Vale… Is Not a Vampire?

Stunned beyond words, I moved on habit and pulled strands of Atlus through the weave carved into the runestone, lighting it up. All the easy-to-fix flaws in the runic circuit painted my claws in an uneven, stuttering glow.

Eryn… dead.

The stone slipped through my fingers. It bounced off a rock and clattered to a stop a little distance away.

Should pick it up.

Check if it’s fine.

I squeezed my eyes shut and rolled my head back. I exhaled frigid air from my cold dead lungs into an even chillier night. There was a dark cover of clouds up there, obscuring the view of the star-speckled night sky. Even with my eyes closed I could tell those clouds were there. This kind of weather has a taste, a feel. With me no longer distracted by the convenience of sight it was readily apparent.

Apparent how inhuman my perception of the world is.

I clenched my hands into fists. Permanently sharp claws dug deep into my palms. Worse than the muted pain was the reminder of my own monstrous nature. A memory of Eryn’s rare, teasing smile flitted through my head. With no more air to exhale, I raked my fingers through my tangled hair and relaxed the tension in my neck. My head lurched back down, coming to a stop with a sudden jolt shooting down my spine. The pain of that was a distant thing as well.

I opened my eyes. Witnessed deep gouges raked into the ground. The constant, worried fidgeting of my feet sent my deadly talons burrowing deep into the earth. I tensed up. The clenching of my toes dug even deeper furrows in the ground. Dirt and small rocks parted effortlessly under the onslaught of monstrous strength and perfect sharpness.

I squeezed my eyes shut again and turned lazily on the heel of a foot. Away from the horrid sight, but not hurried, not fleeing. Just, languid, predatory slowness. Somewhere ahead of me, in the dark, my dad flinched. He startled at my sudden movement, my turning to face him. I didn’t need eyes to see that either. The animal part of me readily recognized the delicious spike of his preyed-upon terror.

I even knew he’d sat down facing me. He always did. Never turned his back.

I took a step, eyes still closed. Even sightless I knew where to place my feet from the memory of my surroundings, the feel of the air, the taste of the wind, and the slope of the ground. Gravel crunched underneath a foot. Another step snapped a dry twig. Every noise I made was a deliberate act to let everyone around me know where I was. It happened effortlessly, hardly a conscious thought needed. After all, blindly was also how I navigated in eye-searing daytime brightness. After all, knowing where to plant your feet to make your presence known used the same savage skillset as silent and predatory stalking.

Yet while this feigned clumsiness put my dad at ease, it could not change my reality. Everything I had known for the truth was a lie. I was not innocent and harmless. Eryn was dead, because of my selfishness. Who knows what had happened to everyone else I cared about in Birnstead. I had slaughtered innocent, well-meaning people in my escape. I was a monster, wanted, hunted, dangerous.

And now even steadfast, unbendable Aunt Reya was screaming her impotent rage into the night sky.

Instinct more than clear intent led me to the quiet burbling of the stream cutting the clearing in half. A single toe touched frigid water. My next step sank ankle-deep into the stream. I stopped. Eyes open. Looked down to the water at my feet. My pointless, fake breath hitched and I blinked.

The nightmare in the water blinked its demented, monstrous eyes in tune. Its mad, questing gaze seemed to have a life of its own. The ravenous monster, barely disguised as a gangly child, studied me. Its eyes roved over my face, searching for exploitable weakness.

I grimaced; the monster grinned back at me. A pointed fang slipped past grinning lips. A hungry tongue licked grime and caked blood from dry lips. Baked-in gore painted the horror’s features in a tapestry of past maulings. The filth and blood ran down the creature's neck in rivers of decay, coating every inch of its naked, disgusting body in the bloodstained reality of its true nature.

I touched its face, monstrous, bloody claws peeling and scraping at the crud, but only managing to smear it out further. It wouldn’t go away. Only made it worse. That was me now. The horror inside finally laid bare for all to see.

That’s me.

That was not how I was supposed to look, but it was me. The thing reflected on the water, garbed in a poor approximation of a child’s body, with dead pits for eyes, and a fake fanged smile that carved into your soul, that was me. I tried to twist my features into shape. Happy instead of haunted and hungry. Wide-eyed innocence instead of wild indignance. Timid instead of tortured.

Every failed attempt only made me feel more miserable. The flowing water of the stream animated all the horrible little details of my reflection. Features shifted subtly wrong with every change in the liquid flow. The caked blood in the scattered reflection undulated as if it hadn’t quite dried yet.

Remnants of slaughtered Inquisitor lingered on my tongue. With every breath, the last desperate moments of Remorseful-morsel Piers taunted my senses. Every swallow amplified the taste of him, sent it flowing down my throat until the very memory of him burned a hole in my stomach.

It was all so fake. The human mimicry, the lies, my hiding behind a mask of humanity was so disingenuous. I wasn’t happy, or innocent, or timid. Despite how much it shocked me, the mirror of water did not lie. It only reflected what I had always denied. This monstrous, man-eating horror, that was the real me.

I kicked the water, sudden ripples washing away my discomfort. There was no monster there. No vampire. If I couldn’t see it then it wasn’t real.

Not real.

Not.

Not, not, not—

The water stilled. Reality stared back at me, with cold condemnation of my denial. With an angry grunt of despair I clawed at my reflection. Four great scar-rents tore through my mirror self, further disfiguring the horrid visage. I punched the water, driving my entire fist through the scarred monster-face. As long as I kept my arm submerged the image wouldn’t be able to reform.

Sobbing quiet tears that would not come, I closed my eyes.

Later, the sweet scent of home and the soft crunch of gravel alerted me to Dad’s presence. Keeping my eyes closed, I turned to face him, pinpointing his exact location by scent and sound alone. Four sets of claws — hands and feet both — gouged the mud at the bottom of the riverbed. Instead of finding grip, comfort, support, they only managed to stir up silt.

I consciously held my legs still. Inattentiveness would naturally shift my awkward and strategically disadvantageous crouch into a perfect pouncing posture. I couldn’t have that, not in front of my dad, who was already so terribly afraid of me. It would be so easy though. Not bothering with the lie, being myself.

Why can’t I just let go…

“Valentina…” Dad sighed, shifting from leg to leg.

The water swirling at my feet carved into the riverbed, dug out the already unstable mud I was standing on, and my toes slipped.

That simple utterance of my name in his grating voice, it was like a promise. None of my trying to appear less threatening had any use. He had time to recover from the cold and shock, and had gotten his thoughts in order. The lecture, the self-righteousness was coming.

I shook my head, resigned. My foot found purchase again, my crouch a little closer to a pounce.

“Oh Valentina… what have you gotten us into?” Dad asked, accentuating the have with an unhealthy dose of indignation.

I swallowed the angry retort threatening to snarl its way out of my throat. Insult and offense. Distrust and abuse. He was always like this. And any second now he would complain about how my wrong decisions made him feel. How I was supposed to feel because of it. Divines, I can’t believe I ever thought him lecturing about his feelings was a good thing. As if I even needed his reprimands to know anymore. I already knew this was my fault. All my fault.

“Who is that woman even?” Even with my eyes closed I could imagine him gesturing in Aunt Reya’s direction. “She assaulted an Inquisitor. That could have gotten us all killed. We can’t just trust someone like that. Gods, none of this would have happened if I hadn’t let you talk me into this.”

I hung my head and opened my eyes. Crouched in the water’s reflection, sat the vicious monster. A horrid man-eating vampire that could not be trusted around people. Instead of staying locked away like a good little pet, it had pleaded and begged to be allowed into the wider world. Finally, its too-human father had relented, had shown misguided faith and trust. And the monster had slipped away from that chokehold of fear. It had roamed, explored, wandered…

And now Eryn was dead and everyone in Birnstead suffered the consequences because the monster wanted some pretend-humanity. Nearly a dozen Inquisitors slaughtered by the vile creature’s hand, torn apart simply for doing their duty, at a time when the war was going badly and every single one of them was desperately needed. My father’s false hope of raising a good little daughter, shattered. His entire life, ruined.

I smashed a fist into the water, shattering my reflection once more. Two deep breaths and I gave an appropriate response. “I’m sorry, alright!”

Except it was not the appropriate response. I knew, logically, what horrors I had inflicted on the world and the people around me. But I was not sorry. Apologies meant regret and an intent not to repeat the same mistake. I did not regret any of the things a normal person should be regretting, and if I was not careful I would probably do the same dumb things all over again.

“Sorry doesn’t fix this. What are we going to do? Where are we going to go?” Dad waved his arms in large, agitated gestures. Then he dropped them and his voice dropped with it. “How many did you kill?”

My head snapped up. My hand slipped and I nearly crashed into the river. “I—” I sputtered, mentally tallying. Two at Dad’s cell. Piers was my fault as well. Can’t forget about Arrin. Eryn and Granny Madge. How many of the Inquisition reinforcements were…

My thoughts faltered, overwhelmed by the look of absolute horror on Dad’s face as he relived those horrid moments; me tearing into Piers, me hunched over the dead guards at his cell. As the reminder had him thinking so many other questions.

As it had me thinking those same questions.

Did I like it?

Will I do it again? How many more? Can I even stop? Where will it end?

Am I even still your daughter?

My claws dug into the mud, but it didn’t have the same comforting texture as flesh. I chewed my lip, but it was a poor substitute for a freshly torn-off arm.

Dad froze, his sudden wide-eyed stare boring into me. It came with a fresh spike of fear, a nervous shiver erupting all over him, then the rigid posture of prey that hoped the predator wouldn't pounce as long as the prey remained perfectly still.

One glance was enough and then I looked away. It didn’t help, not seeing. His prey-taste was still there, screaming at me that he feared he’d said far too much. Dread cloyed the air, fear that he might have angered me beyond recovery, that he may have stirred me into a frenzy. His stuttered breathing grated my ears, every inhale sharp as if it was the very last before I tore him apart.

“Dad. No!” I begged. “You know I wouldn’t. You know…”

I wouldn’t kill you?

Except for that one time right after freeing you when I almost did. When the reinforcements rushed down into the dungeon and I reasoned, if ever so briefly, that sacrificing you was an easy way to secure my escape. Even if instantly dismissed, that single half-feral moment, that had been the truth of me. Dad had so wanted a child, someone he could love and care for and dote on. Instead, he had gotten me, the monster that wore his daughter’s skin. I knew all the right responses, all the tender, caring reactions I was supposed to exhibit. He had drilled them into me, day after day, for more than twenty years. But none of that learned behavior replaced my instinctive reaction.

Daughters cared, and I clearly did not. I absolutely would kill him if it ended up securing my safety. I would have killed Irina and the other Inquisitors if I had been a little more proactive. I could have broken out so much sooner, left a trail of so many more corpses if only I hadn’t been so stuck in my own fantasy of harmlessness.

I knew what my unnatural heart really wanted. And when I acted on it, I knew it was not me being strong. It was not me keeping some emotional distance to make more rational decisions. It was merely my true nature shining through. The real me, it was the monster reflected in the water.

It was hard to believe that, just a few short months ago, if I had heard of a vampire killing Inquisitors, I would have gone after it. I’d have to kill myself now. It was the right thing to do. It would rid the world of one more dangerous, man-eating monster. What a delusion. I couldn’t kill myself. And if another vampire showed up…

I don’t know.

I still wanted to protest, still wanted to deny my father’s unspoken accusations. But I had been silent for too long, a tacit admission of my guilt. It was too late for me to continue the lie about my nature.

I think he knew it too, because he threw up his arms. “Gods damn—”

Aunt Reya interrupted by stepping in front of my dad. She mimed slamming our heads together, then shoved the runelight stone I had dropped into Dad’s hand. What little light it had emitted was already mostly gone, the horridly carved circuit having leaked its charge. “You taught your daughter magic, right? Her little light stone broke. Fix it,” she ordered. “We need something to see by.”

“It’s not—” I hissed.

“You!” She dashed up to me, forced me to my knees, and dunked my head into the water. “You’re a mess, and you’re giving me a run for my money on murder-face. Clean up. Get dressed.”

Sputtering for air I didn’t even need, I surfaced.

Mercilessly, Aunt Reya dragged me to a sitting position. She raked a sharp comb through my hair while I hacked up water that had gotten in my lungs — still awful, even if I don’t need to breathe. She rubbed a wet and far too rough cloth all over my face to clean it of the worst gunk.

“Continue,” she commanded, shoving the wet rag in my hands and draping a dry cloth to towel myself off with over my head. “And once you’re done, put on a shirt. Like I ordered you gods damned forever ago. This night isn’t going to last and they will start hunting us when the sun comes up.”

Right. Wasting time.

Aunt Reya snatched the recharged runestone from Dad’s hands. “Good. Now, does anyone have a brilliant idea for how to survive this?”

“I don’t even know you,” Dad accused her. “Why should I trust you?”

Aunt Reya took a step towards him. “Because I’m all you’ve got, and I’m a sight more competent than the both of you put together. Objections?”

Dad acquiesced, his posture shrinking in on itself under Aunt Reya’s burning gaze.

“What’s your plan?” I asked as I finished toweling off. Even if I did not have the entire story, I trusted her. And if there was one thing I understood about Aunt Reya, then it was that when she was this snappy with people, it was out of disappointment. While Dad and I had been arguing, she must have been figuring out how to survive this.

Aunt Reya motioned us towards the horses. “I’ve spent a lot of time thinking of ways to get you safe once I finally got you out of those bastard’s claws, Vale. Didn’t have much else to do, besides wait, and hope, and scheme. I admit, I stepped out of this game quite a while ago, and trust and favors don’t always carry all that far. But I think I can still swing a couple of things, at least for a month or two.”

“This woman is sounding an awful lot like a criminal to me,” Dad muttered.

“We broke out of prison, Dad. What do you think that makes us,” I hissed, carefully not mentioning how much of that had been me slaughtering my way out. I couldn’t have Dad distracted by that when I desperately needed to build his trust in Aunt Reya’s capabilities in these kinds of situations. “She ran a gang in a past life. Street kids. In Rhicat, I think. She doesn’t really talk about it much. Or at all.”

“A gang!” Dad shouted. “These are the kinds of people you ran off to?”

“Divine’s sake, can you two make each other feel miserable some other time,” Aunt Reya hissed at us. “Right now we need to move.”

“Right,” I agreed. “What can you… swing exactly?”

“You know, contacts, places, connections. Ways to remain hidden and wait for the worst of this to blow over. It’s going to be harder with you and your dad than with you alone, but we’ll manage somehow.”

“A month or two, and you’re thinking we’ll need longer?” I asked, knowing she would need a lot longer than that. They’d never stop looking for me. Not ever. I presented too much of a threat. Beyond mere slaughter, I could thrall and turn people. I wasn’t just a singular vampire. I was a plague, a tide of doom threatening to sweep over the continent.

“I genuinely do not know how long it will take, Vale. All we can hope is that if we lay low long enough, that you turn into less of a priority. It’ll take as long as it takes.”

I mulled that over as I checked the horses we had. Aunt Reya had been busy while Dad and I had been arguing. What little we had in terms of supplies and gear had been redistributed evenly among the two animals. Everything was ready to go. I went through it all anyway, verifying that Dad wouldn’t lack anything essential, but mostly giving myself some more time to think. Aunt Reya clearly intended to aid us, both Dad and me, significantly, and for a long time. That was exactly what I needed from her, but what could she possibly gain from that?

I slipped into one of Aunt Reya’s smallest shirts. Predictably, it hung on my frail kid body like a badly fitted dress. “But you’ve already been gone from Birnstead for so long. You have a life there, a girlfriend. Hardly anyone knows you were here. You could go back. Why do this? Why for me?” I asked, fiddling with the garment, trying to get myself to look a little less like a petulant child.

“Yes Vale, for you.” Aunt Reya looked up thoughtfully. She kicked at a pebble. “In a way, this may be the stupidest thing I’ve ever done. I’ve had so many moments where I thought I’d give up and turn back. I didn’t need to do this, not for anyone. This was a fool’s errand. There’s nothing I’d be able to accomplish anyway. It would be easier to be selfish, and you were so strong that even cutting you into bits didn’t kill you.” Aunt Reya wiped away fresh tears. “But I’ve misjudged you once before, thinking you were strong when you were weak. Never again, Vale.”

I gave the shirt another tug. Aunt Reya had just voiced everything I thought about her helping me. It was stupid, and pointless, and made no sense. Yet she was helping anyway, and I was fairly certain she wasn’t even lying or deceiving me about it. I should be able to tell if she was being dishonest. I lived in Birnstead all summer. I had months to study her tells.

Selflessness. Perhaps it was as simple as that. Aunt Reya was doing this out of some kind of misplaced benevolence. Belief in selflessness was what had made the people of Birnstead accept me so readily. I went out of my way to take care of their Ahuizotl infestation. I amputated Uncle Tare’s leg, and saved his life in the process. They’d interpreted my actions as kindness. It wasn’t. Not really. It was merely the closest I’ve ever gotten to aligning self-interest with the benefit of others. The more I acted likable and helpful, the less likely the village had been to report on Onar’s vampire rumors.

But they believed in it, in kindness without any expectation of reciprocation. They performed irrationally selfless acts, all the time, without even realizing they were doing so. They could still be selfish, but sometimes they just weren’t. That was what made them human, while I wasn’t.

I could use a little more of those happy feelings that doing good brought though. I didn’t think I could manage months on end, with nothing to do but stay hidden. The thought of that reminded me far too much of how my life had been like before I set out. And this time those months of suffocation would be burdened even further with Aunt Reya hovering over me, constantly believing I was better than I really was.

I couldn’t have that, couldn’t sit idly by after I’d done such horrid things. I needed to do something that wasn’t ripping people to shreds, had to commit to something that wasn’t destructive or murderous or monstrous, and hope it gave me even the tiniest fragment of the indulgent thrills my escape had given me.

And most important of all, Uncle Hadrian was mine every bit as much as Dad and Aunt Reya were. He was in trouble, and I could not abandon him, no matter how much Dad insisted I did so. And even if rescuing him was yet another of my self–serving desires, I hoped that maybe, along the way, I could push my selfish wishes towards some kind of act that was at least a little bit selfless.

I gave up on the shirt and helped Dad onto Fern’s back. Aunt Reya checked how everything was stowed one last time, then took to the saddle of the more excitable horse. She extended a hand towards me, intent on letting me ride with her.

Instead of taking the offered hand, I let go of Fern, chanced a quick, toothless smile at my dad, and stepped back. Away from both of them.

“Vale?” Aunt Reya frowned, then gestured towards the treeline. “Now, please. Time is running out and I want a little more distance between us and the assholes that want to do this to you all over again.”

I shook my head.

Aunt Reya studied me. As I expected, it didn’t take her long to figure me out at all. “Sarding hell,” she swore, “you’re going after him, aren’t you? That is why you’ve been hearing me out.”

I looked at my feet, unable to meet her penetrating gaze. I felt bad about hiding my intentions from her. If it weren’t for my dad, then maybe I wouldn’t have. But if I had spoken openly about my desires, then Dad would have never gotten on Fern. He would have argued and kept on arguing. I couldn’t have that. Dawn was approaching, and Aunt Reya was right, we had no more time left for needless bickering.

“Yes, I am,” I mumbled. “Could you take my dad… without me?”

Perhaps it was wrong to trust someone as cold, ruthless, and manipulative as Aunt Reya to take care of my dad. But this was exactly why I trusted her with him. We were on the run. There was no room for goodness and kindness. The only thing that measured up to the brutal treatment the Inquisition had subjected my dad and me to was Aunt Reya’s callousness. She would do what was needed to keep my dad safe. Whatever it took.

Dad did not know which one of us to look at first. “Tina, no!” he cried out indignantly, when he finally realized my intentions. “He’s the smuggler that got us into Thysa, and he’s obviously involved in a lot more nasty business.”

“I have to,” I protested. Yes, Uncle Hadrian might have smuggled me — a vampire — into the country. Yes, he was probably deeply involved in this entire mess. Yes, that meant he has likely lied to me for my entire life. But he has always treated me as a person. He has never seen me as a monster, as something to be feared. His love for me has always been unconditional.

And he hired people to free me.

I had repaid that kindness by ratting him out. That Inquisitor in charge of my interrogation, Creeping-vines Sung, he had asked after him. I couldn’t quite remember if or how much I had told him about Uncle Hadrian, but Sung had asked about him during my escape. That meant he knew something at least. Sung had managed to locate and capture Dad. It was only a matter of time before he found Uncle Hadrian as well.

Reya pushed her horse along until she stood in front of me. When she looked down on me it was with a strange compassion. “This is not what you want to hear, but I must agree with your father. This uncle Hadrian is right in the middle of this mess, and you can not protect anyone if you can not even protect yourself.”

“I need to do this,” I pleaded. “He cared for me, Dad, Aunt Reya. And I repaid that kindness by giving his name to the Inquisitors.”

And I need to prove that I am still capable of kindness.

“You think I didn’t tell them?” Dad spat back. “They tortured me. I told them everything. But that doesn’t mean this isn’t the wrong thing to do. I want you safe, Turnip.”

“Don’t—” I cut myself off, refused to let this turn into an argument. “I’m still going. Please?” I stepped up to my dad and clutched his leg, almost begging him to understand.

“Tina… I…” his hand fluttered through the air as he sought for new words to dissuade me. His gaze drifted, then landed on Aunt Reya.

“If he is dear to you, then respect that he asked you to look after yourself first,” she offered.

“Can’t. Not when he’s clearly not looking after himself,” I countered.

For a moment, it looked like Dad had nothing to say to that. Then, right when I thought he’d resigned himself to my leaving, his hand landed on my head. His fingers dug into my hair. He plucked a strand out of my eyes and tucked it behind my ears with surprising gentleness. He sighed long and deep. Weary. “Oh Turnip, if you’re going to be this stubborn about it, then I’ll just have to come with you, won’t I.”