I shook as violently as a leaf in a storm as Lydia continued to stroke my hair.
“It’s not the body that breaks down over time,” whispered Lydia, “It’s the mind that goes. Lucky are the ones that their mind outlasts their body. The worst kind of eternity is one of insanity,”
I looked at Lydia then, the profoundness of her words reaching through the sadness and smacking me across the face, shocking me to my senses. Perhaps we really were alike. I looked at her face, full of surprise at my sudden calm study of her eyes at such a close distance.
“You’ve known it?” I asked, “You’ve felt this sort of madness?”
I held my breath, waiting for Lydia to answer. I needed an answer. If Lydia had gone through this, if she had felt this, and had survived as strong as she had always appeared then so could I. With her help. I waited eagerly as she drew in a breath, becoming tense as we sat there. Answering would mean revealing something personal about herself and Lydia rarely did that. But I needed it. I needed to connect to humanity, to believe in my humanity even if I hadn’t ever really been human. And maybe she needed to connect too.
“I’ve touched madness,” said Lydia, looking away uncomfortably for a moment, “I have seen true madness. I don’t think anyone really knows madness and then comes back to tell of it,”
“I don’t feel pain anymore,” I whispered to Lydia, looking down at the new skin on my arms, the fingernails I had pulled up perfectly healed, without so much as a scratch or scar.
“That sounds like a blessing to me,” muttered Lydia, biting her lip as soon as the words left her mouth as I looked sharply at her.
“What if I’m losing my humanity,” I said, angry, “What am I then? Driven mad, without any sense of pain and unable to die, to find peace? What kind of existence can I hope for?”
“You’re on the brink of madness,” said Lydia, taking one of my hands, “If your mind had consumed you then you wouldn’t be talking like this. You would just be…reacting,”
“How do you know that?” I asked, pulling my hand from hers, “You’ve touched madness. How do you know what I’m feeling at all? How do you know this isn’t madness?”
“Because I’ve seen true madness,” said Lydia, standing up slowly, “And you’ve seen the effects of madness,”
Lydia stood over me where I still sat on the floor, unsure of what she meant.
“Before I left the court, one of the reasons Victoria hates me so much,” said Lydia, bitterness in her tone, “I found the Tomb of the King and Queen. I went down there. I met Sophea years ago, just as the madness had started to consume her. What you see now…there is nothing left of the great mother of all vampires. Nothing more than legends remain and now tales of terror,”
Lydia stretched a hand out to me, something she did more often than I realized until this moment as I sat on the floor looking at her hand. Lydia waited, hand outstretched as her words sank in. I felt a spark of hope flicker out of existence when Lydia said that. The humanity in me looking to find something in Lydia’s strength that I could mirror had found more similarity between myself and Sophea, the very reason my mind was breaking at what my reality had become. I looked into Lydia’s face. Her concern was becoming thin as her impatience began to show through and I took her hand, letting her pull me up to standing.
“I can’t be like Sophea,” I said, my heart plummeting into my stomach at the thought of becoming that which I had come to fear most in a matter of less than a day.
“And you won’t,” came a woman’s voice from the doorway, “Not while I’m around,”
Victoria stood in the doorway of my room. Neither Lydia nor I had heard the door open and we both jumped, clutching hands firmly at our conversation having been overheard.
“I…I’m terrified of her,” I stammered out, unsure if my honesty would upset Victoria, “I’m terrified of what she might do, what she’s done,”
“My mother…” Victoria began, pressing her lips in a thin line as she paused and came to stand next to me, a thoughtful expression on her face, “she comes from a time when war, fighting, survival was everything. Sophea comes from a time of true brutality and what my sister did, killing our father, is what broke my mother into madness,”
I nodded but couldn’t really see how Victoria was able to so calmly justify all that had happened. The damage that Sophea had done reached beyond your garden variety brutality. Sophea was downright sadistic. It had been so much more for her. It had been a game to her, one filled with pleasure at each scream.
“Is she really going to go back into the tomb?” asked Lydia, barely above a whisper.
Victoria looked at Lydia a moment and then at me. I was holding my breath again, my fears hanging on whatever words Queen Victoria might choose next.
“Yes,” Victoria finally said as I breathed out in relief, “It might be a few days but I know my mother. She prefers the solitude. She lost joy in the world a long, long time ago when my father died,”
My eyebrows went up at the mention of Sophea roaming the castle for a few days. I glanced quickly at Lydia to see her reaction and she looked the same as me. Shocked, worried, and as though she had already started counting down the days.
“But until then, we have preparations to make, celebrations to arrange, and the spoils of war to keep her preoccupied,” said Victoria with a smile and a clap of her hands as she began striding towards the exit.
“Spoils of war?” I asked.
“Of course,” said Victoria from over her shoulder, turning to smile at Lydia and I as she reached the door, “That’s my mother’s favorite part,” and the Queen did something I hadn’t ever expected to see. She winked at us.
My mouth fell open as Victoria left quickly. I turned to look at Lydia and neither of us said a word, both speechless at the apparent amusement Victoria had with her mother’s delight in the spoils of war, whatever that meant.
“Get ready,” I could hear Victoria call from a few feet down the hallway, “We have a lot to do to get ready. And I will need you both as my event planner didn’t…make it,”
The blood soaked the marble steps by the time we made our way to the landing that had filled with blood at the base of the grand staircase. I stopped at the three short steps that led down onto that landing. There wasn’t a single spot the blood hadn’t seeped in, standing inches deep where I stood. Lydia pulled my hand gently, stepping down into the landing and paused, seeing that I had become distressed. I took a deep breath and took the several steps down onto the landing to stand next to Lydia.
“It will get better,” Lydia whispered, “Over time,”
I nodded to her, not believing but not wanting to dwell on the memories or this place. I placed my hand out, palm up and waited. I felt eyes over me, looking down at me with their silent screams as I did everywhere but I didn’t want to look up. I waited for the droplets of blood to fall, to paint me in their pain and sorrow. I waited a moment and breathed out a sigh of relief as my hand stayed clean. But no sooner had I sighed than a single, warm drop landed on the side of my outstretched palm and streaked down my arm to my elbow.
My head swirled as I stared at the blood that streaked across my skin and my breathing came rapidly, all at once. The walls and pillars spun around me as I looked at the blood, not wanting to pull my gaze up but knowing that I needed to, the longer I looked at that blood. It wasn’t a vision or a nightmare. The blood was warm. I could feel it. I reached my other hand out to touch it, wanting my other hand to come away clean only to feel the familiar sticky feel of blood beginning to thicken between my thumb and finger as I rubbed the drop between them.
I waited as long as I could, trying to fight against the vision of the bodies hanging above me, waiting for the rain of blood to begin again and drench me. I thought my mind would explode, ripped in every direction from replaying the horror again and again as I looked with wild eyes at the blood on my skin. Her laugh floated lightly and echoed throughout the grand staircase and the high ceiling o
f the space. I looked up quickly to find Sophea’s smiling face looking down at me from the railing that overlooked the landing from the second floor of the castle.
I put a hand up, trying to shield myself from her only to find more blood dripping down. Sophea held a terrified girl over the railing, dangled by her foot with a slice on her arm dripping steadily just over me now. I felt Lydia yank me roughly out from under the dangling girl. She was a human. And just as Lydia pushed me to safety and I sprawled across the floor towards the curling staircases on both sides of the landing, the girl fell. She landed on her face with an earth shattering scream of terror and a splat. I closed my eyes as the girl’s head burst on the hard surface, blood and pieces of her head shooting every which way as though a watermelon had been dropped from a great height. I didn’t scream.
The room continued to swirl as my eyes remained closed, not wanting to see the face of yet another dead person to remember, to haunt me. I heard her laughter continue, vibrating violently and growing louder with the great echo of the space. Sophea’s laughter haunted me more than the girl’s death. Until it didn’t, until I felt my mind dig in to stop the spinning. The sorrow and the fear, just like the pain, just disappeared and my mind embraced the one thing I had left - my anger.
I opened my eyes, set on Sophea with her hysterical laugh that had chased humans, even vampires away. As I gathered myself up off of the floor, my face looking up at Sophea where she stood and looked down at her handiwork, I felt something roll out from between my lips. It began slowly, a rumble, a growing force as my teeth gritted together and my lips began to curl up into a snarl. My humanity faded as I let an animal I never knew I had in me come forward with a growl. My instinct to fight, to kill, to hurt filled the void where my pain and fear had been.
Someone began pulling me away from the stairs, away from Sophea, and after blinking several times I followed the hand that held mine to see Lydia’s fear filled face dragging me as quickly and roughly as she could manage towards Queen Victoria’s chambers.
“You are fucking crazy!” said Lydia with wide eyes as she looked behind me every few steps and then to me, then finally forward as she continued to pull me along.
It wasn’t until one of the guards stepped in front of Lydia as she tried to drag me to the Queen that I bothered to look behind me, and found Sophea less than 30 feet behind, hot on our trail with a smile on her face.
“One of Queen…um, Patricia’s captives is demanding an audience with Her Majesty, the Queen of Vampires,”
“Does he mean me?” asked Sophea.
“I think she means Queen Victoria, your majesty” said the guard with a voice no higher than a whisper and a bow deep enough to qualify as begging.
“She?” asked Queen Victoria, coming from the corridor that Lydia had been dragging me towards.
Sebastian followed closely behind Victoria and as soon as he saw me, he walked swiftly towards me. Relief flooded over me at the sight of him and I walked just as quickly to meet him half way. He placed his hands on my face and kissed me firmly, our bodies pulled close and my eyes shut tightly as I tried to live in just this moment, as I tried to resist the faces that flashed before my closed eyes. Sebastian slowly pulled away, looking down at me with a smile and a worried glance toward Sophea where she stood smiling not far behind Lydia.
“She says her name is Felecia, your Majesty,” said the guard, still bowing deeply as Sebastian and I turned our attention to him and the Queen, “Wife of Sebastian,” said the guard, with a glance towards Prince Sebastian.
Sebastian froze. I looked up at Sebastian’s face for answers as painful memories of his back, skinless and caked with dried blood, came flooding back. Slowly Sebastian looked down at me with a face of utter confusion. Our eyes met and I could see the pleading in his eyes, his mouth agape, as he searched for the words to explain what the guard said.
“Nobody believes her, of course-” said the guard, interrupted swiftly by Queen Victoria.
“Bring her to me immediately,” said Victoria, waving her hand to dismiss the guard.
The guard didn’t say another word. He turned immediately and his heavy boots on the floor gave a resounding echo through the room. If he had walked any faster he would have been running. In a matter of seconds he had vacated to leave us all puzzled over Victoria’s reaction. She didn’t move, looking at the spot the guard had stood, staring at the marble floor that still had residual streaks of blood moving across it.
“What is going on?” I could hear Sebastian say.
“I’ve found her. We’ve found her,” whispered the Queen, “After all these years…Patricia has had her all along,”
I walked slowly over to the Queen, placing a delicate hand on her arm. That action, a comforting and concerned hand on her arm, broke her concentration. She looked at me sharply, her motions lightening fast as she placed a hand over mine, covering it quickly but gently. My eyes became wide and I stood perfectly still, waiting for what she might do next. I shouldn’t have simply walked over and touched her. It had been foolish. Victoria was clearly not in her right mind, hardly anyone was for that matter. From the look in her eyes, misted and glazed over with a memory I couldn’t see, I could tell she wasn’t here. Where ever she had gone just now, whatever she was reliving, it shook her.
“Who did Patricia have?” I asked quietly.
“Didn’t you hear the guard?” snapped the Queen, the mist from her eyes drying up immediately.
A low laugh bubbled up from Sophea, still coated in the rain of blood from her victims, now dry and caked, and beginning to smell if we were being honest.
“Her name is Felecia,” murmured Victoria, “She was Sebastian’s wife,”
And with that, Victoria’s fingers curled around my hand and flung it off of her as though she had just remembered that she didn’t like for anyone to touch her. Her face twisted up and then began walking briskly away.
“Where are you going?” asked Sebastian as Victoria walked with the determination of a warlord preparing for battle and the elegance of royalty thousands of years in training.
“If Felecia is coming,” said Victoria, not bothering to stop but shouting over her shoulder as she walked, “then we have a lot to do. And we must begin now,”
Sebastian and I looked at each other, neither one of us with words enough to speak but plenty of questions on the tip of every tongue in the room. Whoever was coming, I hoped for her sake she really was the Felecia that the Queen expected. Because if she wasn’t, I wouldn’t want to find out what Queen Victoria might do. And if this Felecia was exactly who she said she was then someone owed me an explanation. Because I sure as hell wasn’t going to share what was left of my honeymoon with another woman!
THE END
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Deadly Lovers (The Prussia Series) Page 16
