Page 11 of House of Crimson Hearts
We created these carriage tunnels a thousand years ago, shortly after Mother and I came to be. They’re the only way we can travel at the peak of suns up. The horses take a while to train up, though. They don’t much like being down here, so they’re rotated often and taken good care of, and now the tunnels serve all our kind.
Warmth hits me as soon as I slide into a leather seat. The carriage is a deep rouge, plush. I struck lucky this evening. Sometimes they can be shabby.
The tunnels weave like the veins we draw our meals from under Sangui City, traversing across territory boundaries without a care. The carriages down here are rounder than overground ones. They’re designed to look like fattened blood cells.
A couple of hours later, the carriage pulls up to the St Clair station territory. To my disdain, Dahlia, my least favourite sibling, is waiting for me outside the station with a horse.
Three men stroll past, I tense up as one of them catches sight of me.
He baulks, grabs the arm of one of his mates. “It’s the freak,” he says.
“The omen of death,” the other one confirms.
The third man makes the mistake. The words I can handle, the words all my siblings ignore, it’s the violence none of us tolerate. The third man picks up a rock and flings it at me.
Dahlia, Mother of Blood, bless her violent soul, flings me the reins and lunges to catch it. She races forward and smashes the same rock over the man’s head repeatedly until his face is a bloodied pulp. The man who called me a freak pisses his pants, a dark streak spreading down his trouser leg, and the other man runs as she drops the one she’s beaten to the ground.
She strolls back smiling, a dark little glint in her eye.
“Sister,” she says. “Shall we?”
“We shall, and thank you,” I answer. It’s a rare occasion Dahlia and I are on the same side. But as much as we quarrel and bicker and hate on each other, we are still family, and she will not tolerate abuse from an outsider. Our relationship is complicated.
Her black hair is quaffed in a similar style to Xavier’s, though hers is shorter than his, and cut in a more aggressive shape. She’s smaller than me in height, but more than makes up for it in size and unrestrained rage. She has that muscular build created by throwing punches and crushing bones. Five hundred years ago, when Mother turned her, my favourite thing to do was to watch people underestimate her. She’s a wretched little thing, all fangs and fury. She’s also Mother’s favourite. Make of that what you will. The woman had brought me up for five centuries before Dahlia came along, and yet, Dahlia is her favourite. Xavier disagrees with me, but I know I’m right.
“You look like shit,” she spits.
Ahh, back to hating each other so quickly.
“You could at least attempt civility.” I sigh.
She jumps on her horse, leans down and holds the reins of mine to allow me to get on.
“Like you do when you’re hungry?” she says.
“I don’t think you’re one to talk about hanger, Dahlia.”
She rolls her eyes at me. “That was seventy-five years ago. Isn’t it time you let that go?”
“Let go of the fact you drained and slaughtered my girlfriend because you wanted to fuck her, and she wasn’t interested?”
“Please, she was a pathetic human woman. I wouldn’t have pity-fucked her if she begged. Besides, she wouldn’t have survived turning, let alone the Morose Mourning. I was putting her out of her misery before you killed her trying to turn her. Really, you should be thanking me.”
At some point in the first five hundred years, every turned vampire experiences the Morose Mourning period. Usually, after the last living relative who can remember them passes. It’s some kind of trigger in their minds. The reality of immortality descends and for a while, they mourn life, living, the fragility of mortality. Of course, I never experienced that. I was born this way and know no different.
Which means it’s yet another way I’m different from them.
“It wasn’t your choice to make,Dahlia,” I growl.
“Neither was it yours to burn my cottage down with me in it, but you always seem to forget that.”
I shrug. “It seemed a fair recompense. Besides, I left you a window unlocked.”
She glares at me, but the conversation is thankfully over. We’re silent as our horses trot out of the carriage station and ferry us up the long and winding route through forests and mountains to Mother’s castle. The family home looms on the top of the highest peak in the city: Castle St Clair, wrapped in shrouds of clouds and mountain mist, its crenellated turrets a beacon of power gazing upon its inhabitants.
As I gaze up at the highest turret, the moon showers the castle with glistening light; it occurs to me that of course Mother wants her castle at the highest point. That way, she can see everything and everyone she controls beneath her.
“You could at least pretend to be enthused over dinner, for Mother’s sake,” Dahlia says as we slow the horses to a stop in the circular drive and we dismount.
