Blood Relations - Epilogue

Saturday March 14, 1998

Compressed in a dark nook behind the stairs of a basement, Dimitri watched Amber and Vicky through a scrying shadow. His natural bodiless form did not express emotion well, but if Dimitri had a face, it would have been glowering in confusion.

Recruiting Amber to work for him should have been easy. He knew her mind, and he thought he’d understood how far she had drifted away from her humanity. But showing her the truth didn’t work out according to plan. In fact, she saw his efforts as an attack rather than an effort to gain her trust.

It didn’t make sense. Certainly, he’d hurt her, but then so had the vampires. Emil abused Amber every night for weeks, and she seemed to care for him more every time he bit or scratched her. She suffered but a few days under the influence of the nightmare blood, and yet she acted like Dimitri had clawed her unborn child from her womb.

He gave her gifts to make up for his mistake, and she called the spells he taught parlor tricks. He gave her immortality. He gave her power, even a blessing which would allow her to block him out of her thoughts. She called the thunderstone a trinket, and still she wouldn’t forgive him for one minor slight.

Why? Because he was evil.

Dimitri wanted to be angry. Was she so much better, just because she was amoral?

He had been angry with her, which is why he stupidly uttered his threat that Amber would regret crossing him. In the distant past, he would have killed her and all the vampires right then and there, just to make a point.

But Amber was right. He’d gone about recruiting allies all wrong, and he had “fucked up, but good.”

Dimitri closed the scrying shadow and considered what to do next. He had no desire to return to Lissand. After serving his prison sentence inside a tree for thousands of years, the last thing he wanted was to live in the endless forests of the elf world.

He could travel back to the northern tundra, but the sight of his people lost in apathy angered him. How could anyone stay locked on a “reserve,” feeding on what few scraps the other races would allow them? He thought no one could, but he saw many of the wyrm accept the compromise. They raised one or two wraiths per year, only to see most cut down by the dwarfs and the shadow hunters for wandering where they didn’t belong.

It wasn’t a life. It was a never-ending prison sentence.

But the human world offered him no place for refuge either. He could frighten the humans for a short time, but he was not so deluded to think himself a god, and he believed the humans would quickly find a way to exploit one of his weaknesses. If they could not kill him, they would at least drive him away.

Again.

He could find no allies in either world, and even his own people had given up and accepted the status quo.

But, perhaps there was a way to motivate the wyrm into taking back their place on Earth. The daemons were sending scouts to the human world, and the elves did nothing. So perhaps if Dimitri restricted his scheming to the Earth plane, they might overlook his efforts? Then, by proving that the jailers didn’t care to protect Earth, Dimitri might have a chance to convince the wyrm to leave Lissand en masse.

Excited by the idea, Dimitri waited until sunset. He slipped into a shadow portal and sped out of the house, roving the city until he found a ley line.

The line was in the middle of a residential section, but thousands of years before, Dimitri remembered when the spot had been marked by a temple.

Humans moved on to other gods, other religions, and over time, they forgot about the power sources thriving under their feet.

Dimitri looked around at the houses, humbled by the changes that had taken place in the humans while he served his sentence in Lissand. The humans had forgotten so much of the old ways, and yet they made up for it with their ability to craft tools for every need. All along the street, people slept in climate controlled comfort. Their freezers and pantries stocked constantly with food, they wanted for nothing. And yet, still they wanted more.

Dimitri did too, and he grudgingly admitted there wasn’t much difference between himself and the humans. He wanted to raise a family and eat well. He wanted to live in comfort, free from fear or uncertainty about his place in the world.

Only, he had no place in the world.

In any world.

Like Amber, he was just another stray. Amber found a place to belong, and she had gotten herself adopted by a new family. Dimitri wondered if perhaps that was what caused her to turn down his offer. What he asked from her was too great a risk to the coven.

Dimitri could understand that, if it were the case. But he didn’t feel the same way about his own offspring. He could put one of his children in harm’s way without a second thought.

Amber was not evil, simply amoral. The vampires were similarly amoral, which is why she had found a place among them. But she was not evil, and she could never ally herself with a creature who was.

Again, he could understand, but he still wanted his own place in the world, and if he could not find allies on Earth, well then, he could make an ally.

Dimitri sent an impulse out, compelling the humans into an unnaturally deep sleep.

When he was assured that he would not be disturbed, he lay across the street, spreading himself as thin as he could manage. Drawing energy from the ley line, Dimitri tore away a section of his amorphous body. He contracted rapidly once the break was complete. His senses became numb, deafening him to the thoughts of the humans briefly. He was able to recover within seconds, as the pain of separation was more psychic than physical.

Moving his body back out as thin as it would spread, he covered the lifeless fragment and infused it with energy from the ley line. Far from being a simple matter, the transfer of pure energy took every ounce of mental strength he had, and the air was filled with a loud thrumming during the process.

Dimitri had to rest for nearly an hour before he could go on. He sipped blood from his reserves to regenerate, and then he focused his will to imbue a part of his own malevolent spirit into the pulsing husk. This task, at least, was easier for both parent and child.

A soft hiss emanated from the new life form, and with every pulse, the shadow grew. Dimitri contracted his body and drew away from the child. It expanded outward, and the hiss rose to a shriek as the newborn wraith rose up from the ground.

The wraith’s senses cast out to look for prey. It found the body of its parent first and flattened itself to the ground, falling silent in deference.

Dimitri telepathically sent the newborn wraith a selection of his memories, giving his child a knowledge of the world, and of magic. The wraith could pass the memories on to its offspring, and each one of his children would carry out his orders with undying loyalty.

Use the humans to build your ranks, Dimitri commanded. Avoid exposing yourself, and do not eat anyone who bears a foreign scent.

He extended a part of his body as a tendril, then drew upon the reserves of blood hidden inside his feeding spell. Silver blood dripped from his body, and the wraith slid closer to feast upon the tiny puddle.

Do exactly as I say, and I will give you a larger reward when I return, Dimitri sent. Go now, and begin raising an army for me.

The unicorn blood flowed through the wraith’s body, filling the young creature with an unnatural hunger. It blurred down the street, its rapidly developing mind already seeking out a fertile human female to impregnate.

Dimitri sent out an impulse to pull everyone from their slumber. He wanted to give them a sporting chance, and leaving them locked in a comatose state while the wraith fed was...what was it?

Dimitri decided it was fiendish, a level of evil which he wasn’t ready to approach anymore. Killing the humans was one thing, but they should at least have a half a chance of fighting back. Which is why he would go home, and leave the neighborhood to deal with one weak, infantile wraith.

What could be more fair than that?

The wraith veered toward a house, and within seconds, it located a victim, screeching in excitement before it fed from the petrified woman and impregnated her with a part of its body.

Dimitri turned his attention to the task of opening a portal back into Lissand. Bright light flashed above him as the portal yawned open, and he resisted the urge to shrink back though the light stung him. At least it’s not sunlight, he thought.

The light slipped around his body, and then the sounds of the Earth insects faded away, replaced by the buzzes, clicks, and chirps from the larger species from Lissand. Above him, the cloudy Earth sky was replaced by a clear field of stars.

The change in the air was less subtle. Lissand smelled wild, an odor which was full of natural decay. The smells of rotting animals and vegetation was not cleaner smelling than Earth, but it was less polluted.

Dimitri couldn’t decide which environment he preferred.

He rose up into a humanoid form, lifting his head to watch with keen interest as a gryphon passed above him. Dimitri moved swiftly to follow his prey, leaping from the ground before he became an intangible shadow and rose up into the air.

After feasting, it would be a long trip back to the northern tundra, where he could watch his army grow and wait to see how the other factions reacted to his invasion plans.

He was relatively sure the elves would respond as they always did to problems on Earth. After being run off from the Earth plane, the elves had no love left for the humans.

They would remain in Lissand so long as Dimitri didn’t repeat old mistakes by leaving portals into Lissand open. All the elves cared about was keeping their sanctuary safe from the humans, and since Dimitri had no plans to leave any portals open, he had little to fear from his former wardens.

But he wasn’t so sure about the daemons. After all, the daemons and the wyrm had conflicting agendas. The daemons wanted to bathe the Earth in fire, and doing so would leave the world barren and without a food supply for the wyrm.

Which made them enemies, even if they were both evil. So the daemons might not care for the appearance of even one wraith on Earth.

He didn’t care how the daemons reacted, and so long as the elves didn’t stick him in another sapling for a few thousand years, he didn’t care how they reacted either.

But how would his people react?

That was who he hoped to stir into action. Would the other wyrm also begin sending children to Earth, or would they ignore his protest and continue living in quiet desperation?

No, some of his people had to be as tired of the compromise as he was. They were creatures of evil, and if he proved their cage had no bars, then the rest of the wyrm would surely follow him back to Earth. The day that happened, there would be a feast the likes of which had not been seen on Earth for sixteen thousand years.

Then the long reign of the humans would finally be over.

The End?