Archive of Our Own

Work Text

Mélanie opened her eyes and was dazzled by gold and green; she had no idea what was happening, only that she was sitting on leaves and twigs.
Struggling to get comfortable against the hard ground underneath her, she blinked and realised the gaudy glare was sunlight streaming through the ruined stone walls in front of her.
All of the colour and warmth that had been washed away by that unnatural eclipse returned as the moon moved away from the face of the sun.
Then an object twitched close to her face.
She pushed herself on to her hands and knees, ready to face some small, fierce creature, but saw that the object was Maria’s foot.
Looking around, Mélanie saw that Maria had finally come down from the old, ruined tower and had gone to sit down on the remains of a stone wall, her back turned.They were in an old abandoned castle that was hidden by a small copse of trees on edge of the forest just outside Machecoul.
Half of the building had collapsed, leaving behind a few battered, stone walls shining with mildew in the sunlight.
Only fragments of the roof remained, letting a fetid wind rustle through the weeds choking the area.
Everything was quiet except for the birdsong coming from the forest, and the footsteps of either Mizrak or Alucard.
Mélanie glanced at her friends who were sitting nearby.
A sad, downtrodden lot they all were, including Mélanie.
Richter was holding his head in one hand, brows furrowed as if he was nursing a migraine.
Annette looked to Richter with sympathy, yet she’d also failed to stave off the despair affecting the entire group.
She was just doing a better job at hiding it.Then there was Maria.
Defiant, fiery Maria who weighed both the political and ethical standing of an entire provincial town upon her shoulders despite no one — not her mother, not her adoptive brother, and certainly not her suddenly revealed father — asking her to.
The Maria who marched into the abbey on several occasions to preach revolutionary zeal with more passion than most priests could muster for the sermons they wrote themselves.
If ever she was refused entry, she always found a way to shout her message twice as loud.
Maria, who was young, and believed in her cause so, so much.
Mélanie couldn’t find that Maria.
There was a dullness to her emerald-blue eyes as a numb expression blanketed her bruised face.
She’d grown older in the past few hours, faster than anyone should ever have to regardless of the circumstances.
Yet she was still a child.
Her conviction was now laced with a pained reluctance.
Mélanie looked down at the town they’d left behind, at the sun-kissed rooftops in the distance.
Less than twenty-four hours ago they had been racing towards the abbey, desperate to save Maria from the delusional Abbot who was going to kill her.
It seemed a lifetime away.
What was going to happen now?
Mélanie stood up and thought of Erzsebet Báthory, of the daunting, seemingly impossible task that Tera had now left them… Tera…The grief that had possessed her since Tera’s sacrifice felt different now.
The sight of the Vampire Messiah plunging her fangs into Tera’s neck before they fled the abbey seemed to have nestled in her brain, like diseased things, infecting her memories of the Speaker magician she had respected.
Would they have to face Tera in the future?
Would they treat her like any other vampire they’d encountered in the past?
Would they have to put her out of her misery like she had with her own sister seventeen years ago?
Mélanie could no longer put up with standing there with nothing but her bitter thoughts for company.
The distraction she desperately craved came when Annette finally spoke aloud what they had all been thinking when they saw the sun emerge again.
“Why not keep the world in darkness forever and destroy it all once?
She must have exhausted her power.”
Annette stood up from her spot on the ground.
“We should attack again now while she’s weak.”
“She’s not weak,” said Alucard, who had just emerged through a doorway in one of the ruined walls.
Long hair of pure untouched white lay on top of his black cloak.
His skin inhumanely paler than that of the Abbot’s when that bitch-of-literal-apocalyptic-proportions had asked if he loved Tera, and eyes the colour of polished gold.
Beautiful, but in a way which was unnerving.
This man was more ghost, more angel, more creature than mortal.
Yet, unlike the vampires he so closely resembled, he did not burn in the sunlight.
“He’s right.
Besides, we don’t what we’d be walking into,” Mélanie said, placing a hand on Annette’s shoulder.
“No more rogue missions.
No more reckless plans.
We’ve taken on more than we could handle too many times already, and now another one of us has paid the price.”
Annette covered Mélanie’s hand with hers and squeezed it.
Mélanie appreciated the gesture but found herself unable to show it; no smile stretched across her face, her mouth staying a neutral, straight line.“I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner,” said Alucard apologetically, turning his eyes towards Maria. “Who did you loose?”
“Her mother,” Richter replied.
“Though she’s not exactly dead.”
Alucard grimaced, understanding the implications of that sentence instantly.
“I’m sorry,” he said sympathetically.
“I know how she feels.”
There was a sound of footsteps approaching, and everyone, except Maria, turned to see Mizrak emerging from behind a pile of stone bricks.
The monk had left earlier to scout their new hideout and see if there was any food nearby.
He now had a bucket of water in one hand, and dead pheasant in the other.
“I found a well,” said Mizrak, placing the bucket down.
“There are places we can sleep which are dry enough.
There’s a hearth, too, where we can light a fire and cook.”
“Thanks, Mizrak,” said Richter gratefully.
None of them had eaten breakfast that morning, the thought of it was left back at the cottage, forgotten, when the monk had turned up, warning them Maria was about to be killed.
The thought of food alone put Mélanie in a better mood.
She hadn’t been in a good mood much these past few days, but that had done it.
Mizrak put the dead pheasant to the side and scooped some water from the bucket into a wooden goblet.
He held it out to Maria, but she didn’t move or even turn to look at him.
Alucard then held a hand out, offering to take it instead, which Mizrak obliged.
The monk then bent down and filled a second goblet for himself.“How much do you know about Erzsebet Báthory?” asked Alucard, taking a sip from his goblet.“She absorbed the power of an Egyptian goddess called Sekhmet,” Annette answered.
“Which apparently is a lot of fucking power,” Richter deadpanned.Mélanie felt as though a brick had slid down through her chest and into her stomach.
The memory of Erzsebet brushing aside all of Richter’s magical attacks (which had felled other vampires and night creatures) without even lifting a finger, was still fresh her mind.“I went to find the source of it.
Her power,” said Alucard.
“Perhaps it would be a key to her weakness.
A way to destroy her.
I found a temple half-buried in the Egyptian desert.
Half temple, half tomb, in fact.
Sekhmet’s tomb.”
“You mean the goddess is dead?” said Annette.
“Dead for thousands of years,” Alucard said in a matter-of-fact tone.
“Her blood, however, is still stored in the temple.
Goddess blood stays fresh, I suppose.”
“Why did they keep her blood?” asked Richter, raising a disturbed eyebrow.
“So that one day, Sekhmet could return to earth and rule again, as she did at the dawn of time,” Alucard replied.
“Which meant someone drinking the blood.
Someone it would not destroy.”
“Erzsebet,” Mélanie murmured, connecting the dots.
Alucard nodded.
“She’s very powerful,” Richter admitted dejectedly.
“I threw everything I had at her, but she brushed it aside.
We had to run.”“Do you have a plan?” Mélanie asked, looking expectantly at Alucard.
It was their only chance, the only slender of hope left to them, and she was going to cling to it until forced to let go.
“An Egyptian deity has two souls, called the ba and the ka,” said Alucard, talking with his hands.
“The first is present in the blood.”
He held up the goblet, looking down at the liquid sloshing inside.
“The second is in the goddess’s heart, which is preserved in her mummy.”
He placed his other hand over his chest, where his own heart would be.
Mélanie, Richter and Annette exchanged puzzled looks.
“She gave her heart to her mother?” said Richter.
The look on Alucard’s face indicated that was not what he meant.
Luckily, he was saved the trouble of elaborating when Mizrak chimed in.“It’s an ancient pagan practice.
A preserved dedicated corpse,” he explained, taking a sip of water from his goblet.“Oh.
Uh, sounds lovely,” said Richter awkwardly.

“But are grounds for hope,” Alucard continued.
“Centuries ago, the mummy was stolen.
Drolta was Sekhmet’s high priestess and did everything she could to conceal this fact.
I spent the last few years tracking it, the tomb robbers, their descendants, across Africa and then to Europe, finally, France.
I believe it’s in Paris now, where I must go to destroy it.
And I could use some help, Richter.
You’re a Belmont, after all.”
Richter hesitated, but before he could give an answer, he noticed Maria had finally turned around.
She was glaring at him.
She looked mean, unlike herself.
It seemed to make Richter aware of how everybody’s eyes were on him.
The only response he was able to give was a quiet sigh.

Richter was stood alone by a stream in the forest when Mélanie and Annette approached him.
The enormity of his decision not to immediately agree to help Alucard race Erzsebet to Sehkmet’s corpse still scared Mélanie.
She could not remember, ever before, him choosing not to act.
He was full of doubts, doubts he evidently could not help voicing when Mélanie and Annette stood beside him.
“He’s a living legend who’s known my family for hundreds of years,” he said.
“And he appears from nowhere, saying I should go with him on this important mission to fight evil.
And I’m a Belmont.
How can I refuse?
But I know Maria won’t come.
She won’t leave Tera.”
“And you don’t want to leave Maria,” said Mélanie, knowing what Richter was thinking before he’d even voiced it.
She had fully expected Maria’s anger, and was therefore unsurprised that she communicated mainly through dirty looks and pointed silences for most of the morning.
“She’ll want revenge,” Richter grimaced.
“On the Abbot, on Erzsebet, which will get her killed.
I could tell her this plan.
Going to Paris is the way to get revenge, win this war, but suppose it isn’t?”
“Staying here to be defeated again isn’t a plan at all,” said Annette softly.
Richter released a heavy sigh, lifting his head up towards the canopy of branches above him.
Annette raised her left hand to try and comfort Richter, but at the last moment seemed unable to face it, and merely lowered it and began sheepishly swinging it backwards and forwards.
Mélanie stared at the stream, her tense reflection stared back at her: the long dark hair that was greying at the roots, the pale face, the sharp, tawny brown eyes braced for impact.
The graceful flow of the waters reminded her of Paris.
The massive yet effortless flow of the Seine and its waters which carried the very history of France.
Its beauties and its tragedies alike.
A sickly romantic nostalgia, more than she thought herself capable of.
The city itself didn’t even carry half the romance those writers, artists, and salon-goers always waxed poetic about, whether sweetly or even erotically.
Paris was loud, claustrophobic, and you were more likely to get a chamberpot accidentally emptied over your head as you were walking down the street.
Mélanie remained grateful her family only visited Paris briefly.
Just thinking about it made her feel queasy.
“I don’t think it’s wise to leave Maria, either,” said Mélanie, breaking the silence.
“I could stay behind and keep an eye on her.
I can’t use or understand magic, so I don’t know how helpful I’d be on this mission.
Besides, I’m not exactly fond of the idea of going to Paris.
There really is no fathoming the depths of my hatred for that place.”
Richter and Annette looked at her with a mixture of surprise and contemplation.
“Are you sure?” Richter asked.
“There have been quite a lot of times — more than I’d like to admit — where I’ve been really grateful for your help.”
“You appreciate my help?
Wow, never thought I’d hear those words from you,” said Mélanie sarcastically.
“I’m being serious, Mel,” said Richter, irritated.
“You’re not like me.
You never rush into things unprepared, always think things through.
You’re also smarter than anyone else I know.
I really could use your help on this mission, magic or not.”
“And that’s also why I’m best suited to stay here,” Mélanie argued.
“I can try and make sure Maria doesn’t do anything she’ll live to regret.
Don’t know if I’ll be successful, knowing her, but I have more of a chance.
Also, the last time I visited Paris, I swore never to go back there again.”
“You hate it that much?” Annette asked incredulously.
In a rush of bitterness, pettiness, and all manner of other acidic feelings, Mélanie let slip an opinion that wouldn’t help their cause in the slightest.
Still, it felt good to finally pour out a bottled up hard drink for another to take part in.
“It’s a shit city.”
Annette snorted before composing herself.
“If you stay here, though,” said Richter, “you’re more likely to be attacked by the Abbot’s night creatures than we are.”
“We killed a lot of his beasts when attacked the abbey,” said Mélanie flatly.
“It’ll probably be a while before he has enough corpses to replace them.
And he can send all the night creatures he wants at me.
I am not going back to that city covered in shit-sludge juice.”Suddenly, without warning, the earth was ripped out from under her as memories of blood, shit, and cold air assaulted every mental sense.
Mélanie felt herself stumbling away, she pressed her palm against her mouth, fighting the rising tide of bile, the world around her slipping through a nauseous spiral.
“Mel?”
She fell to her knees, barely managing to raise one hand to catch herself.
Every breath felt like dragging a weight through water… unable to contain herself, she moved her hand away and vomited onto the grass.
“Mel!”
And then things really came undone… time slipping… other words half-heard and half-understood: Annette and hello can you hear me?
Richter is standing over her, looking extremely frightened.
He is trying to talk to her, but all she can do is let out dry, choking coughs, trying to hold herself from throwing up again.
“She’s really ill!
Go back and get someone!
I’ll stay with her!”
Someone’s arms are on her.
Rubbing her back as she lets out more dry heaves, the metallic taste of bile lingering in the back of her throat.
She now felt less eager about food.
Alucard is here now and where did he come from?
His face doesn’t move much and is he dead too, like Edouard?
Now he’s at her side supporting her and Mélanie, she’s moving through the forest… away from the vomit… as they walk.
Her thoughts are no longer in straight lines, they… cascade… away from her… like ash.The memory of the biting, all-consuming cold is still on her skin, that must be why she’s shivering.
She’s back at the abandoned castle.
And Alucard is here: “I need you to try and take some deep breaths.”
She could hear Richter and Annette muttering… but… she did not care.
She focused on Alucard’s slow breathing, trying to match its pace.
The nausea in the back of her throat is subsiding slightly, though she now realises she was sweating and shivering feverishly.
She suddenly retched again and Alucard leapt backwards out of the way, but nothing was left to come back up.
And… be quiet… because Alucard is talking to her: “Do you know what caused you to throw up?” he asks, “You don’t seem to be physically ill aside from the nausea.”
“Yes,” Mélanie says, letting him take her hands into his own gloved ones.
“Do you want to tell me about it?”
“No.”
The sky is brighter now and Mélanie is sitting alone, a wooden goblet of water between her hands but it… ripples and… shakes, warning her of an earthquake.
Wait… we don’t usually get those much.
But the earthquake comes all the same because it’s inside her, the shakes, and she can’t hold the water without spilling.
“She’s in shock,” she hears someone say.
“I’m fine.”
She doesn’t know how, but she manages to take a few gulps of water, wiping off her chin as water spills over. The lingering nausea lessens considerably.
A brick falls nearby but before the sound… reaches her, it has changed.
It’s a gun.
It fires two three six times and, oh, Richter is here again, sitting across from her but he can’t hear the gun.
Only Mélanie can.
He asks questions.
“What the fuck happened?”
“Did the thought of Paris make you throw up?”
“Does this mean you’re sure about staying behind?
You’re going to stay with Maria?
I think it might be for the best now, and Mizrak will probably stay too.”
Mélanie answers as best she can, the thought of keeping an eye on Maria giving her something to focus on.
But she never mentions the cold, the gun, the blood, the hunger.
After that, Mélanie asks a question of her own: “Will you speak to her?”
“What?”

“Will you speak to Maria?
You need to try as well.”
Richter nods.
“Yes.
I’ll bring her some food as well.
She’s refused to eat so far, but she’ll get hungry eventually.”
And “Oh”, is all Mélanie can say… to that.She’s left alone again, listening to the gun no one else can hear, and feeling the cold no one else can feel.
Until there’s a soft hand on her shoulder and she flinches.
And an even softer voice, “I was wondering if you might be up for some food now.”
Mélanie’s eyes turn to the voice and sees it’s Annette with a plate of cooked pheasant meat in her hand.
Mélanie took it, no longer able to ignore her hunger, unable to tell if it was real or the memory.
The meat felt good in her stomach, but she was only eating to have something to do with her hands.
Her stomach was full of hot, bubbling guilt.
They would not be worrying over her if she had just kept it together; they would be focused their mission of stopping Erzsebet, the real problem.
And it was no good telling herself that the memories and the bile had come out of nowhere, because there was also the inescapable business of that her hold on the bag, that had been so tight until now, had come loose.
Don’t be stupid, you can’t control when the past returns, she told herself, trying to keep calm, though the hand on the pheasant meat was shaking, you were just a child, there wasn’t much you could do…
But then what happened that night in 1786? she asked herself.
I voted that night, I had a hand in that choice, too….
She put the pheasant meat down a little harder than she meant to, and pieces of it fell onto the ground.
No one took any notice.
Then the sound of footsteps caught her attention.
She looked up and saw Richter inching his way towards Maria — how long had she been there? — a plate of cooked pheasant meat in his hand.
Richter sighed as he worked up the courage to be in Maria’s baleful presence, and sat down next to her.
He offered her the plate, which she took wordlessly and began taking bites out of the meat.
“Whatever happens with your mother, Maria,” Richter said uneasily, “it won’t bring you peace.
She’s a vampire.
We have to accept that.”
“Just like that?” said Maria coldly, putting the meat back down on the plate.
“No, no,” said Richter at once, regretting his curt approach.
“Sorry.
Of course not just like that.”
“And don’t talk as if my mother matters to you as much as she does to me,” said Maria fiercely.
“You chose to leave here there.”
Richter looked aghast.
“It was her choice, Maria.
And it was a choice between her and you.”
“No.
You needed to escape,” said Maria furiously.
“And you were only able to take me with you because I was unconscious!
You ran away, Richter!”
Maria angrily threw her plate at the nearest wall, where it clattered to the ground along with the pheasant meat.
“It’s what you do,” said Maria savagely, standing up and stalking off.
“So, run away to Paris.
I don’t want you here anyway.”
Once she was out of sight, Richter’s demeanour became unusually sombre.
He closed his eyes, threading a hand through his untidy brown hair, then looked up at Mélanie, who felt her hand shaking on her piece of pheasant meat again, and clenched it more tightly to stop the trembling.
“I’ll speak to her later,” she said, seeing Richter’s eyes were practically pleading for her help.

If Mélanie had ever sat through a longer afternoon than this one, she could not remember.
Mizrak suggested once, without any real conviction, that they all try to get some sleep, but Richter, Mélanie, Annette’s looks of disgust were answer enough.
They sat mostly in silence on the ruined stone walls, watching the sun sink lower and lower into the horizon, occasionally getting up to stretch their legs, speaking only to check the time, to wonder aloud what was happening, and to reassure each other that if there was bad news, they would have known straight away, since they could see Machecoul in the distance.
Richter fell into a doze, his head lolling sideways onto his shoulder.
Annette was curled up like a cat on the ground, but her eyes were open; Mélanie could see them reflecting in the sunlight.
Mizrak was sitting with his head in his hands, whether awake or asleep it was impossible to tell.
Mélanie and Alucard looked at each other every so often, feeling like the only non-mourners at a poorly attended funeral, waiting… waiting…
At ten minutes past five in the afternoon, Mélanie finally plucked up her courage and got up to find Maria.
She’d last seen her walking into the half-collapsed tower.
She couldn’t find her, as she stepped into the hollow structure; not until she heard Maria say, quietly, “I’m down here.”
Mélanie looked down: Maria was sitting in a shadowy corner, her fingers hooked around her shoes.
Her head was pressed against the cold stone of the wall, eyes hiding from the light.
Mélanie bent down, knees clicking.
“You know that was vild, Maria.
It wasn’t fair on Richter,” she said.
Maria looked at her, saying nothing.
“Are you okay?” she asked, not understanding why she was even bothering.
“No,” said Maria.
“Richter and Annette are worried about you.”
“Don’t need their worry,” she sniffed.
“I’m worried about you,” Mélanie said.
Maria put her head against the wall again.
“Don’t need yours either.”
“Can you come out and talk to me?” she asked gently.
“Please?”
“Did he run?” Maria asked.
“Did he run when Erzsebet turned my mother?”
“We didn’t have a choice,” said Mélanie.
“Richter was telling truth when he said it was your mother’s decision.
The last thing she said to us was, “Get her out of here”.”
Mélanie offered her hand to help Maria up from the ground.
She didn’t take it, standing up on her own.
“You didn’t even try to save her,” said Maria sharply.
She ran her finger along the edge of one of the bricks, pressing until it bled.
“There’s nothing we could have done, nothing.
We were surrounded by about two dozen vampires—”
“You could have if you tried!” Maria said fiercely.
“I’m sorry,” said Mélanie.
She tried to hold Maria’s stony gaze but kept slipping away.
“If there was anything I could do to change it, I would.
Anything.
But there’s nothing we can do now.
And you getting yourself killed because you’re so angry at the Abbot and Erzsebet… those fucking meshugas are not worth any of that.”
“So they just win?!” Maria shouted.
“No, I…” Mélanie abandoned her sentence, stepping over to her, her arm out to place a hand on her shoulder.
And maybe it was because the Abbot’s angled face flashed into her head, or maybe she didn’t want Mélanie to get too close to the after-rage still thrumming inside her, but Maria pulled away from her.
“Wha—” Mélanie’s arm fell back to her side, her eyes darkening, deepening.
“What are you doing?”
“I don’t know.”“So, what is it, you just want to hate the whole world right now, including me?”
“Maybe.”“Maria—”
“Well, what’s the point?!” Maria shouted, her voice snagging against her dried throat.
“What’s the point of everything we did up until now?!
I thought we were doing this to fight evil.
But guess what?
It wasn’t!
My mother is a vampire and I couldn’t save her and I’m a revolutionary.
That’s evil now.”
Maria’s eyes filled.
“What if I can’t defeat them?
What if I’m not good enough to defeat them?
I’m not good, Mel, I—”
“We will defeat them.”
“I need to.”“And you think I don’t?!” Mélanie said tersely.
“I might not know Tera like you do, and I can’t explain it, but I need to defeat them too.
She took me in when I arrived here, was welcoming to me, even after she found out I was an aristocrat.
The past is repeating itself all over again six years later, and this time I actually have a chance, a small chance, to fight back against the paskudniks when I had no hope back then.
I know Tera isn’t my family, but it feels like a second chance to me.
You aren’t on your own here, so stop pushing people who care about you away.
Stop pushing me away.”
Maria’s hands gripped the stone bricks, bones pushing through her skin.
“I just want to be left alone!” Maria shouted.
“Fine,” said Mélanie, scratching a phantom itch at the back of her head.
“I’ll go for now, but know that I’m going to stay behind with you while the others go off to Paris.
I know you’re only lashing out because you’re angry.
I’m angry too.
And you don’t mean it, you know you don’t mean it.”
Mélanie sighed.
“Let me know when you remember who we are.
Who you are.”
Mélanie walked over to the opening in the half-collapsed tower, before stalling, head slightly cocked.
“Try and think about how we feel about all this before running your mouth like that again,” she said angrily, not looking at Maria.
She stepped over the piles of bricks and walked away.
Her hold on the bag had loosened again.
Drek…Backlit by the moon, the abandoned castle glowed silver around its ragged edges, the light piercing through its cracks and crevices and holes were walls, windows and staircases once were.
Mélanie, Mizrak and Alucard stood on the hilltop, determined and cold in the darkness, wind whistling through the branches of the trees behind them.
Their plans were made, their preparations complete; Mélanie heard two sets of footsteps crunching against the fallen grass behind them.
She and Mizrak glanced over their shoulders to see Richter and Annette coming back (the latter had left earlier to commune with Cecile in the spirit world, Richter had gone to fetch her), ready to set off with Alucard for Paris.
Annette’s brown eyes looked down at the town in the distance; the lights coming from the windows and the smoke rising from the many hearth fires.
Her gazed seemed to linger the abbey’s bell tower that loomed in the darkness.
“Edouard’s made his choice, Annette,” said Richter, sensing what was on her mind.
“You’ll see him again.”
Annette nodded.
Saving Edouard had been one of her primary goals since she’d found out he’d been turned into a night creature.
She had a chance of getting him back, after everyone thought they’d lost him forever.
Annette had said she tried to free him when she went down sent the Abbot’s machine back to hell.
He had refused, however, as his singing was helping some of the other night creatures remember who they used to be.
It was his job now to help them.
“Where’s Maria?” Annette asked, noticing the youngest hunter’s absence.
“At least I can say goodbye to her.”
“She ran off to meet the Revolutionary Army,” Alucard replied.
Mélanie remembered it vividly: the drum beats that announced their arrival in Machecoul, along with the tricoloured flag that fluttered around in the wind as they marched across the countryside below them.
Maria had been excited by their presence, assuming the government in Paris must have sent them to aid them, and had ran down the hill to join them.
Alucard and Mélanie were less thrilled by their presence.
She didn’t trust them, and she never would again, not after all the turmoil that was happening across the country.
“I’ll go after her if you wish,” Mizrak offered.
Richter let out fond sigh, rubbing the back of his head.
“Well, if it’s the National Guard, she’ll be in her element,” he said, “catching up on the news about Paris, debating them to death about God knows what.”
“Also, going after her wouldn’t be a good idea,” Mélanie pointed out.
“The Revolutionary Army probably won’t respond well to either you or me.”Mizrak was a man of the cloth and she was an aristocrat; both people from groups the revolution had declared their mortal enemies.
“Tell her we looked for her,” said Annette to both of them, “and we’ll see her again too.”
Mélanie nodded.
Alucard started to make his way down the hill.
Richter went to follow him, but stopped, turning to Mélanie and Mizrak.
“Tell her…” Richter trailed off and let out a small chuckle.
“Don’t tell her anything.”
Mélanie’s and Mizrak’s eyes widened, questioningly.
“When all this is over, I’ll tell her myself,” said Richter, then he turned and continued following Alucard down the hill.
Annette quickly nodded to both of them before running after them.
Mélanie and Mizrak stood side by side, watching them descend the hill, until their were out of sight.
Suddenly, Mizrak turned around, his brown eyes wide and alert.
At the same time, Mélanie heard what sounded like a soft, ghostly exhale on the wind.
She turned around as well, but found there was nothing there.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, looking up at Mizrak and noticing his puzzled expression.
“I can almost swear there was—” He cut himself off and shook his head.
“Never mind.”She had imagined that sound, she must have done.
She glanced around, listening sharply over the tree branches rustling in the wind.
However, there was no noise that sounded like that ghostly exhale.
She looked around again, but saw nothing.
She had imagined it, there was no other explanation; imagined it because her mind had constantly been on edge after two nights of little sleep.
“What are we going to do now?” Mélanie asked.
“Wait here for Maria to come back,” Mizrak replied.
“If she’s gone for too long, we’ll go and look for her.”
“I think we should take it in turns to keep watch outside this place,” Mélanie suggested.
“And we’ll need to think about getting some more supplies, as well.
We can grab them from the house in the morning, when the sun has risen.
If the vampires haven’t torn it apart already, that is.”
With a silent nod of agreement, Mélanie and Mizrak spent the rest of the evening sharing the role of lookout.
However, their surroundings remained silent all night, and whether because of the fact the abandoned castle was in ruins, or because it was partially hidden by a small huddle of trees on the edge of the forest, the hilltop remained deserted apart from occasional birds and squirrels.
Eventually, Maria came trudging back.
She didn’t say much to either of them, but judging by the sour look on her face, her meeting with the National Guard hadn’t gone as she’d hoped.
Maria set up a makeshift bed out of a pile of straw in one of the few intact rooms.
Mélanie swapped places with Mizrak at ten o’clock, and looked down upon a deserted scene, noting the crows fluttering high above her across the starry sky.
She still wasn’t sure if she fully trusted Mizrak.
Until that morning, he had been working for the Abbot, and was absolutely involved in creating night creatures with him.
The fact that he’d been in the cellar with Abbot, along with the Marquis and Drolta, that day was proof enough.
On the other hand, though, if hadn’t been for him, they wouldn’t have got to Maria in time to save her.
And he’d also helped them kill his men when they’d stood in their way, no matter how much it must have pained him to do so.
For now, Mélanie would give Mizrak the benefit of the doubt.The surrounding silence was broken only by odd rustlings and what sounded like cracking twigs: Mélanie thought that they were caused by animals rather than vampires, yet she kept her dagger held tight at the ready.
Her insides, already uncomfortable due to their inadequate helping of pheasant meat, tingled with unease.
She had thought that she would be elated that there was still hope in defeating Erzsebet, but somehow she did not; all she felt as she sat looking out at the darkness, was worry about what would happen next.
It was as though she had been hurtling towards this point for weeks, months, maybe even years, but now she had come to an abrupt halt, run out of road.
Sehkmet's corpse was out there somewhere in Paris, but she did not have faintest idea exactly where in the city it could be.
She did not even know what it looked like.
Meanwhile, she was at a loss to actually help Richter, Annette and Alucard out in finding it; she couldn’t use magic and she couldn’t stand the thought of going back to Paris.
However, she did have another important job to do.
Mélanie looked over her shoulder: Mizrak was getting on his knees and crossing himself, but Maria was nowhere to be seen, regardless of Mélanie’s periphery.
She was most likely still on her bed of straw, sleeping, plotting, fuming.
Wondering how she’d kill the Abbot and Báthory herself.

Careful, Maria.
Mélanie spared a final thought just as she turned her eyes back towards the hilltop in front of her.
In your desire to burn everything, be careful that you don’t burn yourself or all of us.
Nameless forebodings crept up on her as she sat there in the dark: she tried to resist them, push them away, yet they came at her relentlessly.
No one would believe you… No human being can endure all this…
Mizrak, now murmuring a prayer softly to himself, could walk away if he wanted to: she and Maria could not.
And it seemed to Mélanie as she sat there trying to master her own fear and exhaustion, that Mizrak prayer was ticking away the time they had left… Stupid idea, she told herself, don’t think that…She was starting to feel the cold air again.
She was afraid that she was making herself feel it again by having these thoughts, and tried to direct them into another channel.
She thought of poor Tera, who was now a creature of the night.
Would Tera try and resist Erzsebet or would she tell her everything she knew?
Mélanie wanted to believe that Tera would still have at least some of her former self now she was a vampire, that she would still be fond of them now, but who knew what would happen?
What if Erzsebet tortured the former Speaker?
Sick images swarmed into Mélanie’s head and she tried to push these away too, for there was nothing she could do for Tera: she and Richter had already decided against looking for her; what if she tried to kill them?
They could not count on that Tera would still be her usual self upon becoming a vampire, a creature that thirsts for blood.
The cold air was biting against Mélanie’s skin now, and she clutched her arms as she began shivering.
She thought that there was so much they did not know: she had been right that they had taken on more than they could handle too many times already.
Why hadn’t they learned more about Erzsebet before Alucard arrived?
Why hadn’t Tera mentioned more about the Vampire Messiah?
Had she thought that there would be more time; that it would take weeks, months, perhaps, until she arrived in Machecoul?
If so, she had been wrong… Erzsebet had seen to that… Erzsebet, the murderous messiah, who had struck at the Abbey…
And Tera had been bitten… bitten…
“You thief.”
The voice was high, clear and refined.
Even though she was whispering, the anger within her words was shouting at her.
Mélanie was lying on her back against hard, cold wooden floorboards, the quilt laying over her doing a poor job at keeping her warm.
The girl who was angry with her was lying next to her.
Hunger had hollowed her face, making it gaunt and skull-like, but it was alive with the glow of rage.
Her brown hair was dirty and matted, and there were streaks of white in the stands lying on her forehead.
“I can’t believe you’d do such a thing.”
“How could you steal from your own cousin?” whispered another voice.
An older woman’s.
“What kind of animal are you?”
“Why do you blame me?” Mélanie’s own voice shot back. “It’s all your fault.
I didn’t ask to be associated with Jews.
I’m here for only one reason — you came into my life and introduced me to Judaism.
That’s the reason I’m suffering, so don’t blame me for what I’m doing.”
The two voices broke into desperately muffled sobs and tears burn in her own eyes —“Mélanie!”
She opened her eyes, panting, her cheeks moist with tears.
She had passed out against the wall she was sat on; had slid sideways down the stone surface was sprawled out on the ground.
She looked up at Mizrak, whose broad mass obscured the sky above them.
“Dream,” she said, sitting up quickly and she bent her face as low as possible, wiping them off on her robes, pretending to adjust her shoe, so that Mizrak wouldn’t see.
“Must have dozed off, sorry.”
Face dry, Mélanie looked up and attempted to meet Mizrak’s concerned glower with a look of innocence.
“Richter told me about what happened this morning.
It happened again, didn’t it?
I can tell by the look on your face.”
“I didn’t mean for it to happen,” Mélanie said.
“It was a dream.
Can you control what you dream about, Mizrak?”
Mizrak’s answer was more blunt and cut straight to the bone marrow than Mélanie would have preferred, yet she still appreciated that he didn’t ask what her dream was about.“I think I’d better take over the watch if you’re so tired you’re falling asleep.”
“I can finish the watch.”
“No, you’re obviously exhausted.
Go and lie down.”
He dropped down on the stone wall at the mouth of the hideout, looking stubborn.
Annoyed, but wishing to avoid a row, Mélanie stalked back into the abandoned castle.
Maria was still curled up on her pile of straw when she walked past.
Mélanie climbed into a dry corner of one of the half-collapsed rooms, lay down and looked up at the dark stone ceiling.
She closed her eyes, trying to get the details of the dream out of her mind.
Why were they coming back now of all time, when she didn’t want to show any weakness?
The noises of the surrounding woods were muffled inside the room; all Mélanie could hear was Maria’s breathing as she herself drifted slowly into sleep once more.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Early the next morning, before the other two were awake, Mélanie left the abandoned castle to look out at Machecoul in the distance.
She looked inside, into the growing plan in her head.
It wouldn’t be easy, Tera’s cottage was about twelve minutes away, and the town’s people were hostile towards them.
They’d need to try and stick to the backstreets as much as possible.
Twelve minutes was all it would take.
Then she returned to the abandoned castle to wait for the others to wake, and discuss her plan with them.
Maria and Mizrak agreed that it was best to stick to the backstreets as much as possible, and whenever they did venture into the main ones, to keep as low a profile as they could.
Maria therefore shoved the straw into the darkness corner of her sleeping space to hide it from view, while Mélanie and Mizrak obliterated all the marks, impressions and pheasant bones on the ground that might show they were staying there.
They then descended the hill towards the outskirts of the town.
Once they had reached the road, and located the nearest alleyway entrance, Mélanie ventured inside to take the route towards Tera’s cottage to find sustenance.
This, however, did not go as planned.
She had barely entered the alleyway when she caught sight of a group of people armed with pitchforks and shovels, the angry, murderous looks of their faces made her freeze where she stood.
“But we can easily take them!” protested Maria, when Mélanie had ushered them back the way they came, and mouthing ‘People here’.
“If we start a fight, it will cause a lot of noise,” said Mélanie.
“And if one of them gets away and calls to backup, we’ll be in even more trouble.”
“She’s right, we’ll have to find another route,” said Mizrak, with half a glance at Maria.
“Fine,” Maria huffed.
In the end, they settled for an alleyway that barely anyone ventured through, because the tannery was located halfway along before you reached the road.
The tanner watched them as they passed, shiny-faced and looking anxious.
Behind him they heard the gloop gloop of the bubbling, treacle-thick mixture of limewater, hair, fat, sinew and dog droppings.
They tried to hold their breaths for as long as possible, but Mélaie found herself unable to keep putrid stench out of her nose completely.
It smelled like urine, rotting flesh and shit.
Immediately, her insides started writhing as though she’d just swallowed live snakes — doubled up, she wondered if she was going to be sick.
Fortunately, there was nothing in her stomach for throw up.
When they ventured out of the alleyway, she saw the achingly familiar Machecoul cobblestone side street: sunlit shop fronts, the outline of the hilltops beyond the town, and the curve in the road behind that led off towards the abbey.
Mélanie glanced around, and dread reared in her like a snake.
Daubed on the windows, shutters and doors, either in red paint or — Mélanie shuddered at the thought — blood, was the solar eclipse symbol of the Vampire Messiah’s cult.
She had been expecting hostility, obviously (given how they had been attacked by the townspeople when they were fleeing from the abbey), but the sight of this made every eye that landed on her feel like a needle being jabbed into her skin.
She found herself looking over her shoulder every three seconds, watching every single person in front, behind and across from her.
“I can’t believe it,” said Maria, incredulous.
“I’ve known these people all my life.”
“That doesn’t count for much in circumstances like this,” said Mélanie coldly.
“It’s every person for themselves.
Believe me, I know.”
Her eyes landed on a man who was emerging from a doorway they were walking past.
He growled threateningly at them, grabbing a pitchfork that was propped up against the doorway.
Maria raised her finger to cast a spell, Mélanie quickly clamped a hand over hers, shaking her head.
“God bless you, brother,” said Mizrak, raising his hand as they passed.
The blessing seemed to put the man more at ease, as Mélanie saw him lowering his pitchfork.
“You still don’t believe in your God?” said Maria harshly.
“Of course I do,” said Mizrak gruffly.
As they walked out onto the main road, there was a sound, carrying across the breeze.
A clamour of shouts.
They came again, farther away.
Their eyes shot to their right.
There was a group of about fifteen people, marching down the road towards a group of tents encamped in the countryside just outside town.
Sledgehammers, sickles and hatchets held up in their hands.“I tried to warn them,” said Maria, exasperated, “but the captain of the National Guard is an insufferable, ignorant sow.”
Mizrak let out a laugh that was much more like bark.
Then Mélanie harshly tapped his arm and Mizrak glanced over his shoulder, instantly noticing what she was looking at.
A portly woman, who they recognised as the butcher’s wife, was talking to two men, both armed with flintlock muskets.
Neither of them could make of what they were saying, but they didn’t need to.
The butcher’s wife pointed at them, directing the two men’s attention towards the trio.
Mélanie and Mizrak both grimaced.
“If you want the supplies from your house we need to move fast,” Mizrak whispered urgently.
“Not too fast, though,” Mélanie added as she and Maria moved to match his quickened pace.
“We’re on the run.
First rule with going on the run is ‘don’t run, walk’.”
Mélanie, Maria and Mizrak walked briskly down the nearest side street, following the familiar route towards Tera’s cottage.
Eventually, after a few tense minutes, where Mélanie felt her chest tighten every time they passed someone, the outskirts of Machecoul came into view.
Paths of trampled dirt endlessly snaked in wandering directions, leading travellers to neighbouring townships.
Some of which, unlike their town, had embraced the revolution with full hearts yet were considerably more spared from hellish onslaughts than Machecoul.
Save of course for the monthly, simple-minded hubris of a single vampire barging into the local watering hole as a challenge to any hunters in the area.
Come and get me, God’s own shit stain smeared across this mortal world. You can’t kill what cannot die.
Maybe not the last words spoken by most vampires, but certainly the last thing thought.They crossed over the familiar stone bridge and walked along the dirt road until, at last, Tera’s cottage came into view.
Mélanie and Maria breathed a sigh of relief when they saw it was still in one piece, and showed no outward signs of having been ransacked.
“We’ll go in through the back door,” said Maria.
Mélanie nodded.
“You get some food and anything else that might be useful,” she said.
“I’ll get some blankets and some possessions that I don’t want to risk being stolen.”
“I’ll stay outside.
Keep a look out,” said Mizrak.
With a nod of agreement, they skittered around the house and towards the back door.
Maria tried the handle, it was unlocked and the door swung open.
The sunlight followed them inside, cracking into the tiled hallway in a long, glowing strip.
As they hurried over the threshold, their shadows carved through the beam of light, both of them together as one stretched silhouette, with two heads and a tangle of moving arms and legs.
Maria closed the door behind them and they walked slowly down the hallway.
Mélanie could not help but tiptoe, even though no one was home.
She looked around, everything looked just as they had left it, no signs of disturbance.
It felt most strange to stand here in silence and know that this was likely going to be the last time they would visit this place.
She could tell Maria felt it too, the way she held her breath.
There was a heaviness in the air.
Memories captured in the silence, floating around like invisible motes of dust.
Mélanie didn’t even want to think too loudly, in case she disturbed it.
This quiet place, the place where that had been her home for the past three years when she’d first arrived here when she was fourteen or fifteen.
Mélanie then noticed the particularly forlorn expression on Maria’s face; this place had been part of her whole life, her history.
One she had shared with her mother.“Come on, let’s make this quick,” said Mélanie quietly.
Snapping out of her sad trip down memory lane, Maria moved towards the kitchen-dining area.
She grabbed a basket and began shoving any food she could find into it.
Mélanie pulled open the door under the stairs, she gave it one last sweeping look and then made her ungainly way back into the hall where she deposited her blanket, a travel cloak, a bundle of spare clothes, a flintlock pistol, a pull-string bag filled with money she’d saved for emergencies, and a lantern near the back door.
Then she ventured upstairs and into the attic.
It was surprisingly spacious for such a small house.
There was a single bed tucked in the corner, a chest of draws, a door leading out to the balcony and piles of empty wooden crates thickly coated with dust.
Mélanie ventured towards the red, woollen rug on the floor, she silently promised the room that she would put an end to this.
Not just for the whole world, but for Tera too.
She got down on her knees and began rolling the rug back to reveal the old floorboards underneath.
She started prodding the boards, tracing her fingers around the shape of them, trying to prise up their corners.
Eventually, she found it.
It was the one closest to the rug, on the left.
She pushed down one corner and the other side of the board kicked up.
Mélanie pulled up the floorboard, sliding it to the side.
She proceeded cautiously, groping around in the empty space.
Her hand touched something soft, grabbing it, Mélanie pulled it out its hiding place.
It was a folded piece of white woollen fabric with six blue stripes along the bottom; a Jewish prayer shawl or tallit.
Mélanie laid it aside and felt around under the floorboards for the other item she was looking for, which she found very quickly and pulled it out.
A silver Hanukkah menorah coated in a fine layer of dust, with candle stubs still resting in its sockets, solid wax hanging in frost-like drips.
These two items were her most well kept secret; if the Abbot had found out she had them, she would be in serious trouble.
Quickly, Mélanie unfolded the prayer shawl, placed the Hanukkah menorah in the centre of the fabric, and wrapped it inside.
Even though they were now allies, she would prefer to keep them hidden from Mizrak.
And then she heard it.
A door slam downstairs.
Mélanie froze, terror pooling in her gut.
She stayed still and listened, straining her ears so hard she could hear herself hearing.
No other sounds followed.“Maria?” Mélanie called uneasily.
No response came.
Mélanie straightened up and moved towards the top of the stairs.
“Maria, what was that?”
Still, no answer.
Every nerve in her body seemed to tauten: Mélanie rushed down the creaking stairs and looked around.
There was only one door that was closed: the door to Tera’s bedroom.
She looked back at both the front and back doors; could they make it in time?
Cautiously, she crossed over to it.
Mélanie grasped the metal handle and pushed the door open.
Maria was backed up against the desk in the left corner of the room, terror pooling in the pupils of her eyes.
Mélanie stepped further inside to get a better look at the opposite corner of the room, where Maria’s eyes were fixated.
A figure stood in the shadowy corner, slowly inching its way towards Maria.
Mélanie gasped when she realised who the intruder was.
It was Tera.
Mélanie jumped in front of Maria and slotted a throwing knife comfortably into her hand, which she pointed at her.
“Don’t move!”
Tera stopped dead, staying still in the shadowy corner of the room.
Mélanie could see that she was still wearing the same black dress, the same blue fabric tied around her waist.
Her ears were pointed, skin so pale that she looked like little more than a walking corpse, and her green eyes were flat and cold.
“What are you doing here?
What do you want?” Mélanie demanded sternly.
“To see my daughter,” said Tera calmly, showing her teeth which shone in sharp relief below her pale gums.“Why?
Did Erzsebet send you?” asked Mélanie suspiciously.“No,” Tera said at once.
“I’ve run away from her.
The only job she gave me was to bring the Abbot to her.
I never went back to Erzsebet.
I’m here of my own accord.”
Mélanie didn’t know what to think.
Was it a trick?“Why should I believe you?” asked Mélanie coldly.
Tera’s face fell; she had no defence, nothing that could truly prove she wasn’t a threat.
“When she made you a vampire, did it hurt?” asked Maria shakily.
“I was protecting you,” said Tera heavily.
“Saving you from this fate.
That’s all I cared about.”
Tears began welling up in her flat green eyes.
Mélanie’s knife hand dipped a little.
This response didn’t seem like an act.
It sounded like the Tera she knew.
She didn’t fully drop her guard, though.“And what’s it like now?” asked Maria timidly.“In ways, the world seems brighter.
In others, impossibly dark,” Tera replied pensively.
“It’s strange to think that I will live forever.
Unless someone kills me.”
The dry chuckle that came with the last sentence made Mélanie feel a sickening surge of unease.
Maria must have felt the same way, given the expression Mélanie saw on her face when she briefly glanced over her shoulder.“Remember when you were small?” Tera asked, focusing on her daughter.
“You used to ask to listen to my heart and lay your head on my chest.
Now I can hear your heartbeat from here.”
Tera smiled,
but looked more like a nightshade grimace that made Mélanie’s bones cold.“Can I come closer?” Tera asked innocently.
Mélanie bit her lip.
She wanted to say ‘No’, to tell her to stay where she was, but no words came out her mouth.
At same time, however, she couldn’t bring herself to say ‘Yes’, either.
There was just something about Tera’s demeanour that seemed off.
Mélanie wasn’t sure if that was because the woman had sinister intentions, or it was just that seeing her as a vampire was so jarring.
Maria placed a hand on Mélanie’s shoulder.
“Mel.
Let her through.”
“Are you sure?” Mélanie asked anxiously.
Maria nodded.
Mélanie grimaced, she still didn’t fully trust Tera and thought that Maria’s love for her mother could blind her to any potential threat.
But she didn’t want to deny Maria the chance of seeing her mother again, if Tera’s words were indeed genuine.
“Be careful,” she whispered, forgetting that Tera would now be able to hear them, no matter how softly they spoke.
She moved away from Maria cautiously, keeping her eyes on Tera as she stood there, inhumanly still, like a fleshed-out mannequin.
Once she was out of the way, Tera began to take slow steps towards her daughter, her hand raised to touch her face.
Suddenly, Mizrak appeared in the doorway.
He froze, gasping at the scene the scene in front of him, which was also suspended in mid-action, both Maria and Mélanie looking towards the door, the latter with a throwing knife in her hand, and Tera immobile in front of her daughter, a hand resting on her cheek.
Tera’s eyes glowed blood red as they turned in his direction, a snarl rising from her throat.
“Run!” said Mizrak loudly, drawing his scimitar and making a lunge at Tera.
“NO!” Maria yelled as her now-vampire mother dodged Mizrak’s attacks nimbly, ducking and weaving through the swipes of the curved sword.
Tera levitated herself backwards over the bed and into the corner of the ceiling.
Mizrak vaulted over the bed and squared up to her, pointing the tip of his scimitar at her.
“Stop!” Maria shouted.
“She’s a vampire, Maria.
Nothing more,” snarled Mizrak.
“She cannot love.
Don’t trust her.”
A look of unconcealed hurt clouded Tera’s face, her flat eyes shining with tears.
“Five minutes ago, you were making night creatures,” said Maria angrily.
“Why should I trust you?”
All the blood left Mizrak’s face.
He froze, unable to say anything in his defence, likely because he had no excuse for his complicity in the Abbot’s actions.
Tera lowered herself down to the floor, strode past Mizrak and left the room first.
Maria followed her mother down the dark corridor as Mélanie watched Mizrak lower his scimitar, his eyes down and defeated.
Mélanie took a deep breath and, after a quick “I’ll be right back” to Mizrak, she left the room and looked around for where Maria and Tera had headed off to.
She found them quickly in Maria’s room just next door.
Maria was sat on her bed and Tera was stood in the doorway, keeping out of the sunlight.“Are you going to help us drop the supplies off back at the hideout?” Mélanie asked, being careful with her words.
Revealing where their hideout was to Tera wasn’t a good idea, Erzsebet’s minion or not.
“No,” said Maria.
“Go without me.
I want to stay here for a while.”
Mélanie glanced warily at Tera.
“It’s not a good idea for us to be separated for too long.
Especially considering the circumstances.”“Say what you really mean, Mel,” said Maria shrilly, glaring at her.
“You don’t trust my mother now that she’s a vampire.”
“No,” Mélanie admitted honestly.
“But can you blame me?”
She glanced at Tera, who had a sad, but understanding look on her white face.
“So you agree with Mizrak, do you?!” said Maria loudly.
“You agree that my mother is a monster who can’t love?!”
“I did not say that, nor will you ever hear me say it,” said Mélanie with painful restraint.
“The truth is I don’t know what her intentions are —”
“I want to help my daughter,” Tera interjected calmly.
“There!” said Maria, louder than ever.
“Now are you happy?”
“This isn’t about whether I’m happy or not,” said Mélanie, whose voice, by contrast, was becoming more and more quietly waspish.
“What matters is that you stay alive.
You can’t fight against the Erzsebet’s forces if you get yourself killed, can you?”
“So you don’t trust me to make my own decisions?” said Maria indignantly.
“Why?
I’m not scared of vampires or night creatures.”
“I know.
You’re not scared of anything and that’s the problem.
I don’t want you take any unnecessary risks, and — tell me I’m wrong — you’re more likely to do that when you’ve no one around to hold you back.”
Mélanie glanced at Tera again, and felt a small amount of immature pride in how her expression seemed to suggest she’d already taken her side in this.
She had a point because of course she did.“So you just want to keep me shut up at the cast—”“Don’t say where our hideout is!” Mélanie spat.
There was a nasty silence.
They glared at each other across the room, but before either could say anything else, Tera broke in.“Okay, enough you two!
Maria, you’re not being fair on Mélanie.
She’s just concerned and wants to keep you safe, and she’s right.
You can’t defeat Erzsebet if you get yourself killed.”
Maria at least had the decency to look abashed.
Tera then turned to Mélanie.
“Melanie, I get why you don’t trust me.
I wouldn’t either if I was in your position.
But can you at least accept that I became a vampire to keep my daughter safe?
That is something that will never change.”
Tera’s question made Mélanie’s voice die in her throat.
She couldn’t think of anything to argue with that, and let out a heavy, defeated sigh.
“Make sure you come back by sunset at the very latest,” said Mélanie definitively.
“If you don’t come back by then, I’ll come and look for you.
All right?”
“Okay,” said Maria, accepting the compromise.“Mizrak and I will take the supplies back.
And Tera—” Mélanie fixed her with a stony, no-nonsense glare “do not even think about following us back.
Even if you aren’t following Erzsebet’s orders, it’s possible she could have sent other vampires to tail you.”
“I understand,” said Tera, nodding.
“I’ll see you later then,” said Mélanie, sparing Maria a final glance before making her way back down the hall and towards the attic to collect her two most guarded possessions.

“Okay, spit it out.
What’s bothering you?” asked Mélanie, frowning.
“Sorry?” said Mizrak, a bit startled by the suddenness of her question.
“Don’t play coy with me.
You’re clearly troubled by something,” said Mélanie.
“Is it what Maria said earlier?”She was glad to see that Mizrak’s face fell at her words.
“Ah, yes,” Mizrak admitted.
He even looked a little worried.“Well?”
For the first time since Mélanie had met him, Mizrak looked less than an intimidating man, much less.
He looked, fleetingly, like a small boy caught in wrongdoing.
“I always knew it was wrong.
Ungodly.
Evil,” said Mizrak, not looking at her.
“I knew, but I tried to justify it.
Tried to explain that the revolution was the enemy of God, and it was erasing our space in the world.
I hurt people in the Abbot’s name, and in the name of God.”
“But you were the only one who got his head straight and said ‘Enough is enough’,” Mélanie pointed out.
It was now dusk and Mélanie and Mizrak, having nothing else to do after dropping the supplies back at the abandoned castle, and helping themselves an adequate meal, were walking side by side down a dirt path on the outskirts of town.
Mizrak had been carrying an unnaturally sombre demeanour since what happened back at Tera’s cottage.
They may not have been in a confession booth and Mélanie was certainly not a priest, she thought she could at least listen to Mizrak’s regrets.
It was easier than putting up with it for the rest of the day and, in any case, it would give her something to do.
“True, true,” said Mizrak, and looked like a child who was seeking reassurance.
“Yet I followed Emmanuel for so long.
I allowed vampires to run free in my town.”
“You were also involved the Abbot’s dealings with the vampires?” Mélanie asked, more as a confirmation rather than something to make the monk feel more guilty than he already did.
“Yes,” he murmured.
“The Abbot made a deal with the devil to give him that accursed machine.
This came at a cost, of course, but he told me it would worth it.
Once he’d used this alliance to crush the revolution, he’d turn on Erzsebet and use his night creatures to kill her.
But, as you know, that meant turning a blind eye to the vampires.
Letting them feed on our own people.
I assuaged my conscience with empty words.
It would all be for the greater good, and any harm done would be repaid hundredfold in benefits for the Christian people.
Did I know what this path would ultimately lead to?
I think I did, but I closed my eyes.
If the plans of crushing the godless revolution came to fruition, along with vampires, it would all be worth it.”
“I’ve heard that the road to Hell is paved through good intentions,” burst out Mélanie.
“As have I,” said Mizrak heavily.
“Why do I always end up following the bad guy?”
“Well, you did swear a vow of obedience and all that shit, ” said Mélanie dully.
“And from what I’ve heard from Tera, the Abbot’s probably never lead you wrong before.
Heck, Tera was in denial that he was involved with the vampires for quite a while.”
“I spend more time around Emmanuel that Tera ever has,” Mizrak snorted.
“And I’m not the one who had a child with him.”
“You found out?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“Erzsebet.” Mizrak’s voice was full of bitterness.
“I was there when she told Emmanuel to sacrifice Maria to her.
I thought she was shitting with us, but then I saw the look on Emmanuel’s face…”They continued to walk in silence for a while.
The sun continued to sink lower across the sky, casting a hazy golden sheen.
At last, Mizrak said, “Okay, let me rephrase: Why do I choose to follow a person I know is going down the wrong path?”
“I happened to know the answer to this,” said Mélanie.
“Because you’re hoping you’re wrong.
And every time he does something that tells you he’s going down the wrong path, you ignore it.
And every time he comes through and surprises you, he wins you over and you loose that argument with yourself that he’s not worth it.”
“Exactly,” said Mizrak, the realisation dawning on him as she explained it.
Then his face hardened, and there was self-disgust in his voice.
“Still, that doesn’t erase my sins.”Mélanie and Mizrak walked for longest time yet without speaking to each other.
The realisation of what to say next gradually settled over Mélanie in the long minutes, like softly falling snow.
“I remember once my aunt Johanna — and aleha hashalom — said something about most of us all being ultimately imperfect.
But even if we make mistakes and do terrible things, we can try to make things right.
And that’s what matters.
The trying.”
Mizrak closed his eyes for a moment, and nodded.
“You may be right,” he said quietly.
And then, out of nowhere, Mélanie heard a loud whoosh and large shadow flew over them in the sky.
Mélanie and Mizrak stopped and looked up.
They both used a hand as a shield as the dazzling sunlight poked them hard in both eyes.
In the distance was a black shape with large wings that were beating every now and again.
Mélanie and Mizrak both squinted, trying to get a better look as the shape moved closer and more features became visible.
But then, through the hazy golden light in front of them, Mélanie saw, with an icy surge of terror, the dark outline of a winged woman, monstrous and vicious-looking, soaring through the air.
Mizrak gasped, Mélanie’s mouth fell open… and she stared up at the face that she had never expected to see again.
A face that she had last seen as a shrivelled-up corpse, mouth hung open as a perpetual echo of a high-pitched, rattling death cry.
Drolta Tzuentes.
Dark skin that now seemed almost maroon, with livid, pink eyes with black scalar, and pair of large, black horns protruding from her forehead.
“H-How…?
Isn’t she supposed to be dead?” Mélanie sputtered, incredulous.
Mizrak said nothing, watching Drolta fly overhead and above the town.
A second’s relief that she wasn’t coming for them, and then, with a feeling of sinking dread, Mélanie realised what direction Drolta was headed.
“Isn’t that where the Revolutionary Army is camped?” she asked, unable to stop herself.
Mélanie and Mizrak looked at each other, then set off in that direction at a sprint; back down the dirt path and into town.
As they ran through the now deserted streets, Mélanie could hear the combined sounds of their feet thundering along the cobblestones, and the shouts of the mob of townspeople from earlier in the distance.
“Down with the revolution!”
“Traitors!”
“Death to the revolutionaries!”
“Curse the uprising!”
Mélanie looked up at the sky again, she spotted Drolta’s winged outline in the distance, but she was too fast.
She would arrive at the National Guard’s encampment long before they did.
Mélanie and Mizrak ran so fast that they were halfway towards the countryside when Drolta’s black form disappeared below the trees ahead.
Mélanie sprinted, ignoring the burning in her lungs, and the sounds of the sound of the mob’s bloodthirsty shouts, and the loud bangs of guns through the windless air.
Panting and gasping, Mélanie and Mizrak slowed down, Mélanie so out of breath she could not speak.On top of the hill they were standing on, they could see the commotion that was happening below.
They were too late, there was already blood staining the grass; Drolta was stood in the middle of the circling revolutionary soldiers that were still alive; the corpses of their comrades were strewn across the ground.
The mob of townspeople — it was now much larger than before — were stood watching at a safe distance, cheering Drolta on.
Then, before Mélanie could stop him, Mizrak had pelted down the hill and into the trees.
“Mizrak!” Mélanie moaned breathlessly.
Taking a deep breath to brace herself, Mélanie followed him in a desperate sprint; the was no way she could physically restrain the much larger man; she reached into her robes for her knives and saw Mizrak’s black cloak streaming behind him like a banner as she hurtled after him.
“Mizrak, wait!” she yelled.
“Don’t go down there — stop — you’ll get yourself killed—”There was a loud thud.
Someone had jumped out from the trees and restrained Mizrak from behind.Mélanie almost collided with them; she skidded to a stop right beside them.
Mizrak was struggling against the arms that had seized handfuls of his cloak and surcoat, keeping him rooted to the spot.
As Mélanie caught her breath, she looked up at the man who’d restrained the monk.
Her eyes widened.
A mass of straight, dark hair hung to his waist, accentuated by a single thin braid pulled back behind his left ear, revealing warm brown skin and a strong jaw.
Gold jewellery glittered on his pointed ears, including a large hexagonal piece with a green gem at its centre.
He was attired in an overcoat and breaches of rich purple and gold.
His poison green eyes with slitted, snake-like pupils looked grim as they briefly met her tawny-brown ones, acknowledging her presence.
It was Olrox.
“This abomination is your Abbot’s work,” he said coldly.
Mizrak soon gave up struggling — seeming to not perceive the vampire as a threat — and now stood watching with helpless, wide eyes.
Mélanie turned to watch as well, keeping half an eye on Olrox, and saw Drolta ripping a revolutionary soldier’s head in two.
Now that she had a closer look, Mélanie could definitely see that Drolta looked more night creature than vampire as she turned to face a group of soldiers loading a cannon.
Her large, dragonic wings half furled, her evil, pink eyes upon them, a monstrous, scaly woman, thrashing her spiked tail and fleshy, maroon dreadlocks protruding from her head.There was a deafening BANG as the soldiers fired the cannon and Drolta threw up her wings in front of her to shield herself against the incoming cannon ball.
A surge of white smoke billowed thickly as the cannon ball collided with Drolta’s wings, sparks flew across the field, obliterating the night creature from view.
Next second, Drolta flew through the smoke and barrelled through the group of soldiers, severing heads and leaving deep gouges in throats as she went.
“You can’t stop this, Mizrak,” said Olrox.
Mizrak’s face was contorted, and Mélanie expected the monk to protest, but he said nothing, shaking as his terror for the soldiers gave way to sorrow.
His guilt infected Mélanie, too, even though she knew it would be suicide to try and help them.
Drolta sunk her fangs into a soldier’s neck and ripped his head off. She couldn’t watch any more of this… Mélanie turned away in favour of keeping an eye on Olrox.

Mizrak closed his eyes tight shut, as though he also could not bear to see any more of the ensuing massacre.
He was gulping for air: his broad chest was rising and falling rapidly, and tears began to pour down his cheeks.
Olrox’s green, snake-like eyes softened as he felt Mizrak shaking in his arms, looking concerned.“She’ll kill you, and that will be the end of it,” said Olrox, his voice taking on mellifluous, soothing tone, as if he was trying to comfort the distraught monk.
Mizrak seemed to peer through a haze of pain, and Olrox’s words appeared to take a moment to reach him.
Then, Mizrak’s legs did not want to support his weight.
He sank to his knees and began to cry in earnest.
Olrox’s arms remained firmly wrapped around the Mizrak’s form, but the hold was much more tender now.
After one mad second, Mélanie realised they were embracing.
She pushed her greying hair out of her eyes, and stared thoughtfully at them.Mizrak buried his wet face in the crook of the vampire’s elbow as he continued sobbing.
His breathing was shallow.
The monk’s right hand gripped his own surcoat tightly, whilst his left desperately clung to Olrox’s purple overcoat.
Olrox closed his eyes, saying nothing, likely because he knew there were no words that could soften the blow of Drolta’s massacre.
Even Mélanie, who was no fan of Olrox’s, couldn’t help but want to join them in their troubled feelings.
She kept her eyes on the two men, listening to the bloodthirsty cheers of the mob, shouting, “Execute them!”, egging Drolta on in her brutality.
Eventually, the sounds of the carnage and the shouting died down as the townspeople left, satisfied, and Drolta took off.
When Mélanie finally looked back at the field, the sun was sinking fast; the sky had turned to clear, yellow-tinged grey, but to the west there was ruby-red glow.
The National Guard’s encampment was in ruins, tents had been destroyed, bodies were strewn all over the ground and the grass had been dyed crimson.
A small group of night creatures were loading the bodies into carts, to be taken back to the abbey.
Mélanie hadn’t been thrilled when the National Guard had arrived, she knew deep in her bones that their presence in town would lead to nothing good.
Now she knew why: they had given the Abbot a large supply of fresh corpses, more than enough to start rebuilding his army for Erzsebet… But she hadn’t expected Drolta to return… and since the townspeople were supporting them, the vampires didn’t need to bother about being discreet anymore…She turned to look back at Olrox and Mizrak.
The vampire was standing in the long shadows of the trees, keeping out of the fading sunlight.
He had let go of Mizrak, who’d hiccoughed himself into silence, yet remained on his knees in the sunlight.
“You couldn’t have saved them,” said Olrox in a soft, yet matter-of-fact, tone.
“I don’t only pick the fights I can win,” snarled Mizrak.
He looked up at Olrox with his ferocious, anguished face, tears still streaming from bloodshot eyes.
“Then you’re a fool,” said Olrox.
“No.
I’m just not an animal,” Mizrak snapped, getting to his feet.
“Why don’t you go back to where you belong?
I’ve seen enough too, Olrox.
Enough to know that some things are worth dying for.
And some things are not.”
“Guess that explains why you tried to get yourself killed a few minutes ago, too,” said Mélanie sarcastically.
Mizrak and Olrox both turned to look at her, Mizrak angry and bewildered, Olrox outwardly calm and mildly satisfied that someone else agreed with him.
“Oh, remembered me, have you?”
“I’m sorry, what?!” Mizrak spat at her.
“You were going to rush over there, unprepared, and get yourself killed.
That’s what,” said Mélanie coolly.
“Finally, a rational mind,” said Olrox, a triumphant sneer curling his mouth.
“Could you stay out of this, please?” Mélanie asked sharply.
Olrox’s face was quite expressionless, but he went silent nevertheless.
The only time his face showed some form of suppressed emotion was when Mizrak briefly glanced over his shoulder to glare at him.
Mélanie and Olrox weren’t friends, that was for certain, however, Mélanie didn’t hold anything against Olrox personally.
Furthermore, he’d also given them the Abbot’s spell book and helped the during the battle at abbey.
Whatever his reasons were, and whatever might be in it for him, Olrox wanted Erzsebet gone as much as they did.
“Are you trying to tell me you wanted me to just stand back and watch them get killed, Mélanie?!” Mizrak shouted.
“I’m trying to tell you to calm down and be realistic,” said Mélanie.
“I wanted to try and save them as much as you did.
And I wanted to prevent Erzsebet from getting new army of night creatures so soon.
But neither of us can use magic like Richter, Maria, Annette or Alucard.
And those soldiers couldn’t even land a dent on Drolta with a fucking cannon.
Whoever else tried to help them then would end up dead, too.”
“Well, if Drolta was there to get more corpses for Erzsebet’s army, then isn’t that why we should have gone down there?!” Mizrak argued, waving his hand impatiently.
“I’ll say it again,” said Mélanie evenly.
“If you went down there, you would be killed.
Please understand.”
Mizrak’s face twitched convulsively.
He was shaking, not with pain, but with a fresh wave of fury.
“No, I don’t understand,”
said Mizrak, who was refraining from yelling with enormous difficulty.
And then, suddenly, he couldn’t stop himself.
“THOSE PEOPLE WERE MURDERED BY DROLTA AND NOW WILL BE MADE INTO NIGHT CREATURES!
WASN’T IT YOU WHO SAID I NEEDED TO TRY TO MAKE THINGS RIGHT AFTER MY PART IN THAT?!”
Breathing hard as though he were fighting, Mizrak turned away from Mélanie, who still had not moved a muscle, and rubbed his knuckles in his hand, exercising every last bit of restraint to prevent himself from storming off.
Mélanie’s expression did not change, but her face had whitened under the bloody tinge cast the setting sun.
For a long moment, Mélanie said nothing.“I meant what I said,” said Mélanie quietly.
“But risking your life and doing something that could easily rob you of your life are two entirely different things.
Please try to control yourself right now.
Before you joined up with us, we lost Annette’s friend, Edouard, because we made a similar mistake.
I understand why you wanted to go over there, but we cannot afford to loose anyone else right now.
Too much is at stake.”
Mizrak had no retort.
He took a deep breath and looked positively ashamed, either for what he’d tried to do, or for yelling at Mélanie, or both.
“We also didn’t count on Drolta coming back from the dead,” he admitted.
“I didn’t even think that was possible.
Vampires are undead, so why did the machine work with her?”
“Who knows?
Frankly, who cares?” said Mélanie.
Then, after spending almost the entire argument ignoring him, she turned her attention to Olrox.
“Olrox, may I ask you a question?”
“Shoot,” he said, raising a cautious eyebrow at her.

“Do you think Erzsebet will try and use the machine to bring back her other dead vampire soldiers?”
“I doubt it,” Olrox replied
“She only cared about bringing back Drolta.
If the rest of her cult members die, she doesn’t give a shit.
She didn’t even bother to look for Tera after she ran away.”
Mélanie nodded.
That ruled out the possibility that any vampires were tailing Tera… it also confirmed what Tera had said back at the cottage…“Do you know anything else about Erzsebet’s plans right now?”
Mélanie asked.Olrox stared down at her, his fathomless, reptilian eyes boring into Mélanie’s.
“No.
I wasn’t around for any of those discussions,” said Olrox sleekly.
Mélanie spotted the lie from a mile away.“We both know you’ve secretly been finding out the details of those discussions.
That’s why you had the Abbot’s spell book in the first place, right?”
Olrox sighed, realising he’d been caught out.
“I’m sorry, but I really can’t.”
“Olrox, this is vitally important,” said Mélanie urgently.
“I need to know.”
“Don’t act like we’re friends,” said Olrox tonelessly.
“You’re using me to get to her.
And then what?
You take what you need.
Hang me out to dry?
Hmm?
I’m expendable?”
“No, no one is expendable,” said Mélanie.
“That’s what this is all about.
Everything with Erzsebet is a calculated risk.
Look, Richter may have a vendetta against you, and he is my friend, but I’m more willing to compromise with you than he is.
I can’t promise you safety but the only thing I can say for certain is this: If Erzsebet gets what she wants, the whole world will suffer, including America, and right now, you’re the only person within her circle that can stand in her way.”
Olrox seemed to consider this for a moment, then let out a small sigh.
“They’re planning to march on Paris.
To crush the revolution,” Olrox said calmly.
“As soon as they have enough night creatures.
But we know that’s not the only thing she’s waiting for.
Erzsebet sent out spies after Alucard and your friends, trying to figure out where they’re going.
They know they’re after Sehkmet’s missing soul too.”
“Thank you,” said Mélanie.
Then, remembering something, she turned to face Mizrak.
“Oh, by the way, I’m going to forget I saw that between you two.”
Mizrak flushed.
Olrox raised an eyebrow.
“You’re not even a little bit curious about what we’ve been doing?” he asked, amused.
“Don’t know, don’t care,” said Mélanie flatly, then she turned and began walking out of the trees.
She heard Olrox chuckling behind her.“You had to be scolded by a child?” said Olrox dryly to Mizrak.
“Doesn’t look good for you, Mizrak.”
“How unsurprising,” Mizrak snarled.
“Letting a child fight your battles.
Like a true coward.”
Mélanie slowed down and turned around, she saw Mizrak walking out into the sunlight.
She also saw the pained look on Olrox’s face.
“You know you’d be dead if it weren’t for him,” Mélanie whispered admonishingly as they walked away.
The very last rays of the setting sun were casting a bloody light over the long-shadowed ground.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

When Maria did not return to the abandoned castle, despite the sun having set nearly an hour ago, Mélanie stood up to leave the hideout and look for her.
Mizrak was reluctant to let her go on her own, but she assured him that she would be fine; she’d been in situations where she’d been on her own before, and there were very few places Maria could have run off to.
Mélanie planned her excursion carefully, because she had been ambushed by a group of vampires on her own and at night once before, and had no desire to repeat that experience.
Her knives and stilettos would, of course, be essential, and as an added precaution, Mélanie thought she would take her flintlock pistol, which, despite being noisy and requiring more maintenance, was just as an effective tool as her blades.
One shot could easily throw an enemy off balance or end the fight instantly, however, a single misfire could doom an entire hunt.
But Mélanie rarely missed her mark.
For good measure, she also took her lantern; one of the possible locations Maria could have gone to got very dark at night time.Once Mizrak had left to search for food, Mélanie loaded the pistol with a ball round and consecrated gunpowder (she promised she’d owe Mizrak something at some point in the future), tucked it in her maroon robes and, just as she had done that morning when they’d gone to get supplies, crept down the hill and towards the outskirts of town.
It was awkward moving through town tonight, because Mélanie had the pistol tucked into her trousers, and she had to keep an eye out for any vampires as well as hostile locals.
However, the moonlit streets were empty and silent, and by checking the mouths of the backstreets and alleyways at strategic intervals, Mélanie was able to ensure that wouldn’t run into anyone she wanted to avoid.
When she reached Tera’s cottage, the last place she’d seen Maria, she located the back door, leant close to it and, after checking her surroundings again, pushed the door handle.The door creaked open.
Mélanie slipped inside, bolted the door behind her, and crept down the tiled hallway, looking around.
“Maria?” she called out, hoping she was still here and had just lost track of time.
But the cottage was quiet as a grave.
“Maria?
Tera, are you here?” she called out again.
When no response came again, she went to check all the rooms.
Maria’s bedroom was empty; the same with Tera’s; the kitchen-dining area was barren; Richters room yielded no results, as expected; the attic, too, was deserted.
After quickly checking the garden and the forest out the back and finding nothing, Mélanie marched back down the road and into town.
There was only one other place that she could think off where Maria could be: a clearing in the forest on the other side town with a circle of stones.
A place where Maria had first learned to use magic, where she held her revolutionary meetings.
Maria was desperate to get stronger and defeat Erzsebet and the Abbot, it seemed logical that she would return there, to place where it all started.
Back in the dark streets, Mélanie examined her surroundings, to check that the coast was clear.
Yes, the butcher’s wife that had tried to rat them out that morning was in the safety her shop… nothing else seemed to be moving apart from a stray cat, who’s tail bobbed in and out of view as it skulked through the street in front of her… Mélanie had taken her first step towards the forest, when something else in the street caught her eye… something distinctly odd.
The cat was not the only thing that was moving.
A lone figure was striding through the street, heading in the same direction she was about to head off in.
It was an old man with a long mane of white hair and an unkept beard, clad in a crimson-red tailcoat… an old man she’d never seen before.Mélanie stared at the old man.
All the townspeople had turned in for the night and he certainty wasn’t a vampire — so what was he doing, wandering through the streets of Machecoul at one o’clock in the morning?
Mélanie watched closely as the old man moved through the streets, pausing here and there to look over his shoulder…Mélanie hesitated, thinking… and then curiosity got the better of her.
She turned, and set off in the same direction, keeping a safe distance from the old man.
She was going to see what he was up to.
Mélanie tailed him through the streets as quietly as possible, keeping out of sight, though the old man still turned around at the clunk of a loose cobblestone, the rustle of her robes.
She crept along the side street as the old man suddenly changed direction, ducked into a doorway about halfway along when the old man glanced over his shoulder again, proceeded down the short flight of stone steps, a shortcut which would take her to the tailor’s shop.
She kept glancing at the old man, noticing the sword strapped to his waist, wondering… it just didn’t seem right, for this elderly, well-armed man to be sneaking around a provincial town late at night…And then, halfway down the stairs, not thinking about what she was doing, not concentrating on anything else but the peculiar behaviour of this old man, Mélanie’s foot suddenly sank right into the missing step Richter always forgot to jump.
She gave an ungainly wobble, and slipped down the stairs — she lurched to try and catch herself from falling on her face, but it was too late; she let out a surprised yelp, loudly and distinctly — she fell down six stairs, landing painfully on her hands and knees.
The old man spun around, looking suspicious and triumphant as Mélanie straightened up, staring at him hard, heart pounding with fear… and, almost immediately —
“I knew someone was following me!”
The old man’s voice was the unmistakable hunting snarl of an experienced warrior.
She had heard Richter put on that voice multiple times.
In fact, something about this old man seemed to remind her of Richter.
“Who the fuck are you, missy?” he asked in a stern voice.
“What are you doing out here and why are you following me?”
“Don’t “missy” me,” snapped Mélanie childishly.
“And what are you doing here?
I’ve never seen you around here before.”
“That fact that you’ve been following me, and trying not be noticed when vampires are running amok means you’re not in a position to demand answers from me,” said the old man authoritatively, leaving Mélanie not room for argument.
“All right, fine.
My name is Mélanie de Linville,” she said warily.
“I was out searching for my friend when I spotted you heading the same direction as me.
I was curious and wanted to see what you were up to.
Now it’s your turn.”
The old man’s grey eyes widened upon hearing her name.
“Mélanie?” he murmured to himself.
“Do your friends call you “Mel” for short?”
“Yes?” said Mélanie, bewildered.
How did he know her nickname?
Who told him?“Oh, you’re the gloomy aristo girl Richter told me about,” the old man realised, relaxing his guarded posture.
“I’m Juste Belmont, Richter’s grandfather.
Richter asked me to come here to help keep an eye on Maria, since he was heading to Paris with Alucard and this black sorceress.”
“Oh,” Mélanie gasped, noticing the silver shoulder pauldrons on his red tailcoat.
They had the Belmont family crest engraved into them.
“Wait, is that what Richter told you about me?” she asked, feeling a vein flickering on her temple.
“Yes, he called you a gloomy girl who sighs a lot,” said Juste.
“And that he also trusts you with his life.”
“Well that’s a nice thing for him to say,” said Mélanie tonelessly.
“And I prefer to call myself realistic.
Oh, and Richter’s told me you’re a shmuck.”
“A what?”
“A dick.”
Juste let out dry chuckle.
“Yep, that sounds like him.
Julia had also called me something along those lines,” he said fondly.
“Anyway, you were saying you’re looking for Maria?”Mélanie nodded.
“She hasn’t returned to our hideout, even though I specifically told to be back by sunset at the very latest.
I’ve been through the house, where I last saw her, but she’s not there.
There’s only one other place she might be that I can think of.
Unless she’s returned to the hideout since I left...”
“Nope, she’s not there,” said Juste.
“I’ve just been there, no one but a bloody fox passed through there.”
Mélanie’s heart gave a horrible jolt.
How did he find where they were staying?
A second later, however, she knew the answer: Richter must have told him.
Her relief didn’t last long though; if Maria wasn’t at the hideout either the circle of stones in the forest was the last place she could possibly be.
If not… Mélanie didn’t even want to think of that possibility…
“Let’s head over to the forest now.
It’s the one place I haven’t checked yet.”
Mélanie turned and walked back up the stairs, careful to jump the missing step this time, with Juste alongside her.
They walked briskly through the dark streets towards the forest, watching the townspeople who closed their shutters whenever they saw them coming, displaying the red solar eclipse symbol.
“Unbelievable,” Juste growled.
“These people really must be dense, supporting vampires who are going to make them their playthings.”
“They haven’t thought that far ahead,” said Mélanie coldly.
“All they see is someone who will give them what they want, not someone who will take everything away from them.
This town’s Abbot has been telling them that she’ll crush the revolution they hate so much.
It’s one of the reasons Maria’s had to hold all her revolutionary meetings in secret.”
“Richter told me about that bastard,” Juste muttered.
“That he’s a Forgemaster supplying Erzsebet with night creatures, and that he’s Maria’s father.
Which is why I needed to keep an eye on her.”
His grey eyes then turned down and fixed upon Mélanie.
It was a penetrating glare, and Mélanie had the impression that Juste was sizing her up, wondering whether to ask her a question or not, and how much to ask her.
“Speaking of which,” Juste said finally “why did you let her go off on her own in the first place?”
“I can’t make all of Maria’s decisions for her.
As much I don’t want to let her out of my sight,” said Mélanie.
“She knows exactly why I’m staying with her and understands my reasons.
It was her responsibility to make sure she came back.
I told her I’d come looking for her if she didn’t.”
“What if the vampires got to her?” Juste asked.
“Maria can easily take care of a few vampires on her own,” said Mélanie: the idea was dreadful to her, she could not believe it of Maria to be defeated so easily.
“Besides, Erzsebet is more focused on following Richter, Alucard and Annette’s movements.
She knows they’re after Sekhmet’s corpse as well and wants to try and get her hands on it before they do.
If she wanted to focus her attention on us, we’d be having more trouble than we currently are.
And, likely, she would have sent Tera to do that.”
“Yeah, Richter told me about what happened with Tera,” said Juste heavily.
“It’s fortunate you haven’t run into her yet.”
“Umm, about that…” Mélanie mumbled nervously.
“What?
You have?!” said Juste sharply.
“What happened?
How did you escape?”Mélanie explained briefly, how she and Maria had encountered Tera in the cottage, how the only thing she’d cared about was seeing her daughter again, how Mizrak had interrupted them before Maria stayed in the house with her mother.
“You left her with Tera?
Why?
What were you thinking?”
“I…” Mélanie tried to remember; the whole encounter seemed like a blur of mistrust and confusion.
“I didn’t know what to think… Tera said she’s left Erzsebet — well, I’ve managed to confirm that she was telling the truth.
She’s acting on her own, at the very least.”
Juste looked aghast.
“Mélanie, you should never trust a vampire, especially in times like this!
These monsters are trying to capture and kill you!
You need to meet them with the same resolve!”
“It’s Maria’s mother!
If we have to kill her, Maria should be in agreement with the decision!
Tera became a vampire to save Maria from that fate in the first place,” Mélanie added defiantly.
Juste was reminding her of the sneering boy in Maria’s revolutionary group, who had sneered at her when she mentioned she only killed when she deemed it absolutely necessary, even with vampires.
“Yes, Mélanie,” said Juste grimly “and she’s now a vampire whose very existence relies on consuming human blood!
Forgive me, but you shouldn’t be working with vampires, unless you have a death wish.
They see humans as livestock or prey animals, collaborating with them is close to suicidal!”
“So you think I should have killed Tera, even though she didn’t give me any reason to?” said Mélanie angrily.
“Of course not,” said Juste “but new vampires are very unpredictable.
Vampirism has different effects depending on the person turned.
Yes, Tera was compassionate as a human.
But she also faced a lot of hardships throughout her life.
Those kinds of hardships have an effect on one’s psyche.
And vampirism can twist that pain into something more insidious.
It forces a once gentle person to act on their most vicious impulses.
I understand why you were reluctant to kill her, Mélanie, but Tera could be kind in one moment and malicious in the next, and I urge you not to pay dearly for being too trusting!”
Juste was making Mélanie feel idiotic, and yet there was still a grain of defiance inside her.
“I won’t blast people out of my way just because they’re there,” said Mélanie.
“That’s Erzsebet’s job.”
Juste’s retort was lost: finally reaching the outskirts of town, Mélanie and Juste strode along the dirt road and up the hill.
Ignoring her irritation for a moment, Mélanie addressed Juste again.
“Did you run into any trouble while you were searching for us?”
All Juste’s frustration with Mélanie seemed to drain away at the question.
“Not much.
Although, there were all those vampires that burnt my hut down the during the eclipse.
I managed to kill them all by the time the sun came out again.
Richter, Alucard and the black girl arrived soon afterwards and asked me to help you.”
They reached the edge of the forest.
A chilly breeze that seemed to emanate from the heart of the forest lifted the hair at Mélanie’s brow as they approached.
“Richter’s mission may be more important in the grand scheme of things ,” Mélanie said, “but staying here hasn’t been totally pointless either.
We can keep an eye on how many night creatures she has, since the abbey is in this town.
Also, we’ve been able to learn some of Erzsebet’s plans, too.”
“Really?” said Juste.
“What have you learned?”
“She’s preparing to march on Paris,” Mélanie explained.
“But two things need to happen before she can do that: First, she needs enough night creatures, and Second, she’ll need the next piece of Sekhmet’s soul to become even more powerful.
Unfortunately, she’s close to achieving her first objective.
As for the second one, there’s not much we can do.
Richter, Annette and Alucard are taking care of that.”
“That’s not good,” Juste sighed, as though resigned to the worst.
“That means we’ve not got much choice but to trust them.”Coming to a stop just outside the forest, Mélanie lit the candle in her lantern with a flint and steel, just enough light for them to see what was directly ahead.
So, with the lantern in Mélanie’s outstretched arm, they entered the forest.
By the glow of the lantern, they followed the route towards the clearing with stone circles along the path.
They walked for about twenty minutes, not speaking, listening hard for noises other than breaking twigs and rustling leaves.
Then, when the trees had become thicker than ever, so that the stars overhead were no longer visible, and Mélanie’s lantern alone shone in the sea of dark, they left the path.
Mélanie paused, trying to remember which direction to take next, but everything outside her little sphere of light was pitch black.
She’d never been this deep into the forest without Richter or Maria guiding her before.
They knew the different paths and tracks a lot better than she did.
But Richter was miles away now
and Maria was probably already in the clearing.
Something touched Mélanie’s hand and she jumped backwards, crushing Juste’s foot, but it was only the tips of some leaves.
“What do you reckon?” Mélanie said to Juste, whose eyes she could just make out, reflecting the light from her lantern.
“We’ve come this far,” said Juste.
So they continued down the route into the trees.
They couldn’t move quickly now; there were tree roots and stumps in their way, barely visible in the near blackness.
Mélanie could feel Juste’s hot breath on the back of her neck.
More than once, they had to stop, so that Mélanie could look around and find the shapes and forms that indicated which direction to take in the lantern-light.
They walked for what seeemed like at least half an hour, their clothes snagging on low-slung branches and brambles.
After a while, they noticed they could see that forest was becoming brighter again, as more patches of the starry sky above became visible through the trees.
They were getting closer…
Then Mélanie came to stop as she heard a great, echoing bark, making both her and Juste jump out of their skins.
“What was that?” said Juste loudly, looking around in the darkness, gripping the hilt of his sword very hard.
“There’s something moving over there,” Mélanie breathed.
“Listen… Sounds like something big.”
They listened.
Some distance away to their right, the something big was snapping branches as it carded a path through the trees.
“What do you think it is?” asked Juste.
“It’s too big to be vampires.”
“Shut up,” said Mélanie, sharply.
“It’ll hear you.”
“Hear me?” said Juste, whispering loudly.
“It’ll see the light from your fucking lantern!”
Reacting quickly, Mélanie promptly extinguished the lantern with a pinch of her fingers.
The darkness seemed to be pressing on their eyeballs as they crept cautiously towards the sound.
There was a growling noise just ahead.
“What do you think it’s doing?” said Mélanie.
“Probably getting ready to pounce,” said Juste.
They stopped and waited, shivering, hardly daring to move.
“Do you think it’s after something else?” whispered Mélanie.
“Dunno—”
Then, to their right, came a large black mass suddenly came rushing past them.
It went crashing through the trees, in the direction of the clearing.
Mélanie yelped and tried to stumble backwards, but got her left leg lodged in a tangle of brambles and yelped even louder.
“Mélanie!” Juste said loudly, his voice breaking with relief.
“Mélanie, I think it’s one of Maria’s creatures!”
“What?”
“Come on!”
After painfully untangling her leg from the brambles, embedded thorns still drawing blood, Mélanie blundered after Juste in the direction the creature had just gone, stumbling and tripping, and a moment later they had found the clearing with a circle of stones.
Maria was standing in the middle, an arm outstretched towards what turned out to be giant black wolf with red markings on its forehead.
Tera’s face was a pallid, moonlike circle in the darkness, a proud smile stretching across her red lips.
Then, Maria drew a circle in the air and a portal opened up.
Mélanie stared at the portal as the wolf walked inside it, eyebrows furrowed.
It wasn’t its usual golden yellow, it was pitch black and it seemed to be pulsating as it closed.
Also, Mélanie had never seen Maria summon that wolf before, and it looked different from her other creatures.
Just what had Tera been teaching her?
Before Mélanie could ask that question aloud, Juste had rushed past her into the clearing.
Alerted by the sound of his footsteps, Maria and Tera looked up as her vaulted over one of the large stone, his sword drawn.
“Maria, get out of the way!” Juste shouted as he swung his sword at Tera.
The vampire dodged the blade, squaring Juste up as he placed himself between her and Maria.
“Who are you?” Maria asked, flabbergasted.
Juste didn’t answer and went for another lunge at Tera.
“What are you doing here?” asked Tera.
She continued to dodge his sword, or block it with her claw-like nails.
“I’m trying to save your daughter,” growled Juste.
“From you.”Mélanie, who had been standing in the trees, too stunned by the suddenness of Juste’s attack, finally rushed into the clearing, unsure of what to do.
“No!
Please!
She’s not like them,” Maria shouted.
She tried to rush to her mother’s aid, but Tera quickly erected an ice wall between them.
However, the momentary distraction allowed Juste sword to slice Tera’s hand.
The wound seemed to make Tera more aggressive, as she started blasting jets of fire at Juste, who skilfully redirected them by pushing her arm aside each time.
“Now you show me a rat that’s different from any other rat,” Juste growled, locking Tera’s left arm under his sword arm.
“I’ve seen hundreds of vampires in my life, and they’re all the same.”
He grabbed Tera’s fingers as she tried to blast another spell at his face.
He mercilessly snapped them backwards with a sickening crack.
Tera yelped in pain, twisting out of his grip and jumping backwards.
Juste stabbed his sword into the ground and reached into the sleeves of his crimson coat, pulling out several throwing knives.
Mélanie watched, open-mouthed as he threw them with incredible speed.
Tera struggled to dodge them, even with her vampiric speed.
Loads of little tears were left on her black dress.
Eventually, Tera jumped onto one of the stones and into the air with wolf-like agility.
Juste pulled his sword out of the ground and got into a stance, ready for Tera’s oncoming attack.
With her left hand finally healed, Tera conjoined a glowing blue orb of her ice magic and dived at Juste.
Then, she thrust her arm out to the side and block of ice from the wall she’d erected came flying at Juste.
It caught him off guard, knocking his sword out of his hand.
Tera was on him in a flash.
Mélanie caught a shadow-scrawled glimpse of her falling on top of him; saw her eyes glowing blood-red, blazing with sheer animal ferocity.
Heard her snarl, a dark sliver sound, doglike.
Saw her fangs dripping with saliva and the sideward predatory lunge of her head.Breaking out her stupor, Mélanie quickly flicked her wrist and a throwing knife slotted into her hand.
She reared her arm back, preparing to launch it at the vampire’s head.
Suddenly, Tera stopped dead; her eyes went back to their normal flat green, widening when she realised what she just about to do.
“I’m sorry,” she said, pulling away.
“Juste… I don’t want to kill you.”
The ice wall melted as Tera stood up.
Juste to rose to his feet as well, staring at Tera.
The two of them seeming to come to an unspoken truce.
Mélanie lowered her throwing knife and made her way towards Maria, who had been watching the whole fight with wide, frightened eyes until now.
Her relief didn’t last long, though.
Maria’s face turned a nasty greenish colour once she saw Mélanie marching towards her.
Mélanie came to a halt in front of Maria, her hands on her hips, staring at her friend’s guilty face.“So,” she said pointedly.
“Hello, Mel,” said Maria, in what she clearly thought was a jaunty, winning voice.
“Have you any idea how worried I’ve been?” said Mélanie in a deadly whisper.
“Sorry, Mel, but see, I’ve been—”Maria and Mélanie were almost the same height, but Maria cowered back as Mélanie’s cold rage broke over her.
“Hideout empty!
No note!
Sun down… could have been attacked… out of my mind with worry… did you care? … never, as long as I’ve lived… I told you to come back and you completely ignored me, even Richter and Annette knew when to listen to reason…”“Ugh, Richter,” muttered Maria.
“You could do with taking a leaf out of Richter’s book!” said Mélanie, through clenched teeth, prodding a finger in Maria’s chest.
“You could have died, you could have been seen, you could have endangered the rest of us—”Mélanie stopped her scolding abruptly at sound in the distance, a vicious snarling.
All of them turned their heads in the direction it came from, and they ran into the trees to investigate, Juste picking up his sword from the ground before joining them.
They were soon crashing through the forest, branches whipping their heads and arms as Tera led the way cleverly through the widest gaps, following a path she obviously knew.
Mélanie looked sideways at Maria.
Her eyes were still wide from the fight earlier, but they weren’t popping anymore.
“What was Tera teaching you back there?”
Maria stared straight ahead, saying nothing, focusing on where she was going.
They smashed their way through the undergrowth, Juste puffing loudly behind her, and Mélanie saw Maria catch her sleeve as they squeezed past a large oak.
After ten noisy, breathless minutes, the trees thinned, and Mélanie again saw patches of sky.
Tera stopped so suddenly that Mélanie nearly slammed into her.
They had reached the edge of the forest.
It was dawn, the sky was pink-tinged blue as the sun rose above the trees in the east.
In the field below them, Mélanie could see the source of the monstrous noises.
It was a huge army of night creatures, all marching across the countryside, in the direction of the château.
“What are they?” asked Juste, staring at them incredulously.
Mélanie remembered he’d never seen night creatures before.
“The National Guard,” said Maria, a positively dangerous look crept over her face.
“I know.
Me and Mizrak witnessed the whole massacre,” said Mélanie.
She felt a horrible mixture of pity and repulsion as she looked down at them.
“It makes me sick looking at them,” growled Maria, “knowing that he did this.
Turned them all into night creatures.
He needs to be stopped.
“That’s a night creature too?” Juste asked, looking up at the sky.
Mélanie, Maria and Tera all looked up.
The winged Drolta was flying overhead; Mélanie was unsurprised, having seen her new form already; both Tera and Maria’s eyes went huge in the emerging sunlight, their mouths hanging open.
“Drolta,” Tera gasped.
“How’s that possible?”
“The Abbot.
That’s how,” said Mélanie, repeating what Olrox had told both her and Mizrak.
Tactfully, she didn’t mention that it was him who’d told her.
Tera did not speak.
Her flat green eyes were fixed on a point over Mélanie’s shoulder.
“Where’s Maria?” she asked.
Mélanie didn’t bother to look over her shoulder.
She turned to look out at the town in the distance and, sure enough, she spotted Maria.
She was using one of her birds to fly towards the town, but the bird’s feathers weren’t their usual scarlet and gold.
They were black, as if they had been coated in soot…
It reminded her of that black wolf Maria had summoned… and the black portal…
“No!” Tera cried, reaching her hand out towards her daughter.
She yelped in pain as her skin was singed by the sunlight, quickly pulling her hand back and clutching it against her chest.
“She’s going to the abbey,” said Tera fretfully.
“Juste, Mélanie, go after her!
I can’t get there fast enough to save her!”Mélanie’s heart jumped, a cliff-drop down her ribs, landing hard the pit of her stomach.
No, no, no.
Not this.
Please don’t go where she thought it was going.
“Save her from what?” Juste asked.“From what she’s about to do,” said Tera urgently.
“She’s going to kill her father!”

Mélanie’s eyes flicked to meet Juste’s, the terrible gravity of the situation sinking in.
“COME ON!” Mélanie shouted, but Juste needed no telling: he sprinted after her down the hill and across the countryside.
Mélanie knew what she had to do, knew she had to stop Maria from murdering the Abbot, no matter how much he deserved to die.
But Mélanie knew how she felt: gathering more information about Erzsebet’s plans could not bring the satisfaction of revenge; she too wanted to fight, to punish him, the man who’d caused them so much pain, and she wanted to go and find the rest of her friends, and above all make sure, make quite sure, that Richter was not — but she could not permit that idea to form into her mind —
She sprinted, half-believing she could outdistance death itself, ignoring the growls of the night creatures in the distance behind her, and the sound of the cobblestones under her feet as she entered the town, and the creaking of forests around them though the morning was windless; through the streets that seemed, themselves, to have risen in rebellion, she ran fast than she ever moved in her life, and it was she who saw the great building first, the abbey that housed the night creature-making machine.
And their Forgemaster: the Abbot himself.
Panting and gasping Mélanie slowed down, stopping just outside the abbey, listening to the screeches and growls that suggested Maria was already inside.
Juste caught up.
“What — what are we going to do?” panted Juste.
“How are — we going to stop her — she must want to kill him — so bad —”“Convince her?” wheezed Mélanie, bent double, clutching her chest.
“I don’t know if we can.
Once Maria sets her mind to something — there’s no talking her out of it.
But we have — to try nevertheless.
If not — there’s only one thing for it.”
Bracing herself for whatever was about to happen, Mélanie and Juste rushed towards the abbey’s doorways.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

The carnage had already started when Mélanie and Juste made it inside.
Maria was stood in the middle of the nave, her back turned; seven small black portals were above her head.
On the left-hand side, Maria’s tiger was tearing night creatures to pieces.
On the right, Maria’s birds were shredding more night creatures with their claws and beaks.
All of them were black and red, instead of their usual brighter, more vibrant colours.
The blackened creatures moved in sync with Maria’s fingers, which were swiping across the air as if she was conducting two orchestras at the same time.Mélanie and Juste made to rush towards Maria.
She heard them coming and turned around.
Maria glared at them: her eyebrows twitched as if she was holding back.
She pointed at them, a small black orb at the tip of her finger.
A black portal opened on the ground in front of them, Mélanie and Juste skidded to a stop once the large black wolf emerged from it, blocking their path.
The wolf growled at them, its evil, golden eyes blazing.
Then Maria turned back around and all the small portals behind her began merging together into one large, gurgling, inky-black hole.
It grew in size until it stretched across the width of the nave.
The black wolf suddenly did something very strange and alarming.
It started whimpering and cowered away from the giant, black mass, as if it were afraid of what was about to come out.
And Mélanie had the feeling she did want to find out either…
But for some reason, that thought didn’t bring her the same terror.
Mélanie felt calmer, somehow.
A strange quieting, as though thinking that thought made it easier to accept.
It wasn’t that she was terrified of what was going to happen, but she was not going to let Maria kill the Abbot.
It was hers to prevent, here and now.
And there was only one way to do that.
Mélanie turned to look at Juste, his eyes were wild, his breath wilder.
They only turned away when Mélanie tapped him on the shoulder.
“Juste, she’s not going to stop.
No matter what we say” said Mélanie frantically.
“There’s only one thing for it: I’m going to kill him before she does.
Keep her distracted.”
“What?
How?” Juste asked faintly.
“Just do anything.
Long enough until I can get over there!”
Without wasting her breath or sparing Juste another glance, Mélanie swung around and raced out of abbey.
She turned the corner, around the building and through the hole Annette had made in the wall.
Crouching down, Mélanie started to creep past the pews, keeping out of sight of both Maria and the black birds that were hovering nearby —
She screamed.
Her heart had left her chest to pound in her throat.
The earth shook and the sunlight leeched out of the church.
Mélanie looked up and then her mouth fell open.Dragon.
An enormous, vicious-looking dragon had partially emerged from the black portal, its back-half still within its depths.
The beast’s scales were indigo-blue, an odd fringe of fine spikes around its face.
Eyes a violent yellow, with vertical pupils like a cat’s, bulging with rage.
It let out a horrible noise, a yowling, screeching roar.
Its ginormous wings unfurled, stretching out across the entire width of the abbey, destroying the stone pillars that stood in their way.
The dragon glared down at the Abbot, who was cowering backward towards the altar.
His face was livid with terror.
“Maria, I never wanted to hurt you,” the Abbot shuddered.
Maria said nothing and glared him, suddenly terrible in her anger and the intensity of her pain.
The blue-green of her eyes had been swallowed by the same inky blackness of her magic. All she wanted to do was to burn him to a crisp.
All she wanted was his complete and utter annihilation.
Both of the dragon’s rear legs stepped out of the portal, which closed as its tail emerged.
The dragon let out another roar, and gush of scarlet flames flew at the ceiling from its open, fanged mouth.
“Maria,” Juste called out.
His voice seemed to snap Mélanie back into focus.
Okay, she breathed.
So, what could she do?She couldn’t try and tackle Maria, not with that dragon acting on her orders.Could she focus on the Abbot?
Yes.
He was too terrified to move, that made him an easy target.
Mélanie went to reach for her knives.
Wait, she stopped.
Looking down, Mélanie realised her hands were shaking.
That would throw her aim off; a single bad angle and she’d miss her mark.
Okay, what now?
She should have been trying to think about that when she was rushing towards the abbey, making mental notes on how she would kill the Abbot if it came down to it.
She’d known she might have to do if Maria proved to be beyond the point of reason.
She’d seen how Maria’s magic had changed into something darker, and she hadn’t realised how destructive it had become until seeing it action just now.
But that terror, it had blinded everything else while she’d been racing over here, and she hadn’t been thinking of the details of how she would kill the Abbot.Okay, so what could she do now?
Come on, think.
Keep her mind busy, so it didn’t go looking for that dark place at the back, where the terror lived.
The Abbot’s back hit the altar, nowhere left for him to go.
“I only wanted to protect the kingdom of God,” he said weakly.
“Maria!” Juste shouted, rushing towards her.
The dragon thrashed its spiked tail, narrowly missing Juste and destroying the bottom of a stone pillar where he’d been standing.Mélanie jumped, falling onto her side.
The landing was uncomfortable because of something in her trousers.
Of course, the pistol!
Mélanie pulled it out, and cocked the hammer back.
That was something she could do, though.
A plan, keep her mind busy.
Mélanie could shoot the Abbot with it, the bullet killing him almost instantly.
Though she would need to be precise, she couldn’t afford to miss his head.
Looking down, she could see hands were still shaking.
Mélanie took a deep breath.
She needed to get in close.
Turning back to the altar, she saw the Abbot falling to his knees.
“This isn’t what your mother wants,” said Juste.
Mélanie briskly crept towards the altar.
That’s it Juste, keep her distracted.
Just a little bit longer…“How do you know what my mother wants?” Maria asked furiously.
Mélanie was almost there… the Abbot was within range.“She sent me here to stop you,” Juste replied.
Mélanie raised the gun, both hands holding it steady.
“WHY?!” Maria roared, taking her eyes off the Abbot for the first time in minutes and looking at Juste.
Mélanie’s finger reached for the trigger.“Because you’re good, Maria,” said Juste, pleading.
“Your power is a force for good in the world.
Not for killing stupid old men.”
Mélanie faltered, her finger hovering over the trigger.
Wait.

Against her better judgment, Mélanie glanced over her shoulder.
The inky-blackness in Maria’s eyes started to recede, the blue-green becoming visible again.
Then, just as soon as it had returned, the blue-green was gone again, swallowed with black.
Rage black.
Murderous black.
Behind-Mélanie’s-eyes black.
Eclipse-black.
I’m-going-to-die black.
“MOST OF WHAT’S BAD IN THE WORLD IS BECAUSE OF STUPID OLD MEN!” Maria yelled, her long blonde hair flying loose as her green ribbon came undone.Fuck!
She’d been stupid.
Mélanie had said it herself: Once Maria set her mind to something, there was no talking her out of it.
Taking a deep breath, Mélanie didn’t bother with being stealthy anymore.
She stood up and ran towards the altar, the Abbot’s hands were clasped in a desperate prayer.
“Oh, God.
Oh, Heavenly Father,” he breathed hoarsely, desperate tears falling into his open mouth.
Mélanie skidded to a halt in front of the Abbot.
Her arm knew what to do.
She raised the pistol and her finger squeezed the trigger.
BANG!
The noise of the explosion filled the church.
There was an acrid sour smell of smoke.
The Abbot stared at her, as though in supreme inquiry, then his body slumped forward and fell to the ground with a crash.
From in between his eyes the blood flowed from a round neat hole.

“Maria!”
Mélanie snapped her head round when she heard Juste’s shout, shaky and more desperate than before.
Maria screamed in her direction.
A bottomless scream, raw and visceral.
She couldn’t see her.
The Abbot’s death hadn’t even registered in Maria’s mind.
Her eyes were consumed by the inky-blackness.
Blinded by her raw, primal rage.Nononononononono.
There wasn’t time to scream.
Mélanie broke into a run, desperate to get out of the way, as the dragon shot a torrent of scarlet fire at the Abbot’s corpse —
Then Mélanie’s right hand burst open and she knew she was dead: it was pain beyond imagining, pain past endurance —
She was gone from the abbey, her right arm was locked in the coils of a creature, so tightly bound Mélanie did not know where her arm ended and where the creature’s began: they were fused together, bound by pain, and there was no escape —
Blinded and dying, every part of her begging for release, Mélanie heard a metallic scream…
Loud.
So impossibly loud.
Mélanie tried to figure out where the sound was coming from, but she was weakening, her head emptying.
And as the shadows deepened around her, the creature’s coils loosened.
Explosions behind her eyes.
Mélanie felt the dry, rawness in her throat and she realised that scream was coming from her.
She felt herself separating from her own body.
Peeling away.
Darkness.
And her, disappearing down into it.

Mélanie came through the darkness, one eye cracked open at a time.
She quickly closed her right eye as something dripped into it.
It was a sound that led her out, something crackling by her ear.
Mélanie was shivering as though she lay on ice; she felt as though a white-hot poker were being applied to her right hand.
Her left eye was open but she couldn’t make sense of the shapes around her.
Not yet.
A disconnect between what she saw and what she understood.
And all she understood right then was pain, splitting open her hand, writhing up her arm.
But she could breathe.
She could hear herself breathing.
And then she couldn’t: the world growled and crackled around her.
But she knew that sound.
She understood it.
The dragon.
She was in the abbey.
She was lying down, on her back.
Two more blinks and suddenly the shapes around her made sense, her mind re-opening its doors.
A large, expansive space; cold stone and rough wood against one cheek; a scarlet light ahead of her, crackling flames at where the altar was.
She was in the abbey.
Yes, that was it, she told her newborn brain against the blinding pain.
And that was Maria’s dragon; that’s what she’d heard.
She must have been out for only a few seconds.
Half a minute at most.
The dragon had been right behind her when she’d killed the Abbot, murderous.
Blasted fire at her.
The flames must have caught her right hand as she’d scrambled to get away, ready to burn her to oblivion.Oh yes, that was the most important thing to remember, her mind now catching up.
The dragon had blasted fire at her.
She was dead.
No she wasn’t: she was alive and she’s gotten out of the way, thank God she’d gotten out of the way.
But she had been injured, her right hand had gotten caught in the flames.
The hand that had been holding the gun.
She had to see how bad it was, it was very important that she see how bad it was… taking great gulps of air, Mélanie pushed herself up with her left hand, willing herself not to black out again, the pain half-blinding her.
Mélanie hesitated.
Something pushed her forward.
A ghost at her neck.
She tried to open her right eye again, closing it as soon as she cracked it open.
Her left hand shook as she reached to wipe her eyelid, only to find blood — her blood, caked along her fingers.
With her right eye now clear, she looked down at her right hand.
And part of her knew before she saw it.
Part of her knew.Mélanie’s singed maroon sleeve was covered in her blood, which had splattered from her not-there hand.
Her right hand was not there anymore.
Her heart had gone too, throwing itself down the ladder of her spine, curdling in the acid in her gut.
Nononononononononononono.
How?
Mélanie stared, her eyes wide.
Breaths rattled in and out of her mouth and nose, hissing against the stands of hair that were sticking to her face.
Where her right hand had once been was now a bloodied, singed stump.
The hot and porcine smell of burnt flesh settled uncomfortably in her nostrils.“Mel!”
Mélanie forced herself to look up when she heard that shout from in front of her.
Maria was stood behind her dragon, her long blond hair hanging loose; the blue-green had fully returned to her eyes; they stared at her, wide with the hangman’s horror.
“Mel,” she panted, her chest heaving.
“Mel, I… I never meant to…”“I kno—” But Mélanie’s mind wasn’t focused on forming words.
It skipped from hand to exploded to missing.
The flintlock pistol had blown up in her hand when it got caught in the fire.
The flames must have incinerated the little bits of flesh that remained, all the way down to her wrist.Mélanie’s eyes darted to her right, past the dragon and towards the altar.
The light of sun that hung low in the sky filtered through the windows again.
Its light casting an eerie golden edge on the altar, on the crucifix that had warped from the heat of flames, on a corpse that was lying, face down on the ground.
The Abbot’s body was unrecognisable, burnt to a blackened crisp.
That dragon.
It’s scarlet flames.
That could have been her.
She had almost died.
Maria had almost killed both her and the Abbot.
Mélanie felt no sympathy for the Abbot.
He needed to die.
She did what she had to do, for both Maria’s sake and the world.
“Mel!”
She looked back at Maria.
Juste was there too, staring at her from further back.
“Mel, I’m so sorry!
I almost killed you!” Maria moaned, remorseful.
“I-I,” Mélanie stuttered.
Oh, it was just the girl who almost killed me by accident, don’t worry about it.
“I know.
You couldn’t stop yourself,” she said through clenched teeth.
“This is why you shouldn’t let emotions cloud your judgement.”
Then something started leaking into the room.
A black and tarry substance, neither liquid nor gas, gushed from the floor and walls.
There was a smell.
It oozed out of the walls and floor along with the black miasma.
Mélanie tried to tell herself it was only rot, or the accumulated damp guano of all the animals that had nested within the crevices in abbey’s stone walls — mice, rats, perhaps even a fox or two.
But it was more.
The smell was deeper than animal-stink, more entrenched.
It made her think of tears and vomit and blackness.
Mélanie, Juste and Maria all looked around, staring at the strange black substance.
Even the dragon turned its head to look, seeming to be just as confused as they were.
The black miasma glided across the abbey, travelling towards the altar where it coagulated into one big mass.
Behind the Abbot’s smouldering corpse, the black mass rose from the floor until it had assumed a humanoid shape.
The figure was strangely blurred around the edges, as though Mélanie were looking it through a misted window, and it flickered like a flame on a candle.
It was not human, but the spectre had an unsettlingly human, skull-like face.
Punched black holes gazed at them, watching, its mouth spread in a wide, toothy grin.
In that moment, Mélanie almost forgot the pain as she stared, wide-eyed at the black spectre.
The fear in her was sickening with its greatness, settling in her belly like a horrid pregnancy.
Then, the black mass extended across the floor, dark tendrils latching onto the Abbot’s corpse.
The spectre laughed, a raspy, cold laugh that made the hairs on stand up on the back of Mélanie’s neck.
The abbey rang with it, as though ten spectres were laughing all at once.
Next second, both the black spectre and the Abbot’s corpse sank into the floor.
They merged with the darkness and were gone, leaving only a black scorch mark on the floor.There was a long moment of stupefied silence; the blood-red tinge of the rising sun filtered through the windows.
Mélanie tried to stand up, but the pain was terrible.
The wince that erupted from her mouth echoed sharply through the silence.
“Mel!” Maria cried loudly.
“We need to get her to safety,” said Juste.
“We need to treat that stump before it festers.
Can you stand?”
“I think so,” said Mélanie weakly.
Shaking all over, she pushed herself up with her left hand, clenching her teeth against the white-hot pain steadily coursing through her right arm.
Her head was spinning as though she’d just travelled miles on one of Maria’s birds.
Speaking of Maria, the blonde girl was suddenly at her side, steadying her as swayed on her feet.
Maria awkwardly helped Mélanie down the nave and into Juste’s waiting arms.
“Hold your stump up for me,” he requested.
Mélanie held it up obediently, hissing as Juste clutched at her elbow to keep the shaking limb steady.
He observed it for a while, turning it over clinically.
“You’re lucky,” he said at last.
“The fire must have cauterised the stump when the gun exploded.
Stopped any bleeding.
We still need to treat those burns though when we get back.”
Mélanie followed Juste’s gaze as it focused on Maria.
She was sending her black and red tiger back into a portal in the floor; her birds and the wolf were already gone.
Once it had disappeared, she turned towards her dragon, the only one left.
She raised her hand and a large black portal appeared in front of it.
But instead of going back, the dragon turned around to face Maria, its fearsome yellow eyes narrowed dangerously.
It didn’t want to listen to her.
“I command you,” said Maria firmly.
The black portal moved so it was under the dragon’s feet, but it used its great leathery wings to prevent itself from sinking into the murky black hole.
Hovering in mid-air, the dragon let out a jet of fire from its fanged jaws at the ceiling.
“No!
I command you!” Maria shouted, desperation in her voice.
The dragon moved its long neck, turning its head at Maria, the scarlet sparks still sputtering in its mouth.
Panic riled up within Mélanie, warm and frothing and she wanted to do something.
But she couldn’t.
She was injured and couldn’t fight Maria’s beasts.
She couldn’t do anything, lest she get herself killed too.
Juste let go of Mélanie and sprinted towards Maria, left arm outstretched.
The dragon reared its head back.
Mélanie felt something new, unraveling from the pit of her stomach.
A primal feeling, ancient.
A terror beyond any words that could contain it.
It was everywhere: behind her eyes, beneath her skin.
Too strong.
Like a million, million pieces of her disappearing and reappearing at once, flickering in and out of existence.
They going to die.
Theyweregoingtodietheyweregoingtodietheyweredeadtheyweredeadtheyweregoingtodie.
She might just die from the feeling alone.
Her heart so fast it no longer sounded like a gun, but it couldn’t keep going like this.
It would give out.
It would surely give out.
Mélanie screamed, pushing the name Maria from her throat, but it wouldn’t do anything.
A hopeless cry in the dark.A great torrent of fire erupted from the dragon’s mouth.

“MARIA!” she screamed again as her vision was swallowed by scarlet light.
She grew her hands — hand — up in front of her face, shielding herself from the sudden blast of heat.
The sweltering heat of the fire that had burned the Abbot’s corpse to a blackened husk.
The sweltering fire that had warped fire metal crucifix.
The sweltering fire that had destroyed her hand.
The sweltering fire that was killing Maria and Juste —
Suddenly, a new colour flooded her vision: blue.
Sky blue.
Sapphire blue.
Calming blue.
Mélanie moved her hand away from her eyes and looked up.
Maria and Juste were crouched on the floor, unharmed.
Juste’s outstretched hand was enveloped with a blue light.
Mélanie’s brain slowly put the pieces together, too slowly, the terror dissipating.
Juste had shielded them from the flames.
He had saved Maria.
He had reawakened his lost magic, just as Richter had.
Dear God, Mélanie thought, is this what Richter must have felt?
When those vampires threatened to capture her, Maria, Tera and Annette.
Threatened to bring them to Erzsebet to let her do whatever her sadistic mind pleased with them?
Had he felt that same bottomless terror?
The wind whistled past her ear and an icicle pierced through the roof of the dragon’s mouth.
It gave a high, whistling cry of pain.
Landing on its hind legs, the dragon let out a roar of exasperation and climbed down into the black portal.
Once the indigo, scaly beast had disappeared from sight, Maria slammed her hand onto the floor and the black portal closed.
Mélanie let out a great sigh of relief.
Her tawny eyes travelled from the spot where the dragon had been, over Juste, whose hand stopped glowing blue when he clenched into a fist, then to Maria.
Trembling all over, Maria drew a great, shuddering gasp and she fainted.
Juste caught her before she could hit the ground.
“Is she okay?” Mélanie asked, her voice unsteady.
“Yes, she’s just exhausted herself,” said Juste, scooping Maria up into his arms.
“But you should be more worried about yourself.
You’re the one who’s injured here.”
“We can worry about my injury when we get back,” said Mélanie impatiently, the searing pain in her stump coming back to the forefront of her mind.
Seeing no point in arguing any further, Juste made his way towards the doorway, carrying the unconscious Maria.
Mélanie turned to follow him, clutching her arm just below the burns, but stopped when she saw Tera standing in the doorway.
Eyes flat and emotionless.
Watching.
“Take her somewhere safe,” said Tera.
Juste stopped next to her.
“These dark, monstrous things, she should leave them alone,” he said.
“Or they’ll corrupt her and destroy her.
Is that what you want?”
Tera said nothing.Juste walked out of the doorway and into the sunlight.
Mélanie followed him, shooting a suspicious glare at Tera as she passed.

----- CHAPTER BREAK -----

Mélanie forced herself to focus on walking, putting one foot in front of the other, the pounding stump making her feel as though she was about to throw up; her vision blurring worse than ever.
“You need to lie down… come on, now…”Juste slung the unconscious Maria over his shoulder so he could use his other arm to hold Mélanie steady.
He was half pulling, half carrying her (with extraordinary strength for a man so old) through the streets, narrow and winding; the sun was rising over the rooftops, staining the sky the pink of washed blood.
Mélanie heard the townspeople rising behind them as Juste made his way through the old streets, taking both her and Maria back to the hideout.
Over the cobblestones, past boarder of the town and the countryside, across the grass;
Mélanie heard nothing but the heavy breathing of Juste as he helped her walk.
At least there were no hostile townspeople to worry about now, Mélanie thought.
No vampires to do damage to them, like leeches that fed on a slow swimmer.
Now the light had spilled across the land, and all evil things slept (most of them, at least).
It was to be a beautiful day, crisp and clear and filled with sunshine.
By and large the town (not knowing it was dead) would go off to their jobs with no inkling of the night’s work.
According to the Old Farmer, sunset tonight would come at seven o’clock sharp.
Mélanie did not speak on the way back.
Her throat was locked.
Just keep going, she told herself.
Keep going.
She could worry about her injury when they got back, but for now, Mélanie walked with Juste holding her steady.
That’s all.
One foot in front of the other, even if she had to drag them, even when the hole in her heart became too big to keep standing.
She walked and tangled her fingers into Juste’s tailcoat, fingertips in the creases of the crimson fabric.
She might just be able to figure this out.
Just one foot in front of the other, that was all.
Eventually, they found themselves in a familiar thicket of trees.
Moments later, they were back at the abandoned castle.
Mélanie heard Juste place the unconscious Maria down, and felt a cup being pushed into her hand.“Drink it… you’ll feel better… come on now, Mélanie, we need to focus on treating your stump…”Juste helped tip the stuff down Mélanie’s throat; she coughed, a peppery taste burning her throat.
The abandoned castle came into sharper focus, and so did Juste… he looked as white as Maria had when she realised what she’d done, and both eyes were fixed unblinkingly upon Mélanie’s face.
Maria was lying on one of the low stone walls, eyes still closed.Before Mélanie could say anything, a twig snapped behind them.
Mélanie and Juste spun around.
Mizrak was standing in the doorway, a dead pheasant in his hand.
For a moment there was silence as Mélanie, Juste and Mizrak stood staring at each other, the former two covered in dust and sweat and (in Mélanie’s case) blood.
Then Juste broke the silence.
“You must be the monk.
I’m Juste Belmont.
Richter’s grandfather.”
“Are they all right?”
Mizrak walked closer.
His eyes went wide when he noticed Mélanie’s burned stump.
“Your hand!
What the hell happened?”
he asked more urgently.“Maria was going to kill her father,” said Mélanie, staring down her unconscious friend.
Her head felt clearer; the stump wasn’t hurting so badly; she could see Juste’s and Mizrak’s faces distinctly.
“I couldn’t let her do it… no daughter should have to kill their own parent…” Mélanie muttered.
It seemed important to explain this.
“Maria had summoned a massive dragon… it blasted fire at me… caused the gun to explode in my hand… but I did it… I killed him before she could.”Mizrak let out his breath in a long, low hiss, “Did the devil come?”“I don’t know if it was the devil,” said Juste thoughtfully.
“Something came.”
“Did he accept his death?” asked Mizrak.
“Did he face it with courage?”
“No.”
Maria had opened her eyes, scoffing at Mizrak’s question as she sat up.
“Not even a little bit,” Mélanie added tonelessly.
“He died like a bloody coward.”Mizrak sighed heavily, his face growing forlorn.
While Mélanie might not feel any sympathy for Emmanuel, Mizrak clearly did.
He once been a good man… apparently.
“So, that’s who you are,” said Maria, looking up a Juste.
(Mélanie began wondering just how long she’d been awake).
“You do Speaker magic.
Though you didn’t when you were fighting my mother.”
Juste turned away from Maria, “When Richter regained his magic, he said it was because he had to.”
“You didn’t need to do it for me,” said Maria.
“I could have saved myself.”
“No, you couldn’t, Maria!” Mélanie balked.
“That dragon was going to kill you, and it’s no use looking at me like that, you know it’s true.
If it hadn’t been for Juste, you would have ended up as black as your father’s corpse.”
Maria glared at her, any previous concern or remorse for being the cause of her injury forgotten.
“She’s right, Maria,” said Juste, turning to face them again.
“Fire and ice and wind, they’re just the elements.
Things in this world we learn how to bend to our will.
But those things you conjure, they’re from a place we don’t understand.
Maybe the same place where your father’s soul was dragged.”“Of course it’s not the same place,” snapped Maria, standing up.
“Whatever it is,” Juste said gently, “those monsters, they’re conjured from despair, Maria.
Despair will rot you from the inside out.”
“You’re Richter’s grandfather.
Not Mine.
So maybe you should mind your own business,” said Maria angrily.
Then she hopped over the stone wall and stalked off through one of the doorways.
Mélanie sighed.
Of course Maria would still be angry.
Revenge never brings you any relief, not matter how much you may think it.
It doesn’t undo the damage that was done to you.
But those were thoughts for later.
“You don’t have children, do you, monks?” asked Juste, briefly glancing at Mizrak.
“Well, you’re not supposed to.
I’ve never understood that vow-of-chastity business, to be honest.
Doesn’t sound healthy to me.
Not having children, thought, that makes a lot of sense.”
Mizrak’s face, whilst Juste was talking, was very strange.
He nervously averted his eyes away from Juste, and beads of sweat were rolling down his face.
Wait a minute, had he and…?
Mélanie quickly abandoned that thought.
She didn’t want to know.
“Mélanie?” said Juste gently.
Mélanie looked at him and grimaced again; the pain in her stump, which she had not noticed all the time she had listened to Juste a Maria arguing, now returned in full measure.
She also realised she was shaking.
Juste gripped her uninjured arm.
“We need to focus on treating your stump now,” he said.
“And those gashes on your face.”Mélanie nodded.
A kind of numbness and sense of complete unreality were upon her, but she did not care; she was even glad of it.
She didn’t want to have to think about anything that had happened since she had first raced into the abbey.
She didn’t want to have to examine the memories, fresh and sharp as portraits, which kept flashing across her mind.
Maria, those dark creatures she summoned.
The Abbot, knelt on the ground, hands clasped in a desperate prayer.
The dragon, emerging from the black portal.
Scarlet flames… about to kill her… Scarlet flames… about to kill Maria and Juste….
“Juste,” Mélanie mumbled, “you said that Maria’s creatures were conjured from despair, right?”
“Yes,” said Juste.
His voice, which had been so calm throughout the argument with Maria, shook very slightly for the first time.
“Why do you ask?”
“Maria’s creatures don’t usually look like that,” said Mélanie as Juste helped her onto a stone wall.
“They’re usually much brighter colours, not black.
And Maria’s never had any trouble controlling them before.”
“She was using a different kind of magic,” Juste explained.
“Do you have any medical supplies here?”
“Yes,” said Mizrak.
“They’re over there.
I’ll get them and some water, too.”
Mizrak put down the dead pheasant and rushed over to the other side of the ruins.
He came back a few minutes later with a bag and bucket of water in his hands.
Juste took them and unfastened the bag.
“As I was saying, magic is very much like a sword,” said Juste.
“It has two sides: one that’s used for survival, the other that used for slaughter.
The side that is used depends on the wielder.”
“Maria’s never used that kind of magic until now,” said Mélanie.“Well, things have changed a lot for Maria in the past few days,” said Juste.
He got out a rag which he dunked into the water.
Then he wrung it out and began lightly dabbing it on Mélanie’s stump of an arm.
The burns stung and Mélanie couldn’t help but let out a pained hiss.
“She was almost killed by her own father and her mother got turned into a vampire,” Juste continued.
“Everything we see and experience is interpreted by our mood.
How we feel and what we’re doing with it.
If you feel angry or afraid or upset, you interpret everything in a more negative light.
I know from experience that a person’s magic is heavily tied to their emotions, so when they’re feeling negative, their magic becomes that, too.”
Once he’d finished dabbing the stump, Juste reached into the bag and got out an ointment.
He scooped some out with his fingers and began applying it to Mélanie’s stump.
“So the creatures became more angry and violent when Maria was feeling that way,” Mélanie mused thoughtfully.
“Maybe she lost control of the dragon because she was feeling so many things at once.
Anger towards the Abbot.
Guilt for hurting me.
Fear of the dragon.
Emptiness because revenge doesn’t bring any relief.
She probably didn’t know how to feel, and that’s why she couldn’t control it.”
“Maybe…” muttered Juste.
“Or those creatures are just too violent.”
“But why?” Mélanie asked.
“Why would Tera teach her something so dangerous in the first place?
It just seems to out of character.”
“Remember what I said when we were looking for Maria?” Juste asked.
Mélanie nodded.
“Newly turned vampires are unpredictable.
It twists a person’s pain into something more insidious.
It must have made Tera feel greater animosity towards the Abbot than usual.
And even if she had good intentions, she’s encouraged her daughter towards darker practices because her desires have twisted as well.”Juste stopped talking in favour of applying a dressing of bandages to her stump.
Once he’d secured it tightly, he tied Mélanie’s hair out of her face and began cleaning the blood off.
It had been coming from three large gashes; two on her forehead and one on her left cheek.
Juste applied the ointment to them and told her to take it easy for the rest of the day.
Juste left her to check on Maria and Mizrak left to prepare the dead pheasant.
Now alone, Mélanie stared down at her bandaged stump.
What could she do now?
She was down to one hand and two legs.
It would be very difficult for her to fight now.
She’d likely just end being a deadweight.
But, no, that wasn’t right, she told herself, massaging her arm and a pins-and-needles sensation spread through her not-there-hand.
She wouldn’t be a complete deadweight, it was knowledge that was bone-deep, a knowledge that would outlive her.
She could still throw her knives with one hand.
And she had the stiletto holsters around her ankles.
She just needed to practice.
She would live to see Richter again.
Her mother.
Her father.
Her baby brother.
Cassandra, more a sister than a cousin.
Annette.
Tera, even though she was now a vampire.
Emiliya.
Jacob.
Sarah.
Alucard, even.
Mélanie was lucky.
So lucky.
Why hadn’t she ever stopped to think about how lucky she was?
All those who cared about her, whether she deserved it or not.
A new feeling now.
Not the panic from earlier.
It was less bright than that, heavier, sadder, slow moving, but it hurt so much more.
She’d almost died and she would never have seen them again.
Any of them.
Not Richter’s lopsided smile or his ridiculous laugh, or any of the hundred ways he had of telling her that she was his best friend.
Never hear him call her Mel again.
Never see her family, not her friends.
All those last moments with all of them, and Mélanie hadn’t know those had almost been her final goodbyes.
Her eyes welled up and spilled over, running down her cheeks, causing the gash on her left one to sting.
Why couldn’t she sink through the ground right now, disappear, but disappear to somewhere the vampires couldn’t get to her?
At least she’d told Cassandra she loved her before she ran away from home.
At least Cassandra would’ve had the small moment to hold onto.
But what about her parents?
When had she last said that to them, or Martin?
Would Martin even remember what she looked like, when he was all grown up?
And what about Maria — when was the last time she told Maria she cared for her?
Not enough, never enough.
What if she didn’t truly know?
Her death would have destroyed her, because it would have been her fault.
Mélanie cried harder, tears gathering into her hand as she pushed it over her eyes.
Please don’t let her blame herself.
Maria was one of her best things, and Mélanie would have been one of the worst things that happened to her.
A pain in her chest she’d never forget.
But Mélanie was still alive, and she could still help her, Mélanie was sure of it.
Mélanie could do that for her.
Justice: that slippery word, but they would need it, so they could all eventually learn to move on from everything that had happened.
Wait, what was the date today?
She didn’t even know the date of the day she’d almost died.
She cried harder and harder, until those more rational parts of her took over, pulled her back from despair.
Yes, she would help Maria and the others defeat the vampires, would send them into oblivion.
But there was a difference between wanting to defeat someone and being able to do it.
A world of difference between those two things; Mélanie had learned the hard way.
Juste and Mizrak were supposed to be keeping a lookout for any hostile townspeople who might try to attack their hideout, but they were putting most of their time into helping Mélanie practice.
“Don’t worry about it,” Mizrak said shortly, when Mélanie had pointed it out to them, and she didn’t mind practicing on her own for a while.
“At least
you’ll be prepared for when Erzsebet’s army starts to march on Paris, which will be very soon now.”
“Good training for when become a fully fledged vampire hunter,” said Juste excitedly, impressed with Mélanie’s talent with throwing knives when he’d been watching her, and he was flabbergasted when she revealed she was self-taught.
The mood in the abandoned castle as they entered the afternoon became determined and tense again.
Everyone was preparing for when Erzsebet’s army began to march towards Paris; whether she did that with Sekhmet’s second soul was another matter entirely.
One that was out of their control.
Mélanie was practicing with her throwing knives in every available moment.
She felt more confident about her skills the longer she practiced.
This task would undoubtedly be difficult and dangerous, but Mélanie had found ways to fight monstrous creatures and vampires before, but now she was without her right hand and this time she had some notice, some chance to prepare herself for what lay ahead.Tired of walking in on her all over the hideout, Juste had let her use the crop of trees just outside as long as she didn’t push herself too hard.
She had soon mastered throwing three knives one-handed with her usual accuracy, firing her stilettos from her ankle holsters, to take her enemies by surprise, and useful manoeuvre suggested by Juste where Mélanie throws several knives in the air, balance them on he arm as they fall down, and launch them at her target.
She was still having trouble with catching several knives with one hand, though.
They either kept fall onto the ground or cutting her hand, luckily none of them were too deep.
She also spent ten minutes practicing her hand-to-hand combat skills with one hand.
The last time she’d practiced was with Richter five months ago; he’d beaten her but had said she was “surprisingly good”.
Mélanie also practiced diligently with her dagger, practicing hitting all of the targets on Jacob’s time-of-death timetable she’d followed like gospel for years.“You’re doing really well, though,” Juste said encouragingly, looking down at their list and crossing off the skills Mélanie was already very competent with.
“Some of these are bound to come in handy.
How about we take a break now?”
“All right,” Mélanie agreed without protest, but not because she wanted to stop practicing.
Once Juste was out of sight and earshot, Mélanie approached Mizrak.
“How do you know that?”
“Know what?” asked Mizrak, puzzled.
“How do you know Erzsebet’s army will be marching Paris very soon?” asked Mélanie curiously.
Mizrak’s face fell the moment she’d asked this.
He quickly looked around, checking nobody was around to overhear them.
“Olrox,” he whispered.
“He told me what Erzsebet was doing after Juste had treated your injuries.
But never mind, that’s not important at the moment,” he added briskly, turning away from her and walking back towards the hideout.
Mélanie raised an eyebrow.
Favaras iz er azoy iberkern?
Maria’s back was turned to Mélanie and Juste in the darkness, lit the by ghostly glow of the lemon slice moon.
She was standing in front of a black portal, but nothing came out of it.
The murky black hole just hovered there, inert.
Ever since they’d gotten back from the abbey, Maria had been in a bad mood and demanded to be left alone whenever they’d approached her.
She would come out briefly for mealtimes, but only to grab her plate and take it back to her sleeping space to eat alone.
No one saw much point in pursuing the issue, at the time, so they’d let her stew in her bad feelings.“Are you trying to conjure something?” Juste asked.
“Or just staring into the abyss?”
“I know you think I did a terrible thing,” Maria muttered.
“Trying to kill my own father.”
“You’re a very powerful magician, Maria,” said Juste.
“Especially for one so young.
But you draw your magic from an ancient source which perhaps you don’t fully understand.”
“Oh, because you understand everything about fire and ice,” snapped Maria.
“Do you know what I think, Maria?”
Mélanie said.
“I’ve had time to think since I lost my hand.”
When Maria didn’t reply, Mélanie took this as her prompt to continue.
“I killed him, Maria.
And I don’t even think I regret it.
Because he was going to kill more people and turn them into night creatures.
All protect his own position of power.
The world is better place without him.
Safer.
No more people will turned into night creatures and forced to serve Erzsebet after their deaths.
But you weren’t going to kill him with any of that in mind, were you?
Or maybe that’s what you told yourself if you did.
You were going to kill him purely out of hate.”
Mélanie briefly paused to let out a heavy sigh.
“I used to hate people all the time if they’d wronged me, and I still do.
But I’ve realised that if you make decisions out fear or anger, you’re more likely to be wrong.”“It felt right to me,” said Maria bitterly.
“Eech veys.
It always does,” said Mélanie calmly.
“That’s what everyone thinks: If something is right then it will feel right, and you know what?
If that was the case, we would always be making the right decisions.
And we don’t.”
“You have it easy, Mel,” said Maria fiercely.
“You’re perfectly calm.
Since this means nothing to you…”“He deserved to die.”
A calm, collected voice, like a smooth note from a cello.
Why had her hand dropped to her dagger in her robes?
They turned and saw Tera emerging from the trees, walking towards them.
Mélanie stared and waited, cautiously.
“Maria, be careful,” said Juste as Maria made her way towards Tera — the black portal following her from behind.
“It feels good… to have such power,” Maria told her mother.
“To control such powerful forces.
To have power over life and death.”
“It shouldn’t feel good, Maria,” said Juste.
Mélanie noticed Maria’s hands clenching into fists, and how the black portal began to pulsate.
“The world can be a dark place, full of horror,” said Juste gently.
“But if you surrender to the darkness, what’s the point in living?
None of us counts for much.
All of us will be forgotten eventually.
But there’s something miraculous about us being here at all.
To see this world.
Breathe its air.
Smell the forest at night.
Feel the sun our skin.
If we’re still able to do that… there is a point in living.”Mélanie could tell that even though he was talking to Maria, his speech was directed at Tera as well, based on how Juste was looking at the vampire, who stared intently at him, at a loss for words.“And maybe there’s even more point in living forever,” said Maria, her voice shaking.
“They’re right.
This was different.
Trying to kill my father.
This was murder.
And I almost murdered Mel, too.
I can never go back to who I was.”
Mélanie felt fear and warning kindle her nerves, her hand tightened on the hilt of her dagger.
Maria moved until she was in front of her mother.
She raised a shaking hand to her collar.“But I could be with you forever,” said Maria, pulling back her collar and exposing her neck.
Tera gasped, her flat green eyes went huge as she stared at Maria’s neck, gritting her sharp teeth.
Mélanie pulled her dagger out of her robes.
Two balls of fire appeared in Juste’s palms.
“Get away from her, Tera,” he growled.
Maria turned her head, her bright eyes trailing towards the abandoned castle, finding Mélanie and Juste standing there, latching on.
Her breathing grew heavier, her eyes sharpening.
“It’s my life!
I choose what to do with it!” Maria said fiercely, baring her teeth.
Tera floated backwards as the black portal grew in size.
Juste saw it coming.
Mélanie saw it coming.
In one quick, shuddering movement, Maria wrenched out her arm and a black mass emerged from the portal.
It was giant, insectoid creature with elongated limbs.
It’s eyes were a piercing red, filled with hatred.
The creature opened its maw, revealing a red, humanoid creature fused to the roof of its mouth, which let out high-pitched screech at them.
Its breath in their faces was foul beyond measure, the breath of tombs.
“Stop, Maria!” Tera shouted desperately.
“Send it back.
My darling, send it back.”Maria turned to face her mother, a positively anguished look on her face.“This is not what I want.
And it’s not what you want either,” said Tera, as the black, insectoid monster retreated back into the portal before it vanished.
Mélanie placed her dagger back in her robes, Juste extinguished the fire in his palms.
Tera stepped closer and placed a pallid hand on her daughter’s cheek.
“I love you, Maria.
With all my heart,” said Tera quietly.
“All I want is to be close to you.
But if you’re to find yourself again, it can’t be with me.”
Tera lowered her hand.
Maria heard it in her voice.
She stared at her mother, eyes wide, eyebrows lowered.
“Where are you going?” Maria asked, her voice catching, fighting the whistling of the trees.
“Goodbye, my darling girl.
I need to find myself, too,” said Tera, her voice quiet, eyes glazing as she stepped away.
“Take care of her,” she said, looking up at Juste, who nodded, his expression hardening.
It was an echo of her words when she’d saved her daughter at the abbey, saved her by sacrificing her humanity.
Now she had to save her again, that was Tera’s choice.
And Mélanie knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that it was the right one to make.
Maybe the other choices she’d made haven’t been, maybe every decision up to this point since her transformation had been wrong or bad, untraveled paths and other lives.
This choice was the worst of them all, hurt both her and Maria the most, but it was right, it was good.
One of them had to be the first to leave.
The first to take that last look.
It was Tera.
She turned, and ran away into the trees.
“Mum!
Mum!”
Maria ran after her, voice desperate and clawing.
Mélanie and Juste followed her in a run.
“Mum, please don’t leave me!” she begged.
“Please!”
Tera kept running and didn’t look back, despite her daughter’s pleas.
Maria caught her ankle on a tree root and she fell pathetically to the ground.
“Please don’t leave me!” she cried, her voice thick with tears.
By the time Mélanie and Juste caught up, Maria was crying out into the ground, the wind carrying her sobs, and Tera was gone.

Maria had cried and cried until she was empty because she knew, just as Mélanie did.
Just as Tera undoubtedly did.
They couldn’t rest.
They couldn’t have a normal life back, the one thing they wanted above all else.
The one thing all this had been for.
That was it, the price they’d have to pay.
They all had spent hours talking it over with themselves, running scenarios, asking ifs and whens, and they couldn’t see any other way through this.
The one way for Tera to keep her daughter safe from her.
Tera had always known what had to be done.
Even though it might just kill her to do it.
Mélanie, Maria and Juste were sat in the ruined tower, a campfire was burning in the centre.
Maria’s face in the near-dark, underlit by the orange glow of the campfire, shadows like bruises around her dejected green eyes.
Her voice was all Mélanie heard, staring up at the dark shadows on the collapsed ceiling, moulding their shapes into her mind as Maria spoke.
Eyes wide open, so they couldn’t be glued shut.
The cold biting on her skin.
You have it easy, Mel.
You’re perfectly calm.
Since this means nothing to you…In her head, Mélanie lifted and dipped the words, just as Maria had, laid the same pressure on the same syllables.
Maria hadn’t brought it up again, when Tera had arrived and told her how good the dark power felt, Juste made his speech to both of them.
Maria then asked her mother to make her a vampire, and she’d almost fought both Mélanie and Juste over it.
Her mother had stopped her, saying they needed to find themselves… apart.
Tera had ran off into the trees, and Maria couldn’t follow her.
She’d lost her mother, again.Mélanie tried that sentence again, filling herself with Maria’s voice, analysing it from every angle, staring into every gap and intake of breath.
It was out of anger, what she’d said, that was all.
But it was not an accusation that friends, especially not best friends, make of each other.

Since this means nothing to you, the Maria in her head told her.
She knew what she’d meant at the time, that Mélanie was able to remain calm whilst she was lost in her anger and grief.
But that’s not what she meant in this echo in her head.
It was an insult.
An insult against her, against their friendship. Since this means nothing to you.It was the same as always, Richter and Maria running off ahead into the fight, while Mélanie stayed behind and cleaned up after them.
It was the same as always.
But even as she told herself that, Mélanie knew it wasn’t true anymore.
Still, she was going do it again, but she wasn’t letting Maria off the hook this time.Maria had to apologise.
They would fight the vampires, and defeat Erzsebet and Drolta, then Mélanie would make Maria apologise.

“There’s a war going on,” the real Maria said.
“Why don’t we let other people worry about that for now?” said Juste gently.
“No,” Maria sighed.
“There’s a war.
We have to go and fight in it.”
And how do you plan to fight a war against your enemy, whilst you’re fighting a war with yourself, Mélanie though.
And loosing, she added.She shook that thought off for now and got up to find Mizrak.
She found him rather quickly; he was on his knees, murmuring a prayer to himself, which Mélanie caught bits of as she edged closer.
“…nor standeth in the way of sinners.
But his delight in in the law of the Lord.
And he shall be like a tree.
Planted by the rivers of water.”
Suddenly, Mizrak broke off and stood up.
Mélanie was halfway along the distance between herself and the monk, which was now very dark, when she heard another voice speak.
“I’m leaving.”
Mélanie stopped and a second later, she recognised it as Olrox’s.
She hesitated, not wanting them to know she’d heard them, when the sound of Mizrak speaking made her stop, then move closer.
As quietly as she could, she crept behind a wall fairly close to where they were standing and out of sight.
She breathed evenly through her nose, just as she had when she’d eavesdropped on Olrox and Drolta in the graveyard.“Where are you going?” Mizrak was asking.“Home,” said Olrox calmly.
“She’ll see it as a betrayal, of course, and one day she’ll want her revenge.
The New World is vast.
Always somewhere else to go.”
“You should stay here and fight.”
“I know when a war is lost.”
Olrox’s voice was melancholic in a way Mélanie had never heard before.
“My people knew splendour which would make your head swim.
Great cities, vast palaces, magnificent temples to honour our terrifying gods.
When we first saw the Spanish Christians, we laughed.
How could they threaten us?
But I remember the moment when I knew.
In the fires which destroyed Tenochtitlan, I knew that it was over.
And our terrifying gods could do nothing to save us.”
“Perhaps your gods were the problem,” Mizrak mused.
Olrox made a grunt, and Mélanie wasn’t sure if it was in agreement or disagreement.
“When the Spanish conquered you, you were still human?” Mizrak asked.“Yes,” said Olrox wearily.
“One of them made me a vampire.
Something else they brought with them from the Old World.”There was a silence.
Mélanie leant still closer to them, desperate to hear more.“Come with me.”
“And spend a lifetime running from her?
No.”
Mizrak said it without any bitterness.
Olrox let out a sad and resigned sigh, one that seemed to carry the weight of his immense age.“Then take care in the battle to come,” said Olrox heavily.“If you have a soul, Olrox,” said Mizrak, “and maybe you do, I hope it finds peace.”
Mélanie heard soft whooshing sound, and she saw a cloud of black mist rising overhead and disappearing into the darkness. Mélanie looked curiously at where Olrox had vanished.
The two of them had barely any contact with each other, apart from when Olrox had given them the Abbot’s spell book, and when he’d stopped Mizrak from trying to help the Revolutionary Army.
It now dawned on Mélanie, however, that soft, ghostly exhale she’d heard after Richter, Annette and Alucard had left hadn’t been imaginary after all.
Mizrak seemed to have heard it too, seemed to have sense something behind them.
It was the exact same sound Olrox made when he sublimated into mist.
He’d been watching them.
Or, more likely, now that she thought about it, watching Mizrak.The vampire had been trying to keep him safe this whole time.
That explained everything.
Olrox had made his presence known to Richter in the dungeon because he was worried Mizrak would have been killed.
He saved Mizrak multiple times during the disastrous fight at the abbey, first from a vampire cultist then from Erzsebet.
And he’d been happy when Mélanie lectured Mizrak on his recklessness because that meant there was someone else who could keep the monk in check when he wasn’t around.
The grass rustled, and a few seconds later footsteps told Mélanie that Mizrak was making his way back into the castle ruins.
Mélanie stayed where she was, listening to the muffled talking around her and wondering why she didn’t feel more scared.