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She was back before any of the others. It was late, well past midnight, but she knew she had another hour, perhaps more, before her acolytes began to file in, blood-warmed and weary. Good. Armand savored these rare hours of solitude. Sated from her hunger, freed from the cruel, ceaseless chatter of her followers, she could carve out a moment of peace.
But as she descended the earthen stairs to the catacombs, she knew at once she wasn’t alone. There was a faint glow from within. She followed it down the cavernous hall, past the tombs hollowed into the walls, until she found the source. The torch had been lit in her chamber, and inside Armand’s coffin lay Allesandra.
Armand sighed softly. Allesandra had made a habit of this in recent weeks — stealing into her chamber when the others were away to lie in her coffin. Even when Armand didn’t catch her, she knew. She left behind stray locks of gray hair or the earthy scent of her dress. Armand always found it a bittersweet comfort. It reminded her of the days when she would still have nightmares, how Allesandra came into her coffin and held her until she fell back to sleep.
But that was no longer her Allesandra. For half a century, she had been in decline, but these last ten years had been particularly difficult. She had grown cold and mocking, not just towards her followers but to Armand. Some nights, she refused to speak to her at all but carried on whispered conversations with herself or sang the old hymns in that croon of hers.
Worse, she rarely hunted anymore. The few times a month she did, she refused company so Armand could not be sure if she was killing at all or if she was taking just enough blood to bring color back to her cheeks. Her last measly hunt had been over two weeks ago, and it was wearing on her. Her white skin clung like a sheet to her bones. The leaner parts of her body — her wrist, her neck, her knee, which was bent at the edge of the coffin so her bare foot dangled just above the dirt floor — looked brittle enough to snap under pressure.
Of course, they wouldn’t. Allesandra was old enough to survive these weeks of starvation with only superficial repercussions. But that wasn’t the point. These things were forbidden.
Two innocents a night. That’s what she required from her followers. The younger ones would return gorged to the point of sickness, yet Allesandra, the eldest among them, the one who ought to lead by example, squandered her duty.
She had gone mad. They all knew that. But such disobedience demanded punishment — punishment which Armand couldn’t dole out. She lacked the strength, and she lacked the will. Terrible as Allesandra had grown in her madness, Armand still loved her. She could not cast her into the fire like the other mad ones. Not her.
“Allesandra,” Armand said, not so much a greeting but a gentle warning that she was approaching if the beating of her heart had gone unnoticed. She was going to offer to bring her a victim, though she knew damn well that Allesandra would refuse, when something gave her pause. A gust of wind, lost somehow in the catacombs, swept up the dust on the ground and carried with it the faintest scent of something from deeper within the chamber.
Blood.
“Don’t hide in the shadows, my child,” Allesandra said. Her voice sounded hoarse from lack of use. “Come.”
“Have you fed?” Armand asked, though she realized the foolishness of the question at once. She was pale as death. Of course, she hadn’t fed. And yet there again was the scent of blood. It was fresh.
Armand almost expected to see a limp, bloody rat clenched in her hand. Instead, she found Allesandra sprawled partly over the coffin’s edge, her dress gathered at her hips, her legs splayed open. Her hand lay over the dark patch of hair between her legs, long fingers moving in slow, deliberate circles just beneath it.
Armand didn’t move, didn’t speak. She didn’t know how to react — or whether to react at all. Such things were not forbidden, no… but they had no reason to be. They were dead, sexless creatures. They could not gain any pleasure from such things. It was pointless.
“Oh, but don’t you remember it? What it felt like as a mortal?” Allesandra asked, a dreamy smile on her lips. “I know you do. I knew your dreams when you were still but a fledgling in our chamber. What an insatiable creature you were.”
“Hedonism,” Armand murmured, but there was no venom in her voice. It was just another peculiarity of madness. It would pass. Armand would sit with her until the others returned and required her attention, speak to her softly, try to draw her back to herself. Sometimes, it would work, and for an hour or two, Armand would have her gentle mother back.
But when Armand went to kneel next to her, she was struck motionless.
Catching the faint glimmer of the torchlight, Armand saw what Allesandra was pressing into her folds. It was a tiny crucifix, cast in silver with the figure of Christ molded in its center in remarkable detail. Attached to its top was a string of simple wooden beads that Allesandra had wrapped around her narrow wrist.
It was a rosary, wet and reddened from her blood-tinged fluids.
It took Armand a moment to hear Allesandra’s laughter over the sound of her own heart beating in her ears. She had been waiting for Armand to find her like this.
Armand felt hot with anger and with something like grief.
“Get rid of it,” Armand hissed. She felt suffocated suddenly by the smell of it, the blood mixed with metal. “Now. Before the others return.”
“Will you punish me, my little mistress?” Her laughter was maddening. Armand wanted to grab her by the throat and choke the air out of her until she quieted, but her muscles were beyond her control. Then Allesandra pressed the crucifix deeper, and Armand saw the feet of Christ disappear inside her.
Armand snatched Allesandra’s narrow wrist in one hand to yank it, but Allesandra, for her feeble appearance, was immoveable.
“Get rid of it,” Armand said again, louder. She heard the authority in her voice giving way to anger. But what was her authority to a creature of this age anyway, one so old that she could have beheaded Armand with a single swat of her wrist, and perhaps was mad enough to do it?
“Do you fear me, my child?: Allesandra asked, as if plucking the notion from her mind. “Come. Take it from me. I will let you.”
She spread her legs apart a bit further, as if in invitation.
Now, in the full light of the torch, Armand saw the crucifix more clearly from where it lay nestled within Allesandra’s pale folds. She saw the details of the face and was struck with the terrible sense that the figure of Christ was staring back at her.
Armand couldn’t stand it.
She lunged at Allesandra.
There was a blur of movement. Armand couldn’t be sure precisely what had happened. She only knew that she had fallen forward on top of Allesandra and that Allesandra had wrapped her free hand around the back of Armand’s neck like a claw. Her face was level to Allesandra’s. Their hips lay against each other. She could feel the beat of Allesandra’s heart against her own breast.
“We do not look upon the crucifix.” Her words seemed to be breathed directly into Armand’s mouth. Santino’s old words. Their gospel. She had never heard it spoken with such derision before, not even by herself. “For God should strike us dead if we do.”
Armand felt movement at her groin. Allesandra was withdrawing her hand from herself. Armand might’ve breathed a sigh of relief if she was breathing at all. Over. She is done with this mockery. But then she felt Allesandra tugging the fabric of her own worn dress, higher and higher, till she felt the chilled air on her exposed sex. Even then, she did not realize what Allesandra was doing until she felt the metal against the inside of her thigh.
Armand flinched as if burnt by fire, and there again was her laughter. It was so cruel for her tender gaze.
“Enough.” Armand pressed her palms to her chest and tried to push away, but it was like trying to move a stone wall. No, a stone wall she might’ve been able to move. This was like trying to move the earth itself. In the pit of her belly, she felt some mortal emotion that she couldn’t identify. Exhilaration? Anticipation? Fear? When she spoke, all she heard was her own hate. “Allesandra, enough .”
But Allesandra was unyielding.
Then there it was, pressed against her. Armand felt Allesandra fingers spreading her open, teasing her dead clit the way she had teased her own just a moment ago. Then, slowly, Allesandra pressed the base of the crucifix into her.
Armand shivered beyond her control. What Allesandra had said was true. She did remember the feeling, the feeling of fingers — the rough and cruel and calloused, but also the gentle and oil-slicked — pressing into her mortal body. She remembered the feeling of fear and rapture. It was a shadow of the blood, yes, but as a mortal, it was everything. And, for a moment, it felt like everything again.
Allesandra pressed deeper. The crosspiece of the crucifix caught, and Armand gasped softly, clenching down on it involuntarily, as if even her body knew to fight this blasphemous intrusion. But Allesandra was nothing if not patient. She waited until Armand’s muscles released to turn the crucifix within her and then pressed it in fully. Slicked with her blood, it went in easily.
Then came the string of beads. Armand felt her gathering them around her knuckles then slowly pressing them in, fucking her fingers inside of Armand with them, until her cunt had swallowed up the last one.
Allesandra’s grip on her hair went limp. She was rubbing the back of Armand’s head now, as if soothing her, but still Armand couldn’t will her muscles to move. She felt the crucifix too acutely. Its sharp, silver edges prodded her soft insides, burning them — and Armand was briefly horrified to find the burn pleasurable. Then she realized that the pleasure could’ve only been from Allesandra’s blood that had covered the crucifix like a sheen and was now seeping into her.
“Do you remember it now, my child?” Allesandra asked. She brought her fingers to Armand’s lips and smeared her bloodied fluids across them. The scent of blood flooded Armand’s mouth. It spurred her enough that she found the strength to wrench herself up. Allesandra, slipping her fingers from her hair, let her go without struggle.
Armand stood, stiff and trembling slightly. She felt the crucifix shift within her. The burn should have faded fast, but instead, it seemed to reach further within her with every beat of her heart. She wanted to pull it out now, hated the pleasure. She wanted to cast the bloodied sacrilege at Allesandra, to let her suffer the consequences when the other discovered her crime. Let them all come together to drive her into the fire.
No. Just the thought was enough to make her heart ache, even now.
She’d take the thing to the Seine, throw it in the river, keep Allesandra from the others for the rest of the night, and let her mood pass. It was just another peculiarity of madness. It would pass.
“Allesandra,” Armand said softly. “If you do anything like this again, I’ll nail you in your coffin.”
There again was her laughter, ricocheting off the walls of bone and rock so the whole catacomb seemed filled with it. Armand turned. She wanted nothing more than to be away from Allesandra and all her madness and cruelty. And yet, as Armand turned down the earthen corridor to leave, she could not stop herself from running her tongue over her lips to taste the bit of Alessandra that had been left behind.