He shifts his position, unfurling his long legs from beneath him. “But then, as the months passed, the disappearing acts intensified, until one night an entire village emptied of vampires without a trace. We sent sentries to investigate the incident, and they came back empty-handed. It was as if those vampires had never been there whatsoever.”
“Did someone kill them?”
“No, not killed. Kidnapped. It took us a few weeks of scouring the North lands until we found a witness. A human living in one of those villages. A girl bonded to one of the vampires that had vanished. You know her.”
“Nella,” I say under my breath.
Killian acknowledges my whisper with a faint dip of his chin. “Her lover had hidden her in an iron box under the house, and she was barely breathing when she was rescued. She didn’t see the assailants, but she heard the attack, and she said that they were vampires as well. That they were overpowering and taking everybody prisoner. They were killing humans on the spot, bleeding them dry and then turning them.”
I can only imagine Nella’s terror, and my heart squeezes with pain for the poor human.
“More and more attacks followed, but it took us almost a year to catch one of them. And nothing prepared us for the truth. They call themselvesonpyr. They are still vampires, with the only physical difference being their everlasting bleeding eyes. But their minds are not their own anymore. They have no free will, no conscience, no nothing. They’re ruthless murderers,killing humans left and right, and kidnapping all the vampires they cross paths with, to drag them to their mistress, an all-powerful, malevolent creature named Morweena.”
“Another vampire?”
“No, Morweena is not a vampire herself. We came to believe she is a sorceress, capable of mind control over the un-dead.”
I gasp at the realization. “She brainwashes vampires, turning them intothat?”
“From what we can tell, she needs to touch one of us for her power to take over and infect us. It’s like a plague spreading through the kingdom. We already lost the North, one village and town at a time. And they’re advancing more and more, closing in on the other side of the Saunoque Mountains.” There’s an almost imperceptible tremble in his fingers as he pours more blood into his goblet, mixing it with the wine. He motions with the bottle then, and I reach out with my half-empty glass, letting him refill it for me. Our fingers almost touch, the feeling barely there, but it’s enough for my pulse to speed up. I push the warmth away, focusing on the ever-growing tightness in my ribs at the horrific image he is painting in my mind.
“She’s growing an endless army of onpyrs; that’s why they kidnap your kind.” He nods in confirmation, his dejected gaze almost bringing me to my knees. “Why?”
“Who knows why villains are the way they are?” he responds, his gaze almost lost to his inner turmoil. “Total realm domination is my hunch.”
I cringe at that idea. Imiryion has enough issues as is; it doesn’t need another creature to subjugate and massacre the beings of this realm.
“What happened to Vladymyr?”
“We lost Vlady soon after we realized what we were up against. He led one of the first missions into enemy territory. We were trying to catch more onpyr prisoners, trying to bring them backand restore them to themselves. His entire detachment was overpowered and turned. We mourned him as we do all our fallen brothers and sisters. I never saw him again until last week, when I led a mission into Valha, the latest town to succumb to their hordes.”
My heart clenches painfully in my chest. He brought him back for questioning, sure, but maybe he still held faith that he could save his long-lost friend. And that will never happen, because of me.
My broken murmur fills in the space between us. “I’m sorry I cost you your brother’s life.”
His gaze levels with mine, and he shakes his head. “Don’t burden yourself with his death, Aimee. Vladymyr was long gone before I even slid my knife into his neck. That creature that was wearing his skin was just a mindless puppet for Morweena to pull her evil strings. There is no room for sentimentality amid a war.”
Although I understand his reasoning, I can’t help but feel accountable for what transpired tonight. My recklessness deprived him of useful information that he could have uncovered, and of any chance to redeem the mind and soul of his brother in arms.
“Did you find a cure?”
He shakes his head no, the finality of the gesture sinking into my bones. “There is no cure, little umbra. Once turned, onpyrs only live to serve the purpose and commands of their mistress. All their previous lives, their beliefs, their dreams and aspirations—everything gets wiped clean. Only true darkness remains. There is no soul left to salvage.” He swirls his goblet of bloodwine and downs it in one go. “The only thing we can do is kill them. Once beheaded, their eyes turn back to normal, the connection to Morweena severed. But we can’t fight them off forever. The hordes of onpyr creatures are threatening to subdueour own, our numbers dwindling with each town they empty. If they reach Drovillan, if they storm the castle and succeed…” Oh gods, panic prickles the back of my head as I sense where this is going. “If Sangeries falls, the rest of the kingdom will follow.” I finish the rest of his thought with a trembling voice.
“And if Wrahta falls, Ryawarath and Reweroth won’t stand a fighting chance.” His gaze hardens infinitesimally, and my lungs stop working for a fraction of a second, preparing me for what’s coming.
“The only way to win this war is by defeating Morweena herself. But none of us stands even a remote chance of getting close to her. After all these years, we don’t even know how she looks like, not firsthand. We gathered scraps of information here and there, and we know she’s a tall sorceress with a blazing red mane, ivory skin and soulless, ash-white eyes. No vampire who has fallen into her clutches has escaped unscathed.” His fists clench at his side, and I almost reach to touch him, to soothe his pain away, but I catch myself in time, hugging my midsection instead.
“I’m afraid I don’t even have any hope of defeating her on my own, not even with all the lethal power of my crimson shadows.”
“Not on your own…” I repeat, a cavernous pit forming in the depths of my soul. The wine glass slips from my shaking hand, shattering on the stone floor in front of the fireplace. The ruby liquid spills on the ground, blending with the broken crystals in a foreboding manner.
“That’s why you had me kidnapped, believing me to be my twin. The prophecy… You need Aurora to defeat Morweena.”
Bloody hell! Imiryion is utterly and inexorably FUCKED.
CHAPTER 16
Aimee
