4-6
Never in all of her life had Elaine seen something capable of such exquisite violence as Vilena Ruthven. She had spent much of her years amongst violent men, men for whom the edge of a blade was a way of life and fourteen kills in an evening was merely exceptional, not impossible. She herself was capable of tremendous violence, sometimes facing twenty or even thirty armed foes at once and, if not always prevailing, then at least surviving. In a just world, no living creature would have to face a death by main force, but the gates of Eden were long since shut, and so even a saint such as she had to master the sword and shield.
But Vilena was as different from the knights of the round table as a bird on the wing was different from a human acrobat. It was patently impossible that she, who Elaine had so recently confirmed was made out of mere flesh, could move with such certitude of direction, such incredible force, such windstorm agility, and yet Elaine had never been more present within herself and entirely certain of the truth of her senses than in that moment.
This was the dance of which Vilena had spoken. Not the press of their two bodies together, but the dance of murderous rage whose steps traced from one end of the ballroom to the other and whose music was screams of agony and howls of hatred. The first three deaths had served as the slamming of the band-leader’s staff, informing all present that the performance was about to begin. The whole ballroom and all of the rooms on the ground floor below had turned into a single grand resonating chamber for the tight-strung vocal cords of all in attendance, their screams and shouts magnified into a vast wall of noise, all-encompassing and overwhelming.
Elaine slipped away. Gilead was there with her, too; the same slipping had taken them both ever since the original slip when the scar was written against her face by her mother’s sin. It was a law of the universe that when blood spilled, Gilead slipped away. But this time a sort of double consciousness emerged. Even as the body, muscle seeking to hide away amidst silk and whalebone, started on its momentum, ready to kill and survive, the eyes couldn’t help but wander in Vilena’s direction, watching her perfume herself with steaming blood.
Because, of course, there was one group who did not consider a man’s arm being ripped from his body to be a sign to flee. Even as the guests drained from the room, the company of soldiers drawn in to defend Lord Ruthven’s homestead drew together in military order. One section, upon seeing that the threat was none other than their master’s wife, retreated. But only one.
The ballroom became a battlefield, dozens of soldiers arranging themselves as if prepared to receive a cavalry charge. Some took cover behind the largest landmarks, grand pianos and upturned banquet tables, while others went low, crawling on their stomachs in order to avoid attention. The air became a hailstorm of bullets.
Vilena could ignore such petty things, of course. Her body flickered between corporeal and misty states, and even when she was solid, lead bullets hardly fazed her. Wherever she found her husband’s men, they were destroyed with incredible viciousness, skulls crushed and hearts torn out, men heaved into the air and split in half with main strength. She could not even stop to feed, so powerful was Vilena’s hate, the need to destroy more powerful than the obvious yearning that showed on her face whenever she cupped a mouthful of blood past her lips.
Elaine felt frightfully unnecessary. What could she do, when even a single of the bullets that Vilena ignored by the score could kill her on the spot? Her body, entirely unmoored by thought, took care of the matter for her. Her opponents fought dishonorably, and so she would do the same. Elaine followed in Vilena’s trail and searched for stragglers, tromping through the pools of blood that spread out upon the polished wood floor. Ruthven’s men were canny; Vilena, in her blood-wrath, left many alive, hiding behind pillars or amongst the dead. These, Elaine found and, if they would not surrender their weapons on the spot, executed.
Trickier were those who had managed to evade Vilena’s wrath as a group, half-sections of stalwart men who found themselves caught between the immortal vampire and her chivalric shadow. These could only be defeated with severe and overwhelming violence. If a single shot could kill Elaine, then Elaine could not allow them to make a single shot. She would lunge in, grabbing whichever man was closest and using him as her shield until she could close into melee, too close for her opponents to use their rifles.
(A bayonet is as good a weapon as a sword, if not better. But soldiers of the early industrial age are no fencers. Elaine du Carbennic was).
Thirty of Ruthven’s soldiers had concentrated by the stairwell, standing as a single wall of bullets in hopes of slowing Vilena down. They did not. Vilena was a streak on the air, impossible to aim for as she approached, and then she was in the middle of them. Some drew swords, others knives, and yet others panicked and tried to flee. All died equally, for Vilena had surrendered her humanity in the face of bestial power, and could move with the speed and ferocity of a pack of wolves set loose amongst the flock, the shepherd nowhere to be seen.
Men were torn asunder or throats ripped open, Vilena’s fangs grown more prominent with each kill until the four fat tusks bulged out of her mouth. The floor where the fight took place turned into a single marsh of dismembered body parts floating amidst thick pools of spilt blood. A few of that thirty-man group tried to retreat—Vilena had killed so quickly that only half a dozen remained—and they too were cut down. Vilena did not kill out of need: she killed out of an unspeakable hatred for everything that was her husband’s.
As she beat one of the last survivors to death with the butt of his own gun, Vilena screamed ferocity in her native tongue. “A esli kto s mechom k nam voidet!” His skull finally popped under the onslaught. “Ot metsha i pogibnet!”
All around the ballroom, those few soldiers who yet lived were in a total rout, hurling themselves out of windows so as to avoid Vilena’s wrath. The vampiress let them go, but was by no means content to do so: rather, something had frozen up within her, a blockage that turned all of her muscles to immobile steel beneath her flesh. She stared down at the blood around her ankles like Tantalus staring at the pool around his chin.
“Vilena? Say not that you’ve taken up regrets at so late an hour.”
Elaine had taken advantage of the lull in the fighting to approach, even though the wisest part of her was screaming to stay away. Vilena jerked upright, as though she’d forgotten Elaine was there.
“No, no,” said Vilena, her voice distorted by her fangs. “There is no going back after this.”
The distance between the pair vanished in a flicker of mist. Elaine lost her breath as the Vilena’s powerful fingers dug into her hips, the pressure sinking into her very heart until it threatened to stop dead.
“If you kill me, my compatriots shall never forgive you.”
“I know that,” Vilena growled. “I can feel your blood…”
Elaine should have been terrified, she should have fallen into that mindless violence that had taken her so many times before. But she could not muster the necessary fear; her body sang out for Vilena’s.
“Why do I love you?” Elaine whispered, as though there was nobody around to hear.
The absurdity of the question caused Vilena to soften a fraction. “I don’t know,” she said. “But I would, in your shoes.”
Vilena lunged a handful of centimeters, and Elaine flinched, afraid she was about to feel fangs piercing her neck. But no such pain rocked her: Vilena’s own left hand had flown in front of her face, giving her something to bite down on. Her eyes glared into Elaine’s with a volcanic need.
Whatever love or hunger that the vampire had deflected by biting her own hand sought redirection elsewhere. Vilena’s hips, feminine in their breadth and yet greatly powerful—as their brawl had proven—pressed fiercely against Elaine’s skirts, as though she could pierce through all of the layers of fabric that dared to keep the two of them apart. Elaine, caught between her impulse to flee and her impulse to give in, couldn’t breathe.
How fortunate then, that they were interrupted by another round of gunfire. Elaine was instantly shoved to the ground as a storm of bullets pierced through Vilena’s chest, faster than she could render herself insubstantial against them. She spun, back bent, nails now as sharp as dragon’s claws as she let out an awful screech.
It was one of the machine guns on the outer wall, turned inwards when the regular patrols had failed to stop Vilena, now firing through one of the palace windows. Without another word, Vilena took to the skies, vanishing in a streak of mist. The gun tried to track her, further long bursts tearing up the ballroom, but there was nothing solid with which to hit. Vilena disappeared through the broken window (to continue her violent spree outside, erasing the machine gun nests that lined the curtain wall).
Elaine’s chest heaved. How close had she just been to death? It was only when the blood soaked through her clothes, the warm liquid threatening to stick to the skin of her shoulders, that she regained her feet once more. Before she could decide what to do next, two figures raced up the stairway from the lower floors.
“Gilead!” Sara screamed. “What happened up here? What the fuck?”
Sara stumbled to a halt, eyes bulging out of her skull as she took in the sight of the dozens of dismembered bodies scattered across the ballroom floor. The question on her mind was obvious.
“Not my victims,” Elaine said. “Lady Vilena has turned coat against her husband. I promised her a place in our group in exchange for her assistance.”
Upon hearing this, Sara reacted by tripping over her own feet. “You mean to tell me that going with her worked?”
“Not without some labors,” Elaine responded.
“And here I was thinking you were having another one of your episodes. Wait, were you? How could you have known this would happen?”
She hadn’t been, at least not when she had first decided to go with Vilena. Why she had made that decision was something Elaine did not know herself. But while she had been focused on Sara’s arrival, the other person who had come up the stairs from the dungeons was making their own move.
“A good evening to you, you lovely woman,” said Qi Zhen, bowing low in the English style. “With whom might I be—oh, it’s you. Why are you in drag?”
Elaine spun around, hands tightening on her weaponry. “Thou bastard and brigand, dost thou wishest that we might have encounter again? Wishest thou to taste my steel, thou overgrown child’s doll?”
Qi Zhen fell into their stance, but before they could make their own challenge, Sara quickly interposed herself between the two of them.
“We’re all on the same side! Qi Zhen helped me to break out of the dungeons and agreed to assist in rescuing my sister, so no arguing! No fucking arguing!”
Elaine smoldered at the motionless mannequin. Then she remembered.
“My harness,” she asked Sara. “Havest thou still my harness?”
After a second’s delay to remember what Elaine was talking about, Sara’s hands dove into the pockets of her manservant’s uniform, searching from shoulders to hips for the thing she’d had stashed away the entire duration of the mission. When she did find it, she held up the little white chip between her fingers like a gambler holding up the winning card, its string hanging down around her wrist.
“Here you go,” she said, tossing it to Elaine.
During the planning stages, Elaine had wanted to have Duranore’s enchanted armor on her person the whole time, but Juniper had talked her out of it. The chip didn’t look like jewelry, which made it suspicious, not to mention that the necklace was much too long to match with the high collar of her dress. Better to not draw attention to Elaine’s chest and throat. Now, things had progressed far past the need for subtlety: she would need all the protection she could get. She put on the necklace, then willed it to activate.
Instantly, Elaine was shattered, then the shards of her reduced to dust and the dust blown away in the wind. The dress was gone, the padding gone too, leaving Gilead wearing the (holographic) steel plate and matching under-suit once more. He felt flayed, as though every touch and movement of air was reaching through his skin to poke and prod at the agonized muscle underneath. The sudden shift in the distribution of his body weight caused Gilead to stumble backwards, clutching at his chest.
As though the tissue had turned white-hot, Gilead’s fingers flinched away from his body.
“Far better,” he said. “Though I lust little to test this harness against the force of bullets.”
While Gilead picked up his sword and shield once more, Sara burst out laughing. Wordlessly he stared at her, feeling an unexpected moment of solidarity with the similarly-unamused Qi Zhen. Eventually, Sara wheezed out an answer.
“The makeup! It got rid of everything else, but it didn’t get rid of the makeup!”
Gilead dropped his sword, hand flying to his face, only to stop. This was something that had to be done delicately. The very tips of his fingers gently ran across his skin, confirming what Sara had already said: his lips were still painted red, his eyes enwreathed in smoky black. As of yet, he had avoided ruining it completely, though it had to be badly smudged by now.
Sara slowly let her giggling subside. “I’m sorry, apparently I needed that more than I thought. I have a handkerchief here, you can wipe it all off—”
“Once Vilena comes back, we need to be moving,” Gilead said. “Where is Juniper?”
“No idea. She ran just before I made a complete fool of myself with that bomb.”
“What was that?” Qi Zhen asked. “I could feel the floors shake all the way from the dungeon.”
“Zahra is… was being held on the top floor, in Ruthven’s private quarters. They’re hidden behind a secret door, and I got impatient looking for how to open it normally.”
“No matter,” Gilead replied. “If she is there, then we shall rescue her. Vilena is a terror in battle; few threats will slow us.”
“It’s not far.” Sara jerked her thumb at the stairwell behind her. “It’s a single stairwell connecting the entire palace. We just have to climb six stories up.”
Gilead’s ears prickled: something was wrong. It was only after a moment that he realized what that was. The distant, muffled sound of machine gun fire had come to a sudden stop. Sure enough, a second later, the cause of that stoppage revealed herself, as Vilena’s mist form drifted lazily down through the same shattered window and came to rest upon the floor.
The vampire materialized; her dress bore a few new holes and rents in its material, baring yet more of her milky skin to the cold evening air, but she was otherwise intact. A look of worry crossed her face.
“Elaine? Elaine? Where is Elaine?”