by Ana Calin
She refuses to believe that Gunnar never touched me. She thinks I’m in denial or something, and maybe it’s better this way. But then why doesn’t she empathize?
She slaps me again. “You let him take me to leave you alone, isn’t it? You used me as a shield, and thought me too stupid to see it. But guess what? I swore to myself I’d hurt you badly in return, very badly. Oh, how very satisfying it was when you opened the door and found Jeremy’s naked buttocks bouncing between my legs in your own bed only months before your wedding.” She grins a large, sick grin. “I planned that one well, in the tiniest detail. Had I gotten the Marquis to do the same in his study the day you found us there my revenge would’ve been perfect. I know you well, Saphira, I know you’re madly in love with him, like never before, and you would’ve gone insane with jealousy. He’s absolutely crazy in love with you too, which is what sealed your fate. Had he fucked me before your eyes, you probably wouldn’t be finding your end here and now.”
She looks greedily into my face to assess and relish my horror. I’m so finished that speaking is next to impossible, but I see great opportunity here—opportunity to stay alive—so I make a superhuman effort.
“Do it. Anything is better than rotting in this prison.”
Indeed, a glint of cruelty crosses her gaze. She can’t resist the temptation of hurting me yet more. My heart aches for her so bad it gives me chest pain. Gunnar sucked the soul out of my dearest childhood friend, mutilated her mind, and turned her into a monster. She’s a wild rose with deadly thorns. So many horrors happened in Northville, it must be truly an outpost of hell that should go down at the hands of leper monks and slithery beasts.
“No,” Lauren says after moments of pause in which she must’ve pictured all the suffering she can put me through if she keeps me in this place longer. “I won’t kill you today. But know that Death is polishing its scythe for you every ticking second.”
To be honest, I don’t think I’ll survive another day, but we humans would do anything to draw just another breath. I know I’m just buying a little bit of time, but I’m clinging desperately to every moment of it.
Lauren gets off me, and a rock seems to lift off my chest, allowing me to pull in a noisy breath. She calls for the nurses who return and drag me back the way we came, my feet leaving trails of water and blood behind. Yet despite all of it, with every inch they put between Pretty Lauren and me, my spirits lift.
They take me to a cell very similar to the last one, but this one has a cot. When they bang the locks shut I manage to crawl onto it and close my eyes. It feels so very comfortable that I immediately drift into deep sleep. I dream of little Lauren and her innocent smile. She dares me to explore the catacombs under the manor with her, and she runs ahead of me with her white cape flapping in the wind, her skinny boyish legs clad in knitted white stockings, her short hair glowing like fire. I truly do deserve this. I should have stayed with her that night at the Opera House when she begged me not to leave.
CHAPTER XXVI
WHY WILD ROSES KILL
“I should have stayed with her,” I keep saying. I’m aware of the soothing hand on my forehead, and soon also of the warmth of a bed and thick duvets that slowly brings my body back to life, but other than that I’m stuck on Lauren’s story inside my head. It’s a while until I can lift my eyelids, and even longer until I come back to myself completely.
“I need to talk to her,” I say to whomever is there to listen. “She has to forgive me.” I try to get up, but a stabbing pain in my ribs knocks me back down. I groan, but luckily someone rushes to my side and does something to take the pain away.
“Don’t strain yourself.” It’s Yvette’s smoker-deep voice. “You’ve been seriously abused, and you’re still weak.”
Little by little I get used to the waking state again, and Yvette rustles the curtains aside to let light in. I’m still at the asylum. I recognize the bleak gardens outside, even though I can’t see very well. I manage to sit up on the bed eventually, grimacing at the discomfort, and tangling in all the cables that are clipped to my fingertips. Wow, I must be doing shitty.
“How did you manage to get me here?” My vocal cords sound so rusty I must’ve been out for days.
“You’re pretty lucid, I see,” Yvette says with a smile as she heads back to the bed. She checks the IV lines and the machines around me like a dexterous nurse, only that she’s wearing black instead of white. I can’t help but marvel at how generous her bust is, and at the fact that she doesn’t try to hide it like most women her age. The cleavage, red lipstick and wrinkle-free full-moon face make me wonder whether she grooms this appearance for some much younger lover. Can’t believe where my mind strays . . .
“How much do you remember?” she inquires, hands and eyes up on the machines.
“Everything. I remember that Lauren almost killed me, and that she ordered I be treated so badly that I eventually die. Which is why I’m surprised to wake up being tended to.”
I catch a glimpse of my reflection against the screen of a machine, and I cringe. One eye is swollen and reddish-purple, same as my upper lip that’s crisscrossed by cuts.
Yvette leans down to me with a motherly smile, and caresses my forehead. The scent of aromatic cigarettes is welcome and homely.
“You were very lucky, Saphira. It may look bad now, but it’ll all go away. There will be no scars or permanent damage. There certainly is a God up there who loves you.”
“Yes, I believe so,” I whisper, still terrified by my own image. I try not to look at it again, and pray that Kieran doesn’t get to see me like this. “How did you manage to save my arse?”
“Let’s say I restored the balance of power. Lauren Morris has been sleeping with Lord Barkley for years—this was Barkley’s secret, and how certain people in this town kept him doing what they said. Now, since Miss Morris opened her big slutty mouth in front of me, he must do what I say. I blackmailed him.”
“She’s been sleeping with Ronald Lord Barkley....” My stomach knots. I can’t help imagining Pretty Lauren’s skinny model legs in high heels wrapped around Barkley’s pruned hips. Gunnar’s abuse of her when she was a child drilled into her mind severely deep, making her sink in traumatic experiences until she became as dangerous as her abusers.
“This is all my fault ....” I shake my head, which causes me a terrible headache.
“No, Saphira.” Yvette cups my face and makes me look into her eyes. “We are all responsible for our own actions, and so is Lauren for hers.”
“That’s not true,” I manage among tears. “It’s a simplistic way of putting things in order to get the burden off the shoulders where it belongs. You can’t tell a raped child that they’re responsible for what they become.”
Yvette searches my eyes. “As I said, you’re pretty darn lucid.”
“Thank God. Don’t try cheap lines on me again, because they don’t soothe me—they enrage me.” I sound angrier than good Yvette deserves. Poor woman is just trying to help, but I can’t bring myself to apologize.
“Okay, then look this truth in the face,” she retorts. “What happened to Lauren Morris was not your fault. You were only a child yourself. Even if you had known what Gunnar was capable of, you couldn’t have confronted or challenged him.”
“No, but I could’ve hindered him. I would have never left her side, I would have....”
“Not knowing what he was capable of kept you alive and unscathed, Saphira! That bastard was a narcissist who cared about his image more than anything, people held him for a perfect family man. Trust me, had you compromised that, he would have gotten rid of you.”
Chills go through me and shake me to the bones. The man I’d known as my father.... I can’t think it to the end. It’s unbearable.
“And raping his neighbours’ daughter didn’t threaten his image, you think?” I grumble.
“Lauren Morris’s dad used to work for yours. He kissed Gunnar’s ass big time. So Gunnar sent him and his wife on busin
ess trips almost constantly, if you remember, and kept the girl at your house.”
I nod slowly in recollection. That’s how Lauren and I became best friends in the first place. Loose ends come together, and things start to make sense. I look slowly up at Yvette and narrow my one good eye.
She frowns down at a syringe that she then dips into my belly. “So that your blood doesn’t coagulate,” she explains.
I don’t even wince at the sting. One welcome by-product of being subjected to great violence is that you become really hard to frighten or sway, not to mention almost immune to pain.
“How long have you been working for Barkley?”
“For many years, Saphira.”
“But how come we never met? Are you originally from Northville?”
“Oh yes, I was born here. And you and I met before, a number of times actually. Not that I expected you to remember, you’re high society, crème de la crème, I’m working class—the well-paid and well-connected layer of it, I admit, but still just a face in the crowd.”
A face in the crowd . . ..
“I’ve even been at your graduation party,” she continues. “I was at the manor on the Night of Venice as the Marquis presented you as his girlfriend, and at the Christmas party at your house as your father announced your engagement to the Marquis. I attended your engagement banquet at the manor too.” She gives me a meaningful look. “You and the Marquis came to greet us after you came back from your....”
That night flashes through my memory. Kieran doing it to me down in the dungeons, then displaying me all over the banquet hall, my arm hooked around his. It was surely clear to everyone that we’d just ravished each other, and Kieran made a point of it. And then it hits me.
Images and events rush through my mind one after the other—the Opera House. Lauren. Billy singing on the stage, his voice angelic; Jeremy befriending Billy, the boys in the catacombs; Lauren following; Vivienne and I keeping back, scared. A face in the crowd. Basarab, Ivan. The Slayer.
Jeremy was the most popular boy in town back when we were teenagers. He’d give me those cocky grins that made me melt. He first kissed me by the thick oak tree in his back yard. The first thing I saw when I opened my eyes again was Lauren right over Jeremy’s shoulder, her eyes jealous and her cheeks red. She’d appeared from around the corner just in time to catch the kiss. Billy—a thin mouse-faced boy with spectacles and hormone-caused pimples by now—gazed long at Lauren from somewhere behind her. Little Jeanie watching us from up in her room, nose and little chubby palms stuck to the window. Ronald Lord Barkley visiting all our families very often. A face in the crowd. Basarab, Ivan. The Slayer. Again, the Opera House.
Years later, I walked in and saw Jeremy in bed with Lauren. Just months before Jeremy and I were supposed to be married. She said she did it for revenge, but in truth, who was using whom? Billy worked as a notary, sunken in his work in his smoke-filled, cluttered office; still Jeremy’s best friend, and still hopelessly in love with Lauren; it seemed easy for her to manipulate him. He helped with adoptions a lot. Lord Barkley still visited all our families. Vivienne on the table, her body arching under electroshocks, her eyes on a face in the crowd. A face in the crowd. The Opera House. Basarab, Ivan.
The big hooded man walking away from Lauren in the rain the night Kieran and I wanted to elope together. Powerful, giving her orders. Lauren Morris, raped by Gunnar years ago. She’d slept with my fiancé, as well as with the family friend Ronald Lord Barkley who should have loved her like a father, and who knows with whom else. A face in the crowd, always there, never noticed. The Opera House. Basarab, Ivan.
“Saphira!” Yvette’s voice drills through to me. “What is it, girl? You look as if you saw a ghost.”
I stare up at her. “I know who he is, Yvette. I know who Ivan Basarab truly is.” Again I try to get up, but the pain in my ribs knocks me back down. I groan, and this time it takes Yvette an eternity to muffle the pain with shots of God knows what. Only after I’ve calmed down she tells me it’s morphine. I’m seriously dizzy and sick.
“You shouldn’t have, I need a clear head,” I manage.
“Without the morphine you’d be squirming in pain. You wouldn’t be able to think straight, trust me. We’ve been keeping you on it since you got here.”
“Why should I be in so much pain to need morphine?”
“The jets of water broke several of your ribs.”
Everything in my head turns foggy, and I feel a bit high. “I need to talk to Kieran. I need to tell him.”
Yvette keeps her hands on my body, arranging everything from the duvets to the cables that spring from my fingertips, and I understand she’s nervous.
I fall asleep soon, and wake up at a certain point to see Joyous’s big-boned head in a fuzz above mine. He’s holding my hand, his eerie sunken eyes the colour of honey intent on my face, his ruffled decadent ringlets framing the unusual sight of him. He seems very focused, like some shaman at work. There are hushed voices around, but I don’t understand what they’re saying and soon I fall asleep again, this time feeling light and relaxed in a natural way, like someone who’s taken in a lot of oxygen in the woods.
When I come back to awareness I feel so strong I could take on the world, but before I even think of sitting up the voices in the room become clear. I lift my head to see Yvette standing at the foot of the bed facing none other than Zed Stone Mask and, to my huge surprise, he’s holding her hands in his. The shock must play a part in my remaining still enough for them not to notice that I’m awake and to continue their conversation.
“Only a few of the others returned from the South where they watched over Vivienne Grant,” Zed says. “Basarab’s black monks ambushed them, got Vivienne, then followed the few survivors here. We’re greatly outnumbered.” His voice is no longer flat and inflection-free like I know it, but nuanced and worried.
“Saphira said she knew Basarab’s true identity. But the meds knocked her out before she could tell me.”
“Joyous fixed her. She’ll come back to herself soon, and she’ll tell the Marquis directly. We’ll smuggle her through the catacombs and get her to him.”
“I knew Joyous had healer talents, but watching him at work was utterly fascinating. Three special men—you, Joyous and The Marquis—each with their unique gifts.” Yvette lifts her hand and strokes Zed’s cheek with an expression that makes me think both of a caring nurse and a lover at the same time. She looks at him as if he’s hurt, and I remember the scar Kieran left on the Head of Security’s cheek. “The Marquis is making it very difficult on you lately, isn’t he?”
Zed cuddles into her palm like a kitten, and once again I marvel at the tenderness of this scene. I would have never imagined Stone Mask even capable of such expression of feeling. To be honest, I always thought him emotionally crippled. He goes even further and kisses the heel of her palm before he replies.
“He’s mad with pain. Joyous and I barely managed to keep him back the other night, when he found out what happened to her. He howled for hours, locked in his study. We all had to come together and seal the place to prevent him from leaving, while also guarding against Basarab’s monks. It was dramatic.”
Zed’s words tear through my heart. Kieran is in pain!
“You said Saphira told the Marquis she had a plan that night,” Yvette says. “What was that plan?”
“She said she’d manage to get to Lynn Grant, Vivienne’s mother, who knew Basarab’s identity. She said she’d play crazy, pretend she has seizures. How very different things turned out . . ..”
Indeed, how very different. Nothing went according to that plan. As soon as I’d gotten inside the asylum I’d seen poor Vivienne—surely brought back by Basarab’s black monks that ambushed Kieran’s men in the South—writhing in pain during electroshocks. Her mother was already dead. And I almost made it in a plastic bag myself. I can’t keep back anymore.
“Zed.”
Both he and Yvette turn to face me. His features regai
n the stony aspect I know in a second, and his eyes sharpen into steel blue, while Yvette’s red-lipped mouth opens in surprise. Her full-moon face is bright and wrinkle-free, and yet the age difference between the two of them is glaring. He looks in his mid twenties, German-style stony face, while she seems a middle-aged career woman who comes home from work to a glass of wine and a Shepherd dog in the evening. So Zed’s the reason why Yvette is so devoted to our cause.
“You’re awake, Saphira darling,” she says, drops Zed’s hands as if she still hopes I haven’t noticed, and hurries to my side, checking my forehead and the machines.
It’s easy for me to sit up, but still, I’m careful. I’m pain-free and I feel strong, but you never know. I look straight into Zed’s eyes.
“Come closer, please. The walls might yet have ears.”
He doesn’t look surprised at my being fully restored. He must have complete trust in Joyous’s miraculous skill that I’m extremely curious about, but other matters are more pressing now.
Zed approaches and bends to me. Yvette wants to give us privacy, but I grab her hand and signal that she do the same as Zed. As our heads come so close together that they form the tip of a triangle, the name of the villain leaves my lips in the faintest whisper. I can barely hear myself, but by the way they blink, staring at me and then at each other, there’s no doubt they got it.
“Are you sure about this?” Zed seems bewildered.
“Positive. Things can’t wait any longer, Zed. Please take this information to Kieran right away, it’ll make all the difference in the fight against Basarab.”
“Yes, it will. But you can tell him yourself. You’re no longer frail, you’re fit enough to take the catacombs. I’ll help you.” He takes my hand and takes some distance to allow me to get off the bed. I smile and squeeze his hand as a sign of friendship, but I must refuse.
“I can’t leave here without Vivienne, Zed. If we abandon her, she’ll die. Seems the life expectancy of whoever knows Basarab’s true name is dropping by the minute.”
