‘Was he – were they …’
I nodded grimly, watching the dust lift and settle, like a flung breath. A wind would gather her up soon, but no Iele would let her walk with them. I hugged my arms to my chest as Mira looked from Fen to me, impatience mingling with her horror.
‘What?’ she said finally. ‘What does this mean?’
‘They were undead,’ I said at last, the word bitter on my tongue. ‘Strigoi.’
Mira laughed, and the sound was harsh and unlovely as a howl. ‘A strigoi?’
‘Look,’ said Fen. ‘See with your own eyes. Settler or no, you cannot ignore what is before you.’
Mira grimaced down at the corpses. ‘But strigoi are stories, made up to frighten children.’
‘Look,’ Fen repeated. ‘That was no ordinary child.’
‘She had a fever,’ said Mira. ‘Or had been bitten by a rabid dog. It happens.’
‘She’s ash, Mira,’ I said calmly. I felt like I was floating above the scene, blood roaring in my ears. ‘The sun made her ash. And she tried to drink the blood of her father.’
‘What did he say,’ snapped Mira, holding up her hand to quiet me. ‘What did he say before you murdered him?’
Fen hissed, but I ignored the aggression, the accusation in her voice. She was afraid, just as I was. Just as the man had been. And – who knows? – perhaps as his daughter had been, too.
‘He asked me to kill him.’
‘That’s convenient,’ she said.
‘And told me the Dragon had made his daughter a monster. He told me she was strigoi. They say the thirst for blood is like a madness – they must sate it. Even with their own kin.’
‘You killed him,’ said Mira. ‘He was alive, he was beneath my hands. He was warm, he was breathing, he—’
‘He would have been strigoi by morning,’ I interrupted, fear making my patience snap like a thread. ‘Can’t you see it was kinder this way?’
Her breath hitched, and I caught her up in my arms. She pushed against me, but soon her struggles turned to weeping, and she pressed her face into my shoulder.
No one spoke, and the night drew in close, whispering in our ears. Eventually Mira quietened, her breath smoothing. She drew back, her face red and puffy.
‘We should burn them, then?’ she said, voice thick, and I knew that at last she believed me. These strigoi were dead, released from the between place at last, but it would be best to burn them. It was the only way to be sure they could not rise again.
There was not much left of the child to burn beyond the cloak. The man had not been full strigoi when he died and I could feel his flesh-and-blood body too solid around the stake I had pushed between his ribs.
My hands quaked as I helped drag him to the patch of ground Fen had cleared and stacked with tinder. It was worse than Vereski, this slaying, so much worse, because the man was an innocent, no matter that – what had he said?
I abandoned her to the dusk.
I felt his guilt like it was my own. Though his plea was for me to do as I had done, I was a murderer twice over. I had no choice, I told myself, again and again, but it made it no better.
Even the child, vicious as it was, was an innocent. I knew strigoi were damned by their desire for blood, the closest thing to a life force they could possess. They were fed and weakened by it. Despite my frustration at Mira’s initial lack of belief, had I not felt the girl’s skin powder beneath my fingertip I would have had a hard time trusting it too. Everything I knew about strigoi was from stories, but that didn’t make the girl any less real.
As they burned, I swear they screamed.
There was no point feigning sleep. Even Fen couldn’t settle, and we spent the first part of the night building another fire, our backs turned to the smouldering remains of the man and his daughter.
‘He said the Dragon made his daughter that way?’ said Fen, rubbing his jaw with a rasping sound. His stubble was nearly a beard. It made him look like a man. He would not look at me. I knew he was thinking of Kizzy, surely at the castle a couple of days now. ‘So does that mean …’
He seemed unwilling to say it, so I did.
‘The Dragon is a strigoi?’ I swallowed. There was a sweet taste in the back of my throat that I did not want to think too hard upon. ‘I think it must.’
‘It would make sense,’ said Mira, the tremor in her voice not yet faded. ‘The stories we were told at the boyar’s castle – I’m guessing they were not stories after all.’
‘What did you hear?’ said Fen, sitting and pulling his knees up to his chest: a child’s pose with a man’s beard. I felt a pull of love for him, this boy we had grown up with, who loved my sister enough to cross countries, to face monsters.
‘He drinks blood,’ Mira said in a near whisper. ‘He has the fury and power of a dragon.’
I nodded. I had heard all this before, but Fen was rapt. I supposed they did not hear as much in the fields.
‘The offerings have been happening for decades,’ she continued. ‘They always sent the best of us. They sent Cristina—’ her breath hitched. I felt a wave of pity, and something else burning in my belly. ‘She must be dead now.’
‘Perhaps not,’ I said, for lack of another response. ‘Perhaps she is simply a servant.’
‘Why did he become that way?’ Fen asked. ‘Was he once a man?’
Mira shrugged. ‘Some say yes; others that he is a demon come to earth. But if he is a man, he must have made a soul pact, to become so powerful, don’t you think?’
I blinked at her. I didn’t realise Settled knew of soul pacts, the exchanges humans made with spirits. To do it was to be damned, one way or another.
She saw my expression and laughed. My heart gladdened at the sound. ‘I’m not turning mystic on you,’ she said. ‘But that’s something I heard. And now, after what we’ve seen …’ She shivered, but did not look at the bodies, burning behind us. ‘Perhaps I must believe it.’
‘We need a plan,’ said Fen, standing so suddenly it made me jump.
‘Yes,’ I said. ‘If he really is a strigoi, and as powerful as we’ve heard, we need a way to fight him.’
Fen frowned at me. ‘We can’t fight him, Lil. The best we can hope for is to find Kizzy and escape.’
‘You’re happy to leave the others? She said they’ve taken people for decades.’ I gestured at Mira. ‘Her friend, and that child. You’re happy for it to continue, so long as you have Kizzy back?’
‘Where has this come from, Lil? You were content enough to live a life in your sister’s shadow once. What’s changed?’
His words cut, because they were true, and I shrugged off Mira’s restraining hand. ‘I know we can do this, that’s what’s changed. MamÄ showed me—’
He snorted, incredulous, and I felt fury run through me like a blade. ‘It’s true, Fen. The Iele showed me this route—’
‘Which led us straight into danger.’
‘They showed me what awaits us,’ I snapped. ‘And they showed me Kizzy, dancing for him. I can end this, I know it. Perhaps the reason you only saw me in my sister’s shadow was because that’s where you expected me to be. But where is she now, Fen?’ I stretched my arms out to the hushed forest. ‘And where am I? Who killed that strigoi, who knew it for what it was?’