by S. W. Clarke
“Here in the bed?”
“Yes. Nikolaj brought you here, and I followed to help you”—thank the GoneGods for that, I thought—“and almost as soon as he set you down, you began to convulse.”
“It’s because of that creature,” I said. “The demon. It’s attacked me twice now, and this time, it was bigger. Much bigger.”
She sat forward. “And how did you escape?”
My lips pressed together. “Mariana.”
This was the first time it had occurred to me: Mariana had helped me escape the demon. She could have let it have me, and I would have been donezo. Why hadn’t she?
By her own estimation, this was her soul, after all. I was just the darkness she needed to overcome.
Seleema’s eyebrows lowered. “Mariana helped you.”
“Yes.” My eyes darted toward the open door. “Seleema, I need to know—where is everyone else? Did they try to leave?”
She shook her head. “Not without you, Tara. Valdis refuses to attempt to leave without Ariadne, and Ariadne refuses to leave without you.”
“Me?” I pointed at my own chest. “But I’m not …”
Seleema shot me a look. She knew what I was about to say—“I’m not anyone to her.”
Except I was.
I was the other half of her family.
“And my arms?” I said, half-lifting them.
Seleema’s eyes left mine. “The infection slowed.”
I sucked in air. “You didn’t.”
She didn’t answer; instead, she fixed her attention on wetting a cloth that she went to set on my forehead.
I pushed her hand away. “How much time?”
“It does not matter. It is done.”
“Seleema, how much time?” I insisted.
She sighed, lowering the cloth and fingering it in both hands. “A week.”
“No,” I breathed. “You can’t keep doing this. Promise me you won’t burn any more time off the end of your life for me.”
Her face lifted, eyes flashing. “Then you must promise me something, Tara Drake.”
Inside, I recoiled. The anger of a houri was something to behold.
“Promise me,” she said. “That you will face this demon with Mariana.”
“But you told me I couldn’t fight it.”
Frustration swept across her features. “You cannot. But you must face what the demon represents.”
“I’ll go wherever I need to,” I said. “But I don’t know where that is.”
“You do. I have no doubt.” She paused. “Think, Tara. Allow yourself one undistracted, unobstructed moment to think on it.”
For her sake, I did. Only because she’d burnt a week of her life to save mine. Next time, how long would it be? An unconscionable amount of time.
I had to figure this out.
I stared at the portrait of Valdis and Mariana and the baby. I had leapt from the window of their home, fallen into the forest.
There, I had seen two memories.
Two circuses.
My gut had pulled me toward Percy, but my head had told me to walk toward the screams.
I exhaled softly. “My mind keeps pulling me back to the night of the GrandExodus.”
Seleema set her hand over mine. “Then that is where you must go.”
“But I’ve been back there, Seleema. I went there when you took me to the massage parlor, and when we were in Montreal.”
“Clearly you did not see everything about that night, Tara.”
Downstairs, someone yelled. A man’s voice.
He was calling out someone’s name.
“Who is that?” Seleema asked, slowly rising.
Nikolaj’s head appeared in the doorway. Had he been listening in on my conversation again?
I glared at him. “What are you doing here?”
His eyes flicked to Seleema, then to me. “Do not go downstairs. It’s too dangerous.”
Oh, the last thing either of us were going to do was listen to Nikolaj.
“It is Franklin,” Seleema said. “He needs me.”
She pushed herself up off the bed, and I followed. My head went starry and woozy as I did, but I forced myself onto my feet. I pulled on my boots beside the bed and started straight for the door behind her.
“Move,” I said to Nikolaj.
He didn’t, but I pushed past him anyway.
Frank’s screaming hadn’t stopped. And I’d be damned if I was going to hide in a bedroom while danger lurked downstairs.
Neither Seleema nor I ran from danger. Not if either of us could help it.
We faced it head-on.
↔
Seleema barreled down the staircase. “Franklin, I am coming!”
Meanwhile, Nikolaj set a hand on my shoulder. “Do not follow.”
I tried to shrug out of his grip, but he held firm. It didn’t help that I was heavily weakened. “Get off me.”
He set one finger to his temple. “Do you know why that man’s screaming?”
“I’d like to find out with my own eyes.”
“Sin,” Nikolaj whispered. “She’s out there, calling to him.”
My gut cinched. The same thing had happened to Ariadne, and now Frank. “I need to help him.”
As I said it, someone appeared at the base of the staircase. One of Valdis’s men swept through the foyer and affixed some sort of metal bar across the front door.
“Do not hurt him,” I heard Seleema call from another room. “His soul is pure. He will never succumb to Lust’s call.”
“He doesn’t need your help.” Nikolaj gestured me down the hallway, which led to darkness. “Come on.”
I didn’t move. “Come on where?”
“To the master bedroom. It’s safer back here.”
“How about no way in hell?” I tried jerking away again, but found his grip as immovable as steel. “Now you let go of me before I teach you the meaning of a sonic boom to the face.”
He gave a single, quick exhale. “How’re you going to do that?”
I reached down to show him, but found my belt empty. No Thelma. No Louise.
I flared on him. “You took them.”
“I did no such thing. Your houri friend took them—they’re back in the bedroom.”
I didn’t have time to turn around and check, because Nikolaj started pulling me down the hallway toward the darkness.
“Seleema!” I yelled out, knowing I was outmatched. I was weakened, and without my whips. “Perce!”
“One nice thing about this house,” Nikolaj said as he swept a hand around my waist and dragged me across the wood floor, “is it’s largely soundproof from one floor to the next. You see, sometimes Ariadne screams, and it’s hard to concentrate or sleep when a woman’s screaming.”
Ariadne screams? I thought. And then, is he threatening me?
I scrabbled against his grip, but he was two times my size, which made me about as effective as a bug on flypaper. “You’re making an enormous mistake.”
A doorknob turned, and we redirected course. Now he was pulling me through a doorway and into a much larger bedroom. “How’s that?” he asked.
“Because I’ve got a dragon,” I spat at him, even as he hauled me in. “And he gets enormously angry when his mother’s held captive.”
Nikolaj finally let me go. He backed the door shut behind him, standing up against it. “But I’m not holding you captive.”
I pushed upright, rushing up to him. “Aren’t you?”
He didn’t move. “Valdis gave me strict orders. When Lust starts calling, keep the vessel away from any outer doors.”
“I am not the vessel,” I growled. “I’ve told you my name, Nikolaj.”
He stared down at me, his dark eyes flashing in the semidarkness. The only light came from a narrow slit in the drapes—the moon, just like in Mariana’s memory I had been inside.
“I was told you were much angrier than her,” he murmured, “but I didn’t know the extent of it.”
&nbs
p; I stamped a foot. “I am not angry.”
One thick eyebrow rose.
I pointed a finger up at him. “Listen, if your soul was being absorbed bit by bit and you were stuck in a mansion with your nemesis, you’d be pretty agitated, too.”
“And that’s why,” he went on, “you’re no match for Lust.”
“What do you mean?”
“You’ve got bloodlust,” Nikolaj said. “Real bad.”
My finger slowly lowered. Bloodlust. I had used that term to describe my desire for revenge. This man was absolutely on the money about that.
“You don’t know anything about my bloodlust,” I whispered. “Or what I’ve been through to earn it.”
He finally took one step forward. “Don’t I? It was you, after all, who condemned me to seven hundred years as a vampire. Seven hundred years is a long time to spend with Valdis. You see many things.”
I took a step back, my chest squeezing. A powerful ache had started there. “What are you talking about?”
But I knew. I already knew.
“When you were her, you always tempered his darkest impulses,” Nikolaj murmured. “So I suppose it wouldn’t be any surprise that, without her, he’d do as he pleased. And despite all his best efforts to find you, you weren’t the same tempering soul Valdis found down here in Houston.”
I just stared at him, folding my fingers to keep them from shaking.
Nikolaj gazed right back at me. “You ran, you screamed. You were nothing like her, were you? And when we killed them all, you didn’t become more like her. Not one bit.”
“Quiet,” I barked.
“You became more like Valdis,” he finished. “Impulsive. Lustful. Angry.”
He was there that night. Of course he was.
Nikolaj had witnessed the death of my family. Maybe he’d even taken part in killing my parents and sister.
Either way, he’d been one of those vampires running around in the mud, tearing limbs from bodies.
I threw myself at him, my fist sailing almost without my realization toward his cheek. This is for all of them, you bastard.
Nikolaj had probably expected many things from me, but I don’t think he expected me to lunge at him quite so fast.
How did I know?
Because my fist landed against his face.
Bone met bone, and I knew I’d feel it the moment the adrenaline wore off. But for now, it felt damned good to see his head jerk on account of my fist.
He didn’t stagger, though. Instead, he pulled me against him, pinning my arms to my sides. My wounds were compressed, and I cried out. That was some kind of agony.
“Well,” he said, “now I don’t feel so bad about this.”
Chapter 5
In one motion, he lifted me off my feet and carried me over to the bed.
Before I could process what was happening, he set me down on the edge of it, boxing me in with his arms set at either side of me. His face hovered right in front of mine.
“Don’t you even dare,” I spat. “My hoochie’s got teeth that’ll—”
He barked a laugh. “Don’t flatter yourself.”
When he straightened over me, I tried to stand, but he pushed me back down.
I lifted my chin. “What do you want, then?”
“I’ve already told you what my orders are.” He folded his arms. “And now I’m going to tell you what I’ve been waiting seven hundred years to say.”
He sounded like a petulant child. “I’m not Mariana. And I’m not interested.”
“You most definitely aren’t. But she’s in there, isn’t she? And she’s listening.”
I glanced toward the door.
“Don’t try it,” Nikolaj said. “It’s locked.”
“I’ve broken through locked doors before.”
“Not ones like these. Trust me.”
I sighed. “All right, Nikolaj. Say whatever it is you need to say.”
“This is for Mariana.” He got down on his haunches directly in front of me. For a second, he bobbed there, just looking at me. “The day I killed your family, I was a seventeen year old soldier. I had been taken from my family, who were too poor to keep me, and put to work for the lord of the land your village was on.”
I didn’t speak. I just let him tell his story.
“One day, the lord’s master at arms said, ‘You are to go kill the men and women of this village.’ And I and twenty other boys of seventeen were sent to your village and did as we were told. Most of us didn’t like it, but we lived hard lives. Everyone did in those days, and you did what you were told if you wanted to eat and survive.”
I didn’t like the sympathy worming its way into my chest.
Right now, I just needed Nikolaj to be the figure in the darkness, the one standing between me and that door. The one I could kick and punch without a second thought.
I didn’t need him to be human, too.
“That day of the village slaughter, a vampire handed you a knife and told you to avenge your family,” Nikolaj said. “And you refused. From that day forward, by the Law of Gifting, my life was yours. I could live and die by your whims. Do you remember that day?”
Of course I do, I thought.
No—that wasn’t me.
That was her.
My mouth opened, a strange feeling blossoming in my chest. For the first time, I didn’t know whether my response was my own, or hers. “Yes. Of course I do.”
His eyebrows lowered. “So you are here.”
“Nikolaj,” I said. “This is not the time. You must understand.”
Was that me speaking? I didn’t know. It sort of felt like me, and sort of like her.
“Then when?” he ground out. “When is the time to hold you accountable for the seven hundred years of unmerciful life you forced me to lead? The things I did—the acts I bore witness to?”
“Would you have died at seventeen?” I asked. “Would you have died to a girl with a knife in the forest?”
“Yes,” he shot back. “I would have. Knowing what I know now, seeing what I’ve seen—I would have chosen that heaven over this hell.”
“But you didn’t know then what you know now,” I said, my voice lilting and cool like it never was. “And I gave you that choice—to know more life.”
“As a vampire.” He rose, looming over me. “As a bloodsucker. As a fiend. As the man of Valdis, who knew no kindness or mercy except toward you. Why you?”
I remained seated upright, not backing up an inch. “I am sorry, Nikolaj.”
He smacked me, the motion so sudden and violent I heard the noise before I realized what had occurred. My head swiveled right, and I braced myself with one palm set to the duvet. “If you were sorry, you’d have let me die the thousand times I begged for it.”
Anger fizzed in my chest. Another sensation tempered it, though—coolheaded logic. GoneGodDamn, this really wasn’t like me. When I pressed my hair from my eyes, I found him breathing hard, fast.
I assessed his body language in one scan, even in this almost-darkness.
He was ready to do something crazy.
“I only have one question for you,” he seethed. “And I want you to tell me the truth, Mariana.”
I pressed myself to an upright seat, my cheek stinging like the dickens. “All right.”
“Do you remember the night he took you to the fisherman’s village on the coast?”
“Yes,” I said at once. Already I could hear the sound of the Black Sea on the shore. Already I could smell the salt.
“Of course you do. I remember it well.” Nikolaj was breathing harder now. “Do you remember the hut where they hid the children?”
I blinked. “Nikolaj, I—”
“Do you remember,” he said over me, his voice like steel, “the hut where they hid the children?”
“They were deathly ill,” I said. “It was a mercy.”
Nikolaj laughed. “Oh, I suppose the two of you fancied yourselves physicians. You saw enough blood, didn’
t you?”
The part of me that was Tara wondered at what he was referring to, while the part of me that was Mariana felt a silent, creeping horror.
“And when Valdis told me to go into the hut with the children,” he whispered, “I looked to you. And you said nothing.”
“I was sixteen!” I cried. “I had no power. I had no sway. I could not defy him.”
“You coward.” His finger pointed down at me. “You murderer. You could have stopped him. He favored you, GoneGods know why.”
“I couldn’t,” I cried, and now I was really crying. “I couldn’t, Nikolaj.”
Metal slid across leather, and a blade flashed in the moonlight.
A hilt was presented to me, and Nikolaj stared at me from the other end of it. “Now you will finally show mercy.”
↔
If you’d believe it, I hadn’t ever killed a man.
Sure, I had given Valdis a terrific scar over his right eye. Sure, I had fought countless humans and Others. I’d delivered black eyes, administered painful whiplash and even broken bones.
But killing a man?
That was something I, Tara Drake, hadn’t pulled off. Back in New Orleans, I’d realized I didn’t want to be Peter’s assassin. And while I’d spent every day for the past five years imagining ending Valdis’s life, imagining wasn’t doing.
Imagining wasn’t stabbing a man with the knife gleaming before me in the light.
Nikolaj got down on his knees, the blade still held up toward me. “This is the same weapon Valdis handed you on the day your family was murdered.”
A seven-hundred-year-old knife. How long must he have carried that thing with him, considering it and studying it? A blade like that could become an obsession, especially paired with the trauma he’d gone through in that forest clearing.
I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what to do.
So I reached out to the other half of my soul—the light.
“Mariana,” I whispered inside my head. “He’s not mine to kill.”
I’d imagined she might respond to me, that I’d hear her voice in my skull. But I hadn’t imagined seeing her in my mind’s eye.
She stepped from the darkness, emerging into the fore in a long, elegant dress. Her hands were clasped before her just as Ariadne did with her own fingers; it must have been a familial trait. “No, he is not. His life is mine.”
