with her instincts. Her vision still swimming with hunter’s acuity, she made herself focus on the linoleum, a tiny decorative brown pattern on yellow, or perhaps yellowed tiles, worn through to the concrete beneath in a few patches: in front of the sink, before the stove, gentle pathways trod between them. Ana should have been here deepening them, refreshing the faint scent of cabbage and carrots that seemed to seep from the walls.
“Yeah,” she said, her quiet voice muffled further by her fist. She slid it along her jaw, pressing her lips together until she felt like she could speak steadily. “Yeah, they want us back.”
No one made any reply.
Her mind was blank. She tapped her finger against her jaw, as if she could somehow kickstart her thought process, but nothing resolved in the void where her ideas should be. It was truly too terrible to contemplate. Her mind was so empty she could hear a faint hiss, like the needle on a record player running out of groove.
No. That was Radu’s breathing, soft and slow and unable to escape her notice no matter how he tried.
“That’s what happened last night,” she found herself repeating. “I woke up underground, and… I wanted Ana to look at him,” she said, with a helpless shrug in Radu’s direction. “I never thought…”
“If this happened last night, they couldn’t have followed you here.” Zachary’s tone was iced once more with the chill of suspicion, cold enough to turn Radu’s gaze back to him.
“They could have been watching,” Michelle snapped, glad for the dull spark of anger at his judgment. “They could have followed l. They could have seen that on the news.” She flipped a hand dismissively at Sofia. “I don’t know what kind of, of spy network network she has, but Iris is definitely in with the cops.” Her fingers slipped down to trace the deformed shape of Mel’s medal beneath her shirt. “She could have known what was going on at Nicolescu’s clinic. She sure found out right away. He was one of Ash’s; maybe they got along.” Zachary’s brows raised fractionally. “I think… I think being mixed up with us is just a bad idea.” She opened her mouth to continue, but nothing came; her words had fled once more, just as unexpectedly as they’d returned.
“Will Ash also be joining us this evening?”
Michelle’s lip began to curl in offense, but her face went slack as she realized she couldn’t honestly answer that question.
“Return to his demesne. You may lick the stain off the floor.”
He hadn’t moved a muscle, but Michelle nearly gasped at the naked contempt in Radu’s hoarse voice. Zachary’s lips compressed into a hard line, and she realized they were nearly within arm’s reach of each other; certainly within the sword’s striking range, if he could draw it in such a confined space.
Radu lowered his head slightly to meet Zachary’s eyes. The twist of his neck caused his hair to slide over his shoulder, revealing the still livid bruise on his throat. Zachary noticed it immediately, blinked once, and turned to Michelle with a baffled look of burgeoning disgust.
“I only saw the two of them,” she said hurriedly, absolutely unwilling to enter a moral discussion they might not all survive. “There should be others there. They killed at least one of them.” The Oracle was gone, but Cassandra rang bitterly in her memory. “A bunch of employees.” She blinked at the recollection. “I don’t even know if they were open last night.” She shook her head. “Everything is so well sealed down there I couldn’t tell.”
Zachary stood as still as stone, eyes narrowed, jaw tense, but bristled no further; she had to assume he was mollified. She turned to check on Radu, but stopped short when she caught sight of Sofia.
The young woman’s eyes had gone blank again, her gaze turned inward as it had been when she’d advanced on Michelle with such unstoppable ferocity, her mouth pursed strangely, her lips squirming as if she was trying not to snarl. Michelle quailed with despair at how hideous this would get if she turned savage once more, but her incipient terror collapsed as she realized that Sofia was feeling her teeth with her tongue.
Whatever was left of her exhausted heart ached with incomprehensible pity. It was beyond sorrow, beyond loss; it was simply unthinkable to begin even trying to explain what had become of the young woman. Unspeakable. She could only think of one person who might know what to do about this. “We can’t leave her down there,” she nearly whispered.
Zachary tilted his head to regard her. “You say there’s at least one less.”
It took Michelle a moment to realize what he was saying; she paused, baffled at the idea that he, that anyone, would volunteer to help. She wanted to be cheered, but the cold hollow within her swallowed it like a pebble in a well.
She could see one of the edges of the Blade of Laertes pressing its outline against the tail of his coat; he had it slung at his waist, ready to draw. Everything that walks in shadow, Radu had said, but witches were natural. Tiriesas had been trying to speak to the dead. She wished she’d read more than just the plays.
Even if it were bane against Circe, they’d have to stab her with it somehow, and the odds of sneaking up on her felt pretty grim.
She had come back from ashes.
“Circe isn’t like us,” she said slowly. “I don’t know-I don’t know what a witch really is.” Her gaze slid to Radu, who offered no insight. “Maybe she is just a really horrible one… but she can do things.” She squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to remember the hand, the claw catching her jaw and parting her skin like paper. “With… parts of us.” She tried not to look at Sofia, wished desperately they could ask her to step into the next room-as if that would stop her listening-knowing full well if their positions were reversed, she’d have agreed and walked straight out the front door. “I don’t know how, or what, but… I don’t think you should find out. Either of you.”
Zachary took a moment to consider this with his strange, statuesque concentration. “You’ll forgive the unpleasant reminiscence, but the two of us didn’t do very well down there.”
“I did fine,” Michelle nearly snapped, then immediately raised a conciliatory hand, closing her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see his stillness crack. “I got out last night, too. I’m not bad at this,” she said, lifting her lids to give him a wry smile. “But I… don’t have anything else going on.” She shifted her weight towards Sofia, hoping it communicated enough. “Or much idea of what we’re gonna walk into. Or how long that stuff I said is going to last,” she finished with improvisational brilliance. The worst thing was that it was entirely true: Michelle had no idea what the hypnosis she’d performed was going to do. The thought of Sofia going into another predatory frenzy while they tried to infiltrate the club was too terrible to entertain.
“I would be so completely happy to get out of here.”
Sofia’s soft, forcibly cheerful voice was unexpected enough to startle them all; even Radu snapped to attention. She looked from one to the other, eyes wide, a pleasant, close-mouthed smile plastered on her face that only faltered a little when it came to Radu. “If there’s anything I can do to make things… not… as bad, for everyone, just say the word.” She steepled her fingers, drumming the pads against one another as the lack of response clearly began to intimidate her, but she forged on nonetheless. “I actually, ah, have an engagement coming up-in Cologne? Christmas week?” Her eyes flicked back and forth between them, searching for a reaction. “I should really call my agent.” She let her gaze drift to the floor.
Atta girl. Let us know people will look for you. Michelle’s lip began to twist in a sad smile at the memories of all the safety lectures she’d gotten about European travel just a few months before. About the absurdity of worrying about work in the face of all that had happened, but she stopped when she saw the fluidity with which Sofia’s fingers interleaved themselves before her. Musicians often worked at night, and were notorious for all sorts of eccentricity. If she got lucky, she really might still have a future ahead of her.
If Michelle could pull this off, it might even be normal some day.
But she wasn’t going to try explaining any of that; instead, she turned a weary half-smile on Zachary. “You heard the lady.”
He met her gaze directly, deep blue eyes boring into hers relentlessly. “You really can’t mean to go down there alone.”
“Of course not.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder at Radu. “We got out of there last night,” she repeated; it was true. It wasn’t impossible. “We can do it again. With Ana.”
Zachary thrust his hands into his pockets, clearly struggling to master his frustration. She almost smiled to see it; she thought she’d become the kind of person no one could worry for. “If what you’ve said is accurate…” He trailed off, shaking his head.
Michelle caught his gaze and held it forthrightly, putting all of her hopes for their safety into it; even she wasn’t sure if she was trying to hypnotize him, or simply pleading. “Zach, if we can’t do it, no one can.”
He tilted his head, a muscle in his jaw twitching as he drew breath to speak, but he exhaled it in a brief sigh, closing his eyes as he lowered his head in acceptance. “Then I wish you the very best of hunting.”
Michelle grinned, delighted at how easily it came. “Send a letter here when you get somewhere. If not, we’ll look for you in Cologne.”
She flashed Sofia a thumbs up, who awkwardly returned it, and wished she could bleed away into the night to end the conversation decisively. The effect was further spoiled when Sofia flinched away as Radu rose to his full height. He nodded silently to her as he reached behind him to open the door, stepping forward to give it room to swing open. He looked to Michelle, who took her cue and strode out into the blue-white darkness before she could regret anything she’d said.
Chapter 7/9
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: 11,677
Begin at the beginning.
The card sat in the middle of the scarred wood of the kitchen table, unassuming and almost decorative. Michelle’s vision hazed red at the corners, narrowing into predatory tunnel vision that rendered every minute detail inescapable: the tiny pores in the smooth cardstock, the slightly wrinkled corner, the faint depressions that indicated the elegant script was hand written.
If she hadn’t been so hyper focused she might never have seen Zachary’s hand move as he snatched the card from the table. With a frown, he held it open to show them that there was nothing written inside.
There didn’t need to be.
“This is what they did to me.” Michelle hadn’t realized she meant to speak, scarcely recognized the low, flat tone of her own voice. “That’s what happened last night. I thought I’d found a good place to hole up for the day, but I woke up back down there.” She raised a hand to her mouth, dragging her palm down her lips as she struggled to keep her racing thoughts from hurtling off a cliff. “I.” She lowered her hand, shook her head, tried again. Nothing came out.
Zachary’s slanted look didn’t quite reach Radu. “Who are they?” he asked, his voice even more quiet than hers.
“Iris.” She slumped back against the worn wallpaper, balancing her weight on her heels as the sick anger of the memories of having to try to talk her down washed over her, but still grateful to have a question she could answer. “The human.” She had just enough self possession to keep from adding, the one who sent you away. “She wants to be a vampire. I ruined it for her.” Something moved in the corner of her eye, but she didn't have the heart to look; she could only pray that Sofia would remain calm. “She found someone else to help her…” Her words ran as dry as her mouth while she contemplated the impossibility of explaining Circe, even to someone primed to accept the incomprehensible.
“Another one?” Zachary asked.
“No. She’s-I don’t know if she was ever a person.” She battled to force the images from her mind, the memory of the dry, desiccated fingers biting into her cheek, but even talking around it was almost too much. “She’s, like-she’s-” She shook her head harder, fingers unconsciously rising to trace the shape of the slap.
“Circe.” She and Zachary whipped their heads around at Radu’s sudden rasp; Sofia flinched, falling back a step until a kitchen chair stopped her with a squeal against the linoleum. “First among witches; inventrix of all sorrows.”
Zachary regarded him for what felt like a long time. A slice of moonlight fell between the parted curtains, illuminating half of his taut, solemn expression. “Surely she has no such pressing need for bacon,” he said finally.
Michelle blinked, uncertain that she’d heard his soft southern drawl correctly, but a corner of Radu’s lip lifted in an unreadable grimace as he shifted his weight against the door. “It makes fine bait.”
This time Michelle raised a fist to her mouth, propping her elbow up with the other. He was right. She’d known it as soon as she’d seen the card, she was simply so horrified that her intellect wasn’t able to catch up with her instincts. Her vision still swimming with hunter’s acuity, she made herself focus on the linoleum, a tiny decorative brown pattern on yellow, or perhaps yellowed tiles, worn through to the concrete beneath in a few patches: in front of the sink, before the stove, gentle pathways trod between them. Ana should have been here deepening them, refreshing the faint scent of cabbage and carrots that seemed to seep from the walls.
“Yeah,” she said, her quiet voice muffled further by her fist. She slid it along her jaw, pressing her lips together until she felt like she could speak steadily. “Yeah, they want us back.”
No one made any reply.
Her mind was blank. She tapped her finger against her jaw, as if she could somehow kickstart her thought process, but nothing resolved in the void where her ideas should be. It was truly too terrible to contemplate. Her mind was so empty she could hear a faint hiss, like the needle on a record player running out of groove.
No. That was Radu’s breathing, soft and slow and unable to escape her notice no matter how he tried.
“That’s what happened last night,” she found herself repeating. “I woke up underground, and… I wanted Ana to look at him,” she said, with a helpless shrug in Radu’s direction. “I never thought…”
“If this happened last night, they couldn’t have followed you here.” Zachary’s tone was iced once more with the chill of suspicion, cold enough to turn Radu’s gaze back to him.
“They could have been watching,” Michelle snapped, glad for the dull spark of anger at his judgment. “They could have followed l. They could have seen that on the news.” She flipped a hand dismissively at Sofia. “I don’t know what kind of, of spy network network she has, but Iris is definitely in with the cops.” Her fingers slipped down to trace the deformed shape of Mel’s medal beneath her shirt. “She could have known what was going on at Nicolescu’s clinic. She sure found out right away. He was one of Ash’s; maybe they got along.” Zachary’s brows raised fractionally. “I think… I think being mixed up with us is just a bad idea.” She opened her mouth to continue, but nothing came; her words had fled once more, just as unexpectedly as they’d returned.
“Will Ash also be joining us this evening?”
Michelle’s lip began to curl in offense, but her face went slack as she realized she couldn’t honestly answer that question.
“Return to his demesne. You may lick the stain off the floor.”
He hadn’t moved a muscle, but Michelle nearly gasped at the naked contempt in Radu’s hoarse voice. Zachary’s lips compressed into a hard line, and she realized they were nearly within arm’s reach of each other; certainly within the sword’s striking range, if he could draw it in such a confined space.
Radu lowered his head slightly to meet Zachary’s eyes. The twist of his neck caused his hair to slide over his shoulder, revealing the still livid bruise on his throat. Zachary noticed it immediately, blinked once, and turned to Michelle with a baffled look of burgeoning disgust.
“I only saw the two of them,” she said hurriedly, absolutely unwilling to enter a moral discussion they might not all survive. “There should be others there. They killed at least one of them.” The Oracle was gone, but Cassandra rang bitterly in her memory. “A bunch of employees.” She blinked at the recollection. “I don’t even know if they were open last night.” She shook her head. “Everything is so well sealed down there I couldn’t tell.”
Zachary stood as still as stone, eyes narrowed, jaw tense, but bristled no further; she had to assume he was mollified. She turned to check on Radu, but stopped short when she caught sight of Sofia.
The young woman’s eyes had gone blank again, her gaze turned inward as it had been when she’d advanced on Michelle with such unstoppable ferocity, her mouth pursed strangely, her lips squirming as if she was trying not to snarl. Michelle quailed with despair at how hideous this would get if she turned savage once more, but her incipient terror collapsed as she realized that Sofia was feeling her teeth with her tongue.
Whatever was left of her exhausted heart ached with incomprehensible pity. It was beyond sorrow, beyond loss; it was simply unthinkable to begin even trying to explain what had become of the young woman. Unspeakable. She could only think of one person who might know what to do about this. “We can’t leave her down there,” she nearly whispered.
Zachary tilted his head to regard her. “You say there’s at least one less.”
It took Michelle a moment to realize what he was saying; she paused, baffled at the idea that he, that anyone, would volunteer to help. She wanted to be cheered, but the cold hollow within her swallowed it like a pebble in a well.
She could see one of the edges of the Blade of Laertes pressing its outline against the tail of his coat; he had it slung at his waist, ready to draw. Everything that walks in shadow, Radu had said, but witches were natural. Tiriesas had been trying to speak to the dead. She wished she’d read more than just the plays.
Even if it were bane against Circe, they’d have to stab her with it somehow, and the odds of sneaking up on her felt pretty grim.
She had come back from ashes.
“Circe isn’t like us,” she said slowly. “I don’t know-I don’t know what a witch really is.” Her gaze slid to Radu, who offered no insight. “Maybe she is just a really horrible one… but she can do things.” She squeezed her eyes shut, trying not to remember the hand, the claw catching her jaw and parting her skin like paper. “With… parts of us.” She tried not to look at Sofia, wished desperately they could ask her to step into the next room-as if that would stop her listening-knowing full well if their positions were reversed, she’d have agreed and walked straight out the front door. “I don’t know how, or what, but… I don’t think you should find out. Either of you.”
Zachary took a moment to consider this with his strange, statuesque concentration. “You’ll forgive the unpleasant reminiscence, but the two of us didn’t do very well down there.”
“I did fine,” Michelle nearly snapped, then immediately raised a conciliatory hand, closing her eyes so she wouldn’t have to see his stillness crack. “I got out last night, too. I’m not bad at this,” she said, lifting her lids to give him a wry smile. “But I… don’t have anything else going on.” She shifted her weight towards Sofia, hoping it communicated enough. “Or much idea of what we’re gonna walk into. Or how long that stuff I said is going to last,” she finished with improvisational brilliance. The worst thing was that it was entirely true: Michelle had no idea what the hypnosis she’d performed was going to do. The thought of Sofia going into another predatory frenzy while they tried to infiltrate the club was too terrible to entertain.
“I would be so completely happy to get out of here.”
Sofia’s soft, forcibly cheerful voice was unexpected enough to startle them all; even Radu snapped to attention. She looked from one to the other, eyes wide, a pleasant, close-mouthed smile plastered on her face that only faltered a little when it came to Radu. “If there’s anything I can do to make things… not… as bad, for everyone, just say the word.” She steepled her fingers, drumming the pads against one another as the lack of response clearly began to intimidate her, but she forged on nonetheless. “I actually, ah, have an engagement coming up-in Cologne? Christmas week?” Her eyes flicked back and forth between them, searching for a reaction. “I should really call my agent.” She let her gaze drift to the floor.
Atta girl. Let us know people will look for you. Michelle’s lip began to twist in a sad smile at the memories of all the safety lectures she’d gotten about European travel just a few months before. About the absurdity of worrying about work in the face of all that had happened, but she stopped when she saw the fluidity with which Sofia’s fingers interleaved themselves before her. Musicians often worked at night, and were notorious for all sorts of eccentricity. If she got lucky, she really might still have a future ahead of her.
If Michelle could pull this off, it might even be normal some day.
But she wasn’t going to try explaining any of that; instead, she turned a weary half-smile on Zachary. “You heard the lady.”
He met her gaze directly, deep blue eyes boring into hers relentlessly. “You really can’t mean to go down there alone.”
“Of course not.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder at Radu. “We got out of there last night,” she repeated; it was true. It wasn’t impossible. “We can do it again. With Ana.”
Zachary thrust his hands into his pockets, clearly struggling to master his frustration. She almost smiled to see it; she thought she’d become the kind of person no one could worry for. “If what you’ve said is accurate…” He trailed off, shaking his head.
Michelle caught his gaze and held it forthrightly, putting all of her hopes for their safety into it; even she wasn’t sure if she was trying to hypnotize him, or simply pleading. “Zach, if we can’t do it, no one can.”
He tilted his head, a muscle in his jaw twitching as he drew breath to speak, but he exhaled it in a brief sigh, closing his eyes as he lowered his head in acceptance. “Then I wish you the very best of hunting.”
Michelle grinned, delighted at how easily it came. “Send a letter here when you get somewhere. If not, we’ll look for you in Cologne.”
She flashed Sofia a thumbs up, who awkwardly returned it, and wished she could bleed away into the night to end the conversation decisively. The effect was further spoiled when Sofia flinched away as Radu rose to his full height. He nodded silently to her as he reached behind him to open the door, stepping forward to give it room to swing open. He looked to Michelle, who took her cue and strode out into the blue-white darkness before she could regret anything she’d said.