Chapter 15
1492 Words
The silence beneath the pier was no longer a sanctuary; it was a tomb. Chloe’s hand slipped from the railing, her body tilting sideways as the last of her consciousness flickered and died. She didn't fall with a thud; she collapsed like a marionette with its strings cut.
Cassius caught her before she hit the deck, his scorched hands trembling. "Chloe?"
He shook her, gently at first, then with a growing, jagged panic. Her skin was waxy, a terrifying greyish-blue under the shadows of the rotting timber. He pressed his ear to her chest. Her heart was a dying bird, the beats so faint and irregular that for a moment, he feared the silver in his own system had somehow poisoned the air she breathed.
"Wake, little healer," he hissed, his voice cracking. "Thou canst not leave me in this wasteland!"
Outside the pier, the buzzing of the drones intensified. The "Hunters" were no longer sweeping; they had found the scent. Two tactical boats cut their engines, drifting toward the pilings with the silent arrogance of executioners.
Cassius looked at Chloe’s face, then at the sun beginning to dip toward the horizon, bleeding a bruised purple across the sky. The hunger in him, spurred by the silver and the solar burns, rose up like a tidal wave. He felt the beast—the part of him that had slept for eight centuries—clawing at the back of his throat.
"Stay," he whispered to her unconscious form, laying her gently on the cabin floor.
As the first boot stepped onto the wooden planks of the pier above, Cassius stood. He shed the wool blanket. The sun was almost gone, leaving only a sliver of gold on the water, but to him, it was enough. He moved.
The first man didn't even have time to raise his weapon. Cassius erupted from the water like a vengeful spirit, his fingers locking onto the man's throat before the soldier could even scream. The desperate, stumbling confusion of his earlier awakening was gone, replaced by a raw, medieval brutality. He didn't just bite; he tore.
The blood hit the back of his throat—hot, metallic, and overflowing with the chemical tang of modern adrenaline. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever tasted.
"Contact! We have contact!" a voice screamed into a radio, followed by the frantic staccato of gunfire.
The bullets hissed past Cassius, some thudding into his shoulders, but he didn't feel them. He was a blur of shadows and crimson. He moved between the pylons, appearing behind one man to snap his spine, then lunging across the water to drag another into the dark depths. He was a storm of ancient rage, a widower who had decided that he would not lose another woman to the greed of men.
He fed until the pier was silent. He fed until his skin hummed with stolen life and the burns on his face smoothed into perfect, porcelain flesh. The tactical boat—a sleek, black vessel far superior to their stolen cruiser—sat bobbing in the water, its deck slick with the evidence of his feast.
He didn't look back at the bodies. He jumped back onto the Sea Sprite, scooped Chloe into his arms, and transferred her to the black tactical boat.
"We return to the beginning," he murmured, his eyes glowing like embers.
The tactical boat roared north, its high-powered engines cutting the travel time in half. By the time they reached the hidden cove near the old cathedral ruins, the moon was high and silver.
Cassius carried Chloe through the woods, his feet moving with a memory that spanned centuries. He reached the hidden entrance to the crypt—the heavy stone slab hidden beneath the roots of a massive oak tree. He slid it aside with a single hand, descending into the cool, stagnant air of the earth.
The crypt was exactly as he had left it. The air smelled of dust and the faint, sweet scent of dried lavender—the last thing he had smelled before the Brotherhood had sealed him away. In a small alcove, resting upon a stone pedestal, was a heavy silver ring set with a dark, opaque lapis lazuli.
His daylight ring. The anchor to his soul.
He slid it onto his finger, feeling the ancient magic settle into his veins, a shield against the coming dawn. But his focus was on the woman on the stone floor. Chloe was cold. Too cold.
"I will not let the fire take thee," he whispered.
He bit into his own wrist, the skin parting easily. He knelt over her, pressing the wound to her lips. "Drink, Chloe. Take the life I have stolen. Take the curse and live."
He forced a few drops of his ancient, potent blood into her mouth. For a long, terrifying minute, nothing happened. Then, Chloe’s back arched. Her lungs expanded with a violent, gasping breath, and her eyes snapped open.
They weren't brown. For a split second, they were a vivid, electric violet before fading back to their natural shade.
"Cassius?" she coughed, her hand flying to her throat. The exhaustion was gone, replaced by a terrifying, buzzing energy. She looked around the dark, stone walls, then at the blood smeared across his wrist and her own lips.
She tasted the copper. She felt the heat in her veins that wasn't hers.
"What did you do?" she whispered, her voice rising in a sharp, jagged crescendo.
"Thou wert fading, Chloe. I had no choice—"
"You had a choice!" She scrambled back, her heels scraping against the stone. She stood up, her movements unnervingly fast, though she didn't realize it yet. Her face was flushed with a sudden, angry heat. "I am a nurse! I spend my life protecting the boundary between life and death, and you... you shoved your way across it!"
"I saved thee!" Cassius roared, standing to his full height, his own temper flaring. "Wouldst thou rather be a corpse for thy sister to study? Wouldst thou rather be ash?"
"Yes!" she screamed, her eyes brimming with tears of fury. "I'd rather be dead as a human than alive as whatever this is! You didn't save me, Cassius. You used me. You made me part of your nightmare because you were too selfish to be alone!"
Cassius flinched as if she had struck him with silver. He looked at her—this small, brave woman who had stitched his wounds and stolen boats for him—and he saw the reflection of his own greatest sin.
"I... I am a widower," he said, his voice dropping to a hollow whisper. "In thirteen hundred, I tried to turn my wife, Eloise, to save her from the plague. I was a young fool. I didn't wait for her consent. I just wanted her to stay."
He looked at his hands, the ring glinting in the dark. "The Brotherhood found out. They didn't just kill her. They made me watch as they burned the house with her inside. She died screaming my name, Chloe. Not in love, but in terror. Because I had made her a monster, and she didn't know how to carry the weight."
The silence in the crypt became heavy with the weight of centuries-old grief. Chloe’s anger didn't vanish, but it shifted, turning into a cold, hard lump in her chest.
"I'm not Eloise," she said, her voice trembling. "And I won't be your second chance at a happy ending. You took the one thing I had left that was mine—my humanity."
"It is only a drop," Cassius pleaded, stepping toward her. "It will fade. Thou art not turned, Chloe. Thou art only... mended."
"Don't touch me," she said, backing toward the stone stairs. "I need to get out of here. I need to find Sarah. I need to find a way to get this... this poison out of my system."
But as she reached the top of the stairs, the stone slab above began to move. A light—harsh and artificial—shone down into the crypt.
"I told you, Chloe," Beatrice’s voice echoed down into the chamber, sounding like the closing of a coffin lid. "Secrets don't stay buried. Not in this family."
Standing beside Beatrice was a man Chloe didn't recognize—tall, with eyes like flint and a scar running through his eyebrow. He held a heavy, specialized crossbow aimed directly at the center of Cassius’s chest.
"Move away from him, Chloe," Beatrice commanded. "Or I’ll let Mr. Birch show you what happens when we use a bolt dipped in concentrated garlic and silver nitrate".
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