This chapter contains disturbing themes.
The ground support team held their post as dawn neared. No word from the away team, but they had received a message that was just as clear.
A large, black pillar of smoke rose up from the island in the distance, a clear sign of victory.
"Yeah!" crowed Mao. "Burn in hell, asshole Americans!"
"Shut up," Kai spat, "my dad grew up in America and half the people on this team are Americans!"
"I know! I didn't say 'burn in hell all Americans,' I said 'burn in hell asshole Americans.' They're not assholes, so they have no reason to be offended."
"Whatever," Kai said as he rolled his eyes.
"Signals, coming in, West-Southwest!" Joel piped up from his position beside his laptop.
Kai eagerly whipped out his binoculars and scanned the horizon.
"It's them!" he announced happily, before his voice suddenly took on a slightly more somber tone. "Only four sets of wings, there should be five," he fretted out loud.
"Don't worry, we register all seven GPS trackers."
The entire team gathered at the edge of the cliff to witness the majestic sight of the airborne heroes flying in from over the sea, the purple beginnings of the dawn behind them.
Freddie was carrying an unconscious Yuki, Ruka was carrying an unconscious Haji, and Aka was carrying an unconscious Saya. Solomon would have offered to carry her, but he was concerned about how she might react if she woke up in his monstrous talons.
The four winged chiropterans came in for a landing, Solomon disappeared in a blue flash and reappeared on the ground below, while Aka, Ruka and Freddie seemed to flutter their wings slightly before their feet met the earth, running for a few yards before coming to a stop.
The entire group suddenly turned around when they caught the distinctive noise of a plastic water bottle being dropped on the gravel road. An early morning jogger stood gaping at the bat-winged humanoids, and had clearly witnessed the landing.
"Damn it," the elder David groaned, "Junior, go get the tranquilizer gun."
"Don't bother, I'll take care of this," Lewis announced, already walking toward the jogger.
The two Davids watched as Lewis stood next to the jogger, put his arm over his shoulder as if he was an old friend, and turned to him with a friendly grin.
"No one will believe you," Lewis said in his booming yet amiable voice and gave the man a friendly slap on the back along with a jovial chuckle as he slipped a several hundred-dollar bills into the jogger's pocket.
"Taken care of," Lewis declared as he rejoined the group and the unnerved jogger continued on his way. Lewis turned to Joel. "Your old dad is especially liberal with our hush-money budget."
Meanwhile, Kai ran up to the newly landed away team, having noticed that several of them were unconscious.
"What happened!?"
"They are alright," Solomon announced as he knotted his tie, now in human form and almost fully dressed, "but we should probably get them to Dr. Silverstein as soon as possible."
Freddie placed Yuki on the couch as Julia and Kai entered, talking amongst themselves.
"…Aka insisted on taking care of them herself, Ruka and Solomon are helping. Saya and Haji are in stable condition, I have them both hooked up to a few packs of Haji's blood that I had saved for an emergency, Haji is actually showing signs of consciousness but Saya -"
"The heavy sleeper, as always," Kai said with a sigh.
Julia bent over to examine Yuki and proceeded to take her temperature, pulse and blood pressure. "She seems healthy, but her pulse is abnormally high considering she's unconscious."
"…raausio irneaa…raausio irneuu…." Yuki mumbled weakly, her eyes still closed, but twitching rapidly as of she was dreaming.
Kai and Julia glanced at each other.
"….raausu irneaa… alaneiu…" Yuki continued, each syllable having it's own specific pitch, almost as if she was singing.
"What language is that?"
"I don't know," Julia said slowly, "it could be a lost chiropteran language."
"What do you think she's saying?" Kai wondered aloud.
"The heartbeats," Freddie interjected.
"What?" Kai and Julia exclaimed simultaneously.
"That's what she's saying, 'the heartbeats – the heartbeats – forgive me,'" said Freddie, sounding puzzled at the translation himself.
"How the hell do you know what she's saying?" Kai asked skeptically.
"I'm her Chevalier," he quickly answered with a non-chalant shrug. He turned to Julia and winked. "Sometimes we know things."
Kai accepted this answer and Julia narrowed her eyes but Kai changed the subject before she had a chance to ponder the meaning of what the "New Chevalier" had said.
"Shouldn't we should get her on a blood drip?"
"Not necessary," Freddie declared as he sat on the couch beside his Queen, his arms encircling her waist as he pulled her into a sitting position, propping her up against his chest, her chin on his shoulder. He pulled his collar away, exposing his neck.
"C'mon sweetheart," he said almost pleadingly as he gently pressed her face to his neck. After a few seconds, the still unconscious Queen accepted his offer, letting out the distinct hissing intake of breath that always preceded the bite.
"Good girl," Freddie said quietly, before briefly glaring at Kai and Julia as they watched. "Do you mind?" his wavering voice and lulling eyes making it clear that he was deriving some considerable pleasure from this. The two humans took the hint and left the room.
Yuki's eyes suddenly snapped open, her pupils so dilated that they almost completely eclipsed her blue irises.
"The heartbeats! The heartbeats!" she screamed franticly as she scrambled away from Freddie.
He leaned forward and forcefully captured her in his arms. "It's alright, it's alright," he said soothingly as she finally relaxed against him and sobbed.
"Shhhhh. It's alright. I'm here, you're safe," he whispered.
"…It's like a million voices all screaming at me at once," she whimpered, "but it's not just voices, it's images, sounds, faces, smells, feelings…"
"It can only hurt you if you let it," he said softly.
"I don't know what any of it means," she wept.
"Try to isolate one image at a time," he continued to tenderly stroke her hair, "tell me what you see, it'll help you focus your thoughts."
She cried for a few more seconds before taking in a deep trembling breath, and closing her eyes.
"I see … snow… lots of snow…"
Crunch crunch crunch crunch.
It was just like the re-occurring dream, she saw it through her own eyes, but she had no control over her actions.
She looked up at the silver-white winter sky wreathed by treetops.
She could still hear her own thoughts on what she was experiencing.
Why am I running?
She then heard the other set of feet swiftly trudging though the snow behind her, chasing her.
Who am I running from?
Whoever they were, they were rapidly gaining. Knowing that she would be caught soon, she jumped behind the trunk of a large pine and stood utterly motionless, trying to still her breathing so she might not be noticed.
No such luck.
Her pursuer appeared before her in a blue streak. It was a girl, possibly in her early teens by human standards, her eyes covered by a cloth blindfold.
Her face…
It's … me?
"Tresna fa! Tresna fa!" The girl giddily exclaimed.
Wait. I understood that… "I found you! I found you!"
I'm chasing… myself?
The girl then ripped off the blindfold, and offered it to her. "You're turn!"
Those eyes, just like Saya's.
She looks like me, only with Saya's eyes.
I know her…
She's-
She's-
Anyaharla.
She's Anyaharla.
My older twin sister.
Suddenly, a much darker image super-imposed itself over her sister's face.
The image of a disheveled young woman, standing in the back of a very large room. It was clearly the same person, but her expression made her almost unrecognizable. The ragged woman bore a look of unimaginable, irrational hatred, but also of profound pain, and it was directed squarely at her younger sister.
Her sister was holding a sword, dripping with blood, and completely with out warning, charged at her.
But why? Why would she attack me?
…
She stood in a grand hall, dressed in a white robe of an unknown type of fabric, amazingly soft to the touch, thick and yet feather light. Close beside her stood a man with kind bronze eyes, his light brown hair with a few subtle streaks of gray, even though he looked as if he couldn't be much more than thirty.
He held her hand gently.
My Consort...
He was always so sweet to me… it was an arranged marriage, but I did care about him, very much.
Her eyes continued to wander around the room. The floor seemed to be made of one giant flat piece of stone, polished to a glass-like smoothness, there were no walls, only enormous stone pillars holding up the high ceiling. A crowd of around fifty people lined the edge of the large room.
At the head of the grand hall sat three women.
The elders.
A human unfamiliar with Chiropterans might have laughed to hear those women called elders, since none of them appeared to be a day over eighteen, at the most. The one in the center sat higher than the others, her skin dark mocha, her harsh eyes that distinctive burgundy brown, her hair done in hundreds of intricate, dirty blonde braids.
She's my great great aunt.
In front of the three elders stood Anyaharla, dressed in an identical white robe, behind her stood a tall, richly dressed man with waist length platinum-blonde hair.
My sister's Consort.
At her sister's feet was a simply dressed, tan skinned young man with black hair so short that he was nearly bald, kneeling humbly, his palms to his floor, his nose between his palms.
That must be her 'Groom.'
The center elder stood as a gasp spread throughout the court.
"What is the meaning of this?" she spoke in a deep, resonant voice. "Why is he here?" she pointed at the kneeling young man.
"He wouldn't do it!" Anyaharla promptly answered, clearly trying to sound angry, but a tinge of fear peeking through her haughty expression.
"This is an outrage!" the blonde man shouted indignantly. "How dare you, you cowardly maggot!" he growled as he stepped closer to the kneeling young man, with the clear intention of kicking him.
"Stop," the center elder ordered as she turned her attention to the boy. "What say you, Groom? You refuse to fulfill your destiny?"
"No, your grace," he cried, his voice slightly muffled against the floor. "I did as I was commanded."
"He lies!" the brown-eyed Queen nearly screamed.
"It's true your grace, I did as I was told," he interjected, his body tensing at the end of the statement, clearly expecting to be struck.
"Tell me, Groom, when you took her, was there blood?"
He hesitated for a moment. "No, your grace."
The fear was becoming very visible on her sister's face. "Don't tell me you actually believe him?"
"I have heard enough talk in my life to know what is and what is not. This Groom's words smell of truth, yours reek of the opposite."
"No! He lies!" Anyaharla whimpered.
"You have broken the law of chastity," the center elder pronounced sternly.
The brown-eyed Queen stole a desperate glance at a strikingly handsome, though middle-aged man in the crowd.
I remember, she had been deeply in love with her fencing instructor for years, and she told me that the relationship had been consummated… she didn't believe in the elder's warnings, she thought that hibernation and bareness was just a myth, made up to scare young Queens into keeping their knees shut until marriage. I always suspected it was just a myth too, but I never broke the law.
She was always braver than I was.
The tall platinum blonde man clearly noticed his new wife's stolen glance at her fencing instructor.
"So the rumors are true!" he bellowed furiously as he approached his Queen's lover. "Do you have any idea what you have done?! You have doomed her to living death!" he roared as he suddenly appeared before the handsome swordsmen, his arm already through the mortal's heart.
"Nooooo!" Anyaharla screamed as she rushed to her lover's side, catching him as he sunk toward the floor.
Her dying lover whispered something inaudible to her.
All three elders were now standing. "You dare commit a murder of unsanctioned vengeance and before the entire court?!" the center elder asked the bloody-handed blonde. "We have created a society of laws, that human's crime was great, but it did not carry the penalty of death," she said, looking towards the dead man before returning her glare to Anyaharla's Consort, "You may have become an immortal knight, but you do not have the right to take the law into your own hands. You have committed murder, which does carry a penalty of death!" she turned to glance at the other elders. They nodded silently. "With such an abundance of witnesses, there is no need for further deliberations," she declared as a tiny blade flew from her sleeve, shallowly sliced through the arm of the young blue-eyed Queen and then lodged in his throat.
He gasped slightly as he crystallized and fell to the floor in pieces.
Anyaharla stood, trembling in shock between the lifeless bodies of her lover and husband.
"And you," the center elder growled, "you must realize what you have done. You have broken the law that is to never be questioned, you have brought shame upon your clan, and what's more, you and your sister were the last two fertile Queens in existence. Our numbers have dwindled since the war, the war that your mother gave her life to end. You had one chance to increase our population, to sustain our fading species, and you have thrown it away for a human."
Anyaharla was weeping by this time.
The center elder appeared behind the disgraced Queen, produced a dagger, and with one stroke, cut through her ankle length braids.
"You are hereby stripped of your title and banished from this court, immediately and permanently."
She lost everything. Her husband, her lover, her family, her throne, her chance to have children, and was also doomed to an eternity of hibernation.
Her only crime was falling in love.
Anyaharla gave her younger twin sister a brief, pleading stare.
There was nothing I could have done.
I still should have done something, even if it was to join her in exile.
I should have done something.
I should have done something.
…
She was sitting at the head of yet a different grand hall, with an angled, wood-thatched ceiling and a clay floor with a roaring fire in the center. Dozens of people sat at tables along the room's perimeter, it was some sort of banquet.
I remember this place. This is our new fief, that island in the Far West.
Beside her, sat her husband.
In front of her was an enormous, swollen belly.
What was that?
She placed her hands over her stomach, intrigued by the strange sensation.
Some weird indigestion?
No.
She smiled as the realization came over her.
My babies -
One of them just kicked.
She closed her eyes.
I can feel their little heartbeats.
She felt another sharp internal jolt, this time, almost strong enough to be painful, soon followed by several smaller rumbles.
She sighed and tapped her belly with her finger.
"Now, now, behave yourselves you two, don't kick your sister," she said aloud.
Her husband gave an amused chuckle and she began to hum an extremely familiar melody.
The lullaby my mother used to sing.
The ruckus in her womb mysteriously died down.
"That's right, go back to sleep. Soon, it'll be time to come out and play."
Suddenly, the room went silent as a ragged young woman appeared at the other end of the hall, a long, rusted sword in her hand.
She stood as she spoke to her big sister. "You're actually here!" she exclaimed happily. "I've been so worried!"
Anyaharla just stared at her, her expression filled with unimaginable hatred, and her eyes filled with crippling pain.
"You, worried?" The troubled Queen spoke with venomous anger. "What do you have to be worried about?"
"I was worried about you!"
"You, worried about me? Why would you worry about me? I am nothing. I am worse than nothing – I am disgraced."
"Sister -" she heard herself murmur, more alarmed by the terrifying vacant darkness in her sister's eyes than the blood coated sword clutched in her hands.
"I am not your sister anymore, I am exiled, remember? I wander alone, waiting for my time to run out while you sit here in your castle, your perfect husband beside you and your perfect babies inside you," her voice echoed with her despair. "But soon, we will be equals again, I shall make it so."
Just as the last word escaped her sister's lips, the tormented Queen disappeared in a blue streak, charging towards her.
She could have gotten out of the way in time, but she was so stunned by her sister's unprovoked attack that she stood, paralyzed with shock. She stood, frozen as the deadly weapon approached.
I know what happened now. She couldn't handle the loneliness, guilt, grief and shame…
If I were to be in her situation, I probably would have lost my mind too.
She shut her eyes at the last moment.
"Ughn…"
But the noise wasn't from her. She felt the blade slide into her abdomen with less force than she had expected.
Her eyes opened to the back of her husband's head. He was standing in front of her, the sword had run him through completely before piercing her belly.
"Noooo!"
He immediately pulled the sword from their bodies, and whirled around to face his Queen.
"Are you alright?" he asked hoarsely as his legs crumbled beneath him, leaving him lying on the floor.
She looked down at her wound. There was not even a hint of crystallization, his body had absorbed the poison.
She nodded in tears.
"The babies – are they alright?" was the last thing he managed to say before his face turned to stone.
She looked down at her wound again, only now realizing that the sword had pierced directly through her womb.
She placed her hand over it.
The little heartbeats – they've stopped.
She began to tremble with profound grief – and fury.
"You killed them," she murmured.
Anyaharla's expression had not changed, still full of hatred and pain.
She felt her eyes begin to glow as they locked on her older sister's. With out breaking the stare, she reached down and tightly gripped the sword that had been just pulled from her own belly.
"You killed them!" she roared as she flew at her sister in a rage. In the back of her mind, it vaguely registered that the blade had pierced her unborn children, and their blood had the power to kill her sister.
Her sister made no attempt to defend herself as the weapon plunged into her chest.
She heard Anyaharla's voice, even though her lips were not moving.
"Now, we are sisters again."
The burgundy brown eyes turned to gray stone.
…
Crunch crunch crunch crunch…
She was running in the snow again, only this time, it was at night. The white blanket covering the ground seemed to glow against the dark, rust-orange sky.
Crunch……… crunch………. crunch…….. crunch…
She felt the tears begin to freeze against her cheek. She was running at her absolute top speed, over a hundred miles an hour. The sound of the crunching snow slowed as she reached a clearing, and she paced forward across it until she came to the edge of a massive cliff.
Crunch crunch.
She pulled a small dagger from her robes. The scabbard was carved with an intricate image of a bird in flight, with a long, flowing tail, just below it was an inscription in her native language. In a strange coincidence, the four characters used looked vaguely similar to roman letters, and if they were to be read in English, it would have been pronounced 'Saya.'
She pulled the shiny dagger from its scabbard.
I blamed myself for what happened. I believed that I could have prevented it if I had been a better sister – if I had told Anyaharla not to sleep with that man, or if I had joined her in exile, she wouldn't have gone mad.
I wanted to die. I thought I had nothing left…
I thought my babies were dead.
All I wanted was to be dead, like them.
Committing suicide unassisted was a difficult thing to accomplish for a full-blooded chiropteran Queen. She knew she would have to be thorough.
She cut a bone-deep gash in both her wrists and dove headlong into the precipice with out hesitation.
Her hair came undone and streamed upwards over her body as she fell into the dark nothingness, concentrating hard not to reflexively use her powers of flight, her eyes closed in anticipation of the eternal sleep she believed she would soon have.
Suddenly, her eyes snapped open.
The heartbeats – they've started again.
She placed her hands over her womb as she fell.
They're alive.
My babies are alive.
Through the darkness, she could see base of the cliff rapidly approaching.
I have a reason to live.
I can't die, not when I can give them life.
She gave in to the instinct she had been suppressing, and she took on a full chiropteran form, massive wings extending from her arms…
But it was too late, there wasn't enough time to catch a current of air.
Yuki couldn't remember hitting the ground, but she could remember what she had said out loud just before she died.
"The heartbeats – forgive me," she sobbed into Freddie's shoulder, his Queen's ramblings about her memories having moved him to tears as well.
After a few minutes of crying, her eyes snapped open, just as they had over nine thousand years ago, when she realized her children were still alive.
She leapt out of her Chevalier's arms, and ran down the hall, into the master bedroom of the house.
Solomon, Akahana and Ruka all stood round a double bed, Haji on the right side, his eyes half open, watching over Saya, as she slept at his left.
Solomon and the twins turned toward the tear-stained, blue-eyed Queen, and all three seemed to instantly comprehend what was happening. They silently backed away from the bed and stood by the wall, soon joined by Freddie.
The ancient Queen slowly approached the bed, smiling as tears continued to stream down her face.
Yuki bent down and kissed her forehead.
Saya cooed softly in her sleep as one of her mother's tears fell on her cheek.
Yuki simply gazed down on her sleeping daughter for what seemed like an eternity, before she turned to the others in the room, her expression now considerably less joyful.
"Where is my other daughter?"