11.a, The Bridal Party
(I narrate this passage as per details I latterly extracted from Perveen's and Marie's minds)
Perveen sat in her bed chamber staring, despairing into the ancient three-piece mirror that adorned her dressing table, Louis XV or XVI; old, kidney-shaped, with one large oval mirror in the centre, flanked by two identical miniatures on either side. Charcoal-grey fissures fractured in lightning veins behind each glass surface; none had seen a duster in a century or more.
She was restless, anticipation making her anxious, nervy and snappy. These were emotions she'd rarely experienced as a vampire; so rare, in fact, that her attendants were wholly unsure how they should react to their mistress in this mood.
Today, her attendants, twins by the name of Amelia and Marie, were adopting new roles. As Perveen sighed at a reflection she couldn't see, one twin stood at each of her shoulders bedecked as bridesmaids, stroking gilt, pearl-handled hair brushes through either side of the vampire queen's sleek, ebony mane.
The maids' soft, peachy cheeks implied that they had been brought to this side of the grave when they had been even younger than my bride-to-be. Not that I knew, at this point, that Perveen was my bride-in-waiting. Even less did I know that she held the title of vampire queen. You die and learn.
They'd been stroking Perveen's polished, sleek black locks for so long now that sparks crackled and burst into the already-charged air with every pass of the brushes. Two ghostly brushes, repeating the same monotonous down-and-back-up passing motion, reflected in the mirror, gliding through the air in showers of angry, undirected sparks.
Perveen's smile was, in its own way, a mirror of the sadness that overwhelmed her mood; today, of all days, she should be feeling jubilant, exhilarated. But a bride who cannot reflect upon her own beauty must feel like the most beautiful singer in the world suddenly struck deaf.
True, the twins couldn't see their own reflections, either. But they had the advantage of only having to look at each other to remind themselves of how radiant they were, and would be forever, all things being equal. Today, as royal bridesmaids, they were perhaps more eye-searingly beautiful than they had ever been.
The twins' identical white silk and lace dresses, crafted in toga style, danced in the candlelight (whoever had decorated my room had obviously retained enough candles to extend the gift to Perveen). The sheer silk fluxed like liquid; the intricate lace pattern was more subtle, depicting dew-frosted webbing spun amongst stargazer lilies.
The top half of each dress was a halter design, the separate silk and lace bands connecting behind at the nape by courtesy of a solid gold 3" diameter ring. In front, the concertinaed silk and delicate lace bands criss-crossed each other in a dramatic drape, joining the bottom half of the dress at the sides of the opposing hips.
The silk flowed like a river of molten milk, whilst the lace, flat and two-dimensional by comparison, lay more like a tattoo than material, creeping around and down from the shoulder, plunging behind its silk peer en route to the side of the other hip, barely masking the otherwise naked left breast in its wake, forming a perfect 'X' across the torso, leaving everything from the solar plexus the pubis bare.
Through their belly buttons, dead centre in their milky midriffs, hung another gold ring, this one 2" in diameter with a 1" long baguette-cut emerald suspended vertically within its circumference as if by magic. The deep green gemstone matched the colour of the twins' eyes perfectly, as did the way the chromium caught and refracted the very light from the air itself.
Wheat coloured silk braids belted the dresses, from which the bottom half of the dress floated to mid-thigh length in alternate panels of the same lace and silk materials as the halter top. The twins' golden curls were kept in check by simple tiaras, gilt laurel crowns adorned backwards, which enhanced the Roman look.
To complete the ensemble, their shoes mimicked Gladiator sandals, made from white leather, up from which sprang thick white silk straps, criss-crossing their way up the shins and calves, finishing high above the knee, giving the illusion that their dresses fit from top to toe. For vampires, they sure looked angelic.
11.b, The Truth Will Set You Free
"Mistress, what's wrong?" Amelia asked, the tension in the room finally drawing the question from her. The trepidation in her voice was clear, unsure of whether she was overstepping some hereto unforeseen boundary or protocol.
"How do I know, Amelia?" Perveen answered. "I brought Sebastian here without his consent. Does he saying he loves me now mean anything since I've taken the choice from him to love any other than we in the Brotherhood? Would he have chosen me if he had the worlds to choose from?"
The twins looked at each over the top of Perveen's shining scalp. Neither fancied the avenue this conversation was beginning to saunter along.
Sucking in deep, Amelia answered, "The point mistress, is somewhat moot, is it not? For now, you cannot reverse what you've done. And if you dwell upon it, you have eternity to let it eat you from inside."
Perveen's mood visibly darkened at hearing the truth so candidly. Whatever she'd wanted to hear, that wasn't it. "Marie," she said, turning to the other twin, "do you possess any insight that's not the twin of Amelia's?"
Amelia flinched, snagging Perveen's ear. Despite her giving the queen a straight answer, her twin Marie was the more forthright sister of the two, which was probably why Perveen had asked Amelia first. This did not bode well.
Marie said, "Why, mistress should have thought of that beforehand. Perhaps neither of you will ever know the truth of that question, now. However, if you do not resolve this most basic question of trust, I fear your marriage is doomed before it begins."
If Perveen hadn't wanted to hear Amelia's answer, she most certainly hadn't wanted this blunt truth from Marie.
"How so, doomed, Marie? Do you know something I do not?" Perveen asked, a scowl slipping into the deepest tones of her vocal chords.
"If madam excuse the afront," Marie began, "but tongues and tales are rife amongst the court. Word is that Sebastian does not even yet know that the two of you are betrothed.
"Surely, bringing him into Brotherhood without his consent is one thing. But only deigning to tell him that you and he are to be wed upon his arrival at the Master's altar is breaching another height of trust altogether."
The queen looked at Marie, then across to Amelia, both of whom had stopped their constant scraping of Perveen's scalp. Her eyes blackened until there was little white left to see, only storm clouds brewing beyond in some other realm. But those clouds were getting ready to break, roiling into this parallel existence across supernatural plains that only the blessed were adept at traversing.
The candle flames began to dance on a hidden breeze, jigging in a hectic, voodoo rhythm to some far-off inaudible drum beat. The beat echoes rumbled across the plains, heralding the thunderheads, building, billowing beyond Perveen's dilated jet-black pupils.
The maids began to back away, Marie towards the door, Amelia towards the twilit window, both unsure of their footing as colour rose in Perveen's cheeks. Without warning, the queen's head lurched, craned backwards, stretching unnaturally as it had for the vampire's kiss on the bridge, her jugular vein visibly pulsating, throat gulping large pockets of the musty, wax- and soot-laden air that her long dead organs could not use.
An ear-piercing howl ululated deep from within the vampire queen's core, or mayhap originated from the same source as those thick, threatening thunderheads. The unearthly wail of the banshee resonated against the solid stone walls, amplifying as the waves bounced backwards and forwards across the boudoir.
The dance of the candle flame changed, wavering in time with the warbling that threatened to upend anything that wasn't weighty or secure. The twins dropped the brushes to clamp their hands around their ears in a vain attempt to protect their eardrums.
Blood began to trickle from Amelia's ear as she cautiously backed away from Perveen's right shoulder. The air around them crackled as it absorbed the metallic aroma that secreted from the lengthening crimson streak crawling now down Amelia's neck and towards her décolletage .
In a flash, the queen was up off her seat, the storm clouds breaking in her eyes, in her mind. Before Amelia could even flinch again, Perveen was behind her, craning her neck over Amelia's shoulder, licking the blood upwards so as not to waste a drop.
So deep did Perveen's claws dig into Amelia's shoulders for purchase, they sheared the silk and lace bands of the dress at either shoulder. The ring that had held the top in place at Amelia's nape clattered to the floor, useless.
Perveen's mouth clamped around the punctured ear, her tongue instinctively following the blood flow back to its source, wrenching the tiny orifice asunder en route, until the blood flowed from the side of her head like a river
Amelia's scream picked up from where the vampire queen's had left off, filling the room with a panic of agony, tiny droplets of blood spattering the shreds of material that clung onto the gold ring on the floor beside the chair..
Still, it wasn't enough to slake the vampire's thirst.
From across the room, Marie's fangs, sharp and pearly-white, bore into life, accompanied by a reptilian hiss. She was conflicted, undecided whether to attempt to aid her fast-ailing twin, thus face a similar fate or to bolt for the door.
The sickening crack of Amelia's neck broke the spell cast by Marie's consternation. Realising that she could do nothing to help her twin, that she was beyond even the sanctuary afforded the undead, she bolted for the door.
With impossible speed and palpable anger at having to leave her feast, Perveen withdrew her tongue with a slither and detached her fangs from Amelia's jawline. The queen appeared in front of the door before Marie, blocking her exit, even before Amelia's limp body had found time to hit the floor.
When the dying bridesmaid did land, it was with a sharp, hollow slap on the cold, marble tiles. That slap acted upon Marie as if someone had ripped out her spine, her shoulders slacking in acceptance of both her and her sister's fate.
She looked at her queen, her own fangs withdrawing in surrender to this superior creature, and simpered simply, "Why?"
11.c, The Vanity of the Damned
The dawning of the answer in the queen's mind was akin to a slap around the queen's own chops. A triumphant grin rapidly replaced the visible hatred that had masked her features not a second before.
"I cannot see my beauty, Marie. What bride should be denied that on her Wedding Night?" she answered. "Yet you and your sister can remind yourself of how precious you were as a human every time you look into each other's faces. She is the very image of you, a beauty shared that would never have been impaired. For a moment, I could not bear it; jealousy ripped through me like a rapier through a taut silk sheet."
Marie was incredulous, but held her tongue. As if jealousy justified the queen's actions! As if vanity was an excuse for the murder of the yin to her yang!
In life, as in death, she had only ever known being one half of twins. With Amelia dying on the side of the room, she was to be wholly independent for the first time in either of her lives. For her sister's sake, Marie would hold her tongue now, no matter what.
Before the reality of new loneliness could truly sink in, Perveen began to offer a more eloquent explanation, perhaps this time one that the twin would find hard to digest. "Marie, please understand," the queen began, "the only time I glimpse myself is as humans see me, and only then when I invade their mind. By the time they acknowledge me, they are at the point of death.
"By then, I am nothing but the paradigm of fear, the nightmares they never knew they possessed embodied in me, twisted into a version of reality their minds cannot hope to grasp. You know this as well as I; you have seen what I see in the flaws of the human psyche.
To them, thus to myself, I am hideous, a gargoyle from another plain that distorts their perception of possibility. They only realise that they've wasted their blinkered life a moment before they succumb, before it's too late to change. That unadulterated hatred they feel, of themselves, of the 'they say', and of me; over time, their visions have skewed how I see myself.
"But Sebastian, he sees me how I wish to be remembered. I am as perfect in his eyes as when we were but adolescents, innocents at school, long before this undead existence that makes us these monsters to mortal men. It is that beauty I crave to see daily, more than this very afterlife itself; with him, I shall have it for all time.
Tonight, he will become my king, as you say, not that he knows it yet. Together we will rule this castle, this coven, this brood. Forever. He will have all time to see how right I was to bring him here!"
Marie was utterly overwhelmed and disgusted by the queen's vanity. If the queen asked her another question now, would Marie be able to lie? The truth on this matter told unto Perveen candidly was as sure a death sentence as standing in the middle of a pile of kerosene-soaked kindling and setting it alight.
With no hint of an apology for slaying Amelia, and a new surety that had come with saying what she wanted to hear out lous, the queen asserted herself. A single speck of blood on her wedding gown was now the only trace of her sudden, fatal outburst. Innocence had returned to her face, as placid as the surface of an underground lake, undisturbed by the breeze for centuries. Finally, Perveen nodded and, flinging Marie aside from the door with the power of telekinesis alone, left the bridesmaid in the room with her dying sibling.
Marie picked herself up and flew across to her sister's body, which was lying askew on the cold, sterile floor, bathed in the purples of dusk shying in through the window. One of Amelia's eyes forced itself open, the swell of a vampire tear let loose, trickling down her ashen cheek, over skin that had only moments hence been plump and ripe, even in its undead state.
Neither reprehension nor admonition marked the dying vampire's features, even though it was her sister's answer that had broken the storm clouds of the queen's rage. Only the love that a twin can know, the implicit adoration born in the womb of their long-dead mother and having survived life, death and life again painted Amelia's face.
Marie saw the pleading in Amelia's still-sparkling emerald eyes. Unable to speak, her ear and neck torn asunder, she knew that her time was up, that she was beyond saving. She just wanted the torment over and needed Marie to comply. Was that not punishment enough?
Marie nodded understanding and acquiescence. Still, Amelia's body lay crumpled, at an unnatural angle to her broken neck, even as Marie cradled her. She wrapped her left hand around Amelia's neck, careful not to let her sister's head flop to an even more obtuse angle.
Closing her eyes, Marie's other hand plunged between her sister's breasts, both now bared, as was all of her torso, right down to the wheat-coloured silk braid belt. Amelia's sternum cracked apart, a horrid, hollow sound, as Marie's hand disappeared into her sister's rib cage up to her slim wrist. It exited the cavity with a sickening, sucking plop, blood oozing from her twin's long dead heart, which she held aloft, sleek and alive by the reflections of the twinkling candlelight.
Amelia almost managed a smile as her eyes closed for the final time. Her last vision was of her twin eating her still heart, which had for so many years beat in tandem with hers as humans, and that now looked to be trembling with life one last time in the shimmering candlelight. Whatever remained of Amelia's life force, Marie wanted to absorb it all so that her sister would live on within her, perhaps even more so than she had in the lives they had shared for the centuries that had passed beforehand.
Picking the discarded gold ring off the floor, still in its shreds of fabric, and ripping the emerald-hung ring from her dead sister's navel, Marie prepared to take her place as bridesmaid to the queen who had splayed her life in half so cruelly, so needlessly.
For Amelia, it was the end of life's second journey; for Marie, it was only the beginning. If she knew what was ahead of her, maybe she would have swapped places with Amelia in, well, in a heartbeat.
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