The pain was unreal as Astucia was born again as the creature known as a vampire. Being embraced was like nothing she had ever experienced before.
Astucia’s Embrace
Astucia remembered dying.
She wished she didn’t.
The room was dark except for the candles surrounding the stone table beneath her. She could smell wax, damp stone, and blood.
Her blood.
It ran from the wound in her throat, warm against her skin before dripping onto the floor.
Her heartbeat thundered in her ears.
Fast.
Then slower.
Then slower still.
Astucia tried to move, but there was nothing left in her body. Her fingers twitched uselessly against the stone.
The vampire stood over her.
Watching.
Waiting.
Astucia tried to speak.
Only a wet gasp escaped.
The vampire leaned closer.
“Almost.”
Her heart beat again.
Weakly.
Astucia could feel herself slipping away.
The ceiling blurred.
The candlelight stretched into strange golden streaks.
Another heartbeat.
Then—
nothing.
For perhaps three seconds, Astucia knew peace.
No pain.
No fear.
No memories.
Then blood touched her lips.
Her eyes opened.
Every muscle in her body contracted at once.
Astucia screamed.
Her back arched violently from the stone table as something impossibly hot tore through her throat.
She tried to spit the blood out.
A hand clamped over her mouth.
“Swallow.”
Astucia shook her head desperately.
The blood burned.
It wasn’t warmth.
It wasn’t fire.
Fire burned from the outside inward.
This burned from the inside out.
Astucia swallowed.
Her scream became a muffled shriek.
The blood reached her stomach.
And her body exploded.
At least that was what it felt like.
Her heart slammed once inside her chest.
THUMP.
Astucia’s eyes widened.
Another.
THUMP.
Harder.
Her ribs felt as though they were being struck from inside.
THUMP.
She screamed again.
Something moved beneath her skin.
Veins darkened along her arms as the vampire’s blood spread through them.
Astucia stared at them in horror.
“No…”
Her fingernails scraped against the stone.
“Please…”
Another convulsion seized her.
Bones cracked.
Her spine bowed.
Astucia screamed until her voice broke.
She could feel everything.
Every nerve.
Every vein.
Every muscle.
Her body had died, and now something was forcing it to live again in a way nature had never intended.
Then her heart stopped.
Astucia froze.
Her mouth opened.
Nothing came.
No heartbeat.
No breath.
Silence.
She thought it was finished.
Then she touched the stone beneath her.
And the world disappeared.
Astucia suddenly saw a woman strapped to the same table.
She felt the woman’s terror.
A man screaming.
Another vampire feeding.
Someone begging for mercy.
Blood running across the stone.
Decades of death.
Centuries of memory.
Every person who had ever bled upon that table seemed to scream through Astucia at once.
She jerked her hand away.
The visions vanished.
“What did you do to me?”
The vampire stared at her.
“I did nothing.”
Astucia’s breathing came in panicked gasps even though her lungs no longer needed the air.
“I saw them.”
“Saw whom?”
“The people.”
Astucia stared at the table.
Her hands were trembling.
“The people who died here.”
The vampire’s expression changed.
Astucia barely noticed.
Another wave of pain ripped through her.
She screamed and rolled from the table.
Her body struck the floor.
The instant her palm touched the stone—
another memory.
A prisoner crawling.
Bloodied fingers dragging across the floor.
Someone standing over him.
A blade descending.
Astucia screamed and pulled her hand against her chest.
“MAKE IT STOP!”
The vampire stepped backward.
Astucia crawled away from the table.
Every surface frightened her now.
The walls.
The floor.
The chains hanging nearby.
Every object suddenly seemed capable of remembering.
And when Astucia touched them—
they wanted her to remember too.
Her teeth began to ache.
She grabbed her jaw.
The ache became pressure.
The pressure became agony.
“Oh God…”
Her canines pushed downward.
Astucia screamed again.
Blood filled her mouth as her gums tore around the emerging fangs.
She spat onto the floor.
Then the smell reached her.
Blood.
Her blood.
Everything stopped.
Astucia stared at the crimson droplets.
The pain remained.
But something else had appeared beneath it.
Hunger.
Terrible.
Bottomless.
Impossible hunger.
She could hear a heartbeat.
Not hers.
The vampire’s.
Astucia slowly looked up.
She could hear blood moving through his body.
She could smell it.
She wanted it.
The realization horrified her.
“No.”
The vampire smiled.
Astucia backed against the wall.
“No.”
Her body moved before her mind could stop it.
She lunged.
The vampire caught her easily and threw her backward.
Astucia hit the stone table.
Her hand landed upon it.
The memories returned.
Hundreds of them.
Death.
Fear.
Blood.
Pain.
Hands touching stone.
Bodies dying.
Voices begging.
Astucia screamed.
But this time something else was hidden among them.
A presence.
Ancient.
Distant.
Something that had noticed her.
For the briefest instant, Astucia saw darkness stretching farther than the world itself.
And within it—
a closed eye.
Then a voice whispered through memories that were not hers.
What the mind forgets, the blood remembers.
Astucia ripped her hand from the table.
The vision vanished.
She collapsed onto the floor.
Her body finally became still.
No heartbeat.
No breathing.
No warmth.
The pain slowly faded.
But the memories didn’t.
Astucia curled against the stone, staring at her hands.
“What am I?”
Her sire approached.
For the first time that night, there was uncertainty on the vampire’s face.
“You are one of us.”
Astucia shook her head.
“No.”
She looked toward the table.
She could almost hear the dead whispering from inside it.
“I’m something else.”
Her sire crouched beside her.
“Astucia.”
She looked at Alexandre.
Her eyes were no longer human.
“Don’t touch me.”
He stopped.
Astucia stared at her own hands.
Hands that could now uncover things buried by centuries.
Hands that could make the dead speak.
And somewhere beyond the memories of the world, something ancient had felt her awaken.
The closed eye had opened for only an instant.
But it had seen her.
Astucia whispered the words she had heard.
“What the mind forgets…”
Her new fangs showed as she finished.
“…the blood remembers.”
——
Being back in her childhood home had awakened things Astucia had spent centuries trying to bury.
Some memories were pleasant.
Others deserved to remain dead.
Her Embrace belonged to the latter.
Astucia stood before the tall window of her suite, staring into the darkness beyond the estate.
She still didn’t understand why the memory had returned so violently.
She remembered Alexandre.
His blood.
His decision.
Her death.
Her rebirth.
And the thing she now understood had been watching from somewhere beyond the memories.
The closed eye.
Mneme.
Astucia clenched her hands.
Alexandre had turned her against the wishes of the Ancients. For centuries, vampires possessing certain mortal gifts had been forbidden from receiving the Embrace.
Now she understood why.
They hadn’t been protecting vampire society from people like her.
They had been protecting the world from what could reach through them.
That realization only made her hate Alexandre more.
Yet beneath the hatred was a truth she refused to acknowledge.
If Alexandre had obeyed the old laws, Astucia would have died human.
And perhaps no one would now stand between Mneme and the memories of the living.
A knock came at the door.
Astucia turned.
Mireille entered.
The sight of her mentor softened something inside Astucia that centuries of violence had failed to destroy.
They embraced.
“You’re trembling,” Mireille whispered.
“I remembered my Embrace.”
Mireille immediately pulled away.
“What?”
“All of it.”
Astucia hesitated.
“Even the eye.”
Mireille became perfectly still.
Astucia saw fear enter her expression.
Not surprise.
Fear.
“You knew.”
Mireille looked away.
“You knew!” Astucia repeated.
Before Mireille could answer, another voice came from the corridor.
“There is something both of you need to know.”
Ashlana entered.
Astucia’s expression hardened.
“What?”
Ashlana closed the door behind her.
“My family has abilities I haven’t completely explained.”
Mireille watched her carefully.
“You are a seer.”
“Yes.”
“And an empath,” Astucia added.
“Stronger than you realize. I can receive emotion, but I can also project it.”
Astucia folded her arms.
“That isn’t exactly comforting.”
“It isn’t supposed to be.”
Ashlana approached the table.
“But that isn’t what matters.”
She looked between them.
“My family carries something else.”
Mireille’s eyes narrowed.
“What?”
“Resistance.”
“To what?”
Ashlana hesitated.
“Memory.”
Silence.
Astucia’s arms slowly dropped.
Mireille stared at Ashlana.
“Explain.”
“Mneme can enter memories. Change them. Twist them. Make someone question what they experienced.”
“We know what Mneme can do,” Astucia said.
Ashlana shook her head.
“You don’t understand.”
She stepped closer.
“She can’t do it to us.”
Mireille froze.
“What did you say?”
“My bloodline can resist her.”
Astucia stared at her.
Mireille crossed the room so quickly that Ashlana instinctively stepped backward.
“Do you understand what you are telling me?”
“Yes.”
“No.” Mireille’s voice became deadly serious. “I don’t think you do.”
Ashlana held her ground.
Mireille continued.
“For centuries, entire Houses have fallen because Mneme could make allies forget one another. She could turn loyalty into suspicion. Love into hatred. She could remove a person from someone’s memories until it was as though they had never existed.”
Ashlana nodded.
“But she can’t do that to my family.”
Mireille stared at her.
Astucia finally understood.
“That is why she wants you dead.”
Ashlana looked toward her.
“Yes.”
“Not because you’re a seer.”
“No.”
“Not because of your empathy.”
“No.”
Astucia’s eyes narrowed.
“Because you remember.”
Ashlana nodded.
“No matter what she takes from everyone else.”
Mireille whispered the answer.
“Your blood remembers.”
Astucia went completely still.
The words struck her harder than any blow.
She saw the stone table again.
Felt Alexandre’s blood burning through her dead veins.
Saw the impossible darkness.
The closed eye.
And heard the whisper that had followed her across centuries.
What the mind forgets, the blood remembers.
Astucia looked at Ashlana.
Then at Mireille.
“That wasn’t a warning.”
Mireille’s face changed.
“What?”
Astucia suddenly understood why the memory of her Embrace had returned.
She hadn’t remembered it by accident.
Something had wanted her to remember those words.
Astucia whispered:
“It was telling me how to defeat her.”
Ashlana frowned.
“How?”
Astucia looked toward her.
“Mneme controls memory.”
She stepped closer.
“But she cannot control blood.”
Mireille slowly shook her head.
“Not exactly.”
Astucia looked at her mentor.
Mireille’s expression had become grave.
“Memory lives in more places than the mind.”
Astucia remembered every object she had ever touched.
Every scream preserved in stone.
Every death hidden inside a blade.
Every secret soaked into walls.
And suddenly she understood.
Mneme could erase what people remembered.
But Astucia could recover what the world remembered.
Ashlana’s family could preserve what Mneme attempted to change.
Two powers.
Two defenses.
Two things Mneme could not completely control.
Astucia smiled.
It wasn’t a pleasant smile.
“For the first time,” she said, “Mneme has a reason to be afraid of us.”
Mireille didn’t smile.
“No, Astucia.”
She looked toward the darkened window.
“She has a reason to kill all of you before you learn what you’re capable of.”
Mireille didn’t smile.
“No, Astucia.”
She turned toward the window.
“Mneme has survived because she destroys those capable of remembering the truth before they understand why their memories matter.”
Astucia’s smile disappeared.
Mireille looked at Ashlana.
“If your bloodline truly carries what you claim, then Mneme hasn’t just discovered an enemy.”
“What has she discovered?” Ashlana asked.
Mireille’s expression darkened.
“A bloodline she thought she’d already exterminated.”
Crazy Canadian Writing 