Bad Blood: Vampire Cohorts Book Four

By Angela Louise McGurk

This is Valhalla, Little Warrior... Here there's pain. Here there's hell. Don't stay here for me...

Right from the dawn of civilisation, war had wrought ruin on those fools who put their faith in love. It stole soldiers from sweethearts, warriors from wives, and it ensured that grief burgeoned; a putrid, swelling pustule that ate away everything good about love, like some necrotising bacteria on wounded flesh. It turned joy to despair, and corrupted hope until only thoughts of vengeance remained.

I knew that.

I’d felt it before; the suffocating weight on my chest which came from knowing the sun had winked out and plunged me into a world of darkness, ice, and hopelessness. Fenrir’s maw had devoured all the sunlight from my world, and that understanding stole my breath, just as it had in the past, until my lungs burned against the bands of horror and grief that constricted around them.
Conn had died.

My mind rebelled against the notion and fire erupted around my hands again, magic skittering over my skin and crackling in the air around me, but there was no one left to fight. We’d let them go. It didn’t matter that I’d slaughtered many of them, or that soot and ash still stained my skin from the rain of fire I’d brought down on our enemies. It wasn’t enough. Not considering what they’d stolen from my cohort... What Fenrir had stolen from me.

How could I survive this? How could I do this again?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Angela Louise McGurk
• Release date: Jun 30, 2023
• ISBN: 9798215067840

Angela Louise McGurk

Angela is the author of the Vampire Cohorts Series. Book One, Bite the Bullet, is due out in December 2015, with five further books scheduled to follow.Vampires are popular with Angela, being the subject of most of her writing and 65-75% of her reading. The other 25-35% of Angela's reading is usually historical fiction and/or historical non-fiction. The combination of Angela's love of vampires and history can been seen in 'Absolution' which combines the modern world and WW1 history.While currently occupied running her business, Angela spends much of her free time writing, reading,and trying to find a way of saving all the worlds in her head before they evaporate to some forgotten place never to be retrieved. As well as being a designer, business owner and writer, Angela is the mother to two fantastic children and wife to a husband who still hasn't read her books!She grew up in a small Northumbrian pit village and briefly lived in Newcastle-Upon-Tyne where the Vampire Alliance series is set. One of her favourite places in the world in Rome and when she gets around to finishing the re-write of the prequel to the Vampire Alliance series this will be set in Rome. The prequel, currently going under the working title of 'Irredeemable' has been a work in progress for fourteen years, originally written in Angela's early teens it is currently being re'vamped' and will be published sometime in the future. Although as Angela also has plans for sequels, prequels and spin offs what comes next is anyone's guess!

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COPYRIGHT

Copyright © Angela Louise McGurk 2015

All rights reserved.

Smashwords Edition

The right of Angela McGurk to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (U.K) and falls under the protection of the Berne Convention for the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works.

First published by Angela Louise McGurk, www.angelalouisemcgurk.com, [e-mail]

First published online by Angela Louise McGurk in 2015.

First published as an eBook by Angela Louise McGurk in 2023.

First published hardcopy by Angela Louise McGurk in 2023.

This is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, licensed, or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the author/publisher, as allowed under the purchase/download or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

ISBN: 9798215067840

www.angelalouisemcgurk.com

Cover design by Angela Louise McGurk, www.angelalouisemcgurk.com

DEDICATION

This book is for everyone who has ever grieved, who wished things had been different, or who has made mistakes due to grief or pain. The world is sometimes hard to live in, and sometimes lonely, but things can always get better if we keep trying.

Thank you to my husband, Matthew, and my children, Willow and Gryphyn, for putting up with my eccentricities.

And once again, thank you to my mam, and to the Scottish Pixie, Rebecca Anne Stewart, for continuing to catch most of my typos.

I love you all.

xxx

CONTENTS

Title Page

Copyright

Dedication

Poem: The Second Sorrow

Chapter One: It May Befall

Chapter Two: About the Slain

Chapter Three: For Sanity’s Sake

Chapter Four: With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility

Chapter Five: The Hero the Cohort Deserves

Chapter Six: Enemies on Every Front

Chapter Seven: A Cohort is for Life, Not Just for Christmas

Chapter Eight: Somewhere Over the Rainbow

Chapter Nine: Ps. I Love You

Chapter Ten: The Heart of the Matter

Chapter Eleven: Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones, and Words Incite a Riot

Chapter Twelve: In the Name of Love

Chapter Thirteen: Go to Hel

Chapter Fourteen: Situations of Life and Death

Chapter Fifteen: Some Nights I Should’ve Stayed in Bed

Chapter Sixteen: Behind Bars

Chapter Seventeen: It Can Rain All the Time

Chapter Eighteen: The Goddess of the Dead

Chapter Nineteen: Back to Our Roots

Chapter Twenty: I Wish I Was an Only Child

Chapter Twenty-One: A Picture of Dorian Gray

Chapter Twenty-Two: It’s Not Much to Look At

Chapter Twenty-Three: The Rebel and the Reprobate

Chapter Twenty-Four: The Leader of the Pack

Chapter Twenty-Five: Fríge, Goddess of Motherhood and Family

Chapter Twenty-Six: The Price to be Paid

Appendix

Coming Soon: Blood Feud – Vampire Cohorts Book Five

About the Author

POEM

The Second Sorrow

By Angela Louise McGurk, 2017

Tears gleamed in red and gold,

Bright mirrors to the flame,

Dancing about its wick

As waxen, flesh became,

And melted into shrunken hollow,

Where tears will ne’er stain.

Where now, silent wanderer?

What fields are left to walk,

Seeking halls which thunder,

When the mute men talk?

Memory drifts in thickening fog,

Thought makes a final call,

Greed and hunger devour

‘Till insatiable, they fall,

As fury’s widow weeps

Against fury’s funeral pall.

CHAPTER ONE

It May Befall

Sweetheart, take this, a soldier said,

"And bid me brave good-by;

It may befall we ne'er shall wed,

But love can never die.

Be steadfast in thy troth to me,

And then, whate'er my lot,

'My soul to God, my heart to thee,'--

Sweetheart, forget me not!"

.

- Eugene Field,

Soldier, Maiden, and Flower,

1887

Right from the dawn of civilisation, war had wrought ruin on those fools who put their faith in love. It stole soldiers from sweethearts, warriors from wives, and it ensured that grief burgeoned; a putrid, swelling pustule that ate away everything good about love, like some necrotising bacteria on wounded flesh. It turned joy to despair, and corrupted hope until only thoughts of vengeance remained. It twisted comfort into torment; a sickness that choked the breath from the lungs of whoever was left behind.

I knew that.

I’d felt it before; the suffocating weight on my chest which came from knowing the sun had winked out and plunged me into a world of darkness, ice, and hopelessness. Fenrir’s maw had devoured all the sunlight from my world, and that understanding stole my breath, just as it had in the past, until my lungs burned against the bands of horror and grief that constricted around them. The lump in my throat stole my ability to speak, but what could I say anyway? What words could I utter as Gunner returned from our vehicles with body bags, preparing to collect our dead - our sentries and our Sire?

Conn had died.

My mind rebelled against the notion and fire erupted around my hands again, magic skittering over my skin and crackling in the air around me, but there was no one left to fight. We’d let them go. We’d let Leof’s murderer flee with his ragtag bunch of mangy mutts, and a choked growl escaped me at the thought. It didn’t matter that I’d slaughtered many of them, or that soot and ash still stained my skin from the rain of fire I’d brought down on our enemies as my anguish washed away everything but the need for revenge. It wasn’t enough. Not considering what they’d stolen from my cohort... What Fenrir had stolen from me.

How could I survive this? How could I do this again?

I’d been steadfast for so long, honouring my troth by fighting Ragnar even though I had no hope of victory, even though I’d believed Leof dead. For centuries, I’d lived with that suffocating grief, and I couldn’t face it again. I had nothing left to give.

I longed to pray to someone, to beg some deity to fix it, but it was too late for that. Only one goddess possessed the power to change Leof’s fate, and I’d failed him. Ishbel told me that I could change the cloth of fate and weave it to my own pattern, but I’d let Leof fight even when I knew he shouldn’t, then failed to stick to his side even though I knew what Beorn intended. It was my fault, at least in part.

Tears streaked over my soot-smeared cheeks, and I pressed a fist to my chest, wishing I could pull my heart from my body because it couldn’t bear the pain. It was all I could manage to stand there, to hold myself still as Gunner zipped up that blasted body bag even though I wanted to grab him, to stop him, to declare that Conn hadn’t died or that I could somehow breathe life back into him.

Salix? Hun? Let me get you back to the car... Lex whispered, breathing gentle encouragements as she tried to urge me away from the scorched clearing, the battlefield where we’d made our stand. We'd sacrificed so much for...

For what?

For Lex's life?

So many had died to save one life. We’d failed to save Jackson. We’d lost others. Leof had paid the ultimate price for our partial ‘victory’, ripping the heart out of the Newcastle Cohort, condemning him to Tiw’s Valhalla, and condemning me to an extension of the centuries of grief I’d endured before. It didn’t matter that it had been his responsibility as Sire to fight for his people. It didn’t matter that he had been a soldier at heart and incapable of backing down... I still wished we’d walked a different path and maybe made other sacrifices. I would have made a different sacrifice if it had been up to me.

Or I should have done so.

Why had I run to Lex’s aid rather than sticking by Conn? I couldn’t protect everyone all the time, but I should’ve protected Leof because he was everything to me. My heart. My fight. My faith in myself. I should’ve let Lex die.

I hated myself for that thought, for the idea I would’ve traded my friend for Leof, but it was the truth. I could’ve survived losing Lex, like I survived Lily. But not this. I knew I wouldn’t survive when the world moved on and I could not.

Oh gods! Not again.

I can’t! I yelled at Lex, the words finally exploding past the choking ball in my throat, and she blinked at me in pity and desperation, not sure what I needed or how to help me. Didn’t she realise that there was no helping me?

Not again! I can’t! Not again! Don’t make me do this again! I screamed at her because she was one of the Wyrdæ, the weavers of fate. Even though she was just a vampire now, I still needed to scream at someone. To beg. To barter. To make useless declarations and voice pointless pleas that couldn’t change a thing, no matter how much I wanted them to.

Please, Darcy, let’s get you back to the Hi-Lux, she tried again, taking my elbow, and trying to turn me from the grim scene of the battle-scarred and now abandoned werewolf camp. She tried to turn me away from Conn’s bagged body and the flickering blue-grey echo that hovered over it, a perfect replica of my Leof, his final thought whispering to me even though his echo’s lips remained still and soundless.

I love you. I love you. I love you...

I yanked my arm out of her grip, and my lips peeled back from descended fangs as I snarled at her. I wanted someone to fight. There had to be someone I could defeat to make this right again. We’d intended to protect the Cohort, to defeat Tiw’s pet werewolf. This wasn’t how it was supposed to be!

The magic around my hands flared brighter, divine names glowing against my skin, shimmering around my wrists, and disappearing under my jacket. Those names declared me to be Fríge, Freyja, Gefn, Friagabis; a powerless facsimile of the goddess I must have been in the past. No matter where I came from, in the end I hadn’t been strong enough or wise enough to save Woden, and I doubted I had the strength to keep my mind from flying apart in the face of so much anguish and regret.

Our sentries sat on the bloodied and burned grass around me, their eyes glassy and their own tears dripping from their chins. They looked shell-shocked, disbelief and grief warring in their expressions. They noticed neither their torn and burned clothing, nor their lost weapons, nor the injuries that had stolen friends, and limbs, or had taken eyes and knocked out teeth. Their pain speared towards me, twisting in my heart as though it was my own; a dull roar of emotion which I had no defence against, because my shields had disintegrated.

The distance between Conn’s soul and mine exposed just how fragile my defences had always been. It whisked away the protective barrier of his kaleidoscopic emotions, leaving no partition between my mind and the noise of his cohort. That tumultuous cacophony threatened to drown me under a clamour that would only get worse as news of our losses spread. How could I make it stop?

Someone should’ve comforted our sentries, reassured them, led them from that battlefield with a promise that their cohort could somehow recover. Conn would have spoken to them, inspired them, made sure they stood even when they wanted to crumble. Yet I wanted to scream at them. I wanted to ask why they hadn’t protected their Sire, and why they hadn’t ensured every wolf paid for the pack’s crimes. Why had no one eviscerated the wolf Chief: the weapon who’d caused our bereavement?

Yet even as I thought them, I also knew I aimed such accusations at myself rather than at Conn’s people. I should have done those things. It had been my responsibility. So, I said nothing as I approached Leof’s body again, not caring what anyone thought as I used considerable vampire strength to lift his grim black body bag. My magic steadied me, assisting as I balanced Leof’s broad bulk. Yet as it did it also burned my palms, blisters erupting across my skin. I’d already used more magic than my body was built to withstand, but it didn’t matter. None of it mattered. Let me burn, for all I cared.

I can get him to the car, Gunner offered.

Another snarl grated from my throat as I bared my fangs at him, both a hostile warning and desperate claim on all that was left of my Leof.

He. Is. Mine! I stated, my tone rough with pain and so aggressive that our Head Sentry held up his hands in a gesture meant to placate or surrender.

I know, Salix. But you don’t need to do this. Let me help you.

Mine! I growled again.

I couldn’t explain why I had to be the one to take care of Leof, even though it caused indescribable agony to even contemplate carrying him home, to the cold marble shrine where our dead awaited their funerals and the sun. In the future, I would blame the past. I’d point out that the first time someone told me Leof had died they also claimed his body had been lost to the mud of a battlefield, or to scavengers. No one had brought him home after he marched with King Ælla. I held no funeral back then, having no way of tending to him or saying goodbye.

The second time, when Ragnar claimed Leof had died in a purposefully set fire, there’d been no body to retrieve. I thought Leof had burned to dust. I was also a slave back then; I had no freedom and Ragnar denied me any ritual of remembrance. My grief had been another way to torture me, so my gaoler denied me those silly rituals people used to chase some sense of closure. He denied me those final acts that declared the deceased had been loved, and that they would be missed.

This time, I needed to cling to Leof’s body. I needed to force my magic through him again, looking for any lingering spark of life, for the brush of his soul against mine as our magic tangled, even though it was a futile endeavour. I needed to ascertain again that he truly had gone, even though it seemed incomprehensible. Then I needed to get him home, because I had promised William that I would protect my Sire, my Leof.

Of course, I understood none of my reasoning as I growled at Gunner again. Raw instinct and relentless emotion urged me to act, to stake my claim, no matter how I rationalised it later. In response, our head of security surrendered and stepped back, his grey eyes watching me warily, as though I was some feral animal who looked too dangerous to approach. If such thoughts passed through his head, then he kept them to himself.

At least my need to cling to Leof, to get him home, kept me on my feet when I might have fallen apart. No matter what came after, I would stand until I lay Leof in the shrine. Then I might scream. Then I might rage some more. Or I might crumble, pieces of me scattering like shattered glass, to be ground under the heels of those who’d ensured my fall. Later, I could let my bereft despair bring me to my knees, but for an hour or two more I needed to go through the motions.

When no further protests hindered me, I turned away from Leof’s people, heading back through the woodland with his body. Overhead, the mournful caw of a raven broke the quiet of the night; Hygd or Mynd giving their own disbelieving cry for their slain master. Guilt tore my wounded heart further. I had asked the ravens to find Beorn’s camp. I’d ensured we could locate Fenrir. I’d made too many mistakes. So, why hadn’t my life been the one we forfeited? Why couldn’t I have gone to Valhalla instead, to face Tiw’s wrath, just as I had paid the price of Cyneweard’s freedom from Ragnar? Why couldn’t we repeat the unintentional trade we’d made so long ago when Leof escaped and set a monster’s sights on me?

I had no answers.

I didn’t speak as we loaded up the Cohort vehicles. After climbing into the cab of the Hi-Lux, I closed my eyes and tried to hold back the tears that still leaked from beneath my lashes. Yet when Gunner slid behind the wheel, I felt his grief for his maker, a man who had been a brother to him, and it made it so much harder. His pain mingled with the sorrow and shock coming from the others as our convoy of Land Rovers pulled away, and with the resignation and love emitted by Conn’s echo as it repeated his last burst of emotion.

I wished it would all stop, but I knew worse would follow.

When we reached Milbank’s subterranean garage, Will burst through the steel door of the house proper, his anxiety in his expression even though I couldn’t feel it. I didn’t need to; his horror was clear as I climbed down from Gunner’s vehicle and retrieved the body bag from the back of it. Denial shone in William’s eyes as he scanned the other clusters of war-worn sentries for his maker, and then Leof’s Second slid to his knees on the asphalt, tears welling in his hazel eyes.

I’d promised to bring his Sire home, but all I had was a cooling corpse in a blood-stained bag. I wanted to apologise, to beg for William’s forgiveness, yet at the same time I couldn’t look at him. I couldn’t bear to recall all the times Conn had spoken in code, assuring his Second that he could care for me in the event of Leof’s death. I couldn’t bear that anyone but Leof might need to care for me.

Pushing my way into the house, I led a grim procession up from the car park. When I reached the main foyer, Milbank House ground to a halt. Vampires paused as they went about their lives, turning towards me in mute horror, or letting out disbelieving cries of shock and grief. Many fell to their knees as William had done, clinging to each other as they tried to hold themselves together despite what we’d all lost. Each person I passed sent another spear of searing anguish into my consciousness, and there was nothing I could do to deflect them, to block out the noise, because I'd be damned before I asked William to use his psychic gift to protect me. I’d rather drown under the din.

The roar in my head and heart swelled ever louder as I climbed through the house, heading to the third-floor shrine. By the time I laid Leof’s body on the marble plinth that was the centrepiece of our white temple of death, the noise had already become a stabbing agony that slid into me again and again. It felt more painful than the knife to my gut which had distracted Conn and caused his fall. I wanted to cover my ears and block it all out, even though I knew that wouldn’t work. I wanted to be left alone with my own grief, because that was quite enough to destroy me without bearing everyone else’s too.

As I removed the body bag from Leof, others placed more of our fallen sentries on gurneys around the shrine. Just as at Lily’s funeral, none of our dead would be given a position of prominence, except for our Sire. He would have the place entitled by his rank, his age, and his sacrifice. He’d lie like a lost king on his marble slab, surrounded by his slain guard. He’d lie there, just like his other body lay on a stone plinth somewhere in Ésageard.

A sob escaped me, croaking past the ball of anguish caught in my throat, and I clutched Leof’s too-cool hand to my chest, wishing his fingers would curl around mine, that his chest would rise and fall, and that he would breathe.

Others piled into the shrine behind me, needing to see for themselves that they had lost their Sire, because they wouldn’t have believed it otherwise. Or they came to weep over their own fallen spouses and friends, adding an extra layer of pain to that which assaulted my ‘gift’. I felt a scream building in my chest, a scream that would demand everyone else shut up, if only to leave me with my own pain long enough for my pleas to become further entreaties that some sympathetic god aid in Leof’s return.

Maybe William sensed my desperation and my welling shout. He turned to the others in the shrine, demanding, Everyone out. There is nothing to be done tonight. Tomorrow families and friends will tend to their dead, but for now you need to go back to your rooms. Comfort each other. Be with each other. Everything else can wait.

Once we were alone, he offered, Normally spouses or friends clean and dress the slain before others come to say goodbye, in the case of Sires that task sometimes falls to their Seconds. I can see to it if you...

His offer went unfinished as another growl passed my descended fangs, and I gripped Leof’s hand that bit tighter.

It was only an offer, but you can do it, he backtracked, holding his hands up much like Gunner had done back at the battle-scarred Devil’s Water camp. I need to go and help Lydia and Margaretta inform the wider Cohort and BritVaC of what’s happened. For now, you should go back to the suite, Darcy. Get showered and get some rest. There will be some difficult days ahead and you’ll need your strength.

He reached for me, trying to offer some comfort, and unintentionally silenced the din in my head. When I tugged my arm away the noise seemed so much louder, erupting in my skull again, and I knew it would be all too easy to rely on William’s gift. His psychic block was like Eden’s forbidden fruit; a temptation I couldn’t afford to reach for. Yet a moan of pain escaped me, and my hands finally went to my ears, even as further tears snaked over my cheeks.

Darcy... William began.

When I looked up at him, I saw the offer in his eyes; the offer of a calm port in the storm, but I couldn’t accept. I couldn’t.

No, I croaked, my voice serrated by grief and sharpened by a fear of needing anyone else ever again. You have a job to do for his cohort. You need to focus on that.

At least let me get you back to the Sire’s suite, he asked, and I could see his concern in his expression, smell it in his scent, even though I couldn’t feel it.

No, I refuted again, turning back to Conn. I’m staying here. I need to stay here.

Maybe William knew he’d never manage to gainsay me. He sighed once, the sound both defeated and grief filled, and then he left me alone.

For hours, I stayed right where I was; a teary-eyed statue keeping vigil over Leof. Only with each passing hour ever more of the Cohort learned of our great loss, too many members connected to me through friendship, allegiance, or Conn’s blood. Their agony overwhelmed me, so much so that I could barely stay upright. More than once, I almost crumpled to my knees.

When I finally conceded that I needed help, I could only stagger from the shrine. I swayed and weaved, stumbling through Milbank House, barely seeing the familiar corridors and stairwells as I sought out Gunner. I found him in the Security Office, sitting in silence behind his desk with an open bottle of whiskey in front of him, and I mumbled a desperate plea; Help me...

Salix? he prompted as he jumped to his feet. What is it, what do you need?

I shook my head, wincing as my brain burned and each squeeze of my heart seared.

Too much noise, I tried to explain, my tone rough. In my head, there’s too much noise.

I’ll get William, Gunner announced, reaching for his phone.

No! I yelped, alarmed, needing an alternative. No, please. Do you have any of the darts left? The sedative Viola used on me...?

His brows tugged together in concern, over pitying eyes.

Salix, I don’t think that’s a good idea.

Please Gunner. I can’t bear to rely on William. Not tonight. But I can’t bear this either, having a whole cohort’s grief warring with my own. I’ve lost the most important thing I ever had. The only thing I had to fight to remain loyal to while Ragnar had me. Please, just for now, let me sleep.

He seemed about to argue, hesitating, but then he sighed and sagged, relenting.

Alright, Consort. Alright. Be warned that there’s only one dose left, though. Come, let me take you back to your apartment and then I’ll get you what you need.

Only when I turned to back out of the office, my feet wouldn’t obey my command. The weight of communal emotion wanted to squash me to the floor, and I feared that falling was the only move I could make.

Whatever he saw in my expression prompted Gunner to scoop me into his arms. Part of me wanted to protest, but there was safety in his concern for me; the concern of a friend who hadn’t any other demands or other complications. I turned my face to his shoulder, giving in to the need to sob into his black, raven-branded, Newcastle Cohort t-shirt, then I let him carry me back through the house.

I doubted I had the capacity to navigate anyway. Everything blurred. What went on inside me felt too all-consuming to let me understand the passing of the world beyond. For a time, I simply stopped functioning, letting Gunner place me on the sofa in the Sire’s suite. He peeled my bloodstained jacket from me and fetched a warm flannel from the bathroom to wipe the soot and gore from my face and hands. He brought me a steaming cup of sweetened tea, trying to offer me some small comfort, but I didn’t drink. If I’d tried, I would have thrown up.

Eventually he pressed the last of Viola’s darts into my hand, the much-needed missile containing a gift which could at least silence the Cohort for a while. Then he headed for the door, only looking back once with his fear written in his expression. He didn’t expect me to survive... I didn’t either.

Once he left me alone, I plunged the needle-tipped dart into my thigh, flooding my veins with whatever strength of drug Viola had used to kidnap me, way back before I knew about Dunthryth, or about Fríge. As the world dimmed and blackness claimed me, I hoped I’d never wake up again. Yet, even as unconsciousness swept me away, it brought with it a new torture. Maybe the sedative was too old now, defective. Or maybe what I’d lost was just too profound to block it from my mind. Either way, dreams plagued me. Dreams of Leof, but not just of him. No black oblivion waited on the other side of sedation, and what blackness I found came in the form of an unnaturally starless sky, and the vision of a forest that only ever saw darkness...

CHAPTER TWO

About the Slain

Leof’s arm slid around my waist as we lay in the clearing, his gaze fixed on me as I stared up at the sky. It was a clear, cloudless night, yet above us only darkness existed. It seemed like every star and even the moon had winked out of existence. It bothered me, but Conn didn’t notice the unsettling expanse of black. He only had eyes for me.

"Look at me, Little Warrior. I want to be able to remember every detail when it starts."

"When what starts?" I asked as I rolled to face him rather than continuing to stare up into the darkest night sky I’d ever seen.

He brushed my cheek, his touch feather-light as his fingers explored my face, tracing each curve as if he wanted to memorise everything about me, right down to the feel of my skin. I wanted him to be warm, but his hand seemed abnormally cool as his fingers followed the curve of my chin. Did he need to feed?

He grew colder still as he answered, When forever starts, my love. I don’t want to forget you.

A frown pinched my brows together. I didn’t understand what he meant.

"Why would you forget me when you see me every day?"

At my query, the sadness in his blue eyes looked so profound, so heart-wrenching that my throat constricted around a lump I hadn’t noticed earlier. A ball of pain seared in my chest, burning away as if it would ignite me, set fire to me, destroy me… But I didn’t understand why. What was going on? What had I forgotten?

"I don’t understand, Leof," I whispered as I curved my hand over his, holding it to my cheek and trying to warm it, before turning my head and kissing his palm.

"You do, he answered as he tugged my hand to his mouth and pressed his cool lips to my knuckles. You just don’t want to remember. But that’s alright. Don’t remember yet. Just lie here with me for a while."

"You’re scaring me, I admitted, still frowning. Why did you bring me here, Leof? Where is this place? It seems familiar and yet not familiar… Where are we?"

"Does it matter as long as we’re together?" he enquired, and the question sent a chill cascading through me.

"We’ll always be together, I insisted. We’re going to get married again. We’re going to have a Star Wars wedding. We’re going to be Sire and Consort forever."

He pulled me closer, wrapping his arms around me in the way I loved, but it made me shiver. He really did feel too cold. Even his embrace chilled me. Hadn’t he been feeding enough? How long had we lain outside?

Shuddering, I rubbed my hands up and down his arms, trying to force some of my warmth into him as I murmured, You’re cold, Leof. We should go.

"No!"

The note of panic in his voice both shocked and worried me, but he shook his head, as if trying to hide his alarm.

"I’m not ready yet. Why don’t you warm me up, Little Warrior?" he prompted.

When he rolled onto his back, I straddled his hips. Despite the unnatural cool of his fingertips, my flesh still tingled, electrified by his touch as he stroked around the waistband of my jeans. Heat pooled in my core, and I moaned as his hand slid up, under my t-shirt, to cup a suddenly aching breast. He pushed up my top, gaining the access he craved as his mouth went to my nipple. My skin pebbled against the coldness of his lips, of his tongue, but I wondered why warm breath didn’t heat my damp skin.

How odd. How wrong.

Nothing made sense. Why did my mind feel fuzzy, anyway?

"This isn’t right, I murmured, and I pushed him away even though I longed for him to continue. Leof, what’s wrong?"

His eyes pleaded with me. When he answered, urgency made his tone abrupt; desperate in a way I’d never heard before.

"Please, Darcy, you’re wasting time. Can’t you just give me one more night? One night to get me through…"

A rustling cut short his request, coming from somewhere beyond the tree line. Someone or something drew near, coming through the woodland towards us. Alarm gripped Conn, and he pushed me onto my feet, urging me further away from the sound. He herded me towards the opposite tree line, genuine terror in his expression.

"It’s too late. You need to go. It’s too late."

"Why won’t you tell me what’s going on?" I begged, my anxiety increasing at his ever more erratic behaviour. He looked frantic, his expression one of terror as he pushed me onwards, so quickly that I stumbled in spite of my vampire agility.

"Conn, slow down! What’s wrong? What’s coming?"

"Fate. My eternity, he answered as he dragged me on. I don’t want you to see. I don’t want you to know."

The rustling behind us increased until I could hear the footfalls of our pursuers. They echoed amongst the trees, so loud that the accumulated roar clamoured like thunder. I knew that sound. I knew it well enough to fear it. I’d heard armies march through woodland a long time ago, in our distant past. I recognised it well enough to know that the army hunting us would dwarf any we’d faced before. It marched towards us, louder and vaster than any I’d ever seen.

But who would send an army after us? Beorn? Osier? Had the Bloodied Hand grown so extensive? What was going on?

The closer the sound drew, the more urgent Leof’s attempts to pull me onwards became. My foot caught on a tree root and I fell hard. Without allowing me time to right myself, Conn dragged me up by my arm, twisting my shoulder and sending a wave of pain through my protesting joints and ligaments. It wasn’t like him to show so little care. It wasn’t in his nature to be cruel despite how hard he’d tried when he first turned me. That had been an act, a ploy to distance himself. But this? He wasn’t himself at all, not as he yanked on my arm again. He wasn’t behaving like my Leof, and I didn’t understand.

"Who’s following us? Who sent them? Who do they belong to?"

When he laughed, he sounded bitter, and he still didn’t slow down.

"Me, once. Some of them were yours. Now they’re his. You need to go."

Why did he say ‘you’ and not ‘we’? Why would I go anywhere without him? We had to stay together. Wasn’t that important? I felt sure that staying together was important. We were stronger together.

Careering out of the trees and into another clearing, Conn almost dragged me off my feet again. I stumbled at the base of a grim, grey plinth which dominated the space. Chains hung from the dais, and it reminded me of the stone table upon which Aslan had sacrificed himself in C. S. Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe. The sight unsettled me even more than the thundering of marching feet behind us. It made me sick to my stomach and I knew bad things had happened there. I also knew worse would follow. I wanted to get Leof far away from that sacrificial altar, yet I couldn’t dwell on my premonition as the noise grew louder, drawing closer.

I heard the shouts of riled-up men; warriors yelling at each other in Old English and Old Norse. I couldn’t help but note how odd the mix of languages sounded in the modern day. They had no place in my world, not anymore, and my instincts screamed at me in response. It meant something important, the echoing shouts in those old tongues, but I still couldn’t understand. Our enemies marched on us in what I knew must be a blood-hungry horde, and I couldn’t grasp what their advance meant for me or for Leof. Why did I feel so lost?

Conn stopped, pulling me to an abrupt halt and giving up on his escape plan. He shook his head and announced, There isn’t time. We can’t outrun them. You need to wake up, Darcy. Don’t watch. Wake up.

"This is a dream?" I asked, yet I wasn’t surprised. None of it had seemed real.

More than that, it couldn’t be real. Not when Conn sounded so much like he thought he’d never see me again. Defiance flared at the notion. Of course he’d see me again. He’d see me every day for the rest of forever. Once we defeated Beorn and Osier, we’d have our future ahead of us.

"Is any of this real?" I asked.

The grief in Leof’s eyes made my heart pound with anxiety. When his tears welled and fell, I felt utterly bereft, more so than I could explain. Then he answered, and my uneasy fear doubled.

"I love you, he told me. That’s real. I love you. I will always love you. Now wake up."

Determination filled the command, desperate and fuelled by fear... So much fear that I wanted to stay, to soothe him.

"I don’t want to leave you," I murmured.

Instinctively, I knew it would be worse to leave. If I woke, I might recall what he refused to tell me; the truth he claimed I didn’t want to remember.

"We have to stay together. I can’t leave you," I pledged, yet it already felt too late to make that promise.

"You must. Wake. Wake up, Darcy! Dunthryth! Please, he begged desperately. You can’t know! For my sake, wake…"

His tirade ended in a strangled cry as a sword erupted through his chest, and I screamed as someone yanked the blade back out of Conn's back with a brutal tug. My Leof crumpled to his knees in front of a Viking swordsman, thick black blood spilling down his front.

I froze, gaping in horror at the pale skinned warrior. His lips looked so blue... His eyes were shadowed yet cloudy with cataracts... He looked dead. When he swung his blade, I didn’t have time to react. I couldn’t move in time to save Leof, and I screamed again as his head thudded onto the mossy earth.

The sound of my anguish filled my ears, yet the advancing army didn’t seem to hear me. They paid me no heed as I continued to vocalise my pain, my horror. Above Leof’s body, his echo shimmered into existence, and another keening wail escaped my lips. I’d failed him, and I couldn’t drown out his familiar voice as his last thought repeated over and over in my head.

I love you. I love you. I love you…

My own agonised sob jolted me awake. As it did, the truth rushed in on me as an inescapable tide of regret and grief.

Leof was gone.

I wanted to scream again at the thought, because it still seemed as incomprehensible as it had when Beorn killed him. My Leof was dead, laid out in the shrine where I’d left him sometime after dawn. It hadn’t taken an army to kill him, even though I felt sure it should have done so. It had taken just one wolf; one man to whom he’d shown mercy. How was the possible?

Leof was my strength, my heart, the best parts of me, and I’d never see him again. Once we gave his body to the sun and his echo vanished, I’d never again hear him say the three words that gave me a reason to exist.

I choked with that realisation. For several moments I couldn’t draw breath, even though my lungs burned, and my heart thumped frantically, painfully, against my breastbone. Panic gripped me in a stranglehold because I had no idea how to get through this without going mad. Surely the only way to live would be to lose my mind, to forget everything, including how to love. Surely the only way to carry on would be to give up everything I’d become, everything Conn had made me, and everything he’d made me hold onto...

I don’t make weak vampires, Darcy. In you, I made one of the strongest.

The words he’d once said held no comfort for me as my mind reeled in horror. Instead, they whispered a cruel warning; he had made me and without him I was nothing.

Leof had been my strength as Dunthryth, and he’d bolstered me as Darcy. I had weakened, failed, and fallen without him. I couldn’t go through this loss again. I couldn’t resume my role as the grieving widow. Yet what choice did I have? What reprieve or respite could I search for? There were no options for me, no paths I could walk to find some semblance of peace. Death led to Tiw. And life? Living meant an eternity of this, of this pain that would never leave me, just as it hadn’t left me as Dunthryth.

I wished I could cease to exist, that I could remove myself from everything, soul and all. Couldn’t I simply stop? Couldn’t I just give up and fade away to nothing? That seemed better than existing when all I had left was my duty to Leof’s memory. Duty: the only thing I had to get me up, to make me move, but it wouldn’t sustain me forever. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t a baby growing in my womb. I didn’t have what I had in 866 AD.

This was as good as it would get for me; sitting on the sofa at two in the afternoon, after the sleeping Cohort had fallen almost silent, when I could hear the rattling desperation of my own mind. A few people still projected their grief and anger, but the emotions of most of Milbank’s residents had fallen quiet, peaceful as they dreamed of better places and kinder times. That left me alone with my thoughts for the first time since Conn… Since Beorn…

Tears streamed over my cheeks again, and a sob escaped me as the moment I’d lost everything replayed in my head for the hundredth time. When I rubbed my chest, it surprised me that no stake protruded from my heart.

It was probably only a matter of time...

But that would lead to Valhalla.

Gods, I’d rather feel nothing than endure the lost, bereft, helplessness I’d been left with. I couldn’t do this on my own. My thoughts spiralled back on themselves again, repeating their earlier scorn. I didn’t possess the strength to go on alone. Hadn’t my life as Dunthryth proven that much?

Clutching my head, I longed to silence my whirring thoughts; a vicious, cyclical internal monologue of self-loathing that insisted I needed Conn. Over and over the accusation repeated, on a loop that would never end but which might drive me insane. Yet worse than the shame of being nothing without Leof, was the shame that came from knowing I’d failed him. He died because of me. I would live with that regret, that guilt, and my grief for as long as it took for Tiw or Osier to kill me too.

Or could I starve myself into the coma state? Would William allow that?

I doubted it, but I would ask all the same. In the absence of another way, I would beg it of him; I would beg him to give me the only peace available. Agree or not, I would find a way to do it... but I had duties which needed my attention first. By the end of the week, Leof’s remains would be ashes on the wind. Although my throat constricted at the thought, there was no avoiding it, and I needed to prepare for it. I needed to prepare Conn’s body for it. My position as his Consort demanded that much of me. Then I would become a living corpse, trapped on the oblivious cusp between life and death.

The need to fulfil one last duty as Leof’s Consort forced me up off the sofa. I had to do it straight away, during the day. It would be easier to cope while the house was quiet, while I was alone to weep my way through the task that I’d set myself, without everyone else’s grief screaming in my heart too. By the time the house woke for the night, Conn would be ready for his people to pay their respects. That would be my last gift to him.

I detoured via the bedroom on my way out of the apartment, to find a suit which looked suitably stately. I hated the pin-striped Armani, but Leof would’ve chosen such grave attire. He’d want his cohort to see their Sire, to remember him as they’d know him. Yet even though I knew that, part of me wanted to put him in his Han Solo t-shirt and leather jacket instead, if only because I could imagine him arching his imperious brow at the suggestion. The look would’ve been so infuriatingly Conn, and I wished with everything I was that I could see that look again. But I couldn’t, not outside my memory, and so I’d give him what he’d expect rather than what I wanted. He’d meet the dawn in a suit, and I’d keep his biker jacket to hug tight, to cry into when our bed seemed too vast, too empty for me alone.

Provided I ever found the strength to lie in our lonely bed without him...

Not that I imagined I’d remain in the