"Dealing the Death Card (2)" by Amy ´Insom´ Downum

   Beyond the ebon-stained window the sky screamed and writhed. Veins of lightning pulsed erratically, twisting like snakes around turrets thrust hundreds of feet into a violently undulating atmosphere. On the other side of the glass the air was just as electric. Random explosions of light illuminated a figure pacing. The sharp stab of stiletto heels rang in the silence between bellowing lamentations of thunder. The figure, trim and pale-skinned, was Agatha, and she had been pacing for an hour.

   The sound of her agitated footfalls created an edgy melody in time to the bass drum overhead. Her eyes passed to the black marble floor below. She had no reflection. The steady second by second tick of the behemoth oak clock in the corner finally brought an abrupt end to her fervent pacing. A resounding groan announced that it was one o’clock in the morning, and Agatha flew to the massive bedroom doors and into the cold stone stairwell spiraling down from the West Tower.

   “What news?” Cold and demanding, her voice muted the conversation that drifted quietly through the common room. A second voice, cracked and worn, filtered from the shadows beyond the reach of the grand fireplace.

   “They have not yet returned.”

   Agatha’s eyes mimicked lightning. “Why haven’t they?” Tension ignited to the vehemence of her challenge.

   With a delicate timbre, the cold voice brought Agatha’s inferno to a humbled smolder. “The Dealers are your jurisdiction. If they have gone astray, the fault is not mine.” Humiliation, bright as a blushing rose, lit Agatha’s pale cheeks. The elder watched her from the corner, boring holes that bled and burned into her breast. Eyes of slate and shadow caught the firelight and threw Agatha’s gaze to the floor. Her submission, though obvious and exposed, was swiftly withdrawn at the toll of a clear crystal bell. The note brought back the fire to her blood, crowding out the disgrace of seconds previous. The eyes of another woman now sought her, eyes void of sight and a throat without a voice.

   A haunting, bleeding whisper touched the edges of her mind and lingered only briefly. “They come…”

   War drums erupted in Agatha’s chest. The last her heart had beat so wildly was the last she had ever felt it, and now only the ghost of the sensation remained. She flew to the greatest of the castle’s windows and fixed her eyes on the turbulent sky beyond the warped pane. And waited…

   They came in droves. The sky belched them forth like locusts of the Plague. They themselves were a Plague unknown to the barely-conscious world of men. They had been unknown since their creation fifteen thousand years ago, when the Demonic had first laid his hand upon God’s pure earth and molded a crude and unintelligent blood fiend. It whispered sweet lullabies to the sun and when she slumbered crept forth to wail at the moon, always hungry, never restful. Legends grew out of the mists shrouding rural villages, out of the blood and the fear and the superstition. That primitive nightmare leeched life from malcontent, hatred and blood. These ravenous Russian wolves spread, multiplied, and evolved, until the colony split and dispersed, and the Plague bled beyond the hamlets and villages and into the cities and the metropolises. Identified as the Volk, their vast social network became increasingly difficult to hide, and yet their ancient culture remained untapped. Each new member to their society, admitted and acknowledged by the wounds they sustained, died, stiffened and stood erect as a child of the Volkan. As a single locust in the army of the Plague.

   Shadows swept across the front lawn, shimmering and wavering in the downpour. Agatha swept from the common room into the entrance hall and through the front doors, from the warmth into the deluge of rain. Her eyes caught the broad figure in the lead, and her boots carried her swiftly to Rurik’s enshrouded form.

   Her voice came in a fluid, urgent hiss now face to face with the Captain. “Did you succeed?” She searched his face, invisible but for twin eyes like chips of frozen jade. Her own burned with anticipatory excitement. “Did you kill Bezborodov?” She had no reason to suspect otherwise.

   The Captain’s gaze met hers. His eyes harbored infinite promises and anchored them with little hope. They blazed bright and in an instant Agatha knew that what she did not want to hear was forthcoming.

   “No.”

   The warmth of the common room extinguished its self in a rush of whispering coals. As agitated as they were ten minutes ago, Agatha’s footsteps rang through the stone hall of the LaCroix castle in sharp contrast to the silence on which Rurik tread. He followed her into the presence of the common gathering, carrying himself as if ill news was good news and Agatha was nothing to fear. His idle bearing made her skin crawl.

   “They have returned, Agatha.” In his corner shadow, the elder Navar smirked.

   “They return a failure!” A serpent’s hiss passed her lips. Her fingers knotted into each other to keep from strangling the other. “Bezborodov lives.”

   “As he has for thirteen hundred and fifty-four years.”

   “As was our mission to end his-“

   “Enough.” In the silence left by his command, the elder’s chair sighed, and from the shadows emerged the second oldest of Europe’s reigning class. Where age had not ruined his body, his disease had. Wrinkles and scars ran together, tributes to battles won and lost – to a life won and lost. He moved like aged wood, his muscles petrified and stiff and his joints creaking in tune. But beneath an exterior of frailty was kindled a warrior veteran’s soul, kept fresh as long as it was fed. He commanded respect with actions, not words, and in his presence the common gathering settled into silent unease. Agatha, between Rurik’s broad frame and the wall of Dealers behind her, stood her ground.

   “Missions fail. Bezborodov has been eluding assassination attempts from every civilized clan in Europe since he usurped Machlich Satan knows how many millennia past. To say that a British squad failed to assassinate him on their first attempt is not surprising in the least.”

   At this, Rurik shifted and frowned. Agatha felt her cheeks flush with colour and quickly dammed it back up. “I had hoped that with our latest intelligence gains we would be able to-“

   “I said enough.”

   Suitably silenced, Agatha stood in a pool of heat that threatened to return permanent colour to her skin. She watched Navar with pitted eyes, detesting him for his lack of support. When their plan had been launched, he too had expressed a viciously willful desire to see their preparations bear fruit. When he spoke again at length, he brought another point of failure into painful relief.

   “Ten left for Volgograd. Nine have returned…”

   Rurik stepped into the embers’ glow. “Marsalle Aulk was attacked en route. She was pronounced dead upon arrival.” Agatha’s fingers flew to her temples. Rurik treated the news as nothing special. He had his ways of remaining distant, as Agatha had hers of becoming too entangled.

   Navar’s own reaction was incalculable. His face remained impassive, the same canvas of cobwebs and fissures. “Debrief them, Agatha. We will meet again in the morning.” Given a gracious parting path by the Dealers he had just dismissed, the elder stepped into the hall and vanished into a curtained corridor.

   Shaken to her core, Agatha straightened and brushed briskly past the Captain. She kept her back to him as she made her way to the conference room in an attempt to regain the composure the elder had sucked from her. Nine of the ten chosen men and women chosen less than two weeks ago filed in. A ragged bunch, wet and perpetually pale, they turned to her in the shadow of their Captain. Thunder beat ceaselessly on the high window.

   “The elder might excuse failure,” she began harshly, speaking past Rurik to the assembled Volkan, “but I do not. Do with tonight what you will, but tomorrow’s dawn begins a new tactic.” Something buckled beneath the weight of her frustration. “I’m sorry…for Marsalle. She was one of our finest.” Faces peered back at her from the light of a single oil lamp in the corner. Distorted, oblong, pale and twisting, eyes like black pits in the shelter of the brow. She looked to the window above and beyond. “Good night.”