22. Blood and Flesh Make the Best Birthday Gift

Author: Kiki
Raw: https://novel18.syosetu.com/n2498fn/24/
Translator: Lilia v4
Editor: Yuriko AYA

Even after her father, Merrick, came home, Lilina showed no desire to leave Liza’s side.

She clung to her mother from behind as Liza stood in the kitchen, wearing a dreamlike expression.

“What’s gotten into you, Lilina? You’ve been awfully attached to Mama since yesterday.”

Knowing nothing, Merrick smiled as he spoke to his daughter. Lilina, however, no longer had the slightest interest in her father and gave no sign of answering.

Sensing the awkwardness, Liza tried to smooth things over with her husband.

“She says she had a frightening dream.”

“A dream, huh? Come to think of it, I haven’t had one in ages.”

“That just means you’re sleeping soundly. It’s a good thing.”

“Ha ha, perhaps so. A soldier’s body is his livelihood. I’m no use to anyone if I can’t sleep properly.”

Merrick drank his evening liquor and picked at the food served with it. He did not notice how his wife had changed since his return. Nor did he notice her trembling as she stood in the kitchen.

Out of his sight, Lilina was covertly exploiting the Mark on Liza’s swollen belly. It was the heart with demonic wings—the proof that Liza’s body had finished preparing to abandon its humanity.

Liza struggled to conceal the Mark’s overwhelming supernatural effect from her husband. Even a glance would have shown that something was wrong, but the pleasantly tipsy Merrick noticed nothing.

Even if he had, it was already too late. Lilina had long since ceased to be human, and Liza was completely in her thrall.

“Mama, who do you love more—Papa or Lilina?”

Lilina whispered so Merrick could not hear. Liza answered at once.

“Lilina. Of course it’s Lilina.”

“Who makes you happier—Papa or Lilina?”

“Compared with you, he doesn’t even—”

“Then we don’t need Papa anymore.”

“No … we don’t. As long as I have you, Lilina, I don’t need him.”

Lilina nodded in satisfaction, certain that her mother now belonged entirely to her.

Just then, Merrick abruptly stood. Liza stiffened at the thought of him seeing her expression, while Lilina looked almost as though she would not mind being discovered. If that happened, so be it. Merrick might have honed himself as a soldier, but Lilina was a Demi-Vamp and could kill him with ease.

“Off to the toilet …”

Instead, he left the room without so much as looking at them.

“Hee hee. Good thing he didn’t notice, Mama.”

“Lilina …”

The moment Merrick was gone, the strength left Liza’s body. She paused her cooking, gently removed Lilina’s arms from around her, and turned to face her.

“My, Mama. The instant Papa leaves, you can’t wait any longer.”

Laughing, Lilina accepted her mother’s corrupted affection. In the kitchen, the two crossed another forbidden boundary until Merrick was about to return. Liza understood how grotesquely the charm had distorted their family, yet she surrendered to it all the same.

◇◇◇

Afterward, they continued their secret relationship whenever Merrick’s attention was elsewhere. If he relaxed in the living room, they slipped into the hall; even in front of him, they used blind spots beneath the table to exchange covert signs of intimacy.

Merrick did notice that they had become strangely inseparable, but he never imagined the true nature of what had happened between them. He was normal, and it was precisely that normality that kept him from recognizing the abnormal.

Lilina and Liza bathed together that day and slept in the same bed. Only they knew that neither statement conveyed the whole truth.

The next morning, Liza finally refused Merrick’s usual kiss.

“I’m sorry. I’m not in the mood today.”

She watched her dejected husband leave while Lilina looked on with satisfaction.

After a night’s sleep had restored a little of her composure, Liza felt a faint twinge of guilt. She remained standing there for some time after seeing Merrick off, as though proving it.

Lilina approached from behind, tapped her back, and gently whispered into her ear when she turned.

“I want to spend today with Mama. I can stay home from school, can’t I?”

Liza’s face softened into an indulgent smile. “Of course,” she said, embracing her daughter and seeking reassurance from her. The charm overwhelmed what little resistance remained.

◇◇◇

“I’m home!”

Merrick returned that evening, but no one answered.

Perhaps they had gone shopping together. Liza usually went alone, but given Lilina’s behavior lately, he could easily imagine it. With that thought, he entered the living room and found a note on the table.

I am waiting at the church.

That was all it said. The handwriting was Liza’s.

“Why the church of all places?”

Naturally, Merrick found it strange. But if she was waiting, he had little choice but to go and meet her. He worked the stiffness from his weary body, then promptly left the house for the church.

Twilight had fallen, and the sky was stained an ominous purple. Had it been crimson, he could simply have called it beautiful. Today’s sky looked unusually sinister.

“What could she possibly need to summon me to the church for?”

With a trace of unease, Merrick walked through the town as darkness gradually swallowed it.

After more than ten minutes, he reached the church. The instant he opened the door, he lost consciousness before he could even see what lay inside.

◇◇◇

His head hurt. So did his body. He seemed to have been seated on something extremely hard.

The moment Merrick awoke, he looked around.

The room was dim and damp. Its walls were a featureless gray, and the absence of furniture made it feel utterly barren.

A wooden door stood ahead of him, but Merrick had no memory of entering through it. He would have to escape and find out where he was.

He tried to move—and discovered that chains held him fast.

Why was he here? He remembered arriving at the church, losing consciousness, and then—

“Merrick, are you awake?”

The door opened, and Liza appeared. Lilina entered holding her hand.

“Liza? Lilina? What is this place?”

“Inside the church, Papa. You came blundering in after reading the note, so Mistress knocked you unconscious with her shadows and chained you up in the basement.”

“What are you talking about, Lilina?”

Merrick could not understand his daughter’s words.

Mistress? Shadows? Chained in a basement?

What did any of that mean, and why had they done it? Why was Liza barely looking at him, but gazing at Lilina with flushed cheeks?

The entire situation was incomprehensible to him.

Then another person appeared to confuse matters further: a girl dressed in a nun’s habit. It was Chigusa.

“Good evening, Merrick.”

“You’re … Chigusa, aren’t you? The woman who recently began living at the church?”

“Yes. We have met a few times.”

“Why are you doing this?”

“I thought I would show something special to one of the soldiers who protects the peace of this town. Go ahead, Lilina.”

“Okay!”

At Chigusa’s instruction, Lilina stepped behind Liza and lifted her outer garment, revealing her pregnant belly.

There, Merrick saw a heart-shaped tattoo he had never seen before.

“This is the sign that Mama belongs to Lilina now.”

“Belongs to … Lilina?”

“You’ll understand when you see what the Mark does.”

Lilina activated the Mark. Liza’s immediate, involuntary response made its unnatural power plain, and Lilina continued demonstrating it with evident delight.

Merrick still could not understand what he was seeing. What was happening before his eyes? Who was doing this, and for what purpose?

“See? Mama can’t resist it. And before this, the charm made her surrender even more completely. Didn’t it, Mama?”

“Yes. The Mark is nothing compared with what came before. Lilina has replaced you in every way, Merrick.”

“I made Mama admit over and over that I’m the one she wants. Aren’t I amazing?”

Lilina puffed out her chest proudly, but Merrick could not answer.

He had no choice but to accept the fact that his wife and his school-age daughter had been drawn into an abusive, magically induced relationship. However desperately he wished to deny it, the truth stood before him.

Only one person could have caused it.

“You … You did this, Chigusa!”

“Yes, I did!”

Confronted, Chigusa confessed without hesitation.

“Conveniently enough, your daughter was already fond of me before I ever laid a hand on her. That made corrupting her very simple.”

“What kind of person are you …!”

“A person, am I? Hee hee … I wonder whether I am truly human.”

“Stop talking nonsense and change Liza and Lilina back!”

“Liza aside, it is already too late for Lilina. She is no longer human.”

“What …?”

Merrick nearly repeated that she was talking nonsense. Yet Lilina’s complexion had been poor since the previous day. Her skin was pale, and now that he looked closely, her eyes were red.

He knew of an inhuman creature with those traits.

“A vampire …?”

“Half vampire and half human, one might say. I call us Demi-Vamps.”

“Lilina is … already …”

“Yes. Body, mind, and all, she has fallen into my thrall and become the same kind of inhuman being as I am. And now Liza will become one too—by Lilina’s hand.”

“Don’t be absurd! Liza would never want that!”

Lilina answered his shout with perfect composure.

“You’re wrong, Papa. Mama said she wants to stay with Lilina forever. She begged me to change her with my own hands.”

“That’s a lie! The charm made her say it!”

“It isn’t a lie, Merrick. I chose to abandon my humanity just as Lilina did. Then I can love her forever, in a body remade by the same power.”

“Wake up, Liza! This is wrong!”

“I know it’s wrong.”

“Then—!”

Even as her husband desperately pleaded with her, Liza’s thoughts remained fixed on Lilina, who clung to her side.

Words could no longer reach her.

“But it can’t be helped. I’m far happier now than I ever was when I loved you.”

“Liza …”

His voice broke as he spoke his wife’s name, and his head sank. Crushed by grief, Merrick lost the power to speak.

Before any new emotion could rise in him, Chigusa decided to begin the ritual.

At her glance, Lilina whispered something in Liza’s ear. Liza’s eyes grew dreamy, and she tilted her head to offer her neck to her daughter.

“Stop … Please, Lilina, stop.”

Such a plea could not possibly reach Lilina now. She answered only with a quiet, mocking laugh.

It was, quite literally, a devil’s smile.

Lilina moved toward Liza’s bared neck. Knowing that the lethal venom within her daughter would soon remake her as something inhuman left Liza feverishly entranced.

“Mama … I’m going to do it now. Lilina is going to become part of you.”

Perhaps Merrick meant to shout. Perhaps terror stole his voice.

The moment his mouth opened, Lilina’s fangs sank into Liza’s neck.

Liza welcomed the sensation of falling into the abyss.

Trying to please her mother, Lilina drank earnestly. Liza’s blood carried much of the off taste Chigusa associated with non-virgins, but it belonged to the mother Lilina loved more than anyone, and she did not care. To Lilina, that very quality proved whose blood it was and made it seem sacred.

Merrick could only groan as he watched his wife change.

He lacked the strength to break his chains. Nor was he a child who could do nothing but scream. Chigusa found his restraint rather dull, though she decided that, for now, it did not matter.

Liza praised Lilina through the ordeal and stroked her head as the girl continued to drink. Taken out of context, the gesture might have looked like a tender moment between mother and daughter.

But Lilina’s mouth was fixed to a neck already taking on a vampire’s pallor, and the strength was rapidly leaving Liza’s body.

The feeding continued until Liza’s body convulsed and went limp. Merrick could do no more than stare and groan.

The transformation advanced. Soon Liza lost consciousness, and the change spread through every part of her body.

Lilina rubbed her stomach with a satisfied sigh, then looked toward Chigusa as if asking whether she had done enough. Her mistress smiled and nodded, and Lilina relaxed with relief.

Her first feeding had succeeded.

Nothing human remained within Liza. She had been entirely filled with what Lilina was—with the essence of a Demi-Vamp.

Lilina waited eagerly for her mother to awaken and look upon her with red eyes, wholly governed by their new bond.

At last, the reborn Liza opened her eyes.

The first person in her field of vision was Merrick, the husband she had once loved most. Yet she felt absolutely nothing for him. A short while earlier, she had at least regarded him as her husband in name. Now, from the bottom of her heart, he meant less to her than a stone lying by the roadside.

What mattered were the daughter who had given her this new body and the mistress who ruled them both.

Her eyes met Lilina’s. Two pairs of red eyes held each other’s gaze.

“Mama, you’re so beautiful.”

Lilina placed a hand against her cheek and drew her close. The two affirmed their corrupted bond once more.

After having been divided into human and inhuman, they believed themselves true mother and daughter again. To them, it was profoundly moving. To Merrick, excluded and powerless, it was a moment of utter despair.

“Don’t you have anything to say to Papa, Mama?”

“Nothing. Not to that thing. All I want now is to join Lilina and Mistress and share their love in this new body.”

“I thought so. Lilina feels the same way. Is that all right, Mistress?”

“Of course. Everyone is waiting, not only me.”

“You heard her. Let’s hurry!”

Lilina took Liza’s hand and led her out of the room. Neither looked back at Merrick before vanishing beyond the door.

Tears gathered in the eyes of the pitiful man as he stared into the darkness that had swallowed them.

Chigusa felt no particular sympathy for him, but one event still remained.

Left alone with him, she approached the bowed Merrick and spoke with genuine delight.

“I expect the due date will come sooner than planned. You have that to look forward to.”

Merrick jolted.

The unborn child.

If Liza had ceased to be human, what would become of the child born of their love?

“Wait, Chigusa! What are you planning to do to that child?”

“Who knows? Even I don’t yet. But I imagine things will work themselves out.”

She was not evading the question.

Chigusa was confident that she could manage the birth, but even she did not know what the result would be. Whatever happened, it clearly would not end well for Merrick.

“Why are you doing this? What did our family ever do to you?”

“Why …? I never felt anything like a sense of purpose in my old life. Recently, however, I have found something resembling a goal.”

Chigusa looked straight at Merrick with her red eyes.

“I want to envelop the world in kindness.”

That was the final destination toward which she now meant to advance.

“Humans cannot accomplish it. For them, love and hatred are a matched pair. Whenever they show someone kindness, love them, or cherish them, hatred is inevitably born somewhere else. But I am different now. Demi-Vamps are different. We all love one another equally, so surely no one will hate. There will be no senseless violence and no more people like the person I once was. We can create such a world.”

“That’s madness.”

“Its madness is precisely what makes it good. Human ‘sanity’ accepts sacrifice, does it not? The Discard District is its perfect symbol—a thoroughly human place where people avert their eyes from the weak and abandon them.”

“You’re doing the same thing! You’re eliminating me right now! How is that any different from what humans do?”

“It is different.”

Chigusa answered without hesitation.

“Humans hurt other humans. Demi-Vamps do not hurt other Demi-Vamps; killing one of our own is unthinkable. If that is not kindness, what would you call it?”

Merrick said nothing.

He could have offered any number of objections, but before speaking them, he understood that argument was useless.

An unbridgeable gulf separated Merrick and Chigusa: the gulf between human and inhuman. Words could not cross it.

Seeing that he had given up, Chigusa turned away.

“Then I will see you again soon.”

The door slammed, leaving Merrick alone in the dim room.

A single candle was his only light.

He stared at its sinister, wavering flame and passed what felt like an eternity.

◇◇◇

From then on, Merrick was given only water. He was forced to relieve himself where he sat, and occasionally a girl who appeared to be enslaved came to clean the room.

At first, he tried to speak to her. Whether under orders or for some other reason, she never said a word.

Several days later, Lilina and Chigusa returned.

Merrick had wasted away, but neither showed any concern.

“Today, Papa, we have a very important announcement!”

Lilina spoke with innocent cheer.

Merrick suddenly remembered an occasion from when she had still truly been his daughter. On his birthday, she had presented him with a gift in exactly that tone.

Perhaps this, too, would be a wonderful present.

“Come on. Hurry inside.”

Lilina briefly disappeared beyond the door. When she returned, she was leading Liza, who held a newborn baby in her arms.

A faint light kindled in Merrick’s dying heart. Tears he had thought long since exhausted welled in his eyes.

“Isn’t she adorable? We considered all sorts of names because she’s Mama and Lilina’s baby, but in the end we settled on Liz.”

Lilina’s incomprehensible claim did not register with Merrick. He could only whisper the baby’s name in a hoarse voice.

“Liz …”

Her eyes were red, and her skin was white.

She was plainly not a human child. Even so, to Merrick she was undeniably his daughter.

Neither Liza nor Lilina regarded her that way. To them, Liz was solely the child of the two Demi-Vamps.

“I really don’t want to, but since you’re here, we’re going to let you hold Liz.”

“It was my suggestion,” Chigusa said. “It seemed cruel to let you die without doing so.”

“Hold … my child …”

Clang!

With a sudden, dull metallic noise, the chains binding Merrick’s arms broke. Chigusa had used the shadows filling the room to sever them.

Freed, Merrick crawled slowly toward Liza and the child.

Liza looked down at him as though he were an insect. With obvious reluctance, she brought Liz closer.

“Liz, behave yourself.”

At last, the baby was placed in Merrick’s arms.

“Ah … Oh, Liz. So that’s your name. You’re a little girl …”

His voice trembled as he cradled her and gazed into her red eyes.

Liz waved her tiny hands and stared back at him.

“Ha ha … You look so much like Liza. I’m sure you’ll grow into a beautiful woman.”

He would never live to see what she looked like when she grew up, but imagining it was easy.

If she became as beautiful as Liza, a wonderful man would surely marry her. A man so fine that he might laugh at Merrick by comparison.

Merrick would gladly be laughed at.

A future in which anyone could laugh would be happier than the present.

“Liz … Liz …”

He repeated her name and embraced the baby.

When Liz’s mouth drew close to his neck, it opened. Small fangs were clearly visible, proof that she was not human.

The newborn already possessed the instincts of a Demi-Vamp. To her, Merrick was an unwanted human holding her captive.

She sank her teeth into his neck and tore away a piece of flesh.

Merrick convulsed. Blood poured from the wound as Liz attacked again.

“Wh-why …?”

The injury was fatal. At that rate, he would bleed to death within moments.

Still, he did not let go of Liz. He loved her—and, more than that, he could not understand what was happening. Even as reality, death at the fangs of his newborn child was impossible to believe.

“What … did I … ever do …?”

Merrick fell backward onto the floor.

Liz continued tearing at his neck until he died. Lilina and Liza watched with the warm, gentle expressions of parents proudly observing their child’s first achievement.

◇◇◇

Thinking it rude to interrupt a family’s time together, Chigusa had quietly left the room.

If kindness like this spread throughout the world, she thought, then no one like her former self would ever be born again.

She had to see it through.

She would create the gentle world humanity could never achieve—a world, as she conceived it, in which no one was sacrificed.

“To do that, I must begin by doing something about this country.”

As she climbed the stairs from the basement, one person’s face came to mind.

Leia Hersig.

The witch who lived in the castle had deep ties to the kingdom. Perhaps she could be useful in destroying it.