by J. C. Staudt
Ryovan stands from his chair. “Shenn needs rest. I’ll go get Lorne ready for transport home. Come find me when you’re ready to go.”
I nod and take his place in the chair.
When he’s gone, Shenn gestures toward the credenza beside her bed. “Open the drawer.”
Inside are the crumpled notes. All of them.
“I want you to have these,” she says. “If you want them.”
“Of course I do.”
“I wrote them for you. Take them.”
“Are you sure?”
She sighs. “When I was little, your dad told me you were going to come here and live with us one day. He said you needed a safe place to hide from the world. I just know you two are going to be the best of friends, he’d say. After his disappearance, my dad went along with the story. I spent years holding out hope that one day you’d come. It gets lonely around here, especially when you’re a kid with no other kids around. I used to play with Satielle a lot, but hide and seek is a drag when your opponent can walk through walls. People came and went over the years, Guardians and friends and folks who just needed a roof over their heads. But the one person who never came was you.”
“I know it’s no consolation, but I’m here now.”
She gives a little shrug and winces from the pain. “It’s not your fault. You didn’t know I existed. You didn’t know they promised me a best friend who never showed up. When your mom died and you moved back to the city, I was over the moon. Not about your mom dying, obviously. Then last year you vanished like your dad did. I was depressed for months. By the time you resurfaced and I got the chance to meet you in person, it was all I could do not to smother you and spill everything.”
“You did come on pretty strong with the whole dating thing.”
She laughs, winces again. “You’re so different from the way your father described you. He used to say you were absolutely alive with curiosity about everything; a dreamer with a big heart and a huge imagination. You’re not like that at all.”
“I’m not? What am I like?”
“You’re a jackass.”
I smile, though it hurts to hear.
“You’re conceited. Closed-off. You act like there’s some big secret no one besides you deserves to know.”
I pause. “Then let me be open with you for a second. Walking into another man’s life has been the scariest thing I’ve ever done. I’m constantly afraid of the wrong person finding out. I’m obsessed with doing right by the guy I killed. But I feel like all I’ve done so far is take advantage of his wealth to get me out of the shitty situation I was in before. The strangest part is, I feel guiltier about lying to his family than I do about killing him. That’s weird. Right?”
“I don’t think so. You killed Arden by mistake. You’re lying to Lorne and Carmine on purpose.”
“It’s a lie I don’t want to stop telling.”
“Every lie ends. Beneath any mask you build yourself, you’ll always be Cade Cadigan, Prince of Tolmyr. You’ll always be loved, and despised, and destined to suffer because of who you are. Who you were born to be. Change your face all you want. You can’t change your destiny.”
“Destiny will have to wait. I deserve to suffer for what I’ve done, but now I have a family to look out for.”
“We’re your family. We always have been.”
“Walking away from Arden Savage isn’t that simple. I’m not ready to leave him behind.”
“You’re not ready to be yourself, you mean.”
I set my jaw. “However you want to look at it.”
Shenn nods. There’s a sadness in her eyes, verging on pity. “You’d better get your brother home.”
“I’d stay longer, but—”
“Get him home.”
“I’ll be back to check on you as soon as I’ve read all these,” I say, gathering the letters from the drawer.
“There’s some seriously embarrassing stuff in there,” she confesses.
“Can’t wait to bust your balls about it.”
Shenn’s expression is both smile and frown.
“Rest up and feel better, okay?” I touch her on the leg before folding the letters into my pockets and leaving the room.
On my way toward quarantine, Ryovan stops me in the hall. “Lorne is all ready to go. Do you plan on letting him see you like that?”
I show him the broken belt buckle. “This thing got toasted. I’ll use an illusion spell.”
“Be careful with him. The fever’s making him delirious.”
“I will. Give my regards to the others, will you?”
“As you say.”
There’s enough of the residue pill left to let me cast an illusion spell and assume the guise of Arden. Lorne is conscious but incoherent as Ryovan and I wheel him out to the Maserati and load him into the passenger seat. He’s thin and sallow, but his head shows no signs of a split and his skin is on tight. His assigned revenant Lord Petrovic didn’t get anywhere near him thanks to the hospital threshold, and I’m hoping the threshold of my apartment was enough to keep Paige Tarpley in a similar state of wellness.
Lorne mumbles to himself the whole way home, putting his strange nightmares into words. I worry about entrusting him to Dani, but she’s probably the best thing for him. A dose of cold reality after a traumatic few days.
Parking outside the Nachtenbank Center, I open the passenger door and help Lorne out. “Can you walk?”
“Bro. What happened to you?” he asks, studying my ruined attire as he rises on unsteady feet.
“There was a fire at Carmine’s charity banquet tonight.”
“Carmine,” he breathes. “Is she okay?”
“She’s at the hospital. She was injured, but she’s going to be fine.”
“I want to see her.”
“I’ll take you to see her in the morning. You need rest. You’ve been sick with the flu.”
“The flu? No wonder I’ve been having all these crazy dreams. There was this one where they kept shooting me up with needles and taking my blood—” He looks down at his arms and goes pale.
“That wasn’t a dream. Mottrov’s people really did abduct you.”
He shivers, breath misting. “I knew that bastard was into some fucked-up shit. He’s been trying to recruit Carmine for his dirty hippie activist group.”
“He’s been abducting people and taking their blood without consent. Some sort of experiment for his blood transfusion machines.”
“Oh, shit. This motherfucker’s going to prison for a long-ass time.”
“Mottrov was killed in the fire tonight. You don’t have to worry about him bothering you or Carmine ever again. Oh yeah, and stay away from Nels Oberon at Oberon Consulting. He’s a con artist. He was on Mottrov’s payroll.”
“Nels was?”
I nod.
Lorne thinks. “What day is it?”
“Early Saturday morning. March 9th.”
“It’s been a whole week?”
“You were abducted last Friday night.”
“How’d I get out of there? Who found me?”
I clear my throat. “We’re home now. I’ll take you up to see Dani, if you want. Don’t you want to see your girlfriend?”
He looks as though he isn’t sure. “Where’s Paige? Did they find her?”
“Paige is fine. She turned up a few days ago.”
He sighs, rubs the back of his neck. “They had us together at first. Then they split us up. First they were keeping me in this dark room with a bed and a bucket. Then they moved me to a hospital, only it wasn’t a hospital. It looked like one, but there were no other patients, and people kept staring at me through the glass.”
“It was a hospital, Lorne. You were hallucinating. You kept talking gibberish, not making any sense. You thought all the doctors and nurses were trying to keep you captive. They had you in quarantine because your flu was really contagious, and you tried to break out. Do you remember that?”
He nods, though his expres
sion is uncertain.
“It was post-traumatic stress from being locked in that little room in Mottrov’s basement.”
“I was real sick, like puking everywhere. And then I had to shit real bad, and it was like seriously the worst shit of my life. Came out of me like a mudslide, dude.”
“That’s more than I needed to know.”
“I’m tired.”
“I know you are. Let’s get you inside. It’s freezing. Hold onto me, okay?”
I consider the lies and half-truths I’ve told as I help Lorne through the building to his apartment. Is it right to lie to those I claim to hold dear? Of course not. Is it necessary? In circumstances like these, when a rational explanation must be devised for the psychological health of those involved? Absolutely.
As Dani throws her arms around Lorne’s neck and nearly drags him to the floor with kisses, I stand in the background and smile with a hollow sort of indifference. I’m glad I get to be the guy in the background. The man behind the scenes, who makes sure everything turns out the way it’s supposed to.
Dani pays me no attention, and that’s just as well. I feel the illusion spell ebbing, so I close the apartment door and take my leave. I’ll be Cade Cadigan by the time I get home, but it’ll be the last time I’m him for a while. As soon as I can arrange it, I’ll fix the spellvault belt or arrange something better. From now on, it’s too dangerous being myself. Even behind closed doors.
Chapter 32
Paige Tarpley has wrecked my guest suite and cried herself to sleep by the time Ersatz dispels his ward to let me inside. I’ve swallowed a residue pill and illusioned myself into Arden Savage once more. I know the fallout for keeping a girl locked in my apartment won’t be pretty, so I wake her with a gentle nudge while holding a sleep spell at the ready in case she flips out on me. She wakes with a start, screams, crab-walks across the bed, and flops off the other side.
The fall doesn’t faze her. She backs across the floor and presses herself against the far wall. I adopt a non-confrontational posture as I round the bed to sit on the near edge with my hands raised. She eyes the bedroom door as if to make a dash for it, but holds still and waits for me to speak.
“Paige. I’m not going to hurt you.”
“How did I get here?”
“You tell me. I came home Thursday night and found you cowering in my office. The place was trashed and you were all out of sorts.”
She thinks it over. “I’m so confused. I would never break into anyone’s house or damage their stuff.”
“Well that’s exactly what you did here. This room was in pristine condition yesterday. Are you telling me you didn’t do this?”
“I was trying to get out. Why did you lock me in?”
“Because I was considering pressing charges, and I wanted to make sure you were here when I got home so we could talk.”
Paige frowns. She begins to cry, heavy wracking sobs.
“I’ve decided not to,” I assure her. “Stuff can be replaced. People can’t. I’d really like to know how this happened, though.”
She dabs her eyes on her sleeve. “I’ve tried to piece it together, but there are so many blank spaces.”
“That’s fine. Just tell me what you can remember.”
“There was a party Thursday night. I don’t remember drinking, but I felt drunk and I started worrying maybe somebody slipped something into my water. I left with a bunch of people, who at the time felt like close friends, but thinking back now I didn’t really know any of them. Then I was here, and I was alone, and you came home, and I woke up this morning and I couldn’t get out. I must’ve blacked out, but it’s weird. I’ve never done that before.”
“You went and saw a doctor after you were here earlier in the week, right?”
“Yeah. She took a blood test, but I’m still waiting on the results. Jesus, I hope those Mottrov people didn’t give me some kind of disease with their dirty needles. Can I go home now?”
“Of course. But Paige, listen to me. I hate to be the one to tell you this, but your dad passed away on Thursday.”
She sobers. Her face reddens. “How?”
“I don’t know whether it was a heart attack or what. He was playing cards with some friends from work, and he collapsed. I’m sorry.”
I sit with her while she mourns. When I offer to drive her home, she accepts. She suffers a mini breakdown along the way, distressed over both her father’s death and her own strange behavior, which she can’t rationalize or justify. I doubt vampires ever consider the psychological damage thralldom inflicts on those who manage to escape it. I’d imagine former thralls are few in number, but I now know four of them, including myself. The early symptoms of past trauma in Paige Tarpley are evident. Lorne and Carmine will have a similarly long road ahead of them. My road will be the shortest, since I know both the source and the nature of what happened to me. I wish I could offer them the same luxury.
When I get back home, I lie down in bed and fall out in seconds. I wake up in my ravaged apartment the next morning feeling every bruise and cut with keenness. Smoldering beneath the surface of it all are glimmers of hope and regret. Cade Cadigan met Carmine Savage, and it wasn’t weird or horrible, and for the first time I’m able to bask in the realness of it.
Dani insists on coming to the hospital with Lorne and I, where we find Carmine stitched up and recovering well. She’s every bit as beautiful with a shaved head as I thought she’d be. We sit together and have a huge cry-fest and tell each other how much we mean to one another. At first I’m worried about having to fake it, but soon I’m crying right along with them. This family thing is a real punch in the feels.
Over the next few days, Gilbert Mottrov’s mugshot is plastered across every TV news station in the city. The loss of such a prominent public figure from one of the biggest megacorps in the world is a shocking event for many, including Mottrov Multinational’s thousands of employees. The company is undergoing a restructuring on account of the tragic and mysterious losses of several other high-ranking executives, making Gilbert’s son Felix the corporation’s new President and CEO.
When the Civic Center reopens, I go back to look for my father’s signet. It’s long gone. With Calyxto in the fairy slammer and my promise to free him outstanding, I set to work on a plan. Carmine is released from the hospital and gets her stitches out. They’re able to reduce the scarring along the top of her head and restore most of the hair follicles to prevent any bald spots, which she’s thrilled about. Lorne clings to Dani, and their relationship deepens.
Felix Mottrov holds a press conference on national news for the benefit of the shareholders and the public. Toward the end of his speech, he delivers a one-two punch that sends a chill through my bones. “I want to assure our shareholders that I will run this company with every ounce of dedication, expertise, foresight, and hard work my father has poured into it over the years. We’ve only just begun, as the old song says. This is a new era for Mottrov Multinational, and I’m more determined now than ever to move us into the future with only the best yet to come. And finally, I’d like to comment on the much-speculated-upon death of my father, Gilbert Mottrov. While no charges have been filed to date, I am working with law enforcement officials to further their investigation. I will not rest until the cause and nature of my father’s death are determined, and those responsible are held accountable.”
I shut off the TV in disgust. “He just flew in the face of everything he said on the night of the gala. He basically told me that by killing his father, I did him a favor.”
“You did,” Ersatz says. “He won’t come after you. It’s a diversionary tactic. He’ll stall until the investigation peters out and everyone forgets about it. The case will go on the books alongside this city’s growing list of unsolved mysteries. Finding a killer would mean exposing Mottrov’s abductions and striking a severe blow to the company’s stock price.”
“The abductions are going to come out anyway. It’s only a matter of time.”
/>
“Never underestimate a wealthy vampire’s ability to arbitrate out of court.”
“As long as Felix has the Book of the Grave, I’m not putting anything past him.” I pound the couch cushion, making Ersatz do a little hop. “I’m so pissed I lost out on it. Those stupid goblins ruined everything.”
“Perhaps the Guardians might assist you in obtaining the grimoire. Have you thought any more about joining them?”
“Yeah, I’m going to help them out on a few portal crossings, just on a trial basis. We’ll see how it goes. I know they were my father’s friends and everything, but I’m not sold on them as a whole. And let’s be honest—most of them aren’t sold on me, either. What do you think of them?”
“Sketchy characters, each and every one.”
“They’re a motley crew. But there’s a lot of good in them, too.”
“Oh, plenty,” Ersatz agrees.
We sit in silence as the day passes, waiting for the handyman to arrive and repair my kitchen. I’ve tidied up everything I can on my own; all that’s left are the holes in the walls and the bashed-in cabinets. Life may feel unsettled for the time being, but I’m working on that. I’m giving myself a pass on being a hero for now. Until I know who my true friends are, at least.
One thing’s for certain—I haven’t met all my enemies yet. And I haven’t figured out how best to fight the forces of darkness surrounding me. Whether together with friends or on my own, I’m the One Who Suffers, and suffering means sacrificing what’s easy in order to do what’s necessary. I guess it’s true what they say. Sometimes if you want to fight the darkness, you’ve got to get a little dark yourself.
Afterword
I hope you’ve enjoyed Savage, Book Two in the Solumancer Cycle. If you did, please leave a review to let me and other readers know what you thought. Sign up for my Readers’ Group if you’d like to receive advance copies of my future books and other exclusives. Thanks for reading!
