“Amaranth.” Three syllables as big and unfathomable as the sky. As old as sin. The night was waning and dawn would soon come. A woman sat in an anonymous hotel bed as a man made preparations.
“Yes, yes. You're a bright one.” The man looked young with sharp features and sunken gray-green eyes. “What did you know?” He was fussing with the curtains and clicked his tongue each time he readjusted them.
She didn't answer. She was staring at the wall.
The man was on her in an instant. His knee sank into the mattress next to her and his form was imposing. His eyes locked with hers; his Voice filled her senses. “What. Did. You. Know.”
“I...know what you told me. I learned it now, when you told me.”
Once he got his answer the man disengaged with a “Feh.” A single bloody tear fell down the curve of Clara's cheek as she watched him pace.
“Shouldn't we go to the Prince? The Sheriff?”
The man paused mid stride and looked at her. “Wait. Waitwaitwait. What do you think happens to you when they see you?”
Clara shrugged as she shook her head. They wouldn't hold her for his crimes.
“Look at yourself. You don't see?”
Clara blinked. “I-I'm not him. I--”
“You're the same as him.” He said with a sigh and walked over to the bed. “Was it a girl? Tonight, maybe?”
Clara's eyes widened. Roland had said the Discipline used on her was to steel her neonate nerves. He had said the girl was a rare delicacy that had been kept alive to the point of—
She was throwing up over the side of the bed now. Blood mixed with saliva pooled into a thick puddle into the carpet. The man patted her back. He spoke clinically and dispassionately. “Nod or shake your head. Was it tonight?”
She nodded and heaved out more blood for the effort.
"Brunette? Look a little like you?"
She nodded again.
The man cursed under his breath. “Look—Roland was sick. Amaranth was the last great thrill for him and, well, he was good at it. Covering his tracks, at least. But you don't get to ride that wave forever. He got caught tonight and you're lucky I found you and not someone from the Court. In fact, you're lucky I'm the only one that knew you'd exist.”
Clara felt her stomach empty onto the carpet as he explained. She swallowed back precious Vitae and asked, “But why?” Her eyes asked the question: why me?
The man considered the question. Then Clara realized why he was being so calm: he'd had this conversation before, just not with her. “You're the fourth Clara. That I know of. He had this idea that if he fed one into the other it'd eventually make a perfect Clara. And you all look the same. Or similar, at least. That's it, mostly—he saw something in you that, in his mind, made up to a better Clara and you fit the profile.”
“You knew. You knew the others?”
“I knew the first. And the second. And I know you now, too.”
Dawn was coming. Clara felt it in her bones. She broke away from him and crawled under the bed purely on instinct and exhaustion.
“Don't worry, dear Sister. It's not your fault. You're just my responsibility now.” She heard him suck in his teeth and, just before she shuddered and fell into the slumber of the Damned, spat out "Feh."