When Blood Runs Cold - Chapter 259

The figure that emerges from the impenetrable blackness is not entirely the same as I remember them, but not exactly different either. Most of my memory of her remains intact, and yet there are nagging differences in her form that leave me wondering just what else she might have kept hidden from me. For while her small, pale face has not changed, nor the swirling vortexes of her black hair or the silky transparency of her wings, something else has.

Her figure, once solid and completely opaque, now has the similar consistency to the little terrors of light that dart and float around her. She appears one with the darkness, transparent yet glowing with a faint blue light that distinguishes her from the gloom. I suppose to myself silently that if I reached out to touch her, my hand would go completely through her just like the spirits that abide around her. Perhaps this is one of the perks of being dead- and being able to control what form she takes through the power of her soul.

Completely invulnerable. I suppose that is one of the perks of being dead. It also makes it a hell of a lot less easy for Azrael to get his grubby little hands on her to try and pry out her soul. To that, I commend her foreplanning.

“I have heard,” she starts, stepping through the air towards us, her feet hovering a few centimetres above solid ground. “That you two have been looking for me. You might want to choose your reasons for visiting very carefully, I am in no mood to be messed around. The spirits are restless tonight, and so am I.”

Glowering at us both, she maintains a healthy distance between us, allowing those flickering blobs of luminescence to squander our vision of her every now and then so that we are never truly seeing her for what she is. It would be a natural assumption that she would rather not make herself recognizable to the cold blooded vampire who loiters by my side, though with such distinctive characteristics, that will likely turn out to be rather difficult. Perhaps that is another reason why she appeared to us in this form.

“We came here to talk. Do I have the pleasure of talking to the soul of death?” Azrael asks, taking a brazen step forward, a slight smile on his face as he extends its hand out towards her. She does not take it.

“Who else would I be?” she smiles cunningly, gesturing the whole of her body with one wave of her hands. For a few brief seconds, her form pulsates in the darkness, her white eyes stark against the gloom. “Do I look particularly alive to you?”

Beside her, the spirits under her bidding continue to cackle and screech with glee, as though seeing us was the most amusement they had seen in their undead lives. But it is all a façade.

I guess I am not the only one pretending tonight.

Very deliberately, I let my fingers tremble as I clutch around Azrael’s arm, holding out the flame with the other hand- a motion that Ingrid notices. With a wide, Cheshire smile, she swoops inwards, circling us now, like a shark around its prey.

Neither Azrael nor I move, stiffening as the cold envelopes us.

“And who is this delightful little morsel? I have not seen a pretty young spirit like you in nearly five hundred years. Ah the joys of youth! It is but a shame that they will all have to”- she touches a tree beneath the palm of her hand, blackening the bark until it begins to fall away- “…crumble.”

It is in that moment that I hear the coo of Azrael’s voice in my mind, the pressure of his power playing in my head.

Talk back to her.

Well, it would seem my orders have been given.

“Your riddles mean nothing to me, beast,” I growl, lashing out with my flames, but careful to miss her by a couple of inches. The spirits around her hiss in response but with a slight wave of her fingers, she quells them into silence. Carefully now she peers at me and Azrael, her expression of interest so keen it seems entirely genuine. But alas, it is all one great game of pretend. Floating up to lie in the dead branches of a tree above us, she inspects us both curiously.

“Strange. I have not met anyone so determined to be in my presence. Most would have run by now. What exactly do you want from me?”

“I told you, to talk,” Azrael growls at last, folding his arms. “We need you to help us at the palace. You would do a great service to us. We have heard your powers are… legendary. Wouldn’t you like to put them to use?”

The soul of death falls silent for a moment.

“Legendary, hmm?” she muses, now bored of her spot in the tree and decides to float back down to us.

Taking a step down towards us, Ingrid circles our forms, her ghostly hands reaching out to grasp inches away from our skin, as though through touch alone she would be able to sense our motives. She does a good job at pretending- the way she instils a certain air of fear into everything she does, weaving it like a glorious pattern onto plain cloth. If I didn’t know her secrets, and she didn’t know mine, I might have been terrified.

“And what service could the dead possibly do to you? You seem to know my powers enough that you’d come to seek me, but are they really of use to you?” she queries, stopping in front of us now. Carefully, she leans out, running her ghostly hand a mere breath away from Azrael’s cheek.

If he wanted to, he probably could have lent out to grab her then, tested his luck on the translucent woman and dragged her back down to the palace dungeons. He could have asked me to subdue her, to use my powers on her, and I would have to do it. But something stops him this time. Perhaps it is the façade of earnesty he puts up that he strives to keep, or perhaps he merely is waiting to bide his time, hoping to gain the trust of the faery- trust he will never gain. But either way, his motives for remaining passive continue to elude me, so I find that for now, while his actions are in line with my own, I would rather let sleeping dogs lie.

“There are changes my companion and others would like to see implemented into Faey,” Azrael shrugs simply, giving nothing away. “Your power is vastly helpful to our cause, which is why we request you join us.”

“Cause?” Ingrid growls, drawing back now, aghast. “You speak of war,” Ingrid spits, swooping backwards to join the hordes of spirits that circle around her head in a halo like formation. As they join her, they begin to condense around her, shielding her form from the majority of our view. “My powers have only known peace for hundreds of years. I prefer to primarily aid others, not to hurt. But I will hurt you too if you insist on keeping me here, locked within my own home. I am not the person you are looking for,” she growls gruffly, her white eyes flaring behind the crowds of spectators, a snarl to her voice that I have not heard before. Wrinkling his nose, Azrael takes a few bounding steps forward, his hand outstretched towards her just as she begins to turn her back to him.

“Wait,” he calls in a booming voice, the low anger of his tone shaking the whole forest into a quivering silence. Not even a bird dares to sing as he walks up to meet her, knocking aside all the luminous balls of blue and white into the void of darkness around us. The spirits scatter in an almost practised hurry.

“Three days,” he says bluntly, giving no elaboration on his words but the sheer voice of warning behind them. Ingrid turns.

“Three days?” she asks incredulously, her fingers clenching tight into fists. Her form begins to shake with an unrestrained rage, both fragile and ridiculously powerful at the same time- breakable as a leaf and yet somehow as sturdy as an oak.

“You dare threaten me, puny vampire? You may be immortal, but you are not invulnerable. Test me and I will kill you, Traitor Prince, and I will do it in the most painful way possible.”

Azrael, in the brazen and entirely brash manner that was always becoming of his, completely ignores her.

“I am giving you three days to think over the matter. If you wish to learn more, you will do well to visit us before your time is up. Then perhaps you can join our cause. But if you do not, well,” he murmurs, trailing off suggestively as he plays with the gleaming golden rings on his finger…