by Cate Corvin
“What was that thing?” I asked when I pulled away. All I remembered was a milk-white flesh and too many faces.
“A sleeper.” Dominic touched my cheek. “They tend to lie in wait rather than actively hunt for sustenance.”
A shiver down my spine. In this case, sustenance could only be human life.
I glanced at the mirror before he covered it, and jerked, moving closer.
My skin was a shade lighter, and the smattering of freckles I’d gained from all my work outdoors in Herbalism had completely vanished. “What the hell? I only went into Death one time!”
Dominic pulled the silk back over the mirror, blocking the spirit’s doorway. “It happens faster if you forget yourself. You start to become part of it.” He was just a hair lighter as well, his skin still tawny, but not the deep, burnished gold it had been in the photo I’d seen of teenage Dominic.
Something niggled at the back of my mind and was gone just as quickly. Everything I’d seen in Death was like a vanished dream now.
“Death steals,” I said, looking at my hand. The difference was barely discernible, but the sudden disappearance of my freckles was a little unnerving. I took a deep breath.
“We need to gather everyone and put together what we’ve got. But… I need to talk to Locke first. Alone,” I added, seeing the look on Roman’s face. “This isn’t just our present, it’s his past. This was his life. He deserves some privacy when I bring this all down on his head.”
“You think he’s Elijah.” Roman watched me with narrowed eyes. “Does he remember any of his life here?”
“Not yet.” I slid the notebook in my satchel. All I wanted to do was go to sleep and forget how horrible and hollow Death felt, but the locket was heavy in my jacket. “And I don’t know if he ever will. But this might help jog his memory a little.”
“We should come with you.” Roman met Dom’s eyes over my head. “We have no idea how he’ll react to hearing this; I like him, Blondie, but he’s still a vampire.”
“Would you want an audience if I told you your dead sister wasn’t at peace?” I asked waspishly.
“I don’t have a sister,” Roman retorted. “He broke his chains to get at you, Lu. We don’t know if he might snap when his memories come back. We need Shane, too.”
I turned to Dominic, hoping for help, but his hazel eyes were steadfast, arms crossed over his chest. “I’m coming with you. Mister Frost has a valid point.”
I gritted my teeth, but a tiny part of me was both relieved and excited. They would finally all be together if Dominic came with us.
Roman stripped his clothes as soon as we shut the false door, sliding Best-Kept Secrets back into its place. Without waiting for him to ask, I folded his clothes and tucked them in my satchel, and got a cold nose pressed to the back of my thigh as thanks.
Dominic walked at my left, Roman trotted to my right, and my hand drifted to the soft patch of fur between his ears. His low rumble of pleasure rattled in my bones.
We slipped through the black door. Locke wasn’t near his chains. I lit my wand as we passed, finding the raw, empty holes in the stone where his old chains had been.
He’d ripped iron anchors clean out of the wall, just to get to me.
I shivered involuntarily, grateful for the man and the wolf surrounding me.
Chapter 16
Lu
As soon as we entered Moira’s Forest, Roman bounded out into the woods, unleashing an ear-piercing howl that still rang in my head after the sound had faded.
Only minutes later Shane came scrabbling over the wall, using fallen trees as a bridge, his ears perked up.
He paced the clearing, his blue eyes focused on Dominic, and eventually relaxed enough to take a seat on my other side.
I knelt and ran my hands over his plush, silky fur. “I need to talk to Locke about something. These two are probably overreacting a bit, but I think it’s time all of us got together.”
Shane huffed and licked my cheek. “Let me talk alone for a minute, okay?”
I touched Dominic’s arm as I passed. He was examining everything around us in his intense, unsmiling way, from the tunnel to the clearing of Moira’s Forest to the wall of Cimmerian just visible through the trees.
He didn’t seem surprised by a tunnel leading to freedom. My heart squeezed in my chest.
A shape resolved from the darkness. Locke would’ve known we were coming and heard our passage long before we arrived.
“Sunlight?”
I slipped from the protection of the therianthropes and mirrorwalker, approaching my vampire.
“Locke,” I breathed. He wasn’t ashen but sleek and lithe, and he’d… clipped his hair? It was trimmed almost to scalp, highlighting his strong bone structure. For a moment it wasn’t Locke stalking towards me through the forest, but a warrior from days past. His dark brows pulled together, and his lips parted, tongue running over his sharp teeth.
“I found something that… has to do with you.”
He stopped only a few feet away, his amber eyes fixed on my face. “What is it, my Lucrezia?”
I had hoped that if his memories came back, they would do so over time instead of all at once. It would be too painful otherwise. I slipped the locket out and thumbed it open, and Locke took another step forward, his gaze glued to the gold.
“What is that, sunlight?” he rasped, but there was a dim recognition on his face.
“A locket, given to me by a spirit. Does the name Josephine mean anything to you?”
He was so still now he might’ve been a statue cast in bronze, an object I could’ve walked right past without seeing as a living being. “Josephine.”
“Josephine Locke left this for me.” I held out the opened locket, and he took it from my hand without making skin contact. His pupils contracted as he examined the tiny portraits.
“Yes,” he said, pressing his thumb to Josephine’s portrait. “Jo. I remember.”
There was such a deep ocean of sadness beneath his words I almost couldn’t bring myself to continue. Wouldn’t it be better to live in a peaceful ignorance, with the old pain and hurts locked in a chest beneath that ocean?
“Your name is Elijah Locke,” I said gently.
Locke’s eyes flashed and he closed them, his fist wrapping around the locket. “My name is Elijah, and my sister is Josephine. We are the last of Lockheart. She married… ah, I don’t remember his name! She became a Gilt.” He let out a ragged breath. “I will never call her that. Never. She is a Locke! Where is she, sunlight?”
I stared up at him, my tongue frozen in my mouth. This was the part I was afraid of the most.
His face fell, memories returning before I could share her fate. “She is no longer among the living.” Then his expression became guarded and wary, transforming in the blink of an eye. “So much blood.”
Shane and Roman were immediately on guard, their hackles rising in a dense ridge along their spines.
But Locke didn’t move. He unfurled his fingers, gazed down at Josephine’s portrait with a burning mix of rage and sadness on his face, and snapped the locket shut.
“Take it,” he said, thrusting it at me. “I can’t be the one to hold this burden. These memories should have died with both of us.”
I glanced at Dominic, who seemed to guess my intentions before I even spoke them. “You’re not going out there alone, Lucrezia,” he said.
Locke’s smile was twisted. “Do you fear I will harm her? That my anger will get the better of me?”
Dominic, unshakeable as ever, met his gaze. “Yes.”
The vampire prowled closer, examining Dominic from head to toe. “I remember you. You asked me to let you pass, but you offered a worthless bargain.”
“I had nothing else to give,” Dominic said.
Locke stared at him hard. “Then your reason wasn’t important enough.”
Irritation broke through Dominic’s rough features, tinged with black rage.
“What are you talking a
bout, Locke?” I felt the situation was spinning out of control, hinging on Locke’s anger and Dominic’s stubbornness.
“We all hide secrets,” the vampire said. His eyes moved back to me, and both wolves growled when he reached out to touch the base of my throat. A small smile played on his lips. “Some of us more than others. And some of us can’t even remember what our secrets are.”
“But we can figure it out if we trust each other. The Lockes were magic-binders. Josephine told me there was blood on the stone. Do you have any idea what that means?”
Locke’s expression shivered for an instant, and I could almost see his memory locking up on us. “No.”
“At first, I thought maybe it was the waystone, but it’s not. It’s the cornerstone,” Roman said. I spun on my heel. He’d shifted back to his human form. “You said you felt like Cimmerian was reaching out to you, Blondie. If Josephine was a magic-binder, her blood would’ve had the same properties. I’d thought that maybe Gilt botched the Grand Rite of Initiation when she came of age and never gained total control over the cornerstone, but if Josephine was killed for it…”
“Her blood bound the cornerstone,” Dominic said, his voice clipped. “As long as it remains there, Gilt and her family have a tenuous control over the manor’s wards at best.”
I let out a shuddering breath as more pieces fell into place. Blood binds, fire cleanses.
“She reached out to me because I have wildfire,” I said, and Locke’s hands convulsed into fists. “It’s hot enough to destroy anything… even two-hundred-year-old blood binding a covenstead’s wards. Blood binds, fire cleanses.”
They stared at me.
“If I can cleanse the cornerstone, I can perform the Grand Rite and take Cimmerian. It could be Lockheart again. You have to help me get down there, Locke.” I touched his arm, his silky skin as his lips set in a line.
“No.”
“No?” My heart thumped erratically. “Why not? Josephine didn’t call me into Death so we could sit around and do nothing with the information!” I immediately regretted my outburst. He’d just faced the cruel facts of his sister’s ignoble death, and here I was snapping at him.
His lips pulled back over his teeth, a feral, condescending look I’d never seen on his face before. It chilled my heart. “You think I’m the most dangerous guardian she keeps? None of you would survive the journey down.”
“I didn’t mean to demand anything from you, Locke. I’m sorry. But if we want to stop Gilt and lay Josephine to rest, I need to make it to that cornerstone.”
I reached for his hand, and he pulled away.
Ignoring the stab of hurt in my chest, I tucked the locket away, and dug my feet in. “Everyone else please go away for a minute.”
“Absolutely not,” Roman said, backed up by Shane’s snarl.
I glanced at the therianthropes over my shoulder. “Please. This is the last time I’m going to ask nicely.”
Roman scowled, and for a moment I thought the twins would fight me on this.
I didn’t want to argue with them, but I would. Locke was in pain.
“We’ll wait inside,” Dominic finally said. Roman sighed, his shoulders slumping.
“You’d better keep it together, vamp,” he said to Locke, and followed Dominic. Shane went last, his legs stiff and fur raised.
Soon, it was just Locke and I in the forest, just the way it had been the first night we walked outside together. This time, the forest felt more sinister, the shadows deep, and the moon only a sliver overhead.
Locke let me touch him, turning his face so his lips pressed to my palm. “I remember her, sunlight,” he said, his melody of his voice thickening. “I remember so much but not enough.”
I rested my head on his chest. “I’m sorry you had an audience for that. I wanted to tell you in private.”
“At least she was able to speak to one of us.” He stroked my hair, lingering around my shoulders. “Better that she get her message out and rest than be trapped here forever. My only consolation is that her spirit still lives and wasn’t fed into the Cage.”
My chest seemed to convulse. “What do you mean?”
Locke’s pupils contracted and widened again. “I… don’t know.” He seemed unsettled by his own words. “Every time I try to reach for my memories, they slip through my fingers again. I remember her wedding, my sister smiling in her white dress. She was so happy. But all I remember next is holding her body…”
I gasped. His fingers had dug into my skin, like sharpened claws. Locke released me, almost pushing himself away.
“Her husband was a Gilt?” I committed the clue to memory, to go in my notebook alongside Josephine’s warning and the page I’d ripped from Fundamentals.
“Yes. I was his best man.” A vicious look crossed his face, there and gone in a flash. “You know I do not lie to you, Lucrezia. I am not the only guardian of Mallory’s secrets. I would rather risk your wrath than lead you all to your deaths. The evil that has festered here has lived here for far longer than you, born over two hundred years ago when my coven went to ruin. I can’t even remember what it is!” He shook his head, running a hand over his shaved head. “All I know is that death lives below.”
That phrase slammed into the forefront of my mind. “There’s only death below.” My brain twisted, trying to place the words with the person who’d spoken them, but I came up blank.
“It’s a ruin,” he said, his voice dismal. “This place is an abattoir. I won’t bring you below. Better to let the cornerstone to die out on its own, than allow the charnel house to gain another soul.”
I couldn’t help but wonder what he meant by this place gaining- and feeding on- souls. Spirits broke free from Death all the time. I’d never heard of a covenstead that fed on them.
“Let’s think on it, then. Maybe something else will fit into this mystery and give us a better answer. But if I can get to the cornerstone and cleanse the binding, I’m going to do it.”
Locke gazed at me with consideration. “I could keep you away.”
I felt like ice had touched the back of my neck. “You promised you wouldn’t Compel me. Ever.”
But he was a vampire, and I had never made a true bargain with him.
“I would do whatever it took to keep you from that fate.”
I crossed my arms, almost unable to believe how easily he would throw this away. His sister’s spirit had risen from Death to fix this, and he was willing to let their family home fall to ruin for good.
“We’ll see about that. This isn’t just about the Lockes anymore. It’s about everyone who’s died here.”
Locke paused in his pacing to give me the gentle smile I knew and loved. “You would believe so, Lucrezia, I know.”
“She said she still loved you.” That much was clear in my mind, at least. “She can rest for good when I’ve freed the cornerstone.”
We were silent for what felt like hours but was only a minute.
“We know who you are now. Do you want me to call you Elijah?”
My vampire shook his head once, a short, sharp jerk. “No. That name died with my living body. I will keep the name that was important enough for me to remember.”
I couldn’t help myself; I reached out for him, wanting him to know on some level that he wasn’t alone in the world.
But in many ways, he was. The last of Lockheart, everything he knew and loved long gone. There were only so many ways I could possibly comfort him, but I’d keep trying even if it killed me.
Locke sighed and kissed my forehead. “Here I’d meant to come to you when I gained control over myself,” he said with a wry smile.
“You still can. Just because we put more of the puzzle together doesn’t mean I don’t want to see you, Locke. Even if you don’t take me to the cornerstone, it doesn’t change how I feel about you.”
He traced my chin. “And how is that, sunlight?” Locke’s anger had cooled, but it left behind a sad, desperate resignation. “I’m a creature of hun
ger, and I’ve done nothing but act on my own selfish impulses. I’ve refused to help you- and I stand by my conviction in the matter. What could you feel for me beyond repulsion and anger?”
“I feel love, Locke,” I snapped, gripping his biceps and pulling him closer. “I love you because you’re stubborn and have conviction in what you believe. I might not like it, but I know you’re doing what you think is right. You’re more than what you believe you are, and you proved it when I came back for you. I could only hope to have willpower as strong as yours if I held another’s life in my hands.” His lips parted, revealing the tips of his pointed fangs. “You’re like us. You didn’t ask to be what you are, full of something everyone else is afraid of.”
Powerful hands twined around my neck. “Do you love me, my Lucrezia?”
He was so strong, he could’ve snapped my spine with one hand. He could Compel to do anything just by catching my gaze. His teeth could tear me apart.
I gazed into the amber depths of his eyes, seeing Elijah Locke behind his cunning, bestial looks, the smiling man in the portrait who loved his sister, who would do anything to best his nature.
“I do love you, Locke.” I rested my palms on his chest. There was no heartbeat, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t feel as deeply as any of us. “You belong with me. You’re one of mine.”
He sighed and pulled me against him. “I don’t deserve it, and yet I want your love more than anything. You are my sun, Lucrezia, in a world where I will never see the sun again. If my sire came to me now, I would get down on my knees and thank him for taking my mortal life and allowing me to live long enough to have met you.”
My words felt like they’d been stolen from my lips, the depth of Locke’s passion shaking me to the core.
“But even knowing that you return my love doesn’t mean I will bend on this matter.”
I laced my hands around the back of his neck and rose on my toes to kiss him, heedless of fangs. “You don’t have to,” I said against his lips, unable to pull myself away. “No matter where we stand, I love you.”