While we nonchalantly converse, Father Cullard is busy being drawn and quartered. Not enough to kill him, but just to make his squeals and screams of agony rise into the stifling summer day, above the din of the audience.
“She sure did,” Jinneth says dreamily. “Valiantly, too. Did you know she was a Silverknight?”
I nearly sputter, eyes widening. “What?”
“Oh yes. She doesn’t like to talk about it”—though my mother does—“but she was one of the foremost champions in Heskel Angul’s day. She comes from a long line of warriors, apparently. Not born in Nuhav, but from some faraway land.”
A loudsnapand wail pierces the sky as something inside Cullard breaks.
I pout at my mother. “Fascinating. Tell me more. I know Keffa never will.”
“The first time I met her, I was at a ball with Lenaro, your father. Bloodsuckers attacked us through the windows, came atus like a wave of death. Started slaughtering people left and right.”
I cringe.
Cullard cringes harder as his broken body is now being lifted by a rope loosely tied around his neck—not enough to kill, but to make him squirm and kick and struggle. People near the front of the crowd throw more rocks, debris, and shit at him.
“Lenaro was suddenly nowhere to be seen, the coward. I was on my back, ready to die . . . and there stood the Iron Sister in front of me. Gallant, beautiful, flowing hair. I was instantlysmitten.She and a few others in the crowd helped fight off the Buvers before the massacre could get out of hand.” She chuckles to herself, blushing slightly. “Imagine my surprise? My awakening happens as death stares me in the eyes with dripping fangs.”
I let out a dreamy sigh of my own, thinking about my mates. “I can relate, Mother.”
Cullard screams again as he’s tarred and feathered, turning into a dark blob in the distance that resembles a floating, overcooked chicken.
“We never get to plan when our ‘awakening’ happens, do we?” I muse. “Imaginemysurprise when I realized I desire vampires.”
She tuts a laugh. “That handsome devil of yours? I suppose he’s not so bad after all.”
“Skar saved your life,” I point out, lifting my fingers, “twicein one night!”
“Yes, but he did it for you. Not me. If it was up to him, I’d be splattered hundreds of feet at the base of that tower right now.”
“That’s true love, isn’t it?” I ponder. “Save someone you despise because they’re associated with the one you love.”
She looks offended. “You’re saying he despises me?”
I cringe. “Erm, well . . . no.”
She laughs, nodding deeply. “Only jesting, my dear. Those were wise words. I hate him too.”
“Mother!”
“What?” Jinneth throws her arms up, feigning innocence. Then she grows serious. “The important thing to me, Sephania, is that you are loved. And byso many.” She gestures at the huge crowd again, though I suspect she’s talking more directly about the four men I call my own.
Cullard, by contrast, is not currently feeling very loved. He’s getting a sword dragged down his chest to open him up, tortured every way imaginable while bloodthirsty citizens cheer on his macabre death sequence.
Yesterday, Skar asked me if I wanted him to turn Cullard, like Dimmon Plank, to keep him suffering for eternity. I replied that I couldn’t stand the thought of having to look at or think about that man longer than I had to, and that it wouldn’t be necessary, but thank you for the thought.
I suppose me and Jinneth and all the others have been so desensitized to the sheer scale of violence in Nuhav and Olhav, that seeing Cullard’s innards spill out of him in a great plopping heap, and then wrapped around his body and neck like they’re a child’s sweet treat, is just another summer day for us.
“Oh my,” Jinneth mutters, looking out and seeing Cullard’s death throes as he twitches and twirls in his noose. “Looks like it’s the climax.”
The cheering rises to a fever pitch.
A few minutes later, Father Cullard is gone, and yet the Silverknights continue blaspheming his corpse for a little while longer, just to give the audience an encore.
Sometimes, I have no idea how I’m going to turn this ravenous society of lunatics into a peaceful community. I can see now how Antones failed to make the Grimsons into a pacifist enclave.
But then I think about how my people were raised: in constant fear of a flashing dagger in an alley; a friend selling you out to a flesh-trader for a bit of coin; vampires stalking from the shadows to steal your loved ones; faithful men preying on your children.