by Ana Calin
I managed to free my wrist from the Upgrade’s hold, and used the element of surprise to push away the hand that covered my mouth.
“Stop hurting him, please!” I cried. The Upgrades jerked me back, and my plea seemed to only spur the Regent on. He turned leisurely to Damian.
“I’m curious. How much would you suffer for her, Executioner?” The tip of his blade pushed under Damian’s upper rib. Damian’s lips tightened and I flinched at the sting in my own flesh.
“Would you turn martyr, like Jesus Christ himself?”
The Regent slashed a long cut along Damian’s stomach, blood swelling in the wake of the blade in dark red beads that turned to crust within seconds. I cried out, eyes blasting wide at the pain, unable to look away. The Regent started sawing downward, the sound of it like knife on leather, while my own flesh burned and blistered. He was slaughtering the man I loved like a pig hanging from a hook, and me along with him.
Damian bared his teeth and growled, his hands gripping to the chains and his arms contracting to the maximum. The pain was excruciating for both of us, making us melt into each other, welding us together.
The Regent sensed our connection, its growing, and inflating. He stopped and observed it with that long, Joker-like grin on his face, his eyes darting from Damian to me.
“I think she loves you, too, Executioner. Really.”
I cried out, fighting for air to fill my aching lungs. “Please, stop this, I’m begging you.”
Damian’s eyes locked on mine, glassy with pain, while I sobbed and shivered. The Regent laughed. The monster laughed, relishing the torture.
“But how strong is her love, I must wonder? Would her sentiment persist, if she knew what you are?”
“I know everything,” I blurted, spewing spittle, and heaving. I could barely keep from fainting, but I couldn’t leave Damian alone in this.
“Oh, you don’t know nearly enough, my dear.” The Regent’s head made a turn to me, almost spinning on an axis. His full irises seemed black holes. “You know he’s an Upgrade. I had some pictures reach you, so you know some of the things he’s capable of. But, you see, when he met you, the ice in his heart began to melt, so you never got to experience at least half of his true nature. You softened him, if you will. But at his core, he’s still— ”
“Stop!” Damian’s demand covered the Regent’s voice like dark poison. “One more word and the deal is off,” he said with what felt like the last drop of strength.
Needles pierced my heart as I looked at him, the cut along his abdomen now an embossment in a canvas of blood and bits of flesh. Vomit crawled up from my stomach, but I caught it my throat, afraid I’d pass out if I gave in.
“Oh, really?” the Regent spat. “If the deal ends, she dies. One swing of my man’s blade, and your little pet drops dead. How about that?”
He searched Damian’s sweaty, dead-pale face with the curiosity of a psycho for a creature in a jar. His long, white fingers traced the still unscathed top of Damian’s big pectorals. “Mr. Varlam was right. You wanted her for yourself so bad, you lost your head. You even tried to lock her away from the world, so no one could reach her and take her away from you.”
“So poetic,” Damian managed a hiss, baring his teeth. It didn’t seem to faze the Regent. Though I couldn’t see his face since he stood now with his back at me, I sensed his delight as his fingers slid down to the cut on Damian’s stomach. I thought I’d go mad with pain. I prayed to God for a miracle that would switch both of us off, that would strike us dead, leaving us empty carcasses on the ground.
The Regent’s index pushed into the wound. I shuddered and gasped as I felt it in my own flesh. Damian’s body flexed, his hands gripping again tightly to the chains. He spat out a curse, his eyes flashing deep into mine, sucking motivation out of me. My head began to spin.
“You still find it within yourself to mock me, Executioner. You forget my power.”
“I don’t fear you, filth,” Damian snarled, saliva dripping from his mouth. His pain burned me all over.
The Regent thrust the blade into Damian’s right forearm and pulled hard toward the wrist. Blood surged, and Damian’s body contracted again, his jaw crunching, while I screamed like a mad woman.
The monster proceeded to the next arm, pulled the blade through flesh, his teeth showing in strain. He hunched a little, and needed to hold the hilt with both hands. The muscles in Damian’s forearms were too hard, so he went back to the abdomen, which was easier to torture. He dipped his fingers into the cut, but when Damian let out a howl, the monster staggered backwards. What happened next made my skin pebble, and this time not with pain or fear – but with stupefaction.
The crystal-green of Damian’s eyes began to shred like unstringing filaments, as if rivulets of fluorescence tore through his irises. His features grew edgy, his jaw and cheekbones sharpening. I blamed the scene on my losing my mind with pain, but in a matter of seconds, he became a gargoyle with the eyes of a devil, the sight so clear I couldn’t deny it. His lips darkened and fissured. Scared as hell, I couldn’t even scream anymore.
“At last he shows his true face,” the Regent exclaimed as if in the ecstasy of revelation. As if this had been his purpose all along.
Damian’s hands tightened around the chains, making the bullies look like desperate kids struggling to keep a fast-growing demon captive. His fingernails blackened like coal and began to elongate into claws, and the texture of his flesh appeared to change, too.
He tugged at the iron, making the rings in the walls clatter, and bits of plaster dribble to the floor. Power oozed from him, growing heavy like gathering thunderclouds.
“The moment has finally come!” the Regent chanted like an evil wizard in a trance and, a second later, thunder boomed. A flash of light slit through the nave, and the weight of evil grew so heavy that the walls seemed to shudder.
A piping sound very close to me made me tear my eyes from the transforming Damian, searching my proximity for closer danger. Svetlana Slavic twisted and squirmed just a couple of feet away, ripping off her clothes as if they burned her, her flesh turning into the slime of a mollusk. I closed my eyes and shook my head, certain I was losing my mind. But when I looked again, the mollusk was still there.
Now I understood why she’d been looking so sick for so long, and what she’d meant back in the mountains when she’d said we had to “escape the confinements of our flesh” – she was BioDhrome’s new project, and it was draining the life out of her.
Svetlana turned into what looked like a humanoid serpent, her long platinum-blonde hair seeming a wig on the head of a glutinous monster. She spanned and launched at Damian with her arms outstretched, while the bullies strained to keep him in chains as he grew and grew like a muscular tumor. For at least another moment, he’d be in chains, and that would be enough for her to end him. I screamed with all I had, I screamed the life out of me.
Svetlana’s clammy feet slickened the aisle as she sped to Damian, opening her mouth like a cobra to bite his face. Certain this was it, this was the last breath Damian Novac would draw, I felt all the air leave my lungs. A devil he was, but I loved him madly, and I wanted to die with him. I didn’t look away even as Svetlana’s fangs came within an inch of his eyes.
But in that instant, as if reality had switched frames, her head dropped to the floor and rolled right at Damian’s feet. The next thing I saw was Hector Varlam holding a shiny blade, down which a yellow kind of slime or purulence crept.
My flesh threatened to peel off my bones, and revulsion tore through my stomach. Tears flooded my eyes, the pulse in my ears deafening. I thought I heard the Regent say, “organ after organ,” then someone’s warning, “not alone.” Blackness grew at the edges of my vision, closing in on a blurry dot. My mind drifted, as if I were wasted.
The last things I heard were a bang against the walls, as if the doors burst open, and many steps flooding the church, patting the stone floor as fast as an army of termites. War calls fil
led my head, one voice rising impetuous over all the others or simply very close to me. I recognized that voice. It was Giant’s.
Chapter Fourteen
I woke up lying on a bed in a dark room. In just a few seconds memory kicked in – thick veins snaking among muscles, bone white teeth bared, arms strained in iron shackles to the sides. Damian’s face morphing into that of a gargoyle.
My first impulse was to fling my legs over the bed edge, but they proved much harder to move than expected. They responded as if they carried weights through water. Finding balance took a few moments with arms outstretched in search of steadying walls or furniture, my brain a soaked sponge in my skull.
I tiptoed to what I recognized as the double door that separated my room from the antechamber at Mom’s house, and emerged into the narrow corridor, stopping in the doorway. Kitchen to the right, bathroom in front, living room to the left, all a haze in semi-darkness, hollow and soundless.
From where I stood, I absorbed the feel of the house. The seeming emptiness was uncanny, and what I used to call home felt like one of those gothic castles in a disturbing movie. The most prominent memory in my mind was of Damian, jutting out from the murky mash of cloaked minions around the humanoid serpent that Svetlana had turned into. The memory of the Regent torturing Damian lashed at me, Damian’s pain becoming so unbearable that the demon at his core burst out. I remembered his fluorescent stare pervading mine so very clearly.
Latching on this sense of connection, I walked slowly to the living room. From there the master bedroom would be to the right and the vestibule with the front door to the left. I intended to get out in the night and run to the abandoned church, hoping against hope that I’d find Damian still alive, and yet weeping and sighing with an aching chest in expectation of tragedy. But the moment I stepped into the living room, my heart sent hot wires all over my body, right to the tips of my toes.
Could this be real? What were the odds? My eyes bulged out of their sockets at the sight of Damian sitting on the couch, slowly raising his head to look me in the eyes.
A ghost, that’s what I saw for sure. He was no longer a monster, but the inhumanly handsome Damian Novac I’d fallen in love with. Still, his chiseled barbarian face was marble white, his sculptured lips dry, as if life had drained from his body. He wore the bloodstained sweater he had before he’d taken it off at the Regent’s command, his raven locks spilling free and damp to his broad shoulders. He looked as pale and dead as any of Rice’s vampires, but his eyes glinted with implacable will, making the picture even more eerie, otherworldly. He resembled a fresh corpse inhabited by a demon.
He rose to his feet with difficulty. My heart overflowed with pain as I looked at him, the smell of rust filling my nostrils – from the blood, I realized.
I needed to touch him. Touching him was the only way of finding out whether I classified as delusional, if I’d crossed directly to “seriously deranged,” or if this was truly happening. My body became too hard to steer after only a couple of steps. My limbs became sacks of sand, my mind wandering like a lunatic’s in an abandoned asylum.
Damian opened his arms in a subtle invitation to approach, like Jesus invited the apostles to touch the holes in his hands. I dragged myself another few steps in his direction, but with every inch, a soak-red stain slowly expanded into the tissue of his sweater like the wine had on his shirt the night we’d first spoken to each other.
He began walking to me. His cheek twitched with every step, and the bloodstain on his sweater yawned.
This can’t be happening, I told myself, but as his arms wrapped around me, and he pulled me to his chest, his presence became undeniable reality. He towered over me, the scent of rust strong, while the moisture of blood on his sweater hardened into crust as my cheek pressed against it. I remembered – his blood solidified almost immediately after it left his body. This was real. This was freaking real.
“You’re bleeding!” I looked up at him.
“I’ll be all right.” Weakened by pain, his voice was a slur.
“It doesn’t look that way!”
“Regeneration was superficial. It’ll take a while for the wounds to heal properly, but I’m an Upgrade, Alice. I will heal.”
I tried to push him away, but his arms formed a granite circle that kept me only inches from him. I looked him all over.
He didn’t seem stable on his feet, and speaking appeared to be an effort to him. My heart aching, I cupped his jaw with my palm. It felt like a steel beam, but his features showed fatigue. I caressed the tips of his hair, letting the wet silken texture tickle my fingertips.
“Alice, I’m sorry you had to learn that way—”
“No, don’t be. I already knew you weren’t,” I looked for the words, “entirely human. It didn’t hit me out of the blue.”
I searched his face, letting all the love I felt show in my eyes, while his fingers stroked my cheek. They trembled slightly.
“Come, lie down,” I whispered, leading him gently back to the couch, my hand light on his upper arm. His triceps felt as hard as ever under his sweater, so hard it could’ve fooled anyone. I wished I had the strength to carry him, cradle him in my arms, as unsexy as it sounds. I felt powerless and useless because he had to drag himself, his arm winding protective around my shoulders instead of seeking support on me.
He slumped on the couch looking sickly pale, but his devil-like green eyes remained focused, in control. The red crust all over his sweater – now once again darkening with moisture because he’d moved – sent a stab through my heart. I dropped to my knees before him and tried to lift the fabric and check his wounds, but the sweater was stuck to his flesh. Only thinking of the pain it would cause him to pull further made my skin crawl.
“You need a warm bath,” I said. “It’ll help get you out of this thing.”
I sprang to my feet, intending to go and prepare the bath, but Damian grabbed my wrist to keep me close. I looked down at his big, hammer-like fist crisscrossed by streaks of solidified blood, my wrist tiny in his clasp.
“Please,” he managed. “Stay here. Just lie down with me.”
I didn’t need a second invitation. I curled my legs under me on the couch, resting my head on his bulky, crusty chest, my hand between his pectorals. Feeling his heartbeat. I closed my eyes and, for long moments, I just listened to his breathing, to his steadying pulse, inhaling the scent of rust and fir. He was truly here. We’d made it. We were both alive. Alive.
“How come, Damian,” I whispered. “How did we escape? For all I know, we should both be dead.” Then I remembered the last thing I’d heard before my brain shut down at the cathedral – Giant’s voice.
I lifted my head, my gaze searching for Damian’s. He rested his huge frame against the back of the couch, his raven locks spilling over it, face upward, his chiseled profile glistening in the moonlight. His eyes were closed.
“Giant,” I whispered. “I know he was there, I recognized his voice.”
“He was there,” Damian whispered back, making it sound like nothing out of the ordinary.
“Are you simply not surprised, or just too tired to look it?” I inquired, puzzled.
He smiled without opening his eyes. “Too tired. But it was a surprise for me, too. I’d always thought him on BioDhrome’s side.”
“That’s what we all thought.” It hit me – all besides Leona. “That’s why Leona must’ve got me to the university attic. To share the secret, probably to extract me....” On a second thought... “Why was it even a secret that he worked for the Order?”
I posed the question to myself rather than to Damian, because I didn’t want to strain him. He turned his head slowly, looking at me like I was made of cotton candy, and stroking my face with his fingers. They, too, felt crusty, and smelled of rust.
“He is the Viscount,” he said slowly, but in a steady voice. “Dr. Nathaniel Sinclair, founder of the Order of Lords.”
The news sent a flash through my limbs.
“Say what?” I whispered.
Damian gave a small nod. “He keeps his true identity a secret even from the Order’s members. It’s safest, plus that anonymity allows him to test new people’s allegiance before enrollment. The way he’d tested mine ten years ago. Had I been still on BioDhrome’s side, simply trying to infiltrate the Order, I wouldn’t have fought Giant. I would have talked my way out of the conflict, thinking him a peer, and his attack a misunderstanding.”
“Well, then,” I replied as the information sank in, “I guess we owe him our lives.”
“Not only that, but also the fact that BioDhrome has finally crashed. They’d focused all their units to trap me, and they were all at the cathedral when the Viscount and his commando team ambushed them.”
He took a few deep, slow breaths, closing his eyes with a grimace of discomfort, and shifting his torso a little before he continued. “Greedy for my blood, they paid with theirs. The bad news is that the Regent escaped. He and Varlam are the only survivors, but the latter won’t survive long on his own.”
Against all odds, relief washed over me. “Thank God, Hector is alive.”
Damian’s features distorted in disgust, his jaw rippling. His eyes flashed at me. “You’re happy? After what he did to you? Alice, I would’ve killed him with my bowels hanging out of my body at the cathedral, given the chance. And I will kill him if I lay my hands on him.”
“But, Damian, Hector switched sides.”
“There are no guarantees he’d stay on ours. He’s a pervert and a sadist, and he’ll return to his old ways sooner or later. Plus, even if he were a good guy, the Viscount wouldn’t accept him within the Order. It’s a very exclusive circle, as you have surely realized by now.”