The Mother's Arc

Chapter 2 of 4

The shield held. Walachia stayed hidden. But when the Mother returned to her workroom below Tower Strigoi, she opened her hand and found the ruby dark and cold. Every drop of moonlight was gone. She had planned to use that stone for the daylight rite. Now she had nothing left to power it. The one attempt that mattered most had no fuel. She set the spent ruby on the stone table. Around it lay her ritual tools, useless without stored light. The daylight rite needed years of moon, and she had burned it all in a single night. Without power, her clan stayed cursed to the dark. She pressed her fists to the table and thought. There was one other reserve in Walachia. Her instinct turned to the streets. She wrapped her long veil close and went down into the market row, where the tall Gothic building glowed under wrought iron lamps. A sleek group of night-clad vampires stood beneath the orange light. They wore modern suits and dresses, red-eyed and pale, the fashionable young of the court. Each of them carried moon-charged stones sewn into collars and cuffs. "Give me your stones," the Mother said. "I need every scrap of stored light in this kingdom." A tall woman stepped from behind the group. Her lace gown swept the cobblestones. Long nails, red eyes, a matriarch of one of the old lines. The younger vampires drew back to let her speak. The Mother knew her. This matriarch shielded her whole house from dawn using those stones. "You ask us to burn our sunlight charms," the matriarch said. "So you can chase a rite that already failed once." "I ask you to trust the one holding your shield," the Mother answered. "Give me the stones. I will make the daylight yours." The matriarch studied her. Then she shook her head slow. "My house burns without those stones. I will not spend them on a maybe." She raised one hand. The young coven closed ranks behind her. The Mother's temper cracked. She threw out her arm and pulled the blood in the matriarch's veins. But the pull met nothing to raise. Her blood-bending was spent with the shield, drained days ago. High above, a pale winged shape stirred on a rooftop, a strigoi mort she had once bound. It should have answered her call. It did not move. She had no power to wake it. The coven saw her fail. They saw the great Mother reach and grasp air. The matriarch turned and led her house away down the lamplit row. The Mother stood alone under the orange glass. The ruby was dead. Her magic was hollow. And now the court had watched her weakness with their own red eyes. By morning, every clan would know the Mother could no longer raise the dead, nor make daylight, nor force anyone to obey.