Pendulum (Kingdom of Night Book 1)

by L. C. Davis

  The trance had been broken. Good. At least half of my plan had worked.

  As for the second part of my plan, it sat in my pocket untouched and unknown to anyone but the two of us. Even so close, it may as well have been on the other side of the world. My body was beginning to grow stiff with whatever the vampire version of rigor mortis was. Even if Victor was in a frame of mind to think of it, I doubted he had the fine motor skills necessary to uncork a delicate vial.

  It was undoubtedly for the best, I reminded myself. If I wasn't in the equation, Sarah and her band of misfit vampires wouldn't have any reason to kill him. No hybrid, no sacrifice. I couldn't say this was how I had imagined dying, but if it meant Victor had even a chance of going back to Sebastian and living out the life they should have had without me between them, so be it.

  “Cut the wolf!” Sarah's voice was frantic.

  “He threw the knife,” came the gruff voice of the other female vampire. “It's in the crowd somewhere.”

  “Well, fucking find it!!” she screamed. I could hear the others moving about and Victor snarling. He must have knocked one of them off the stage because I heard a scream that traveled from behind me all the way to the far side of the room with a loud thud.

  They knew about werewolf blood. Of course they did. At least Victor stood a chance at defending himself without Sarah controlling him. He could at the very least fend them off until I was dead, which seemed to be taking much too long if Mr. and Mrs. Alderdice were a good comparison.

  Great. I couldn't even die the right way.

  A massive shadow came over me and I found myself staring up at Victor's wolf form. I was hesitant to believe he was really in there, not right now. The beast reached for me and I wished desperately that I could close my eyes, but I was nothing more than a statue now in what had to be the single most dragged out desiccation process in the history of vampires.

  “Get your hands off of him,” Sarah hissed. I couldn't see her, but the beast ignored her as he grabbed the stake in my chest. My throat was frozen, making it impossible to scream. He turned and brought the stake down on the approaching vampire with a sick crunch. A moment later, screams rose up from the vampire crowd and the sound of footsteps on the marble floors drowned out everything but the beast's panting. The doors were evidently locked and they remained captive, albeit freed from Sarah's trance.

  I waited for the beast to crush me or rip me in half, but instead he lifted me into his massive – hands? They seemed too human to be paws – with a surprisingly gentle grasp. One of them closed almost entirely around my waist. My entire body was stiff and I felt like a 30s movie siren suspended limply in the arms of a great beast.

  He leaned down and snorted softly in my ear, nudging me as if he wanted me to move. When I looked into his eyes, I realized it was Victor. He was still animalistic and feral, but it was him. He gazed down at me with such sorrow and warmth, it couldn't be anyone else.

  At least I would get one last glimpse of my old friend before it all ended. My best friend, through all these years. Even if I didn't remember until much too late.

  I managed just a sliver of a smile and wished more than anything that I could reach into his mind in this form. Timing really never was our thing, I whispered regardless.

  His eyes widened noticeably, as if he'd heard me. I knew it was impossible, but when he stroked my hair with fingers that strained desperately, it seemed the impossible had come true.

  You can hear me??

  He didn't have the chance to respond before the commotion in the room turned to chaos. The door to the ballroom exploded, sending debris and vampires flying.

  A second beast roared with such force the entire floor of the building shook. The sound was immediately followed by a loud succession of crunching and ripping. As the succession repeated itself, the screaming and wailing picked up temp. Roars punctuated the ghastly sounds of teeth gnashing flesh, creating a twisted rhythm.

  Sebastian… It had to be.

  Victor looked over his shoulder, seeming almost nervous. He drew me closer to him and backed towards the stage. From what I could see, the rest of Sarah's troupe was gone and she was lying on the stage with the stake burrowed deep inside her skull through one eye.

  I could see Sebastian then and I was beginning to feel the faintest tingling sensation in my chest. I tried to lift my head, but it was no use. His eyes locked on me and he snarled, shaking blood and flesh off his red-stained muzzle. He stood in a sea of vampires – or at least, the parts that had once made them vampires – and it dawned on me that he had killed every last one.

  All but the two on the stage, at least. My heart was still dead, but if it had been capable of beating, it would have thundered. Victor held me close, his lips curling back in a warning snarl at his approaching brother, chasing away any hope I may have had that Sebastian was coming to save me.

  He wasn't. Not now. He couldn't know what the vampires in this room had done, yet he'd shredded them all without a second thought, just like that clan Sarah had put in his path.

  The tingling in my chest was quickly fading into pain. It was dull at first, but the gradient into excruciating was slim. I had thought that feeling my own heart stop beating was painful, but I was woefully unprepared for the far worse process of everything starting up again. The worst part was, I couldn't even scream.

  Sebastian climbed onto the stage and looked between me and Sarah with wild golden eyes. He sniffed the air watched me for a moment and seemed to be struggling to trust his own senses. He eventually came to some form of acceptance, because he let out a grieved howl, causing every window and wine glass in the room to shatter.

  The very next sound he made was a furious roar. It was hard to say whether it was aimed at Victor or me. I didn't have time to guess before Victor placed me carefully on the floor in front of him, not far from Sarah, and lunged.

  Victor took the black wolf down off the stage and the snarling and gnashing began fresh. Unlike the pitiful vampires, Victor was an even match for Sebastian. His frame was leaner, lankier, but what it lacked in bulk it made up for in speed and agility. When Sebastian lunged, he darted away, lunged to attack, and darted back out of the way before Sebastian could get in a hit. When he did get lucky, his massive and mangled hand sent Victor flying into a wall. It was hard to imagine that there would be any left when the dust settled.

  Feeling was beginning to come back into my body bit by bit, and I eventually grew to welcome the pain as it spread out from my heart to my vital organs and, finally, my extremities. My fingers seemed to be the last to gain dexterity but I stretched and clenched them ceaselessly, willing them to move. Movement came back to my right arm first, probably since it was further away from my heart.

  As soon as I could manage, I dug into my pocket for the vial. I cried sharply as shards of glass dug into my palms. Of course, the vial had shattered along with every other piece of glass in the room.

  My hand jerked and spasmed but I managed to bring it to my mouth. I licked it desperately, glass and all, praying that just a bit of that blood was Victor's. I reached back in and found the bottom of the vial, drawing it out as carefully as possible. A few drops lingered and I brought them to my mouth like they were liquid gold. They felt like nothing when they hit my tongue, but I was beginning to feel a bit less stiff. Maybe it was only a placebo effect, but it was enough to get me into an upright position.

  The fight still raged between them. Sarah groaned and I twisted the stake deeper into her eye, hoping it would get to whatever part of her brain enabled her to be so psychotic. She was already the reverse version of Phineas Gage, brain damage could only be an improvement.

  When I looked up, Sebastian had his brother by the neck and was raising him up only to smash him into the broken window glass. They were both precariously close to the thirty-story drop off of the building.

  “Sebastian!” I cried. When the beast set its glowing eyes on me, I realized that I needed a plan. Not that mine had been work
ing out very well. I just knew that if I didn't distract him from Victor, he was going to do something that neither of us would be able to live with.

  31

  As I stared into Sebastian's eyes they burned only with hatred. Whatever love he had felt for me had surely vanished with my werewolf half. As sinister as the other half felt, it was helpless before the beast in front of me, his paws dripping with the blood of the kind he found so abhorrent.

  And now, I was one of them.

  He crouched down and I knew he was about to pounce. I sat there, hunched over on the middle of the stage, and cringed. When the sound of something sailing through the air at an unnatural speed met my ears, I looked up sharply just in time to see a metal blade stick in the wolf's chest.

  He threw his massive head back and let out a painful scream. My newly beating heart lurched and I struggled to stand.

  “Easy, child. The blade won't cut deeply enough to kill him, only to stall him for a moment,” said Saban, moving past me to scoop Sarah into his arms while the beast was distracted. “I would ask you to come with me, but I know what your answer will be.”

  I stared at him in shock. He left the stake where it was. “You're not going to pull that out.

  “You spared her life,” he said softly. “Loyalty to family should be repaid in kind. I can guarantee that she will not pursue you until sunrise, but your fate will only be delayed until the harvest moon next year.”

  “Thank you,” I said, at a loss for what else to say.

  He smiled sadly. “Do not thank me for this. Thank me when your spirit is whole again.

  Before I could ask what he meant, he drew the silver dagger I had thrown and placed it in my hand. “Use this. If you are cunning and fierce enough to be one of us, you might survive after all.”

  He leaped off the stage with Sarah in his arms, swift and graceful despite his imposing stature. He was gone and I was left with a barely conscious Victor and Sebastian's snarling best form. No sooner had Saban left than he ripped what I realized was a sharp silver cake knife from his chest. He flung the object across the room and immediately turned back to me, stalking forward.

  I clutched the dagger and dragged myself backwards, only making it to the center of the stage before I collapsed. It was hard to believe this was the same playful Sebastian who had chased me through the woods and made love to me in the grass under the autumn moonlight only the week before.

  In my heart, I knew he wasn't seeing that version of me, either. Saban's words came back to me. Maybe whatever I had done to be able to kill the Aderdices had cut away that part of me – the only part of me – that Sebastian loved.

  The blade in my hand felt so cold. I raised it slowly and the beast halted in his brief climb onto the stage, one fur-covered hand curled up by his chest in hesitation.

  “You see this?” I spoke, my voice surprisingly calm. I didn't want to die, but fear had yet to make its return. “I could kill you with this. I could put it straight into your heart and you'd die.”

  He snarled.

  “But I'm not going to do that. Do you know why?” I waited, but received only an angry growl in response. I could only pray that he could hear me somehow, even in this state. I wanted to pray, but She seemed so far away now. “Because I love you. Even if our bond is broken, even if the half of me you loved is gone forever, even if it means I die by your fang, I promised to love you a long time ago.”

  I took a shaky breath as I tossed the knife offstage. I closed my eyes for a moment and when I opened them, he was closer. I held his gaze, refusing to let him go. If he was going to kill me, he was going to look me in the eye first. “I choose to love you, Sebastian. Not because you're my soulmate, not because I'm a werewolf, not because of the moon. Because you're my friend, and I choose to love you for who you are. And I choose to believe that's why you love me, too.”

  He looked between me, the knife, and back, his eyes carefully appraising. There was no trace of Sebastian's goofy, loving personality. For the first time, I wondered if this might be the real him. The man I had caught a glimpse of in front of the pendulum, thoughtful and questioning and strangely sad.

  For a moment, it looked like my words had struck a cord. It looked like I might get a chance to find out which one was the real Sebastian. He backed away slightly and hunched low. My optimism was dashed when he crouched low and snarled intently at something behind me.

  I spun in time to see Victor crouched silently behind me with his fangs bared. The gray wolf let out a protective roar at Sebastian now that I had seen him. No wonder Sebastian had seemed so wary. My words weren't reaching him, he was just keeping an eye on the only threat to his next target.

  A grotesque sense of deja vu overwhelmed me. The dream. The woods. The full moon hanging over our heads, streaming in through the shattered glass panel overhead.

  Caught between two brothers, two wolves, two wolves. Why was I always the cause of such division? As long as I was alive, they seemed to be fated to a struggle against each other. If they could only understand how much I loved them both, how I would give anything to bring them together instead of further apart. If letting Sebastian tear me apart would do that, I would have offered myself in a heartbeat, but I knew that it would only drive the wedge in deeper.

  There was nothing I could do. Not like this. Not when I was divided even within my own mind. Fangs ground ready to gnash flesh, claws curled in anticipation of ripping throats, and chests rumbled with growls that carried meanings far more profane than the human tongue was capable of. Two brothers stood on either side of me, all too eager to make the growing schism between them irreversible. No matter how this fight ended, we were all destined to lose from the moment it began.

  I felt them tense in unison as if all three of us were connected by some invisible thread. It suddenly became too much to bear and I threw my hands out as they lunged to end it all. “No!!” I cried out of sheer desperation, praying that they would both turn on me instead. My palms burned fiercely, a feeling I hadn't known in so long that it was almost welcome.

  The sound of a jet breaking the sound barrier drowned out everything else and something violently shook not just the room but the entire building. I thought it was an earthquake, but when I opened my eyes, everything had stopped shaking and Sebastian and Victor were nowhere to be seen.

  I looked around desperately to find Victor on the other side of the theater, alive but shaken. Whatever had happened, it had thrown him.

  I dragged myself to my feet and dropped off the stage. “Sebastian!” I cried. I searched the room for his jet black form but couldn't find him. I nearly stumbled over one of the bodies he had left, only to realize it was him. He was back in his body – or maybe this was his alternate form – but it was him. I fell to my knees and turned him over. He was completely unclothed, but the blood that had clung to his fur now stained his skin.

  “Sebastian, please, wake up,” I begged, shaking him. At least, as much as he could be shaken.

  He groaned and hope rose within me as he opened his eyes. They were brown again instead of that eerily golden shade. His confusion began to fade and recognition came into his eyes as he looked at me. I smiled hopefully and stroked his hair as he looked at me, reaching towards my face.

  When he touched the tips of the fangs that were pressed lightly against my bottom lips, his curiosity turned to disgust. “It wasn't a dream.” He didn't sound disappointed, he sounded grieved.

  I swallowed hard. I was used to that look. From foster parents when they had finally just given up on making it work, from lovers, even from myself. But to have him look at me that way made me glad that whatever I had locked away was safe behind some impenetrable wall. It was bad enough this way.

  I moved away from him and pulled myself up on the edge of the stage. “I guess I should be glad you're not trying to kill me anymore,” I said, freezing. I turned and ran towards the other side of the room, at least as much as I could run. It involved a lot of stumbling and staggeri
ng, but I finally made it.

  He was still in his wolf form, making the faintest of whimpering sound as he clutched his head. “Hey,” I murmured gently, climbing over the debris to get to him. I knelt beside him and put my hand on his. It was bigger than my entire head. “Let me see.”

  Watery gray eyes watched me with caution, but he allowed me to move his hand away, revealing a small but rather deep gash. It looked like a piece of silverware had been turned into a projectile when they were both thrown, but he had done far more damage ripping it out. I struggled to remember what the legend had said, about wounds caused by silver not healing.

  “I'm so sorry,” I murmured, stroking the other side of his face. He leaned into my touch and his muzzle rubbed against my palm. His eyes went wide suddenly and I thought he was going to attack, but he merely grabbed my arm and held my hand up for inspection. A cold nose touched my palm and he chuffed.

  “What?” I asked, not understanding. Maybe the head injury was making him loopy. A delusional werewolf didn't seem much safer than one in a berserker state. He released me so I could look down at my palm and I shrugged. “What? I don't see it.”

  He snorted. I couldn't help but smile a little, even after Sebastian's behavior. Victor's beast form was certainly full of surprises, cute being the last one I expected. “I'm sorry, I don't speak wolf.”

  If I didn't know better, I would have thought he rolled his eyes. “You need to shift,” I said. “We have to get out of here so I can treat that. And if the police aren't already here, they will be.”

  “He can't,” said Sebastian. I didn't want to face him but I turned reluctantly. “He gets screwed up when he shifts. He gets stuck.”

  He was holding the vampire Sarah had selected for her sacrifice by his collar, his feet dangling over the floor. His mouth was taped and he was making hoarse, muffled sounds that had probably been going on for some time. Sebastian was now dressed in an ill-fitting waiter's uniform that was obviously meant for a man of lesser height and far more girth, but it served its purpose. “What's this, some sick vampire party favor?”