The Blood is Love by Karina Halle

7

Lenore

I can’t breathe.

I wake up, eyes flying open, and see an endless night sky of stars above, and yet I know Yanik is with me, that he has me, I can feel the unmistakable strength of his evil, endless darkness and utter madness.

He’s going to kill me, he’s going to kill me.

“Calm down, Lenore,” a voice says, cutting through the darkness. “You’re having a panic attack.”

The voice is familiar, but it’s not Yanik.

It doesn’t belong to a vampire.

But the evil, the darkness, it remains like it runs in black veins under the ground, permeating the world from the inside out.

“Lenore,” the voice says again, and suddenly the stars in the sky seem to disappear, as if covered by a black cloak. “You’re all right. You’ve lost a lot of blood. Just stay still and wake up slowly.”

Blood?

And then it all comes rushing back into my head.

Solon.

The beast.

The empty red eyes.

The feeling of five curved, knife-sized claws shredding through my chest, from my collarbone to my sternum, scraping through muscle, fat, cartilage and bone.

I gasp again for air and sit up and look down at my chest.

I’m wearing Solon’s black silk robe, naked underneath, and my chest is one big gaping wound full of carnage. Pain, terror, abject horror runs through me, making my blood turn cold and fizzy and I’m close to passing out, because how can I still be alive with my body nearly ripped in two? This wound is deep and fatal, and awful, so awful.

I’m going to throw up.

“Breathe,” the black cloak says, and when I look again, I see a changing face and fathomless eyes staring at me. “Breathe through it Lenore. You’re safe here with me. We will fix you.”

Suddenly he stands up straight and motions with his hands and I’m rising up off the ground, like a puppet on a string, until I’m standing on my feet, my toes sinking into sand.

Sand.

I look around.

I’m on a long stretch of beach, the sand cool against the soles of my feet, ocean waves crashing to one side of me, a darkened forest on the other side. No moon to be seen.

The man stands in front of me, pulling his cloak down off his head, though it doesn’t make his face settle down. It keeps on changing shape, a moving blur of features, while his eerie blackened eyes remain fixed on me.

Jeremias.

My real father.

“Where am I?” I ask weakly, my voice raw, my lungs bubbling, frothy and cold. “How did I get here?”

His lips move into a smile. “We are in one of the many worlds available to you, dear daughter. Worlds that exist, if only you know where to look.”

That isn’t helpful.

I start coughing again, spitting out blood onto the sand. It looks black, like tar. This isn’t good. “I’m going to die, aren’t I?”

I feel the impatience roll off Jeremias, but I’m too tired and, well, dying, to care.

“You might if you don’t stop talking,” he says after a moment. Then he sighs. “You must have trust in me.”

I stare down at my chest in horror again, at the mess of flesh and bone. Is this even happening? How do I know I’m not already dead?

“I can’t trust a man I just met,” I tell him. Oh god, I think I can see my lungs.

“Even one who is in the process of saving your life?” he asks calmly. “Besides, we have met. I have helped you before and that should be enough to warrant your trust.”

“When…” I begin, but the effort to talk is too much. When did you help me?

“When you were tied to a chair in front of a vampire named Yanik and you asked for help. Your inner well, the moonlit one full of darkness and power, was waiting for me.”

“My mother told me about that, about the well inside me.”

“And your adoptive mother is a witch, just as I am, just as you are. Tell me, do you remember that moment? Before you harnessed Absolon’s power, took his fire, and made it something of your own, something to wreak destruction and death on the Dark Order? Because I do. I heard you call, was standing by to help, and I asked, ‘Are you sure, child?’ And you said—”

“Yes I’m sure,” I repeat absently, remembering it so well, even though I’ve been trying so hard to block it out. I knew I had felt something—someone—else inside me, helping me access what I needed to in order to defeat Yanik. I just didn’t know it was this guy. My infamous evil warlock of a father.

“No, don’t block it out,” Jeremias says to me, reading my mind. “By blocking out what’s difficult, you’re refusing to face it. By refusing to face it, you can’t use it to make yourself stronger. Lenore, my child, you will need all the strength you can get going forward. Not only to survive what this monster did to you, but to survive everything else that is to come your way. I have foreseen the future.”

Suddenly Jeremias waves his hands and I’m drawn to him like an invisible hook is placed around my back, my toes dragging through the sand. “We have much to discuss,” he says gravely, his face inches away. “But it will have to wait.”

He moves his hand again and I’m spun around, facing the dark forest now, seeing flickering flames at the base of the bent cypress trees, the kind of forest you would see on the wind-beaten Northern California coast. Am I still near San Francisco? Or am I truly in another world?

Jeremias begins walking through the sand, though he seems to glide just above it, and I am pulled behind him, like he’s dragging me along a foot off the ground.

We go up a small bluff and then he steps to the side and I’m left hovering in the air, in front of a circle of torches, the flames dancing in a non-existent breeze. A circle is drawn on the sandy ground with dark charcoal that reminds me of Solon’s transformation. For a moment I wonder how he is, if he’s woken up yet into his vampire form, or if he’s still a beast and wreaking havoc around the house. There are scratches on the banister on the main floor, deep gouges left by his claws, so I know it had to at least have happened once before. I hope Yvonne and Amethyst are okay.

I hope he’s okay.

But then my thoughts stop because outside of the torches, holes begin to open up in the ground and thin pale arms reach out, like something rising from the grave.

Oh, no.

I stare, scared to death, watching as four girls pull themselves out of the soil. They’re all ghostly white, with long black hair, barefoot, dressed in matching white dresses.

They get to their feet, taking position beside the flaming torches, and the dancing light illuminates their faces. The girls all look to be the same age, maybe a bit younger than me, but they also all look exactly the same. Like quadruplets, they all have the same small mouths, skinny noses, and piercing dark eyes. Even their posture and the way their hair falls in their face is the same, like someone copied and pasted over and over.

Who are they? I ask Jeremias, who is standing there, staring at the girls, and the girls are staring at him, like dogs awaiting a signal from their master.

“My apprentices,” he says in a deep voice. “They need to learn. You will be a great example.”

An example of what?I ask, my eyes going wide, but suddenly I feel wind at my back, my robe blowing around me, and I stare down in wonder as it twists and turns around me, like it’s a black snake, like it’s alive, and then suddenly the color fades to gray, and then to white, and now I’m in the same white dress as the girls.

I look at Jeremias in shock, but he just flicks his finger toward the flames and suddenly my spine is arching and my feet are going forward, and I’m on my back, floating in the air, moving along the path as if pushed on an invisible stretcher.

I cry out as I fly through the air, dizzy, the pain in my lungs increasing from the pressure, and now I’m in the middle of the circle, surrounded by the creepy girls and the torches, suspended above them.

What’s happening?I cry out in my head, my throat filling with blood from my lungs, making it impossible to speak.

“Hush,” Jeremias says as he walks toward me. He’s now holding a silver chalice filled with black liquid, though when I breathe in deep, I can smell that it’s blood. Not human blood, though. It seems almost alien, and entirely repulsive.

I tilt my head to the side, my hair dangling, long enough to almost reach the ground from this angle, and I watch as Jeremias lifts the silver chalice above his head. He closes his eyes and his face continues to morph and change.

“Unum tenebris, hac nocte voco te, filia mea, ut praeter eum,” Jeremias says in a low voice, speaking something that might be Latin. “Nisi ab ea a venenum, venenum dare me illam.”

“Venenum, venenum,” the four girls start to chant in a raspy monotone.

Venom? Venenum is Latin for venom, maybe?

“Unum tenebris,” Jeremias repeats.

“Unum tenebris, unum tenebris,” the girls chant, flat and unmusical.

Suddenly there is movement and sound coming from the forest. I turn my head to look as cloaked figures move through the branches. They remind me of the Dark Order, and that’s enough to scare me shitless. They wait in the darkness of the trees, watching. Maybe learning like the girls, maybe biding their time.

“Ea cura corpus cum sanguine,” Jeremias drones on.

Corpus? Body. Sanguine? Blood.

Whose blood?

Mine?

“Ea cura corpus cum sanguine,” the girls chant flatly.

Jeremias takes a step forward and stares down at me, and now his eyes are no longer black. They are yellow. No iris, no white, just sulfur-yellow, with a black slit down the middle.

My skin crawls with horror.

“Ea cura corpus cum sanguine,” he whispers, as if to me, then he takes the silver chalice and tips it, so the blackened blood spills out of the cup and onto my chest.

I scream.

The blood burns and hisses, steam rising from my body, and suddenly I’m contorting in the air, back arched, limbs moving and stretched in all directions. Pain throttles me from the inside out.

“Ea cura corpus cum sanguine,” Jeremias repeats, louder now, his voice vibrating inside my skull, and my vision starts to get blurry, red tears filling my eyes. I can’t stop screaming from the pain, my body won’t stop burning, my skin pulled so tight I might splinter into a million pieces.

Suddenly the chanting is louder, more ominous, and through my faltering eyes I see the cloaked figures at the edge of the forest remove their hoods with skeleton hands.

They have deer skulls for faces, empty sockets for eyes, antlers that were improbably hidden by the cloaks, and they raise their arms—human arms, bare bone—to the sky as the chanting continues to grow.

I’d be horrified if I wasn’t already in so much pain, if it didn’t feel like the blood was causing fissures in my soul as it seeps into my wound, my chest grinding, like my ribs are moving independently.

Then suddenly, the pain stops.

The chanting stops.

The world goes painfully silent and still.

Then whatever power was holding me up dissipates and I’m falling.

I land on the ground in a heap, raising my head enough to see Jeremias step toward me. His feet are cloven hooves.

“You are saved, my child.”

* * *

“Wake up, Lenore.”

My eyes flutter open.

I’m lying on my side on a patch of damp moss, staring at Jeremias, who is sitting on a fallen tree trunk that is absolutely writhing with insects.

I’ve been in and out of consciousness for what seems like an infinite amount of time. Sometimes I come to and I’m sitting up against a tree, the bark rough on my back. Other times I’m sitting in front of the ocean, watching the waves, hugging my knees. Or lying down on the sand.

It is always dark. Forever night. There is never a moon.

I don’t even know if I am still alive.

“You are alive,” Jeremias says. “And you are healed. It’s time for you to accept what’s happened to you.”

I swallow, and for once I don’t taste my own blood.

I close my eyes and breathe in deeply and my lungs aren’t bubbling or leaking. Slowly I push myself up so I’m sitting, keeping my legs together because I’m back in Solon’s black robe, naked underneath.

I’m scared to look, to see that wound.

“Go ahead,” Jeremias says. I glance at him and his nose changes from something small and petite, to something red and bulbous, then long and aquiline. Always changing. Why?

But I don’t ask him that. Instead, I take in another deep, beautifully clear breath, smelling sea salt and fresh air, and then I open the collar of my robe just enough to look at my chest.

There are ugly gashes between my breasts, dark red and scabbing over.

But they are scabbing over.

The wounds have closed.

“How?” I ask, looking at Jeremias. “How is this possible?”

He grins, his teeth changing shape as he bares them at me. One moment the smile looks friendly, the next it looks predatory. “Magic,” he says lightly. “Of course.”

Right. Magic. No matter what has happened to me in the last few months, coming to terms with the fact that magic is real, that it’s something that exists in this world, and all worlds, that some humans can possess it so casually, easily, is something I still have a hard time wrapping my head around.

The fact that I myself have magic? Forget it.

“You disappoint me, Lenore,” he says, observing me carefully. “You’re the only daughter who has turned her back on who she is.”

I stare at him sharply. “What do you mean, only daughter? You have more than me?”

His grin is both proud and malicious. “Oh. Precious soul. How ego-centric you are in your thinking. I suppose it’s all gone to your head hasn’t it, that you’re the daughter of Jeremias. Well, perhaps that’s warranted. You are the only half-witch, half-vampire with the bloodline that you have. But you are not my only child. I have many.”

“How many?” I ask, intrigued, and a little frightened, at the idea of having brothers and sisters through him.

He shrugs. “A lot.”

I was raised an only child. To think that I have siblings feels like a door to a whole other world just opened. I suppose it has.

“Are any of them…normal?”

He laughs. It’s raspy and metallic and makes my jaw clench. “Normal? No more normal than you. Tell me, Lenore, are you ashamed of being a witch?”

I swallow hard. “No.”

“But you lie. Why?”

“Why do I lie?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t know…”

“You’re afraid of me. Still. After all I’ve done for you. I’ve saved your life twice now, doesn’t that earn me your trust? I don’t expect you to love me, dear daughter, but I do expect your respect.”

I rub my lips together, my eyes coasting over the wound, wondering if I’ll have scars for the first time in a long time, or if one day it’ll be like nothing happened. But of course, I’ll never forget it. I’ll never forget that the beast lives inside Solon.

Now that I know what he’s capable of.

Now that I know that it wants me dead.

I push that out of my head. I’m not ready to think about that yet, about what it means for us. I don’t want to face it.

“How did you heal me?” I ask again. “What ritual was that? Whose blood was that? What were the animal things in the trees, the skeleton hybrids?”

“Disciples.”

“Like your apprentices?”

“No,” he says mildly. “They don’t belong to me.”

“Who do they belong to?”

“The Dark One,” Jeremias says, fixing his eyes on me in a cold stare, chin raised, as if daring me to make some sort of joke. But I don’t find anything humorous in the name. Instead, the name shoots fear right to the base of my skull, awakening panic in my lizard brain.

The Dark One.

I don’t even want to think it.

I remember Jeremias’s eyes turning yellow, like a snake, his feet turning to hooves. The blackened blood that burned my flesh.

Oh, god.

“God can’t hear you here, Lenore,” Jeremias says, with a conviction that chills me to the bone. “And he can’t help you, either. Your god would have let you die at the hands of that vampire. But the Dark One, he can always help, if you know how to call him. And you will. With practice, you will.”

He leans in closer, and I smell the stench of decay on his breath. “Did you know that you could have saved your friend Elle? That she didn’t have to die?”

I glare at him, my heart thumping unevenly in my chest. “What the fuck are you talking about? How dare you even say her name.”

“I dare because you deserve to know the truth. You could have turned her into a vampire. Did you even think of that?”

My mouth drops open and I snap it shut. “I did think of that. Of course I did. But Solon stopped me. Because I would have turned her into a monster.” Just like him, I add.

“Not you, Lenore. Your powers are intention. Intention is the basis of all witchcraft. You could turn anyone into a vampire and they won’t go mad, they won’t turn into a monster. You have that power, and only you, because of your duality. You’re prized, you know. Your blood. Why do you think Skarde wants to destroy you?”

I stare at him, trying to piece it all together, make it make sense. All that he just said about Elle, that I could have saved her…I can’t. I can’t even entertain the thought because the guilt will eat me alive, the idea that she could still be alive. Be a vampire. Living in the house with me.

My heart is shattering.

I push it aside.

“He wants to destroy me because I have power to destroy him,” I eventually say.

He gives me a cold smile. “So much confidence for someone who has turned her back on the craft. No, Lenore. You alone can’t destroy him, but you are definitely needed in the process. That is not why he wants to destroy you, however. It’s because you can undo all he has done. He’s creating an army, one that’s both mad and monstrous, but controlled. Vampires have been forbidden from creating new ones by the bite, because it is too dangerous. Too dangerous for anyone but him. But you, you Lenore, you can do it. You can build an army of your own, of rational, sane vampires. No more monsters. Isn’t that nice?”

His words fall on me like snow, taking a moment to sink in.

I can do what?

Create my own non-mad army?

I can create vampires that won’t turn into a beast?

“Does…” I lick my lips, trying to swallow the enormity of it all, “does Solon know this about me?”

Because if he does, that means he’s been using me all this time, and…

Jeremias stares at me, thinking it over. As if the answer is more than a yes or a no.

“No,” he eventually says, and my heart flutters with relief. “He doesn’t. But if you told him, it would change things.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, he already knows you’re somehow instrumental in helping defeat his father. Do you really want to be pulled into that?”

I adjust myself on the moss, my legs starting to feel cramped, and pull my robe closer around me. “I’ll do anything to help him defeat Skarde, because I would do anything for him. Also, and a big also, his father tried to kill me. I won’t forget that. I hold grudges.”

His lips twist into something like a smile. “Good. Because that is how it is foretold.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I mentioned before that I have seen the future.”

I stare blankly at him. “Yeah? And?”

“You will be instrumental, Lenore. Against Absolon’s wishes.”

“What does that mean?”

“It means,” he says with a patient sigh, “he needs you, but he will do all that he can to keep you back. When the time comes, you’ll know.”

I frown. “Are you purposefully being vague or…?”

“I’m not. I see the future, but it’s based on feelings, not visions, and not specifics.”

“Great,” I mutter.

“I’m not sure you understand the magnitude of what has happened to you and what is about to happen,” he says, suddenly getting to his feet. I stare at his feet for a moment—boots, not cloven hooves—before I look up at him. “A man will come for you both. You must go with him. Together you can help defeat Skarde. Make no mistake, he is not easy to kill. It will take all of you to complete the task.”

“The task?” I repeat. “Defeat? Do you know how bonkers that sounds?”

His eyes narrow and a flash of yellow slides across his pupils, making me flinch and feel sick to my stomach. “I know this all feels like a joke to you, but I assure you, if you don’t take it seriously, the gravity will come too late. You didn’t take your lover’s transformation seriously, and look where it got you.”

I fucking hate that he’s insinuating that I brought the beast upon myself, even though it is true in a way. I mean, I didn’t run when Solon told me to. Instead, I let him keep fucking me. I wanted the beast.

“Heed my words, my child,” he says, holding out his hand for me. “The time of reckoning is coming soon, and it will not happen without you. You are needed for Skarde’s destruction.”

“Why can’t you do it, if you’re best buds with the Dark One and oh so powerful?” I ask, snarky without even meaning to, ignoring his hand.

His look could cut glass. “I’ve tried,” he says carefully. “As you can see, I have not been successful. Skarde is not easy to get to, even for me.”

“And the Dark One?”

Careful, Jeremias’ voice appears inside my head and I see the heavy warning in his obsidian gaze. Wouldn’t want to give him any ideas. This is his show, after all.

What the hell does that mean?

“Now,” Jeremias says, his voice loud and pleasant as he pulls me to my feet, “I think you have healed enough to be on your way.”

“Wait,” I say, feeling a faint twinge of panic, like I’ve barely learned anything, like it’s all happening too fast. “I don’t want…I have to be able to see you again.”

“You will.”

“But I mean, like, I need you to show me what I’m capable of doing,” I tell him, feeling shy all of a sudden. “I’m afraid of what I can do, and also afraid to even try.”

“I know,” he says. “Go to your well and I will be there.”

Yeah, but you’ll be there with all the dark magic flowing through you.

“Dark magic is the best magic there is,” he goes on, with a smirk on his ever-changing façade. “You grew up in a world of light and look at how far that got you.”

“My mother,” I stammer, the words coming out of me. “My mother. Alice. The one I never knew. The vampire.”

He goes still. “Yes?”

“What was she like?”

Jeremias stares at me for a moment before he breathes in deeply through his nose, his chest rising. “She was…a good vampire.”

“I heard she killed my aunt.”

“Well, that’s what vampires do, isn’t it? Kill people.”

“Did you love her?”

He gives me a rueful smile, eyes turning darker. “I did.”

“And did she love you?”

A pause. “I’m sure she did. Deep down, perhaps, even if she never knew it.”

Uh oh. That sounds like borderline incel talk.

I suddenly don’t want to ask any more questions.

A scurrying sound comes from behind me, snatching my attention. I look over my shoulder to see the witchy quadruplets with their white dresses and disheveled black hair coming out of the forest and scattering in different directions, like something spooked them. They dive into the holes in the ground and disappear, their slender pale feet the last traces of them.

“What’s happening?” I ask. “Where are they going?”

“It’s time for you to go,” Jeremias says in a clipped voice. “The slayers are worried. You need to be returned.”

“The slayers?” I repeat.

Then the world is ripped away.