Here, In This Place: An Origin Tale

N I N E T E E N

RECKONING

“Take her teeth!”

-Miriamne Kertesz

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Kruinh did not doubt the will of his clan to find Rosamunde, Rhodias or Gabriel, but they lacked knowledge. Full of rage they hunted the forests and hills the way they would have long ago. David calmly went to his rooms with Tanitha, sat down in a chair and began asking questions.

The Courts had three estates in England.

“Unless they’re completely stupid they won’t go to any of those,” Kruinh said.

“Would they have flown on a plane? Would there have been time?”

“It would have been private, one of ours.”

“The records must be checked.”

“Did they have friends?”

“Evangeline,” Sunny said, the same time Chris opened his mouth.

David looked at them both.

“My sister,” Chris said.

“Evangeline was one of Rosamunde’s first experiments with disobeying me. She made Christopher’s sister a drinker. I gave Evangeline the choice to swear allegiance to me or die,” Kruinh said.

“She swore allegiance and then fled to Rosamunde. She is her oldest creation,” Chris said. “It is entirely possible that they are staying at her house.”

“Which is where?”

Chris said, sounding surprised, “Bavaria?”

Kruinh nodded.

“I will put it about that we are looking for them. It shouldn’t take long to bring them back.”

“Do you think we can really find them?” Dan whispered to Laurie.

Laurie said, “I don’t think anything can hide from Kruinh for long.”

Not two days passed before a letter arrived at Visastruta addressed simply to “Kruinh.”

 

Dear Basileus Kertesz Kruinhi,

My grandfather, an old ally of your family, has discovered some things in his possession which belong to you. He is sending me back with them, and we hope you will receive us one day hence at your private landing strip outside of Bucharest, 

Most humbly yours,

Ethan Dunharrow

 

The wind was high when they arrived outside of Bucharest, and once the plane had touched down and the stair was lowered, the door opened and out came a stately, almost frosty, tall, caramel skinned man in flat cap and great black coat, scarf snapping in the breeze as he came down the steps. Sunny. Laurie and Chris could see that his leather gloved hand carried a silver chain, and at the end of the silver chain—no, three silver chains, and at the end of these chains, miserable, angry, exhausted, were Rhodias, Gabriel and Rosamunde.

Behind them was a woman who looked much like the man. At her side she wore a long slender sword, and her black hair was lustrous and hung down her back.

“Are they Drinkers?” Sunny whispered.

“No,” Chris said, his face solemn as the two who had brought back the captives walked toward them.

“They are witches.”

“That is why they can hold them on leashes,” Tanitha said. “No drinker can strike a true witch, and a powerful enchanter can command even us.”

The man bowed.

“Ethan,” Kruinh stepped forward.

“Basileus,” Ethan pronounced, bending to kiss Kruinh’s hand.

“You will stay with us.”

“If you plan to do what we discussed, then we had better. Please let me introduce you to my sister, Eve.”

Eve bowed.

“I’m sure you have much to tell us,” Kruinh said.

Ethan nodded.

“I’m sure you are right.”

“Over the years, Evangeline has cultivated a friendship with my sister,” Ethan explained over supper.

“I’m afraid your kinsfolk thought this extended to them.”

“It may well have,” Eve said, lifting the wine glass to her lips, “but Grandfather would not allow it. He heard you were searching for them, and thought I would know where they were.”

“Were they in Bavaria?”

“They were,” Eve said to Kruinh. “And they were leaving. I believed they thought they were coming to us.”

“I sent a message to a cousin of yours,” Kruinh said. “David, I’m sure, has even met him. One Uriah Dunne.”

“The professor in Rawlston?” David said.

Eve nodded.

“He is a nephew of the head of our clan, the one whose sword I hold. This is how it came to Grandfather’s attention. He and our cousin Owen do not agree on much, but Owen agreed on sending the sword so that what must be done can de done.”

“What must be done can be done?” Sunny mouthed to Dan.

Eve dipped her spoon into the red soup.

“Excellent borsht!”

David Lawry wasn’t afraid of anything anymore.

As he followed Tanitha down the stairs, he realized that what he had feared more than anthing else was himself, his horrible impulses, the lonely him who, with no understanding of what he was doing, found himself masturbating at his bedroom window. How different he was now, how far he had come. How low, lower and lower down this winding stair and through the wide, low ceilinged halls that ran around the underpart of Visastruta. Behind David came Sunny, and behind Sunny was Dan. After him came Eve with the sword, and Ethan and lastly, Kruinh.

When they arrived at the great cell where the three criminals were, David was a little surprised that there were no bars. But what would bars have done? Rhodias and Gabriel were chained to the wall, but Rosamunde stood in the middle of the cell, eyes defiant.

Tanitha moved into the cell, and she came straight to Rosamunde.

“I should have done this long ago,” Tanitha said.

“Done—” Rosamunde began, but just then Tanitha seized her jaw, pushed her to her knees, and reached inside of her mouth, and there was a sound of ripping, a muffled screaming, a great tearing, that turned the stomachs of David and Sunny, and when Tanitha raised her bloody right hand, David stared in horror to see she held a blood loop in her hands, some manner of necklace, and while Rosamunde fell to the ground wailing, blood pouring from her mouth, Tanitha came to Dan.

“Wear this, and remember what she did to you, and how you are now avenged.”

And David’s eyes widened to see that it was a bleeding necklace of teeth, that Tanitha had ripped out her cousin’s jaws, and four fangs hung at the corners.

While Rosamunde still gave gurgling screams and blood poured from her ruined mouth, a savage looked passed over Dan’s face, and he slipped off his jacket, took off his shirt, and now bare chested, bent his head and allowed Tanitha to place the bloody chain around his neck.

Next, Tanitha approached Rhodias, and while her aunt screamed and cursed her, suddenly Miriamne was there and she pronounced, “Take her teeth.”

Slowly, ignoring Rhodias’s screaming, Tanitha did. She did not make a necklace of this, these teeth came out in chunks, dark red hunks of gum and tooth, and when Rosamunde had moved away, Rhodias’s mouth was a mass of blood.

Tanitha stopped before Gabriel, and she did nothing. Her cousin looked at her, horrified, but she did nothing. And then Tanitha turned to Sunny, and Sunny understood.

Alexander Kominsky walked to Gabriel and Gabriel’s face softened.

“I told you, I told you,” Gabriel almost sang, “I would be honored to die at your hands. I told you if one day you were the stronger and I was befoe you then it would be my—”

His words died in a rush of blood as Sunny wrenched out a great red tongue, and then, surprised at the ease of it, popped out, one by one, Gabriel’s fangs.

“In time they will grow back,” Miriamne whispered to David, while he watched Sunny showered in blood and Gabriel, screaming in pain, falling to the floor.

“But the Maker teeth never come back,” Miriamne said. “That power is forver gone.

As if there were no bloodshed, or as if it did not matter, Ethan and Eve stepped forward, and while Ethan began to whisper words over them, Eve handed the sword to Kruinh and, without care, he closed his hand over the blade and ran it down the sharp length, giving his blood. Tanitha did the same and next Miriamne, and then, dipping the point into Rhodias’s blood, Eve traced a circle around her, and next around the moaning Rosamunde and lastly around Gabriel. As David watched, a faint blue light followed the tracing of the sword so that three circles appeared and vanished.

“Now you all are bound,” Ethan said. “Wherever your lord commands you to remain, there you will remain. Now what protection you once had is gone, and should you ever leave the place your lords choose to imprison you, you will be just as a new made Drinker in the light of the sun, consumed. So say I. So says the sword, so says the blood.”

With that, Eve sheathed the sword.

“I will send them to their old house in Yorkshire, far from me,” Kruinh said.

“And if they leave—” David began.

“If they so much as set foot on the doorstep,” Kruinh said, “they will explode into flames and burn to ash. Daylight or nighttime. It is the oldest spell of punishment. It can only be done with the blood of the punished and punisher and with the will of a witch.”

“Can such a thing be undone?” Miriamne asked.

“Not now,” Ethan said, “And certainly not by me.”