2006, 23rd January
Labrador Sea
Lucia’s eyes opened in a flash as she became aware of a weight over her.
Without consciousness even having caught up, noticing the humanoid outline atop her, she jabbed at where she estimated the throat to be.
With a strangled yowl, Hilda jumped off her, somehow landing on all fours a good distance backward.
Lucia arched her spine, fangs bared, and they regarded each other for moments before lucidity caught up.
“What the hell are you doing?”
“Nice reflexes princess. Really putting that pure blood to use.”
Lucia merely responded with a low, rumbling sound in the back of her throat.
Hilda smiled, putting up her hands in a placating gesture.
“I’m not here to fight, Lucia. I probed you enough yesterday, and I was impressed by what I saw. Really impressed. You really are a pureblood.”
“What does that mean?”
“What, your dad never told you?”
Lucia answered the question with silence.
“Oh, come on. Don’t tell me you never noticed. Your dad knocked up your mom when he was a vampire himself, didn’t he? You’ve never been human from the beginning. When your dad finally turned you, he just… completed you.”
Lucia’s nostrils flared even as she processed this new knowledge.
But if she had been something other than human from the start, how would she know the difference anyway?
Hilda continued, oblivious to Lucia’s inner turmoil, or choosing to ignore it entirely.
“These half breeds we’ve been saddled with- James and Erik; sure, they’re older and stronger than us now. But we’re natural born predators in a way that they’re not. They’re just human, with a few bells and whistles on top.”
“And how would you know what the differences are between you and a human? If neither of us have ever been one, how are we supposed to know how we’re different at all?”
Hilda only smiled wider.
“When you first turned; who was it that you killed?”
Aimee’s glazed eyes floated back to Lucia’s mind with perfect clarity.
“That’s none of your business.”
“So, you did kill someone.”
Lucia growled once more.
“How would a normal person have reacted to that? Broken down? Attacked their sire in a blind rage with no regard for self preservation? And you? I bet you stopped giving a shit half an hour after the fact.”
But what should she have done?
She couldn’t possibly spend that long mourning; her survival depended on her adjusting to what she had become; what had suddenly been thrust on to her.
Should she have attacked James and Lionel in a righteous fury?
But they would have killed her. Surely hers was the only sensible course of action.
Lucia was hit with the cold realisation that Hilda wasn’t precisely wrong.
“You’ve never given a shit about a human through your entire life.”
Michael’s laughter called to her, as they zipped under her window at night.
“Bellone, jump or you’re going to get left behind!”
Magnus’ steadfast smile as he followed along on increasingly hare-brained shenanigans that were Michael’s idea of fun.
“Yes, well… I suppose that won’t matter for very long.”
He was dead.
He was dead and she hadn’t even had the chance to say goodbye.
“You don’t know anything about me.” Lucia snarled.
Hilda’s smile slipped, and she cocked her head to one side, before continuing to speak.
“Maybe. But you keep clinging to that humanity you don’t have, it's going to make you look weak. Your companion has already picked up on it.”
“What does James have to do with anything?”
“Here’s another thing you didn’t know about pure bloods. We can prey on others of our kind to gain power. Half breeds are prey. James knows that, and now you know it too."
And saying so, Hilda vanished into the ice once more.
James arrived not ten minutes later to find Lucia already geared up and ready.
“I see you took some initiative today.”
Lucia didn’t reply and they walked out of her chamber together.
Clearly the ritual’s effect hadn’t cleared away, and beyond walls of ice, she heard a sound she hadn’t ever expected to hear within this palace of ice.
The sound of a beating heart, perfectly even.
The murmuring of conversation, between two individuals, one clearly the matriarch of the Draugr, and one male voice, young, by the sound of it.
James had heard it too.
When they got within sight of the two, James tensed, his posture causing his frame to get smaller.
Lucia had often seen vulnerability within him before, the fear and the insecurity he so often seemed to project.
It just hadn’t seemed notable, because she saw it in nearly everyone.
She saw it even in the old grey woman, odd as that seemed.
But she did not see it in the still living man, so relaxed surrounded by undead monsters.
The golden haired man turned his gaze to Lucia, half lidded eyes betraying just the slightest hint of arrogance, and for a moment, she was overwhelmed with nostalgia.
That completely open posture of a man used to the very world bowing to suit him; she had seen it before.
He reminded her of Michael.
“Perhaps it’s time for you to be going.” The old matriarch grated out.
“Of course, ma’am. Do give some thought to my proposal, though, will you?”
“And how did you find us here, sorcerer?”
“Me?” The stranger laughed. “It was your victims who led me to you.”
Lucia swore she saw the light shimmer in spots behind him, even as he spoke.
“Of course.” The old woman looked even more subdued. “Do you need one of us to send you back?”
The man barked a laugh of genuine amusement.
“I got here by myself, ma’am. I’ll find my own way out.”
Lucia had rarely heard as much condescension in one word as the stranger had managed to fit into that ma’am.
And as the man walked, the ice itself yielded to make way.
This wasn’t the technique the Draugr used to somehow slip their bodies through ice without breaking it; the ice turned to vapour in front of him, and froze solid once more behind him as he walked through.
The matriarch sighed, and shook her head.
“All this before the close.”
“Who was that?” Lucia asked her.
“His name is Hans Muller. He is a sorcerer, girl. One that dropped from the sky onto our homes to make demands, as is their wont.”
“And you let him. Instead of putting him in one of your cages and bleeding him dry like those other people you keep around here?”
The matriarch shot Lucia a sharp look.
“Did you know this world of ours isn’t the only one? There are several. There are worlds made entirely of dreams. There are worlds that are reflections of ours. There are worlds where all is death and nothing, not even light or thought, survives.”
“Fascinating history lesson, but we seem to be getting a bit off topic.”
James groaned behind her. “Lucia…”
“It is your present and your future, girl.” The crone snapped, “Our very souls are bonded to these worlds. The Vampire has a special affinity for the worlds of dreams, to manipulate the minds of our prey, and the worlds that are dead, for death is what we are. But what world does a sorcerer pull their power from, Lucia Bellone?”
Lucia merely shrugged.
“All of them. Every. Single. One. Including this one. Do you understand, girl? And there are more like him out there in the skies, and the day they turn their wrath on our world they could turn it all to ash.”
The old creature paused, before speaking once more.
“The world is far more vast than anything you’ve seen, Lucia Bellone. You’ll do well to remember that, and be wary.”
Lucia wasn’t prone to melodrama the way this old witch seemed to be, but her instincts had given her more insight than any insane ramblings.
She could spot the vulnerability written within the very stance of both James and the matriarch.
But that man had displayed none.
He was not prey.
The matriarch took a moment to compose herself.
“But he’s gone now, and it didn’t come down to a fight today. The next part of the hunt must continue.”
Hilda and Erik took this moment to appear from their own chambers.
Hilda looked James over, once, and shot Lucia a wink, which she chose to ignore.
“Your boat is coming to pick you back up. Today you hunt the great bear.”
Lucia frowned.
“There are bears here?”
“Not usually. This one’s a spirit, bound in the shape of a bear.” Hilda had sidled up to her. “It was summoned by the matriarch. We are to bring its heart back to her and she’ll use it to appease Grandfather Winter, or something, according to the stories.”
“Grandfather Winter?”
“Religious thing. I’ll tell you later.”
Lucia wasn’t quite sure how hunting a bear was going to work out, but was fascinated nevertheless.
Hilda took her hand, while Erik took his place by James’ side again, and they slipped through the ice, arriving at the surface of the glacier.
This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.
A ship made its way towards them, a dot of light, growing bigger.
“Remember,” Hilda said, “You can’t use weapons, even on this hunt. The beast has to be slain with fang and claw, or Grandfather Winter will not accept the meal. Or so the story goes.”
“Who is this grandfather winter guy anyway?”
“The oldest of the Draugr; the progenitor of our line. Apparently we hunt annually to keep him appeased or he’ll burst out of the sea and devour his children to the last.”
“And you believe that?”
“Eh. The Hunt is fun. And it hones us. That’s reason enough for me.”
The ship had arrived, and they embarked upon it, setting off for one of the uninhabited islands that dotted Iceland’s fjord.
Lucia allowed herself to be dragged inside by Hilda.
“Come on, change out of that ridiculous diving suit.”
Lucia found some denim clothes and a thick fur lined black jacket inside the dressing room they entered.
She stepped out of her suit, examining herself in the mirror.
Her muscles had grown toned and defined, far quicker than should have been normal.
Clearly, her body wasn’t quite dead enough to be static in form.
She ran her tongue over the pointed tips of her incisors.
She had known that much already.
Hilda had inconspicuously tried to move behind her, but Lucia hadn’t allowed it, shifting to keep her within her field of vision.
Hilda made a slight purr of frustration, then moved in closer.
“Your evolution is coming along nicely. You’re well on your way to apex predator.”
Lucia put a hand on Hilda’s collarbone, pushing her away a bit, then kept her hand there.
“You’re not so bad yourself.”
Hilda laughed.
“Get dressed and join me on the deck, princess. We have a beast to hunt.”
Lucia’s eyes narrowed, and did not leave Hilda until she was gone.
Obviously, this hunt was going to involve more than just hunting down a bear.
Clad in a thick jacket, she walked out to the deck, where Hilda leaned against the railing as their boat cut across the waters.
They were nearing a patch of land, white, and seemingly devoid of flora, with dots of yellow light on the bank.
“Someone expecting us?”
“Yeah. Some of our clan’s human retainers are taking part in this hunt, because it’s important to cover ground quickly. This is the single most important part of the hunt, after all.”
Lucia cast her senses out, and could not sense James; he had to be deeper within the interior, with Erik.
She could only see one end to the story with James; she was supposedly the predator, but James was far from helpless prey.
Lucia may have picked up every technique he taught her with ease, but James still outclassed her on the raw physical edge and supernatural power alike, having been turned fifty years earlier.
One of them couldn’t live while the other survived, and because Lucia had no intention of dying for his sake, and it wasn’t likely she could convince him of any benevolent intentions on her part while being just as unwilling to place any trust in him, she would have to find her advantage over him as quickly as possible.
Now was as good a time to begin as any other.
“What you were saying earlier, about the differences between the half bloods and the purebloods- I’d like to know more about that.”
“Oh? Well, you already know some of them, don’t you? Your powers come to you instinctively, you don’t need to learn the way a human does. And James cannot devour the light like you, just like Erik can only ever hope to move through the ice, he cannot manipulate the cold like I do.”
Lucia’s other lingering suspicion was confirmed by how easily Hilda volunteered this information; she planned for Lucia to be aligned with her for the foreseeable future.
Hilda continued to speak.
“Any vampire can use the blood to enhance themselves physically, heal their wounds, or manipulate the minds of their prey. But only a pureblood can use the full breadth of power a vampire has. Simply, your upper limit is higher, and you’ll hit it faster.”
“And those magical rituals the matriarch uses?”
“Ah. That. Those rituals can do things a vampire can never otherwise do, and there’s a bunch of them. But you saw how it is. It’s a pain in the ass to learn, even for us, and it’s a pain in the ass to use, because of how much blood-fuel it needs.”
Just then, Lucia sensed James and Erik emerge from the interiors, just as their boat banked onto the shore.
In a single leap, Hilda was off the deck, landing nimbly on her feet at the edge of the bank.
Lucia shrugged and followed suit.
Shortly, they had all disembarked.
The view of the horizon may have been unimpeded by trees, but the land itself was crooked, plenty of snow laden jutting edges to obscure vision.
But Lucia doubted they would miss a bear. It was merely a matter of covering as much surface area as was possible.
Hilda consulted a wristwatch.
“Four hours allowing reasonable margins.”
And with that proclamation, they were off.
Fanning out from their point of origin, Hilda and Lucia took one side of the island, while James and Erik took the other.
Lucia got used to the footholds fairly quickly, growing accustomed to the snow yielding below her boots.
Hilda let out a breath as a line of fog, falling back, then circling behind her to her other side.
A hissing sound, followed by a scream and a sharp scent of blood in the air, immediately pulled Lucia’s attention.
Leaping over to where the shrieking was coming from, she saw one of the retainers had been shredded, organs spilled over the ice.
Hit by something with immense force behind it, he had probably died even before his torch had hit the ice.
His companion was incoherent with fear, before Hilda locked her eyes with his, and likely used her ability to soothe him.
In minutes, he was on his feet and on the trail once more.
Bears were well capable of being ambush hunters, but something was off here.
By feinting the act of moving into her blind spot, Hilda had pulled Lucia’s field of vision away from where the attack took place.
There was another agent on the field; and Hilda seemed to be aligned with it over the Draugr.
Lucia could see no footprints even over the snow, besides those left by the retainers, and those of Hilda and her own.
Aerial hunter?
Hilda was already walking ahead.
Lucia supposed that was where she would get her answers.
She had already come too far to turn back.
Her senses were on alert through the rest of the trek, awareness of every footstep rattling upwards through her bones.
Hilda laughed, not even needing to turn her head.
“You don’t have any blindspots, princess. At least not in front of you.”
“Clearly.” Lucia said, refusing to let her concentration waver.
“Seriously, though, that’s a human thing. Run on unconscious instinct to maximize reaction times, or concentrate to see the whole picture with a tradeoff in speed? The advantage of being an actual apex predator is, you don’t have to choose.”
“You a biology nerd?”
“Hah! Kind of. The rest is my own experience. If you haven’t seen something, it’s not because you missed it through a blind spot. You’re just lacking the right perspective.”
Perspective.
Multiple parallel worlds.
Perspective, or lack thereof.
“Where did that fucking bear you summoned pop out of again?”
Hilda stopped in her tracks to turn to Lucia, smiling.
“The spirit world, or so the old lady says.”
“What the hell is that, exactly?”
“I don’t know, some sort of reflection of this world, the closest parallel world to ours. That’s all not important. What’s important is, there’s a bleed around us, leading to that world, and that’s where the bear came here from, and took on a physical form to survive in this world.”
“So theoretically, it can travel back and forth?”
“Theoretically.”
“And us?”
“Stuck here, I guess. I haven’t ever seen any of our kind go through a bleed. Hell, I’m calling this place a bleed at face value, I don’t know what a bleed actually looks like, or if we can even see one. And all the bears I’ve hunted the last few times this Hunt came around seemed pretty normal to me.”
This could be the truth. Or not.
But she had specified our kind.
There was something else hunting on this island tonight, and judging from Hilda’s lack of initiative in tracking it down, it was likely not this precious bear.
She felt this was the mysterious entity that Hilda was aligned with.
She could smell the recruitment pitch on the horizon.
"Let's keep moving."
They moved further inland, the blue green lights playing across the sky illuminating the snow clad landscape laid out in front of them.
Commotion ahead.
This time, Hilda took to her heels, Lucia behind her.
Their falling feet perfectly aligned atop each other, finding the perfect possible footholds and moving through the snow with unnatural speed.
A scent she did not recognise- was that what bears smelled like?
They saw one of the retainers, running far ahead, firearms drawn, clearly pursuing something he had caught the trail of.
And then he retreated, not having fired a shot, even as a familiar metallic scent filled the air.
Hilda did not slow down.
Neither did Lucia- she suspected the third hunter had closed in on the prey.
She did not intend to be hunted tonight.
As they closed in, she spotted the flesh and blood form of a massive bear, gut splayed onto the snow, but also bleeding motes of unnatural light from the wound across its torso.
And she saw a man, large in his own right, sitting naked atop his kill, as if unbothered by the biting chill in the air, blood spilling from his gore-covered hands.
The man rose to his entire height as he watched the two of them approach- he couldn’t have been less than seven feet tall- and stretched his arms by his side as they got closer.
Hilda stopped in front of him, with Lucia right on her heels.
“Hilda. It’s been a while.”
“Victor.”
Her tone was, if possible, even more excited than before.
“And who is this?”
“Her name is-”
“I can introduce myself just fine.”
Turning to Victor, Lucia addressed him.
“My name is Lucia Bellone. And you are?”
“Victor. Bellone… now where have I heard that name before?”
“What does it matter? Are you part of this hunt?”
Lucia could hear his heart beat too loud to be one of her kind.
But he wasn’t human either- the carnage he was capable of was testament enough to that.
“Everything I’m part of is a hunt, Lucia Bellone.”
“Great. So you’re a shitty poet.”
Hilda laughed.
“You really should leave the cheesy lines for some other time.”
Victor didn’t appear to have taken offense, and inclined his head good naturedly.
“Why did you bring your… friend here, Hilda? I expected you alone.”
“Something I’m not supposed to see?”
Hilda put up her open palms between the other two.
“She’s pureblood like me. It’s hard… to be around all these slow, dull creatures for so long after our last winter together. And I wanted you to see this, Lucia. A change of perspective.”
Lucia merely raised an eyebrow.
“Victor can perceive and cross the bleeds at will. It comes innately to his kind, unlike us. Which is a shame, because it’s fucking beautiful.”
She got closer to Lucia, clasping her hands in her own.
“Come on. I promise, it’ll be worth it.”
Lucia could sense the rest of the crew closing in.
“Alright.”
Victor placed a blood soaked hand on her shoulder, and another on Hilda’s.
Then the world itself seemed to shift around her, her sense blurring as if subjected to extreme velocity before settling, and a new world unfolded in front of her.
Inky blackness stretched out to every corner of her senses, with dots of light scattered throughout.
Lucia felt like she was standing within the cosmos.
She turned to see a giant star of light.
“That.. is the spirit of the Island.” Victor said from behind her.
“What, like, that Gaia-Earth Mother thing?”
“No, not like that. The island was here before the spirit. The spirit feeds on it, and got linked to it that way.”
“Feeds on the island?”
“It’s too hard to explain. I’ll leave it to someone more qualified.”
Hilda hopped between the lights, never letting them brush against her.
“The implications of this place are insane.” She chirped excitably. “Time flows differently here compared to the physical world. Even the reason we’re able to survive here is because we don’t need oxygen.”
“And you?” Lucia turned to Victor. “You’re definitely breathing… something.”
Victor shrugged.
“My kind is native to the horizon. Breathing oxygen is an adjustment we made… afterwards.”
“After what?”
“A theory my partner has. That the horizon wasn’t originally separated from the physical world at all.”
“Your partner being?”
“I believe you’ve seen him already.”
“The mage? Hans?”
“Exactly. He plans to remake this worthless universe into one worth living in.”
“Think about it, Lucia.” Hilda interrupted, her eyes gleaming with a fanatical fire.
“It’s a world where people like us can truly be free. At our rightful place, instead of hiding in the dark.”
“That your idea?” Lucia turned to Victor. “Or yours?”
Victor himself did not face her, walking towards the globe of light.
“I served in Iraq, you know.”
“What the hell is it with all you people going off on tangents.”
“Fighting on behalf of senile old assholes sitting comfortably in their air conditioned fortresses whose only talent is talking their ass off, while their pawns die in puddles of their own blood and shit. And humans are the only species that lives this way. How is it that this race of pathetic mongrels inherits the earth? Because their actually capable forefathers built up a system that doesn’t require their descendants to get up off their ass once in a while to wipe it?”
“So you’re an anarchist.”
“I’m a naturalist. No other race lives this way, but humans do, and they’re at the top of the food chain, so they must be the ones that are right, while everyone else is wrong, yeah?”
Lucia did not respond, as Victor drew ever closer to the light, which had grown searingly bright, affording only a brief glimpse of the man’s silhouette.
And then Victor plunged his hand into the globe, and hell broke loose.
With a guttural sound, the orb of light assumed the form of a massive emerald serpent, and baring its fangs, lunged at Victor.
Who had been replaced by a truly massive half wolf monster clad in a thick coat of grey fur.
Lucia could feel the strike’s destination instinctively- the wolf-man’s shoulder.
But Victor made no effort to move.
A fang sliced through fur and sinew with little resistance, but in that, Victor dug the claws of that hand into the creature’s throat.
A hard scraping sound, as if the claws had not struck vulnerable flesh, but unyielding rock instead.
But yield it did.
And Victor’s hand pierced the gullet of the serpent, the puncture streaming with light instead of blood.
Lucia and Hilda both jumped to opposite sides as the creature’s inertia brought the two of them barrelling towards the vampires.
Victor’s muscles constricted as he gripped the folds of spirit-flesh through the cavity in the throat.
And something gave way beneath his grip.
The creature erupted in a shower of light-dust.
It’s venomous essence taking root within Victor’s heart.
“Humanity isn’t at the apex of this world.” He said, voice coming out akin to rumbling thunder.
“They’ve been allowed to stay there in their delusions too long. Time to take the world back.”
And Victor’s form bubbled once more, shifting back to human, or at least, as human as he would ever be.
His shoulder was entirely healed, as if it had never even been scratched- slick with blood from a wound that was no longer there.
Lucia looked at Hilda, and saw her devotion to the idea gleaming in her eyes.
This was turning out to be quite the eventful trip.
And Lucia had decisions to make ahead of her.