Interlude #2
And Count di Flaviari, Dulior’s prized fledgling, had done precisely that; he had given his lover the Blood, and bound him.
It was a perverse thing to do…Yet delving deeper into the Count’s mind and memories, the All Father saw how this—whatever the arrangement between him and Dulior—had never been the Count’s intention.
He had been searching for a way out of it, away from the Countess, and was so very desperate.
As long as he could keep Emmerique by his side, the Count was willing to do anything, to sacrifice anything, even if that meant exchanging one master for another, as long as he no longer served under this woman.
It had been centuries since Ingenuar had last appointed a Regent.
The Sultana and the Basilissa had fulfilled their purpose; they had gathered the immortals and divided them amongst each other throughout the Ottoman Empire.
They maintained the facade that they served the All Father, but Ingenuar knew better.
Having Regents did not strengthen his rule—this empire that Felivar had imposed upon him—it weakened it.
A third Regent would not restore the balance between the two mistresses.
Not when the man Ingenuar intended to appoint wanted but one thing: to be left alone, undisturbed, with his chosen one.
Ingenuar had once been a draugr’s chosen one; he could still taste the cursed Blood that had turned him into a daemon.
When he returned to Berlin, he penned a letter; an invitation and a proposition.
A promise that the title of Regent would grant the Count his desired freedom and divorce.
All Silvio di Flaviari had to do in exchange for the title was to answer to Ingenuar’s beck and call, and carve another rift in the blood borders.
Help erode Felivar’s work still further.
And in time, the more the Regents fought, the sooner would Ingenuar see it all undone.
There were advantages to Silvio’s possessiveness over his valet, to his obsession.
The French Regent would not volunteer to defend Ingenuar’s territories but if someone like the Sultana threatened the consort, who could say how far Silvio would go to keep his lover.
Not even Death itself had withstood the insistent drum of Silvio’s heartbeat—Rico, Rico, Rico…
Despite being his firstborn, Ingenuar had never been able to truly behold Felivar.
The draugr had always been a faceless spectre, casting no reflection in the mirrors of the Berlin Coven.
Nor had any other vampire or human ever exhibited the slightest awareness of the man who stood dressed in red and silver behind Ingenuar’s shoulder.
And even if one could see the creature presiding over the Court, Silvio appeared the most blind of all the undead; he had eyes only for Emmerique.
Silvio would never see Felivar, nor be swayed by him. There was no room for another in those sharp green eyes.
It would take years, centuries even, to arrange all the Regents in their proper places on the board, but Ingenuar was patient. What were a few hundred years more spent waiting…
*
1991
Ingenuar lost track of how many vampires he had made over the millennia.
He shed his blood for any and all mortals who captured Felivar’s attention—men, women, even children.
Those that survived the cleansing of the flesh were welcome into their fold.
Soon they were so numerous that they needed a place to call their own.
They sought out abandoned mounds and tombs, looting the riches and trinkets laid out for the dead.
They wore the clothes left for the deceased to wear in the afterlife.
And they killed. They killed and fed, and when Felivar’s fancy fell upon a human, they dragged and carved them out, making room for the new, for the Blood.
They called each other ghouls, daemons. Vampires.
By the time they settled in Prussia, Felivar had long since lost interest in his brood.
“You fathered them, you care for them.” The draugr made a dismissive gesture and withdrew into the bowels of the Coven.
Felivar would often vanish for months, years.
Sometimes centuries. He appeared and demanded an audience of Ingenuar, his son, the All Father, only when he wanted something.
What did this creature want, what more was there to give?
Ingenuar had fed Felivar his blood, his life, the lives of countless others; he had built and expanded a Coven, a web of vampires who reached the very edges of the continent.
The known world teemed with these hungry, ravenous creatures…
and Ingenuar was growing tired of them. They desecrated the land and bled it dry like mold, like a toadstool tipping under the weight of so much blood.
Blood.
Blood.
“Immortality is catching up to you.” Felivar looked up at the mirror hanging high on the wall of Ingenuar’s study.
From this angle his reflection was not visible, only the multitude of paintings and tapestries, the vases perched on the mantlepieces overflowing with delphiniums and buttercups.
“It is common for an immortal to grow mad the more centuries one has lived.”
“I am not mad.” Ingenuar answered and realised the absurdity of the words.
Felivar did not appear to have heard him.
The draugr was pacing around the room, studying the artworks and trinkets Ingenuar had gathered over the years.
His collection had grown so vast he had to move some of it to a separate chamber.
His antiques aging while their master rotted before the eyes of the court.
“You have almost entirely stopped drinking blood. You rarely leave this castle you’ve built for yourself.
And the last vampire you made—” Felivar cocked his head in the direction of the All Father.
Ingenuar’s insides churned under the silver glow of those eyes.
The room tilted and nausea threatened to overwhelm the more he fixated on Felivar’s features.
So many centuries, and he still could not stand the sight of him.
“When was the last time you made a vampire?”
Ingenuar opened his mouth to answer, but Felivar ignored him.
“I’ve found you a sibling.”
“I do not need siblings. I have plenty of kin to worry about.”
“Oh, she is not for you.” Felivar dragged a finger over the mantelpiece, his nail gauging the marble. “She is for me.”
What would it be like for Felivar to make a new vampire after the millennia since his last creation on that barren island of Ingenuar’s youth?
Could a human survive being turned by drinking Felivar’s blood now?
Could a human survive drinking Ingenuar’s blood?
This was why he had stopped making others.
He was afraid of what he would bring upon the world.
A drop of his blood was enough to cleave the earth—a gallon of it would shatter continental plates.
His father did not offer further details.
This sibling, whoever she was, was out there, somewhere in the world.
It was up to Ingenuar to find the fledgeling and…
do what? What would he do once he found his sister?
Bring her to the Coven, introduce her to the others?
To Scarlett? Give her a piece of mortal land and a title, name her as Regent?
No, Ingenuar wanted to close the circle of blood, to lure as many of the immortals he could find and end it. The ichor that Felivar had fed him all those centuries ago was never meant to give life: it was poison. It was rot.
And Ingenuar would see it burn.
*
2017
Felivar tapped against the glass and wondered what it might feel like to have an actual reflection.
His body was liquid mercury, moving at its own mercy, threatening to spill through the blurred lines of his flesh.
At his feet, Ingenuar gurgled, his windpipe torn.
Felivar narrowed his eyes, concentrating on the tissue and muscle and willed them to collapse together with the satisfying crunching sound of breaking glass.
His son had outlived his usefulness. Ingenuar had lost his appetite for blood, for life, for rule.
From a guiding hand of the undead, he had withered into a dry branch, barren and shivering.
Felivar thought that the news of a sibling would invigorate his son.
Instead, Ingenuar had written to the Regents; one letter had already found its way to the Marquis.
Where were the other two? What did the summons to the Basilissa and the Sultana say?
Felivar would gnaw at his nails, if he could.
Ever-diligent Silvio had been the first to answer the call.
Felivar contemplated going to the Marquis’ chamber and searching for the letter, but why would the Regent carry it back with him?
It was too late… there was no time to act, to find out what his son had done.
What plot had he set in motion? “Gather them all to rule. Gather them all to end it,” Ingenuar used to say, slurring the words like a curse, like a promise.
The remaining mirrors in the room began to crack and splinter under Felivar’s fury, like a vein running over a frozen lake, picking at where the ice was most fragile. The shards rained down and piled onto the ground and across Ingenuar’s body.
Earlier tonight, his daughter had come seeking an audience with the All Father. He had not seen her since the night of her making. She looked strong, the Blood had acclimatised beautifully in her.
Felivar was tired. Tired of walking between the planes, of compelling flesh to gather and cling to a skeleton that did not exist. Bone marrow and plasma conjured from air and sustained by the force of his will.
Exhaustion marked his features; it dimmed the flame in his eyes and made him wonder, belatedly, if he had been wrong to tear out Ingenuar’s throat.
The irony of using a sliver of glass to cut him open and release the Blood he had gifted Ingenuar centuries ago.
His son’s hand twitched, the fingers desperate to hold on to Felivar’s leg and pull.
“This is how I found you and this is how I leave you,” Felivar clicked his tongue, the movement made him ache.
A glutton, the demons called him.
He had shed his name aeons ago. The mask he wore now was of his own choosing—a name stolen, a face borrowed.
He would have to start anew. Rebuild the Coven with whatever pieces the All Father had left.
Musing over Ingenuar’s still twitching form, Felivar did not hear the door open and close.
There were people moving about out in the hall, but someone had stepped inside, breaking his contemplation.
Felivar narrowed his eyes in the direction of the new figure.
It took him a moment to recognise Silvio.
He was not used to seeing the Marquis from this angle, dressed in grey and sepia.
Of the three Regents he was most fond of Silvio, the appetites the Marquis nurtured were closest to the draugr’s own.
Felivar liked what he saw in the face now taking on an expression of confusion and scorn.
Yet the Regent did not move to strike or rush to aid the All Father.
His green eyes reflected Felivar, confining him for a moment in their mercy, until Silvio took a step forward and dipped his hands into the blood pooled around Ingenuar’s head.
The blood had paled in the candlelight to the same colour as Felivar’s burning eyes.
Felivar regarded Silvio kneeling before him amid the ruins of ambition, and smiled.
Felivar needed a new vessel, someone who could achieve what Ingenuar had failed to accomplish.
Neither of his offspring was strong enough to endure gazing upon him.
One had shrunk from him like a child scolded by its father, and the other barely had the time to fix him in the dark.
But here stood Silvio, his eyes took in all of Felivar’s form, frowning, trying to make out the figure before him.
When you have starved for so long, Marquis, all you can see is hunger. Felivar smiled; a strange fondness blossomed in his chest.
Felivar and Ingenuar had tried time and time again, failing to bring back the dead.
Of all the vampires in court Silvio had the potential: he had brought his lover back through the veil; Felivar saw the memory written in Silvio’s blood.
Emerick dying, Emerick crawling out of the earth…
Silvio had always been hungry, mad with need…
Now Felivar wanted to feed that need. Make it swell and fester.
“And only a glutton can sate another glutton’s hunger,” Felivar tipped the Marquis’ chin with a taloned finger, and saw the slow formation of his reflection in Silvio’s eyes.