I don’t know if her promiscuity should repulse me or not.
“Why’d you bring me here?” I ask. I barely stand above Patricia and Jacob in terms of strength, but I try to channel some of Raul’s fortitude.
“I brought you here…” Mother turns to me, “to show what befalls vampires who oppose my rule.”
Everything happens at once.
She flings an arm toward me. That chained silver collar flies from her sleeve. I raise a hand to protect myself but it does little good. The collar simply binds it to my neck.
The force of the strike throws me back. All the air rushes from my lungs as I slam against the wall. Mother’s magic instantly pins me in place.
The guards surround the prisoners. They shove a strange looking sack over each of their heads. Patricia and Jacob start to convulse the instant the sacks are on.
Their bonds are released. They drop to the ground and jerk about with absolutely no control over their limbs.
“Hold them tight!” Mother commands.
Two guards grab either of the pair. Patricia and Jacob don’t so much fight the guards, as the guards fight them, doing as much as they can to keep the convulsions in check.
Mother gestures to Smithson. “Bring it now.”
The Commander rushes off into the depths of the cave and comes back carrying two empty canvases.
Exactly the same sort that I saw lining the hall.
Realization sinks in. “No!” I exclaim. I fight the silver collar with all my might. “No, Mother, don’t—“
“You dare call me that?” She turns on me, dressed in all the fury of a Queen. “I am your Monarch, and you will address me as such!”
She slaps me. My head snaps to the side, and my glasses go flying. Everything becomes an indistinct blur.
Jacob and Patricia keep convulsing on the ground. Smithson raises the two canvases onto hooks on the wall, right where the husband and wife pair were previously hanging.
Morgan towers over them. The way the shadows fall across her face make her all the more menacing.
“For the murder of four of your kind,” she declares, “I sentence you both to eternal suffering. The lives you stole will never be brought back. I would not do the same to you, but I will ensure that all the pleasures of this world are denied to you as you continue to linger, as trapped souls, for all eternity!”
Her voice gets louder and louder as she delivers the two sentences. A wind gusts up from the sides of the chamber and surges around her in a violent tornado. Her dress flaps this way and that. For the first time in my eyes, she looks like a real witch.
She pulls a silver dagger from her waist. The wind howls, ripping away my screams of protest.
Morgan raises the dagger above her head. She plunges it straight down into Jacob’s heart. Blood spurts out, but it’s caught by that wind and directed straight into one of the empty canvases. Mother chants an incantation, and the flow of blood is surrounded by a glowing blue light. It streams right into the frame, where slowly, the image of a wretched Jacob starts to form.
What little I make out without my glasses is ghastly. The Jacob in the painting is barely a skeleton. The muscles take shape over the bones of his skull. His eyes appear there, too, looking infinitely haunted. The barest layer of translucent skin starts to cover the red muscle fibers…
And then the flow from his body stops. I look at the shell that remains. It’s a horrible sight. Inside the painting, he starts to move, but then Mother utters another spell, and he goes still.
She stands and draws a strand of hair out of her face. “One done,” she says. “Never to trouble me again.”
Her coterie of guards snickers.
She turns her attention to the woman. “My dear, you’re in luck,” she says. “You get a few more minutes on this earth while I recover my strength.”
I see it as my chance. If I can save Patricia… if I can make a difference…
“Morgan, you mustn’t do this!” I stop fighting the collar around my neck—it’s not like I can do anything against it. “Think of the consequences! You speak of killing vampires as the greatest crime—surely, this is worse! A soul is not meant to be separated from a body. Not while still remaining on this earth! Please, please, don’t mar your rule by doing something while lost in the grips of madness!”
She barely looks at me. “Madness?” She scoffs. “No, Phillip. This isn’t madness. Madness would be allowing the seed of rebellion to linger. You think I can turn a blind eye when four of my guards are dead? You think I can sit on my throne and do nothing while filthy vampires such as these seek to undermine everything I have? Everything that we’ve built?”