Chapter 48: The Vitality Drain

Drusilla lunged forward and delivered a sharp strike to Ace’s face. He didn't move. He stood in the center of the study and kept the arms down at the sides. He didn't raise a hand to protect the jaw. He didn't try to catch the wrist of the woman who struck him. He accepted the sting of the cold palm against the skin. She struck him again on the other cheek. The sound of the slap filled the quiet room and echoed off the book-lined walls. Ace kept the eyes on her. He saw the fire in the crimson irises. She didn't stop. She swung the arms in a blur of velvet and lace, landing punch after punch against the chest and the shoulders. He stood like a stone pillar while she vented the rage.

Drusilla stopped hitting him for a second to catch the breath. She reached out and gripped the collar of the leather jacket. She bunched the material in the hands and shoved him with a sudden burst of energy. Ace stumbled back across the rug. He hit the edge of the heavy mahogany desk. The impact forced the air from the lungs. He didn't fight the movement. He let the wood of the desk catch the weight. Drusilla followed him immediately. She didn't let go of the jacket. She pressed her body against him, pinning him to the desk.

"Two days, Ace!" she yelled.

She shook him hard. He heard the teeth rattle in the head. She gripped the leather so tight that the knuckles turned the color of bone.

"You walked out of this house and left me with nothing but a mark that wouldn't stop glowing," she continued.

The voice sounded thick with anger and a sharp, jagged terror. She didn't look away from him.

"I sat in the dining room and watched the servants stare at me. I walked the halls and waited for a sign from the bond. I didn't get a single thought. I didn't get a single word through a courier. I had to manage the trade council while I wondered if you lay dead in a ditch somewhere in Moonwood Mill."

She shoved him again. The wood of the desk creaked behind him. He didn't try to push her back. He looked at the pale face and the way the dark hair fell around the shoulders. He saw the way the lips trembled. He didn't speak. The silence in the room seemed to make her even angrier. She raised a fist and slammed it into the desk next to the head.

"Answer me!" she screamed. "Don't you dare stand there and give me a wall of silence. I have spent centuries dealing with people who hide their motives. I will not have it from you. Tell me where you were."

The sovereign bond-mark on the wrist flared suddenly. A blinding gold-crimson light filled the space between them. The glow didn't stay on the skin. It spilled out into the air. It looked like liquid fire that had been poured into the room. The light hit the floor and seeped into the cracks of the wood. A vibration started deep in the foundation of the manor. Ace heard the floorboards groan. The rug beneath the boots shifted as the wood trembled. The light became more intense. It illuminated the dust motes in the air until they looked like tiny sparks of gold floating in a sea of blood.

Drusilla stared at the light. She didn't back away from the heat it released. She gripped the jacket tighter. Ace experienced a strange sensation in the chest. He noticed the body heat dropping. It wasn't the cold of the room or the night air. It was a drain from the inside. He watched the gold-crimson threads of magic move from the wrist and wrap around Drusilla's arms. She began to siphon the raw vitality of the wolf through the connection. She didn't know she was doing it. The bond acted on its own, bridging the gap between his warmth and her stasis.

The eyes of the vampire queen glowed with a new light. She pulled the energy from him and used it. She raised a fist and brought it down on the shoulder. Ace didn't expect the weight of the blow. The strike felt supernaturally heavy. It didn't just hurt the skin. It rattled the bone and sent a shock through the entire arm. He let out a sharp grunt and leaned harder into the desk. The mahogany cracked under the pressure of the body. She struck him again in the center of the chest. This time, he felt the ribs flex in a way that made him worry about the structure of the torso. The force was too much for a normal vampire. She had the heat of the moon in the veins now. She struck him again and again. Each hit landed with the sound of a heavy hammer hitting a stone wall.

Ace felt the strength of the wolf constitution reaching its limit. The skin on the face felt hot and swollen. He tasted copper as blood filled the mouth. Drusilla didn't notice the damage she caused. She continued to pull the power from him. She used the borrowed strength to punish him for the disappearance. The room continued to shake. A glass vase on a nearby shelf tipped over and shattered on the floor. The shards of crystal reflected the gold-crimson light that pulsed from the bond.

"You don't get to leave!" Drusilla shouted.

She landed another blow on the chest. The force of it knocked the air from the lungs once more.

"You don't get to decide when this bond is too much for you," she said.

She pulled back for another swing. The gold light on the arm looked like a solid cuff of metal. She looked stronger than he had ever seen her. The lethality of the House of Black had merged with the raw power of the Moonwood pack. She was a weapon that he had unintentionally fueled. He stayed against the desk and waited for the next strike. He didn't try to stop the siphoning. He let her take the vitality because he didn't know how to tell her the truth about what the magic was doing to her. He watched her raise the hand again. The gold-crimson light made her look like a goddess of war in the middle of a burning temple.

Drusilla swung a closed fist and hit Ace directly in the side of the ribs. The sound of the impact did not resemble a typical punch. It sounded like a heavy stone striking a dry branch. Ace let out a long, ragged groan and doubled over. The wolf durability that usually protected him from physical harm began to fail. He had survived falls from cliffs and the bites of other Alphas, but this was different. The power she used came from his own blood. It bypassed the natural armor of the werewolf constitution.

He gripped the edge of the mahogany desk to keep from falling to the knees. He noticed a sharp, hot pain radiating from the side. The bone had cracked under the weight of the strike. He coughed, and a spray of crimson hit the dark wood of the desk. He stayed there, breathing in shallow hitches, while the gold-crimson light from the bond continued to wash over the room. He realized she could kill him. The siphoning process had turned the vampire into a force that the body could no longer resist. She did not stop. She raised the arm again, the velvet sleeve pulling back to reveal the glowing sovereign mark.

She launched another strike aimed at the face. Ace did not let it land. He moved with a sudden burst of speed and caught the wrist mid-swing. He clamped the fingers around the thin bone of the arm. The force of the movement caused them to stumble together. He backed her toward the center of the room until they stood away from the desk. He held the arm steady, preventing her from delivering another blow. She struggled against the grip, pulling and twisting, but he did not let go.

The room became silent. The only sound came from the heavy, frantic breathing of two people who had just been in a violent struggle. Ace tightened the grip on the wrist. As he held her, he pressed the thumb against the soft skin of the inner wrist. He expected the cold, stagnant pulse of the vampire. He expected the deep, rhythmic thrum of the sovereign bond.

Instead, he noticed something else.

A secondary heartbeat thudded beneath the skin. It moved with a rapid, frantic pace. It was too fast for a wolf and too vital for a vampire. It felt like a small bird trapped beneath the surface of the alabaster skin, beating the wings in a desperate attempt to escape. The rhythm was distinct from his own and entirely separate from Drusilla’s cold stasis.

Ace froze. He did not move a single muscle. He stared down at the wrist and then looked up at Drusilla. The rage in her eyes did not vanish, but it shifted. She stopped struggling. She looked at the hand he used to hold her. She looked at the point where the thumb pressed against the frantic throb.

The silence in the study grew heavy. Neither of them spoke. The gold-crimson light of the bond dimmed to a low, pulsing amber. They stood in the center of the room, locked in a biological realization that changed everything. The heir to Newcrest existed. The child they had not planned for, the one the Count had predicted, now occupied the space between them.

Drusilla pulled the arm back slowly. He let her go this time. She stepped away and covered the wrist with the other hand. She looked at him with an expression that mixed shock with a growing, cold pragmatism. She didn't ask a question. She knew what he had found.

"I went to Glimmerbrook," Ace said.

The voice sounded thin and rough. He wiped the blood from the corner of the mouth with the back of the hand.

"I didn't just wander into the woods for two days," he continued. "I went to find answers. I saw Elder Morgan. I asked her about the records of hybrids. I asked her what happens when the two natures merge in a single body."

Drusilla stood perfectly still. She didn't adjust the gown or smooth the dark hair that had fallen into the face. She watched him, waiting for the words he had brought back from the magic realm.

"She performed a ritual," Ace said. He gestured toward the obsidian basin he remembered from the cottage. "She saw a bridge made of bone. She saw a void. She called it a war in the womb, Drusilla. She told me that the two natures do not live in harmony. The vampire stasis tries to freeze the growth. The wolf vitality tries to burn through the stasis to expand."

He took a step toward her. She did not move.

"Morgan gave me a prophecy," he said. He looked at the floorboards, seeing the image of the black liquid in the basin. "She said the child will act as a parasite. It will strip the magic from the blood and the marrow from the bones. It requires immense energy to survive the conflict between the two natures. It will consume the mother until she is nothing but an empty shell."

He looked back at her eyes. He saw the way she processed the information.

"She said there is no solution," Ace finished. "She said the war has already begun, and the winner has already been decided. You are the vessel that breaks under the weight of what you carry."

The words sat in the air like a death sentence. The luxury of the manor, the trade ledgers on the desk, and the political power they had built in Newcrest suddenly seemed small and irrelevant. He watched her. He waited for her to scream or strike him again. Instead, she stayed silent, her gaze fixed on the mark that carried the frantic rhythm of a life that was slowly eating its way through her.

Ace watched Drusilla as she touched the skin over her stomach. She didn't look like a mother. She looked like a prisoner examining the walls of a cell.

"The child does not simply grow inside you," Ace said. He stepped closer, his boots crunching on a shard of broken crystal. "It harvests. It takes the vampire stasis that keeps your body from decaying and it burns it for fuel. Then it takes the wolf vitality from me through the bond and uses it to expand. You are the battery for a machine that never stops running."

He gestured to the glowing mark on her wrist.

"The child will strip the magic from your blood first," he continued. "Then it will take the marrow from your bones. By the second trimester, your body will begin to fail because it cannot provide enough energy to sustain the war between our natures. It is a parasitic relationship. It eats you to survive."

Drusilla let the hand drop from her stomach. The rage that had fueled her punches vanished. In its place, a cold, sharp pragmatism settled over her features. She straightened her posture and smoothed the velvet of her gown. She looked toward the empty space on the desk where the stolen research had once sat.

"The blueprints," Drusilla stated. Her voice had lost its tremor. It sounded like a blade hitting ice. "The clinical notes my uncle kept in the trunk. You took them from Straud Manor. You showed them to me in the library. They contained protocols for thermal regulation. They had charts for nutrient balance and maternal stabilization."

She turned her crimson eyes toward him. The luminous light in them had dimmed, replaced by a calculating stare.

"Fetch them," she commanded. "If the Count spent centuries mapping this crisis, then he has already done the work Morgan claims is impossible. Those papers are no longer a breeding program. They are a medical manual. Bring them here so we can find the frequency to stabilize the growth."

Ace felt a cold sweat break out on the back of his neck. He looked at the dark, cold hearth of the study. He remembered the smell of burning parchment. He remembered the way the orange flames had licked at the edges of the Count’s meticulous handwriting.

"I can't," Ace said.

He didn't look away from her. He forced himself to hold her gaze even as his chest tightened.

"What do you mean you can't?" Drusilla asked. She stepped toward him, her boots clicking sharply on the wood. "Where are they, Ace?"

"I burned them," he admitted.

The words felt like lead in his mouth.

"When I confronted Vladislaus at his manor, I threw everything into the fire. I watched the blueprints curl and turn black. I watched the research notes turn to grey flakes in the embers. I hated that he viewed you as a vessel. I hated that he had planned our lives like a laboratory experiment. I wanted to destroy his control over us."

Drusilla stopped moving. She stood three paces away from him. She didn't scream this time. She didn't raise her hand to strike him. She simply stared at him while the silence in the room became absolute. The realization of what he had done seemed to drain the last bit of color from her face.

"You burned them," she repeated.

She looked at the hearth as if she could see the ghosts of the papers there.

"Centuries of research," she said. Her voice was a low, dangerous murmur. "The only existing maps for the war happening in my body. You threw them into a fireplace because your pride was wounded."

"I didn't know," Ace said. "I thought I was protecting you from him."

"You were protecting your ego," Drusilla snapped. She turned away from him and paced toward the window. She looked out at the dark forest of Newcrest. "The Count raised me. He is a monster of calculation, but he does not waste effort. He would not have spent six hundred years on those notes if the solution were simple. You have destroyed my only lifeline."

Ace walked to the center of the room. He looked at his hands, then at the mark on his wrist. He felt the pull of the bond. It was a bridge that carried their thoughts as well as their blood.

"The information isn't gone," Ace said.

Drusilla turned her head slightly to look at him over her shoulder.

"The papers are ash, but the knowledge is still in his head," Ace continued. "Vladislaus lived through Elara’s death. He spent every night after that recording what he learned. He remembers those charts. He knows the magical frequencies and the nutrient requirements."

Drusilla turned around fully. She crossed her arms over her chest. "He will not give them to us. You insulted him. You burned his life's work. He is a sovereign of the High Houses, and he does not forgive easily."

"Then we don't ask," Ace said. He felt a desperate plan forming in his mind. "We use the bond. You and I have achieved total mental synchronization before. We have merged our minds to fight Greg. We can do it again."

He stepped closer to her, his amber eyes glowing with a dark intensity.

"We go to Straud Manor," he said. "We initiate a telepathic intrusion. While you engage him in conversation, I will use the bond to anchor us. We will reach into his memories and pull the data directly from his mind. We will take what we need to keep you alive."

Drusilla looked at him for a long moment. She scanned his face, looking for the guilt and the determination there. She looked at the blood on his lip and the bruise forming on his cheek where she had struck him.

"You are suggesting we commit a mental assault on the most powerful vampire in Forgotten Hollow," Drusilla said.

"I am suggesting we survive," Ace countered.

Drusilla uncrossed her arms. She looked down at the frantic throb in her wrist. The secondary heartbeat was still there, a constant reminder of the clock that had started ticking.

"He will sense us," she said. "The moment we breach his mental wards, he will fight back. He will view it as a betrayal of the highest order."

"He already views us as a disappointment," Ace said. "Let him think what he wants. We need those protocols."

Drusilla nodded slowly. The icy pragmatism returned to her expression. She reached out and straightened the collar of his jacket, her fingers brushing against his heated skin.

"We will have to beg him for an audience first," she said. "We must play the part of the repentant daughter and the humbled wolf. We must get close enough to touch him."

"Then let's get moving," Ace said.

He reached out and took her hand. His furnace-warm palm met her cool skin. The sovereign mark flared one last time, a unified glow of gold and crimson that illuminated the wreckage of the study. They left the room together, moving through the dark hallways of the manor toward the stables, heading back toward the ancient shadows of Forgotten Hollow to reclaim the life that was already slipping away.