Marcus turned his glare to her. “She found us.” He ended his sentence with a sound of disgust and thrust me toward Thalia. “Just take her.”
He turned and headed down the hall, a ring of keys jangling at his side. “Take her matches,” he called behind him as he disappeared into the shadows.
Thalia grabbed hold of my elbow, and I yanked fruitlessly against her grasp.
“I see you’ve met our disabler,” she said. Her hair smelled like lemons and soil. My stomach lurched. She tightened her grip, laughing, and reached in my pocket. She retrieved the box of matches. “Guess you don’t need these.”
As she pushed me forward, I leaned back, refusing to walk the direction she urged. Another Cruor approached. Something pricked my neck.
Everything blurred.
No.
I fought to hold onto consciousness, but my muscles weakened. I sank to the floor, Thalia’s elbows hooked under my armpits.
Her voice was there, somewhere, woolen and dreamlike.
“Take her.”
* * *
I BLINKED MY EYES OPEN. No iron bars. A steel door. This wasn’t what I expected. A caged light flickered overhead. Mildew spores branched across the bottom of the walls like varicose veins. I heard a distant coughing—a Strigoi being held prisoner. Not Charles. I tried to rub my forehead, but my hands wouldn’t move. Someone had roped me to a chair.
The doorknob rattled, then stilled.
An unfamiliar voice echoed through the door. “Turning her would be of use.”
“You don’t know her.” This time, the voice was Thalia’s.
“I’ll send Marcus.”
The door opened. As Thalia entered, her black robes brushed the floor. Her hair was tamer than usual, her expression colder and her violet eyes brighter.
“I’d just as soon have you killed,” she said, “but I suppose it will still happen. Only more painfully.”
This was all she said before leaving.
* * *
MY CLAIRAUDIENCE came and went in waves. Marcus was disabling me, though perhaps sometimes he was too far away to do so effectively.
When I had a new surge, I sent my clairaudience out to the Council’s main room. Thoughts echoed inside my head—Thalia and Callista I recognized, but no one else. They had with them a human girl, one who would not make it through the night. I pushed my fear for her aside. I couldn’t help, only listen.
“If any of you object, you are free to leave,” Callista said. Her words were a lie. No one was free to go anywhere if they didn’t agree with her, and they knew as much.
“You have my utter and complete loyalty,” Thalia replied.
“Give it a rest, Thalia. I knew of Charles long before you came to me.”
“Oh?” Thalia sounded hurt to the ears of a quiet Cruor whose mind I had tapped into. “How is that?”
“You know my source.”
“Ivory?”
“She contacted me a month back and told me of his nature. Along with the location of the Liettes.”
Thalia didn’t believe her but dared not accuse the Queen of lying. “She’s gone now,” she said instead, barely-suppressed anger coloring her voice. “I’m here. And I am the one who told you of the girl. Ivory was keeping her from you.”
“It’s of no consequence,” Callista retorted. “We have but one goal. Ultimately, we protect ourselves and therefore the human race as a whole.”
I couldn’t believe Ivory had gotten the Council involved. I was only thankful she hadn’t told them where Charles lived, but that was likely only because she didn’t want them to find me.
As Callista spoke, conflicting thoughts echoed from those around her. Most were completely loyal while others knew her for the hypocrite she was. Save the humans—but kill them when she wanted to feed on their blood? Over the years, Callista had done her part to ensure a Council comprised entirely of Cruor. Her loyalties lay with protecting her own kind, and she believed the longer they waited, the faster the dual-breeds would grow in number.
“We have the upper hand now,” Callista continued, “and we must extinguish the remaining dual-breeds at once if we want to send a message of zero tolerance. They will only replenish in number, and I don’t think I need to tell you all the dangers that would pose.”
Almost everyone in the room agreed with her final sentiment.
I allowed more thoughts to filter in. One member carefully watched everyone’s actions, and I included her thoughts in my focus. She thought differently—mostly in patterns and pictures—but her mind seemed blank of emotion or reaction. She was mentally filing every spoken word and every Cruor’s move.
Callista’s very own stenographer.
I closed my eyes, and the stenographer’s vision played on the insides of my eyelids.
“I hate to be contrary, my Queen,” a young male Cruor said, “but the Universe—”
“Oh, please. Surely you jest?”
“It’s only that—”
“It’s nothing! The Universe is nothing—they have failed time and again. This is our chance.”
No one dared interrupt.
“The Universe has no answers. I have the answers. Cloning has brought forth new opportunities, and we are decades further in our advancements than even the top scientists in the world. We will come forth with our cures for disease, and the humans will welcome us with open arms. No longer will we need to live in the shadows. And humans? They will sacrifice their blood to us in thanks.”
“But the witches—”
Callista whipped around. In one movement, she broke a leg off a chair and dove across the room, plunging the wood into the young Cruor’s heart. To me, her movements were all a blur, pausing at the final result: her body hovering over his as his veins turned visibly black, his body crumbling to dust, a broken chair toppling behind her. Callista’s eyes held a murderous glint, and her mouth twisted in a cruel smile. But all that quickly melted away, a resolute calm reclaiming her features.
She stood, the stake in her hand hanging limply at her side. Blood dripped in small splatters to the floor, turning to ash like a flicked cigarette. “Does anyone else object?”
Everyone looked away except the stenographer.
“As for these witches—do not doubt me for a moment. We will find them and they will join us,” Callista said. “Starting with Sophia. We will guide her into fully realizing her gifts and using them to protect our kind.” She paused and gave each Cruor in the room a long stare. None of them made eye contact, though most were devoted to the cause. “She will come around.”
I shook my head. In the human world, genocide wasn’t acceptable. In the world I knew, people at least felt bad for hurting others or feared repercussions.
But not here.
* * *
SOMEONE LAUGHED outside my cell door, and I shuddered. Marcus. I’d spent the last few hours sinking into the recesses of my mind. Already dead. With him near, the supernatural thoughts quieted, no longer accessible. Damn disabler. There had to be some way around his gift-thwarting ability.
He unlocked the chamber and strolled in. “I sensed something about you that night at Club Flesh,” he said casually. “Not quite human … and yet, not quite one of us.”
I flinched one shoulder in a defensive shrug.
“Now I know what it is. Your soul—it doesn’t belong to you. You’ve merely inherited it. How easy then to sacrifice it for something more.” He paused a moment, then added in awe, “A forever girl. Yes, the Queen has told us all about you. I’m always telling her what a shame it is we don’t keep more Strigoi with us, if for nothing other than reading auras on our behalf. We’d have invited you here sooner, had we known.”
When I didn’t respond, he pulled from his pocket the matchbox Thalia had confiscated from me earlier. “You like fire?”
I pressed my lips together.
“That’s okay. I don’t mind doing the talking.” He flipped my box of matches in his hand. “Did you know, in some parts of
the world, they used to burn witches?”
He looked at me, as if expecting a response. Or maybe my silence was all he expected.
“Yep, burned them.” He drew his eyebrows together, glanced up, and tapped his index finger against his cheek. The gesture looked staged, rehearsed, as though all this was a game to him. My stomach churned.
“Canada. That’s it,” he said, nodding. “They definitely burned witches in Canada.”
“Idiot,” I rasped.
Suddenly, he was crouched at my side, lifting a cup of water to my mouth and helping me take a sip. “There she is.” He patted my cheek a couple times before standing up again. “Denmark.”
I swallowed. Why was he telling me all this?
“I was there,” he said, his interest returning to the matches in hand. “In Denmark, I mean. I was there when they burned the witches. Have you ever smelled the burning flesh of a human?” He laughed. “They thought they were burning witches, anyway. Thought they were burning the Strigoi and Cruor and all other supernatural beings. But here we are. It was only the innocent who died. This is why we need our wars. This is why Callista needs you. You wouldn’t want any more innocents to die, would you?”
“Innocents are dying.” Did he really not get this? “Your Council is the one killing them.”
He set the box of matches on the floor. I didn’t need to read his mind to know he was mocking me.
“See you soon, Sophia,” he sang as he left the room.
* * *
MARCUS RETURNED what might have been days later. The ropes were digging valleys into my chest, arms, wrists, shins, and ankles. I gritted my teeth against the dull, never-ending ache around the edges of the rope where my skin had swelled. My dried tears stiffened on my face, and snot ran down to my lips. I hated how pathetic I must have looked.
He pulled a table and chair into the room and sat with a plate of food. He cut a piece of steak and bit it off the fork.
“You like steak?” he asked, chewing.
I didn’t reply.
He spit out the steak and jumped to his feet, toppling the table over. The plate shattered by my feet, and I startled. “Do. You. Like. Steak?”
My heart rate ratcheted up, and I couldn’t stop shaking.
Immediately, he calmed. “Forget it. I used to like steak.” He clasped his hands behind his back and paced the room. Then he was kneeling in front of me again, shards of the broken plate cutting into his knees. “Life as a Cruor is not so bad, though.” He grinned. “Kind of fun.”
I tried to appear unaffected but likely failed to grand proportions. “These killings won’t help your cause.”
“Won’t it, though? Tell me: would you give up America?”
“I don’t see what—”
“Do you know nothing of history?” He was up, pacing again. “Your kind killed the Indians so you could have your country. Your freedom. We kill the dual-natured so we can have our lives. You are asking us to give up our very existence.” He stopped, snapping his glare toward me. “You think we haven’t tried another way? What do you suggest?” He didn’t wait for me to respond—just resumed pacing. “Do you not realize that many of the humans killed over the years were killed because of the dual-breeds? Should we allow them to expose our kind—destroy the perfect balance and risk the lives of humans and Earth itself?”
“This has nothing to do with Earth,” I said. These people were all brainwashed. Humans hadn’t been killed because of the dual-breeds. How could the Council know so much about science, and still be blind to basic scientific truths? Had no one told them correlation doesn’t equal causation? Had they not been able to figure that out for themselves?
“You may not see now,” Marcus said, “but this is an absolute truth. It’s everywhere, all the time. Your ability to understand is irrelevant.”
“Steven Robiner,” I whispered. I was fairly certain this wasn’t what Mr. Robiner had in mind when he was discussing his philosophy.
“So you are familiar?”
“Hardly with your understanding.”
Marcus smirked. “Given your situation, we will have to agree to disagree.” He turned to stare at the wall.
Desperately, I pushed for access to his mind, but he’d completely disabled my ability.
“I was trying to … what’s the word? Relate?” He walked up beside me and caressed my cheek with the crook of his finger, his skin cold and abrasive. From someone else, the gesture might have been soothing, but from him it was repulsive. “Callista wants to turn you. This will be much easier if you agree.”
“No.”
“I figured you’d say that. I might be able to help you, though.” He lit a match and grasped my wrist. “If you want to be turned, I can give you some anesthetics for this part.”
This couldn’t be happening.
“Since you’ll no longer age, it helps to remove fingerprints first.” Still holding the match between his forefinger and thumb, he fanned three of his fingers—no prints. “See? Smooth as silk. Humans cannot track us.”
Maybe I could distract him. “Oh?” My voice cracked. “I didn’t know that.”
He smiled. “Stumbled on the idea by accident. Two birds, one stone.”
“Why don’t you tell me more about it?”
“Sure.”
I breathed out a slow, heavy breath as the match burned down to his fingers. He tossed it to the ground. Sulfur rose from the concrete in a meandering stream of smoke.
He lit another. “I’ll tell you while we finish up here.”
His words sucked away my hope, and I gasped, the air in the room sharp at the bottom of my lungs. The fire seared my fingertips, and I screamed. I screamed and I heard myself screaming, but there was only blinding pain. I tried to summon my power, tried to focus my energy on reversing the fire, to use it against him. But I had nothing left.
{chapter thirty}
MY FINGERTIPS WERE BURNED, but I had no tears left to cry. Only raspy, dry sobs. A chalky, sour film coated my lips and tongue, and vomit drenched the front of my shirt. Marcus had set the rope on fire earlier, letting it burn my flesh before dousing and retying me, but now I needed to summon my strength.
Maybe if I accepted their offer—if I joined them—I’d be close enough to show them another way, show them they didn’t need these genocides.
I wanted to blink everything away. Erase it like a bad dream. How many of my thoughts were born from logic and how many from fear? Where did my beliefs lay? Was I just as bad as the Council—just as bad as everything I’d ever hated?
With a deep breath to steel myself against the pain, I fought against the rope. I whimpered through my teeth as I tried to wriggle free, and just as I freed one of my hands, something slid at the back of my cell.
Marcus would be returning to burn an answer out of me. Quickly I worked to free my other hand, certain I couldn’t take any more. I had to at least fight back, at least try to stop him.
A hand clasped over my mouth. My eyes went wide.
“Quiet, now,” said a female voice. Though her voice was soft and warm, I remained guarded and unsure. “We don’t have time for your efforts. Ye must get out of ‘ere immediately, and I’ll see to it. But please, keep quiet.”
Her cool, agile fingers brushed against my hands as she worked to untie the remaining knots in the rope. Everything about this woman was petite except for her large, ice-blue eyes. Black hair swept down to the middle of her back, and she smelled of rain and strawberries. She looked no older than sixteen, freckles spotted over the bridge of her nose and fronts of her cheekbones. But her voice sounded older, matured, and from another time and place entirely.
As the rope fell away, I eased to my feet. Clothing, seared straight through in parts and stuck to the pus of my wounds in others, pulled away from my skin as I moved. I gritted my teeth to keep silent, but a pained hiss still escaped.
“We’ve little time. Can ye walk?”
“I … think so.” The words scraped my throat.
The young woman draped my arm over her shoulder and led me toward a gap at the back of the room—it was as though the entire wall had slid open. I limped beside her into the passage, then leaned against the stone wall while she closed the back of the cell. She ushered me down the hall, and as we turned the next corner, she bit into her wrist and held it to my mouth.
“Drink.”
The warmth of her blood surprised me. She didn’t seem to be in any pain as I fed from her, but she must have been a Cruor, because my pain quickly ebbed. There was some kind of marking on her neck, peeking out from the collar of her dress top. A tattoo?
“We’ve been waiting for ye,” she said. She stopped in the middle of the hall and handed me a bag of clothes. “Change quickly.”
I peeled the old clothes off the rapidly-healing burn wounds and hurriedly dressed. “Why are you helping me?”
“The children will explain. Now, please, ‘urry.”
The children?
Blood and mucus seeped from the thick, rope-shaped valleys on my arms, chest, and shins, sticking against the otherwise soothing clean clothes. With each step, the wounds contracted.
“What about—”
“Shhh. Listen carefully. My name is Ophelia. I work for the Council, was sent ‘ere for ye, many, many years ago. Things are amiss. Ye will fix that, but not today. For now, we must get ye away from ‘ere.”
Ophelia? Hadn’t that been the name of the young woman Ivory had turned in exchange for the Ankou magic that would protect her from the sun? Turned, so that she could join the Council?
“You know Ivory?” I asked, though I was almost certain.
Her brow furrowed. “Who?”
“Lenore—her name was Lenore when you knew her,” I said, thinking to the memories I’d stolen from my once-friend.
Ophelia nodded. “Now, please, we must move along.”
She stopped short and slid open another section of wall, revealing Charles and Adrian. My heart fell, and I started to run toward Charles, but Ophelia grasped my shoulder, holding me back until the men stepped into the hallway.
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