First Draft
Thirty Two
"Isn't this what you came for, songbird?" Mezereon asked, with a fist balled in the boy's hair and pulled the body to stand, the tips of the boy's bare feet barely brushing the ground.
The damp invasive thing that had made its way into Saben's Frost mouth, the thing seeking further passage down her throat slowly uncoiled itself and slipped away allowing her to suck unnecessary lungfuls of air.
Instead she choked on the foul scent of death and desecration.
"Let him go." She rasped.
"Who are you to demand such things of me?"
Mezereon bobbed the child up and down, his hair was wet with sweat and blood and when the boy's head lolled back Saben's heart fell to see Daniel's eyes opened wide in terror.
Saben opened her mouth to say his name but was interrupted.
"Daniel."
She turned and saw an unmistakable figure thinly veiled in shadows the torches cast. Blaise Harman, mouth open, frozen as she took in the sight of the broken bodies of children and People.
"Do not turn away from me." Mezereon hissed and Saben turned back to him obediently.
His eyes were as bright as twin suns, filled with a white hot fury. His face was stretched, gaunt, his teeth large and grotesque in his small cherubic mouth. He looked demonic, a fit architect for the carnage that surrounded them.
She couldn't believe she had once let him lay fingers, tongue and teeth on her. She couldn't believe she had once thought him a god,
Mezereon loosed his grip on Daniel and the boy feel to his knees, overcome with trembling like a newborn foal. The word mommy passed his lips and Saben could hear Blaise Harman's shuddering breath.
Her mind was blurred with equal parts of horror and panic. Tears fell down Saben's cheeks, salty hot and real.
"Did you think you could come into my home and steal from me?" Mezereon's voice boomed, bouncing off the bodies and the walls, grating on her ears.
"Steal from you?" Saben repeated incredulously and felt her teeth set on her bottom lip and all uncertainty evaporate. "You sick son of a bitch, that's my son."
Daniel's head flicked up and she briefly saw his eyes grow large and liquid with a new kind of terror. Mezereon barely spared a glance at the boy in his grasp before he carelessly flung him across the room. Another piece of worthless meat.
"Let me go." Blaise shouted desperate to go to the fallen boy.
"Not yet." Celsia Verain hissed in the witch's ear, holding her back with one hand. Staying deep in the safety of shadows, watching the scene from behind the witch's shoulder.
"So you have been keeping secrets from me, songbird." Mezereon approached her, one deliberate footstep placed in front of the other. His face as sharp and appealing as a crocodile.
"I don't even fucking know you." Saben hissed.
"You belong to me." He said as if it were a simple fact.
A chill went through her. "I belong to no one."
They circled one another slowly, each of his advancing steps met by one of hers retreating. "All that you have given me-"
"Meant nothing."
His eyes grew dark, cold, and desolate. "All the songs you sang…for me."
"No." She shook her head.
"Liar." He hissed bearing fangs curved like a snakes.
"Celsia." Saben said without looking. "You there?"
"Do it. Do it now." Celsia growled at Blaise and released her.
Mezereon and Saben had made an arc, and she now stood with her back to Daniel, shielding him from Mezereon thinking only that he would have to get through her to get to the child and maybe that would be enough time for Celsia…for Blaise…
The crackling smell of witch fire overpowered the necrotic stench, Saben could see it grow from Blaise's palms over Mezereon's shoulder, orange flames growing in ever expanding globes and the heat brought beads of sweat rolling from Saben's brow to her lips.
She prayed to a God she didn't believe in, begging for the flame to hit Mezereon, burn him from the face of the world and he would only be able to tread in her nightmares. Blaise will save us all, she allowed herself a modicum of hope.
The fire ball sailed over the two vampires as Mezereon knocked Saben to the ground and they landed in a sprawl of limbs. Weak blood made jelly of her arms and legs and Mezereon's throat locked on her throat with frightening precision. He tore at her skin until the blood warmed her skin.
Her vision blurred and she wanted to know where the witch fire had gone.
"Say it." Mezereon hissed his face covered in red, his eyes burning feverishly.
"No." She screamed around the tear in her throat, a butchered, gargling sound. She turned her head, trying to see Daniel. She had to know he was okay.
"No." Blaise screamed and ran to Daniel, wading through bodies before collapsing beside the boy. She clutched him to her chest and Saben could see he was barely breathing. The witch fire had hit Daniel, patches of skin peeling back others charred as black as coal.
"Daniel, please. Please say you're okay. Please, baby boy."
"Say it." Mezereon hissed in her ear, words dripping like poison bringing her back to herself.
Her eyes fastened on Blaise Harman and her son in the witch's arms.
"Say it and all can be forgiven. All could return to normal." Mezereon continued.
She could still feel the current of her blood spill uselessly to the floor, her vision fading, barely alive to use her mouth now, her lips trembled, working slowly as if she were going to say…
"Say it."
"She belongs to me."
Abberline stood with a hand around Celsia's throat and she was unable to speak or move. His eyes were glowing brighter than the hottest part of a flame, and he moved quickly, quicker than Mezereon had, quicker than Saben had ever seen.
In a flash of dark clothing on blue fire he was suddenly on top of Mezereon, pulling Mezereon off of her and then Mezereon was in the air, falling.
"Are you okay?" He asked Saben, his breath hot on her bloodied face.
Mezereon landed gracefully on his feet.
Saben stared up at Abberline as she had when she was a child, danger and wonder and dark things passed through her consciousness and she stared at him as if he were a phantom or an illusion. As if she were a child again, running through a forest…
"You should worry about your own hide, Cebren." Mezereon growled and launched himself at the vampire.
They tumbled to the floor, furious thrusting limbs, drawing blood and cracking bone.
Saben roused herself enough to turn on her stomach, her throat was bloody ribbons, more blood smeared the floor and even though her senses were failing she managed to crawl , drag herself toward the blurry vision of Daniel. She tried to speak but blood frothed past her lips and she was suddenly cradled by the beating of Daniel's human heart.
"You can't have her." Abberline said as there came a brief reprieve in their battle. "It's not difficult to understand."
"And will you kill her to keep her from me, just like you killed your mother?"
Abberline charged at the boy vampire, his hands grasping fistfuls of Chinese silk and with all his strength he threw Mezereon across the room where he landed in a pile of dead bodies.
A strange sound erupted from where he fell and when Mezereon's face appeared it was a grotesque mask of scorn. "I understand perfectly, boy." Soulmates.
Abberline glared at him.
"You still leave your fate in the hands of dead gods?" Mezereon sneered. "It would be a pleasure to kill her, just like it was a pleasure to fuck her, to taste her."
Abberline was shaking with rage.
"And your little boy too." Mezereon showed more teeth than was natural, an ugly, animal creature, no he could not be mistaken for anything but a monster. "You think I couldn't see through your little spell? Why can't you look at him, Cebren?"
They came together again, jaw snapping and nails scoring deep welts and gouges in their vampire flesh. Each cut mended in seconds, each ribbon of blood rolling away to freshly healed flesh.
Abberline countering each of Mezereon's swift strikes, Abberline had the advantage of training and size and perhaps the fact that he had never been human. "You wouldn't kill me, brother." Mezereon said as his muscles began to cramp, when it dawned him for a brief instant that he might loose.
Abberline had him in a head lock, and he was pacified, his limbs flailing, no longer deadly.
"You are not my brother." Abberline replied coldly and wrenched his jaw apart. Not satisfied he plunged a hand into the boy's chest, nails finding easy passage through his skin and flesh, cracking bone to find the pulpy blackness of his dead heart.
He wrenched the organ from his chest and let it fall to the ground where it rolled toward Celsia Verain's feet.
Saben had lost her battle to reach Daniel, unconscious on the cold floor, her wounds were healing immeasurably slow and she was far to young to recover. So she dropped off the precipice into a thundering dark descent.
"Saben." Star cradled Saben's head in her small lap, sticky, cool hands gently stroking the vampire's brow. "Saben?"
Saben didn't respond, she didn't fight the free falling sensation dragging her down to death, to the surface of the underworld where she would be reunited with Daniel…
Abberline turned his eyes to the scene laid out before him, Saben's head cradled in the small child's lap and Daniel in Blaise's arms, perhaps dead, perhaps not.
Celsia was on her knees staring up at him.
He stared at the boy and watched as the black char slowly rolled off of his boyish cheeks in sooty particles. Scylla du Coudray's spell rolled away, his curly brown hair turned straight and black, his skin tanned and his mouth fuller.
"What have you done?" Blaise asked, staring at Daniel as if he became a new child altogether.
Daniel's eyes opened, brown eyes sparkling as they met Abberline's gaze and his mouth fell open.
Abberline lifted Saben in one arm and he held out his hand. "Come." He turned his back to both Blaise and Daniel.
Celsia rose shakily to her feet to follow.
"Not you."
Celsia's mouth hung open in disbelief.
Star slipped her small hand into Abberline's outstretched palm.
"Are we going home now?" Star asked in a small voice.
"Yes, sweetheart," Abberline murmured. "Quickly now, before I change my mind."