Of Mother's and Children
This article is a part of Spooktober 2024 and is still a work in progress. Written for the Deafening prompt."He's unstable, Mother" Malloy hissed as he approached Ebio where she stood at the back of the ship that was taking them to their current home in England. Her silence in response was deafening, which meant that she knew and she was going to ignore it. Angry, he went on, "He varies wildly between moods, often speaks of things that he can't quite remember, and he is vicious." Ebio scoffed and leaned into the wooden railing at the stern of the ship, her skirts brushing softly against the worn wood of the deck. Turning her head to look at him, she said with some mild amusement, "I am well aware of your penchant for destruction and blood, my son, so I should think that you would have some appreciation for his manners." Malloy let out a huff of annoyance and stepped forward to stand next to her, his hands tightly gripping the railing until the heard the wood creak and groan as he stared out at the sea. He felt her dark eyes focused on him as he released it before it would break under his strength and felt like prey before her. By all the once gods of his people, he had not felt like prey since he had been a child hunting in the jungles. Not even the Spanish cowards who had led to his people's destruction had made him feel like that. The slight Egyptian woman next to him with her fathoms deep black eyes, however? Who had saved him from dying in the streets of Tenochtitlan by giving him her blood? She who had allowed him his vengeance against the Spaniards? Malloy feared Ebio, beloved daughter of the Elder Issuru, who even hunters only dared whisper the name of. He knew, however, to never show fear to a predator, so his voice was steady as he stated, "I can temper my own lusts, Mother. He just doesn't stop until you hold him down." "Then we teach him." "Mother." Malloy had to get through to her. Had to make her see that the boy child she had been promised by saving Marie Smith years before was not worth the trouble. That he would end up killing all of them. At a speed faster than the mortal eye would have been able to see, Ebio turned and her hand found his throat. Malloy choked as her thumb dug viciously into the soft skin underneath his chin and scented blood as her nail cut into him. Her other fingers dug deep into the side of his throat and he felt the muscle and organs underneath buckle beneath the full pressure of vampiric strength. Grunting, he closed his eyes to ride out the pain and tried very hard not to be afraid that he was going to die at her hands. As quickly as the pressure was there, it was gone and he coughed violently while muscles reformed back to where they were supposed to be. Ebio wiped the streak of blood off of his chin with a finger and licked it off of the digit as Malloy reopened his eyes, her own never straying from him. "He is mine," she stated quietly, her tone firm and unquestionable. In it, Malloy could hear the echoes of an Egypt long gone and he knew he had overstepped his bounds with her. Ebio had purged herself of any echo of her former accent, replacing it with a crisp uppercrust English accent. When she sounded like her homeland, there was blood in the water. "As you are mine, Itztli. By the promise his fool mother gave me when I could have killed the girl child. I took foolish pity upon a hunter who stalked our kind and she attempted to run from me. To take that which I had been sworn an oath in blood to." Ebio then shrugged slightly and turned away, allowing some of the tension in his back and shoulders to finally flow out of Malloy. "I can at least respect a need to protect her children," she said quietly. "I feel the same towards all of you." Then the wooden railing crunched and broke underneath her delicate looking hands and she carelessly tossed the peice off the edge of the ship into the sea. "Poor little Marie," she tutted with a shake of her head. "If she had never spread her legs for her Irishman, she would have never had a firstborn for me to take. And then she died, poor fool, at the hands of Cael Ward for them as well." Ebio turned to look at him, eyes dark and fathomless. "He is mine, my son, and I do not abandon that which is mine. Not even when it has it's teeth against my throat." Malloy stared down at her for a long moment before nodding and hoarsely replying, "Yes, Mother. Then I...I will do my best to teach him." He didn't bother to note her earlier use of his birth name and not the one he had taken upon their settling in England a century before. She had the right out of anyone to use it. "Temper his bloodlust as you can and point him in the direction we need him to go," she hissed. "Fill in the blank slate that he has become with something new. You will make him into whatever we choose for him to be." Nodding in confirmation, he then asked the question he dreaded. "And if he ever remembers what we took from him?" Malloy thought of the younger brother that they knew they had left behind, the one that his own lovely Xiang had stared at so hungrily. Of the red-haired woman that his new brother had been with, the one that he himself had dragged away into the darkness and killed. A look of sadness crossed Ebio's face and she turned away from him, back out to sea. Malloy stared at her, the silence between them once again deafening as she gave him nothing. Then she shrugged and replied quietly, "If he remembers what I have done, I will allow him his rage. If it will save him in the end, I will give him anything...as I would to you or your sister. Such is what a mother does for her children." Malloy just looked at her for a long moment and nodded, murmuring, "Of course, Mother." Ebio nodded to him and then she was gone, leaving no sign that she had been there at all except for the broken railing. Even her skirts and bare feet had made no sound across the deck of the ship and he didn't even try to track her with his heightened senses. He already knew that he wouldn't be able to. His hands clenched into fists as he looked back out at the dark, roiling sea, and hissed, "I will temper him, Mother, but I will not let him destroy you. I can't."
Timeframe: 1663
Location: On the sea between Ireland and England
Event: Malloy confronts his sire, Ebio, about the nature of his new bloodbrother, Darragh Ó Conaill.
Consquences: Ebio reinforces her position of defending her violent, bloodthirsty third child and Malloy makes a decision about his brother.
The favorite of the Elder Issuru's children, it is known that she was born in Egypt and that she and her sister, Abana, were turned at the same time. In her life, she has garnered a brutal reputation that makes hunters usually whisper her name and has sired three children, loving them as if they were her own by birth.
Once a proud warrior amongst his people, Itztli was dying in the streets of Tenochtitlan when Ebio came upon him. There he became her second child and intensely loyal to her when she helped him slaughter the Spaniards that had ruined his people. For centuries, he and his child Yen Xiang Jun remained at his sire's side until she told them to go live their lives.
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