She was beginning to stir. He looked down at her as she convulsed against her restraints: the shaking motions signifying that the nanotech drugs in her system were beginning to disappate. Her blood would be pure, and the ritual, the hated ritual, would begin again.
He would have thought her attractive, had he not long ago lost the capacity for such evaluations. Her jade hair was sheen on her shoulders, glistening with an excess of sweat. She was still young, her skin just beginning to green from the toxic exposure. Poison left a slight tinge on her joints that thickened to peridot on the edges of her fingernails, and around her shaking eyelids. Her face had been mopped clean, but her dress, plainly designed, and embroidered in threads dyed that same green as her hair, was in folds and tatters.
Her eyes shuddered as they opened, and the first sight she saw made her stomach turn. She made a cry as if to wretch, but her stomach had already been purged hours ago, making the effort futile. Fearful, she closed her eyes against the symbol that she saw: the White Chapel, as it was now called, two right triangles back-to-back, carefully constructed in mother-of-pearl against the dark stone of the faraway ceiling, and lit, just-so, with two of this country's only electric torches. For her culture it was an ancient symbol of evil, and so it was carefully placed exactly as it was, that it might be the last sight she ever saw.
However, one from Master's world would be given far more pause by the symbol she could not see; the even cross in the center of a wheel, to which she was currently tied.
He stood now within the wheel, at the intersection of the cross. The wheel itself was in a pentagram drawn on the floor in chalk, and the room was choked with incense. Other than the electric spotlights high above, it was lit only with burning braziers, letting off a thick chemical steam. Master had a flair for the dramatic. And Master was the room's final source of light, as he stood, just outside the unholy assemblage, the red, glowing eyes high above the ground marking the only sign of his silent presence.
She screamed, and he knew it meant her adrenaline was running high, which, presumably was Master's intent. Frightened and drooling, she began to stammer. "Lamma... Lamma!! Penna ni! Tal juta Hyv! Tal juta HYV!!"
The last screech infuriated him, and despite himself he shot out a hand and hit her face. The reinforced metal struck against the weak flesh, shattering bone, and causing her next scream to warble through a bleeding tongue.
"Stupid girl. The Hive is long dead," he spat. The girl strained again, and, not understanding, began to cry, screaming through the pain for help, any help. 'I'll serve the Hive,' she had promised in her desperation, probably making a guess from a legend her great-grandfather had told her.
"All is prepared, my Childe," Master intoned, in that soothing syrup of his voice. "We are ready to begin."
"No," he said, as it felt like he always did, and immediately—as it always did—his mind began to burn, as if deprived of oxygen.
"Yes," Master responded, forcefully, but quietly. The torches flared under the red of Master's eyes. "We begin. Now."
This time, I won't, he thought, but he felt his hands begin to move toward the ceremonial dagger. He grabbed onto the hilt with a vice-strong grip, and lifted it, slowly, not toward the girl's heart, but to her arm. With one quick slash, he ripped her open at the wrist.
Above her gurgling outcry, Master began the chanting. The damned unnecessary chanting.
He was a scientist, and he'd have rather collected the fluids with a syringe and a storage sac. But Master was adamant about his alterations to the procedure, and he felt the force of Master's mind against his own, pushing him toward her bleeding arm. The last metal shield slid away from his face, revealing what patch of skin remained on his lower face. The ancient chin shook, and the mouth wrenched open. The teeth were not fanged, but dulled and yellowed, and the gums so thinned that the teeth were barely adhered to his jaw.
He had been reluctant to drink from the last three, the last four, no, the last hundred. But, as always, that reluctance gave way to madness at the first taste. Like a drowning man gasping for air, he suckled at his victim's fevered pulse. Her shouting was in his ear, but it was nothing compared to the words hammering his mind; Master's chanting, in any myriad of ancient languages, calling on mismatched dark forces from long-dead sects. And he suckled until he felt her pulse begin to drop, and then, he desperately chewed, gnawing her arm to the bone with his dulled teeth, trying to catch every drop even as he splattered the blood in his own enthusiasm. His mind struggled against Master's, struggled against his undead existence, but, louder than anything his mind could protest, his body screamed: LIFE, give me life; I still want to LIVE!
When the pulse ceased and the girl at last fell silent, he remembered again who he was. He stepped back, and looked at the blood on his hands, then licked at them. The room resonated with Master's now-stronger laugh.
—AF