by Lund, S. E.
I say nothing, staring straight ahead because I don’t want to look at his face. After everything that’s happened, I feel like I could break into tears. I bite my cheek so hard to stay in control that I taste blood and that brings me some satisfaction. It calms me.
Blackstone stands as if he can’t tolerate me remaining where I am. He walks over and faces me, his arms crossed. I feel his gaze move over me, but I refuse to meet his eyes except briefly.
“Such a rebellious girl,” he says. “Michel and Julien have a handful with you.”
I still refuse to respond, taking in a deep breath to try to slow my heart rate.
“Very well. Let me describe our plan for you. You’re going to go back to Soren and you’re going to agree to help him gain power. At the appropriate time, you’ll help destroy him. This time, we won’t fail.”
I frown and glance at him, unable to resist, to see if he’s serious. He wants me to help Soren gain power?
“I thought you wanted him dead?” I asked, confused. “I thought you didn’t want to share. If he gains power…”
“If he gains power, he’ll bring a lot of humans under his wing, so to speak,” Blackstone says, a grin on his face. “They’ll be more docile. Easier to manage if they have the fear of the Lord in them. Then, when the time comes and things are under control, you’ll help Michel and Julien kill him. Once he’s gone, I’ll put my own people in place. Soren is a wildcard. He can’t be controlled. He’s even older than me.”
“How old are you?” I say, unable to resist.
“Old enough,” Blackstone says. “Old enough to have seen things only written about in myth and legend, but not quite as old as Soren, and our kind has this thing with age and rank.”
“Why won’t you tell me when you were born?”
“Some things are best left a mystery, Eve. But it was before either Michel or Julien were born, so that puts me above them both.”
“You’ve ascended?”
“You don’t believe in it,” he says, smiling.
“I don’t believe it’s anything to do with God or gods,” I say, unable to keep a hint of ridicule out of my tone. “It’s some kind of genetic engineering.”
“You’re right, of course,” he says, tilting his head to one side. “A natural form of it, discovered long ago and kept secret for thousands of years. Only those connected to others of our kind know of it. You should take it yourself, but I hear you’re stubborn.”
“Why did the virus fail to destroy Soren?”
Blackstone walks away from me and returns to the desk, taking a seat. “He must have a genetic mutation that makes him immune. He was able to keep it from completely taking over in his body and the Twelve. Don’t you hate the Twelve, Eve?” he says, a look of disgust on his face. “Twelve? I mean, how manipulative can he be, replicating Christ and the Apostles!” Blackstone shivers dramatically and shakes his head.
“You’re not religious?”
“I’m not a monotheist, if that’s what you mean.”
“So you believe in the gods?”
“Belief isn’t the appropriate word, Eve. Knowledge of is more accurate.”
“They’re not gods,” I say and shake my head, my back stiffening. He stares at me as if to check my response, his eyes narrowing.
“Call them what you will,” he says. “They were gods to humans just as vampires will be now.”
“You think he’s like you—a vampire who has ascended—but he’s different. That’s why the nanovirus didn’t work.”
“Obviously. But the difference is one of degree, not kind.”
“He claims to be an angel.”
Blackstone shrugs. “He can claim anything he wants. I know better. He’s like me, but has some strange genetic variant that makes him just a bit harder to kill. That’s all. Now, please,” he says and takes in a deep breath, “I’m growing tired of this question and answer session. You’re going back to him and you’ll help him do his little magic tricks and calm the masses. Then, when the time is right, you’ll kill him.”
“Won’t he know your plans? He can force me to tell just as easily as you can. The drug you used he can use, too.”
“We’ll block your memory the way we did before. You won’t remember until you hear the magic word.” He grins at that, as if this is all a fun game.
I have to keep telling myself that everything I thought about the Council was wrong. That the plan I was involved in before wasn’t from the Council. It was his plan. I was working for him, not for humanity.
I’m so sick of being used by everyone, manipulated, lied to, drugged, my memory wiped, that I feel like screaming. I know that would accomplish nothing but make me look like a weak child, so I bite my lip hard to regain control over my emotions.
He points to the guard standing behind me. “Take her back to her room. We’ll speak later.”
The guard takes my arm and leads me out of the library. When I reach the door, I glance back to see Blackstone’s son bending over the map while Lord Blackstone points to it. I’m forgotten, just a pawn in their game of power.
Julien said I was the queen, but at that moment, I certainly don’t feel like one.
Chapter 90
“Love cannot live where there is no trust.”
Edith Hamilton
I sleep for several hours in my cell and wake up with a hunger for blood and regret for everything that’s happened since I found that online journal of mine. How would my life have been different if I’d never found it?
I don’t tend to prefer ignorance over knowledge, but at that moment, I’m so tired of all the revelations and anxiety about the future that for a moment, ignorance seems preferable. Living an ignorant but idyllic life with Michel at the beach cottage before I found the journal seem preferable to what I now face, but there’s no going back.
Right now, I want more than anything to go back to that day when I opened the file box from the University and found the manuscript. I wish I hadn’t been so damn curious and instead of trying to get it translated, simply filed it away as something to deal with later and then forgotten it. I wish Michel had been able to compel me to forget him and the Council and everything connected to it.
Then I think of the brothers, and my heart can’t imagine life without them in it. For all the bad in my life since I met them, there has been some good. I saw my abuser die, I learned the truth about my mother’s death, and I’ve felt intense and deep love for Michel and Julien despite everything. Plus, I met Dylan and learned I had a brother. Could I blame him for betraying me? He thought he was doing the right thing. He thought he was infiltrating Blackstone in order to use their technology against them and was then betrayed when Blackstone took his parents.
I sit up, barely refreshed and in need of some blood. I know I’m free to roam around the compound, but I feel more like crying than exploring more. My father won’t respond to me, and it’s fruitless to stand outside his cell and speak through the bars when he’s crouching in the corner.
I’m so sick of feeling helpless. I’m sick of being told half-truths and full-on lies. I’m sick of people drugging me and wiping my memory and hiding the truth to protect me. I want to take a sword and stake and shove them both through Blackstone’s and Soren’s hearts.
It’s while I’m fantasizing about murder that my door opens and Dylan enters. I glare at him, caught up in a fantasy of bloodshed, and he visibly winces, as if my very expression hurt him. I still don’t feel entirely comfortable around him, knowing what I now know, but I still think he’s more friend than foe.
I pat the bed and motion to it with my head. “Blackstone’s told me his plans, or at least the part he wants me to know. I take it I’m supposed to go back to Soren and help him gain power so he can calm the masses using religion? Then we kill him once things are under control?”
Dylan sits on the bed and leans forward, his elbows resting on his thighs, regarding me. “That’s what I understand,” he says. “One more try with the
nanovirus to destroy him and the Twelve.”
“Does he really believe Soren will accept me back? Does he really think Soren won’t suspect some kind of plot against him?”
Dylan shrugs. “Soren will expect it, of course. He’s no fool. But he’s as caught up in this as Blackstone. They both need you. They both want to use you to destroy the other. They’ll use you and they’ll each hope to be the one who gains the temporary advantage that will let them prevail.”
“I’m so tired,” I say and lean back against the wall.
“I know,” Dylan says and takes my hand, squeezing it. “When this is all over, we’ll go away somewhere. Live in peace.”
“Do you really think that will ever be possible?”
Dylan raises his eyebrows, but he exhales heavily, as if exhausted. “I have to keep believing it’s possible or else I can’t go on. I have to believe that there will come a time when Blackstone is vulnerable and I’ll be the one to shove the stake through his heart.”
I stare at Dylan, seeing the anger in his jaw, the tightness to his lips pressed together. “Revenge for Sarah’s death?”
He nods. ”And for everything else.”
“I’ll do the same to Soren,” I say, and smile softly. “We’ll both get revenge.”
“Your mother. My sister. They think they can do these things with impunity. The only thing that keeps me going is the possibility that one day, they’ll both pay.”
* * *
We sit in my tiny dark room and discuss our childhoods, waiting for Blackstone to call for us. Dylan speaks of his parents with such fondness, and of Sarah; I feel my heart squeeze for his loss. I hear his fear for his parents in his voice.
For my part, I try to remember my own childhood, but my memories from before my mother’s death are so fragmented. I can remember snatches of the past with both my parents—our cottage on the Pembrokeshire Coast, the salon in Vienna, various apartments where we lived. I was happy, that much I know. I loved my father and mother deeply and tried to please them both by playing really well.
After about an hour, a guard knocks at my door and orders us to follow him. He takes us to a large dining room where there’s a feast set out. Outside, the sun is setting and servants are busy lighting candles. Places are set and we’re led to two seats near the end of the table.
We sit and wait, and in a few moments, others enter the room—more of Blackstone’s officers. Then William enters and nods to us.
Dylan and I speak to each other in quiet voices while the others sit and the servants pour a dark liquid into our cups. I take a sip after I see others drinking and I discover that it’s not wine but blood. I can’t help myself and drink down hungrily. The waiter fills my cup once more and I drink that down as well.
I feel satisfied for the first time in days.
Finally, Lord Blackstone himself enters with one of his lieutenants. They’re deep in discussion when they come through the huge double doors and barely acknowledge the rest of us when we stand.
“Gentlemen,” he says to the others. Then he turns to me. “Lady.”
He nods at me and I nod back and sit down once more, determined to go along with him at least on the surface. I’ll lie in wait the way Dylan said we should, for our moment. It might not come for a while, but we’re both determined it will.
“Please,” he says and motions to the plates of food and decanters of wine. “Help yourselves. Let us enjoy the bounty we have before us.”
While my thirst for blood is slaked, at least temporarily, my stomach still grumbles and so I take some meat off a plate. It looks and smells like venison, the meat bloody. It tastes amazing and I wolf it down as if I haven’t eaten in a week. Dylan is silent beside me, busy eating as well. Together, we fill our plates and eat the roasted vegetables, bread, and meat that is set out on platters in front of us. The setting is rather rustic, with tapestries depicting pastoral scenes hanging on the walls. The servants stand against the walls watching, but there’s little for them to do but refill our glasses.
When I’m full, I wipe my mouth with my napkin and sit back, my eyes on my plate, listening to the conversation. Dylan does as well, but he turns slightly towards me, his arm over the back of my chair.
Neither one of us speaks, simply listening to the discussions around us while we wait for Blackstone to say or do something. Several officers report to Blackstone on the problems they’re having maintaining order in Cambridge. Someone talks about the quotas of prisoners and whether they’re being met. Someone else talks about how far the plague has travelled in the last twenty-four hours.
I realize that this is no longer merely a war, but a conqueror establishing his empire. As the plague progresses and civilization falls even further, Blackstone and Soren are prepared to step in and establish control.
Finally, Blackstone puts his own napkin down and pushes his chair back from the table, crossing his legs and settling his arms on the armrests. I’ve been watching him out of the corner of my eye and when I feel his gaze on me, I meet his eyes.
He smiles. “So, Eve. Tell me—have you decided to cooperate? Once you do, we can get your father cleaned up and fed and I’ll bring him up to see you.”
“Of course,” I say, keeping my voice calm despite my desire to scream at him. “I have no choice.”
“Good,” Blackstone says and waves to the guard who stands directly behind him. The guard bends down and listens as Blackstone whispers something in his ear. The guard leaves, and I wonder if he isn’t going to bring my father up.
“Is he getting my father from the dungeon?”
“Patience,” Blackstone says. “Now, because you can’t be compelled, I’m going to have to insist on absolute obedience and a proper attitude from here on in. I don’t want any resistance. I don’t want hesitation. I’m not used to it and I don’t tolerate it. If you want your father back, you must comply. Any sign of disobedience, and he’s back to the dungeon. Do you understand?”
My instinct is to fight him but I resist. I nod. “Yes.” I say it as respectfully as I can manage given the circumstances.
“You promise? Say it out loud.”
“I promise to follow your orders without hesitation.” It makes me sick to say, but I do.
“Good girl. I’m having your father washed and dressed and his hair cut. He’ll be brought to my study when he’s presentable. In the meantime, I have a little test of your loyalty and willingness to follow my orders.”
Blackstone waves his hand and a guard goes to the door and opens it. Other guards shove three men into the room. They stumble inside, their hands shackled to chains attached to their manacled ankles. They look like they’re drugged or compelled—I can’t tell which. They’re zombie-like as they stand before the table where Blackstone sits, their eyes on the floor before them.
Blackstone turns to me and points at the men. “Kill one.”
I know what he means, but I feign confusion, frowning, my heart going into high gear and blood pumping in my veins. When I do nothing, Blackstone clicks his tongue.
“Tsk tsk, Eve. Not off to a very promising start.”
“What do you want?” I say, my voice wavering, my hands gripping the armrests. “Do you want me to kill one outright or drink his blood?”
He makes a face as if I’m stupid. “What do you think, Eve? You’re a vampire now. Own it. Vampires drink blood. Why waste a perfectly good human by killing him outright? Drain one. Any one of them.”
I stand, but my knees are weak. “Who are they?” I ask, stalling for time.
“What does it matter? Under Dominion, vampires need no license to kill for blood. Only hunger. But if it makes you feel any better, these three were caught looting and pillaging among their own kind in the city. They’re going to be put to death for their crimes, and so I thought,” he taps his temple, “what a great opportunity for Eve to show her loyalty to me. Her willingness to follow my orders. Without hesitation. Without question.” He emphasizes the last phrase.
“A virgin vampire? Gods above, that I could be so lucky. My favorite thing of all. A vampire’s first kill.”
He smiles a feral smile and comes to my side. My heart pumps fast, the blood rushing in my ears. He grabs one of the three men by the scruff of his collar. The man has dark hair shaved almost to his scalp, a grizzled chin, and filthy clothes. He visibly recoils when Blackstone pulls him close.
“Why not this one?” Blackstone says, glancing over at me. “He’s as good as the next.”
I frown. “If all he did was loot, death isn’t an appropriate sentence.”
“It is under my rule.”
I say nothing, a feeling of panic filling me. I grind my fingernails into my palms to try to regain control over myself and turn to Blackstone, my eyes stinging with tears. “I can’t.”
He shakes his head, a world-weary expression on his face. “This one, then. He raped a mother in front of her child. Surely that deserves death. I mean, after all, Franklin got the knife, didn’t he?”
I stare at Blackstone. He knows about Franklin?
“Am I not right?” he says, an amused expression on his face. “If Franklin deserved death, why not this man? Who knows how many women he’s raped? Even killed? These are not nice men, Eve. Surely a vampire can take their blood without guilt.”
I hesitate. Is Blackstone telling me the truth?
“Ask him if you don’t believe me,” Blackstone says. “Use your powers to compel him to tell you the truth.”
Blackstone motions to the man, who stands sullenly in front of me, his eyes on the floor.
I stand in front of the man, who continues to stare at the floor despite my presence. “Look at me,” I say, my voice breaking.
Finally, he drags his eyes up to meet mine.
“Look in my eyes.”
He does, and when our eyes meet, when they really meet, I speak to him. I don’t know if I’m doing it right for I’ve never tried to compel anyone before.
“You’re going to tell me all the crimes you’ve committed in your life.”