Blood Hope

Randilyn stood in the doorway of the tent she shared with Amiri, gazing out at the hard rain sheeting down. The dense black clouds had turned that late afternoon as dark as midnight. Her pale hair and skin looked ghostly against the backdrop of the overcast day, limned by the lamplight from the table behind her. Autumn had arrived with a vengeance, forcing the Army of the Renunciate to halt frequently and wait for it to break before moving on.

She was an Ymraude nibari. They were made, not bred, or born. Most of them began life as humans, although a few sylvans could be found in their ranks. Potions and spells moved them into the change from whatever species they had begun life as; and the initial action of the potions was to extend their life spans through the use of Blue Moon's Mourning. They all had one thing in common: they had been born male and wished they had been born female. All things came with a price; and Ishla the God of Love and Technology offered them a trade. She would make them female, but only if they agreed to become nibari and ultimately vampires.

Compared to the Lemyari vampires, the Ymraudes had no power of any consequence. When the godwar broke out, it went swiftly against the original pantheon of light. All of the major and more powerful gods fell to the onslaught from the hellgods; and finally only Ishla remained. She was a gray god, neither fully of the light or of the darkness; secretive and subtle. Powerful secrets stolen from her temple by her high priest, Zarlec, who betrayed her, had given the hellgods their victory. The Lemyari resulted from a bastardization of her initial research into vampires which Zarlec had given to the hellgod Gylorean Galee. In order to buy herself time to open the last surviving Gate Arcane through which she could bring allies, young gods, to her aid, Ishla unleashed her two most powerful remaining weapons: the demon-eaters and the Scavenger, a being so terrible and unstoppable that she vowed never to create a second one.

Her final act before opening the Gate had been the creation of the Ymraudes. They were subtle creations, designed to infiltrate the ranks of the other vampires, and destroy them from within. She paired them with the demon-eaters, deploying them in guerilla units. Whenever an Ymraude perished, her chosen nibari immediately transitioned into the vampire's replacement, making it close to impossible for the enemy to destroy all of them. Unlike their more powerful kinsmyn, the Lemyari, the Ymraudes did not suffer from the uncontrollable appetite for blood. Their instincts never dominated their faculty for reason.

The Ymraude shaman, Amiri, had been chosen by Ishla to guide, protect, and study the last of Ishla's demon-eaters. Amiri had gambled dangerously by tricking Isranon into biting Anksha, which brought the little demon-eater into season for the first time in her life and nearly resulted in the deaths of both Anksha and Isranon.

Amiri's friendship with Isranon had suffered because of it. Randilyn had told her that it would; but her master was stubborn when it came to her quest for scientific knowledge to replace what had been lost in the godwar thousands of years ago. The fragmentary texts on the demon-eaters, what little had survived the centuries, had been entrusted to Amiri and by extension, Randilyn.

She stared again at the sleeting rain, wishing it would stop. One of the few things that their liege-lord, Isranon Dawnreturning could not do was alter the weather. Randilyn wished he could. Going north was taking twice as long as coming south had.

She heard the beads in Amiri's cornrowed hair clack together and knew that her master had roused. Randilyn's mouth pursed. She opened the neck of her tunic and sank to her knees. "I suppose you're hungry?"

Amiri's fangs descended, ivory against her crimson lips. "What are you pouting about now?"

"Did I say I was pouting?"

"I know that tone of voice, Randi." Amiri settled behind Randilyn and licked her neck.

"Bite me and get it over with."

"Definitely pouting." Amiri's fangs broke the skin on Randilyn's neck delicately, sucking the delicious fluid that rose to her mouth from her nibari's veins.

Randilyn stiffened and pushed away Amiri's attempt to lessen the discomfort by swishing into her pleasure centers.

: Come on, Randi. Relax. : Amiri sent through their link.

: Won't. :

Amiri finished, licked the wound closed, and rocked back on her heels. "What have I done now?"

"You lied to him."

"Isranon?"

"If truth dies / all that is left of life / is darkness and lies."

"Oh, for Ishla's sake, don't start quoting Padruig Caimbeul at me."

"I will if I want to. You lied to Isranon."

"If I had told Isranon the truth, it would have destroyed him."

"I searched the books, trying to find where you got your information. All I found was that vampires and sa'necari don't pin up and kill imps like he did because of the stress of battle … unless they're going rogue."

"You have it all wrong. Hunger always becomes an issue when too much power is expended by a vampire or other high-level hemophages and hemovores. It isn't as rare as you think for a hemovore to drain an enemy in the midst of battle, Randi. When…"

"You've never done it." Accusation deepened in Randilyn's voice.

"I don't wield the kind of power that Isranon does. I don't spend that much of myself in battle, because I don't have it to give."

"The rogue state…."

"He isn't showing any other symptoms of the rogue state, Randi."

"You've been watching him?"

"Don't I always?"

"Then what do you think it is? He sends for more nibari every hour or so, sex and blood again and again. He wasn't like this three years ago. If that's not rogue, then define it for me."

"I assure you he isn't going rogue. He's sa'necari, not a vampire. If I tell him how utterly mystified I am, he'll come to his own conclusions, and those could be fatal."

Randilyn lowered her gaze and closed her tunic, fiddling with the buttons in a distracted manner. "Corbienne is going rogue."

Corbienne, one of five Lemyari vampires traveling with Isranon's company, had always seemed unstable to her; and the more that Randilyn learned of Corbienne's history, the more the nibari became convinced of it. Corbienne's father had owed gambling debts to a vampire of Lord Hoon's lineage. Not knowing the nature of the mon that he owed the money to, Corbienne's father had tried to avoid paying the money. The vampire had then demanded Corbienne as repayment for his debt. After slipping the young mon some of his blood in a glass of wine, the vampire had killed her in front of her family and abandoned her. When Corbienne rose three days later, the maddening hunger of the newborn had driven her to consume her entire family. She had then fled into the forests, grieving and confused, until Haig found her and tried to teach her self-restraint as he had once been taught by Dane Jayce.

Randilyn had recognized the signs of a breakdown in Corbienne following the battle of Chyniolus, and knew that she was Passion-Dancing her human lover, Iuf; mistaking appetite for love and gradually killing him. Amiri had made a study of the Passion-Dance, allowing several innocents to die for the sake of her scientific investigations. Randilyn had protested it then, and continued to try and act as Amiri's voice of conscience. Sometimes it worked, but far more often it failed and resulted in Amiri disciplining her for interfering.

"You ought to do something, Amiri."

"I've spoken with her time and time again. So long as she's in denial and refusing treatment, there's nothing I can do."

Tears welled in Randilyn's eyes. "Won't you do something more than talk?

"No."

"You could tell Isranon…"

Amiri frowned, wiping the last traces of Randilyn's blood from her lips. "I'll think about it. I promised Iuf that I would not speak of it without his permission."

GODWAR CENTRAL

Blood Hope