The Vampire & Her Witch

”You don’t believe her?” Heila asked quietly from beside the Inquisitor. ”You should know prayers to help you discern the truth if you have doubts,” she suggested lightly.

”I do... but I won’t use them now,” the Inquisitor said, frowning as he continued to turn over the demon’s words, trying to find the fault in them. He preferred to use his mind and the evidence he could inspect with his own senses to discern the truth instead of relying on guidance and inspiration from the Holy Lord of Light. After all, the Lord above had given man a mind for a reason, and it wasn’t so that His servants could turn to him for answers whenever they had doubts.

Besides, even if he prayed for revelation, he wasn’t sure that he could impose the Holy Lord of Light’s will on Dame Sybyll, forcing her to tell the truth, without injuring her in the process. She might see it as an act of aggression that would trigger even more bloodshed, and Diarmuid refused to be the reason that their fragile truce was broken.

”She remembers all of this so clearly,” Diarmuid said as he finally realized what was bothering him about Sybyll’s story. ”I, I feel like her pain and sorrow, anger and grief, they all resemble true feelings. If she told me this all happened yesterday, I wouldn’t doubt her words... but this was all more than twenty years ago,” he said softly. The rest, he left unsaid. After all, he was sitting just a few feet away from the powerful demon. If he said that she sounded rehearsed, he wasn’t certain he would survive making the accusation.

”You need to learn more about vampires, Inquisitor Diarmuid,” Heila said with a knowing look in her eyes. ”Dame Sybyll doesn’t dream anymore. She can’t. None of her kind can,” she said, though she had heard from Ashlynn that things weren’t entirely like that for Nyrielle anymore.

”Every day, she relives her past,” Heila explained. ”Vampires remember things clearly because they relive them over and over and over again. If they have pleasant memories, then it’s probably a wonderful thing. But for Dame Sybyll...” she said, allowing her voice to trail off so the Inquisitor could fill in the rest for himself.

”Merciful Light,” he whispered as his eyes grew wide in horror. ”You mean, the things she lived through... she has to live through them again and again and again each day when the sun rises?” The thought of it was enough to send shivers down his spine, and when he looked back at Sybyll, his expression was filled with more worry than scrutiny. If this was the struggle given to a person who became a vampire... wasn’t it still too cruel?

Dame Sybyll had clearly overheard his whispered conversation with Heila, but she didn’t address him directly when she resumed her tale. Still, her next words made it clear that the secret Heila had revealed was every bit as agonizing for her as he’d feared, if not worse.

”Tha’ life we lived, it weren’t one I’d wish on tha’ man I hate tha’ most in this world,” Sybyll said as she turned to lock gazes with Ian Hanrahan for the first time since she’d entered the great hall. Her crimson eyes were puffy and faintly pinkish tears spilled freely from them but she didn’t seem to care as she directed her fury at the bound and chained lord.

”Fourteen years, we ran, an’ we hid an’ we lived like kicked an’ beaten dogs,” Sybyll spat fiercely enough that Ian staggered backwards and nearly tripped over his own chains. ”Fourteen years b’fore we heard tha’ usurper Aiden died an’ Cousin Ian took his place. Fourteen years, that broke me mother’s body and spirit... but she never forgot who she was, an’ she never turned her back on me.”

”So when she thought that finally,” Sybyll said as her body shook with barely contained fury. ”Finally, we could come home an’ reconcile wit’ me cousin. When we were no threat ta him or his place on tha’ throne. When he had no reason ta’ hate us or hurt us...”

By the time they’re returned to the place that should have been Sybyll’s ancestral home, her mother was no longer recognizable, even to the people who knew her best. Those years wore away at her until her lustrous red hair was thin and faded, her pale, milky skin had grown tan and blotchy, and her once radiant smile was cracked and broken.

There was no trace of grace or pride in the bearing of the crippled woman who brought her daughter to visit the keep on a feast day, but even if the years stripped away every external trace of the woman she had once been, her mind remained as keen as ever. They’d saved up every snip and silver penny they could, and spent nearly all that they had to dress themselves up neatly, blending in with the other prominent common folk until Caitlin found the opportunity she’d been looking for.

She’d led Sybyll into the passages known only to the most trusted of servants and the Hanrahan family themselves, leading her to a place that they could wait for the young Baron Ian Hanrahan once the public feast came to an end.

”It’s been a long time, Cousin,” Sybyll said, addressing Ian Hanrahan directly at last. ”Ye were still a young man, tha’ night we met. I still remember tha’ lecherous look in yer’ eyes when ye’ thought me mother had brought me to ye as entertainment fer tha’ evening,” she said in a voice that dripped with venom and scorn.

”You should have taken the offer,” Ian said, refusing to stand idly by and allow the demon woman to continue controlling the narrative now that she had brought matters around to him directly. ”If you’d have gone along with it, that old hag might have survived the night and you wouldn’t have been chased out of town.”

”You tell a fine tale of misery and woe,” the shackled baron continued as he drew himself up to his full height. ”But everyone who knew my aunt Caitlin knew that she was barren. You show up, looking a bit like her, with a mad cripple raving about my father murdering yours, then offering to ’make amends’ and keep matters secret,” he roared, shouting to be heard by every person in the hall.

”You’re a demon! You were a liar and a swindler then, and you’re a demon trickster now,” Ian shouted. ”You can conquer my home with your army. You can drag me here in chains,” he said as he rattled his chains for emphasis. ”But you can never convince the good and godly people of Hanrahan that you belong on that throne,” he declared, as though he could make his statement true through sheer force of will.

”And sooner than you know it,” he said as he pointed a thick, sausage-like finger at her. ”The Lothians will arrive to tear you down from that throne, and they’ll bring the full might of the church with them to do it! So count your days, you demon temptress,” he sneered. ”Because you don’t have many left.”