Ulysses Exposed (Blaire Thorne Book 1)

by N Gray

  I stopped massaging Ralph’s back. “Are you serious?” I flashed back to my dream of both Léon and Sebastian—how they had both opened a vein for me to drink their blood, and that it was Sebastian who had forced his blood into my mouth. The memory of it sliding down my back like a knife slicing along my spine, and I shuddered.

  “And—drum roll, please. The bond is a double-edged sword. As the human shares the vampire’s unique power, if the vampire can cause fear, then so can the human. As a result, the vampire cannot punish their human servant, for doing so ends up with the vampire punishing themselves. Unless, of course, they happen to be a sadistic bastard, as most vampires already are.”

  “Okay, enough of that. I’ve already told you that I won’t be going back to Léon to beg him for the second mark, anyway.” The thought of it was turning my stomach, and so I decided to move the conversation along. “Did you learn anything about Slayerbody while I was sleeping?” I said, watching his face.

  “I couldn’t get in.” Ralph stared at me. A hint of concern flashed in his eyes. “I couldn’t bypass their security without being detected.”

  “Please tell me there is another plan somewhere in there?” I tapped the side of his head playfully.

  “Not at the moment.”

  “Now what?”

  “Now, you need to rest. Besides, we can’t do anything until that blood bag is empty.”

  I leered at the bag; it was only half empty. My movement was too quick, and bright sparkly stars came into view. My right hand grabbed Ralph’s chair, and my left grabbed the stand connected to the drip. Ralph stood and held me up under my arms, which felt awkward because he was facing me.

  “I’m all right,” I said, stepping backward and out of his arms. “Let me lie down for a little while. Maybe you should phone Marcus and hear how his day is going?”

  Ralph pulled out his cell, dialed Marcus’s number and started pacing on the other side of the room. While I was back in bed, Ralph had spoken to Marcus and came to stand at the footboard. He seemed concerned or as though he was in disbelief. I wasn’t sure which, and it took a while before he explained.

  “What’s wrong, Ralph?”

  “I don’t know, but something weird is going on with Marcus. He says he isn’t feeling well, but he’s a were-lion, for goodness’ sake. Were-animals never get sick, except when they’re injured through fighting—but even then, they can heal themselves. And the process is quick, too.” The lines between his eyes deepened. “Anyway, he says the photo place is open until ten tonight and asked if we could fetch the prints. He will arrange for us to collect them with the manager; that way, we don’t have to go all the way to his place to fetch the stub.”

  “What are you worried about?”

  Ralph rubbed his chin. “I don’t know. It reminds me of the night you were attacked, and how he asked Shane to be your backup. I’ve only just realized, but I don’t actually know what he was doing while we were all busy.”

  I wasn’t sure what to make of that. Not remembering Marcus at all prior to the last few days meant that I wasn’t in the best place to gauge whether his behavior was normal or not. But I had to agree with Ralph; were-animals don’t fall ill. Ever.

  Something must have shown on my face that mirrored Ralph’s because he gave a slight nod of his head, as if we were thinking the same thing.

  “You think he is up to something?” Ralph said.

  “Maybe. How about we fetch the photos first and then go around to his place?”

  “Sure. Grab your pills and bring your blood bag along; I’ll hook it up in the car.”

  Once we were in the car, Ralph hooked my intravenous on the little handle above the passenger-side door as I buckled into my seat. Ralph drove us to the photo place and found a parking spot close to the entrance. I asked him to get me something to snack on if we were going to be following our boss around all night, and I stayed in the car while he collected the photos.

  Ralph returned after twenty minutes with a bag that he dumped in my lap. As he started the engine, I drank the water he had purchased, and it was cool against my throat. With the back of my hand, I felt my forehead.

  “Do I have a temperature? I feel hot.”

  Ralph almost backhanded me in the face trying to feel my forehead. I guided his hand to my head.

  “Yeah, you feel hot. Did you bring the tablets Désiré left for you?”

  I set the bag down on the floor between my legs and reached for the first aid kit containing the pills that Désiré had prepared for me. “Right here.” I popped a tablet out of the foil packet and swallowed it with some water. My throat felt raw, and I tasted metal.

  I rummaged through the bag and grabbed the packet of crisps and the envelope containing the photos. “Have you gone through them yet?” I asked.

  “No; tell me what you see,” he said, without moving his eyes from the road.

  He hunched over the steering wheel. I felt myself frown. “Can’t you see at night?”

  That made him leer at me, his frown matching my own, and then he went back to concentrating on the road.

  “I’m just tired, I guess. Stop staring at me and tell me what you see in the photos.”

  Maybe he didn’t want anyone to know that his eyesight was going. He looked like he could be over forty. It didn’t seem appropriate to ask him his age, though; yet one more reminder of the distance my memory loss had now put between us.

  I glanced through all the photos first and then started organizing them. I put similar images together, but many of them were blurry—one looked like the close-up of an eye, while another focused only on lips. I took those and placed them at the back of the pack.

  In total, there were fifteen or sixteen photos that I could make sense of. The weirdest of sensations ran through me as my eyes scanned each image; a sensation I fought desperately to conceal from Ralph. My eyes widened, and my hands began to shake. It was almost as if the photos were speaking to me, and suddenly I was able to recall things that I had no idea I knew. Each of the photos had resonance, and there was a familiarity about them that was somehow disorienting. In those moments when I looked through them for the first time, even though I was unable to remember even the most precious details of my own existence, I could recall information that was thousands of years old.

  Each of the synapses in my brain were firing with minutiae of a civilization long since lost. Pressure built behind my eyes, and I decided that the only way to rid myself of it was to try and vocalize my thoughts. Fortunately for me, Ralph’s eyes were still very much on the road, and so, by controlling the tone of my voice and speaking contemplatively, he had no idea of the extent to which I was affected by the images.

  “Okay, most of the photos are too blurry to clearly make out what is going on, but they’re definitely surveillance photos relating to the shipment we were following. The first three are of the shipyard; nothing out of the ordinary, just the yard, the container, and the container’s reference number — ‘369182’. There are two snaps of the mummy of Amenemhat, one of which shows his whole body wrapped in linen bandages and molded plaster. From the look of it, his sarcophagus was made from stone and painted with inscriptions on the inside. Also within is Amenemhat’s mask in cartonnage—that’s the mask that’s molded onto his mummy and painted to look like an animal.”

  I stopped talking. How did I even know about this stuff?

  Ralph raised his eyebrows in response; clearly some of the language I was using was very topic-specific and hinted at the fact that I was starting to much more clearly grasp the situation that we were in. I thought he was going to say something, but he didn’t, and so I looked at the next set of photos and carried on telling Ralph what I saw.

  “There is one of Amenemhat’s face, or rather the gold and black painted linen cloth covering him. And then there are five photos relating to the jewels you mentioned. There are three jewels, all emerald green in color and of various sizes, outlined in elegant gold. Lastly, there’s three
photos of some hieroglyphic markings on a stone tablet, but I don’t know what these markings mean.”

  What I didn’t say— mainly because I did not understand how I knew all this—was that there were depictions of the Goddesses Isis and Nephthys on Amenemhat’s coffin. From what I could remember, legend spoke of them safeguarding the deceased in the afterlife.

  There were also depictions of Apep.

  Apep was the Eater of souls, the embodiment of chaos who appeared as a giant serpent or crocodile. The other name by which he was known was Apophis, and he had lived in the underworld, waiting for Ra.

  Ra. The deity of the sun. The creator of the sky, the earth and the underworld—the place where the sun sets and only the dead reside.

  I seemed to remember reading books that claimed there were many battles between Apep and Ra. Some described Ra’s victory, whereby he dismembered Apep and disposed of him, scattering his body parts in places that no one could find.

  Now that I thought about it, it all reminded me of vampires and their preference for night over day. Was Apep, patiently awaiting Ra in the underworld, the master of all vampires? Was Ra Apep’s ultimate destroyer? Did Ra chase Apep to sleep at dawn—was that why vampires were absent during the day? And did Apep collect his souls by feeding on his victims’ blood?

  I wasn’t sure whether I should I tell Ralph about all this stuff I seemed to know about Egyptian gods; about the soul eater and the creator. Something in the back of my mind—probably the same place as where the information was coming from—told me that I would sound crazy.

  Ralph said something, but I didn’t make out the words. A car passed us at a snail's pace. I lifted the photos close to my face so that I could tell Ralph what else I saw, but that movement was s-l-o-w and blurry.

  “Sorry, what did you say?” I said, mumbling.

  “You’re pale. What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing.” My vision cleared and I noticed that we had parked outside a house. “Is this Marcus’s house?”

  It looked like a nice enough neighborhood. Some houses were double stories, while others had the idyllic white picket fence. Marcus’s house was a single story with brown shutters over the windows and white paint on the walls that had started to chip away to reveal a dull grey color. Only one light illuminated the inside of the house, and the porch light was on. Everything else drowned in darkness. I had to fight the urge to tell Ralph to keep driving.

  I flinched when Ralph spoke. “Yeah, that’s his,” he said. “Marcus said he was home, but it looks awfully quiet.” He undid his buckle and unlocked the car doors.

  I needed to get a grip. Why was I so jumpy?

  There was blood still left in the I.V. There was no way I could crouch outside someone’s home with a drip in my arm and a blood bag in my hand. I yanked the needle out, and blood sprayed all over my face and down the front of my shirt. I let go of the needle and pressed down on the wound.

  “Jesus, Blaire! Couldn’t you wait a goddam minute? Let me help you.”

  I felt the warm liquid drip down my cheeks and over my mouth and chin. I licked my lips and swallowed the warm blood, savoring the metallic taste, even swirling it around my mouth before I swallowed it.

  I removed my hand from the wound, brought it to my mouth and started sucking on the cut. I could feel my eyelids fluttering as I drank.

  I enjoyed it. I wanted more.

  It was not my doing.

  Those were not my thoughts.

  Where did they come from, and why could I hear them?

  Ralph came around the car and opened my door. There was a flash of panic in his eyes, but he didn’t hesitate. He pushed me gently to one side and went for the first aid kit. He yanked it open, and the contents flew onto my lap and the floor near my feet. He grabbed a piece of gauze and softly pulled my arm away from my mouth.

  I opened my mouth, but I couldn’t think of anything to say, and so I closed it again. Ralph applied pressure while, with one hand, he folded a piece of the gauze into a small square and placed it on the wound, grabbing my index finger so that I could keep it in place for him. He removed a large plaster from the first aid kit and placed it atop the gauze, pressing it firmly into place.

  Ralph pursed his lips as his cold blue eyes avoided mine. When he was done, he stepped away from the car—away from me—and waited for a few silent moments before he spoke. “Put everything in the bag. Time for us to see if Marcus is home.”

  He was angry.

  CHAPTER 15

  I EMPTIED THE packet with the snacks and bottles of water out onto the carpet by my feet and unhooked the blood bag. I placed the drip and blood bag in the packet along with the bloody gauze and the plastic strip from the plaster and climbed out. Without looking back at me, Ralph locked the car and walked in silence along the path toward Marcus’s front door.

  Ralph knocked, but there was no answer. I walked to the side of the house to see into the window that had a light on. I saw a sofa near the window, a dining room table and an open-plan kitchen. Eerily similar to both mine and Ralph’s homes, like we had hired the same contractor to build our houses.

  “Maybe he’s in the basement? Don’t we have keys to each other’s homes?”

  Ralph gave one stern nod, reached for his car keys again and found the key he was looking for. He slipped the key into the lock and opened the door.

  A wave of warm air hit me in my face as we walked into the lounge, and it smelt stuffy and stale with a hint of something bitter and rotten. I felt my lip pull upward.

  “Marcus, are you home?” Ralph yelled into the empty house.

  The longer we stayed inside the house, the hotter the house felt, like when you swim in a pool and find cool spots and warm spots in the water on a sunny day. This house felt exactly like that; it felt warm, then hot, and then back to warm again.

  “Is his hidden door also under the fridge?” I whispered.

  Again, Ralph nodded once and headed for the kitchen. He felt behind the fridge and hit the switch, and then the motor started, pulling the fridge away from the wall to reveal an opening in the floor.

  With my left hand trailing along the wall for comfort, I descended the stairs, and just before I reached the bottom, the lights came on. Ralph moved away from the light switch and stairs in order to search the room. I followed closely behind him. When he stopped, I bumped into him, and Ralph grunted. Apparently, he wasn’t talking to me.

  “Sorry,” I said, with an edge of sarcasm. “I didn’t mean to bump into you, and I didn’t mean to … you know”—I couldn’t say it—“back there in the car. I don’t know what happened.” I shrugged.

  The color of his eyes changed with his mood until they were no longer blue. They looked like storm clouds to me—and the storm was about to break.

  “You need to figure out what is happening to you, Blaire. Maybe you do need to see that vamp and ask him what the fuck he did to you. Humans don’t drink blood.” His words were tainted with disgust. “Especially not their own.”

  I had to agree with him on that point; I don’t do blood. I shouldn’t be doing blood. Ever.

  Ralph turned away from me and walked around the room. It was a room so similar to his and to mine that, at a glance, we could easily see that there was nothing out of place. I walked in the opposite direction toward the little make-shift kitchen where the table and fridge stood. Marcus’s table also had silver containers for tea, coffee and sugar, but he didn’t have a coffee machine—just a kettle. I opened the fridge, and it was packed full of food—enough to feed you comfortably for at least a month, if you rationed properly.

  “He is not here,” I said. “Nothing looks odd. Let’s go back upstairs. Maybe he left something lying around.”

  Without waiting for Ralph to answer, I climbed the stairs. When I reached the top of the opening and stepped out, the room downstairs went dark, and I heard him climbing back up.

  In the main bedroom, the stench of something rotten brought tears to my eyes. I covered my nos
e and mouth with my hand, but that didn’t work; the stink took my breath away, forcing me to take short, shallow breaths.

  “God, what’s that smell?” Ralph asked, towering behind me.

  He pushed past and went into the en-suite bathroom while I checked the cupboards. There was nothing of interest in the room. By the time I had finished, though, Ralph was still in the bathroom.

  “What’s taking you so long?” I stopped short in the doorjamb, dropped my hands to my sides and couldn’t tear my eyes away from what I saw in the bathtub.

  “Now I know why he didn’t want us to come to his house,” Ralph said.

  I nodded, but he didn’t see me; he, too, was staring at the contents of the bathtub. My eyes were slowly trying to adjust to what I was looking at. At first, it was blurry, but after blinking a few times, I started to roll the picture around in my mind until I could focus on it again. And then, I couldn’t unsee it.

  I should be used to seeing sights like this. Should be, but apparently the new me was finding this disturbing.

  The first thing I saw was a bone; the humerus of an arm, sticking out from a mass of grey rotting meat enclosed in pale skin that was wrinkled from lying in the dark liquid for so long. It was apparent that the body had been dismembered and that it was not there in its entirety. The femur moved, animated by the little things moving in and around it from where green puss leaked into the bathtub. I gagged and swallowed. The edges of the limbs were jagged, as though they had been hacked off by a saw or a blunt object—or, possibly, teeth. Someone was sick enough to leave the plug in, so that the liquid had pooled in the bathtub and surrounded all the limbs, creating the horrifying scene.