I do have guesses, but they’re batshit crazy and I’m not about to egg this man on or give him ideas.
“There is so much you don’t say,” he comments after a moment. “Has your brain always been like that?”
I press my lips together, refusing to speak.
“That’s fine if you don’t want to talk,” he goes on. “I’m used to being the one doing all the talking. Most of the time, people can only stare at me, their brains being reduced to a lump of grey matter. You, on the other hand, aren’t like that. And I know why.”
Don’t ask him why, don’t ask him why.
“You don’t have to ask,” he goes on, leaning back in his chair. “I’ll tell you. Why am I so interested in your parents? Because they aren’t actually your parents. They stole you when you were two years old. You remember it, don’t you? You remember them taking you. You remember your original mother, your father.”
My mouth parts, his words colliding in my brain with mini explosions. “No,” I tell him, my breath catching. “No. That’s insane. That’s not…my parents are my parents.”
“You were born on Orcas Island, in Washington State. The middle of nowhere. Beautiful place, right on the ocean, surrounded by trees.”
I swallow, shaking my head, but the lies are hitting me like the truth because I’m remembering my dreams. “You’re a liar,” I whisper.
He bites his lip for a moment. “Am I? I can still feel your blood inside me, singing your truth. There were rumors about you, from the moment you were born. Rumors, but no one really knew, no one had the evidence. I knew though. I felt you across time. You’re a myth to everyone but me.”
My eyes pinch shut. I don’t want to listen to this. I don’t want to even indulge this madman in his weird fantasy. He doesn’t know me, doesn’t know where I came from. I was born in San Francisco to my parents, that’s it, that’s it…
“I knew your real parents,” he says, his voice going quiet and soft, enough so that I have to look at him. There’s something gentle about his expression, apologetic, even. It’s unnerving after all of this. “Alice and Hakan Virtanen. I knew that they wanted you so badly. A child was all that Alice could talk about. I lost touch with them before you were born. We had our…differences. I wish we could have worked through them, because sometimes I think I could have stopped what happened.” He looks away, eyes grappling with something heavy. “Then again, I’m used to causing death, not stopping it.”
He brings his gaze back to mine and exhales sharply, straightening up. “Twenty-one years ago, when there was talk that Alice and Hakan had a child, I was happy for them. Then the three of them were killed. Burned alive in their house. Murdered. By Elaine and Jim Warwick.”
I can’t help but laugh, though it feels like I have acid inside me. “My parents? Murdered people? What the fuck are you talking about? You’re even more messed up than I thought.”
“They were murdered,” he goes on simply. “And then the rumors started. That the little girl they called Lenore wasn’t fully theirs. That she had another father, not Hakan. That there was a reason they lived on such a remote island, cloaked in secrecy. Because she, the girl, you, was…forbidden.”
“You’re insane,” I manage to say.
His eyes narrow, sharp enough to take my breath away, make my skin prickle with fear. “I was insane, for a very, very long time. Be grateful that I got better.”
My god.
Who the hell am I dealing with here?
“And then the other rumors started,” he says, eyes still boring into mine. “And those rumors were about the Warwicks. That they didn’t kill the child. That they stole the child, recognized something of themselves in it, and took her into the city to raise as their own. They made sure that no one knew the truth, did all they could to cover all their tracks. They knew if others found out the child would be taken and killed. She was forbidden, remember.”
I can only stare at him. He’s not making any sense, and even though there is something deep inside me that’s finding truth, it’s a side of me that shouldn’t exist. Because there can’t be truth here. I know who I am. I know who my parents are. That’s all there is.
“And this is where I come in,” he says, leaning forward. “Because there are two sides that want you, and I’m the one that deals with both sides.”
I blink hard, nothing even close to making sense. “What, like a bounty hunter?” It sounds ridiculous the moment I say it, but then again, everything has so far.
He inspects his fingernails for a moment. “I prefer the term mercenary. Misleading word though, isn’t it? It almost implies that I have mercy.” He gets to his feet. “And I don’t.”
He walks over to the wooden crate in the corner and pulls out my Alexander McQueen purse. I can’t help but gasp, the mere bag reminding me of my life, my real life, the one I had before I came to this place where time doesn’t seem to exist.
“I’m going to show you something,” he says to me. He opens the bag, pulls out my iPhone. He displays it and taps on it, the phone turning on to show my wallpaper of blackened roses. Fully charged.
Hope leaps inside my chest, though I know this is too easy, that this isn’t going to go the way I want it to.
He puts the phone close to my face until it recognizes me and unlocks the screen. Then he walks around the chair so he’s behind me, his arms held out in front of me, holding the phone so I can see. He rests his chin on my shoulder, the side of his face pressed against my jaw and my neck, and his skin is so cold at first that it’s like being hit with a blast of nitro. Then it quickly warms up and it’s like all the blood inside me is drawn to his skin, while the scent of roses and tobacco and cedar fill my nose.
I’m drowning in him. I have to fight to keep my eyes open.
“Tell me what you want to see,” he murmurs, turning his mouth to my ear, his warm breath making me shiver. My nipples immediately go hard, heat pooling between my legs. This isn’t fair. My body is betraying me for no reason at all, jumping right from fear and straight into lust.
It’s the adrenaline, it has to be.
“Focus, Lenore,” he says. His voice is like whisky on the rocks, the way it sinks in, warm, smooth, intoxicating. “I know how you’re feeling. This is part of the change. But I need you to look at the screen right now and tell me what you want to see.”
Back to that change. What change?
But he quickly swipes through to my Facebook app, goes on my page.
“What do you want to see? Anything here? Maybe there are private messages from your friends wondering where you are?” He goes through my messages, but there’s nothing new since I last saw it. Then he goes to my wall. “Perhaps people have written there, talking about how you went missing.”
Nothing on my wall.
“How about we google your name? Surely you must be all over the news right now. A pretty white academic abducted in Berkeley? You’ll be every headline.”
He googles my name. There are a bunch of Lenore Warwicks, including me, but there’s nothing in the news at all.
Oh my god. What the fuck is going on?
Why aren’t people looking for me?
“Okay, we’ll go to your texts then,” he says, bringing up my messages. “That should explain it. Oh, here’s your mother.”
He pulls up the last texts from my mother.
Lenore, I had a dream. Where are you? Tell me you’re safe?
Sweetie, where are you? Pick up your phone.
Lenore, please, if you can … just somehow let us know you’re alive.
We’re sorry.
And that’s that. The last text is “we’re sorry.”
My stomach turns sour.
“And your friend, Elle,” Absolon says, bringing up her texts now. “Lovely girl. Let’s see what she has to say.”
I stare at the screen.
Where did you go, are you OK?
Wow, I feel like horseshit. Dude, I hope you got lucky tonight because otherwise
I’m going to be so mad you didn’t text me back.
Lenore? Hello? Okay your phone might be dead, I’m calling your mom cuz I’m worrying.
Then one more text.
K, I talked to your mom. Sucks about you needing a new phone! She told me you’re on your way to Joshua Tree. Totally get that this is a fun trip with your parents, so I’ll try not to be pissed that you’re not spending your 21st with me. I know you won’t get this until you get your new phone but just call me back when you get home, we have lots to talk about. And drink. Make sure you howl at that desert moon for me! Ow ow ow!
What the fuck?
What the absolute fuck?
“Do you see now?” Absolon whispers in my ear. “Do you see that no one knows you’re here? And no one is coming to look for you?”
I shake my head, tears welling up, my throat clenching.
All this time I was able to remain calm, only because I had this weird, unflinching belief that someone would save me. That the worst couldn’t happen to me because I would be found. Someone like me couldn’t go missing in a city like this. My parents would turn over every last stone looking for me. I relied on that naïve feeling of being special and exceptional, the kind of person to whom nothing bad can happen. I was above that.
But the truth is, I am below it.
“You’re not below it,” Absolon says to me, lips brushing against my ear. “You have everyone fighting over you, to have the privilege of being the first ones to tear you apart. Because you are exceptional. Too exceptional to exist.”
“You’re reading my thoughts,” I say absently, my voice faint, small, far away.
“Yes,” he practically hisses. “And you offer them up so easily to me when you’re upset. Almost makes me feel bad. But not quite.”
He straightens up, taking the phone away.
“What are you going to do with me?” I manage to ask. The defeat inside me is dragging me inward, like I’m collapsing in on myself, like a dark star. I don’t know how much of what he said is true, but that seed of truth that had glowed inside me, the one that believed him, that my parents truly weren’t my parents, that seed is growing. Not only did they not tell anyone that I went missing, they went a step further and lied to Elle about it. They have an alibi for me.
They don’t even care.
Absolon sighs, running his hand through his thick hair as he walks past the chair. “I don’t know.” He stops and eyes me, hands clasped behind his back. One moment he’s absolutely menacing, the next he’s as refined as royalty. “What I do know is that this feeling sorry for yourself stage won’t last very long.”
I stare at him. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, you’re changing. I’ve told you as much.”
“Changing into what?” I cry out angrily, sick of these fucking games.
He grins at me, flashing those sharp incisors which seem longer, sharper somehow. The sight makes my blood run ice cold with instinctual fear, the kind you feel when a snake shows its fangs.
I can’t breathe.
“You’re changing into something like me,” he says. “Before I brought you here, I thought it would be straightforward. Now that I’ve tasted you, know you, I don’t know what to expect. What side might take over. Until then, you’re going to be in that chair.”
“And what are you?”
One moment I’m looking at him halfway across the room, the next he’s in front of my face, and I didn’t even see him move. All I see now are his pupils, so black and infinite that I might tumble inside and drown in them.
You know what I am, he says, but he says it inside my head, and his lips aren’t moving. You just don’t want to say it because you think it means you’re going insane. But you’ll know for yourself soon enough.
“I’ll be back later,” he says after a moment. “For your first stage.”
I try to move my tongue. It feels thick and heavy. “First stage?”
“Of The Becoming,” he says. “The first stage is lust. The second stage is bloodlust.”
“Lust? What does that even mean?”
“You’ll see. You might even enjoy it…if I’m feeling charitable. If I’m not, you’ll be in pure agony, begging me to end it.” Then he flashes me a smile and tips his chin to me. “Take care, Lenore.”
He leaves the room, keeping the lights on this time.
I take a moment to try and take stock of the situation, to try and make sense of everything that just happened.
But I can’t.
It’s too much, too unbelievable, too fantastical.
The only thing that does make sense is that my parents have left me here to die.
And they might not even be my parents.
Chapter Seven
Red moon rising over the Golden Gate Bridge.
Me, in the back of a car, staring out the window, feeling so much wonder. Not at the moon, which is singing me a song, but at the bridge, at the cars, at seeing the ocean from this height, moonlight gleaming on the water.
I turn forward in my child seat and look at the people in the front seat. There’s a man with kind eyes and a funny laugh, he’s driving. Then there’s a woman with long blonde hair pulled back into a braid, her arms wrapped in bandages.
They are not my parents.
But I know they will be.
“What’s your birthday, Lenore?” the woman asks me.
I’m too young to speak, too young to know.
But I say, April 17th inside my head and the woman nods.
“Then we have nineteen birthdays together before you must die,” she says, turning in her seat to smile at me. “You know you have to die, right? A girl like you shouldn’t exist.”
A girl like me.
“Until then, we will love you,” she adds. “And you will love us. And we will pretend that we are happy, even though deep inside, we know the clock is ticking.”
“Okay,” I say in a small voice.
I glance up at the rearview mirror.
And now Absolon is driving the car.
He grins, with fangs that glint in the moonlight, and with one smooth movement, he brings the car over the lanes, accelerating, and then the car is bursting through the guardrails, and we plunge down, down, down.
Falling.
Dropping.
Into icy water.
The last thing I see are the lights of San Francisco.
* * *
“Should we wake her up?”
A calm, elegant voice answers. “She’s awake. She just doesn’t know it yet.”
I am awake, but barely. My mind keeps drifting off into darkness.
Except it’s not total darkness. There are images there.
Of blood splattering on walls.
Of cells flittering within veins.
Of a pumping heart.
There are images of orgies, cocks hard and erect, plunging inside people, the cries of pleasure and agony, the writhing bodies beneath bodies on bloodstained satin sheets.
There is a feeling of something inside me, a beast, that wants to break free of my skin and run and fuck.
There’s another being too, one born of moonlight and darkness, who wants to hide myself, to shrink, to sink inward.
I don’t know what I am anymore.
I don’t think I ever did.
I am changing.
“Lenore.”
It’s Absolon’s voice. To my detriment, it’s now a familiar one.
I open my eyes, expecting to see the basement ceiling.
But it’s not.
It’s lace.
A canopy of lace high above me.
I blink and try to move.
I can’t.
Story of my life.
I lift my head.
I’m on a four-poster bed, on top of black satin sheets.
I’m in only my bodysuit now, my skirt gone.
My wrists and ankles are wrapped in ropes that connect to each corner of the bed, spread eagle.
At the
foot of the bed stand Absolon and Wolf, both staring at me with interest. Absolon is in a tailored navy shirt that shows off his shoulders, arms, slim V tapering to black pants, his skin luminous. Wolf is in a leather jacket, Henley shirt, jeans. The dark one and the light one.
I should be terrified.
I should be screaming.
But I’m not.
It’s not that I know these men don’t mean me harm. I know Absolon means me harm. He’s warned me plenty of times. I’ve felt his harm bleed from my throat to his finger and down through his lips.
But I don’t think this is what it looks like.
What it feels like is a different story.
I’ve seen The Exorcist.
This is what they do to someone who might become uncontrollable.
I’m changing.
Into what?
How can I be changing into anything except the shadow of the person I once was?
“Good morning, Lenore,” Absolon says in a clipped voice, hands behind his back as he walks over to the side of the bed, staring at me like a doctor would a patient. “And how are we feeling today?”
I stare at him, trying to ignore the rising anger that’s making my blood seethe. How the hell does he think I feel? Not only do I have no idea how I got from the basement to here, this strange room, but he let me know how much my parents don’t want to find me. Worse than that, they’re covering for my disappearance, like they had something to do with it.
“Wolf, I’d like some time alone with her,” he says, keeping his eyes on me. Fuck, is he reading my mind again? Or was that something I dreamed?
“Of course, sir,” Wolf says, heading for the door. “I’ll be just outside.” It shuts behind him.
The room itself is large but old, wallpapered walls the color of faded indigo, dark wood furniture, a window with blackout shades pulled down. The only lights are from an antique lamp on the bedside table and from a candelabra flickering on the fireplace mantle, which gives everything an extra eerie appearance, and that’s saying a lot since it already feels like the mansion from Dark Shadows.
Absolon sits on the edge of the bed, twisting his body in an elegant way to face me. He takes his finger and runs it over my arm until I’m shaking from his touch, unable to control the shivers. Whether it’s from revulsion, anger, or something else, I don’t know.
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