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see-arcane · 1 day ago

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Blood of My Blood: Longest Night

I imagine it's tricky for a family that's 3/4 vampires to celebrate the regular batch of holidays. But a kid deserves to be festive now and then and there is a handy time of year for nocturnal sorts to celebrate.

December 21st, the winter solstice, the Longest Night.

You can read under the cut or on Ao3 here.

There were three holidays in the castle.

One was St. George’s Day Eve, which neatly held hands with the boy’s birthnight. Father was always called away for the hunting of blue flames, but after the celebration of the night with Papa and Mum, Father would be waiting for him by his coffin at sunrise. He would have a coin harvested early from the earth and some gift of his own to give. It was good.

Another was New Year’s Eve. To the boy’s knowledge, this was considered the birthnight of Time itself. He would get to unwrap a fresh calendar to hang and do something called a ‘toast,’ though there was no hot crisp bread involved. Papa would down a glass of something that burned the boy’s nose to smell, then Father, Mum and the boy would take a single quick sip and welcome the New Year. Papa’s blood always tasted different after those drinks, a little singed, but somehow nice and swimmy on the tongue. It was good.

But the best was Longest Night.

Longest Night was preceded by the crucial private magic of Shortest Day. No one was allowed to be up and awake during the Shortest Day, or else the joys of Longest Night would not happen. The Visitors that came by daylight were swift and skittish and would not stop to deliver their bounty if anyone was up to spy on their work. They might skip by regardless if they were not left the token of food before all were in bed by sunrise.

“What do they eat?”

“Whatever a home has to spare for a plate,” Papa told him. “Sweet things, usually.”

“Like the pep mints?”

“Peppermint, yes. Biscuits, cake, chocolate.”

This had worried the boy at first. Papa tasted sweeter in December from all the Longest Night things he and Mum put together in the kitchen. Once, Papa had been doing something with pieces of fruit, cloves, and spices, the result pouring perfume out of the bowl and through the air. And, perhaps not quite by accident, Papa allowed one of the hard little cloves to cut his thumb.

“Oh dear. Could you help me, Sweetheart?” Under his breath, smiling, “Quick!”

The boy rushed to put his mouth to the cut. Papa’s blood hit his tongue in a new way. He thought of the red-white candy that had shown up after Papa’s last errand—

“You had pep mint!”

“Peppermint. Yes, I did. Is it any good?”

“Have to check.” Another sip. Another. “Checked. Very good.”

“Good.”

Good, but sweet. What if..?

The Visitors will not come for Papa, Dearest.

Mum’s hand on his shoulder, her smile on her face and in her son’s mind.

He is for us alone. Besides, he would not fit on a plate. On that note…

The boy watched his mother’s gaze float to Papa, something of either mercy or conspiracy in her look.

…it need not be desserts alone. It is cold out for those who are not like us, and the Visitors would surely appreciate something with more heat in it. Supposing Papa is willing to part with some of his paprika.

“Absolutely.”

Something to keep in mind for the Eve before Shortest Day. But for now, we need to hunt for the tree.

The tree was very important for the Visitors. They were wild folk who were used to taking and receiving bounty in wilderness. Unless the boy wanted the gifts from them all left piled against some random trunk in the forest, the castle needed a tree of its own. One they could shelter and dress so that there was no mistaking it as the tree to stop for. The boy was scrupulous in seeking this particular quarry. It could not be too tall or too short, too spindly or too thick. There must be no animals living in it, not even the bats; though he knew already from Father that they had all taken off to their caves for the winter. It must be just right.

Eventually they came upon it, powdered in snow and sweet-stinging with its aroma.

This one?

“This one!”

Mum cleaved the trunk from its roots, hoisting it as airily as she might have carried the boy. They returned to the castle and set it within the stand that Papa had built for it. Then came the decoration. Threads of nutshells and dry berries hardened to beads were wound around the boughs, ready to turn to kindling once it came time to break the tree up into firewood. Give or take a few wooden ornaments the boy painted himself. He was still hanging them when Father appeared. Standing and staring and silent as the boy worked.

Father had allowed Longest Night to happen because of Papa. The boy knew so. Young as he was, there were some realities that one accepted without needing the Lesson laid out in words.

It was especially easy to accept as the boy had spoiled his own attempt at wheedling Father about holidays not so long ago. He had found one in a book on a high shelf in the library. The boy had clambered up to it for the sake of its pretty leather spine and flipped through it in awe of its illustrations. One in particular had arrested him. Even what little bits of the poem-story that went with it seemed somehow simpler to ingest than the rest of the dense writing about a king named Arthur and his many legendary knights. The image that held him was all holly greens and reds, with a wide-eyed young man gawking up at an emerald giant in knight’s armor, holding his own severed head as it rained blood. Beyond them, rows of knights and King Arthur himself stared over their banquet tables.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight had much the same bones as other fairy tales he was privy to, but the boy had caught on a word that had yet to show up anyplace else in his storybooks. A word that carried with it implications of revelry that was meant for adults as much as children, a thing of games and gifts and feasting and joy that nobody grew out of. A miserable fate that seemed to be the case with birthnights. The boy was alone in celebrating his, despite Father, Mum and Papa surely having birthnights of their own. It suggested to him that birthnights would go without celebration on some distant grownup year. But a holiday! Those stuck. And they were for everyone.

All this in mind, he had come to Father with the book under his arm and asked, “What’s Christmas?”

Father declared that Christmas was two things. First, a dreamed-up fiction for the imaginary knights in the book to celebrate. Second, a topic the boy was not to mention again. Now give him the book, diavol.

Foolishly, the boy had hugged the book to himself, citing the fact that it was in the library, and Father had said he could read whatever he liked in it, and—

“Boy,” Father had said, soft as a knife cutting snow, “you have a moment to consider whether you wish to disobey me.” Father’s eyes had flared. “There, it has passed. Now give me the book.”

The boy had given it. Father had given it to the fireplace.

Knowing he wasn’t to cry and waste blood, the boy had held his tears in. At least until he was outside, far from the courtyard and tucked up in a tree, weeping until he was the color of Papa’s hair. Mum had found him. They’d returned home only when they felt sunrise plodding toward them. The next nights had been odd. Different in the way they had been after Father had torn Hoppy to shreds.

That time before had ended with Father taking him aside for a lecture on the folly of pining for weak animals that would only break one’s heart with their frailty, capped with the gifting of a wolf crafted from downy fur and glass eyes. The boy had managed to tamp back joyous tears then, embracing his Father through an armful of plush.

The atmosphere of those preceding nights had settled thickly again. And it came, as it had before, from Papa. It was not so fiery as Father’s presence or as icy as Mum’s, but it was there. No one was more aware of it than Father. It might have been funny in a book: Father growing more and more agitated the more sedate Papa turned, until Father was left pacing and fuming while Papa went silent and almost frigid with patience. Until, finally, a week’s worth of nights passed and Papa and Mum came to the boy with talk of Longest Night. A thing left uncelebrated thus far because Father was not one for frivolity and Papa and Mum had left off holidays when they came to live in the castle.

Why?

“Your parents want for so little here, diavol,” Father had broken in, lupine smile back in its place. “It seemed unnecessary for us to bother with such rites. But you are here and young and new enough to want such things.” A clawed hand had flapped as Father dismissed them and himself. “Revel with it as you like.”

And that had been that.

Now here was Father, scrutinizing the tree, curling his lip at the decoration.

“Is something wrong, Father?”

“Not for me. I am not the one expecting a tree wearing nothing but nuts and berries to stand out from every other in the forest. Even painted, it will hardly catch any Visitor’s eye.”

The boy sat up with a shiver, “It won’t?”

“I am afraid not. Your Papa and your mother, they hail from a choked and choking city with little in the way of nature. It is no wonder any meager flash of green caught attention there. But here, in our verdant mountains, there would need to be more applied. This?” He flicked one of the nutshell cords Mum had helped him with. “Will be as good as invisible.” He held up his hand before the boy could speak. “I have something that may be of use. Supposing you wish to bother with it.”

The boy was already adhered to his side. Off they went, up, up, up to Father’s own bedroom. There, piled in the corner…

“The coins will not hang, of course. But these?” Father hooked a dust-caked golden necklace. A ruby huge as a hen’s egg and bright as his own brooch dangled on it. The boy was already enamored with a chain of twinkling emeralds and a bracelet dewed with diamonds. “If these do not snare attention, the Visitors must be blind.” They were perfect and the boy told him so, pausing in his elation to embrace his Father’s leg tight enough to break an ordinary man’s bones. “Yes, yes. Take your bounty, magpie, and be off.” But Father lingered to watch as the boy loaded himself up with chains and cuffs enough to make him jingle all the way downstairs.

“Mum! Papa! Father had more decorations!”

They saw. Mum kept her expression even while Papa straightened with something like recognition. Yet this moment passed as the work of stringing the gold along the boughs began. The tree glittered and blazed as though it had been crafted by a giant’s jeweler. Given the chance, the boy might have sat up with the tree all day just to stare at it.

“You need to rest, Sweetheart. There’s more to do tomorrow.” Papa held out a sheet of paper and a sharpened crayon. “Remember?”

The boy squirreled himself away with the stationery, scribbling carefully in his coffin. Another important thing to remember about Longest Night was that the Visitors were not like himself or Mum or Father. They couldn’t just dip into someone’s mind and know what they wanted. If the boy did not write out what he wished for and have it sent out, the Visitors would be left to guess. Papa was entrusted with delivering his list in the post on his next errand in town. Father even let him seal the envelope with his own stamp, the wax writhing with a scarlet dragon.

With that done, now he had to consider what gifts he would bring to the tree. For the Visitors were not responsible for every present brought. Families wrapped and traded gifts among themselves too. But oh! What could he give that his parents, who wanted for nothing in the castle? Worse, how could he do what even the Visitors couldn’t, and guess the answers? He was not as smooth as Mum or Father when he peeked into a mind; even Papa caught him at it. There was simply no knowing without being found out. So…

“Mum?”

Yes?

“If…someone wanted to get you something for Longest Night, what would it be?”

I need nothing and want little, Mum assured, her hand soft in his hair. But I suppose if I had to want something, it would be my loves, safe and happy.

That hardly narrowed it down, but the boy didn’t say so. He went to Papa.

“Papa, is there anything you want that you didn’t ask the Visitors for?”

“My family safe and happy.”

“No, I mean something that can go in a box.”

“Do you not still fit in the coffin?”

The boy huffed away, still puzzling. Surely Father would have something he wanted. Father was never satisfied. There had to be something he—

“The things I want are not delivered to me, diavol. If I want a thing, I take it. Besides,” Father’s teeth shined bright and sharp as icicles, “I have you and your mother and dear Papa. You are gifts that give every night in new and wonderful ways. As to anything I want beyond that?” A shrug. “Those will come to me in time. …Oh dear, such a look. Whatever is the matter, child?”

“I can’t wrap any of that! Mum and Papa didn’t say anything I could wrap either! Longest Night is only a few weeks away and I don’t know what to make or to find or—or anything!” He stared glumly out the frosted window as the moon stared glumly back. “I don’t want to be the only one who doesn’t give anything.”

“Mm. So you shouldn’t. Folk such as the Visitors do take such a sour turn if they think they spy someone being selfish. Yes,” Father nodded with solemn weight, “you must have something to offer. I dread to think what would happen if the Visitors discovered you left your poor parents with nothing. Come.” Father rose and turned on his heel. The boy scrambled after him. “We shall find them something fitting.”

Again, the trip to Father’s chambers. The boy left it beaming, his new treasure hidden inside a blanket.

“But Father, this is all for Mum and Papa. What about yours?”

Father only grinned, insisting, “The Visitors know I am lord of this castle and Count of these lands. I would draw ire myself if I went bothering anyone for excess. No, diavol, that you would give these gifts from my hand and yours is fine enough.”

Time passed. Games were played. No titanic knights came around asking to have his head lopped off, thankfully. Although the boy did treat himself to one snowman he dappled all over with coniferous green before knocking its head off with a twig.

Other than that, he built up a whole snow family with Papa. Father took him flying to see the entire valley from above, mute and lovely in its winter white. Mum started a snowball battle with him that stretched for some nights off and on. It might have been shorter had Father not joined his side and made a war of things. And that too might have ended in a short victory if Father were not distracted by the boulder of a snowball that struck him from behind. Papa dashed away from his vantage point and into the trees. Father, being himself, gave snarling grinning chase. While they were off playing hunt, the boy pleaded a tired and happy truce to Mum. Towards dawn, Father tromped home with ice on his boots and Papa in his arms, drowsy and swaddled in Father’s cloak.

After that was the Eve before Shortest Day.

The boy could scarcely sit still all night. He would swear the clocks were going slower and that Father was somehow stretching the night out even further by covering up both moonrise and sunrise with extra helpings of cloud. It wasn’t until Mum and Papa sat by the fire for stories that he ceased fretting. This was Longest Night tradition as well.

“I thought grownups always did story time all quiet, reading to themselves.”

“Usually we do. But on this evening, and on through the last nights of the year, we like to tell stories to each other.”

Often frightening ones. We understand if you do not wish to listen.

But the boy was already in Mum’s lap, sharp ears up and mind alert. Mum told her stories. The boy shuddered through some and gasped over others.

Would you like to stop?

“No…” came from under the boy’s blanket.

…Would you like Papa to tell one?

“I’d be happy t—,” The boy popped his head out the blanket and twisted in his mother’s lap. Papa told his stories. They were not half so scary as Mum’s. A few even made him laugh. It was at the end of one of these that he heard the rooster outside begin to crow. The boy sat up as if pinched and went running to the nearest window. Too many clouds and a new swirling of snow and no hint of daylight yet, but the rooster always knew when the sun was coming. It was time.

“The plate! Mum, Papa, we need to set out the plate!” They set it out. A thing with biscuits and hendl and a helping of hot chocolate in a little cup. The boy pinned a note of thanks under fork for good measure. “I’m ready to sleep now.”

Dearest, the sun isn’t even up. Are you sure?

“Very sure. It’s time for everyone to sleep. Please.”

“Mm,” Papa nodded. “And you won’t be up running circles around the vault past sunrise?”

“No. I’m going right to sleep.”

Some hours and a sunrise later, the boy was up and pacing. Just to tire himself. That was all.

That doesn’t feel like sleeping.

The boy returned to his coffin. It was tricky to lay there with all the secret flotsam hidden inside with him. He managed to keep his eyes shut until roughly noon. Then he went slinking toward the stairs. Just to see if the Visitors had come. Nothing more. Nothing—

“Were you going somewhere, diavol?” This time the boy almost yelped aloud. Father almost never bothered to be awake during the day. But for Shortest Day, he had sat and lurked upon the stair. Waiting. “Were you?”

“No, Father.”

“You were just stretching your legs, perhaps?”

“Yes, Father.”

“Good. I was stretching mine too. Now sleep.”

The boy dragged himself back to his coffin and flopped despondently into his covers. Shortest Day was a lie, he decided. It was actually the Longest Day. Perhaps even an eternal one. It would never ever end and he would be doomed to toss and turn in the coffin forever and ever and…

He woke to the tell-tale shift of day falling to dusk. It bristled in his bones. Carefully, carefully, the boy peeked from his coffin. Mum and Father were still in asleep. He gathered up his hoard of gifts and crept on half-mist feet up the stairs and away to the tree. Elation almost made him fumble the crookedly wrapped packages.

The Visitors had come and gone. Presents stood waiting under the twinkling branches. The plate and cup were empty. Scrawled on his own note in tiny block letters was a message of thanks in return from the Visitors; they looked forward to next year’s trip. The boy snatched the note up for his pocket, tucked his gifts behind the tree, and ran.

Up to the tower, dashing to Papa’s bed. How could he still be asleep!?

“Papa! Papa, Papa, Papa—,”

“Yes, yes, yes?” Papa asked into his pillow.

“They came! The Visitors came and it’s Longest Night! You have to get up, come look!”

Papa lurched upright, bloodshot but smiling.

“I’ll be down soon. I have to put my coffee on. Are we the only ones up?”

“I’ll get Mum and Father!”

And he raced away before Papa had gotten both feet on the floor. He paused only for another giddy glance at the tree, then onward again. Mum was already sitting up in her coffin, taking a moment to stretch and stand.

“Mum!”

Yes?

“It’s Longest Night!”

So it is. Did the Visitors come by?

“Yes! There’s so much and it’s so pretty and Papa is getting up but he has to do his coffee first and Mum you have to go look at the tree and is Father up yet?” He wasn’t. Mum watched the boy lunge toward the great black coffin. The boy pressed himself right up to the lid, whisper-shouting, “Father. Father, it’s Longest Night. Are you up, Father? Father, you have to get up, come see! Father, Father, Father, Father—,”

The lid opened a crack. A red eye gleamed.

“I will rise when it is time I rise. Go with your mother.”

The lid closed.

Mother and son went up. Papa was there, a steaming cup in hand.

Counting a missing head, Papa asked, “Did he want us to wait?”

“Wait for what?”

Papa and the boy jumped. Mum narrowed her eyes. Father was in the room and wearing a robe the boy had never seen before. A thing of deep arterial scarlet lined in ermine. He dragged the largest armchair up to sit and watch as the boy assailed the bounty around the tree. Toys and books and a new little fishing pole and a music box and a dozen other fun little oddments were waiting, some from the Visitors, others from his parents. The boy was so dazed by it all that he nearly forgot his own part. Nearly.

“Your turn!” the boy announced to Mum and Papa who had just taken their own seats after clearing the mess away as paper flew. The boy took his own offerings from behind the tree and placed them proudly in their laps. Father’s grin sharpened as Mum and Papa unwrapped two leatherbound journals with fine fountain pens to match. “Father helped me find them. He said you were both such good writers when you all first met, but lost your diaries when you came to live in the castle. And see!” He shuffled some of the gifts aside to dredge up his own new sketchpad. “We can all do writing and drawing together! I want to make a book, maybe.”

Mum and Papa continued to smile, but a flint of hardness passed in her eyes and a melting fatigue polished his.

You would make a wonderful author, Dearest. You could illustrate your own adventures.

The boy pretended not to notice how her claws pricked the cover as she set the journal aside. Papa put his own down gently. His hand now free, he laid it on the boy’s shoulder.

“Are you forgetting one, Sweetheart?”

“Oh!” He was. The boy ducked back around the tree and came up with the third gift; one Father did not know of. Father’s grin actually faltered as the boy rushed up with the little package in hand. A tiny box smothered in butcher paper. The boy bounced on his heels as Father opened it with agonizing slowness. The paper revealed box of weathered secondhand shop velvet. This had not come from the boy, but his Papa. The gift inside had his touch too. “Papa waded out to get them before the river iced up. They came out all clean from the water.” Father said nothing, casting a steady glance at the back of Papa’s head. Papa nursed his coffee from one hand and twined his other with Mum’s. Father switched the box from his right to his left hand and gingerly wedged it open with his thumb.

Inside, gold shined in the shape of two coins. Their already-rough images were smoothed from the river and the metal was brighter than any token Father had dug up from under his blue flames. He stared at one and the other, turning them in his fingers.

“…These are quite old,” he said at last. “My own father would know them only from memory.”

“Papa said they were special since the blue flames wouldn’t show up over anything but dry ground to tell where treasure was, so those,” the boy pointed to the coins, “would’ve been hidden forever if they stayed stuck in the riverbed. And he taught me how to do buying with them.”

“It was a bargain,” Papa hummed. “I bought such a fine piece of quartz off you with my two little coins. Practically a steal.” So saying, Papa cast a smiling glance at Mum. Mum cast her own back, turning her gift from Papa over and over in her free hand, the firelight filling its pale crystal like magic. It turned out that Papa had taken the lump of quartz into town to have a man chip it into the shape of an owl for Mum. Mum had written Papa a slim storybook all her own and it now sat tucked within Papa’s robe, flat against his heart.

“A steal you say,” Father huffed. “It might be, if my eyes do not deceive me. Or have I gone without a gift from my friend and the mother of our son?”

Your eyes deceive you, Mum intoned, her gaze still firmly nailed to the clear stone owl. The gift is from us both. In the tree.

Father and the boy looked up. A large envelope the color of ivory balanced in the branches, wrapped in a red ribbon.

“I can get it!” The boy misted his way up for it, pondering the crinkling weight inside. He turned it over to find Mum’s own elegant swirling script penned along the flap.

For Future Consideration

—J, M

Father took the envelope from him with even gentler, almost tentative care. He even sniffed it. Mum and Papa gave him only an idle glance. The boy fidgeted again.

“I can open it if you want.” He reached for the ribbon. Father swatted at his knuckles.

“Shoo, thief. Go play with your own spoils.” The boy retracted his hand and even went to sit among his presents, but his eyes stayed with Father and his gift. After some endless seconds, the red ribbon fell away, the envelope was opened, and out came…paper. A thick sheet so large that it had to be folded twice to fit within its broad container. Father frowned at this until he opened the entire thing. For once, the smile on his face seemed actually to reach his eyes.

“Father, what is it?”

“Art,” Father beamed. “Of a very particular kind. Perhaps intended to lure me away to France.”

“What?”

Father turned the paper around. It was a poster done in reds and blacks, showing a smiling woman with a narrow sword on a stage. A man had dropped flat past her feet while beyond them an audience sat and watched. There was another man dangling by a rope around his neck, looking annoyed. Above it all were the words Le Grand Guignol on a banner. It looked scary, but the style of it made the boy think of the funny comics Papa let him clip out of his newspapers. Light, almost silly, like the fearful things were there for the crowd to enjoy. The lady with the blade certainly seemed happy.

“It is for a certain theatre recently founded in Paris,” Father went on, raising an eyebrow again at Mum’s writing on the envelope. “They put on the most amusing plays, I’ve heard.” His gaze leveled first at Mum, then at Papa. “This is a fine thing to consider. Perhaps as a family outing some night.”

The boy sprang up.

“When?”

“When you are old enough, diavol.”

“But how long until that?”

“Long enough that you need not fret about it for some time, Sweetheart. Now, would you be kind enough to hand me one of the ribbons from your pile?” The boy wondered at Papa, though not deep enough to spy in his head. There was a surprise pacing somewhere behind the clear eyes. Another red ribbon was fetched. Papa took it and bound it around his wrist in a bow. It covered half of the boy’s past kisses. “Longest Night comes with feasting. I must fill myself up before I can be decanted.”

Mum and Papa took themselves to the kitchen and the boy followed at their heels. In time, Papa found himself seated at the dining table, trying to both stuff and pace himself between different portions, some heady, some sweet, some rich. He sipped a creamy drink with a funny name—the boy would whisper nog nog nog to himself off and one for the next few days in his coffin, giggling over the sound—and a little of cider and of chocolate and, when Father set down a gleaming bottle of it, something called Tokay.

Eventually Papa pulled away from the table, sighing.

“No more. I will burst.” He unwrapped the ribbon from himself and tucked down the heavy robe’s collar. “I fear I might sleep until the New Year after this.”

“You will do no such thing, my friend,” Father murmured into his neck. “We shall roll you down the stairs if need be.” He slipped his teeth into the bend between Papa’s throat and shoulder. The boy thought he did so with a lighter kiss than usual, almost nipping in the way of a wolf nibbling at his kin in play. Blood welled just the same and Father lapped it clean. Mum went next, just as gentle, nursing in a steady stream. When she pulled away it was with a bloodless kiss to Papa’s jaw.

Thank you, Darling.

Last came the boy, fitting himself carefully on Papa’s wrist. He couldn’t say whether it was the bliss of the holiday or the seasoning of Papa’s meal or some dizzying blend of both, but the kiss tasted better even than his birthnight sip after Papa had sampled the cake. The boy sucked every droplet from his teeth and gums, savoring as best he could.

“That was a really really good kiss, Papa. Is that part of Longest Night too?”

“Perhaps,” Papa said sleepily. “Or else it was the nog.” The word set the boy snickering into his hands again. The Longest Night unspooled and the boy swore again the names must be tricks. How else to explain how infinite the Shortest Day felt and how brief the Longest Night was? Too soon he felt the sunrise coming to herd everyone away to bed. Mum walked with Papa up to the tower. Before the boy could follow up and give his good days, Father halted him with a long white hand at his shoulder.

“Leave them for now, child. There is something waiting for you below.” The boy fought against the urge to race down and ahead. He stayed dutifully parallel to his Father’s long strides, hustling in his own short steps to keep pace. Down in the vault they strolled up to Father’s coffin. “I had my own trouble sleeping during the day. Such was why I was up on the stairs. I believe there is some lump in there that bothered me. Can you see it?”

Father lifted the lid. The boy saw.

Here was the last gift, another tell-tale rectangle whose solid weight spoke to a book hidden in its skin of crimson paper. The boy unwrapped it delicately at first, then in an unstoppable gleeful rush.

Sir Gawain and the Green Knight was in his hands again, this time only a solitary volume in its immaculate cover of gold and green foil lettering. He saw it was still made thick with artwork in a spread of fantastical painted visions.

“I shall be glad to bring you all of King Arthur’s legends should you still wish them some night in the future. Such are an old and favorite collection of myths penned in your Papa’s distant England, but many tales are not quite suited for a child. I had thought I’d made the library safe for your eyes and burned my mistake to spare you. But this?” Father tapped the cover with his claw. “This I shall be happy to read and explain, should you desire its deeper meanings. But the lesson at its very top is something clear even to one so young.” Fangs flashed and eyes burned. “The weak live by the mercy of Powers greater than themselves.” The smile softened then, almost musing. “And I suppose the illustrations are to be commended if nothing else.”

The boy nodded at all of this but found his throat too tight to form words. He peered up at his Father’s face, high as the moon above him. His eyes asked. Father nodded and opened his arms. The boy leapt up and locked his small arms as far around Father’s shoulders as they could reach. Father held him close in turn. His throat stayed strangled with heat and his eyes threatened to betray him with the ruby twinkle of tears. He fought them back.

“Thank you, Father. I love it.” His face buried in the black fall of hair, his brow rasped against the trimmed wilderness of winter’s growing beard. “I love you.”

Father was quiet for a moment. His down-spotted hand stroked the small curve of the boy’s head.

“I love you too, diavol. Happy Longest Night.”

The boy wished him the same. He gave his love and his happy wishes to Mum on the way back up, racing against dawn.

Hurry, Dearest. He was half-asleep when I left him.

The boy all but flew. Papa was in bed, eyes still open for him. If only just.

“Did you enjoy your first Longest Night?”

“It was better than anything I thought it’d be, Papa. Why haven’t we done this before?”

“You were a babe,” Papa smiled, eyelids drooping, “and your parents had forgotten celebrations for quite some time. I cannot speak for Father, but your Mum and I did not have much celebration even when we were small. Our lives were very thin as children and stayed much the same as we grew up.”

“But then you met Father,” the boy beamed. “You came to the castle where everything is and he loved you like the princes in the books do.”

“…Yes. He did. And I loved your Mum. And now we live in the castle, where everything is, love and all. And where we forgot much of holidays, for there was no point to them. Not here.” Papa’s hand settled on him, light and cool as snow. His eyes shined like wet ice. Perhaps quartz. “Not until you. We might never have remembered the 21st of December without you, son. Thank you. Come here.” The boy came, folding himself into his Papa’s arms under the covers. His ear pressed to the faint drumming of the man’s heart. “I love you, Sweetheart. So much.”

“I love you too, Papa.”

“Mm.”

“Happy Longest Night.”

“Happy Longest Night…”

Soon Papa was asleep. His chest lifted and dropped with his breath, the boy clinging to him and the sound. He left a bloodless kiss on his Papa’s cheek as the first rays of sun arrived, lining the mountains in gold.

Down the steps.

Into the coffin.

The boy laid his head down and began to dream of the next Longest Night.

(This goes out to @ibrithir-was-here in particular. Happy Nearly Birthday, Merry Christmas, and a gothically grim-sweet Longest Night to you, friend.)

#let Little Quincey have some fond holiday memories dang it #kid deserves it #quincey harker #jonathan harker #mina harker #dracula #blood of my blood #winter solstice #longest night

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see-arcane · 1 month ago

Text

Blood of My Blood - Danse Macabre

(The next grisly step in Blood of My Blood.)

The moon shines on a holy rooftop and a bloodstained street.

The music rises to a grim crescendo.

And a last dance is shared.

Ao3 link is here.

Time turned fickle for him after the first century.

He had not expected that. In truth, it had never occurred to him as he laid the foundation of his planned eternity. Irony distilled: A man chasing immortality without once thinking of how to pass the time. Even in his prime, he had been a child. Conquest was his only prize to chase until, as his men reminded him that they were only flesh, and his enemies smeared together under his hunger, and the sounds of steel and screaming blurred in the mad whirlpool that was his brain warring with itself for control, he had blinked. And suddenly he was a solitary shadow sitting in a ruined castle in the mountains he had blighted into his genius loci. Had a century passed by then? Had two? He had thought to ask one of the servants, only to realize there were none. No one in his retinue. No confidantes.

It was only him. A glutted Thing of power beyond human scale, huddled in its cave and desecrated earth. Alone.

There was no recalling how long or short the time was before he stole the first of his women away. A fair girl, almost as flaxen as—no. He would not think back to that. Forward, old devil, forward. Yes, he had snatched up the First in haste. Desperation. Someone to be a man for rather than the peasants’ monster. Then another. Another. A hoarder of pampered cats. But he had loved what they were, if not the women themselves. His pets. His pretty faces. His musical noise to fill up the castle halls with laughter, even if he was its target. And why not? He had let the malaise catch him. The ennui that even his instructors under the Mountain had warned him of.

Time turned into fumes for him in that period. The only thing that kept him aware of the calendar was playing the role of Count. A nobleman still had his duties to the swatch of country that was his and vice versa. Endless busywork and ever-increasing mountains of paperwork to slap him awake lest the wrong attention be drawn to the Dracula estate. Oh dear, has the old bastard finally croaked? Have his endless chain of lookalike descendants? No, not to worry. Still here. Always here.

Always. Always. Always.

Time rushed. Time crawled. Time turned to snowmelt between the itineraries.

Nights were his allies, at least. Those he could count on to stretch for him in his domain. An hour in Transylvanian darkness was three hours anywhere else. And the days! Oh, what a coward the sun became when his rule claimed the land! Sunrises limped and sunsets sprinted.

Tonight he wondered if time had done the same here. The night stretched and spilled like tar. Yet the notion brought him no comfort.

The night was going on too long. His senses reassured him that sunrise did still exist and it was coming, but for the first time in almost half a millennium of undeath, frustration made him suspect the dawn was purposefully withholding itself. At last the sun was taking its revenge by refusing a reprieve that would force himself and half the players of the night’s farce back into sleep. There would be no more intermissions, no more pauses. Tonight was to be an end or a beginning and nothing else, bar an ever more irritating slew of highs and lows. Every victory in the battle was chased by a fresh needle to the eye.

The woman had flung the sky—his sky!—at him. A stalemate until he struck her down with a fortunate shot. The boy was going to her aid now. Him and the freshly minted nuisance of a bride. But before he could go to congratulate the happy couple?

Him.

A silver-white blur and a streak of red to mark his eyes. There was not even half a second to dwell on his wonder at the change in this creature. His thrall, his friend, his runaway beloved. Not before the Thing that had been Jonathan Harker was on him like a hound seizing a wolf. Not one of the lordling’s insipid pups, no; those mockeries of breeding were good only for rending rats and rabbits. If Jonathan Harker were any animal, it was a dog bred for hunting whatever beast looked at its sheep or its master.

And was he not that still? Was he not Master of the dog’s Mistress?

He tried to prove as much for an instant with his mind flung out to the woman only to be thwarted. His strike had done too much and her mind was too deep in blackness even to be stirred to his aid, let alone to pull Jonathan’s leash. Being caught in this revelation was what let his friend land the first blow. His Master struck him back. This earned him two strikes more and a startling view of the interior of the man’s mouth as it tried to bite his throat out. He’d never been on the opposite end of the surreal maw his conscripts wore. Sometimes the jaws of a bat, other times a wolf. Jonathan’s seemed to double up in a hideous way, bristling with teeth enough to fill an anglerfish’s mouth.

They grappled and tore, bit and struck, around and around in brute parody of a waltz. There might have been room in him to spit a comment to that effect, but for the boy’s darling wife. Her and her damned—ah, the burn declared otherwise!—blessed pistol. She was what was called a ‘crack-shot’ back on the lordling’s balcony. So many new holes had been made in his head. He had soothed himself to think that he had been starved, aged, distracted, her shots pure luck. It had not even occurred to him to bother with a trance.

Now he was fed back to his prime, she was perched atop the church, and his senses prickled in warning of what she wielded. The damned pistol had been replaced with something worse--a blessed martyr's weapon. He did not doubt that his speed and the girl's hesitance to strike Jonathan would be enough to thwart her aim. Probably. Still, there was no point in extending the risk.

“I’m afraid you must pardon me, my friend. The young lady is due for a meeting with her father-in-law.”

Crack.

Jonathan’s head broke the brick, but the wall had its revenge in a starburst of blood. His friend wobbled, but caught his arm and clamped it into solidity before the mist form could finish. How..?

“I do not dismiss you,” Jonathan hissed. The whites of his eyes had gone rosy. “You have kept the Reaper waiting too long.” Was there something in the words or the will of his friend that anchored him? It must be so. He wouldn’t have suffered his next few injuries otherwise. It was only when Jonathan made a grab for the kukri that he left himself open.

Crack. Crack. Crack!

More broken bricks. Jonathan lay broken with them, groaning in a pillow of rubble. The white of his hair stained to crimson.

“Do not trouble yourself, my friend. I will tend to the children tonight.”

He was gone like a gust. An aching, bleeding gust, if one too quick for the little would-be markswoman. Nor could she dare to waste such precious ammunition on a gambled shot as he melted into the dark. The waning wedge of the moon was an admirable light on the scene, and aided twice over by the streetlamps. But mortal eyes could only strain so far. Pity.

His form congealed as he rose, the head of a dragon arching up to devour. His laugh turned the young couple's heads. It tickled to see how their faces went white before the sight of him. “My congratulations to you, newlyweds. I must have lost my invitation t—,”

Bang!

There went a holy bullet. And with such true aim! Yet it was a pointless shot, traveling through the cloud of him with no more effect than a pebble flung through fog. Even as it stung upon exit, he laughed again while his daughter-in-law chewed back a curse.

“I had assumed your gilded gnat of a father would have taught you the rules, girl. For shame.”

As he hoisted himself to further educate on the matter, something drew tight around his ankle. Then pierced it. So quick and so tight that it tore through his Achilles tendon.

He snarled and twisted, glare aimed down, only for a sudden wave of horror to douse his rage. Anger drowned to that strange shuddering fear he had not known until that faraway day in Piccadilly. Back when he had seen the flash of steel and hollow burning eyes as his good friend gave chase to carve him open. Despite the familiarity of the dread, he did not recognize the figure crushing his ankle as Jonathan Harker. So much blood had fallen over the face and the face had so distorted with the rictus of its grin that he thought he was seeing a visitor from his years under the Mountain. Possibly one of his own tutors come to collect its due for the Lessons learned and the bodies piled. Or else something older. Colder.

Death leered up and spoke in his friend’s voice, “No more running. No more hiding in the mist.” The iron hand tightened again, this time cracking bone. Red rivulets painted Jonathan’s knuckles. “Twenty years of feeding cannot be washed away with a few nights’ gluttony. Blood of my blood,” he hissed, his fangs doubling in the open jaws, “your time has come.”

Jonathan tore them from the building’s side in a tangle of limbs and snapping teeth. A tangle that was impossible to be extricated from even when they landed in the churchyard and thrashed back to the street. There was not a half a second to be won without his friend pouncing again, ripping him out of the beginnings of fog form and back into the churning state of physicality. Injure, heal, injure, fight, injure, curse, injure, injure, injure. To his credit, he struck as many blows as his opponent, perhaps more. Each strike was given more venom than the last with his aggravation.

The girl was no doubt following them with the barrel of the gun, waiting for a clear shot in the whirling rush of them to make a new hole in him. An opening that became all the more likely as his friend kept hold, anchoring him to tangibility even as his flesh bruised or split. This, when Jonathan himself suffered damage upon damage, and that with but a scant dose of lifeblood in him. Even undead, his Harkers did so fuss about their meals. Such caution with the mortal chattel left his poor friend depleted. His healing grew slower and slower as his once and future Master beat him back for every blow struck.

And yet there was no shaking him. Jonathan cackled at the fact, sounding like so much shattered crystal. Undeath or lightheadedness had fully chipped through the silence that had once pinned his tongue when the man was called upon for violence.

“Count, I am hurt!” he chided. “Why do you insist on leaving the floor? Is this not what you wanted? Here we are at last! In England, enjoying our overdue dance. Come, let me have your hand.” Jonathan’s bear trap mouth lunged out and would have torn said hand off by the wrist were his Master a half-second slower.

“Have it then.” His fist flew. Jonathan ducked and reached for— “It is my turn to be stung. I thought this was a gift.” He had to fight for evenness in the words. It was another battle in itself to keep Jonathan’s hand from swinging down with the kukri blade straining for his neck.

“It is! Only you must wear it closer.” Jonathan turned them as they spoke, trying to bare his Master’s back to the enemy. “A new brooch to have at your throat.”

The words turned some flagstone over in his chest and sent a hundred blind and bitter vermin running and biting through his heart. Strength surged. So did the clouds. A curtain was drawn back over the freshly-emerged moon just as the streetlamps doused all along the block. No audience from above to spy now. In the same tide of will, he finally tore the kukri free of his friend's hand. It rang against the street as it was flung aside, metal on stone. Jonathan lost a moment in throwing his attention after it in the new gloom. A moment was all it took.

He seized his friend in both hands and drove him down into the pavement.

Crack!

A heavier sound than what had come from the brick. Jonathan’s eyes rolled blearily in their sockets, but his hold remained steady. One hand gripping, another swiping for his Master’s face.

Crack!

“Stay down.”

Jonathan clung. His blood held, his hand held, he was trying to rise again, to—

Crack!

“Stay down!”

Crack!

“Why do you do this to me?”

Crack!

“Why do you make me do this when we both know how this ends?”

Jonathan sprawled dazedly in the rubble. His hands and his blood still gripped their Master. Scarlet streams ran from pained eyes. An image rose up of that childish night of gluttony inflicted to taunt the woman. His friend slumped, mauled and sluggish, dreaming traitorous thoughts of a flight from the window.

“You think you know…” Jonathan croaked in the present, “…but I see it. Tonight is where it ends. All of it. No victories. No conquest. None of us are yours anymore, Dracula.” His smile was not bitter. It was the tired curl he had seen the last night they had all lived in the castle. Ghoulish and sad and beautiful. It trickled until the lips blazed like red lacquer. “We never will be again.”

“You are all mine,” his Master insisted back. His own hands tightened on the leaking heap of his friend. “The woman, our boy, you. She may have bled into you, but it is still my gift. Or do you think just because your Mistress sleeps for the moment, that you shall remain free of the leash I shall see her strangle you with? This is only where we start, my friend. We all have eternity before us. And all of it under my will.” It was his turn to smile. He tried to sharpen it, but found it creaked on his face until it was a mere desperate baring of teeth. “Undeath ends in but one way. Over 400 years of attempts and empty prayer have failed to deliver that end to me. You and the children and the thieving Jackal shall do no better. There is a Lesson waiting to be learned in that. A long one. But you will learn it. Or I will cement her in a wall for the next hundred years.”

To his shock, there was no horror on Jonathan’s face. Not even anger. There was only melancholy. His lips quivered, fighting not to part. Then:

“Or we could leave them,” came the whisper. “I was ready to, all those years ago. I think I may even have sold my soul at the time. There’s no telling for certain, but…yes. I think I must have for things to have gone this way. Before I ever became a Judas for my love, I was ready. I am still prepared, if that’s what it takes to free them from us.” One hand on his Master’s arm. The other clutching weakly at his lapel. “We need not chaperone or stain the family any longer. Let us go now. While they do not see.”

Either blood loss or the deeper weakness his friend had been seeding for twenty years almost paralyzed him.

For one starving instant, he caught himself imagining it. He pictured himself snatching Jonathan’s ragged form up in his arms and darting away into the night. His will was still supreme. He could sever the woman’s mind from his own and hide them in some secret corner of the world. If her mind wailed for her beloved to come running like a hound after its whistle, he could silence it. No amount of stolen sorcery could unmake that contract of their condition. Was it not how he planned to puppeteer the world from the beginning?

He could do it.

They could do it.

But no. He could have laughed or screamed as he felt Jonathan’s fingertips trace along his sternum. The claws growing and aligning. Oh, his dear Scheherazade and that magic tongue.

“Come. Hell is waiting for us, balaurul meu.”

Before Jonathan’s hand could drive forward and tear out the ancient heart—the metaphor made flesh—his Master seized the plotting fingers in his own crushing grip.

“No, my friend. No Hell. Only home.”

“Two names for the same place,” Jonathan grated. He was struggling again. Grasping, trying to rise. And still holding his Master solid. The fight would never overbalance in his favor without his fog or his focus. He had to. He had to… “We made a vow, she and I.”

“Jonathan—,”

“We will die before we return to you,” the gore-streaked face spat. “We will die before we let you have our son.”

“Yes. You will.”

CRACK!

Stone and skull fractured against each other. It was one of many sounds he had enjoyed over the centuries: The fragility of the human frame echoing in his ears. This time the noise was a knife in his chest.

Jonathan Harker slept in the crater with his eyes open. A corona of blood grew from his head in a monstrous halo as one hand fell away and the other hung limp in his Master’s fist. In the shattered skull, no thought or life paced. There was only quiet.

With a shudder, he squeezed the cold hand once before laying it aside. His fingers worked gingerly under what was left of his friend’s head, cupping blood, bone, and brain as one might try to save the yolk in a mangled egg. He knew the man was dead when he pressed lip and tongue to the slack mouth and felt no resistance. His last kiss went to the stained brow, cradling the corpse against him with a sigh.

“I am sorry, my friend. No, do not scoff. I mean it. I wanted none of this. We could be home right now. Our diavol safe and strong. Time wearing your compunctions smooth. No matter how long the Lesson, how harsh its teaching, time would win. And some night, this century or the next, happiness would find you. Misery breaks like bone under enough pressure. Joy is in its marrow. Was that why you did it? Why you betrayed me and our bliss to come? Was the thought of happiness in my arms so awful?”

Jonathan did not say.

The silence was answer enough.

He laid the carcass gently in the bed of pavement and swept a curtain of hair from the puckered brow. Even death did not bring serenity to the man’s face. He had watched his friend sleep more than once and had never come upon him without the look of a penitent begging Morpheus in his dreams for mercy or punishment. That such still existed in him as a vampire was as much a pain as a marvel. Undeath itself could not temper the martyrdom in him. It would need extracting like a tooth.

Perhaps. But first he needs a piece added. He left it behind so carelessly.

His thumb traced the bright stone at his throat before fishing out its mate from a vest pocket. The brooch glowed with internal fire under the waning moonlight, eager to return its rightful place. He closed Jonathan’s shirt collar and bowed to set the pin before a thought occurred—

Moonlight moonlight the clouds you lost focus the clouds are open and the street is visible she can—

— too late.

Bang!

A lance of fire shot through his hand. Blistering torture erupted there and made the injuries collected thus far feel like the nipping of insects. It had wounded more than flesh.

In his fist, snapped shut in pain, there was mere crystalline dust. That and a crumpled setting of ornate gold. Nothing more.

What clouds were left bayed anew with thunder as he snapped his head around. He found the lordling’s daughter taking aim again.

No more.

“No more,” he intoned to the air and to the hateful girl with her toy. He did not have it in him to relish the spasm of comprehension as the trance pierced her eyes and wrenched her rebelling brain into an obedient knot. Not even when he ordered her to lift the gun until it was level with her own temple. His son bleated once in horror—

“Lu, no!”

—thinking his Father meant to throw away a bargaining chip so foolishly. So painlessly. No, no. Nothing so easy for her. For any of them. Ah, and it seemed the boy’s cry was enough to rouse the limping mother at last. His will cracked at her like a whip:

Hold him.

A flare of fury from her, then another baffled cry from the boy. Good. Wonderful.

He looked again at his friend. His friend stared blindly at the stars. He paused long enough to slide the eyelids shut.

“Sleep, draga mea. This will be over soon.”

The promise made, he dashed down the street to retrieve the fallen kukri. He turned to mist a moment later and raced off to the climax of the night. Perhaps if he had turned back a final time, he would have reconsidered.

He might have hesitated in his return to the roof. (He did not.)

He might have stopped to examine his friend, the better to be certain he was dead. (Mr. Harker was.)

He might have wondered, just for an instant, if he did not feel Time’s seemingly infinite sand dwindling to its last grains in the hourglass. (If so, he would not admit it.)

But he did not turn and so did not see his friend’s face.

Dead and dismissed from the rest of the night's pending acts, Jonathan Harker was still. With the exception of his head. It had slumped to the side and its eyelids had slipped open. A proper corpse could do no more. If one could interview such a cadaver, he might have admitted that he had nothing to do with it. But something did.

Gravity? The final mindless motions of a dead body? Certainly.

Yet they had acted under a guidance that ensured the body stared in the direction of the church, of the ex-Master, of the eastern horizon made jagged with rooftops. And they had left the glazed eyes open for whatever audience might watch things unfold through the windows of a dead man’s unblinking stare.

If only to be sure that what was left of Jonathan Harker and Itself might witness the end of the dance.

#warning for somewhat graphic descriptions of injury on this one #jonathan harker #dracula #lu holmwood #quincey harker #mina harker #blood of my blood #my writing #horror

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