If Jared had wanted it to be ‘far worse,’ it would have been. He must have held back.
But why attack Speer at all? Can he really no longer control his anger?
“Perhaps in a few days, when you’re feeling better, we can arrange something. It’s best for you to rest and take it easy. You don’t want to risk re-injury.” He straightens and heads for the trap door. “I’ll be back to check on you. In the meantime, Borg will look after your needs.” He climbs down the ladder and pulls the trap door shut. I hear the sliding of a bolt and a scraping noise as the ladder is pulled away.
Now what?
I lie back and wait for the room to stop spinning.
A plan. I need a plan, but what? This castle is huge. Even if I could get out of this room, how would I find Jared? How would we get out of here?
Don’t worry about tomorrow. Tomorrow has worries of its own.
True. I have enough worries to last me for today.
I close my eyes and pray.
Lord, protect us and save us.
The same prayer I prayed when I clung to the side of a waterfall on Jared’s back. Levin’s prayer from Anna Karenina.
Lord, protect us and save us.
And then another.
Though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…I will fear no evil.
For You are with me.
53: The Fire Remains
Jared
It’s been five days. At least, I think so but I am starting to lose track.
I can’t move much because of the chains. Not that I want to move at all.
Every day, I am taken to the Blood Room, as I think of it, by the four guards. The needle is inserted and the blood drained—five pints, sometimes six, until I pass out. I awaken back in the cell, chained and alone.
Like Azazel.
Perhaps this is my fate. To be chained in a pit and treated like an animal. I am as guilty as Azazel. Maybe more so. I knew what I did was wrong and I did it anyway. I allowed myself to be used by men who thought they ruled the world.
There is no excuse.
My blood is not regenerating fast enough to keep up with my “donations.” Wilder leaves me only enough blood to keep my heart pumping and my brain functioning. I am barely alive.
When I refuse to eat, they force-feed me thick shakes made of pureed vegetables enhanced with large amounts of turmeric. For blood-enhancement, Wilder says. They give me plenty of water to drink, which I crave. The thirst is maddening.
I lie on the ledge, half-sleeping and half-dreaming. I have visions of Grace in her wedding dress, the crown of flowers in her hair, whispering those words—our vows. Of kissing her—dancing, laughing, and free.
“Hey kid.”
I open my eyes to see Mike before me. He leans against the wall, eats sunflower seeds, and spits out the shells. I’m reasonably sure I’m hallucinating.
“Mike?”
“It’s me.”
“Did you come to get me out of here?”
“No. I’ve come to distract you from your own thoughts. You’re going down the rabbit hole, aren’t you?”
“Yeah.”
“I thought so. You have to hang in there a little longer.”
“Why?”
“A little longer.” He comes closer and puts a hand on my head. His Light surges through my body like an electric shock. My heart races and nerves fire as blood pumps through my veins into the tips of my fingers.
Maybe I’m not hallucinating.
Mike withdraws his hand. “That should keep you for a while.” He steps back. “I have a message for you. From Elohim.”
“What is it?”
“You’re not alone.”
“Grace—”
“We have Grace.”
A shining stillness overtakes my body and slows my heart. Peace.
When I open my eyes again, Mike is gone.
But a sack of sunflower seeds lies on the floor.
***
Footsteps. I roll over and groan. Already? Has a day passed since the last blood-letting? Mike restored me somewhat, but I’m not ready to be drained again. I need more time—to sleep without dreams and to hope.
“Time to wake up, Vampire Boy.”
They have all sorts of names for me.
The main guard’s name is Stefan. He only speaks French and doesn’t know I can understand him. I pretend I can’t. “I hear you’re an angel,” he said the first day. “Where are you hiding your wings? Or are they invisible?”
The others laughed.
The next day: “Are you still here? I thought you would have broken out by now, that you could melt these bars with your laser eyesight. Or is that Superman? I can never remember.”
The day after: “Whoa. You really do look like a vampire now. Better watch out, fellows. He might want to bite your neck! He needs some blood, that’s for sure.”
Today, he seems surprised at my condition.
“Look at you. Back from the dead?”
The guards unhook the chains and lead me up the stairs. But instead of the Blood Room, they take me to a bathroom.
“Take a shower,” says the one who speaks English, Claude. “Put the clothes on. Knock when you are done.” Stefan pushes me in and shuts the door and the lock clicks.
They have a point. I guess I am starting to stink.
I look around. There are no windows, only one vent but that’s too small to fit through. I sigh, peel the clothes from my body, and take a long, hot shower, although it’s difficult with the manacles. I put on the clothes laid out for me—black pants and a black hooded sweatshirt with the golden spear logo on the breast. I stick the piece of bloody fabric in the pocket of the pants. They still haven’t found it. I suppose that if they were going to strip-search me, they would have done it already.
I knock on the door when I’m done. Stefan opens it and immediately puts the chains back on me and pulls the hood over my head. They take me up the stairway to the main floor of the castle.
I hear voices, commotion. I am led down a hallway to a curtained archway. Stefan pushes the curtain aside to reveal a medieval chapel lined with ornate arched windows and dark marble columns. About a hundred people are seated in chairs facing the altar. They all turn to stare at me.
Darwin Speer stands on the altar platform in front of a large, blank video screen. He looks fully restored—there’s not even a bandage on his nose and no trace of a bruise. He must have had a new infusion.
“Ladies and Gentlemen! Mesdames and Messieurs!” He continues speaking in both English and French. “This is the moment you have waited for. We have here with us the donor of our serum himself, the ‘superman’ I’ve told you so much about. He hasn’t been very cooperative of late, so we’ve been forced to take some precautions. Nothing to be alarmed about.”
Speer motions to Stefan, who pushes me forward. The two guards holding my chains follow. Another lingers close by with a rifle. I feel all the eyes in the room on me in the shocked silence. It’s like being led to the gallows.
I recognize a few of the faces. William Hyde. Marta What’s-her-name, the scientist. Lucille. Harry and Shannon.
This must be the Interlaken Group.
Speer watches me, his mouth set in triumph. I shuffle onto the platform. Stefan pulls my hood away. A murmur of curiosity sweeps the room.
“Here he is, our patient zero. We call him “Abaddon.” Speer grabs hold of the chain attached to my neck and yanks playfully. “Abaddon is over one hundred and fifty years old. Yet see how young he looks. Hardly more than twenty-five.”
Gasps and murmurs follow.
I focus on Shannon Snow. She sits still, a smile painted on her face and her green eyes fixed on me. She puts a hand to her rounded belly and rubs it absently.
Questions are fired at Speer one after the other. Many still doubt his story. Speer becomes agitated, his face flushed, and his eyes pulse. Apparently, his groupies are not that impressed with me.
“He doesn’t look
all that remarkable,” says one woman. “How do we know this is real? How do we know he is what you say he is?”
“I will prove it to you!” Speer shouts, clearly agitated. Things have not gone as he hoped. He turns to an armed guard, grabs the rifle, and swings it at me. I have no time to think or act. He fires, the shots echoing in the vast space. Bullets slam into my stomach and my side and I drop to the floor. Screams and gasps join the echoes, although I can hardly hear anything now. My world has become suddenly small, a spinning vortex of pain.
“Don’t worry, he’ll be fine!” Speer shouts over the rising din. “His regenerative power is remarkable. So it is for all those who have the treatment. Think what this could mean for our military. Our soldiers would not be killed as long as we protected their hearts and heads. They would recover in hours rather than months.” He stands over me. “Get up!” he snarls.
I whisper, “You promised…no government…”
“Get up!” He turns back to his audience. “As soon as we are able to mass-produce the serum, the cost per treatment will come down dramatically. And I can assure you—especially my military friends—that the cost would be far, far less than all that body armor and medical care you pay for now.
“California, thanks to our friend Governor Ravel and his lovely wife Shannon, is about to approve our treatment. Clinics will soon be open all over the state. And you know what they say, as California goes, so goes the country. And then, the world.”
Speer pushes the mic away and whispers to Stefan: “Get him up.”
The guards grab me under my arms and haul me to my feet. Speer comes over and rips open the front of my shirt to display the bullet holes in my body.
“You see? The bleeding has already stopped. In a few minutes, the wounds will be completely healed. This is more than a breakthrough, ladies and gentlemen. This is the future! And you have seen it happen right before your eyes!”
Faces gape at me in disbelief. I want to shout, Do you see what he just did? Do you see the monster he’s become? No one moves. No one speaks. Then Harry Ravel stands and begins to clap. Others join in and the applause spreads as people jump to their feet. The sound reverberates through the vaulted space and drowns out the braying laughter of demons.
Speer whispers to Stefan. “Get him out of here.”
54: Carry You
Grace
I’ve been in this tower for six days.
I’m going crazy with boredom. I stare out the window at the serene Swiss countryside, the lake, and the mountains. I leaf through the piles of science magazines left on the nightstand, most at least ten years old.
And I search for a way out.
I’ve tried to open the trap door but there’s no handle on the top and it’s bolted on the other side. The room contains nothing that I could use to pry it open. All my fingernails are broken from trying.
Every day is the same. Borg arrives with breakfast and fresh towels. He’s young, blond, and looks extremely healthy. I wonder if he’s had the treatment and is like a mini-Jared. He looks as though he could lob me out the window with very little effort. He gave me a package of clean underwear, thank goodness, and a dress that probably came from Lucille’s closet—it’s clingy, black and short. I hated putting it on, but my clothes were rank.
After a breakfast of fruit and oatmeal that Borg calls Muesli, the doctor appears. He shines his flashlight in my eyes and asks dumb questions. “What is the capital of New York State?” “How many fingers am I holding up?” Sometimes, I say the wrong answers and he gives me a worried look and writes something down in his chart. Even though I feel better—the dizziness is gone and the headaches are only intermittent—I decide not to tell him so.
“I want to see my husband,” I say every time.
“You will soon. Your husband is fine. He’s in good health and well taken care of.”
Britney Spears.
Borg returns at noon and five p.m. sharp with lunch and dinner, mostly salads, vegetables, and steamed fish. “Brain food,” he tells me. “High in antioxidants to help replenish brain cells.” It isn’t bad, exactly, but I long for a chicken nugget.
I long for Jared.
Something is wrong, I feel it in my bones. Jared is in deep trouble.
I have considered trying to escape out the window, but the panes are permanently soldered into the wall. Besides, the drop to the ground is at least a hundred feet. Even my bedsheets wouldn’t get me close enough to make it without injury, assuming I could break a window and squeeze through.
And then I got to thinking that if this is a real castle, it might have a secret passage. So I searched the room and looked under carpets and behind furniture. I felt along the walls and tried to pull away loose stones. I found nothing.
How much longer will they keep me here? What will they do with me?
Six days.
I get out of bed, stretch, and look at the clock. Borg is due in fifteen minutes. He’s extremely punctual. I go into the bathroom, which is tiny and probably converted from a storage closet. The toilet is actually right under the showerhead, which makes doing either of those activities rather awkward. I strip my clothes off, take a shower and attempt to wash my hair, although getting my arms over my head is a risky maneuver. As I turn to rinse out the shampoo, I slip and almost fall into the toilet. I grab the shower head for support, but it comes loose from the wall. Water sprays everywhere and I manage to shut it off and then examine the hole in the wall. I’ll have to tell Borg I broke the shower.
I realize I can see all the way through. Behind the fiberglass shower stall there is—nothing.
I stand on the toilet and stick my head as far as possible into the hole. I see a rounded shaft about three feet in diameter. The crumbling stones tell me it’s part of the original castle. Water pipes and electric cables run up and down its length. I can’t see the bottom.
Maybe it had been used originally to dispose of the contents of chamber pots.
Or maybe it was once an escape hatch.
My heart starts to race. I dry off and wipe the soaked bathroom down with the towels. I stick the shower head back into the wall as best I can and close the curtain, hoping Borg won’t open it to check. I quickly brush my teeth and comb my wet hair, still a bit slick with shampoo. That done, I leave the towels on the sink, go back into the room, and put the black dress on.
Then, I lie on the bed with a washcloth over my forehead as the hatch in the floor swings open.
“Guten morgen, Fräulein.”
“Hey, Borg. What’s up?”
“No, no. Say, ‘Was is los?” He’s trying to teach me German.
“Was is los?”
“Nicht viel.”
“Cool.” I have no idea what he said.
“You should learn German. You Americans only speak English.”
“ʼCause everyone speaks English.” This is another conversation we always have.
He comes over and peers at me. “Bist du krank? Sick?”
“Only a headache.”
“I give you some Medizin.”
“Thanks.”
He puts two orange tablets on the nightstand, then goes into the bathroom. I hold my breath.
A moment later, he comes out carrying the sopping wet towels. I wait for an interrogation, but he doesn’t remark on them, just sticks them in the laundry bag he’s brought with him.
“I bring you more clothes.” He pulls a pair of black yoga pants and a white T-shirt from another bag. “You like?”
“Awesome.”
“Anything else I can do for you?”
I let out the breath. “You can take me to see my husband.”
“Es tut mir lied, I can’t do that.”
“I figured you’d say that.”
“Bis später, Fräulein.”
“Whatever.”
I wait until the trap door is closed and bolted and the ladder scrapes away from the opening before I get up and put on the new clothes. Much better. Good timing, Borg. Yo
u’re a prince. I go to the bathroom, stand on the toilet, and carefully pull the shower head out. Working as quietly as I can, I rip away pieces of the wall until the hole is big enough to fit through.
I test the water pipe, hoping it’s sturdy enough to hold me. The stones of the shaft are uneven and look crumbly, but at least they will give me some footholds. It takes time to hoist myself up to the hole. I stand with one foot on the toilet and the other on the wall and squirm and wiggle my way in until I can grab onto the water pipe and pull my hips and legs through. I gasp, thoroughly sweaty, and pray I don’t get stuck. Finally, I free one leg and jam it against the shaft wall to steady myself. I take several long breaths and pull the other leg through.
Balanced as best I can, I take a break until my heart rate slows. My head swims with the exertion. I glance down, and see nothing but blackness. The air inside the shaft is stale and hot. I slide my hands down a few inches, pull one foot from its perch, and drop lower, sliding before I find another foothold. My heart thuds in my ears. I do it again and move a few inches at a time. The pipe wobbles and loose stones fall down the shaft. I don’t hear them hit bottom. Sweat pours into my eyes but I can’t wipe it away. The muscles of my arms start to burn and my hands cramp. Cobwebs catch in my hair and I swear spiders are crawling down my neck.
If I fall and die, no one will ever find me.
I keep going, while my mind questions everything. How much farther? How much longer? What if Borg comes back and finds me gone? What if Wilder shows up early? What if someone hears me rattling around in the shaft? Will they be waiting for me at the bottom?
My foot slips off a crumbled stone. I lose my grip on the pipe and drop like a literal rock. My heart nearly stops but the bottom comes up quickly.
The drop is only a few feet.
Maybe my luck is changing.
Breathing a thank you to God, I check to make sure nothing is broken. Then I stand and peer into the utter darkness. I stick my hands out and move until I hit the wall, then I slide along it, creeping slowly in the hope that I will come upon some sort of doorway or opening. There has to be some way out, or else why bother making a secret passage in the first place? I finally discover a break in the stones—a small opening. It seems to be a wooden door, only about three feet high, but it won’t budge—probably hasn’t been opened in centuries. I get down on my hands and knees and throw my weight against it again and again. I try punching it with my feet, but all I get is pain.
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