Slaying the Vampire Conqueror
Carissa Broadbent
1
I didn’t miss sight anymore. Sight was an inefficient way to perceive the world around you. It was a crutch. What I was given instead was far more useful.
Take this moment, for example—this moment when my back was pressed to the wall, dagger in my hand, as I waited to kill the man on the other side.
If I was relying on sight alone, I would have to crane my neck around the doorframe. I would have to risk being seen. I’d have to go by whatever I could make out in the darkness of him and his lover, squint into that writhing mass of flesh, and figure out the best way to make my move.
Inefficient. Room for error. A terrible way to work.
Instead, I felt. I sensed. Through the magic of the threads, I could still perceive the boundaries of the physical world—the color and shape of the scenery, the planes of a face, the absence or existence of light—but I had so much more than that, too. Crucial, in my work.
My target was a young nobleman. Six months ago, his father died. Within weeks of him receiving the keys to his father’s significant cityscape, he began using all that newfound wealth and power to steal from his people and build more wealth for the Pythora King.
His essence now was slick with desire. The Arachessen could not read minds, not truly, but I didn’t need to see his thoughts. What use were his thoughts when I saw his heart?
“More,” a female voice moaned. “Please, more.”
He mumbled something in response, the words buried in her hair. Her desire was genuine. Her soul shivered and throbbed with it—her pleasure spiking as he shifted angles, pushing her down to the bed. For the briefest of moments, I couldn’t help being jealous that this snake had better sex than I did.
But I drove that thought away quickly. Arachessen were not supposed to mourn the things we gave up in the name of our goddess—Acaeja, the Weaver of Fates, the Keeper of the Unknown, the Mother of Sorcery. We could not mourn the eyesight, the autonomy, the pieces of our flesh carved away in sacrifice. And no, we could not mourn the sex, either.
I wished they’d hurry up.
I pressed my back to the wall and let out a frustrated breath through my teeth. I blinked, my lashes tickling the fabric of my blindfold.
{Now?}
Raeth’s voice was very quiet in the back of my head—she was nearly out of Threadwhisper range, all the way downstairs, near the entrance of the beach house. When she spoke into my mind, I could sense a faint echo of the ocean wind as it caressed her face.
{Not yet,} I answered.
I felt Raeth’s irritation.
{I don’t know how much longer we have. He’s distracted, isn’t he? Take him and go before he starts to pay attention.}
Oh, he was distracted, alright. His woman wasn’t the only vocal one now, his grunts echoing against the wall behind me.
I didn’t answer right away.
{Sylina—} Raeth started.
{I want to wait until the girl is gone.}
As I knew she would, Raeth scoffed at this. {Wait until the girl is gone? If you wait that long, someone will notice that something is off.}
I clenched my jaw and did not answer, letting her Threadwhispers fade beneath the sounds of our target’s enthusiastic climax.
Threadwhispers were very useful. Communication that couldn’t be overheard, that could transcend sound the same way we transcended sight. It was a gift from the Weaver, one for which I was very grateful.
…But I hated that it meant I could never pretend I hadn’t heard something.
{Sylina!}
{She might not know,} I told her.
What he is. Who he is. What he’s doing, and who he’s doing it for.
I had no qualms about killing the nobleman. I would take more joy than I should in feeling his presence wither and die beneath me—and that would be my little secret, a guilty pleasure. But the girl…
Again, Raeth’s scoff reverberated between us.
{She knows.}
{She—}
{If she’s fucking him, then she knows. And if not, she has terrible taste in men. What difference does it make?}
And then I felt it.
A sudden crack through the air. Sound, yes, a distant BANG—but the sound was nothing compared to the sensation that ripped through the threads of life beneath the physical world, a force powerful enough to set them vibrating.
I froze.
My target and his paramour stopped.
“What was that?” the woman whispered.
But I was no longer focused on them. Not with the force of the vibrations, and Raeth’s wordless panic spreading slowly across them, rolling toward me like a pool of blood.