Desire

Amaclaty, I'm so sorry for so many things. I regret knowing I am in my last days and will not be able to guide you in person. I wish I could pass on the full extent of my knowledge to you, but that would take precious time, of which I now have very little. So bear in mind that what I h say here is of great importance.

Firstly, Trust no one but Alayza. Blayne Belen has influence over all but her. If all has gone well so far, I should be right in assuming that she performed denique cruor, the final blooding, upon you as she did to me. Value her words, for she is wise, and always my greatest friend within out fated clan.

Also, beware the wrath of Blayne Belen. His anger stings, as does his disapproval. I hope you must never meet with the same painful consequence as I when I provoked him. To this very day I bear the mark of his rage upon my skin.

As I said, I cannot tell you all that I have learned. Remember only this if nothing else: cruorem nuntius alone can save the clan.

Your sister in blood, Anality

"Cruorem nuntius," Amaclaty murmured. What was it? Latin obviously, she thought. But what did it mean? She turned to ask Sarkis and Varden, but Anality's warning came back to her. Trust no one but Alayza. She kept her mouth shut, and Sarkis spoke to her instead.

"Adveho, Amaclaty. I'm sure you thirst, and the clan has mostly retired by now on Blayne Belen's request." Again Sarkis touched her arm and in an instant they had Flickered away, reappearing once again. But instead of finding herself in another underground branch of the clan's tunnels, Amaclaty was shocked to feel a breath of fresh air around her. They stood in the church's graveyard.

On three sides of the church, old crooked tombstones extended over the hill and the frost-bitten grass. Some were so old that the engraved writing had been worn away by years of wind and rain. A few lay flat, knocked over by the teenagers who favored the cemetery with frequent visits. Amaclaty turned to inquire of Sarkis what they were doing, but Sarkis raised a pale hand to silence her. The older vampire's eyes were closed, but they darted and moved beneath their lids as if looking around. Abruptly, she stood, putting a finger to her lips for silence. She knelt behind a gravestone; a large one with the names of several generations wrought upon it, and she pulled Amaclaty down beside her.

"Caution is key, Amaclaty. If you do not succeed and you are discovered or caught, or if you are followed back, Blayne will not be merciful," Sarkis said, her eyes flicking briefly to the scars on Amaclaty's shoulder. "Go to the playground, see what you find. You will know what to do when the time comes. Remember, do not allow yourself to be prematurely exposed for what you are, for no good will come of it. Invado obscurum."

With that Sarkis Flickered away, leaving Amaclaty crouched behind the gravestone and horribly confused. Anality had said to trust only Alayza, but Sarkis had never wronged her, and besides, she could do nothing else but follow the order given to her. She stood and turned around so she could see the school's playground and set off in that direction, easily climbing over the crooked chain-link fence when she reached it.

The children of the school did not call the place the playground. They called it the Boat. Even teachers and neighbors knew it as that. There was a set of monkey bars and two different jungle gyms, and an uneven set of parallel bars which were bent and twisted with years of weathering and use. A set of pull up bars and a wooden balance beam looked so tilted and rotted that Amaclaty was sure they'd simply fall over if she bothered to kick them hard enough. But the main feature of the place was the Boat itself.

Made of warped wood, it stood over six feet high at its main deck, at least two more feet on it's upper one. On the first deck, right in the center, was a mast, void of its sail. Ask any student at the school and they'd all say the same thing: the sail had never been there. Not even their older siblings could remember having one. So the mast stood empty and skeletal, silhouetted by the street lights on the road behind the playground, reminding Amaclaty of a cross for crucifixion as she ascended the ladder to the Boat's main deck.

The second deck of the wooden Boat was now rather useless, but sometime Before (it was always called Before so vaguely; no one really knew if it ever had really been that way) it had been very important: it held the silver-sprayed, fire-house-type pole leading to the wooden structure's dark and vast underbelly. But the entrance to the space beneath the Boat's tilted deck had been boarded up long ago, and usually the small second deck of the Boat was left well enough alone. Tonight, however, there was somebody standing on it.

The figure was thin and tall, and dressed in a black sweatshirt, and it seemed fully occupied with whatever it was doing. Amaclaty caught the distinct odor of permanent markers; it was only one of the local amateur graffitists, tattooing some new crude message into the worn wood that the school janitor, Mr. Newkirk, would have to try to scrub away before recess started the next afternoon.

Amaclaty realized that Sharpies weren't the only thing she could smell. There was a scent that seemed to be begging her to recognize it, but that she could not quite place. All the same, she found herself craving more, wanting whatever taste went along with the smell. And was it her imagination or did she hear something that hadn't been there a moment before? A steady rhythm calling to her. She wanted nothing more than to move towards it, but something told her to resist. She stood silently as she fought the urge to follow the things beckoning so deliciously to her senses.

The teenager on the second deck turned around, a slight hint of surprise lighting up his brown eyes, which, Amaclaty saw as his hood fell back from his face, were ringed with black makeup, one of the Goths that represented most of the town's teenagers. Amaclaty felt as fi he was moving in slow motion as he jumped from the upper deck to stand in front of her. He moved in such a way that his sweatshirt shifted—Amaclaty heard the rasp of fabric on his skin—and his throat was exposed. Sarkis was right—she knew what to do without thinking of it.

Still seeing things moving slowly, Amaclaty looked into the boy's eyes. He couldn't have been much—if any—older than she was, and his age made him that much easier to seduce. She made eye contact and held, and he couldn't look away. He was under her influence. She turned around quickly and motion righted itself to its normal speed. She flashed him a suggestive smile over her shoulder as she steeped up onto the rail and jumped over the front edge of the Boat, landing catlike on the grass below. He followed, landing much less gracefully.

Amaclaty could no longer ignore the call of his pulse and the scent of his blood. Desire and thirst hit her in one immense wave. She caught his gaze again, and it was if a connection had been forged between them. She saw he was a runaway, come to the town in the hopes of joining the gothic-style gang that ruled supreme on the night streets in the town. She caught the word Saugerties and probed for its meaning, discovering that it was the name of the town. She searched for more but found no new information, so she let the word slide through her mind's unearthly grasp. The boy had hopped the fence and come to the Boat to wait for the gang. Amaclaty smirked darkly as the gang's name came flitting across her mind's eyes—The Vampyres. Well, it looked like he had found what he came for after all.

She blinked sharply, breaking the connection. With inhuman speed she was upon him, pressing him roughly against the crooked planks, exploring his lips with her tongue. He kissed her back eagerly, but she was growing steadily more impatient. She moved quickly to his neck, biting rather harshly at the skin of his throat. The smell she has caught before was much stronger here, and she could sense the taste beneath it. Amaclaty ran her tongue across his neck, searching for a vein. A low moan of pleasure sprang from his throat. She pressed her lips to his again and began grinding her hips against his. He responded almost hungrily. He was practically gasping for breath, and she could hear his heart pounding urgently beneath his chest. She was torn between desire for release and her horrible burning hunger, desperately needing to quench them both. They fought within her, swirling and clouding her thoughts.

Hunger won.

She twisted her fingers into his hair and yanked back, baring his throat. He gasped in pain but was powerless to resist. The stinging scent of his fear clashed suddenly with the sweet aroma of his blood as Amaclaty sank her fangs into the hollow of his throat. She brought her lips over the wound and drank deeply until his form grew limp beneath her. He no longer struggled.

Licking the blood from her lips and trembling with pleasure, Amaclaty Flickered effortlessly back to regius cella, leaving the body to be discovered later. The blame was already placed upon someone else, so she did not fear discovery. The note the boy carried in his pocket said simply, Vampyres @ midnight.

- - -

The chant had started sometime while she was sleeping. Amaclaty had woken up to it and now simply sat listening to the rolling tones of Latin.

"Laurus quod obscurum vadum sceptrum super nos. Nos vadum have quis est vere nostri. Infit es nox noctis." The words had woken her, and she had no idea what they mean. It was time to talk to Alayza.

"Alayza, ego voco vos," she said quietly. Alayza appeared a moment later.

"You're awake," she noted unnecessarily. "Usually after their first drink, a vampire is asleep longer." Amaclaty nodded mutely as Alayza sat cross-legged on the bed beside her. She examined the Mársabis for a few moments and said, "You have read her note."

"How did you know?"

"I can tell by the way you are looking at me. Anality told you to trust me and you are wondering why. But never mind that; we can discuss trust issues later. You have many questions troubling you, and I will do my best to answer them."

Amaclaty thought for a moment, losing herself in the words of the chant. "What are they saying? The vampires, I mean."

"Triumph and darkness shall reign over us. We shall have what is rightfully ours. It begins tonight." Clearly it was something Alayza had memorized.

"Tonight?" Amaclaty asked with alarm. "Why? Why can't it wait? Even as a Mársabis I still have much more time with the clan. Isn't there more time to plan things?"

"We have been planning for sixteen years. And though there is time for you, there is very little time for the clan. Erikagana made a prophecy while she was with us. She said if we did not follow it, we would be struck down. Obliterated.

"As with Anality, Erikagana made this prophecy on her death bead. She said, 'As the Dark One's followers are branded, so are the years which still remain. Fix what is wrong. One more of the bloodline shall come to prepare you. If it should be that you have not righted you faults in the final year, you shall be swept from the earth.' This is our six-hundred and sixty-sixth year, Amaclaty. Our time is short."

"But how do we know when to strike? We can't just be scattered around Saugerties, can we? People will notice."

"You got the name from the boy you killed? No, you're right, that we cannot do. Blayne Belen has discovered that the school holds a haunted house in the old rectory, the one behind the church. We will attack there first."

"Won't people see us though? They'll try to, I don't know, seal the building or something!"

"Yes, Blayne and Sarkis thought of that too. They could certainly bless the ground around the building and prevent us from escaping. In fact, it is more probable than possible. However, we will not be attacking inside the building. We will pull the fire alarm, and of course, as mortals do, they will panic. We attack then."

"The people we're not drinking from will run though!" Amaclaty objected. "They'll go to get help!" She could hardly believe they hadn't noticed that particular flaw. Alayza simply laughed.

"Who said anything about drinking? No, we're not drinking tonight. Not at first, anyway. We're launching an attack. Wound them and leave them. We can drink our fill afterwards." Amaclaty swallowed deliberately, trying to stop the slightly sick feeling rising in her throat. Alayza stood abruptly as if she had been prodded with something sharp.

"I'm being summoned by Sarkis and Blayne. I will return in a moment," she said. She Flickered away and left Amaclaty sitting alone on her bed. So it would start tonight. The clan would launch its attack and its plunging of the town into perpetual darkness. And she was to be their leader. She was the prophesized Mársabis that was supposed to be all powerful, the equivalent of her predecessors combined. She was the great and mysterious Marsabis, destined to arrive in the devil's year to save a population of vicious, blood-sucking creatures practically imprisoned beneath what seemed to be half the old Hudson river town and was probably more.

But how was she supposed to do that? Surely a feeding frenzy alone would neither satisfy nor save the vampires. According to Anality, cruorem nuntius was the only thing that could. But what was it? And why was she the only one who could use it? If Blayne and the others could surely they would have long ago.

"Amaclaty," Alayza said reappearing. "Sorry for the interruption."

"How does summoning work?" Amaclaty asked, suddenly curious.

"It's only effective between those who share blood. The more blood you share the harder it is to resist the summons." Alayza looked away, suddenly appearing smaller, less somehow. "Unfortunately for me, I hold quite a lot of Blayne Belen's blood. It is nearly impossible already for me to ignore a call from him, and because I share blood with Sarkis as well, the double incantation was not something I could ignore."

"Why do you share so much blood with Blayne?"

"He blooded me... A long time ago. We were lovers for quite some time, before and after my transformation. Quite a bit of blood was exchanged between us. But he decided his lust for me was resistible, and his thirst for blood and power was not. So he left me. He tried to abandon me in Europe after Erikagana's coming, before we came here to America. Thanks to Sarkis, however, I am still here with the rest of the clan. And with Galena," she added as an afterthought. For several minutes she seemed lost in her memories, and Amaclaty realized that Alayza was centuries old and had more memories than she could ever imagine having.

"Why are Sarkis and Blayne in charge?" Amaclaty asked finally. "They seem to have so much power over the rest of the clan."

"Has no one told you the story?" Amaclaty shook her head. "I will give you the simple version, then. I would not deny Sarkis the pleasure of telling you all the details.

"Long ago, when vampires had existed for many years unaided by your bloodline (before the noble line came into existence, in fact), there existed a large clan dwelling beneath the twice (now thrice) holy city of Jerusalem, probably the largest colony ever to have been. During those times they were powerful and the Holy Land's best kept secret. But the council began to become corrupt. They did many things unjustly, including placing strict rations on feeding while they gorged themselves.

"The clan began to weaken. The vampires blooded as children faded, yes, literally vanished from existence, from starvation. So Blayne began to gather a group of rebels who revolted and managed to break away from the colony. Galena, Karæa, and I were among the group. This was not the first seemingly outrageous thing Blayne had done. Before he himself was blooded, he was married to a girl, and she had their child. When he was blooded, rather than leave them, he took the child into the clan. This was a great risk, as newborn blood is always sweetest and the child was a great temptation for the entire colony, including Blayne himself. For over twenty years he raised her, and then blooded her as one of the clan.

"So you see, Blayne led us from injustice and slavery, and Sarkis is his flesh and blood, so we cannot object to them. We owe greatly to both of them, and it would be inconsiderate to withhold authority from them."

"But I don't—" Amaclaty began.

"Silence!" Alayza snapped, her eyes blazing suddenly with cold anger. "Not a word shall be spoken against Blayne in this hallowed of halls! You are ignorant and your brain is stuck in mortal ways!" Amaclaty recoiled as if she had been struck. She had not seen Alayza this angry since stilling his lash from her shoulders.

"Sorry," Amaclaty whispered.

Alayza sighed and sat down beside the new vampire again. "No, i should apologize. You are young and will always be so. It is unfair to ask you to understand customs that i do not fully grasp myself." The red-haired vampire smiled, but the smile was not one of happiness. It was small and sad, seeming to say simply, I've given up hope. Alayza murmured something in Latin, and Amaclaty decided it was best to say nothing.

"Adveho," she said finally, gesturing for Amaclaty to stand before rising herself. "It will be starting soon. Listen." The rolling chant had stopped.

"What do I do once the alarm rings?"

"Throw yourself into the battle fully. Do not give yourself time to think, or you will fall. Do not give in to the secondary pleasures of thirst, as they will leave you vulnerable. Listen for the call of cessum. As soon as you hear it you must return here to regius cella. Do you understand?" Amaclaty nodded. "Good. When I tell you, begin to Flicker to the graveyard and suspend yourself halfway there. It will leave you invisible temporarily. Only appear in the cemetery when the alarm rings. I wish you—"

The rest of Alayza's sentence was drowned by the tolling of a chime. "Now!" Alayza cried. Amaclaty was momentarily fascinated by the sight of Alayza slowly fading. "Go!" Alayza insisted, her voice no more than a whisper. With a surge of panic, Amaclaty Flickered towards the graveyard, but realized she was visible there. She hastily tried to correct her mistake and Flickered back the ways she came. The result was devastating.

She was plunged into utter darkness and cold she had never felt before. She felt nothing moving. All she was aware of were the horrible, terrifying, ear-splitting shrieks of the demons surrounding her. Razors edged the sharp screams. Each wail brought forth another wave of pain and sadness and sorrow that crashed over Amaclaty. She tried to cover her ears but could not move. She tried to scream but no sound came from her throat. She heard the wails and shrieks louder than before. And, faintly, the sound of a bell.

The alarm, she thought, and she strained against the unearthly bonds tying her to the hellish limbo world. Suddenly she broke through them and was running at full speed across the graveyard.

"Amaclaty, ictus thema thematis! Bite them! Cito!" someone shouted. Risking a glance around, Amaclaty saw every vampire at the neck of a mortal. She was struck by the size of the clan, never imagining such a vast number could have lived in the underground tunnels. Amaclaty caught the eye of a mortal girl who gasped in fear and horror as the gaze stopped her in her tracks. Amaclaty did not waste a second, but tore into her throat, ripping flesh and spilling blood, which stained her lips scarlet. Amaclaty released her grip on the girl and moved swiftly to the neck of a new victim. Adrenaline coursed through her as she scoured the grounds, savoring the taste of blood on her tongue. Blayne hung by one arm on the church's steeple, calling orders in Latin. "AMACLATY!" he yelled down to her. "Find any survivors that call themselves the Vampyres and bring them to my chambers! Quickly!" So she swept the grounds, forging and breaking mental connections but finding no Vampyres among the injured people. She looked once to the horizon and saw the first thin line of light appearing over the mountains. How could that be? It hadn't even been midnight when the vampires had launched their attack.