Autumn Bones

Weirdly, a length of scarlet ribbon had been run beneath her chin and tied in a bow atop her head.

I took a deep breath. After the night’s chill outside, the air in the crypt was close and stifling, but although I was beginning to sweat under the leather of my secondhand motorcycle jacket, the sweat turned cold on my skin.

“Brethren and sistren,” Lady Eris said in a mellifluous voice. Okay, so apparently sistren is an actual word. “We gather here tonight to celebrate the initiation of a new member into our midst. Hail, sister!”

“Hail, sister!” a dozen-plus voices echoed.

Creepy, right?

She glanced around the crypt, her gaze settling on Jen. “Does the family of the initiate wish to bid her mortal sibling a farewell?”

“Are you serious?” Jen blurted. Lady Eris raised one perfect eyebrow. “Jesus!” Jen stared at her sister. Unheeded tears spilled down her cheeks. “Jesus, Beth! Did you have to?”

“You should be grateful,” Geoffrey the prat informed her in a supercilious manner. “It is a tremendous honor that we accord her.” Other vampires murmured in agreement. Jen fixed Geoffrey with a death stare filled with hatred. He actually looked slightly nonplussed.

“Very well.” Lady Eris raised her voice. Not much, but it held an unmistakable ring of command. “Let the ritual commence.”

She offered a series of invocations to the Goddess of Night in all her incarnations, of which there were many. I concentrated on taking mental notes for my database, counting the vampires in the crypt. Altogether, there were sixteen of them. Seventeen if I counted Bethany, which I wasn’t ready to do yet.

Other than Jen and me, there was only one other mortal present. I recognized him as the guy who’d played John the Baptist in the tableau vivant. He stood quiet and patient, gazing at Bethany with a look of glazed envy.

Bethany just continued to look dead.

I clutched Jen’s hand in my left, my right resting on dauda-dagr’s hilt, its coolness caressing my palm. The candles burned, wicks crackling faintly here and there. I was hyper-aware of my heart thudding steadily in my chest, the soft whoosh of air entering and exiting my lungs.

Lady Eris beckoned. One of the other female vampires brought forth a silver chalice and set it on the edge of the sarcophagus. Another inclined her head to Geoffrey the prat, proffering a little silver knife with a curved blade.

Ceremoniously, Geoffrey unbuttoned his brocade waistcoat and removed it, handing it to the nearby doorman, who folded it neatly over one arm. Then Bethany’s blood-bonded mate unbuttoned the ruffled cuff of his left shirtsleeve and rolled it up to expose a pale, muscular forearm before accepting the knife.

Making a fist of his left hand, he held it over the chalice. With the knife in his right hand, he slashed the length of his inner forearm.

The other vampires sighed in approval, making the candle flames flicker and sway, sending dancing shadows around the crypt.

Okay, so it turns out that vampires aren’t actually bloodless, which I guess I’d known on some level, since it’s their blood that turns mortals. Exactly how it could work without a beating heart to circulate it, I’d never understood. It’s just . . . it’s not human blood that runs in their veins. What pulsed out of the gash in Geoffrey’s arm was an opaque, pearlescent liquid that spidered over his skin and streamed into the chalice. The way it slithered and skittered reminded me of mercury from a high school science experiment.

I swallowed hard.

Jen squeezed my hand tighter.

The gash on Geoffrey’s arm was already knitting, fading to a faint silvery line. He shook a few errant drops into the chalice before bowing to Lady Eris and offering the knife to her.

She pricked her forefinger and extended it. One, two, three perfect shimmering globules formed at the tip of her finger, falling into the bowl of the vessel.

There was a moment of silence, broken only by the faint sound of the candles and three mortals breathing.

Then Lady Eris bent over the sarcophagus. With one decisive slash, she severed the ribbon binding Bethany’s jaw shut.

“Now,” she said.

Bethany’s jaw went slack and open, revealing nascent fangs. Two male vampires flanked her, raising her torso from the marble. Her limp spine sagged in their grip, and her slack jaw gaped wider.

Jen looked away, her nails biting into the palm of my hand.

I wanted to look away, too, but I didn’t. I made myself watch as Geoffrey the prat raised the chalice to Bethany’s lips with surprising tenderness, tipping its contents into her open mouth, carefully and judiciously.

For no particular reason, I counted the seconds that passed in my head.

One, two, three . . .

On three, Bethany’s body convulsed. Her spine arched rigidly and her throat worked, swallowing. Her skin flushed in reverse, by which I mean that it turned even paler, taking on a faint luminosity. Her throat worked again as Geoffrey poured the last of the blood from the chalice into her mouth.

With the last gulp, her eyes flew open wide, dark and terrified. Her hands scrabbled frantically at her chest, her upper lip curled to reveal lengthening fangs, and she made a breathless choking sound.

“It’s all right. You’re all right,” Lady Eris said in a soothing voice, laying one hand on Bethany’s brow. Bethany’s terrified gaze met hers. I could feel the weight of vampiric hypnosis emanating from the brood mistress. “It’s the shock of rising, that’s all. Do you remember we discussed this?”

Bethany gave the faintest hint of a nod, drawing in a gasp of air and gagging on it.

“There is no need to draw breath until you’re ready to speak, sister,” Lady Eris continued. “You’re in your new body, your reborn body. Listen. Listen to its silence. Revel in the silence. Listen.”

The panic in Bethany’s eyes began to fade, replaced by something else. Something dark and needful.

“Yes.” Lady Eris smiled. “You begin to understand, to truly understand. When all other needs are gone, only one remains.”

“To feed,” Bethany whispered.

“Yes.” Lady Eris beckoned again. One of the female vampires led John the Baptist to the sarcophagus. “To feed.”

I glanced over at Jen. She was watching now, a look of sick fascination on her face as her sister, still supported by a pair of vampires, reached for John the Baptist’s outstretched arm, sank her brand-new fangs into his wrist, and began slurping down his blood.

Okay, ew. Earlier in the summer, I’d caught a glimpse of exactly how disturbingly erotic it could be to be fed on by a vampire, and let me tell you, that so does not apply to the newly risen. It was more like watching a starving person gorge herself in a particularly disgusting manner.

When John the Baptist sank to his knees with a guttural groan, the vampire attendants eased him away from Bethany. She sat upright and unsupported now, her eyes bright, twin rivulets of blood trickling from the corners of her mouth. She took a deep, experimental breath, licked all around her lips, and smiled broadly. “I feel good,” she announced. “I feel great!”

A polite golf clap went around the crypt.

Geoffrey the prat spread his arms. “Welcome, my love,” he said to her. “Welcome, my sister.”

Bethany glanced at him. “Oh, fuck you!” His mouth fell open in shock. Lady Eris did the one-eyebrow raise. “You made me wait long enough for it.” Bethany looked around the room. “Jen!”

Jen blinked. “Uh . . . yeah?”

Her sister grinned again, revealing bloodstained teeth. “C’mon, girl! We’ve got unfinished business at home. Let’s go!”

“Huh?”

“Let’s go!” Bethany hopped off the sarcophagus with startling speed, nearly falling over and catching herself in the blink of an eye. “Wow. That’s gonna take some getting used to.” She grabbed