Enid’s eyes opened she saw the light of lanterns. She was in a bit of a panic her hands pressed against the glass that encased her. She saw a woman, there was something familiar about her the grey streaks in her long black hair. She was walking away the gait. It was Rosealyn. Enid slapped the glass. But there was some sort of commotion outside of the church. Which her sleeping form seems to have been moved too. Rosealyn started to rush.

What the fuck?

Enid pressed hard against the top of the glass coffin it was heavy, seemed to be made of gold. She struggled with it. Her body was weak from the sopar. Enid felt around her. She was in her black armor and Bloodseeker was laying on her chest. She also had a white tabard embroidered with gold thread.

Shit.

She found her pack laid beside her she dug into it thinking of the blood stones and they came to her hand and she sucked two down quickly. She could feel the power flowing through her and she shoved the gold lid aside leaping out. She made a quick grab for her pack and tore off the bright white tabard. She ran for the church exist. She stopped short of throwing the doors open and pushed them ajar. She could see the flicker of torches.

“Witch! You brought this on us!”

“No, it’s the plague. A sickness, not a curse from God, not condemnation.”

“So many die, yet you and yours, and the children of the keep live your lives. Your precious lady untouched.”

“I told everyone to stay away from the sick, to wash with the soap. You won’t listen.”

“You’re a witch.”

“Let’s burn her! That will appease God.”

Don’t interfere. You’re supposed to be dead and every single villager has gawked at you in the blasted church. But if I’m too fast to be seen…

“Please don’t, I’m looking for a cure you just need to give me time I was just praying and asking Saint Sarah of Savia to intercede on my behalf. God will answer I just need time.”

“Why would he listen to you when he ignores us?”

“Please calm down and go home gathering together will just spread it faster.”

“And how would you know that if you didn’t cause it.”

“Because the lady told me pestilence spreads fastest in crowds.”

Enid heard footsteps behind her, and she rolled back from the door wrapping the shadows around herself. She watched as the priest, not one she recognized, younger the father she recalled pushed the doors open.

“Everyone please calm down. I’ve just witnessed a miracle!”

“Just after Rosealyn prayed I saw flashes of light and Saint Sarah the incorruptible, her body vanished! It is a sign, she is going to intercede for us. Just like Rosealyn has said.”

The mass of frightened townsfolk began to cross themselves.

Shit, better make it look right.

Enid flitted back into the church putting the tabard in the glass coffin and sealed it once again. She ducked back into the shadows as the Father lead the people into the church. There was a murmur and exclamations of shock as they saw the sealed tomb with just the tabard left. Enid rolled her eyes and crept away. The father began to speak.

“Let us pray, everyone, so that our pleas can be heard!”

Enid looked about the town, it had grown since she had last been awake. The church was a cathedral, the houses looked older. She saw the tanner’s house, now adorned with what looked like a poultice sign.

Rosealyn must have converted it so she could work as a healer.

She moved onwards and as she passed another home, she heard coughing. She saw no adults around so she crept in, a girl lay coughing. She seemed to be in the midst of a high fever and not in her right mind. Enid took another look around and pulled the tablet from her pack. She held it over the girl.

Nasty bugger isn’t it. She squinted as she tried to read the glowing blue text it showed her. She glared at it.

You’re not as helpful as you pretend.

“I’m going to do my best to help. Rose will save you little one.”

The girl, perhaps eight years old, looked up at Enid.

“Saint Sarah?”

“Yes, little one, Rose prayed, and God answered. We will find a cure; I just hope it’s in time.”

Enid stood up and held the tablet in front of her as she scanned the contents of the house’s larder. The screen flashed as she came over some cheese. And then some bread.

“How am I supposed to make enough of that to cure the town you silly thing.”

Enid moved close to the cheese. Looking through the tablet at it.

“Do you know how long it will take to purify enough of that?”

Enid tapped the screen a few more times. She read the lines, scrolled done. Tapped again.

“Why didn’t you just show me the spell first?”

Stupid Atlantis tablet.

“Fruit of life, or blood from three generations of a life bearers.”

What the fuck is a scion of life?

Enid searched for the term and shook the tablet in annoyance.

“Three generations of women of someone who has tasted the fruit of life. My daughter is nine you stupid thing. So, produce enough cheese or bread mold to feed the whole town, or wait until my daughter has a daughter, or track down the female linage of my family from Rome. That will all take too long.”

Enid frowned and put the tablet away, spell was easy enough, but the components were a different story. She moved towards the keep slipping into the crypt through a secret entrance and into the keep. The passages were dusty from disuse. She went to enter her personal chambers but she heard voices within.

“The plague has reached France as well Edward. I don’t think anywhere is safe. Whole villages are dying. King Philip sent me home to try and talk peace with King Edward and try and win David’s freedom, as if I could manage such a thing. I think he thought we’d be safer here.”

“You’ve mother’s gift for politics Eyre.”

“I’m no saint.”

“You’ve a point.”

Enid could hear a toddler start crying.

“Shh Margaret, shh.”

No, how long was it?

Enid looked through the peep hole and could see her children, both adults, Eyre was holding a toddler in her arms. Enid fell against the wall clinching her fists.

It couldn’t have been that long.

“If mother was here, she’d know how to cure this disease. Have you heard from father?”

“No, he hasn’t returned from grandfather’s keep. He left me in charge.”

“I wish he would have stayed, and Aunt Katherine. It is not safe to be out with pestilence riding on the roads.”

“He will be fine. As will we. Aunt Rose is sure she can find a remedy. Though she said she was going to go pray for mother to intercede, I suspect she is not as confident as she is pretending. She is the best healer on the isles so I know she will come through.”

“It was an exhausting trip; I need to get Margaret to bed. Sleep well Edward. I will, after I check on our little brothers, and sister. Mary has taken ill. Aunt Rose said she would be alright, that it wasn’t the bad kind of pestilence. So many are sick.”

Enid waited for a long time, hearing the regular deep breathing of sleep she snuck into her old room proper pulling the shadows around herself. It was the same, but different, she could see new touches added by the new ladies of the house. Edward slept beside a younger woman. She had some similarities with Rosealyn.

Did she have a daughter?

Enid wandered the halls of the sleeping keep. It had been improved, better defenses, better kitchen, better servant quarters. She entered the court chambers, which now held two thrones, one larger than the other. Tapestries seemed to depict some of Enid’s victories. All with her looking exceptionally pious. She shook her head.

Not how that happened.

Everywhere Enid looked she saw images of her and her godliness.

I’m going to throw up.

She shook her head, then sniffed the air. She followed the scent of Eyre through the corridors and slipped into her chambers. She walked up to the bed, looking down at her grown daughter. She was her spitting image if she were a foot taller, and an adult. Beside her lay the toddler with a shock of wild red hair. Enid smiled, then frowned.

I’d rather not steal their blood but it can save so many.

She held out the blood stone over her daughter. She whispered a chant and a mist of blood left Eyre’s skin and the stone began to glow. She went to the other side and did the same with her granddaughter, taking far less. She put the stone in a pouch on her belt. She sat down beside Margert. Looking her over, memorizing every little detail. She whispered.

“May the gods protect you little one. Know that I love you as much as anyone can.”

Enid’s gazes flicked to her daughter’s face when Eyre’s eyes opened.

“Mother?”

Enid looked into her eyes.

“I’m a dream.”

“You are not, that trick won’t work on me, remember.”

Enid frowned, putting a finger to her lips and motioning to the door. Eyre looked at Margaret and nodded. When the pair reached the hallway, Eyre crossed her arms.

“How is this possible mother?”

“A miracle?”

“I don’t believe in those anymore, not since I saw the spot where you fought the Strix and saw the grass had still not grown even in fifteen years.”

“I died and got better.”

Enid shrugged holding her hands out in surrender.

“You’re a vampire.”

“There are no such things.”

“I know far more then you can imagine mother. And here I thought you actually were a saint.”

“Yes, but I’m more.”

“Then what are you?”

“I ate fruit from the tree of life, I’m more alive than dead.”

“So, Eden is real too.”

“Most things are real Eyre, people just don’t believe in them anymore.”

“How old are you mother? Were you really just going to sneak in here and then leave without talking to us? Why did you abandon us? Fake your own death? The whole somehow making a copy of yourself to make it look like you were dead and gone that was a brilliant stroke, we mourned you.”

Enid sighed and reached out to touch Eyre’s shoulders. Eyre shoved her away.

“Don’t touch me, you lost that privilege when you abandoned us.”

Enid lowed her hands looking at the stone floor.

“I didn’t fake my death. The arrows they were cursed. If I were anyone else, I would have turned to dust with one of them, but I had to heal and the only way to do that was to sleep. I thought it would be for a month or two.”

“So that was really you, being stared at and prayed to in the church?”

Enid shuddered.

“Yes.”

“Why not come when we are awake, why not wake us? Were you just going to sneak in and sneak out like some thief in the night, father remarried you know? Said you told him you would die and that he should move on afterwards. And now you’ve made him a bigamist, living in sin risked his immortal soul.”

“Should he have waited twenty years for me wake? A hundred?”

“You should have told us what was happening. We had a right to know. We could have stopped them from putting you in the church to be gawked at.”

“So, you could put your lives on hold and wait for me to wake up, maybe not in the lifetime of the next ten generations. Your grandfather is older than creation. He slept for entire epochs! I couldn’t do that to any of you. Better you think I’m dead and move on your lives for all I knew I’d never see you again when I went to sleep.”

“But you said you only expected it to be two months.”

Enid sighed slumping her shoulders.

She always was the smart one.

“Look, the truth is, I had two other children, I watched them grow up, have families and die. It was the worst thing I’ve ever had to live through. I couldn’t do it again and someone I thought I’d killed centuries ago was behind the attack on me, and he would have killed you and your father if I had stayed. I planned to leave you are right. You are better off without me. I am the monster that people fear. The one the church tells you lurks in the shadows. You needed a good person, like Katherine. Not someone like me. The blood on my hands could fill oceans.”

“We needed you, you are our mother.”

“Eyre, I don’t have time to argue this point. I need to finish this spell tonight.”

“What spell? Do you plan on making me forget you were here?”

“No, I’m trying to make a healing spring to save your lives.”

“So now you’re a witch? Does the blasphemy never end with you? They make you a saint and you practice witchcraft.”

“There is nothing of Lucifer in my magic. It existed before he was created. Before any of this was created.”

“I’m not going to let you poison this town with your demonic magic!”

Eyre grabbed Enid’s arm. She was stronger than Enid had assumed she’d be, but no match for her. Enid flipped her and gently caught her as she was about to hit the ground.

“Its not demonic magic, it was a creation of your God. The power in his fruit of life flows through my veins, and yours, and your daughters. It is why you are stronger, faster, smarter, healthier than the humans around you. You are closer to Adam and Eve then any other living human besides your brother. You will live to be two or three hundred years old. You’ll live through this plague, and your children will, but your other loved ones will not. The town will die if I don’t do this and you and your brother and your children will be floating in a sea of disease-ridden corpses. I love you but if you try to stop me again, the next time I put you down you’re going to wake up with a headache.”

Eyre ceased her struggling and Enid released her. Eyre scowled up at her mother.

“You’re face will stay that way if you keep doing it.”

Enid laughed, and Eyre gave a begrudging smile.

“I promise I will say goodbye before I leave Narfordshire. You are smart enough to know it is the best choice for everyone. Including you. You have my gift, or you wouldn’t be able to resist my attempts to persuade you with magic.”

Eyre frowned and nodded. Sensing the truth in her mother’s words. Enid offered her hand to her daughter and pulled her up.

“I will speak to you tomorrow after nightfall. Meet me in the crypt alone. Please don’t tell Edward he seems happy. For the magic to be effective I need to draw the blood and use it before dawn.”

Enid turned a corner without looking back and wrapped the shadows around her. She made her way to the church. Where the priest and townsfolk were holding an adoration. She shook her head. In front of her coffin she found a dip in the floor and shrugged it would do. Her resting place had been in a nook on the side of the church she held up the blood crystal and whispered the spell and a mist of her blood flowed out. She opened her coffin and dropped whispered another spell releasing the blood. The blood pooled at the bottom of the glass coffin and she held her hand over it and began to chant the spell to draw the energy from the fruit of life contained in it. A brilliant ball of white light illuminated her shrine, she pointed at the dip in the floor and the stone broke, earth and stone beneath it pushed away and water sprang forth. She heard a commotion from the church proper. She wrapped the shadows around herself and hid behind her former resting place.

“It is a miracle!”

Sure, father whatever gets you to drink it.

Enid saw Rosealyn at the edge of the crowd and while the assembled worshippers were distracted by the blood dosed tabard and newly formed spring she dragged Rosaelyn into another corner of the church looking into her eyes.

“Rosealyn you are seeing a vision of me displaying the stigmata. That is the reason for the blood in my coffin. I have been transubstantiated into a manifestation of the holy spirit. In the place of my body a healing spring sprung forth. Drink from it and be cured of the pestilence. I thanked you for taking care of my children and told you that to me you are my daughter as well. Go tell the priest.”

Rosealyn rushed to the priest.

Father I have seen a vision of Saint Sarah. Rosealyn pointed and the priest gasped and crossed himself as the Saint shimmered and vanished before is very eyes. Several of the other townsfolk did the same looking skyward and crying out glory to god, tears falling from their eyes.

Enid shook her head again while concealed by the shadows of the church.

Bunch of fools, but they’ll live now.

Enid made her way back to the family crypt beneath the keep and sat on the tomb that used to be hers. On the stone slab that covered it was written in Latin, here lies Sarah of Savia, beloved Wife of Henry Stewart, Earl of Nardfordshire, mother of Edward and Eyre. Born 1299, died 1324. Pillar of Piety to all who knew her. Warrior of Great Renown. Died while defending her keep and lands from invaders.

That was sweet of him.

Enid was tracing the lettering when she heard footsteps coming down the secret passageway stairs. When she looked up, she saw Eyre emerge from the concealed door.

“Well, three more miracles mother, you’re really living up to the name title saint.”

“Is it working? Are the people drinking?”

“Yes, it is. They say there was a flash of light, then they saw your apparition. Bearing the marks of the stigmata.”

“I had to explain the blood in the coffin.”

“So, you’re leaving then?”

“Yes, I am, I hope I can find out where the Black Sun is hiding and kill him, then come back.”

“Really?”

“Yes, it is too dangerous for me to be around here, especially after my miraculous disappearance from the coffin, he’ll know I’ve risen and will be hunting for me again. This really would have been so much easier if I’d just been where I left myself, everyone would assume I was dead and then I could kill him from the shadows.”

“I understand why you need to go, if me leaving could save my children I would leave too.”

“I know, but it being the right thing to do doesn’t make the choice any easier, Eyre.”

“If I can’t return you need to watch yourself, and watch out for your brother, I love him, but you were always the smarter of the two of you. You will understand the need to appear to die at a ripe old age of what seems right. You’re going to be young for a very long time and others won’t understand.”

“Could you just turn us like your father did for you?”

“It is not a life I want for you Eyre, it is hard and secret and it is one bereft of love.”

“But father loved you and you loved him.”

“Yes, that is true, but mortals they, you, live such a brief time I blink, and I miss it, loving a human is like torture. You will see when you live long past your children. The first time you think you can take it, the second you dread the passing years, the third you realize you are just torturing yourself.”

“So then why stay, why marry father, have children?”

“Truth be told, I needed him to take over the keep and lands and I was to die and he could remarry and have a happy mortal life. The area was unstable, peasants were revolting, the Pugmentia were in disarray and about to cause a civil war. I was ordered to stay and stabilize things.”

“Who can order you around?”

“Your grandfather, the Emperor of my kind, the council who serve him. I am a princess, but I have duties.”

“Wait, you’re an Emperor’s daughter?”

“I’m his heir, when he decides he no longer wants the responsibility it falls to me.”

“I wasn’t supposed to be able to get pregnant Eyre. I’m a vampire, sure your grandfather can have children but all he has to do is pass his seed on, a woman has to carry it and my body wasn’t supposed to be able to do that, and then you showed up. I was surprised and distraught. I had no idea what you would turn out to be.”

“So, we were a mistake?”

“It is better to say you were an inconvenient miracle. It doesn’t mean I love either of you less. But you have to understand, there are bad vampires out there, and even worse humans. It is my responsibility to keep them from hurting the innocents around them. Open warfare between vampires and humans would be a bloodbath in every sense of the word. Having you kept me here and would have if the Black Sun had not tried to kill me. And kept me from performing my duties to my father and my people.”

“Who is this Black Sun you keep talking about?”

“It is a person and an organization. He, it? I’m not sure what it is really, is from the same place as your grandfather. A time before time, or creation or what not. Your grandfather called it Atlantis. Apparently, there was some great war the forces of light against the forces of darkness. Father was the leader of the forces of light. He turned himself into a vampire or something similar with magic so he could fight the twisted creatures the Black Sun created. Atlantis had some sort of weapon, or magic, or both that effectively ended everything, your grandfather thought he had defeated the Black Sun. Then God, your God stepped and made his version of reality or well his first, it didn’t work out and he made a second, this one. Father decided to just see what the future brought. The Black Sun somehow survived the weapon and hid in a place between the old creation and the new one.”

Eyre blinked at her mother and rubbed her temples.

“So why didn’t grandfather just finish him off when last you knew where he was?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Apparently I have two-hundred more years to live, so tell me, it’s the least you can do.”

“In the year sixty-six after the birth of Christ, he would have been you cousin by the way, the Black Sun tried to end creation by destroying the barrier between the land of the living and the land of the dead. God would have wiped everything out and would have tried to start again, what Mariana told me was that the Black Sun would have stepped in and made his own version of reality. He’s not a good person, and I assume his version of creation would be a terrible place to live. So, we stopped him, well Mariana stopped him I just fought off his minions so she could. Mariana knew how to fight him, I have no idea how. She’s been dead for thirteen hundred years, so I have no idea where to start. Anyway, Mariana tried to tell him, and our father didn’t believe her. So, she built a legion of vampires, undead and blood slaves to fight the Black Sun herself. She asked Lucius and I to help. He was my first husband. We succeeded but then when Father demanded to know why Mariana would risk exposing vampires to the world with the Black Legion and a massive magical battle in the streets of Rome she told him it was the Black Sun. He again did not believe her, but I had seen it with my own eyes and I can sense the truth and she was telling the truth. Lucius denied everything said Mariana was power mad and trying to take over the empire and rule over the humans. I told your grandfather it was a lie and again, he did not believe me. He said it wasn’t possible that the Black Sun still survived. That he had killed him.”

“Jesus was my cousin?”

“Yes, he was Mariana’s grandson.”

“How is that possible?”

“You know for yourself you and Edward are capable of things people call miracles, why not your cousins?”

“So, he wasn’t God’s son? I mean God?”

“I could not tell you the answer to that question, all I can say is that as a man he was the best humans had to offer and he used the gifts he had to help everyone around him. He could have been God in human form, or just a powerful scion of life. I cannot say, I could never read him. Either way it was Gods power, he created the tree, and the fruit that Mariana ate came from it, so that power was passed to him.”

“Mother I wish you could stay; You can teach me so much.”

“And what good would that do you? Its all ancient history. Your time is now, you should enjoy it.”

“Promise you will return.”

“When I return you will be older and wiser, and will have seen a generation come and go, and then if you still want the gift your grandfather gave me, I will consider it.”

“Please be careful mother.”

Enid nodded and the pair embraced.