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The hallway rivaled the dim vastness of deep space. Danny sniffed against the rusty twang in her nostrils and caught the scent of cedar kindling and fir trees, the first sharp snow of a European winter. She had endured four of those winters now, her final year at Silas acting as some sort of sensory scrapbook. She took longer at the beginning of term to stop and smell the roses (the metaphorical ones—the roses outside the greenhouses sprayed a strong hallucinogen if you got too close). But way back at the start of the school year, Danny had vowed to be more cognizant of details. She appreciated the lingering heat of prolonged summer, reveled in the odor of body sweat and exertion as she and the Summers ran through quarter staff and archery drills in August and September. Recalled with an aching melancholy the opening semester ritual, where they’d burned last year’s seniors’ farewell letters on a pyre; the chanting and the tears and the resolution, allowing their reign to end as a new one began.
Danny’s last year as an undergrad at Silas.
And then she’d met Laura.
And fought.
And lost.
And died.
Danny died…
Danny couldn’t be sure if she teleported or jogged or crawled down the mysterious corridor; but she shouldered a lone door open to find a study bathed in burnt oranges and vermilions, lush leather and velvet upholstered furniture with shellacked cherry wood end-tables, shelves, and bookcases. A hearth twice as big as the one at the Summer’s lodge housed an impressive fire, flames tickling the stone and consuming the logs arranged inside the firebox. Assorted tchotchkes of grotesque design were placed about the room: a black lacquered skull used as a paperweight for a thick stack of yellowing parchment; a vase with some sort of sacrifice depicted in fascinating stencil work; a free-handed fresco painting above the mantel of a hunting scene… where cannibals seemed to be chasing a young, naked man for sport; crossed medieval battle axes on the walls; a sheathed sword and flintlock pistol stowed atop the coffee table at center. A display case of insects and reptilian innards, moth wings plucked from a thorax and pinned with chilling precision against corkboard, the scientific names of each specimen labeled in flowing calligraphy.
And perched in all her demonic glory, casually sipping at a fragile teacup, was Matska Belmonde. She set her tea aside and didn’t acknowledge Danny, too engrossed in her reading, or too indifferent to be bothered.
“What is this place?” Danny rasped. Her words were liquidy and metallic. Her throat slick and dense, similar to the sensations of a bronchial infection with mucus buildup, drainage in the chest.
Mattie just flipped a page with a blood red fingernail and huddled deeper over the musty-looking tome.
“Hey, bloodsucker, where are we?” Danny asked, running a crackled finger across a free-standing globe.
“Hell, I imagine,” Mattie returned blithely. “Though with you here…” Mattie drifted off, and finally lifted her gaze to Danny.
Danny didn’t know why, but the smirk settling over her preternaturally sculpted features seemed eerier in the firelight, the shadows extended and deepened by the fickle flames and good-for-nothing oil lamps scattered at uneven intervals in the study.
“No, I suppose you’d end up here, too. Figure it out on your own, I’m reading.”
It might have been a library if there had been more books. One collection of shelves behind Mattie’s chair was fairly full, a smattering of titles, old as the dust clinging to their covers and growing progressively newer, less tattered, as Danny came to the end of the bottom shelf. She noticed that the very last book in order was missing; likely the one Mattie was dissecting. The books themselves looked filled to bursting with stories and adventures and hosts of characters and the narrative ilk. Danny crossed to investigate the collection, not titled, just dated. She ran her finger over the spine of a particularly fascinating hardback with gold scripted Roman numerals embossed on the edges.
Mattie snarled behind her and leaped up.
“Not yours!” she seethed, holding the book she’d been reading close to her body.
“What do you mean?” Danny asked.
Mattie simply stalked over to the shelf and planted herself between Danny and the books, the edge of a nostril twitching in hostile disdain. “Mine. Not yours to destroy, although…”
Mattie looked dejectedly down at the book in hand. “My darling sister kept on despite you. Despite her precious love’s pleas. Her crippling romances were always so pitiable. And you,” another scoff, a searing appraisal from a being who’d lived a millennium or more. “You didn’t live through it, either. Tell me dear, is your useless sacrifice everything you hoped it’d be?”
“I don’t understand why I’m here, with you,” Danny retorted, bowing up for lack of anything else to do.
“Please desist,” Mattie swatted Danny’s arm with her book, really more a gesture than a warning. “Your posturing does you no good here.”
“It’s only posturing if I don’t back it up,” Danny returned.
“I’ve no amulet for you to crush, and you dear, are devoid of stakes. What are you threatening me with? Death?” Mattie tittered her amusement with short, incredulous exhalations. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed this—you seem more brawn than brain—but we’ve played this game before. Put that dog and pony show of heroism to bed so I can get back to my reading in peace.”
“Not until I get some answers,” Danny rebutted. “If we’re really dead, shouldn’t we be… uh…”
“What did you expect, you foolish thing?” Mattie scoffed, slinking across the carpeted study in heels too high for an afterlife. She paused at a service tray with a teapot of fine china and matching bits of crockery, refilling her cup with practiced finesse. “Perhaps oblivion isn’t all it’s cracked up to be?”
“I don’t know what I expected,” Danny confessed, eyes still trained on the spines in the shelves. She cleared her throat, determined to dislodge that wine and iron taste from her gullet. “It certainly wasn’t you.”
Danny abandoned the bookshelf and regarded Mattie, still perched at the rolling cart with the service tray, an expectant look on her face.
“Tea, dear?”
“What?”
“You sound like you’re regurgitating food for your young,” Mattie clarified, pouring a steaming stream of liquid into another cup. She placed it on a saucer and retrieved a pair of tongs, hands hesitating over the sugar cubes. “Or worse, like one of ‘Calla’s hacking fits in her bestial form. It’s all enormous hairballs and temperamental purring with that girl. Sugar?”
“Why are you doing this?”
“Offering tea?”
“Being nice. I killed you.”
“Which I might still be bitter about if you hadn’t experienced a worse fate,” Mattie plopped a sugar cube into the drink. “I find retribution immensely satisfying, dear, but even I wouldn’t stoop so low as to off someone with their back turned.”
Danny gaped. “How did you—”
“The massive hole in your torso was evidence enough. And you clearing your throat?” Mattie led, as if Danny were a particularly idiotic child, dumbfounded by the simplest question. “That would be the blood pouring into your lungs, effectively drowning you. How did it feel, your body turning on you? Death by immersion? Unpleasant, I’d wager. So many of my snacks gurgled on their screams—”
“Death didn’t redeem you,” Danny snapped, disgusted by Mattie’s inquiry. “You’re still a monster.”
“Oh well… menacing, dear. But never discourteous. Milk?”
“I can fix my own damn tea if I want it!” Danny shouted. “I’m more concerned with—with—”
“Where you are?” Mattie said blithely. “What we’re doing here? The two of us, especially. How long have we been here?” Mattie flicked her wrists about, aristocratically expressive. “Haven’t the foggiest. Days? Weeks?” Mattie grinned, and took her saucer and teacup in hand. “You’ll notice there’s no clocks,” she finished, sipping demurely at her cup.
“But you’re not worried,” Danny surmised.
“Ah, she does have a mind underneath that thick skull. No wonder they didn’t bash your head in. It would take much too long.”
“Mattie… it wasn’t personal.”
“On the contrary,” Mattie countered, sly and malevolent. “I believe killing someone is the rote definition of personal. I never liked you much, but I did respect you. Martyrdom is admirable in its own fickle, demeaning way, especially when it’s all for naught. And for you to end up here… with me,” Mattie’s laughter died but her brilliant smile never faltered, her tone shifting from lightheartedness to analytical seriousness. “I don’t believe the cosmos is that random.”
“So you’re saying this isn’t a coincidence?” Danny asked.
“I have a theory,” Mattie responded, passing a saucer and cup with cloudy tea to Danny’s shaky hands. “Sit,” she commanded, and Danny obeyed, plopping down on a leather sofa.
“Now, if you could fill me in on the recent goings on—I’ve been so out of the loop! Because of you dear, if you recall—I’d be happy to shed some light on the bigger picture.”
Danny took a sip of tea; it burned her throat, but it did dull the taste of blood. The fact that she could still notice sensation—a feeling—seemed very odd and discomfiting. Like her… soul? spirit?... wasn’t fully separate from her body just yet.
“The campus is in shambles,” Danny sighed dejectedly. “The Summers and the Zetas teamed up to go after Vordenburg, but it didn’t end very well…”
Danny told her everything she knew, everything she and Laura and LaF, Perry, Kirsch and J.P. had managed to piece together in the final hours of her life. It was all very complex, what with the overlarge fish out of the way and Corvae rendered powerless, the Zeta betrayal and Vordenburg’s rise to ultimate power. The contracts and the dissolution of the board, rules bound by magical charters… all of it reeked of manipulation.
“Strategy,” Mattie amended, and Danny stopped.
“You think someone meant for all of this to happen?” Danny asked. “That we’ve just been puppets in some bigger scheme?”
Mattie set her teacup aside and propped her elbow on the arm of the winged-back chair. Danny had never once felt small, but under the critical gaze of one dead-undead-limbo lady Matska Belmonde, she acknowledged the twinge of doubt burning her lungs. Though that very well could have been the hole in her back.
“Who would want that?” Mattie asked. “The board gone. The fish filleted. Someone’s banking it all on Vordenburg’s fall.”
“But he’s got everything. There’s no way to stop him.”
“So saith you,” Mattie returned glibly. “But we’ve been out of the arena for a while now; there are elements that we aren’t privy to, moving pieces we were never supposed to notice.”
Danny concentrated on her teacup, mulling over the players. “If someone got Vordenburg out of the way, it would create a power vacuum.”
“Correct.”
“The only people with enough manpower to fill that gap are the powers that be at Corvae.”
“You’re two for two, sweetie. Dare to keep playing?” Mattie teased.
“But who… why would… The only people who stand to gain anything from all this were Corvae. And I’m sure they have their own agenda, but when it comes down to brass tacks, they were just placeholders for your—oh, God.”
“I’m beginning to understand why you weren’t allowed to ‘move on’,” Mattie smiled slyly, rising and crossing to accompany Danny on the sofa. “You’re bright enough… for a human.”
“How could she… how did you figure it out?” Danny asked.
“Aside from the woman creating me? Grooming me?” Mattie asked, arching a skeptical brow. “This was the biggest clue, one that helped me form a theory,” Mattie said, indicating the book in hand. “But with you here, I can confirm it.”
“How?”
Mattie passed the book over to Danny. “Open it.”
Danny eyed the pages warily. It looked brand new, well, newer than all the other books on the shelf. No dust, no yellowing pages. The spine had very few dents, as if it hadn’t been fully read through yet.
“You still expect sabotage?” Mattie asked, that ever-present element of condescension shooting her voice to a lower register.
“Can’t be too careful.”
“Just try,” Mattie instructed.
And so she did. But try as she might, Danny could not open the book. It was like the pages had all been superglued together, and all that she held in hand was some paper box, only operable for those with a key. And Mattie, grinning knowingly at her side, must have the master set.
“Interesting,” she said.
Danny barely concealed an eye roll. “Yeah, and…?”
Mattie retrieved a single book on a display stand near the fireplace and handed it over.
“Try this one,” she said.
“Another exercise in futility?” Danny huffed. “Does this amuse you?”
“Just try it, you imbecile.”
Danny cracked the cover and flipped to the title page, dumbfounded to see her name in bolded script and capital letters. She flipped another page and nearly gasped, the table of contents corresponding with several of her significant life events.
“What does this—”
“Shhhush now,” Mattie said, snatching the book from Danny’s hands.
The cover itself flipped closed of its own volition, haunted or enchanted or magicked into shutting.
“Curses,” Mattie muttered, tossing the book back in Danny’s lap. “But I suppose it proves my theory.”
“Which is…?” Danny asked, carefully paging through her book of life.
“Your story,” Mattie nodded negligently at the book in Danny’s hands. “My story,” she finished, turning her attention and spreading her arms toward the shelves of books on the far side of the study.
Danny held the lone book tightly to her chest. It wasn’t very big, and so many of the moments seemed inconsequential. Chapters like “Second Root Canal” and “Jane Austen Obsession” seemingly as meaningful and lengthy as “Brother’s Death” and “Collegiate Selection.” It paled in comparison to the books on the shelves, novels so lengthy Melville seemed concise, Tolstoy a mere short story writer. All of that life lived… and Danny had ended it.
Danny, and her tiny novella of twenty-odd years. Her lip trembled at the unfairness of it all.
“Only the good die young,” Mattie told Danny, as she herself stared at her life, her memories, every instance that had molded her into the monster that Carmilla loved so dearly. “Have you ever really thought about that phrase?” she asked.
“I’m beginning to,” Danny said, eyes twitching against the oncoming tears.
“Because they’ve not lived long enough to turn bad,” Mattie said. “The master of experience and innocence is Time. All principles fail eventually. Just like all empires, all rulers, martyrs even—”
“Someone’s been reading too much Blake,” Danny sniffed, brushing a tear off her cheek.
She couldn’t really pinpoint why she was crying… but she felt robbed, somehow, cheated. She’d hurled herself headlong into a quest and come up short, dying to believe in a greater goodness with no strings attached. Turns out she’d had strings attached to her all the while. Just a marionette in a hellion’s chess match. It stung, like the knife in her back, an arrow in her shoulder, a dart in her jugular—her sacrifice had been made in vain.
“What’s missing?” Mattie asked her, returning to the sofa where Danny sat, a lump of bile and regret ossifying like bone in her throat. “Come now martyr, what’s missing from your book?”
“I don’t know,” Danny choked out.
“You’re smarter than this, you back-stabbed backstabber,” Mattie cut, pointing viciously at the pages. “Take another look. What’s missing?”
Danny flipped through quickly, not liking this game. “I… I don’t know. Everything seems at least mentioned.”
“What about the end?”
“What about it?”
“How about the fact that it isn’t there?” Mattie said, flipping through her own book to the last page. “—‘and Danny took the amulet, crushed it, as Matska fell into Carmilla's arms. She died there, which—.’ And it just stops there. Unfinished. Unresolved. Come now martyr, you read stories! Someone has to win, whether they be 'good' or 'bad'. There needs be an equilibrium."
"So what does that mean?"
"It mean that it’s not over, not for me.”
“I don’t get it,” Danny turned to the final page of her own book.
“Your last sentence…?”
“—‘and there she died, in L-L-Laura’s arms, until—’. Until w-what?” Danny sputtered, turning to the blank back cover of the book.
“Until these pages undergo multiple revisions, because honestly, the prose is revolting,” Mattie answered.
“What the hell does this mean, Mattie!?” Danny asked, chucking the book towards the table. “It’s not the end, which means we go… we go back? But how can that—”
“Of course, I don’t know of any mortal means of resurrection. Divine or supernatural intervention, however…”
“Oh my God.”
“Now Danny darling, do calm down. It’s not as bad as all that.”
“Oh my God.”
“Play your cards right, and this could be loads of fun for you! Don’t pretend you’re not envious of that stack of books behind you. You could have all of that and more!”
“I won’t… I can’t go back—I would never—”
“Hush now. Never is an awfully long time. And mother can be good to you, if you prove useful. Alas, you don’t have much control over it during the initial stages. You were strong as a mortal, but as a vamp—”
“Don’t say it!” Danny cried.
“—ire, why, you’d be nearly unstoppable. I thought I was lethal in my heyday, but darling, you… you’re a specimen. We could have great fun, you and I. Put that silly ‘killing me’ nonsense behind us and let bygones be. Oh, Gingersnap don’t cry,” Mattie commanded, digging a sharp talon beneath the jiggly skin of Danny’s chin. “Not when there’s such havoc to wreak.”
“Kill me,” Danny whispered, slumped forward on the couch. “Stab me, o-o-or bash my skull in—you were just talking about it a second ago!” Her breath came out in staggered, hyperventilated gasps, her volume increasing along with her dread. “You'd get your revenge!”
“Sweetheart,” Mattie chuckled with gleeful disdain. “You’re already dead.”
“MAKE IT PERMANENT THEN!!!” Danny catapulted forward, grabbing a wicked-looking letter opener from a writing desk in the corner of the study. Rubies on the hilt, opals and silver and ancient and probably magical… all she wanted to do was drive it into her own temple.
“I think becoming the thing you detest most of all is fitting retribution for the damnable human that killed me,” Mattie said lightly, returning to the service tray. “More tea?”
Danny held the knife with two hands and extended her arms out as far as they would go. She was shaking, more scared than she’d ever been in her life. Scared… She wasn’t scared to die, full stop. But to undie, undead, live again without really living—
She was terrified.
“P-please,” Danny ground out through sobs, the letter opener suspended in midair, bewitched into a standstill no matter how forcefully Danny tugged it toward her heart. “Please just let me go out on my own terms.”
“Not how the world works, darling.”
“Fuck, could you lay off with your twisted endearments?” Danny said, dropping the knife to the carpeted floor. The metal in her hand had turned white hot and smoked against the skin, her flesh putrefying from the hilt. She felt a tingle in the back of her spine, her chest warping. She hurtled headlong toward the door of the study, threw her body against it, twisted the knob, but found herself trapped with a psychotic, tea-obsessed ancient.
“You—” she lunged against the door. “And—” Lunge. “Your—” Lunge. “Dumb—” Lunge, and then a slump. “Sister.” She’d nearly wrenched her shoulder from its socket with the force of her beating, using her body as a human battering ram. “Everyone’s your ‘cupcake’ or your ‘creampuff’ or your ‘dear’ or ‘darling’. But not me!”
Danny yelled for good measure, slamming against a resilient door to no avail as the tingling in her back traveled up her spinal cord and hit her brain stem, shocked something in her system and set her neurons ablaze. Falling, the study faded in and out of a blackened vignette of vision, Mattie’s dark silhouette standing sentry near the fire.
“You’re right, I suppose,” Mattie strutted over to where Danny crumpled in the doorway, spent and helpless. She leaned down and caressed her cheek, pinched at the flesh there with cruel affection. “You’re not really any of those, now are you… sis?”
Danny wanted to spit at her, swing at her, curse and cry out, but she was too weak and the force in her body too powerful. She felt the tug of magic at her chest, her back warping as she rose and blinked, incoherent and dazed. Her senses were frazzled, though she could just make out a curly head of hair before her and a masculine presence behind her.
Compartmentalizing it all required gargantuan effort, for her world had narrowed to thirst, and thirst alone.
Off in a crypt on the far side of Styria, Mattie awoke with a gasp and a shudder, serenity settling over her like some comforting charm as she began the search for Mother.