Vampiolence

by ObabScribbler

Chapters

1. Winter Song
2. Vellum
3. Pretty
4. Daddy
6. Orchid
7. Mother
8. Octavia
9. Vee
10. Vanelda
11. Voron
Epilogue: Vinyl
5. Trottingham

1. Winter Song

….

1. Winter Song

….

Vinyl knew something was wrong the moment she stepped through the front door.

“Tavi?”

The empty hallway threw her voice back at her.

“Tavi, are you home?”

She should have been back from practise hours ago. The clock on the wall read just after eleven. Vinyl would have winced, had the fur on her neck not been raised. The air felt wrong. It was too quiet. All the lights were off. Octavia hated the dark. Whenever she was home, lights lit rooms she wasn’t even in. Vinyl wasn’t sure why she hated the dark so much but she had never questioned an excuse to snuggle tighter under the covers at night.

Vinyl eased the door shut behind her. Every instinct told her to be on guard. She was usually good at ignoring raw instinct but right now her guts were clenched so tight she could barely breathe. Both instinct and intellect told her something was very, very wrong here.

She was nearly at the kitchen when she smelled it. There was no mistaking that coppery tang in the air.

Blood.

Her mind felt for the spell out of habit. The limiters were still in place, just like always. The loop was still intact. Even after all this time, buried under so many layers, she worried about doing something that could give her away. Right now, however, too much of her was panicking to even think about how she looked.

Blood in her house? In her home? How? Why?

Whose?

Tavi …

Alarm sluiced through her. She kicked the kitchen door open with such force that the handle lodged in the wall. Blood-scent hit her with the same level of force, lodging in her nose and throat like barbs. Her nostrils flared. Her eyes widened. Her mouth became a shrinking zero of surprise and horror.

Damn it, she should be moving! Why was she just staring like a deer on a train track as the Canterlot Express barrelled towards it?

The pony on his hind legs looked over his shoulder and smiled. It was, in all fairness, a nice smile in a nice face; a backdrop of white fur and eyes that crinkled at their corners. This face, those wrinkles seemed to say, smiles a lot.

It wasn’t until you got to the eyes that your opinion changed. Even then, some ponies might not realise. Ponies were not always perceptive when it came to spotting dangers amongst their own kind. They were a race focussed outward, looking for hazards from outside their perfect little society. It was probably some throwback to a bygone age when they lived in herds and had never conceived of things like cities, houses or mass murdering psychopaths. Ponies didn’t kill. Ponies didn’t hunt their own. Vinyl had always found it a useful characteristic, to various ends of her own. The stallion’s raw presence was intoxicating. He didn’t even need to say anything. He just had to be and ponies flocked to him. They never saw the pinpricks of cunning deep in those eyes. They didn’t recognise the calculation in his every nod and gesture. Mostly they never got past the smile. Not until it was too late.

Vinyl remembered that smile all too well.

“You’re home!” His voice was as handsome as the rest of him. A slight accent clung to his words, not enough to be noticeable but enough to make his speech patterns more formal and attractive to the ear. A true predator did not miss any trick. “We were beginning to think you were not coming, my dear. Were you waylaid at work?”

Vinyl tried hard to keep herself steady. “Put her down, Voron.”

“Well there’s a nice hello – and after I made such an effort to be civil, too.”

“Put her down now.”

He shifted his gaze. “Oh, but we were having such fun waiting for you to arrive. You always did have such good tastes, my dear. I see that hasn’t changed.” He grinned. “I might have had a little taste. You did keep us waiting an awfully long time.”

Octavia’s eyes were huge with panic. She stared at Vinyl and might have run to her, had he not pinned her against the wall beside the counter with all four hooves off the ground. There was blood on her shoulder. It didn’t show red, just darkened her grey fur into black tufts where Voron’s mouth had been. Several dark lines traced a path like filigree to her hooftip. She had bled enough to make spatters on the floor

“V-Vinyl,” she stuttered. “Run!”

“Vinyl?” His chuckle coated her name like an oil slick. “Seriously? All the names in the world you could have gone with and that was your choice?” He shook his head. “So did you name yourself after the record or the fabric? No, wait, I see you have been drawing on yourself. Musical notes? The record then. I am disappointed in you, Vanelda. I thought you had more imagination.”

Don’tfreakdon’tfreakdon’tfreakdon’tfreak-

Vinyl’s mind tripped over itself as she fought the simultaneous impulses to run, fight and just stand there gawping. That voice. That damned voice! She had spent too many sleepless hours trying to tear it out of her memory – and now here it was. Here he was.

Here.

In her kitchen

In her home.

He couldn’t be here.

She couldn’t let him be here.

Stupid stupid stupid! This is all my fault. I should have guessed. I should have known.

He was watching her.

Vinyl swallowed back her recriminations. “Put her down. You know you don’t want her.”

“Don’t I?” His tone remained playful. It was a thin veneer.

“No. You want me.”

Octavia looked between the two of them. She had no idea. She had no friggin’ clue. Oh, she had an inkling of how much danger she was in. Her bleeding shoulder and fear-stink told even Vinyl’s pitiful senses that much. Yet she didn’t know the rest. She didn’t know who Voron was – what Voron was - or why he was here, otherwise she wouldn’t be telling Vinyl to run.

Or maybe she would. This was Octavia after all.

The kitchen was a mess. She had fought him. Somehow that pleased Vinyl. No way would her girl go down without a fight. No friggin’ way.

Except this was Voron and that was a very, very stupid way to think. If he had allowed Octavia to fight back, it wasn’t because she posed an actual threat. Ninety-nine percent of everything he did was just for his own amusement or gain. The remaining one percent … Vinyl didn’t even want to think about that.

“Ohhhhhh.” The word became a purr in Voron’s throat. “Offering yourself up? Trying to exchange yourself? How noble.”

Octavia squeaked as he pulled her closer. Vinyl’s spine prickled with panic and anger. He nuzzled into Octavia’s throat, inhaling the terrified earth pony’s scent like a kitten finding a nice spot to nap.

“Leave her alone, Voron!” Vinyl gritted.

“I was wondering whether you’d set up house here with a pet. It was the most palatable option I could think of when I first tracked you down. Do you know what I saw when I first spotted you in this squalid little bit of suburban nightmare?” His lip curled, revealing a hint of curvature. Octavia trembled. “I saw you carrying groceries, of all things, through the front door. Brown paper bags! Utterly mundane. Utterly not you. But a pet would be acceptable. Tell me she’s a pet, Vanelda. Tell me you haven’t been as stupid as I suspect you have been.”

“Vinyl, what’s going on?” Octavia whispered.

Vinyl glared as if the strength of her eyes alone was enough to floor him. “Put. Her. Down.”

“Oh dear,” Voron sighed. “I had hoped you had not fallen into such triteness as to shack up with a mortal to act out the plot of some subpar romance novel. Please do not tell me you believe you love her, Vanelda. That would be too, too cliché, even for you.”

Vinyl didn’t answer. What was she supposed to say? Confirming or denying the truth would only end badly. The old urge to comply rose inside her. She shifted her gaze, avoiding meeting his eyes directly.

Keep it together! That isn’t you anymore. You don’t have to do as he says. You have your own mind and he can’t force you to do anything you don’t want to do. Keep! It! Together! Vinyl!

“Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.” Voron pulled away from Octavia, shaking his head. “Such a shame. And here was I, thinking we were going to be reunited amidst wonderous surprise that you are alive after all and declarations that you had finally seen the error of your ways and planned to come back to where you belong.” He smiled. There was less warmth in it than a blizzard. “I did, after all, think you were gone from this world. I mourned you, Vanelda. I am so …” He paused as if to relish the word. “Happy to find I was mistaken.”

Mourned her? Now that was funny.

“V-Vinyl?” Octavia’s cheeks were wet. She wasn’t gulping air the way she did when she was upset or got so angry she made herself cry with frustration. Terrified tears leaked silently from the corners of her eyes.

“This ‘Vinyl’ name. I do not like it. Stop calling her that.” Voron shook her for good measure. Octavia’s head joggled like a balloon on a stick. “Her name is Vanelda. Say it with me now, little pony. Van-el-da.”

“Voron, stop this!” Vinyl cursed the desperation that crept into her voice.

“Why do you not call me ‘Daddy’, Vanelda? Anyone would think you do not care for me at all.”

Vinyl couldn’t look away from Octavia. I’m sorry, she thought. I’m so, so sorry. I should have told you. I should have been more honest, but how could I? How could you have believed me?

And even if, by some miracle, Octavia had believed the wild and crazy story, what then? She would have left Vinyl – or if she hadn’t, she would never have had peace of mind again. The truth would have stolen something from both of them that they could never get back. The only debatable things were ‘what’ and ‘how much’.

Voron glanced sharply at Vinyl. The sudden movement dragged her attention away from Octavia. The whites of his eyes had darkened to pink. She recognised the sudden burst of anger thinning his pupils into slits. Her stomach lurched. She took an involuntary step forward, foreleg raised as if she wanted to pull him off his prey.

It was the worst thing she could have done.

“I thought so.” Voron’s mild tone did not match his expression at all. “You have fallen for this one. Oh, Vanelda. My poor, poor dear little Vanelda. Do you not know that this is pure foolishness? Lay with mortals, certainly, but never fool yourself into thinking you love them. And certainly do not leave your family for them.” Pink shadowed into to red as he turned his attention back to Octavia, hugging her tight against him like a lover. “Was that why you made believe you were dead? For this little scrap of flesh and bone and … feelings?” His lip curled. “Yes. Yes, I think so. The way you look at her and she looks at you. She has taken your heart.”

Octavia’s chin rested on his shoulder facing Vinyl. She opened her mouth to speak again. Faster than Vinyl could blink, Voron’s elbow jutted out and then forward. A wet crunch echoed off the kitchen walls.

“No!” The cry ripped from Vinyl as Octavia gasped and sagged.

“Whoops. I think I just broke hers.”

He came for her the night of the festival.

She was wearing the frock Mother said she had worn at her age. She hadn’t inherited Mother’s dark fur but the yellow fabric looked just as good against white. She laughed and pranced as Mother tried vainly to tie a ribbon in her tail.

“Winter Song!” Mother laughed. “Hold still or you shall look such a mess!”

“But the unicorns will be setting off the fireworks soon! Motherrrrrrr! Why must I wear a ribbon at all?”

“Because everypony looks their best for the festival and you look pretty in ribbons.”

“I look foolish!”

“Pretty,” Mother insisted, pulling her close with magic. It always went like that: magic was the only way she would keep still long enough to be decorated, no matter how pretty the dress nor silky the ribbon.

“Motherrrrr-”

The cottage door smashed open. Both of them gasped. Instinctively, she hid behind her mother’s skirts. They had each dressed up for the festival and the folds of fabric shielded her completely from whoever was trotting inside.

“What manner of ill-bred equine would-” Mother stopped abruptly. “You…” she said in quite a different tone.

“Good evening, Spring Blossom. My, my, you do look quite lovely tonight. Are you going somewhere?”

“No,” Mother breathed. “No, you can’t be here. This isn’t … how did you find me?”

“A fine greeting after I came all this way and paid you a compliment.”

“This is too soon! She’s only a filly!”

The stranger sighed. “Soon is relative. My arrival is not too early by my estimation, merely yours.”

“You promised you would not return until she came of age!”

“And you said you would raise her in luxury. This cottage seems somewhat less than the finery in which I first found you.” The stranger tutted. “You led me a dilly of a chase to find you. A new home, new name, you even bespelled yourself to look different. Did you truly think that you could hide her from me like this, Spring Blossom? For shame.”

“I … I … when … you told me … you said eighteen–”

“I have changed my mind.”

“You cannot!”

“I assure you again, my dear, that I most certainly can. You speak as if we are equals who sat down to parlay and discuss terms.” The stranger laughed. “Any terms of our ‘agreement’ were never yours to define. It suited me then for you to take care of the business of raising her while I tended other concerns away from this land. I thought she would have access to high society, would be accepted amongst courtiers and nobles if she grew up as one of them. Indeed, I also found it quite amusing that you thought you could blackmail me with my own identity when you discovered the truth of it. No doubt you thought relinquishing your family name and fortune would allow you to hide her from me, but you were wrong. I can always find those who have my blood in their veins. Now it suits me to retrieve what is mine and so I have come for her.”

“No! I will not let you! She is just a foal!”

“You will not let me?”

The stranger’s voice lilted pleasantly. It sounded nice. Even as he crossed the floorboards in a few quick strides and shoved his face into Mother’s, he sounded like he was complimenting the weather or asking politely for directions to the nearest ale house.

“You are right. She is a foal. She is my foal. Or did you forget that? Just look at her, Spring Blossom. Look at her and tell me she is not mine.”

“I … I …” Mother stuttered. “P-please. You have others … you said you had others … a-and she’s so young … please leave her with me a little longer –“

“So that you may spirit her away and try to hide her again? Or now that you know I can find her, you would try to turn her against her father as she grows? I think not.”

“At least let her have her foalhood first …”

“You speak as if I mean her ill. This was always the way things were going to be, Spring Blossom. You knew in your heart that I would come eventually. That I have elected to arrive eleven years before you expected me is neither here nor there. Or did you think that hiding yourself away in this little hovel and trading your fine clothes and jewels for a new identity would buy you more time? Did you intend to roll her in mud and wode when her eighteenth year came and tell me she was somepony else? Did you honestly think you could keep her from me by pretending you were a peasant? You? Nobility shines through even the worst grime, my dear. You are as lovely as the day I chose to woo you.”

“You chose to make me your brood mare!” Mother spat.

“And yet I see you did not cast her off a cliff. Others before you have done as much – or taken themselves off to die when they find themselves bearing my foals and the truth wriggles in their bellies. Some even died trying to rid themselves of their pregnancies, but you … I do not think that even crossed your thoughts. You were always so soft, Spring Blossom. In truth, I am surprised you gave up your wealth so easily to keep her from me. Or me from her. Clearly, you did not mind laying with me so very much if you were willing to raise my get and safeguard her like some precious thing even after you knew the truth of her heritage. What is her name?”

“Please,” Mother begged. “Leave us. Let her be normal.”

“What is normal, Spring Blossom? To be your ‘normal’ is to be weak. I will teach her to be strong. I will make her strong. Strength is her birthright.”

“It doesn’t have to be!” Mother shouted. “If you leave her here with me she could be a normal pony!”

The stranger clicked his tongue against the roof of his mouth. “I tire of this. Foal, what is your name?”

Suddenly Mother’s skirts were gone and she was exposed. She stared up at the stranger. The crash of a body against the wall made her tremble.

“Mother!”

The candle lay on its side on the floor, flame guttering. Mother had always told her never to let the flames touch the floorboards. She scrubbed those boards every week and was very proud of them. Now wax dripped onto the wood and the candle flame licked greedily at them.

“Here, little one,” murmured the stranger. “Look at me. Look into my eyes.”

“No, don’t! Winter Song, run!” Mother coughed as she stumbled to her hooves. Red stained her hairline. “Run far away and don’t look back!”

She couldn’t move. She was transfixed by the stranger’s peculiar eyes. They seemed almost luminous in the flickering candle-glow. The whites darkened to pink as he murmured pleasantly.

“There are we are. Good girl. You are a good girl, aren’t you? You’re my girl. My own sweet girl.”

Her mouth ran dry. She couldn’t even blink as she watched the pink darkened further, like somepony had held a glass of red paint in front of the candle –

The chair Mother had been sitting in slammed into the stranger. He hurtled sideways into the wall and slid down. Encased in sparkling blue magic, the chair rose again and smashed down on him, shattering all its legs.

“Run now!” Mother shrieked at her, horn aglow. “Run, Winter Song!”

And she ran. Blinded by tears, she ran out into the darkening evening. Her tiny hooves ate up ground as fast as they could. She was halfway down the hill before she realised that following the path might be a stupid idea and banked left, aiming for the forest treeline.

A scream, abruptly ended, made her stop.

It was the first of many mistakes she would make with him.

He landed in front of her as if from a great leap, eyes red from lid to lid save for an incandescent white ring around each slitted pupil. He looked like a demon straight out of Tartarus. She screamed and tried to run again. He had no horn or wings under his cloak. She could outrun him. If she could just get to the village maybe she could–

He overtook her madcap dash and plucked her up in his forehooves like she weighed nothing. She kicked and fought as he brought his face close to hers. Her struggles ceased when he bared his teeth. A pair of pointed fangs gleamed at her.

“Winter Song,” he said thoughtfully. “I do not like that name. It is a weak name for a weak pony who hides behind her mother like a coward. You shall have a new name to begin your new life.”

“Wh-what did you do to Mother?” Her voice came out a squeak.

“You will think no more about her,” he said dismissively, as if simply saying it was enough to make it so. “That life is over. Your real life begins now.”

“Real l-life?”

The stallion smiled. His white mane fanned around his face, making strange shadows dance across his fur. “Vanelda. Yes, I like that name. It means ‘strength’ where I come from. I am going to teach you how to be strong, Vanelda. It is unfortunate that your sister died so unexpectedly, but things are what they are, and because of her stupidity you will take her place at my side sooner and learn of your rightful place in this world.” He pulled her close.

“No!” She didn’t know what he was going to do but the whisper of his breath against her throat ignited fresh panic in her belly.

He held her out again and shook her. “Do not misbehave. I am your father. You will show me the respect I am due.”

She stared at him. Her father? Mother had told her Father died before she was born. It was why they lived in poverty. Father had not made a will and Mother had lost everything. That was why she spoke so much nicer than the ponies in the village but still worked for them, cleaning their homes.

That was the second mistake.

She should not have met his gaze. It snagged like a hook into her eyeballs. Something inside her pulled towards him, a writhing, twisting, ethereal snake slowly uncoiling in its burrow after a long sleep. He pulled her close again. This time she was pliant.

Her neck burned. It felt horrible, like the time she stayed out too long in summertime and had heat sickness. She gagged, especially when she heard swallowing close to her ear. Her vision was starting to grey out when he put her down. She couldn’t stand, but that didn’t seem to matter. Firm hooves turned her face upwards and pulled at her lower jaw. She coughed as coppery liquid slid down her throat.

“No.” The stallion’s voice seemed to come from far away but his hooves were a vice around her muzzle. “Swallow it all. No daughter of mine shall have half-strength because she botched her own awakening.”

She continued to cough and choke, eyes flying open. She couldn’t breathe. She could barely think. The snake inside her was made of fire and hot metal. It thrashed and sliced through her other organs. Her gorge rose. She tasted bile. Still he held her mouth shut. The backs of her eyes prickled as she stared up at him, pleading to let her spit out whatever vile thing was shredding her guts.

Gradually, the burning flowed outwards, spiralling down her legs and up into her head, lighting every nerve ending ablaze. She was made of fire and flesh and tears that ran and sizzled away in the flames of her own destruction. Her eyeballs were going to explode. His face and all the sky behind it tinted red.

“I have never had a unicorn daughter before,” he purred. “Let’s see if you’re any stronger than the others.”

And with her guts on fire and her mind in turmoil, she died for the first time.

….

2. Vellum

….

“OCTAVIA!”

Vinyl acted instinctively. Her horn flared. At once, half a dozen things on the sideboard rose up. Each became a sparkling blue missile – at least until Voron spun around and held Octavia in front of him like a shield. With precision honed by hundreds of hours’ practise manipulating multiple things at once at her turntables, Vinyl halted every single object in mid-air.

“Do you not see, Vanelda? Your attachment to this pony makes you weak. If you truly meant to strike me down, you would not hesitate.” Voron peered around Octavia, smiling so she could see his fangs. His eyes gleamed. He wasn’t full-red yet but he wasn’t trying to hide his reactions either. “Or maybe you are deceiving yourself. Maybe you long to return to me after all. Life was good when we travelled together. You miss that, don’t you, my pretty Vanelda?”

That name. That damned name. “My name is Vinyl! And I’ll never come back to you!”

“Never say never, my dear.”

Octavia groaned. Her head inched upwards.

“Tavi?” Hope flared. She was still alive?

Vinyl could now see the wound on Octavia’s chest. A ring of red marked the edge of Voron’s hoofprint, like the marks Vinyl herself had left in the terrible tasting dough she had made the one time Octavia tried to teach her how to bake. No doubt ribs were broken. But Octavia was still alive! That was the most important thing.

“Tavi, baby, hold on. I’ll get us out of this. I promise.”

“An empty promise, I can assure you,” Voron said mildly. “I could snap her neck right now and be done with this charade.”

“Don’t you dare!” Vinyl all but shrieked.

He smiled. He actually smiled at her, like this was all some big joke. To him, it probably was. “You have developed some fire in your belly, Vanelda! Maybe this little detour into the mundane was not such a waste after all. I must confess, when you deserted your fealty to me, I was very angry at you. To choose death over your own father! And then to find out you lied about it? Such behaviour is not becoming of a dutiful daughter. But if living among mortals has given you some new fire, then it might be worth something. I have more use for a fiery pony than I do for a milksop.” He tilted his head to one side as if considering his own outdated language. “Of course, fire is only useful if it can be made to burn the right things. A fire that runs unchecked is useless and leaves behind only ash.”

Vinyl’s mind ricocheted from possibility to possibility. Maybe she could levitate Octavia out of his grip or cause a distraction outside. She was used to fine-controlling multiple strands of telekinesis at once. He had never known her before she learned how to do that. Or maybe –

“Vanelda. You are not paying attention to me.” The faintest hint of irritation fringed Voron’s tone. Her breath caught in her throat and ice water washed through her veins. “Apologise for your rudeness.”

“Sor-” She tamped down on herself.

Voron frowned. It did not make his face any less handsome but it did sharpen his features. He looked colder. Older. More like the truth that lurked beneath his smiles. “Vanelda, apologise or I shall – urk!”

He didn’t get any further. Quivering in his stomach was the knife Octavia had secretly grabbed from the kitchen counter when he had her pinned beside it. Her limbs were still contorted from how far she had been forced to bend to even get it that high behind her. She gasped, clearly having jarred her chest. Nonetheless, she shoved further backwards, jiggling the hilt like it was the last thing she would ever do.

“Get … away … Vinyl!” she wheezed. “Wh-while … he’s distracted … run!”

“Winter Song, run! Run far away and don’t look back!”

Voron roared with pain and rage. In a blur of motion, he lifted Octavia and slammed her against the kitchen floor.

Her cry cut off. A ragged triangle of red appeared on the tiles, corner marked by half a broken tooth. He was lifting her again when Vinyl struck.

A toaster smacked into his head. Before he could recover, a glowing blue electric mixer swept his hooves from under him and slammed against his left hind leg. It hammered down again and again, matching the toaster’s attack on his right leg and eliciting a fresh roar.

While the machines tried to turn his bones to mush inside him, plates, pots, pans and dishes flew from the cabinets to smash into his face. Sharp fragments of crockery rose up and jammed into whatever white fur and flesh they could find. Voron was forced to shield his eyes against hundreds of razor shards, which instead buried themselves in his forelegs and hooves. Kitchen drawers hung open and cutlery shot out like silvery arrows. It was an all-out, chaotic, unplanned assault that would not stop him in the long run.

Yet Vinyl was not interested in the long run. She just cared about getting Tavi away from him now.

She rushed in and pulled Octavia away from him as he flailed. Octavia panted in agony. Vinyl was forced to pull strands of her magic away from the assault to prop up the injured earth pony. No way could she walk on her own anymore. If they were getting out of here, they were doing it under Vinyl’s power.

“C’mon,” she hissed, galloping into the hall. Octavia floated behind her like a marionette with tangled strings.

If they could make it outside, they would be in a better position. This was a nice neighbourhood and Ponyville was a nice town full of nice ponies. The houses were far apart, since the street had been designed by city planners who valued greenery over squeezing in as many properties as possible, but if she could at least get Octavia somewhere safe then maybe –

She didn’t see the dark shape waiting on the stairs. If she had, she would not have run past it for the front door. She might even have been able to defend herself, though her horn and mind strained to maintain so much divided magic already. Instead, something heavy and laughing propelled into her back at speed. Her belly skidded along the hallway carpet, leaving clumps of white hair behind from the friction. She instantly tried to turn over, but whoever had landed on her pinned her down. Grunting, she tried to peel just one more strand of magic from her dwindling reserves, blindly bullwhipping the telekinesis behind her.

“Naughty!” giggled a voice in her ear. It sounded like what you would get if you mixed a nightingale with a hacksaw. “No using magic, naughty girl!”

Vinyl would have gasped if she had been able.

The mangled toaster landed on the welcome mat a few inches from her nose. Voron’s roar was terrible to hear. Vinyl’s mind all but locked up in terror. Only thoughts of Octavia kept her from becoming a gibbering mass of old apologies and fresh panic. She retracted all telekinesis from the kitchen and concentrated on unlocking the door to quickly levitate Tavi through it. It didn’t matter if she got away herself, as long as Tavi was safe. Somepony would find her and take her to the hospital. She had faith that the ponies of Ponyville would not let an injured mare lay in the street untended.

She got as far as turning the doorknob.

“Naughty girls must be punished! Naptime now.”

A hoof rocketed into the back of Vinyl’s head.

Darkness swallowed her.

….

She crept back to the lair like a mouse stealing food from the cat’s bowl. All her stealth meant nothing, however. Voron only had to probe the link to know exactly where she was. That he didn’t immediately summon her to him was unusual but she wasn’t complaining. She slunk to her designated room, closed the door with a soft click and sat on the bed that was not her own.

Pictures of some other filly’s family stared accusingly at her from the dresser. The filly this room really belonged to had a frame all to herself. The photo had been taken at some sort of dance recital where she had posed on stage in a wonky arabesque. Her coat was a lovely shade of lavender, her mane sugary pink. Close to the camera was an older mare who shared enough resemblance to be a relative. She was clapping her forehooves in blurred applause, face lit by a grin. The moment spoke of many similar ones – a collection of happy events strung together to form a life in which Vanelda had no place.

She got up to turn all the photos facedown. She couldn’t bring herself to throw them in the trash but she couldn’t stand them staring at her either.

“I’m sorry, Clover,” she whispered.

She wished her only knowledge was through pictures. Nopony should have to look at a photo and know what a pony sounded as they laughed over ice-cream and also as they cried and begged for their life.

“I didn’t want to. I’m so sorry.”

If only Clover hadn’t lived in this house. If only she hadn’t been so socially awkward and dreadfully easy to befriend. If only she hadn’t been too lonely to ask the questions that might have kept her alive. If only Voron could go and jump off a cliff instead of moving from town to town all the time …

Vanelda’s belly felt bloated. She had expected Voron to call her to him immediately so she had eaten too much in preparation. Habitually she wiped at the corners of her mouth. She was fastidious but always felt like there were tell-tale signs of what she had been up to. She had never quite gotten past her first feeding, when she had gone full-red and ripped a rabbit to pieces. Not even its thready scream had been enough to wake her from her frenzy. She had come to later, stained so extensively that not a scrap of white fur was left. Ever since, she had kept herself so clean that in another lifetime teachers and friends she’d never had might have whispered ‘OCD’.

She waited. Good girls waited. She hadn’t always been a good girl but beat a dog enough and it soon learns obedience. Ponies are no different. Not even monsters like her.

She waited for hours. Dawn painted the horizon purple, then mauve, then a delicate orange. The sky was completely blue and the neighbourhood stirring by the time Voron returned. He didn’t usually risk compromising their secrecy by letting ponies see them entering or leaving this house. He must have had a good reason for doing so now. What it could be made Vanelda shudder.

The front door opened and shut. Voron’s hoofsteps clattered against the tiled hall floor.

“Vanelda?”

Her bloated belly roiled.

“Come here, sweetness.”

She couldn’t resist a direct order. She did, however, drag her hooves as she left Clover’s room and descended the stairs. Voron waited at the bottom. He stood upright, a bundle of rags draped across his forelegs.

“Ah, there you are. Did you feed well last night?”

“Yes, Daddy.”

“Good, good.” There was a strange gleam in his eyes. “Come here. I have somepony I want you to meet.”

“Meet?” She eyed the bundle. It was moving. Her heart sank. She prayed he hadn’t brought her something alive that he wanted her to kill in front of him. He did that sometimes. She wasn’t sure if it was a test of her loyalty, obedience or something else. It might just have been that he just enjoyed watching things die. It was bad enough when he brought her animals but that bundle … there was a hoof poking from the folds of fabric.

A tiny, soft hoof not yet old enough to bear its owner’s weight.

A white hoof.

“Shhh, shhhhhh.” Voron’s tone was gentle as a summer breeze. “It’s all right, little one.”

The hoof pressed against his nose. Its owner giggled. Voron’s smile showed every single one of his teeth.

“Vanelda, say hello to your little sister. Her name is Vellum.”

Suddenly Vanelda wanted to empty the contents of her belly all over the floor. The face looking up at her from the outstretched bundle was adorable: a chubby foal with cheeks begging to be pinched and a giggle to make any mare broody. She held out her forelegs, demanding to be picked up. The only thing spoiling her appearance was the abundance of red stains around her mouth and the tiny fangs indenting her lower lip.

“My first successful pegasus get,” Voron said proudly. “Can you believe her mother’s husband thought she was his? His screams were hilarious when he found her empty crib.”

“Baba!” The foal blew a raspberry. “Bababa!”

“We’ll be moving on tonight. I have what I came for.”

Vanelda’s head snapped up. This? This was why he had made her come here? This was why he had made her do what she had done?

“You will look after Vellum while I sleep. I will teach both of you from now on. She is by far the youngest daughter I’ve ever brought into the fold. Maybe this age will make her more biddable than her predecessors. She might even survive as long as you have. I do so want a pegasus in the family,” Voron went on blithely.

Vanelda swallowed. “I … Daddy, I don’t think …”

“You do not think at all, sweetness.” Something dark laced his words. It was not an observation, but an order. “You are not meant to think. You are just meant to do.”

“But–”

“Good girls do not question what their daddies tell them, Vanelda. And you do wish to be a good girl, do you not?”

Fear rattled down her spine. “Yes!” she squeaked. “I do.”

“Because what do bad girls get?”

“P-punished.”

“Indeed they do. And it has been so very long since I had to punish you, sweetness. It would be a shame if you forced me break that streak through your own misbehaviour.” He raised his eyes as if in thought. “Or break you. I’m not sure which.”

She swallowed and held out her forelegs to accept the bundle. However, instead of passing it over like she expected, Voron put it down on the floor and peeled back the wrappings. It was a shredded, bloodstained baby blanket.

“Sit there, Vellum. That’s a good girl.”

The foal rocked back and forth, giggling and sucking her own hoof. She was too old for diapers but seemed not to know much language.

“Babababa! Baba?”

“Daddy is hungry after giving you so much of his blood, little one. He needs to feed now.” Voron held the foal’s gaze directly. “Stay there like a good girl.”

The old panic rose inside Vanelda like a column of ice. It lodged in her throat when Voron looked at her. The whole world seemed a little bit colder when he got that look. She knew better than to back away, but it was hard to fight down the instinct when he approached.

“Lay down, Vanelda. You know better than to keep Daddy waiting.”

Dutifully, she tucked her legs under her and rolled over. The motion made her nauseous. Voron looming above made it worse. She shut her eyes. She should be used to this by now. It shouldn’t be this difficult anymore. She shouldn’t mind. Good girls wanted their fathers to be happy. She wanted to be a good girl. She so, so wanted to be a –

“Ngg!”

She winced when his fangs pierced her upper abdomen. They seemed to lengthen when they were past the first layer of skin and subcutaneous fat, stretching past what lay between him and his prize. When he began sucking, her throat tightened at the draining sensation. Her bloat subsided but the nausea remained. When Voron made an appreciative noise, it was all she could do not to cry out.

When he was finished, she stayed where she was, made dizzy by the sudden loss of nutrients. He had taken more than usual. She opened her eyes to a spinning room and had to wait until it stopped before getting shakily to her hooves.

She froze when she heard the sound of someone clapping.

Vellum giggled enthusiastically, little forehooves tapping in what seemed like approval. She was still exactly where Voron had told her to stay. She had watched the whole thing. She immediately held her forelegs out, demanding that Voron pick her up. He did so, laughing when she insisted on hugging him and nuzzling into his embrace like he really was her father.

Vanelda could only watch, suffused with dread at the sight.

“There’s my good girl …”

Author's Note

Edit: For those who see comments about '[GRUNT FROM BEING STABBED]' that was leftover from the annotations on the audio adaptation that I didn't catch when uploading this. >.< It was not meant to be there.

3. Pretty

….

“The incy wincy spider climbed up the water spout.”

Vinyl returned to consciousness slowly and painfully, like she was dragging herself up a long black pipe using only her teeth and a rope.

“Down came the rain and washed the spider out!”

Damn it, her head friggin’ hurt. She felt like she had been run over by a cart.

“Out came the sun and dried up all the rain!”

Several times.

“So incy wincy spider climbed up the spout again.”

That voice. She knew that voice.

“Then itty bitty pony developed such a cough.”

Recognition slipped between the cracks of her returning consciousness and slid into place with a cruel click.

“So itty bitty pony pulled its legs right off!”

When Vinyl opened her eyes, she knew exactly who she was going to see.

“Yay! You’re awake!”

Even though she was prepared, her stomach still clenched at the smiling face and bright, happy eyes.

“I thought maybe I hit you too hard. It’s been so long. You went down so easy, big sis. You never went down that easy before. I thought maybe I broke you. I didn’t want to break you. I’ve hit you harder than that before and you never broke.” The cupid-bow lips pouted in a way that had made many colts and stallions swoon – right before she parted them to reveal fangs that ripped out swooning throats. “You really did do it, huh?”

Vinyl swallowed. The sides of her throat stuck together. When she spoke, her voice sounded sticky and rough, like she was speaking through molasses and ground glass. “Hello Vellum.”

The beautiful mare clapped her forehooves like somepony half her apparent age. “Hi!” she squealed. “Hi, hi, hi! Do you know who I am, big sis? Do you know your name? How many hooves am I holding up?” She thrust one forehoof against Vinyl’s nose, knocking her off balance.

“Ugh …” Vinyl swayed, realising belatedly that she was sitting upright with her back against something hard. She tried to get up but her midriff pressed against something. Likewise her forelegs when she tried to raise them. “What the-?”

“Daddy said you might try to hit me when you woke up. I thought he was wrong, but you know Daddy.” Vellum shrugged. “What Daddy wants…”

He gets, Vinyl thought. She refused to complete the old mantra.

Vellum, apparently waiting for the second half, pouted when it didn’t come. It was an adorable expression. She looked like a china doll with her snow-white fur and frothy ringlets. She stamped a hoof and tossed her mane. The gesture was so achingly familiar that Vinyl’s heart flattened as much as her ears.

“Vellum, leave her alone.”

Vellum immediately backed off. Vinyl tried not to wish herself unconscious again at the slowly advancing hooves. Her brain threw images at her in a kaleidoscope of memory and raw emotion: a toothy smile, the sound of bones against kitchen tile, a spray of blood she had sworn would never be spilled, wide purple eyes...

Vinyl stamped on her terror and held it, wriggling, under her hoof long enough to ask: “Where’s Octavia?”

Voron was a mess. He had cleaned himself up but his fur was still streaked with blood and dirt from the kitchen floor. He wasn’t limping. He should have been limping. She has smashed his legs into paste. He shouldn’t even be able to walk right now. Why wasn’t he even limping?

He caught her looking and smiled.

There was one sure-fire way he could have regained his strength and healed so quickly.

Bile touched the back of Vinyl’s throat. “Where is Octavia?” She tried not to let her pitch rise but it crept up anyhow.

“You mean you can’t smell her?” Voron’s smile widened. “You disappoint me, Vanelda.”

Vinyl’s neck prickled. She finally took stock of where she was. The combined scent of resin and dust was so familiar that she hadn’t registered it at first. The fact that the lights were off hadn’t help to orientate her either. Now, however, she identified the basement Octavia had suggested they set up as a practise room when they moved into this house. She and Vinyl had spent long hours painstakingly mapping the walls with foam to sound-proof it for when either of them wanted time to play as loud as possible without disturbing the neighbours. Right now that seemed like an extremely stupid decision.

There was a pile of grey fur in the middle of the floor.

“Tavi!”

Vinyl’s muscles exploded into movement. She struggled against the belts somepony had cinched tight around her waist and all four legs to tie her to this chair. She struggled so hard, in fact, that the chair tipped sideways and both she and it crashed to the floor. They had never gotten around to carpeting this room, so the clatter was deafening. Even when the noise faded, her voice carried on streaming angry invectives.

“Vanelda,” Voron chided. “Such language.”

She flung a curse at him like a poison dart.

“You wound me.” Voron placed a forehoof to his chest, seemed only just then to notice it was dirty, and frowned. He looked about, eventually settling for a cloth Octavia used to shine the wood of her bow and cello. Voron swiped at himself in brisk, even motions, speaking as he cleaned off small patches of bloodstains. “She is not dead. She was useful in helping me repair the damage you caused, but she is less useful dead than alive. At the moment, that is.”

The pause made Vinyl go still. Octavia was alive. She fastened onto the thought. Octavia was alive. Her Tavi wasn’t dead. A mixture of relief and suspicion washed through her, simultaneously loosening and tightening her muscles.

Voron fed on her.

That fact landed in the centre of her mind like a sandbag dropped from a hot air balloon. The resultant indentation caused all other thoughts to slide towards it until she could think of nothing else. Voron. Voron. Voron. She had beaten the tar out of him and he had fed off Octavia to fix the damage she had caused. If she hadn’t done that to him, he wouldn’t have …

Oh Tavi … I’m so sorry …

“You’re right, Daddy.” Vellum crouched beside Vinyl, peering at her like a particularly curious fossil found on the beach while shell-collecting. “She really can’t break those bonds after all. I guess I owe you a fruit cup.”

Voron snorted indulgently. “Not a bet I was eager to win, my lovely.” He sighed. “All my abilities flowing through your veins, all that power, and what did you choose to do with it?” He was clearly addressing Vinyl, though Vellum chose to answer.

“She shut it all off! How did she even do that? And why would she want to?” She pushed her face into Vinyl’s, practically pressing their eyeballs together. “Why would you want to do that, big sis?”

“It is not supposed to be possible,” Voron said easily. He didn’t sound angry anymore. In fact, he sounded rather bored.

Vinyl wasn’t fooled.

She was already tensed when he lifted the music stand, tore it in two and threw the pieces of useless metal across the room.

“It is an insult.” Still, he sounded bored. “It is a crime against propriety.”

He picked up a sheaf of papers Octavia had scribed over countless hours of composition. It was the work of a second for him to reduce it to fluttering confetti.

“It is spitting in your father’s eye.”

One forehoof met the wall, leaving a round indentation just like the mark he had left in Octavia’s chest. Vinyl realised with a jolt that he had been holding back before. It would have been simple for him to punch right through the body of an ordinary mortal pony. When he turned back to her, Vinyl found herself shrinking against the overturned chair.

“I raised you not to spit, Vanelda. It is unladylike.”

She silenced a whimper by biting the inside of her cheek.

“Ohhhhhhhhhh, you’re in trouuuuuuuuuble!” Vellum giggled.

Voron crossed the room, grabbed Vinyl by the throat and hoisted her into the air, chair and all. She choked. The combined weight pulled her down into his iron grip. His hoof was like a vice. The urge to flare her horn and hit him with everything in the room was strong, but though her wooziness had worn off now, the risk was too great, especially with Vellum around too. She couldn’t save Octavia if she got herself killed.

“Tell me how you hobbled yourself, Vanelda,” Voron said softly, so damnably softly.

She gurgled.

“Tell me how and why you chose to rid yourself of my gifts to you.”

Black dots swarmed the edges of her vision.

“Daddy, she’s going a funny colour.” Vellum’s voice sounded muffled and further away than before.

His grip eased. It barely helped.

“My patience grows thin, Vanelda.”

Vinyl opened her mouth to answer, wondering what she could say other than ‘because I didn’t want to be a monster like you anymore’.

A groan made her freeze.

Voron’s pupils shrank.

Sweet Celestia. Vinyl’s brain jangled with alarm. She resisted the urge to look at the pile of grey fur. Don’t give him an inch. Stay strong. Look him right in the eye. He can’t control you that way anymore. He doesn’t have that ability. You looped it. He can’t break what you did. You can look right into his eyes and he can’t force you do a damn thing anymore. But if you look away first … if you do that …

Looking away first meant conceding he was stronger. She had spent too much of her life letting him think that; letting him believe he was the boss of her. Right up until she took a stand and said ‘no more’ with actions, not words. To Voron, spoken language was a frivolity; something he could prettify and tie up in a nice bow of civilised phrases and decorum. He understood the language of violence much more – spoke it more fluently too.

His mouth curled into a smile.

….

Daddy’s smiles were scary. He had a lot of them, but they were all scary in some way. Scariest was how other ponies didn’t seem to realise they were scary at all, and smiled back, all big teeth and big eyes and big hearts bursting for something that could rip them out as easily as … well, smiling.

“You two go out,” he had said, wearing a particularly frightening, predatory grin. “Daddy is having a guest over tonight and he needs to house to himself.”

“Come on, Vellum,” Vanelda muttered. She held the little filly by one hoof as they trotted along. Vellum’s tiny legs necessitated such a slow pace that she half considered just picking her up and letting her ride the rest of the way.

“Nelda! Neeeeeeelllllllllllldaaaaaaaaa!”

“Stop being cute,” Vanelda snapped.

Vellum giggled.

The trees were thicker further in. There was more undergrowth too. Vanelda scented the air, picking up the unmistakable aromas of rabbit, fox urine and the old musty smell of a badger that had passed this way hours ago. She guided Vellum to a little knoll and sat her down. Vellum giggled and kicked the ground until Vanelda held her legs still.

“No. You have to be quiet.”

Vellum had beautiful eyes. The irises were a shade of red so pale that they were almost pink, making her look like a little china doll in the moonlight. She could pass as normal with eyes like that. In a fit of pique over the constant whining about being snagged in trees and on bushes, Vanelda had tied Vellum’s many curls into a tight braid that banged her shoulders as she walked. It had been a long time since Vanelda was able to see herself in a mirror, but she would bet money that she didn’t look nearly as adorable. Her own mane had grown in lank and straight, and fell around her face like a shroud. Her dark red eyes peered out from beneath it as if she was some moody teenager who wrote bad poetry and listened to songs about kicking back at the world.

If Vanelda ever kicked at her world, it would kick back.

A lot.

“Stay quiet,” she said firmly. “If you stay very still, you’ll get something nice.”

Vellum gazed at her adoringly. “Ooooooooh!”

“Yes, nice.”

“Like nice!”

“I know you do. So stay still and quiet, like we practised. Remember?”

“Mousey!”

“Yes, like a mousey.”

Vellum proceeded to press one forehoof against her mouth in an incredibly loud bout of shushing. She eventually settled down into the required silence, but Vanelda would have been surprised if anything remained in the woodland after that noise.

Evidently the rabbits around here were very stupid, because one hopped out from the undergrowth less than half an hour later. She felt Vellum stiffen beside her but didn’t move to hold her sister still. Tiny muscles quivered against her flank at the sight of the little white bottom bopping across the clearing in tiny hops and skips.

Wait for it, Vanelda thought. Wait for iiiiit –

Vellum let out an anticipatory breath.

The rabbit raised it nose, ears twitching.

Uh-oh, Vanelda thought.

It bolted.

She exploded into motion. In a second she had cleared the distance and leaped over the fleeing creature. It tried to zigzag but she cut off its retreat. Dipping her head, she snarled and bared her fangs. It was all show, of course. She had graduated from rabbits decades ago. The snarl did what she wanted, however. The rabbit turned to escape from her and ran straight into Vellum’s waiting embrace.

Vellum raised her face, smiling in absolute delight at her success. The rabbit scrabbled under her forehooves. “Got it!” she declared proudly, as if she has brought down a stag unaided in the middle of a blizzard.

“Good, now finish it. Make it clean, like I taught you.” One quick snap of the neck and the rabbit’s troubles would be over. Vanelda had perfected the art of the quick, clean death and made sure Vellum knew it too. It would die of a heart attack when drunk from, and this kind. “Go on. Quickly now.”

Vellum tilted her head at her sister. She looked down at the rabbit, turning it over so as to better grip its head. She looked back up at Vanelda, presumably for approval that she was doing it correctly.

“Good. Come on now. Hurry up.”

She looked at the struggling rabbit again, swivelling her head this way and that. Before Vanelda could stop her, she bent her head and bit out its belly.

Its scream was high and ear-splitting.

“Vellum, no!”

Vellum tossed her head, scattering blood in a wide arc. She shook the slippery red chunk of fur like a dog with a favourite chew toy. Something thin whipped about her face. Vanelda realised with a lurch that is was part of the rabbit’s intestines. Vellum spat out her mouthful and bent again, scooping out tiny pulsating organs and gleefully tossing them aside as the rabbit screamed and screamed.

And then the screaming stopped.

It took Vanelda a moment to realise the rabbit was finally dead. There was still a high-pitched, ear-splitting noise in the clearing. She watched as her little sister threw back her head, laughing in pure glee.

“Nelda! Nelda, look! Nice!”

Vanelda took a step back, unable to take her eyes off Vellum’s blood-smeared smile. Her fangs were out but her eyes … they weren’t full-red. They were still sugar pink. She had done all that without bloodlust setting in.

“Nice!” Vellum giggled again. “Big sis! Look!”

Vanelda looked down at the tangled remains of blood, bone and sinew between Vellum’s hooves. She had seen worse. Voron had made her do worse. But this …

Vellum snorted with laughter. “Pretty!”

Vanelda turned and emptied the meagre contents of her stomach onto the grass.

4. Daddy

Daddy

“Ohhhhhh, she’s hopping mad now!” Vellum crowed, but stopped, a quizzical expression wrinkling her forehead. “Well, if she could hop, that is. Which she can’t. Because I tied her to a chair.” Her smile returned. “I’m good at knots.”

Octavia’s raspy breathing was like a knell in the little room. Her movements were ungainly, like a foal first finding its legs. She tried to push herself upright but her forelegs slid out from under her. The thwack of her falling back down was far, far too loud.

Vinyl saw all this from the corner of her eye, locked into a stare-down with her father.

No, with Voron. He was Voron, not her father, and definitely not Daddy.

Voron’s smile was icy. “Such defiance, my dear heart.” He reached up and gently stroked the side of her face. Vinyl tried not to grimace. His touch was soft and intimate, as if he was perfectly within his rights to brush aside her sweat-damp mane and trace the line of her cheekbone. “Such fire in you. Always such fire and strength burning beneath your surface. You thought I did not know, but I knew everything, my dearest. I could see into your heart as easily as I could see through a clear window. And yet even your will could be bent to mine. Even you did as you were bade when I did the bidding. What higher compliment could a father receive from his child?”

The air in the room seemed heavier than before. Every breath hurt Vinyl’s chest, as though her ribs were made of lead.

“A successful unicorn get who carries my blood,” Voron purred. “Do you even know how rare you are? My own father said it could not be done. He said I was a fool to come here, to Celestia’s land, and try to make my children from hers. I should have stayed and eked out some pribbling existence in the old country like him, glad for scraps thrown down by nobles who would never allow our bloodline to rise above theirs.” Voron’s fangs glinted as he snarled briefly. “My blood deserved better than that, whatever risks the shining sun princess posed.”

Vinyl wasn’t sure what to make of this. He had never spoken like this before. Was he … was Voron trying to reason with her? Trying to tempt her to come back to him with his own twisted logic instead of brute force?

“The blood of ponies is too thin, he said, and the blood of unicorns does not take well to holding our power as well as its own. Yet here you are, still alive and still sane. So many decades we had together, Vanelda, and you still live where so many others of my children have perished. You are one of my greatest creations.”

His hoof-tip grazed the corner of her eye, making her blink. His face came close enough that she could pick out every fleck of red in his irises – and he could do the same for her pink ones.

“Or you were.” Voron brought back the hoof and slammed it into her face. “Before you ruined yourself.”

Stars exploded across her vision. Her head rocketed sideways in his grip. It was a wonder her neck didn’t break. He dropped her unceremoniously and both she and the chair clattered to the floor.

“Vellum.” He said the name like she should already know the rest of the sentence without him needing to speak it.

Vinyl could make out the sound of wings through her pounding ears. She struggled to blink back to proper sight. She was aware of movement above her and turned to look up, like a snake staring into the jaws of the fox about to bite its head off.

“Tell me what you did to yourself to take away your powers or I will rip her head off,” Voron said calmly.

Octavia half-stood and half-lay back against him as he held the top of her head in one hoof and her chin in the other. Vinyl always used to joke that her fur was as dull as her music, usually to provoke a reaction so they could play around and be silly. Octavia was always so serious. Opportunities for silliness were good for her, even when she complained about them.

Right now, however, Octavia’s fur seemed greyer and duller than ever. Everything about her drooped, as though some essential essence had been sucked right out of her and not returned. There were no fresh puncture marks on the side of her neck though. She had all the hallmarks of being drained but no marks.

Except …

There.

When Voron shifted one hind hoof and Octavia was forced to do the same, Vinyl saw them: two little ragged holes high on the inside of her thigh. He had gone for the femoral artery, biting high enough that if she had been awake, Octavia would have been humiliated as well as in pain. Vinyl hoped desperately she had not been awake, even as the part of her that knew Voron told her he would have made sure that she was. He would have wanted Octavia awake. He would have wanted Vinyl to know she had been frightened and aware when he hurt and humiliated her.

Vinyl was assaulted by the sudden image of Tavi – her Tavi – struggling to get away from the two white ponies. In years gone by, Vinyl and Vellum had each pinned the forehooves of Voron’s victims while he fed off them that way. It made Vinyl sick, even then, to see the delight he took in their fear and embarrassment. She could not unsee what her imagination conjured: Ocatvia stretched out, pinned in place by a laughing Vellum, while an injured Voron pushed her hind legs apart, bending one over his shoulder and lowering his head to place his mouth –

No, no, no, no, NO!

Rage swelled inside Vinyl like a column of fire. The bonds holding her to the broken chair all but dissolved as she telekinetically ripped them away. The base of her horn throbbed like it always did when she tried to use magic with a headache. She ignored it.

“How fast could you do it, Vanelda?” Voron murmured. “Could you use your puny pony magic on me faster than I could snap her neck?” He tightened his grip.

Octavia whimpered.

It was a tiny noise, like the cough of a sparrow, but to Vinyl it was the only sound in the world at that moment.

She could do it. She could fling him right across the room. She could tear Octavia from his hold. She could pick up anything in here and hit him like she had in the kitchen.

But she had seen how fast he could kill.

Her magic died. Her shoulders slumped. “Let her go.” Her stomach clenched in revulsion as she added, “Please.”

“Please what?”

No.

“Please what, Vanelda?”

No, no, no, no …

Vellum giggled. Voron stared expectantly.

Sweet Celestia, don’t make me say it. Don’t make me …

Octavia gasped as Voron twisted her head.

“Please … Daddy.”

“Please, Daddy, no!”

Vanelda cowered further into the corner, forelegs raised to protect her head and neck.

“I didn’t mean to! I forgot to lock the do–”

“You forgot?” Daddy didn’t sound mad. He sounded … peculiar. Like he was bored or something. Like those times they went out together to sit and watch crowds at cafes and no mares caught his attention. “That. Is. No. Excuse.” He punctuated each word with a strike or kick that made her cry out.

“I’m sorry!”

“Whether or not you meant to is irrelevant. I spent weeks wooing that noble. Her get would have been in Celestia’s own court. And you had to let her see you feeding?”

A vicious kick sent her spinning into the centre of the room. Her scalp throbbed from a fresh cut.

“A little more blood on the walls is no matter now.” He stepped towards her, shaking droplets off his hooves. “But there should have been none.”

“D-Da … ddy …” she mewled. Her breathing felt slurpy. Something had cracked and was now stabbing about inside. It hurt to inhale, exhale, and even more not to breathe at all.

Daddy wasn’t even panting.

The door opened and Vellum trotted in. She froze when she saw the grisly tableaux, eyes travelling from the slumped earth pony with the oddly angled neck to her father and sister. Her wings fluttered. “What happened?”

Vanelda coughed. An impulse sluiced through her to tell Vellum to run. Not that she could speak anymore. Bloody spittle gathered at the corner of her mouth.

“Daddy?” Vellum looked expectantly at him. “What happened to Lady Philharmonica?”

Daddy shook back his mane. “She met with an unfortunate accident, dear heart. Your sister brought a cat into the house.”

“A cat?” Vellum wrinkled her nose. “Why?”

“Evidently she has developed a taste for them.”

Vellum’s tiny pink tongue stuck out. “Yuck. Cat blood tastes awful. Even worse than rabbit. Couldn’t she catch a pony?”

“She could have,” he said mildly. “She chose not to. She has been choosing not to for a while.” He eyed Vanelda as she struggled against her broken ribs. “Though she thought she could keep that from me.”

“That was stupid.” Vellum tilted her head. “Why would she think that?”

“She thinks she can keep a lot of things from me.” Daddy sighed. “My dear Vanelda. All these decades and you still have not learned? You can keep nothing from me. My blood is your blood and your blood is mine. Your life is mine. I can sense when you are lying to me. Your blood sings of your deceit.”

Tears beaded at the corners of Vanelda’s eyes.

“Daddy, I think she’s going to cry! Big sis, don’t cry! That’s so babyish!”

“This is an evening of poor decisions, it seems.”

Vanelda squeezed her eyes shut, trying to will away the tears and the pain that caused them. “I’m sorry,” she husked.

“I do not doubt that you are, but you are sorry that you were caught. You are not sorry that you have lowered yourself to eating … vermin. I know about the rats also, Vanelda. And the rabbits. And the other creatures you have been drinking from instead of ponies. I know that you have avoided drinking blood for as long as you are physically able, trying to survive on ordinary food like some ordinary pony.” Daddy’s eyes grew hard as rubies. “But you are not ordinary, Vanelda, and you never will be.”

“I’m sorry.” She didn’t know what else to say. “I’m sorry … s-sorry … so sorry, Daddy …”

“In an emergency or for hunting practise it is acceptable to consume such things, but this is not an emergency. Trottingham is not some backwater rural wasteland. This is a city. There are ponies here. Homeless ones who would not be missed. There is crime to be blamed for slashed throats and empty purses. Or there are public houses whose drunken patrons would not put up a fight and a river for you to toss their bodies into. You know how to dress a scene to disguise your presence there. You have no excuse.”

“I … I …”

She couldn’t tell him she didn’t want to be a monster anymore. She was tired of being something they were afraid of. She could knock out the homeless he spoke of so that they couldn’t see her when she bit them, but even that filled her with revulsion. While he was wooing some new mare, he never did his own hunting, so it was impossible for herself or Vellum to drink only a little. Vellum’s slow aging also meant she was still too small to contain as much blood as he needed without starving herself. No, it all fell to Vanelda, as usual. She was the big sister; the dutiful daughter. It was her responsibility to look after them both.

Daddy made a ‘tsk’ noise and turned away. “We must leave this city now. Drink from Lady Philharmonica to heal yourself. When next we reach a settlement, you will catch a pony of my choosing. There will be no mercy from you then. You will drink from that pony, then you will kill it and dispose of the body cleanly. You will show me that you remember the way we do things, Vanelda. You will not hesitate. You will not argue. You will not think of these ponies as equals. Do you understand me?”

The urge to argue washed up against the pain in her chest like an incoming ocean meeting a tide wall. “Yes, D-Da-” The word devolved into coughs so violent she gagged on her own blood.

She heard a scraping noise. The next thing she knew, her face was being pressed into still-warm flesh.

“Drink,” Daddy ordered. “Before her blood congeals. You have internal injuries. Take enough to heal them quickly.”

Vanelda shut her eyes, extended her fangs and drank deep. She couldn’t bear to look at the dead mare’s wide purple eyes.

“Good girl.”

6. Orchid

Orchid

“Quit shoving me!”

“I would have thought you’d go faster with your girlfriend’s life on the line, big sis.”

Vinyl growled to herself and wished she knew a spell to make skulls spontaneously implode.

Vellum skipped from step to step, balancing on only one hind hoof each time. She twirled, scraping the low ceiling with her outstretched wingtips. “This staircase stinks really bad. Rats have died up here. I can smell the musk and rot. How can you stand it?”

“My sense of smell isn’t what it used to be.”

The rhythmic creaking of the wooden steps ceased. “Seriously? You gave up that too?”

“I gave up a lot of things. Some of them were way before I cursed myself.”

She wasn’t looking over her shoulder but she didn’t need to. She could feel Vellum’s eye-roll like she was twisting the optic nerves herself. “Oh get over yourself, big sis. There’s no need to talk all overdramatic.”

Vinyl gritted her teeth. She said nothing of what it had been like to suddenly reduce her physical senses to those of a mortal pony after decades of vampiric power. She remained silent on the shock of losing her increased strength, how normal pony speed and endurance had taken months to get used to, and how returning to the natural eye colour she had inherited from her mother also came with feeling blind at night. For everything she had regained – sunlight, real food and privacy in her own head being the topmost on her list – she had not realised what living like a mortal actually meant until the curse was cast and she was reduced to a mewling, weak bundle barely able to stand on her own.

She pushed open the cockloft door, lifting herself bodily into the attic. Vellum flew up behind her. The sound of her feathers hitting the joists was loud as a thunderclap in the small space.

“I take it back. Up here smells way worse. Dead rats and old vomit.” She sniffed. “Lots of old vomit.”

Vinyl had cleaned it up every time but she had never perfected a way of recasting the curse without so much pain that she threw up. By the tenth year she no longer passed out, but the throwing up was a constant. At least up here, Octavia could not smell it. Vinyl couldn’t smell anything more than dust but she didn’t doubt Vellum’s words.

She crossed the floor to the eaves. The sky outside the tiny window there was starry and beautiful. Vinyl barely noticed as she unhooked the catch and pushed the window wide. In a quick, practised move, she swung herself out into the night and scrambled up onto the roof. She grabbed hoof-fuls of thatch to keep herself from falling to the street below and hauled herself to the right place.

Wingbeats behind her signalled Vellum had followed. “For a second there I thought you were doing something stupid. This house isn’t huge but if you’re really as weak as a mortal that kind of fall could kill you.”

Vinyl ignored her. Her horn ignited in a soft glow. Extending her telekinesis, she dug into the straw, feeling around for her prize. In less than a minute her magic touched oilskin and she pulled out the tightly wrapped shape. Turning, she slid to the end of the roof and skidded right off the end. One forehoof caught the window-frame and a burst of telekinesis propelled her back into the attic.

“That was kind of impressive,” Vellum observed. “For a dumb mortal. Daddy would be really unhappy if I let your brains go splat on the ground after we spent all this time looking for you.” She alighted on the floor, sending up a cloud of dust that made her cough as she spoke. “Is – kaff – is that the book?”

“Yes.” Vinyl stroked the slick oilskin, bound by string she had enchanted herself to repel rodents.

Vellum approached with supreme confidence, steps not faltering despite how Vinyl’s hackles visibly raised. She plonked her rump down and tilted her downturned face so their eyes were forced to meet. Vinyl found herself staring not at a manic grin, as she had expected, but at an expression she had rarely seen on her sister’s face before. Vellum looked … the only word that really fit was ‘troubled’.

“Big sis, I don’t understand. Why did you leave us? Weren’t we a good enough family for you? Didn’t you love us anymore?” She bit her lower lip. Vinyl was suddenly assaulted by a memory of a much younger, smaller Vellum doing that when she came home from an unsuccessful hunt and worried that Voron would be mad at her. “You just … disappeared. Poof, just gone. I thought you were dead. You went out hunting one night and never came back, and Daddy couldn’t feel you anymore. I cried over you. I missed you. And Daddy … he got so mad when he thought you were dead. He was proud of you. He wanted to find whoever killed you and rip them apart.”

For taking what’s his, not because he actually cares, Vinyl thought.

“And instead, here you are, alive and living with a mortal – living as a mortal – hobnobbing with princesses at royal weddings and … and … I don’t understand why.” A plaintive note etched Vellum’s voice into a wistful, far too young whine. She sounded like a foal asking about death for the first time and not settling for the happy lie she was given.

“I wouldn’t expect you to understand,” Vinyl replied bluntly. She had spent too long and too much energy distancing herself from all this to let watery eyes and childlike questioning shake her resolve now. She lowered her gaze, refusing to meet Vellum’s even when her sister’s gripped her jaw to force her head level.

“Why not? You’re so stupid! We’re so much better than mortal ponies, but you chose to live like one? You actually chose to be weak and slow and blind and deaf and … prey?” Incredulity. Disbelief. Evidence that Vellum would never – could never – understand Vinyl’s motivations. How do you explain to an eagle how much better it is to give up its claws and wings and mastery of the skies and instead be a rabbit, living underground, feasted on by every predator out there?

Vinyl remembered the scream of a long ago rabbit as Vellum tore its guts out and laughed. Her heart chilled at the memory.

“I chose to be free.”

“This isn’t freedom! You chose to be one of Celestia’s servants.”

And there was the other reason Voron had come for her. Even worse than someone else taking his possessions was one of his possessions choosing to belong to someone else. He would never see being an Equestrian as being free. Celestia’s ponies were her possessions and that he could not allow for his own flesh and blood.

“We should go back to the basement. Voron’s waiting.”

“Daddy,” Vellum corrected.

“Voron.”

“Daddy! Even if you turn yourself mortal, it’s still his blood in your veins, Vanelda!”

“My mother’s blood is in me too. She was mortal. And one of Celestia’s ponies.” Vinyl briefly lifted her gaze, allowing Vellum a good look at her pink irises. “She named me Winter Song.”

Vellum stared back at her with abject disgust and absolutely no comprehension. “You’re so … ungrateful!”

“Ungrateful?” Vinyl echoed, despite herself. “Ungrateful for what? Him taking me from my home? My life? Taking away my future? Killing my mother?”

“For him giving you a better life, a better future! For making you better – making you more than you were! For him giving you powers and abilities beyond anything you could have achieved without him! For making you a part of something so much bigger than being an ordinary pony in an ordinary life destined for an ordinary death!”

Vinyl sensed they weren’t just talking about her anymore. These didn’t sound like Vellum’s words. She was parroting Voron. Her voice had climbed in pitch as she spoke, tiny bits of spittle flying from her mouth as her words became more impassioned and she was shouting directly in Vinyl’s face.

“He made you! He made both of us!”

“No.” Vinyl worked hard to keep her own voice steady. She couldn’t afford to let Vellum fly off the handle now. A fight up here would be a Very Bad Thing for Octavia – as well as Vinyl herself. Vellum was stronger, faster and if she lost control, as she was prone to do, she would not hold back until one of them was on the floor.

“No?” Vellum repeated.

“I made me. I’m not Winter Song or Vanelda anymore. I’m Vinyl Scratch. I chose this name like I chose this life. Nopony gave it to me or forced it on me. These were my choices and I’m going to live with them no matter what kind of loyalty you think I owe … him. Sharing blood with somepony doesn’t mean you owe them your life.”

Vellum pressed their snouts together, growling deep in her throat. Vague luminescence bathed her eyes. For a moment Vinyl thought she had pushed things too far, but Vellum pulled away as if an invisible piece of elastic had snapped her backwards.

“Come on,” she snarled. “Daddy’s waiting for us.”

Vanelda had adopted a routine over the past seven weeks. She attended every one of Professor Orchid’s twice-a-week magic classes and afterwards would copy out her notes from spidery to neat hoofwriting while whatever music group followed the class held their rehearsal. Nopony ever told her to leave. In fact, many times other ponies also stayed to do their own work. It seemed that as long as they didn’t talk, anypony and everypony was welcome to watch. Sometimes it was a jazz group, sometimes the orchestra that had played on that first night, and sometimes a choir whose choirmaster was so exacting that he stopped them to yell every thirty seconds.

When not attending classes or revising what she had learned, Vanelda let herself into closed bookshops to help herself to their wares, or hunted to sate Voron’s hunger and keep herself alive. The university campus proved a windfall for a lazy hunter – or one who would rather spend her time reading and practising spells. The many, many parties meant even more drunken students whom nobody questioned when they turned up unconscious during their trip home. She could skim a few pints from several ponies per night – enough to sustain herself and Voron without actually killing anyone. The alcohol in their blood had no adverse effect of vampire biology and Voron was so preoccupied with his courting that if he noticed the extra tang in his meals he never mentioned it.

Magic was as fascinating as it was intoxicating. There was so much more to being a unicorn than she had ever considered for herself. Intellectually she had known that other, mortal unicorns could do more with their magic than she did, but she had never considered their skills in the context of herself. Now a whole world of possibilities were beginning to open up to her. Her actual knowledge remained small, and she had applied little of what she had learned for fear that she would mess it up and Voron would find out where she had been sneaking off to. Yet her desire to learn more increased with each day and she stashed each new book in a hidden stockpile away from their den.

It was in the seventh week that things changed.

The orchestra was once again in session, today playing something bombastic that made Vanelda’s hooves tap as she scribed. Sometimes she consulted her latest book to make sure she had spelled a word correctly. The conductor tapped his stand when the orchestra came to an end, reeling off improvements that needed to be made and praise for individual musicians.

In the lull, a shadow fell across Vanelda. She looked up to find Professor Orchid standing over her. She startled in her seat, inwardly cursing herself for not realising she was being watched.

“You sure do get absorbed in your work,” Professor Orchid observed mildly. “I been watchin’ you for a good twenty minutes an’ you never so much as looked up once.”

“I … um …” Vanelda wasn’t sure what to say. Since the first class she had not spoken directly to the teacher. Words failed her now, morphing into a series of guttural noises that might have been syllables before the life was squeezed from them by her nervously convulsing throat.

Professor Orchid quirked an eyebrow. “Cat got your tongue?”

Vanelda swallowed. “Sorry.”

“Why be sorry for not noticin’ me eyeballin’ you? There are much better things to be sorry for.” The quirked eyebrow descended to become part of a frown. “Sneakin’ into a magic class when you ain’t a student, for example.”

A chill rushed down Vanelda’s spine.

“Fourteen evenin’ classes,” Professor Orchid went on. “An’ an hour or two after that each time where you stay in this here theatre an’ do even more studyin’. Yet I ain’t never seen you in one of my actual classes. I thought maybe you were just an appallingly bad student, but that just didn’t match up with the way you listen so intently to every word I say in this here room, nor with how you bury yourself in your work after we’re done. I wish all my students had that level of dedication – I wouldn’t need to hold no evenin’ classes at all if they did. So I checked the registers. They come with photos, y’know. Didn’t take long for me to look through ‘em all. A white mare with a white mane, white tail an’ bright red eyes ain’t exactly easy to overlook. I’m willin’ to bed you’re the only albino pony in the whole university. Except you ain’t a part of the university, are you?”

Vanelda felt like she had swallowed sand. She tried to say something but her mouth just opened and closed around the thought: ‘No, not yet! Don’t send me away!’ It was too soon. She wanted to learn more. She had thought she would at least have until Voron made them move on from Trottingham.

Professor Orchid stared at her, expression inscrutable.

“I …” Vanelda struggled against the emotion clogging her windpipe. “I’m …”

“You’re what? A freeloader? A sneak-thief? A charlatan?”

Her face fell into her own upturned hooves. It was over. Her magical education had barely begun and it was already over. If she was lucky, she would be allowed to leave and not have to run for it. Professor Orchid could not catch her at full gallop – no mortal pony could – but if she chose to use her telekinesis there was no guarantee Vanelda could escape that, vampiric strength or not.

“All of them,” she whispered. “I’m sorry. I … didn’t mean to. The first time was an accident. I got lost on campus and wandered in by mistake.” Sort of, but she didn’t mention that part. “And then I … I wanted to know more. I … didn’t finish school. I didn’t know any of this.” She waved a foreleg at her notepad, bulging with paperclipped worksheets and extra paper from past classes. “I just … wanted to know more. But you’re right – it wasn’t my place. I’m not a student here.”

“Most students here have paid a lot of bits for their education. It don’t seem very fair that they’re doin’ that while you waltz in an’ freeload yours.”

“I know.” Vanelda rose to her hooves. “I’ll go. I won’t come back, either.”

“No, no, don’t be so hasty.”

She froze. “What?”

Professor Orchid shrugged. “Tuesdays and Thursdays are catch-up lectures like this. My schedule on weekdays is pretty darn full with other commitments, but how do Saturdays sit with you?”

“I … what?”

That eyebrow quirked up again, accompanied this time by a small smile. “Weekdays are workdays. Ain’t nopony can tell me what I can on weekends though. If’n I choose to spend a couple givin’ some pro bono tuition to a promisin’ young magic user, then who is anypony else to tell me I can’t?”

Vanelda could barely believe what she was hearing. “You … want to teach me?”

“Tutor you. One on one. At least for one lesson. I’m curious to see what kind of aptitude you actually have. The material we’ve been coverin’ in these classes ain’t beginner magic, an’ if you didn’t finish high school, I’d be curious to see how you coped with it.”

High school? She had never been to any school. Her mother had taught her basic reading, writing and arithmetic but there had been no school in their village. “I had to read up on the basics after the first class,” she admitted. “Then go back and reread my notes. They made a lot more sense the second time around.”

“We’ll see.” Professor Orchid clicked her tongue against the roof of her mouth. “Saturday. My office. It’s on the third floor of the Starswirl Building in the middle of campus. 3pm.”

Vanelda’s heart sank. “I … I can’t come in the daytime.”

“Oh?”

“My family …”

“Oh. They don’t know you’re here?”

She shook her head. “My father would never approve. It’s … he’s kind of … the reason I ended up in that first class. I didn’t mean to. I was just … I saw him out with a lady friend when I wasn’t supposed to and … when I … I mean I … it was an accident. I didn’t even know what this building was, let alone that you were running a class. But when I heard you teaching … I wanted to stay … I… I’m sorry.”

She had no idea why she had poured out so much. She clamped her jaws shut, in case her wagging tongue decided to just blurt out she was a vampire and was content to wait quietly in her seat for the baying crowd laden with torches and pitchforks.

“Hm.” There was that frown again. Professor Orchid would be so much prettier if she smiled more and frowned less. She had an actual groove between her eyes from the ghosts of frowns past. “Interestin’. All right then. When can you come?”

“Sunset.”

She let out a bark of laughter. “Quite dramatic. Sunset it is then.” She stuck out her hoof. It took a moment for Vanelda to realise she was expected to shake it. Tentatively she did so, but froze up again when Professor Orchid stopped and stared at her again. “It would seem appropriate for you to give me your name. I can’t go on calling you ‘that albino mare who likes magic an’ music’.”

“Oh! Um … Vee.”

“Vee?”

“Yes. That’s what I go by. It’s … short for my real name.”

“And your real name is?”

“I’d prefer just Vee.”

“An’ I’d prefer to win the lottery an’ lounge about eatin’ grapes while a handsome stallion rubs my tired hooves, but that ain’t gonna happen neither.”

“I…” Valenda bit her lip and averted her face. She let go of the hoof still trying to shake hers. “Then … I’ll have to thank you for your offer, but I … I can’t take it. I’m sorry.” She got up. “I’ll leave now.”

She got past Professor Orchid and was halfway up the stairs to the exit when the older mare’s voice brought her to a halt.

“Well … all right then, Vee.”

“What?”

“Sunset on Saturday.” Professor Orchid trotted away as if completely disinterested in the fact that she had just changed another pony’s life. “Don’t be late. Oh, and be ready to try casting Pearl Shine’s energy manipulation spell from today’s class. There will be a practical test. These classes are all well an’ good but they don’t lend themselves to practical work an’ that’s just as darn well important as knowin’ which researcher researched what an’ when an’ what they called it once they were done researchin’.”

Vanelda stood in stunned silence while the orchestra began to play once more.

7. Mother

7. Mother

The basement door opened on a scene that made Vinyl’s breath catch. Octavia sat on the work table. Many times before Vinyl had entered this room to find her sat at that table, head bent over some new composition, or fixing her bow. Now she sat on it in a way she never would of her own volition. Voron sat next to her, hind legs idly swinging like a colt on a playground. He had one foreleg thrown around Octavia’s shoulders in a grotesque parody of an embrace, though it was equally clear he was helping her stay upright.

“Ah, girls!” he beamed. “So glad you’re back. Octavia and I were just getting to know each other a little better. It was so boring while you were gone. We had a nice little chat, didn’t we Octy?”

You don’t get to shorten her name, Vinyl thought reflexively. You don’t have that right.

Octavia didn’t reply. Her eyes were fixed on Vinyl in an expression that made her stomach lurch. Vinyl strove to find the right word to describe it but the weight of her marefriend’s stare made all rational thought vanish. What in Celestia’s name had Voron done to her while they’d been gone? What else could he put her through?

No, that was a bad avenue of thought to wander down; the kind filled with broken glass, muggers and blood on the floor.

“You didn’t tell me before that her last name is Philharmonica, Vanelda,” Voron crooned. “I saw it on one of those sheets of paper over there.” He gestured to the torn shreds of Octavia’s compositions. “It certainly does add a new dimension to this whole situation. You were always one for being governed by your emotions, my dear. Indeed, I think I understand now why you left us. Guilt does make so much more sense than ‘falling in love with a mortal’.” He rolled his eyes.

Oh no …

Suddenly the word for Octavia’s expression landed in her mind like a corpse falling off a cliff: betrayal.

“We knew a Lady Philharmonica once, did we not, my dear?” Voron went on with false obliviousness. Every word cut into Vinyl like a knife. “Melodia, her name was. Such a pretty name. I told her as much. It made her giggle. She had a beautiful voice. Well, opera singers do, don’t they? It was a shame, what happened to her. I quite liked her. And as it turns out, if our courtship had turned out differently, Octavia would have been my step-daughter.” He smiled, showing off his fangs. “In a technical sense, at least.”

Colours splashed across Vinyl’s mind; lurid snatches of the past. Red spray on the wall. A broken body in a green dress. The pale orange of a cat’s fur. A brown wooden door opening because she had forgotten to lock it. The wide, wide purple of a mare’s eyes and the silvery sound of her abruptly ended scream –

“Shut up!” Vinyl growled.

“You never told her what happened to her mother, did you, Vanelda?”

Octavia’s unwavering stare was not the glassy one Lady Philharmonica had worn as Vinyl drank from her still-warm body, but it was just as baleful.

“Shut up!”

Voron laughed. “You never told her how you were responsible for her dea-”

“I wasn’t! You killed her, not me!”

“But if you had been a good girl and done as Daddy told you, then she wouldn’t have had to die. It is your fault, my dear – and you know it, or you would have told her and you would not be shouting at me so uncouthly now. And besides.” Fangs. Always fangs and a sharp, handsome smile. “You drank her blood, not I. In all our courtship, I never supped from her. I kissed her, danced with her, laughed with her and made love to her, but only you drank her blood.”

Vinyl’s hooves trembled so much that she fumbled her grip on the oilskin-wrapped spellbook. It hit the floor with a dull thud. She left it there, pinned by Octavia’s stare like a butterfly on a corkboard.

I’m sorry, she wanted to say. I wanted to tell you the truth but I couldn’t.

She remembered holding Octavia in bed after she had woken from nightmares of her mother. The murder had been a big news story when it happened. Authorities had found Melodia Philharmonica in a lake, bloated and half-eaten by fish by the time she was finally located. Suicide, the inquest decided. Grief over her husband, coupled with a dwindling bank account as her concerts dried up, had motivated a final, fatal plunge off the Canterlot waterfall.

For months afterwards, Octavia had been hounded by press who wanted an inside scoop on how her fortunes had turned from riches to rags. A father who had jumped from his study window when his investments went bad, a mother who had leaped off a cliff – what would she jump from, the media wondered? The voracious way they talked of her private grief made Vinyl sick to her stomach.

Octavia had been pulled out of her expensive boarding school and sent to stay with poorer, untitled relatives who raised her on a diet of music and love until she was old enough to play her way into a scholarship at Trottingham University. Her life had not been ecstatically happy, but she had at least overcome her heartache and given herself purpose and fulfilment again.

Yet now that old grief was written large across her face. Vinyl ached to hold her and caress away her pain like she had after those nightmares. Her forelegs twitched but stayed where they were.

“Please …” Octavia rasped. “He’s a monster. I know, but … tell me he’s lying, Vinyl. Tell me it’s not true … that you didn’t know anything about … a-about …”

Vinyl wanted to vomit. Acid clung to the back of her throat. “I … I …”

“Now, now, now, my dear, we are not to lie. Good girls do not lie,” Voron chirped. “Dear Melodia was quite honest with me. She liked the idea of me being your new father figure. She thought I was … what word did she use? Ah, yes: solid. She thought I would be a good influence and bring some stability back into your life.” He smiled. “She really did only want what was best for you. Too bad your lover took it all away. Don’t you hate her for that? I love her because she’s my dear, dear daughter, but I could understand you hating her for murdering your mother.”

“Please, Vinyl. I understand you keeping … what you are … what you were from me. It’s all too incredible to be believed. I would have laughed … thought it was all some big joke of yours … until tonight. But this … Vinyl, please tell me he’s lying. Tell me you didn’t have anything to do with my mother’s death.”

Vinyl swallowed. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“No …” Tears slid down Octavia’s cheeks. “This is all … you … you lied to me … about everything … it was all … please … no…” She closed her eyes, who whole chest convulsing around a sob. “Mummy …”

“Tavi, please – I didn’t kill her, I swear! He’s lying about that!”

“And what about the rest? Did you drink her … sweet Celestia, her blood?”

“Tavi, you saw what I was like when we first met. Don’t you remember? I couldn’t disobey him when he gave me a direct order. I couldn’t.”

“I remember. I thought … I thought we had … a connection. That you could confide in me about what you’d been through. I thought you’d told me all your secrets about … about the things your family did to you. I thought I knew you better than anypony else in the world.” Octavia shut her eyes. “But it turns out I don’t know you at all.”

Voron threw back his head and laughed. “Trouble in paradise, my dear? Mayhap you are reconsidering your choice to give up your powers for a life with this mare? A mare who now hates you for what you did?” He was clearly savouring every word. “You have made many mistakes, Vanelda.” His voice dropped to a tender croon. “My Vanelda. My own dear, sweet daughter. But I am not a monster. I am willing to forgive you and bring you back into the fold. All you have to do is undo your curse and you can come home. You cannot stay here anymore.” He stroked Octavia’s mane, pulling a lock of silky black hair up to sniff. “Not with her. Not after this.”

“Leave her alone.” Vinyl unwrapped the oilskin with swift movements. “She’s been through enough.” I’ve put her through enough.

“She has been through rather a lot, yes,” Voron said pensively. “Poor thing. So sad. So broken. She did not believe me when I informed her about her mother. She had faith in you. Ah, if only you were a good girl, my dear, none of this would have happened.”

Your fault. All your fault, said an old voice in the back of Vinyl’s mind. It was her own voice, muffled by her own hooves as her memory self curled into a bloody ball on the floor next to Lady Philharmonica’s body and tried not to bring back up all the blood she had drunk. Everything is your fault, you stupid, stupid –

The book seemed to vibrate when her bare hoof touched it. Dark magics crackled along its edges, or so it seemed to Vinyl. It was as ugly now as it had been the day she took it from an antiquities dealer in the Canterlot back-streets a decade ago.

“First you let Tavi go. Then I try to undo the curse.”

“Try to?” Voron didn’t sound happy at her wording.

“I told you, this isn’t a simple spell; it’s latticed curses.” At his expression she explained, “I’ve cast the same curse lots of times with slightly different wording. Each casting laid over the top of the last to form … well, it’s like a magical net to hold back my … powers. Curses alone are rare and difficult to cast. Some ponies don’t think they even exist because they’re so complicated that unicorns all but completely stopped using them centuries ago. It may take a long time for me to be able to undo it all and Tavi needs medical attention now.”

Voron tilted his head to one side as if considering her request. “No, I don’t think so. First you undo the curse, then I release her. You need to hold up your end of this before I fulfil my part, Vanelda.”

Vinyl ground her molars together. She knew the likelihood of him releasing Octavia after he got what he wanted. “Let her go first.”

“No, and if you speak to me like that again, I will pluck out Miss Philharmonica’s eyes. Now do as you are told, Vanelda.” He ran a fang down the side of Octavia’s face, drawing a thin line of red a hairsbreadth from the corner of her eye. “Or I shall not use my hooves.”

“If you take her eyes, can I have them?” Vellum asked. “I like the way they pop when you tuck them into your cheek and then bite down.”

Vinyl swallowed and opened the book.

Professor Orchid’s office was a hodgepodge place filled with knickknacks, wall-hangings and bookshelves. These were not enough to contain all the books she kept, however, and it was normal to have to step over great piles of them to get from the door to her desk. A wind-chime hanging from the curtain rail had been taped to the glass, which made a bulge against the perpetually drawn curtains.

“Gift from one of my philosophy students who was very into ‘natural energies’,” Professor Orchid explained the first time she saw Vanelda looking at it. “Lovely girl. Had a thing about trees and singin’ like a clogged drainpipe. It’d be rude to throw it out, but darn it if’n that chimin’ don’t drive me batty.”

“You teach philosophy too?” Vanelda had asked.

“I ain’t no one trick pony. I reckon nopony is, no matter their cutie marks. Half of ‘em just need to realise that. Now, less gabbin’, more studyin’.”

The tutorials were more than Vanelda could have hoped for. It turned out that she had a natural propensity for magic. Professor Orchid refused to call it a talent. Whatever it was called, she helped Vanelda take the fragments of magic she knew and build on those, strengthening her baseline knowledge until she was just as adept as any unicorn who had attended magic school their whole lives.

“I ain’t never seen anypony as quick a study as you, Vee,” Professor Orchid said at the end of their fourth lesson.

“Um, thank you?” Vanelda almost reverently placed her notes into her saddlebag.

“You’re welcome. You’ve absorbed so much in the past month, I swear it’s like you’re a pony-shaped sponge – if’n a sponge could recall Ponythagorus’s Theorum of Energy Dependence to twelve decimal places off the top of her head. You must do nuthin’ but read an’ practise your magic at home.”

Vanelda hesitated before replying, “Uh, something like that. I try to study as much as I can.”

Mostly in trees on warm nights, or in whatever store was open all night if it was raining. Her hunts had become perfunctory and quick, the better to allow her nights filled with learning. Voron was romancing one mare after another, which gave Vellum and Vanelda ample time to themselves and his distraction meant he was no delving too deeply into what his daughters were up to as long as they were not breaking his rules and brought him the blood he needed.

The nights spent hunting with her sister were hardest. The extra freedom had allowed Vellum’s cruel streak free reign, and since she had decided to hunt alone more often than not, Vanelda had not been there to stop it growing. She was shocked the first time Vellum took her to Shady Meadows, a retirement home so large it was almost another village within Trottingham. She had expected Vellum to slip in, bite one or two old ponies while they were sleeping, and slip out again. Instead, Vellum pinned down an ancient mare in her bed, revelling in her frightened, weak struggles before drinking from her.

“Because of where I bite them, the staff just think it’s another case of anaemia,” she explained as they dashed away through the night. “Sometimes I listen at the window when the old farts are trying to explain about the ghost filly in their room. It’s hilarious! Nopony believes them, of course. It’s best when they start crying. I have to stop myself from laughing in case I fall off the roof!”

“Why would you do that?”

“Duh – because I can’t keep my grip when I’m holding my stomach.”

“No, why torture them? Why not just get them while they’re asleep?”

“Because that’s boring! Don’t worry – I don’t do this every night. I make sure there’s no pattern so nopony can figure out the ‘ghost filly’ is real. I won’t jeopardise our stay in Trottingham. I like it here. Don’t you?”

“Yes,” Vanelda agreed. “I do.”

“I’ve never seen Daddy so satisfied. The mares here are practically falling over each other to court him! I hope we get to stay here for months and months and months!”

“Me too.”

Months would mean more tutorials and more evening classes. It was fragile, but Vanelda felt actual happiness budding inside her at the prospect.

Her thoughts were cut short by Professor Orchid’s question.

“Vee, you’ve been comin’ here for a month now. You know that I’m a pony who notices things. An’ … I’ve been noticin’ certain things about you. Certain … tells.” She spoke slowly, almost hesitantly, and in a tone Vanelda had never heard from her before.

“Tells?” Cold washed through Vanelda. Had she let something slip? Come to a tutorial with blood on her lips perhaps? She always cleaned herself so thoroughly after feeding! Something else then? Had Professor Orchid guessed her true nature? Inadvertently, she took a step backwards, towards the door.

“Don’t you go boltin’ on me now.” Professor Orchid leaned forward in her swivel chair. It creaked with age. “Vee, level with me please. I’ve been very accomodatin’, I think you’ll agree.”

Swallowing down the lump in her throat, Vanelda nodded.

“You mentioned your father a few times. Is he ..?” She seemed to choose her words carefully. “Does he … hurt you?”

“Wh-what?”

“You’re scared of him.” She didn’t say it like a question, but as a fact. “An’ it’s clear he has a rather large say in how you live your life. That much was obvious from the first time I talked to you. But since then, it has become clearer an’ clearer to this ol’ mare that there’s more to it than just an overprotective daddy.”

Vanelda’s breathing quickened.

“I’m concerned about you, Vee. Is your mother –?”

“My mother’s dead,” she blurted.

Professor Orchid blinked. “Oh.” She blinked several more times before asking, “Do you … have any other family?”

“No. Yes. No. I …” She should run. She should run and never come back. But Professor Orchid was watching her with such concern, and she had already been so kind … “I have a younger sister.”

“Does your father hurt her?”

Slowly, Vanelda shook her head. “He … doesn’t need to. She does as she’s told.” She closed her eyes. “She’s a lot like him. M-more than me.”

“I see.”

She couldn’t see. She couldn’t possibly see.

“I-I need to go now –”

“Vee, wait.” Professor Orchid did not reach out to stop her. She didn’t even raise her voice. Yet something in her tone made Vanelda stay. “Please. I’m not here to judge you. I want to help, if I can.”

“Nopony can help me.” She shook her head. “No, that’s not right. You’ve helped me. All this. Learning magic … it … it helps. My father … he isn’t a unicorn. Neither is my sister. I never learned. I … never went to school. We move a lot. I can’t tell him I’m learning from you or … or he might make us move again. Sooner than we would otherwise. A-and I love magic. I love …” She couldn’t finish the sentence. “You’re going to tell me to run away from him, but I can’t.”

“Not in those words. I’d advise you that there are a number of agencies who could help you leave him, if you’d be willing to –”

“No!”

“Okay, okay, no need to shout,” Professor Orchid said gently.

“You don’t understand! You think it’s simple, but it’s not! I can’t just leave him! He’d find me in a heartbeat!”

“That’s not –”

“It is true! You don’t know what you’re talking about!” Vanelda snapped. She realised she was panting like she had been galloping for hours. “He’ll never let me leave. I’m his daughter. I belong to him.”

“No, you don’t.” Professor Orchid was firm. “You belong to yourself.”

“That’s easy for you to say! You don’t know what my life is like!”

“I might do.” The older mare leaned back, pressing her forehooves together beneath her chin. “I grew up on a farm in what could affectionately be called the middle o’ nowhere. Things were tough, but my Pappy was a stallion who didn’t give up once he’d set his mind to sumthin’. That’s how he caught my Momma’s eye, even though she was a unicorn an’ he was an earth pony with little enough coin to his name. She was loyal to her husband – went against her family’s wishes in marryin’ him an’ stayed out there even when things turned sour for the farm. Each bad harvest, though, she asked to move someplace else, where they didn’t have to whittle a livin’ from earth that hadn’t seen a pegasus fly over in decades. When me an’ my brothers arrived, she asked even more, but he was a stubborn ol’ coot. Time came when things were so tough that we could either move out or settle to dyin’ where we lived. He got the love o’ the bottle. Mooma got the love o’ his backhoof. When she died, he needed new targets. I was the eldest. Wouldn’t let him touch my brothers. Eventually my Momma’s brother came to visit. Soon as he realised what we goin’ on, he offered to get me outta there. I’ll admit, I was scared Pappy’d come after me too. Seemed like the only way to get out from under his hoof was to die like Momma did. Uncle Wheatfield had to convince me that wouldn’t happen. I took my brothers an’ I ain’t never looked back. Got me a job, went to night school, tried to make sumthin’ of my life. Took a long, long time, but I did it.” She fixed soft eyes on Vanelda. “It can be done, Vee. I requires help, but it can be done. You don’t gotta live in fear your whole entire life.”

Vanelda’s eyes felt hot and prickly. She was rooted to the spot.

“So I guess maybe I do know what you’re feelin’ right now, at least a lil’ bit,” Professor Orchid went on.

Vanelda opened her mouth to reply, but nothing came out.

“Vee?”

She shook her head. “I … I have to go.”

Professor Orchid looked sad. “All right. Will you be back?”

“I … I …”

“Like I said, I just want to help, but if’n you’re not ready yet, I can wait. I’ll see you at class this week?”

Vanelda nodded, turned tail and ran.

Saturday nights on campus were quieter than one might expect. Most students were still recovering from the hangovers from Friday night and so spent Saturdays nursing headaches and drinking nothing but water. As such, the campus was not densely populated even in early evening. Vanelda galloped away from the Starswirl building, instinctively pressing herself into shadows, even though there was almost nopony around to see her.

Her mind whirled. She couldn’t even think of leaving Daddy. It was ludicrous. Professor orchid meant well, but all she had done was jumble Vanelda all up inside. She wanted to scream with frustration that her own situation couldn’t be resolved by some kindly uncle who would whisk her away and make all her dreams come true.

She heard the voices before she smelled the curious mix of cheap cologne and antiseptic. The combination wrenched her from her own thoughts. The voices were both aggressive but had not devolved into full-blown yelling, which lent their conversation a hissing, snakelike quality.

“Leave me alone, you creep!”

Vanelda slowed. She knew that voice.

“I will if you say it.”

“Not on your life! You can threaten all you want, Bass Note: I’m not quitting the orchestra just so you can have your place back.”

Bass Note? Vanelda recognised the name.

“It’s my rightful place and you know it! Now my cast is off there’s no reason I can’t have it back!”

“Other than I earned it fair and square and you were banned for the rest of the year. You’ll have to wait until next year and audition for it like everypony else.”

“Next year? Next year!?” Bass Note’s voice cracked and his pitch sky-rocketed. “Of all the bloody cheek from a guttersnipe like you!”

“Bog off, you revolting windbag.”

“You shouldn’t even be at this university! You’re only here because the admissions committee felt sorry for you and Dean Blackthorn knew your mum!”

“Don’t you dare talk about my mother! I earned my scholarship fair and square. I didn’t have to ask anyone to pay for my education like some ponies who have more money than sense – or talent.”

Vanelda drew closer to the alleyway between two buildings that housed the argument. Her hoof-falls were light as snow. She remembered the grey pony with the dark braids who played cello in the orchestra. She always played with her eyes closed – something the conductor often reprimanded her for, though he could not fault her performances. Right now she sounded furious as a wet cat.

“You know your problem, Octavia?” Bass Note harangued. “You don’t know your place. Maybe once upon a time you could have put on airs and graces and pretended like you were better than me, but not anymore. You’re the last Philharmonica and you’re a nothing and a no-one, and that’s all you’ll ever be until the day you jump off a high place like your parents.”

The female voice sucked in air in a ragged gasp. Vanelda did too. The name chimed in her memory like a knell.

“You’re a real bastard, you know that?”

“Aw, did I make you cry? Life’s tough. Your surname doesn’t mean squat anymore and neither do you, you talentless hack.”

“You … absolute … arghh!” The mare vented her frustration in a yell.

“Hey, shhhh!” Bass Note cautioned. “Don’t be so loud.”

“Loud? Loud!? You say things like that to me and then you tell me to be quiet?”

“Shut up!”

“No! I’m tired of putting up with your guff, Bass Note. This ends now.”

“Huh?”

“I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry that you broke your leg, I’m sorry that you couldn’t keep playing cello and they replaced you with me, I’m sorry I’m such a challenge to your identity by just bloody well existing and I’m sorry that you’re such a vicious, small-minded, misogynistic bully that you can’t just accept change gracefully and count your blessings like the rest of us do instead of constantly, constantly lashing out at everyone else and using their own personal nightmares and pain to punish them for your own diminished feelings of self-worth!”

The shocked silence that followed was punctuated by panting from her outburst.

“Are we done now? Because I have to get to rehearsal.”

Footsteps. A noise that could have been a growl from somepony unused to growling. Hoof on flesh. A whooshing exhalation.

“You bitch! Nopony speaks to me like that! Do you hear me? Certainly nopony like you!”

Vanelda was moving before she had time to stop herself. She flowed from the shadows. To the untrained observer, it might have seemed like a headlong rush, but another hunter would have admired the economy of movement. Bass Note didn’t know what had hit him. He met the ground with a meaty thump.

Only then did she come back to herself and turn around. She knew who she would see.

The pretty grey cellist sat slumped against the wall, unconscious. Blood ran down the side of her head. A patch of red on the wall signalled what had happened. The smell of blood swirled in the air, powerful and heady. Vanelda felt the pressure of her fangs lengthening and the familiar pulsing sensation behind her eyes. It would be so easy to bent and drink from both of them. They were both out cold. They would never know.

She shook the thought away and tamped down on her bloodlust. Ignoring Bass Note, she scooped the grey mare onto her back and took off at a gallop back the way she had come.

Professor Orchid opened her office door. She had saddlebags on her back and a key in a bubble of telekinesis beside her, clearly just about to leave. “Vee? What’s – sweet Celestia.”

“Please, help,” Vanelda begged. “I didn’t know where else to go.”

“What happened?”

“Some stallion called Bass Note kicked her into a brick wall.”

Professor Orchid’s expression grew hard. “You shouldn’t have moved her, but it’s a little late for that. Lay her on the couch. I’ll fetch a doctor.” She ran down the hallway before Vanelda could protest.

The couch wasn’t really built for comfort. There were no cushions, so instead Vanelda bundled up a shawl she found on the back of a chair and put it under the grey mare’s head.

No. She wasn’t called ‘the grey mare’. Bass Note had called her Octavia. Now that she knew, Vanelda could see the resemblance to Lady Philharmonica clearly in the fine bone structure and grey coat. The stain of blood on her fur looked obscenely familiar too. Vanelda reached out to wipe it away but only succeeded in smearing it further.

“Damn it.”

She paused. Was that her voice? It sounded so odd; like she was about to cry. Come to think of it, her eyes felt tingly. She had assumed it was from her bloodlust but given that Professor Orchid hadn’t run screaming, she knew she hadn’t gone full red.

A bulb of water plopped off her nose.

“Damn it! Damn it! Damn it!” Vanelda wiped hastily at her face, making a pinkish mess as the blood on her hoof mixed with the tears on her cheeks. “Damn … it …”

“Mrrf. Whu…?”

She stiffened.

“Huh?” Large purple eyes fluttered open to stare groggily around. “Where ‘m I..?”

Vanelda sniffed and cleared her throat to clear the thickness. “Don’t get up. You had … an accident,” she settled on. “You hit your head. You’re in Professor Orchid’s office.”

“I’m where?” Despite the instruction, Octavia tried to lever herself upright. She fell back with a groan. “My head … it feels like it’s going to explode. How did I get here?”

“I brought you. I was passing by when you got hurt.”

Octavia’s eyes snapped open from their pained scrunch. “Bass Note!”

“He’s not important right now.”

“He kicked me! He kicked me when I wasn’t looking! I – ow!” She clutched her side. “I think … maybe he broke a rib … sweet Celestia, this hurts.”

“Lay still.”

“You … I know you. You’re that mare who always stays behind after Professor Orchid’s evening class.”

“Yes.”

“I don’t’ … know your name … nggg, oh Celestia, this hurts so much ...”

“My name isn’t important. Just lay still until the doctor gets here.”

As if on cue, the door opened and Professor Orchid ushered in a blue stallion carrying a medical bag. Vanelda stepped aside, allowing him access. Professor Orchid departed once more to give campus security Bass Note’s description. Though she knew she was expected to stay, Vanelda slipped out after her while both Octavia and the doctor were occupied.

She blended into the shadows like she was part of them, flowing along rooftops and clinging impossibly to buildings until she reached the spot where she had left Bass Note. He was gone, but evidence of his departure lingered. She took a moment to separate the freshest scents, discarding her own and Octavia’s.

Tracking him was foal’s play. He was limping along a pathway towards the halls of residence, making slow progress and favouring one hind leg. The sight of him made something flare inside her. It burned hot, spiralling outwards through her veins. She let the change take her. Fangs indented her lower lip. Her eyes prickled as the whites darkened and an iridescent white glow blossomed around her pupils. Strength flowed into her muscles beyond even what she already possessed. Her mane began to drift upwards as if caught in the draught from an invisible air vent. She had caught sight of herself before in glass, mirrors and the surfaces of water. She knew how eerie she looked when she went full red.

Bass Note did not scream when she darted past so fast she was barely a blur. The intent was to make him think he had tripped and head-butted the wall he was running beside. She dragged his limp form up a tree. She did not drink him dry, but sucked enough blood that he would be even more woozy and confused when he woke. Then she draped him over a branch, chose the foreleg that had so recently been in a cast and positioned it across a fork in the tree’s limbs.

In slumber, he looked a lot younger. It was a funny thing she had often noticed about ponies at rest. Even Vellum’s face took on a more innocent quality when she slept. Vanelda had never seen Voron sleep. She wondered whether he looked young and innocent too.

She brought her hoof down hard on Bass Note’s foreleg. It snapped, bone bursting through flesh, snapping sinew and muscle. Where her hoof carried on its arc became a red mess. A chunk of meat flopped free completely, slopping to the ground below. Bass Note stirred, pain bringing him half out of unconsciousness. It would hurt far, far more when he came around properly, but for now he would have only vague recollections and impressions of what was going on.

His wordless noises became a wail as Vanelda pushed him out of the tree. She didn’t care if he broke more bones when he struck the floor. The fall would not kill him. His leg was ruined. He would never play cello again.

She vanished into the growing night.

Author's Note

A full cast reading of this chapter can be found here.

8. Octavia

Octavia

Vinyl arched her neck, white hot bolts of agony ripping up and down her legs like some unseen force was tearing off her muscles and sewing them back on in the wrong order. She gritted her teeth, but still cried out as the ring of magic spiralled around her and then dissipated. Her legs trembled. Her stomach roiled. Every inhalation was eclipsed in pain only by the necessity of letting each breath out again.

Don’tpassoutdon’tpassoutdon’tpassout –

“What’s taking so long?” Vellum pantomimed a yawn. “Are you even trying?”

“This … isn’t … some … parlour trick,” Vinyl wheezed. She had performed three castings so far and she was exhausted. She wasn’t even sure if she was using the right spell to undo the curse, but it was all she had. The book claimed it was a catch-all spell to undo other spells, but she had no idea whether it would even work on a curse, much less a lattice of them.

“Whatever.” Vellum picked up a set of headphones and slipped them over her ears. She mimicked using an invisible turntable, shaking her hindquarters in a way Vinyl would never do. “Hey look, I’m DJ Pon3! Boosh, chu-chu, boosh, boosh – reeeeee!”

“Vellum.” Voron interrupted her terrible impression of Vinyl’s music. “Be quiet.”

Vellum’s expression became mutinous. Evidently the conversation from the attic was still weighing on her mind, since she flopped into a vacant chair and muttered to herself: “Why should we even take her back? We’re just fine without her. Better than fine.”

“Vellum,” Voron said very quietly. “Mind your tongue. We need Vanelda because we are family, and family is everything.”

“We managed for ten years without her.”

“If you are not prepared to speak out loud, do not speak at all. Muttering to oneself is unladylike. You should be more like Octy here.” He hugged Octavia closer. “She knows when to keep her tongue silent. Her mother raised her well. She taught her manners and decorum.”

Vinyl looked up. Octavia reacted like a ragdoll, allowing Voron to move her about without protest or any indication of fear. Her eyes were dull, her expression flat, as if she had reached her limit for traumatic experiences and her brain had simply switched off rather than process any more of the nightmare she was trapped in.

Tavi, I’m so sorry.

“Quod factum est , iam pedum solvere. Ut hunc nodum posse dissolvi , hoc dimittit avem , hoc ostium apertum eaque omittere.” Vinyl was getting so used to this incantation now that she didn’t need to keep her eyes on the page to read it all – which was just as well, as her stomach rebelled when the spiral of glittering magic enveloped her once more. “Ego placerat magiae meae vires, mea vita spectabat eaque abrogare.”

Fire raced through her veins. Her eyeballs felt like they were exploding in her skull. Her legs refused to hold her up this time and she collapsed onto her side before the spell was done, kicking uselessly. The scream in her throat became a guttural moan, and then a wet eviction of what was left in her stomach. When the magic dispersed, she lay heaving on the floor, head resting in her own vomit, trying to bring up food she hadn’t eaten.

“How many more times, Vanelda?” Voron asked. “How many more times do you have to cast this spell?”

“As many … as it … takes …”

She felt awful – far worse than when she had cast the curse on herself. Well, apart from the first time. She could feel it still, blocking her vampiric powers. When she had first cursed herself, it had been to render herself mortal. She had not known that the curse would not rid her of her vampire nature, only bury it deep inside her. She was mortal, but she wasn’t like other mortals: a fact she had carried with her every hour or every day for ten years.

And yet she would not do anything differently. Those ten years had been with Octavia, and even if it had all been built on deception, the happiness they had experienced together was worth ten thousand curses and even more counter-spells. Everything she did now, she did for Octavia. She didn’t know how, but she would save her. Even if it meant sacrificing herself, she would make sure Octavia lived to see the morning.

Still on her side, Vinyl began to chant: “Quod factum est, iam pedum solvere. Ut hunc nodum posse dissolvi, hoc dimittit avem …”

It was jazz band rehearsal tonight. Octavia Philharmonica should not have been at the theatre. Vanelda studiously copied up her class notes, adding to them from her own knowledge and the textbook in front of her. Jazz band was more discordant than orchestra. She liked it more. Something about the freedom and inventiveness appealed to her. Where orchestra was all about practising every detail until the whole sympathy was perfect, jazz intentionally broke the rules, creating new patterns of sound that may sound sweet, may sound dissonant, but were always, always passionate.

Somepony cleared their throat behind her.

Her pen stopped. She knew that voice.

“Hello,” Octavia said quietly.

Vanelda turned. She was surprised to see the familiar braids were gone. Instead, Octavia’s mane was loose and brushed forward to cover part of her face. It made her look older, though judging from the corner of white gauze poking out, the change was mainly to cover her injury.

Vanelda mumbled something that might have been a greeting.

“You vanished on Saturday.”

“I know. I’m sorry. I was … I had to get home. I didn’t realise how late it had gotten.” A lie. It tripped easily off her tongue. “My father is … very strict. He likes it when we’re home by the time he sets.” Not a lie. Or not a whole lie, at least. When Voron said to be back, you were back with time to spare.

“Oh.” Octavia’s chin drew towards her chest, as if this was not the answer she had been expecting and she was reassessing what she had planned to say next. “I was worried. Professor Orchid was too when she couldn’t find you.”

“I was safe. It was you who were hurt.”

“Yes. Yes, I was.” Octavia drew in a breath and let it out slowly. “I wanted to say thank you. For what you did, I mean.”

“It’s fine.” Vanelda dropped her gaze, taking in the variety of garbage left behind by the rest of the evening class students. “But you’re welcome, I guess.”

Octavia gently patted the side of her head. “I had to have stitches. And the doctor said I had a concussion. Campus security wanted to speak to you about it.”

For a moment Vanelda panicked, but everypony had accepted the story that renowned partygoer Bass Note had once again gotten drunk, gone out looking for his rival and tried to hide in a tree after beating her up, with disastrous consequences. If he remembered anything about what had truly happened, he had not told anyone. If he had, Vanelda would have had to leave and start hunting in the suburbs, away from the university. She hated hunting in suburbs. Families lived in suburbs.

Children lived in suburbs.

“I didn’t do much. I just punched him to get him off you.” And kicked him. And rammed a hoof in his groin. And more. “I … if my dad found out I was fighting, he wouldn’t let me come here anymore.”

“Come here? To the university?”

She nodded. “Like I said, he’s real strict. If it got out that I got into a fight, he’d find out and …” She searched for an acceptable phrase. “Um … ground me.” Yes, that sounded banal enough. She hoped she sounded convincing.

Octavia gave her a sidelong look. Without warning, she slid into the seat beside Vanelda and leaned in close. “You’re not actually a student here, are you?”

Was everypony around here a detective or something? Or was she just that idiotic about covering her tracks these days? She never used to be so careless. Damn it.

Octavia’s gaze flicked to Vanelda’s pen, which had snapped in her hoof. She blinked in surprise.

“Gosh. Don’t worry! I’m not going to tell anyone.”

“Professor Orchid lets me stay.”

“I’d gathered as much. You and she seem rather close.”

Close? They were barely acquaintances, weren’t they? Then again, Professor Orchid had gone out of her way to accommodate Vanelda’s desire to learn magic when she really didn’t have to. Did that make them more than acquaintances? For some reason that made Vanelda’s heart lurch. She couldn’t tell if it was in shock, revulsion or fear.

“Not really,” she said, feigning nonchalance.

“University professors don’t give up their Saturdays to give students lessons – especially students who aren’t paying university fees,” Octavia pointed out.

“Oh. Well. I guess …?”

“I’m certainly grateful for it. I’d be in a proper mess now if you hadn’t been on campus when you were.”

“Um, you’re welcome?”

“I didn’t tell campus security your name. Professor Orchid didn’t either. I followed her lead and afterwards she told me I did the right thing, even though technically it was the wrong thing. She was right. I wouldn’t want you hauled in and punished by campus security for hitting Bass Note when you were just defending me.”

Vanelda let out a mirthless chuckle. “Campus security couldn’t punish me.”

“Huh?”

“Not in any way that counts.” She realised what she was saying and faltered. “Um, I mean –”

“Can I take you out for coffee?”

Her train of thought jumped the tracks. “What?”

“And maybe a pastry? To say thank you. It’s the least I can do. I know a great bakery that stays open late and does the most amazing lattes.” Octavia smiled. Her teeth were small and white and blunt.

Vanelda shook her head to stop herself staring at that horribly genuine smile. “Caffeine doesn’t have much effect on me.”

“I-I’m a tea drinker myself.” Octavia stumbled, clearly thinking the head shake was a no. She got to her hooves, absently pulling her hair forward. “It’s fine. I just thought-”

“I’d like to go for tea with you.”

Vanelda couldn’t believe she had said the words. She wanted to snatch them out of the air and ram them back down her throat. The bottom half of her pen crunched to fragments in her grip.

Octavia smiled once more. “All right then. That is, if you’re done with your work?”

“I’m done.” Vanelda scooped everything into a saddlebag she had appropriated during one of her night-time bookstore jaunts. It had a picture of someone called ‘Barry Trotter’ on the side. She allowed the broken pen to tumble into the bag too, hiding it under her notebook.

“Excellent! My treat then.” Octavia winked. “For my knight in shining armour.”

The corner of Vanelda’s mouth tugged upwards of its own will. “You’re very strange.”

“In a good way, I hope.”

She was smiling. She was actually smiling. And not the smile of a hunter enticing prey into a dark alley, either. She couldn’t stop her lips from curving upwards.

“Yes,” she said, and meant it. “In a good way.”

9. Vee

Vinyl had soiled herself. She knew from the smell. She should have been humiliated but she was in too much pain.

Someone was crying. Was it her? No, she had no energy. It was taking all she had just to breathe. Her chest seemed made of iron and her heart a magnet drawing each rib inexorably inwards to stab all her organs.

“Stop! Please, stop!”

Everything sounded like it was underwater. She tried turning her face towards the voice, but it was impossible.

“It’s killing her!”

“She is strong. She can do this.”

“Vinyl, please stop!”

… Tavi?

That couldn’t be right. The voice sounded upset. Octavia hated her now. She knew the truth about how they had met. She knew all the secrets Vinyl – Vanelda – had been keeping from her for so long. No way could she be –

“Vinyl, please!” the voice said urgently. “Don’t do this! It’s not worth it! I’m not worth–”

Dull thud. Wet thump. The voice cried out.

“Foolish mare. She will do this. She will do it because I have told her to and she has learned the perils of disobeying her father.”

“You’re a monster.” The voice was even more muffled, as if the speaker was pressing a hoof over its mouth. Her mouth. Tavi’s mouth. “Why can’t you just let her go?”

“Because she is mine. She has always been mine. She will always be mine.”

“She isn’t yours. She’s her own pony!”

Another wet thump. Tavi cried out again. Something small and hard bounced off Vinyl’s nose. With enormous effort, she prised her eyes open. It took a few moments to focus on the white object on the floor in front of her.

A tooth.

The forked end was bloody.

“Thbt!”

“Ah! Insolent wench! How dare you spit on me!”

“Go to Tartarus, monster!” Tavi’s words sounded odd, her consonants too sibilant.

This was her tooth.

An image of Octavia smiling over a cup of tea in a late-night bakery flashed into Vinyl’s mind. Tavi’s smile, so warm and open and different than the smiles Vinyl was used to. Or maybe that was just her attraction making the memory seem more special than it was. She hadn’t known what attraction was back then. She hadn’t even known what friendship felt like.

Vinyl remembered Octavia smiling unexpectedly when she had tried to cook spaghetti and failed so badly that pieces were still whirling on the ceiling fan a month later.

“You’re a terrible cook, but you’re my terrible cook.”

She remembered the tired smile that came when Vinyl had a warm bath ready after a rehearsal with a brutal new conductor that left Tavi’s hooves sore and chafed.

“It has to be done. Sacrifices have to be made if one wants to get anywhere in life.”

“But Tavi –”

“My dream is to play in the Canterlot Symphony Orchestra someday.”

“I know that but this guy is an assho–”

“Vinyl, language! You don’t get to that level without working hard in lesser orchestras first. Ponyville Players may not be the Canterlot Symphony, but it’s a start. They’ve been known to play at the Galloping Gala before. Who knows? Maybe someday I’ll go with them too.”

She remembered how they had both smiled through their first Hearth’s Warming. They had been too poor for a tree and so had decorated a random branch.

“Vinyl, get out of there! That’s Apple property! You can’t just hop the fence like that!”

“Relax, Tavi, it’s just a branch. What are they gonna do, set their dog on me for branch theft? I’m not even breaking it off one of their precious trees. It’s on the ground!”

“Just get back on this side as quick as you can! Please! I don’t want to get into trouble.”

“Relax. Applejack’s cool. She won’t mind. Heck, if we asked, she might just give us a whole tree.”

“I think you might be exaggerating there.”

Vinyl remembered kissing that smile, so many times. Warm kisses on the doorstep. Slow kisses in the shower, or the bath, or in front of the fireplace on cold winter nights. Sweet kisses that tasted of chocolate and candy on Hearts and Hooves Day. Fast kisses each morning beneath the covers before the alarm clock insisted they get up and go earn the rent money. Kisses each and every day since Vanelda had become Vinyl and thrown herself on the mercy of one of the few ponies who had ever shown her kindness without wanting something in return.

A bead of blood dripped off the tooth’s root.

“Vinyl isn’t yours. She doesn’t belong to anypony. Not you, not me, not anyone. She belongs to herself!”

Tavi … stop talking …

The flap of wings. Another wet thump. Another cry.

“Don’t talk to Daddy like that!”

Tavi … please …

This wasn’t happening.

Vanelda looked around in horror. Smashed furniture lay everywhere. The couch had been torn open and upended. Beloved books were torn to pieces, their pages spattered with red.

Vanelda took a few hesitant steps into the room. “P-Professor?”

No answer.

“Professor Orchid?”

Her hooves travelled of their own volition. She stooped by the couch, peering under the gap. She had to twist her head nearly upside down to see properly. Blood scent filled her nose. She knew what she would see, but not how she would feel when she saw it.

“No …”

Necks should not bend that way. No bone had broken the skin, but a purplish lump showed where it bulged beneath. There was no way to tell whether death had come from that or the weight of a wooden couch landing on her skull.

“You’ve been a naughty giiiiiirl.”

Vanelda sprang to her hooves. “Vellum! You did this?”

“Actually no.” Vellum leaned against the doorframe like she had any right to be here. Vanelda had never quite felt like she belonged, but Vellum’s presence was even more ill-fitting. She claimed whatever room she walked into with her mere presence. Voron did it too. Her little sister was inheriting more and more of their father’s traits with each passing night.

Vanelda faltered. “What?”

“I didn’t kill her. He did.” Vellum inclined her head.

For the first time, Vanelda noticed the second body beyond the couch. Bass Note’s head had been all but completely separated from his body. His blood scent mingled with Professor Orchid’s, becoming inseparable to Vanelda’s nose. Her intake of breath seemed inordinately loud in the small office. Bass Note had not been seen on campus since he was expelled for his attack on Octavia. He had gone home to his parents in disgrace, carrying a criminal record instead of the university degree they had expected.

Death had not come easily to him. His expression was locked in a rictus of surprise and fear.

“He tried to throw a couch at me,” Vellum snorted. “A couch! I’ve been hunting him all week but, ironically, it wasn’t until he left his estate and came into town that he was alone enough for me to strike. And then he tries to throw furniture at my head! I threw it back at him, of course. I missed, but that mare was beyond caring at that point. He put up quite a fight for a mortal. How come you can’t use telepathy like that, big sis?”

“Telekinesis …” Vanelda said slowly, unable to quite believe what was going on. Coincidence? Really? It couldn’t be. Not even she was that unlucky. “You were hunting this stallion?”

“It was fun. He kept coming to this tavern I’ve been hunting at for the past few weeks. A real run-down place on the outskirts of town. I like to chase the patrons into the forest and scare the poop out of them before bringing them down. They wander out when they come round and it’s hilarious to see them bumping into things. Once, one of them cracked his head open on a rock! This guy though; he’s a riot. Or, well, he was. He had such a potty mouth! Way worse than the older stallions who usually drink there. I learned all sorts of naughty new words. He hated that mare.” Vellum pointed to where Professor Orchid lay. “Kept talking about how it was her fault he got kicked out of university. Even I was surprised when he came here tonight to kill her, though.”

Vellum sauntered over as she spoke and kicked the corpse. Bass Note slid sideways, smearing a bloody arc against the wall. It looked like the world’s worst painted rainbow.

“It was always ‘That nag this’ and ‘I’ll make her pay’ that and ‘If it hadn’t been for her, my life wouldn’t be ruined’ and yadda, yadda, yadda. Never pegged him for a killer though.” She shrugged. “Mortals are weird.”

Vellum’s words rang in Vanelda’s ears. Bass Note blamed Professor Orchid for his expulsion?

“But the professor wasn’t the reason he was thrown out,” she protested. Octavia had been. Vanelda snapped her mouth shut with a jolt, realising what she had said.

“How would you know?” Vellum narrowed her eyes.

“I-I’ve been hunting here for a few months now. All these drunken teenage ponies? It’s easy pickings. They drink to excess at parties and can’t even remembered their own names, let alone why they’re waking up in strange places with less blood than when they started the night.”

“This place is your hunting ground?” Vellum sounded both pleased and delighted. “Why didn’t you tell me? We could have hunted together! Or shared! All this young flesh around? And you were keeping it all for yourself?”

“And Daddy.”

“Well, yes, but that goes without saying. No wonder he liked taking from you more than me lately! Your prey must taste much sweeter than the old duffers I’ve been drinking from!”

“It won’t last much longer.” Vanelda fought to keep the tremor from her voice and her eyes off the upended couch. Nopony else was here on a Saturday, or else this much damage and commotion would have raised the alarm already.

“Why not?”

“It’s nearly summer break. They’ll all go home then.”

“Aw.” Vellum pouted. “Phooey. So … what did you mean about this professor mare not being the reason my naughty stallion was kicked out of this place?”

Vanelda swallowed, carving her story out from the frozen mass of her brain as she spoke, hoping she didn’t contradict herself. “You go to enough parties and speak to enough ponies, you learn things. He beat up another student. That’s why he was thrown out.”

“Oh really?” Vellum tapped her chin in thought. “That would explain it, actually.”

“Explain what?”

“Why he kept asking this professor mare where ‘she’ was – and why he looked so upset when her neck broke. He was holding her in his … telepathy? No, telekinesis. That’s what you said, right?”

“Right.”

“Yeah, only her horn was doing that glowing thing too, and she was struggling like blazes! Then, crack! No more professor pony.”

Vanelda could picture it in her mind: Bass Note must have taken Professor Orchid by surprise as she sat at her desk waiting for Vanelda to arrive for their lesson. She might even have thought the door opening was her. More often than not, she did not look up from whatever she was doing until Vanelda had been sitting on the couch for several minutes. She could envision Bass Note grabbing her up in his telekinesis, demanding to know where Octavia was, and Professor Orchid fighting back until …

Vanelda’s hoof tingled with the memory of splintering bone and flesh and the meaty thump of a body falling from a tree.

This was all her fault.

“Big sis? Are you okay?”

“We can’t cover this up, Vellum.”

Vellum stared at the carnage as if she was only just seeing it properly. “Oh. Yes. Pretty hard to make this look accidental, huh?”

“Daddy is going to make us leave.” Vanelda swallowed the lump in her throat. “If he doesn’t kill us first.”

Vellum was as white as her but she seemed to grow paler at this realisation. “He won’t,” she said, though she didn’t sound sure. “He loves us. He’ll understand. This wasn’t our fault.”

“Maybe if you’d left that stallion alive it might have been okay, but … Vellum, did you have to go so far?”

As if on cue, the last few strands of skin holding Bass Note’s head to his neck snapped and his skull struck the floorboards.

Vellum’s throat bobbed. “He won’t … I mean, h-he … Daddy loves me.”

“I just hope he was done courting.” Vanelda’s mind raced. “And the mares he was courting are with foal now.”

Vellum’s eyes rounded. “Didn’t you know? Three of them are.”

“What?”

“Weren’t you listening when he told us?”

She clearly hadn’t been. Then again, her thoughts had been consumed with magic lessons and Octavia for the last two months.

Octavia.

Voron would make them leave tonight. Vanelda knew it with the same certainty that told her the sun would rise tomorrow. When he punished his daughters or not, they would leave tonight and Vanelda would never see Octavia again.

“Fly home.”

“Big sis?”

“I’ll mess up the crime scene.” Vanelda lit her horn. “I’ll make it look like they both died in a magic fight.”

Vellum’s eyes lit with hope. “You can do that?”

“I can try. Fly home. Get there as quick as you can. Tell Daddy what I’m doing. Maybe he’ll be easier on us.” And with the time she had bought herself, maybe Vanelda could get to Octavia and say goodbye. She harboured no hope that she would be able to stay while her father and sister left. That was not how things worked. It was never how they worked and would never be how they worked. She was trapped forever in the life Voron had designed for her. For a short time she had begun to think that maybe there was hope for her, but this just confirmed that she was destined to stay trapped forever.

But a goodbye was not too much to hope for, was it?

“Go, Vellum!” Vanelda picked up the lamp off the desk and telekinetically hurled it at the window. “Go!”

Vellum escaped through the jagged hole, soaring up into a cloud bank that concealed her white body.

Vanelda proceeded to wreck the tiny office yet further, sweeping her magic around in huge wave. She yanked chunks out of the walls, tore free the ceiling fan and whirling it so deep into Bass Note’s body that it looked like that had been what killed him and the weight of his body had pulled it off the ceiling. She did her best to stage the fight scene, apologising to Professor Orchid for treating her remains so poorly.

“I’m so sorry,” she cried, tears streaking her face. “I’m s-so sorry.”

Finally, she blew all the torn pages into the air, lit the little oil lamp Professor Orchid’s brother had given her, and allowed a drifting page to fall into the flame. The rest took care of itself.

As she streaked away from the scene, Vanelda kept her mind focussed on the task ahead instead of the one just performed. She travelled by rooftop, hiding in shadows and not looking back even when the fire alarm began to ring.

Octavia opened her door with a frown at the desperate knocking. Her expression melted into a smile, then concern when she saw Vanelda in the corridor.

“Vee? What’s –”

“There’s no time.” Vanelda pushed her inside and slammed the door behind them. “I’m leaving. Tonight.”

“Leaving?” Octavia repeated. “What do you mean?”

“Leaving Trottingham. My father is going to make us move tonight.”

“He can’t!”

“Yes, he can.”

“But … but why?”

“I can’t explain now. Octavia, please, I don’t have much time. I came to say goodbye, but if he finds out I was here…” She swallowed. “He may hurt you.”

“Hurt me?”

“Because I put you above him.”

Octavia’s eyes widened. “Don’t go back to him. Stay here. I’ll … I’ll hide you.”

Vanelda shook her head sorrowfully. “These past few months … they’ve been the best of my life. And I mean that. I’ve loved every minute. You have no idea how much I … how much I wish I could stay.” Her throat felt clogged up, like she was talking through congealed blood. “I would give up everything to be able to stay with you.”

“Then why –?”

“Because I don’t have that option. He’ll never let me go. Professor Orchid … she tried to help me. She wanted me to go to the authorities.” Vanelda didn’t bother to hold back her tears. “Bass Note … tonight he … he …”

“Bass Note?” Octavia frowned. “Vee, what happened? Why do you smell of smoke?”

“Bass Note …” Vanelda stumbled over her words. How could she explain this? “He came looking for you, but Professor Orchid … I … I found them but I … I c-couldn’t …”

“Vee?” At last, Octavia sounded scared.

“Octavia, please … my father won’t let us stay. I know him. He won’t let us stay here. The media that’ll come from this … b-but I wanted … I needed to come and say goodbye to you.”

“I’ll come and find you,” Octavia said resolutely.

“I don’t know where we’re going. And … and it’s not safe. I won’t let you put yourself at risk for me.”

“But –”

“Octavia, I think I love you! And I’d die before I’d let anything happen to you! So please, forget about me, okay? I needed you to know that I didn’t … that I didn’t just leave because I wanted to … but I c-can’t …”

“I … I think I love you too,” Octavia said softly. “But I didn’t know … I thought you weren’t into mares … but all the time we spent together was … the best time of my life too. I was so lonely, and then you came along and…” She gulped. “I don’t want you to go.”

“I don’t want to go,” Vanelda replied, her chest hurting at the revelation of what might have been. “But I have to. I n-need you to b-be safe. You’re the b-best thing in m-my life and … and …”

And then there was a mouth on hers, and hooves running through her mane, and everything was touch and feel and smell and Octavia Octavia Octavia …

Vanelda broke the kiss with a gasp for air. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.

“I want you to be safe too,” Octavia whispered back. “This isn’t fair. You don’t deserve this.”

Vanelda leaned in to hold her, feeling Octavia’s body begin to judder as she cried. “I’m so, so sorry.”

“Please don’t leave me,” Octavia sobbed. “I waited to tell you how I felt. Please don’t let this be the end before it even started. Whatever happens, we can face it together. Bass Note, your father – anything!”

“You wouldn’t say that if you knew the whole story.”

“Vee, please!”

“I’m sorry Octavia. I love you so much.”

She hadn’t even realised what love was until this moment, and as soon as she had found it, she had lost it.

“No! Vee, wait! Come back!”

She ran from the dorm with the sound of Octavia’s crying in her ears and the taste of her on her lips.

10. Vanelda

Vanelda

Octavia’s breathing hitched in tiny wet spurts. “Y-you’re b-both evil.”

Voron laughed. The sound reverberated through Vinyl’s head like somepony was banging a metal drum inside her skull.

“Silly filly.” She didn’t need to see Vellum to know she was rolling her eyes. “Evil’s just a label. Don’t you know that labels are soooooo out of fashion these days? I mean, you wouldn’t like it if I called you, say, weak.”

Octavia cried out in tandem when the sound of a slap.

“Or pathetic.”

Another cry.

“Or a fucking sneak-thief who stole my big sister and poisoned her fucking mind!” Vellum shrieked, all trace of humour suddenly gone from her voice. “It’s your fault she left us! If she had never met you, none of this would have happened! We’d have stayed a family!”

The sounds of violence were more than Vinyl could take, but her traitorous body refused to respond to her commands. Any movement was completely beyond her as she struggled to even breathe.

Reprieve came from an unexpected source.

“VELLUM!” Voron thundered. “Desist!”

Vellum let out her own cry of pain. Something struck the wall and then the floor in short order, and the air was filled with a lattice of pained whimpers from the two downed mares.

“I did not give you permission to harm her!”

“B-but Daddy –”

“Your antics cease to be amusing when they flout my authority! She is our bargaining chip. Or did you forget that?”

She squealed again. For some reason Vinyl took no satisfaction in the sound of their father’s hoof striking her. “I’m sorry!”

“Petty vengeance will not put our family back together again.”

“I’m sorry, Daddy! Please forgive me! I wasn’t thinking! You’re right! You’re always right!”

Voron grunted. “Vanelda, why have you stopped?”

“Sweet Celestia. Is she breathing?” Panic laced Octavia’s voice. “Please no. Celestia, please, no, no, no –”

“Do not utter that nag’s name in my presence!” Voron snapped. “Celestia’s days are numbered. You would do better to start swearing by my name than by hers, since my family shall soon be the ruling house in this land.”

“Wh-what?”

“The age of Celestia is over. Not even the return of her sister or the ascendance of her students can stop the rise of the House of Verchovski. She may have clawed some family out of the dirt, but my children are far more numerous. And alicorns,” he added, clearly savouring every word, “bleed just the same as everypony else. All it would take is one opportunity … one bite … and anypony is my prey, royal blood or not.” He chuckled. “I am eager to see if royalty tastes any sweeter than the blood of peasants or nobility.”

“Y… you’re mad,” Octavia whispered. “Totally insane. You can’t possibly think you could take on the princesses.”

“Celestia’s rule rendered my people a frugal life fighting over scraps in the mountains while ponies roamed freely and without predators under her protection in this lush land. He interrupted the natural order of things by protecting you weak creatures. Why should ponies be the only species to escape the natural cycle? Why should vampires be so thoroughly banished that every mare, stallion and foal thinks them nothing but mere legend? Well I say no more!” Voron snarled. “With my children, I shall wrest this land from Celestia and her filthy alicorns! Then the age of the vampires can begin when they are gone!”

“This is why you want Vinyl back so badly?” Octavia’s voice was so hoarse that Vinyl could barely hear it over the pounding in her ears. “You’ve done all this because you want to pit her against the princesses?”

“My children are mine to do with what I will,” Voron announced.

“You can’t make her take on four bloody alicorns alone!”

“She will not be alone. Far from it.”

“Yeah,” Vellum piped up.

“You?” Octavia was clearly incredulous. “Her? You think she’ll be enough to turn the odds in your favour? At least with Vinyl I could understand your thinking, but sending a little pegasus against four alicorns? That’s ludicrous. Especially one so tiny and weak looking. And you, you’re just an earth pony!”

Vellum hissed.

“Well you are weak. You were barely able to hold me down when he was … was drinking from me before.” Octavia’s voice wavered as she spoke, but a strange kind of firmness coated her tone like a coating of liquid steel.

Tavi, what are you doing? Vinyl thought desperately. Shut up already! Don’t say anymore!

“And I’m just a plain old earth pony – and not one with muscles who works the land either. I don’t even have magic, and you think you’ll stand any kind of chance against Celestia and Luna? Not to mention Princess Cadence and Princess Twilight. Princess Cadence has the might of the whole Crystal Empire behind her and Twilight Sparkle is pretty much the most powerful pony who ever lived. They’ll shrug you off like an ugly coat.”

Tavi, you’re not this stupid!

Vellum’s growl was a feral noise straight out of a nightmare.

“If your father’s plans hinge on you, then he may as well run back to the mountains now with his tail between his legs, because the age of vampires will never happen if you’re the best they have to offer.”

The growl rose to a screech of pure rage. “You -” The vowels devolved into nothing more than a shriek and a mad flutter of wings.

“Vellum, stop!” Voron roared.

Too late.

There was a wet ripping sound and the slosh of liquid. Octavia let out a screaming gurgle Vinyl recognised from all the years she went hunting with Vellum.

Her mind thinned to a silent scream that went on and on and on, wrapping around every thought and squeezing them into the same shape.

Tavi, NO!

“And what, pray tell, brings you to my shop, traveller?”

Vanelda threw down the bag of coins, spilling its contents across the counter. The shopkeeper’s eyes went wide at the sight of gold. Judging by the amount of stock crammed into this place, he didn’t make many sales, and certainly it had been a long time since he had seen money like this.

“The Grimoire of Assidua Shadowhoof,” she hissed.

The hoof that had been teasing a coin from the bag froze in mid-motion. “I think you are mistaken. That book does not exist, traveller.”

“It does and I know you have it.” It had taken months to ascertain that the Grimoire of the dark mage was more than mere myth, and extreme pains to locate a genuine copy of her book, but Vanelda knew this was the place and that he was lying to her. All manner of items that ‘did not exist’ littered its shelves. A book written by Starswirl’s the Bearded’s disgraced student was not the most unusual thing within these walls.

“Assidua Shadowhoof is nothing more than a fairytale to scare naughty foals into eating their alfalfa,” the shopkeeper said. “There is no historical evidence that-”

“Look, how about we stop this before we even start it? I know she existed. I’ve spent a long time verifying that fact. I know her book is real and that it is proof beyond doubt that there are such things as curses, and I also know that’s why no copies were ever made and its very existence was hushed up by the Equestrian government so long ago than not even they remember why anymore. So how about we cut the crap and you just fork over what I want for the price I’m willing to pay for it. Then I won’t have to either bring the Royal Guard down on this place like a ton of bricks or torch it to the ground myself.”

It had taken nearly as long to steal that money as it had taken for her to traverse Equestria by her father’s side and formulate this plan. It was a ridiculously risky plan, but it was the best she could do and had taken months upon months of careful preparation to even get this far. She knew this was her first, last and only chance at saving herself from her father’s designs for her and finally, finally getting the normal life she desired more than anything else in this whole damn world.

The shopkeeper stared at her. She resisted the urge to retreat further into her hooded cape. She could not be denied this chance, damn it!

“Wait here,“ he muttered eventually.

Her ears flicked forward, listening for any hint of betrayal. Yet he returned a few moments later bearing a small, unassuming book bound in black. There was nothing written across its front or spine. Had it not been for its obvious age, it might have been mistaken for anypony’s address book.

“Thank you,” Vanelda snapped, scooping it up and taking her leave.

“It won’t work, y’know,” he called after her. “I’ve tried every single thing written in there and none of them work.”

“We’ll see. Maybe you just didn’t want them to work enough.”

“Well you arrogant little–”

The door shut on what he was about to say.

However, Vanelda would have been lying to herself if she said his warning did not cross her mind as she stood in the forest clearing and chanted the incantation until her throat was raw. She ended her last repetition by punching the ground hard enough to leave a dent and shedding angry tears.

“Why won’t you work?” she demanded of the book. “Why!?” She threw it across the clearing, falling to her knees and biting back a scream. “Why am I never allowed to be happy?”

The image of a smiling grey mare fizzled through her mind. Clenching her jaw, she got up and fetched back the book, then picked up a stick and painstakingly drew the arcane symbols on the ground one more time, copying the illustration in the book exactly. When it was complete, she stood in the centre and sucked in a breath, pulling up every torturous memory of her father she could bear to remember – and many she couldn’t. These were the reasons she was doing this. She crystalised that thougth and balanced it in her mind like a knife edge ready to cut the ties that bound her to him once and for all.

“Please let this work. Please, please, please let this work. I deserve to be happy. I do!” She closed her eyes and repeated the words she had been saying all evening, pouring every ounce of resolve into each syllable.

Octavia –

Pain ripped through her. It was unlike anything she had ever experienced before. Her insides were on fire. Her brain was made of molten lead. Every single hair on her body sent up a cacophony of pain so visceral that she vomited back the meagre contents of her stomach and lay on the ground trying to retch up food that wasn’t there. She raked at herself with her hooves, instinctively trying to open herself up to let the hurt out. Blood splattered the ground. A pushing, shoving, compressing feeling swept through her, and in its wake she felt empty, as if some integral part of her was suddenly gone.

No, not gone; merely buried so deep inside her that she couldn’t sense it anymore.

It wasn’t enough, but though she tried to say the words again, the connection would not break. It only stifled, leaving her mind curiously … empty.

She could not feel her father’s presence anymore.

Utterly spent, she flopped to the ground, unable to even open her eyes. Streaked in sweat, dirt and her own vomit, her triumphant smile remained fixed on her lips. It was still there when she awoke, unaware until that moment that she had passed out.

A timber wolf blow hot breath into her face.

It must have been attracted by the noise. She bared her fangs at it, letting it know it was facing another apex predator. Yet the sting of elongating teeth did not come. Her eyes did not prickle into full red. She hissed, but it was the weak hiss of a newborn kitten, and the light from the timber wolf’s glowing green eyes hurt to look at, but the rest of it was bathed in gloom she could not see through. She was practically blind in the night’s darkness.

She wanted to laugh. She wanted to whoop and yell with delight. Yet she could do nothing but hang limply as the gigantic timber wolf picked her up and carried her away. Its sharp wooden teeth cut into her sides, eliciting a groan of pain.

The irony of her situation was too cruel. Here she had finally done the impossible and her reward was to be a meal for some creature made of twigs and leaves?

The sound of rushing water signalled that the wolf was trotting along the riverbank. Well, at least it was taking her further away from Canterlot. She hoped her father never found her body. She would die a mortal pony, or as close as she could to being one. If nothing else, she had reclaimed that part of herself at last.

Suddenly the timber wolf stopped. A growled reverberated up its throat and through her. A similar growl echoed from ahead of them and a set of glowing green eyes stepped out of the underbrush. The two timber wolves circled each other, clearly vying for the prey the first had caught. Vanelda jerked and swung as the second wolf snapped, trying to grab her out of the first one’s jaws. The first wolf snarled, lifting its head to keep her for itself. Her hind legs flopped about uselessly, but her forelegs were locked around the book held to her chest as if her muscles were made of stone. The second wolf raised itself onto its forelegs, the better to snatch her away, but left its belly exposed. The wold holding her lashed out with its claws, sending a spray of wood exploding away from them. The second wold howled and staggered back, forelegs smacking the first wolf in the face by accident more than design.

And then Vanelda was in the air. She flew to a zenith and then began her descent. She fully expected to die splattered against the ground, and so was doubly surprised when she was instead enveloped in water. Her head broke the surface with a gasp and she struggled weakly to stay afloat and hold the precious book out of the water as she was carried away by the current.

No! I won’t die like this! she thought grimly. I refuse to die like this! not now! Not after everything I’ve been through to get this far!

Her horn burned like there were red hot needles being pushed through her forehead and into her brain, but she forced her way through the pain barrier and buoyed herself upwards enough that she wouldn’t drown. She didn’t have enough strength to get herself to shore, but she could at least keep herself from drowning or crashing against rocks that would shatter her suddenly fragile body to pieces.

By the time she washed up on shore she was more miles away than she could count. Her magic fizzled and died, leaving her coughing and panting in a mudbank amidst the debris that had collected there.

She didn’t know how long she lay there. It may have been minutes. It may have been hours. The world became nothing more than a freezing, hazy collection of half-numb sensations and things that might have been dreams or could have been reality.

“… sweet Celestia…”

“… ambulance…”

“… worry sweetheart, the paramedics are on their …”

“… just found her laying there…”

“… no identification…”

“… Jane Doe …”

She awoke to a sterile room and the sense that she should have been smelling disinfectant even more strongly than she could. Noises clattered but they were distant and indistinct in a way sound never had been for her before. She blinked up at the ceiling, trying to gather herself together piece by fragmented piece.

“Ah, you’re awake,” said a cheerful voice.

“Hmm?” With effort, she turned her head. A yellow pony in a nurse’s cap leaned over her, beaming like she had pulled Vanelda back from the edge of oblivion personally. “Bwuh?”

“It’s okay, chickadee, just relax. You’re in the hospital.”

“Hosp’tal?” The word had a blurry quality thanks to her excessively dry mouth. She coughed. Her whole body hurt with every movement.

“Hold steady there,” the nurse soothed. “You’ve been through a lot.”

“M’book…”

“Your book? It’s in your personal effects locker. We practically had to crowbar that smelly old thing from you when you cvame in. it must be mighty important.”

Vanelda fell back against the pillow, gasping slightly for air. “’Tis. Vey impor’nt.” She swallowed. “Wa’er?”

“Water? Here you go, now sip it slowly through the straw.”

She drank gratefully and greedily until the nurse pulled the glass away.

“Now, chickadee, I’m going to need you to answer me some questions, okay? Do you think you’re up to that?”

“Mrrf.”

“Nothing too taxing. First off, I need to know your name, chickadee.”

She froze. “I … I …” Struck by sudden inspiration, she finished: “I don’t remember.”

The nurse frowned. “Oh dear. Do you remember what you were doing in the water three nights ago?”

Had it really been three nights already? Daddy would be livid. She froze again as the thought struck her that she didn’t have to call him that anymore. She could call him by his actual name. She didn’t have to acknowledge his hold over her any longer.

Voron wold be livid.

The thought was new and thrilling.

Voron did not know where she was.

Without the connection to her mind, Voron could not find her.

Voron would think she was dead after the connection broke, since the only reason his blood link with his children ever broke was when they died.

“Is that a smile I see? Do you remember your name, chickadee?”

She forced the smile away. “No. I just … I’m happy I’m alive.”

The nurse beamed. “You should be, you had a real lucky escape, doncha know. Uh, I don’t suppose you can remember the name of somepony we could call to, ah, come fill out some forms with your personal details, do you?”

One name appeared in her mind. It seemed the most natural thing in the world to say it.

“Octavia Philharmonica.”

11. Voron

11. Voron

Vinyl did not register Voron knocking Octavia from Vellum’s grip. She did not register anything either of them said. She only registered the heavy thump of a body landing next to her, wet spray across her face and the smell of blood.

“You stupid fool! What have you done!?”

“D-Daddy!”

Vinyl poured everything she had into opening her eyes one more time. She was dying. She knew it with crystal clarity. Only dying could feel this bad. Inside and out, everything was only pain. She managed to prise back her lids … and found herself looking straight into Octavia’s wide purple eyes.

Octavia was shaking. No, she was convulsing. Her throat was so dark with blood, it appeared black in the light of the cellar. Yet despite the shudders wracking her body, she did not break eye contact. Haltingly, she raised a forehoof to her neck. Vinyl thought she was touching the wound in shock, the way many victims did. Death was such an unwelcome surprise to some ponies that only touching their own mortal injury was enough to convince them they were dying. Octavia, however, did not seem surprised at the ragged bite Vellum had taken. With grim determination, she brought her cupped, bloody hoof to Vinyl’s mouth.

“Drinking … b-blood … healed him … before,” she whispered laboriously. “Please, Vinyl … they were … g-going to kill me… anyway an’ y-you know … it …” Tears streaked her face. “Please, Celestia … please let this work… don’t let her die …”

Vinyl tried instinctively to resist but Octavia easily pushed her hoof into her mouth. The familiar coppery taste touched her tongue, awakening memories she had desperately tried to forget for ten years.

“I d-don’t c-care wh-what you are o-or … th’past,” Octavia slurred. “I l-love … you … for who you are … n-not … what … or … was …” Her eyes dimmed. “Please … live … for me.” Her breath hitched wetly in her throat. “Don’t … let him … make you i-into … somepony y… you’re … not…” Her words became a single breath, and then she was still. Her bloodied hoof hit the floor. Her eyes still stared, but Vinyl knew they could no longer see her.

Octavia was dead.

Her Tavi was dead.

Just like that, Vinyl was a small child again, screaming for the only other pony who had loved her for her – and who her father’s twisted plans had taken away.

“Winter Song, run! Run far away and don’t look back!”

“I l-love … you …”

I just … I’m happy I’m alive.”

“Please … live … for me.”

Something exploded inside Vinyl in that moment. Maybe it was that taste of blood. Maybe it was a last reserve of strength not even she knew she had. Or maybe she was powered by nothing more than raw grief and rage. Whatever it was, it allowed her to pull herself over to the pony who had loved her more than life itself and accept her final gift.

As Octavia’s blood flowed down her throat, Vinyl felt the last fragments of the curse snap and the dark power inside her surge out of its prison. Her nubby teeth elongated into sharp points. Her eyes prickled with heat. Strength rushed back into her limbs. She felt cuts close up and bruises melt away, leaving her dirty but whole and brimming with more strength than ever before. When she raised her head, mouth dripping, she knew her eyes were glowing full red for the first time in a decade.

And she did not fight the change.

Vinyl roared.

“What the -” Vellum started to say.

Vinyl moved faster than a striking snake. Voron and Vellum flew apart, each reeling from her blows. He landed lightly, lips pulled back in a snarl as his own eyes flared red. Vellum opened her wings to save herself, baring fangs painted with blood.

Octavia’s blood.

Vinyl was beyond rational thought. She moved on pure instinct, every action dictated by the savagery of her own emotions. Something tickled her mind but she forced it back, completely taken up with vaulting off the wall and pinning Vellum to the floor. The other vampire was a hissing, spitting bundle from air to concrete. Her teeth raked at Vinyl’s forelegs and she kicked upwards, trying to crush her belly with her hind hooves. Her wings beat fruitlessly, shedding feathers each time they struck her assailant.

“Vanelda! Stop! I command you to stop!” came a deep voice from far away.

“If you leave her here with me she could be a normal pony!”

“Get off me!” Vellum shrieked. “You traitor! You don’t deserve to be part of Daddy’s court!”

“Daddy, I think she’s going to cry! Big sis, don’t cry! That’s so babyish!”

The tickling inside Vinyl’s head grew stronger.

Voron roared, “I command you to STOP!”

He was inside her head. He was trying to use the reignited connection between them to make her bend to his will. It had always worked before. None of his children had ever been able to resist him.

“A successful unicorn get who carries my blood. Do you even know how rare you are?”

He had no idea. He had never had any idea. Ten years is a long time. It is an especially long time when one is learning magic the way Vinyl had. She was much, much more powerful now than she had been when kind ponies pulled her battered and broken body out of a river and unknowingly set her on the path to a new and brighter life.

Her horn glowed.

Furniture around the room lifted off the ground, encased not in her usual pink signature, but in a bright red radiance. Like it was caught in a whirlpool, it began to circle the room, picking up speed as it went. Music stands, books, instruments, chairs, the table – all of it flew like scraps of paper in a gale. The piano chimed discordantly, wires and keys snapping loose as it ricocheted off the wall. The broken pieces of music stand Voron had torn in half clattered in ever-accelerating loops, at their centre a tiny unmoving grey body.

“Vanelda!” Voron yelled above the din. “Stop this madness at once!”

Vinyl lifted her head. The light fitting shattered, sending glass shards into the maelstrom and plunging the little room into darkness. This proved no problem for the three vampires, who continued to snarl and bare fangs at each other in the gloom.

“You’re not the boss of me anymore!” Vinyl screamed.

Voron leaped. The piano crashed down where he had been. For a second he lost his footing and it seemed as though he would be snatched up by the unnatural wind, but he grappled a hold on the uneven stones of the wall and clung on, mane plastered against his face and neck.

Pain seared across Vinyl’s chest. She looked down to see Vellum’s teeth buried there. She had taken the opportunity presented by Vinyl’s diverted attention. Ribs crunched in her powerful jaws. Vinyl brought a hoof down on her sister’s head, but Vellum’s bite was too strong. Pulling her free meant pulling out a chunk of her own flesh and bone. Vinyl felt Voron move behind her, though she didn’t need to turn to see him. Working his way across the stones would not take him long. The maelstrom faltered as another rib shattered. Vinyl wasn’t sure afterwards whether she made the decision or the decision made her. Either way, her head whipped forward and she drove her teeth deep into her sister’s skull.

Vellum screamed into her mouthful. Vinyl tasted revolting blood. It burned her tongue. Yet she held on, knowing that if she didn’t, she was dead and Octavia’s sacrifice had been for nothing. She released her hold on Vellum’s forehooves, shifting to brace her hind hooves on the other vampire’s hips, her rump pointed awkwardly into the air as she hooked her forehooves between Vellum’s ribcage and upper forelegs. Vellum batted at her with her newly freed hooves, grabbing handfuls of mane and tearing it out with chunks of bloody scalp still attached.

“No!” Voron thundered, understanding clear in his shout. “Vanelda, no!”

Too late.

Vinyl snapped her body straight, digging in all four hooves and clamping her jaws tight as she arched her neck. Vellum’s body, smaller than her own and already strained tight in her grip, tore across the middle, spilling viscera onto the concrete floor. She had time to look surprised before, with a wet popping crunch, her head came away from her neck.

“NO!”

Vinyl tossed her head, releasing the skull with its frothy, bouncing curls to be swept up be the maelstrom of her own magic. She spat out the blood still in her mouth and leapt free of the eviscerated corpse, clutching her chest wound with one forehoof. Every breath was a gloopy wheeze and the crunching sensation when she moved was nauseating.

Yet there was no time to focus on her injuries. She felt and heard Voron’s attack but had no time to react before he struck. He cannoned into her from behind like a runaway carriage. What should have laid her flat instead sent them sprawling as she deftly turned it into a roll. He tried to get a grip under her chin from behind but she bit down hard on one, cracking the hardest part of the hoof but missing the soft, blood-rich frog at the centre. He snarled right into her ear. She scrambled, trying to get her hooves under her so she could buck him off, or at least keep him away from the side of her exposed neck. She brought her up sharply, trying to crush his face, but the impact only succeeded in giving him extra momentum to tear off her ear. Pain radiated through her skull, momentarily blotting out all else, right when she needed all her senses.

No! I won’t die like this!

Finally gathering her hooves, she rocketed backwards, pinning Voron against the wall with her body weight and her magic. He doggedly gripped her midriff from behind, trying with one good and one ruined hoof to tear it open. She stamped, kicked, struggled and battered at him, trying to free herself so she could throw the contents of the whirling room at him.

“You will never be free of me, Vanelda,” he growled into her ruined ear. “In this life or the next, you will always be mine.”

With a wordless cry, she summoned part of the broken music stand to her, bringing it up behind her to shove deep into his side. She hoped she’d hit vital organs with the blunt object, but the stab was an untidy one and she couldn’t be sure. The shock of it had the desired effect: Voron convulsed and she leapt free, skidding around the face him in the centre of the room. A whirling dervish of furniture whipped between them like a swollen river.

Something red flashed past. She caught sight of Vellum’s curls and wide-open mouth. Voron’s hoof whipped out snatching it from mid-air. He cradled Vellum’s head almost … gently, giving it a look Vinyl would have called fatherly on anypony else.

“Little one,” he murmured, stroking back her devastated pigtails. “You were always Daddy’s favourite. Always my good little girl.” He planted a kiss on her forehead. “Our children will carry on our legacy, my dear. She will not tarnish what you did for the betterment of our family.”

Vinyl tensed when he looked up at her, expression melting into a snarl as he brought his hooves together, crushing Vellum’s skull into bloody pulp and shattered bone. He ducked his head, gulping mouthfuls of brain matter and squishy red meat. He tugged free an eyeball, chewing briefly before swallowing.

“If you take her eyes, can I have them? I like the way they pop when you tuck them into your cheek and then bite down.”

“Valenda! What you have done is unforgiveable.” With one foreleg, Voron pulled free the music stand and rammed it deep into the concrete floor. “You have disobeyed me for the last time. Your worth is not equal to what you have cost me tonight.” He threw the remains of Vellum’s skull with such force that they ripped through the maelstrom and splattered against her face and the foreleg she had instinctively raised.

It was a dirty trick. She leapt aside, but her concentration had been compromised. Voron bounded through the maelstrom, punching his way through the table that tried to get in his way, resisting the pull of her telekinesis with sheer momentum and raw strength. It should have been impossible for him to do more than stand against her power.

But this was Voron and Voron was good at doing the impossible if it meant dominating her.

Sudden icy fear swept through Vinyl. It was old emotion, frosted hard by history. She couldn’t stand against him. He was Voron. All you could do was run from Voron, and even then it wasn’t enough. He always got what he wanted. Always.

No!

In desperation, she cast the only spell she could think of. Fireworks sprayed from her horn, hitting him in the chest. The smell of burnt fur hit her before he did. She kept casting, but she was weakening and she knew it. Octavia’s blood was not enough to sustain her through this level of combat. She punched frantically at Voron’s throat, trying to crush his windpipe, throwing fireworks into his eyes to blind him. He roared in pain and she wriggled free, turning to buck him so hard in the chin she half expected his head to fly off.

No such luck.

He swept out a foreleg, catching hold of her haunch. She heard the crack before she felt the pain from her own thigh bone. A scream ripped from her unbidden. She staggered away on three legs, trying to lift her injured one but only able to drag it limply behind her.

Voron clambered to his own hooves, wiping blood from his eyes. He growled low in his throat. His eyes glowed red, the irises bathed in white fire that made him look like the demons ponies wrote about in books about Tartarus.

Despite herself, Vinyl backed up. She let out a cry as she stumbled over something, pain rippling up her injured leg. She spared a glance and saw Octavia, half rolled onto her back from being stepped on. Her eyes stared sightlessly at the ceiling.

All at once, Vinyl realised she would never get away from Voron. He was too strong. He had always been too strong. Even when she escaped him long enough to build a new life for herself, he had always been there inside her head. Not the controlling presence of her childhood and adolescence, but a memory so strong he dictated her behaviour even after she had thought herself a brand new pony: Vinyl Scratch, just an ordinary unicorn like anyone else, not Vanelda Vershovski, daughter of a monster. She had never truly let herself be free of him. Since the day she was born, he had always been a part of her, waiting in the wings while she acted out her life on a stage she thought he would never set hoof on again.

But he had.

He always had.

He always would.

Unless …

Vinyl set her stance. “You want me so bad, Daddy?” she spat. “Come and get me. I’d rather die than give in to you ever again!”

“Foolish child!” he hissed. “You could have been part of something so much greater than yourself, and instead you force my hoof like this? I am ashamed to call you my daughter! The only thing you are useful for now is as a bloodbag, just like those useless children of Celestia you so wanted to be like!”

“I’d rather be one of Celestia’s children than the daughter of someone so pathetic not even his own father could stand to have him around. No matter what you do, you’ll never be good enough for him. Never.”

Voron’s eyes flashed hot as the surface of the sun. With a screech, he galloped at her, zigzagging so fast even she could barely track his movements. In less than a heartbeat he was in front of her and she thought she had made a major miscalculation. She felt his breath, smelled the blood on it, saw the raw hatred in his eyes – and cast the spell she had used ten years ago to cover up the crime scene in Professor Orchid’s office.

Instantly, the wavering maelstrom became a swathe of flame. Voron looked up, aghast, and was about to bolt when Vinyl leapt up at him. He reared back, clearly expecting the attack to come from her jaws. Her broken leg shrieked but she threw all her weight and strength into plunging the broken shaft of the wooden cello neck up, under his ribcage and into his twisted black heart.

Voron roared. The maelstrom hurtled inwards at the insane speed it had picked up as it whirled around them, crushing everything in its path. Vinyl pumped everything she had into her magic and her muscles. She would not let Voron get away.

As the flames rose higher and higher, the entire practise room became a conflagration. From within it a roar became a scream, became a keening wail, and finally – finally – stopped.

Sunlight painted strange patterns on the walls. One of them had left the window open all night. There was a bite to the air that spoke of the promise of winter. It would be the Running of the Leaves soon.

“What are you thinking of?” came a sleepy voice from her chest.

She looked down. “Good morning. How long have you been awake?”

Octavia yawned delicately into her cupped hoof. “Not long. I was just too comfortable to say anything. You make an exceedingly cosy pillow.”

“You wouldn’t have to use me as a pillow if you didn’t wriggle around so much while you sleep.”

“I like to listen to your heartbeat.” She turned her face upwards, smiling. A strand of hair fell across her face. She looked rumpled and content and absolutely beautiful.

“Celestia damn it, you’re pretty.”

“Oh shush. I need a shower, mascara and a mane-brush before I look even halfway decent.”

“If you weren’t pretty, would I do this?”

“Vin-mrrf!”

The taste of her lips is as wonderful now as it was the first time the kissed, though much less hasty than those stolen moments in her dorm room so many years ago.

“You’re incorrigible,” Octavia laughed.

“Um, cool?”

“Don’t pretend dumb with me, Vinyl Scratch. I know you’re not as thick as you make out.” Octavia heaved herself into a sitting position and immediately clasped her forelegs around herself with a shiver. “Blast it all, did I forget to shut the window again? Sorry love. It’s like an icebox in here.”

“All the more reason for snuggles.”

She squeaked as she was pulled down again into another embrace.

“Vinyl!” she giggled. “I have to go to work! And I really do need a shower first!”

“Snuggles eclipse showers.”

“They do not!”

“Do too.”

“You really are an incorrigible wretch, you know that?”

“Yeah, but you love me anyhow.”

Octavia’s head thumped down on the pillow, framed perfectly between white forelegs. She smiled upwards. “Yes, I do love you, but I don’t love being a smelly beast.”

“I’d kiss you even if you stink of old fish. And cow dung. And mouldy cheese.”

“You paint such a lovely picture.” She reached up, pulling her down for another deep kiss. “Whatever did I do with myself before you came into my life, you grotty creature?” She traced her hoof lightly, producing a shiver of pleasure. “Oh, it’s like that, is it?”

Their kiss seemed to go on for too long and, at the same time, ended far too soon. The alarm clock rattled out a warning that they were, indeed, going to be late for work.

Octavia sighed.

“To be continued?”

“To be continued,” she agreed. “Very much so. I might even let you get the front door closed when you get home.”

“I love you, Tavi.”

“And I love you too, Vinyl. Now shoo. You’ll be home late today so I’ll wait up for you, okay?”

I’ll wait up for you, okay?

I’ll wait up.

I’ll wait.

I’ll …

The smell of charred flesh and wood filled the air. The walls of the practise room was so burned, it was impossible even to see the outline of the door. A gigantic pile of blackened debris smoked in the centre of the floor.

Abruptly, the still-hot pile moved. Plumes of ash curled up and out as the top shifted. Tiny red cherries crackled and flared as what meagre oxygen remained in the room reached them. The flames had been doused as quickly as they began, but even so the air what was left was thin and difficult to breathe. That did not stop the face that appeared from gasping it greedily.

Vinyl pushed aside what remained of her furniture. It tumbled to the floor, shattering into ashy fragments. With great effort, she pulled herself and then her cargo free and rolled down the side of the pile. It wasn’t especially tall, but she hit the floor with a jolt that elicited a cry and lay there for several moments. At no point had she let go of what she was holding.

Octavia had landed against Vinyl’s chest when they hit the floor. Her cheek appeared pillowed there, as if she had just gone to sleep – if one ignored the massive wound that had ended her life, or the fact that they were both singed from where Vinyl’s protective barrier had not quite managed to keep them safe as her firestorm burned Voron to a crisp.

His body was still in the burned pile, as twisted outside now as he had always been on the inside. Vinyl had no compulsion to dig him out. She had watched from behind her barrier as he burned. It hadn’t been enough to stake him the way old legends demanded you stake vampires. She had forced herself to the very limits of her strength to make sure he was finally, ultimately dead.

“He’s gone, Tavi,” she whispered. Her voice was scratchy and brought on a coughing fit that caused Octavia’s body to slide sideways. Vinyl caught her, dragging her back into place. She stroked Octavia’s mane, the movements jagged with exhaustion. “He’s … really gone.”

Beside them, the ash pile shifted and collapsed inwards, filling in the hole Vinyl had created and burying Voron’s body once more.

“All my life I … I dreamed of him being … b-being … I thought … I thought that if I could finally be free of him I’d feel. I’d f-feel …” She had nothing left to cry with. That didn’t stop her body trying. She bit her lip, chest too injured to tolerate the stress of sobbing as deeply as she wanted to. “It was all I ever wanted.” She circled her forelegs around Octavia, burying her face in the top of her mane. “It wasn’t worth the cost.”

And there, in the tattered remains of her life, Vinyl Scratch screamed out her endless grief.

Epilogue: Vinyl

Epilogue: Vinyl

Tiptoe lived up to her name. She liked to think she was the quietest pony who ever played hide and seek, though Bluebell from Class 2B was renowned champion of the playground. Still, she reckoned not even Bluebell could have snuck out of her tent without waking any of her tent-mates, which had to count more than just winning games of hide and seek, right?

Outside the air hummed with the sound of cicadas. Tiptoe paused to make sure nopony was awake to see her scurry across the meadow towards the toilet tent. It was one thing to need the bathroom in the middle of the night because of scary stories. It was another to be caught and called a baby for the remainder of the trip.

She used the tent and re-emerged with a sigh and a shiver. There was a nip in the air. Her mummy would have said she needed a scarf. Maybe, just this once, mummy was right. Tiptoe picked her way back towards her tent, hoping she could get back inside and snuggle into her sleeping bag before anypony realised she had been gone. Filly Scout rules said she was supposed to have woken her tent leader and be escorted to the bathroom, but that was far too humiliating a prospect.

However, when the strange pony stepped into her path, she kind of wished Charmer was by her side. Charmer was a unicorn and nothing seemed to scare her. Sometimes there is nothing more frightening than to be a tiny earth pony without no-one else around to remind you that you have no wings or magic.

She squeaked. Surely there hadn’t been anypony else there a second ago. She had checked! And this pony wasn’t a Filly Scout leader, either. Tiptoe had never seen her before in her life. She cowered down in the grass.

The pony was tall. Moonlight turned it into a genderless silhouette, but when it spoke, the voice was unmistakably female.

“Are you Tiptoe Bilberry?”

Tiptoe cowered even lower, then stopped. No, she should act more like Charmer. Nothing scared Charmer. “Wh-who wants to know?”

“Are you?”

She stuck out her bottom lip. “I can’t tell you. You’re a stranger. A-and if you don’t leave – right now – I’m going to scream and wake up everypony because strangers aren’t allowed in our campsite. We rented this field. It’s ours until next Thursday.”

“I can feel the blood-bond,” the stranger said cryptically, ignoring Tiptoe’s threat. “Yes … you’re definitely who I’ve come for.”

“Come for?” Tiptoe repeated, less certainly than before. She took a step back and opened her mouth to scream.

Before she could, hooves clamped over her mouth. She stared with wide, terrified eyes into the face of the bigger pony. How in Celestia’s name had she moved so fast?

“I’m sorry, kid. I know this isn’t your fault.”

Tiptoe tried to struggle as the mare carried her away, but she was held too tight and they moved so fast. In what seemed like only a few heartbeats, they were out of the field with barely a bump as they the mare opened the gate in the fence and left it wide.

“Then again,” the mare said in that same flat tone, “It wasn’t my fault either. It wasn’t any of our faults. This is just the way things have to be. For what it’s worth, I am sorry, kid. Tiptoe,” she corrected herself. “I’ll remember your name. I always remember the names. It’s the least I can do.”

Tiptoe tried to cry out as the pony drew her back and then hurled her into the air as easily as if she was throwing a baseball. She sailed over the edge of the quarry that neighboured the campsite. All the Filly Scouts had been told on the very first day not to leave the field and definitely not to wander too close to the edge. That was why they were supposed to leave the tents in pairs at night.

As she fell, she saw the mare poised on the edge, forelegs still outstretched. Her whole body was highlighted in the moonlight, her fur as white as Tiptoe’s own but her eyes as red as poppies.

And then Tiptoe hit the rocks at the bottom and knew no more.

Vinyl stared down at the tiny broken body. It didn’t get any easier. She turned away, the image burned into her mind. So many dead children. So many left who needed to die.

She could feel them. It was faint unless she concentrated, but she could feel them, their minds nebulous presences dotted around Equestria. She couldn’t pinpoint towns or houses unless she was much closer, but if she concentrated she could pick directions and just keep walking until their minds coalesced into something more substantial.

Voron’s last gift. Or maybe this was the same with all vampires. She was the head of this bloodline now. It made a twisted kind of sense that his ability to sense his children would pass to her, his eldest, now he was gone.

It made wiping all trace of him from the world that much easier.

She couldn’t take the risk. Every single one of the foals Voron and Vellum had made was a threat to Equestria. Every single one had the potential to become a vampire, or at the very least to pass on the vampire gene. She couldn’t allow that. Voron’s plans could not be allowed to come to fruition.

It was her only reason for carrying on now. The spellbook that she might have used to tamp down her vampirism again had burned up in the practise room two years ago. Her life in the sun had burned up with it. Not that she wanted that life if it didn’t have Octavia in it. She needed a reason to have survived. She needed everything she had suffered and lost to not have been for nothing.

And so she followed the minds she could feel. She travelled as far as she needed to and did what needed to be done. and gradually, the number of minds she could feel had grown smaller. With every life she snuffed out, the number grew smaller still. When she could feel no more at all, only then would she allow herself to rest. Only then would her life have had some meaning.

A thin band of light skimmed the horizon. Soon the Filly Scout campsite would wake. Soon they would realise Tiptoe was gone. They would look for her, find the open gate, and discover her body at the bottom of the quarry. An accident, they would say. A tragic, terrible accident that could have been prevented if only she had woken her tent leader when she got up in the night.

Vinyl was well practised in making crime scenes look like anything but what they were.

“Not yet,” she whispered to the soon-to-rise sun. She sprinted away, too fast for mortal eyes to see. “I still have work to do.”

When all her father’s offspring were gone, then … then she could rest.

“I’ll see you then, Tavi. Wait for me, love.”

Fin.

5. Trottingham

Trottingham

“Good girl.” Voron nodded in satisfaction.

Vinyl’s gorge rose. She forced it back down. “Please let her go, D-Daddy.” She tripped over the last word but managed to get the whole sentence out without pausing.

“Tell me what you did to yourself to take away your powers,” Voron repeated, voice soft as a falling feather. “And I will think about it. If you are difficult, dear heart, I will maybe pluck out her pretty eyes before she dies.”

Octavia’s breathing hitched.

“It was … a spell,” Vinyl admitted.

“What kind?”

As if he would understand the difference between a curse and a charm anyway. He had never been interested in her magic beyond how it could benefit him. As far as he was concerned, telekinesis was as much as she needed to learn, since it allowed her to hold down prey from a distance. There had always been a strange dichotomy to the way he acted: he seemed so proud of having a unicorn daughter, but at the same time made no effort to encourage her magical knowledge beyond the basics. Then again, if he had thought the combination of unicorn magic and vampirism might drive her mad, maybe that explained why he had never pushed her. She hadn’t exactly pushed herself, either; not until after she said goodbye to her old life and started anew as an ordinary pony – as Vinyl Scratch.

“You are not ordinary, Vanelda, and you never will be.”

The memory struck like an arrow through her chest. She steeled herself against it so she could speak.

“A curse.”

“You cursed yourself?”

“Yes. I did.”

Voron snorted. “Can it be uncast?”

“You can’t ‘uncast’ curses. You can undo them but it takes a lot of time and effort.”

“Do not toy with me over semantics, Vanelda. Can this spell be removed, or broken, or however you wish to phrase it? Can this curse be made to disappear from you?” His eyes narrowed. “Can your true powers be returned?”

Did he think they had been erased entirely? She supposed that was the natural assumption. If only it was that simple.

“I … I don’t know.” Maybe in the beginning, but she had cast and recast the curse so many times over the years that the loop was the magical equivalent of titanium now. She wasn’t sure she could undo it now even if she had wanted to. But maybe she could break it; break each layer until she got to the power buried beneath them all. “You can break curses but the results can be … messy. And potentially deadly.”

It wasn’t the answer Voron wanted. “Do you know how to do this?”

“Not from memory.”

His hoof twitched on Octavia’s head. A tear slid down her cheek.

“But I could find out!” Vinyl added desperately.

“How?”

“I have a spellbook.”

“Where?”

“I can get it.”

“It’s in this house?”

“Yes.”

Sort of, anyway. She had always worried about Octavia finding it during one of her many ‘tidying up’ tirades, so she had hidden it, only fetching it when she needed to recast the curse. She had heard too many stories of old curses decaying until the magic binding them went haywire and had unfortunate side effects. It was one of the many reasons Celestia had banned curses from Equestria – indeed, to the point where some thought there were no such things as curses. Vinyl had never wanted to risk hurting Octavia, so she had recast and recast upon herself until the tangle of overlaying magic was more a knot than a net holding her vampirism at bay.

“Where is the book?” Voron demanded.

“In the eaves. Under the thatch. You can’t reach it from inside. You have to climb out onto the roof and dig around for it.”

“Very clever. Hiding in plain sight.” Voron smiled. It made Vinyl’s skin crawl. “So you did retain at least some of the things I taught you.”

She had never thought of it like that. She pushed the idea away, focussing instead on the current moment.

“Vellum will escort you to fetch it. Do not tarry. Do not dawdle. Do not play any stupid games. Remember, Vanelda my dearest.” Octavia gasped as he pulled her backwards, nuzzling the side of her face like a lover. “If you choose to play games, I have the winning card.”

For a fleeting moment Vinyl met Octavia’s eyes. She tried to pour every ounce of regret and apology she had into that brief look. She wanted to speak, to say something important and meaningful like ponies did in movies when they weren’t sure they would see each other alive again. Instead, she felt Vellum shove her in the back.

“Move it or lose it, big sis!”

Then she and her sister were moving through the door and up the narrow staircase to the ground floor of the house. Vinyl heard Voron start to say something, but Vellum closed the door behind them, sealing Octavia away with that monster. Just the two of them. Alone.

Vinyl quickened her pace.

Vanelda quickened her pace as she slipped through the crowd of late night shoppers, hurrying away from the restaurant window.

The city of Trottingham was a rotten place. It was boring and bland and beige. Even the ponies there were all dull. They talked about humdrum things like the weather, or house prices, or the rate of inflation, or how police-stallions were getting so much younger nowadays. If there were foals, they were neither seen nor heard. There were no playgrounds, no skateparks, nothing to indicate any kind of younger generation other than a couple of schools surrounded by brick walls. Each day, it seemed the most exciting thing one could hope to happen was an extra scone at afternoon teatime.

Vanelda would have loved to be bored there. She would have adored the opportunity to have so little to do that her mind could get antsy. Instead, she spent her days sleeping and her nights collecting blood for Daddy.

Or at least, that was how she was supposed to spend her days and nights. In reality, she spent her days sleepless and her nights restless. She was a skilled hunter. She didn’t waste time on chances that would come to nothing, the way Vellum did. Almost a decade of practise and still Vellum made mistakes that cost her more prey than it should. She waited too long or not long enough; she missed her mark or opportunities Vanelda had been capitalising on at her age. Usually Vanelda caught up with those ponies her sister had lost and subdued them before anything untoward could come of her failures, but lately Vellum had insisted on hunting alone, determined to please their father with her own collecting. Thus Vanelda found herself walking alone instead of shadowing her sister.

Five nights after they arrived, the third since Vellum started going off alone, Vanelda was stopped in her tracks by the sight of Daddy through a restaurant window. He sat across from a pretty mare the colour of old paper, whose brown mane had been neatly tied back into a bun. She was a consummate Trottingham pony: dull colours, dull dress sense and dull demeanour. She nodded politely at Daddy as he spoke. When she talked, her mouth barely moved and her eyes were often downcast, flicking up now and then to check his reaction. Voron smiled beatifically at her. Vanelda knew that this was exactly the kind of mare he liked. He was drawn to beautiful ponies, but those who were demure and showed him the proper amount of respect were his favourites.

Vanelda backed away. She couldn’t let Daddy see her. He would think she had been invading his privacy on purpose, even though it was pure accident. She backed into a trash can, panic spiking inside her at the noise. Daddy raised his head, even though he could not possibly have heard anything from within the hubbub of the restaurant. He turned his face towards the window.

Something pinged in her head. Vanelda realised he was feeling for his children’s minds.

She turned and ran, not caring where she went. She needed to put distance between them. Daddy hated to be interrupted when he was courting. The most important thing in the world was his next generation. She and Vellum knew this as clearly as they knew their own names.

Her hooves ate up the ground. There were a fair few ponies around. Winter was approaching and evenings darkened earlier and earlier at this time of year. Already store window glittered with Hearth’s Warming Eve displays. An aged couple cried out as she ran past them, knocking the stallion’s hat off. A mare drawing a cart yelled when Vanelda darted across the street in front of her. Cats scattered when she turned down an alleyway and vaulted a garbage area behind a coffeehouse, scaling the wire fence and galloping again on the other side.

“Well I never!

“How rude!”

“Watch out there!”

“Show some manners!”

The heavily accented shouts followed her as she weaved in and out of the built-up area. This wasn’t working. Her instincts told her to find a place to hide, away from prying eyes. Her heart thudded and her head pounded as fast as her hooves. She almost wished the silly stories that ponies told each other about her kind were true: things would be so much easier if she didn’t need to breathe or eat or suffer any of the weaknesses she did.

A coppice of neatly pruned trees loomed ahead. She darted off the pavement and into them, emerging on the other side in a garden with a perfectly flat lawn. Crossing that quickly, she dashed onto a stone walkway that opened out into a large unpopulated courtyard. Only then did she pause to take in her surroundings properly.

Unlike the shopping area she had just left, here there seemed nopony else around. The light cast by a single bulb above the door was minimal, but Vanelda’s eyes drank it in and saw everything as clearly as midday. A large statue of a rearing pony stood in the middle of the courtyard, bordered on all sides by benches and pretty trash receptacles. The same symbol was emblazoned everywhere: the rearing pony encircled by stars, moons, suns and scrolls. Below was the relief: Trottingham University.

She had stumbled right into the university grounds without realising it. Trottingham University was renowned across Equestria for its high-class education. Ponies from all over almost fought each other to gain entry. Well, earth ponies did, anyhow. There were a few unicorns and pegasi who also came here, but most of those aimed for Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, or Cloudsdale College, so places on courses in magic and flight-based careers did not fill up as quickly as those for earth ponies. The unwinged and non-magical of Equestria vied for the acclaim of a degree from Trottingham University and woe betide any who did not pull their weight once they got here. The culture of ‘all work and no play makes a Trottingham U student’ was not just vernacular – as evidenced by the lack of anypony wandering around enjoying their evening.

She had only seen the university from a distance before. Turning, she looked up at the vaunted buildings that made up the central campus. They ranged from squat square boxes to actual towers, complete with spires and weathervanes. Most of them were dark inside. She trotted carefully alongside them, peering inside curiously. This one held tables and science equipment. This one was a small seminar room with chairs around a chalkboard bearing mathematical equations. This one was filled with books. It held her attention for a few minutes. Some offshoot of a library maybe? Or a lecturer’s office? The next one held a disparate collection of things she didn’t recognise, having no knowledge of theatre, costumes or props. In truth, Vanelda could only read and write because of lessons from her long-dead mother, and her learning was far removed from any books that might find their home in a university like this.

She once stole a set of saddlebags from a house Daddy had claimed when Vellum was still tiny. They had stayed in Canterlot for a short time, and the owners of the house had been on vacation. On the day Daddy said they were to leave, Vanelda remembered stuffing both saddlebags with books that jabbed into her sides as she walked. The bedroom she had been staying in clearly belonged to another filly whose heart and soul lived through page and ink. She had textbooks all about spell-casting and how to use one’s horn correctly. Most of the books Vanelda had taken were beginner magic books to help refine her telekinesis – simply worded things meant for foals a fraction of her age. One, however, had been grabbed from a shelf filled with storybooks.

The Trottingham University emblem looked rather like the cover of that book. What had been the name of the character? Tearing Through? Blaring Clue? Something like that. She had thought to read it to her new sister, but Vellum was more interested in chewing it than listening to it. Vanelda had persevered, reading it aloud of an evening and to herself while daylight reigned outside wherever Daddy had chosen to rest that day. She had almost finished the storybook when Daddy returned to their lair in a foul temper and showered her with torn pages before tossing the cover into a tree. It had snagged there, dangling morosely, and still been there when she left on the following night.

To this day, she still didn’t know how the story ended. She hoped the explorer main character had successfully beaten the villain and saved the day, but knew this was by no means a certainty. The day could not always be saved, after all, and sometimes instead of defeating the villain, you had to settle for appeasing him so you could live a little longer.

She was struck by the unfairness of this place. The ponies here had bright futures ahead of them. They were forging their own paths. What path lay before her? More of the same that lay behind her. Or worse. She shuddered to think what Daddy planned to do if he could actually create more foals and raised them to maturity.

There had been a few others after Vellum. They hadn’t lasted long. Twice, Vanelda had looked into cribs and found tiny bodies that had just stopped moving for no reason other than they couldn’t cope with being turned so early. One adolescent pegasus had arrived wild-eyed, staring around himself and asking for his mother like a colt half his age. Vellum hated him on sight and only smiled again when he was found hanging from a tree a few nights later, wings drooping uselessly. None of them had been successes. Each time, Daddy had grown cold and angry for a few days, and soon after they had moved on so he could go courting again.

Courting was important. That was an ingrained truth. When Daddy was courting, neither Vanelda nor Vellum were to bother him. Unbidden, newspaper articles about Lady Philharmonica’s murder glimmered through Vanelda’s mind. Her steps quickened, though she was now far away from the restaurant and the doomed paper-pale mare with the shy eyes.

Vanelda’s ears flicked forward. Voices? Her hoof-falls became soft. She pressed herself into the shadows and adopted the slinking pace of something hiding in plain sight. The voices grew louder as she reached the end of the building, but something else came with them. It was a low, vibrating sound, muffled as if coming from inside. As she grew nearer, higher sounds joined it, resolving themselves into a tune.

Music. She could hear music.

She liked music. She didn’t get to hear much of it, but what she had experienced, she had enjoyed. She paused, trying to locate the source of this tune. Was it a radio? No, it was a single instrument she didn’t recognise. Her ears swivelled this way and that, pulling her attention to a rectangular building labelled ‘Music Block’. One of the windows on the second floor was open. That was where the music was coming from.

As if the player had heard her, the music stopped. Vanelda, already straining to hear, picked up a few choice curse words. Whoever it was had made a mistake and was chastising their own playing with high vigour.

“Blast it all! It’s not rocket science! I should be able to do this by now! Argh!”

The music started again from the beginning. Vanelda listened, tilting her head to one side. Some sort of string thing. Very deep. She wished she knew the names of more instruments. It had never been important enough to learn about –

“Hey, wait up!”

She froze. Had she been spotted?

“Dash it all, Walnut! You know I can’t keep up with you on this!”

No, the voice wasn’t calling for her. However, its owner was getting closer. Instinctively, she swarmed up one of the large oak trees lining the path and hid herself in its branches. The leaves barely moved at her passing. Peering through them, she watched as a brown unicorn stallion trotted into view. He paused, turning to wait for an equally pale yellow unicorn whose insipid mane made him look like a glass of lemonade in need of more juice.

“Come along, Bass Note,” said the brown pony; Walnut, presumably.

“Please excuse me for having a broken leg!” the yellow one replied, gesturing to a calliper he was leaning heavily upon. One front leg was swathed in a plaster cast.

Vanelda found herself assessing how slowly he could get away if she jumped him. She shook the thought off. If he were alone she might risk it, but not with his friend right there and an unnamed number of ponies still making music nearby.

“This makes it dashedly difficult to get around.”

“I’m carrying your books,” Walnut pointed out.

“Ponies invented saddlebags for a reason. Though why they invented gravel paths, I’ll never know. It’s dashedly difficult to use a crutch when it keeps slipping out from under you.” Bass Note jabbed the ground with the calliper’s rubber tip for emphasis.

Walnut rolled his eyes. “We are going to be late. You know how Professor Orchid gets. I don’t want to have to stand on the stage again while she tells me off and everypony laughs just because you can’t hold your drink.”

“I was not drunk!”

“Come off it. You tried to levitate yourself. Off a balcony! After twenty-one shots!”

“It was my twenty-first birthday! Everyone gets twenty-one shots on their twenty-first birthday!”

“Not everyone tries to fly!”

“Well somepony has to put those cheeky pegasi in their place.”

“Ugh! Just come on or I’m leaving you.”

Bass Note grumbled to himself as they walked. “Stupid evening classes. Whose idea was it to keep us here this late anyhow?”

“Oh do stop whining,” Walnut said tersely.

“I have a lot to whine about. I can’t play my cello like this, I’m going to lose my seat in the orchestra to that ugly upstart who wouldn’t know a bow from a stick off the ground, and to top it all off, I’m losing my evenings to bloody magic catch-up classes! Why should I have to stay here so late just because Professor ‘I’m So Clever’ Orchid makes our midterms so tough that nopony could possibly pass them?”

“You can really go off some ponies, you know.” Walnut’s voice faded as they made their way along the path away from Vanelda’s tree. “Even friends.”

She watched them go, her insides clutching suddenly. Bass Note’s leg would make him easy prey if she could catch him alone. If he continued complaining so much, it was entirely possible Walnut would abandon him, too. She scuttled down the tree, making sure nopony could see her, and trailed after them.

They stayed together until they reached a tall building with lots of steps out front. Bass Note groaned, whined, moaned and complained up every single one, but Walnut waited patiently at the top. Vanelda watched, eyeing the building warily. The front entrance was too open. If she was recognised as not being a student here, she would be too exposed to escape. Bass Note would have been wonderful prey, but she should abandon this hunt. She should. It made sense.

She didn’t want to.

They had gone to magic catch up class. She didn’t know quite what that meant, but she realised with the kind of jolt that came only a few times in every lifetime that she had been fooling herself. Bass Note had not been the only draw here.

A hint of an idea germinated in her mind. She tried to shake it away. No, it was stupid. She was supposed to be collecting blood for Daddy. Yet … couldn’t she do both? Maybe there would be somepony else suitable at this class. Or maybe Bass Note would work out after all. And maybe she could pick up a few tips about her own magic while she was there.

Maybe.

Maybe …

The restroom window would have been a squeeze for a normal pony but she slipped catlike through it. She had long since learned that if you emerged from a public bathroom, ponies assumed you were meant to be in the building. It was always easy to locate restrooms by scent, too.

The building wasn’t huge inside. She spotted a sign bearing an arrow and the legend ‘Theatre’ and guessed from the number of ponies streaming that way that this was a good bet. Even better, she could hear Bass Note’s voice echoing from somewhere ahead. She merged into the crowd, trotting along as if she had every right to be among all the shifting, warm, juicy bodies –

No, she couldn’t think like that!

Her belly growled. She resisted the urge to punch it.

“Didn’t have time for dinner, huh?”

She whirled to find a washed out pink mare walking behind her. The urge to bolt rose and fell like a swelling wave as the mare’s smile curved her square muzzle and she jogged up alongside. She was a plain creature but the smile made her masculine features almost pretty. The mare’s horn glowed and she extracted an energy bar from her saddlebag, moving aside a huge red braid to reach the clasp.

“Me either. Here. Have some of this. You won’t be able to concentrate on one of Orchid’s classes if your blood sugar is low.”

Vanelda saw her gaze flick over her own back bag and realised too late that she was the only one in the crowd not wearing saddlebags.

“Boy, you must have rushed out of the dorm in a real hurry if you forgot to eat and you forget your books!” The flap of the pink mare’s saddlebag opened again and a notepad and pen floated out. “It’s a good thing I always carry spares. Here. I forgot mine the first time I took this class and Orchid ripped me a new one.”

Vanelda was floored by the unexpected generosity. Her steps actually faltered, causing the pony behind her to knock into her.

“Hey! Watch it!”

“Sorry!” She hurried ahead, her own horn igniting in a meagre glow to accept the gifts. “Th-thank you. I don’t know … what to say.”

“You’re welcome and it’s fine. We’ve all napped in the afternoon before.” The pink mare winked. “I’m Scarlet Harmony.” Her eyes traced the line of Vanelda’s bare spine to rest on her flank. “Oh!” she said, clearly before she could stop herself if her subsequent contrition was any indication. “Sorry. I try to guess names from cutie marks but…”

But Vanelda had none. Her cheeks flamed. Somehow being a blank flank had never made it onto her list of concerns before. Right now, however, with the eyes of this pretty mare fixed upon the empty space, self-consciousness slid through her. Her dark tail twitched as if to cover it.

“It’s fine!” Scarlet Harmony said a little too quickly. “I’m sorry! Oh gosh! I’m s-”

“No,” Vanelda interrupted. “The fault is mine.”

“It’s nopony’s fault if they … uh …”

She shook her head. “We … will be late,” she said at last.

“Yes. Uh. Yeah.” It was difficult to tell whether Scarlet Harmony was blushing too, though she tone indicated she was.

Vanelda allowed herself to be swept into a huge room filled with descending rows of seats set in a semi-circle. It reminded her of an actual theatre, especially since a raised dais sat at the bottom. On it stood a tiny white mare with a severe bun on the back of her head. Every wisp of mane had been plied into it, until even her ears seemed pulled taut. Her expression didn’t seem much more forgiving. Though she would wager nopony else could read it from across the room, Vanelda saw her nametag bore the words ‘Professor Orchid’.

Everyone settled into the rows. There appeared to be no assigned order. The mares and stallions edged from seat to seat, whispering to friends, giggling together and eying their professor from behind raised notepads. Every single pony here was a unicorn. When Vanelda slid into a seat, put down her borrow pen and pad, no-one raised a complaint. She spotted Bass Note and Walnut a few rows forward but her attention snapped beyond them when a sharp crack sounded from the front. As one, everpony fell silent.

“Well now. Another midterm goes on by an’ another evenin’ class fills up. Anypony’d think I was askin’ too much of y’all or sumthin.”

Professor Orchid, in a contrast of expectations, had a broad southern drawl that reminded Vanelda of a single summer when she got to taste molasses and watch a huge family of farmponies till soil and plant saplings all day in the burning sun. Their work ethic had been hypnotic and she had watched, spellbound, from the shade of a nearby forest, until a pretty green filly wandered too far past the treeline and got chased by timber wolves. Vanelda had ripped the wolves apart when it looked like they would follow the filly out of the forest, but the damage was done. Every one of the earth ponies stayed away from the forest after that and she eventually moved on as she always did.

Another sharp crack brought her back to the present. Professor Orchid levitated a bamboo cane and struck the chalkboard next to her one more time for emphasis.

“Let’s get one thing straight here, fillies an’ gentlecolts: just ‘cause y’all made it into this here university don’t mean diddly squat now. You wanna rest on your laurels? Fine. But y’all can rest on ‘em on the other side of them there front gates. I ain’t got a lick of time for anypony arrogant enough to think that half measures are good enough in my classes. If you think you can socialise five out of every seven night of the week an’ still get a passin’ grade, Mister Malachite, then you are sorely mistaken.”

Titters broke out a row above Vanelda. She turned to see a grey unicorn sinking lower into his seat.

“If you think you’ll be able to pass one of my exams with minimal studyin’ because you were busy practisin’ your musical instrument, then I’d suggest you change your major, Mister Bass Note.”

“That’s not fair -” Unlike the grey stallion, Bass Note tried to speak up, but Professor Orchid cut him off.

“Life ain’t fair, Mister Bass Note. Better get used to it. An’ finally, if you think I have any patience for absence from my classes without the strongest of excuses – and a cider hangover AIN’T one of ‘em – then you might wanna think about settin’ your alarm earlier in the mornin’ an’ actually livin’ up to your lofty claims of bein’ the first of your vaunted farmer family to take magic classes instead of bein’ the first to fail ‘em, Miss Crab Apple.”

The spine of a bright green unicorn at the very front became ramrod.

“These are just some of the reasons I see so many faces before me. Quite frankly, you all have your reasons for wastin’ class time, but let’s be frank here: this is your chance to redeem yourselves. If’n you slip, slack off, shirk this class or otherwise shilly-shally an’ waste my time, you will live to regret it.” Professor Orchid’s horn sparked slightly. “Am I makin’ myself clear?”

A chorus of defeated assent went up from the students.

Professor Orchid nodded briskly and turned to the board she had set up behind her. “Right then, Hermann von Hoofholtz’s Law of the Conservation of Thaumaturgical Energy states that magical energy can be neither created nor be destroyed, only transformed from one form to another …”

Vanelda listened, enrapt, as the lecture unfolded. It was several minutes of open-mouthed wonder before she remember about the pen and notepaper Scarlet Harmony had given her. She began hastily scrawling down as much as she could, enthralled by the lilt of Professor Orchid’s voice as she explained several theories that underpinned the very fabric of magic itself. Around her, other students also made notes, but none of them tried to transcribe every word out of their teacher’s mouth. Vanelda, unused to such a lesson, was shocked when Professor Orchid set down her chalk.

“That’ll be all for this evenin’. For homework – an’ yes, though this may be college, I do indeed call it homework – y’all are to read chapters one through three of Internal to External Magical Transfer by Ludwig A. Colting, payin’ extra attention to the section on various applications of internal energy to create a physical effect in the exterior world. There will be a test on these chapters next session, which is on Thursday.”

Like some great amorphous animal, the rows of students broke apart and began to scatter. Vanelda remained where she was, suddenly stricken. A textbook? Her heart thrilled a little at the idea that there would be another of these lessons in only two days’ time, but a textbook? A test? She didn’t have the first and so would fail the second, thereby revealing herself as not an actual student at the university. Even if her vampire nature remained hidden, she would not be permitted to come to any more lessons.

And she wanted to come to more lessons. This one has sparked something inside her: a desire to learn and apply that learning to her own magic. She wanted to rush out and do something other than the crude telekinesis she had always settled for in the past. She wanted to try out what she had learned. She wanted to come back on Thursday and learn more. For the first time ever, Vanelda felt like a proper unicorn, not a freakish blood-sucking facsimile.

But the textbook …

She must have spent longer pondering the problem than she realised, for the sound of Bass Note’s voice only metres away brought her to her senses.

“There she is. Just look at the smug nag. Dash it all, I can hardly stand it!”

“Hold fast, Bass,” Walnut advised. They were a few rows away but Vanelda picked out their muttered words easily. “She’s not worth it.”

“She’s not worth anything. Filthy little guttersnipe,” Bass Note growled. “Thinks she’s so wonderful just because her family has a title. No bloody money to go with it, mind you, but you wouldn’t think it with the way she acts; all high and mighty and –”

“Bass,” Walnut warned.

“I’m not going to hit her with my crutch, old bean, don’t worry.”

Their gazes were fixed behind Vanelda, on the door by which they had entered. She half-turned in her seat to see nothing more than a rather plain grey mare descending the staircase. The mare was unremarkable in every sense of the word, save for the huge, black, oddly shaped case strapped to her back.

She paused when she reached the two stallions. “Excuse me.” Her voice held the same accent as Bass Note, though where his dripped with disdain, hers seemed crystallised with icy politeness. “If you’d be so kind as to step aside; I need to get to rehearsal.”

“You can rehearse all you want,” Bass Note sniped. “You’ll never amount to anything.”

“We shall see. Excuse me please.”

“That’s my chair, you know. Not yours.”

“I don’t see your name on it,” the mare said mildly. “I always thought First Chair went to the most talented musician of each instrument in the orchestra.”

“I’ve been First Chair since my first week at Trottingham University!”

“Yes, I know. And yet you’re not now.” She smiled. It was a tiny smile, barely more than a vague curve of the lips, but something about it made Vanelda’s breath catch. It should have been a cruel smile. The words suggested cruelty, but the smile … the smile was almost … playful. “You’re not even in the orchestra anymore. It was my understanding that the reason you were banned was because you insulted the conductor and stormed off the stage in a huff when he told you he was making me First Chair from next semester. If you hadn’t had yet another tantrum, maybe you could have retained your seat a while longer. He may even have given it back to you after your leg healed. I guess we’ll never know now.”

Bass Note’s eyes narrowed. “You smug little –”

“Leave it, Bass!” Walnut hauled him back.

“Let go of me! I’ll wipe that smile off her –”

“Is there a problem here?” Professor Orchid’s voice cut through the atmosphere like lemon juice through milk. She was standing three steps down from them, her expression cool but her eyes burning.

“No, Professor. No problem.” Walnut hurriedly shoved Bass Note up the remainder of the staircase ahead of him. “We were just leaving.”

“Glad to hear it. Orchestra practise don’t need no commentary from the peanut gallery, I reckon.” Her gaze landed on Vanelda, who froze guiltily. For a moment it seemed as though the older unicorn might be about to say something. Her gaze travelled down to the copious scrawled pages. They were covered in stains and ink smears. She raised an eyebrow, but moved off, passing by like Vanelda had every right to be there.

The grey mare turned to look at Vanelda too. “You’re staying?”

Vanelda’s jaw flapped. She had not been expecting the question. “Ah, uh, um … can I stay to neaten up my notes so I can read them later?”

“Of course. Anypony can come to listen to orchestra rehearsals, as long as they’re quiet.”

“Uh, thank you.”

“Not my decision. University policy.”

The grey mare tossed back the braids that had fallen over her shoulders. Her movements were as functional and simple as her hairstyle, yet Vanelda found herself watching as the other pony descend the stairs. The grey mare joined a group of other ponies arranging folding chairs and tuning up instruments they had extracted from more odd shaped black cases.

Shaking her head to clear it, Vanelda returned to her notepad. She tore off the pages she had written and began laboriously copying them out in a calligraphic style her mother had taught her many, many decades ago. How many had it been now? She paused, trying to count. At least nine. Maybe even ten. It was hard to keep track. She used to try but eventually gave up. Each year just brought more of the same, so why bother charting the passage of time?

Several sharp taps caught her attention. A mussed pony in a very obvious wig was standing in front of the group on stage. He tapped a funny little stick against his music stand a few more times, raised it, and then waggled it around. The ponies began to play a slow, sombre tune. It began simply, but as more and more instruments joined, the melody became more complex, the tempo increased, and the ponies playing were clearly exerting themselves to keep up.

Vanelda was overcome. Her pencil drooped in her hoof. Her lips parted. She had never before heard anything so haunting and yet stirring. This wasn’t music the way she understood it. This was a story made from sounds: loss and pain followed by resolve and, as the orchestra came to an exultant, crashing crescendo, finally triumph over adversity. She realised only when it was over that her free hoof was gripping the desk so tightly that the wood was beginning to creak.

Reality swamped her like a bucket of icy water. She leapt up, scattering her notes. Hastily she gathered them, taking no care with how they crumpled in her grasp. From the corner of her eye she saw the conductor turn and scowl at the commotion. She snatched the last sheet from the air and ran for the exit, hastening on her hind legs as she clutched her papers to her chest. Only when she had retraced her earlier steps and was ensconced in a bathroom stall did she pause to catch her breath.

What in the world was that? She couldn’t explain her own reactions. She had already been struggling with her own behaviour tonight, but this was the cherry on an extremely disconcerting cake. What had she been thinking? She was ridiculous – utterly ridiculous! Wasting time in a magic class? Then frittering away what remained of the night listening to mortal ponies play wood and metal noise-makers?

“I’m so stupid,” she told herself in a fierce whisper. “A complete idiot.”

Yet try as she might, she could not stop the haunting melody of the orchestra’s music from circling in her head. It wormed its way into the nooks and crannies of her mind, weaving around Professor Orchid’s words until the music and the magic class sounded out together in her memory: a stupid, idiotic, wonderful commotion.

Vanelda sated her hunt with a pair of drunken ponies staggering back to their dorm from a party. The alcohol in their blood tasted foul, but she knocked their heads together when one paused to be sick, slaked her thirst from him and took blood from the other for Voron. Both ponies were alive when she left and would, she hoped, put their unconsciousness down to drinking.

Voron was in a fine mood when he finally returned. He barely said a word as he took his share of her hunt from first one daughter and then the other. Vellum told her sister and father in great detail how she had found an elderly mare in a care home, sitting by her window, and drained her so carefully while she slept that she did not wake even when fangs pierced her femoral artery. Old ponies died in their beds all the time and were often prone to anaemia.

“An excellent piece of hunting, my sweet one,” Voron told her absently before retiring to bed.

Vellum’s reactions were as though he had praised her for hours, and she bore her own huge grin to bed as well.

Vanelda’s own thoughts were occupied with book shops and city maps. The next night, she set out to hunt a different sort of prey, and when Thursday night rolled around, she slipped once more onto the university campus.