Crimson Prințesă's Arc

Chapter 3 of 10

Ten beasts still knelt on the stone floor of the Hall of Monsters. The blood storage stood empty. Maria wiped the last red from her lip and looked at the row of drained clay vessels. Ten was not a legion. She needed a source that would not run dry. She turned to Dawit, who watched her from beneath the glowing orange windows. "Your shamans made enough for a pack," she said. "I need enough for an army. Where does more blood like this come from?" Dawit did not soften it. "It doesn't. The shamans who enriched it are gone. Their method died with them." He crossed to the empty storage and pressed his hand flat on the cold clay. "I've spent months trying to rebuild it. I have failed every time." Maria felt her plan crack. She stepped closer to him. "Then we don't rebuild theirs. We make a new one." Dawit was quiet a moment. Then he lifted his head. "There are two bloods strong enough on their own." He held up one finger. "The vampire bat. Its blood carries the hunger that lets it feed on anything and keep flying." He held up a second finger. "And the strigoi mort. Undead blood that already refuses to die." "Two strains," Maria said. "Not one." "That is the wall," Dawit said. "Apart, each is thin. Neither raises a legion alone. And no one has bound them. Mix them in a jar and they curdle." Maria looked at her hands. The answer was already there. "They curdle because no one bends them. You mix. I bend." Dawit left and returned with two sealed flasks. One held the dark blood of a vampire bat. The other held the pale, near-black blood drawn from a strigoi mort. He set both before her and broke the wax. Maria touched her ruby headdress and pulled its stored moonlight down into her hands. She would not spend her own life on this. She reached into both flasks at once. She felt the two rivers, one hot and greedy, one cold and stubborn. They fought her grip. The bat blood tried to rise. The undead blood tried to sink. "Hold," she whispered, to herself. She pulled both by the throat. She wound them together in the air, strand into strand, hot into cold. The two streams shuddered and then stopped fighting. They braided into one thick red rope that hung between her palms, glowing faintly. It moved on its own, eager and tireless. Maria lowered the fused blood into a single empty vial. It filled and did not curdle. It held. "One strain," she said. "And it copies itself if we feed it the bat and the mort." Dawit stared at the vial. "That is a source. A real one." Maria capped it. She had her well now. But the bats she needed nested in the mountains, and the strigoi mort belonged to men who would not give their dead freely.