Chapter Text
Bachelor Dankovsky had once again come so painfully close to victory.
This attempt was nearly, almost, near enough– but he had learned so cruelly over so many years that a quest like his demanded nothing short of absolute perfection. No price could ever be too high in pursuit of that ultimate, glorious triumph, that light which he could swear he almost had in the palm of his hand. Yes, he had made progress tonight; in fact, he had shattered the til-then limits of physical science. Yes, it did well to use an already-living subject; an inoculation against Death, like all things, was so much more elegant and impressive than a cure. But now here he was, nothing more than another faceless ne’er-do-well dragging a corpse through the night.
The idea of trying to hide a body amongst so much naked desolation and gore was almost laughable, but she was perhaps the only person in this godforsaken Town whose remains couldn’t be stepped over in the street. She was, after all, the image of perfection. The perfect candidate, thanks to her formidable spirit, her suprahuman lineage… everything that made the Bachelor certain that her absence would be investigated tirelessly. Now the blood of Simon Kain, which had run Scarlet in her veins, leaked a dull brick red from the ruined bedsheet Daniil had wrapped her in. It stained his hands, his coat, and seemingly the backs of his eyelids. Rivers had sprung forth from clinical punctures, pouring thickly over pale skin, wounds opening and blackening like wicked smiles as he administered shocks again and again. And how her eyes had shone– those black eyes, gleaming brighter than his scalpel! All for nothing. Another disappointment.
A few lamps burned low around the perimeter of the plague pit on the outskirts of town. Here, in her linen burial shroud, she would blend right in, and the bodies were to be burned tomorrow. Her disappearance would never be traced back to him – maybe the Ripper would be blamed for it, if Daniil played his cards right. Her body was oddly light, as if her bones were hollow like a bird’s, allowing him to heave it over the fence and into the pit with only a little difficulty. Rigor mortis was setting in, and the sound she made as she joined the masses of decay made even the seasoned thanatologist nauseous.
He straightened up, looked down to make sure none of her identifiable features had been uncovered in the process, and then turned on his heel and set off for the Stillwater. Back to the drawing board.
Dark. Cold. Heavy. The cold sank in through every layer of skin, muscle, and bone, but the moment its first fingers reached the center of the young Mistress’s chest it was driven back by a core of burning heat. The fever spread. The permeating smell of congealed blood singed her airway at her first breath. She closed and opened her fists, then started moving – shifting with a silent determination through an ocean of cold limbs and plague sores, like a single candle flame in the pitch dark. She clawed and kicked, struggling not to sink; her nails dug into dead flesh as if to prove that she was not one of these abandoned cadavers, the too many and too poor for caskets, and then finally her hand struck packed dirt. Luckily for her, it was so full that she could reach up and grab the base of the fence, and she pulled herself up out of the pit, leaving only her bedsheet behind.
On solid ground, Maria coughed up black blood, then flopped over onto her back and took shaky gulps of fresher air. Her matted hair fanned out in the dry yellow grass, and she lifted one of her narrow hands to examine it in the lamplight. Something stirred deep in her chest, at the bottom of her well of unstoppable lifeforce. She let her hand fall onto her chest, fingers trailing over the distressed black silk of her nightgown and the perfect bloodstained skin where she so clearly remembered being torn open. A Kaina couldn’t be seen like this– not by anyone but the full moon above her and the jerboa that fled through the grass.
Her head spun with thoughts of Dankovsky and sublimity, memories from a yesterday that felt like a lifetime ago, and she let her reborn body drive her with vicious purpose. Up away from the pit, across the bare fields of Earth. Was this her Bachelor’s victory? How dare he kill her and throw her away like regular offal? Oh, offal. She could smell it for miles. Standing before a locked warehouse, she dug her nails into the sheet metal beside the door, feeling it dent and tear before her, and ripped it open. Heralded by the horrible creaking and screeching of steel, she slipped inside and threw open the first icebox she could get her hands on. Fresh meat. She grabbed one of the deep red cuts awaiting processing and sank her teeth into the soft flesh, letting the metallic taste fill her mouth. Raw beef carried a sort of nostalgia; it always tasted like a childhood that hardly seemed to belong to her anymore, and in between that childhood and tonight, she had eaten very little red meat at all. In moments she had devoured half the icebox’s contents. It didn’t quite satisfy – too cold, too fatty – but the iron energized her. Was this her own victory? The final metamorphosis? With her bare hands, she widened the hole in the wall, tearing a whole panel off in the process. Some passersby would find it if the patrol didn’t get there first, and Earth would feast tonight. Better than letting it rot before a stalled factory.
Maria’s bare feet made soft imprints in the ground. In a cluttered loft high above the Skinners, Peter Stamatin sat in a corner surrounded by designs and empty bottles, dark hair hanging listlessly around his face. His green eyes followed Maria as she stepped past his sculpture of her and gave him her wickedest smile, as she pulled scraps of paper out of his bathtub and filled it with hot water.
She peeled off her sticky nightgown, one sloped shoulder after another, and cast it aside to burn later. With Peter still slumped against the wall, she could feel his gaze trace her body, covered in blood and dirt and ash. What he was seeing, she could hardly imagine, but the fear and awe in his eyes assured her that this was all, for him, part of a terrible dream. She didn’t say a word to him as she got into the bath and went about the considerable task of getting the Death out of her hair.
Wisps of blood and bile twisted through the water, mixing in with traces of spilled paint. Maria dragged her fingers down her arm, pressing so hard she left white trails behind, to dislodge the dead skin charred by electrical burns. She rubbed the dirt off the soles of her feet. Peter stared at her like she was a monster or a ghost, which she believed she very well might be. When she was as clean as she could get, she climbed out of the water. A drawer, which she had to jostle to open, contained a few of her spare dresses. A crimson skirt fluttered down into place over her bare skin, a wide neckline clinging gently to her shoulders, and she tied a silk shawl around her waist like a sash. She looked into the black eyes of a torturous abstract painting as if it was a mirror, which in a way it was.
“Maria,” Peter rasped, surprising her. By the sound of his voice, one would think he had died that evening.
She turned to look at him, really look at him, for the first time. His expression was rapturous, desperate. His body, even as drained as he was, seemed to glow with heat. She could smell his blood, sweet with twyrine and misery. Her attention sharpened, eyes narrowed, head ticked to the side. He moved, weakly, as if to reach for her. She had known exactly what she needed from the moment she woke up in the plague pit, but now she had the words for it.
Maria descended on Peter like a bird of prey, kneeling before him and above him, her hands sliding down the front of his shirt. Her red lips pressed against the delicate skin of his neck, tasting his pulse, and he gasped, tilting his head away so she could get in closer. She squeezed the sharp lines of his hips. There wasn’t much meat on his bones, but there would be enough.
“Maria,” he repeated, as if it were a prayer.
“I love you,” she threatened him.
She kissed his jaw, his neck, his collarbone, then let her white teeth graze the sinewy muscle that ran from his neck to his shoulder. She bit down, gently at first, but with an unrelenting and certain pressure. He wrapped his arms tightly around her and bared himself as well as he could, though she could feel his hands shake. Her teeth dug into his flesh, he cried out in pain, and she could taste the first pangs of iron and twyre in her mouth.
A shock went down her spine and she straightened up, abandoning the fresh wound which started to bleed into his dirty tunic. His eyes were glassy; there was barely anything of him left. “Please,” he whispered. Scattered amongst the bottles on the floor were drawings, each one more fantastic than the last and still never good enough for his own standards. Glass roses and steel thrones and shimmering Foci. This was the meat of him: his stunning genius, the incredible vector of his soul. What little remained was not to be wasted.
“I’m going to eat you,” she told him.
“Haven’t you already…?” he asked, delirious. “An angel, Maria. Heaven sent its wickedest for me...”
“No. I haven’t. There’s so much more I want from you…” She leaned in to kiss his forehead. “You’ll give me everything. Won’t you?”
He trembled and cried and swore over and over that he was hers, and she held him and felt a bloom of cruel pride that almost completely eclipsed the physical hunger in the pit of her stomach.
Sunlight kicked up the dust in Peter’s loft, making the smell of despair stronger than ever before. Maria opened her eyes to a hunger that was starting to gnaw its way up her throat and sat up, disentangling herself from the architect that clung to her. He stirred as she stood up and walked to the window. Broken glass crunched under her feet like fallen leaves, getting no reaction from her and seemingly unnoticed by him.
“I had such terrible visions…” Peter professed weakly. “I felt the hand of Death last night, I’m sure of it.”
Maria looked out the window at the sooty miasma that had settled upon the Skinners overnight. “Only my hands,” she assured him with a gentle confidence. “Twyrine stirs the worst reaches of your imagination, my darling Peter.”
“And the most sublime,” he protested. His fingers gingerly prodded the soft scab on his shoulder, and he hissed and drew back in pain. “Do you see this, Maria? A creature from the depths of the earth almost devoured me in the dead of night. How beautiful she was… It must have been that maneater everyone’s talking about. The shape-stealer. It must have been made of moonlight. The moon feeds on me in the darkness, you know…”
“You were out of your mind last night, my love,” Maria remarked, combing her fingers through her messy hair.
“But you were there! You fought off the beast. My head was between its jaws. You, naked and holy, descended like an angel to save me. Only you could do such a thing,” he recounted, every syllable thick with infatuation.
“But of course… You’re to be devoured only by me.” A smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, and her stomach growled as she cast a glance back at him.
“Eternally,” he agreed as he changed his shirt out for an equally dirty one on the floor nearby, which at least wasn’t bloodstained. “What a divine dream. I can’t see the truth like you, Maria… But it does inspire me. Oh, I feel sick. Would you bring me another bottle? I’ll drink your health.”
“Drink your own– mine is impermeable,” she said, turning toward his cabinets. “Fever, I am always racked with; but no flu, no pox, not even this pest dare come near me.”
A door creaked open and slammed shut, and the weary voice of Daniil Dankovsky cried out: “Peter!”
Peter pulled himself to his feet at last, as Maria pushed aside empty bottles on a shelf to find one that still had his poison in it. “I wonder what he wants now…” Peter mused, glancing towards the sound of footsteps coming up the stairs. Maria clicked her tongue and offered him a sealed bottle, which he accepted with a bow of his head on his way to greet the Bachelor.
“It’s Hell out there,” Daniil complained as he entered the loft. “Listen, Andrey insisted that I check on you. The man is out of his mind– but I’ve brought you some medicines.” As always, he saw nothing more than what he was looking for.
“Must you come all the way up here?” Maria asked. At the first sound of her voice, all the color left his face. His eyes widened in confusion and horror when they found her, clean and healthy and alive. She tilted a shoulder. “You’ll let the Pest in, you know. I can see it on your shoes…”
His mouth opened to demand answers of her, but then he glanced over at Peter and steadied himself. She could practically see his head spinning. “And what are you doing here?” he shot back after a long pause. His fear tasted delicious.
“I’m looking after my architect, of course,” she replied, knowing full well that wasn’t what he was asking. Her eyes challenged him to interrogate her here, dared him to let Peter hear what he had done.
Instead, he turned to Peter. “How long has she been here?”
Peter shrank back and looked to Maria, who responded on his behalf. “That’s none of your business, en-Daniil. Peter isn’t feeling well. He had a difficult night.” Daniil’s eyes narrowed, and he studied Maria as if trying to reveal all her secrets through sheer force of will. She smiled softly and stepped towards him; he instinctively took a step back, before steeling himself to let her come closer. He was practically shaking as she reached out and delicately touched his face. “I’m happy to see you, truly. But think of Peter’s health! Without him, all is lost, our future is bare– I hope you’ve at least brought him something to keep him safe,” she said, looking down into Dankovsky’s terrified brown eyes.
Peter, seemingly unaware of the tension in the room, pulled the cork out of his bottle. “And I hope you’ll drink with me, old boy.”
Starving, Maria could hardly bear to be so close to Daniil. She let him slip out of her grasp, and her red lips parted to give Peter a smile before she disappeared into the stairwell– Dankovsky was too shaken to stop her, and Peter was determined to waylay him.
As soon as she stepped outside, she was struck with a familiar stabbing pain between the eyes, so sharp it almost made her nauseous. The source of her headache stood with her back to a wall, staring Maria down. Rather than verbally acknowledge the waif, Maria scoffed and pinched the bridge of her nose in an attempt to reduce the pain. She started to leave, east towards the Knots, but the Changeling’s words stopped her in her tracks:
“Maria Kaina, I know of you this...”
Damn it. Maria drew herself up to her full height, then spun carefully on her heel to face Clara. “You know nothing of me, little one. Don’t even bother with your tricks.”
Clara’s eyes narrowed. The infected air seemed to warp around the two Mistresses-to-be. “You aren’t human anymore,” she accused.
The hairs on Maria’s arms rose, but she breathed deeply and held her ground. “I haven’t been human in years. But what do you think I am, Clara? Am I an evil witch? A werewolf, perhaps? And, oh, what are you ? I find it hard to consider you anything more than dust under my shoe.”
Even without any answers, Clara didn’t back down either. Her saintly hands balled up into fists. “You’ll ruin everything. You’re unnatural, I can feel it! Everyone is afraid of me – but you’re the real monster, and I’m the real Mistress!”
“Yes, I’ll ruin everything for you. I dare you to stop me– even to try! I could reduce you to ashes with less than a thought.” With that, Maria turned around again, walking towards the nearest bridge. As Clara hurried after her so as not to be ignored, Maria noticed that neither the Changeling nor the stumbling, wretched infected in the streets stirred any hunger pangs in her. They smelled like bones and damp dust, all of them. But even unprovoked, the hunger writhed inside her, making her toss her head and squeeze her nose again to distract herself.
“I’ll destroy you, Maria,” Clara warned. “You’ll be dead before me. I can see it!”
“You’re cute, really. You’re mistaking your dreams for sight, just like the bitch that took you in. Do you know what I see? You couldn’t even survive it… I see blood everywhere. I taste it on my tongue. I’ve had a vision, a flight, and I know that no man, no woman, and no beast can destroy me; no Death can take me; even you, child of the earth, are bound to the earth; and thus you have not an inkling of the power it would take to stop me from doing what I am here to do.”
“How I hate you!” Clara cried. Knowing there was nothing else to do, she stomped her foot on the ground to show her indignation. Maria waved her off with a flick of the hand; Clara whispered a curse and let herself fall behind, opening and closing her hand.
Maria implicitly knew where she was going. She turned left in the smoky air of the burned Chine and glided south through the Knots, unimpeded by looters, only briefly slowing down when she would pass someone in the street. It was light out – and the townsfolk gave her a wide berth, anyways. It wasn’t worth the chase.
Near the Station, isolated from other buildings, Maria let herself into a shack that would soon shelter more than one crime. She could smell his flesh from here; this time, there was no question.
He was happy to see her, of course. He was in love with her, as she knew well. It was essentially Utopian to love Maria, and to love Maria was, inevitably, to be consumed by her.
“You should be careful, coming all the way here,” he warned her as he rifled through balance sheets in search of some financial information to show her. “People have lost their minds. Even my people! I’ve heard them say…” He trailed off.
“What do they say?”
“They say you’re a witch…” Vlad looked at Maria over his shoulder uncertainly before continuing. “And I’ve heard the word… shabnak-adyr.”
She smiled softly. He tapped the side of a stack of papers against his desk with a sense of finality before turning to face her. “How charming,” she mused. “I thought all that hysteria was quite over.”
“It never ends with that kind of people,” he informed her. “They see the clay wench in every shadow… including yours, Maria.”
“Don’t worry, Vladislav,” she teased, moving to sit down on his sad little cot. He smelled like ink and some unplaceable spices. “But if you must, I may allow you to inspect my legs, so you can assure anyone who asks…” As she spoke, she inched the hem of her dress up to her thighs, bending and flexing at the knee demonstratively. Her legs were long and bone-white, but bound lightly with muscle. She glanced up at him to invite him closer, and he didn’t need any more convincing.
She could all but taste his excitement in the air as he crossed the room, closer, closer – and then, as his hand reached for her thigh, she pounced.
Throwing herself at his chest, she sent him backwards so hard that his head hit the rim of his precious well with a loud crack! He hit the ground a moment later, and then she was on top of him, and she was ripping his shirt off and digging her teeth into him as the blood from his head quickly pooled under them. He screamed as she tore a chunk out of his shoulder. Fresh, tender meat filled her mouth, and the taste of it was certainly as close to heaven as Maria Kaina could get. Desperately, Vlad tried to shove her off of him, but her nails gouged long stripes of red along his sides and she dove again, pinning him down as he struggled. As she lapped at the blood that dribbled from the crater in his shoulder, he grabbed an outcrop in the brick wall beside them and tried to pull himself away, kicking at her.
One of his boots landed at her belly, knocking the wind out of her, and she fell back onto her haunches as he started to pull himself up. She lunged forward then, throwing her arms around his waist, and grappled him onto the dirt floor once again.
“You’re being difficult now, Vlad,” she hissed.
“Ahh! Fuck!” he screamed. “Oh, God, get off me!”
She grabbed a loose brick from a pile at the foot of the well and drew herself up, straddling his torso. She swung the brick down at his head and felt it connect with a crunch and a spray of blood, then tossed it aside and went in for the kill– her bloodstained mouth against his neck, biting down on the trachea until it compressed and then tore apart. She pulled her head up in a sharp ripping motion, and chewed and swallowed as the last of his weak defensive motions faded out, replaced by a raspy gurgle that soon became silence.
One of his orbits had been crushed by the brick, destroying the eye inside it, and the other eye pointed blankly at the ceiling of the shack. Maria rolled off of him and got into a more comfortable sitting position, then lifted his arm with her hands and leaned in to tear into the muscle of his forearm. Blood ran down her chin and neck, staining another dress– but that was a problem for later. When she was satisfied, she would leave him here and climb down into the tunnels, and let his people say whatever they liked. She had work to do, and hunger to chase, and she felt amazing.