Embrace Ch. 03

She cannot bring herself to ask him why.

He smiles as she bows her head to hide her ugly tears.

"You're such a sweet obedient thing. The stars will wait for you. Your husband buried his young wife today. He'll have wed again within the year. Once he has an heir, I'll allow you to venture out and build yourself a small herd on the proviso that you are not recognised. Is that clear enough? In the meantime I shall provide you with the willing victims you require."

"Thank you sire." She leans forward to kiss his ring as he offers it.

*

There is a beautifully made harpsichord, some fine new linen and a fresh mattress in her cell. She is fed more than adequately, and alongside blood, regular information about the world outside sustains her. Still, it is a painfully lonely existence.

Wolf-Dietrich's tutelage is nothing more than a charade. He humours her interests from time to time, but for the most part her nights are filled with tedious study. His curious brand of patronising mock kindness peppered with unsettling cruelty is draining. The emotions that come through the blood are a welcome relief and distraction.

Each evening he tires and she is dismissed a good half hour before sleep takes her. Those precious hours of twilight are truly her own. In the same manner, evenings roll into one, but from time to time she imagines she has dreamt, but cannot remember it. Sometimes it feels like someone was calling her name, but only the memory of the word lingers in silence.

*

She sits bolt upright on her little cot.

"Felix?" She whispers.

Silence.

There is no compulsion as such. She feels a tickle in the back of her mind, and a growing urge to leave her chamber. As she makes her way it seems prudent to hide herself, and she draws closer to the shadows. She imagines that she's following a thread, like a child in a fairy story. The passage is cold and dark. She puts a hand on the damp wall to steady herself. There should be a handle, and there is. She opens a loose panel and carefully feels her way down the spiral staircase. There is more damp as she descends, and an echo of water dripping onto bricks.

Twin points of eerie red light flicker into existence like demon eyes. She feels the unease of her beast as a counterpoint to her own, but the sense that she is where she ought to be is stronger. An intangible thread connects the monster in the dark to her own blood.

She finds the courage to speak.

"Are you kindred?"

A rough male voice answers, nervous as her own.

"Are you?"

Through the dripping water, the steady tapping of footsteps grows louder, and the flicker of torchlight approaches. When she looks back, the red eyes are gone, and she does her best to hide herself.

A middle aged woman in a worn woolen dress carries the light. She goes right to where the red eyes were and there's a yelp as she reaches into the shadows and draws a bearded peasant out by his ear.

"Put him down Henrietta." Amelia recognises a tall slim man in neat grey merchants garb. Jerome, the Malkavian primogen, rests a calming hand on the woman's arm and she unhands the peasant.

"Shouldn't have been so fucking rude then should he? Eh?" Henrietta clips the peasant around the ear and he brandishes an axe in her face.

"You are out of order! Who the fuck are you to touch me you old witch? Keep her on a lead if you want to keep the head on her shoulders."

"That's unfair Jackie boy, it's not right. Have a bit of respect for your elder mate."

The peasant sneers at the gentleman and backs up, stroking the haft menacingly.

"She doesn't know shit. There's someone else here. Too busy threatening me to notice?"

All three of them jump as something white unfurls from a corner of the room. A slender woman crouches there, her pale dress a little worse for wear, stained and damp. She looks past them all at the pitch black corridor and smiles. She reaches out like a dancer, graceful fingers extended, before snatching her hand back as though it had been smacked. Henrietta swears at her.

The gentleman shakes his head. "Getting all worked up over little Charity?"

"Not her! Christ sake Jerome, I don't mean one of ours. It was some noble, all powder and paint, never seen her before. Probably fucked off now and told half the town where we are."

"I haven't. And I won't." Amelia finds her courage at last. "I'm supposed to be here."

Henrietta swears again but this time she's smiling. She looks Amelia up and down. "Who says? Can't be right. Not going to end well with you if they catch onto your game girl."

Jerome takes the torch from Henrietta and wedges it in a corner. The woman takes a seat up against the wet bricks and pulls out a little wrap of tobacco and a pipe. As she packs the bowl she smirks over at the gentleman.

"Not all of us feels the threads and come to gather. Jerome don't. Jack does. Charity well, she don't ever let go of 'em, and I have my days. Them days I see only paths and forget myself." She lights the pipe from the torch with the twist of paper from the tobacco.

Jack is restless. Amelia eyes him and his axe nervously. She still feels the connection between them.

"I think I know what you mean." She searches for a link to the others and feels nothing much.

Charity hums a low note as she swirls her finger in a filthy pool of water. She looks up and stares at the wall just behind Amelia.

"Dear Old Grandfather," she sings, "Dear Old Grandfather, Dear Old Grandfather..."

Amelia spins around to see but there is only a brick wall.

Henrietta taps the still burning ball of tobacco out of her pipe into the floor. She spits.

"Do it Jack. Split her head. Do it."

"Fuck off you old witch. Can't you see it? That's his childe." He tucks his axe beneath his coat. "And I'm not your lackey. You know where to find me Jerome."

The gentleman nods.

"Keep it to yourself Jack."

The peasant sneers and looks back at Amelia.

"Watch this lot. They're all fucking mad." He tips his hat and walks away.

"I'll... I believe I should go." Amelia stammers.

"No you don't." The mad woman steps closer. "You don't believe anything anymore. Why are you still here?" She jabs a finger at Amelia's bodice.

There's a connection. Amelia feels a web between all of them, herself, Charity, even Jack as he runs away laughing to himself. And Felix. Felix is a long way from here. He's weak, barely there at all.

Amelia straightens her back and meets the angry woman's eyes.

"Why have we all come here tonight? What is this web that joins us?" She gently takes the woman's fist between her hands. "You are my elder. And there is more common blood between us than between me and the monsters upstairs, I feel it."

"Them upstairs will have your head." She looks back at Jerome. "Think you could walk me home love? Gather's about done I reckon."

Charity creeps along the ground. Her face is vacant. She crawls, her white dress soaks up the mud and water and clings to her spare frame.

"He says it's in the water. In the red ground. The wave is rolling across the sea. The gods are running before it."

Henrietta rolls her eyes and laughs. She pulls Charity to her feet.

"But we have our ways, girl. Only time will tell. Say goodnight to the childe."

"Good night to the childe." Charity echoes in her sing-song voice. The three make an odd little group as they trail off into the passages with the only light.

Disoriented for a moment, Amelia rests her hands against the cold bricks. As she makes her way back up to her lonely cell, she finds that connection to the web of madness and smiles bitterly.

"I'm not alone."