Resurrected
Me: Hi guys! Sorry for the wait, my computer's now back and I'm raring to write. I've been writing bits and bobs of these next events over the past week, so the next chapter should be up pretty quickly. Just wanna say have a very Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!!!! Love you all!!!
The day was absolutely still. Nothing stirred, not even the air amongst the grassy plain between the House of Night and the castle. The Sun was at full height, sending beams of hot light onto everything it could reach. Lenobia strode back inside the French windows, letting Eliás close them behind them. There were so many questions unanswered. What would they do about Kalona? Would Neferet even be asleep at all??? All this was too risky.
"Dragon..." she said, sitting down with the fledglings, "Can Anastasia tell whether or not Neferet is sleeping?"
Dragon concentrated for a moment. "Yes. But she never sleeps for very long. An hour, at most."
"Right." She said, "The clock's running."
"How do we even get in?"
"Firstly, we need to ascertain who is getting in." Lenobia said, picking up a piece of paper and scribbling names down on it, "Stark will burn crisper than something off Erce's barbeque in sunlight, so he's out." Erce looked annoyed.
"We all will." Said Damien concernedly.
Damien was right. Fledglings wouldn't cope in the light. She realised it had to be the adults, or Aphrodite. "Apply that to all fledglings... We are left with Aphrodite, Darius, Dragon, Erce, Eliás and myself." She pulled a face. She knew that Erce and herself were as good as useless, as were Darius and Dragon. Formidable warriors they were, but they couldn't protect the girl from Neferet's magic."
Eliás stood behind her. "I will go." He said, "I will accompany Aphrodite."
Aphrodite raised an eyebrow. "Fine. But how do we get in?"
"Does anyone have any belts in their suitcases?" he asked.
"Why?"
"If you wear two across your chest like a harness..." he said, "The buckles are metal. I can lift you in through the window by generating electric fields. Unfortunately, the only drawback is that Neferet will probably be wearing it, if it is so important."
"I don't suppose you can manipulate diamond as well can ya?"
Dragon answered. "It is set in gold." He said, "The clasps are gold as well."
Eliás looked thoughtful. "Gold is tricky, it's incredibly inert. I won't be able to move it much."
"You don't have to." Said Lenobia, "Just undo the clasp and move it away from her. You can carry it back here."
"Another problem." He said, "The duplication spell won't work unless the necklace is present."
"Not unless we create one from memory." Said Dragon, "I know what it's like."
"What about Kalona?"
There was a silence. What indeed about Kalona? He wouldn't hesitate to kill them if he found them.
"Anastasia says Kalona doesn't sleep at all, so the chances that he will be there cuddling her are slim." Dragon added, sighing, "I can't believe we're doing this..."
"Don't you dare drop me!"
Aphrodite held her breath. Not because of the sea air which smelled so different to what she was used to, but because she was about to effectively scale a Cliffside. In theory, that was the plan. She and the adult vampyres were standing on the sand of the beach, the same one which Zoey had told her about when she jumped off the side of the cliff rather than be with Kalona. The Czech High Priest ignored her completely as he focussed his power. The belts crossed over her shoulders began to lift, taking her with them. "Careful!" she hissed.
"Alright, Prophetess?" asked Eliás somewhat sarcastically, lifting himself up too.
"Just go!"
He nodded, and closed his eyes. Suddenly, they were flying upwards. It was like being in a lift without walls. She felt the charge buzz through her hair again. "Do you mind???" she said.
He ignored her again and concentrated, holding his hands out a little, palms flat, as if he were signalling to go up. They slowed as they approached a balcony, and Aphrodite felt herself lifted up and placed, as lightly as a feather, on the floor of the balcony. Elias followed, and watched tentatively as she peeked around the drapes that were blowing gently in the breeze.
"All clear." she mouthed, holding out a hand and ushering him forwards.
The room was enormous, it should have belonged to royalty. Intricate designs carved in every inch of stone that made up the walls and ceiling captured the eye wherever they looked. Only the sound of Neferet's voice could pull their gazes away. Elias immediately positioned himself between Aphrodite, his fingers tingling, even sparking, as he prepared to have to strike.
Thank the Goddess, he didn't have to. She was speaking, yes, but not through consiousness. What came out of her mouth was mostly gibberish, the occasional half-scream, and almost what sounded like sobs.
Cautiously, Elias approached her, his mind beginning to look for the electrons in the gold clasp. "Don't forget to look for the other items." he whispered. Aphrodite nodded, and turned to the dressing table, silently opening all the doors.
Elias' concentration was brutal. Working on a tiny pice of metal that he couldn't even see was proving difficult. He could feel Aphrodite's glare in his back telling him to get a move on. It didn't help that Neferet was wearing another necklace - a short choker. Neither did it help that she seemed to be having some kind of nightmare. She groaned and screamed, murmuring more gibberish and tossing and turning. He felt the metal clasps come apart, and slowly, putting as much charge through the gold setting necklace as he could, he made it hover above Neferet's neck, praying one of her thrashing arms wouldn't catch it.
"Grab it!" he hissed, his power flowing out of him fast - gold was so inert, inducing any electric charge in it at all was taking almost all of the energy he had. Aphrodite was quick to act, snatching it out of the air and holding in an expletive when she discovered the metal was hot from the charge. Pulling the fake out, he gently laid it onto her neck and clasped it. Phasing back into full consciousness, he closed his eyes and relaxed. His senses tingled, and his face deteriorated. Whilst inducing charge in the necklace they wanted, he had automatically induced a charge in the choker as well. If it wasn't gold...
The former High Priestess stirred, a snatch of her head, and Elias knew they were both doomed.
As Sod's Law would have it, the clasp of the choker were not gold. She let out a shriek and sat up like a shot, pulling the necklace from her skin as the burning metal ate into her skin. As the broken choker lay in her hands, she looked up at the intruders.
Aphrodite froze.
Fuck.
"W...Wh... What are you doing in here?"
Elias flew to Aphrodite's side, ready to grab her and jump out of the window. He looked back at Neferet.
She flinched.
She, flinched?
At his sudden movement. She shot back in a panic, her back flat against the headboard of the bed, her hands gripping the sheets, her face whiter than a ghost's. Just as Elias placed himself between them, Neferet looked around the room with an almost childlike curiosity. "Where... Where am I?" she asked them, terror leaking through her voice like poison into a lake. She was breathing hard, and tears began to run down her face.
Elias stood like a statue between them, as Aphrodite peered out from around him to look at the drivelling woman before her as she broke down into tears.
"Crocodile tears Neferet?" she asked in her usual fashion, cocking her head to the side, before turning to the window to go, "Come on!"
Neferet's face was as if she had lost all hope. "It's always the same..." she said, her tears running away into nothing.
Aphrodite now stood at Elias' side. "Maria? Alexej? That's not funny."
Neferet curled up into a tight ball over her pillow, leaning her head on her knee. "I will never get out of here."
Aphrodite looked sceptical. "What the fuck are you on about Neferet?"
Neferet looked up at Aphrodite. "I am not Neferet." she said, her gaze setting fast onto the emblem belonging to Loren Blake, before turning her face away.
Elias glared. "What?" he almost spat, softening his gaze a little. He took slow steps towards her, "Who are you?"
Her eyes suddenly widened and her face returned to one of panic. "She's waking up!!!" she hissed, pointing frantically towards the window, "Go, go!!!!"
Eliás didn't need telling twice. Grabbing Aphrodite, he ran for the window, jumping from the balcony and falling freely towards the beach below. Aphrodite would have screamed, if his voice in her ear had not threatened her not to. Eliás summoned what energy he had left and brought them to a gentle landing onto the soft sand below.
"Are you alright?"
It was Lenobia's voice. Her eyes briefly made contact with Eliás'. "You look less serene than your usual."
"We have another problem."
"You've got it?" asked Darius, as they all turned and ran.
Aphrodite pulled Anastasia's beloved diamond necklace from her pocket. "Maria..." she called out into the thin air, "We're ready!"
Dragon's POV
It was right there on the table.
Simply seeing it, simply knowing that it was there, in front of me. It made me think of her more. Her smile could have powered a third world country when I brought it back to her.
Russia was ridiculously cold. Why exactly I wanted to go there, I wasn't sure. I had been all over Europe since I had Changed, five months before. Russia was simply another stop on a bus route. I went to St. Petersburg, which had, by that time, been renamed Petrograd by Lenin. There was a sadness that I seemed to inhale as I breathed, one that didn't come back up when I exhaled mist into the freezing atmosphere. It was still horrendously dangerous, a danger I walked numbly through, maybe because of the cold, maybe because the knowledge that I was no longer a human felt like immunity.
No longer human...
It hit me hard like the gale of wind blowing in my face. I shivered. To look back on what I felt, thought then, I remembered the confusion inside me. I was afraid. Easily. I was not brave like she was. I feared that my life might now not be completely my own, the concept of the future so solid, when I didn't want it to be yet. I was frightened by the unatural feelings I found myself staring at. The feral growl that arose in my throat when any other fledglings looked at her, even those that had been my friends since the Third Form, part of me became wild, a vampyre of lore. The heart-arrest that occured when she smiled at me, the part of me that no longer belonged solely to me, the part of her that I shared. My absolute control over my own life was gone. I had thought that by travelling a little would help me clear my head, understand a little better. Mere weeks into my travels I was the pathetic picture of a vampyre pining. That in itself frightened me. I was a vampyre, it didn't change the fact that, no matter how mature I wanted to be, or how mature I thought I was, I was male, and not yet twenty.
Reading the Russian newspapers was, for me, a fairly useless act. The letters on the page didn't form in my head. They made about as much sense as my own feelings. The pictures were still there though. The clearest parts that shined through the jumble. I couldn't understand why, at the time, there were so many pictures of the same people. In every picture there was a large family, the same family every time. With a tiny little boy, and four girls, and a mother, and a father, most of the pictures were. Why my gaze kept being drawn back to that picture I didn't know, there was just, something. I shook it out of my head and didn't think further about it until I saw another picture in that paper, as I stood with my back against a street wall. It was dated 1915, and showed two girls sitting with a group of injured soldiers at a hospital.
I had to blink.
A little younger, and not yet Marked, but it was her. It was Nastiya. I glared at the page. It was her. She was smiling for the camera, her wavy chestnut brown hair cascading over her shoulders. I tried again to read the caption beneath the picture, desperate for it to make sense. How stupid.
"Are you alright, Mr. Lankford?"
The voice was female, and speaking English, although not without an accent. My father was English, yet having grown up in Spain, with a Spanish mother, English still felt like a foreign language. I looked up, to see a tall woman standing in front of me. The fact that she was wearing a sleeveless dress in subzero conditions told me that she was a vampyre before her Mark did.
"May I help you?" I asked.
"Forgive me." she said, "My name is Valentina. I am the High Priestess of St. Petersburg's House of Night. Or, Petrograd's, I should say." she added sarcastically.
I gave a bow and shook her hand. "It is a pleasure, High Priestess."
She looked at the newspaper in my hand. "Yes, awful news isn't it?" she said sharply, turning over to the front page, "All the country wants to read in the morning is misery and despair. Or worse, lies altogether. It is extremely disrespectful to the Tsar and his family."
"The Tsar?"
I was so clueless. So blissfully clueless.
"Yes, he and his family were assassinated, almost a year ago now." she said solemnly, "I'm sure you've heard. But now people have to throw rumours around left right and centre, that one or more of his children might have survived." she pointed to the headline, "They've had so many fakes appear out of the woodwork it's despicable. It is no way to honour the memory of those children."
"I agree." I said, before pausing, "Valentina, would you please read something for me?"
She smiled. "But of course."
I opened the page to the picture of Nastiya. "What does the picture caption say?"
"Hm..." she peered closer to see the text, before turning to me and smiling, too knowingly, "It was taken in 1915, in Tsarkoye Selo hospital, it shows some wounded men sitting with the Tsar's two youngest daughters, the Grand Duchess Maria and the Grand Duchess Anastasia."
I looked back to the picture of the family, how like the Tsar she looked, and then at the littlest girl...
It was her.
But how?
My nineteen year-old brain had only just, just, registered the fact that I was in love with her. As I sat in Erce's flat, meandering in my thoughts, I could see it clearly, but at the time, admitting it, even just to myself, was the hardest thing I had ever had to do to that date. My breath stopped as I remembered something else. Mihailov. He was half Russian, I had heard High Priestess Rosalina mention he had been a part of the Russian Imperial Family. Until he was Marked, that is.
Nastiya, my Nastiya, the Grand Duchess of Imperial Russia?
Valentina must have thought I was either thick, or deaf. Possibly both. She smiled again, this time even more knowingly. Like she knew. Could she possibly know?
"How did you know my name?" I suddenly asked, not sure where the question had come from. She had used my name, I had never seen her before in my life.
"As you are gifted with unimaginable talent with a sword, I am gifted with the abilities of Precognition, and of Empathy." she said, "I can see, and sense, things, particularly feelings, before they occur." deciding to let me wallow in this for a minute, she dove into her pocket and pulled out a necklace. That necklace. "This is hers." said Valentina, holding it out towards me, "It means a lot to her. Will you take it back to her?"
I took it from her. "Yes." I had said.
And now it was before me again. I felt stakes through my heart as I remembered her face when she first saw it. When I presented her with the newspaper picture, and she burst into tears. All those moments.
And now, I was presented with the chance to bring her back. I couldn't stop the fear that consumed me and ripped me to shreds like a black hole. She was weak - would she survive? Goddess forbid that any Raven Mocker should hurt her again. We were going into war. Neither of us may ever go home. But what I did know, was that I couldn't have her back, and then have to say goodbye again.
I knew. Even without the true rift of death between us, the mere illusion of it had broken me. I couldn't do it. We were one. Without her, there was no me.
I knew what I had always known. That I would rather be with her in the next world, than without her in this one.