Something ripples under his skin. Something hard, with too many joints.
“Run,” Mike bellows.
He pushes me up the stairs, shielding me with his body. Vincent comes scrambling up behind him. A swipe of his gnarled, blackened hand misses Mike’s ankle, makes him stumble.
Victoria and Mom wait in the library. They swing the doors closed as we pass through and the third layer of wards slams together with an almost audible thrum. Even Mom reacts like she heard the noise. Victoria hisses and stumbles back from the warded wall, while Mom hefts my father’s old shotgun and steps into the circle. Mike crouches to seal it, panting.
That took a lot out of him.
There’s a boom and the walls rock. Books fall off the shelves, and dust peels down from the ceiling in thin little streamers. Another boom and the doors rattle, the wards flaring up, flashing as a thrall hits them and burst into ash and bone. A puff of pale ashes floods under the door.
“Open up!” Vincent bellows, “Open up, little pigs, or I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blow your house in.”
“Come right in,” Mike shouts back, but his voice is strained. He’s gone pale and he’s sweating.
Another boom. The door bulges in before settling back into place. As before, the wards are wearing down, becoming less effective.
Then it stops.
A dead, eerie silence falls over the room, broken only by the soft sound of wood and metal rattling. Mom clutches the gun to her chest and shakes like a leaf in the wind, staring at the door. I look at her and she steadies, takes a deep breath.
The silence drags on, becomes unbearable, stretching until it might break.
Then the voice comes, small and quiet. When I hear it I take a step towards the door until Mike stops me. Victoria looks at me, terrified.
“Chris?” Andi calls. “Chris, I can’t find you.”
Her voice, her trembling voice comes through the door.
“Chris, help me. I can’t see. It’s cold in here. Where’d you go?”
It takes everything I have not to tear those doors open. Victoria edges back, glancing at me.
“Chris, please, I want to go home.”
Then silence, once more.
I swallow, hard.
“You did something you shouldn’t have,” Vincent whispers. I can feel it as much as hear it. “You have something I want now. Whatever you did to Victoria, I want it. Give it to me. Give me your blood.”
“Not a chance in hell.”
He laughs, and the soft rasp has nothing human in it. “If you don’t I’ll come in there, and I’ll hurt you. I’ll start with the cattle. Your mother, isn’t it? I’ll turn her and feed that snake’s withered heart to her. I’ll make Victoria mine again and you, you Christine. I will show you such things.”
“If you want me, come and get me.”
The doors buckle in, crack, and the next blow sends them collapsing in. Vincent stomps across the wood, dragging one leg.
“Now,” Mike rasps.
I have to do it. He’s not strong enough. Besides, I’m the one they’ll hear.
“Exspiravit,” I shout, “Sanguinare exspiravit, surgencio ex mori, sanguinare vampiris!”
Vincent stops, and blinks, the same curiously unnatural motion I remember so well.
Andi stands next to him. She blinks a few times.
“Chris?”
Vincent rounds on her.
“Away, slut. I summon you not.”
It doesn’t work. There’s another one behind him, another girl, not much older than I was. Another appears, another and another and another filling the room, surrounding me. Andi doesn’t even look at Vincent. She stares at me.
“I’m so sorry.”
She blinks at me a few times, and a smile spreads on her face.
Vincent looks around the room, confusion slack on his burned, inhuman face.
“What are you doing?”
“Get him!” Andi shrieks.
They move all at once, a hurricane wind surging through the library. The books fly off the shelves, toppling to the floor while others hurl across the room and smash against the walls. The shades seize Vincent. Andi has him in a headlock. Another girl grabs his arm, and he wrenches her around and bodily flings her away but it’s too late, slim pale hands grab his and another one has him and another and another, and where they can’t grab they dig fingers into his charred flesh and pull. His arm cracks with a great hollow sound like a rotten log and he goes down to one knee, dragged by the spirits.
He’s too strong. He throws them back, shakes loose. The break in his arm is like another joint, his limb flexing obscenely. Beneath the rotted, burned flesh I see something slick and black, dotted here and there with coarse sharp hairs. His upper arm expands, bulges out and the skin stretches, and bursts in half. His hand falls away and two long jointed black legs slide out of his body and their sharp ends dig into the floor with heavy thunks as they bite into the wood. His face goes slack and when his cheek sloughs away, horrid slick button eyes peer at me, four of them, lidless.
His other hand clamps down on my neck. My feet dangle above the floor as he lifts me in one hand, his fingers digging into the flesh of my neck.
I swing my arm around and slap the heavy collar around his neck. It closes with a loud snap and the links clutch together as they once did on my throat, crushing his neck. He sinks to his knees again, lets go of me and begins digging at the collar, succeeding only in pulling away flesh from his neck as the metal refuses to budge. The spirits surge into him again, and the disgusting chitinous legs bursting from his left side crack and vile black ichor leaks onto the carpet.
Victoria raises my father’s heavy bronze bust of Benjamin Franklin and brings it down on Vincent’s head with a sharp crack.
“Get down!”
I throw myself past Vincent, seize Victoria around the waist and drag her out of the way. Mom shoulders the shotgun and pulls both triggers. It bucks up almost vertical, and she stumbles and falls on her ass, but not before Vincent’s back bursts open like a rotten melon.
He starts laughing. He won’t die.
Not yet.
I know what I need to do. I get up and throw myself at him. He claws at me, but I grow stronger as he grows weaker. I rake my nails over his chest, shredding the remains of his filthy clothes with my claws. I dig until I find pale flesh and my fingers sink into it to the knuckles, and I pull. Ribs crack under my fingers with hollow pops, and my arms are bloodied to the elbow with thick black muck.
There it is, cold and small and slick. My hand closes around his heart. Mike grabs my mother and turns her away, hiding me from her sight.
Good. She doesn’t need to see this.
The arteries stretch and break, and Vincent, pinned down by the shades, held in place by the weight of his own evil, watches as his shriveled excuse for a heart tears free of his chest, pulled by my hand. I squeeze it, feel the cold pulpy mass of it, and part of me is disgusted.
I remember that part of me. Vincent tried to kill her.
I look him in the eye, in what remains of his face.
A twist of my neck and my jaw unhinges. Like a snake.
It goes down in one great gulp, like a pulpy, rotten fruit.
Some recognition dawns on him. I can taste the horror of it. I can feel his thoughts.
She’s eating me.
I reach down and grasp his head in my hands, dig my fingers in to get a good grip.
Wait, please.
“This is what’s going to happen,” I rasp. “You’re going to run, and I’m going to chase you.”
Then in a single motion, I twist off his head.
Vincent just… goes away. His body bursts open and ash spills out, and I throw myself back in disgust. The ashes writhe, and tiny creatures crawl away from the main mass as he turns hollow and folds in on himself. Not just creatures.
Spiders. Hairy little spiders.
They try to get away. Some of them just stop and puff int
o little piles of ash, others fall apart, some drag themselves into little streaks on the carpet. In a moment they’re all gone and there’s nothing left but a few chunks of brittle, ancient bone, a skull without a jaw.
I pick it up and squeeze it and it bursts into shards in my hand.
Kneeling, I let my arms fall to my side and breath.
Arms close around me.
Andi kneels in front of me and rests her forehead against mine. She hugs me tight, and I can’t help but break into sobs.
“It’s not your fault.”
I should say something but I can’t control the sobs to form words.
“I have to go home now,” she whispers.
When I reach to put my arms around, they close around nothing but air, but I hear a ghostly peal of familiar laughter, and voices in the distance, and for a split second I see Andi where she belongs, in a sunny place with a warm breeze in her face and a long island ice tea in her hand.
“I love you,” I whisper, and somehow I know she hears me.
I’m still sobbing softly when Mike puts his arm around me and pulls me to my feet. Mom grabs my arm.
Victoria turns and walks towards the window.
“Where are you going?”
“Outside, to wait for the sun with the rest of Vincent’s mindless thralls.”
“He’s dead.”
“Yes. So am I. I’m tired of this.”
“No.”
She stops. I can feel her resisting me.
“What are you doing?”
“You can leave now, but I command you to live.”
“What are you doing?” Mike says, squeezing my arm.
I give him a look.
“Do you,” Victoria says. “What about the people that have to die for me to feed?”
“You’re not going to hurt anybody. Go, Victoria. I forbid you to die.”
She rubs her chest and stares at me with mournful eyes. She walks out of the library. The thralls ignore her. They stand there, like robots waiting for orders, staring at nothing. They’re still there in the morning. When the sun hits them they go up like candles, flames bursting out from under their skin. It’s horrifying to watch, so I don’t. I go outside. By then Victoria is long gone. I have no idea where she went.
Mom watches the house for a while.
“Well need to get it cleaned up,” Mike says, softly. “Bring someone in to repair the damage.”
“Leave it,” she says. “It’s just a house. I have my daughter back.”
I throw myself into Mike’s arms and bask in the sun, ignoring the cold until it’s time to leave. I don’t know my destination yet, but I know where I’m going.
My name is Christine Elizabeth Moore, and I’m going home.
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A selection from Blackbird by Abigail Graham
Chapter Three
Victor
I walk into the room and lock eyes on Evelyn. She’s frozen, still as a statue, staring at me. Her eyes trace me to my seat as I sit down at the end of the table and rest my attache on the wood. I run my hands over the tabletop. Antique, I think. I’ll bet it’s as old as the company. The top is perfectly smooth, polished to a high mirror shine. Evelyn’s reflection is dark and wavy in the surface. Her mousy little assistant doesn’t seem to know the score, from the way she looks at her boss. Evelyn recovers, her face going still. I’ve seen that mask before. Her face just sorts of goes blank. Models do that when they run the catwalk, just go still. Your gaze could slide right off her face, except for her eyes. They’re razor sharp, and somehow in the middle of that neutral expression is a cutting look.
“Why is he here?” she says, calmly, clearly meaning me.
“He was invited,” says Thorpe.
He toys with his suit coat as he sits down, and looks around with a smile.
“Gentlemen, I’m not going to lie,” he says, smiling at his board, his friends. They’d all cut his throat, but everybody in business is always friends. “We’re in trouble, here.”
Business is the art of pissing on people with a smile, my Dad used to tell me.
Trust me, I’d rather be elbow deep in an engine block right now, but alas. I drum my fingers on the briefcase.
“Miss Ross,” he says, turning to Evelyn. “Care to begin?”
“After he leaves.” She’s never taken her eyes off of me. Her face is a mask but her tones are acid.
“He’s been invited here by the board,” Thorpe says. He shifts uncomfortably under Evelyn’s icy gaze.
She looks at me again, and her perfect mask cracks into a scowl.
“This man is a convicted felon. You may have missed it, Mr. Thorpe, but he went to prison for embezzlement and insider trading.”
“It was only medium security.”
Evelyn has the most pretty lips. She doesn’t wear makeup. They’re a pale soft pink, and she’s cute when she sneers, no matter what anybody says. It makes me smile. I can’t help it.
I hate you, you bitch, I think to myself, stop being cute.
The innocent girl I knew was a lie. She was always her father’s creature. A thief in the night who stole my life. They took my home, my legacy, even my mother. They ruined me. I have to remember that. I have to.
Silence has stretched from brief to uncomfortable.
Thorpe clears his throat. “He’s staying. Were you going to begin, Ms Ross, or do we need to hear what he has to say first?”
Her face flushes up to her hairline.
Damn it, Eve. Stop being so pretty.
“Very well. Alicia.”
God this shit is boring. Evelyn spends the next hour reiterating reports and data and sales figures, all publicly reported and freely available, she stresses repeatedly. Every time she mentions contacting Thorpe she throws in a line about talking to his secretary. The change in her tone, the flutter of skin around her eyes is very subtle, but it’s there. She knows, and Thorpe knows she knows. The tension in the air is like the presence of hornets. You heard the fuckers buzzing and then they stopped, and you just know they’re there. The presentation is mostly for Thorpe’s benefit, the real message between the lines, and that message is: You are my bitch, bitch. She’s getting off on this, or she’s trying to, anyway. She keeps a bunch of papers on the little podium, and spends half as much time giving me a death glare as she does actually addressing the board.
The point of all of it is this: Thorpe is going into a death spiral. Their suppliers are raising prices, their distributors are raising prices, the union is threatening a strike, and there’s a new regulatory issue the company hasn’t yet dealt with. Something about the way the boxes are labeled, a new rule about calories and nutrition facts or something. None of the details matter. The point is, the money coming in is already not enough to cover costs; the costs are bloated. Evelyn stops just shy of helping them, smirks at her own expertise. When she does she looks wicked and wanton.
I keep forgetting I’m supposed to hate her.
Yet I don’t understand her. The Evelyn I remember was wide-eyed and shy, terrified of the world around her, sheltered. The Eve I remember needed me. This… this ice queen doesn’t. The presentation reminds me of a cat playing with its prey, without even planning to eat it. This is all a game to her.
She looks a lot like her father.
My hands squeeze into fists.
“Amsel has considerable resources to bring to bear to correct these deficiencies,” she says, beginning her close. “I am not planning to swoop in and replace everyone. Yes, some bloat will need to be shed. Many of your business practices will change, but what I am proposing today is a partnership, not a takeover.”
The takeover would come if they defy her, I realize. It’s in her tone, the subtle
way she moves. Everyone in this room is a guppy, in a tank with a shark. I can see it on three of the six board member’s faces. They’re already convinced. She probably took care of this well before this meeting started. If I were a more hateful man my first thought would be she slept with one or all of them, but Eve would never do that. Or maybe I just want to believe that. She was so shy, so fragile. I wonder where that girl went and where this creature came from, with her skin as hard as ice and her sharp claws.
In the same neutral voice she begins laying out the terms, and what Amsel has to offer. It’s very generous, if you’re an idiot. She’s asking them to put themselves in her hand, and the only person who cares less about any of these men than each other is Evelyn. If they’re smart they’ve studied and if they studied they know she’s going to give the company six months to turn around or gut it and pour the money from selling off the equipment into another takeover like this.
One company in five that Amsel has acquired since Eve took over the company has been broken down and sold off to competitors. I wonder if she ever thinks about the consequences of her actions. My father would be disgusted at what his name has come to represent in the circles he traveled. A shell of a company run by a frigid bitch on one side, his ex-con son on the other, a walking embarrassment to the family. God knows I did enough embarrassing shit in my youth, but who doesn’t?
“Thank you, Ms. Ross. We’ll take it under consideration,” Thorpe says.
There’s a note in his voice she doesn’t like, by her scowl.
“You may remain if you like, to hear the counter offer.”
I’m not going to lie. That was definitely my idea.
I saunter up to the podium and open up my attache. I don’t have a projector, nor do I have a presentation. Instead I pass out folders. Thorpe has already seen the proposal, this is for the rest of the board. They open and I see their reaction when they lay eyes on what I’m proposing.
“Eve has done a good job of explaining why you’re screwed, so I’ll spare you a retread of the gory details.” I shoot her a glance. “Thanks, by the way. You saved me from talking myself raw.”
Thrall (A Vampire Romance) Page 16
