by Cate Corvin
They dimpled my skin and pressed down. This time there was no euphoria.
Jagged prickles buzzed under my skin like a nest of hornets, spreading through my body like fire. I was screaming, my voice cracking, and Locke hummed in satisfaction at my misery. Everything hurt so badly I would’ve died to end it-
Warm arms wrapped around me, pushing Locke away.
Shock jolted through me as the pain vanished. Dom and Locke vanished. It had never been real.
Sandy brown hair brushed my cheek. “Shhh, close your eyes.”
I sniffled and reached out to hug a thin, frail body, obeying the order. Hot tears dried on my cheeks as my protector stroked my hair and murmured soft words of comfort in my ear.
The bowls of the wolves faded, and I released a shaky breath.
My head was pillowed on Simon Wicke’s shoulder. The lanky teen covered me like a shield as the darkness of the Hole whirled around us, agitated at being disrupted.
“Keep them closed,” he said, running a hand over my face. Before I obeyed again, I saw the mottled bruising staining his pale flesh. He’d suffered greatly before he died. “It wants to feed on your fear, but it has a harder time catching your mind if you don’t look at it.”
“Thank you,” I breathed, taking comfort in his presence, even if he was long dead. The teenage boy curled himself around me.
“I feel them coming,” he said. His voice sounded far away, even though his mouth was right next to my ear. The spirit trembled. It must’ve been sapping all of him to take this corporeal form. “Hold on as long as you can.”
He gave up on speaking, putting all his energy into shielding me from the Hole’s influence. My heart sank- I didn’t want my men anywhere near this. They should’ve fled while they had the chance.
After what felt like years, the sound of the lid being scraped back cut through the silence. Simon squeezed me weakly and vanished as hands reached down and picked me up, dragging me out of the depths.
I blinked and looked up at Annabelle and Eleanor. They looked pissed, and dirty bandages were wrapped around Annabelle’s arms where I’d hurt her.
Annabelle made a garbled noise, and the Weird Sisters hauled me upright and down a hall.
Every muscle in my body felt like jelly and my stomach lurched at the rocky movements. “Put me down.”
They ignored my rasps and I found myself unceremoniously dumped in Albrecht’s macabre room. Temple’s empty eye sockets glared at me. Albrecht had balanced an old top hat on his mummified head.
“Six hours in the Hole, and you didn’t go mad,” Albrecht said thoughtfully. He adjusted a lace cravat in the mirror, brushing dust off an old-fashioned, moth-eaten coat. When he moved, the stench of mildew wafted over me. “I believe that’s a new record. Patricia, be a dear?”
This time I didn’t fight as Patricia stood me up like a living mannequin and began to strip off the remains of my singed uniform. That energy was better conserved for later, when the fucking magic-binding charm wore off and I could explode into an inferno.
After what they’d just done to me, I was going to make their deaths very painful.
Albrecht looked over my nude body, unrestrained lust in his eyes, and I flinched.
He just laughed. “I wouldn’t lay a hand on you before the handfasting is complete. Do you take me for a savage, coven-daughter?”
Well, yes, I did take him for a savage, and many other things as well. Savage might’ve been the kindest of those things.
Nausea rose in my throat as Patricia dragged out a length of ivory silk that glistened with tiny seed pearls.
I allowed her to dress me in Josephine’s wedding gown, which was deceptively heavy from all the embroidery and pearls. She pushed me in front of the dressing table and began dragging a brush through my tangled hair.
“You seem a little more amenable to reason this time, Lucrezia.” Albrecht watched in satisfaction as Patricia began pinning up my hair in a style reminiscent of Albrecht’s time. “Your aunts were worried you’d spoil the joy of this occasion for everyone.”
I caught Patricia’s eye in the dusty mirror, but she looked away quickly, focusing on my hair. Her gnarled fingers ran through it slowly, and the look on her face was close to reverence. I felt like nothing less than giant, terrified Barbie doll. “My… aunts?”
“You see why we desperately need fresh blood.” Albrecht sprawled on the settee next to Temple. A tiny puff of dust rose from the mummy when he jostled it. “Mallory was the sharpest of the four, so she was chosen to represent our illustrious school to the world above. These three became my attendants.”
Patricia chose that exact moment to yank my moonstone studs from my ears and slide pearl drops through the holes instead. I winced as the wire caught my earlobe and her fingers fluttered. She looked at Albrecht with an expression close to panic, and his face darkened.
“I’m fine!” I said quickly. I had no desire to see what terrible things he did to them when he was pissed, and besides, their deaths were my choice now, not his. “I’m fine, I’m just not used to other people doing my hair or… dressing me.”
I finished on a lame note, but Albrecht gave me a knowing look, and Patricia relaxed.
Part of me felt bad for what I was going to do to them. She’d spent her whole life in darkness, never knowing anything else.
Then she pulled out a box full of old cosmetics, gilded pots of ancient powder, and rouge that had gone fuzzy with mold. I pretended I didn’t see the beetle crawling through the jar of face powder she opened, even though every muscle in my body stiffened.
Better to keep my sanity that way.
“Mallory tells me you’ve never lived in a Great Coven. You’re from a small family with no means. When you become the matriarch of this family, you’ll have privileges you never could’ve dreamed of, and lifetimes to experience them.” Albrecht ran his finger over my cheek, smudging the clown-white powder Patricia was patting into my skin. “I understand this is hard for you to accept. It’s not every day that unattainable dreams are handed to you on a silver platter.”
Patricia swirled a brush in musty-smelling, bright pink rouge and attacked my cheeks and lips. I clenched my hands in my lap- she was literally painting me to look like an old-fashioned porcelain doll.
I wanted to say exactly what I thought, but I didn’t want to be dropped back into the Hole. This was all insane.
After an undeserved extra hundred and fifty years of life spent living in the depths of a covenstead, Albrecht did seem to be genuinely out of his mind.
“It’s very difficult to accept,” is what I opted to say, hoping I sounded demure instead of appalled. ‘Aunt’ Patricia carefully dabbed the pink rouge on my lips, and found a pair of cracked, brownish lambskin gloves to slide over my hands.
I shivered when something wriggled against my palm.
She clapped her hands when she was finished, and I struggled not to grimace when I looked in the mirror. I looked just as crazy as them… and my time was running out. I couldn’t hold onto my façade of calm for much longer.
Albrecht stood at my back and touched the desiccated skin on his cheek with a frown. “I need another harvest,” he muttered, but he slid both hands over my shoulders. “What a lovely bride you make. Almost lovelier than Josephine.”
I looked like the kind of porcelain doll people left in thrift shops because it was demonically possessed.
Josephine’s wedding dress was a little too loose in the bust, a little too tight in the hip, but otherwise we were close to the same height and build. Large holes had been gnawed in the lace, showing bits and pieces of skin through them.
I forced a smile at Albrecht in the mirror. Was he expecting us to get handfasted right now? The magic-binding charm was still holding me tight, and for the first time it occurred to me that it might not wear off at all.
My stomach plunged towards the floor in a sickening drop. I’d have to kill them all with whatever weapon I could find.
“And
they say it’s ill luck to see the bride in her wedding dress. This is the happiest day of my life,” he said with an easy grin.
Goosebumps rose all over my body.
Albrecht looped my arm through his and led me through the door. I followed on bare feet. Patricia had forgotten shoes after she’d taken my black heels.
The dress’s hem dragging on the stone floor made a hissing noise that preceded us. The Cage arched overhead, and Gilt waited with Eleanor and Annabelle, her hands clasped behind her back. Now that they were all together, the sisterly resemblance was unmistakable, made even more horrifying by the Weird Sisters’ ragged appearance.
Gilt’s lip curled as she took me in. “Grandfather, despite my utmost respect for you, I question the wisdom of this course of action.”
Albrecht released me and I almost went flying. “Do you, darling Mal?” He towered over her and for once, Gilt quailed. The sight was so incongruous with what I knew of her that my jaw almost dropped. “After years of work you’ve found me the new gene pool we so desperately need, and now you have reservations?”
“I simply question the wisdom of handfasting the girl, Grandfather.” Gilt held up her hands as though to block him from touching her. “She’s valuable, yes, but so is her eligible status… and yours. You won’t always live below.”
“No.” Albrecht glanced at me consideringly, and for a moment I thought I might get out of this intact and untouched.
No such luck.
“It’s been so many years since I had anything besides these three. I do miss your mother, darling Mal,” he said, reaching out to grip the wrist of my injured hand. The pain flared back to life and I almost shrieked, a haze of gray falling over my vision, even as the horror of his implication hit me like a brick. “She was the best of my wives. But it’s clear that our bloodline is becoming corrupted. Three of four children, with the minds of imbeciles… it’s time for someone new. I won’t disrespect the mother of my future legitimate children by keeping her like a common whore.”
The Weird Sisters crowded together, their bulbous eyes taking in the drama playing out in front of them. They were all wearing piecemeal clothes and accessories from different eras, objects stolen from Cimmerian’s dead: a glittering flapper gown, citrine clip-on earrings, a flowered straw hat.
These poor insane women had been kept in the dark their whole lives, and Albrecht had forced himself on them. He was their biological father… and grandfather. And so on.
I couldn’t play along anymore, even without my magic. It was too much to bear. I couldn’t picture them forced to pleasure Albrecht’s mummified husk, prisoners to his mad whims. His own damn daughters.
“I’m not having any of your children,” I gasped, pulling away from him. My hand pulsed with a low throb of agony. “I’m not handfasting you. You can kill me if you want, anything would be better than being tied to you for eternity.”
Albrecht looked at me incredulously. Gilt stepped in, taking advantage of my outburst. “She needs a little more time to adjust, Grandfather. Being elevated in status so quickly has… addled her senses.” Her old-timey phrases were jarring. The diction was off, compared to Albrecht or Locke.
His head snapped around and Gilt shut up. “You told me you had found the perfect subject, Mallory. Shall I have you fetch the dictionary so you can look up the definition of the word ‘perfect’? You’ve brought me wildfire, yes, but in a flawed vessel that fights me every turn.”
“I’m standing right here, asshole,” I said. Annabelle covered her dropped jaw with a painted silk fan, fluttering it coyly. “I’m not a subject or a vessel- I’m a person. Do you even see what kind of craziness you breed down here, or are you too fucking nuts at this point?”
Albrecht’s lip drew back, baring his teeth. “You brought me a vessel with a filthy mouth. On the day of our handfasting. Are you hungry, girls?”
For a second I thought the change in subject was just his fractured mind jumping around again, skipping time and no longer present.
But Annabelle lowered the silk fan and Eleanor licked her lips, all of them focused on the luckiest sister of the four.
Gilt’s face drained of all color, standing out milky white in the lamplight. She looked stunned, like she’d been blindsided without warning. “Grandfather, I apologize for my transgressions-”
“Fresh meat, my dears,” Albrecht said, and the Weird Sisters pounced without warning.
Gilt screamed only once under the fury of snapping teeth and clawing hands. I sank to my knees, retching and dry-heaving as Albrecht watched with blank eyes.
He sighed and wiped a fleck of blood off his cheek. Gilt’s foot jittered and fell still.
“Lucrezia, let me make my intentions plain. You’re a lovely woman, and my girls would certainly enjoy having a new companion.” Annabelle stuffed a gob of something red in her mouth and my gorge rose. I swallowed hard and looked away, my hands shaking at my side. I’d caused that. “Some say that genius and insanity look like two sides of the same coin. You simply need a new perspective.”
He was standing in front of me now. Albrecht gripped my chin and forced me to look up at him.
I reached for a single ember of my wildfire, hoping that the charm had died with Gilt, but it held fast. There was nothing.
“I would prefer that you put a smile on that pretty face and make my day,” he said, his voice almost gentle. “Riches, Lucrezia. A thousand years to sit back and watch your progeny grow and become the greatest of the covens, blessed with wildfire.”
His skin was drying out again, his stolen vitality slowly being used up. The skin of his fingers was coarse under my chin.
Albrecht eyed his own hand, licked his drying lips, and glanced regretfully at Gilt’s body.
“Or I can put you in the Cage and burn off some of that wildfire. She would’ve been more useful there, but my girls get so little fresh meat these days…”
He grabbed my broken hand and hauled me forward, my mind going blank as he squeezed my injured finger. The pain was monstrous.
It receded as he strode under the legs of the Cage, practically dragging me behind him. A long iron pole descended from the apex of the machine, spearing down into what looked like a small cell set in the center of a massive pentagram.
The pentagram and its sigils were made of forged metal set in the stone floor, swirling in an endless dizzying pattern that hurt my eyes. I was looking at a fortune’s worth- a lifetime’s worth- of money and effort expended for one purpose.
Eternal life.
If I died in there, my spirit wouldn’t even be free to move on through Death. It’d be trapped in Albrecht’s body forever until he burned it off like fuel. The thought of how many spirits had been wasted on him was sickening.
He pulled the cell door open and shoved me inside. I resisted, bracing myself against the door, ready to sink tooth and nail in his flesh to stop him, but a swift uppercut to my jaw exploded through my head.
When clarity returned to my pounding skull, I was slumped on the floor of the Cage, and Albrecht had locked the door. The tiniest movement made my stomach churn and my head spin wildly.
Albrecht had retreated to one of the massive legs, a shadowy figure standing just out of sight. “Lucrezia, every time you fight, we will hurt you. We will hurt you more and more, until you feel you can’t bear any more… but I think you’ll find you can.” He grinned, the corner of his mouth cracking. “When you are released, perhaps you will have a more satisfactory answer. For now, I’ll just have a little taste of you.”
He drew a sigil in the air and blew it towards the Cage like a kiss.
I reached out and grasped a bar of the cell that held me, the buzz and crackle of energy flowing through the metal. The sigils on the pentagram lit up with a ghostly light.
I felt my wildfire then, inaccessible but flowing through my veins, streaming in minuscule motes through every cell and into the pentagram. The energy flowed through the legs of the Cage… and as I watched, Albrecht
’s cheek began to heal, growing over with new flesh.
My head dropped to the metal floor. I was too tired, too nauseated to even move. It was too much energy for my body to even summon a single tear as Albrecht drained my wildfire from me.
He touched his restored face and smiled at me from the edge of the pentagram. “I feel you in me.”
I passed out, grateful for the consuming darkness.
Chapter 16
Dominic
Ten hours and forty-seven minutes. Twenty-five floors down.
Only five floors left.
Lucrezia and the Vita Machina were so close but seemed as distant as the moon no matter how many revenants we killed, how many spirits were exorcised, how many vampires we dusted.
It seemed like thousands, a never-ending nightmare that brought us no closer to her.
My body worked on autopilot, slamming a dagger through a vampire’s chest and piercing their heart while the other dagger beheaded it. The body immediately crumpled into a pile of dust at my feet and I turned to the next.
Shane Frost snapped at another, taking off a leg at the knee as Roman’s teeth buried themselves in the creature’s guts.
Locke was struggling. He’d managed to resist his brethren’s calls for almost half a day, but now his exhaustion was apparent. His skin had gone ashen, and a look of pain crossed his face every time one of us was freshly wounded. We’d grown used to the scent of coppery blood, but to him it was probably a painful temptation.
We’d agreed that he wouldn’t use his healing properties on us until the need was desperate. The risk of his loss of control was too dangerous.
We cleared the twenty-fifth floor and Roman shuddered, losing his wolf form and retching up blood into the vampire’s dust.
“Don’t drink them,” Locke said hoarsely. “You might turn.”
“I fucking hope not,” Roman said, spitting red. “It’s bad enough knowing you can walk around in my dreams, I don’t need you singing the song of your people in my head while I’m awake, too.”