CHARLIE
At last, I reached Issastar.
Despite the beating it had taken from the rampaging golenae, Admite bombs, and the civil war, I found the city still bustling.
Tradespeople hurried through the streets, vendors shouted from their food carts, and children darted among the rubble, chasing balls—and one another.
Soldiers were everywhere. There were Lacunae, but also guards wearing the blue of the Maethalian crown—although their unkempt appearance and gruff demeanor made me think they were not the same men who I’d seen in that role when I was first in Maethalia, who had all seemed well-groomed and professional.
I’d left Parthar at an abandoned farmstead just beyond the outskirts of the city.
Without simnal, it had taken me over an hour to explain that he was to stay there, that I couldn’t just waltz into the capital city with a young dragon at my heels.
He’d finally remained behind and let me walk away without him, though I somehow doubted he’d stay put.
On the way into the city, I pulled the dead man’s cloak I wore around myself.
Anyone who looked closely would notice my flight jacket, lace-up boots, and button-down shirt—all Admite clothes.
But at least at first glance, I’d look normal to them, and the cloak covered up my service pistol, as well.
People paid me little mind as I passed among them, hurrying toward the city center.
Hope buoyed me along. Just knowing Essa was close had me almost floating down the road despite my travel-weary legs.
But when I caught the first glimpse of Charcain, my gait slowed, and I stopped to stare.
The palace’s soaring, pearlescent towers stood broken, its mighty, glimmering walls cracked and repaired with dull gray grout and dreary brown stone.
It hurt my heart to see it. It felt like a cynical metaphor, like all good and beautiful things in the world would eventually be broken and patched up with shit.
Somehow, the sight of it made my desire to get to Essa feel all the more urgent.
I picked my way through the narrow, crooked streets to the base of Charcain’s outer wall and made an orbit around it, cutting through a series of streets and alleyways.
In some places, homes and shops had been built right up against the wall’s base, and I had to navigate some distance away before finding a street that would take me back the way I wanted to go.
It took the better part of an hour to make the full circuit, but eventually I made it back to where I’d started—feeling frustrated and despondent.
Despite the damage the wall had suffered, I found nothing resembling an unguarded entrance.
There was no crack I could sneak through, no huge tree I could climb to reach the top, no poorly watched gate with a lock I could try to pick. Nothing.
I stood leaning against a wall of a pub, my arms crossed, glaring at Charcain with irritation and wishing I had some Maethalian currency with which to go into the pub behind me and purchase a beer and some food to console myself.
I’d been standing there for perhaps twenty minutes when I began to notice that guards seemed to be entering and exiting an alleyway off to my left with unusual frequency.
Pushing off the wall, I made my way to the alley and cautiously entered.
It was dim and damp, riddled with dirty puddles and paved with ancient, buckling cobblestones.
There were a few shops there—one that seemed to be selling some sort of potions, another that offered a variety of ugly hats.
At the end of the alleyway, a ramp sloped downward and a pair of double doors which opened into an underground space beneath.
I pretended to be window shopping for a hat and watched as a pair of guards walked by me and passed through the doors.
A few minutes later, a trio of Lacunae emerged from them and marched down the alley and out into the city.
This was what I’d been looking for. An entrance.
But clearly, this was a tunnel for guards and knights only, not for commoners. Even if I fought my way past whatever guards waited below, I couldn’t just walk out the other side wearing these clothes. Not in broad daylight, at least. I’d be spotted as an intruder.
So, I waited. I wandered Issastar’s crooked streets and dreamed of Essa.
I sat near a fountain so old I couldn’t tell what the statues were supposed to be.
And I ate the last meager food ration I had in my bag—a packet of stale crackers and a tin of peanut butter.
When I was done, I splashed some of the fountain’s water onto my face, hoping to dispel the mental fog that stole over me as the blood hunger crested once more.
My hands trembled. My teeth grew long. I watched each passerby with the eyes of a predator, fantasizing about what it would be like to sink my teeth into them. To taste them. To drink their essence and feel it lighting me up from within.
God, I hoped Kitty and Bo had managed to make it to Umsir and found some cure for this curse. Because I couldn’t live like this forever. No way.
I was in no state to fight. I felt jittery and half out of my mind. And I had no idea what I was walking into in that underground passage. There might be a hundred soldiers down there. The gateway might not lead into the castle at all. It might just be an underground barracks or something.
But I couldn’t wait any longer. Vampyrism might have stolen the simnal from me, but I didn’t need any dragon power to feel Essa’s nearness.
And I couldn’t stay away from her a moment longer.
Night was falling, and it felt like time was slipping away, like some hourglass inside me was running out of sand.
It wasn’t dragon sense, and it wasn’t the scrying of a Gray Brother seeing into the future.
Maybe it was a psychic connection that had something to do with love—I had no idea.
But whatever it was, I felt it. Urgency.
Need. Restlessness, growing stronger every second.
It made no logical sense, but I felt like if I didn’t go now, I would lose Essa forever.
And so, as the sun set and shadows drew themselves across the alleys and streets of Issastar, I made my way back to the guards’ underground den.
For ten minutes or so, I stood leaning against the wall of the alley, watching the entrance, and no one came in or out. That gave me hope. Maybe I was timing things right…
The blood hunger roared inside me like a rising storm, stronger now that the sun had set. But maybe that was okay, too. I felt feral. Ferocious. Like I could take on a hundred Lacunae single-handedly—like I would take on the entire army of Maethalia, if it would get me back to Essa.
And so, I checked my sidearm, clicking off the safety, and loosened my saber in its sheath. Then, with my shoulders thrown back and my head held high, I marched down the ramp and into the base of my enemy.
The first thing that hit me was the smell of horse shit and hay.
I could hear the snorting and stamping of hooves and looked to my left to see around ten stalls filled with massive, black war horses, all of them looking at me with distrust. Several rolled their eyes and whinnied as I approached.
I could feel the beating of their hearts, too, with my keen vampyre senses—all that hot blood inside them, pumping faster as their fear piqued.
But horse blood didn’t hold the same appeal as human blood, and I was able to resist the temptation and walk on.
Light down here was scarce, especially now, at dusk.
Only a few scant torches illuminated the space, but my vampyric vision allowed me to see perfectly.
To my left were the stables. In the center was a cobblestone path so well-worn it must have been trampled by a hundred generations of Maethalian guards.
To my right, a waist-high stone partition sectioned off a space that appeared to be a mess hall area.
There were long wooden tables—all of them empty—but beyond them, three hearths stood, each with a cooking fire burning inside it and, over the fire, a cauldron of what smelled like stew.
Three men were there, cooking. One was stirring his pot.
Another sprinkling salt into his. The third was chopping some sort of root vegetables that looked like pink carrots.
Ahead, the path was open. No one stood guarding it. All I had to do was slip past, and I’d be inside Charcain. It was almost too—
“Ow, cursed knife!”
Someone shouted, and my attention snapped back to the cooks. The one who’d been chopping carrots held one of his hands tightly with the other. As I watched, blood seeped from between his fingers.
The world seemed to constrict in an instant as the scent of that blood hit my nostrils, and the hunger rose in me like a rampant lion, insane, uncontrollable.
Before I even knew what was happening, I’d bounded over the wall and streaked to the injured cook.
I grabbed his wrist and ran my tongue down his injured finger, the taste of that hot, coppery liquid setting off pleasure inside me like the bursting of a mortar round.
The cook screamed, groping for his dropped knife, but before he could grasp it, I slammed him against the ground and yanked his head back, exposing his neck. My fangs throbbed as I opened my mouth, ready to strike, to feed.
The other cooks were shouting now. One of them threw a knife that clattered past me harmlessly.
The other was running away, screaming for help.
But he didn’t have to run far. I heard the thudding of many feet, the jingle of armor, and I looked over to find what must have been three dozen Lacunae charging toward me.
The first few, upon seeing me, drew their swords.
Every cell of my being wanted to ignore them, to dig my teeth into the cook squirming beneath me and drink him dry. Already, the blood I’d tasted was better than any cigarette, any coffee, any sex I’d experienced in my life.
But I still had sense enough to fear Lacunae blades.
So, I rose to my feet, snarling like a dragon.
The first Lacunae arrived and tried to stab me.
I slapped the flat of his blade away with preternatural speed, grabbed his forearm, and flung him past me.
He clanged into the cauldron of soup, spilling its contents and sending a scalding, wet mess gushing across the stone floor toward us.
The second warrior to attack was not a Lacunae, but a noble knight.
He swung his blade at me in a wide arc. I ducked it, then lunged forward and hit him with a ferocious backhand that knocked off his helmet.
I jumped on him then like a lion upon its pray, my teeth sinking into his cheek.
I tasted blood and the world ignited with pleasure once again.
But more knights were coming. Some with spears.
Some with swords. Some with chain flails whiffing ominously through the air.
I shoved the man whose blood I’d been drinking into two of them and drew my sword.
Seven charged me at once.
But I was powerful now, ignited by the little bit of blood I’d drunk.
My blade whisked through the air so fast, no normal eye could have followed it.
Clink, I turned an enemy blade aside. Chunk, my own blade buried itself in an attacker’s neck.
Crash, I kicked a Lacunae in the gut with such force that it knocked him and three others down like bowling pins.
Another tried to brain me with his mace and slipped in the spilled soup, falling in a crash of armor.
But the damned Lacunae were still coming, fifty of them, at least. Even in my blood frenzy, even knowing that the path to Essa led through them, I knew I had no chance of fighting my way past them all.
I gave a snarl of pure frustration, a sound so ferocious that even these seasoned warriors drew back.
Then I turned back toward the exit, back toward Issastar, and I ran.