by Zan Safra
Oh, God…
I stumble across the room. My foot strikes a pewter candlestick, sending it rolling away. Its candle lies on the rug, spatters of cold wax around it.
The door is ajar.
I run into the corridor. The alchemical lights are extinguished. Only my new sight allows me to see through the darkness.
The Shadow Palace is never dark at night.
A horrible, heart-piercing fear weighs me down as I go to the nearest door, to Beatriz’ room. The wood is splintered. The entire handle has been torn out, cast away down the corridor, leaving a ragged hole. No light shines from within.
“Beatriz?”
I push open the door. It opens into a destroyed room. Beatriz’ desk is overturned. Her lamp lies shattered. One of her plants flails weakly on the floor, its pot in shards.
I run out and crash into Andreas’ room. Empty. Renzo’s and Milo’s, empty. Pia’s and Fiorella’s, empty.
“Madrina!” I scream. “Madrina!”
No one hears.
I run down the staircase. The automaton Niccolo lies broken on the landing, twitching like a dying insect. I reach the schoolroom. Empty. The practice room. Empty. The library. Empty.
The corridors blur, tilting, a mad, quivering sketch. A long scratch tears the wallpaper. A broken vase cuts my foot. Glowing lucifern sap smears my nightdress as I shove through the fallen plant, into the atrium. “Madrina!”
Echoes scream her name, mocking me. They die, leaving a fainter sound in their wake. The crackle of a hearth burning high.
The hawser, the binding mooring me to the fiend, draws me towards the sound, down a corridor and to the parlor.
A heavy brass candlestick lies on the floor. I take it up and open the parlor doors.
The room is in shambles. The furnishings are overturned, the paintings askew, the mirror shattered. Half-burnt candles stand scattered about, melting onto broken tables, dripping over the mantel’s edge. Flames devour a log in the hearth. The largest armchair stands amidst the chaos, turned away.
I raise the candlestick and go to the armchair, facing it.
Andreas sits there, still in his battered costume coat. His face is so pale that his skin is nearly translucent. Blackened veins crawl from beneath his collar and cuffs. The Dead blood shines inside him, poisoning his every vein, spreading from his wound like the tentacles of a tumor.
He lifts his head. His eyes glisten with fever. He inclines his head as he studies me, with a gaze as fixed and piercing as a reptile’s.
The fiend’s gaze.
The voice that leaves his mouth is his own, but cold, not with the chill of ice, but the grave. “There you are.”
My own voice is small, faint as a child’s. “What have you done?”
The moroi tilts his head again. The movement is measured, the precise action of a marionette. “Absurd little creature.”
A sneer tugs at Andreas’ stolen mouth, a look I’ve never seen, one that would never cross his face. “What a sight you are.”
I pry the words out of me. “Where are they?”
The moroi heaves as though about to retch. A trickle of black blood leaks from the corner of his mouth. “His heart slows,” the fiend rasps. “He does not have long.”
“Leave him!”
Tears blind me. The candlestick trembles in my hands. I want to use it, beat it out of him, rip it out…“Leave him!”
The Andreas-thing watches me. “You have fallen so far. From conqueror to this,” he says. “Now you shall feed the first of my new order.”
Contempt creeps across his face, burning like acid in his gaze. “Why else would I leave you living?”
The moroi takes my folded glaive from inside his coat and throws it into the hearth.
The metal of the candlestick grows slick in my hands. “My family.”
“They still live.”
The moroi raises one arm, examining the blackened veins at his wrist. I understand. “No.”
“It is already done. They will succumb soon enough,” he says. “But for the youngest. Fiorella?”
The moroi grins. “She is too young to be of use. I shall feed her to the others.”
A shriek rips out of me. I swing the candlestick high. The moroi gazes at me, expressionless. I stop myself in time, panting, tears blinding me. I can’t. I can’t help him, I can’t beat the fiend out without harming him…
The shadows in the corners stir. Dead creatures emerge from them, a samca, a pricolici, a katakano, two upiri. They surround us. Black filaments stretch from the moroi to their hearts, exactly like those that bound me to the Dead of San Michele.
The fiend’s emotions course down our connection, gloating, triumph, glee. “How the little ones wept,” she whispers. “Dragged away by monsters, their mother powerless to help them, no one to answer their cries—"
“What do you want?” I scream.
The moroi draws my medallion from his coat. He lifts it by its chain, watching it as it turns. The engraving flashes in the firelight, mocking me. Draculesti, Draculesti, Draculesti…
The candlestick falls from my hand. The revenants bare their teeth, flexing their claws.
“Look at you now. Reduced to this,” the fiend whispers. “Cowering inside a cripple. Feigning care for these miserable creatures. Deceiving them into serving you.”
The moroi spins the medallion, wrapping its chain around his finger, and catches it in his fist. He lets it fall and spins it in the opposite direction, unwrapping it. He continues, watching me, face warped into an ugly smirk. Spin, spin, spin, catch. Spin, spin, spin, catch.
“They’ve done nothing to you. Let them be. You have me now.” Tears course down my face. “Who are you? Why do you hate me?”
The fiend catches the medallion in her fist. She stares at me.
“Have you truly forgotten yourself?” she whispers.
A grin cracks her face, teeth black with rotten blood. She throws back her head and screams with laughter, black tears pouring down her face, banging her fist against the armrest.
“Stop,” I choke.
“You still think to command me?” She slaps Andreas’ hand against his chest. “I am the Dragon now! I will rebuild the House of Draculesti! I rule!”
“You’re no ruler.”
The fiend’s laughter dies.
I can’t stop. “You’re nothing but a murderess. You attack your victims from the dark. You use others to carry out your plans.”
The fiend rises from her chair. The blackened veins spread further, crawling towards Andreas’ eyes.
But I won’t retreat. I won’t stop. “You ambushed my family. You poisoned my friends. You use my brother as a mouthpiece instead of facing me yourself.”
The fiend comes towards me. I want to run. I won’t.
“You infest like a disease. You hide behind your slaves. You torment helpless Naturals who can’t possibly fight back.” My fingernails bite into my palm. “You never face anyone who can fight back. You never face anyone at—"
The back of her hand slams into my face. The blow sends me crashing down. A marble bust topples over and shatters beside my head.
My jaw aches. My ears ring. I brace my hands and push myself up. “You know I’d never attack Andreas. So you hide behind him. The way you always—"
A boot rams into my stomach. Pain smashes me like a cannon shot. “You’re no queen!” I scream. “You coward! You—"
Another kick. Pain pins me. “No. You will not feed him when he dies,” the fiend whispers. Her boot presses into my throat. “I will have you grovel.”
Andreas’ hand reaches into his coat and draws out a vial of black blood.
I grab his ankle and twist. Andreas stumbles and falls into the chair again. I drag myself up, clutching my middle, but before I can straighten the Dead creatures seize me again. They drag me towards the fiend.
I twist, striking out. My fists strike two of them, throwing
them into the walls. Three more grab me. The fiend regains her footing, forcing Andreas’ body upright. I can see the poison glowing inside him, a black web pulsing beneath his skin.
“I shall parade you in chains. All of the Dead will see the ruin you have become,” the fiend whispers. “And then I shall rip you apart.”
The moroi unstops the vial. The vampires drag me nearer. I see the threads that bind them to the fiend, the black filaments pulsing with the kudlak’s commands.
The taste of ash floods my mouth. Daggers of cold pierce my bones. The threads glisten like cords of liquid ink, beckoning—
And I know what to do.
I snatch the threads, my mind snapping shut around them like a trap. The vampires halt, bony fingers locked about my arms.
I grip the threads, constricting the connections, diverting them. “Let go of me.”
The command darts from the black core poisoning my heart, racing down the threads. The Dead creatures’ grip slackens.
The fiend recoils as though struck. Our own connection ripples with shock. I squeeze the threads, binding them together. “Let go of me!”
The command pulses through the threads. The vampires’ claws open. I jerk away, blood coursing back through my veins. The Dead creatures falter, growling in dull confusion, as though waking from a trance.
The fiend seizes the cords again, wrenching at my hold. Grab her! Bring her to me!
But I don’t let go. I wrench back, pulling, wrestling with her until—
The threads snap. The shock of it makes me stagger. The invisible threads flail like severed tightropes, thin, and wither away.
The fiend reels. The Dead creatures retreat, crouching, staring about in fear. The kudlak stares at me through Andreas’ eyes, paralyzed. Fear pulses down the connection like shocks of lightning.
The poison in Andreas’ veins glows as the fiend stabs a finger at her creatures. “Kill her!” she screams. “Obey me!”
But the vampires do nothing. I stare hard at Andreas. I see the poison’s source, the wound on his arm, burning like a black coal beneath his sleeve…
And I know what to do. “Get out of him.”
“Obey me!” Andreas’ stolen voice rises, a wild, terrified shriek. “Obey me!”
“No, Isadora,” I whisper. “You obey me!”
I lunge at her and catch Andreas’ arm. The wound sears my hand, making the cold withing me surge, turning me to stone, the stone of a grave. “Leave him!”
The tendrils of blood writhe like worms. I grab them as I grabbed the threads, seizing them with my mind, pulling, wrenching, ripping. “Get out!”
They scream, the fiend, Andreas. The poison separates from his blood, flowing backwards, rushing through his veins, returning to the wound.
I let go. My hand is soaked in black. Strings of Dead blood drip from my fingers.
She’s gone.
Andreas staggers. I fling the filthy blood away and catch him, dragging him to the chaise. He collapses onto the cushions, panting. The Dead creatures surrounding us retreat, slipping into the shadows, out of the parlor. I feel them leave the Shadow Palace, separate, and vanish.
Andreas coughs. I kneel beside him. “Andreas?”
The veins have gone. Already a hint of color tints his ashen face. His eyes flutter open. “Ayanda?”
The look, the voice is his. I yank him to me, hugging him. It’s him. It’s him.
He sags in my embrace, exhausted. “I let…them in…”
Tears well in my eyes. I mustn’t let him see. I must put what I feel aside, for his sake, for everyone’s. “It wasn’t your doing.”
“There were too…Madrina couldn’t…oh God…”
I hold him tighter, pressing my face into his shoulder, my tears soaking the cloth. “Andreas, don’t—"
“She has everyone,” he rasps. “Madrina. The children. Yurei. Jette. Belle…Belle is…”
“I’ll stop her. I’ll free them.”
He grabs the back of the chaise, heaving himself up. “I’m coming.”
I hold him back. “You’re ill.”
“I don’t care! I won’t let—”
His arm falls to his side. He sags onto the chaise, eyes slipping closed. His breathing steadies with sleep.
I wipe the bloody tears from his face and fold his hands over his middle. My ruined glaive sags in the hearth, a distorted mass of metal. There’s nothing else, no movement, but for Andreas’ breathing and the licking of the flames. My family is gone. My friends are enslaved. The Shadow Palace is a sepulcher. I’m alone.
Utterly alone.
The realization, a surety dawns, the clearest, most obvious thing.
I’m not alone at all.
I slide a cushion under Andreas’ head and leave the parlor. I cross the Shadow Palace and climb the tight spiraling staircase to the cupola, remembering another vast tomb, and what happened in it.
Command. We shall obey.
Call. We shall answer.
Lead. We shall follow.
The frigid wind feels hardly more than a breath as I step out into the cupola and turn towards San Michele. The filaments binding me to the Dead quiver like spider-threads.
I close my eyes. Listen.
The threads ripple. The Dead attend, listening like animals cocking their heads.
I need you. Come to me.
The command darts down the filaments. Without hesitation the Dead begin to move, quickly, galloping, swimming, taking wing.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Belle
I AM IN THE Before. I know that without question.
I am in a bare stone room, Moonlight streams from a round window set high in the wall. I see my hands, olive-skinned, fingernails polished, and a plain blue gown. Beside me is a stone slab as high as my waist. A person lies upon it, covered in a white sheet that hides all but her face.
My face.
It is me, me, blue-skinned, black-haired, stitches shining as though newly sewn. My eyes are shut but my chest rises and falls. I am alive.
“Finished,” says a voice.
Someone stands beside me. Her face is a blur, no more than an impression, but I can see a laboratory vestment, precisely like the one I designed for Jette. Her dark hair is piled on her head in a messy knot. She trembles with energy, as though she would like to dash about the room but is forcing herself into stillness.
I know her name, Vida. I know that she has not left her laboratory in months. She emerges to eat and runs straight back to lock herself in. I had not seen her in days when she burst in upon me and dragged me here. I do not like the light in her eyes. I have seen Vida excited before, of course, but not in this way. This is different. Not right.
I look back at the thing on the slab. “Does she…will she be able to speak?”
“I hope not. That would complicate things, wouldn’t it?”
“So she’s…empty?”
Vida does not respond. I know she is only half-listening, if at all. Her eyes seem to shine from within as she regards her creation. I cannot say which of them frightens me more.
My voice quavers. “V-Vida, what have you done?”
Vida slams her fists against the slab, a movement so violent that I flinch away. “I didn’t create a beast!”
She stabs a gloved finger at the thing on the slab. “Does she look like the others? Does she—”
“How she looks doesn’t…”
Absolute fear chokes me. The creature on the slab has moved. Her head is turned towards me. Her eyes are open, liquid pools as black as the sky. She watches me silently, studying me with a cold, reptile stare.
I run. Vida’s voice follows me. “Bela! Bela, wait!”
But I do not wait. I must get away, from her and her creation, from that awful hollow inhuman thing she wrought...why could she not let it be, why must this madness haunt our family, why can we not leave such things be…
I cough. A weight presse
s down on me, like a huge brick upon my chest. My eyes feel full of sand. Dust coats the inside of my mouth. The weight pins my entire body, as though I am trapped under a pile of rubble.
My eyes fly open. I am.
I struggle, wriggling in pitch darkness. Something beneath me gives way and I fall onto a metal surface, chunks of wood and stone pelting me. The darkness deepens. Machines rumble below.
I cough out another lungful of dust and crawl along the metal. Stone scrapes my back. The closeness makes me want to scream, but after a moment my head bangs into a brass wheel. A hatchway.
I grab it and pull until it turns. A round door slides away, flooding the space with rusty light. I crawl through and tumble down again, into a passage of riveted metal plates.
I sit up, aching. I need only glance about to know where I am. The machineworks.
I try to stand but my legs give way. My volta throbs weakly. I spent so much in the battle that…
The battle.
My head clears. Yurei is captured. Andreas is a moroi. We walked into a trap.
I grab a rivet and drag myself up, clinging to it until my legs steady. My volta jitters with my fear. Yurei and Andreas are trapped. Ayanda and Jette may be anywhere, but…but perhaps they worked it out, perhaps they escaped...
Or perhaps I am the only one left.
I choose a direction and follow the passage as best I can. I must find some sort of safe place, somewhere I might hide until I can work out some idea, some sort of plan…
I move more quickly, forcing my legs to carry me on. The distant machines clank like the ticking of a giant clock.
A door appears ahead. I go to it and turn its wheel, dragging it open. A corridor just like this one stretches before me.
I cannot go on this way. I do not know where I am. I might be heading away from the Palace for all I can tell—
Something growls.
I turn. A gray Dead woman stands at the other end of the corridor. She is nothing like the rest. She appears almost human, dressed in a ruined ball gown. But the rage in her eyes is what freezes me. They shine like quicksilver, above a vicious snarl.
Her growl rises to a roar. She charges at me. I run but do not get far. A weight slams into my back like a boulder and slams me into the metal wall. The Dead woman spins me about. Her mouth stretches like a snake’s and she bites into my throat.