"Some might ask how one can find the most evil, the most wicked, the most sinful and depraved of women. It is quite simple. My personal studies of faith and of the souls of that inferior sex has revealed to me that all the most degenerate women are poorly endowed, and so the righteous surround themselves with those who are full in the chest. The reasons for this are twofold. Firstly, it shows that the Lord God has not smiled upon them, reviling them for their evilness. But also, it is a simple matter of anatomy. You see, in a well-bosomed woman, the largeness of her chest draws evil away from her heart, where it taints not her thoughts, while in one who is less endowed it is compressed and malignant. Naturally, one can only judge an adult by this, but have you not seen how children are malicious and sinful unless beaten? And of course this does not apply to men, who are not subject to the lustiness of women."
– Pope Aegis X, 'Lectures on the Wickedness of Women, Part XVI
…
The two sisters made a strange tableau. On one side, Louise, eyes burning yellow-pink, was wearing a gauzy sheet over her comfortable dark clothes. On the other, a decidedly dishabille Cattleya was clad in a skimpy nightgown, eyes a dull crimson, fangs bared in shock. The two sisters looked similar, but Cattleya was more rounded, more curvy compared to Louise's more angular figure.
"W-wait, so you're not a ghost?" Cattleya asked carefully, before breaking into a pointy-toothed smile. "Oh, Louise, I'm so happy for you! Oh, unless you're a ghost who's lying to me about not being dead, or you don't know that you're dead. But even if that's the case, I'm still really happy you're choosing to haunt me! Don't worry, I'll try to explain everything to Mother and Father! They've come to a way of handling me safely; I'm sure they won't mind having another dead daughter!"
She paused for breath. "Well, of course they'll be very sad and unhappy that you passed away, but still! At least ghost-hood isn't as bad as having to put up with drinking the blood of the living, so there's that! Also, I think you'd technically be another undead daughter, but still! Do you remember how you died?"
Hmm. It certainly appeared to be Cattleya, as opposed to a horrifying fiend out to consume the blood of the living in a tormented mockery of life. And... Louise's knees felt like jelly, and she sagged, grabbing the window frame for support. "Mother and Father... know?" she whispered. "They're... they know and... they're fine with it?" She paused. "Also, no, Catt, I'm not dead and... they're fine? How can they be fine? You're a vampire! That's not fine at all! That's the opposite of fine. That is un-fine."
"Well," Cattleya said, sitting herself down on the bed and straightening out her nightgown, "no, they're not fine. Louise, please, sit down, I don't want you to fall down and hurt yourself. You're alive, you say? So either you don't remember how you died, or you... just have been gone for nearly nine months!" Cattleya blushed. "Louise! Did you get... is there a child? Is that why you were gone for nine months? Do I have an adorable little niece or nephew and when do I get to meet them? Oh, this is wonderful! Have you picked out a name yet? Can I help?"
Louise would have massaged her temples if she had not currently been using her hands to keep herself upright. She was starting to remember one of the more difficult elements of talking with Cattleya when she got a 'good idea' into her head. "No," she said hotly, "I did not get pregnant! And I'm not dead! And I'm not a ghost!" She cleared her throat. "I... I... uh, ended up as a dark lady of a ruined tower after I ran away after my summoning and I've been trying to overthrow the Council of Regents and restore Princess Henrietta to her rightful position and... uh..." she trailed away.
Wow. When she put it like that – and this was the first time she had really said it out loud – it was very... uh… very. It was full of veryness. Veryness abounded.
"Oh." Cattleya's voice fell. "That's going to be rather harder to explain to Mother than you just being a ghost." She paused, realisation dawning. "You're that overlady in the north, aren't you? The one who killed the comte de Mott!"
"That's why she can't find out, Catt! And why you weren't even meant to see me and... and it's your fault for making me scream because you're a vampire! Why are you a vampire? How are you a vampire? How long have you been one?"
Cattleya sucked in a breath. "Define 'vampire'," she suggested. "I mean, it's kind of been getting worse for years, but it all started about ten years ago when I got bitten by Louis de la Vallière, called by some the Bloody Duke, because Eleanore had raided his tomb and disturbed his rest."
"Ten years ago," Louise said flatly. This had to be related to how her father had obtained the fragment ten years ago! It had to be! "Eleanore did what?"
"Raided the tomb of our... is it five greats, or six? Well some-number-of-greats-grandfather," Cattleya said. "During the holidays, back when she was at the Academy, she broke into the tomb of Louis de la Vallière, broke the wards on his grave, and... well, she says she didn't take anything and was just curious, but I have my doubts." Cattleya pouted. "Mother and Father very nearly disowned her for doing that."
"Louis... Louis," Louise said slowly. It was familiar. And not just because it was the masculine version of her own name. "I've heard Gnarl mention that name."
"It's not surprising. He's the source of the royal blood in the family, and was utterly, utterly horrid. Before him, the de la Vallière family wasn't that bad," Cattleya said soberly. "I mean, yes, there were occasionally nasty people, but nastiness sadly happens among the nobility. But Louis de la Vallière was a bastard son of the king, and he was wicked to the bone. Worse than his father, and since his father was Charles the Vile that was horrible indeed.
"But Louis de la Vallière was clever, cunning and ambitious; a real cut above the petty wickedness of his peers. His mother – who wasn't a nice woman herself – passed the duchy to him and went to live in a monastery when he was twenty. And he kept things looking mostly normal. Except slowly the land got sicker and sicker. Orc and goblin tribes started occupying those lands near the Germanian border. The dead started rising and he would ride out and 'destroy them'… but only after his lesser noble tenants had been ruined and had to take loans from him. There were famines in the bad weather, and in some remote villages they had to turn to cannibalism… and well, you know how people who do that become ghouls. His children took after him in temperament, too."
Louise paled. "And Mother and Father named me after him?" she asked in disbelief.
Cattleya shook her head. "No, I think they just liked the name 'Louise'," she said. "Or maybe they were trying to redeem the name." She raised an eyebrow at her little sister. "That… uh, may not quite have worked. I think I wanted them to call you 'Henrietta', but that was mostly because that's what they'd just called the princess. And Eleanore wanted a little brother." She shook her head. "But yes. Father found out everything he could about him, because he basically had him as an example of what-not-to-do.
"At some point, the Bloody Duke turned his dabbling in necromancy using water magic into handling raw Evil, according to Father. And then to avoid death, he went out and hunted down the biggest and nastiest vampires he could find, and then made them fight and eat each other to find who was the most powerful one of them. And then became a vampire, and killed and ate that vampire. And then some other vampires he'd found to steal their power. And also some demons, dragons… pretty much everything he could to try to get even more power."
"That's… horrible," Louise breathed.
"That certainly is," Gnarl said in her ear gleefully, revealing that he had been listening in to the conversation. Louise had a nasty feeling she would be hearing more on this subject from him when she got back to the tower, it sounded like the sort of vile atrocities he liked. And the dratted Jester would probably taunt her about it, too. Something like 'Heir to a Proud Legacy' or some insufferable stupidity like that.
"So..." Cattleya continued, not noticing the way Louise's right eye was twitching slightly, "at some point he got torn to shreds by an angry werewolf, but... uh. He didn't die properly. Or whatever the proper word is; I'm not sure. Some kind of dark working he'd carried out, anchored in something of a terrible evil, meant that even being reduced to ashes didn't kill him properly. He had bound his soul so tightly to his body that it could never escape, Father says. Feeding off life energy of the world around him. Or something like that. Father says he's been trying for years to kill him properly, but all he can do is keep him trapped. And that's the same way he stops the Bloody Duke from controlling me."
Something of a terrible evil. Oh dear. But wait... no! Her father had bought the fragment of the tower heart ten years ago. The overlady began to nibble on the fingernails of her left hand as she thought, moving into the room properly to warm herself by the fire.
"Louise," Cattleya scolded her, "don't bite your nails."
Louise took her fingers out of her mouth. "Who's this?" she said, pointing at the girl on the bed who had been lying there silently, staring at her.
"Oh," her older sister said, "that's my maid. She helps me with all kinds of things."
"Like feeding," she said flatly.
Cattleya blushed. "Well, not officially."
Louise stared suspiciously at the dull-eyed girl who was looking incuriously at her. "Did you use evil vampire magic on her to make her like that?" she demanded. "She should be more surprised to see me!"
Cattleya's eyes widened. "No, of course not!" she said, sounding offended. "Anne was kicked in the head by a donkey when she was little, poor girl, so she's simple. Mother and father assigned me her as a maid because she doesn't ask questions and doesn't get suspicious about the little things, like the fact I don't have a pulse when she dresses me. I mean, she knows, but I'm not entirely sure she understands. And most mornings she has to work out how to heat up water from scratch. But she's very sweet and caring and she likes my animals. And it's good to be taking care of someone this unfortunate." Cattleya smiled, showing just a hint of fang. "She's very huggy indeed," she said.
"And the blood drinking," Louise said flatly.
The older girl coughed, sitting by her maid and stroking her brow. "I... ahem... would get in rather a lot of trouble if Mother found out about that," she admitted, tapping her index fingers together. "I'm... sort of not allowed at all to do that. I'm only allowed animals. But Mother only checks the neck and the arms and the torso for bite marks. And I am very careful when doing it, and Anne doesn't mind, do you?"
The girl shook her head. "I like Miss Cattleya," she said, softly. "She is nice. Not like men."
"Yes, some men were being... unkind to my little sweetums," Cattleya said cheerily. "Then I found out, and would you believe it, two of them found God and joined the church and the other ran off to join a travelling show! Well, they did. I can't imagine why! Strong strapping men like that wouldn't be scared by... why, by pretty much about anything. Strangely enough, quite a few of the men in the surrounding villages who have been unpleasant to my little birdies - and anyone else who has been cruel to animals - have had some dreadful frights which had led them to righteously change their ways. Which is jolly nice of them, I think." She grinned. "It really gives you hope for the decency of humanity, doesn't it?"
Louise giggled. Her head was still swimming at the revelation, but... Cattleya was still Cattleya. She'd only not known about this before; her sister had... well, that was the question.
"How did it happen?" she asked.
"What?" her sister asked.
"The whole v-... v-word thing," Louise said.
"Ah," Cattleya said, eyes narrowing momentarily. "Well, I'd actually expected to have to tell you earlier – Louise, you're kind of inobservant, you know – so..." she got up, and recovered several sheets of paper from under her bed, "... I prepared these!"
…
It is a dark and stomy night. Through storm-wracked clouds, a full moon shines down, deep red and bloody, casting the world into crimson hues. Outside, a wolf howls. And hark! Through yonder window we see our heroine – innocent, beautiful, naive – tossing and turning. It is the height of summer and the muggy heat of the darknight storm is intolerable. If things would but cool down, it would be more tolerable, but it has been sweltering in the day and the rain brings only frightful humidity.
She kicks off her covers, rises from her bed. With her wand she – so proud is she of this little spell – lights up her room with a wavering light, and makes her way over to the window. A puppy sleeps on the floor; graceful as a cat she steps over it. Dramatically, chest-heaving, she throws the shutters and the windows wide open. The air is moist, smelling of rain, and she sighs in happiness at the welcome relief, before returning to bed.
And what is that? What terrible tenebral terror, a transient trick treading on tremulous toes, takes a some-other-word-beginning-with-'t' path up to the window of our fair maiden? What gleaming eyes glow hungry in the dark, what barbarous fangs catch the light?
(That's the baddy, by the way.)
Under bloody-hued moon his shadow creeps along the wall, a patch of darkness in a red-cast world. Something fluttered in the dark, and then the man – pale, sunken-eyed, a veritable walking corpse with long fingernails and teeth – is in her room, standing in the window. His shadow is cast over her sleeping form. Slowly, he approaches.
He also kicks the puppy out the window. What a dastardly scoundrel! And the yelp wakes our brave rosy-haired damsel, who looks up in horror at the charnel monster which looms over her.
"Oh no!" the fair maiden says, clutching her hands to the bosom she does not in fact have, because she is, you know, ten. And then she screams.
The beast descends.
...
Louise stared at her sister from her seat on the bed next to her. "Is that really what happened?" she asked accusingly.
"Well... more or less," Cattleya admitted. "I mean, I was ten at the time and it was really scary, but I think that's pretty much what I remember. I might have elaborated on things a bit. I'm not actually sure myself, because after it started happening I got frightfully weak and started seeing things that weren't there."
She shifted, slightly uncomfortably. "Also, I got a bit carried away writing that and so it sort of leaves out that it wasn't just one time. He kept on taking more and more, night by night. Father eventually noticed the bite marks when I started getting very, very sick and started getting cravings for raw meat. You might remember when I collapsed at dinner?"
"No," Louise said.
"Well, you were six at the time. That was when he found out, anyway. And then he sent Mother away to get something he thought might help while he spent all his time around me, trying to make me stronger, but… well, by that point I was half-dead already and very, very sick and vampirism fights normal healing magic, even from a square-class. He could stop me getting any worse, but…" Cattleya shrugged. "By the time Mother got back from whatever she was doing, I was barely hanging on."
Cattleya's voice was desperately sad when she continued, "And then... well, when Mother and Father went out to do what they had to do to bring the Bloody Duke under control, trying to stop the sickness by killing the one responsible, I... slipped away some time in the night. By that I mean 'died'. Or undied. And they didn't even managed to kill that horrid, horrid man!" she added, eyes burning crimson. "I mean, not permanently. Mother said that she sliced him up into lots of little bits, sort of like Germanian sausage, but he just reformed. I mean, this is Mother we're talking about so she just did it again, but still."
The maid, Anne, sat up and draped herself around Cattleya's shoulders. "Don't be sad, Miss Cattleya," she said quietly. "It isn't fun to be unhappy."
The hug seemed to calm her down a little. "Well, that was the end of my life metaphorically as well as literally," she said. "There was no way I was going to get to go to the Academy, and they started putting around the story that I had come down with a wasting sickness. And they had to call off my marriage, and rearrange things so you'd be marrying Jean-Jacques instead of me."
Louise went limp. "My... the marriage... it was a lie?" she said weakly. "I... I was second-best?"
"There, there," Cattleya said, wrapping a slightly chill arm around her head. "I'm sorry you had to find out and our parents weren't going to mention it, but yes. You were just six, remember? They'd arranged the marriage when he was fifteen and already a square-ranked prodigy, and I was nine. Then when I was ten, I ended up like this, and they had to scramble to talk him into accepting their six year old instead." She grinned, sadly. "I'm fairly sure you got a rather larger dowry than I would have," she said. "And having grown up... I don't think I would have been happy with a man like him anyway. He's too militaristic and too hard. Of course, you lost him too, because everyone thought you were dead."
Louise sniffed. "It's just..." she said weakly, "... everyone was lying to me and... and... it's not fair and..." she snivelled. "I didn't mean to spend so long away," she said weakly. "I ended up trapped in a tower with a really horrible vampire who I... uh, killed when he tried to kill me and then I accidentally collapsed the entrance and... by the time I got out, it had been months and Princess Henrietta had been arrested and... do you have any idea how long it's been since I've been able to talk to a normal person? It's... not fair." She glanced at her still-upset sister. "And Cattleya! Poor you! Oh, it's not fair on you, either. I shouldn't be turning it into being something about me. It's... just so much so quickly and I've missed you so."
Something in her was screaming that she was an idiot to let a vampire have an arm around her neck like this and that they were just blood sucking monsters, like the one who had killed the child back in the tower, but... but...
... this was Cattleya. And from what she'd said, as long as she could remember, Cattleya had been like this. She just hadn't known.
Plus, she was a fully-fledged, regent-killing dark lady. She... she probably counted as a worse person than a vampire who didn't kill people.
"You're jolly right it's not fair on me," Cattleya said, a note of steel entering her voice. "I hate this dratted state of affairs. It's a load of sugar and... and I know our parents are right, but Founder! Some nights I have had it up to here with this flipping sugar and just want to go out and open up some throats." She paused. "Which would be wrong and so I don't do it," she added. "If you really did kill a bad vampire, then I'm proud of you, Louise. I try very hard to be a good person, even when I'm utterly sick of cow blood night after night. And so sometimes I'm a little weak and indulge in a few mouthfuls when Mother isn't here, but that's all! I know it's wrong and I feel awfully guilty about it! And Mother would kill me."
"Me too, if she knew what I was doing," Louise said, with a bubbling hiccup. "I... I spend a lot of time feeling guilty about the things I do." Not as much time as she really should, but perhaps Cattleya didn't precisely need to know that. Anyway, she wasn't a vampire and was doing the things she did to save Henrietta, so that made things different.
"What are you doing here?" Cattleya asked, curiously. "Oh yes, Anne, please go and make some tea for my guest." Slowly the other girl unwrapped herself from Cattleya, and shuffled off. "That'll keep her busy for at least five minutes while she tries to remember where the kettle is kept in the maisonette," the older girl said quietly.
"I could do with some tea," Louise agreed. "I... I used to not drink much of it, but the minions like it and there really... there really isn't much else to drink if you don't want to drink wine that's probably made of mushrooms. And I don't trust the water if it's not boiled."
"Poor you," Cattleya said. "I suppose that's a bit of living in a dark tower which the stories always miss. I mean, I suppose it's easy for the established forces of Evil who have money and the like, but you sound like you're working from a rather lower class of evil base."
Louise nodded sadly. "Lord, yes. It's bad at times." She shook her head. "As for why I'm here... I think it might be related. You see, there's a fragment of the tower heart... which is a giant crystal thing at the centre of the tower which does things like lets me teleport to places... which Father apparently got his hands on ten years ago and... well. According to the books I've read, if a tower heart gets too damaged, it – and all the bits taken from it, no matter how far away – blow up in a horrible magical explosion." She paused. "There were pictures. They were scary."
"Well, we certainly don't want that!" Cattleya said firmly. "Horrible magical explosions are never a good sign." She paused. "Except when they're done by good people, of course," she added, and crossed her arms. "I suppose I should help you look for it. In the name of avoiding horrible magical explosions. And if it was part of what happened ten years ago... you know the secret lake?"
"Oh yes," Louise said, a glimmer of hope in her voice. "That was my special childhood place, you know. I have a lot of fond..."
"Well, the marble building on the island in the centre is the mausoleum of Louis de la Vallière, so it'll be there." Cattleya paused. "Or is it a tomb? Or an ossuary? I'm sorry, for one of the living dead I really don't know my way around tombs! I just sleep in my room with soil under my mattress and thick curtains."
... well, that was a bunch of childhood memories ruined, Louise didn't have the heart to say. Though at least she now knew why whenever she had tried to row a boat over to the island at the centre of the lake, the current had mysteriously picked up and pushed her away. Clearly, that was part of the warding on the island.
"Well, then," Louise said instead, "I'll gather up the minions I left outside, and you and I can go see."
"Wonderful!" Cattleya said, clapping her hands together. "I'll go get a weapon, then! I think that's traditional!" Rising, she made her way over to the door and stepped out for a moment. Morbidly interested, Louise followed her. Stretching up onto her tiptoes, Cattleya lifted a large double-handed sword off the wall and hefted it, testing it in first one hand and then the other, before returning to the room.
"… isn't that a little heavy?" Louise asked dubiously, staring at her big sister hefting a sword which more resembled a bulky spear than it did anything a lady might use in one hand.
"A bit," Cattleya said. "Do you think I'm out of shape? I'm sorry, but exercising makes me hungry! And it wouldn't be morally righteous to do that! And I just hate when I get too hungry and accidentally kill a bird!"
Louise stared. "Catt," she said bluntly. "It's the same height as you are, and made of solid steel. It… it probably weighs a tonne or something!" She squinted in the darkness at the plaque under where it had been hanging. "God only knows what kind of a person used it in the first place."
"Wolfgang von Zerbst. 'Thought to Try a Frontal Assault: Rest in Pieces'… that's 'pieces' as in chunks," Cattleya said helpfully. "My night vision is really good." She coughed. "Uh… but I already had that memorised." She looked sad. "There's not much you can do during the nights and I've already worked my way through most of the interesting books in the library. I really miss daytimes. I mean, we're pale anyway, but I start burning in seconds."
"Do you even know how to use that thing?" Louise demanded of her, as there was a clattering from the adjoining room as the maid hunted for a kettle.
Cattleya blushed. "No," she admitted. "I was mostly thinking that I just hold it at the blunt end and hit people with it as hard as I can. Or possibly stab people with it." She smiled shyly before glowering in a manner not dissimilar to a peeved kitten. "I mean, it's really long and heavy, so even if I don't aim well, it should still be enough to get revenge on the… the horrible person responsible for doing this to me." Cattleya coughed. "I mean, you know evil magic, right?" she asked, hopefully. "Could you maybe – if you got a look at it, of course – work out what Louis de la Vallière did? Maybe even undo it? So I can kill him properly dead?"
Ah. So it appeared that Cattleya's motives were not entirely pure for helping her. Or maybe they were. From what she had said, Louise suspected anything you did which would kill her vampiric ancestor probably counted as a pure deed.
"I can try," she said, warily.
"I'll get looking in the library," Gnarl said in her ear. "See what might be done. That kind of magic sounds very interesting indeed, and more than a little familiar. And we don't want someone like that getting free if you have to take the tower heart fragment. Why, he would be a rival!"
"You said minions?" Cattleya continued, breaking her reverie. "What kind do you have? Are they vicious? Malicious? Dreadful vile seductive demons who break all sense of what's right and wrong?"
"No, that's my tailor. Well, her and her father," Louise said without thinking. "Especially her father."
"Hmm," Cattleya said, sounding peeved. "Well, you shouldn't be associating with such sorts. There is such thing as standards."
"Fettid!" Louise called out, as an answer. "Please show yourself!"
There was a blur of air, and it was suddenly revealed that he had been sitting on the mantelpiece all along. Louise felt in retrospect she probably should have noticed it, because the fire had been burning with a blue corona.
A high pitched noise split the air, emerging from Cattleya as she caught sight of the minion, and it was only after a moment's thought that Louise realised that it was not, in fact, a noise of fear. "Who's this little lady?" the older girl said, staring at Fettid. "She's so cute!"
Louise stared askew at her sister. There were many words she would use to describe a minion, especially one of the green-skinned variety. Among them were 'stupid', 'smelly', 'violent', 'malicious'… well, if she listed them all, she would be here all night. But most certainly, most concretely, in no way whatsoever at all was 'cute' among them. "That thing is Fettid," she said. "It's one of my minions."
"You mean there's more of them? She's so adorable! She's even wearing one of your old dresses!"
"Yes. That she is. She stole it." Louise blinked. Why was she referring to Fettid as a 'she', anyway? Minions were, to the best of her knowledge, probably 'he', and to find out more would involve checking under the loincloth which was something that no sensible being would want to do.
"Well, we have you and we have me and I have a sword and you have a horde – or so you tell me – of the cutest, most adorable minions around," Cattleya said enthusiastically. "So... let's be on our way to see if your magical crystal thing can be found in the tomb of the sugarhead who's responsible for me being like this! And we can catch up more along the way... I've missed you so, so, so much, little sister!"
Louise raised her hand. "Can... can we wait until the tea arrives?" she asked, hesitantly. "I've been up since dawn getting here, and I think it's catching up with me. And it was cold up on the roof and I need warming up."
"We certainly can," Cattleya said cheerfully. "It'll give me time to change, too. Change into something which isn't my favourite nightgown. Not change into a bat or a wolf or a mist. Though... Louise, mind carrying a change of clothes for me just in case I do have to do that?" Cattleya threw her wardrobe wide open. "What do you think I should wear?" she asked her little sister. "You have more experience at this kind of thing?"
"Uh." Louise blinked as she leant towards the fire, warming herself. "I normally just wear my armour. I'll change into it later... oh Founder." She shuddered. "It's going to be freezing. It's been out in the cold all night."
"I mean, I'm a vampire hunting," Cattleya said, "but we're also hunting a vampire. So should I dress up like a hunting vampire or a vampire hunter?"
Louise cocked her head. Two images came to mind. One involved velvet, décolleté, and general indecency. The other involved hard-faced men in leather with crossbows and stakes.
"The second one," she said as quickly as she could.
...
