by J. L. Myers
Feeling the overwhelming instinct to do so, I lifted my face to the sky, extending my hands towards the clouds. I imagined there was power out there, raw and tangible. Power that I could somehow beckon to me. After a few long moments, tingles cascaded across my arms and my eyes stung from not blinking. But nothing happened. I tried again, eyes watering and tears rolling down my face. Still nothing happened. Frustrated, I went to drop my arms when something made me freeze.
I could hear pattering rain racing our way as the wind picked up. All of a sudden the clouds brewed above, coiling around each other like violent waves. They became darker and wilder until any remaining blue and white was swallowed up. The feuding waves collided with force, looking like a stampede of rivaling armies meeting in the middle.
Lightning split from above and shot at the ground, and me!
I dove, barely managing to escape its path before it viciously struck the exact spot I’d been standing. Glorious blue-white light blinded me while the impact boomed through my ears. I curled over, hands covering my ears too late and eyelids pinned shut over starbursts.
“Amelia!” Dorian’s voice echoed as his hand touched my arm. It sounded as if he were speaking through water. “Shit. Are you okay?”
Kendrick appeared at my other side and lifted me into his arms. Through the bond he could tell I wasn’t injured in any life-threatening way. “She’s just startled.”
Blinking away the starbursts, I watched the clouds disperse to a light gray calm. There was no sign of any lingering electrical strikes.
“Yeah, I think I’m fine.” I wriggled free from Kendrick’s supporting arms and stood on wobbly legs. “Well, this was a complete bust.” I brushed the wet grass from my butt. “Apart from attracting bad weather, I didn’t even feel like a vision was coming on.”
“This was your first attempt.” Dorian released his hold on my arm, satisfied that I was okay. “You just need more practice.”
“Yeah.” Kendrick walked over to the terrace doors. “And maybe next time, try it inside.”
I sensed the worry behind Kendrick’s words, which matched my own. These freaky occurrences with bad weather and lightning had increased. And the common denominator? Me.
I headed in the opposite direction and Kendrick stalled. “Where’re you going?
“For a run,” I called back without turning. “I need to clear my head.”
I plugged my earbuds in and blasted Offspring’s Rise and Fall album on my iPod. If only the noise could drown out my thoughts of the bond with Kendrick, the weather attraction, Caius wanting my blood, and the identity of E.B. But nothing could.
Hoping the exercise would help clear my mind, I tore through the suburbs. After clearing countless roads, a familiar rise in elevation announced the entry to Mt Major. I took off up the mountain, hoping the blaring music, cold air, and open space would distract me from everything. My muscles lengthened and tingled as I surged through the unending thicket of trees. Waiting to dodge each fallen tree, boulder, and stream until I almost hit it felt exhilarating and distracting. But too soon I reached the peak of Mt Major.
With winter in full swing, the surrounding mountains were blanketed by glacial-white snow. I squinted as the sun peeked through fading clouds above. Light rays spilled onto the snow-covered peaks and glistened so bright the glare burned my eyes.
Appreciating the fact that I could endure direct light when other turned vamps couldn’t, I lowered myself into the snow, crossing my legs in a clear patch of sunlight. Even Pure Bloods, although immune, would feel uncomfortable if exposed. It was another trait that made me different.
As the mounting issues crept back to mind, I made a decision. I was sick of letting my abilities and everything Caius had done to me interfere with my life. Right now it was time to take control.
Unlike earlier, I kept my hands down and closed my eyes. On top of all the poisoning and experiments, Caius had erased my memories. Important memories to cover his malicious tracks. But I wasn’t oblivious or weak anymore. I had been given a gift. When Kendrick had compelled me under Marcus’s control, the blocks had begun to crumble. Traveling to the cabin, a memory had resurfaced with my vision into the past. But it wasn’t enough. I needed more.
With a deep breath, I relaxed. Wind whistled through the trees. Soft consistent rain fell, hissing as it melted the snow around me. Non-hibernating creatures foraged down the hill. Some birds chirped while others cut the air with strong wings. I remained still and silent for a long while, willing all the worry away as the sunlight faded.
When I began to nod off, a rush of images flooded my mind, a dam wall breaking its banks. There were so many faces, voices, and places that my brain began to throb. With a few deep breaths I willed the rush aside, grasping the edge of a single memory, somehow knowing this was the one I needed.
As the confusion cleared I found myself sitting on a round rug. Wooden planks and stone surrounded me, while an open fireplace warmed my back. My mom sat in her green armchair with Dorian curled up on her lap. The sight would have been totally weird, except he wasn’t the size he was now. He was small. Just a boy. They were both sound asleep.
A deep voice drew my eye to a slightly younger version of a man I knew. The same man I wished I never had to see again. Caius. He sat in a mirroring armchair, his hands clasped in his lap. His dull, silvery eyes stared through a six-paned window to his left. Outside the air was calm, the lush forest green rather than snow-sheeted.
My instincts told me to scream. To get up and run as fast as… I peered down. My legs were small, my hands child-sized. The solidity of everything had confused me, making me forget. But I knew now. This was a memory. And the child who was me sitting before Caius wasn’t scared. She was curious and excited. She loved this story.
“Erzsebet was close to a breakthrough when the monsters stormed the castle.” Caius slid his gaze onto the child version of me. His expression was kind, nothing like the last time when he’d tried to kill me. “But did they kill her?” He shook his head. “No. What they did to her was much worse. She was forced into darkness, left to roam alone and starving. She longed for the light, for a way to escape. But there was no one brave enough to continue her perilous work.”
“W-what happened, Unky Caius?” my childlike voice quavered, despite having heard this story countless times before.
“The insanity crept closer and closer. She could not escape it.” Caius sighed, deep-set eyes lost in thought. “Though by that point, she no longer wanted to. She was lost to the dark, sentenced to an eternity as one of the monsters she had worked to save.”
“And then the prince came and he saved her!” the little girl exclaimed, bouncing on her bottom.
Caius stroked his chin. “Would that make you happy, Amelia?”
The way he said my name made the real me cringe, while the little girl basked in its love. “Yes, yes!” the little girl cried. “Can he? Can the prince save her?”
Caius smiled genuinely, lips parting to reveal harmless, human-straight teeth. “Then that is exactly what will happen. The prince will break the spell and he will not fail. He will find princess Erzsebet, and he will save her.”
I gasped for air as the memory dissolved into nothing. Caius’s story spun through my mind. “Oh. My. God. Kendrick, did you see that?” I jumped up, my heart racing.
What? Is everything okay? A few seconds of prodding ran over my brain. Apparently Kendrick had been practicing blocking me out again. Wow, that’s huge. Are you thinking what I’m thinking?
I bolted down the mountain at breakneck speed. “The person Caius continued his experiments after was Erzsebet. E.B. What if B stands for Bathory? She could have been his relative.”
A twinge of excitement streamed from Kendrick. I’ll see if I can log into the council server from your mom’s computer.
“Oh crap,” I said, not slowing.
What? What’s wrong?
I dodged around a thick growth of trees and jumped a boulder. I think I know
why Caius needed to kill me. Shit! He said it in the vision… “The prince will break the spell and he will not fail. He will find princess Erzsebet and he will save her.” I struggled to control my breathing as I pushed on faster. Don’t you get it? I’m the link, his experiment from the start. I cleared a wide frozen stream in one bound and my feet sunk into dirty, melting snow. Irritated, I kicked my drenched Vans free, and kept running. We thought Caius wanted to secure his position on The Council, to have immortality so he could rule forever.
We were wrong, Kendrick said. He needed your blood to save Erzsebet.
~
Soggy and chilled to the bone, I shot into my mom’s office, shutting the door behind me. Being comfortable and dry didn’t even make the list of things to do now that we had this new lead. Kendrick was behind the desk in Mom’s padded chair, tapping his chin in frustration.
I went to stand beside him. “Did you get in?”
Kendrick shook his head. “Your mom’s computer is locked up like Fort Knox. I tried everything: your last name, hers, birth dates. Nothing worked.” He pushed the button on his iPhone and the screen lit up with a snowboarding shot.
“So we’ve got nothing?” I leaned against the desk’s glass edge.
“Not exactly,” Kendrick said. “I checked the net and found this.” He clicked the mouse and the screen came to life.
Countess Erzsebet (Elizabeth) Bathory was born on the 7th of August 1560, into a renowned Noble family in Hungary. As a child, she experienced seizures and uncontrollable fits of rage. Later in life she was branded the most prolific female serial killer in history and was later remembered as the “Blood Countess.” Following her husband Ferenc Nadasdy’s death, Erzsebet was reported to have begun aging prematurely. Her four children, three daughters Anastasia, Anna, Katalin and son Paul, were sent to relatives. In 1604 she and four servants educated in witchcraft performed dark spells to combat her premature aging. Virgins were strung above a bathtub and cut open so that she could bathe in their blood. Erzsebet and her servants were accused of torturing and killing hundreds of girls, amounting to more than 650 victims, though her servants were only convicted of 80. Erzsebet was never tried or convicted, but in 1610 was imprisoned in the Cachtice Castle in Slovakia, where she remained bricked in a group of rooms until her death on the 21st of August 1614.
“How could she murder so many people?” I slumped back against the desk. The visual of all those defenseless girls strung up to bleed out over a tub was horrifically disturbing. It would forever be imprinted on my mind. “Who was she, and how was she related to Caius? Why would she kill all those virgins? Was it part of her experiments?”
“Well, she’s not his mother,” Kendrick said frowning. “Her only born son was named Paul. Maybe his aunt, or a sister. Do you remember what Caius said in his story?”
I couldn’t forget a single word. “He said she was close to a breakthrough. But I have no idea what that means. He also said that monsters forced her into darkness. Could he mean the people who bricked her in until her death?”
“Maybe,” Kendrick said. “But what if the darkness wasn’t literal, like a place? What if the darkness was in her mind?”
At that second Kendrick’s iPhone sung out a Tony Hawk game tune and he picked it up. “About time.”
“What’s going on?” I slid a patterned seat around the desk as Kendrick read the screen.
“It’s from Marcus. An override code to crack into anyone’s account.”
So he did trust Marcus. I sat down beside Kendrick. “You told him what we found out?”
“No,” Kendrick said absolutely. “I said we had some kind of lead on Caius and needed access.” He didn’t look at me as he keyed in the code, though a muscle ticked along his jaw. “I don’t want you telling him anything about this.”
I began to argue as a click like a vault opening sounded, and Access Granted flashed across the screen. My words cut off as anticipation tightened my ribs.
I slid the keyboard my way and typed Erzsebet Bathory into the search bar. A list of links flashed onto the screen. “What are all these?”
“The Armaya’s archives,” Kendrick said, clicking the first link. “Old texts that have been scanned for historical preservation.”
The scanned pages were frayed and discolored, looking seriously old. We both edged in and stared at the screen, speed-reading at a similar pace.
The first scanned text was a history of Erzsebet’s life. A lot of the early stuff was similar to what we’d found on the Internet. But what followed was far from the Internet’s knowledge of human history.
After the living death of three of her four children, Countess Erzsebet Bathory devoted her life to discovering a way to restore damned vampires to life. Her experiments were controversial and conducted in secret, against The Council’s laws. Countless damned were captured, imprisoned, and drugged. Many nights the Countess would inject herself with various concoctions to scale the rejuvenating affects and UV resistance. Most of these tests, according to the Countess’s own records, failed, either increasing resistance for a short time, or doing the exact opposite and leaving her weak and sickly.
I shivered, thinking back to our conversation with Marcus before fleeing the Armaya. He believed Caius’s plans were linked to the damned in some way. But the damned were extinct. Kendrick and Marcus had said so themselves. “How can Caius’s plans be linked to the damned?”
“I don’t know.” Kendrick skimmed ahead and stopped a few chapters later.
The Countess’s downfall was her own perseverance and determination to bring back her lost children. One night, after another failed experiment left her weak and almost immobile, one of her captives escaped. An alarm was raised, leaving enough time for Erzsebet to stow her son in a lockable cellar before the escapee attacked. The Countess’s son was discovered the next day, though her body was never recovered.
Printed after that block of text was a black and white photograph. Pictured was a woman with fair hair, youthful features, and chalky white complexion. Countess Bathory. A boy with dirty-blond hair stood by her side. Her son, I guessed. Behind them was a table that bubbled with beakers and Bunsen burners.
Kendrick printed the photo and closed the archive. Then he opened another link. “It’s another experiment book.”
Hand-drawn tables filled the worn pages with thousands and thousands of experimental procedures. Some consisted of drawing damned blood to boil, dry, burn, or mix with chemical or metallic substances. Others consisted of injecting manufactured concoctions back into a damned vampire. Then there were the experiments she performed on herself, and even some on humans. Everything was dated and timed. All the results were noted. They ranged from severe reactions to ultraviolet light, increased or decreased healing, temporary return of heartbeat, disfigurement, and even death.
“Hey, look.” Kendrick pointed to the table on the next page. These ones had the subjects DOB.
What I saw made me sick to my stomach. “Oh God. She started experimenting on children.” I reached for the mouse and clicked ahead a few pages. I gulped at what was written. “Babies too.”
“Look, there’s a table key,” Kendrick pointed out.
I followed his pointing finger to see acronyms, along with their definitions. Two I had seen before. IBB and IAB.
“Infected before birth and infected after birth.” Understanding rocked me like an avalanche.
“Caius infected you before and Dorian after birth,” Kendrick said, confusion streaming through the bond. “How is that even possible?”
Thoughts of a giant poison-filled needle being jabbed into my mom’s pregnant belly swarmed over me. Or could the meaning be less literal, like infecting us before our first breath of life? Either way, the image made something else very clear. “I don’t know.” I swallowed the need to gag and clutched Kendrick’s arm. “But this proves he knew my mom before he attacked her.”
Needing to know everything, I opened the last archive. This one was handwr
itten in flowing calligraphy with Erzsebet Bathory on the first page. What followed were full pages of notes, most on research into breaking the curse of the damned. From her research she had determined that an immortal’s blood was the key to restoring them.
“This all happened before the Blood War,” Kendrick said, leaning back into the padded seat. “When the damned were hunted to extinction.”
“She’s not dead,” I blurted. Oh, God, this was huge. “Caius wants my immortal blood. He’s still trying to save her, which means that the damned aren’t extinct.”
I read on, but the reasoning behind how she thought immortal blood could bring the damned back to life wasn’t there. Past that page the scanned information ended. I removed the photo from the printer on the cabinet behind the desk and stared at the innocent-looking boy. “Why does Caius care? Who is she to him?”
My gaze slid past the boy and I noticed something. “Hey, look at this.”
Kendrick frowned at the photo in my hands. “Is that what I think it is?”
I squinted, trying to get more detail. Not that squinting would help. My vampire eyesight was almost perfect, its ability to sharpen and zoom now happened without trying. But my eyesight wasn’t the problem. The quality of the printed photograph was. Still, I could make out the granulated lines of carved roses in the small rectangular-shaped box.
I touched the paper, recognizing the intricate gold box with amethyst stones. I’d first seen the item at Mom’s auction, and been so explicitly drawn to it. “That’s the jewelry box Caius won at the auction. The one he gave me.”
As I said the words the office door swung open. Mom glided into the room, stalling as she caught sight of us. “What are you both doing in here? You know my office is off limits.”
I hated what I was about to say, but we needed to know the truth, not be left wondering if her explanation was honest or not. Compel her, I sent through the bond.
Kendrick hesitated, shooting me a sideways glance. I wish this wasn’t necessary. Your mom has always been so nice to me, but I’ll do anything to keep you safe. Resigned to the task, he shot around the desk and placed his hands on my mom’s shoulders. His eyes captured hers. Instant lightning sparked across his irises and his pupils dilated. “Be still and do not speak.” He paused. What now?