I close the Vulgata and think of the people I’ve met since returning to Devil’s Dyke. Micah, James, Anthony, Wolfgang — they’re not as different from each other as I believed. There’s a common thread binding them all, something I’ve been lacking: belief. They believe, and I don’t.
The nave fills with the chime of church bells, and I look down at my watch. It’s midnight. “Happy birthday to me…” The timer on the bottom right corner of the face is still running: 21 HRS, 16 MIN. I still have no idea what it means.
I lie down across the pew and rest my tired head on one of the embroidered kneeling cushions, staring up at the nave’s vaulted brick ceiling. As sleep overcomes me, one last thought pops into my head: What if I did — believe, that is? Would that be so bad?
I leave Saint Mary’s fully recovered and retrieve the Phantom from North Laine. It rains the entire drive back to Devil’s Dyke.
Lucy must be worried sick about me. I drive past the access road to Stockton Estate and continue on toward Weston Manor. Upon arrival, I find Lucy’s front door wide open. No, it’s busted open, dangling from its frame by the bottom hinge.
I abandon the car and phasm to the entrance. “Lucy! Lucy, where are you?”
“Manny! I’m up here,” she screams. “Hurry. He’s going to kill me.”
I’m up the stairs in two bounds, where I discover Lucy’s attacker. It’s the same hooded figure from last night. He pounds on her bedroom door, attempting to break it down. His right arm is exposed by a tear in his sleeve. It’s bleeding, and the skin around his bicep is a jumble of mutilated flesh, dripping with signs of infection.
“Hey,” I bark.
The figure turns and stares at me from behind milky green eyes. His body trembles in sporadic seizures as wisps of steam rise from the sides of his collar.
“Henry?”
Henry opens his mouth and hisses, revealing a full set of razor-sharp teeth. His lips glisten with stains of fresh blood and white foam.
“What’s happened to you?”
Henry doesn’t answer. He becomes distracted by his mangled arm and begins to gnaw on the open wound like a rabid dog. He turns back around and continues to beat down Lucy’s door. “Luce, I need you.”
“Go away, Henry. You need help,” she shrieks.
“Your blood is my help.”
The spark in my chest flickers. “Henry, stop.”
“Stay back, Daemon,” he shouts, spraying the floor with pink mucous. “You’re useless to me.”
“Careful, Manny,” Lucy warns. “He’s been bitten by a Lycain. His mind is ill.”
My fingertips start to tingle. “I won’t let you hurt her.”
“I don’t want to hurt her. I just need a drink. One drink.” He strikes the door once more, and his hand crashes through the wood paneling. Henry shoves the rest of his arm into the hole and feels for the knob.
“No! Manny, do something,” Lucy cries.
My muscles ignite, and I launch forward, summoning my claws in midair. I latch onto Henry’s back and dig my nails into the thick folds of his hoodie. Using all of my weight, I thrust my body backwards into a reverse somersault, kicking my left heel into Henry’s back. He flies across the hallway and crashes into the wall.
“I don’t want to fight you,” he growls. “I just need a drink. She owes it to me.”
“The bite is making him mad,” Lucy yells from the hole in her bedroom door.
“Henry, listen to me. You need to control the hunger. Bloodlust will only lead to more Bloodlust.”
He laughs, spitting up more foam. “This isn’t Bloodlust, mate. This is survival.” Henry charges forward.
“Stop. I can help you.”
“No. I need her.”
My skin tightens into armor, and I collide head on with Henry’s massive frame. He tries to push past me, but I stay low and keep my feet planted. He jerks me to the side, and we crash through the wooden railing, plummeting to the first floor. The descent occurs in slow motion, giving me ample time to twist Henry’s body around to cushion my fall. He lands face-first, but the impact doesn’t stop him. He throws me off his back and continues up the stairs. I pounce again, wrapping my left arm around his chest and my right hand around his burning forehead. He grabs both of my wrists and squeezes until his claws break skin.
“Henry, stop. I’m not trying to hurt you.”
He elbows my stomach once. Then twice. And I feel a crack in my ribs.
“This isn’t you,” I groan. “You love her, remember?”
“Love has nothing to do with this.”
In a final attempt to restrain him, I jerk my right hand back, pulling Henry’s forehead along with it — snap! He falls back, and we tumble down the stairs. I roll toward the main entrance, and my side crashes into the dangling edge of the front door — crack! — adding to the excruciating pain in my abdomen.
Henry crawls toward me on his hands and knees, his head swaying between his shoulders. I reach for a wooden piece of broken doorframe, but the farther I stretch, the more unbearable my ribs feel. So I dig my toes into the floor, inching my way to the makeshift stake.
The bones in Henry’s neck begin to mend themselves — click-click-clack — allowing him to lift his head. He wraps his hot hand around my neck and tosses me across the room like a rag doll. I land on the coffee table, shattering the wood and glass into hundreds of pieces. Henry digs his claws into my chest and thigh and hurls me onto the leather sofa, pinning my wrists under his shins. Saliva falls from the corner of his mouth, searing my chin like acid. I turn my head to avoid another burn, but he grabs my jaw and forces me to face him. The glaze over his eyes is thicker now, whiter.
Henry’s muscles spasm again, and his body trembles. The gash in his bicep oozes, making him wince, and he digs his teeth into the torn flesh once more. I howl in agony as he presses harder on my broken ribs.
The sound of my distress pulls Henry from his daze, and he removes his hand from my throat. Streams of white tears begin to fall from his cheeks, exposing the green color in his eyes.
“I can… help you,” I stammer.
“You can’t, mate. Don’t you see? She’s the only one.” His Bloodlust returns, and Henry presses down on my neck and chest with all of his weight.
“Please” — I gasp — “stop.”
“I’m” — Henry battles the urge to continue — “trying to, mate.”
“I know you… you don’t want… to do this.”
“I don’t,” he yells. “But I can’t stop. Help me stop.”
Help you stop? Impulsion. Of course. I can impel him. I can make him stop.
Adrenaline, pain, fear, hope — I focus on every sensation coursing through my body and channel it to the part of my brain just behind my eyes. “Let me go.”
My words have no effect.
“You’ve got to do better than that,” he growls.
I try again — “Let go” — but nothing changes.
The room starts to spin as darkness encroaches upon my peripheral vision. I can’t hold on much longer. I need oxygen. I need to breathe.
Henry senses me slipping away and continues to cry, conflicted by what he’s about to do. It’s clear he doesn’t want to kill me. He has to. To get to Lucy. As the tears fall from his face, they wash away the globs of puss coating his eyes, revealing his green irises once more.
That’s it. I pull my thoughts together for one last try, focusing on Henry’s exposed eyes: “Henry. Let…me…go.” My Impulsion has an instantaneous effect, and Henry’s grip relaxes, allowing blood and oxygen to reenter my brain.
Henry gasps. “Thank you.” He leans back, alleviating the pressure on my ribs, and as he does so, a wooden spike bursts through his body. Blood and blue mist pour out of his gaping wound, and he digs his claws into the sofa. After the glowing vapor escapes his chest, Henry cr
umbles, coating me in a layer of clothing and moist soot.
Lucy stands beside the couch, shaking, clutching the wooden spike under her bone-white knuckles. “Are you okay?”
“No. But I will be.”
She attempts to sit me upright.
“No, no. Just leave me like this. I’ll heal.”
“Are you sure?” Lucy’s difficulty accepting my refusal of help is inappropriately charming. “Can I do anything?”
It’s a long shot, but I ask anyway: “Wouldn’t happen to have any sheep blood, would you?”
“Sheep blood? Yes. Henry keeps bottles in the kitchen.” Lucy leaves my side and returns with an open bottle of Southdown Blend. She props my head up with a sofa cushion and pours tiny amounts of liquid into my mouth. “Better?”
The maple-wood flavor begins to distract me from the pain. “Yes. Thank you.” I sit up a little higher. “You said Henry was infected? With what?”
“It’s called Lycain Fever. It’s what happens when Disciples are bitten. The Fever eats away at the brain and magnifies a Disciple’s hungers.”
The Wolf from last night, the one on the pier, he must have caught up with Henry after he jumped into the water.
Lucy continues. “Scratches aren’t as lethal as bites. Those can be treated with wolfsbane. But a wound like Henry’s can only be treated with blood, lots of blood. And the longer treatment is withheld, the more the Disciple is affected. I didn’t want to kill him, Manny, but if I had given him my blood” — Lucy’s eyes water — “I don’t think he would have been able to stop drinking.” She begins to unravel.
“Lucy, it’s okay.”
“And after all he’s done for me…”
“You didn’t have a choice. You were saving my life. And I think Henry was already sick, before the Fever.”
“What do you mean?”
I tell her about last night, what Henry did to Gabriel and me on the pier.
“That doesn’t sound like Henry at all. Maybe he was impelled?”
Impulsion is a possibility. There’s also the possibility Henry just snapped. He was in love with Lucy, after all, and if he knew her as well as Lucy claims, her affection for me couldn’t have gone unnoticed. Plus, after James scolded him last night for his ineptitude to keep me safe, I wouldn’t blame Henry for resenting me further.
“Maybe you didn’t know him as well as you thought you did,” I suggest.
Lucy deflects my assumption. “Bottle’s done. Let me get you another.”
I’m able to sit up fully by the time she returns, and the scratches from Henry’s claws are slowly disappearing. I lift my shirt to assess the damage to my rib cage and find a small bump protruding from the left side — a broken bone, no doubt. I take Lucy’s hand and place it over the bulge in my stomach. “On the count of three, I want you to push down, as hard as you can.”
“What?”
“Just do it, okay? One… Two… Three.”
Lucy pushes — crunch! — and I howl in agony as the bone resets. I take the second bottle of Blend and chug until my pain is dulled by the soothing warmth of sheep blood. I don’t stop until the bottle’s empty.
“Thank you,” I tell her again, resting my head back. “You know, this is the second time you’ve saved my life.”
“Second? When was the first?”
“When we first met…”
It was several weeks after Miss Maggie had left our family, and I was outside, taking a break from my lessons with the tutor. I couldn’t focus on any of my subjects because I was too sad. I was missing her too much.
“Hello?” someone yelled from afar. Across the pasture, I saw this beautiful girl skipping toward me. She had on a grass-stained sundress, with stems of purple flowers tucked behind her pink ears. She giggled as she approached, wrapping her hands around two braided pigtails. “My name’s Lucy,” she said, tugging down on her auburn hair.
I smiled from ear to ear, happier than I had ever been since before Miss Maggie’s departure. “Where did you come from?”
“Over there,” Lucy replied, pointing to the renovated farm across the field. “Mum said I could play in the backyard, and this is my backyard,” she exclaimed, twirling like a ballerina.
Lucy’s eyes glisten. “You remember that?”
“Better than ever.”
She smiles and leans in, kissing my cheek. Her touch sends my body into a frenzy, warming my insides more than sheep blood ever could. I ignore my pain and scoot in closer, kissing her on the lips. Lucy puts her hand on the back of my head, inviting my mouth to remain locked with hers. We breathe in sync, inhaling and exhaling each other’s air, and every breath causes my heart to flicker with that familiar electric spark.
I rise from the sofa, and Lucy leads me to one of the bedrooms on the ground floor. We try to pick up where we left off last night, but due to my injuries, Lucy does most of the work. She takes my shirt off, mindful of my tender side, and in a careful series of tugs and pulls, removes my pants and briefs, as well. Then she undresses, removing her crucifix last.
Lucy climbs on top of me, testing the weight of her body against mine. It’s uncomfortable at first, but the vibrant hum of blood coursing through her veins distracts my brain, easing me into submission. “Is this okay?” she asks, lowering her torso closer to mine.
“Yes.” I take a breath. “Just take it slow.”
“We don’t have to — ”
“No. We have to. Believe me, we have to.”
She giggles. “Okay.” Lucy sways back and forth, left and right, aligning our bodies like pieces of a puzzle.
“I love you,” I whisper. “I always have.”
“I do, too. And I always will.” Lucy exhales, and her hips connect with mine. Then our hearts, minds, and bodies finally become one…
Bzzz… Bzzz… Bzzz…
I stir. “What is that?”
Lucy lifts her head from my chest and groans. “My mobile. Just let it ring,” she says, too comfortable to move.
I kiss the tip of her ear. “Good morning.”
“Good morning. And happy birthday.”
I laugh. “It certainly is.”
“How do you feel?”
I examine my ribs — no pain. The claw marks on my wrists are also gone. “Feel great.”
“That’s a relief. After last night, I was afraid you’d wake up more hurt than before you went to bed,” she jokes.
“Even if I did, it would have been worth it.”
Lucy hugs me tighter.
“If you told me a year ago this is how I’d spend my twenty-seventh birthday, I would have told you you were crazy.”
Lucy doesn’t react.
“You okay?”
“I knew you were coming back to Devil’s Dyke, before your father passed,” she confesses.
“You knew, too?”
She nods, sitting up. “I wasn’t supposed to. I was sorting through paperwork in the library and overheard Anthony arguing about it with Isidore downstairs, in the study.”
“Sunday before last?”
“How’d you know?”
“Micah. He told me yesterday they fought and James had to break them up.”
“It sounded like the other way around, from what I could hear.”
“What do you mean?”
“Anthony had been looking forward to baptizing his Alma for months.”
“His Alma?”
“Yes. That’s the American girl you met in the pasture, Michelle. Anthony told Isidore she would be ready to be Saved by the upcoming New Moon — which is tonight — but your father said all twelve candidates had been selected and there was no more room. There are rules against baptizing more than twelve Saved per Fellowship at a time,” she says, referring to the Discarnate Treaty. “Anthony argued there would be room for her if one of th
e candidates was moved to the next New Moon, and because you were the only candidate who wasn’t a confirmed Saved, Anthony asked that Michelle be given your position. Isidore refused, of course.”
“Wait. My position?” That must be why Anthony tried to send me away when he stumbled across me out in the wood, to secure a baptismal spot for Michelle. “How was I in the mix to begin with?”
“That’s what James said. He thought it was absurd you were already a candidate, but more so that it prevented Anthony from saving his Alma sooner rather than later. Isidore assured James you would go through with it, and that’s when James lost it. He was afraid your father would pressure you into being sired before you were prepared, and even though Isidore promised James he wouldn’t, James didn’t trust him. Then they started talking about Wolfgang, something to do with the Demiguard mark.”
“Mark?”
“Six one six. It’s a brand Demiguards use to display their title. It’s the number of the Beast. Your father was marking himself with something similar only — ”
“It was upside down.”
“How did you know?”
“Because I’ve seen it. In the dreams I’ve had about his death. Nine one nine.”
“Isidore told James his symbol wasn’t for the Demiguard, that it was for Mina. For their anniversary. September nineteenth. Nine one nine.”
Of course. Those were the numbers on the back of the photo I found in James’ car: 1909.
“But James didn’t believe him,” she continues, “because if it was a date, as your father claimed, the numbers should have read 199.”
“By your calendar,” I quickly reply. “Not an American one.”
“That’s what Isidore said.”
“Then what happened?”
“I don’t know. Nicholas caught me listening and sent me away. By the time I returned to Weston Manor, Micah was calling me to tell me Isidore was dead. I’m sorry it’s taken this long to tell you, but what was I supposed to say? I expected your visit because your father might or might not have had plans to pressure you into Discipleship? I knew your relationship with him was strained, so what good would it have done to tell you about all this if Isidore was already dead? It was just easier to pretend.”
The Afterliving (His Blood & Silver Series Book 1) Page 26
