The Divergence

The sun had barely vanished beneath the horizon when Adeliza heard voices outside.

She had been waiting for darkness in the entrance hall, sitting in almost the same place she'd occupied for much of the day, and the instant the last oppressive awareness of sunlight disappeared, the world beyond the manor came alive to her senses again. 

Voices carried through the walls from somewhere beyond the estate grounds, accompanied by the distant rustling of equipment and footsteps through grass.

They had found them again.

Adeliza slowly lifted her head, long black twin tails spilling over her shoulders as her empty red eyes settled on the front doors. 

This particular estate wasn't nearly as deep within the newly appeared lands as many of the others they'd discovered, which had initially seemed convenient. 

Now she thought it had been a mistake to remain here for more than a single day. 

Humans and werewolves had been hounding them almost constantly, forcing the three vampires to move from one temporary refuge to another whenever their location was discovered.

She still wasn't sure why the government was so determined to capture them.

The country had barely functioned properly before either Divergence. 

After the world had expanded and entire regions had been thrown into chaos, Adeliza would have thought three vampires hiding in the countryside would've ranked rather low among its concerns. 

Instead, soldiers had repeatedly been sent after them, sometimes demanding surrender and sometimes firing before the vampires had even been given an opportunity to answer.

Genevieve had always insisted they minimize deaths.

Adeliza had listened, even when it became increasingly difficult to understand why they should show such restraint toward people who showed none in return. 

The humans knew vampires regenerated. 

That knowledge apparently made lethal force easier to justify, because bullets were still bullets regardless of whether their target could recover afterward.

Then there were the werewolves.

Adeliza understood them even less.

Before this particular group, she'd barely interacted with werewolves at all. 

The wolves hunting them now seemed either to work alongside the government or exist adjacent enough to its forces that the distinction had become meaningless. 

Humans would engage them first, forcing the vampires into a prolonged confrontation, and then the wolves would appear. Sometimes it happened quickly. 

Sometimes there was enough of a delay that Adeliza wondered if the humans were intentionally driving them toward waiting packs.

Whatever the arrangement was, the result remained the same.

They were hunted.

A door opened on the second floor.

Adeliza looked up as Sybil stepped into the hall, her long pink hair gathered into its high ponytail. 

Her empty red eyes were filled with the same worry she'd carried throughout the entire day, and after staring down at Adeliza for several seconds, her pointed ears twitched toward the distant voices outside.

"I don't want to keep doing this," Sybil said, gripping the railing. "Running, fighting, hiding, then running again. That's all we do!"

Adeliza closed her eyes briefly before pushing herself to her feet. "The entire day has already passed, Sybil. The sun just set, and Genevieve still hasn't returned."

The words immediately took some of the anger from Sybil's expression.

Adeliza hated herself for saying it aloud, but pretending otherwise wasn't going to change anything. 

She looked toward the doors before returning her attention to Sybil, and when she spoke again, her voice carried a melancholy she didn't bother hiding. 

"I'm tired too. I really am. But if we stop, we're putting our lives into other people's hands, and so far those people haven't given us much reason to trust them."

Sybil's lips pressed together as she descended the stairs. Adeliza reached for her when she arrived at the bottom, lightly tugging one of her sleeves before offering a faint smile.

"We only have to get past whoever is outside. If they let us leave, we'll leave. If they attack us, we'll fight back."

Sybil's ear twitched again as she listened to the voices beyond the walls. "After we find Genevieve, we're leaving this country. I mean it. I don't care where we go as long as it's somewhere we can live without someone trying to kill us every night."

Adeliza's smile softened. She placed a hand on top of Sybil's head and gently smoothed her lustrous pink hair. "I'd love that."

"I'm not a child." Sybil brushed her hand away, glaring weakly at her.

Adeliza hummed. "You make that argument surprisingly often for someone who isn't a child."

"Adeliza."

"I'm going."

She approached the front doors.

Flying directly from the estate was possible, but neither of them particularly liked the idea. 

Wings made them incredibly mobile once they were airborne, but they were also large targets while emerging and during the first moments of ascent. 

If gunfire shredded a wing before they gained altitude, regeneration would repair it quickly enough, but they'd be forced back onto the ground and the entire confrontation would drag out.

Going through their pursuers would be faster.

Adeliza opened the door.

A sharp crack echoed through the night.

She moved instantly.

A fraction of a second after Adeliza stepped sideways, the section of door she'd been standing in front of exploded into splinters and debris. 

Fragments scattered through the entrance hall, several striking her dress and falling harmlessly to the floor.

"So much for letting us leave," Adeliza muttered.

She caught Sybil by the wrist and pulled her through the doorway. "Focus on dodging. Don't stop unless you have to."

The two vampires disappeared into blurs.

Gunfire erupted from the darkness.

Humans possessed plenty of ways to attack something from a distance, but actually hitting a vampire that knew an attack was coming was another matter entirely. 

Adeliza crossed the estate grounds faster than the soldiers could properly adjust their aim, her black dress streaming behind her as she shifted direction whenever she caught the movement of a weapon.

A fallen log appeared ahead.

She vaulted over it.

One of the soldiers had positioned himself on the opposite side, rifle already turning toward her. Adeliza twisted in the air and planted her foot against the side of his head as she passed. 

She didn't stop to see what happened. The impact sent him tumbling sideways while she used the contact to redirect her momentum, landing several yards beyond him before accelerating again.

Sybil slipped through the firing line a moment later.

A soldier turned toward her.

Sybil reached him first.

Her palm struck his chest, and combined with the speed of her movement, the relatively restrained blow still launched him backward. 

His arms wheeled wildly before he slammed heavily into the ground, rifle spinning from his hands.

"Sorry!" Sybil called without slowing.

Adeliza almost laughed.

Almost.

Escaping humans wasn't difficult. Vampires were simply too fast for ordinary people to chase on foot. 

The difficult part was escaping without being tracked to wherever they intended to spend the following day. 

If their resting place was discovered while the sun was overhead, they would truly be trapped. 

They could fight inside a building, but leaving it would mean exposing themselves to something far more dangerous than any rifle.

Adeliza raced another hundred meters with Sybil beside her, passing through the last cluster of soldiers. 

One stepped into her path, and she swept him aside with her forearm without breaking stride.

Trees rushed toward them.

Adeliza jumped.

Her wings erupted from her back with a powerful unfurling motion, enormous leathery spans catching the night air. 

Her dress accommodated them as naturally as ever, and one powerful flap sent her soaring above the treeline.

Sybil followed a heartbeat later.

The heavy sound of their wings rolled across the forest as the two vampires climbed. 

A soldier below fired several shots after them, but at that distance and speed, it accomplished nothing. 

Adeliza angled herself away from the manor and accelerated until the lights below disappeared behind the trees.

Normally, she loved flying.

Tonight she barely noticed it.

The expanded world stretched beneath them, forests and unfamiliar terrain rolling toward the horizon beneath a darkening sky. 

From hundreds of feet above, the land was breathtaking, but Adeliza's attention remained fixed on scent.

Genevieve.

She needed to find Genevieve.

Sybil flew silently beside her.

For nearly twenty minutes neither spoke. They separated slightly from time to time, widening their search before returning to one another, their wings carrying them across enormous distances that would've taken humans hours to traverse.

Then Adeliza smelled it.

Maple and cream.

Her head snapped toward the right.

Sybil reacted at exactly the same moment.

Neither needed to say anything.

Both vampires banked sharply and accelerated, wings beating harder as they shot toward the source. 

The scent was fading, but it remained extraordinarily heavy, so saturated into the area ahead that Adeliza could detect it even from nearly three hundred feet in the air.

Her stomach didn't tighten. Her heart didn't pound.

Neither could.

Yet dread still spread through her.

Three minutes later, they found the source.

Adeliza folded her wings and dropped.

Three hundred feet vanished beneath her in seconds. She opened her wings only enough to correct her descent before touching down with barely a jolt, the impact utterly insignificant to her body. Sybil landed beside her.

Neither moved.

A black dress lay on the ground.

Tattered.

Burned.

Empty.

The air reeked of burnt maple and cream.

Adeliza stared at it.

There were blackened patches across the earth, along with marks from a prolonged struggle. Trees bore scars. 

The ground had been torn apart in several places, and old blood had burned wherever the sunlight had touched it.

Her expression didn't change.

She walked forward.

Sybil remained behind her.

Adeliza knelt beside the dress and carefully slipped her fingers beneath the ruined fabric. Ash scattered from it as she lifted it from the ground.

Behind her came a soft sound.

Adeliza looked back.

Sybil had fallen to her knees.

Her empty red eyes fluttered as though she couldn't make them focus on what was in front of her. Her mouth opened, but for several seconds nothing emerged.

Then an anguished wail tore from her throat.

Adeliza looked down at the dress.

There was no body.

There couldn't be.

She knew what happened to vampires in sunlight.

The amount of burnt earth, the remnants of blood, the ash, and above everything else, that scent...

This was where Genevieve had been.

This was where Genevieve had died.

Adeliza's fingers tightened around the ruined black fabric.

Her nose twitched.

There were other scents here.

Many.

Animal.

Wolf.

Her lips pulled back, exposing her fangs.

"Werewolves."

The word came out as a hiss.

Sybil's crying continued behind her, but Adeliza forced herself upright. Every part of her wanted to follow those scents immediately. They couldn't be that old. She could track them. She could find whoever had done this.

She could—

Adeliza looked at the ground.

There had been too many.

Her eyes closed.

She walked back to Sybil and grabbed her beneath the arms, pulling her to her feet. Sybil barely seemed to register the movement.

"Fly."

Sybil stared at her.

"Sybil." Adeliza's voice sharpened. "We have to fly."

Adeliza launched upward before she could change her own mind. Her wings snapped open and carried her above the trees while Genevieve's ruined dress remained clutched against her chest.

Sybil stayed below for several seconds.

Her breathing came rapidly despite the fact she didn't need the air, body falling back on an old human response that served no purpose anymore. 

She looked around with wide red eyes, searching the ruined clearing as if there had to be something they'd missed.

There wasn't.

Sybil screamed.

Then her wings opened.

She flew after Adeliza.

The distance between them gradually closed, but Sybil couldn't stop looking back.

Genevieve was gone.

The thought refused to fit inside her head.

Genevieve had been there yesterday.

She had spoken to her.

Smiled at her.

Genevieve had been the one constantly insisting that they shouldn't kill people if they didn't have to, even after soldiers started firing at them. 

She'd been the one who tried to calm Sybil whenever she panicked and who kept the three of them together when everything around them seemed determined to force them apart.

Sybil had jokingly called Genevieve her mother.

She'd called Adeliza her father.

It had been stupid.

She knew it was stupid.

None of them were actually related, and they'd known each other for less than two weeks, but Sybil had never possessed much of a frame of reference for what a family was supposed to feel like. 

Before the First Divergence, she'd barely scraped her way into adulthood. She had spent most of her life alone, surviving from one problem to the next and learning early that there was usually no one coming to help.

Then she'd awakened as a vampire.

Then she'd found them.

For the first time, she'd had people who made her feel warm inside simply by being there.

Genevieve had felt like a kind, endlessly patient older sister who occasionally slipped so naturally into caring for her that calling her "mom" had become an easy joke.

Adeliza had played along.

For a few days, Sybil had actually been happy.

Now Genevieve was ash scattered across an unknown patch of wilderness.

Sybil wanted the wolves dead.

The realization came with frightening ease.

She wanted to find them. She wanted to tear into them until none could move. She wanted them to understand what they'd taken from her.

Yet the scents in that clearing had told her the same thing they'd told Adeliza.

There were too many.

If they went back, they could die too.

Ahead, Adeliza flew without looking back, Genevieve's dress pressed tightly against her body. Her fingers dug into the damaged fabric as she stared at the horizon.

She wanted to turn around.

Every few seconds, the urge returned.

Turn.

Follow their scent.

Find them.

Kill them.

Her wings trembled.

Genevieve wouldn't have wanted that.

That almost made Adeliza angrier.

Genevieve had always been the one insisting they shouldn't kill unless there was no other option. She'd said humans were frightened. 

She'd argued that the wolves might have reasons of their own. If they could just speak instead of fighting, perhaps eventually they'd reach some kind of understanding.

Adeliza had listened.

She'd restrained herself.

She'd tried.

And now?

Genevieve was gone.

A tremor ran through Adeliza's body as she tightened her hold on the dress.

She wanted to tear something apart.

She wanted to scream until her throat failed, even though it would simply heal. She wanted to descend into the forest and rip trees from the earth until there was nothing left around her but destruction.

There was nowhere for the fury to go.

Genevieve should have been beside her.

For a year.

A decade.

A century.

A thousand years.

They had been immortal.

They should've had so much time that these first few weeks eventually became an insignificant memory buried beneath centuries of experiences together.

Instead, Genevieve had died after barely two weeks.

Two weeks.

Adeliza's empty red eyes remained fixed ahead.

She wouldn't let Sybil die.

She wouldn't die either.

If they both threw themselves against that pack and were killed, who would remember Genevieve? Who would remember that she'd existed as anything other than an unknown vampire killed in some patch of wilderness?

The wolves would remember a victory.

The government might record an incident.

Nobody would remember Genevieve.

Adeliza would.

Sybil would.

That meant they had to live.

She angled her wings and climbed sharply.

Clouds swallowed her, cold moisture rolling over her skin and dress before she emerged above them. Sybil followed moments later, pink hair streaming wildly behind her as she struggled to keep close.

Adeliza finally looked back.

Sybil's face was wet with tears.

Adeliza slowed until the other vampire caught up, then reached sideways and caught her hand.

Sybil immediately tightened her fingers around hers.

Neither spoke.

They flew together.

Not every country was like the one they were leaving. Adeliza knew that much. Some governments had maintained order despite the Divergences, and she'd heard scattered reports of places where vampires and werewolves weren't being actively hunted.

The problem was finding one.

Vampires themselves were scarce. Adeliza had only encountered four others since changing, and two of those had been Sybil and Genevieve. 

The fourth had stayed with them for only a short time before continuing onward, intent on reaching the Unified Sovereignties.

At the time, Adeliza hadn't thought much of it.

Now the memory returned.

The Unified Sovereignties.

Reports from there had been strange compared to almost everywhere else. Vampires appearing openly. Werewolves doing much the same. 

Violence still happened, but the government hadn't collapsed into indiscriminate fighting between species.

Adeliza looked toward Sybil.

Sybil met her eyes.

"Where are we going?" Sybil asked, her voice unsteady.

Adeliza hesitated.

Then she adjusted her direction.

"The Unified Sovereignties."

Sybil looked forward again and gave a weak nod.

Adeliza squeezed her hand before releasing it, allowing them both to fly properly as they reoriented toward the distant country. 

Genevieve's ruined dress remained tucked securely against Adeliza's body, stained with dirt, ash, and the last traces of her scent.

They accelerated.

Adeliza didn't know what they would find when they arrived. She didn't know whether the vampires there would accept them, whether the government would truly leave them alone, or whether they'd simply find another version of what they'd escaped.

For now, none of that mattered.

They needed somewhere safe.

They needed other vampires.

And someday, when Sybil was safe and Adeliza no longer had to fear losing the only person she had left, she would come back.

Her fingers tightened around Genevieve's dress once more.

She wouldn't forget the scents from that clearing.

She wouldn't forget the wolves.

Genevieve had wanted peace. Adeliza had respected that while she lived, and even now she couldn't bring herself to throw away everything Genevieve had believed simply because grief demanded blood.

But forgiveness was something else entirely.

Adeliza's empty red eyes narrowed as she and Sybil disappeared farther into the night.

No matter how long it took, no matter how things changed, she would find a way to punish the ones who had killed Genevieve.

She had eternity to remember them.

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