by Dima Zales
Ignoring the pain of my injuries, I drag the nearest corpse from the pile, then another, then another.
By the time I finally expose Ariel and Beatrice, my arm and back muscles ache almost as much as my legs.
Now I see why the corpses re-died. While Ariel is lying with her face pillowed on Beatrice’s chest, the necromancer’s head is unnaturally flat on the floor. That, and bits of her brain matter amidst a big puddle of blood, tells me that Beatrice is dead—a fact I have very mixed feelings about. The most selfish thing that crosses my mind is the relief that the necromancer won’t walk around with what would’ve been a horrible facial scar from my knife-slice… as in, I don’t have to feel guilty now that she’s dead.
Doors open in the distance. Has someone come to check on us? How long has it been since Ariel first fired her gun?
Ariel lifts her head and turns toward me, her hair matted with blood that covers most of her face.
“It’s over,” she gasps and lays her head back on Beatrice’s chest, as though it were a nice memory foam pillow.
“We have to get out of here,” I say, kneeling next to her.
No response.
I wipe the blood from her cheek and notice how extremely pale she is. Panicked, I press my finger to her pulse.
It’s there, but weak. This must be due to blood loss from that head wound.
She needs a hospital, pronto.
I take out my phone, but the stupid battery is dead.
Unwilling to needlessly jostle Ariel in her fragile state, I check Beatrice’s pockets and locate her phone, which is eighty-something percent charged.
Without a second of hesitation, I dial 911.
“911. What’s the address of the emergency?” a female voice says.
“Put the phone down,” says a hypnotic male voice that I recognize.
Looking up, I confirm my suspicions. Crinkling his too-pretty-for-a-guy nose at the carnage around him stands Gaius—the man in black who saved me at the TV studio and escorted me home. His entire black-suited team is with him, and they all stare at Ariel’s and Beatrice’s blood like starved children at marshmallows.
“She needs help,” I say without hanging up the phone.
“I can see that,” Gaius says and lifts his sunglasses to expose those mirrored eyes.
Before I can look away, the eyes grasp my attention and don’t let go.
“Hang up now,” Gaius says, enunciating every word.
I fight the urge to let his voice become the center of my universe.
“Ariel,” I say, unable to look away.
“Oh, I’ll save your friend,” he says without blinking.
“What is your location?” the 911 dispatcher asks urgently, but I hang up on her. Not because he took over my mind, but because I believe he’ll help Ariel. Plus, I just had an idea that might not work out if I don’t hang up.
My mind is hazy as I pocket the phone, but I channel all my willpower to say, “Help her. What are you waiting for?”
“Right,” Gaius says and approaches Ariel. “Just one very important thing before I proceed.” He looks at me as intently as before, but his eyes are back to their Siberian ice color. “You’ll soon have a chat with some important people, and they will ask you about that TV incident when we first met. If you mention me, Darian, or my team, she’ll die.”
A chat with some important people.
My thoughts are jumbled by the lingering haze, but I’m beginning to understand why Gaius is here.
He must be how I get in front of the Council I saw in my vision.
He was always going to find me using some magical vampire means.
The stupid future sure likes to be stubborn.
“I can’t lie with the polygraph stone they’ll put around my neck,” I say, staying alert with a huge effort.
Gaius looks shocked, then mumbles under his breath, “Of course. Damn seers.” Louder, he says, “Just don’t bring it up, and you should be fine. No one would insult a Council member or the Enforcers by making open accusations.”
“Deal,” I say and repeat to myself what I’m supposed to do a few times, just in case this haze messes with my long-term memory.
Then again, maybe I shouldn’t worry. I didn’t expose Darian in my vision. Unless it was because I got this same threat before the events in the dream? No. Even if I didn’t get the threat in that timeline, I was too terrified of speaking in front of all those people to come up with such creative ideas. And history is about to repeat itself.
“Good,” Gaius replies. “Now let me help your delectable friend.”
He leans over Ariel and—as though it’s the most normal thing in the world—licks up all the blood covering her face. He then pulls away, and fangs glint in the air before he sinks them into his own wrist. Blood starts gushing from the wound, and he brings it to Ariel’s mouth—undoing his earlier work by covering the lower portion of her face with blood again.
Though I don’t have Ariel’s medical background, I’m pretty sure this is not how blood transfusion works.
Yet what he’s doing seems to do something good, because color returns to Ariel’s face. She grabs Gaius’s forearm and keeps drinking his blood with way too much enthusiasm.
The word “vampire” penetrates my dazed consciousness, but I mentally swat it away like an annoying mosquito.
As she gulps down the blood, Ariel starts making the most disturbing sounds—orgasmic-type moans that leave no doubt about her health but major doubts about her sanity.
As my worry about Ariel abates, it becomes harder to resist the haze. I should probably run, but I can’t get my body to move.
Besides, I can’t leave Ariel here, with this man who threatened her.
In the middle of the feeding, Gaius lifts his head and looks at me again, his eyes mirrored, and the haze intensifies, taking over my mind. Just like after the show, time seems to move in jolts, my memory short-circuiting intermittently.
One moment, I’m watching the strange blood transference, and the next, I’m being led away.
Gaius is holding a blissed-out Ariel in his arms, and some of his black-clad colleagues are tidying up the exhibit.
Next, I register walking through the Luxor hotel. Here and there, figures in black are staring down cops and security personnel with their mirrored eyes.
“No one will know what happened here,” Gaius says when he catches my unfocused gaze. “I’m glad you got rid of the necro. If we’d arrived while she was still alive—”
I must’ve spazzed out in the middle of his monologue because I next come to my senses in front of two limos.
“Here,” Gaius says, handing me a small plastic bag with a single hair in it. “This belongs to you.”
He looks at Ariel, who’s draped over his shoulder, and adds, “Your friend insisted you get this back.”
I blink, taking the bag from him. Is this how he found us? By somehow tracking me through my hair?
I hope I’ll remember this after the haze is gone, so I can shave my head as a preventative measure.
The ecstasy on her face receding momentarily, Ariel half grunts, half moans something in approval—she’s clearly doing a million times better than before.
“Sorry about this.” Gaius takes out a canvas sack and puts it over Ariel’s head before handing her off to one of the men in black, who takes her to the farther limo. “Security precaution,” he explains. “I’m sure you understand.”
“Wait,” I say, but a sack goes over my head as well—and despite all my experience with blindfolds, I don’t have a way to peek out of this one.
The mind fog intensifies without visual input to keep my brain busy. One minute, I’m sitting in a driving car, and then almost instantly, I’m being led somewhere.
“You have to heal her quickly,” Gaius says to someone. “She can’t face the Council with those horrible bruises, and I’ve been explicitly forbidden from healing her my way.”
I’m still in the dark, but my guess i
s that someone shoots magic at me, because it feels like all my cuts and bruises are being erased with a warm energy that spreads through my whole body, leaving pleasurable relaxation behind. The splinter in my forehead falls out, and my neck bruises become but a distant memory. It’s as though I’ve gotten a massage, used a steam room, and then slept for fifteen hours, all in a few seconds. I sigh in pleasure and hear Gaius chuckle approvingly.
“That’s enough,” he says and leads me away from wherever we are.
I must be in the car again because I feel the engine revving.
After an indeterminate amount of time, we stop and someone leads me through a tangle of corridors to some place that’s cold and smells like an ancient castle.
Eventually, we make our way to what feels like a large room.
Someone guides me to the center of the room and yanks the hood from my head.
The room is dimly lit, so my eyes don’t need to adjust. I meet Gaius’s mirrored gaze again, and the haze in my mind dissipates.
“You should be back to normal in a moment,” he says and walks away.
When my mind is completely clear, I recognize the scent of sage incense in the air and instantly know where I am.
I was right. The future does have a preference for how events play out.
Since I survived Beatrice, I get to die here.
I’m standing in front of the Council in the circular room from my dream.
They’re about to interrogate me and then take a vote to kill me.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Frantically, I try to recall what happened in my dream to help me scheme better. In the magic parlance, this is called “being ahead of the audience.”
If memory serves, the Hogwarts-like candles will light up, and I’ll find myself in a mini Colosseum. The Council will all be dressed in their Eyes Wide Shut sex-orgy best.
As I expected, or predicted, or whatever the correct term is, the candles come to life.
I stare at the Council members in the circle around me and try to not freak out at the upcoming public speaking. If I have a panic attack and faint as I did in my dream, my fate as a dead woman will be sealed.
They’re all staring, but I know there’s going to be a guy behind me with that BDSM collar, so I spin around.
As expected, the guy is just a few feet away from me, his hand already extended.
He didn’t expect me to turn, so he didn’t hide his face deep inside his hood—which is why my eyes want to jump out of my head from shock.
I now understand why this man’s voice was so familiar in the dream.
I know him.
Know him very well.
The reason I hadn’t attached his very distinct voice to his identity—other than my battling a panic attack—must be because it was so out of context. The man standing in front of me is the last person I’d expect to be supernatural, which I assume is a prerequisite for being on this Council.
It’s the owner of the hedge fund I work at.
My boss, Nero Gorin.
He’s also kind of a bad-luck charm for me, as far as panic attacks go. He’s now witnessed two of them (unless the one in my dream doesn’t count).
“I need to put this around your neck,” Nero murmurs like before.
“Okay, boss,” I whisper back conspiratorially.
He pauses as though to register my recognition, then removes his hood, erasing any remaining doubts as to his identity.
As he puts the necklace around my neck, his fingers gently brush my skin, and my breathing quickens as gooseflesh rises on my arms.
Am I dreaming about kissing him again?
But no. That dream never involved an audience.
In any case, there’s some warped logic to his presence here. Nero has always been eerily good at seeing through lies. Some even said his skill is “almost supernatural.” Turns out, they were spot on. During my dream, the stone in this necklace worked as a lie detector: it lit up green when I told the truth and red when I inadvertently lied—something I’d better avoid this time around. Under my new world paradigm, it seems feasible that Nero has transferred some of his lie detection ability into this stone on my neck.
Using special-effects-like moves.
Nero Gorin.
Sure.
Leaning closer to my boss’s ear, I whisper, “Please don’t let them kill me.”
Just like in my dream, he reassuringly touches my back—and I recall he did the same thing at the Alpha One conference, right before I fainted.
Well, I can’t faint this time, so I pull away from his touch and preemptively breathe five in, five out, just as Lucretia—the shrink at his hedge fund—taught me. My anxiety abates enough for me to spot other symptoms of an incipient panic attack, and I do my best to convince myself I have this all under control.
Slightly calmer, I let Nero lock the necklace into place. Knowing how it would go, I don’t bother trying to get it off me this time.
Especially since I hope the right truth will set me free.
Everyone around us looks eager to watch Nero do his lightning thing. I just keep my breathing exercise going because I know how close I am to having to speak.
“This will not hurt you,” Nero says softly, and I remember he was standing during that vote.
“Don’t let them kill me,” I want to beg him again, but he’s already halfway to his seat.
As the ocean-blue glow illuminates my surroundings, I face the location where Kit—the magenta-robed, face-shifting Asian woman—is about to stand.
“I’m Councilor Kit,” she says just as expected, in the anime-sounding voice. “I’m the designated neutral party in tonight’s proceedings. Please state your name for the record.”
Because everything thus far has transpired as expected, and thanks to my breathing exercise, the prospect of saying my name doesn’t terrify me nearly as much as it did in my dream.
It does terrify me more than anything from the Bodies exhibit, though—and that set a new bar for horror.
Clearing my throat, I say, “My first name is Sasha.” I enunciate everything slowly and deliberately, like I’m trying to impersonate President Obama. “My last name is Urban—I got it from my adoptive father, but I might soon change it to my adoptive mother’s maiden name, Ballard. I don’t know my biological parents, or else I’d use their last name.”
The lie detection stone lights up green to all of that, and that’s good; I need to keep it that way.
Chester, the guy in the yellow robe, stands up again and reveals his mischievous satyr face, now noticeably less smug than in my dream. He must not appreciate all the truthful information I packed into that one answer.
“I’m Councilor Chester, the Plaintiff in today’s proceedings,” he says, and this time, I think I know where I’ve heard his voice. I don’t dwell on it now, though, since I have to focus all my energy on not fainting, which is getting harder and harder to do. “I’ll cut right to the chase,” he continues. “What did you do at eight p.m. on Sunday, October 8th?”
Even though I’d expected the question, the room still spins around me. Fortunately, the deep breathing staves off any nausea, so my voice is semi-normal as I enunciate every syllable again. “I was performing on a show called Evening with Kacie.” I inhale deeply and wish I had a bottle of water that I could slowly uncap and sip to let myself relax more. “I didn’t realize that mentalism was a crime that required proceedings such as this one, but I’m very sorry if I broke some rule I didn’t know about. Or are you asking about that event because it was the first time a corpse raised by a necromancer named Beatrice attacked me?”
The necklace shines green, and I enjoy the gaping look of incomprehension on Chester’s face. He definitely didn’t expect me to say all that.
Everyone in the room flouts decorum to discuss what I’ve just said.
When the noise level reaches high-school-cafeteria decibels, the black-hooded figure of Vlad stands up and clears his throat.
Every
one shuts up.
Vlad clearly has clout.
“The Enforcers have recovered the corpse of the necromancer she mentions.” He gives me a strangely approving look, then turns to face the Council. “I was going to bring this up after we’d settled Sasha’s fate.”
The stress might be playing tricks with my vision, but does Chester look relieved at learning of Beatrice’s fate?
“If Sasha rid us of a necromancer, you should’ve told us,” Darian says, this time without an introduction.
Vlad’s forehead reaches a new level of broodiness as he stares at Darian. “She wasn’t the one who dealt the death blow, and besides, you know how my people feel about necromancers. I’m more grateful to the defendant than the rest of you are. However, as Leader of the Enforcers, I don’t think my gratitude is relevant to these proceedings.”
“It’s relevant,” Darian says without much confidence. “It speaks to her character.”
“Can we resume the proceedings?” Chester says. “Or let’s just neutralize her and be done with it.” He seems to have regained some of his good humor.
“I don’t see much point in the proceedings anymore,” Darian says and looks at Vlad, who seems to nod, though almost imperceptibly. “We know she didn’t think the performance was against the rules—and we know she was adopted, meaning no one could’ve taught her the rules.”
“Are you familiar with the term ‘Cognizant?’” Chester asks me instead of acknowledging Darian’s iron-clad arguments. “You must answer. Now.”
Fighting my fear of public speaking with all my might, I inhale deeply, count to five, and exhale. “Yes. I first came across this term the night after the TV appearance, when I eavesdropped on the late necromancer Beatrice during her conversation with her employer.”
The stone on my neck shines green, and I gulp in another breath. I was worried it would reject the word “eavesdrop” in lieu of “heard it in a psychic dream,” but it seems the stone is flexible enough to consider my prediction a form of eavesdropping.
The reaction in the room is priceless. If I’d planted poisonous snakes in the robes of everyone here, I don’t think it would’ve created as big of a commotion.
