III
Coup D’Grace
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> In the beginning, there was formless all-nothing.
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> The endlessness split in two;
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> One half flesh and the other, spirit.
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> Lucifer governed over life and Azazel presided over death.
—The Saint-Skin Scrolls, Archē 1:1-4 (the Verse of Twins) translated into Vulgar by Bishop Gascoine D’Tristime; New Standard Version printed by Argo & Sons.
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Blood sang in my veins, drums of war beating in my ears a staccato that would put the most talented minstrel to shame.
I was accustomed to pre-fight adrenaline, to the calm rush just before violence, but this was something else. Where before my resting heart rate was that of the sleeping dead, now, it was the constant thrum of a hummingbird’s wings.
My opponent was a heavy-set man just a palm shorter than me with slicked-back hair and a prodigious beard. Well-endowed with rúna, ambaricité crawled along his skin like sheet lightning filtered through a vibrant, carnelian prism.
Grappler archetype—attraction rúna on the palms and weight rúna on the backs of the hands. Do not let him get a hold of you, else he’ll throw you around like a lightweight.
Lamaré had talents other than shameless lechery, it seemed.
I could not help but charge into the fray—this was better than any draught, and nearly-better than sex. The visceral reaction that overtook me demanded all of my attention, all of my perception, all of my soul.
I threw myself into the trance, muscles relaxing into stillness just before the point of contact.
My tendons contracted like the pulleys of a great beast of a machine, pulling striated fibre taught against bone. I turned on my heel in an unnaturally-smooth swivel, letting a grasping hand flow just above my left shoulder; the passage of air in its wake, a hurricane within the wind tunnel of my ear canal.
The momentum of the pirouette fed into a wild haymaker that made the sinews of my neck stand stark against the rest of my flesh, steel cables straining just beneath the skin.
My left fist connected with the man’s rib-cage and then his body crumpled against the wall to my right. Even my heightened perception had not been enough to witness the Tarantula’s flight, only the conclusion thereof.
Stone cracked like thunder but I damn-well knew that it wasn’t over.
You see, in my previous life I had been a prize-fighter. A fall-guy or scapegoat, in specific. They set scrawny, rúna-covered lightweights against a big-bad unmarked like me to earn easy coin from the foolhardy. All spectacle but little substance beneath the veneer—not a real brawl but instead a performance.
Sacrūna did not keel over without a fight that would turn a common man into a vegetable in the Saint-Getaine Asylum’s garden.
The Tarantula brushed off the dust from his thighs, popped his left shoulder pack into place with just a grunt and a squint, and then it was round two.
Do not think that vampyres fed on the strong—they were predators through-and-through, thinning the herd’s weak and vulnerable. The unmarked, the poor, the sick, the homeless, the addicted; these were the prey of Narancan’s line.
My body was made to contend against easy pickings, not someone my own size.
Rúna for speed on the soles of his feet, counter-weights on the opposite side just like with his hands.
Inertia made me into its punching-bag as I wasn’t fast enough to dodge my foe this time around. He shoulder-checked me, switching to a tackle after he knocked the air outta my lungs.
Beads of sweat hung suspended in the air for an eternal moment.
We crashed to the hard-packed earth, throwing up dust and breaking three of my vertebræ—don’t ask which ones because I did not know their names.
Thoracics six-through-nine.
“You a doctor or something?” I croaked as I tried my best to weasel out of the Tarantula’s grasp.
“What?”
“Not talking to you.”
A good well-rounded education is a staple for even the less pure stock of the Sol bloodline.
“O’ course it is.”
My foe was downright befuddled at my queer behaviour—probably thought that he broke something inside my skull, too.
I used the momentary distraction to headbutt his parietal bone—handy having a life-in lexicon in your head (hey, I heard that!)—and elbowed his spine. The tell-tale report of rending osseous tissue reached my ears; the world was in balance once again.
Rolling to a boxer’s form, I wove on the balls of my feet to escape a mule-kick that had no right clipping me through displaced air alone. That’s gonna leave a mark.
Actually—
I ignored the voice at the back of my head, nursing my groyne and attempting to regain even a semblance of composure; weren’t against the rules hitting below the belt.
—your regenerative processes go beyond scar-tissue—
The heel of my foot said ‘bonjour’ to the Tarantula’s clavicle. He hadn’t grappled me in time and now he had to fight with bone scraping against his jugular from the inside-out.
—reverting cells into a receptive state that is not unlike the mutable flesh that alquemistes use to cultivate homunculæ among other types of golemns. This same process was used to make the base morphological changes in your physique.
“Now ain’t the time for lectures, Lamaré.”
Tsk, tsk—it is always the time for expanding the mind among other internal cavities, mon ami.
I let out a long-suffering sigh as I waddled over to kick a man in the face again.
Blood spun in a circle, beads of liquid still in the air before they splashed against the wall as my perception slowed-down back to normal. Broken noses were a sonuvabitch to put back into place—hurt worse than alcohol to a wound gone sour.
Dodged a half-hearted swipe, kicked and missed, slipped on blood and fell on my arse in the dust of the arena. It developed into a rough-and-tumble sort of wrestle that had all the physicality of rough sex but none of the fun.
Some of Lamaré’s—let's say—‘proclivities’ bled into my train of thought at most absurd of times.
I got caught in a headlock and could not help but thank Lucifer that I was otherwise too occupied to hear more of my resident specter’s ribald-laden tongue.
Elbows to the kidneys, I reversed our roles, spinning around and kneeing my opponent in the sternum. Having been reared with brothers, I knew the pain of knuckles being rubbed against the crux of the breast—in four words: unpleasant as the Green-Hels.
Technically, due to the grammatical reform of 674 After God’s Death, those are five words. Hyphenated clauses still count as separate in regards to word count.
I felt a hand wrap around my ankles before my world devolved into vertigo and discombobulation. The stone wall cracked under my weight, breaking some more bones in the process.
There goes thoracics nine-through-eleven, lumbars three and four. I will not comment on your spinal processes. Those are more fragmented than the shattered remnants of the Narancan Empire.
My worldly knowledge expanded beyond its intended bounds as did my range of motion. Left arm hung nearly-limp, tendons snapped in two along with multiple hair-line cracks throughout, well, everything.
Contusions and bruising abounded, every inch of my flesh bloodied but not bleeding. Not a drop had left my veins, adhered to my body through supernatural forces no one in the known world understood. My cuts were sealed with dark-red scabs that were autocannibalized into temporary scar-tissue and then unblemished skin.
I got up, each breath returning to me my strength and my body mending before my eyes. What should have crippled a normal man and put him on the cot for months if not forever, only dazed me.
A feral grin split me from ear-to-ear, the morphological changes evident in the uncanny facial expression. My fangs were not in full display but should I open my mouth, they’d be.
I was drunk on violence, on the vice of war, even if it was the little war with no steel in sight. Gods, how I wanted to draw blood, to break something, someone, to overcome and to exalt in myself.
An addict through-and-through, I had only exchanged my previous draught for a new one. I wanted coin and I wanted prestige. I wanted fame and I wanted acclaim. To be seen after so many years of being a nobody in the background, a scapegoat prize-fighter with no name but ‘Brute’.
I recovered before my foe, charging him like a bull. He swiped out, ready to catch me by the foot and throw me around like a child’s ragdoll. Placed all my weight on the tip of my right foot’s toes, letting my centre of gravity shift me forward into a front-flip kick.
Fingers grazed my foot just so, not enough to grasp.
My heel connected with my foe’s occipital.
The snap of thunder that followed was the sound of victory and a twisted ankle—the trou d’cul’s skull was thicker than it ought to be.
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A perfunctory glance with my senses told me that the Tarantula was out cold but not dead—steady breathing and regular heartbeat. Noise outside of my immediate vicinity reasserted itself in my ears, a deafening chorus of chants falling over me.
It was glorious.
Pillar rúna along the spine and transference rúna around the temples linked to the rúnari array as a whole with anchor points to the skeleton to soak-up any run-off—decent enough grammarie for someone outside the sanctioned guilds; there is no master’s mark. When he wakes-up, ask him who’s his alq’.
With a shite-eating grin I lifted my right arm into the air and basked a bit in the attention. Night-God knew that it was a rare occurrence for a scapegoat to actually win. I could feel my spine crawling back into place under my skin, the sensation utterly disgusting as my viscera rearranged itself as if it had a mind of its own. Vertebræ slotted where it should, tendon wriggling to reassert its hold between muscle and bone.
Having had my fill of ego and id, I sauntered away into the open maw of the tunnel. Which was to say that I limped with a cripple’s gait, nearly keeling over then and there.
My strength waned such that I doubted I could exert more than a single man’s might of arm. Touching a finger to my neck, I saw that I was burning up as if under a deadly fever, my skin red and sweat sublimating directly into vapour from my form.
Ichor-malaise; it’s a common phenomena for newborn sacrūna to over-strain their bloodstream. Rúna feed off of ambaricité first but when the easy stores of energy are drained dry, they tap into blood directly, second—this generates heat as alquemique bonds are broken up to free the latent ambaricité within. Ambarique charge is present within all living things, though it tends to coalesce within tissues that are rich in iron, among other metals.
I did not speak into the air directly—there were rúna that made you able to hear a pin drop in a crowded bar. So that’s what your bloodline does then; it transmutes sunlight into ambaricité.
Not primarily, no—ambaricité is only a secondary boon. The blood of Sol accelerates the production of ichor within the marrow. This drains the body of nutrients and can lead to emaciation and then starvation if left in the sun for too long. There’s a reason that my line took to the West Coast of Serein: there’s an abundance of food, be it crop or livestock.
The more that Lamaré told me about his bloodline, the more that I wanted it.
Whatever it was that heightened my senses did the same with all the other sensations; greed, lust, love, hatred, wrath, joy, envy, empathy. My world was awash in extremes and my emotional state was becoming increasingly harder to regulate. I was perpetually building up pressure in my heart as my wants swelled greater and greater still with no end in sight.
I dreaded what would happen should I not find a way to relieve the tension in between my shoulder-blades. Patriarchs and matriarchs alike brought the switch and the slap upon their loved ones out of frustration—what would a vampyre do with all of their accursed strength once they were at the end of their rope?
Overstimulated and over-stressed I walked up the stairs, the weight of the past days a whirlwind in my mind. So much had happened in so little time. Too much at once and too fast to boot.
C’est la vie, mon ami. Let’s get you into a nice bed; you need your rest.
The spectre’s voice was not sultry this time around—a rarity—only worried and a tad over-tired himself. I caught the coin purse thrown at me without looking at it, heard that it had exactly twenty silver Crowns within, and waved away Claude’s attempt at conversation.
“Tired. Gonna sleep. The next man of yours that comes by my place without knocking will die. Bonne nuit.”
My path back to my hammock was a blur, the little death overcoming me instantly once I laid my head to rest.
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Beneath my feet, I saw Raphaël slumber under red amber.
Slowly, like I was vin rouge being poured into a chalice, I slipped into control of our body—well, technically it was his but, as they say: ‘ta maison est ma maison, mon ami’.
I opened my eyes and knew then that he was now trapped within, resting in our crystallised heart as a spirit in my stead.
Oh how I had missed the flesh—disembodiment was not an enjoyable experience as the human mind was accustomed to some amount of sensory feedback. I went a little stir-crazy from the isolation and wanted nothing more than to go out and about. To dance, frolic and drink myself stupid, to wake up in a stranger’s bed and to drown away the looming spectre of my death three-days-past.
I laid my head to rest and closed Raphaël’s eyes instead.
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A yawn opened my mouth and the need for ablutions got me out of the cot. Excretory needs were nearly entirely superseded, this being the first time in three days that I took a piss in the pot. I was glad to be rid of them, to be honest.
God’s gouged-out eyes, I’m starving. Want some red meat; though, the decidedly animal kind.
I waited and waited for my resident spectre to pipe up with a jest—’you can nibble on my red meat, monsieur’—maybe even just a correction—’humans are, technically, animals, mon ami. Mammals, in general, and primates, in specific’—but he was quiet today, leaving a void in his absence. Now that I realised how much I took his interaction for granted, I couldn’t help but feel… something. Whatever it was, I did not entirely know, only that it was one of those nebulous emotions that required twelve lines in a minstrel’s song to be properly expressed or some other such sophistry nonsense.
A look at the moon’s current phase marked that another day had passed—either I was well and truly nocturnal or that fight had taken a lot out of me. With the hunger gnawing at my insides like a dog to an old and marrowless bone, I reckoned that it was mostly the latter with some of the former.
Amoré, we need to talk.
Those words in that particular order had never led to anything good. Ever. In the entire history of creation, since the dawn of time when Lucifer gave up His eyes so that Man might see, have those words been anything but a prelude to disaster.
When you sleep I come awake.
“That’s an inside thought, Lamaré.”
I am inside of you like an arm inside a cloth puppet.
“Graphic, but still an inside thought.”
No, I mean to say that I can pilot your body in your stead.
“Oh. Did you…”
Lamaré interrupted me before I could finish the question—his voice was firm and his conviction steady.
I would never do anything untoward, El. It is no secret that I am as infatuated for you as the Sun is for the Moon, but I do not grope.
A pause.
Without consent.
A shorter pause.
And foreplay.
Having our recollections intertwined I confirmed that my resident ghost had been nothing but cordial. Though I already knew that even without the supernatural connection that bound us both; he was a rogue without but within he was a soft-hearted man that would sooner choose harm upon himself than upon another.
I could not help but feel black regret that the man I was before that night was one whose heart would not outweigh Azazel’s feather on the scales of death. That level of self-sacrifice was like a lead weight on the shoulders of my good conscience, heavy with the feeling that the worth of my heart did not and could not compare to Lamaré.
Even though I could not see him and only hear his voice, I still somehow knew that he smiled melancholically while he spoke. It was a smile that did not reach the eyes and a sadness that belied a deeper sorrow.
Raphaël, I am no better than you or anyone else for my choice that night. I did what I did with what I had at the time—nothing more; nothing less.
I am no saint, but I can be the little d’yabel on your shoulder, whispering sweet nothings.
That got a chuckle out of my suddenly-sullen self.
But seriously, do not agonise over your value as a human being in regards to others. Azazel may weigh our hearts against Her feather but we need not.
“You’re something else, you know that?”
Of course, mon ami. Men and women alike and every shade in between find my rakish charm and dashing good looks positively irresistible.
My grin bared my fangs but since I was in good company I didn’t feel the need to hide that part of me.
“What’s your secret, Ré? How can you be so quick of wit?”
I was under no illusions about my mastery over charisma—it was Ré’s spirit that had done the heavy lifting in regards to the showmanship even though I was a child of the Éder.
When Lamaré did not answer me after a few dozens of seconds, I got worried and grasped at his presence at the back of my head.
Ei, don’t man-handle me; I am thinking—wait, on second thought please continue man-handling me while I gather my thoughts.
“Sorry, got a bit worried. You usually never shut up.”
Though my shameless aspect begs me to tell you how to shut me up, I will endure on.
A sigh.
My mother and father are not dead. Pay attention to the words I chose: they are not dead. They should be.
I knew the pain that having a broken relationship with your parents brought on. So I kept quiet, letting Lamaré spill out the d’yabels that festered in his heart.
Whenever I did not meet Father’s expectations, his go-to insults were ‘dandy’ and ‘prissy’. Any attempt at ‘theatrics’ or ‘flamboyance’ were met with the switch and the backhand slap. I learned quick wit as a means to rebel against the chains that bind, to spit upon my father’s face without the need for any phlegm leaving the confines of my mouth.
Blades and staves may break bones, mon ami, but words… words, they break souls.
The midnight wind whistled through the rooftops as I sat on a bench somewhere damp. Heavy, sombre silence juxtaposed the sleeping-snoring-loud world without—I used the lull to climb atop the sturdiest of houses, my limbs a blur and my hands deft as that of a sailor’s on the mast’s ropes.
Once I reached a house whose roof was not made of thatch but instead baked clay tiles, I settled in and waited. Sometimes, the best thing that you can do for someone is actually nothing at all. The best thing, tonight, was to have an open ear and a ready shoulder.
Mother did nothing but enable him. Instead of blaming him for his abuse, she blamed me—a child that ate the dinner table with more black eyes than a prize-fighter.
Quieter, my spirit became.
No matter how much I begged her to save me from his treatment, she did not relent. She did not even try.
When Lamaré’s voice returned to him, he spoke at a lower register, less speech and more snarl.
Father found me with the stableboy. We were both fourteen then, doing what it is that the young and dumb are wont to do.
Lamaré’s throat shook with barely contained wrath.
The bastard beat me and Jean Luc senseless.
Vitriol incarnate, venomously violent and blind with rage howled somewhere just beyond sight. Within was a maelstrom in contrast to the now still night air.
I awoke to a slap to the face in my room. He would not tell me what happened to Jean Luc, that black heart of his deriving pleasure from my worry. Just like Mother, my pleas were ignored, my pain made little of, and my humanity trampled upon.
‘Proper men do not cry. They do not chase pants instead of skirts.’
His silence was pregnant with a stillborn past that would haunt him until the sun rose in the West and set in the East.
A month passed and I was forbidden from seeing Luc. From the grapevine, I knew that he yet still lived. I had thought that Father forgot about it.
The next three words that he ground-out from his voice-box were like bad omens on the horizon. They crackled as if clove and they burned as if nutmeg but they were not at all sweet.
He. Did. Not.
“You do not need to force yourself to say such things, Lamaré.”
Do not worry—qui n’avance pas, recule. I have never spoken about that day to anyone but Lucifer and if I do not say this now, I never will.
Lamaré took a breath and said his next sentence with perfect enunciation but with none of his usual joie d’vivre.
Father brought me to the courtyard. Said that he had something to show me. Jean Luc had been hanged on an apple tree’s boughs for, and I quote: ‘daring to steal an apple’.
He did not steal an apple.
Another breath and the floodgates re-opened, inundating my mind with the need to strangle the life out of someone whose name was Pierre Picard D’Amice.
I ran away, a coward without a backbone.
This was not the man that had chosen his death over mine.
But now, I am no longer running from my d’yabels. I am no longer content with the draught of hope. What I drink deeply of tonight is malice and vengeance and premeditated homicide.
This was a man that would kill his father.
Tell me, Raphaël Son of the Éder, do you think differently of me now? Am I such a kind-hearted fellow that need be put upon the pedestal? I am no paragon, mon ami. I am a broken shard of glass that wants nothing more than to slit the throat of the man that broke me.
And I was the man that would help him commit patricide.
“Azazel may weigh our hearts against Her feather.” I said to the malevolent spirit within my heart. “But we need not.”