Eternal Night

(I) Chapter 5: Reunions

Frankie was seated on the railing that lined the edge of the Széchenyi chain bridge, one of the famous lions at her back. She leaned against the stout square slab of stone behind her, eyes absently scrutinizing the dark waters of the Danube down below, a black colored cigarette between her lips. Taking in the reflected lights of the city on the river with great indifference, her mind hummed with thoughts and memory.

Her brother had momentarily left her at her own insistence to take care of some alliance business and he was now fifteen minutes past his intended return. His continued absence had her wondering if the decision to set up boundaries at a time like this was entirely prudent. She was as much a part of the alliance as he, and yet here she was, willingly sitting out a critical meeting with a potential ally. And he was late.

Rémy was many things, but he had never been the sort to be tardy without providing some advanced warning first. She had half a mind to get up and go look for him, but walking these particular streets at this hour alone and in her weakened state would have been nothing short of stupid, and so she stayed put.

It was too risky to go hunting by herself – especially with Augustine's private law-enforcers roaming the streets. The last thing anyone needed was for that madman to find out that she was in the city... that she was even still alive in the first place.

No, she'd stay where she was and give him five more minutes to check in before she'd call for help. Besides, her current steady descent into debilitating depression was and would always be far more manageable than free-falling face first into the black that came with Marcus Augustine.

She shuddered as old memories started to lightly claw at the back of her brain, a dark chapter of her life that she had no desire, let alone strength to revisit. Frankie had spent the better half of a century trying to forget the horrors she had endured at the hand of Augustine. If she was being honest with herself, she was still – nearly two hundred years later – trying to forget what had happened in that old, Italian dungeon. The rest of the time in between had been, until recently, devoted to her journey toward healing, to learning who she was again, or at the very least to find some sense of normalcy in her new life.

But even now, she continued to struggle with the way in which her existence had been irreparably altered.

Her life, she figured, could easily be defined as a constant, never-ending uphill battle... one she had grown excessively weary of as of late. Fortunately, many of the usual side-effects of those cursed years hadn't come to plague her with the familiar nightmares – a small miracle, and one she was grateful for.

She wasn't sure she could deal with her present woes on top of reoccurring nightmares... Horrid dreams of ancient crypts beneath old Roma; vampires in ceremonial robes; their cruel, twisted faces; the tormented screams of their victims. The needles, the tubes, the blades, the pain... the inconsolable hunger and rage and fear.

Frankie shut her eyes and inhaled as deep as she could, feeling the sweet smoke of the cigarette burning her lungs and easing her passage back into reality.

She opened her eyes as she exhaled slowly, wrapping an arm around herself – in part to self-soothe, but mostly because she suddenly felt cold. Her gaze returned to the river, attention following its meandering path until her eyes fell upon the imperial palace, situated on the bank of the river some miles away. It was a beautiful building, opulent and perfectly situated on the bones of an old world long-since passed.

But even at this distance, with its glistening lights and grand towers and turrets, spires and balconies, it still felt much too close for comfort, even now. There had been nights in the past when she could have sworn Augustine was watching her, waiting for the right moment to strike and finish what he had started nearly two centuries ago – and right now was no exception.