Chapter XIII. Of Crimson Wings #2
“‘How do you know all that?’ Dior asked.
“Our Priori glanced up at the Grail and smiled, cold as wintersdeep.
“‘We feel them.’
“Maryn looked to Phoebe, eyes agleam. ‘Watch over her this day, Fiáin dahtr.’
“She turned back toward Shadowchild.
“‘With me, Liathe.’
“We nodded, the voices within us a storm now. ‘Oui, Mother.’
“There came a stillness then; a brief moment when even the winds seemed to hush. Dior looked uncertain, glancing now to her fleshwitch, Reyne’s hand gone to her silversteel.
But Maryn ignored all, eyes closed, curls whipping in the gale.
And with a soft rush of fabric, a faint red breath, she burst into pieces.
“Crimson wings fluttering, soaring upward now—the last dregs of her power used. Were she full sated, there would have been thousands of those moths, each a drop of her ancien blood. But so starved was Maryn by our journey, there were only a few hundred, raging upward into stormwashed skies.
“‘God be with you, Dior,’ we said. ‘May heaven’s host watch over you this day.’
“The Grail opened her mouth to speak, but we were already gone, bursting apart at our seams just as the Mother had done. After our training sessions with Dior, we were even more starved than Maryn, only a hundred or so pieces of us swirling upward, consciousness fragmented, a tempest of crimson wings and flickering thought, the center of us held tight to the impulse we must follow. And so we did, across the ocean in Maryn’s wake, the howling wind pushing us onward toward Shadowchild, the men upon her decks, thralled flesh and sharp steel and eyes alight with the zeal of a Forever King.
“They cried aloud as they saw us, firing useless arrows or slinging pointless spears. Were they armed with fire, they might have hurt us, but these were soldiers who fought for vampires, not against them. And so it was we’d lost not a drop as we swarmed toward the mainmast, re-forming on the crossbeam.
Crouching there like death’s handmaid, looking upon the men we must end as we pulled down our scarf and hissed.
“‘You’re all going to die.’
“But Maryn herself spared no time for mind games, hundreds of moths swirling in a tightening spiral on the maindeck’s heart.
And there she coalesced, a red tempest given form—that dead-eyed doll in her pretty cream dress.
The Voss thralls had no clue what they were seeing—not a one of them would have fought Esana before.
At the sight of her, a broad, pig-eyed thug hissed between tar-dark teeth.
“‘What the devil…’
“‘No devil, I,’ Maryn replied. ‘I am God’s own monster.’
“And eyes agleam, the Priori of the Faithful held out her arms.”
The Last Liathe paused in her tale, gaze lost in the black waters before her. Jean-Francois continued writing, quill scratching swift upon the page. But silence stretched out, like a spool of ruby red between parted lips and sundered throat, and still, Celene was mute.
“… Mlle Castia?”
“I had heard tales,” she finally said. “Of the eldest of my faith. Of the dreadful feats a true master of sanguimancy might perform. I had seen the power Wulfric wielded in my years at his side. But while my master was both aged and puissant, he was a boy compared to Maryn. Broodchild of Illia herself. Eight hundred and seventy-six years her tally upon this earth. I had heard legends of the Red Crusade, but she had lived it. The Wars of the Blood. Charbourg’s fall.
Maryn, Mother of Monsters, had survived them all.
“As she lifted her arms, the thralls about her raised battle-notched blades. They’d the look of veterans all, tabards embroidered with ornate ravens, pauldrons wrought like skeletal hands.
How long had they served Fabién, I wondered?
How many years his puppets? Had they bent the knee of their own free wills?
Or were they akin to the soldiers Dior had rescued from Nikita?
Dragged unwilling into the service of the Fallen?
“In the end, I supposed God would judge them fair.
“Maryn opened her hands, fingers splayed. A brief moment passed upon the Shadowchild; the air seeming to still and each soldier to gasp, reaching for their throats. And then the Priori of the Faithful closed her little fists, and each thrall on that deck erupted.”
Jean-Francois arched one brow. “Erupted?”
Celene nodded, swallowing thick. “It is the only word I can use to describe what we saw. Though truthfully, it does little justice to the … horror of it. Sanguimancy at its root is the gift to control one’s own blood; feel it, reshape it, wield it.
But masters of the arte can wield other people’s besides.
And as I watched, dumbstruck, I saw the blood of every man within Maryn’s sight burst from every orifice in their bodies—mouths, noses, ears, eyes—torn from their very veins and up into the salt-struck air.
“We’d been starved aboard Dawnseeker, and my hunger was close to agony by then.
I’d wondered how bad it had been for my Priori; all too keenly remembering the thirst with which she’d near destroyed me.
I had answer now, eyes wide as those fountains of gore sprayed out from the veins of those poor fools and into Maryn herself.
The stench of blood and bladder and bowel painted the air, crimson ripping up and out from the men, veins tearing now, skins flayed and fingernails rupturing, the dregs of them flung serpentine into the sky and spattering across the deck at their feet.
“Hundreds slain in a blinking.
“A cry came from the aftercastle—a cruel gent with marble skin and hair black as pitch, sharp fangs bared as he raised his blade. Ironheart for certain.
“‘Bring flame! Burn it down!’
“But we were moving then, flung like a knife right at that Voss’s throat.
The hunger in us roared, echoed by distant cannon fire, the choir of souls within.
Slicing my palms, we wrought our blade, our flail, the last of our blood used in their summoning.
The Ironheart readied his steel, the half dozen swabs about him likesame—a grim capitaine and a passel of bruisers, hard as coffin nails.
“I felt Wulfric’s hand upon my shoulder then, guiding my swordwork as he’d done nights past, my old master never far from my surface now.
He hated me more than any other inside me, but in the end, he’d no wish for me to die here—his soul would end in hell along with mine.
And so together we danced as once we had in San Yves Priory, his skill, my hand, our sword slicing the air, throats opened and bellies spilled wide.
“The Ironheart was only a fledgling, but still he fought with all the rage of a monster defending its forever.
We cut his men down, moving to the strains of a hymn unheard, played upon keys invisible.
Our bloodblade shattered like glass on the iron of his skin, but the damage was done.
And weaving past his broken guard, we snaked up behind him, fingers sinking into his shoulders and fangs into his throat.
“His name was Mael. Born the son of a cobbler in the city of Isabeau, ninety-seven years ago.
Slain by a granddaughter of Morgane Voss, daughter of Fabién.
A distant cousin of mine. Mael did not think himself evil, nor this invasion cruel.
He thought it their right to rule—these children of the Forever King.
Did the farmer mourn his cows when he took them to market?
Did the shepherd not fill his belly with lamb?
“All this I learned in what would’ve been a heartbeat, if only Mael’s heart had still done so.
But his chest was still and silent as I drank his last drop, his body undone and soul unmoored, dragged down to join the others within me.
And standing in his ashes, mangled mouth peeled back from bloody fangs, I hissed the only truth I could rely on anymore.
“‘By this blood shall we have life eternal.’
“‘Véris.’
“I opened our eyes. And there upon the gore-washed decks stood Maryn, surrounded by corpses.
Hundreds of them. She was drenched head to foot, her whole body painted crimson save for those eyes, black and bottomless as the pits of hell.
And looking at me across that carnage—terrifying and absolute—Maryn only smiled.
“‘We are awake now, Liathe.’
“The air crackled, distant cannon fire rising on the wind. Glancing starboard, we saw Dawnseeker engaged with Hellspawn, both galleys unloading into each other’s flanks.
The Onslaught was bearing down also—largest of the Voss fleet—and we could see Dior atop Dawnseeker’s aftercastle, roaring as her Unbound prepared for boarding.
“‘We must—’
“But Maryn was already gone, splitting into a swarm of wings once more; not hundreds now, but thousands of moths. We followed, bursting apart and winging across the ocean swell, leaving the gutted Child behind us with her decks drenched red.
“Pistol smoke and black ignis fire, flashing steel and thundering drums, screaming men and spraying gore; this the hell we descended into. Grapples had been thrown, iron hooks biting into the Seeker’s flank, drawing Hellspawn close enough to board.
The fighting was frenzied, shields shattered and blades splintered, bellies sundered and heads severed.
The Grail was aft, Phoebe guarding the stairwell leading up to her castle, drenched to her elbows in red.
We saw two highbloods among the fray—a hulking thug with a mighty warhammer, and a swift pistoleer with a brace of wheellocks—Ironhearts both, their hands dripping murder, and their eyes, hatred.
“The battle was near matched, but Onslaught was closing now, grapples ready. And though the Forever King wanted Dior Lachance alive, the reckless abandon with which these sea dogs pressed their attack told us they had no idea who it was they actually faced.