He was very old, and looked exactly as Lucy imagined someone who was allowed to remain alive several centuries past their expiration date would. His translucent, parchment-like skin was stretched tight over his skull, and was crisscrossed with raised, knotty veins. His eyes were sunken so far into the sockets that at first glance, Lucy thought they had been gouged out. They were clouded with a gray film that obscured the iris completely. He lacked hair of any kind, including eyebrows and eyelashes. But worse than any of that, Lucy noted, was the vampire’s leering mouth with two rows of razor sharp teeth, stained brown from centuries of dining on the blood of humans.
He sat crouched for several moments, face pressed into the cage, clearly enjoying Lucy’s reaction. Lucy stared back, swallowing her fear and disgust to meet his cold stare with one of her own. She refused to acknowledge the very clear advantage that he had over her. At last, he reached into his robe and produced the key to unlock the door. “Come out, dhampir, and stand before me.”
Lucy did not consider refusing. She slid out of the cage and stood slowly, her muscles protesting every move. As she stood, Lucy never let her eye contact with the vampire break.
“Such bravado,” he said with mock respect. “Tell me, what advantage do you think that you could possibly have over one as powerful as I?”
Before Lucy had a chance to formulate a reply, his hand struck out, raking razor-like claws across her abdomen. Lucy cried out as she fell to the floor. Alphonse picked her up effortlessly and dropped her onto the operating table, where he secured her head, arms, and legs with thick metal cuffs.
Just before Lucy’s wounds healed completely, he swiped at her once again, reopening the tears in her flesh. This time, however, Alphonse pulled an amber bottle from a nearby shelf and tipped the contents over the wound before it could heal. Lucy’s screams echoed throughout the chamber. She felt as though her skin was on fire. In fact, thin wisps of smoke were issuing from the wounds, which bubbled and gave off an acrid smell.
Alphonse held the bottle up. “An acid, not a strong one, mind you, but we’ll work our way up. Let us observe, shall we, Oscar?” Lucy twisted and convulsed against the restraints as her body tried to repair the chemical damage. But Alphonse did not allow her flesh to heal. Again and again, he ripped her open, pouring bottle after bottle of caustic substances into her wounds, until she was sure she would die from the pain alone. It was only after Lucy finally passed out that Alphonse deemed the session over, claiming that Lucy’s lack of reaction bored him.
For over an hour Oscar endured Lucy’s tortured screams until at last, she had screamed herself hoarse and slipped mercifully into unconsciousness. He dared not look away, nor make the slightest move to suggest he was uncomfortable with Lucy’s treatment. Alphonse tossed Lucy’s broken form back into her cage with as much care as one might give to throwing laundry in a hamper. He turned his attention to Oscar, who dared not let his hope show on his face. “I suppose you think you’ve done your penance?”
Oscar bowed his head in deference. “That is for you to decide, Alphonse.”
Alphonse sniffed noncommittally, walking away from Oscar’s cage to inspect the contents of the others that lined the walls, peering into each with mild interest. “Do you know what any of these are for?”
“Claude’s amusement, I suspect,” Oscar answered, eyeing Alphonse warily. “It is common knowledge that his predilection for torture frequently got in the way of any scientific advancements Claude may have been capable of.”
“True,” Alphonse nodded, still strolling casually about the laboratory. “But he had his moments. You of all people should realize this.”
“Hardly,” Oscar snorted. “Annalia discovered and developed the gene that allowed me flight, Claude had her killed so that he could claim the discovery for his own. I suspect that the reason I was the only one to live through the transition was because he was not in attendance.”
Alphonse waved his hand dismissively. “The past does not concern me.” He came back to Oscar’s cage, unlocked the door, and stood aside. Oscar made no move to get up, giving Alphonse a questioning look instead. “A brief reprieve for good behavior,” Alphonse smiled cruelly, “and I require your assistance.”
Oscar slid forward and carefully unfolded himself, flexing his muscles with loud popping noises as he stood. “What do you need from me?”
“Dispose of them,” Alphonse nodded at the cages. “All of them. Delphine may approve of such frivolity, but I do not.” Oscar nodded and moved toward the cabinet. “What are you doing?” Alphonse demanded.
“Poison, it would make the least mess,” Oscar replied. “I refuse to sink my fangs into anything Claude tampered with.” He eyed the nearest cage, where a man lay barely conscious with festering wounds, oozing puss where his skin had been methodically stripped away. “For all I know they are hunters.”
Alphonse shook his head sadly. “Perhaps you are going soft, Oscar.”
“Self-preservation is not soft. What method would you prefer?”
“Entertain me.” Alphonse draped himself into a chair and yawned dramatically. “You need not bite them, but I trust you’ll find something creative.”
Oscar snorted in disgust, but took the keys from Alphonse’s outstretched hand and unlocked the first cage, the man with the wounds. The fetid smell of him was overwhelming. When the man made no attempt to escape, Oscar sighed, reached into the cage, and dragged him out. Holding him up with one hand, Oscar slashed at him with the other, disemboweling him.
“Not bad,” Alphonse observed flatly. “Try one with more fight in it next. That one.” He pointed to a cage holding a girl, no more than fifteen years old, who stared at him with wide-eyed terror.
At first glance, Oscar thought she might not yet have been tampered with, but when he unlocked her cage, her attempt to bolt for the door was cut short as she fell to the floor. Her legs, heavily scarred, spread unnaturally flat against the tile and Oscar realized the bones in her thighs had been removed. He wanted to turn away in disgust, but such weakness would be his own undoing. Instead, he allowed her to drag her mutilated form several feet in the direction of the door before slicing her head from her neck in one clean movement.
And so it went. Oscar opened six more cages, finding six more horrors, each grotesquely unique in the style with which they had been disfigured. None gave him a fight, two looked almost grateful. Though his methods were inhumane, Oscar felt no regret for ending their lives. Even if he could have healed the physical atrocities inflicted upon them, the mental damage was done. His only solace was that Lucy was still out cold and had not witnessed what he had done.
“You may clean up, if you wish,” Alphonse informed him.
Oscar looked down at his jacket, now flecked with blood and bits of gore. He removed the jacket, tossed it into the nearest trashcan, and went to the sink to wash his hands. What he really needed was a shower and a decent meal, but he knew better than to push his luck. Alphonse had moved from the chair and was now hovering near Oscar’s cage. With a sigh, Oscar dried his hands and wiped his face. “Is this really necessary, Alphonse?”
“I’m afraid so, Oscar. Lucy still has quite a bit of life left in her. Look.” He gestured to Lucy’s cage, where she lay slumped over, her chest rising and falling in the familiar pattern of rest. The scars on her stomach had faded to an almost imperceptible pale pink mark. “I look forward to tomorrow’s challenge.”
With one last furtive glance at Lucy, Oscar crawled back into his cage. Alphonse swept from the room, carefully sidestepping the carnage that littered the floor. He turned out the lights and locked the laboratory. Oscar settled himself as comfortably as he could, turning so that he faced Lucy’s cage and sighed softly.
“I’ll find a way, Lucy,” Oscar whispered softly.
A hoarse cough caught him by surprise, followed by rasping laughter.
“Fuck you, monster!”
Chapter 30
Lucy sat up gingerly. Every muscle was on fire
and the smell of death that lingered in the air caused her to retch violently. Spending another night in a cage was bad enough, sharing the cage with a pool of her own sick was not an option she wanted to entertain. Lucy could feel Oscar staring at her, but she refused to look at him.
“Lucy, you can’t fault me for what I did.”
“I fault you and all like you for existing,” she spat with malice.
“I didn’t have a choice,” Oscar reasoned. “Honestly, it was for the best. I put them out of their misery.”
“You’re a freaking hero then aren’t you? You had a choice.”
“Oh?” Oscar shifted closer to Lucy’s cage. “What choice did I have? Refusing an Elder means death.”
Lucy made a disgusted noise, but still refused to look at him. “You deserve to die, Oscar, a slow, horrible death. But did it ever occur to you that your ‘Elder’ is about half your size and more dead than alive? Why do you take orders from him anyway?”
“Programming,” Oscar replied matter-of-factly. “All of us are coded to obey the Elders. Of course, it is one of the weaker traits. I can’t think of a single High Born who isn’t plotting to overthrow the Elders. But our genetic programming is strong enough that plotting is as far as we ever get.”
He was talking about brainwashing on a genetic level. Less than a year ago, Lucy would have balked at the concept. Then again, a year ago she hadn’t been in the habit of carrying around capsules of inhalants that could wipe out a chunk of someone’s memory. “What’s a High Born?” she asked.
“What you call a vampire,” Oscar replied. “Rather, a vampire born of The Eyes. We generally do not acknowledge the aberrations you are used to dealing with in New Orleans.”
“Then what were you doing there?”
“Just because the Elders were fine with abandoning New Orleans doesn’t mean that all of The Eyes were. There are those of us who feel our purpose has stagnated.”
“You mean that your bid to take over the world isn’t moving along fast enough for you?” Lucy asked sharply.
“You could say that,” Oscar shrugged. “As far as the Elders are concerned, they already control the world. I don’t think any of them have even been out of this compound in decades. Why should they? They have an army of thousands to do their bidding. They don’t hunt, their meals are brought to them, and they have secured that their progeny will not lift a finger against them. They have everything they need right here.”
Lucy filed that bit of information as useful. If she was going to make it out of there alive she needed a plan and soon. “Some existence,” she snorted. “How old are these Elders anyway?”
“No one knows for sure, but there are rumors that some of the Elders are the last of the tribe that moved into Paris during the Renaissance.”
“What about you? How old are you?”
“I’m not sure, though I’ve been told I was responsible for a series of unsolved murders in London’s East End, sometime around the end of the nineteenth century,” Oscar answered with a hint of wry humor.
“You’ve been told?” Lucy shuddered in revulsion, yet part of her was morbidly fascinated with the insinuation that Oscar had hinted at. She wondered what other atrocities humans have been blamed for that might have been the ES.
“The transitions used to rob us of our memories until the early part of the last century.”
“Transitions?”
“Medical procedures,” Oscar explained. “When we discover new abilities or attributes, naturally we want them for ourselves, not just future generations. But until recently, this came with a cost. We were, in essence, newborns. Our abilities were retained, as well as the knowledge required to use them, but beyond that, we knew nothing of our former selves.”
Lucy thought about her own inborn abilities. They were certainly helpful in her current situation, but worth sacrificing her memories for? Her instinctive answer was no, absolutely not. The thought of waking up and not remembering her mother or grandmother, the two people who had loved her, was enough to bring tears to her eyes just thinking about it.
But then there was Andre, and the too painful memories, so fresh in her mind that Lucy wondered briefly whether she would erase their last moments together if given the chance. A tear slid down Lucy’s cheek. She wiped it away with a sniff.
“Are you in pain?” Oscar asked with concern.
“No,” she lied, curling up as comfortably as she could on her side. “Just tired.” Lucy closed her eyes, feigning sleep and thinking about Andre, from their first spirited arguments, to the fleeting moment of passion they shared in his apartment that seemed like a lifetime ago.
He was gone.
That reality hurt her more than any of the torture that had been inflicted upon her. To not feel was tempting, but no, Lucy realized, her memories and feelings, the good and the bad, were the thin line that separated her from the monsters like Oscar and Alphonse. Genetically, she was closer to them than human, but it was her emotions, ironically, her one attribute that Andre had always given her grief about, that made her whole. It was cold comfort at best, but it was all she had. Settling her head into the crook of her elbow, Lucy let her physical and emotional exhaustion overtake her, and soon fell into a fitful sleep.
On her third day of captivity, when Alphonse returned to the lab, Lucy was ready. He opened the door of her cage and stepped aside. Feigning fatigue, Lucy crawled out, using the bars to pull herself from the floor. She stood in front of the vampire, hands clasped in front of her, head bowed in deference. She knew she had just one shot at escape and if she failed, all she could hope for was a quick death.
“I’m glad to see we’re learning respect, dhampir,” Alphonse crowed. “Get on the table.”
Lucy took a slow and unsteady step, fully expecting another attack like the last time, but Alphonse just watched her. Touching the back of her teeth with her tongue, using the method that Dara had shown her, Lucy extended her fangs and bit the inside of her cheek hard. She took another step, but brought her foot down awkwardly and tumbled to the floor.
Alphonse was on her in an instant, which is exactly what Lucy wanted. As Alphonse leaned over to grab her, Lucy reached up and seized his arms near the shoulder. She kicked hard with her legs, flipping him onto his back and pinning him to the ground. With her fangs still extended, Lucy bit into Alphonse’s neck, ignoring her disgust as the flesh made a horrid popping sound. When she felt the blood begin to pool in her mouth, she withdrew her teeth and forced the mixture of her blood and saliva back against the rush that was threatening to gag her.
Alphonse flailed against Lucy, raking her back with his claws, but she did not let go. Even as the claws pierced more than flesh, Lucy kept her mouth over his neck, forcing more of her own blood into his body. At long last, Alphonse weakened to convulsions and began breathing shallowly. Lucy pushed herself away, spat the remaining blood from her mouth, and vomited violently. Only when Alphonse stopped moving completely did she chance getting close to him again. She reached out gingerly and confirmed that he was indeed dead.
Getting quickly to her feet, Lucy ran first to a cupboard where she had seen lab coats. It wasn’t much, but the idea of running almost naked through the streets of Paris held little appeal. She eyed the bladed instruments set up on the operating table briefly, but thought better of carrying a weapon that she was unfamiliar with. Instead, she found a few empty syringes that she intended to fill with her own blood. It would be a crude weapon, but an effective one.
“Lucy,” Oscar pleaded with her from inside his cage.
“No way, I’m out of here. I didn’t risk my life to end up as your prisoner instead.”
“Without me you will never make it out of here,” Oscar hissed. “Through that door is the main compound of The Eyes. Even if you knew your way out, you are going to run into High Born who will not hesitate to kill you.”
Lucy laughed. “Do you think I’m stupid? I’m going through that door.” She pointed to the door at the far en
d of the lab, where she an Oscar had originally entered.
“To what end?” Oscar challenged. “Through that door is a labyrinth of tunnels so complex that you’ll never find the stairs. And even if you do, the doors are locked. Lucy, you are three stories underground and in the dead center of The Eyes of The Sun’s home base. You need my help. Please.”
Lucy hesitated. If Oscar was telling the truth, then he was right, she had little chance for survival. But Lucy wasn’t in a trusting mood. “Fine, but I need some insurance first.” Lucy pulled one of the syringes out of her pocket and jabbed the needle into her arm where she hoped a vein was. After two unsuccessful attempts, she flung the syringe across the room with a frustrated scream.
“Lucy, get my coat out of the trash bin. In one of the pockets is your bracelet, is that insurance enough?”
She ran to the bin, lifted the lid, and gagged from the smell. Holding her breath, she picked out the jacket and gingerly slipped her hand into the pockets, until she found the bracelet. With a rush of relief, she slipped it onto her arm and unsheathed a CPA, inspecting it for damage. Finding the weapon satisfactory, she grabbed the keys from the floor and unlocked Oscar’s cage, stepping back into a defensive posture immediately.
Oscar stood, extending his arms upward in surrender. “I won’t hurt you, Lucy, but we have to move fast.” He walked over to Alphonse’s body and slid the cloak from it. “Put this on, and put the hood up. If we see anyone, say nothing.”
Lucy did as she was told and followed Oscar back out through the door they had originally entered. The hall was again completely dark and Lucy was not wearing her night vision contacts.
“Take my hand, your eyes should adjust soon enough.”
Hesitantly, Lucy reached her left hand out in front of her, keeping her weapon in her right. She grabbed his wrist to avoid unnecessary contact with his clawed hands and they began walking at a brisk pace.
Soon the antiseptic smell of the laboratory gave way to an earthy pungent smell and the air grew humid. As her eyes adjusted, Lucy noticed with a gasp that some of the walls appeared to be made of human bones. “Catacombs,” Oscar explained in a hushed whisper. “There are a lot more of the dead beneath Paris than what is on the official tour.”
The Eyes of the Sun: The Complete Trilogy Page 28
