The Vampire & Her Witch

”You see?” The Olive-Ashlynn said as Ashlynn found herself once again in the bedroom with a sleeping Jocelynn next to her and the strange wood-woman at the foot of the bed. ”This is what you fed me,” it said as it took a step closer.

”You took all of it, every black and bitter drop of your suffering during these long, hard months, and you laid it at her feet for what she did to you,” Olive-Ashlynn said. ”You weren’t wrong then. You were honest about who contributed to your suffering. Without her betrayal...”

”No!” Ashlynn snapped, interrupting the wooden woman. ”No, it’s Owain’s fault for beating me that night and dumping me in that grave,” she insisted. ”Jocey hurt me, she betrayed me, and she...”

”She deserves to suffer as you suffered,” Olive-Ashlynn concluded. ”That’s why you made me, and why you fed me all of your hurt and your suffering. So I could do what you couldn’t do.”

”I didn’t make you to kill her!” Ashlynn said, balling up her fists as she struggled against the temptation to pummel the personification of the Seed of Witchcraft the way Owain had once pummeled her.

”No, of course you didn’t,” Olive-Ashlynn said sweetly as she smiled at Jocelynn’s sleeping figure. ”You made me to ensure that she suffers. You’re going to live forever beside your beloved, but you need every day of your happiness to be a day of her anguish. It isn’t enough to hurt her for what she’s done and then watch her die the way Owain died, her betrayal cut too deep for that,” the wooden woman explained.

”So I’ll help you to torment her forever,” Olive-Ashlynn said. ”An eternity of torment and a body that will never be permitted to die to escape from it. That’s what I’m for. You can’t have forgotten. Every time she drew close to you tonight, when her presence reminded you of the pain she’d caused, you fed me again on your hatred, reminding me of my purpose...”

”No, that, that wasn’t it at all,” Ashlynn said in a desperate rush. ”I made you so we’d have time. So we could face what happened, the both of us together, and find a way through it. I made you so I wouldn’t lose her again...”

”You made me so you would never have to let her go.” The Olive-Ashlynn smiled in a hollow mockery of Ashlynn’s usual expression, without any of the warmth or joy that brought her face alive when she truly smiled. ”That’s not at all the same as forgiving her, is it? You’ve been telling yourself such a beautiful story. Let me show you the truth that lives underneath it.”

Olive-Ashlynn moved faster than anything formed of wood should, as if it possessed Ashlynn’s gifts of vampiric speed to appear on Jocelynn’s side of the bed. Then it reached down into the bed and took Jocelynn by the hair.

”Don’t...!” Ashlynn cried, but it was too late.

Jocelynn came awake all at once, dragged half off the mattress, and the soft sleeping young woman opened her eyes wide in terror, confusion, and pain as the wooden woman manhandled her as easily as a kitten caught by the scruff.

”Ash! Ashlynn!” Jocelynn cried as her hands flew up to claw at the wooden fist knotted in her hair while her bare feet kicked against the tangled furs as she struggled to free herself. ”What’s happening, Ash! What is this... AAAAGGG!” Jocelynn cried in pain as she was pulled completely free of the bed.

”Ash! Save me!”

Ashlynn threw herself across the bed, and her hands closed on nothing in the place where her sister had been a half-breath before. She could see them both, the wooden thing and her sobbing, struggling sister, close enough to touch, and yet she could not reach them no matter how much she scrambled across the bed; she never seemed to come close enough.

And then, in a movement that looked almost gentle, the way one might ease a loose thread free from a sleeve, the Olive-Ashlynn took Jocelynn’s arm and tore it from her body, exactly the same way Sybyll was said to have torn Loman’s arm from his body as punishment for his crimes.

The sound of it was a thing Ashlynn would carry for the rest of her days. A wet twisting combined with the pop and crack of bones wrenching free of their socket, and then her sister’s shriek growing louder and louder as agony consumed her.

The blood came in a black sheet down Jocelynn’s side, splattering hot across the furs, across Ashlynn’s face and her open, screaming mouth, and the severed arm hung loose and obscene in the wooden woman’s grip, the fingers still twitching and reaching out for the sister who couldn’t save her.

”You see,” the Olive-Ashlynn said, the same light, satisfied tone that Ashlynn used when she’d finished baking a treat for her lover and wanted to be praised for her efforts. ”This is the part you never let yourself imagine. The part that you walled off and fed to a seed so you wouldn’t have to face it yourself.”

Then it laid its free hand against the ruin of Jocelynn’s shoulder, and it spoke in the soft rhyming cadence of Ashlynn’s own craft, twisted now into something monstrous.

”Through olive’s deep and deathless root,

Knit the limb and bear new fruit...”

Rich emerald warmth poured out of it, Ashlynn’s warmth, as it used Ashlynn’s own healing gift. The very same power that had failed her so utterly in the dream now flowed freely, eager and obedient.

Jocelynn’s torn flesh closed and the bleeding stopped. Bone and muscle and skin bloomed back out of the stump, reaching and knitting, until a new arm hung whole and unmarked at Jocelynn’s side and her sister was, by every measure the eye could see, perfectly restored.

But the severed arm still lay where it had fallen among the furs, and the blood was still hot on Ashlynn’s skin. Jocelynn was sobbing now, broken little hitching sobs, cradling the new arm against her chest and staring at Ashlynn with wild, haunted eyes as she realized that she’d escaped one madman’s dungeon only to enter another... and this time, her tormentor had the powers of a witch.

”There.” The wooden thing crouched at the bedside, bringing its hollow eyes level with Ashlynn’s stricken, tear-streaked face, and when it spoke again, its dry voice had gone almost tender. ”Isn’t this what you wanted me for? Isn’t this the very thing you made me to do?”

”She will suffer endlessly,” Olive-Ashlynn promised. ”Fresh torment after fresh torment, and I will see to it that nothing in this world is ever permitted to end her life or grant her release from the punishment you crafted with your own grieving hands. Forever, Ashlynn. You promised her forever.” It reached out a single carved finger and tucked a strand of bloodied hair behind Ashlynn’s ear, gentle as any sister.

”No, that’s wrong,” Ashlynn insisted. ”I didn’t just feed you on my hatred! I gave you everything, everything I loved and cherished about my sister. All the moments I wanted to share, all the joy I hoped we’d find... The good and the bad so we could face it all...”

”Is that what you think happened?” Olive-Ashlynn asked, looking at her with hollow, empty eyes that made a mockery of pity. ”You never fed me your love or your joy,” the wooden woman said. ”You held those things close to your heart, never letting go of them so that you could use them like spurs, urging yourself forward.”

”You were the heroine tonight,” Olive-Ashlynn said. ”The sweet savior-sister whose heart knew only love, who’d pushed away her hurt and her hate. The saintess-perfect-sister who could never hurt the woman who’d hurt her most....”

”You gave me none of the love you treasured,” Olive-Ashlynn said while Jocelynn sobbed in its grasp. ”So if you want me to share the sweetness and the sorrow, you have to find a way to let go of what you love...”

”Eternity isn’t easy, Ashlynn,” the wooden woman said as the room began to fade away. ”A vampire’s Seneschal should know that better than most. If you cannot risk that your love for her will be devoured by what you’ve wrought, then you cannot weave a love that will last for an eternity into the seed you plant in her heart.”

”Forgiveness flows from you,” it said as the darkness of the Void flowed outward from its eyes, consuming it along with the rest of the vision. ”And hatred too. So find a way to remake me right... or this is all I can do.”