Sucks to Suck – Chapter 16

She was of very clear purpose as she walked out of the elevator and into the large art deco atrium located within the spire of the tall skyscraper. Those were the hallowed walls that contained the court of the Principality of Seattle, and Skye held a deep deference to the room as she did for the man that currently occupied the throne. She didn’t bother masking her steps, and her boots echoed across the floor as she walked from between the columns and into the centre of the hall proper. From the dais, the Prince watched her approach, and she looked up towards his regal presence.

He was wearing a modern suit, with a slick bespoke cut that was tailored to perfection to his slender, lithe frame. He had very dark skin, and the vampiric pallor had not lightened it, but instead simply robbed it of some of its redness and replaced it with a faint grey tint. It would be easy to miss for anyone with eyes less sharp than Skye’s. The Prince's hair was kept well trimmed and short, always so very short on the sides with just a hint of volume above, and paired with his suit, it made it hard to believe he was more than a couple of centuries old. The only thing outdated about him was the large chain of office worn around his shoulders, which marked him as the ruler of his domain. He lifted his wrist to check his expensive watch as Skye stopped three steps from the base of the dais, and she went down to one knee, lowering her head.

“My Prince,” she greeted, not lifting her head.

“Skye, my loyal left hand…” His words came with measured calm in his voice.

She had not yet broken the news to him, but she was sure that the Prince could’ve deduced them for himself by this point. She wasn’t dragging the solo vampire, and likely poacher, with her, which could only mean that she had failed her hunt, her task. Which meant she had failed him. But the sovereign likely wanted to hear it from Skye’s lips about her failure, and she would give him that. Her mouth tasted like ash to say it, but her honour demanded it:

“I failed you, my Prince. I believe I found the poacher, but I failed to bring her into your custody. I underestimated her and left her under the guard of my thrall. Somehow, she escaped from silver cuffs.”

The Prince listened in silence, and Skye didn’t dare to look up from her feet to see his expression. She had fed recently, enough that her heart still had its beat, and she could feel it racing as she anticipated the judgement and disappointment for her failure. They were, thankfully, alone in the courtroom, so Skye knew the Prince would speak the truth of his mind, instead of keeping appearances for the sake of others.

“Skye, get up.”

“My Prince,” she acknowledged the command and she raised herself from her knees.

Given her height, even with the elevation of the dais of a few steps, her head was essentially levelled with his as he sat upon the elevated throne, and she felt a faint tingle on the apple of her cheeks in anticipation for what he was about to say. His face had not changed from his calm and collected demeanour, and his hands caressed the wooden ends of the throne’s arm-support structures, shaped vaguely like a lion’s claw.

“Are you giving up on your hunt?” he asked deadpan.

Skye shook her head slowly. She had no intention of ceasing her pursuit of the solo, even though she knew it would be significantly harder now that the woman knew she was being hunted. Odds were she would be looking at her options to leave Seattle right now if she was smart, or considering at least changing her hunting grounds and hunkering down for the time being. Yet, Skye was wise to most tricks her kin relied on, and she believed she could find the woman before she was to escape the city if that was her plan.

“No, my sovereign…”

“Then, you have not failed me,” the Prince decided.

Skye resisted the urge to scoff. She wanted to tell him his forgiveness, while appreciated, was born out of emotion, and many would seek to use it against him in the future. But she would not speak out of turn to her sovereign, so she held her mouth. The Prince’s eyebrow lifted slightly as he studied Skye for a moment, and then he shook his head.

“You seem disappointed. Were you hoping that I would be irate?”

“No, my Prince…” Skye answered, “I’m concerned…”

“That I’m too soft on you?”

The question was asked point blank, and this was not how Skye would’ve put things. But her honour would not allow her to lie, so she slowly dipped her head to confirm it. And the Prince’s calm expression curled to form a vague smile.

“Your concern is appreciated. But your mission remains a secret, so there are no appearances to be kept by punishing you for failing your first attempt at capture. And besides, whether you see it as such or not, you had some measure of success… This woman… She’s the poacher, right?”

“I believe so,” Skye said, “I am not certain, and there are questions I would ask of her, but I think so. I doubt there are many solos out there that escaped our notice.”

“That’s a fair assessment. I can’t go back on what I said to Ronan and admit the poacher eluded me the first time, but it seems that the problem is real, so he might not be making a play for the throne. Well, not ‘just’ a play for the throne.”

“He is still dangerous, regardless of how veritable his claims were, my Prince.”

“He is. He is a Celt in a Rose-run city. He will never be anything but dangerous, Skye. But he is the danger I know. I cannot remove him without setting the bloodlines into war, so we must manage him. Agreed?”

Skye would rather see Ronan removed than appeased, but she wasn’t the ruler of the Principality, the Prince was. So, she held her tongue again and dipped her head once more. Not necessarily agreeing it was the best solution, but acknowledging it was his wish.

“Find this solo again, bring her to me. We might be able to dispose of her discreetly, but before that, I would hear what she has to say…”

“What is that you hope to hear, my Prince?” Skye asked, bluntly.

“That Ronan was aiding her, or looking the other way deliberately. If I can prove the poacher was a problem he manufactured, the rest of the Celts will have no choice but to elect a new leader.”

“I thought you said you rather deal with Ronan.”

“I do. He’s the oldest and the strongest of them. I don’t expect him to remain away from power for long. Perhaps a decade or two? Then he will return, for sure… But I rather deal with a weakened leadership, struggling to regain control of his people, and who knows he was beaten, than deal with a Ronan leading a unified clan.”

It was Skye's turn to smile, or at least come very close to it. The Prince was thinking decades ahead of the current game. And that was why he had been the Prince for so long, and why she was so eager to serve him.

“But, Skye, this all starts with you bringing me the girl in such a condition that we can procure the truth from her… Understand?”

“Yes, my Prince,” Skye said, “I shall bring her to you.”

“I know you will,” he said, matter-of-factly.

The hunter and the Prince exchanged a prolonged gaze before she closed her eyes and lowered her head and shoulders in a slow and deferential bow. And with that, she was dismissed. Skye took the elevator back down towards the lobby and exited the building to walk towards the large black SUV with dark tinted windows. She opened the passenger door and climbed on the seat. Even with it pushed fully back, it was hard to find a comfortable position for her long legs. Her knees had to bend slightly to fit in the allotted space. Next to Skye was her thrall; Felicia looked at her with eyes wide with excitement for her return, but she didn’t speak. She knew better than to talk before Skye had commanded her to.

“Drive,” Skye ordered, closing her eyes.

“Where to, Mistress?”

“Just… Drive, for now.”

Felicia still had a lingering pallor from being fed on, and it was clear that she was struggling to conciliate her new found night-life after work, following Skye around and serving her, with the rest of her mortal life; she had large black bags under her eyes and a general look of being ragged. Her hair was a mess, and she had likely skipped a shower or two given the way she smelled. Skye didn’t mind it, if anything, this added to that aura of a grateful lost dog that Felicia had around her, the way she looked at Skye as if she had been rescued from a life of mediocrity and boredom and Skye was a beaming ray of hope.

The mortal started to drive away from the downtown skyscraper and towards the coast, and Skye mused to herself, thinking of where to go next. The first stop would be to start where she had last seen the girl. It had been a couple of nights and if this was a smart vampire, she would’ve uprooted and moved already, but maybe Skye could find out about her previous life and associates. Then there was the company she worked for, which Houston had told Skye about. But they were a cleaning company that moved around town, and even assuming that the woman wouldn’t discard that job as easily as she would discard the place she lived in, finding out where they were that night, would take time, and there was a chance Skye could get there only to find out she wasted the night pursuing it, and Marion wasn’t there.

Skye mused on her options as Felicia reached the broad Alaskan Way street following the shape of the Puget Sound and began to drive North. The docks passed them by on one side, while two massive sports arenas passed through the other, almost one immediately after the other, and the hunter was still unsure how she would proceed to find her quarry. And then, Skye’s phone buzzed. The number calling her wasn’t available, but she had a good guess of who it was.

“Speak,” she answered the call.

“That’s an awkward way to pick up your phone,” Houston’s voice came from the other side.

“Yet effective,” Skye said without inflexion, “what do I owe this call to, Houston?”

“You owe it to the desire of preserving this tenuous alliance we have going,” Houston said, without much patience. “I’ll text you an address to an abandoned building in Miller Park. One of our informers saw a girl that matches London’s description there.”

“When?”

“Ten minutes ago…”

“Are you sure it's her?”

“Sure? No. But the informant seemed pretty confident. Says she’s even wearing the cat hoodie.”

The mention of the outfit increased significantly Skye’s confidence in the information. She paused for a moment and then said:

“Thank you, I’ll check it personally…”

“Good, because we can’t spare people to pick her up for you tonight…”

“Won’t be necessary, nor desired. Best to preserve some separation between our affairs.”

“Well, can say that again.”

“Why? Was it not clear the first time?”

“Nevermind, Skye. Sending you that text n-“ There was a pause in his voice and a sigh, and then he picked up his sentence from where he left it, with a mildly annoyed correction. “Texting you that address now.”

“Appreciated.”

Skye turned off the call, and even before the address was sent to her, she turned to Felicia:

“Do you know how to reach Miller’s Park?”

“Know it? I lived there for a while…”

“Good. Take us there, fast. I’ll tell you exactly where in a moment.”

“Yes, ma’am…”

Felicia nodded and with a proper destination given, she began to drive the car faster across the broad avenue, and soon she took a right, leaving their northbound direction to instead head east. Skye pursed her lips, resisting the urge to chew on them. Something was bothering the hunter; it was very fortunate that the night she had set out again in pursuit of Marion, she had been handed such a clue. Perhaps even too fortunate, but she had no reason to believe Houston wanted to waste her time or harm her by providing a fake lead. He had aided her in tracking Marion the first time, and the Prince seemed to hold faith in the alliance of the Cross and Rose. So, she would not question his judgement. But she felt something that was almost a physical sensation on the back of her neck; a shapeless uneasiness on the edges of her mind about the whole situation. But an amorphous suspicion wasn’t good enough reason for the hunter to abandon pursuit. Especially not when she knew the Prince was counting on her to bring the girl to him. When she knew how much the fate of the Principality and the throne could depend on her successfully capturing her mark.

As they approached the neighbourhood, Skye gave Felicia the address and she entered it on her phone, using the GPS navigation to bring them to East St. John street, and they were looking down a descend, when the vampire commanded her thrall to park the car around one hundred yards from their destination. She didn’t want to risk driving too close and alerting Marion. This was far from the area where she had first seen the girl, and it was a relatively low-density residential zone. A mix of multi-unit low houses and single-family homes seemed to cover almost the whole extension of St. John, and with the light rain falling outside, there were not many people walking around at this time. Unlike downtown, there was very little for mortals to do in such a place at night, besides close their doors and wait for dawn.

Skye pressed her hand on her thigh, where Marion had stabbed her with her own knife. The wound had healed completely in a couple of nights, especially with Skye having fed plentifully in the meantime, but she could still feel the ghost pain of it. It was a wound on her pride more than her body.

“Wait here,” Skye commanded her thrall and moved to open the car door.

“Mistress, wait…”

Skye paused and turned to see Felicia’s tired, pleading eyes looking at her from the driver’s seat with aching desperation. She took a deep breath, knowing that a good hunter was patient, and rushing was not likely to land her her prey.

“Yes, pet?”

“You… You are going to fight her again, right?”

“No, I don’t expect there will be a fight this time,” Skye said simply.

“But still…” Felicia moved her hand towards her plaid wool sweater, to pull it down until it showed the whole of her neck, and parts of her shoulder and collar. “You should feed…”

“Pet, you need to recover before I can drain you again…” Skye said, impatient that Felicia seemed to need such reminders often.

“Please? Just a drop…? Just so I…”

Felicia didn’t finish the sentence, struggling to articulate her need. And Skye closed her eyes and inhaled. The Kiss was a pleasurable thing, and many mortals who tried it would find themselves craving it. Paired with the Bond of Blood, it was no wonder that Felicia could barely function without Skye’s attention. The tall, lanky vampire moved across the seats, to press her nose against Felicia’s neck and inhale deeply the feminine scent of her sweat and her skin. The touch of Skye's slightly less-than-bodily-warm skin against her neck caused Felicia to squirm as if Skye had shoved her hand between the woman’s thighs. Skye pushed her tongue out, licking the neck from the nook where it connected to the shoulder all the way to the base of Felicia’s ear, as she whispered softly:

“What are you?”

“Your pet, Mistress,” Felicia answered, without hesitation.

The correct answer was rewarded with the song of fangs extruding; the wet click causing Felicia to gasp, jump and squirm, closing her thighs together in anticipation. And then Skye bit into her lobe, not hard enough to break the skin, but letting the woman feel the sharp point of teeth against it.

“And what am I?”

“E-everything, Mistress…”

“Good pet,” Skye praised, retreating her fangs. “Now… What do good pets do when told to wait?”

“T-they… Wait…”

Skye closed her eyes. The fear, the arousal and the passion in Felicia’s voice brought her back. Back to the hot summer night, with the distant spires of the Haga Sofia cut against a full moon that bounced off the tiled rooftops of the Queen of Cities, visible through the mansard window of an inn room while the cheap bed sheets smelled like the promise of lovers, fated to always be broken by deceit or time. The girl's voice that night was also filled with fear, arousal and passion then. And she knew, since then, how to handle that. Skye reached down to grab Felicia’s brown hair in a bundle and aggressive gesture, tugging it back to force Felicia to bare her throat to her and to graze fangs by it.

“So, wait you shall, pet. And when I desire to feed on you… I will.”

She whimpered in a way that a less perceptive one might take as pure fear, but Skye could smell the sweet, feminine and rich scent that rose from under her skirt, and sensed the heartbeat speed up inside her chest. She could feel the rush of blood to those cheeks. Best that she marinated in her own expectations, Skye decided. When it was time to feed, she would only taste better for it. A final lick against her neck, causing Felicia to writhe in place, and Skye released her and stepped out of the car, feeling the rain touch her face as she began to walk down the street.

The cubic three stories tall apartment building in East St. John, the one referred to in the address that Houston had sent her, wasn’t abandoned for a long time. The windows were shattered and a few of them boarded, sure, and some graffiti had been painted on the outside of the plain brick walls. The small patch of grass around the building was overgrown, and a chain-link fence had been placed around it, mostly to keep the kids from the nearby homes from playing there, Skye guessed. But the structure showed no signs of the damage that would come from prolonged neglect, the windows and doors only had mild rust and moisture stains. If she had to guess, she’d say it was closed between five and ten years ago, and locked away instead of sold for a reason or another. 

The interior was dark, of course, even if the street around it was relatively well-lit, but from where she stood, just across the street from it, she could see a vague orange flickering coming from a corner window on the third floor. It would be easy to miss it for most, confused with the reflection of one of the lamp posts, perhaps. But she recognised the light of candles.

“Are you hunkering down in there, my little rabbit?” Skye mused to herself, placing her hands in the pockets of her large trench coat. “Why would you need candles when we own the night? Are you afraid of the dark? Afraid of what it will reveal about you?”

After briefly closing her eyes and looking up to feel the rain falling on her face, Skye took a step forward and she stepped into nothing. Anyone looking at her directly would see her move behind a curtain that simply wasn’t there, and disappear. She felt the blood inside her being consumed like fuel on a forge, but instead of heat, it warded off the light, sent it dancing around her, and created a pocket in the world where she could walk without being seen. Her boots still echoed across the sidewalk, but she didn’t bother wasting her energy muffling them yet, knowing that the rain was more than enough to conceal her footsteps. The gate across the small fence was closed by padlock and chain. But as Skye reached the padlock, she found that it was unlocked, left there mostly so that the unobservant eye would think nothing had changed. Opening and closing the gate would cause more noise than she cared to do, so she hopped across it, tossing herself in the air and hearing her trench coat flutter behind her as she fell. Until, half a second before contact with the ground, she focused her will inside herself and silenced it. As she fell onto it, she did so light as a feather and just as quietly.

There was an overgrown stone path towards the steps that led to the main entrance of the building, and Skye walked the distance unseen and unheard, and then, very gently, she pushed against the main door, not surprised that it, much like the gate, had been left closed but unlocked, to fool anyone looking from the outside into thinking the building was empty. She walked past the mailboxes in the corridor, which were littered with trash, beer cans, loose paper and other signs of teens and other interlopers that had broken into the building in the intervening years since it was closed down. The scent of derelict buildings was always a combination of the same notes; stale urine, rust, mould and rotting wood. Skye's eyes could see well in the gloomy interior, and to either side there were doors leading into apartments on the ground floor, around six of them, with a stairwell towards the middle of the building. The light flickering was on the third floor, on the northern corner, so she started to steadily move there. Steps still silenced by her ability, but she still moved slowly, careful not to kick out a bit of rubbish, or knock something over. The landing of the stairwell was filled with broken glass from a couple of shattered window panels, and instead of risking walking over them, she perched herself on the railing and jumped through the void in between, to grasp onto the rail of the second floor and then repeat the jump towards the third. Vaulting over the railing without a sound, she could hear the rain outside, the rustling of leaves, the distant sound of car engines and tires scratching asphalt when headlights passed by. And little else. A tiny heartbeat, as a rat, as unaware of her presence as any mortal would be, walked right by her legs. And then she turned the corner from the stairwell and began to walk towards the apartment.

She smiled as she spotted a string crossing the corridor at shin level, tied to either side to a nail outcropping from the wall, and with a couple of empty beer bottles hanging on either side. If Skye was to trip and rupture it, the noise would be enough to alert someone on the other side. If she was suspicious of the clue before, now she felt that suspicion melting. Whoever was hunkering down there was hiding, and how many girls with black hair and cat-eared hoodies would be trying to hide from someone in Seattle?

But there was something else in the air. Something that smelled both strange and familiar, rising over the unpleasant scents of abandonment that clung to the building. She smelled blood, human blood. Skye walked past the trap without triggering it, and sure enough, redundancy called for a second one to be set further down the corridor, which she avoided as well. It wasn’t a bad practice, but anyone who avoided the first trap would be on the lookout for the second. The effort was amateurish, but she could respect the effort.

As Skye reached the door to the apartment, she heard whispers coming from within. The door was ajar, and there was a faint hint of luminosity coming from under it and the open gap. They were there, Marion and someone else. A human thrall? No, that scent… It was human, yes, but there was something unknown and dark to it. If they were staring straight at the door, they would see it opening, and even if Skye herself was concealed behind her shroud, they would know she was there. But there was no other way in. Maybe she would just need to risk it and be prepared to lunge at the girl.

This time, Skye had brought no silver cuffs. She would not need them. She would beat Marion into submission and carry her by the neck if she had to, back to the Prince. No pauses to feed, no interruptions. But she still drew her blade, thinking that she might need to make quick work of the thrall before she could beat the vampire. Marion was a Rose, like her Prince, so she was unlikely to have any tricks she could surprise Skye with in combat. She had seen how hard Marion could fight. She would not underestimate her. Not again.

She pushed the door open, just enough for her to squeeze herself through the gap. It creaked, and as expected, the whispering stopped. The narrow entrance corridor parted into a doorless arch to the right that led into a kitchen, and further forward, into a living room that took up the whole corner of the apartment and also, judging by the light, connected to the kitchen. The candlelight came from the living room. To the left, there was a side corridor towards the two bedrooms and bathroom. Skye closed her eyes and listened, over the rain, to the sound of breathing and heartbeat coming from the living room. And then as she walked toward it, silent step by silent step, she knew that her presence there was known. They had not seen her, but the prey was holding its breath, aware of the stalking predator. Just as Skye reached the archway into the kitchen, she spotted something on the carpet. A circle, drawn with chalk and salt. It would be easy to miss in the dark if wasn’t for her vampiric sight.

That seemed like real magic, and she had seen similar things before. A circle of retention that would trap her if she was to step on it. The vampire had a thrall who had the Gift? That was concerning. Skye would need to kill the thrall before it could cast a spell. But she still had an advantage over them. They were counting on her eagerness and carelessness and trapped her path towards the living room, so she entered the kitchen instead. There, from over the counter, she saw the two hunching in the dark room, lit by candles and staring into what seemed to be a ritual circle, bigger than the trap one, with a number of offerings in the middle of it. Marion and another woman clad in black and white, with long wavy hair, clutching a notebook in her hands. Their eyes were fixed on the spot where the corridor emerged into the living room and the circle was placed. A valiant effort, Skye thought, as she looked at the young mortal beside Marion. She didn’t look dangerous, but she was. Skye gripped tighter on her dagger and moved to the gap between the counter and the wall, to approach them.

She stopped, looking down, just to be safe, that no circle had been placed there either. Redundancy was smart, after all, and they seemed to know that with their other trap. Sure enough, another outline of chalk and salt had been traced there, harder to spot against the clear tiles. And it had almost worked, Skye thought, as she took a long stride over it and stepped onto the carpet of the living room, shifting the grip on her dagger to invert it so that the blade was pointing to her forearm.

And as her boot touched the carpet, brightness erupted in the room. The candles in the room erupted in flames just as the carpet did and Skye shielded her eyes reflexively from the fire. As she tried to move, her feet were stuck to the ground, and she looked down, squinting, to find that a circle had burned through the carpet around her, this one larger than the other two and marked by strange sigils she couldn’t recognise. Fury raised inside her as she realised that the traps she avoided, all of them, were mere decoys to this one.

The two women stood alerted by the fire, and even though they couldn’t see Skye, they turned towards her, or towards where they knew she was, caught in the true circle trap. Skye's fury started to burn hotter as she put all her will into moving either of her legs, but her feet were firmly planted on the floor. She was caught.

“A-ha! I told you it would work,” the mortal thrall said, confidently.

“Skye?” Marion called to the invisible woman. “We just want to talk… So, you can reveal yourself.”

Skye remained invisible, as her awakened heart beat with rage. She considered just tossing her dagger and killing the thrall, but if that failed for whatever reason, she was surrounded by fire and locked to the floor. And fire was one of the things that could most certainly destroy a vampire. She didn’t drop the shroud, but she had to focus her will on calming down. She couldn’t fail her Prince. Dying would mean failing him as much as failing to apprehend Marion would. Whatever she had to do now, she would. Because she had a mission.

Slowly, she dropped the shroud, and Marion winced backwards as Skye emerged into view like she had been covered by a silk sheet coloured like reality and now it dropped into nothingness, revealing the hunter behind it.

“Oh fuck… She’s big,” the thrall said.

“You want to talk, Marion?” Skye said, sighing in resignation as she sheathed her dagger. “Then let’s talk.”