Denouement

SIX

A few weeks passed and Shade had kept herself out of the news. She was looking into any tidbit of information she could get her hands on. Spending consecutive nights pouring over old newspaper clippings or obscure online articles hadn't lead her anywhere.

Although Shade's work was dull for now, Aurelia's life had taken a turn for the interesting. She hadn't really spoken or made up with Rachel, it didn't bother her. Instead Holden had been joining her and her friends. She was also on good terms with Soren and considered him a friend now.

Even if she couldn't tell him in full detail what her experiments were going to lead to, it was still nice to have somewhat of a confident in that sense.

She almost, almost felt normal.

One afternoon, after Soren had left, she was perusing online articles when an odd obituary caught her attention.

It was a Jane Doe who had died under mysterious circumstances. She had bite marks on her wrists and ankles, but seemed to have the literal life drained out of her. Reports claimed that the victim's skin was translucent, and hollow. The coroner said that her skin was watery and like paper to the touch.

Thankfully, there weren't pictures. Not that Aurelia couldn't handle it, but for the sake of the girl.

Aurelia shivered, toes curling in her thick socks.

She had only heard one story about someone who had the power to drain the life of people. It was an old French folk story her nanny had told her growing up.

It was the story of a beast who had been born of fear and chaos. An unnatural abomination, reared in spite.

In the time of the sun king a noble from a foreign court had arrived, he called himself Saint Germain. He was wickedly handsome and made all the Gentry swoon with his unearthly charm. The sun king valued him as a courtier, but the queen had a wandering eye. She and Germain had begun a secret courtship. The mortal wife of a divine being had taken to bedding a terrible beast, who ached for the darkness like a child for their mother.

What no one knew about Germain was that he was a strigoi morte. An ancient race of cruel creatures who wore human skins. Their origins were unknown but the folklore surrounding them was at best, murky, with no definitive sightings.

The queen who was on a tonic to increase her chances of creating an heir for her husband, became pregnant with Germain's child. She would pass this child off as the King's. But little did they know their precious heir would be the devil.

As the day of reckoning came, Germain fled to his one true home; the catacombs of Paris. The darkness there was livable for him and he thrived in it. Everyday, the executioners would bring down still beating bodies that Germain would feast upon.

As his strength grew, his offspring grew too. The queen knew in her heart, that this was an unnatural child. She blamed Germain for the defective spawn. For one thing, the child had such dark eyes that anyone who starred too long would lose themselves for a moment.

It came to a head one day, when the child, a young girl who the King and Queen had named Oriane meaning light in french, had found a knife in the kitchens and butchered her cat, Celine. When they heard the distressing cries of servants who discovered the princess sitting in a pool of the cat's blood, they decided immediately to send her away. To a place where she couldn't hurt anyone or herself.

They locked her underground in the cellar with just enough to keep her alive. But, she was a crafty bastard child, and had torn her nails to shreds digging under her pallet to the catacombs where she felt inexplicably called. After being locked up by her parents for nearly two years, she found herself in the catacombs, surrounded by dead bodies, she felt at peace.

For her true father was here.

Germain found his daughter, and began teaching her the ways of her ancestors; drinking blood, shape shifting, and slipping into the shadows whenever she pleased. As she was only half strigoi morte, she had more control of her instincts, but those could be just as feral as Germain's when she chose.

She outlived her father, and was still in her prime. But she still yearned for acceptance by someone or a family, as she had been cast out of her own. She was bitter at Germain for choosing to give up his immortal essence in giving it to her. So she began draining mortals any chance she could get and turned them into her own sort of twisted family. After nearly 300 years, she became Oraine matriarche de la pègre of an underground world.

Where true beasts thrived and became the things of nightmares. Oriane raised murderers and thieves and drug lords. All of whom would live over the age of 100 still keep their youth.

It was whispered in the darkest parts of Paris that Oriane still rules her family, and all the murders and crimes that happen today were her doing. Always pulling the right strings. And if children misbehave, they would be whisked away in the night to become part of Oriane's shadow family. That part had terrified Aurelia.

But she couldn't help but feel there was a small grain of truth to the story. Perhaps not as dark as her nanny had told it, but the ability to drain the literal essence of someone seemed plausible at this point. It wouldn't be the craziest thing to happen as of yet.