Then, with a laugh common among mad scientists, I grabbed hold of the doorknob and moved to open the door. “They don’t know who they’re dealing with,” I said.
Twenty-Three: Death for Dinner
I had never in my life seen so many unusual, beautiful faces and they were all grinning at me, proud and impressed with something I hadn’t yet done. There were immaculately elegant vampires in one corner, rough, rowdy and hairy werewolf men in another and the rest of the many strange and unique citizens and creatures of Saint Jean in the middle of the room.
There were some people like storybook fairies, with an unnaturally glowing aura and others with skin like scales and jagged white teeth like sharks. There were those that looked normal and harmless on first glance, like Cantrelle, but whose dangerous features gave away their true nature. Then there were a few whose cat-like eyes and robotic motions were so extraordinarily abnormal that they even looked alien. It seemed to me that if they hadn’t all been smiling at me, appearing to accept me as one of their own, I might have actually been scared enough to wet my pants. Creatures like this, my desperate denial exclaimed, things I hadn’t even had the imagination to dream up, shouldn’t exist.
Max led me slowly into the huge, medieval ballroom, while the creatures in front of us parted and created a clear path before us. I glanced around the room, from ethereal faces to hideous ones, from the sharp, colorfully crested swords and shields on the dark granite walls to the bright, golden, candle-lit chandeliers hanging above us and to the glistening sparkle of the patterns on the marble floor beneath me.
Then directly in front of me, in the space cleared for Max and me by the supernatural beings around us, I saw my mum and Louis. They were standing on a marble stage, with four large, royal chairs sitting empty behind them like thrones. My mum’s cold, undead hand was held firmly in Louis’ and their cheerful, white grins portrayed the happiness and contentment they felt for the nearing of my life’s end.
Max gripped my linked arm tighter as we came closer to the marble podium and when I glanced up at his face, I could see that it was out of fear more than necessity. His eyes seemed to tell me not run, probably for fear that if I did the entire room would swarm on me like locusts on a corn field and I was pretty sure that I didn’t feel like being everyone’s dinner.
As our feet reached the first step to the stage, Max pulled me to a stop and we waited.
Louis, who was dressed in an elegant tuxedo like his son, stepped forward, dropping my mum’s hand from his and clapped his hands together in front of him. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Louis said loudly, stealing everyone’s attention from me back to himself.
I tried hard not to smile at his odd choice of words, feeling peculiarly sure that there were no proper ladies or gentlemen in the room, but soon thought better of it when his vibrant, gold eyes connected with mine.
“Our guest of honor has finally arrived,” he said smugly. “And what a pretty guest of honor she is.”
That comment seemed to get quite a response from the crowd and while most seemed to agree in unison, others let out a loud whoop to show their appreciation. As I thought before, ladies and gentlemen, these were not.
“Alright,” said Louis, as he looked up again with a wide grin and raised his hands to quieten the room. “You’ve all made your point. The young lady can’t help but feel at ease after that welcome, can she?”
His intimidating eyes came to mine yet again and I gave him a tight-lipped smile. He could think whatever he damn well wanted to, just as long as he didn’t see me coming. I doubted my going out fighting option would last very long in a room like this, but if I could take out my major enemy before everyone else tore me to bits, I would die happy. I just had to wait for my moment.
“Well,” he said pleasantly to the full room behind me. “Shall we begin?”
A ruckus of approval turned the quiet room into chaos once more, until Louis raised his hands and silently ordered everyone to settle. “We are gathered here this evening,” he began, reminding me vaguely of a priest at wedding, “to steal the life from the very last daughter of Lilith and bring her back as one of us.”
A few hoots of excitement burst through the room and then at Louis’ glare, a quiet hush returned. “As this is the very last ceremony,” continued Louis, “ever to be performed on a daughter of the Goddess Lilith, I decided to make it interesting.”
Max’s grip on my arm tightened even more until I was sure that there was no circulation left in that arm. Glancing up at him, I saw fear overwhelm his eyes and felt certain that he was worried about what his father had planned for me. Together we turned our attention back to the ringmaster in front of us and awaited his plans for my death.
Louis waved his hands in what seemed to be a grand gesture with no great, grand outcome. Until suddenly, two men, one from either side of the podium, wheeled a large cloth covered trolley each into the room. Both men, who if I had to guess were hairy enough to be loyal, lackey werewolves, steered the trolleys beside Max and me and then stopped and seemed to wait for further instruction.
Louis grinned proudly at his guests and then gestured at Max, who reluctantly escorted me up the three steps to the top of the podium. When we reached the top, Max hesitantly dropped my arm and turned to face the crowded room, forcing me to follow. As soon as I was facing the front, Max and Louis’ arms linked through each of mine and held me firmly in place.
A sudden feeling of being inescapably trapped came over me and I yelled at myself internally for not trying to run earlier. My heart thudded hard inside my chest and I felt my pulse quicken. I knew Louis would feel my fear, but there wasn’t much I could do about it short of passing out. Instead, I held my head high and tried to ignore the cold adrenalin entering my veins pleading with me to choose: flight or fight.
As I expected, Louis turned his head to face me and shone his bright, glowing, golden eyes down at me clearly conscious of my fear, while his grin widened. His free hand gestured to the werewolf men with the trolleys at the bottom of the stage and without hesitation they threw the white covering cloth to the floor. As the crowd around us ‘oohed’ and ‘ahhed’ at the metallic device the werewolves were constructing down the steps in front of us, I tried hard not to think too much about it.
It didn’t take long for the two men to finish and once they had, a sigh of understanding seemed to wash over the entire supernatural gathering. For a moment, I tried not to look down on the probably torturous creation weaving down the stairs in front of me, but it wasn’t long before curiosity got the better of me.
Feeling as though I was looking at something I shouldn’t be, I warily glanced down at the metal apparatus and found myself a little confused over exactly what I was looking at. The wide metallic tray standing in front of me sloped into the middle, towards a deep hole that was connected to a pipe, which travelled down the stairs and stopped a ruler length or so above a second flat tray that was standing in front of the evil crowd. I still wasn’t sure what I was looking at, but my imagination, with the help of my evil half, was coming up with some scary enough ideas.
With another wave of Louis’ hand, a final trolley came out, covered entirely with wine glasses and an eerie mental picture of the pain I was about to endure entered my mind. I grimaced and all the sensitive nerves in my body seemed to twinge tenderly at once. I hoped fearfully that Louis was in no way planning the torture I was imagining, but as I looked up at his delighted and excited expression, I knew otherwise.
A loud applause began to fill the ballroom, slowly at first starting with a single clap until the whole evil audience was showing their thunderous approval and appreciation for Louis’ painful plan for me. Nervously, I moved closer to Max and once again started to scold myself for not making a decent run for it earlier. As I glanced up at him, unable to hide the fear from my eyes, his already ashamed expression filled with guilt and he dropped his eyes from mine and wouldn’t reconnect them. The hopelessness in his eyes and the defeated nature of
his posture reminded me that I was in this alone. I knew that although earlier, a part of Max had appeared to want to help me, his true family, his only family—Louis—would always be more important to him than me. Max would always obey Louis’ orders without question, even if it meant killing me and while a part of me respected his loyalty, the other half wished that he’d be a disobedient son just this once.
With his left arm still linked firmly through my right, Louis raised his free hand to the crowd again to silence them and then clasped his cold, dead hands tightly in front of him across his chest. When the crowd had sufficiently shushed, he bowed slightly to the audience, pulling my left side down a little and then back up with him.
“Thank you,” he said smugly. “Thank you. I’m sure, by now, you have all gathered an understanding of what I have planned for this evening.”
A whisper of agreement filled the room and then Louis continued.
“As our beautiful guest here will be the final sacrifice of the pure Lilith bloodline,” he explained confidently, “I have decided, quite generously, to share her with each of you. As all your powers empower me, I will empower you, by giving you a taste of the purest evil, the powerful rush of the sweet, hot blood fresh from her veins. Your power is my power, your strength is mine, and together we will grow stronger with the sharing of her life.”
Another applause broke out, although I had to wonder why. As leaders go, Louis was definitely up there with the evilest of them and his short speech was more about the benefits he received from sharing my death rather than how he was actually honoring his people. As the applause continued and Louis lapped it up greedily, I made myself search for a flashing, neon ‘applause’ sign. When I found none, I had to assume that the supernatural beings in the room were either too thick to understand the narcissistic nature of Louis’s speech or that they were just playing along for effect.
All in all, I hoped for the latter of the two, because there was no way that I was about to be eaten and then brought back to undead life to join a city of creatures who were all a sandwich short of a picnic.
Louis clapped his hands gently in front of him, arrogantly appearing to clap in appreciation of his people, but more likely clapping because he wanted them to shut up. As the room began to quieten, I decided to test my luck and tried to wiggle my left arm free of its tight confines wrapped around Louis’. For a moment, Louis’ arm seemed to slacken and I almost believed that I might have been able to pull it free, but no sooner had I thought it that Louis’ eyes were on mine and his arm was linked through mine more tightly than ever.
Once a polite silence had filled the echoing ballroom, Louis’ reprimanding eyes left mine and shone out at his adoring crowd. “Now,” he said, officially, “we shall begin.”
A hushed excitement filled the room and Louis waved a hand to the hairy, werewolf-like man standing attentively to his left and waited.
The man, like the other facing him on our right and many of the other presumable werewolf-men in the room, was dressed in a dark black and midnight blue uniform. It consisted of black slacks and shoes and a silky black, military style, long-sleeve, button up shirt with thick blue stripes on his shoulders and a blue tie. Unlike the majority of the guests, who were dressed up in large and slender, but definitely ambitious ball gowns and perfect, penguin tuxedos, the werewolves’ distinctive uniform made them look as though they were still on duty.
In a matter of seconds, the man had gracefully climbed the stairs towards us, bowed quickly and quietly to Louis, presented him with an object I couldn’t quite see and then left, hurriedly stalking back down the stairs. As Louis turned his body back to the crowd, my eyes focused on the large, smooth, glitteringly sharp blade of the dagger in his hands. Fear chilled and stiffened my limbs and although I didn’t want to think about what he was going to be doing with that dangerous dagger, my evil half felt as though she should probably tell me.
I glanced back over my shoulder, desperately trying to look for the support of my mum, Louis’ vampire bride, but was greeted instead with a look of bristling excitement and comforting reassurance. Clearly, I wouldn’t be getting any help from her. Facing the front again, I looked out at the crowd, my eyes jumping from person to disobliging person, as the hot adrenalin from my pounding heartbeat filled my system and made me start to panic. If there was a happy way out of this, I couldn’t see it and I was even beginning to wonder if the strength of my two halves would be able to get me out of this mess.
I bit my trembling bottom lip as Louis turned towards me and the audience gasped in anticipation. I scooted closer to Max and tried again to pull my arm free from Louis’ death grip, but it was no use, his vampire strength held it firmly in place. With a nod from Louis, Max reluctantly stepped behind me, wrapping his arms securely around my waist and over my arms, and then Louis finally dropped his linked arm from my left elbow. But now it was too late. Max held me tightly in front of him, pressing the line of his cool body against the back of mine, while he forced my lower arms out before me above the metal tray.
“You can’t do this,” I said quietly, as I fought unsuccessfully to keep my arms down.
A small feeling of relief washed over me at finally being able to make myself speak out without fear of being punished any more than I was about to be anyway. Fear of accelerating the arrival of my death had kept my mouth shut during all the polite proceedings, but now, with the dread of death so close, all I had left to sustain my life was to keep the grim reaper talking. And with every breath I had left in my body, that is what I planned to do.
Louis laughed wickedly at my meek declaration and the supernatural crowd laughed with him. His bright, gold eyes glared deep into mine and a chastising smile pricked his lips.
“Of course I can,” he grinned at me. “I own you now, Kitty Bloom, just like I own your mother and I owned your grandmother. You are mine and I can do with you as I please.”
I frowned innocently at him, hoping to play a decent part of begging before he caught on to my effort of prolonging my soon to be short life. His grin grew wicked again at my feebleness and he began to move towards me with the dagger.
“No,” I begged. “Please don’t. Can’t we do this another way? Please.”
The crowd around us watched intently, obviously enjoying my struggle, while hopefully completely unaware of its phoniness. I swallowed deeply, staring at Louis with my most helpless puppy dog eyes as I internally tried to force my evil side to come up with a substantial escape plan. As I let out a small whimper, I noticed that Max’s arms, which had been vice-like around me, were now softening and that maybe, just maybe, if he loosened them a bit more I might be able to turn the tables. Either that or head-butt him backwards, it depended on how desperate I was about to get.
I waited for Louis to continue the life-threatening conversation, but found that his concentration had been moved elsewhere. Noticing the audiences’ fierce attention on us, Louis’ expression was beginning to harden. In an angry flash of gold they returned to mine and I started to wonder whether or not my plan of distraction was really a good idea. All things considered, it didn’t seem to matter, because not more than a moment after his eyes met mine, the dagger thrust deep into the inner veins of the underside of my left wrist.
I screamed in pain and thrashed, trying to pull away, as Louis drove the blade down along my arm. Blood spurted violently from my wrist covering the metal tray below in a unique pattern of dark crimson. Louis pulled the dagger from my left wrist and grabbed a hold of my right, getting thick red, venous blood on the clean, white of his shirt as he leaned in.
“No, no, no,” I cried, whimpering as his eyes glared evilly into mine.
“Yes, yes, yes,” he whispered.
His hand dropped and the dagger sliced hard and deep into the soft skin of my right wrist. I screamed again in agony, feeling the blade cut smoothly through vital veins. Tears streamed down my face as I felt the life begin to drain from my body and my left arm started to go numb. With
a neat downward stroke, Louis removed the dagger from my right wrist and handed it back to the uniformed wolf-man who ran promptly back up the stairs to collect it.
The sweet metallic tang of blood filled the air and the swollen eyes of the hungry creatures in the room were captivated by me and the blood cascading down my arms and onto the metal tray below.
“Now,” said Louis, addressing the room, in a deeper, hungrier voice, “everyone help yourself to a glass and form a line. Our party is about to begin.”
Hurried footsteps trampled across the room and the sharp, tinkle of glassware filled the ballroom’s walls. My body began to feel weaker and I was suddenly strangely glad that I had Max behind me to support me. Through a softer vision, I saw the creatures on the ballroom floor congregated below the podium in front of the tray at the bottom of the stairs. Another uniformed werewolf guard stood in front of the end of the pipe and was turning a metal tap at its tip, allowing small portions of my blood into the first couple of guests’ wine glasses.
Soon, everything started to get too heavy, too tiring and I felt my body slump against Max as my eyes closed. Silence seemed to overwhelm me and although the injuries at my wrists throbbed every now and then with an agonizing pain, empty numbness was beginning to take over.
All of a sudden, there was a loud crash in front of me and I weakly forced my eyes open. A tall, black haired man with a beard of stubble and in a black and blue uniform like the other werewolves dragged a blonde haired man into the ballroom. At first they were both too far away for me to distinguish them properly, especially through my blurring vision. But, as the supernatural crowd parted and the werewolf-man dragged the other closer to the podium, a cold, mortified chill engulfed my heart.
“What is this interruption,” yelled Louis furiously.
Innocently Evil (A Kitty Bloom Novel) Page 23
