Circle of Death (24 page)

I heard the screams of the vampires fighting across the city. They were usually silent hunters, but now I could recognize many war cries. The sound of clashing bodies was frightening, even though I only had a human’s hearing. Only the thought of what would happen if we failed kept me cool. At least all the noise meant I wouldn’t be caught by surprise if they approached where we were. At least, I hoped so.

Searching for our mental bond just like Ivan had taught me, I saw Death had found the Nameless, and now they fought. She carried a sword just like Lucio’s, and was an adept fighter, something I really didn’t expect from her. Still, it was easy to see she would barely be able to slow the Nameless down, and even then not for a long time. She couldn’t win alone. I had a glimpse of his face, and it was easy to read his expression: he was having fun with all that.

We didn’t have much time.

The two vampires in front of me were still caught in their fight, oblivious to everything else, and I could feel Seth was too confident. What was he planning? I concentrated, projecting that power I had used to paralyze him once before. I almost had him in the web when something threw my power back, and I almost was caught in my own trap.

But I didn’t have time to think about what had happened,
how
it had happened, because something slammed at me and threw me to the side.

A woman was standing where I had been, with two dead vampires at her feet. Apparently, some of them were still being silent. One look at her was enough to tell me who she was: Semele, one of Lucio’s vampire Masters.

“Do what you must, White Hand. I will guard your back.” She spoke, her voice still human, even though her eyes were completely black and her hands had become claws.

Without waiting for anything else, I got up and stared at the two vampires in the avenue. What had Seth done to repel one of the powers of death? It could only be something the Nameless taught him. That only left me one option, I would have to trust that power I didn’t know how to control.

“
Let him hit you. I need him distracted for a moment, then he will lower his defenses.”
I told Lucio, through our bond.

One second later, I saw Seth’s sword go through Lucio’s chest. I contained my first reaction – panic – before calling the power that had saved me that day at Death’s Sanctuary. Death’s Power. I don’t know if it was Seth’s distraction or if it was the Power itself, but this time I managed to paralyze him without problems.

I ran to where they were and pulled the sword out of Lucio’s chest, seeing he didn’t even bleed as much as he should, and was already healing in a rate that should be impossible. I could only guess it was an effect of my deal with Death, the one that released vampires from the need for blood. Less than one minute later, he was on his feet, as if nothing had happened. Only then I realized keeping Seth paralyzed wasn’t costing me anything, unlike all the other times when I had done that using powers of death.

“Your last words, Seth.” I spoke, releasing enough of him that he should be able to talk.

“Death tricked me! He should be vulnerable! I call Death and claim...”

“Lucio is vulnerable.” I interrupted him, disgusted. “But not to a physical attack. Your negotiation had a flaw.”

I had just finished speaking when Death’s contact pulled me.

“
Be quick, Kelene!
” Her voice was still steady, but I could feel her weariness.

I looked back to the vampires, not knowing if Seth had answered or if Lucio had said anything. But that didn’t matter.

“Do what you must do, and be quick!” I said.

Lucio glanced at me, and I noticed when he recognized the urgency in my voice and guessed what it must mean. Nodding, he approached the other vampire and spoke, his voice crackling with power.

“By the old laws, I reclaim the loyalty of those under the vampire who has fallen by my hands.”

I could feel the power rising around them, a strangely familiar feeling. He bit Seth, drinking all his blood, and with it the allegiance of all the other vampires. Slowly, the sounds of fighting disappeared. Still, Seth wasn’t dead: he had asked for immunity, and now had only one weakness.

Without hesitation, I approached, placing a hand over his face and the other over his chest, without releasing that thread of Power I was using to keep him paralyzed. I closed my eyes, concentrating, searching for Seth’s spirit with the senses only a Hand had. There he was. With a push of my will, I dragged him out of that body.

We had done it.

I saw Kelene become distant, probably seeing through Death’s eyes, and waited until she was back to herself. When this happened, there was a new urgency in her voice, and a touch of fear in her eyes.

“Do what you must do, and be quick!”

This time, it didn’t surprise me that she knew this vampire secret. I nodded, approaching Seth and getting ready to claim all the lines of power that bound the other vampire to his subjects.

“By the old laws, I reclaim the loyalty of those under the vampire who has fallen by my hands.”

Old words, old laws, old traditions. Suddenly it all was back, these things that should have been already forgotten. I drank his blood, the only thing I needed to do to call forth the power in those words. I could feel Seth’s fury while I drank, but that didn’t matter. He was condemned and knew it.

I felt new bonds snapping into place, and his followers’ surprise when they realized he had fallen. Satisfied, I noticed none of my vampires seemed to have doubted we would win. Slowly, as I claimed their allegiance, the fight stopped.

Never, since our creating, all vampires had been under only one Master. Even when I disappeared, my vampires had divided themselves between the two strongest ones of my line. Now everything had changed, and it was impossible to predict the consequences of Seth’s death.

“
Clean all signs of the fight and go back to your territories.”
I sent the instruction through the mental bond, and waited until I was sure all Master were following my orders. Only then I released Seth and moved away.

Kelene moved forward, placing her hands over the vampire’s face and chest. She closed her eyes and a white mist started to rise from Seth’s body, concentrating around her hands. Now I understood why she was called the “White Hand”. This lasted only a few seconds, and then the mist disappeared.

Opening her eyes, Kelene removed the power that kept Seth paralyzed and his body fell, dissolving almost immediately.

“Hurry.”

I glanced at Semele, standing not far from us, in front of the bodies of the vampires she had destroyed while Kelene and I took care of Seth.

“Pietro and I will take care of any problem.” She said, with a good luck gesture.

In the next moment, Kelene and I were in one of death’s pathways, running towards the place where Death fought the Nameless.

As soon as the gray world that was the limbo closed around us and we started running, I searched for Death again, feeling her in the end of her strength. I couldn’t even understand how she still fought, she was too weak.

“
We’re on our way.”

Her relief was apparent, as well as a bewildering sense of purpose and acceptance.

“
Listen carefully and don’t argue. Not now.”

I almost stopped at her words. There was something new in the way she was speaking… No, something
old,
something really old. And there was more emotion in those few words than I ever heard before, even though Death tried to hide it behind that frightening
finality.

“Speak.”

“I didn’t tell you the whole truth last night. About too many things…”
She hesitated, as if she didn’t know how to go on, and it was hard to keep silent, to say that I knew she was still hiding things from me and demand to know what that finality in her voice was. “
First, about your mother. She wasn’t only the White Hand. She was Death’s Avatar, the last one to exist. That means I could use her body as if it was mine, and we did it too many times. I know exactly why you have Death’s Power, Kelene, and that’s why. That’s why you were able to stop even me, that day at the Sanctuary. After your first life, when you never showed any sign of the Power, I was sure you didn’t have it and that your mother and I were wrong… But no, we were right, all this time. You have Death’s Power because you are the daughter of my soul, even though you were born from the White Hand’s body.”

That caught me completely by surprise. How? What? When I became the White Hand, even before I met Seth, I had spent some time trying to found that thin thread that would be my bond to my mother, even if she were dead. I had find the thread that tied me to the Nameless, but had never seen any sign of my mother. That was the reason
–
my spirit was bound to Death since ever. After all this time, all those years, all that have happened… I tried to gather my thoughts and say something, but Death went on.

“
And, truthfully, it’s not that I don’t remember what happened before the Intervention. I simply wasn’t there. I was just one more girl training in Death’s Sanctuary, who had stayed hidden there, safe,
while the Nameless attacked. Your words in the old city made me remember those times and the lessons from my youth. Everything dies. The circle of life and death is what brings strength and continuity. It wasn’t me who the Nameless first deceived, nor was I the one who imprisoned him when he gathered power and started his war, in the old times. I also wasn’t the one he defied, in the time just before the Intervention, when he made the vampires. I was just the one chosen to continue the cycle, the one who should rise and take Death’s place when she fell. It was
me who made the Intervention, but that was the beginning of my time as Death. I had forgotten it… Why waste time remembering things that wouldn’t be useful to me? I fell into all the traps I swore I would avoid. But you made me realize what was happening. And now… Now the time has come.”

Tears fell down Kelene’s face while she ran, only part of her consciousness there with me. She was deep into her communication with Death, and I wondered what she was seeing or hearing to make her cry like that. I wouldn’t ask, not until she was fully back, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t concerned, wondering what could be going on. My only certainty was that Death still fought, otherwise Kelene would have already returned.

Suddenly, I felt her power rising, the energy swirling around her, as an aura I could almost touch. Something big was going on to affect her like that, and I didn’t know what to do. At the same time, that power was moving something inside me, releasing me from some of the Intervention’s restrictions and letting me remember what happened then.

No one really understood what had happened there. In one moment, the Nameless was standing above Death, triumphant. She had been destroyed. His followers cheered when he was thrown to the ground, trapped by a power no one knew what was or where it came from.

A whirlwind was formed in a matter of seconds, and the earth seemed to shake as the Nameless tried to get free, but all was useless. His two loyal sons, as they had become known, approached, trying to help. K’inich and Ajoxb’ak, the corrupted Keepers of Death’s Sanctuary. But not even the power from Death herself that they were still able to call forth could free the Nameless.

“In the name of everything that exists, I contain you.” A female voice spoke, hesitant at first but gaining strength and confidence as she completed the enchantment, the words in and unknown language that resonated in the blood of everyone who was there, leaving no doubt about its meaning. “In the name of all that is alive, I condemn you. In the name of all that is sacred, I bind you.” She lowered her voice until it became a whisper, only to rise again, even stronger. “In the name of life and death, I bind you! In the name of light and darkness, I bind you! In the name of life and death, I bind you!”

There was a heavy silence when she finished speaking, and then the Nameless disappeared, unable to resist the double enchantment: he had been imprisoned again. The two vampires moved, searching for the woman who had spoken, to destroy her and free their master once again. And she appeared in front of them, apparently materializing from nothing, but the former Keepers knew exactly what had happened. She had stepped out of one of death’s pathways. And if they were still opened, it meant that Death hadn’t been destroyed.

They looked back to where Death’s body was, still on the ground. She
was
destroyed, and the woman in front of them wasn’t her.

“K’inich. Ajoxb’ack.” She spoke, and they recognized her voice, now that there was no power behind it.

It was the same voice that recited the spell, but it was more. It was a familiar voice. One attentive gaze to the woman’s face revealed that she was one of the young women who served in the Sanctuary, the sister of a man they had once called a friend but who was already dead.

“K’ujul.” One of the vampires said.

“Not anymore.” She answered, before she started speaking in the Language of Death.

This time no one could understand exactly what she was saying, but the two vampires felt the spell being woven around them, unable to do anything to resist. They were being kept paralyzed, somehow. That was when they realized: that was Death’s Power, and that girl now was Death. Even Death herself was bound to the circle, and now had been replaced. She finished speaking her eyes in the two men, who fell at her feet.

Slowly, she moved forward, until she was within touching distance. She could see the fear in both vampires’ eyes, but she could also see that they feared different things. Ajoxb’ak feared losing the immortality he had given his life and honor to achieve. K’inich feared having made a wrong choice, but she couldn’t tell which choice he was thinking about.

“You chose to give your life and your honor in exchange for immortality. I will not take it from you. You will live long and pay for what you did. From now on you will forever be creatures of the night, made of darkness and nightmares, feared and shunned even by the true monsters. And, while you exist, you will be bound to my will and my commands, you and all of those you made and will make. Never forget it.”