Grindla’s home no longer resembled an oubliette. Rough stone walls arched over Keeli’s head; shallow holes pitted the large expanse of floor. The room looked like someone had taken a large mallet and beaten the crap out of a cave.
Michael lay Eric down on a narrow stone platform that could have been a bed, but looked more like an archaic examining table. Keeli gazed at his slack face, taking in the dark hair, the fine high cheekbones and strong jaw.
“Celestine’s hair used to be this color,” Michael said. “Blue black. She shaved it off because it was Malachai’s favorite thing about her.”
“You see the resemblance now?” Keeli asked. “It was the scent that got me. I finally realized why it was so familiar. He smells like Hargittai. Not quite the same, but too close to be anything but blood.”
“Celestine was pregnant. That must be the reason she left him.”
“And what? She abandoned her baby? Gave him to the government? Look at him! He’s so young.”
Michael shook his head. “We need to talk to her. Hargittai, too. They need to know they have a son.”
Eric stirred, whimpering. Keeli touched his shoulder. After a moment, he quieted.
“He’s been tortured, Michael. Maybe for his entire life. How does someone recover from that without permanent damage?”
“You don’t,” he said quietly. “Sometimes you don’t recover at all.”
Keeli heard cloth rustle; she and Michael turned. A beautiful woman stood behind them. She wore loose yellow silks that perfectly complimented her tousled red hair and green eyes.
“Grindla,” Michael said. Keeli blinked. Grindla noticed Keeli’s surprise, and smiled. Her teeth were perfect, white.
“I can be many things,” she said, and even her voice was different, fluid and feminine. The demon approached the table; Michael carefully edged Keeli aside until he stood between her and Grindla. His hand dropped back for one moment and Keeli grabbed it. He squeezed once, then let go.
Grindla studied Eric, trailing her fingers through the air above his body. She closed her eyes. Shivered.
“Would you like me to wake him?”
Michael studied Eric’s face. “How will he react?”
“With fear, but that is to be expected. He has been raised by that emotion.”
Keeli sensed his hesitation. “We need to talk to him, Michael. We need to know if he can be helped, whether he’ll continue killing.”
“We will not get that from one conversation,” Michael said.
“I will.” Grindla smiled, and it was still disturbing, no matter how different she looked. “Ask him the right questions, and I will tell you what his true heart says.”
Keeli did not want any more of Grindla’s help, but she had to admit it was tempting to take advantage of the demon’s powers.
“More than tempting,” Grindla said, looking into Keeli’s eyes. “You do not have time for anything else.”
“No trickery,” Michael warned.
Remorse flickered through her face. “Let this be my apology, M’cal. For the sake of our friendship, please let me do this.”
He hesitated. Keeli touched his cool hand. “She’s right. We don’t have time.”
His jaw tightened. “All right. But Grindla—”
“In this you can trust me, M’cal. I promise you.”
Promises or not, Eric would be waking on his own soon enough. Keeli heard his heartbeat quicken, his breathing grow shallower.
Michael remained silent. Grindla placed her hands on Eric’s cheeks. His eyes snapped open. Bright, with the same hues as a ruby backlit by fire. For a moment he stared at them, and then sat up—a blur—his hands striking out toward Michael and Keeli.
Grindla hissed a word. Eric froze in mid-lunge. Keeli glimpsed the faint outline of tentacles around the demon’s body, but then the illusion returned.
“Let me go,” Eric said, and Keeli remembered his great strength, the speed at which he could move. She wondered what other traits of the wolf and vampire he had inherited.
“Will you kill us?” Michael stepped close. His face was a mask: cool, calm, devoid of anything resembling emotion. His voice was just as dry, but commanding. “You are supposed to kill me, but you stopped once before. Will you again, this time? We need to talk.”
Eric peered at them, and Keeli tried to reconcile this defiant young man with the confused shadowy figure who had attacked her in an alley, who’d begged her to run because he could not control himself. In that alley had been a monster, terrible and lonely and broken. Something here was not right—she could taste the difference in attitude, the clarity of his gaze. It was like being in front of a completely different person.
“If you let me go,” Eric said, “I won’t attack you. Not unless you try to hurt me.”
Keeli glanced at Grindla, who nodded. She released Eric. He began shivering.
“Michael.” Keeli tugged on his sleeve. “Give him your coat.”
The coat was too small for Eric, but he accepted it without complaint and wrapped himself tight. His feet swung off the stone table. Keeli looked at his ankles, the burns in his flesh.
“Did those men we see do that to you?” She pointed.
Eric’s legs stopped swinging. “Only recently. I wasn’t cooperating.”
“Cooperating,” Michael echoed. “With the murder of vampires and werewolves?”
“It wasn’t murder,” Eric said, grim. “It was execution. Punishment.”
“But you’re so young,” Keeli said, appalled.
“You called me the enemy.” Michael stepped close, and Keeli felt his desperation, his hunger to understand this young man—this boy—who was so much like himself. “I have seen my file. I know you were spying through my window, planning your kill. Why? Why did you call me ‘food’? Did humans teach you such things?”
“Turnabout is fair play,” Eric said harshly, though Keeli saw the glimmer of uncertainty in his eyes. “Karma. Vampires treat humans as food. It’s time someone showed them what it feels like.”
“But you are one of us!” Michael grabbed him by the shoulders. Eric wrenched away and rolled off the table. Anger contorted his face.
“One of you? I’m not anything like you. I’m not … I’m not anything at all.”
“We know who your parents are.” Keeli stepped forward, dodging Michael’s attempt to pull her back. She walked to Eric, watching his surprise mingle with distrust. “Your father is my friend. Your mother is Michael’s friend.” Which was a bald-faced lie, but now wasn’t the time for semantics. “Their names are Hargittai and Celestine, and they loved each other very much.”
She might have sucker-punched him for the way he looked at her—distraught, flustered, stunned—but when he staggered back, hugging himself, she also saw his youth, the echo of a dream flaring to life within his eyes.
“You’re lying,” he whispered.
“We can take you to them. Right now.”
“Keeli,” Michael warned.
“Eric needs to see his parents,” she said, “and his parents sure as hell need to see him.”
“He does not believe you.” Grindla swayed near, intently watching Eric. “He wants to, but he has been taught that he was conceived from rape, that his mother abandoned him for that reason. For being an abomination.”
“What are you?” Eric whispered.
“Something far stranger than a little hybrid.” Grindla smiled and touched Eric’s face. He shied away, but the demon followed, gently stroking his cheek. “There is no such thing as abomination, no such thing as a person who should not exist. We are here, young Eric. All of us, together.”
“Not all of us. You’re all monsters.”
“So what does that make you?” Keeli asked.
“The worst … the worst of both worlds.”
“Or the best,” Michael said. “You have not been given the chance to discover that for yourself.”
“I’m a murderer. A cannibal.”
“He is lying,” Grindla said,
still caressing him. “He never ate the flesh of the men and women he killed. He did, however, take some blood last night. He was too hungry not to.”
Eric finally pulled away. “Stop.”
“No.” Michael’s arm snaked around Keeli’s waist and she leaned into his side, grateful for his touch, for the way Eric’s expression changed, watching them. “No, Eric. We must resolve this now. I need to know why you did those things. What was in your heart when you killed.”
“Survival,” Grindla said, and Michael gave her a hard look.
“Let him talk,” he said. His voice was gentler than his eyes.
They all stared at Eric, who watched them with a peculiar defiance that gave Keeli the impression of a man hanging from a cliff by his fingernails. Eric was still fighting—screaming on the inside—with the world beneath his body, ready to swallow up his heart.
“I don’t know you,” he said. “I don’t trust you. I get beat up at the lab, but at least I know what they want. You two are strangers, and what you’re telling me does not make sense.”
“That’s frightening, isn’t it?” Keeli shook her head. “Yeah, why the hell should you trust us? Shit. We’re not asking for miracles here. Just the fucking truth. I think you owe us that much. You did try killing us, after all.”
Shame fluttered through his eyes. “I stopped.”
“You didn’t stop when you murdered all the others.”
“They were vampires. My assignments. I had to kill them.”
“Bullshit. You’re a vampire. A werewolf. Should you die, too?”
“Maybe,” he said. “Maybe that’s all I’m good for. Death.”
“You learn that in your fancy lab? Did all your nice teachers drill that into your head with their stun rods and silver and drugs? You think they made you take it up the ass to help your self-esteem?” Keeli shrugged off Michael’s arm and stalked forward, feeling the wolf stir within her body, the thunderous presence of her anger. She rolled it on her tongue: hot, fierce.
“If that’s all you’re good for,” she rasped, “then tell us now. Tell us. If the only thing in your heart is death, and all you want to do is keep killing, then let’s start here. Do it right this time. Kill me.”
“Keeli!” Michael grabbed her arm. “What are you doing?”
“Ending this, one way or another. I want the truth, Michael. I want his truth.” Still struggling against Michael’s grip, she turned to look at Eric. “You’re strong enough. One good blow. Do it.”
“No,” he breathed, and right then, Keeli knew she had him. Knew with absolute certainty that the game was done.
“Why not?” she asked, still hot in her skin. “Tell me why.”
“Because I don’t want to.” Eric sucked in his breath. “I don’t want to hurt you. I don’t want to kill.”
“And the others? Why, Eric? Why them?”
“I had to.” He backed away, shaking his head. “You don’t understand. For the past year they’ve been training me. Hardening me. They want me to be a weapon, an assassin. This was just the practice run.”
Keeli grabbed his chin and forced him to look into her eyes. “You’re different from last night. Last night, you were an animal. You could barely function. You said you were hungry.”
“They don’t feed me anymore,” he whispered. “And they pump me full of drugs before sending me out. The cocktail enhances my hunger. Lowers inhibitions. Alters my … personality.”
Michael touched Keeli’s shoulder. She released Eric. “Grindla says you didn’t eat your victims. She called it a show. And we saw your files, the research you did.”
“Practice. They—she—gave me the targets, told me to go out and do reconnaissance. I think she wanted to see if I could move amongst vampires without them realizing what I am. Making them look like they had been eaten, though … that was my idea. I wanted her to believe my control was gone, that she had the upper hand.”
“Who is doing this to you?” Michael asked. “You speak of more than one person, but there is also a woman.”
Eric looked down at his hands. He turned them palms up, and Keeli watched fur push through his skin—quick, sleek, and silver. “I don’t know her name, but I spent my entire life in that lab, in that building. It’s all I know. She hired people to raise me, and sometimes I saw her. Through glass. She talked to me through glass. Read me stories, sometimes. Told me things. Gave me music, encouraged me to sing. She said … she said, she liked to hear me sing. Sometimes she visited when the people came to run their tests. And then last year she said I was outliving my usefulness.” His voice wavered; his eyes grew distant. “So she gave me away to the men and they turned me into something useful.”
Eric looked at Michael. “I received your file yesterday morning. You were a priority case. Last night was the deadline for your hit. But I couldn’t finish the job. I botched it. Thought I could make up for it by completing another assignment, but she was still furious.”
“Furious enough to torture you?”
“I don’t listen well,” Eric said softly. “That’s why they’ve been using a new cocktail. The effect is stronger. Makes it hard to control the monster. Music … the music she gave me helps me concentrate, so I tried that.”
She remembered his ghostly voice, so lovely and strange. “You sang. To distract the beast.”
“It didn’t work. She was mad about that, too.” A bitter smile touched his lips. “Good thing you fight dirty.”
Grindla reached for him. Eric slithered from her touch, shaking his head. “No, don’t. Don’t … touch me. I don’t like it.”
Silence reigned over the room; Keeli listened to their heartbeats mingle, the harsh sound of Eric’s breath. He closed his eyes.
“I talked,” he said. “I told you what I’ve done. What are you going to do with me now? What’s the punishment for murder in cold blood?”
Michael walked to Eric and grabbed his hand. He placed the young man’s palm over the tattoo glittering hard and golden in his cheek. “This is my punishment,” he said. “For all the people I murdered when I was tortured and starved. I will not do the same to you.”
Eric tore his hand away from Michael’s tattoo. He rubbed his palm. “What then? Are you going to kill me?”
Michael smiled, grim. “Like you, I also execute vampires. But at least you can say you were raised to be a weapon against them. I have no such excuse. I do the job because I think it needs to be done, and because I am paid to do it. Of the two, I think I am the worse man.”
“Do they accept you?” Eric asked, still rubbing his hand.
“No,” Michael said. “But they need me.”
“They won’t need me. They won’t accept me. Not unless … there are others?”
The hope in his face took Keeli’s breath away. She felt hit in the heart by his youth, the elusive breathlessness that was still innocent, full of dreams. She wondered how he could be capable of such optimism, but even as she grasped that thought, she realized the silence had gone on too long; shadows passed through Eric’s red eyes, a slow descent into something still and hard and lonely.
“Never mind,” he said.
“Are you ready to go?” Keeli asked.
“Go where? Back to the lab? A vampire firing squad?”
“I was thinking more in terms of my home, but if you prefer those other places, I’m sure Grindla could arrange something.”
“I am sure I could,” Grindla said.
“You live with other werewolves?” Eric looked suspicious. “How will they treat me?”
“Like shit,” Keeli said. “Some of them might even hate your guts. Could be they’ll try to kill you.”
“You’re not convincing me to come.”
Keeli shrugged. “I’m being honest. You may never fit in. But let me ask you something: What do you prefer? Making your own home, free to screw up your life any way you want—or being stuck with a bunch of sadists who screw up your life for you? I know what I chose.”
“
Freedom?”
“No.” Keeli smiled, thinking of how that was both lie and truth: freedom was always a matter of perspective. “I chose him.”
Michael glanced down at her, startled. Keeli smiled. Her cheeks felt red, but that was good—she was glad she was the kind of girl who hadn’t forgotten how to blush.
Eric stared at them, lost. “You never answered my question.”
“We will not kill you,” Michael said, tearing his warm gaze away from Keeli’s warmer face.
“No, not that one. The other. Do you love her?”
“With all my heart,” Michael said.
Eric closed his eyes. “Then I’m ready. Take me to my parents.”
Chapter Twenty-three
Michael did not want to take Eric to the underground. He most certainly did not want to return there with Keeli. The reception she might receive frightened him; he could not bear to see her suffer for their relationship, but—
It is done. She made her choice, and you made yours. The best you can do now is fight for her—for her right to live at your side, with respect and dignity. You know she would do the same for you.
Yes. Keeli never ran. The least he could do was be as strong. After all, what had he sacrificed to be with her? Nothing. Keeli was the one who had made the great leap, the blind flight of faith.
Grindla opened the portal: a blaze of white light. Eric stood beside her, dressed in green silks. With the young man’s dark hair pulled away from his face, the resemblance to his parents was clear: Celestine’s gaze, sharp and keen, set in Hargittai’s fine angular face. The way Eric held himself belonged to his mother—the way he walked, all wolf. Keeli leaned against Michael, studying the young man.
“It’s incredible,” she said.
“Yes,” he said, trying to imagine what their own child might look like. He needed to start buying condoms.
Grindla gestured for them to draw near. “The portal will take you into the underground.”
“Can we enter through my grandmother’s rooms?”
“If you like.” Grindla touched Keeli’s cheek. An odd smile flitted on her lips. Before Keeli could pull away, the demon leaned forward to kiss her on the mouth. Michael felt power wash over his body; for one moment he was afraid. But Keeli blinked, puzzled and unhurt, and said, “What the hell was that?”
A Taste of Crimson Page 30
