Chapter Text
On her journey, Caitlyn imagined she would recognize Piltover when she arrived, that a swell of homecoming would lodge in her heart at the sight of its marbled spires, its shining brass fixtures, the sweeping gulf of its busy port. But watching the city through the carriage window now, no memories surface. She lived here once, grew up here, walked its streets. But then maybe it looked different three hundred years ago. A lot can change in a single century.
She’s spent her circuitous journey from Noxus, dreading and wondering, and now she feels a perfect blankness. The city slips past her, smears of deep blue nighttime and yellow street lamps. Some intersections flood with people walking to and fro, even as late as it is. Back in Noxus, she hardly spent any time among the human populace, knew little of how they spent their time when she wasn’t among them, culling their herd. She and her coven had carried out their existence in an underground fortress, apart but still near enough where they could procure sustenance. The separation made it easier, made the suffering and fear of her human prey more abstract.
It’s why now, as she sits in the back of the carriage, just behind the driver, that she can practically feel the lub-dub beating of his blood stirring the air. Salty, subtly sweet, and fatty. Venom floods her mouth, and she swallows it back reflexively over and over. She hasn’t fed in two weeks, not since she and Mel left Noxus. Mel had been right when they parted ways in Ionia—she should’ve fed. Now she’s holding her breath, staring, unseeing out the window of the cab, thinking of all the ways she could trap the driver and dispose of him if need be. She doesn’t like to drink from men, though, not if she can help it.
No, she still has to meet the groundskeeper at the manor gate to be let in. It wouldn’t do, there’d be too much to explain. She’s already asked for an exception, having the groundskeeper show up well after working hours in the first place.
As the carriage pulls up to the manor, she spots the groundskeeper leaning against the gate. She isn’t what Caitlyn expected when she’d corresponded with the landscaping company. Knew that it was a woman, someone named Vi, and that she would be at the manor entrance gate to hand over the keys once Caitlyn arrived.
She doesn’t look like a landscaper, or anyone else Caitlyn would employ: she’s dressed all in black, jeans that look painted on, a bulky leather jacket pushed up to her elbows, showing forearms corded with muscle, long, jaggedly-cut, greasy black hair, and a face painted crudely with black paint — a slapdash black slice painted down across each eye, with lambent silvery eyes warily peering out of the darkness at the approaching carriage.
Caitlyn watches her from the anonymous space of the cab, waiting for the driver to get out and open the door for her, before she unspools herself onto the driveway. She doesn’t look up at Vi again until the driver has unloaded her suitcase and the compact carrying case for her rifle, and pulled away.
The wind blows, gently batting the scent of Vi’s blood against Caitlyn’s nostrils, which flex to take in her scent, and again she must swallow back the anticipatory drip of venom, the pressing of her dog teeth fangs in her mouth. It’s fresh blood that she first detects, and it’s not the secret, interior fragrance of arterial or intravenous blood. It’s blood spray on the surface of her skin, only slightly muskier for having dried over the course of an hour or two mingling with the tang of her sweat. Blood also that isn’t just her own, but someone else’s. Maybe more than just one someone. Beneath that, less urgently, she also smells some mix of cheap liquor, and cigarette smoke.
She gives herself a moment to wait for the breeze to blow the other way, before she turns her face in Vi’s direction. When she looks at her again, finally, standing less than ten feet apart, she sees the carefully guarded expression she expects is reflected in her own face. She can see a bright, poppy red spot of burst capillaries in the sclera of Vi’s right eye, and she can smell that too, delicate and salty. There’s something to her blood she can’t quite place, something that raises the hairs on Caitlyn’s arms, even under her cloak. It’s not just the smell, or maybe the smell at all, but that extra sense of the Other—usually only tripped by the presence of other vampires. Which doesn’t make sense for Vi, not with all the blood inside her.
She takes in another shallow breath to say, in a low, nearly breathless voice, “You must be Vi.”
Neither Vi’s expression nor posture change, except for her jaw tensing, teeth clicking together for a moment, eyes just twitching back and forth between Caitlyn’s.
“That’s me,” Vi says then. “You’re Miss Kiramman.” She seems on edge when she says it, but her voice itself is unexpectedly melodic.
She has a lovely face under that grease paint smeared all over it. Perfectly heart-shaped, with heart-shaped lips. But she can also see how, in the moonlight, her face is covered in notches and bumps, her nose bandaged over, a sliver cut out of her top lip, and her brow. Her eyes, clear silver blue, look Caitlyn up and down, not as if trying to root out the thing that’s wrong with Caitlyn, what sets her apart, what makes it so she looks human and yet, subtly, but essentially, is not.
Maybe it’s just the eyepatch. Her parting gift from Ambessa. Caitlyn hasn’t gotten used to the sight of it herself, and she knows it makes her stand out.
“I am,” Caitlyn says, interrupting Vi’s inventory of her. “You have the keys?”
Vi nods but doesn’t make a move to either hand them over or unlock the gate for Caitlyn.
“May I ask where it is you came from?”
Vi looks up, frowning. “My other job.”
“Which is?”
Vi hesitates for a moment, her body tensing, and then relaxes. Something like a smirk passes over her lips. “Conflict management. You should see the other guy.”
She kneels to pick up the suitcase, but Caitlyn is quick to grab her other cargo. Vi’s lip curls, but she just turns away, unpocketing a ring of keys and starts unlocking the gate. As Caitlyn passes Vi through the gate, she catches it again—it’s not just a scent, but an energy coming off of Vi, rippling in the air around her. Their eyes connect as Caitlyn walks past, and she senses that Vi is assessing Caitlyn in the same way, that they are seeing the strangeness in each other, together.
She trails behind Vi, keeping several paces between them as she leads Caitlyn to the manor’s entrance, shoulders stiff, turning her head a little occasionally as they walk in silence, to regard Caitlyn out of the corner of her eye.
She thought she’d be safe to return to Piltover, she thought she had been careful. Surely none of Ambessa’s co-conspirators or allies remain here. Surely she hasn’t been followed, she tries to tell herself as she walks. She and Mel had been so careful when they departed Noxus, and she’s been vigilant along her journey to Piltover alone. The only reason they parted ways was to throw off their trail, just in case they were being followed. But she hasn’t sensed it until now. Whatever Vi is, it pulls on her every sense, every scrap of knowledge she’s learned over the years about enemies and how they hide. Her body tells her that Vi is to be treated as a threat.
As they round a massive, triple-tiered fountain with still murky water, she catches her first glimpse of the manor itself. She’d arranged to have the manor looked after and rehabilitated, but still, it seems spectral and abandoned before her now. It’s not easy to wash away three centuries of solitude.
Vi stops at the great doors of the manor and holds the key ring out to her.
Caitlyn reaches a gloved hand out from under her cloak and takes the keys. They feel warm, even through the gloves, Vi’s grasp lingering there on the metal. “Thank you,” she says. She can’t think of anything else to say that would give her a chance to scrutinize Vi any more closely, not without showing her own hand.
Vi nods once, making brief but fierce eye contact for a moment before turning her head to the side. Her jugular jumps under the skin. She’s nervous, and that thought sends a chill down Caitlyn’s scalp. What does she have to be nervous about? Is it just Caitlyn’s off-putting presence alone? What is she about to do?
But she only says, “Any time. Good night, Miss Kiramman,” and walks off, not waiting for Caitlyn to acknowledge her. She puts her hands in her jacket pockets, body signaling a kind of animal fear, the sort you see from dogs before they bite, even as she retreats into the night.
Once inside, the manor yawns before her, the dark hollowness of its chambers cold as corpses. She trails through them, waiting for memory to strike her, but then she wonders if the manor ever looked like this when she lived her as a human girl; the furniture and paintings hanging on the walls are covered in dusty sheets, the curtains all drawn, the corners and crevices laced over with cobwebs. In some of the rooms, where the ceiling has collapsed from the passage of weather and time, she can see the renovation crews she’s hired have left ladders or scaffolding set up, as well as tarps strung up to block the profane sight of degradation throughout the house.
She pulls down sheets as she goes, revealing the character of each room, until she comes to a room that she remembers. Not clearly, but a feeling comes over her in the space, passing through her from somewhere in the decomposed interior of her mind. She can almost picture it: herself walking across the faded carpet, and throwing herself onto the bed draped in green sheets, tears on her face, in some forgotten adolescent melodrama. Sitting on the cushioned bench along the window, reading by the full moonlight, standing before the mirror, turning this way and that, tugging self-consciously on the bodice of a plum-colored gown. This was her bedroom once.
She sets her suitcase down and unpacks it there after casting aside the sheets covering the furniture. She notices that the room is not in perfect order—the bedding is rumpled and a blouse hangs on the handle of an imposing armoire, as if it was laid out to wear the next morning.
The last sheet to come down is a sheet covering a massive mirror, backed with real silver. She snatches her hand back, realizing her error only when she feels it’s heat on her fingertips. She feels the heat behind her eyepatch, dilating through the cornea, Ambessa cut out of her. It takes a moment to stop her head from spinning and calm herself enough for her body to remember where she is, and that Ambessa is dead after all.
She peers into the mirror’s speckled surface. But she only appears as a shadow. She wishes she’d left it alone, but it’s just as well. A good reminder that she may be back in her ancestral home, but she’s not the same girl who once lived here. She touches her eyepatch, feeling the aching void behind it, and watches her silhouette in the mirror do the same—moving sluggishly, smearing darkly across the silver.
She’ll have to find somewhere to sleep without windows come sunrise, but for now she takes her time inspecting the bedroom, the view of the gardens below. From here, she can see where the gardens have already been trimmed and where they’re still yet to be touched, wild and overgrown.
She takes out a piece of paper and pen, and sits at the desk in her room to write a letter to Mel, to let her know she arrived in Piltover safely. But is that really true? She should tell Mel, warn her ahead of her arrival. She needs to tell her to wait, not yet, not until Caitlyn is sure the threat is imagined. Maybe it’s something to do with the missing eye, her sense of sight cut in half, leaving her feeling vulnerable. Maybe it’s just the fact that Ambessa had been, for nearly the entirety of Caitlyn’s existence, an omnipotent presence, one whom Caitlyn could keep no secrets from. Even in death, it’s hard to believe she’s truly escaped.
She hovers the pen above the page, and licks her dry lips with her cold, rough tongue. She needs to feed. Once she’s fed, she’ll have something more to say to Mel beyond the hysterics she feels just on the verge of now. She will warn her, but she must be certain.
So instead of writing her letter, she takes out the calling card Mel gave her before they parted ways. “Jayce shares our preferences. He’ll know where we can find willing thralls,” Mel said. It’s just like Mel to have contacts in all corners of the world, hidden allies waiting to be utilized. Just like her mother in some ways.
She writes to Jayce:
Hello Mr. Jayce Talis,
My name is Caitlyn Kiramman of House Kiramman and Mel Medarda’s coven mate. She told me once I arrived in Piltover that I ought to get in touch with you and that you share our appetites. In particular, she let me know you would know where and how to sate it safely, for all parties.
I look forward to hearing from you post haste.
Sincerely,
Caitlyn Kiramman
One of the things she’d been careful to arrange ahead of her arrival to Piltover was the pneuma-tube connection running throughout the house (along with the water, heating, and electricity), as she found through research that this was the most efficient way to communicate in Piltover—one of the city’s hoard of inventions over the last century. She rolls the letter into a canister and feeds it into the piping beside the desk. There. One less thing to worry about.
As dawn approaches, Caitlyn moves to the palatial bathroom and turns on the sink taps. Her body aches with hunger, throat spasming painfully, tongue stinging with venom.
The expansive mirror running the length of a wide, marble vanity and sink must also be backed with silver, as only her shadow falls across its surface, the room otherwise appears empty behind her. She thought she might finally make herself take a good look at her eye, but she’s more relieved that she won’t have to just yet. She does remove the eyepatch, though, the flesh of her eyelid feeling almost painfully—even humiliatingly— exposed in the entombed air of the bathroom. She undresses, leaving her clothing in a pile of blacks and dark blues, her boots tossed in the corner, and steps into the shower, billowing with steam.
She washes her body and face with quick, business-like movements, avoiding the left side of her face as much as she can, and then takes her hair down from the knot she’s kept it in at the nape of her neck. She rakes her fingers through the kinks, snagging on some tangles as she goes. Some dead organ in her midsection twists with dull pain, her fingers and toes feel numb and clumsy, no matter how hot she makes the water. There’s no warming up this kind of chill, not like this.
Once outside of the shower, she scrubs her body dry with a threadbare towel, still hanging on the back of the door after all these decades, and leaves it on the floor with the rest of her clothes when she’s done.
Some other night, she’ll have to dedicate some time to finding the Kiramman Crypt or procuring a coffin for herself. For now, the sizable walk-in closet will do. She pulls off the coverlet and a pillow from the bed and makes a nest for herself beneath the rows of hanging skirts, dresses, trousers, and blouses in the walk-in closet. Showers of dust fall on her every time she brushes against them, as she settles. She shivers in the bedding, thinking of Vi’s dark figure through the carriage window, the way her presence made her limbic system chime like a tuning fork. And then she falls asleep.
Caitlyn wakes early, just as the sun is starting to set. Before opening her eyes, she casts her senses out around her, listening, scenting the air, and is able to discern that there’s someone on the property. Most likely, someone she’s hired to do repairs. Possibly Vi.
She gets up, cracking the closet door. This time of year, the sun sets early, so she’s safe to come out, though it’s barely past 5:00 pm. She slips out, listening the whole time she stands in the washroom, combing out her hair and adjusting the eye patch. She pulls out the outfit she’d folded away in her travel bag—a pair of high-waisted ink blue trousers, a smartly tailored vest, and a cream colored silk shirt that ties at her throat. She ties up her boots, cinching them tightly right above her knee, and leaves her room, feeling smartly dressed if nothing else.
The house is dark around her as she moves through it, until she reaches the entrance hall, where she finds Vi. She’s turned the great chandelier on, so about half of its bulbs flicker with amber light.
Vi stands on a step stool, changing out the bulb in one of the wall sconces next to the front doors. Tonight she’s dressed in dark canvas pants and a ribbed tank top. Her arms are bare, muscular, with black tattoos of machinery traced in symmetrical patterns down each arm, across each shoulder. She can see more ink work peaking around the edge of the tank top, the hair under her arm dark red with sweat. She’s wearing her hair long down her back, longer than Caitlyn had initially thought it was, but now she can see, in the light, that red shows through at her roots and odd strips the black dye missed. Again, Caitlyn’s fangs prick her lip when she takes in a breath and draws in the taste of Vi’s blood. But also she thinks now that her fangs drop, sensing the obvious wrongness she presents, however mouthwatering.
“Can I help you?” Vi asks without turning around, voice flat.
Caitlyn steps into the room. “Vi. Good evening.”
Vi finishes screwing in the frosted glass lamp shade and then flips the light switch. She turns to Caitlyn. Fiery little flyaways halo her head, lit from behind. She’s not wearing the dramatic grease paint she was the night before, but she still has black shadow smudged around her eyes. The red blotch on her eye is healed, though her eyes still look a little glassy and pinkish. Sweat beads her forehead and upper lip. Her hands tremble at her sides as she looks Caitlyn over with a guarded expression. That something-else quality to her scent is even more pronounced than it was the night before—maybe a product of the lack of alcohol or smoke.
Caitlyn takes a step into the room, noting that all the wall sconce bulbs seem to have been replaced. “Is it just you here?”
“I don’t know,” she says, watching Caitlyn approach.
“Well, maybe you can help me then.” Caitlyn walks over to the mirror hanging over a credenza. It’s still covered in a drop cloth, but Caitlyn can feel the heat of silver when she stands next to it, as she suspected she would. “I’d like to take this mirror down and hang it up elsewhere.”
Vi slowly steps down from the ladder and approaches the mirror. She glances at Caitlyn as she reaches up and pulls the drop cloth down, and looks up at the mirror’s surface. She doesn’t pause the way Caitlyn would if she didn’t find her own reflection there, but she can’t risk taking a look herself in front of Vi. She can only assume from the lack of reaction on Vi’s face.
Caitlyn has a moment of feeling disappointed that it couldn’t be so easy to answer her question of Vi’s existence.
“It’s a nice mirror,” Vi says.
“Yes. But I think better suited elsewhere in the manor,” Caitlyn says, trying not to sound too impatient. There’s really no point to this exercise now. Still, maybe there’s something to be gained from this, even if it just gives her enough time to question Vi further and nothing more.
Vi leans up with her great, strong arms, and her wide, calloused hands, and reaches for the frame. She starts to lift it from the wall and then almost drops it, surprise registering on her face. She sets it back on its nail and looks at Caitlyn and away just as quickly, pausing to wipe her palms on the sides of her trousers.
Caitlyn cocks her head at this and tries very hard to keep her face neutral while still hardly blinking so as to not miss anything. Interesting.
Vi lifts it again, but this time the flinch passes through her, tendons standing out on the backs of her hands, a hectic flush rising up her neck, the heat of blood pulsing in the air, lapping gently against Caitlyn’s face.
God, she’s thirsty, and it’s distracting her. The smell of Vi’s blood is so rich, she can taste it on the back of her tongue every time she breathes in. Rich enough, it nearly mimics the sensation of drinking it. In a very remote corner of Caitlyn’s mind, she recognizes that she’s drawing closer to Vi. Just a little closer. A little closer still.
Vi gingerly sets it on the floor so it leans against the wallpaper and looks up at Caitlyn, eyes sharp, lips parted just a little in a vulpine expression of guarded curiosity. “Where do you want me to put it?”
“This way.” Caitlyn turns, walking back down the hallway. She listens for Vi’s footsteps behind her, wondering if Vi will leave instead. But after only a moment of hesitation, she picks up the mirror and follows. She can hear her boots’ heavy tread on the parquet, but she also feels Vi’s peculiar, disquieting energy pricking at the back of her neck. She has an excited feeling in her chest. If she doesn’t consciously slow her pace, she might break into a frantic run, like a rabbit.
It’s not the way another vampire feels. When another vampire is in her presence, they make a negative space, a hole in the atmosphere, that emanates a lightless, vanta black of energy, so black it sucks in the color around it. They smell of cold soil and old blood.
Vi feels and smells urgently, viciously alive. It feels like being followed by some prehistoric predator that’s burned through its permafrost out of sheer rage. Alive, yet somehow with teeth, like Caitlyn’s. And now Caitlyn is leading the predator deeper into her house.
Caitlyn wonders if Vi is making the same assessment of Caitlyn, noting the void she makes in space as she moves through the manor, the way shadows cling to her, the trail of death in the air in her wake. She wonders if Vi is thinking, just as Caitlyn is, What are you?
She brings Vi into a drawing room she’d noticed had patches on the emerald green wallpaper, where she could see pictures had once hung. She clicks the light switch and gestures to one such patch on the wall. “This is where I’d like the mirror to go,” she tells Vi.
She watches Vi from the doorway as she crosses the room to the shallow alcove. As she passes, Caitlyn again takes in a punishing lungful of Vi’s blood, shuddering a little as she drinks it in.
She watches Vi for a moment and then says, “If you have a job doing conflict management, why take this job?”
Vi huffs in what might be a laugh or a scoff without turning around. She makes quick work of hanging the mirror and then steps back, hands on her hips as she looks at the mirror, like she’s studying it to make sure it’s level. She steps towards it, gently tipping it one way and then back a little bit the other way. “Lots of people have more than one job.”
“Yes, but why do you?”
Vi gives the mirror frame another gentle nudge so it now sits perfectly level on its hook. Satisfied, she looks at Caitlyn. Even from the doorway, Caitlyn can see that Vi’s hands look pink and raw from handling the mirror.
“I—need to get out of the Undercity. Zaun. Can’t quit my other job yet, though.”
“Why not?” Caitlyn tries to decipher the expression on Vi’s face, but it’s closed like a steel trap. The only indication of emotion fluttering beneath the surface is the quickening of her heartbeat.
You’re something, she thinks, but doesn’t say it. But what?
“You need me for anything else?” Vi says, breaking Caitlyn’s concentration.
Caitlyn frowns. “You won’t tell me?”
“What are you gonna do?” Vi snaps, stepping towards Caitlyn, her whole body seeming to coil with tension. “You gonna fire me if I don’t?”
Caitlyn scoffs. “Of course not. It’s a simple question.”
Vi doesn’t shift, though a tremor seems to pass through her. She looks down at the rug, working her jaw. Then says, “It’s just…not the kind of job you can quit without notice.”
Caitlyn gazes back at Vi, trying very hard to think of what she could say to that. She looks down at her clenched hands and consciously flexes them as she does. They’re numb because there’s not enough blood in her body, because she hasn’t fed. She tries to think of something else. But her mind feels like a hill of ants running over each other. “Thank you, Vi. That will be all. You may leave.”
“I still have to finish the lightbulbs,” Vi says.
Caitlyn snaps her eyes up to Vi’s. “Tomorrow.”
A darkly annoyed look passes over Vi’s face, but all she says is, “Fine.”
“Excellent. I’ll walk you out.”
“I know the way.”
“All the same,” Caitlyn says, gesturing gallantly for Vi to pass her into the hallway ahead. Vi walks past Caitlyn into the darkened corridor without another look, marching ahead to the lighted entrance hall. She doesn’t wait for Caitlyn, except to cast a look over her shoulder as she pulls one of the double doors open and leaves.
Caitlyn sighs, one part relieved and one part disappointed.
Once Caitlyn returns to her bedchamber, she finds Jayce’s responding pneuma-tube is waiting for her with instructions on where to find his club and the password to use when she gets there (“Magpie”).
That settled, she gets ready. It’d be foolish to prolong her unintentional fast any longer, though she considers if she should first write Mel. No, better to feed, if she wants to gather her thoughts into something coherent to tell her.
Whether she’s looking for a thrall on her own or in one of the clandestine societies where vampires and humans mingle, Caitlyn prefers seduction as her tool of choice. She could take one by force, wield the blunt instrument of compulsion on the paper-thin material of a human’s psyche. Many do. But there’s no game in that, no artistry or cunning. Ambessa had advocated for compulsion whenever dealing with humans and told Caitlyn her resistance to leaning on her natural abilities wasted energy better spent on other things. Seduction, Ambessa told her, was a tool of the weak, a tool for those who had no other strength and a fragile ego.
Without Ambessa in her ear, Caitlyn elects to do things her way. She showers. She turns the water hot enough that steam rises off her skin, to feel how far down the heat will travel into her meat. Out of the shower, she dresses herself in an oversized black silk shirt, smooth, tightly fitted trousers, and a waistcoat made of plush black velvet and silk. She cobbles this outfit together from various closets throughout the manor with the few of a very small selection of clothing that aren’t riddled with moth bites. She’s satisfied. Nothing fits perfectly, but with the strategic placement of a belt and tucking her shirt this way, and letting out the seams on the pant legs like that, she makes it look effortless yet intentional. She looks really quite rakish in a way.
Her face is another matter. She leaves her hair down, waving around her face as it dries, to hide the strap of her eyepatch. As if that’ll do anything—but there’s nothing else to be done about it. That’s not the issue anyway. The issue is the entire premise of the eyepatch itself and its intrusion on her visage. She studies her reflection in the side of a water glass, watching her face morph surreally as she turns this way and that. It gives her no sense of how she will appear to her prey, but it’s a decent enough view to at least be able to apply a scant bit of makeup.
She takes out the enamel tin she keeps it in, with one small black cake of pigment for her eyes and another, dark berry colored one for her cheeks and lips. She leaves her lips bare, but opts to add a thin, watercoloring of rouge to each cheek. Her eyes, her single eye, that’s where she hesitates with the thin brush she’s dipped in water and wetted the black cake with. She sets the brush down, and instead rubs a finger through the pigment, and applies it around her eyelid, drawing a wing back to meet the point of her eyebrow.
It looks right, at least in the curved glass she’s using as a compact. Her eye peers out of the gloom of eyeshadow, a perfect, cold, sapphire. Something about the dark eyeshadow adds some balance to her face that she’s missed.
The club is tucked into the basement of another one, all the way on the southernmost reaches of Midtown, nearly at the foot of the bridge down to the Undercity. It glows greenly across the river, its noise carrying across the water—music, cheering, sirens. Here on Piltover’s side, the street is quiet and still, shining with rain that catches fragments of green light.
The first club she has to pass through is hot and humid, the air dense with sweat and pheromones. Go-go dancers gyrate in latex costumes on raised platforms above the packed dance floor. Some girls have jumped up onto the bar and are dancing topless there too, but Caitlyn’s pretty certain they’re not one of the professional dancers. The music is loud and deep enough, she feels it in her eyeballs.
She’s relieved when she finds what appears at first to be a broom closet, tucked in a hallway behind the bathroom, as described in Jayce’s letter. She opens the door to a powerful-looking woman sitting on a stool, reading a paperback, with an unlit cigarillo hanging off her lip and a monstrous prosthetic arm. She looks up at Caitlyn as she enters. “You lost?” Behind her, Caitlyn can see a spiral staircase leading down, with pinkish light glowing along the way. The strange lighting paints the woman in shades of purple and mauve.
Caitlyn frowns. This woman is not a vampire, but surely there’s no other reason for her to be sitting here. Still, she wonders what exactly this woman could do to her if Caitlyn insisted on entering without the password. She looks strong, but not strong enough to stop Caitlyn—if only she had fewer scruples, she might test her. “The password is magpie.”
The woman drops her eyes back down to her book, and jerks her chin in gesture. That’s all she gets.
She descends into the wound-like glow of the club. The glow comes from crystal wall sconces, dripping with fat, pink gems, and a dizzying chandelier that dangles in the center of the room like an enormous drop of blood, glittering with febrile strings of garnet among fat beads of clear crystal, as if oozing from a sore.
A woman dressed in black satin, with her hair slicked back, dark lipstick on her lips, and a lacquer cigarette holder dangling from a long, elegant hand, croons on a stage at the back of the moderately populated club, accompanied by another woman straddling a shapely bass behind her. The bar itself runs the length of the space, with a few shadowy patrons sitting on the bar stools, speaking in low voices, while others sit in alcoves—some of them with silky, plum-colored curtains drawn across. In some of the alcoves, she can see couples and small groups speaking closely, and in a few, she can see figures entangled and writhing together.
Her senses are harshly speared open, dilating painfully to accommodate the presence of so many of her kind, the heavy smell of blood in the air, the soft moans play a dizzying backing vocal to the singer’s voice. Even the light suddenly feels oppressive, glancing off her cornea like the red is coming from inside her eyeball, trapped in sympathetic injury to her left eye. She takes a breath and another. She feels every one of her three hundred years of life, the painful, tingling numbness in her hands and feet, her tongue sticking dryly to the roof of her mouth, her teeth aching in her gums, the pinprick of her canines beginning to lengthen inside her lip. But if she feeds, it can all go away. She swallows it all down, shaking.
She walks to the bar and looks down its length at the other club patrons—most of them are hopeful-looking humans, but a quarter of them are her own kind, eyes gleaming, smelling of death and hunger. She orders herself a drink, a martini, feeling the eyes of the two women next to her—both human. She waits a beat after the bartender places the cocktail in front of her to turn her head. They’re sitting on her right side, so they don’t see until she’s turned to look at them that she has the eyepatch, and she watches their expressions subtly shift in surprise. But they don’t seem scared off by her either.
“I love your suit,” one of them says, bravely reaching a hand out to feel the fabric of her waistcoat. She has short, waving, black hair and wide-spaced, dark eyes. She’s dressed in a coordinated skirt and top, each stitched with tiny glass beads, that shimmer fetchingly as she breathes and moves.
“Thank you,” Caitlyn says, cocking her head. She looks to the other woman, a little shorter and slighter than the other, with neatly parted cornsilk-colored hair. She’s also wearing a suit, one tailored perfectly to her slender figure, emphasizing her wider shoulders and the neat tuck of her waist. She blushes under Caitlyn’s regard, so she says, eyes sliding between the two women, “You’re both quite beautiful.”
They giggle, glancing at each other. “Oh, thank you,” the first woman says. “We wanted to dress up—it’s our first time coming to a place like this.”
Caitlyn looks back at the one in the suit. “Does she talk?” She smiles a little, looking back to the first woman.
“Yes, I talk,” says the one in the suit, smiling but also frowning a little as she blushes. Cute. She loves it when they’re indignant. She thinks suddenly of Vi’s sullen face and blinks her eyes hard to try to clear the image.
Caitlyn smiles a little more widely now, just enough so the two women can see her teeth. “Glad to hear it. What did you say your names were?”
At first, she thinks she’ll just drink from one of them, and the other she can save for dessert if she’s still not fully sated after one. Instead she ends up drinking from each to the absolute limit before she knows she’d leave them dead. It’s hard to stop, after having the smell of Vi’s blood in her nose since she first woke up, certainly a headier smell than she can get from either of these two women. God, think of what she must taste like, she thinks to herself deliriously as she begins to drink. But then she’s had her first mouthful and the thought disappears like blood down her open throat.
It’s barely even enjoyable when she’s gone this long without feeding. The rush of blood to her extremities, to her temples, to her heart is almost too much, even before she’s drunk a mouthful. She had to quickly withdraw her bite from where she’d buried it in the breast of the woman in a suit, with a wet gasp, trembling and tense, mouth hanging open over the holes she made. She forgets how it feels, how it tastes, fizzing with warmth on her tongue, down her dry, aching throat. She pauses just enough to recalibrate, even as a bloody kaleidoscope whirls behind her eyelids every time she closes her eyes.
Then, she bends her head to drink again. She gluts herself on the women, if she’s being honest. She turns back and forth between them, mouthing along their throats and breasts, trailing her hand between their legs. When they try to touch her in turn, moaning, whimpering for her, she takes their hands and pins them overhead and even smacks them away. They, like many humans who come to these clubs, think this is a kind of sex, and it is in a way. But it’s better for them if it’s not for Caitlyn, if she doesn’t let herself lose herself to it, not when she’s let the thirst get this bad—as Ambessa has told her, Desperation is the doorway to oblivion. The game of finding a human to drink from has been concluded; there’s no need for seduction or coquetry now that she has them at her mercy. She’ll drink from them, pet them to keep them pliant, but being touched in turn will only happen once she’s sorted herself out. Maybe another later she’ll enjoy the way lust and bloodlust overlap. But now she wants to tell the women, Lie still and be quiet. Can’t you see I’m starving?
When she finishes drinking from them and lies back on the plush, red lounge inside their curtained alcove, she finally does feel the churning activity of blood filling her, and starts to excite her. She leaves the two women there, panting and pale, eyes shining, blood dripping down their fronts, staining their clothes. Caitlyn hadn’t gotten a drop on herself, of course. She goes out to the bar to find another woman, one she can have some fun with.
It takes another week of observation and research for Caitlyn to devise her next test for Vi. In that time, she makes an effort to wake early in the evening and find wherever Vi may still be on the grounds of Kiramman Manor. She’s not there every day, and usually she’s not the only worker busily restoring the gardens and house to its former splendor.
She hopes to catch something that tips the scales, that lets her know explicitly what it is that bothers her so much about Vi, what direction to go. She’s strong, but is she inhumanly strong? She seems tireless as she trims hedges, mows lawns, fixes bird baths, and mends gazebos and lattices. But is there anything truly inhuman about that? Besides, Caitlyn typically only has an hour of observation at most before Vi packs it in and leaves for the night.
Vi’s interactions with the other workers don’t betray anything either. She seems perfectly at ease when she sees her speaking with another woman, a vastaya, as they plant saplings around the perimeter of the hedge maze, occasionally smiling and laughing even. Caitlyn tries to think of the last time she laughed or smiled and feels incredibly ancient. It was probably after she killed Ambessa. She remembers having a good laugh at that.
She spends many hours in the garden at night herself, when she’s perfectly alone, except for the other night creatures that come out; crickets and owls, occasionally she’s spotted a mother fox with her kit. She sits by a large manmade pond, with enormous, luminous koi fish swimming back and forth and a huge brass sculpture that moves in the breeze, chiming. The fish are so docile that they come to the surface to greet her when she stands on the water’s edge.
She sits there to clear her mind. The house feels busy to her, with the former life she can’t remember, and the things she does remember, like luring Vi deeper into the house, bidding her to touch silver though it clearly burned her. It feels like, when she’s in there, all she can think about is Vi, and nothing remotely useful to her either.
Sitting under the Ionian purple willow one of these nights, she spots a section of the gardens she’s overlooked and gets up to investigate. It’s a large, overrun herb garden that must have at some point been intricately plotted, but now each segment runs over each other. She kneels, breathing in the vegetal scent, parsing each plant from the other. Thyme, basil, mugwort, fennel. The plants converge around the center, where sprays of purple, hooded flowers grow on stalks. Aconite. Wolfsbane. It has no real effect on her, but she can smell the sting of poison in its otherwise loamy, dark perfume, and again, thinks of Vi.
On her way out to feed the next night, she goes to find Vi where she’s patching a hole in a window in the solarium. “I have another favor to ask,” she says.
Vi turns to her. Today, she’s wearing a dark grey canvas jumpsuit with the top portion unzipped and tied around her hips, wearing a black shirt that looks like she cut the sleeves and collar off herself. It’s cool out today, as cool as it ever gets in Piltover, but she’s covered in a light sheen of sweat, and mops her forehead with the back of a taped-up wrist when she looks over to Caitlyn. “You know I work for you, right? You can just tell me to do what you want, and I’ll do it. It’s not a favor.”
This is already going off script and part of her wants to debate the matter, but she’s not here to quibble over semantics. “Fine. I have something I want you to do.”
Vi smirks a little, emphasizing the asymmetry of her lips—it’s not just the scar, but one side is pulled up always in a sort of unconscious smirk or sneer. Even her jaw seems tilted one way, like it’d been broken and reset carelessly. “All right. What is it?”
“There’s an herb garden that I’d like you to work on cleaning up. It’s very overrun, especially the aconite flowers.”
“Aconite?”
“Yes. Wolfsbane.”
Vi’s expression sharpens a little at that. “Wolfsbane?”
Caitlyn tilts her head, looking at Vi from under her lashes.
“Yes, wolfsbane. The flowers are beautiful, but I need them trimmed back.” Then she adds, because she just can’t help herself, “If you could, make me a bouquet with any of the flowers you cut.”
Vi’s cheeks turn a little pink under her freckles. She wipes her wrist across her forehead again. Caitlyn wonders if she started wearing the hand wraps only after picking up the mirror or if she just didn’t notice them before.
“Okay. I can do that.”
“Excellent. You don’t have to do it tonight, but I wanted to be sure I caught you before tomorrow.”
Vi nods jerkily. “Fine. Yeah. I could probably get to it tonight, though,” she says, glancing up at Caitlyn again, eyes silvery in the half-moon light.
Caitlyn nods and starts to turn away.
“Can I ask you something?” Vi says.
Caitlyn tilts her head back to Vi and looks at her.
“I never see you during the day.”
“That’s not a question,” says Caitlyn.
Vi sighs. “Are you nocturnal or something?”
“Well,” says Caitlyn, debating internally for a moment, “I’m more productive at night.”
“Sure,” Vi says. “I would be, too if I slept through the day.”
Caitlyn narrows her eyes at Vi and then decides she doesn’t have to entertain this. “Don’t worry about the aconite tonight.”
Vi shrugs and turns back to fixing the window. “Have a good night, Miss Kiramman.”
“You as well,” Caitlyn says stiffly, feeling, annoyingly, like she’s the one who’s been dismissed.
It’s nearly 2:00 am by the time Caitlyn makes her way back to the manor. She’d drunk from one woman to sate her thirst, and another just for a bit of fun. She went back to the second woman’s apartment, switching between piercing her thigh with her teeth, and lapping hungrily at her cunt. Then she’d climbed on top and rode the woman’s face, while she reeled from orgasm and blood loss beneath her.
Now, as she walks through the gates, her feet glide through the dew-covered grass, her gait languid. The air is cool, but humid, and suffuses the grounds with the perfume of roses and damp earth. She pauses to drink it in, the night time swelling around her in a profusion of sensual detail. She has a moment, a fleeting one, of feeling a kind of woozy contentment.
As she passes through the gardens, flowers glittering wetly in shades of dark green, navy, and violet, she removes her gloves and lets her fingers drag across the wet leaves and petals of each iris and peony as she walks past. It’s at this moment, she scents blood in the air. Vi’s blood. And a lot of it.
The smell sobers her a bit, and she begins to walk swiftly to the wolfsbane patch, going around the fountain, the croquet courts, a pet cemetery, an orchard, until finally she reaches the koi pond. All the time, she wonders what she will do, what this information is telling her. Unless something else has befallen Vi, it seems the only conclusion she can otherwise draw is that the wolfsbane had a stronger effect than she could’ve anticipated. And she really hadn’t known to anticipate much of anything. Then again, maybe it’s solved a problem before it became one, if she’s dead. Mel won’t be in danger, at least with Vi taken care of. She could write Mel tonight. She feels queasy, however, thinking about what Vi’s corpse may look like, what it’ll feel like to see her dead.
She can hear something now, walking along the lantern-lit path, past the manmade pond. The cool night air has helped clear her head a little, and she hears, below the sound of crickets and wind chimes, a low rhythmic growling pant. A smell in the air, a wild animal musk, the scent of fear and pain. This close, she can detect a charred quality to the blood smell too, which turns her stomach.
Behind the weeping willow now, in its shadow, she sees the herb garden, and she sees that much of it has been trimmed back. But in the center, she sees Vi, hunched over onto all fours, at the foot of the wolfsbane flower, almost as if prostrate in worship to it.
Except she’s shivering, almost convulsing, and as Caitlyn draws near, she can see her forearms and hands, braced against the ground, are covered in thick, black fur, her fingers strangely gnarled and elongated, with long, sharp claws. Caitlyn pauses, wide-eyed, waiting for Vi to notice her. She doesn’t notice Caitlyn, but she does shudder intensely, digging her claws into the earth and vomits a torrent of black bile onto the ground beneath her.
Caitlyn carefully edges closer and kneels, a short distance away, and waits again for Vi to notice her. But Vi still doesn’t seem to recognize her presence, as she pants and moans low in her chest, a deep, rumbling multi-tonal sound, part animal, part woman. Her ears have lengthened to points as well, covered in the same bristling black fur, fur that’s covering her neck and the sides of her face, but her head hangs down between her shoulders so she can’t really make it out. A trickle of dark, almost purplish blood runs down from her ear, disappearing into the thicket of fur around her neck—which Caitlyn now sees is damp with blood.
In fact, there on the ground, all around her, is a great pool of blood and bile. Steam rises from it, and Caitlyn can see the raw, bloody quality of her hands too, with blisters and open sores along the fingers. When Caitlyn looks up at the wolfsbane plant, she can see bloody hand prints on the leaves, and a discarded, blood-soaked bundle of flowers—the bouquet she’d had told Vi to make.
Vi lifts her head then, and Caitlyn can see how something has shifted in her face too, something with the way the lower half of her face seems oddly distended. Then she turns to Caitlyn, her eyes burning yellow, spilling bloody tears, panting mouth crowded with pointed, dripping teeth. Her breaths become urgent, and her expression twists, and she screams, she howls. The sound raises every hair on Caitlyn’s body, like antenna, receiving Vi’s agony, terror, and rage. She feels her fangs drop at the sound, the urge to scream in concert, lose herself in the anguish, is overwhelming.
The only thing she can think to do is what she knows would heal another vampire, how she’d been healed and healed others in the past. She doesn’t know if this will make things better or worse for Vi, but she drops her mouth to her own wrist, biting into the tangle of veins there, still coursing with fresh blood. Her blood won’t run freely the way a human’s will, but it wells sluggishly to the twin wounds still as she holds it out to Vi. “Drink,” she commands Vi, voice slurring around her fangs.
Vi looks at her, not seeming to recognize her, lips rippling in a low snarl, back arching, fur bristling on her forearms, and sides of her face.
Caitlyn inches closer, wrist still outstretched. “Come on. It’ll heal you.”
But then Caitlyn makes the miscalculation of moving just a little too close, a little too quickly, because in a blink, Vi lunges at her, pinning Caitlyn to the ground, knees trapping her hips, and claws caging Caitlyn’s arms. She’s strong, very strong, and heavy with muscle. Trapped below her, Caitlyn can feel the power contained in Vi’s body, feel its strength bearing down on her, the heat wafting off of her with each rapidly firing pulse, each one a red lash to Caitlyn’s senses, as she pants open-mouthed below Vi. She can taste it. Vi snaps her teeth, millimeters from Caitlyn’s face, and roars.
She wants to scream. She feels afraid. She wants to rip Vi to pieces. She wants to beg Vi for forgiveness for doing this. She wants to beg for mercy. She wants to cling to Vi, she wants to nourish herself on Vi’s well of rage, shear her open and take it on her tongue like sacrament and punishment. It’s too much, her body can’t take it all, and she remembers suddenly in vivid detail Ambessa throwing her down, that final fight between them, how Caitlyn was on the razor’s edge of eternal death herself, and that unwelcome remembrance passes through her body, in a wave of sickening panic. She starts to fight against Vi, and then she stills, calm all of a sudden as the feeling leaves her body all in a rush, and her mind becomes blessedly serene.
She doesn’t like to rely on compulsion, it’s true. She doesn’t like the idea of siphoning power by force. It feels so inelegant—vulgar even. There’s no art in it. But she tilts her head back now, looking up at Vi through a hooded eye, letting her vision tunnel into Vi. In a calm, even voice, still and tranquil as a pool of water, she says, “Let me go.”
Vi immediately sits back on her haunches, face completely slack and blank, body relaxed.
Caitlyn sits up, slowly, maintaining eye contact with Vi, who gives the appearance of waiting for Caitlyn’s next instruction. Now Caitlyn says, “Follow me.”
She leads Vi away from the herb garden and its scene of horror, back to the pond. “Sit,” she tells Vi, and Vi sits without protest.
Caitlyn kneels beside her and holds out her wrist, lifting it to an inch from Vi’s teeth. “Now drink.”
Vi obediently dips her head and sucks at Caitlyn’s wound as she was told. As Vi drinks, some of that ecstatic lightheaded sensation comes back to her, a feeling of heat traveling up her arm, from Vi’s mouth, down the center of her body, with each pulse of blood that passes from her wrist, through Vi’s mouth. She drinks hungrily, at one point lifting her claws to hold Caitlyn’s wrist to her mouth, and moaning softly, cheeks flushing, eyes fluttering closed, brow furrowing in an expression of concentration—and even pleasure. Caitlyn hasn’t been compelling Vi since she began to drink.
And as she drinks, the black fur sinks back under her skin, her claws reform into hands, cracking and popping as they retract. The last to go are the teeth, drawing back inside Vi’s mouth.
Caitlyn feels herself smiling faintly, fangs still out. She’s feeling a bit light-headed, a little brainless. There’s a heat radiating from Vi’s soft, wet mouth on her wrist, a heat that she feels traveling up her arm and down into her body. “All right, I think you’ve had enough,” she says, and lightly pulls back on her arm.
Vi lets her go quickly, dropping her hands and sitting back, blinking her very human eyes open. She looks at Caitlyn, startled, as if it hadn’t occurred to her that the blood she was drinking came from Caitlyn at all.
“You look better,” Caitlyn says, when it seems clear that Vi will not speak first.
She stares at Caitlyn in stunned silence, lips slick and red with Caitlyn’s blood. She licks her lips and then looks away from Caitlyn, frowning down at her hands. They look raw still, but the blisters and burns have faded. “What the fuck is going on,” she says, voice low.
“I should ask you the same thing,” Caitlyn says. She’s biting back the urge to smile. This is probably not very funny to Vi. But then she remembers being trapped beneath Vi, the terrible look in Vi’s eyes, like blank animal terror, the look of a wild thing backed into a corner, willing to eat its own foot to escape the trap.
Vi lifts her chin, nostrils flaring, eyes burning. “You knew it would—do something. To me. You knew.”
“I didn’t know,” Caitlyn says. “But I wondered if it might.”
“So, what, you were experimenting on me?”
“I could tell you weren’t like other humans. I needed to know what I was dealing with,” Caitlyn says, trying to make it sound practical, though now it feels ludicrous. Sadistic, really. She looks down at her hands now, to the already-closed wound on her wrist, and touches the fading scar with her other hand. “I apologize. But I needed to be sure.”
Vi scoffs and shakes her head. “I don’t even know what to say. I am human. Fucking obviously I am.”
Caitlyn doesn’t respond to that assertion, not after what she’s just seen of Vi. But Vi takes her silence as answer enough.
“You are not human,” she says then. When Caitlyn looks up at her sharply, Vi raises an eyebrow at her. “Yeah. I don’t know what the fuck you are, but the moment I first saw you I could tell there’s something weird about you.”
Caitlyn clenches her teeth, meeting Vi’s gaze as she straightens her back to her full height, so she’s looking down on her now. “I just spared your life. I could’ve left you to die, but I gave you my blood. I’m not your enemy.”
“No?” Vi challenges, sticking her chin out, squaring her shoulders. “You wouldn’t have had to spare my life if you hadn’t poisoned me in the first place.”
Caitlyn stands up. “This isn’t going anywhere. I’ve already explained myself, and if you can’t accept my apology, then there is nothing further to say.”
Vi jumps to her feet too, then grabbing Caitlyn’s elbow as she says, “Wait.”
Caitlyn turns her head, not moving her arm from Vi’s grasp, and waits.
Vi drops her hand, but still hesitates, starting to speak a couple times.
Caitlyn pivots to look at Vi fully, seeing the anxiety in her expression, the pallor and sheen of sweat on her face, eyes bloodshot, and tear streaks through the black eyeshadow down her cheeks. She’s still shivering a little. “You knew that wolfsbane shit would do something to me. So, what am I then?”
Caitlyn studies Vi, the luminous grey of her eyes, the shadows across her face. She’s surprised and strangely moved by the vulnerability Vi is offering up to her. Caitlyn looks away, down at her own feet. There’s pressure on her left temple, lancing from her empty eye socket. “I’m not sure. Something like a werewolf. A human who can transform into a wolf,” she says, words coming out hoarsely.
“And you’re—a werewolf too?”
“No,” says Caitlyn. “I’m a blood drinker. A vampire.” Now she looks back up at Vi, to see the change in her expression, the shift in weight to Vi’s back foot, the prone quality of Vi’s energy closing itself to her, retreating. “Let me call you a carriage home.”
Vi’s eyes dart around Caitlyn, past to where the manor crouches in the dark beyond the willow tree, orchards, and hedges. “No, thanks, I’m good.” She smiles, but it’s not a nice smile. Something savage burns behind the black of her pupils, like light reflecting back.
“Vi,” Caitlyn says, “Let me do this for you.”
“I don’t need a carriage,” Vi insists. She has a perfect face for sulking, lips already fixed in a sneer, eyes huge and accusing, dark brows drawn low and tense.
“You could’ve died and at best been seriously injured,” Caitlyn says, starting to get a little desperate and therefore quite annoyed.
“Why do you care? Because you feel guilty? Give me a fucking break,” Vi says, shoulder checking Caitlyn as she walks past her.
Caitlyn follows as they cut through the gardens towards the gates. “Vi, just wait a moment—”
At Caitlyn’s words, Vi whips around and stalks up to Caitlyn, crowding her, so their chests nearly make contact. Caitlyn steps back, but Vi closes the distance again. Her eyes are like two hot knives. Heat throbs off of her, and Caitlyn can suddenly appreciate that she smells herself, her blood, the blood of her thralls whooshing in and out of Vi’s heart. She feels her own body respond to it, almost leaning back into Vi, to lower her face to the artery snaking up the side of Vi’s neck, right where the scent is sweetest, twitching rhythmically under the soft flesh.
As if she can sense Caitlyn’s train of thought, she smirks and tilts her chin up at Caitlyn, haughty almost if it weren’t for the frenetic anger in her eyes. “You think that would’ve killed me? That it even hurt me? That was nothing. I’ve walked away from so much worse. So just fuck off back to your palace and leave me alone.”
When she turns to walk off this time, Caitlyn doesn’t try to follow.