Karhi Emelyn

Cailean shouted out in surprise and alarm.  The door slammed shut behind her, and Karhi was left with Amara.

Amara’s eyes were wide on where the door had disappeared, leaving only the wall that had been there when they arrived.  She looked up at Karhi, brown eyes wide and alarmed.  “Why did you do that?” she demanded.

“Hazel told me that you’re one of the few people that this room is keyed to,” Karhi said.  He stepped away from Amara, refusing to get into the range of an unknown mage.

“It’s been broken since I got here!”  Her jaw clenched in frustration.  “She must have forgotten.”

“I think that if the room wasn’t keyed to you, she would have fixed that immediately.  No—I don’t think she knows.  Because you’re not Amara.”

Her eyes bugged in alarm, and she backed away from him.  “What are you talking about?”

“You’re not an anthroshifter.”  He tapped his throat.  “Anthroshifters heal.  It’s the most well-known thing about them.”

She sneered at him.  “If we’ve been over-expended, we have a harder time healing.  If you’ve never met an anthroshifter before, then you don’t know anything about us.”

That was true.  He didn’t.  But so many other things didn’t make sense.

Idly, he twirled his sword in his hand, thinking.  “Ben Forrest isn’t here.  But people have seen him here.  But he’s been in South America since you allegedly got back from your last mission.”  He tilted his head to the side.  “Why is that?”

“Hey!”

They looked up to see Aoife rounding the corner from the direction that Karhi knew to be the war room.  She had a sword on one hip and two guns on the other.

“What are you two doing out here?”  She trotted up to them, looking the hallway over with an eye trained to find danger.  “Why aren’t you in the panic room?”

“Amara can’t get into the panic room,” Karhi said.  He raised an eyebrow at Amara to see how she responded.

“That can’t be right.”  Aoife looked at Amara.  “The panic room is keyed to you just like in the Irish castle.  Savita checked it before we arrived here.” 

Karhi had known Aoife for long enough to tell when her confusion turned to suspicion.  She tensed, one hand twitching for a gun at her hip.

Amara looked between them.

Finally, she exhaled.  “I guess this was only going to last for so long.”

She shifted again, but it was subtle this time.  She got a little taller, her nose a little sharper, and she gained a scar going through one eyebrow and down her cheek.  She was no longer Amara, but she looked a lot like her.

Aoife’s mouth dropped.  “Ameya?”

“Hello, Aoife.  It’s been a while.”  Her voice was similar to Amara’s, but a bit deeper.

“Where’s Amara?”

“She’s fucking dead.”

Something hit Karhi in his stomach and bulldozed him to the ground.  Pain erupted in his chest, and he choked out a strangled cry of pain.  Broken rib.

Karhi couldn’t get up.  Whatever held him down was strong and immutable, an invisible barrier that kept him down.  It didn’t hurt, it just didn’t let him up.  He was like a bug displayed under glass.

Aoife was pinned to the wall, arms uselessly locked to her sides, eyes wide with alarm.

The woman—Ameya—stalked to Aoife, fists clenched at her sides.  Her face had twisted into a snarl of fury.  “That last operation you did?  Amara was compromised.  The mark’s bodyguard followed her home and killed her.”

“That’s impossible,” Aoife said, voice barely above a whisper.  “We had protocols . . .”

Something clicked in Karhi’s head.

“The dead man’s blood—you made it from Amara’s blood,” Karhi said.  “The blood tested as magical, but it was indeterminate.  Anthroshifter blood.”

Ameya smiled bitterly.  “I thought it would be fitting that she at least got to take others down with her.”

Aoife struggled against the force holding her down to no avail.  “Amara would never—”

“Amara was too soft-hearted to know better,” Ameya hissed.  “You always claimed she was like family, but where were you when she needed you?  Where were you when that monster came after my sister and tore her apart with plague metal?”

Aoife’s breath escaped her in a whoosh.  “What?”

“I warned you.  I warned you, Aoife.  When I first gave you that information, I warned you that he could sense anthroshifters.  I warned you that my sister would be in danger the minute you had her involved in that mission.”  Her lip curled.  “She called me crying.  When I got there, she was torn almost in half.  She died in my arms.”

Karhi had never seen Aoife so shocked.  She kept trying to speak and then would stop.  Her eyes were wide.  “You . . . you betrayed us?”

“Please.  I haven’t worked for you in ten years.  My sister stayed with you, out of a sense of misguided loyalty.”  She shook her head, jaw clenched, eyes glassy.  “I should have pushed her harder to leave.  I should have made her leave.  I knew you would get her killed one day.  You were never our real family.”

“Ameya, I carried you out of the burning wreckage of your house myself,” Aoife said.  Her voice was thin.  Karhi could feel the heartbreak.  “If I had known—”

“You’d what, Aoife?  You’d go after the world’s most terrifying assassin that even Hawthorne herself couldn’t fucking take down?  You’d go after the man that we all thought was dead for decades and kill him?  He was confirmed dead.  He can’t be killed.”

Something about what they were talking about was familiar, but Karhi couldn’t quite place it.  He knew of Hawthorne—one of the most famous vampire hunters that ever existed.  She had had a lot of high-profile kills. 

“So you, what—you killed Rami for revenge?”

“He was the man in charge of the operation.  He was the one who got her killed.”

“Ameya—I was in charge of that operation.  Rami was—”

“Working with your target.  He was working with Moroi.”

Oh shit.  So this was tied back to Moroi and his children.

“Ameya,” Aoife said.  Her eyes had softened.  “I’m so sorry.  I know what it’s like to lose your only family.  I—”

“No, Aoife,” Ameya snarled.  “You don’t understand what this feels like.  Because this was preventable.  If you had just listened to me—I told you not to send her in.  I told you to hire me if you needed someone who could change faces.  A mage who can at least protect themselves if things go wrong.  I told you to put me on that mission.  And you said you would think about it.

“And a month later, I find out the mission is over.  I find out when my sister gets home and tells me she did something crazy.  I find out when she comes home and tells me about Moroi and Dracula and all these vampires she had always heard of but never seen.  To her it was a game—always a game.  No one ever suspects an anthroshifter.  They’re so rare, and they’re impossible to identify.

“But she was identified.  You failed her.”  Ameya’s voice cracked, and tears leaked down her face.

Things were clicking in place.  “You pretended to be Lavender and Ben Forest,” Karhi said.  Greer had said she spoke to Lavender, and Lavender had said she hadn’t.  And multiple people reported sightings of Ben Forest.

“Ding ding,” Ameya said, her voice flat.

And she had said she “didn’t want to see another body” during the interrogations.  From the way Hazel had responded, everyone had assumed she meant something about the mission.  But she had meant Amara’s body.  Mira hadn’t flagged that, but Mira had also been having a hard time . . .

“Mira had a hard time reading you.  Even from the calibration questions.  Because you were telling your sister’s story, not your own.  And every time you said something that was true about her, it was a lie about you.  And the lie about your sister . . . was a truth about you.  Your inner monologue is in Arabic, and you were lying about yourself but telling the truth as Amara.  You completely skewed the results.”

Ameya touched her nose and pointed at Karhi.  “I’ve been taught to lie by the best.”  She looked at Aoife as she said this.

Aoife’s gaze had turned steely.  “So, you killed Rami.  Amara was on leave.  So you snuck in.  But why Ciara?  Why Faren?  They have nothing to do with any of those operations.”  She bared her teeth at Ameya.  “Why Cyly?”

“I needed help to kill Rami.  I know Amara, and I know how to imitate her, but I don’t have her knowledge.”  She held up her fingers, that had a dozen rings on them.  “Fortunately, she put everything in memory crystals for you over the years.  And I had just enough skill and knowledge to take them from your stores and embed them in her rings.”  She wiped the tears.  “When I quit working for you, I didn’t lose all my clearances in the Irish castle.”

Aoife let out a breath of surprise.  “You . . . had the memory crystals turned into jewellery so you could access them at any time.”

“Bingo.  I got to kill Rami.  Snuck in.  Pretended to be a guard.  Stuck a needle in his arm when I got him alone.  And for that revenge, and for these rings, I just had to do one thing—infiltrate the house.  Kill some key players.  Destabilize you a bit.  So I came back early, as Amara.  Told Hazel that ‘my sister’”—she used finger quotes—“who I was supposed to be visiting, was busy.  And Hazel was happy to have me because she was coming to the states.  She wanted me around just in case.  Her pet anthroshifter.

“And when we realized that we had a stick of dynamite to demolish your shields–when we realized what Sloane could do . . . well, I knew how to play Amara.  And Amara has always been popular with girls.”

“You knew Sloane was a cursebreaker.”

“I figured it out when we met her on that breezeway.  Normally you can’t sense stuff above ceilings in the castle.  It’s the nature of the magic of the castle.  But I could sense her.  The magic was already eroding after her only having been sitting there for a few hours.”  She shrugged.  “Cursebreakers are more powerful with stronger emotions.  Sex.  Fear.  All of the usual things.  It wasn’t hard to convince a horny teenager to hook up in places I chose.”

“You’re why we’re being invaded,” Aoife said.  “Were you the reason that our shields started to fail?”

“Hole in one.  Sloane helped with that.  Especially when we needed an in to start the infiltration.  They aimed right where she was on that tower.  She had weakened the barrier enough along with my own work.”

Karhi realized with horror further implications of what that meant.  “Your room is right next to the panic room . . .” he murmured.

Ameya glanced back at him.  “We spent hours together a couple nights ago.  If you had aura sight . . . well, the panic room is Swiss cheese.”

Aoife’s expression had clouded over, the surprise and shock gone from it.   All that was left was an even glare.  “Ameya—why?  Cyly and Alice are the best of any of us.  They—”

“Her obsession with those awful bloodsuckers is dangerous.  Her plans can’t be put into action.  Though, fortunately for us, even there, we’ve had some gains.”

“Your primary target is Alice,” Aoife said.  “You don’t want her continuing her work with General Faren.”

“She’s a good target for that reason, but she’s also just a good target.  Any of the royalty are.”  She shrugged.  “Well, except for you.  Being the Source, you’re much more valuable alive than dead.”

Whatever that meant, it had an effect on Aoife.  She froze, eyes wide on Ameya.  “You . . . how do you know that?”

Ameya shrugged one shoulder.  “Interesting what you can do with a few strategically placed pawns in the house.”  She finally turned to Karhi.  He felt the magic solidify on him, any movement fully restricted again.  “You’re an interesting one, Karhi.  You could be useful.  Centuries of oppression by this family.  You have to be tired of playing their games.”

Tired of playing their games?  “The Ruaidhrí family has never been my real issue.  If anything, they’ve often been respite,” he replied.

“With all their power, why did they never take out Ilona?”

Karhi laughed harshly.  “Why would they?”

“That’s ridiculous,” Aoife said.  “Ilona was—”

Ameya flicked her hand at Aoife, and suddenly the sound around her cut out.  She was clearly still speaking, but they couldn’t hear her anymore.  She stopped, too, looking around in confusion.  She opened her mouth but no sound came out. 

“Sound lock,” Ameya said, looking back at Karhi.  “But anyway—what do you mean ‘why would they’?  Centuries of power—centuries of being almost as powerful as the vampire courts.  So much so that there are only two living vampires represented in the courts.  So much so that they have an entire military at their disposal—why did Hazel never go after Ilona?”

“Again.  Why would they?  I’m familiar with diplomacy.”  And he knew better than anyone that Ilona’s resources were almost infinite.  Trying to send anyone after Ilona would have been a suicide mission.  And could potentially start a war.

“Let me rephrase it.  You seem to have a good relationship with Hazel.  But everyone knows what Ilona did to you and your siblings.  Don’t you resent Hazel?  She makes this big show of going around and making contracts with other magics.  She works especially hard with halfshifters and parahumans.  All under this guise of trying to ‘make the world a better place’.  Or some such nonsense.

“Why did she never try to make your world a better place?  She had the resources.  She’s hired you for years, used you for years.  Your relationship with her is different than any other vampires outside of her house.  Why didn’t she do anything for you?”

Karhi’s smiled without humor.  “I’m not stupid enough to think that she has the resources to kill her sister in a way that wouldn’t result in a backlash that tore the courts apart.”

“Why not?” she shot back.  “She was infiltrating Moroi’s ranks to make an attempt on Eretica.”

Karhi froze.  He looked at Aoife, whose eyes had gone wide.  She said something but Karhi couldn’t hear it.  But he could get the sentiment.  How did Ameya know that?

“Yes,” Ameya said, looking at Aoife.  “Amara told me everything she did for you over the years.  I knew about every mission; I knew about everything.  Because even though she was naïve, she wanted to make sure I always knew what was going in case anything ever happened to her.  She made sure that I was never in the dark about her missions.”  She looked back at Karhi.  “Eretica, one of the most prolific sires in the world.  Amara’s mission was to infiltrate their weird family unit.  She was working with spies that had been planted in Moroi’s ranks years ago.  And she was making an opening to allow one of those spies to assassinate Eretica.  Her break this month and next month was part of her cover with those vampires.  And then she was going right back in.”

That was . . . fucking ballsy.  Going after Eretica.

Karhi looked at Aoife, whose jaw was set in anger.  “Why would you assassinate Eretica?”

Aoife opened here mouth, and Karhi heard her inhale to speak.  Ameya had gotten rid of the sound lock.  “I can’t say,” Aoife growled through gritted teeth. 

“Probably because Eretica was siring her own energivore original vampires.  Ten times as volatile and deadly as regular original vampires.  Able to kill just through energy manipulation.”

Aoife’s mouth snapped shut so fast that Karhi heard her teeth clacked together.  Looking at her, Karhi could see that Ameya was correct.  “We didn’t tell Amara that,” she finally said through gritted teeth.

“No.  You didn’t.  But I work for other parties also interested in what Eretica’s doing.  They were very interested to know what I had found out about Amara’s work.”

Aoife bared her teeth.  “You’ve compromised all of our work?  To who?”

“An interested party,” Ameya shrugged.

“Moroi.”

“Worse.”

There was worse than Moroi?  From the look on Aoife’s face, she also didn’t know what Ameya meant.  “Who could be—”

Ameya cut her off, putting the sound lock back on.  She turned to Karhi.  “As you can see, they have the power to go after old, scary vampires.  They just chose not to.  You had nothing to offer them, so why would they kill Ilona?  They have no interest in you or giving you a better life.”

Hazel . . . had gone after one of the most powerful vampires in existence.  She had done something that could have been an act of war on Moroi.  She had done something that could have completely destroyed the vampire courts from the inside out.

Why?

And why hadn’t she ever gone after Ilona?

Karhi’s stomach twisted with uncertainty.  He had never doubted Hazel before.  He had never considered why she wouldn’t help them, if she could.  He had always assumed that she couldn’t.

But what if . . .

“You said I could be useful,” Karhi said. 

Ameya nodded.  Aoife looked like she had been struck, eyes on Karhi.  She said something—shouted it, actually—but Karhi didn’t catch it.

“How?”

“You’re old.  You’re a neuropath.  We could use your abilities.  And we could take down Ilona once and for all.  She’s still alive.  You know it.  She still has power.”

“She’s practically dead.”

“Practically dead is not the same thing as dead.  The thing that killed my sister was ‘practically dead’.  One of the most terrifying hunters that ever existed.  He was allegedly killed decades ago, but he’s still alive.  And now Amara is dead.”

Aoife was yelling something, but Karhi couldn’t hear her.

“I’ve heard of what you’ve gone through,” Ameya said, turning from Aoife to step towards Karhi.  “I’ve heard about the torture and the abuse.  No one ever did a thing for you.  But we can.  We can make sure she’s dead, and we can make sure she pays.  For everything she’s done.”

As she got closer, Karhi could feel the magic on him easing.  He wasn’t able to move much, but he could wiggle.  It wasn’t the stifling weight that it had been.

“You speak as if you’ve been harmed by her, as well,” Karhi said.

“She killed my parents.”

That sounded like Ilona.  Karhi even vaguely remembered Ilona being upset a few years back about having found an anthroshifter that was taken out from under her.  She was always getting into things and getting upset when they didn’t work out how she wanted.  Carrick had probably taken some damage for that failure.

“So, you’re also motivated to make sure she’s dead,” Karhi said.

“I am.”

“The person you work for could make it happen.”

“Yes.”

“Who do you work for, then?” Karhi asked her.

“You would find out after you joined us.  I can’t just namedrop who I work for.”  She huffed out a laugh through her nose.  “What do you think?”

Karhi could see Aoife struggling against her restraints, yelling something that Karhi still couldn’t hear. 

“So, what—I join you and your mystery boss has Ilona killed?”

Ameya shook her head.  “No—you would get to do it.  You would get that revenge.  For you and your siblings.  You would—”  She stopped, brow furrowing in confusion.  She had lost her train of thought.  “What—”

The force holding Karhi down disappeared, and Karhi threw his sword as hard as he could at Ameya.

It hit her clean through the abdomen, spearing her on the left side.  She crashed to the ground, screaming in pain.

Karhi stood over her almost before she settled against the ground.  He took the handle of the sword and twisted it slightly.  Ameya screamed, back arching off the ground.

“I’ve never wanted to be the one to kill Ilona,” Karhi said.  He felt exhausted suddenly.  His rib had healed and he had an ache in his chest.  But it was an ache beyond the physical.  “I just wanted her gone.  I’m sorry that she affected your life, too.”  He truly was.  He could imagine what Ilona had done to her.  Ilona was a fan of family annihilations when she could.  But Karhi wouldn’t let that sway him.  “Who is this mystery boss?” he asked.

Blood was pooling on the ground beneath Ameya.  It wasn’t moving quickly.  Karhi hadn’t removed the weapon from her side on purpose.  Ameya could potentially survive this.  With fast medical intervention.

Ameya didn’t say anything, tears pouring down her face.  She whimpered in pain.

Aoife joined him, free now with Ameya distracted.  She didn’t say anything. 

“Who is your boss?” Karhi asked again, twisting the weapon.  More blood pooled out.

Ameya shuddered against the ground, crying out in pain at the movement.  “I c-can’t,” she whimpered.  “They—they’ll do so much worse.”

Karhi twisted again, and Ameya screamed again.  “Seems like a better option to talk now.”

She shook her head, a waterfall of tears on her face. 

“Who is he?”

“A v-vampire,” she stuttered.  “I only know him as D.  He—”  She cut off, an awful gurgling noise drowning out the rest of her words.  Her mouth opened wide, and her body shuddered. 

Karhi watched in horror as something covered in black oil crawled out of her mouth.  It looked almost like a scorpion with its tail uncurled, black chitin plates sliding over each other smoothly as it moved.

Ameya’s body went limp, head falling to the side.  Her eyes were empty, and Karhi couldn’t hear her heart anymore.

“What the—” Aoife started before a boom so loud Karhi could feel it in his teeth cracked through the air.

The wall into the secret tunnel exploded out. 

Stone and concrete fell to the ground.  Indigo blue and acid violet shadows flitted out of the darkness, and the shadowmancer entered the hallway.

The oily scorpion-thing scuttled for her, a bright red orb in its pincers.  It crawled up the woman’s leg.  She watched it, an awful smile on her face.  “Excellent.  Thank you, my sweet, for stopping her before she became a liability.”  She reached down and picked it up off her leg and popped it into her mouth, bug and red energy and all.

“Oh, what the fuck,” Karhi muttered as the mage crunched on the shell of the scorpion.  Her skin shimmered with a red light for a moment before turning back to pale white.  Karhi realized she was wearing the same outfit that Ameya had been wearing—black pants and a black shirt. 

“Black widow,” Aoife said.  Her voice was tight.

“Excellent catch, General.”  She threw out her hands and dark purple shadows flew towards them.  Karhi dodged, just barely avoiding them.  He darted towards the shadowmancer, sword in hand, before his vision went black and all sense of his body disappeared.

He was back in that room.

Cords cut into his skin, wrapped around his arms and legs.  They held him spread eagle, suspended in the air.  A collar at his neck had sharp pins.  They were there so that when he got too tired to keep his head up, he felt it in more ways than just exhaustion.

He was naked with the exception of an iron belt around his waist.  Ilona said it was to keep the pleasurable parts of him safe from her wrath.

She stood before him, a goddess of pain and life.  Her hair was the colour of burnished copper, falling down her back, wild green eyes filled with manic desire.  She wore a white dress that clung to her curves, feet bare, fingers adorned with rings.  There was a knife in one hand, and a glass of blood in the other.  She would place the blood beneath him to tempt him.

He was in a small room, underground.  It was dark, lit only with some candles.  The walls and floor were a rough, dark stone.  It was the first place she ever brought him to torture him.  Her original torture chamber.

“No,” he said weakly.  Why was he here?  He hadn’t been here in centuries.

Are you sure you ever left this place?

Ilona was dying.  She couldn’t take him.  She couldn’t be here.

She can.  She’s always been powerful.

No, no one could be that powerful.  He had seen her eaten by soulfire.

“That’s your problem, my love,” she said, stepping forward with the knife.  “You doubted my power.  But I will make sure you never doubt it again.  Nor will I let her doubt it.”

He turned his head to see that the room was bigger than it had once been.

And Sloane was suspended in the air by cords that cut into her wrists and ankles, leaving raw marks where blood couldn’t pool.  She was naked.

But . . . that wasn’t right.

Ilona never used cords.  Cords weren’t painful enough.  It was always metal of some sort—chains, cuffs—not any type of fibre.

With that, he realized that other things were off.  The knife in Ilona’s hand.  She always used ceremonial daggers with jewels in the pommel, the hilts made of precious metal.  This was just a plain dagger, nothing special.

And her hair was the same colour as blood.  Not this coppery colour.

This wasn’t real.  Not just because she was dead.

But because a shadowmancer was trying to make his fears come to life in his head.  As if his own mind hadn’t done that and worse.  And his own mind had way more background and detailed information than this shadowmancer could pull out of him for her cheap party trick.

Sloane’s eyes weren’t even fucking green here.  They were blue.  Sloppy work.

He broke away from the vision, and he was back in the castle.  And he just had enough time to see the shadowmancer disappear into the panic room.  The minute she was gone, purple and blue smoke wreathed the door.

Karhi bolted for the door but he stumbled to a stop just before touching the smoke.  He felt the unease in the smoke even two feet from it.  He knew that if he touched it, he’d get thrown back into those fear-fuelled nightmares.

He couldn’t do anything.  The shadowmancer was in there and had sealed the door from the inside.  Everyone in the panic room was at her mercy.