Breathless Ch. 06

"You sought power," she crooned maliciously, "like a dog chasing a car. Ever figure out what you were going to do if the car stopped?"

Melissa moved between Eve and her prey. She was as confused as hell as to what had transpired that night, but there was one thing for certain: kill a United States Senator who technically hadn't violated the law in any way, and you were going to jail or worse.

"Sadie!" she shouted, trying to overcome her own terror. The woman she had known as Sadie was giving off vibes that were crashing against her fragile shores. "Please stop! You're hurting me!"

"Get out of my way," Eve hissed. "I will not allow Solomon to tear the world apart again. I can stop it by drinking him dry." Her eyes were burning white now, and it looked like she could eat him alive with that gaze.

"Don't do it," Mel said.

Eve screeched to the sky . "He wants to know what being a vampire is like? He has no idea --" Eve stepped forward but Melissa didn't budge. Much to her chagrin, she had wet herself with fear. She had never done that before, even as a little girl. But when she was a little girl, her parents had convinced her that the monsters weren't real. As an adult, she realized that her parents had lied. Her face was even whiter than usual and her skin was shivering. She wasn't sure there was anything left of Sadie in there. But Eve stopped short, her bloody dress just inches away from from Melissa.

"Look at me," Eve said, running her hands just centimeters off of Mel's clothes, tracing the contours of her body until she reached her face, where she caressed that delicate chin with one blood-encrusted finger. Melissa knew that this woman . . . this creature . . . could snap her neck with those delicate steel fingers. "I would never hurt you," the ancient vampire said, her voice now laced with sorrow. "I'm sorry I couldn't tell you. Now, you know what I am. Who I am."

"No, I don't," Mel whimpered. She was still scared, and more than a little bit humiliated. "Sadie would never have made me do this." She glanced downward, seeing the stain on her pants. "You killed those men. You just ripped them apart."

"They would have done the same to me. Solomon will try to kill me if he cannot have me, and he knows now that I will never again want his touch."

"His touch? He's your brother!" Melissa stopped. "He isn't your brother is he? You spoke about him like he was --"

"A lover?" Eve replied, that sorrow in her voice growing. "He was. He was my first." The vampire actually seemed choked up when she said it.

Senator Trefauld, who was lying on the ground behind Melissa, finally found his voice. "But the Provenance says --"

"The Provenance is a Lie," she replied, looking down at her would-be victim with more pity than anger now. "Solomon is not my brother. In the ways of my race, he is my son. He was the first human ever Turned, and that made him powerful. You have made a deal with a great evil Senator. Your constituents may forgive you if you can convince them that you fell for Solomon's illusion. I promise you, it was an illusion, for that is Solomon's power. It was his power before he entered the darkworld, and it simply grew after that. He makes promises, but you never know what you will truly be getting." She looked around the cowering mob. "All of you, go home. There will be no Turnings this night. Any who try will suffer my wrath." With that, she looked at the remains of the Blood Brood that she had torn asunder. "You do not want my wrath, I promise you."

Her eyes fell on the Senator again. "She stopped me from killing you," she said, glancing at Melissa. "Someday, you might want to thank her for that. Now go back to Washington and undo the damage you were planning. Or do I need to tell you what will happen if you don't?"

The Senator stared at the mangled vampire guard nearby. "No, I don't think you do."

The police grew braver the longer Eve went without killing anyone. A few of them came forward with guns drawn. One of them said, "You, drop the weapon and step away from the woman and the Senator."

Melissa spun around. She needed to yell at someone, if for no other reason that to help her retrieve some of her dignity. "This was a vampiric contest of dominance between Eve and the Blood Saint. By vampire law, those two men that attacked her broke the rules of the contest and could be punishable by death. This is beyond human law."

The officer's look unconvinced, but none of them wanted to fuck with Eve. No one wanted to come near her. "We still can't let her kill the Senator," another one replied.

Eve spoke. "The Senator will not be harmed this night, at least not by me." She wrapped her ams around Melissa's waist and chest from behind. "Now I have some explaining to do to my daughter." With that, her wings flapped and Eve carried Mel into the night sky.

Mel was scared again, but this was much more reasonable and mundane kind of fear. She was hurtling through the darkness with the buffeting of those wide, leathery wings. They shot up over the houses of West End and towards the forest on the edge of Gravestones. Eve was going home . . . Sadie's home.

After a few minutes, some of Mel's fear began to melt away. She could remember Solomon and Frost and what Eve had done to the Blood Brood, but it seemed not so important for now. She glanced over her shoulder and saw Eve's face. 'No,' she thought, 'that looks more like Sadie's face again.' There was an odd joy bordering on relief playing across those features.

"I haven't flown free in so long," Sadie said, her voice sounded more like what Mel was used to.

"This is why you flew for the Army isn't it?"

Melissa nodded, her eyes brimming with tears of joy. "Ever since I saw the Wright brothers that first time it Kitty Hawk, I knew I could fly again and not have to hide it."

"Why couldn't you fly? With your wings I mean?"

"Because they would know I was still alive," she whispered. "I won't give this up again."

She swooped and dove, and soon Melissa saw it more of a ride than something to inspire terror. Her vampire mother was coated in blood and Mel had pissed herself earlier in fear, but it was all forgotten in those few moments where even the wind envied them.

She approached the open area next to her house, noticing a large number of motorcycles and cars littered the area around her house. And she saw police lights shining up at her like fireflies. When her feet touched soil, she saw her old friend Frankenstein and his biker gang kicking back on her redwood deck. She saw Devlin and Fitzpatrick and Captain Grom and Vlad, and Vlad had brought all the available werewolves again. It was like she had an army there, and she wasn't sure who's side they were on.

Everyone just stared at her, and Eve had never felt more like a freak. She couldn't imagine what they were thinking . . . how betrayed they must feel. She had lied to all of them.

"Good God," Frankie muttered. "You . . . those are . . . when they hell did you get wings?"

Eve looked at the ground. "Over seven thousand years ago."

Vlad was shaking his head. "It's true then. After you left . . . hell, apparently almost before you left the ceremony, there were people talking to cops and news crews, with everyone saying that the devil herself walks the earth. Is that true? Who the hell are you?"

Eve shook, but now with sorrow rather than rage. There were many ways she had wanted Vladimir Koloff to look at her, but not like this.

Melissa made a choice. Her friend had not told her the whole truth, but she had otherwise never lied. She had saved Mel and introduced her to Mary. She would stand by her now. Melissa slipped an arm around Eve's waist, letting her mother pull those wings around them both.

At that moment, Mary appeared in a blue halo of light, her face still echoing a feeling of almost drunken bliss. She looked at Melissa and Mary and expressed no jealousy. She had been a vampire once, and even after her second death she could feel that old blood calling to her.

"Are you all right my sweet?" she asked, that initial "s" drawing out like a serpent's sigh. "I cannot stay long, and am only hear because there are so many of us to feed and only so many seats at the table. Even for a bounty such as this."

"That's true too?" Devlin asked, his eyes wide. When Eve nodded, he continued with, "That doesn't make sense. If the Provenance was true, then the wraiths should be allied with Solomon."

Everyone looked at him. No one had stopped to think about that.

Grom looked over Eve. "So do we call you Eve or Sadie or what?"

She shook her head. "I don't know. Eve is who I am, but I like Sadie. I like her more than anyone I've been for a long time."

Melissa smiled. "I like Sadie better."

Vladimir still looked serious. "Girl, you've got the whole frickin' planet in an uproar. A vamp that's as old as Solomon? There are a lot of vamps who don't know whether to launch a holy crusade against you or grovel at your feet. There's an emergency session of both houses of Congress getting called as we speak. The National Guard has been called to Midian to keep the peace."

Melissa stepped away from Sadie and the comfort being close to her creator brought. "You promised me you'd tell me. Tell us all the truth Sadie, because right now I really need to believe in you."

"I would never have wished this chaos on you Melissa. Not for anything."

"Start with the Provenance," Devlin said.

"The beginning. It's been a long time since I've been there." Sadie sat on the rail of her porch, looking out into her yard as if it were a concert. Everyone was paying rapt attention.

"Some of it is just stories I heard when I was a child. While I have always been a vampire, the first vampires were in fact mortal. When I was a child, my mother Lillith was not a good mother. It didn't take much to figure that out. She did the bare minimum, but we loved her. She was our mother after all. We lived away from other people. My mother was human, but she didn't want us to associate with other humans. She said we were too good for them. My brother believed her. Adam was an arrogant prick from birth," she added, sounding not at all happy about it. "I got away from them whenever I could, playing in the forest. Sometimes I ran into human children. They'd been told to stay away from me just I'd been told to stay away from them."

"Let me guess," Vlad said. "That didn't happen?" He was actually pleased that Sadie had shocked the world. He had thought that she was going to submit to Frost that night, and the idea unnerved him.

"No. I played with them and we became friends. Lillith would beat me if she caught me, but that just made me more determined. Eventually, some of the adults in the nearby villages began to treat me nice, especially when they found out what my mother was doing. When I was old enough to understand, they explained that Lillith had been anything but 'immaculate.' She had in fact spread her legs for anyone or anything that would have her. She developed a reputation for depravity that eventually frightened any would-be suitors away. Well, almost all."

"Almost?" Melissa asked.

Pain was etched in Sadie's face when she continued the story. "Yes. Almost. But before I go more into that, I have to introduce another character into this little history. When I was just truly . . . well, I guess you might call it 'growing into womanhood,' I encountered a young man who had moved into the closest village, looking for work. I didn't know that he had been kicked out of his own village for being lazy when it came to work and too persistent in pursuit of any female he could see. None of it would have mattered to me anyway. He was the most perfect man I had ever seen, and he found me interesting. So I did what any young woman would have done in my shoes. I fell in love."

"Solomon." This was Devlin's statement, rather than a question.

"Oh yes, Solomon." Despite everything, Sadie's voice seemed somewhat wistful. She had truly loved him once. It was what made the rest of the story so horrible for her to speak of. "He was fascinated by me. He was older than I and a male, but I was stronger and faster than he, and of course I had the wings. Keep in mind that this is when Adam and I were both mortal."

"Mortal?" Vlad asked. "I thought you lived forever?"

"We do now. But there was a time when we aged just like everyone else. Solomon told me that he wanted me because I was beautiful and special, and I believed him. So much so that I gave my maidenhood to him. In the act of intercourse, I bit him. I think it was more instinct than anything, but I drank of his blood and pumped my own back into him. I had created the first new living vampire. Since I was still mortal, so was he when got Turned. He gained strength and speed, but didn't need to sleep under the earth like an newly Turned undead vamp. I didn't understand what I had done, so I told my mother. The fact that I Turned Solomon and spread my legs for him was the first thing . . . the only thing that ever made her proud of me."

Sadie stood up and began to pace the length of her deck, with humans and werewolves and vampires looking on. Mary was still in vengeance intoxication, so she was only half paying attention.

"Adam was obsessed with the idea when he found out. He turned an entire village into living vampires, and they followed him like a god. About then, we both reached the age that our father felt was necessary to make his presence known. One night, the King of Blood sent his spectral body to inform his children of their heritage."

Not a sound could be heard throughout the clearing, as even the crickets seemed shocked into disbelief.

"The . . . King of Blood?" Captain Grom asked. Those with magical knowledge were forced to understand the complicated demon realms as one of their first lessons, because demons fucked with all the other rules. Dante had fallen a little short in his guess, as it turned out there were thirteen layers of the demon realm, each more dangerous than the one before. The thirteenth layer was ruled by The Nameless One, and He was beginning and end of evil as any race understood it. His primary general, the ruler of the twelfth layer of the demon realm, was the King of Blood. His world was literally a lake of the spilled life-force of every evil-doer that had ever been denied access to that place considered "heaven" by the races of Earth. The King of Blood was the boogeyman, plain and simple.

"I told you my mother's wantonness attracted many to her bed. Apparently, even the kings of hell were impressed. He had come to her one night and . . . done things," she whispered, not ever wanting to think about those things her demonic father had admitted to. "He had broken her in some way so that only he could provide the pleasure and pain she needed just to exist. He told Adam and I that it was his demand for his children to rule the world, and subjugate those favored by their enemies above. He told us that we would receive our birthright upon our death. It didn't make any sense to me, but Adam embraced his destiny. I didn't, but 'no' isn't the sort of thing you casually say to the King of Blood. He beat me until a mere thought from him would kill me, but he stopped short. Two of his fangs fell to the ground in the form of daggers, and he said one was for each of us. He gave the first to Adam and called it 'The Spike.' The second he called 'The Thorn,' and told me I could have it when I learned to behave. In the meantime, he would help my brother into his powers, and I was tasked to look after him. Then with one blow, he killed my brother and gave him his first death. He buried Adam in a shallow grave, looked at me and said, 'When he rises, you will understand what you can become.' Then he grabbed Lillith and took her back down to the Twelfth Realm."

"He just left you there?"

Sadie nodded. She had felt so helpless, lying on the ground like a discarded doll waiting for only hell knew what. She couldn't even raise her arms to get water. "I was recovering faster than a human, but still not fast enough. When Adam rose . . . I knew something was wrong. He was half human and half demon, and his powers as the first ever undead were so --" She actually stopped and shuddered. The energy in the air when Adam emerged from the Earth had beaten her down so much that if she hadn't healed some during the day, it probably would have ended her. "Adam rose and knew what he was. He understood his power . . . glowed with it. He wanted to show me what power meant to him, and I was too weak to resist him."

"Too weak to . . . resist?" Vlad asked. He didn't want to ask the next part, but something in her wouldn't let it go. "Resist what?"

Melissa was on the verge of crying. She could feel her creator's pain across thousands and thousands of years. Some wounds never healed. "He raped you, didn't he?"

Sadie looked towards the ground, ashamed despite the fact that there was nothing she could have done. "Rape is about power. He had it, and I didn't. That was the kind of creature that Adam was. Then he left me there to find his followers. He was going to deliver the first death to all of them. He promised that if I didn't swear loyalty to him when he returned that he would give me to his followers as a present, and that I would remain a slave until I died of old age. He was going to raise an army and conquer the human race, just like our father wanted. If the forces of hell couldn't conquer heaven, they would conquer earth through us.

"But his plans were interrupted when daylight came. He didn't know that it weakened him, and he had to hide. It gave me enough time to recover, grab the Thorn, and go to the nearest villages for help. I told them what was happening and what Adam had planned. I tried to explain what he was, but it was hard since I didn't really know. Solomon seemed to understand though. Somehow, he knew exactly what we would be capable of in our undeath. That should have scared me, but I trusted him so much." She paused, since she was fighting not to say that she had loved him so much. Love, even when betrayed, never dies. Sometimes it festers and stews and morphs into a hate so passionate that it eats away at you, but it doesn't actually die. "All the humans capable of fighting gathered what tools and weapons they could and began to search. Solomon and I headed up the party, and I thought he was so brave. We got back to my home shortly after nightfall, but Adam and his forces had already arrived. That was when I found out what Solomon's real intent was. He wasn't being brave, but rather wanted to join Adam. After everything my brother had done, Solomon cared more about sharing my brother's power than anything I could offer him. So he pulled a stone knife and stabbed me in the back. I spun and slashed him across the forehead with the Thorn, but it was almost out of instinct. Part of me couldn't believe he'd betrayed me."

"Son of a bitch!" Devlin growled. He felt dirty in the deep places of he soul when he thought that he'd almost let the Blood Saint Turn him. He had been obsessed with the power and magic of being a vampire, just like Solomon had. "That's how he got the wound that never heals?"

Sadie nodded and actually smiled a little. She saw Devlin's anger and her opinion of him grew. It was a hard way to learn a lesson, but he now realized there was a cost to everything, and he was now wondering if he'd be willing to pay it. "Solomon's blow didn't kill me, but it took me out of the early part of the fight. Some of the villagers I had befriended pulled me out of the way before hell broke loose. We had them outnumbered, but they were powerful. But even with their abilities, they were all new. Not even Adam completely grasped his own his own capabilities, but he was still so vicious. I knew that if we didn't stop him that the undead would win."