Chapter Text
The Blood That Binds Us
Speeding down the curve of the winding back road, Ilya cranked the knob of the Lamborghini's stereo system. Canadian wilderness blurring through the window on one side, the metal smile of a guard rail curling along the other. It was a suggestion of safety from the treacherous water that lived over the cliffside. The pulse of some modern Slavic techno beat reverberated through the interior of the car. An attempt to meet the rush of thoughts that ran through his head with something harsh and confrontational. He needed something that would wedge between the jagged edges and disjoint them into something solvable. Svetlana. Her pain. Her grief. And his inability to fix it.
Svetlana. Sveta. His closest friend. Also a vampire, though younger than him by a few hundred years. He had met her during his wandering years. When he was without a coven. When he was alone and angry, and she had stepped into the space beside him and extended her hand.
One of the hardest things to be as a vampire.
Alone.
His windshield glistened with the slick of rain. He recalled the way Svetlana had cried tonight. A wordless cry into the universe. Mourning. The recollection of her grief made the venom in his mouth go bitter. His teeth ached. Sveta was suffering one of the worst things that could befall a vampire. A kind of pain that every vampire feared. The death of her fledgling. Nyet. The killing of her fledgling. He could do nothing to console her. Nothing of use. A bleak feeling passed over his mind. He was nothing but a useless pair of arms wrapped around her, his chest a space to empty her cries in. This kind of pain was one that had no words. This was the kind of pain that some vampires didn’t survive. To lose your fledgling was an unbearable pain. But to lose your fledgling in the manner she had was incomprehensible.
Vampires are deeply communal creatures. Dependent on their kin. Forming covens of blood and found family, instinctively, intuitively, it was a matter of preservation. Strong social bonds were a necessity of immortality, not a luxury. He knew this. He had seen this. When you lived for hundreds of years in an ever changing, ever cycling, ever transient dimension of existence in the world, the mind required a constant. Covens were the grounding force that allowed them to navigate the passage of time. To be without a coven was a danger that threatened the very existence of a vampire. Many a vampire had gone insane without a coven, cast out into an existence with no reality. Ilya had known this danger and had nearly lost himself to it, until Svetlana had saved him.
To be without a coven was unimaginable, but to lose a fledgling was unspeakable. Siring a fledgling was no small act. Young vampires were not capable of this feat. Vampires did not become capable of creation until nearly a century of existence. No one knew quite why this was, but it indicated a sort of evolutionary fail safe that ensured only vampires who possessed self preservation and a higher level of earthly maturity could reproduce. And once a fledgling was made, it could be decades before another could be created. The act of creation required a borrowing of life force from the sire, that required restoration before a vampire could safely turn another.
This was Sveta’s first and only fledgling. And she was dead. Ilya’s heart ached anew. The shudder of the windshield wipers felt violent against the onslaught of rain pelting the windshield. It would be decades before Sveta could turn another.
The fledgling. A young girl named Rose Landry. A quick witted, charming, funny 22 y/o that Svetlana had encountered on a dangerous trip to an underground blood lounge. Her coven had sent her on coven business to scope out the joint. It was a seedy joint that flouted the usual ethical standards required of such an establishment. The humans were little more than blood bags and death was a constant threat that lurked. But Rose had needed the money. A run away from a less than ideal upbringing, a prodigy of the foster care system, she had left the last of a long string of homes upon turning 18. It was a wonder that she had survived so long in someplace as dangerous as the blood lounge. But Rose had possessed something determined and powerful inside of her. Ilya had always admired this in her. A type of resilience he respected.
Rose had been working. In blood drop. And despite her self possession, Sveta sensed that Rose’s luck was running out as a blood drunk John pulled more than his taking. Svetlana had recounted watching Rose absentmindedly struggle in his grip with no real fight. Her movements a remnant of something animal inside of her recognizing death, but too far removed to do anything about it. Svetlana blew her cover. She tossed the John away from Rose and rushed her back to the coven.
Rose had been rough in the beginning. Distrusting. Angry at her loss of independence. Stubborn that she could survive on her own. But in time, things changed. First friendship between her and Svetlana, then companionship, and ultimately paramores. Lovers. The word came to Ilya out of the blue. That was what Sveta had lost. Love.
For the first time in her life, Svetlana was capable of creation. And she had chosen Rose.
But then — he remembered the phone call. The unexpected call after dusk. His sarcastic greeting cut short by a haunting wail that connected to something in a dark devastated space inside of him, searching out something animal and cornered inside of him. It scared him. Terror. Panic. And then he was in Svetlana’s apartment looking at Rose’s body, strewn unnaturally on the sofa, limp, blank. Any trace of life that had existed, extinguished. The warmth that existed in a silent devotion when she had looked at Svetlana, evaporated. The love. Ended.
It had been a hit. An intentional savagery to punish the coven, to punish Svetlana, for threatening the existence of the illegal network of clubs and blood lounges that ran beneath the city. They were dangerous places run by dangerous people. Svetlana and the coven had known the risks. They had assumed the threat to life in the name of a greater fight. Something important. Something they could not turn away from. But they had assumed this risk for themselves. Rose had not. Rose had been caught in the collateral. An innocent.
And now– Gospodi-- there was nothing he could do. Nothing he could do to put Svetlana back together. Nothing he could do would be enough to put her pieces back together. A life threatening bleed he could not staunch the flow of. His best friend, his closest companion, was bleeding out in front of him and there was no tourniquet to tie. She had found him in his worst years, hurting and alone. She had wrapped herself around his heart and squeezed it back into beating. Until he felt warmth. Until he felt belonging. Until he felt love. She had saved him, and he could do nothing for her.
Except— Nyet. Not that. Still, the thought danced across his thoughts for the hundredth time that night. An overwhelming thought punctuated by his own grief. It was a terrible idea. Bad probably. He couldn’t. Svetlana’s blood rimmed eyes resurfaced in his thoughts. He can’t. He hadn’t turned a fledgling in years. Hadn’t wanted to. Couldn’t. Not after– Nyet! – he can’t think of that now.
Ilya had long resigned himself to the knowledge that he would never turn another fledgling. He couldn’t. Not for himself. But for Svetlana — this was something he had never considered before.
It wasn’t unheard of to jointly sire a fledgling. Most vampires preferred not. They could be territorial and the added intimacy of a shared sire bond could be overwhelming. But he did not want a fledgling. He would not fight Sveta for dominance, though in another world, they would probably have enjoyed that too. He would have to initiate the process of course. Bite the human, feeding them first his blood and then Svetlana’s, forming a triphasic bond. And then, ritual performed, gift bestowed, he would relinquish the fledgling to Svetlana. It could not be a replacement for Rose. Nyet, never a replacement. Ilya was not stupid enough to think this. But, it would give Svetlana a companion. It would not guarantee love or even a friendship like the one she had shared with Rose, but it was a chance. A chance Svetlana would not get for several more decades. He couldn’t bring Rose back, but he could give her this.
Well, he could have.