High Tide

Something was wrong. Gregor woke me that sunset, he shouldn’t even have access to those corridors bellow the main house. Also, one of his arms was missing and the fellow was covert in bruises and sparkling wounds.

“What happened?”

“Started as a fight between the gorgons. The matrons betrayed their High Priestess, apparently, killed her by decapitation. There was a short civil war in their villa.

Before we could understand what was happening, the matrons opened our defences to invaders. Most of them were blood thralls. According to your wife, the neighbour families joined forces to attack us, added mercenaries to their numbers. There is a small family from East Africa specialized in a power that makes them immune to sunlight. They acted as leaders and elite forces, doing most the damage in critical areas.

Our tower was hit hard, the laboratories destroyed. The bodies of my friends destroyed, I still didn’t know if they managed to escape back to our main computer or are lost. Completely destroyed.

Officially, your family is not a noble family yet. There was no presentation to the court. Even if the other families know you have credentials to present, they can claim ignorance. Still, according to your wife, they could not have attacked with such force if they didn’t had agents already inside. The treason was, terrible.

The gorgons turned most your family into stone, including her. Your wife. The survivors, the humans they took as trophies, spoils of war. Your vampire cousin, they ripped her heart out, completely consumed her body.

Some of us organized a resistance, but we could do little. Some gorgons, loyal to the deceased High Priestesses, they stayed behind. Waiting your judgement.

“Prisoners?”

“We captured only five enemy gorgons, and a dozen blood thralls. They are in a cell in this level. We do not know how things are in the surface. With night arriving, their main forces are probably taking position, seeking to gain access. If they find us here, we are doomed.

Do you want to interrogate the prisoners?”

“No. Take me to my wife.”

“Madam Vampirela is a stone statue now. There is no point in…”

“Where?”

“She felt in the internal garden, right in front of main entrance.”

I didn’t listened anymore. Didn’t asked about the other survivors or considered the need to pass judgement on traitors. Tranquilize those who didn’t betrayed me, that they would not be punished for the crimes of their sisters, didn’t crossed my mind.

Something was braking inside me.

I left the elevator in the surface. Walked to destroyed ruins that had been my home the night before.

The statue was where she was supposed to be. Transfigured by hate, in a gesture of defiance. Bulled holes, broken pieces missing.

A smile grew in my face, while the sounds of vehicles approaching from all directions replaced all my sense of identity and reality. My sanity was gone and with it any purpose of vengeance. What came next was, inertia.

There was no vampire above 500 thousand years in the armies sent by 41 local families, more supporters from 77 others, from different parts of Earth. There was couple thousands of vampires, acting as bands, coordinating with their families. Most of them young children of the night. Their coward elders remained safe, in their own domains.

There was a few gorgons, and over 15 thousand soldiers commanded by blood-thralls, some of those thralls older than any vampire in the invading forces.

Fight was over, most the spoils that could be carried away had already been taken. This people was here to help define which pieces of real state each member of their coalition would get. Some elite forces where still taking position to find and open remaining vaults and panic rooms. Underground tunnels that could have been used for escape. Things like that.

No one noticed me, on my knees, looking at that statue. For a long time, they walked up and down, until someone finally point and call attention.

I was not hiding or clocked. I was just there, harmless, defeated.

Then everything inside me came out.

I lost shape, lost the borders of my body, melted into the ground and the darkness of the night. Moved, without moving. And they tried to scream but failed.

No one escaped, that night. All enemies in my lands disappeared. Their memories told me where to go.

I hunted without being seem, thanks to the Oblivion Cloak, my hunt advanced through day and night, thanks to the vampires I consumed during the first night who had well developed Sunflower Seed. I lost count of my actions and accepted no surrender. Entire families disappeared. Most gorgons escaped, fleeing to beyond my reach.

Enough gorgon elders felt, consumed by me. For her secret knowledge to teach me that was possible to reverse the petrification. Expensive and time consuming, but possible.

That was what finally calmed the waters, turned the tide of my spirit down, so my individual identity was able to emerge once more.

I came back home, 9 vampiric families entirely consumed by the oceans inside me.

Janaina’s hearth in my hand.

Standing there, in my home, only three nights later. I lost the last illusion that I would ever manage to control this power. The ocean was too vast, and too deep, now. It would only grow from there. I would learn to harvest power from it, but never understand and much less make myself the master of it.

But I butchered enough blood thralls to fill a bathtub with blood. From that blood, Janaina emerged 17 hours later. Fully recovered, albeit deeply traumatized from the horrors of that night.

Uncle Bob found me a little latter. He had been locked in conversations. Isolated on purpose, to prevent his interference in those plans. Or so he said.

I had no reason to not believe him. Then, I accepted his official decision to join the family and help in the reconstruction of our domains.

No one in the Nocturnal Civilization understood exactly what had happened.

They knew some weapon had been used to defeat my enemies. Some instrument of vengeance. The secret itself was reason enough to avoid another adventure. We had time to think now, and to return to life those transformed into stone by the enemy gorgons.

Simone and Rielle were fine, safe in the computer as programs. Waiting to be downloaded in new bodies as soon as we managed to build those. I promised to Gregor that I would make that my first priority, after the recovery of my wife.

Gregor and Janaina lock me every day, before sunrise. Not for all day, though. And emergency protocols will wake me up any moment, day or night. If I am needed.

My powers are dangerous, specially when my mind falls into sleep. My dreams are violent and open doors to terrifying places. Being the prisoner of my own home is the lesser evil. The only way to stay with my family and protect them. Without risk to became the cause of their destruction.

Now I am the one standing, waiting. When the Italian recover her conscience, I shall be by her side. To welcome her back.

And leave the last steps of the diplomacy necessary to present our family to the local Nocturnal Court in their hands. Albeit, that will be what is left from that Nocturnal Court.