So…this chapter has lots and lots and lots of background (remember: background, not present, and you're all set) goodness…muchisimas gracias to the lovelies who reviewed (Tamashii and galaktis)…I collapse in a prone bundle at your feet…Read on…!
By the by, I had a major brain fart when I uploaded this chapter earlier—I—ah—forgot to add the beginning part you see here. I'm so sorry—it hurts—oh, how it hurts…! ::smiles sheepishly::
Chapter 2—The Marquéd
"My people," Lif began, orb-like eyes flashing perilously, leading Winn's errant thoughts back to him, "as we all know, an insurrection of sorts has begun to brew," Lif's mouth twisted with distaste, "in our dear city of Melas. Apparently, a group of outcast vampires, mistakes, imperfections, aberrations, invariable insults to our brethren, has created an underground organization here, intent on undermining our influence in this city." This prompted growls and harsh whispers from the ethereal Marquéd. Winn winced and then frowned, trying to look angry, yes, and fierce! She succeeded in appearing vaguely irked.
One tall, voluptuous woman, red-haired and fierce, her full, sculpted features accentuated in the dim light, rose to her feet and growled, "Lif, sir, these…insults…must be dealt with swiftly and without mercy! We will rout these traitors only thus." She promptly sat down, fists clenched.
Lif chuckled and murmured, "Danna, my heart, I agree wholeheartedly." His voice sharpened, "But how do you propose we *find* them? Anyone?" Silence. Face contorted with annoyance, Lif continued, "We cannot speak of 'routing' if we have not yet come up with a decent scheme to unearth our enemies. Again, does anyone have ideas?" Silence. Lif fluttered his long-fingered hands in annoyance and sighed harshly. "Go to your homes, lovelies, and think on what might be done to detect these quacks—these subMarquéd! The meeting is ended." With that, the Marquéd rose gracefully—excepting Winn, who cringed and hunched down further into her chair—and divided into quite a few smallish groups, angrily discussing this latest.
"And what, I ask you, have the Marquéd ever done to merit such angst?"
"This is pureed shit. What do they expect to accomplish?"
"I don't know. I do know that if I find one, I'll rip his—or her—heart out and suck it dry…"
Winn listened noncommittally to the conversation for a few minutes, and then began to slink away from the crowd, hair strewn over her face, hands in the pockets of her ragged jeans. She must get away now. From under a curtain of ringlets she peered from side to side, hands icy and trembling, as she made her way through the glamorous and terrifying crowd; too many Marquéd. Perfect Marquéd, at that. Upon reaching the door way, Winn took a last look at the crowd, soaking up the myriad of lovely faces, cool, lofty. As she rapidly scanned the crowd, her large, inky eyes locked with a pair of icy sapphire-colored ones, in which she was convinced she saw not only distaste, but something oddly murderous—not quite right—and she almost gasped. The gem-like eyes belonged to a face just as young and beautiful and remote and common as those surrounding it; high, finely-wrought cheekbones, a slightly aquiline nose, perfectly-shaped, arrogantly twisted lips, creamy, though unnaturally pale, skin. All of this topped with tousled, dark-red hair, almost wine-colored. Beautiful. Winn shuddered—unnatural. Winn didn't like him—the bad-blooded one. Clenching her jaw, and confident that the Marquéd would contact her in time for the next meeting, she jerked away and hurried out the door, headed towards Melas, and her apartment.
* * *
Sitting on her cot in a dingy one-room flat, Winn remembered. She knew she had been Born only a couple weeks past. She knew she was eighteen—would always be eighteen.
She remembered the humanlife she had led; the abused daughter of a pair of destitute drunks, Winn had run away from home in New York City to Boston, and then to Melas, at age sixteen. She was tired. Never falling into drugs or hooking—and this was not a result of any moral righteousness on her part—by luck she found work at a small, underground retail store that paid surprisingly well—or at least enough to live on—(the place had a reputation for repeatedly losing employees to "as yet undefined circumstances"). Regardless of its—tendencies, the facts testified that Winn needed money, and the place provided money. Thus was forged a relationship between the two. She tried never to think too far in the future, which she generally felt held unreasonably ill will towards her; and after two years of living on and off the streets, moving constantly, and enduring what the future ladled out to her, she generally held ill will towards the future.
Two years of unremitting strife left her anxious, hardened, skittish, and wary; she possessed wit but not humor; she had no friends. She did not allow herself friends. Not that she could make any, she thought, what with her neurosis. But perhaps her saving grace, or at least she considered it so, was her entirely unlikely love of reading. It gave her some measure of contentment in her all but cheery situation, some deep-seated feeling of respect for her own intelligence, even if she didn't (couldn't) attend high school and would probably never go to college.
That was humanlife. And humanlife ended for her a couple weeks past in November, when she went out for a rare and savored walk in the forest surrounding northern Melas. For once not fearing for herself (it was broad daylight, for god's sakes), and feeling almost at peace, Winn swung through the forest, admiring the slenderness of birch and rowan and laurel, the full splendor of oak and maple, a nebulous trace of sunshine playing about her lips.
Then she was attacked.
Remembering, now stretched on her back, Winn trembled.
She had had less than a second's warning—the sudden crunch of leaves under phenomenally fast feet, the discordant hiss of an indrawn breath—before her assailant pressed a feverish hand across her eyes and held her down in an iron lock-hold.
Winn remembered the first moment of dazed shock and confusion, the terror, desperate grappling, kicking and clawing, and sucking in air to scream—but before she could, she felt a humid breath on her neck and then the exquisite flash of pain as two long, slender, acute fangs, icy and dreadful, sank into the soft skin of her throat. Renewed shock at the revelation of there really being vampires. Then the excruciating sensation of blood being forcibly leeched from her body, the gradual loss of her senses.
She didn't want to remember any more.
Because then, suddenly, her attacker had wrenched his fangs out of her flesh, and the world blinked out.
Momentarily, at least.
When she came to, her attacker hissed and dumped her prone body to the leaf-carpeted earth, and cried out in rage and torment, "You are not Lilith! Not my Lilith!"
Then the rapid thud of feet pounding the earth in flight.
As she lay on the moist, fragrant mulch, her leafy hair strewn over her face and clinging to the oozing welt under her jaw, Winn wished she could summon enough strength to sob and wail and rage at her premature, unceremonious death. Not surprisingly, she could scarcely squeeze out a single weak tear from the corner of her shut eye. She would die here, she knew, and it would make no difference to the rest of the world—a girl with no family, no friends, and very little identity—except that maybe vampires really did exist.
Or that some pathological killer with sharp teeth and a fixation on arteries was on the loose.
Either way, what did it matter to her? She could feel herself tumbling towards complete silence, total darkness; in a few seconds she'd be gone.
As she had lain crumpled on the forest floor, losing herself, Winn had numbly felt someone tilt her chin back and to the side, and another set of fangs sink into her flesh, taking just a little more blood. At this, Winn noticed, vaguely, a sharp-hot zap at the contact. He (wasn't it a he?) seemed to jerk away for a moment, and then cautiously resumed his task, reinitiating the altogether unwelcome electric-zinging business.
As this new predator's mouth worked at her bruised throat Winn finally, gratefully, fell deep into oddly sparkling darkness.
* * *
An indefinable period of time later, Winn had awakened in an alley wreathed in deep, midnight shadow. She lay there and she knew, without a doubt, and with all of herself, that she was dead and yet not quite dead; that she now belonged to the stuff of legend; that she was a new—thing—now. That her second attacker had made her into a—a vampire (but *why*?).
She lay in a crumpled heap in the farthest, darkest corner of a putrescent, cemented ditch running behind a filthy-looking warehouse. No, not a warehouse—a meat factory. Coughing, Winn breathed in the cloying aroma of gutted flesh, the overwhelmingly acrid scent of feces, urine, and…blood. Sniffing the dense air, searching for that last, tangy odor, she noticed that all her senses, even dulled with sleep, were sharper, more fine-tuned, even predatory. Bloodscent suddenly and nauseatingly amalgamated her nostrils, brain, fingertips; for the first time in her life, she was consumed by a crushing thirst—or was it hunger?—for blood.
With a deep, guttural cry of pain, Winn felt brand new, razor-sharp incisors puncture her gums and grow. She wanted blood. Scrambling on her hands and knees, Winn dragged herself to the source of the bloodscent, and blindly plunged her hands into the cold liquid.
Minutes later, she sat back on her haunches and lapped at her rose-tipped fingers, thirst quenched, mildly shocked at her own bestiality.
Slowly, Winn shook herself, dragged a hand across her mouth, and stood to gather her bearings. She supposed she was still in Melas; at least, she hoped so, and with her head down, hair swinging in front of her face, red-ridged hands stuffed into her pockets, she began to walk, trudging, lost, utterly alone and in a state of dawning fear, through the dank streets and backways that coursed through the unsavory warehousing and factory district of Melas.
Eyes flicking from side to side, throwing glances over her shoulders, Winn hurried through the twisted roads, fearful and dazed, thoroughly lost, hands shaking.
Click.
She paused for a second and then hurried onward. Click. Click. Her quick steps abruptly stopped.
Someone, or a few someones, was trailing her.
Certain that she had heard the clicking of at least one other pair of feet on the glistening road behind her, Winn twisted her body around and, eyes wide in her small face, searched the street. With recently honed vision, she probed the shadows huddled in corners, in windows, and detected nothing. It was a dog, she thought, yes, a frightful dog! Drawing her breath in slowly, Winn laughed shakily to herself, shook her head a little to calm down, turned back around, and prepared to take a step.
And abruptly stopped.
A few feet away, two figures towered before her, eyes hidden in shadow, moonlight and lamplight gleaming on their finely molded, impassive faces. With a stifled shriek, she whirled to run, and automatically one of the figures' arms whipped out and clamped a hard, lean, callused hand around her wrist.
It hurt.
Winn tried to jerk away, fingers splayed into claws, hissing, to her own surprise, with fangs bared, naked and white in the bluish light. The two pale faces above her registered surprised as well, but the grip on her wrist held firm. Her captor jerked her wrist sharply, to still her.
"Stop fighting," she commanded in a low, menacing voice.
In response, Winn fought, nearly hyperventilating, harder.
Lips gently curved in a soft smile, the other figure murmured in a soft, soothing tone, "We won't hurt you, youngling, not now." He bent down a little and his eyes swung into view. Large, distinctly greeny-grey eyes gleaming, he continued, "We do not harm our own."
Winn froze, quivering slightly, and gaped up at the two creatures before her. She almost, beyond reason, believed them, and she was so confused, and alone, and afraid. Should she trust them? What else could she do? Run? Go back to her old life, her humanlife, and be swallowed by sameness again, just with the added, apparently not-so-obscure, habit of drinking blood?
"Come with us," the man urged gently. The woman released her wrist. It tingled as the blood rushed back into it.
She followed.
!!!!Comments are most thoroughly enjoyed, relished, and found altogether delectable…I still maintain that I will erect shrines for comments, so please do - comment, that is.: ) !!!!
