Chapter Twenty
Michelle stretched across the sofa in the TV room.
The movement made the cushion underneath Lavinia shift and caused a lance of pain to stab through her hip.
The doctor hadn’t been lying when he said it would take some time to recover.
She could walk, but any kind of high-risk situation was out of the question.
The Sisterhood was on high alert since the nest had been found so near their base.
Rogues were reckless, and they occasionally lived together in small family groups caught in some kind of shared blood rage, but the Sisters had never seen a group so large in such a remote area.
Nor had there been any reports of humans suffering mysterious deaths, one of the signs that rogues might be hunting in a region.
Somehow, they had not only hidden themselves, but had also managed to feed covertly.
Lavinia couldn’t shake the feeling that there was something different about these rogues.
Her Sisters were out there right now, scouring the surrounding hills for information on what the hell was going on.
Instead of being there with them, Lavinia had been benched over the last week, forced to take a break while the skin of her scalp knitted back together and the bruising in her hip healed.
Normally, she would have been impatient to go back out there.
Realistically, she was still somewhat restless at the thought of not backing up her Sisters.
But the enforced time off also meant spending time with Michelle, which was an absolute pleasure.
“I can’t help but feel somewhat rejected,” Michelle said.
She leaned over Lavinia to grab another strawberry from the plate on the coffee table.
Lavinia could have handed her the plate, of course, but Michelle seemed content with the arrangement, and so was she.
They had chosen to sit in the TV room, which was smaller and cosier than the downstairs rooms. Few of the other Sisters ever went here, giving them a sense of privacy that was often lacking in the Sisterhood’s headquarters.
“Rejected?”
“The witches. Them telling me I’m such a terrible witch that I might as well not be one at all.”
“Would you want to be one?” It had been a weight off Lavinia’s shoulders when the witches dismissed Michelle.
Lavinia hadn’t wanted to consider the possibility that Michelle might be one of them.
Her perspective on the insurmountable difference between human and vampire had slowly been shifting.
The chasm between vampire and witch, however, still prevailed.
If she had indeed been one, Michelle would have been forced to be taken into the fold of the Witch Council, and they would have been drawn into different directions by their different allegiances.
At least now Lavinia could hold onto the small and distant hope that somehow Michelle might not have to be completely lost to her after all of this was over.
Perhaps they would find a way for their paths to cross, sometimes.
For now, though, she would enjoy every moment with her that she could find.
“Not really. I mean, I don’t know. It really depends on what witches can do, right? Would I be able to magic away illnesses? That would come in very handy at my job.”
“I think they probably get sick like everyone else,” Lavinia said. “Vampires do, too.”
Michelle sighed. “Probably.”
“And worst of all, you would have to be…with them.”
“Excellent point. What was up with that kid? Should he really be involved with things like that?”
“Well, I met Balor for the first time over forty years ago,” Lavinia said.
“No way.” Michelle started upright—another jolt through Lavinia’s hip. Still, Lavinia wouldn’t move away or sit on one of the armchairs. She was exactly where she wanted to be.
Lavinia nodded. “I don’t know what the witches call…
what he is. We call them the forever children, because they don’t age.
It is said that it is a bargain they make, where they choose magic over the growth of a normal human life.
I don’t know of any making it past sixty. Balor is quite old for his kind.”
“So they make a child do that to themselves?”
“I don’t know whether they have a say in their own creation or not, but yes.”
Michelle slumped back into the cushions. “God. I’m starting to see why you all don’t like them.”
“Don’t like who?” Proserpina sauntered into the room.
Rest had done her good. Her olive skin had regained warmth, and she moved with more ease.
She, too, was relegated to staying inside until she had regrown her torn lung tissue and restored her cracked ribs.
She still slept through most of the day, the hours that she was awake extending slowly.
When the weather was clear, she and Lavinia lay on the grass for an hour at the height of night, allowing their bodies to heal under the moonlight’s rejuvenating rays.
Lavinia had taken over some of Pina’s duties around the mansion’s defence, checking the security systems, both visible and invisible, that protected the Sisterhood’s headquarters until Pina was well enough again.
“Witches,” Lavinia said. Pina picked up a strawberry from the plate on the coffee table and popped it into her mouth. The soft thickness of bandages around her chest still filled out Pina’s loose hoodie, but Lavinia was pleased to see her friend’s steady recovery.
“Fucking witches,” Pina agreed. Then she looked at Michelle. “No offence.”
“Apparently I don’t count, which is fine by me,” she replied.
“Then I stand by it.” Pina sat down on one of the armchairs and folded her legs underneath her. “I don’t know how you can stand it, Vin. I’m bored out of my mind.”
“Teaches you not to get impaled by a chair leg next time,” Lavinia said mildly.
“I swear, those rogues were the most coordinated I’ve ever seen. And so fast.”
Lavinia nodded. She had been thinking much the same.
“How can you tell someone is a rogue, and not like, just another vampire?” Michelle asked.
Pina lifted one perfectly manicured finger.
“Well, first of all, a vampire in their right mind would never threaten a Sister of Twilight. But with a rogue, it’s more than that.
They have a certain smell, all sour and bitter.
They feed until their victim dies, and that death clings to them.
It’s in their eyes, their movements. It’s hard to explain, but once a vampire truly gives themselves up to their thirst for blood, they leave their senses behind.
They usually barely speak—reasoning with them is impossible.
It’s like they have reverted into an animalistic state. ”
“And they never come back from it?”
“Never,” Pina said.
“Couldn’t they be locked up or something?”
“Annihilation is the only justice vampires know,” Pina said.
“It just seems so…”
“Cruel?” Pina supplied.
“Yeah. Maybe.”
It wasn’t like humans had a much better track record.
Lavinia could well remember the festival atmosphere of the London public executions of the early nineteenth century.
Then, due to changes in ideas of morality, they had been curtailed, held behind closed doors.
Now, the Brits no longer killed their murderers but kept them to live out their lives in crumbling estates.
Lavinia wasn’t a moral philosopher. All she knew was that rogues were a danger to civilians, vampire and human alike.
“You have to remember a rogue could live on for centuries. As they descend deeper, they become increasingly engulfed by their frustrated desires. Quite frankly, keeping them alive only to suffer would be torture,” Pina said.
“It’s an imperfect response,” Lavinia agreed.
It was certainly dirty work, and dangerous.
“But it’s the only one we have right now.
” If there was a way to bring a rogue back from the brink, that would be vastly preferable.
No one had ever been able to. Many rogues killed their family members, or even loved ones, if they stood between them and the objects of their obsessions.
“You should talk to Octavia about this. She lives for this kind of shit.” Pina lowered her voice to mimic Octavia’s, pinching her eyebrows.
“Pina, we need to dismantle the matriarchy, or true equality will never prevail.” She returned to her normal voice.
“She doesn’t have to tell me, I was born under a different star. ”
“What does that mean, born under a different star?” Michelle asked.
Pina picked up another strawberry and turned it between her fingers.
“I think you humans nowadays would call it ‘trans’. The name might have changed over the centuries, but the idea stays the same. I wasn’t born Proserpina, fifth of her name.
I was renamed at twenty-five at my request. I would not have been able to be a Sister of Twilight if I hadn’t.
Still, there will be no sixth of her line.
As I cannot birth my daughters, my line will end with me. ”
It was an unfairness that Pina and Lavinia had spoken about occasionally, in the early hours of dawn over a couple of bottles of wine.
Pina’s mother and her consort had been thrilled to meet their daughter, but some difficulties remained, particularly around the rigid roles within the matriarchal vampire society.
Only the birth-giver could continue a line, regardless of their gender.
Change might happen eventually, but vampire society moved at a glacial speed, nothing like the breakneck pace of its human counterpart.
“Anyway,” Pina said. “Changing the subject. What are you two lovebirds up to?”
Lavinia glared at Pina, but Michelle seemed unbothered. “We were just watching one of my favourite TV shows. We’ll be going to my mum’s birthday in a little bit.”