Hesitantly, I raised the candle, widening the circle of light it cast over the bed. And at what I saw, I dropped it.
Nathan had been skinned. There was no other word for it. From his collarbones to the tops of his knees, nothing but muscle and in some places, bone showed through. I tried to choke back the bile that rose in my throat, but I couldn’t hold it. I doubled over and vomited on the floor, on my shoes, wishing I never had to look at my sire again and see him this way. But I had to look. I had to figure out a way to get him out, to save his life.
Tears streamed down my face as I finally got the courage to examine him again. In Gross Anatomy, you start with your cadaver from the outside and go in. The feeling of my scalpel slicing into skin to make a buttonhole incision, dividing the flesh into large strips that could be peeled away, came back to me, and I almost threw up again. How long had this taken? How long had he suffered like this? The pain was unimaginable.
The worst was, she hadn’t stopped at skinning. It appeared she’d gone as low as his knees and then grown bored, only to return to the top of his chest and begin on the muscle. His ribs were exposed. His two, pulsing hearts were visible behind the bloodstained bones. His lungs, his liver, all of it hung there unprotected.
I don’t know when or why in the course of all of this that I decided Dahlia was the culprit, but I’d never been more recklessly sure of anything in my life.
“Like my work?”
When I heard her voice behind me, smug and superior, confirming all my suspicions, I lunged for her.
Twelve:
Soul Eater
D ahlia paled and stepped back as I ran at her. I wished I had whatever implements she’d used to torture Nathan. I would have jammed them into her throat. I would have carved her into pieces that didn’t die, just wriggled in agony on the floor. I would have smashed those pieces one by one under my shoes.
I didn’t reach her. She held up her hand and knocked me back, the way I had knocked back the humans outside. I felt as weak and inconsequential as a human in the face of her power. She’d done things to me before, but I’d never sensed how incredibly dangerous she was until now.
“I suppose I could have done that with magic,” she purred, nodding toward Nathan. “But I like getting my hands dirty.”
I struggled to my feet, spat, “Apart,” imagined it like a razor blade, but she held it off and knocked me down again.
She stalked toward me. “Well, for some things. I like to get my hands dirty when it’s fun.”
I was the only thing between her and Nathan. If I died doing it, I was going to at least try to protect him. “Apart,” I tried again, and again she shook it off.
“Please, bitch. You think you can hurt me? I bet you think you know everything, just because you have that little book of mine.” She raised her hand again and conjured a ball of crackling purple energy. She released it at me and it was as if every inch of my skin had become fiberglass, splintering and prickling with the slightest movement, even breath.
“That’s amateur stuff,” she continued, looking down at me the way someone would look at a mouse smashed by a trap, dispassionate, just waiting for the death throes to end so they can throw the disgusting vermin in the trash.
I drew a deep breath, despite the pain it caused in my ribs, my lungs. “Apart.”
This time, it worked a little. She didn’t rip apart and she definitely didn’t turn to sand, but a long slash opened on her cheek. Some of my magic had gotten through. And hers faltered.
She looked as surprised as I did.
“I drank your blood, bitch.” I put as much emphasis as I could on the word, hurling it back at her with as much venom as she’d wielded against me. “I’ve got your power.”
“Not all of it.” She sounded confident, but she took a step back.
“Yet.” I don’t know why I said it. Maybe to scare her. But the fact that I meant it, that scared me.
“You wouldn’t dare!” she shrieked. It did scare her. She took another step backward, and another.
“I would do more than you could imagine to protect him.” I advanced on her. “Apart!”
She gasped and tried to protect herself, but a little too late. Another long slash opened across her neck, red weeping from it like wax dripping from a candle.
I reached into my shirt for a vial of holy water. I pulled one out, hurled it at her. It missed and exploded against the wall. She ducked, and only a few drops splashed across her face.
Dahlia smiled and licked one of the drops away, a little wisp of smoke curling up from her pointed tongue.
I looked at Nathan, all torn apart on the bed. I thought of Cyrus, feeding me information and then going back to laugh at me with Dahlia. And I got angry. Angry at being defeated over and over, at gaining ground only to have it ripped from under me, at watching the people I loved being hurt over and over.
“Dahlia?” I asked, hearing the feigned weariness in my own voice, evilly anticipating the shock she would receive.
She snorted again, a look of pure joy on her face at having won so easily. “What? Going to beg me for mercy now?”
I was on her before she could even think to run. She tried to form the words to create a spell. I crushed her windpipe. She raised her hand to zap me with another ball of energy. I slammed her hand down and pulled her fingers back, toward her wrist, until I heard them snap and splintered white bone erupted from her skin. She tried to scream, but without the air to do it, it came out like a death rattle. I looked into her eyes and saw fear. She knew she was going to die.
Maybe, if I had been in my right mind, I would have just killed her outright. I would have had pity. But the smell of her blood leaking from her neck and the intoxicating feeling of power at finally, finally being able to do something I’d wanted to do for a long time—to hurt her as much as she’d tried to hurt me, a fraction of what she deserved for what she’d done to Nathan—clouded my senses. She communicated with me frantically through the hold she thought she had on my mind, trying to impress me with visions of the consequences of my actions, but I ignored her.
When I bent my head to her throat and bit, tearing away all the flesh at the front of her neck, I knew I could kill her now and stop. But I wouldn’t. I gulped down Dahlia’s blood, felt her cease struggling by degrees, and I still didn’t stop. I drank until I knew she was dead, and when the blood no longer moved, I sucked it from the wounds. And then, suddenly, the taste of her blood became the taste of something else, something liquid blue and resistant, fighting against me so that I wanted whatever it was even more.
“Carrie,” I heard Nathan say, weakly, behind me. “Carrie, stop now. Please.”
I ignored him, ignored the impassioned pleas in my head from both him and Dahlia. Hers became increasingly incoherent, until all I heard was senseless, terrified babbling. But still, I drew the blue essence into myself, felt it fill my veins and imagined them burning white-hot under my skin.
A rushing started in my ears. I saw through Dahlia’s eyes. It was a sight without sight, moving backward through a reality I’d never seen before. From the moment I bit her, to her glee as she carved into Nathan—she had laughed at his screams, and for that I wanted to kill her all over again—to her days as Cyrus’s pet, the images flashing through my brain faster and faster, more time elapsing backward as it was lost to the speed of her thoughts.
It was Dahlia’s life flashing before her eyes, I realized, and when I did, everything slowed. I saw a man, a priest, in white-and-gold vestments, and he seemed so tall, like God himself, as he leaned down to the prayer rail and placed the wafer on Dahlia’s tongue. The taste was sharp, sharp like the sudden pain in her tiny, gloved hands. And before she looked down, the priest’s face went pale, the girl next to her shrieked. She couldn’t swallow the host, her first Holy Communion, as she gazed down, transfixed, at the sudden wounds in her wrists. Rivulets of blood poured onto her crisp, white communion dress.
The white of her dress blazed with blind
ing intensity, overlapping the bloody spots until all that filled my vision was light. Then, the white burst through me and my vision cleared. I looked around the room—it took me a moment to remember where I was, and why—and everything seemed to be in sharper focus. It seemed as though the pattern on the peeling wallpaper could cut me if I touched it.
Dahlia still begged and pleaded, but I found it easy to ignore. Probably because she lay dead in my arms. Really, truly dead. I wasn’t sure where the crying came from, but it didn’t really matter. I found that if I made a concentrated effort, I could block it out.
Carrie, what have you done? Disgust, fear and a sliver of admiration—which gave way to more disgust—flowed across the blood tie from Nathan.
“I don’t know,” I said out loud. “I killed her.”
“You didn’t just kill her.” Another voice, this one from the doorway, snapped my head up. Jacob Seymour loomed over me, but he didn’t appear as godlike and impressive as he’d seemed in the past. In fact, he seemed angry, and perhaps a little sad.
Letting Dahlia’s body flop unceremoniously to the floor, I stood to face him. “Are you going to kill me?”
A sinister smile formed on his weathered face. The sadness faded from his countenance, leaving behind only rage. “I’m not just going to kill you.”
I shook my head. “I won’t let you take my soul.”
“You don’t have a choice!” he roared, and he grabbed me by the throat, lifting me from the ground. He hurled me through the door, into the ruined parlor. I landed on an overturned chair, and the graceful arch of the padded wooden arm embedded in my back. If I’d been human, it probably would have broken my spine.
“You are a fool!” he raged, storming after me. I couldn’t stand fast enough, and he got hold of me again, this time grasping one wrist and one ankle. When he threw me this time, I spun. I couldn’t get my bearings before I fell, and I crashed through a marble-topped end table. This time, I felt blood pour down my back. If I let him toss me around like a doll caught in the middle of a child’s temper tantrum, I wasn’t going to last long.
“Did you think you could become my equal?” He knocked aside the sofa as if it were made of nothing. “From one puny soul?”
Still dazed from my injuries and the heady feeling of Dahlia’s soul running like a drug through my brain, I didn’t fully process his words. In my fight with Dahlia, my hatred had spurred me on. But strangely, I didn’t hate the Soul Eater as much as I’d hated his fledgling. I had nothing to fuel me, and my body ached, not just from the blows Jacob had dealt me, but from all the stresses and pains of the last week.
If you die, he will kill Nathan. I couldn’t argue with myself on that point. It was only for Nathan’s sake that I managed to stagger to my feet, put up my hands and shout, “Back!”
The priceless, gratifying look of surprise on the Soul Eater’s face as he flew backward was an expression I would remember forever. It probably mirrored my own, as the power came to me as effortlessly as it ever had to Dahlia. He hit the wall and it crumbled, the cloth wall covering split over the splintered boards and a fine mist of plaster dust surrounded him.
Dahlia’s blood must have been more powerful in large quantities.
He realized it, as well. When he staggered to his feet, he headed straight for Nathan.
“No!” I ran after him, pure fear pumping through my veins. I felt all of it rush straight to the word “Apart!” as I screamed it at Jacob Seymour. He’d nearly reached the door to the room where Nathan lay, but he fell backward, his body jerking like a marionette whose strings had been cut. I hadn’t managed to completely kill him, but he was out for the moment, at least.
Kill him, Nathan ordered. The strength of his mental signal had faded considerably. I had to get him out, fast.
Pulling my last stake from my back pocket, I moved cautiously to the Soul Eater’s side. My hands trembling, anticipating the moment that would come next, when everything I’d been fighting since the moment I’d become a vampire all vanished in a shower of ash, I adjusted my grip and knelt down beside him, ready to strike.
The Soul Eater’s arm shot up, his hand closed over my throat. I dropped the stake and clawed at his hand, noting with satisfaction that it wasn’t as attached as it had been before my spell hit him.
“Inconvenient, isn’t it?” His fist flexed tighter around my neck, as if he was trying to squeeze my head off. “If you can’t speak, you can’t cast any more of those nasty spells.”
Tears leaked from the corners of my eyes. Jacob’s grip on my throat put merciless pressure on my jugular and carotid. My brain, starved of oxygenated blood, began to punch black holes in my peripheral vision.
“Father, stop.”
The Soul Eater immediately released me, but I still fell to the floor. I wondered if I’d been mistaken, if he’d actually killed me. Because standing in the doorway was Cyrus.
It was as if he’d never died. His hair was a little longer than the last time I’d seen him; now it brushed the collar of his shirt. He was dressed all in black, from the laced front of his shirt to the tight, black leather of his pants. A long, straight scar slashed down his chest, and I realized with sickening clarity that he’d been sired again, that his father had taken his heart again. He was as unobtainable to me as he’d ever been.
He didn’t look at me. He kept his eyes on his father, expression bored and disinterested. “You owe her some gratitude. If it weren’t for her, you wouldn’t have the final component of your ritual.” He gestured to himself as he said it, and I saw blood on his hands.
“Cyrus?” I whispered. All of the air had been forced from my lungs, and I couldn’t pull any back in. And I couldn’t look away from him. “Cyrus?”
He didn’t acknowledge me at all. But the Soul Eater did. He glowered down at me, then turned back to his son with the movements of a vulture circling the most likely prey. “Gratitude? It was not her, but my money that brought you back. And more than once. Who let you out?”
“Dahlia.” Cyrus examined his nails, which I noticed matched his clothes. “She wanted me.”
“She doesn’t want anything, anymore,” Jacob hissed, stalking toward his son. “This sniveling whore killed her.”
Cyrus shrugged. “Did she? That is disappointing. I suppose I’ll just have to go back to my cell without the pleasure of Dahlia’s company. Perhaps I can slam my hand in the door over and over again to compensate for that loss.”
“This is not the time for jokes!” The Soul Eater moved so fast I barely saw him hit Cyrus, but deep slashes marred his cheek a second later, weeping blood down his neck.
Slowly, deliberately, he touched his face, then licked his own blood from his fingers. “Thank you, Father. I didn’t get a chance to feed tonight.”
Jacob moved again, and this time it was slower. I saw the motion, and I saw Cyrus’s gaze flicker to me, almost imperceptible, and the slightest incline of his head in a nod toward me.
And it didn’t take more than that for me to decide that this was the moment to act.
Dahlia hadn’t used any words when she’d done her spells. Maybe she was just more powerful. But she was inside of me now. I opened my mouth in a weak pantomime of the word back, but in my head I imagined the letters like battering rams slamming into the Soul Eater, one after another. The Soul Eater jerked backward and slammed into the wall again. This time it crumbled away and he fell through the hole, onto the lawn where Max, Ziggy and Bill still fought the human creatures.
I climbed to my feet, awed at what I’d done for only a second before another kind of amazement came over me. I turned, expecting to see Cyrus had evaporated, that he’d been a part of my imagination. But he was there. He didn’t take his eyes off me as I staggered, weak-limbed, toward him. “You’re alive?”
He didn’t answer. As I got closer to him, I saw a muscle in his jaw tense. Though I was within his reach, he made no move to touch me. And when I put up my hands to touch him, he grabbed my wrists and forced
them down, then stepped back quickly. He reached into the gaping neck of his loose silk shirt and withdrew a plastic bag with a grayish, blood-smeared object in it and pressed it into my hands.
“Now get Nolen and get the hell out of here, before I kill him myself.” His face was hard, and though I thought I saw pain in his eyes, his words cut me to the core.
I turned back to the hole in the wall. Nearly all of the humans were dead. Only about a dozen remained, and the men, aided by Henry, were making short work of them. I glanced down at the Soul Eater’s unconscious form on the lawn. Two of the humans had caught his scent and they ran for him, lapping the blood from his wounds.
I definitely wouldn’t want to be them when he woke up.
When I turned back, Cyrus had gone. I almost called out to him, then remembered what he’d said. “Max! I need help getting Nathan to the van!” I shouted. At my words, Ziggy broke away from the fighting, leaving Henry to assume his place. He easily held his own against the few remaining humans.
Bill loped off in the direction of the van while Max corralled Henry, and Ziggy mounted the steps to the porch. As he came closer, I saw the faint purple lines of minor wounds that had already begun to heal. “Much easier than I thought it would be,” Ziggy said cheerfully, though I could see a glint of grim steel in his expression. “How bad is he?”
I didn’t mince words. I wouldn’t be able to protect him from what he would see. “She skinned him.”
He looked as if he might vomit, but he got it under control. “Fine. Let’s go.” He moved a few steps ahead of me, then stopped. “Is that my heart?”
I’d almost forgotten about the bag in my hand. I handed it over to Ziggy, then went in and covered the worst of Nathan’s injuries. “If we wrap him up in the top sheet, it will give him some protection against dirt and other things getting in the wound,” I explained to Ziggy. Diseases and infections wouldn’t be able to take hold in a vampire body the way they did in a human body, but cleaning dirt out of someone’s skinned torso probably wouldn’t be any fun for the person doing the work or the person getting worked on.
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