Chapter 2
Chapter Two
Edwige
T he bloodlust receded for a moment as the sun set into the glassy sea. It’s fiery red a mirror to the crimson and rust that painted over my snow white hide, the color a perfect match to Maslenitsa, the goddess who’d found and transformed me. I enjoyed a brief, bright flash of sanity before I was engulfed by the roiling need for vengeance once again. The craving brought on as a familiar, rancid scent met my newly sensitive nose.
I hadn’t always been so attuned to smells. Witches were like humans in form and most functions. I had been able to smell about as well as anyone else, which was to say not well at all. Now…now the world was a tapestry of not just color and sound, but smell, too. There are some odors that were impossible for the beast within me to resist.
I’d found one such scent last night.
I’d followed the bloodsucker emitting it through the twining, darkened alleys on the edge of the red district and into the emptier, dirty streets that branched out to the harbor docks. Those cobbled ways were abandoned every night as all the sailors and dock workers packed into taverns and bars, drinking away the aches they earned each day.
I imagined he had planned to snag one of them, making a quick unwilling meal out of a drunkard before going back to whatever hovel he inhabited in the perpetually dark, always smelling of sex and copper red district.
He’d fucked up, and I intended to show him just how much.
They were always so confident, these creatures. So stupidly sure of themselves, swaggering through the streets like they hadn’t been in the nest that had torn up my home, my life, and my body. Like they weren’t being stalked, as if their closest confidants hadn’t been slowly picked off by me, left to burn in the sun with gaping, empty maws as testament to who’d killed them and why. Like they wouldn’t fall to the silver gilding my teeth and claws.
I clacked the aforementioned gilded teeth together in anticipation. The sound was sharp as it echoed through the damp, salty air. The scent of low tide brewing with his personal smell, metallic and too-sweet, like the air around a plum tree once the fruit ripened and began to fall. The miasma was almost enough to turn my stomach.
The echoing clank of my teeth made him flinch. He looked over his wool clad shoulder. It was gratifying to see the flat cap that covered his dirty hair doing nothing to hide the widening of his eyes or the rising of his thick brows. The morphing of his expression as fear curled through the creature’s chest and bloomed on his pale face.
Yes. Fear me. I am here for your pain, your blood, and your teeth.
I clicked my teeth again, harder, the sound so bright and pure. The sliver that coated them making the noise brighter and sharper. My claws echoed through the air as I stalked forward, the silver tips ring bright and fairy-like as I clambered through the gutter. I winced as my bare fingers and toes sunk into the unidentifiable muck that lined the gutters of the streets. It squished between them and coated my skin, skin that was still bloody from the last kill. Had it only been half a day ago? What had I done with the time? Time wasn’t as linear as it had been before my near-death experience and transformation. Now it keeled and yawed, like a ship on the rough seas, moving rapidly before stalling out, moments stretching for ages and hours condensing into a single breath.
“P-please,” he whimpered. Fear was coalescing around him, filling the air with its bitter tang, wafting off his skin and trailing through the mist.
I pounced.
He was smaller than I remembered.
I knew a lot had changed about me when I took this curse of vengeance instead of accepting a clean death, but I hadn’t gotten bigger. Perhaps it was that he cowered before me. Yes, that’s what made him so much smaller, so much weaker. A pathetic little thing, just like the cowering worm he’d thought to turn me into. His vampire strength was useless now, his speed was gone, melted away in the face of the endless, rising fear that I inspired, that I was.
His first scream was music, the cry cut off as I rammed my razor sharp talons, the tips caked in muck and gore, through the base of his throat.
“I couldn’t scream either,” I whispered, gently pulling them back out, watching as the blood dripped onto the pristine white of his cheap shirt, the red blooming over it like the most decadent rose.
His sobs when I pried his mouth open were wretched and pitiful. When I peeled his jaw wider, tearing the flesh of his cheeks and giggling while I did it, I could feel the moment he remembered me. That he knew what he had done, and how he had created his own demise. I squealed along with him as my claws dug through the soft tissue of his gums, continuing to burrow into the bones of his face. Followed by the satisfying crunch when I ripped the first tooth free, one of the most precious ones, his dainty vampire fang. I held it up to the weak orange light of the gas lamp, admiring the brilliant pearly shine of it.
Oh, it was perfect .
His tears mixed with his blood, spooling off of his ruined face in long, thick strands of gore. The fluids, thick, warm and viscous as it pooled around where I knelt, mixing with the muck of the street, the piss and the shit, the grime polluting the already filthy cobblestones with gore.
“Tears, tears, tears,” I sang, jabbing my silver claws into the ruins of his mouth, plucking out his teeth one by one.
I chittered, and he chomped. I rustled while he glommed, the sounds of my hands working over his flesh, an orchestra of the grotesque. His lips sucked, his tongue licked, the sloppy sounds they made a delightful counterpoint to the harsher crack of my inexorable claws and implacable greed. If only this silly little man would stop whining.
“Sticks and stones, and teeth and bones, and sticks and stones, and teeth and bones, and teeth and bones, and bones and teeth, and teeth, and teeth and-” I sang the nonsense words as I worked the teeth from their bony cavern homes, drowning out the weakening protests he was attempting to make.
“Have you had enough vengeance, little one?” The strange voice, calm and faintly amused, pulled me out of the bloody reverie I’d sunk into.
I whirled, baring claws littered with chips of bone and threads of flesh to the stranger who’d dared approach me, who encroached upon my kill and interrupted my meal. I hissed, ready to fight.
“Don’t worry, toothtaker. I’m not here for your prize,” he continued, holding pale green hands up in a placating gesture. I eyed his fingers. They were soft, especially compared to mine. His fingers would be weak and useless at any of the tasks my own excelled in. How would he strip the flesh from this corpse? My fingers were long and spidery, ending in sharp metallic points that I could sink into the flesh and bone of my victims to tear their teeth out by the root. His teeth were flat, useless, and soft.
The idea of plucking those bones from his face and pulverizing them turned my stomach, though. He wasn’t one of the vampires I hungered for.
He had no fangs for my collection.
“Mine,” I growled, crouching low over the moldering corpse, rooting through the shredded gums for the final two teeth, a pair of fat, squat molars.
Hargrave
“It’s yours.” I assured the toothtaker as she turned back to me once again, another pair of teeth in her hand. I stood very still, taking in her curtain of tangled, black hair, pale, gore-splattered skin, glittering teeth and claws. Her wide, reptilian eyes were like the black of an abandoned well, of a winter night, of the new moon. They ate the light as ruthlessly as she devoured her victims.
“He held me down…” she whispered, carefully weaving silver wire around the base of a fang. “He helped,” she moaned, despair colored the words, and I froze.
“They hurt you?” I asked, careful to stay calm in the face of this awesomely violent being.
“Hurt me,” she gasped, closing her bottomless eyes and clutching the remaining fang hard enough to draw blood. “In a sky so dark and so still, on a night with no moon, they came to kill.”
“A kill, little demon?”
“A death, a kill, a maim, an ill will-” she was slipping away from me, heedless of anything around her as she created another fang pendant and threaded the two onto a necklace that, I realized with a shudder, was not ropes of pearls stacked around her slender throat, but a collection of teeth. A staggering number of ivory white teeth, vampire fangs interspersed with the more normal molars and incisors, all of them carefully strung along silvery, delicate chain.
“He helped?” I nodded to the vampire’s corpse.
“He helped, he helped, he helped, he helped…” she was rocking back and forth, chanting the words.
Edwige
I had quite a collection now. The fangs, long and needle sharp, a perfect, brilliantly pure white, were my favorite. Even as the strange, massive orc spoke to me, I found it hard to focus. Not when I had all my new teeth.
They gleamed against the dainty, silver chain that hung from my neck. Each of my prizes were strung along it. They shone in the dim light. So, so perfect and precious and lovely. I stroked my finger along my newest set, the threads of flesh and speckles of gore still present, still marring the bright, smooth surface.
I held one up to examine it, spitting on the bone and rubbing it clean, the silver of my nails making the tiniest, musical little jangle as I touched my newest prize.
The teeth were getting heavy. I’d taken out five of the ones who’d wronged me, who’d hurt me so viciously, but there was still one more to end. The ropes of molars, incisors, and canines that were strung haphazardly hung around my neck like I was a sea queen with ropes upon ropes of moon-bright pearls.
I giggled, pressing the pads of my fingers together and peeling them apart, loving the tacky, sticky gooeyness of the semi-dry blood and spit coating them. Vampire blood decorated my neck and chest. It speckled my stomach and thighs, it painted my ankles and covered my feet like crimson silk slippers. I couldn’t even feel the cold when I was coated in gore like this. It was the warmest coat, the balm against my soul, a friend that I could always rely on.
“Blood for blood,” I whispered, pressing a kiss to the collected teeth that hung around my neck. They kissed me back, little bites of pain mixed with the heady thrill of revenge. I giggled and couldn’t stop, the sound growing and growing until it filled my body and stole my breath, ripping at the sensitive membranes of my mouth and throat. I tasted my own blood now, and it just made me cackle harder.
Hargrave
She was beautiful, and terrible. She was perfect to behold.
I watched her as she crouched in the glow of the lone gas lamp, whispering nonsense words, swaying back and forth like a half-feral little goblin. Her pale skin decorated by the labors of her day, the blood nearly black, barely illuminated by what little light could penetrate the mist off the sea and smog from the ever-present miasma of smoke and soot that was pumped out by the factories and the boats that ferried their goods too and fro.
“Blood for blood,” her hissed epithet came to an abrupt halt as the wind shifted and brought my scent to her. She raised her head slowly, stretching her curled spine, squatting beside her kill.
Perfect and uncivilized and , I realized as her too large dark eyes caught mine, fucking mine.
I stared in awe at her slight form, wraithlike almost to the point of emaciation, skin pale as moonlight, eyes wide and glaring, her vicious silver claws and moon-bright metallic teeth shining, burnished by the faint light. A ragged chemise was all that covered her, barely keeping the growling little thing modest. Her scent, like death, yes, but there were also roses, wet stone, and the burning of funerary resin.
I would cover her in silk, I mused as she shifted into a crouch, looking like the gargoyles that lurked over the stone buildings all around, their twisted face and forms failing to frighten away the bad luck they’d been tasked with banishing.
“Come here, toothtaker,” I murmured.
Edwige
A single strand of his scent, a ribbon of something so intoxicating on the thick, salty night air, that it dragged me out of the wild mindset I’d sunk into. I needed more of it.
The scent belonged to me, the source of it was fucking mine. I owned it just as much as I owned my vengeance, as I owned my collection of teeth.
I turned my gaze from my newest acquisitions to the hulking figure that had waited so patiently at the top of the alley where I’d corned my panicked, gibbering prey. Vampires were all the same, proclaiming to be apex predators while they attacked the weak, the strays, torturing them in their nests. They always crumbled when confronted with a true predator. This one had crumbled so sweetly, especially when I bit my silver teeth into his spine, crushing it like the wild cats that hid, shy and aloof, in their snowy mountains.
I didn’t think the orc watching me would fall as easily. I sniffed again, following the enticing aroma of winter, spice and pure masculinity to its source. Him.
“Mine,” I growled, prowling forward, rolling to my feet with a little hop, heedless of the mud and blood I smeared over my bare limbs and ruined scrap of a chemise. I approached the male, making out a hint of green skin and a bulk so massive he could only be an orc. He didn’t flinch as I came toe to toe with him and wrapped my iron claws around his thick throat. “You are mine,” I growled, staring up into his dark eyes, orange fire blazing in the pupils, an amused smirk curling his darker green lips, highlighting where his tusks, gilded, just like my teeth, rose proudly.
“Yours,” he assured me, wrapping a brawny arm around my slight, filthy form and lifting me off the ground, heedless of the threat in my silver teeth and of my claws tapping against the thin skin above his jugular. “All yours, little demon.”
Hargrave
She purred in delight, those dark, strange eyes widening and softening like a contented cat..
“Yours,” I assured her again. Feeling myself getting swept up in the possessiveness she was exuding, letting her will and her magic wrap around me as strongly as I wrapped my arms around her, heedless of the gore painting every inch of her slight form, the danger in her claws, or the icy hardness of her limbs.
She was mine; I was hers. It was settled.
A cry interrupted us.
The bellowed sound slowing our headlong fall.
She flinched, looking wildly over her shoulder, stiff, matted hair brushing my cheek as she sought the source of the noise.
Someone stood over her latest prize, a human, by the looks of them, swarthy and massive, with the thick mane of hair and beard. The onlooker yelled again, demanding help, crying out in horror at the sight of the mutilated corpse.
“Time to go, little demon,” I growled, holding her tight enough that she hissed, her grasping claws digging into the flesh of my neck where she still gripped me, a master holding her hound. I ignored the pain, trusting, perhaps foolishly, that this creature would not truly harm me.
Hargrave
She was limp in my hold by the time I reached the wrought-iron gate of my townhouse. A now-stately edifice had been a baroque monstrosity when I purchased it. White marble had been weathered into black by the mist, rain and factory grime, its decorative work barely discernible even in the brightest of daylight. I’d had the entire hulking building modernized and now it gleamed, even in the late night darkness that had been compounded by mist and cloud.
I’d smoothed the corners and straightened the edges, turning the columns back to a more sedate Doric when they had been a very enthusiastic Corinthian, and toned down the more dramatic arches. The gargoyles had been banished to perches in the back garden, their snarling faces softened by the climbing roses, English ivy, and lavender. The gardener, a holdover from the estates’ previous owner who did almost no gardening in his dotage, often gave me dire warnings that the creatures would awaken one day and clamber back to their original perches regardless of my decorative preferences.
I had conceded defeat to that bit of information and informed the arthritic old human that should the stone sculptures suddenly gain sentience, I would be happy to surrender whatever territory along my roof or gutter they deemed theirs.
“Just a little further,” I murmured, pressing my lips to the toothtaker’s stinking, snarled hair, ignoring the stomach churning smell. She felt different in my arms, no longer a taught bowstring of half-mad fury and barely controlled violence.
“Where are we?” she replied, pliant in my hold her blinking eyes had returned to a more human shade, though they still sat too large in her gaunt, pale face.
“My home,” I told her, snarling as my guards showed entirely too much curiosity as we passed through the barrier and into the safety of my home.