Enid was bundled in a silk dress that used at least triple the fabric she would have preferred. She hatred the bulky things but Eyre had selected a high-class establishment for their meeting, and she was bound by the prevailing fashion. She bunched her dress up as she got out of the carriage. She took the pro-offered hand of her driver. She had used him often in London when she had need to travel as if she were mortal. He asked few questions and was discrete. She stood at the top of the steps taking in her surroundings. She remembered when this was a Roman settlement, the first time here it had been razed already. What a difference eighteen hundred years had made.

She made her way up the steps. She looked up at Buckingham palace and shook her head. She hadn’t been in a British royal residence since the Edward the Third had reigned. She shook her head once again and made her way inside flashing her invitation. Bloodseeker was strapped to her side to complete her ensemble. She was at the masquerade ball as Saint Sarah of Savia. She thought it both fitting and amusing. The palace guard paid her weapon no mind, it was after all only a fake blade, and a poorly crafted one at that, or so it appeared.

She made her way through the assembled crowd of aristocrats and nobles. Trying to find her meeting spot with Eyre. Whether she would admit it or not she was eager to see how her daughter was doing it had been well over a century since they last met. The letter had seemed terse like something was amiss. She was making very good progress until she felt a tug on her arm which she forcibly, and likely with too much strength for a small woman like her. The action sent the gentleman flying. She sighed and reached her hand down.

“Sorry good sir, you startled me.”

“It is I who must apologize for startling you milady.”

The man, he was perhaps eighteen bowed.

“Yes, my apologies good sir but I must find my uh..”

“Mother.”

Enid heard Eyre’s voice behind her. She swirled in her dress looking up at her statuesque daughter. Who looked every bit her mother with the obvious age difference. Enid had been turned at eighteen and she never got rid of her baby face. Eyre was five foot eight, and absolutely glowed. Enid smiled at her daughter.

“Yes, sorry I am late mother.”

“Lady Isabelle I had no idea you had a daughter.”

“Lord Conroy, indeed, I do, and yes she would love a dance with you, she’s terminally single and I’m losing my hope that I can marry her off. But first it has been some time since we’ve seen each other and we need to catch up, don’t we Enid?”

“Enid what a curious name!”

Enid stared daggers at her daughter. And through clinched teeth.

“Yes mother, lets catch up.”

Eyre hooked her arm into Enid’s and dragged her to a quiet corner of the ball. Enid could see the mischief in her daughter’s eyes. She always knew she was in for an interesting day when she had that look even as a child.

“The look on your face was priceless mother.”

Eyre giggled and laughed.

“I have Bloodseeker with me, you know that right?”

“Oh, don’t be so dramatic. It was in good fun.”

“Says the woman who doesn’t have to have a dance with Lord so and so.”

“He’s single and eligible, quite wealthy.”

“You’re five hundred years old, you’d think you would have grown out of this phase.”

“You’ve been single for five hundred years; You could use a man.”

“Is that why you dragged me here from Paris to set me up with some Lord?”

“Can’t we discuss business later mother? This is a masquerade ball, hosted by the Queen, let’s have fun, enjoy life for once, worry about the other less happy subjects later.”

Enid rolled her eyes.

“You are obsessed with your work, you always have been, you should take time to smell the roses, enjoy a man’s touch.”

Enid put her hand to her forehead.

“My daughter is giving me sexual advice. Have I lived for so long that I am forced to witness this?”

“Cheer up Mother, lets enjoy the ball and then we can deal with the business at hand tomorrow night.”

“Fine. If that is what it will take for you to tell me the reason for the summons, so be it.”

“You act like this is torture.”

“It is a waste of immortality.”

“Mother, what kind of a gift is immortality if you cannot enjoy once in a lifetime event? We will never see this ball again, let’s take part and enjoy it!”

Enid crossed her arms.

“Where did I go wrong in raising you?”

“You died and became a Saint, so I had Katherine and Rosealyn for mothers.”

Eyre dragged her mother back into the ball proper. And forced her to have a good time.

******

Enid lounged on a couch in Eyre’s estate. Her daughter had done well for herself apparently investing in humanity’s future and her own. She was reading one of her daughter’s many books with a cigar in her mouth. She’d never tried one before found it to be a combination of disgusting and comforting. Eyre came out of her chambers stretching, her lover had left just before dawn.

“Mother that’s disgusting!”

“What are you talking about?”

“The cigar, that’s for my male visitors not ladies!”

Eyre grabbed it out of her mouth and threw it in the fireplace.

“Are you going to tell me why you dragged me here from Paris now?”

Eyre sat by the fireplace putting her feet up on a foot stool. She rubbed her temples.

“I was worried you’d overreact. Someone ancient woke up. She is from Egypt or Babylon? One of the cat vampires you told me about. She had been sealed in amber and Lord Albert had her freed.”

Enid sat bolt upright at her words; Her eyes went wide.

“You should have told me last night. Fuck.”

“Why are you so shocked? She’s just an old dusty vampire.”

“That’s not just a ‘dusty old vampire’, that’s Nour and she doesn’t take kindly to the corruption brought forth by the humans.”

“What do you mean corruption?”

“I mean humans doing anything but hunting and gathering. She’s liable to start wiping cities off the map.”

“How could she possibly do that?”

Enid put her hands in her face.

“Have you ever heard of Sodom and Gomorrah?”

“Everybody has.”

“That was her, that’s when your grandfather trapped her in Amber. Never to be released. What do you think she’s going to do to London?”

Eyre put her hand to her mouth and gasped.

“Let’s have fun, let’s enjoy the ball, we’ve lost an entire night. She’ll be gathering her power. I hope she’d not managed to fill herself up enough.”

“Doesn’t she need a storm or something?”

“No, she just needs blood, her blood. Our blood is full of power, but we’re not supposed to use it, takes you to a dark place. Blood magic is mostly bad. She doesn’t care. This is fucking bad, world ending bad.”

“No one can be that powerful.”

“My Uncle Remus once said that the only person who showed as much promise with magic as Nour was your Aunt Mariana and I watched her tear a legion sized whole between worlds using her blood.”

Enid paced tapping her chin.

“How do we find a vampire that can look like a house cat at her whim? Maybe she’s still exploring trying to make sense of things. We would sense it if she’d worked blood magic, when we don’t redirect energy there is a tear in reality. Those are very bad, just in case you were wondering. But will also give away her location. How can we stop her? She’s almost six thousand years old and she’s probably very angry. More importantly how did this Lord Albert get his hands on her?”

“She was delivered in a crate from Prague.”

“What maniac would unleash that on the world? No, wait, this makes sense.”

“What do you mean?”

“If the Black Sun is active and based on several assassination attempts, he is, then causing as much death as she can, would empower it. Oh, this is bad. I hate this feeling, like we’re playing a game and he’s ten moves ahead of me.”

“Can we stop her?”

“There is no we, Eyre you’re going to get as far away from London as you can, you’re going to go tonight, immediately.”

“I’m not ten anymore, I’m staying here.”

“Damnit child, this is dangerous, more dangerous than anything I’ve faced, except the Black Sun. Oh, your idiot vampire lord played right into its hands. Drawn by dreams of power and the respect of an ancient. Fool. The only thing she hates more than mortals are Pugmentia.”

“You sound like you met her.”

“No, father told me about her, as a cautionary tale of what happens when blood magic is wielded with no concern for the ramifications. This is biblical levels of power. The kind of thing the world hasn’t seen since Moses parted the red sea. Seven plagues of Egypt. Maybe that will work to our advantage maybe reality is set enough she won’t be able to do as much damage. It doesn’t matter now, what matters is you need to escape London immediately.”

“I told you I’m not leaving.”

“Why will children never listen!”

“Because I’m not a child anymore.”

Enid spun and glared at Eyre.

“You will always be my child Eyre, always. I will not let you risk your life with this foolishness.”

“And I’m supposed to let you risk yours?”

“It’s my job, it’s always my job. It is not your responsibility.”

“You are my responsibility mother. As I am yours. We do this together or not at all.”

“I could just stake you and ship you to New York, you know.”

“You won’t.”

“Don’t tempt me.”

Enid sighed and threw up her hands.

“Fine but don’t say I didn’t warn you; This only ends when she’s dead.”

“I’ve had to end lives before mother.”

“She is one of ours, this will be different. You will feel the death in a way you didn’t think you could. Like you’ve just cut off an arm or a leg.”

“I can handle it; How do we find her?”

“Well, her feeding wouldn’t be restrained, and she wouldn’t try doing anything until she is full. There should be a trail of corpses. We need to find a copper. Use our gifts to interrogate him about any bodies they’ve found recently, that were killed in a brutal fashion. Or if there were a rash of animal attacks. Thankfully for us most humans will believe anything other than the truth that there are true monsters that stalk the night. You get changed I’ll go gather information, you do the same, we’ll meet up tower of London at midnight and go from there. Do not approach her yourself even if you see her, she is very dangerous.”

“But she hates humans and pugmentia, why would she have anything against one of us.”

“Because we’re royal family, that has an aura, she’ll see it, remember it was your grandfather that imprisoned her for several thousand years.”

“Okay.”

“Good see you at the Tower.”

******

Enid leaned against the other wall facing the River Thames her arms crossed. She saw Eyre approaching and pushed off the wall.

“How did you do?”

“The whole constabulary is on the lookout for a pack of wolves that have started hunting in the city.”

Enid nodded.

“If she’s not ready yet she will be soon, based on what I’ve found out seems they are centered around Parliament hill. Which makes sense it’s a place of power. Burial mound there, older than I am.”

“Why does a burial mound matter?”

“Ancient humans, they could sense places of power, still can sometimes tingle on the skin. They’d use them to bury the dead or set up ritual sites. Stonehenge, Golgotha, St Peters etc.”

“I still don’t understand.”

Enid sighed and motioned Eyre to follow her. She picked up a rock that had fallen from the tower wall. And held it up talking as they walked at a quick pace.

“This is a rock, you believe to be a rock, I believe to be a rock, we know it once was part of the wall around the Tower of London, before that it was in the earth it was quarried, and it was brought here to London.”

“Well yes.”

“Who told us it had to be a rock?”

“It’s what it is, a rock.”

Enid tapped her daughter’s temple with a jabbing finger.

“Use your brain daughter, I know you have one. Who said it was a rock, why isn’t it a flower? Why are there males and females? Why are their humans, why are horses, horses? Who made them horses?”

“God.”

“Yes, sort of. Before the beginning of time as we know it there was nothing just the stuff of creation. The being we have come to call God, he formed that stuff into everything we see, touch smell, then he created humans, and the world started to shape to our beliefs. He did the heavy lifting. Before he created what, we see, there was another creation before, created by father and his ilk. And the Black Sun. They made stuff with their imaginations, and it became reality.”

“But what about dinosaurs? What about the world being older than humans?”

“It is far older than humans’ countless eons older.”

Enid threw the stone into the Thames as they walked.

“In the beginning there was God, he was lonely, so he created other gods, lesser but almost equal. Your Grandfather was one of them. These gods begot other gods. They disagreed with how the stuff creation should be molded. Sextus believed that for the betterment of everyone, and this is the same as God believes or, so I was led to understand, that reality needs to be solidified, codified. The Black Sun did not, it and his faction, I believe it might even have been female as we know such things, they thought it should be ripe for the shaping as they saw fit. Lesser beings didn’t matter.”

“What did God do?”

“Nothing, contrary to popular belief he does not meddle in mortal affairs.”

“Okay, well dinosaurs?”

“The battle was terrible, and both sides were going to be annihilated father stopped time and froze them there at the precipice of destruction. He and his brother escaped to someplace we would call Limbo and God gave up on the old mess and started again, tossing what he had done in the trash. He was still lonely, and he was really angry with Sextus and Remus. So, he let them linger in Limbo and went about creating a new world and new, workers let’s say, which is where the things you’d call Angels came in. They were limited in their ability to build things from the raw stuff of creation. And they made animals and plants large and small on many, many worlds. But still God was disappointed, he wanted to create real sentient life and none of the angels did so. So, he tried to create a man and a woman, humans’ same appearance as the gods he had created before, but he gave them no real singular ability to creation. This is where Lilith comes into existence. And promptly tells God to go fuck himself. He wasn’t pleased but he loves every one of his creations, so he started again, trying to make a more subservient woman. He succeeds, sort of. You know the rest of that story. The humans though they started to do something God hadn’t foreseen they started to lock down creation. Creating a reality as we know it. The angels they were happy it was as if their great work was done. Except for one faction led but Lucifer they didn’t like that at all, they enjoyed the power of creation. So, the same war happened again, those that supported God, and those that opposed him. It ended with Lucifer in the pits of hell. So, with that reality was sealed. Mostly. Humans became the new source of reality but there were places, sites of old angelic battles, perhaps places where Father stayed for a time, where God had cried over the loss of his children. Whatever, humans could sense them and their belief that they were places of power became more and more part of reality. Places of death and life also become sacred, or places of power. Like the necropolis in Rome. Barriers to using magic are weakened, the less effort you need to put into wielding it.”

“So, the burial mound on parliament hill would be a place Nour could wield the most power at the least cost.”

“Exactly.”

“And the reality thing is why we don’t see epic things like we see in the bible.”

“Yes”

“Thank you for explaining mother. I truly appreciate your knowledge and wisdom.”

“Now let’s focus on stopping Nour, I’m going to try and do this peacefully first, but with what father has told me about her, she probably will not surrender.”

The streets near parliament hill were strangely deserted even the bobbies were loath to be out tonight. Seems the pack of wolves hunting the city had left everyone frightened to be out of doors. The pair made their way into the parkland, and towards the burial mound. A lone finger walked in the light of the full moon her hand outreached. As the pair got closer, they could smell the potent blood being spilled onto the earth.

Fuck.

Enid approached with her arms spread out palms forward, she spoke calmly in a language Eyre could not understand. Nour responded, Eyre could tell the words weren’t kind just based on tone. Nour clapped her hands together and knocking the pair backwards several feet. She reached out her arms and a tornado of green fire and purple lighting began to crackle around her.

“Well, that went about as expected. She’s building up power and we need to stop her. Stay here.”

Enid pushed up and started at a dead run and lunged at the whirling energy barrier and was flung backwards again smoke coming off her singed clothing.

“That didn’t seem smart mother.”

“Well, it was the only chance I could stop her without doing something drastic, stand far back please.”

Enid stood up and dusted herself off. And reached out her hands beginning to chant. Energy from them vortex began being syphoned off into her hands which began to burn the more power she syphoned. It began to crackle over her and exploded from her causing a crater around her. Enid collapsed to her knees. The wounds healed rapidly, and she stood and wobbled on her feet. The roar of the energy vortex was deafening.

“Too much.”

“Maybe together mother? Fate of the world doesn’t have to be on your shoulders alone. You have me.”

Enid sighed, clinched her fists a couple of times and took her daughter’s outreached hands and pulled herself up.

“Reach out your hand and repeat my words exactly, you won’t understand them, but you must say them perfectly. And this could easily kill us.”

“Don’t try to contain it mom, let’s throw it back at the vortex maybe we can destabilize it.”

Enid nodded and began chanting looking at Eyre, who matched her mother’s words perfectly. In unison they chanted, holding hands, and one hand outreached. Streams of Power started soaking into their palms the ground began to shake. The magic began to burn their hands Enid sensed her daughter’s strength was waning she shouted against the torrent of wind.

“Now! Will it back at the vortex all at once!”

The pair focused their palms and gaze on the vortex and both beams it the vortex at the same point the resulting in explosion sent them both flying backwards. Enid took out a couple of trees. Eyre was lucky and managed to land in a pond, the impact still knocked her senseless. Enid recovered quickly and drew Bloodseeker she used her blood to speed her run. One of her arms was hopelessly smashed, the other would have to do. She reached the center of the blast and Nour was trying to stand but failing chunks of her had been blown off. Enid spoke in ancient Egyptian again.

“Stay down Nour, this doesn’t have to end in your death.”

“How did you do it? No one is that strong.”

“You’re right, no one is, but we were.”

“You are your father’s daughter.”

“Don’t make me do this Nour, humans aren’t the plague you think they are.”

“They have gotten worse, their poison chokes the air, clogs the earth. Decedent, bigoted, and heartless. The world is better off with them in pens. Your father is wrong, they exist as food, nothing more, we are their gods.”

“You don’t comprehend how powerful they can be when they rise up as one and destroying London, that will…You need to stop Nour, you’ll bring their wrath down on all of us. Sure, many of them will die but they will win.”

“You’re weak, like your creator.”

Enid sighed, the gift of foresight was both a curse and a blessing, she saw the motion of Nour’s hands and heard the chanting before it started. Nour spit at Enid. And reached up her palm energy started to crackle as she chanted Enid sliced off her hand and then her head with two quick swings.

“Sorry Nour, I didn’t bear you any ill will.”

Enid sheathed Bloodseeker and rushed to the pond where her daughter had landed willing her arm to heal it twisted itself back into form with a few cracks and a pop. She reached into the water and dragged Eyre out slapping her on the cheeks. Eyre’s eyes fluttered open and looked up at her mother’s kneeling form.

“Did we win?”

Enid smiled and nodded

“We did, thanks to your strength. I couldn’t have done it without you Eyre.”

“Told you that you’d need me.”

Enid laughed.

“I could use a bath, you already had yours.”

“You’re hilarious mother. You should start a vaudeville act.”

Enid laughed again and pulled Eyre up hugging her close and putting her forehead to her daughters.

“I love you Eyre.”

“Don’t go getting soft on me mom.”