4. 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.”