Pendulum (Kingdom of Night Book 1)

by L. C. Davis

  A vampire couple dancing beside us suddenly swooped in and the man dipped his partner low. “Isn't that sweet,” she said with an unnatural grin that revealed her fangs.

  I looked up at the stage to see Sarah beckoning me. “Come along, darling. That's enough dancing. We still haven't had cake and you've only opened one of your presents.”

  The orchestra stopped playing in unison, but it sounded as if the needle had been pulled from a record. I turned back to Victor for guidance.

  He touched my face with a gloved hand and pulled me closer. Before I could register what he was doing, he pulled me in for a deep kiss that called everything in my world into question. The kiss ached deeply yet I returned it eagerly, desperate for more. As long as his lips touched mine, there were no vampires or werewolves or psychotic hosts. There was no Sebastian either. In that moment, there was only Victor and me.

  It was over much too soon. If he hadn't held me for a moment while I got my bearings, I knew my legs would give out on me.

  “Victor-” I whispered, my hand hovering over my traitorous lips.

  “One for the road, just in case this goes bad,” he smiled sadly, stepping back. “No matter what happens, just remember that's how I feel about you.”

  I didn't like the tone of defeat in his voice. I turned back to the stage to see that the sea of vampires had been parted for me once again. I felt a subtle tug in my mind, pulling me down the aisle and up the stairs that led onto the stage where she was waiting for me.

  “Aww, you blink and next thing you know they're kissing boys. Are you ready to open your big gift? I hope you liked the way I wrapped Jeff's heart. That was just a little teaser.”

  If Mrs. Alderdice had been in a trance at all, she snapped out of it. “No,” she cried. “Someone do something! Kill her!”

  Sarah rolled her eyes. “Can someone please take care of her?” She snapped her fingers and two figures emerged from the crowd. One was the man from the plane, the other was a tall, muscular woman I didn't recognize but who bore similar features.

  “I knew she'd make a scene, but she does love having a bird's eye view of chaos, so I thought it would be cruel to leave her out,” Sarah whispered to me, leaning in.

  “What are you going to do to her?” I asked warily, watching as the men forced her into a chair and brought her up to the stage.

  “Oh, don't worry. The trance was just to make sure she didn't interrupt the dance. She's going to be fully lucid for the evening's festivities,” she said, wincing as Mrs. Alderdice struggled against the men who were tying her arms and legs to the chair.

  I started to lunge instinctively only to be held in place by a vice grip. Sarah's manicured nails dug into my flesh and she looked at me like I was a stupid pup that had tried to escape its pen. “Now now, remember what your boyfriend is going to do if you don't behave.”

  The world spun as I turned to see Victor much closer than he had been before. His body language was one of stalking, not running. The ferocious look on his face didn't match his pleading eyes at all.

  My heart sank at the thought of what I had almost done out of sheer stupidity. I swallowed hard. “Please let him go.”

  “Not a chance. Whether I flip the switch or not depends on your behavior. Besides, is she really worth it?” She put her hand on my back and pushed me towards Mrs. Alderdice. Her mouth was taped, but the look of rage on her face said more than a thousand words.

  “I know you have no idea what this woman did to you, but surely you hate her just a little for what you do know.” She shook her head. “Just another plastic, ugly bitch who got turned a few decades too late and married a closet case takes her issues out on the poor husband brutalizes.”

  “I don't know what you're talking about,” I said carefully. It scared me that Mrs. Alderdice only grew more incensed as she spoke. Not scared. Not confused. Furious.

  “I know you don't sweetie, and that's partially my fault,” she said. “See, your mind is all screwed up. I laid this perfect framework in there when you were little and this hag's husband and son went in and messed it up with their Mind Control for Dummies hatchet job and everything's been going haywire eve since. But don't worry, mommy's here to make everything alright.”

  She smiled cruelly at Mrs. Alderdice. “Starting with you.” She leaned in and gave the other woman's face a few hard slaps masquerading as a jovial gesture. “My son might not remember what your twisted little family did to him, but I do. You fuck with my kid? I put yours in an urn.” She reached into her shirt and pulled out a necklace. Even from a small distance, I could see that it was strung with an entire set of teeth and two unusually long canines.

  It didn't take much to guess whose they were.

  I flinched as Mrs. Alderdice tried to scream, her voice muffled by the tape. Her eyes were wide with grief as she struggled to get out of the chair for a moment before collapsing in sobs.

  “Here,” said Sarah, tying the necklace around Mrs. Alderdice's neck. “You can wear it. I'm more of a diamond kind of gal myself, but the quirky look suits you.”

  “Why?” I choked out.

  “Oh, honey. Defending your abusive Oedipus complex boyfriend and his mommy is so Lifetime move of the week,” she said, giving me a dismissive wave. She checked the diamond encrusted watch on her wrist and looked towards the curtain. “You want to see your present, don't you?”

  I wanted nothing less in the entire world with the notable exception of watching Victor die. “Yes,” I said weakly.

  “Oh, come on. That's not birthday level enthusiasm.”

  “It's not my birthday. Why do you keep saying that?”

  “I'm the one who gave birth to you. Don't you think I'd know that?” she laughed. “This is your second birth. The day I remove the labyrinth and every piece of mind and memory that's been locked away and compartmentalized merges into one. Time to step into your identity as a true hybrid and finally join the rest of your family.”

  Her words were like a chisel putting the last cracks in a stone wall that was doomed to give way at any moment. “It was you. You did this to me?” It was impossible to hide my disbelief. I knew now without a doubt that this woman was my mother, and I was beginning to understand the maliciousness she was capable of, but to think she had been the source of so much pain and very nearly my death was almost too much to bear.

  “Like I said, I laid the framework in your mind a long time before Jeff and his old man came into the picture and you were fine. I did it to protect you, to keep both sides dormant until it was time for you to embrace who you really are.” She sighed. “That idiot expedited things, of course, but all this has been to protect you.”

  “You're lying,” I said, backing away from her. “You don't care about protecting me. If you did, you wouldn't have left me at that hospital. You wouldn't have let me spend eighteen years of my life moving from one home to another, wondering what I'd done to make you hate me so much and if you were ever coming to save me.”

  Tears streamed down my face as I struggled to keep myself together. “If you gave a shit about me, you would have stopped the abuse, the neglect, the loneliness. You would have done something before now.”

  She listened without a trace of visible emotion or regret, crossing her arms. “I was young. Much younger than you are now when it happened. I didn't understand the gift a hybrid child could be, and I thought by locking your gift away, I was giving you a better life. The leader of the troupe before me was a racist son of a bitch who would have bashed your skull in the moment I gave birth if I hadn't run when I did. I thought I was giving you a better life.”

  I shook my head. “I don't believe you.”

  “That's your choice. You don't have to believe me, you don't even have to accept the fact that I'm your mother, but you will take your rightful place among your true family.”

  “I have a family,” I gritted out.

  She laughed dryly, showing a less playful side. “You mean those dogs in the sex dungeon? Please. Do
you really think the hybrid child is going to be allowed to remain in a pack of filthy dogs? You'll be lucky if I let you keep one as a pet.”

  “The hybrid child?” murmured someone in the crowd.

  “Shut up!” Sarah screamed, pure vitriol as she made a tight fist with her hand. I had barely turned around by the time a man dropped in the middle of the crowd, his body lifeless on the floor.

  “Please stop,” I choked out.

  She snarled at me in disgust. “This is what I'm talking about!” She grabbed her head and paced the length of the stage. “It's your fucking compassion. It makes you weak. You, you have no idea what these people have done to you and you're asking me to stop before you feel bad for them.”

  She took a deep breath and seemed to take on a completely different personality, raking a hand through her auburn hair. “That's the problem. You don't know. You're blinded by your ignorance, but I can fix that. I had hoped to do it gradually but the moon rises tonight and there's no time. I'll remove the matrix from your mind all at once. It will be painful, but it's the only way.”

  “That could kill him,” growled Victor. He was standing in the same position she'd left him, as if frozen in place, but he was clearly speaking for himself.

  She bent over with her hands on her knees as if she was speaking to a child. “No. One. Asked. You. Now shut the fuck up before I turn you into a babbling idiot.”

  He looked as if he was going to speak again. “Victor, please,” I cried, giving him a desperate look. “Just let her do this.”

  Victor fell silent and Sarah smirked. “That's a good boy. I love it when a dog knows his place. She turned away from us. “Lorenz, get the party favor from the back, will you?”

  He ignored her and looked at me. “I've been trying not to do this, but the risk is infinitesimally small compared to what she's going to do. This is a grade-a psychic matrix that's been in your mind since you were born. You can't survive this with your sanity intact.”

  I took a moment to relish the sound of his voice in my mind and the closeness it brought. “But I might survive. She clearly has plans for me, like you said. I don't think anything gets in the way of Sarah's plans. If we stand a chance at fighting our way out of this, I need to be whole.”

  “If you try anything, she'll flip the switch and I'll keep attacking until one of our hearts stops beating,” he warned.

  “I know, but I have a plan. Trust me. She seems to want me to transform tonight, and there must be a reason she needs a hybrid. If you can transform at the same time, we might stand a chance.”

  “No, Remus. It doesn't work like that. You won't be focused enough to fight your first time. Besides, I can't shift with her inside my head. I'll just go after you in an even deadlier form.”

  “It's the only shot we have. If I can trigger her switch and then deactivate it, will you be safe from her control in your beast form?” I asked.

  He hesitated. “Theoretically, we can only be psychically manipulated by vampires in our human forms. But the only way you're going to snap me out of it is if one of us is dead.”

  “Got it.”

  “Remus-”

  “You're going to have to trust me,” I pleaded. “You've always been the one who trusted me, don't stop now. Not when it matters most.”

  He watched me, clearly furious. I could tell from his clenched jaw that he was considering whether or not he was going to. Not like Sebastian who would answer first and say whatever he thought it would take to keep me safe, then think about it later.

  “If we survive this, you have to tell Sebastian I only agreed to this idea under the coercion of mind control.”

  It was hard to resist the smile that tugged at the corners of my lips. Eve in this bleak situation, he made me smile.

  “Deal.”

  “Enough forlorn gazing. You can explore the joys of bestiality later, right now it's time for your gift,” Sarah said, dragging me further down the stage. We stopped in front of the curtain and two of her henchmen were waiting to pull the huge golden ropes. The stage light shone so brightly from above that I could barely see as the curtains slid open.

  “I know you're upset I wasn't there to protect you, but I gave you Jeff and I'm about to complete the set of the two men who tormented you,” she said, resting her hands on my shoulders. I squinted and tried to block out the light with my hand. “Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you your clan leader, Phillip Alderdice in all his glory.”

  Jeff's father was suspended on a huge wooden panel, naked except for his white cotton underpants, suspenders and socks. His usually intimidating visage was dashed as he hung from the board, his gut exposed as he hung and writhed from the four posts his arms and legs were tied from.

  “As you can see, this present requires a bit more disassembly than the last one.” She withdrew a wooden stake identical to the one I had found in Jeff's heart and offered it to me.

  I shook my head, horrified. “I-I can't.”

  “I thought you might say that.” She smiled kindly. She put her hand on top of my head and I dropped to my knees before I knew what hit me. I was a puppet and she was clearly pulling the strings. “We'll see how you feel once you're more yourself.”

  I braced myself for pain, but what I felt was so much worse. It felt like someone was peeling the very floor off my mind. The violent lurching feeling that makes you wake up from a light sleep with a sharp jolt might have been a good approximation if it was multiplied a thousand fold in intensity. Even that feeling was pleasant in comparison with the ripping and tearing that followed. My mind became sheets of paper and she was ripping each new strip into a thousand smaller pieces.

  I clutched my head and screamed. It seemed like my voice was being swallowed up by a void and I dared not open my tightly shut eyes for fear that I would open them to find that the entire world had disappeared.

  At some point, I collapsed from my knees to writhe on the floor, still clutching my head in agony. Now that the framework was gone, everything it had been keeping apart melded together. The sound of Victor arguing with someone in the background was a vague, intermittent murmur but it meant nothing.

  “Please!!” I cried. “Make it stop!!”

  My pleas fell on deaf ears. Maybe I hadn't uttered them at all. My body was a lost thing, I couldn't feel it anymore. Everything was inside my mind.

  One by one, the memories started to distinguish themselves from one another. The nebulous blob of information segmented and took on smaller forms like drops that seeped into the raw and bleeding flesh of my mind, eventually turning into streams that offered no less agony.

  Things I didn't want to remember. I regretted it all. Why had I let her do this rather than putting an end to it all?

  I crouched in the darkness and held my head, praying desperately for it all just to stop.

  “Are you alright?” came a boy's voice from somewhere in the midst of the chaos.

  I slowly opened my eyes to see him standing there in the middle of my old room. He was young, no older than twelve, but I recognized him instantly. His big brown eyes were unmistakable. He walked over to the mattress I was crouching on and covered me in his jacket.

  “You look cold.”

  “Sebastian?” I asked in disbelief.

  He grinned. “The priest said you'd know who I am. Are you in trouble? He said you'd find me at the most important moment in your life.”

  “I-I'm scared,” I admitted.

  When he reached out for my hand I saw that it was much bigger than mine. I looked down and realized I was wearing a dirty pair of overalls. Just like Sebastian had described. I must be hallucinating.

  “Don't be scared.” He took my face in his hands. “I'll keep you safe. Just tell me where you are and I'll come find you.”

  I shook my head. “You can't. N-not now. But you will one day,” I said with a smile.

  He smiled back and wiped a tear from my eye. “I'll wait, then. How will I know it's you?”

  I swallowed hard.
“I think you'll just know, Sebastian. You'll feel it in here,” I said, patting my chest. “Like I will.”

  He nodded, looking towards the door. His smile widened as he waved for someone to come in. “Your turn, Victor.”

  There was another boy standing in the doorway with jet black hair and wary gray eyes. He hung back reluctantly as Sebastian leaned in to kiss my forehead.

  “Wait for me,” he called. He paused at the door. “Oh, yeah. What's your name?”

  “Remus,” I replied. “Remus black.”

  “I'll remember that!” And with that, he left the room.

  I turned to Victor and stood, realizing that I would have to walk over to him. Instead, I ran. I hugged him as tightly as I could and he tensed up, clearly startled.

  “I'm sorry,” I laughed nervously. “It's just so good to see you.”

  “I wish I could say the same,” he mumbled distantly.

  I tilted my head. “Why not? What's wrong?”

  He shrugged. “My brother and I shouldn't both be seeing you. That's not how it works.”

  I hesitated. He was right. This wasn't how it was supposed to be at all. “What do you think it means?” I asked.

  He shrugged. “I guess you belong to my brother. He needs you more.”

  My heart sank at his words. “Hey,” I said gently, putting my hands on his shoulders. My hands rested on his shoulders and I was an adult again. “I don't know everything the future holds, but I know you're going to mean a whole lot to me someday, so don't give up.”

  His eyes widened. Even back then he was barely shorter than me. “Y-you're really beautiful. Are you sure either of us are supposed to have you?”

  I couldn't help but smile. “You're gonna be quite the looker one day yourself, kiddo.” I tapped his temple. “You're also incredibly gifted in here. I bet you could visit me if you really wanted.”

  He nodded enthusiastically. “Now that we've met. Will you know who I am if I come visit you in your dreams?”

  I hesitated. “I-I don't know,” I admitted. “But I know part of me will. I know I'll remember one day.”