One day old and ancient, the waxing crescent—barely more than a sliver, really—rises mere minutes before the night is to lift and the day is to break.
Weak as she is, the moon still sees it, not the act itself, but the aftermath, the spreading cinders tearing through the world, dissolving all that it touches, unravelling the tapestry that time and fate has woven of this world.
‘You’re cheating,’ the moon tries to say to the night, but then the sun has risen by now, chasing the night away from this half of the globe.
‘Why has wrath descended upon the world?’ asks the sun.
And the day, breaking merrily upon a world in ashes, says simply, ‘I am sure that all will be well again upon the morrow.’
Barely visible in the morning sky, the moon remains silent, for she alone knows that the night will not allow the morrow to arrive, not for cycles upon cycles again.
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When time finally stabilises, when the world reforms again, when suddenly the moon finds herself nearly full and shining bright, with night falling like a veil all around her, she gazes upon the world reconstituted and repeats—no, not repeat. She says, for the first time, ‘You’re cheating.’
‘No I’m not,’ says the night, gentle and unyielding in the way that only an abyss can be. ‘The game hasn’t even started yet. My chosen has yet to arrive.’
The moon can’t really argue with that. ‘Just you wait,’ she says instead, ‘for I can cheat as well as you.’
Even as she says it, she knows it won’t be enough. The most she will have is a stalemate, now.
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But then again, maybe a stalemate won’t be so bad.
It's alright if the interludes are a bit confusing. They're not meant to make too much sense as a part of the story until closer to the end. Next chapter: the past!
The problem isn’t that I should be dead—completely dead, that is, not just undead. No; the problem is that I’m (as far as I can see) in a coffin and (judging by the feel of the air) also stuck under quite a bit of earth. I remember how much I panicked over three decades ago on my first night as an immortal, when I’d woken up to this same situation. I had so few memories of my human life that even the knowledge I’d retained was minimal. I understood that I was a vampire, and I knew that my final test would be to emerge from my grave, but I barely remembered my own name, let alone how to get out. At the time, my clearest memory was of transformation, a grotesque and painful experience that had left me mentally exhausted as well as physically weak. Now, however, though my latest memory is of literally burning to ashes, I’m slowly beginning to feel a growing sense of mental clarity. Maybe it’s just because I’ve been through so many dangerous situations that I’m now used to it, or perhaps
‘Let her go!’ Canus commands, voice quiet but harsh, and the grip on my hair immediately disappears. I hear the squelch of Scintilla’s knees hitting the ground, and I follow suit out of instinct. ‘Sire?’ she ventures. The only thing that stops me from saying the same is the flash of pure panic that I catch on Canus’s face, which is surprising enough that I remember I’m not necessarily supposed to recognise him. Canus must have thought I tried to attack Scintilla, and that she had to subdue me by force. I’ve never seen him so upset when breaking up fights between our younger sisters, but, then again, Scintilla and I never really fought much in our first life. And I mustn’t forget, this version of Canus is new to having progeny to take charge of. He must be extra jumpy about things like this happening, especially when it’s my first night of immortality. ‘What’s going on?’ Canus tries again, voice calmer this time. I feel Scintilla relax at the change in tone. ‘We were washing her of
My rooms aren’t very complicated. There’s a receiving room of sorts, furnished with plush seating, a small coffee table, and a television screen mounted on the wall. To the right is a bedroom with a balcony, which in turn leads to an ensuite bathroom and a dressing room that has yet to be converted to a walk-in closet. To the left is a door leading to a small but well-ventilated room that would serve as my study. I’ll need to arrange for a desk and bookshelves later. And a computer. I’m more or less dry, Canus having used sorcery to clean me when we first came inside, but I’ve trodden barefoot through half the house, and I’m clad in a ratty white vest and a stiff pair of sleeping boxers. As such, very desperately needing a proper bath, I head directly for the bathroom and the antique bathtub within. The soap and shampoo aren’t made from my preferred recipe. In fact, I don’t think my preferred recipe will be discovered by Scintilla for another three years at least, which is a shame. I
I don’t remember it raining so much on my first night as a vampire, but I do remember the ground being soggy when I first climbed out of my grave, so it must be about to stop in the next few hours. We didn’t have enough time to go hunting the first time around, so Canus had taken me out the following night, when I’d been almost insensate with thirst. Canus had kept me bound under tight orders, so I only have the most basic impressions of the exclusive club that we’d gone to. It’d been the type of club where people watched performers dance rather than participated in such activities. It doesn’t seem like we’re headed there now, however. Outside the tinted windows of the car, the streets of Soho are alight with neon signs whose colours bleed into one another in rain. We come to a stop at a car park that’s packed with glossy vehicles with expensive labels I don’t care enough to pay much attention to. ‘You’ll want to stop breathing, Favilla,’ Canus says as he shuts the car down. I obey.
As a newborn, I always looked around at all the more practised vampires around me and assumed that they were all so much more controlled than I was because they didn’t feel the thirst as much. It wasn’t until months later that I realised how wrong I’d been. The thirst never goes away. We all just get better at dealing with it. It might be callous to use the word mistake, but that’s what we usually call it when vampires feed so much that they start killing people. Not all immortals are as kind as we are—most of them just call humans cattle. It’s not even necessarily against vampire law to kill mortals, not unless the human authorities begin to notice. Most of the time the only consequence that might result is hunters starting to put a bounty on your head. (We don’t bother hunters unless they start culling vampires who don’t kill, and hunters in turn tend not to bother vampires unless they do kill. It’s not a perfect system, but it works.) Canus has always been especially fastidious ab
Aurélie Margaret Campbell; twenty-two years old; classics student at Royal Holloway—at least, I was up until last summer, when I stopped updating almost all my social media. My online presence wasn’t exactly robust even before that, but the near silence after it is still a little abnormal. The only information I’ve found dated within the last eight months is an obituary for one Helen Campbell née King. My mother. She died just three months ago. Stalking yourself online is a bit of a strange experience, especially when you don’t even remember most of it. Aura Campbell had been an awkward looking girl, lanky and slouched, with dark brown hair and hazel-brown eyes. She liked to wear shapeless jeans and t-shirts, and she never showed her teeth when she smiled in photographs. Looking at her now, I can barely see any of myself in her. She’s so ordinary, so pathetic. It’s hard to imagine how she might have caught the eye of Lord Canus. It’s only been about a night since I’ve resolved to fi
I trance for the day fully dressed in sweatpants and a bulky jumper and rush to Canus’s rooms mere seconds after sunset. When I get there, a single male thrall lingers in the hallway, and he startles and quickly retreats upon seeing my rush. (Scintilla probably hasn’t even started on her makeup yet.) Canus never locks his doors, so I simply barge in. His rooms are set up a little differently than it will be in thirty years, but I orient myself quickly enough and find him still reclining on a chaise longue. (He was always slow to rise in the evenings.) ‘I want to go out tonight,’ I say in lieu of a greeting. He blinks, still disoriented from his trance. ‘Alone,’ I add with more bravado than hope. I’m expecting any number of responses—denial, for one, or at the very least a demand for my motivations, but none of them come. Instead, a corner of Canus’s lips twitch, and he points his chin towards his coat rack and says, ‘Bring me my wallet.’ When I obey, he opens it up and pulls out
It’s difficult to describe the scent of one’s Sire. This is a problem that all vampires have, not just myself. To a vampire, the smell of Sire is just that: Sire. It’s authority and trust and command and home all wrapped into one. I don’t know why it comes as a surprise to me. It’s quite literally impossible for Canus to have not encountered me as a human, considering he was the one who replaced my mortality with his blood. But still, it’s strange. The distribution of this scent doesn’t indicate a mere visit, a get-to-know-each-other before immortality is imparted. Obviously, this must be where it happened. This must be the last place I set my human eyes upon. But Canus’s scent suffuses this space, strongly and evenly, as if he lingered here for an extended period of time. So why? Why did he stay around so long? I wander into the bedroom. The bed has been made, and the wardrobe is empty, as expected. There are no other scents of creatures beyond myself (as both vampire and human) a