All at once, the pain vanishes as abruptly as it appeared. It feels as though I’ve pulled a curtain around my insides, protecting them from invisible sunlight. I gasp for breath, an instinct I thought I’d forgotten. Only now do I realize I’ve fallen, face flat to the marble.
The sour stench of urine surrounds me.
“Fuck,” Oskar mutters. “I think I pissed myself.”
“Those cunts!” I roar. I shove to my feet, legs buckling as I rise. “I don’t know what they’re doing—or how—but it’s them. Those fucking witches are trying to kill us!”
“Maybe it’s the curse breaking,” Oskar offers weakly. “Maybe it’s done.”
It’s a stupid, childish hope, but I act on Oskar’s theory anyway. With my shoulder propped against the wall, I slide my hand between the curtain and the window. Sunlight falls over my skin, and the hellfire I felt moments ago is back, scorching my palm into thick welts.
“Cunts!” I scream. I clutch my hand to my chest, glaringat the rapidly forming blisters. Back in the shadows, I’m already healing. The pain disappears, but the anger only pulses faster. “Round the inner circle. Meet me in the theater.”
“Master,” Oskar says. He’s knelt to the side of his piss, staring absently toward the window. “Do you think they’ve sealed it?”
Oskar is the only vampire in my manor who was born with witch blood. It’s rare for full-bloods to survive the transition. Both he and Freja were born into covens, and they’d worked their way into leadership roles, only for it all to be torn away. A random attack left Freja turned and disoriented, disowned by her kind. Oskar brought her here. He’d begged us to save her, to change him too, despite the risks.
In exchange, Oskar told us everything we needed to know about the witches. Their loyalties, their practices, theirweaknesses. Freja never played a part, but Oskar was largely the reason we stole power as quickly as we did.
“Sealed,” I repeat, looking down at him. “You’ve never mentioned this.”
“It’s an ancient craft,” he says, still gasping for breath. “Not something I’ve ever seen. It’s supposed to be near-impossible. If they did it, if they pulled it off, our chances of breaking the curse just disappeared.”
“You’re wrong,” I say. I don’t let his words settle into my brain. I shove them far, far away, deep into the recesses of my mind.
I step closer to the curtain, carefully viewing the street from the safety of shadows. They’re all still there. Grinning. Proud. Viciously pleased with themselves.
The streets should be empty. Only days ago, they were. People were terrified. They knew their place: far below us on the food chain. So far below, I ruled with reckless fists:violent, but loose enough to let power slip right between my fingers.
I glare at those fragile creatures, at their foolish celebrations. So breakable, so arrogant and sated.
“I will kill them all,” I hiss. “As soon as I’m out of here, I’ll kill every single one.”
1
TWENTY YEARS LATER
SEBASTIAN
“How’s it feel?” I ask. I lean against a granite statue of myself, watching breath turn to fog.
This courtyard was once forgotten and neglected, but in the years since the witches’ curse, I’ve brought it back to life. Thick vines now curl over the manor’s stone walls and brush against the uneven cobblestone. Fruit trees and floral bushes frame the main square, and a massive stone table claims the western corner. This damned statue stands proudly at the center.
It’s undoubtedly arrogant to have a statue of myself in the yard, but I knew it was only a matter of time before a snot-nosed human destroyed it out of spite. I’d stolen it from the neutral territory years ago, dragging it from the public square in the dead of night and planting it here. I thought it might have a comforting presence, a promise of the power I’d had once, and would again.
Instead, it’s mocking me. Standing twice my height, it maintains an air of confidence I haven’t held in over a decade. Now, I stand at its base, shivering in this ridiculously heavy coat.
Vampires aren’t meant to shiver. We’re dead, for fuck’s sake.
Magic always comes at a cost though, and this sunwalker spell is proof. It allows me to stand in the direct sunlight, to feel the gentle warmth of day without the skin-blistering heat. But I’m different too. Weak. Horridly mortal, with soft flesh and a beating heart.
A flimsy knife would puncture my skin. It would likelykillme.
“It’s strange,” Theo says. It takes me a moment to remember what I asked.
While Oskar and I lounge in the middle of the courtyard, Theo lingers near the manor’s entrance. The double doors remain open, as if arms ready for an embrace, and I imagine Theo left them this way on purpose. He could reach the safety of shadows in two steps if need be.
“Good strange?” Oskar asks. He lights a cigarette and pops it between his lips. The stench of smoke devours the fresh air, until it’s all I can taste.
