I could see the blood trailing down her hands where the shackles bit into her flesh. It was pooled around her bare thighs in a dark, sticky pattern that reminded me of the ink blots the doctors at the hospital had tried to convince me were supposed to look like my mother. Puddled all around her like that, they still didn't look a thing like her.
"Hello mother." I said as calmly as I could even though I was shaking inside. Rage, fear, and some echo of my inner child mingled around the vicinity of my heart and left a metallic taste in my mouth. How had this thing ever given birth to me, and why hadn't I killed her yet?
The monster on the floor slowly raised her head. Twin dark pools saw nothing and everything from behind stringy red curls. I had memories of her being beautiful, singing me to sleep and holding me when I cried, was that all a lie? "Hello daughter," a slow smile spread across her hunger ravaged face, "Have you come to release me or kill me? Either way I'll be free of these chains." She lifted her arms as far as the heavy iron would allow in her weakened state. It was a mock supplication more of spite than any real contriteness. It didn't fool me for a second.
I took the two steps to the wall and pulled a cold metal chair over to sit in front of her. It was just out of reach a few inches from the edge of the salt and iron circle I had mixed with my own blood and drawn on the hard concrete under and around her. My blood made it semi-permanent, it couldn't be blown away with a breath or brushed away with a foot. The only way that circle broke was by my death and I didn't plan on that happening any time soon.
I took the time to really look at her for the first time since my team had brought her down here. Leading the team that took out one of the strongest Sanguinarian covens of the last two hundred and fifty years was cause for a commendation enough, but the fact that my mother was High Priestess of that coven had earned me some serious street cred with the troops. It hadn't even crossed my mind at the time. I had my own reasons for wanting to destroy the coven that had nothing to do with my job. The fact that it got me promoted was just icing on the cake.
Her hair was waist length and hung in dreadlocked red snakes, covering most of her naked body. The science team had taken all of her clothes and jewelry as I had instructed them. It left her no talismans to fight with, except the ones tattooed on her flesh and those were rendered useless by the runic iron brands they had also seared her with. She was as powerless now as I had felt when I was thirteen years old. That thought didn't give me as much pleasure as I'd expected. All I felt was a gut wrenching emptiness.
"I'm not here to do either, I just wanted one last look at the monster that gave birth to me before I sign the order that turns you over to the Science Priests and they cut your body into pieces for easier dissection while your still living head watches from a suspension unit." The images my words conjured up were worse than any nightmare created by the Zealots in their traveling tents or the elite XCults who paid their own science priests to cut them up and put them back together so they could live forever behind their high walls and robotic security systems.
The sudden burst of laughter that came gurgling out of her parched throat snapped me out of my daydream. I blinked a few times to regain my focus. It wasn't like me to space out. I needed sleep and some rec time, bad. I knew she was baiting me, but I "fell" for it anyway. "What is so funny?"
"Do you honestly think that is what is going to happen here? You are still just as dense as you were at 13." She made a vain attempt to toss her hair over her shoulder but without her hands, it just slid right back. She rocked back on her heels and then pushed her feet out from under her until she sat there, her bare backside on the blood soaked concrete and her legs out in front of her like a broken rag doll. She wiggled until she had drawn her feet up in the lotus position. "You may be one of the rising stars of the science priesthood's minions, but you still can't remember that much about the magickal world can you?" She made a sad sounding clicking noise, " you cannot play at magick while you despise it in the next breath. You could have been one of the greatest Sanguinarian priestesses the world has ever seen. But you chose to turn your back on your family, your gifts, on me."
The last two words were said with such pain that it made me cringe. It wasn't possible. She was a Vampire, and a Witch. She was incapable of any feelings other than hate and blood lust. At least that was what all of my Black Heart training told me.
The Science Priesthood ran the world, or what was left of it. After the XCult elitists had taken their wealth and began building walled "congregations" to cut themselves off from the rest of humanity. These monuments to failed society stood above the broken cities, built on mountains of rubble that had been piled and cemented after WWIII. They were protected by robotic security systems and nobody from below ever went up. Not that we cared anyway. We had our own problems down on the ground. The bombs had created the predicted nuclear winter, but it hadn't lasted as long as they expected it to, only two generations. Mostly due to the science priests meddling with the atmosphere.
The biological weapons used in the war had created a nebulous fog for most of the first thirty to forty years that caused side effects no one could have foreseen. The mingling of so many different bacterial and viral strains had sparked spontaneous mutation in the human genome. Families with latent genetics dating back to the time before the last Ice Age were suddenly giving birth to monsters from every pre-apocalyptical nightmare. It seemed the second Age Of Man really had included magickal creatures like vampires, shapeshifters, elves, dwarves, fae, etc... And now all of those hidden genetic blueprints were being brought back. In the dirt and rubble of the Fourth Age, magickal creatures carried weapons made of the remains of Third Age tech.
The Black Heart Legions were the best of the best of the Science Priesthood's army. To even be considered for it you had to score insanely high on the exams and have some kind of magickal ability. Scoring off the charts on both had given me a free pass and high expectations from my SPA sponsors.
I must have spaced again because when my eyes focused, I caught a smug smile and amusement twinkling in the black depths of my mother's eyes. "It won't matter what you think very soon mother. You'll be a lab rat for eternity and I will finally be free of you."
She surprised me by laughing outright. The sound grated through me. "Oh my poor lost little lamb. You know nothing. You're so hot to be free of me that you do your Masters' bidding without question. Did it ever occur to you to ask yourself why they want to dissect the magickal tribes? Why do you think that you and the rest of the Black Hearts were chosen in the first place? You think they are looking for a cure?" She chuckled again, "don't be so naïve, I raised you better."
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