“Are you going to patronize me again?”
“You don’t need to be patronized! You need to be parented!” he roared.
Her eyes stung. “I’m glad you think so. I can see absolutely nothing about your feelings for me has changed. You will always think of me as the little girl you rescued from the gutters.” Charlotte lay back on the bed, staring up at the dusty shadows along the ceiling. She didn’t need to yell. There was no point.
“Yes, Lottie. You are right.” Valek’s gaze lingered on her fac.
She bit down over her lower lip, forcing the tears to remain in her control. Rolling over, she hid her face in his pillow and could do nothing else but cry quietly. She was an idiot for believing anything could ever change between them.
“If that’s how you really feel….” Her mumbles were smothered and buried from under the pillow.
“I’ll always see you for your innocence, Charlotte. Your purity. That’s what I fell in love with. You’re the only glimmering light in my dark world. I cannot reconcile with this darkness within you now.”
She sat up again, but did not reply. In the corner of her vision, she noticed the other mortal worming her way toward the door. Bitterness flared red-hot in her center. Charlotte got up from the bed and rushed to her.
From her miserable place on the floor, the woman froze for a moment before squirming to peer back at Charlotte over her shoulder. Her face was a mess with streaks of dirt, makeup, and tears.
Charlotte clenched her jaw. This person looked so weak—so measly in comparison to the ones she considered her adopted family that it was impossible for her to relate on any level. In Charlotte’s mind, she was nothing like her at all. She didn’t fear death because she was surrounded by it. She’d beckoned it—brought it to the doorsteps of so many mortals before this one in order to satisfy Valek’s nightly bloodlusts. The memory of the things he made her do for him evoked both pride and anguish. He refused to see it—was blinded from it—but Charlotte was a monster just like him. This sad, little woman was nothing like Charlotte at all and she could hardly identify.
She swallowed her own sour hatred for what she was and muttered, “Where are you going?”
Slowly, the woman got to her feet, her face distorted with panic. Her mouth fell agape as she stammered. “P-Please, I just wa-want to go home. Please.” The last of her words broke over a dry sob.
Charlotte had been hunting too long, been a beast like Valek inside of herself for too long, to let this affect her. The pity she experienced for the woman was something more of a bitter realization. Charlotte did have something in common with her. Weak and expendable. This was her home. The darkness. The danger. She lived in it—was unable to escape from it. But, just like the woman, Charlotte was too weak and vulnerable to help herself now that fate had caught up with her.
Abruptly, and before the woman could protest, Charlotte dug her thumb and index into the sensitive pressure point between the woman’s neck and shoulder. In an instant, she collapsed to the floor. Not dead—unconscious.
Charlotte turned back to Valek, who scowled at her disapprovingly and tsked as though she were an errant child. “Lottie….”
Charlotte shrugged before collapsing back on the bed. “Dinner,” she muttered offhandedly. She missed it—hunting for him, how capable she was as she stalked the night like he did. That’s all she ever really wanted. To be like him. In every way.
“I am not hungry.”
“Do what you will with her, then. Let her go. Chain her to the wall and save her for later, for all I care,” she said sourly and rolled over. “Let her rot.”
“That sort of unkindness is not the girl I know. The…woman…who grew up in this house is much sweeter than all that.”
“Being sweet has clearly gotten me nowhere,” she grumbled.
“Charlotte,” he began again, quietly. “You do know how I really feel about you. You know now what my true feelings are. Don’t you? What do I do, Lottie?” He enveloped her knee with one of his large hands. Smooth. Cold. She suppressed the shudder that began at the top of her spine. “We cannot keep on like this. Not when I am so in love with you. Not when your mind is too preoccupied for you to comprehend that. How do I fix you?”
Charlotte sat up, glaring at him, angry tears rolling down her cheeks and dripping off the point of her chin. “You cannot fix me. I am what I am now—like you—a monster. I cannot change back to what I was!”
“You can.”
“No! I can’t!” she hollered. “You want me to be innocent little Lottie forever! I can no longer be that for you. I’m sorry. I’ve grown up, Valek. Things are changing beyond my control and I don’t even know how to help myself. I am not your little doll anymore.” Her angered expression plummeted into a pool of solemnity. “Sarah’s right. You have to change me.”
She got up from the bed and walked slowly toward his writing desk, where a framed childhood drawing sat on a massive cherry wood dresser. Under glass, multicolored pencil lines sketched out a crude image of what was supposed to be Valek’s smiling face. She plucked it up in her hands, analyzing it in the dark light. Specifically, she traced where she marked crude little lines from his mouth that were meant to represent fangs. She was silent for a few more moments before turning back to Valek again, frustrated.
“You need to figure out what you want, Valek.”
“I can fix you. Give me the chance,” he begged. “I will fix all of this like I promised.” Valek got up from the bed as well. His large shadow eclipsed her face. “Stay here,” Valek instructed Charlotte quietly before bending to gather the motionless mortal woman up in his arms and stalked out of the room, leaving her staring after him.
Experiment
Valek descended quickly to the first floor, his arms filled with the unmoving body of the mortal woman. Her heartbeat was still strong in her arteries, and it took everything he had just to concentrate. Glancing down briefly, he could see her eyelids twitch. She was trying to wake herself up.
As he rounded the corner, he nearly collided with a rather shocked-looking Sarah. He stopped as the little Witch’s gaze shifted from Valek’s face to the woman’s, Valek’s claws around her folded body, and finally back to Valek’s eyes.
“What in Lilith’s creation do you think you’re doing?” she demanded, placing her hands on her hips.
“Move aside,” he demanded, pressing his lips into a tight line to hide the nervousness he felt for his own, disgusting scheme.
“Not until you tell me what you plan on doing with that poor girl. I’m sure we’ve all given her a good heart attack already! Let this one go!”
With Sarah’s shrill voice, Valek noticed the woman’s eyes slit open just a hair. He was running out of time.
“Sarah, this is for Charlotte’s sake. I’m doing this to save her.” Valek’s pleas were more vulnerable than she’d ever heard him, and Sarah shrunk back at his authority, her face falling at the mention of Charlotte’s name.
“What can I do?” she whispered.
“I need your spells. Truffles, rolls, teas. Anything. I just need your magic.” His barking turned to panicked desperation. “But don’t make the spells so strong. I need them weak for this to work fast.”
Sarah nodded once and disappeared into the kitchen with haste.
Valek continued into his office at the end of the hall with the woman.
Kicking the door open, he rushed inside, pressing it closed again with his shoulder. If he was going to follow through with this crazy tactic—which was all too morally wrong, and he knew it—he needed to do it quickly and without Charlotte knowing. This plan was a monstrosity, but what other monstrosities had been committed in the name of science?
How would Charlotte react if she knew what his plan was? He winced, and shoved his reservations aside. Quickly, he laid the woman’s body out along the sterile, white gurney and worked fast to restrain her. He could hear her thoughts beginning to stir, so worked faster, securing her wrists and ankles to the
table by the leather fixtures.
“This is awful,” he muttered to himself. “You truly are a fiend, Valek. You’ve reached a new low, do you know that?”
He finished the last buckle at her left ankle just as Sarah appeared in the doorway, carrying the silver tray, piled high with pastries, candies, and a kettle of tea.
“What are you doing?” She blanched, nearly dropping the tray.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
Valek moved to the Witch’s side, taking the items from her at once.
Sarah rushed to the mortal’s side, putting a gentle hand on the woman’s cheek. “You better explain yourself right now, Valek! How is torturing an innocent person going to help Charlotte?”
“I know how horrid this is.”
Valek began to pace, biting the knuckle of his index finger while his other arm folded behind his back. He needed to perform this procedure in a concentrated fashion. Perhaps there was a way to speed up the process so it wouldn’t take a series of months, as in Charlotte’s case.
The process came together quickly in his mind, though, each step falling into place. But he needed to keep this little experimentation inside the four walls of his office. Charlotte didn’t mind that he needed to feed in order to survive, but he knew how much she hated it when Vampires “played” with their food. He stopped pacing and met Sarah’s judgmental glare as she watched him expectantly, her arms folded across her chest. “This is Charlotte.” He indicated the woman with both of his hands.
Sarah frowned, one eyebrow raised.
Valek moved to the woman’s side. “I need to study the addiction process in another human being so I can figure out the best way to cure her, or ultimately, find out was the conclusion is. Understand?”
“So, what will you do? Vivisect the poor thing?”
Valek looked back to the woman, narrowing his eyes at her. “Probably. Close. I am not sure. Parts of my plan are still coming up vague.”
Abruptly, Valek grasped hold of the back of the woman’s neck, and plunged his fangs deep into her jugular, the hot, sticky ambrosia seeping out around his lips. Her heard Sarah give a tiny shriek behind him. His dead pulse jolted to life with reaction to his arousal as he drank. Beneath him, he heard the woman wail. She was awake and had begun her attempt to fight him off, only to find that she was miserably chained down.
“Valek!” He heard Sarah cry over the mortal’s fluttering pulsations and gargles.
Truly a test to his will, Valek yanked himself away, splashes of blood following on his chin and shirt.
The mortal’s screams were wet and gargled, tears streaming down her face. Valek winced at the horrible tortured sight. To him, in this moment, that was Charlotte. That was what he’d made of her—the only human he’d ever fed from and did not bother to kill in the end. The muscles in his throat tightened.
“But what about the book. Volume Two. It surely has answers for you, doesn’t it? You don’t need to resort to this madness,” Sarah tried to reason.
“The last page in the unit is blank—as if someone wiped the words of the page.”
“You should have me take a look then—”
“Fine. I’ll get it for you. Just get Charlotte away from the door.”
Hearing Lottie gasp, he spun in time to catch a glimpse of the little redhead darting away from the threshold. She’d gotten there in time to witness the bite, but she hadn’t gotten there in time to hear his plan, thankfully.
“You know better than that, Lottie,” he murmured darkly, his back turned to the entrance of his office.
Quickly, Sarah dashed toward her. Without looking, he heard the Witch rush the girl away with a very quick and vague explanation. Then she closed and locked the door.
The other mortal woman glared at him. Her eyes, large and watery, held a look of death. Her mouth was clenched tight. She was damning him in her mind. Sending him straight to Hell for what he’d already done, and undoubtedly, what he was about to do.
“It’s no use, poppet,” he began softly, answering her thoughts and stroking her hair. “I’m already in Hell.”
Her response was a thick wad of spit that landed directly between his eyes.
He turned away from her, hissing, wiping it away with his ascot. He felt her stolen blood boiling under his skin. Narrowing his eyes and exhaling slowly through his nose, he turned back to her.
“Please. I would like to treat you with as much compassion and humanity as possible. Do not make this more difficult than it needs to be.”
The woman said nothing, but continued to fume, breathing heavily. Apparently, she didn’t believe actual communication with him would save her life. Her thoughts mentioned something about it being impossible to communicate with the devil.
Valek snorted. The devil. If she only even knew.
Silverblade
“Why hasn’t anyone thought of this sooner? It’s perfect! Aiden should have sent for me the instant he was inclined to slaughter the blood drinker! He should have known I’d be the most skilled assailant to carry out his mission.” Cinder pulled out her hair from her shoulder armor, a palace maiden finishing up the laces at her iron boots. She liked the frothy dresses of an aristocrat, but when she was in her armor, she felt like she was in her second skin. “Deliver a note to my friend Salazar! I’d like to invite him to a royal dinner –tell him he’s brilliant!”
“But why? I still don’t understand.” A brown-haired Witch named Dot skipped up on her heels to keep in step with Cinder as she tore down the corridor.
“The sword!” Cinder curled her fingers into exasperated claws around her head. “My prized sword. Why haven’t I thought of it before?” She pulled a new copy of the Weekly Cackle from her bronze belt and smacked it into the Witch’s chest.
Dot unfolded it, her emerald eyes darting across the image. “Is this really you?” She held up the picture of a more muscled version of the Elven woman.
She looked fearsome, her face mangled in a war cry. One of her booted feet crushed the dismembered head of a bearded Vampire, both her hands holding up a long blade high above her head.
Cinder giggled. She loved that photo.
“Yes! Of course, it’s me, you twit! Such an old picture. Quipp must have unearthed it for his article. You know, it was only a month afterward I received an invitation from Fallon Price insisting I attend his solstice ball. I won his heart on the spot. I still keep it in a box on my nightstand to this very day,” she sighed happily. “Father!”
“Here I am, darling one!” He sang, appearing from the adjacent corridor. “The sword was delivered only a moment ago. So sorry to have kept you waiting.” He rushed it to her, handing over the blade of silver swaddled in black silk.
She beamed at him. “Thank you, Daddy.”
Unsheathing it, she marveled at it glinting dully in the orange torchlight. It was magnificent, the cross guard shaped into a wicked serpent, the hilt encrusted with finely-cut onyx and jet stones fixed among beds of garnet shards.
“Ah, feels good to ready this thing for battle again. How ironic. Manufactured by the Dark, but utilized to destroy it. Dot!” she barked. “Is my transportation spell ready?”
The little Witch scrambled to pull it from her breast pocket. “I’ve got it right here.” She held the glass vial of swirling color to Cinder. “This will only bring you there. Once you release it from the vial, the spell will be unusable again.”
“No matter,” Balder answered. “A troop will follow soon after on horseback.”
Cinder felt sorry for the horse he’d assign himself to. His girth would surely break the animal’s spine.
This was the perfect plan. With Valek’s head in her fist, everyone would forget all about Aiden Price! She’d win the prize of the Central European Magic Regime’s throne and become Vladislov’s heir. All of Europe would fear and revere her. She’d become an icon. Indestructible and unforgettable. More immortalized than any Vampire could ever be.
“Once I find the heathen,
” she began. “Scoring his head won’t take me very long. I’d ask you all to wish me luck, but I won’t need it.”
“Not at all, princess,” Balder cooed. “Go get ‘em.”
Without waiting for more of a response, she smashed the vial to the floor and the colorful smoke swallowed her whole.
Unmagic
Nikolai sat on the edge of the bed, trying to breathe through the jagged pain of grief hanging on the edge of his every thought. He laid back and laced his fingers together behind his head while he blinked up at a stark ceiling. He had surely died and gone to hell. Who knew hell had ceilings?
No other pain he could manage to inflict upon himself could distract from the raging that was scalding him from the inside out. His family’s screams haunted him so heavily.
His eyes dusted the room around him. Again, somewhere new. Where was he? Should he try to vanish out of there? But where would he go? His chest was on fire. His heart felt like it was going to ashes. The pain was sharp and relentless as it spread up from his sternum to the sides of his throat. He continued to count his pulsations. One –two. One –two. That was the only thing keeping him even remotely sane –counting every last beat of his still-living heart. The bruises on his back, left over from the night his family was murdered, bothered him slightly when he shifted in the bed.
He’d been awake for what felt like hours, finding himself alone in this strange new bedroom. It was old, its furnishings antique, like he’d been transported into another time. Everything was garnet and gold. The tapestries. The bedclothes. The man must have brought him there somehow.
The last evening Nikolai spent conscious was the strangest he’d ever endured. After the odd boy finished his explanation, and his request, he’d left Nikolai alone in the catacombs to digest all of this impossible new information.
Of Blood and Magic Page 25
