Long hours trapped in a finite space with people one enjoys can be trying, but long hours trapped in a finite space with people one loathes can be an utter nightmare.
The day wore on as all days do, the sun pinnacling and rounding the otherwise empty sky as we traversed a low terrain of uniformed blandness. Inside the border of New Mexico, the desert became flatter, redder, interrupted only by irregular rock formations, stunted brush, and the occasional fence. All I could do was stare across the beige plain and muddle through my situation.
The huntress tried to keep up a conversation—and managed to do so quite well, considering I was ignoring her and Saule was intent on reading her foul tome. I inadvertently learned Connie was an only child, her parents had died when she was young, and she had spent much of her formative years in the care of Tiber. As far as backstories went, hers was fairly typical, though it lacked the tragic childhood cliché I would have thought mandatory for a young renegade vampire hunter. She wasn't driven by revenge or hatred, just a reckless need to follow in Tiber's footsteps and to do him proud.
I didn't tell her the Aos Sí was using her as all his kind used humans. The man was too old and too grizzled to continue his sole campaign against the vampires, so he'd enlisted the aid of an impressionable human, training her, shaping her into a better, shinier weapon. Though he may have been affable with Connie, I knew the man was a cheat and liar because if he had truly cared about the girl, he would not have sent her out into the desert to kill alone. He would not have sent her across the country with two strangers, alone.
I allowed the woman her ignorance, because it was not my place to shatter her illusions. Humans often claimed a desire to know more about the others of their world, but time and experience had shown they thrived in ignorance and stagnated in knowledge. The truth was cruel. The world of their fairytales didn't exist. In its place was a realm of terrors, pain, and struggles to survive. There were no elves, no fairies, no angels or pixie dust. There were only bereft, hungry creatures wanting to destroy and to be destroyed.
When night fell and Connie was too exhausted to drive more, I took her place behind the wheel and the huntress climbed into the back with the panting mutt, slumping over without another word shared. Saule slid into the passenger seat and sat cross-legged with her book in her lap, reading by the flickering ray of a dying flashlight as we drove across the flat plain.
For a time, I was given blessed silence interrupted only by distant voices breathing through the radio static, bleating about lost lovers and broken hearts.
The scratch of pages rotating and coming together paused, so I glanced at Saule. She was partially turned in her seat, looking down at the huntress snoozing on Bram's proffered haunch. The headlights of slow-moving truckers I passed crossed the witch's face, revealing its introspection and the diminutive lines at her lips that belied her true age.
"I feel kinda sorry for her," she whispered, setting her chin atop her folded hand. "Like she's jumped feet first into a pit of snakes thinking there's bumble-brush down below."
"I'm sure I've misunderstood that because it was yet another one of your charming witch colloquialisms—," I said as I adjusted my grip on the wheel and stretched my neck. "The woman's naïve."
"So?" Saule shrugged, eyes half-closed as she turned in her seat again. "I am too. It's not a crime."
She read again, though without the same fervor as before. The witch traced the words with her fingers, gaze on me, or the bleak scenery, or our unconscious vehicle-owner. "You know..." she finally ventured, bored of her inner musings. "You're in this book."
Rolling my eyes, I retorted, "And?"
"You're not curious about what it says?"
I held my breath, then let it out. "Get on with it, witch, so we may return to being equally miserable and yet silent about it."
Saule flipped through her disgusting text, coming to the page she wanted. "There's a passage about demon summoning. There's not a lot of detail, but it says...shogh ku quuxgh zuhs ukgh ghai 'ukr, 'u krai ut Qxeekcos—do not call out to him, he who is Prideful. 'u krai zeinut sko quuhkrt ic juxkt-war uhquk juxkt-ketsk—he who carries the names of war gods and death gods...for he is not as his brethren are."
"Is that so?" My teeth grinded together, creating an unpleasant sound in my ears.
"Alone, his many names carry...whispers ic—of destruction, and those of the Isle yet name him World-Burner. He cares only for himself, and will strike no bargain." The witch paused, muttering the translation under her breath until she found the one she sought. "Tremble, for he will blacken our world before submitting to it."
If the woman expected a response or some form of defense on my part, she would be disappointed.
"My...my mom used to tell me and my sister stories about the Sins. She's always been kinda weird, really into horror movies and scaring the flash-bang slang out of her kids. She'd exaggerate some things, but she always said the truth was far more terrifying than anything she could make up. We never knew if what she told was lies or not. I mean, me and Ona always thought they were fibs. We never believed all the stuff a-about the deaths...the killing...."
I let out a dispassionate laugh as we passed a sign for Tulsa. "Do you want me to tell you your mother had a proclivity for tall-tales? That there isn't salience to the warnings of her stories or the backhanded threats written in that dusty book? They aren't lies. I was a Sin, witch. Your understanding of the word sin arises from the records of our misdeeds. We are the outlines of all things in the shadows, the bones upon which they built your mother's tales of horror. Is that what you want to hear?"
"No...." Saule's small fingers wrapped over the top of the book, crumpling the pages. Her voice was weak, as if she was having difficulty finding her will. "I just....Mom said Pride was unlike the others. She said he was worse than all of them, because he was capable of empathy, but he chose not to care. He was alone, bitter, and angry. He did not want others to know his name, to know him, so he killed those who called out to him—and, eventually, his name was lost. They called him 'betrayer' instead."
My jaw twitched. "And witches wonder why we burn their books." The huntress was stirring in the back, her incoherent mumbling becoming more frequent and incessant, so I lowered my own voice when I replied to Saule. "It's utter bullshit. We—they—all feel empathy. They all choose to not care. It is how we survive."
Those who feel empathy, those who allow themselves to care in some miniscule way, start upon a road of degradation they cannot return from. Tehgrair had cared too much for his mortal harem and his own damn exalted reputation, and he let himself go too long without feeding, weakening himself. Cuxiel had cared too deeply for Amoroth and it stole his mind. Even Balthazar had empathized with the Dreaming, and it led him to his eventual madness and destruction.
I cared for Sara, the woman had ruined me—but I could not bring myself to regret it. As I drove and the witch subsided into quiet reading once again, I thought of the last days in my immortal life, of the tree below the earth in Crow's End, of the silver water and the girl who looked into that colorless mirror and reflected upon her dwindling life.
A year ago, I would have thought myself a stupid, sentimental fool, and perhaps I was—but I didn't regret allowing myself to care for the irreverent woman.
Even if it'd brought about both our ends.
It was well past dark when we stopped for fuel in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and Connie tumbled from the back of the Jeep and blinked in the moth-filled lights of the gas station. She looked at Saule and me through her tousled hair as if she'd never seen us before—then snapped her fingers.
"Y'know, I thought yesterday was just a weird dream, but here you are." She stretched her arms up over her head, baring her stomach and the bowie knife strapped to her hip. "Where are we now?"
"Somewhere in the outskirts of Tulsa, if the signs are to be believed," I answered, leaning on the pump. Saule returned from watering and walking her four legged beast, still carrying that damn book as if she was terrified I'd burn it too. I yearned for this stitched together scene of road trip domesticity to end and for us to arrive at Itheria. I was a step away from setting the whole countryside ablaze in my frustration.
"Good!" the huntress chirped, extending her hand toward me. I stared at it, then her, wishing she'd stop smiling as if the world wasn't about to be ripped into pieces like a rat in a wolf's jaws. "Then I can get us to the enclave just fine from here!"
I sneered, but handed over the keys without protest. "This is the only stop," I told her, lacing my words with the utter chill I felt in my chest. "There will be no other detours. Do we have an understanding?"
Connie's smile waned, flickering as her brows knitted together. "You're a real serious guy, y'know? You could be a hunter with that attitude and your—." She cleared her throat and gestured at the length of my body. "Physique."
My lip curled as I turned to the Jeep again. "I've better things to do."
The rest of our ridiculous crew was gathered, the fuel was dispensed, and we again pulled away from the lights into the somber dark, Connie now in the driver's seat. The highways merged and changed, the city fell way to the smaller, duller glow of outer towns, and we trundled along over wintergreen plains and dirty fields.
As we crossed from state managed roads to dusty bylines and backroads, Connie's impervious grin finally slipped, then fell.
"I don't...I don't see no lights," she said, hitting the high points of her accent as she gestured ahead to where a black structure loomed. "The yard lights should be on...."
I said nothing as Saule began to bounce her leg, pacifying the huntress with a few "everything's fine" platitudes, though her own anxiety was clearly showing. We were miles from the next structure, stuck between two fallow fields picked over by the crows.
We came through a busted chain-link fence and the headlights shone upon the building's face with unremitting clarity.
The windows were gone, hollowed by black tongues of residual ash painted on the casements and sills. The yard bore signs of grenade detonations, the ground pitted with round holes and deep furrows radiating away from the building. A body was crumpled aside one of the holes, twisted by shrapnel and the explosion, and another was clotheslined on the fence as if he'd tried to crawl over but had been shot in the back. Both were stiff and riddled with flies.
Vampires.
"No!" Connie exclaimed, shoving the Jeep into park before darting out the car door. The indicator chimed unnoticed in the utter silence of this place as the girl ran headlong into the waiting building with nothing but her knife.
I exhaled, rubbing my face to dispel the unwanted tension there. "Witch," I said to Saule as I opened my door as well. "Hand me a gun. Doesn't matter which."
She hesitated before sliding back off the console. "...why?"
"Just hand me one."
"Darius, you can't—!"
I jumped into the Jeep once more, hating the sound of my name in her mouth, and shoved the witch out of my way as I stretched over the seat to open the weapons' compartment. I chose a handgun, checked the magazine, then exited the Jeep again.
"Darius—!"
"Stop screaming my name all over creation and stay there!" I fired over my shoulder. Despite my order, I heard Saule scrambling to follow, Bram growling at my rough handling of his owner. With no small amount of growling myself, I quickened my stride before the witch could catch up.
The smell inside was horrendous. The wallpaper was smeared with old blood and other unsavory elements of the human body. Dead, savaged hunters littered the hall, forcing me to step over their prone forms, my shoes losing traction on the wet tiled floor. Flashlights were scattered in the adjoining room, giving sight to this atrocity, some blinking in distress and casting rose-tinged rays upon the ceiling and my face.
I wasn't surprised by what I saw, only mildly displeased I had to be seeing it. I'd warned the huntress about her comrades' fates.
Connie was ahead, kneeling over someone she might have known personally before his end. The huntress was so engrossed in her shock that she failed to notice the vampire between us who'd crawled out of one of the side rooms, moving silently with her preternatural dexterity as she focused upon Connie and missed my presence entirely.
I lifted my arm and shot the creature in the back.
Connie jumped and I heard Saule's hurried, terrified steps coming up the hall behind me. I approached the gurgling vampire laying facedown with its limbs twitching and put my foot between its shoulder blades. I fired another round into a more deadly place.
The women watched, speechless, as I flipped on the gun's safety and tucked it into my waistband. "Can we go now?" I drawled, wiping my shoe off on the murderous creature's jacket. "Or do you need to see more?"
Connie rose and came into the hall, staring wide-eyed at the vampire who'd almost ended her life. "How could this have happened?" she warbled. "They were always so well-prepared here."
"I warned you of their fate," I sniffed, wishing to be on my way. "It was inevitable. If you are a moron who watches one too many television programs and thinks it wise to grab a crossbow and hunt vampires like a demented vigilante, then this is your end. You can expect nothing less from a group of foolish humans."
Connie wiped moisture from the corners of her eyes and glared, showing an ugly fervor I'd yet to see her display. "How can you say that?" she demanded. "You're human too!"
Pausing, I looked away from her toward the front entrance and the enticing gust of fresh air it admitted. "I am...aren't I?" I whispered, disliking the foreboding chill my words left in my bones. I was mortal and human—and to be identified as such by someone who didn't know my past was unsettling.
Saule was behind me now, muttering stilted witch expletives under her breath as she observed the carnage around us. "We gotta go to the Chedipe coven," she managed to get out, tucking her curly hair behind her red ears. "We gotta see if they've sur—survived."
"That'd probably be the best option," Connie said as she wiped her brow on her bare wrist. Her hands were trembling too much to handle the knife still at her hip. "If they've outsmarted them mages, maybe they'll be safe from the vamps, too?"
"No," I snarled in disagreement. "I said this was the last detour. We are going to Itheria, not some coven in Kansas."
"We know where the Mistresses are," Saule argued, adopting my own standoffish posture. "They're not going anywhere. It would only take an extra day or so to check on the witches up north, and they may be able to help—!"
They didn't understand what was at stake. They didn't understand that this entire realm stood with its neck in the noose and the hangman was ready to hoist the rope. Sara would be lost—Terrestria would be lost—if I didn't reach Itheria, find out how to stop my winged brother and the mages, and bring about some kind of resolution.
I could not afford another delay.
Lips pressed in a firm line, I twisted upon my heels and walked from the building, the two women trailing me.
"Dar-David?" Saule called, a note of anxiety ringing in her voice. "What are you, ah, doing?"
It would be a lie to say I hadn't considered killing them both and stealing the car. The cold, irrational part of my being willed me to take the gun and to end both the witch and the huntress, but I stayed my hand. Such a thing didn't...sit well with me. I felt no affection for either Saule or Connie, but they were—essentially—innocent. Both naïve and too trusting. Sara had always liked Saule and her crass language, and I imagined my shadeborn would have liked Connie, too. Sara would have thought her brave while I recognized that the huntress was only reckless. Careless.
Sara would've been disgusted with me for even thinking of killing them.
I managed to make it outside without encountering another vampire, though I knew more would be lurking. Annoyed, I went to the Jeep's back and opened it, ignored the curious dog, and snatched my bag and slammed the hatch shut again,
"What are you doing?!"
"I'm leaving."
Both women stood by the Jeep, their pant legs dyed crimson by the atrocity inside the building. They exchanged shocked glances.
I turned to the road and the distant glimmering of town toward the south. "I've had enough of this. I am going to Itheria. You may do whatever you wish without me."
The dirt crunched underfoot as I strode forth without a backward glance. I passed the curled remains of the chain-link barrier and the bodies of the vampires who'd died in the initial assault. The buzz of flies blocked out Saule's shout for me to return.
I walked away into the warm night, telling myself this was the better option, that I didn't need anyone else. I never needed anyone else.
He was alone, bitter, and angry.
I doubted the witch would ever know how apt her description had been.