War-Blood: Chapter 1 - Vezzi

Vezzi scanned the blood-spattered stone room beyond the door she'd just broken open, thinking this had to be a mistake. Just a nightmare. There was no way her eleventh birthday should bring her to dessicated corpses sprawled over a circle of large marble slabs like bed-sized altars, dried blood so widespread that the scent made her gag almost as much as the putrescence of death. Eyes tearing so that she stumbled backward over the threshold to catch her breath, Vezzi looked at the little sister she'd made stand several paces away from the door while she tore it open.

"Stay right there, Kae! You're sure you felt that burst of magic come from here?"

Only six, dark as Vezzi was light, Kaelind nodded, eyes the bright green of new grass wide and teary. Vivid against skin like darkest mahogany, and far too reminiscent of blood at the moment, Kae's red curls bounced with the vigorous motion. "Zale's in there, Vezzi. Or--he was, but I can't feel him anymore."

Kae's tears slipped free now, and Vezzi wished again that she hadn't needed to drag her sister here. But no War-Blood had the Blood-Sense. With just the ordinary Blood abilities instead, Kae was the only one of her siblings who might stand a chance of being able to track down Zale--plus, she had been right there, tagging along despite all Vezzi's surliness at her favorite sibling's disappearance. Vezzi knew she didn't have the time to go looking for somebody else. What had started as a quest to find her missing brother so he could be there for her birthday celebration had turned into a desperate rescue attempt when his weak mental contact had flashed images of unbelievable carnage into her mind.

When that impression was accompanied by a plea for her to stay away, Vezzi knew she had to find Zale, fast. He was in terrible danger. He probably wouldn't have contacted her at all, wanting her to stay safely away, if he weren't too weak to fight the instinctive way his power reached out for help. Though the impression of him faded frighteningly quickly, it had at least lasted long enough to bring them here, where he had to be. Had to, because if he wasn't here, Vezzi had already squandered every chance of finding him.

Vezzi cursed worse than when she'd stubbed her toe and ended up mucking stables as punishment for letting her sister hear those words. Or maybe for letting Zale hear them. Vezzi was never quite sure, and she wasn't about to ask. Zale was two years older than her, even if he was considered the baby of the family. A Manipulation Blood who traipsed through the minds around him as easily as the three of them ran through the sealed-off inner garden with Vezzi's Strength Blood opening the way for them had to have heard worse language than that.

Probably. It was hard to tell, with Zale. He was very good at listening to the things people didn't say, but there was no excuse save obliviousness for somebody with that Blood to be as naive and ingenuous as her brother always seemed. Or maybe that seeming, too, was a part of his Blood. He certainly never had to touch his power to get the whole household turned out to do his wishes; all it took was for him to ask in the charmingly awkward way he had, or flash that shy smile, and the people around scrambled to do as he wanted.

He was agreeable and liked to make the people around him happy, so much that he'd submit to Vezzi's games when nobody else did. That's why he was her favorite. Of course, if he didn't feel like playing along any longer, he just didn't--and after flashing the tips of his teeth in the smile that told her he was done, he would quite literally vanish. Vezzi never figured out whether he just Manipulated light so nobody could see him, or simply wouldn't let any mind register him.

Whatever had enabled their father to be born with all the War-Blood gifts, it had strengthened the individual Blood of each of his children to extreme levels.

Even trusting as he was, Zale should have been able to sense or escape almost any sort of trap, especially with Bel's Control Blood automatically taking command and Eila's Knowledge Blood able to recognize all manner of danger. But here, in this room, even a physical Blood was enough to let her feel that there were wards set up that would inhibit magic, especially that of the Mind Bloods. Which would be all three of them who had come out here.

They probably chose a room with these wards set up so they could pore through old tomes whose spells tended to activate, otherwise, every time someone with the right Blood read them through. Zale had warned her he was going to help their eldest sisters with some complex texts, and why else would they come all the way out into this deserted quarter of the castle unless there was danger in what they read?

The suppressive energies focused on the very center of the room, strongest there even to her practically ordinary senses. That's why Vezzi knew exactly where to look for her brother.

"Kae, do you remember how to get back from here?" Curls still short from the results of Kae's last efforts to use Blood-born flame flopped around the pointed ears shared by all the Blood, and Vezzi lowered herself to her knees. She gripped her little sister's shoulders with the gentleness she fell into around other people because of how easily her Strength could hurt them, and let Kae have a good look at her expression. She had to make her only younger sibling understand how important this was, how utterly serious.

"I need you to run back and get Mom and Dad. Bring them here as quickly as you can. Tell them--" Vezzi shut her eyes and took a slow breath. Tell them what? That Zale was dead, and so were a bunch of their friends and relatives? She looked at Kae sternly now. "Just tell them Zale's hurt, and he needs them. And a doctor, if one's close enough not to slow them getting here. And when you come back, don't look in that room, no matter what. Got it?"

Kae nodded again, uncharacteristically silent behind trickling tears. "Run! As fast as you can."

Kae looked back the first couple of steps, but then she really put herself into the running. At her age, she still stumbled sometimes if she didn't concentrate on moving her feet that fast.

Vezzi turned back to the foul-smelling room, blinking away her own tears now that she was alone. Even what little she had seen of this room--Bloods slaughtered like animals, chalices filled with the black remnants of rotten blood she was sickly certain somebody had drunk while it was fresh--was warning enough that there might be nothing left of her brother, even if he somehow still lived.

The only boy out of eight children, Zale was...well, fragile, really. Like none of them had been since Eila, back when she was a coddled and cosseted only child for the first six years of her life. Which she still was even after the next daughter joined the family, since Bel's Control Blood make her sturdy and healthy from the start, long before she grew into the sensual voluptuousness that let her get what she wanted from most men without even having to tap into her magic. But like most Manipulation Bloods, Zale was so slight he seemed frail, as if his power sought to make him appear harmless with his youthful appearance and size. Eila at least had the uncanny height and tall brow of the Knowledge Blood even back when she was young; and at 40, her stature and self-assured majesty so impressed Vezzi that she longed to be like her eldest sister when she grew up.

It was weird, though, how much older Eila looked than their father.

Of course, Last-Emperor Tanen had been the culmination and singularly successful, tragically non-replicable, result of generations of research on the Blood. The experimentation that led to his birth had also enabled the rest of the Blood, War-Blood or not, to live even longer than ordinary humans rather than being burned out by their powers. But where all the other Bloods succumbed to the Blood-Madness when they had done too much harm with their powers, he had simply stopped--no more aging, no more mental degradation. But just as his access to all the War-Blood gifts didn't pass on to his children, who each had only one Blood as was typical, neither did his strange immortality or resistance to the Blood-Madness.

So their father never looked a day over 28, trim and with the tight waves of hair a noticeably lighter shade of brown than his skin never touched by grey. Even while, beside him, the love of his life's straight red hair changed mostly to white, her pale skin spotted with more than freckles. Vezzi couldn't begin to imagine how the gulf of their increasing age difference must hurt her parents.

Still, the grief that filled him as he realized there was no way to prevent his children from aging and death even as he lived on, unchanged, had carven lines into his face and too often subdued an easy smile. So her older sisters said. To Vezzi, Dad had always been the way he was. It was comforting to think he always would be.

Sometimes, she felt like her brother would always be the way he was, too--innocent and soft-hearted to a frankly-annoying extreme. She had never wished for it before, but now did so as fervently as she had ever prayed for anything.

Vezzi took several deep, relatively clean breaths before stepping back into that charnel room, blinking to free her own tears in the futile effort to keep the miasma causing this stench from burning her eyes. But it was what she looked at that seemed to sear into her very brain. Not wanting to see any of it, Vezzi let her gaze skitter over the first three bodies, sickened by the way their throats had been opened all the way to the spines. As she lost the rich breakfast that had started her birthday so promisingly, Vezzi thought she could even recognize which Blood each was from that quick scan of their features.

There was a typical Power Blood, so broad that he seemed short even though he wasn't, nothing like boyish, rangy Devalinn. And there, an Endurance Blood, she thought, with those super-tight curls--though this state of decay or preservation meant she couldn't be sure of the burnt-umber skin-tone and flame-like eyes Naibi shared with most of her Blood.

The Speed Blood was disturbingly familiar despite sunken cheeks and dried-up eyes. For a moment--because all the Speed Bloods had the same straight, black hair, narrow eyes, flattened cheeks, and almost-yellow undertone to their skin--Vezzi was afraid that was Liss, lying there with her throat gaping. But her fourth-oldest sister was much taller, gangly even for a Blood notably thin.

Almost dreading to do so as much as she wanted and needed to, Vezzi shifted her gaze to the central slab, where she knew her brother must be. It would have taken stronger spells than any a Blood could weave in the air, spells like those lain down in this stone over generations, to prevent Zale's Blood from saving him. Vezzi hadn't expected him to look so much like he always did, only with an ashen pallor that erased his usual pale tan, and heavy chains prisoning his wrists and ankles at awkwardly stretched lengths.

Terrified for him, and infuriated, Vezzi ran to her brother. Before anything else, she reached to find a pulse at his throat, but she didn't feel any sign of life. Panic urged her to help him immediately, but sympathy and the need to bring him to in some place other than this room made her attack the manacles first. Whatever other spells had held him gone, Vezzi grabbed the first steel-and-iron-and-magic cuff and pulled both sides away from Zale's wrist.

Vezzi was petite except for her height and her body's bone structure, far from typical of the immense Strength Blood. She looked like one of those fancy dolls imported from Sion--the ones made of that delicate, white clay--with sapphires for eyes, little recurved-bow lips painted on, and sculpted snub noses. She even had the long, coiled tubes of golden hair she was never quite sure she wanted to know the origins of in the rare dolls she had seen of that sort.

But all of the Last-Emperor's children bore their Blood characteristics at an extreme, whether more or less of what their Blood typically was. And all were extremely strong in their Blood. In only a few seconds, even in a place designed to suppress magic, Vezzi had torn apart the first manacle, and she swiftly freed Zale's other limbs.

She was a little glad she could barely see, on her way out, because it meant she didn't have to get a better look at the mutilated corpse atop each of the twenty slabs surrounding Zale's.

Unwilling to waste any more time, Vezzi lowered Zale to the grass as soon as she got them through a doorway that led outside, far enough away that not even a whiff of that fetid air followed them. This time, she called to him out loud as she felt for a pulse, beginning to shake with reaction. But it wasn't until she started actually sobbing that her brother finally stirred.

Careful of the open wounds all along his veins that began to leak blood again, Vezzi wrapped Zale in a gentle hug, telling him it was okay even though she knew it wasn't.

Too parched to speak, her brother reached into her mind to tell her that she had to know what had happened.

"Tell them what, Zale?" she asked, and felt him push impressions toward her. For a moment, Vezzi resisted, not wanting to know what it was that had scrawled that look of horror across her brother's face, and Zale wasn't strong enough to push past her defenses. But that was the thing with Manipulation Bloods: they didn't make you think or feel or do anything, like a Control Blood could--they made you want to. Before Zale could waste faltering energy trying to change her will, Vezzi reversed course, opening her mind to him so he could show her what was so important she had to warn everyone, even if it cost his life.

The flashes of images were heartrending, if only because she knew Zale was showing her what he had been forced to watch. If she could have convinced herself it was just a nightmare or a story, maybe it wouldn't have been so bad. Maybe she wouldn't have cried to know that her eldest sisters had murdered all these people just to grant themselves immortality. Maybe she wouldn't have to grieve that her gentle brother had been forced to witness all that death and blood-letting, then become the final victim as smiling Eila and taciturn Bel transfused him with stolen blood so that he would live long enough for them to drain his own.

But even if she could have believed the rest was just a tale, the urgency of Zale's fear wormed itself into her own feelings with his desperation. Whatever blood-drinking monstrosities their sisters had made themselves, they would need more blood soon, just as he did.

* * *

Vezzi felt the presence of intruders, even though that was never a part of her Blood, and moved just in time to block a blow that would have ripped her throat out. Maybe it was Zale's terror that saved her. The War-Blood weren't exactly possessed of sensory magic, but in her brother, the Manipulaion Blood's ability to influence the things around them had always run toeard detecting rather than simply affecting. She wanted to scream, not because she was afraid, but because it was all true. Because the person she admired most was staring at her with hungry eyes, a broad smile showing off transformed fangs.

"Eila?"

"Ah, foolish Vezzi. I should have known you wouldn't be content to come looking for him after he was dead." The speed with which the blood-smeared monster that had been her sister lunged at Zale was more than human, and not born of her Blood. And when Vezzi caught her talon-tipped fingers, a hairs-breadth away from finishing off their brother, it took most of her strength to hold back Eila.

"Why are you doing this?"

Eila's smile grew wider, like a maniac's. "His Blood's too strong. He wouldn't break, and now that you're here, there's no time to keep trying. If he won't submit to me, serve me in this immortality, then he needs to die." Eila cocked her head. "But you, dear sister. You can join us. Bel's hold will supplant your free will so that you serve us faithfully for all eternity."

Vezzi barely caught Eila's other arm as it dove toward Zale's face, and she didn't realize that wasn't the real attack until predator's teeth sank into the side of her neck.

Sickened as much by her own actions as by Eila's, Vezzi twisted and pulled until she felt Eila's arms wrench and crunch, dislocated and useless. As the monster that had been her sister screamed, Vezzi grabbed her face and slammed it into the ground so hard something broke. She scrambled backwards, one hand clamped to her bleeding neck and one feeling for Zale's outstretched fingers, to close over them.

Snarling, Eila pushed to her feet without the use of her arms. Vezzi tried to mentally brace for another attack, but Eila just grinned through her pained expression. "Too late, Vezzi. You're already becoming one of us."

As their dad's shout drew Eila's gaze, Vezzi's sister called cattily, "Make sure to Turn the rest of our lovely family before you come join us, won't you, dear Vezzi?"

Vezzi caught her dad's eye and shook her head, freeing him to pursue whatever that thing was. Both moving at a pace only a Speed Blood should be able to attain, Eila and their father vanished through the hedges.

She twisted around to look at Zale, ignoring the wash of pain that spread up and down from her neck. Zale's turquoise eyes, glowing as his Blood subconsciously Manipulated the channels of magic around him to replenish his, looked at her as if he saw what she'd already realized: that Eila was right. She could feel a change spreading through her body already.

'I can save your mind,' Zale's quiet voice said in her head, so soft she knew he was even weaker than she'd feared. He looked like he was going to cry, and that made Vezzi want to yell at him. He'd been through all that, and now he was going to cry for her? 'Please--I can't stop the change, I tried with them, but if you're willing--'

All the anger burned away, Vezzi gripped his hand tighter. "Alright, Zale. Do what you can. Just don't--"

Zale's lips twitched into an echo of a wry smile. They both knew he'd lost too much blood already.

The familiar touch of his mind took the pain away, and Vezzi wanted to protest that he couldn't spare the strength. But he was already sunken within his power, eyes shut, attention focused inward. Even if he could hear her now, he wouldn't stop.

And as she felt something less familiar, the sensation of her mind being Manipulated in far more than the subtle manners she'd imagined were all Zale was capable of despite his Blood's strength, she was glad he'd taken away the pain. Her body already grew new muscle, changed jaw, stronger nails, eating through natural resources. Oh, no wonder Eila so longed for blood, now--her altered body must demand it to fuel itself.

Zale threw up breakwaters to keep her mind from being drowned by the rushing Madness Eila had pushed into her, and he began adding walls and strengthening defenses until she could feel the core of her awareness cut off from the alien intrusion. He altered brain and mind until she might even be able to manage that demonic hunger and hold onto her soul. He wasn't so much changing her mind as preserving it.

And if he kept working, maybe her brother could even reclaim her body, restore it to humanity before these alterations had set. He was certainly going to try, with Manipulation working so much more easily and effectively on a willing subject. But...he was long past the safe point, pushing too much power for him to save himself if he didn't stop now. So Vezzi resisted, imagining her mind flinging him back to himself. When he opened startled eyes, fogged by weakness and faded power, Vezzi offered a triumphant smile.

"Idiot. If Dad was here, that means Kae reached them. There'll be somebody coming. I couldn't forgive myself if you killed yourself saving me." He looked confused, as if to wonder why she would do that when he couldn't be saved, for just a moment before his eyes shut one last time and all expression wiped away.

Vezzi didn't think she could have explained it even if she weren't fading fast, herself; but if she'd let him press on in his efforts, it would have killed him. At least, if he died this way, it would be because nothing could save him from such injury. It would do her no good if he were to save her soul and condemn it all in the same act.