I laid back, watching him, trying not to see him as a living, feeling being—trying not to pity him. My stupid heart always mixed things up, and pity could easily be mistaken for love. But this little lamb was finally waking up to that, and I just let it be pity for a second, acknowledging that I loved him but that, perhaps, it wasn’t the love I always thought it was. Or perhaps it was just changing.
And in trying to move my thoughts away from my problems, I switched focus and took a good look at the space around me, imagining, since this was the room right beside mine, how it would look as a nursery. It was set out much the same as his room downstairs; the exception being that where there once was a secret dividing wall, there was now another window, a bathroom and a sitting area. But everything else was the same: the position of his bed to the left of the door, the mess of papers on the oak table, and the stack of books by the windowsill. And I couldn’t help but think that if I removed all those books, the window nook would make a nice place to sit and feed my baby late at night. We could watch the stars together.
“You sure you wanna go out in your PJs?” Jase asked, rousing my mind as it positioned a crib by the window, instantly rethinking that since it was too close to the fire.
“I’m not too fussed,” I said, looking over at the vampire standing there in nothing but a pair of briefs. “No one will be up at this hour anyway.”
He slipped his jeans on, pulling them up around his waist with a jump and buttoned them, grabbing a shirt off the top of his drawers. “Okay then. Let’s go.”
“You’re ready already?”
“Yup,” he said, his head poking out through the hole in his shirt. He bent down and grabbed his shoes, scooping the keys up off his table before opening the door. “Come on.”
* * *
The hum of bubbling beakers and the whir of expensive machinery made the lab seem alive, buzzing sort of, like there was a team of scientists pondering over the tests and experiments through the night. I half expected to see a dozen men in white lab coats look up and send a polite nod our way as we walked in and locked the door behind us, but only darkness, interrupted by flickering green or red indicators on things around the room, gave us any attention.
“So, what I’m about to show you might be a bit disturbing.”
“O…kay. Maybe I should leave.”
He laughed breathily, sending a sweet smile my way. “It involves looking at dead bodies.”
All blood immediately drained from my face. “Let me rephrase that. I’m definitely leaving.”
“Come on. You can handle it. You’re a vampire.” He took my hand and led me into the morgue, where he closed the door, positioned me in the center of the room and grabbed his tablet off the counter. “Now, being that time changes the state of a dead body, I’ve documented these findings in a slideshow.”
“Oh, a slideshow,” I said, patting my chest. “That’s not the same as looking at an actual dead body.”
“Well, this is the first part. Next, I’ll be bringing out Exhibit A, whose insides have some fascinating things to show you,” he teased.
“Argh.”
With a small chuckle, he went on, showing me the first image on the tablet. “So, I performed these tests on three vampires, using a human as the control, measuring the time of death against the signs and symptoms of the vampire bodies and the human one.”
“And?”
“And, after injecting the vampires with Mike’s venom and watching them die, their bodies simply went flaccid and stayed that way.”
“So?”
“So, in humans, a process known as rigor mortis begins a few hours after death, setting in to the greater extremities completely by around four hours, then continuing to stiffen the body for up to twelve more hours, gradually dissipating until roughly forty-eight to sixty hours after death. But in these guys…” He tapped the screen. “Nothing. And you won’t believe what happened to them after three days.”
“I’m sure I will once you’ve shown me icky pictures.”
He laughed again. “Well, first of all, what I want you to see is what happened to those injected with your venom.”
“Okay. Why? What happened to them then?”
He showed me the screen. “Human exhibit on the right; vampire killed with your venom on the left. This is both bodies at three hours after death.” He swiped sideways on the screen and another image came up. “Six hours, and finally, twelve.”
“They look the same.”
“Yes, now look at the vampire bodies killed with Mike’s venom.”
At two, four, six and twelve hours, when compared to the human, Mike’s kills hadn’t changed at all. They were just dead, floppy specimens. “Gross.”
“Yes.” He laughed. “Then, and I won’t show you this, but those bodies began to liquefy.”
“What d’you mean by liquefy?”
“Well, what happens to liquid if you freeze it?” He motioned to the morgue’s freezer.
“It becomes ice.”
“Yep. Unless the cells were once immortal. Then, they act like vodka. They don’t freeze, and unlike a human body, they turn to liquid—even the bones—and leave a right bloody mess for me to have to mop up.”
I covered my slowly opening mouth, drawing a breath to force down the inching heat of vomit.
“The difference, I found,” he continued, “between yours and Mike’s venom, is that yours doesn’t just kill. It will do so eventually, after about thirty seconds, give or take, based on the size of the specimen, but overall your venom quite simply slows the regeneration of the cells, stopping the process that essentially makes us immortal.”
“So, mine’s not just for killing?”
“Nope. It turns their flesh… human.” Jase finished with a shrug.
“But how can that be?”
“Your venom coats each cell, attaching like—”
“No. How can my venom turn them to human again, but also kill them?”
“Because I believe it’s only one part of a greater puzzle. See”—he walked over and opened the freezer—“Exhibit A died, and rigor mortis set in to his greater extremities roughly four hours later, as you’d expect. But when I performed the autopsy,” he said from inside the steel box, popping out a second later with a sheet-covered lump on a gurney, “I determined the cause of death to be…” He wheeled the bed to the middle of the room and went back to close the door.
“Are you waiting for a drumroll before you tell me?”
He laughed, securing the freezer, then came back and drummed the head of the gurney, flipping the sheet back so the naked and very dead body revealed all its insides under a horrid Y of an opening across its chest and down its middle.
I balked.
“Wanna take a guess what killed him?”
“Having his chest torn open?”
“Nope. This was done after death.” He leaned an elbow on the table and rested comfortably there as though the man was alive. “The real cause of death was… heart failure.”
“What?” I focused on Jason to ignore the thing on the table.
“We have no heartbeat, Ara.” He tapped the man’s chest above the open cavity. “As you know, with the life force of immortal blood, our hearts don’t need to beat. What if that’s it? What if the venom turns the flesh, and all we need is…” He looked at my hand.
“Something to start the heart again.”
“Right.”
We both grinned at each other across the dead body.
“Wait. Won’t a defibrillator do the trick?” I asked, looking at the machine across the room, realizing then as I saw it that he’d probably already thought of that.
“Right again. Already tried it.” He jerked his head to the bulky-looking thing. “To no avail, pretty girl. And I think that’s because your energy isn’t just energy—it’s a certain kind of energy.”
“A certain kind?” I asked, one brow arching, awaiting his brilliant explanation.
“Yup. It’s Nature’s
Energy, like I told you when your head nearly exploded that day. But that doesn’t just mean you get it from the ground. You inherited it and the ability to draw it from the ground.”
“Huh?”
He grabbed the tablet off the dead man’s gurney and fingered through a few things, turning the screen at last so I could see it. “I’ve taken notes out of one of the encyclopedias in the library.”
I leaned closer, not too close so as to touch the dead man, and took a little look at the list. “A Cerulean Entity?”
“Yup.” He flipped it back around and his face lit with the gentle glow of the screen. “Not all born Lilithians are goddesses of the earth, and those that are inherit certain abilities—always different. A Cerulean Entity is an Auress with the power to influence the life force, like you’re a pore in the earth with direct access to Nature’s Energy. You know how, for example, rose quartz gives off an electrical charge?”
“No, I didn’t know that, but I do now.”
He smiled and continued. “Well, all things, stones, minerals, etcetera, give off energy. Beings with your abilities can harness that energy and use it in almost any form. It’s not as simple as saying it’s either static or whatever energy. It’s something different almost every time—depending on its purpose. A defibrillator doesn’t work to start a vampire’s heart because it’s not just a simple jolt they need. I think it’s almost like permission from the goddess—a very different kind of energy you use when you attempt it.”
I stood there with my gob open, a little dumbfounded.
“I thought, perhaps before we even try this, I should measure your amps, so you have a general idea how much strength to apply, but I really think it’ll come down to instinct—something you’ll just have to get a ‘feel’ for.”
“Isn’t that a bit risky?”
He shrugged. “All in the name of science.”
“Great. We’re pioneers,” I said, unenthusiastically.
“Well, no sense in worrying about it before we’ve even tried,” he said, laying the tablet down again. “Wanna give it a go on a live subject?”
“Not really, but… oh my God. Yes!”
Jase laughed.
I pushed my sleeves up my arms, but the excitement and hope raced through me so fast it brought a memory to the surface; the haunted face of my husband appearing like he was in the room. He’d fought longer and harder for those Damned than anyone. If there was a hope in Hell we could truly free them…
“Hang on,” I said. “If we do this, David really should be here.”
“Yeah, of course.” Jason nodded, looking up only for a second from his clipboard. “Go grab him. I’ll get a test subject ready.”
“Okay. Be back in five.”
“Hang on,” he called, and I stopped. “Falcon’s still out there, right?”
“Mm-hm.” I nodded.
“Just making sure.”
“Why?”
“It’s dark out there,” he stated.
“I can walk up to the manor in the dark by myself, you know.”
He shrugged. “I’m sure you can. But it would be very un-gentlemanly of me if I let you.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’ll see ya in a minute.”
* * *
Falcon followed me up toward David’s room, staying behind at a polite distance. I didn’t really want him any closer than a regular guard would come tonight though, in case he settled himself somewhere within earshot of what I came to tell David. Part of me thought that Jason might want his theories kept under lock and key until we’d tested them.
“Falcon?” I said from the top of the stairs.
“Hm?”
“I need to talk to David about something private. Can you—”
“Say no more.” He stopped walking, showing both palms. “I’ll wait here.”
“Thanks.” I smiled back and then continued on, stopping at the end of the corridor to face the long line of closed doors leading to David’s. It still felt strange that he had his own room—a room that used to be Mike’s. I know Mike hated that room for the stained-glass dome above the bed that depicted Lilith’s end, but I was pretty sure David would fall asleep every night with a smile on his face just imagining that story was mine. Probably imagining he was the one to inflict all those tortures on me. Not that any of those things ever happened to Lilith. They were all lies—passed down from one generation to the next to instill fear and keep Drake’s true motive surrounded by eternal confusion.
My deep thoughts about evil plots made the journey to David’s door feel like four steps, and as I reached the end of the corridor, about to knock, I quietly wondered what he’d be doing—where my eyes would find him when he called me to enter. His room hadn’t changed since Mike was in it. I knew that much. It was still laid out as an exact opposite to mine—the bed on the right not the left, the sitting room on the left not the right, and his feet, when he laid down to sleep, if you drew a direct line between both our beds, would be facing mine.
If it were me in there at this hour, I’d be sitting by my fire reading a book. But I wondered if David even lit a fire anymore—if he needed the warmth to make himself feel a little more human. He’d been so cold lately both to touch and to engage that I really had no idea now what he did when he was alone. The old David would have read some twisted, sadistic novel while sitting with his feet propped up on a footstool or table in front of him, probably still wearing socks but no shoes, his long toes curling every few minutes. He’d slowly sip a coffee, smirking every now and then when something really gross or horrid would happen, turning the pages faster and faster until the scene ended.
The new David, though, well—I raised my hand to rap on the door—he was probably sitting in the dark torturing small puppies or something.
At the sound of my knock, David granted me entry with a “Yo”, the excitement building up in my chest as I bounced inside, taking a giant breath and readying myself to expel the good news in one conjoined sentence.
But when my eyes searched the sitting room and the settee by the roaring fire, they found nothing but a humble glow and the romantic air of billowing organza curtains, lightly dancing in the autumn breeze. The room was warm despite the cold coming in freely, but in the seconds it took my eyes to find David, a white-hot chill thinned my blood, syphoning it out through my fingertips and toes until all that pulsed in my limbs was a narrow creek of ice. My mouth stayed open, stuck on the breath I held. He didn’t even notice me standing here in the open doorway, his attentions clearly lost on the mop of blonde hair between his parted knees, his tangled fingers guiding the attached face gently along the length of his manhood.
He intimately whispered an unfamiliar name, finally giving my throat cause to swallow, chunking down the giant gulp of bile. And only as my eyes shifted from the Devil of Lust did I notice two more girls in wait: one by the bed, her arms bound behind her back, round, full breasts silky in the candlelight; and another on the pillows beside David, her voluptuous legs parted, revealing a thin strip of thick black hair. The bed curtains waved me a greeting as I looked on, gently encasing the scene like drapes framing a theatre stage.
The seconds’ hand ticked to the third line on the clock above the fireplace, and as it jerked to the fourth since I entered the room, David finally looked up, our eyes meeting and locking in a mutual exchange of horror.
I plastered a hand to my eyes, twisting my chin toward my shoulder.
“Ara.” He grabbed both my arms and spun me away from the scene. And I didn’t mean to look, but my eyes instantly went to his nakedness, seeing a sheet there now. “You weren’t supposed to see that.”
“I…” I backed away from him. “I’m sorry. I just came to tell you—”
“I thought you were someone else. If I’d known that was you, I would never have...” He stood there in front of me with his head lowered, his eyes closing. “I’m sorry.”
I wiped the shock down my face with a gentle hand from my brow to my lips, looking in
voluntarily back at the girls. A chain hung in a taut line down from the canopy of the bed, connecting with a collar on the neck of the girl on the floor. She trembled slightly—something I could see even from here, but when I looked into her eyes, saw nothing of fear. Her gaze sat patiently and obediently on David. The blond girl laid relaxed and baring all on her side, her head propped up with the heel of her palm, while the girl whose landing strip I’d already seen pushed up on her elbows to find David, revealing a rather nasty-looking gag around her mouth.
“What are you doing to those girls, David?” I nearly cried, about to run over and untie them.
“It’s just sex, Ara,” he said flatly.
My shaking hand rose and, with a dead-straight arm, aimed accusation at the scene. “That does not look like sex!”
“It’s… look, everyone’s different, okay.”
“But…” I tore my eyes away from an almost perfect pair of nipples.
“What?” he said. “You don’t approve of the way I do things?”
“No, I just…” I swallowed hard to keep the emotion from my voice. “I didn’t know you were having sex with other…” What were they? Vampire? Human? I sniffed the air. “People.”
He laughed. “But it’s okay for you to do it?”
“Me?” My eyes opened in horror.
“I saw you and my brother… at the falls.”
“The falls! When?”
“A few weeks ago.”
I thought about that for a second. David wasn’t even home a few weeks ago, and I’d only been out to the falls with Jason once. And we certainly didn’t have sex! “Did you…?” It clicked then. “You saw a memory?”
He nodded.
“Well, that’s almost as bad as eavesdropping, David. You don’t get the full story.” I pointed to my head and replayed it all for him.
He closed his eyes, taking a slow breath inward. “Oh.”
I threw my hands up. “You are unbelievable!”
“Ara, I’m sorry. I didn’t know, okay. I thought you were still sleeping with him.”
“Still?” I stepped forward. “Still? I did it once. Once. And it was—” I almost said a mistake, but stopped myself, throwing my hands up again. “Whatever. Look, I just came to—”
Echoes & Silence Part 1 Page 18
