3 Years Ago. The House Under the Hill, the Brodnax Estate, Jawan.
Things definitely could have gone better, Chester reflected grimly as he spat a mouthful of black blood onto the floor. He pushed himself into a sitting position, and the woman watching him said, "Careful." Her tone was clipped, arms folded across her chest.
"You managed it, then." His voice was scratchy, sticking in his throat. He was sure there was more to say on the matter, but he couldn't seem to manage anything other than dull surprise. Maybe it'd come back to him, somehow.
His sister looked towards the door before answering him, as though debating whether she could just walk away. "You remember what happened?" He stared at her. They had the same blue eyes, the family nose and chin. Before Boris' growth spurt, there was a time when they could have been mistaken for each other. She didn't look up from the floor, and Chester could see her fingers, scrubbed raw, digging into the flesh of her arm. It struck him suddenly that she was afraid.
"You pushed me onto an ornamental staircase finial," he said, vaguely aware that it was an entirely ridiculous way to die. "which, I don't suppose would have been a problem if I'd been anything other than shockingly unlucky." He tapped the left side of his chest, and realised there wasn't even a scar. Huh.
"When's my birthday?" she asked suddenly.
"What?"
"Answer me."
"Uhh.... March? May? Brennus normally—"
"It's you," she sighed. "You can never tell with necromancy."
"I can't believe you fucking killed me," Chester said, the whole situation hitting him at once. "Dear god. I was already dead and you killed me."
Boris moved sideways, taking a step closer to the door. "It was an accident! I fixed it, didn't I?"
Chester swung himself off the metal table, and his legs buckled beneath him. He gripped the counter for support, slowly righting himself. Boris didn't move to help him, and Chester was forcibly reminded of why they'd never gotten along. "I don't know," he said. "Did you?"
Boris edged back into the room, reaching over to her notes. Occasionally her eyes would flick up to Chester, who was still, leaning against a counter top. It was only in that moment of quiet that Chester realised they weren't still at the house. The Estate, as large as it was, did not extend anywhere close enough to the sea to be able to hear it from inside. They were in a small basement room, a room that Boris was obviously using as a workshop. There were bottles and jars across one wall, a couple of chest freezers in one corner and a set of metal worktables.
"I've long held the theory that vampires were simply a subset of ghoul. Essentially, they're created the same way, they're both graveyard spirits. Only difference is that a ghoul is incorporeal, a vampire corporeal. And even that isn't strictly true, as a vampire grows in power it finds that it can slip through locked doors, disappear into mist or appear in the guises of different animals. All of this indicates there is an essential substance, something that may linger after death. I modified my usual methods and stole some things from an Aldrectian thesis on ghoul creation, and ta-da," she gestured to him without much enthusiasm.
"What's wrong?" Aside from the obvious reasons she didn't want to be here, he'd rarely seen Boris so keen to get out of his sight.
"I haven't slept in 36 hours and I've been convinced for most of them that Elias was going to snap my neck once he found out what happened to his heir. Then, once I'd succeeded, I realised that there was nothing to stop you doing the same."
"Someone loosing their temper and hurting their sibling?" Chester laughed. "I wonder which of us that sounds more like." Everything felt off, like he was three inches to the left of his body. Even his teeth felt strange in his mouth, like they weren't really his. "You haven't even apologised, and you're telling me you only tried to fix the mess you caused so you wouldn't get into any fucking trouble?"
"I got scared and made a mistake! I'm sorry. But do you have any idea how hard I work to be respected in this family? How talented I am? You don't have to work for anything."
"Get out. Just get out."
"I—"
"Go!"