I feel like I'm absolute rubbish at writing grandiose speeches, but hopefully I did okay with this one... you'll see what I mean in a bit.
CW: graphic sex, assholery, and ruthless savagery/murder.
Copyright © 2021 TSM. All rights reserved.
Chapter 38
A Declaration of War
Marcus Augustine had never really been the kind of man inclined to take no for an answer. When he encountered something he wanted, sooner or later, he would obtain it – by coercion or through blunt force, the means made very little difference. Once his objective had been acquired, however, boredom would always follow, and often more quickly than he would have preferred.
But Sonya – Sonya had proven herself the exception to the rule.
He had first taken her to bed almost twenty years ago – the price for a seat on his council. But unlike most women who tended to resent his manipulations, the female had proved far more mercenary than he had initially given her credit. She had a ruthlessness he admired, and a penchant for pain that matched his own. Every time he marred her pristine flesh with a cut or slice of claw or blade, she returned it in equal measure. Her favorite place to mark was his back, long, razor-sharp talons slicing his flesh to ribbons, even as his hips pounded – back and forth like a swinging pendulum.
The sheets were already sticky with blood – his black and hers red – an abstract expressionist painting of anger and lust and a vying for power. She never shrank in the face of his brutality. If anything, she welcomed it, encouraged it, baiting him as he drove mindlessly into her welcoming body. She dug her nails into his backside as if the force he was using wasn't nearly enough.
Marcus' eyes were nearly black, pupils large like pits – vast and devouring.
With his fangs out and her blood smeared on his face from when he had ravaged her still healing throat, he looked monstrous. Yet still, she held his gaze. If she was intimidated or afraid, she never showed it. She was brazen in her wanton litanies, wordless cries occasionally punctuated by a yes that was as shameless as her nudity had been when he had entered her private chambers earlier that evening. She had been donning only a robe of silk organza, the material sheer and leaving nothing to the imagination – as if she had been anticipating this interlude.
Normally, he would have made her work for the honor, but he had been in such a good mood…
The orgasm now roaring through him only made it better.
He emptied into her with near-violent spurts, body trembling as he ignored the disapproving look on Sonya's face. She had been so close to coming, only to be denied with him finishing before she could reach the crest. She tried to hold him inside of her a little longer, but his expression was smug and self-satisfied as he rolled off of her, much to her chagrin. When she tried to reach down between her thighs to ease the ache he had created, he slapped her hand away.
"Don't even think it," he commanded, no humor in his face. She hissed, but relented, albeit begrudgingly, watching as he slid off the bed in search of his pants. When he turned around again to look at her, she was propped up on a couple of pillows, her long, dark hair draped over one shoulder as she laid herself out on display for him, a clear ploy to inspire him to not let her lingering appetite go to waste.
"Why don't you like it when I touch myself?" she asked, her fingers grazing idly over an erect nipple, the red marks of his earlier bites on her flesh still healing.
"Because your pleasure is mine and mine alone," he stated possessively.
She rolled over onto her back, knees spreading. Her hand trailed lower, a wicked gleam in her eyes.
"Then why don't you come over here and finish what you started?" she purred, fingers hovering, but never touching.
He growled in warning, snapping his teeth and she moved her hand away. She laughed, but it was hollow – just as empty as he was.
"You're despicable," she said.
"I'm your king," he corrected arrogantly.
"I thought Dracula was king."
"Dracula hasn't been seen or heard from in over a year," he reminded her, even as she took on a look of pure boredom, pretending to study her cuticle situation. "Neither hair nor hide. Knowing him, he's probably crawled off to that absurd fortress of ice and stone in the mountains to live out the rest of his days licking his wounds."
"A pity he proved to be so disappointing," she said, ignoring the sidelong glance Marcus was now sending her. "I would have expected more from the dragon."
"Never underestimate the power of a blood-bond," was all he said.
"But the brats still live. You should have killed them when you had the chance."
"A rare act of mercy on my part, I'll admit, but the suffering it caused to all parties involved was too good to pass up. Of course, if they keep popping up in my city after I told them to stay away, they won't be living for much longer," he grumbled, reaching down for his shirt, though he didn't put it on right away.
"I still think you should have destroyed them and been done with it," Sonya continued, sitting up. "I mean – Krisztian offed Hal with very little effort."
Something that looked very much like remorse ghosted over Marcus' face for just an instant before vanishing a half-second later. Fortunately for him, the woman missed it entirely.
"I promised Vladislaus he would pay for what he did – and I've delivered that ten times over. As irritating as his little blood-bound pets are, my fight was never with them. Only with him," and he started to pull his shirt on when the door to Sonya's apartments flew open unexpectedly.
The woman managed to lift the blood-stained sheets up to cover herself just as Basilio entered the bedroom, clearly in a rage. Councilman Ildar was close behind, an apologetic look on his face.
"You fool!" the Spider was shouting. "You fucking incompetent fool!"
"Get out!" Augustine barked, but the man was still moving, headed straight for the television set on the wall facing the bed. Marcus sent Ildar a venomous look and was ready to bite off his head for letting Basilio even get this far into the palace, but he stopped when he noticed how pale the man was.
Ildar opened his mouth, clearly attempting to explain, but he couldn't seem to find the words. Any noise was lost in his throat before his shoulders fell in resignation.
Augustine was about to demand an explanation, when Basilio turned on the TV, using the remote to turn up the volume a little louder than was probably necessary.
What was playing stole Marcus' breath.
His lifeless heart plummeted to the floor as his stomach churned. It took every ounce of self-mastery he possessed to keep his face neutral – but even to the untrained eye, the disbelief in his gaze could be seen.
On the screen, secretly recorded footage of the night he had ordered the release of the virus into the city was playing – complete with subtitles, and a bloody timestamp no less.
But how?
"It's on every fucking channel in the entire city," Basilio snarled. "And it's been playing for over an hour – the greatest hits of your bloody inept regime. The virus, the dhampir disappearances, the ordered attacks on the wolves… every meeting, every deal, even the fucking conversations you and I were supposed to be having in private," and he jammed his fingers against the screen for effect. "Years of footage, Marcus! Fucking decades of it! It's like someone has been dedicating the last forty years to compiling your greatest hits!" and he chucked the remote against the nearest wall, not caring that it shattered on impact.
"Why hasn't this been shut down?" Augustine asked, his tone level, but the bite in his words was unmistakable as he looked to Ildar.
"We've been trying since we first caught wind of it twenty minutes ago." Marcus balked. This had been playing for over forty minutes before word got to the council? "Whoever is behind this, they know what they're doing. They set up decoy beacons all throughout the city, but no matter how many soldiers we send out, they can't find the source."
"Then go to the power grid! Shut the whole damn thing off!"
"We're trying, but killing the power that runs this entire city isn't exactly an easy thing to do. There are protocols and…"
Marcus snarled, grabbing Ildar by the throat, ready to tear the man to pieces, but a familiar voice began to speak on the TV and he stopped dead.
A chill ran down his spine at the sound.
He knew that voice.
He turned slowly, not daring to believe…
"Citizens of Budapest. My fellow brothers and sisters of the blood. My equals."
Basilio actually staggered back when her face appeared on the screen.
"Shit… shit, shit shit…"
"My name is Francesca Elisabeth de Chacier – though by now most of you know me as Madame Nemo. Writer for Veritas, purveyor of truth – no matter how ugly, dangerous, or inconvenient that truth may be. I am also the latest victim of the most laughably half-assed attempt of a smear campaign that I've ever seen."
The bitch actually chuckled as if the news of nearly a month ago hadn't even fazed her.
Marcus' blood iced over.
Oh, how he hated that snicker of hers.
To this day, he still dreamed of it – that mocking, lilting tone. The endless defiance.
"It should come as no surprise to you," she continued, "that our current administration does not care for the truth. They never have. Not that I blame them entirely – it's never really suited their narrative."
That arrogance of hers had him clenching his fists, a deadly, killing calm washing over him.
"But I do not work for those that would remain in power. I work for you, the people. I have only ever served your interest. You know my true reputation too well to doubt my sincerity. Over the past four decades, I have always given you the facts – unaltered, without bias, and always supported by irrefutable and thoroughly documented evidence. It is only after the facts have been delivered that I then share with you my opinions, my insights. But the invitation for further conversation has always existed between us – and I've heard you, Budapest. I have heard your cries for justice these four long decades. I know that those in power have struggled to silence you – but I've heard you. I have always heard you. Not once have I ever told you what to think or how to feel – because that decision has been and must always remain your own."
Clips of previous VNN interviews with Marcus and other prestigious members of his cabinet began to appear on the screen – the carefully crafted lies of decades now being rent in twain as the footage of reality, the truth, played side by side. The comparison was damning.
"I have never lied to you," she maintained. "I have never made any attempts to deceive, gaslight, or lead you astray. I have never sought to enslave or placate you. My primary objective in all that I have done has been to empower you, to embolden you with the truth."
The images and video faded, camera focusing once more on Francesca.
It was impossible to determine where exactly she was – which of course had been the intention. She was shrouded in darkness, appearing only from the shoulders up, donning what looked like a simple indigo, v-neck blouse, her mahogany hair pulled back in a braid that had been draped over her shoulder.
Simple. Elegant. Approachable.
"I know your fears, Budapest," she went on. "I have heard your whispered conversations, have shared in your struggle. I have also watched many of you surrender to the comfort and stability of complacency because the cost of freedom appears too high, because you or someone you know has lost so much already. I perfectly understand and empathize with the temptation to stay silent, to remain in your willful ignorance, comfortable in the cage that you now live in. But this city and the land beyond was intended to be our salvation, our safe haven in a world that has never wanted us. Instead, it has become our prison and the walls have only continued to close in around us."
There was a shot of the border wall around the north district – that glistening metropolis of wealth and ease, and then a shot of the rest of the city, left to rot and decay in darkness and squalor. The contrast was devastating.
"Those currently in power have lied to this people. They do so to keep us subjugated…" There was a shot of the mass exodus of the wolves to the south district after the virus had been contained; then another of rows upon rows of unconscious dhampirs hooked up to blood-extraction machines in the factory district. And then one more, this time of the Spider's bordellos, the inhumane conditions, the haunted faces that resided within. "They've been denying you of the vital oxygen that is truth unfettered… Well, here is your truth, Budapest. Nothing but the hard, irrefutable facts."
The images changed to a series of faces Marcus knew well – faces of old friends and allies. It wasn't hard to guess where she was going next.
"Almost forty years ago, a coup was initiated in the shadows by an ancient organization known as the Fraternitatem et Sanguis. Their objective: to remove the one person from power who has always held the survival and interests of this people at heart, the only one in a millennia that has sacrificed more than we could ever possibly understand – his happiness, his well-being, and his reputation – all in order to keep us safe from those that would eradicate us from the face of the earth."
An image of the Dracul insignia appeared on the screen, the faces of the known members of the Augustine's brotherhood replaced with the familiar faces of the Dracul Sânge – his brother's fighting squad – the original A-Team and the dragon's blood-bound children.
"This was done by first disbanding the Dracul Sânge," she explained. "A cruel, cold, and calculated move that nearly destroyed the father of our race, leaving stasis as the only option with which he could begin to mend the damage his soul had sustained. But our king did not abandon us to our fates. He left in his place a council of seven of his most trusted advisors – those who had proven their love and loyalty for our kind and its continuation."
More images appeared, this time of the original council with the likes of the Bernardini's and Elina Markov, the latter of which still held her seat.
A sudden realization hit Marcus like a bolt of lightning and he turned, snapping his fingers in Ildar's direction.
"Bring me Elina!"
Without even questioning him, the man quickly bowed and retreated from the room, murder in his eyes.
"But for all of their good intentions, they were not the dragon," Francesca continued in her narrative. "In spite of their sacrifices – some even giving their very lives in order to stand between us and our greatest enemy…" Footage of those executions now played, but the one of Mariella being burned alive was what haunted Marcus most… those eyes. Those damning eyes! "They proved no match for the dragon's lesser brother, a man with everything to gain and nothing to lose."
The footage of the witch's execution faded out.
"Once our true king was removed from the equation, along with the bulk of his supporters – either eliminated or threatened into silence – the virus was unleashed." News footage of those first few months as the epidemic spread now played, the terror that had gripped the city tangible even now… Marcus had almost forgotten how effective it had been in spreading chaos. "Us survivors can readily recall the horror that followed. The outbreak starting along the borders of our great state…" A map of the territory that had been laid out for the preternatural community appeared on the screen, highlighting the origin points of outbreaks before slowly bleeding inward toward the capital. "… Before it began to spread like a wildfire, driving us all within the walls of the city, desperate to seek refuge. We were told we would be kept safe, when in reality, we were only being herded like sheep for the slaughter."
Images appeared of the piles of remains of those who had fallen to the plague, mounds of ash littering the sidewalks, blood like streams in the streets, clogging the sewers.
"Our allies have since then been picked off one by one until none remained, not a single voice of dissent left to question the actions of those in command…"
There was a shout of a female and the familiar growl of Ildar as he reentered the room with Elina in tow, holding the woman by her hair. She was dressed in robes of white this evening, a broach of white gold in the shape of a chrysanthemum, wreathed in leaves of emeralds, situated with care in the center of her chest, just below the breastbone.
"Where was she?" Marcus snarled as his second in command forced the woman onto her knees, not a trace of fear in her eyes; only bravery and acceptance, as if she had been anticipating this.
"In her rooms. She was writing this," and he handed the man a half-written letter.
Augustine scanned the words with ever-darkening eyes. He held the paper up in her face, shaking it.
"'I, Elina Markov, voice of the people, confess to being the sole proprietor and distributor of all documents, images, and video and audio recording of the usurper, Marcus Augustine, and his council…'"
He couldn't even finish reading the first line of the letter. His rage had overpowered him.
With an unforgiving hand, he struck her, making it a point to draw his claws over that beautiful face that had so effortlessly deceived him all these years. Her blood was like perfume in the air. Oh yes, he thought. He would enjoy this. He would relish in prolonging her suffering, squeezing every utterance of treachery from her lips before he'd end her. But before he could do any more damage, however, Francesca's speech caught his attention, the woman still prattling on in her self-righteous indignation.
"Silence became our means of survival," she said, and oh how fitting her words were, now that he was seeing the duplicity of the female on her knees at his feet. "Comfort, modern distractions, and a blind eye – the drugs that kept us complacent. But no more."
The camera panned in slowly, moving in a little closer to Francesca's face. Her irises were now burning violet.
"We are the undying. Children of an eternal night. Nosferatu. We were not made to cower in darkness. We are the darkness. Ruled by neither heaven nor hell, we are beings of unimaginable power, predators by nature, designed to be free, not to exist subjugated by one who isn't even one of us."
"Fucking hell, turn it off!" Ildar shouted, but Sonya, now with the sheet wrapped around her body, materialized from off the bed and grabbed Basilio's arm to stop him before he could reach the television.
"Marcus Augustine is no king," Francesca asserted. "He is a spineless, petty, wholly incompetent ruler… and a complete and utter failure as a vampire and as a man…" That smug, arched smile that Augustine knew all too well reappeared on the woman's face – it was arrogant, challenging… a baited trap. "Well… where it counts, anyway," she crooned suggestively.
Marcus barked at the TV as if it would shut the woman up, but naturally his outburst had no effect.
"'But Francesca,' I hear you saying, 'why should we believe a word you say? What about the people you've killed, the wrongs you've committed?' Oh… didn't he tell you, Budapest?" she asked mockingly.
And then it happened.
That violet hue of her glowing irises began to flicker red, the whites slowly bleeding into black – not wholly, but enough for them to see, enough to remind him of what he had done to her nearly two centuries ago.
Her blood-rage.
But… but it wasn't possible! Had she learned to control it?
A chill ran through him at the notion.
"Marcus Augustine made me the monster that I am," she said, voice darkening, an endless pit of fury and hunger in those soulless eyes and it brought flashes of memory to the surface of Augustine's mind – the night she had somehow broken free. The night the lioness had been unleashed.
"Or have you forgotten already, Marcus? Have you forgotten the woman you attempted to break, the woman you tried to destroy?" she asked, addressing him directly now.
He could feel the eyes of the others in the room resting on him. But he was too stunned to do anything about it, not when the female he was so certain he had broken in that dungeon beneath old Roma was staring directly at him through the television screen.
"You may have staked me, gutted me, sliced me to ribbons, skinned and burned me alive, starved and tortured me, raped, debased, humiliated, and broke every inch of my body before you pumped poison through my veins – yet still I rose from the ashes you left me in again and again and again. For five fucking years of hell while you raged and screamed, furious that I wouldn't die and too dense to realize until it was too late that you had pissed off the wrong woman. I may not have dragon blood running through my veins, Marcus, but I have enough fire and rage to match his…"
At this, she went deadly calm, eyes returning to normal, but the fury in her expression remained undiminished. That arrogant smile of hers returned.
"And you know what the best part is? He gave me his blessing when I asked if I could annihilate you." Francesca then held something up for the camera and Sonya gasped in disbelief, the woman going white. Elina, however, only smiled. It was Dracula's insignia ring – the seal of the king. "Look familiar?" Francesca asked mockingly. "It should… you spent six months trying to carve it out of my skin…"
She then pulled down the front of her blouse to reveal the dragon brand over her breast just beneath the collarbone.
The chill that ran through the room was unmistakable.
The prophecy.
No… no, it couldn't be! There was no way in hell she had found a way around what he had done to her! But if she had, where was Dracula?
"You are not our king, Marcus. Vladislaus Drăculea is. We, the people, will not live out our eternity oppressed, left to linger forgotten in the shadows in fear. This city, this land, was to be our sanctuary – and you've turned it into a living hell. No more. We are taking it back."
The camera panned out slowly again, though the space around her remained nothing but shadow.
"Will you stand with me, Budapest?" she asked, addressing the people now. "Will you fight with me? Will you rise from the gutter of complacency? Will you shake off the bonds of injustice and fear and be free as you once were, be the gods of death that we were made to be? Fight with me, Budapest! Stand at my side, not as subordinates or vassals – but as equals. Fight with me, Budapest! Rise up! Fight for your families, for your friends, for your freedom! Fight for the ones who gave and lost all in their attempts to save us…"
More footage of the trials and executions of supposed traitors and rebels played around her, a battle cry of the people, ending with the final shout of defiance from Mariella Bernardini before the flames had claimed her.
"Don't let their deaths be in vain," Francesca insisted, the words sounding like the command of a queen. The dragon's queen. "We are not animals meant to be caged. Get up. Fight back."
And with that, the broadcast finally ended, the screen going black.
The stillness that hung in the air was crushing.
Though the entire world seemed silent and unmoving, Marcus Augustine could almost sense the anger and resolution building like a tidal wave just beyond the palace walls.
That infernal bitch had wanted a revolution and had gotten one… he had practically gift-wrapped it for her.
"I told you not to underestimate her," Basilio said, his anger either making him brave or incredibly stupid for even uttering the words given what they had just witnessed. "I told you and you didn't listen. You did nothing. You did nothing and now she's going to bring the whole of the city down upon our heads!"
Marcus turned, a deadly look in his eyes.
"How did she get Dracula's ring?" Ildar asked. "I thought he wasn't in the city anymore. You said he was gone!"
"SILENCE!" Augustine roared, but while the others fell quiet under the face of his rage, Elina had begun to laugh.
It had started as a snorted chuckle before bubbling up in a mad, almost hysterical cackle of a woman unleashed. She howled, tears streaming down her face, mingling with the blood still leaking from the gory lacerations of his earlier violence.
The insolence brought the whole of Marcus' attention and wrath upon her as he grabbed her by the throat, cutting off her air and consequently the sound of her amusement, but that merciless joy still glistened in her eyes.
"What have you done?" he snarled in her face.
"That which cannot be undone," she rasped. "You were warned. A courtesy which you did not heed until she had marked you," and with an unforgiving tug, she tore the decorative leather cuff he always wore from his wrist, revealing a brand of his own.
A runic symbol for death.
Mariella's parting gift for him before he had burned her alive.
"You're too late," the woman continued, managing to spit out the words even as the vampire crushed her windpipe in his hand… as if the words weren't even coming from her anymore. "She will come for you. With fire and blood and the power of gods, she will come. And there is nothing you can do to stop her. Nothing in all of heaven nor hell that can save you. Your days are numbered… the queen is coming."
Marcus grabbed hold of Elina's arm and with a roar of fury and bought of inhuman strength, he tore the woman asunder as if she were little more than a piece of cloth. The sound of flesh and bone ripping and breaking was nothing to the sickening slosh of blood and organs that crashed to the floor as she met true death. What remained of her body quickly dissolved into ash. It caked the pool of crimson at his feet.
Augustine was pure unbridled rage, blind with it as he stomped down on her remains before finally punching the wall at his side, fist breaking through solid marble, the precious rock cracking and crumbling in large chunks to the ground.
He was about to continue in his rampage when the screen of the TV flickered – still on, apparently – but the black flashed once, twice, and then an image appeared. A POV shot in first person of a woman writing a letter, a confession, before someone had burst into her room unannounced.
The wind of Marcus' rage was immediately sucked out of his sails as he stared in horror at what he saw.
Ildar, dragging the woman dressed in white from her chambers and down through the palace halls. Forcing her to her knees in Sonya's chambers with Basilio and Augustine in view, the televised broadcast still playing.
Elina… Elina had been bugged!
Before Marcus could even order for them to search for it, Sonya and Basilio were already on the floor, rummaging through her remains until the councilwoman revealed the white gold chrysanthemum broach – and the tiny microscopic camera in its center.
The Spider had already snatched the deceptive piece of jewelry from the woman's blood soaked hands, throwing it on the ground and crushing it repeatedly beneath his boot – and yet the recording continued to play the damning evidence of what had been done here.
Elina's final stand and Marcus' reckless anger.
There was no going back from this – no excuse they could fabricate to explain what had happened.
Elina Markov had been the closest thing this city had had to a queen since it had been established. She had lived her life as its champion, as the voice of the people.
And he had murdered her.
In a blind rage, Marcus had literally torn her to pieces – the symbol of the people.
He had effectively destroyed his own queen piece on the board and in her wake had arisen a new queen – the dragon's undying bride.
Marcus was numb with panic and fury in equal parts as the world around him unraveled, his earlier brash actions now being broadcasted over the television and no doubt on every screen throughout the city.
If Francesca's rousing speech hadn't moved the people to action, this would… and he couldn't help but feel like that had been the point all along: to enrage him to the point of madness.
Sonya at least had the good sense to turn the TV off, even if doing so offered little in regards to their present situation. It also did nothing to quench the murder in Augustine's eyes, but his fury was all a front. Deep down, buried beneath the layers of wrath and bloodlust was a feeling that slowly began to spread like cancer through his veins.
Fear.
"There's no coming back from this," Basilio said after some time in silence, the man – to his credit – trying his damnedest to hide his ire. "The cunt wants a war, we can give her one. Just tell us what to do."
"We could unleash the virus," Sonya offered gently, cautiously making her way over to her lover, her voice measured, calm – belying the wealth of uncertainty now clawing its way through her system. "It would spread chaos, help dwindle their numbers before they can get organized."
"I'm not going to give that bitch the satisfaction of feeding into her narrative. She wants me to play the villain," Augustine explained.
"So play the role," Sonya continued, resting her hand on his arm, her voice soothing, seductive. "She wants a monster to do battle with… give her one."
"We should still target her inner circle," Basilio added. "Weaken her support system, make her vulnerable."
"But if Dracula's already on her side…" Ildar interjected.
"That could have been a bluff," the Spider insisted, though his voice wavered even as he uttered the words. "There have been no confirmed sightings of him. Not even a whisper. She could have had the ring forged."
"But that brand was not," Marcus stated. "Francesca de Chacier is many things, but she's not a fool. She understands the power of symbols… just as Elina did," and he sent the puddle of ash and blood a hard look.
A white gold chrysanthemum.
He should have seen it coming a mile away. The bitch had always been fond of symbols and flower language.
Marcus scoffed. Truth and devoted love, indeed. The man rolled his eyes, only partially aware of the conversation taking place around him.
"You said that you had neutralized her when you poisoned her blood," Basilio continued. "There's a very good chance that even if Dracula were to side with the Chase bitch, they cannot become blood-bound. The prophecy cannot be fulfilled. There's still a chance we can come out of this…"
But Marcus laughed then, a hollow sound devoid of anything human as he walked unfazed through Elina's remains toward the exit.
"Oh, there's no way any of us are getting out of this alive. Not now," he said. But before he could depart, he paused in the doorway to look back at the trio still watching him expectantly. They did their best to hide it, but he could smell their fear. They were right to be afraid. "But that doesn't mean we can't make them all thoroughly suffer in the meantime."
Augustine then turned, stepping out into the hall.
"Call the council together, Ildar," his voice echoed out, even as he continued to walk away. "My brother's queen consort wants a war. Let's give her one."