by S. W. Clarke
What irony that I, destined to become a dragon rider, would have been the earthbound one. But maybe it wasn’t irony at all.
She was good. She was better than me, and my only consolation was that she had died before the gods left. Valdis’s vamps had ended her before the gods sent their nasty little message.
A sharp pain pierced my head, and my eyes opened. A migraine? I shifted my eyes toward the light on the ceiling, but found it had no effect. I could stare at it without trouble.
Not a migraine, then. But something amiss.
I set a hand to my forehead; it was warm—sweaty. The infection was returning. Faster this time than before, which meant I was running out of time.
A noise sounded below, and my head jerked toward the stairs.
Frank. Seleema. Erik. Percy.
I slid the knife between my belt and pants and started toward the staircase. I leaned over the railing and saw no one in the foyer. The front door was still barred.
Downstairs, the living room was empty. Even Ariadne was gone.
I spun toward the office, to which the French doors were still closed. When I approached it and set my ear to the join of the doors, I heard Percy snoring.
He had always been a deep sleeper, but it was a miracle he’d slept through this. I was grateful he’d been spared what had transpired over the past few hours.
I wouldn’t wake him now. There was no point in it.
I crossed through the foyer, back toward the living room. “Frank?” I called out. “Seleema? Erik?”
“We are here,” Seleema called from somewhere else in the house.
I followed her voice through the kitchen, stepping around the blood still pooled on the floor from when one of Valdis’s men had bled out. I passed through another doorway and came into a formal dining room with a long, twenty-seater oak table.
Frank stared back at me from the other side of the table, seated with his arms tied to it. He had a bloody lip and a hard blink, all the muscles around his eyes flexing each time the eyelids closed, like a tic.
Seleema knelt next to him, dabbing at his lip with a dish towel and running her other hand over his head.
At the far end, Ariadne sat facing down the length of the table, her hands clasped atop it. Her eyes stared into the empty candlestick holders, and she did not even notice my entrance.
Two of Valdis’s men stood behind her, semiautomatics held before them.
A hand fell on my left shoulder, and I jumped, ducking away.
“Woah,” Erik said.
I stared at him, wide-eyed. “What happened down here?”
“Sin got to Frank,” Erik said.
“Why was he screaming?”
“Because she promised him something almost irresistible,” Seleema said, setting the towel on the table.
“What was that?” I asked.
“To have me forever,” she said, still stroking Frank’s head and gazing at him. “An impossible thing, but Sin’s specter, Lust, can make the impossible sound possible.”
More promises. Nikolaj had called them “delicious.”
“How’d he get the bloody lip?” I asked.
“That he did to himself,” Erik said. “He started going mad. Throwing himself against a wall, smacking himself.”
“The brightness of his soul was in contest with Sin’s power,” Seleema murmured. “And his soul won, as I knew it would.”
My eyes settled on Frank, who blinked hard again.
Seleema had been right about him all along. He had a beautiful, incorruptible soul. And he had faced Sin’s call and defied it.
Erik’s hand slowly raised again, landed softly on my shoulder. He squeezed it. “You seem better.”
So he didn’t know what Seleema had done to make me “seem better.” I was too ashamed to tell him she had burnt time for me, so I just shrugged. But I didn’t step away from him; right now, I needed the feel of his hand on my arm.
“I’ve been better,” I said, turning toward him. “And worse. Where’s the vampire and the ghoul?”
The corner of his lip twitched. “Valdis is quarantining the Soul Hunter.”
“Quarantine?”
“Sin got to him.”
My eyebrow rose. “Blue Eyes? But he rights cosmic wrongs.”
“Well, apparently when Sin’s on the front lawn, cosmic wrongs right you.”
I surveyed the room, but didn’t see any sign of either of them. “Why Valdis?”
“He’s the only one who was powerful enough to handle the ghoul. Even with the Soul Hunter injured.”
I whistled. “Well then.” I glanced at Erik. “What about you? Have you heard her, too?”
He shook his head. “Not yet.”
But Nikolaj had promised Sin would come. I assumed that meant for everyone.
“Seleema,” I said, “have you heard her?”
The houri shook her head. “Not …”
But Seleema’s voice trailed off beneath an unmissable sound.
It was a young girl’s voice, calling for me.
↔
I spun toward the kitchen. I knew that voice.
Even after five years, that voice rang inside my chest like a bell.
“Patience?” she called. “Patience, where are you?”
The kitchen lay empty, the blood red under the ceiling light.
“Tara?” Erik said from beside me. He sounded like he was underwater. “What are you looking at?”
I glanced over at him, eyes wide. I couldn’t be honest about what I was hearing—he would think I was insane. “I’m going to check on Percy,” I lied. I knew the dragon was still asleep.
But this allowed me to leave the dining room without question. This allowed me to follow the sound of her voice—“Patience? Where are you?”—and her growing fear.
She sounded like she was crying.
I passed back over the tile, skirting the blood, and came into the empty living room.
She was sobbing, choking on her fear. Cold dread flowed through me, and I padded over the rug toward the foyer as the sound of her sorrow grew louder and louder.
As I came under the chandelier, I could finally hear her good and well.
“Thelma?” I whispered as I approached the voice. It was coming from behind the door. The barred, locked door.
“Patience!” she cried out, and a small fist thumped at the other side of the oak door. “Please, let me in.”
I stood there with my fingers clutching one another, my shoulders hunched. It was totally unlike me, this fearful posture. “Thelma,” I breathed. “How did you get out there?” I tried to open the door, but it wouldn’t budge.
“You left me out here,” she said, rattling the door again. “Please, it’s so dark.”
“But … you’re gone. You died.” A tear escaped as I spoke those words.
“No, she didn’t. Thelma is not gone, Patience. She’s outside, and she needs you,” a soft voice replied behind me. When I slowly turned, a pretty woman stood under the chandelier.
I knew that blond hair. I knew those green eyes.
“Mom?” I breathed, my face crumpling.
Her face tilted, hands extending toward me. “Hi, little Tara.”
Tears blurred my vision, but I didn’t wipe them before I started toward her. I fell into her arms, holding her slender body tight. She smelled just like I remembered—of cinnamon and vanilla, her two favorite baking ingredients. “Mommy,” I said into her shoulder. “Thelma’s locked outside. But how can that be?”
My mother stroked a hand over my hair. “Do you remember when you were very small, and I used to tell you the story of the girl who wished?”
I had forgotten about that story until she mentioned it. “Yes.”
“Do you remember what happened when the girl who wished lost her favorite puppy dog?”
I held her tighter, remembering the little beagle we’d had when I was young. One day, it had run away. “Yes.”
She kissed my head. “She wished
and wished, and one night when she went to bed, she wished hard enough that the puppy dog came back to her the next day.”
“Yes,” I said. “It did.”
My mother leaned back. “Because it loved you, Patience. And so we’ve come back to you. We’ve found you.”
I stared at her, my face a wet mess. Was that a scar on her neck? Maybe I had left my mother and father too soon in the circus ring. Maybe they hadn’t died after all. Maybe Valdis had turned them so they could live forever. And now that the gods were gone, they were human again.
And if they survived, maybe my sister had escaped, too.
“You’re alive?” I whispered looking up at my mother.
“I am. And Thelma, too. But she needs you.”
Thelma.
“Patience, please!” Thelma called, beating on the door furiously now. “Something’s coming.”
I turned toward the door. “I have to let her in. She’s in danger.” I grabbed the bar with both hands, began pulling it up. It was heavier than I’d expected, and I struggled.
“No!” a voice called.
Mariana. GoneGodDamn Mariana, talking to me in my head.
“Leave me alone,” I hissed.
“I have left you alone for long enough,” Mariana shot back. “But you have forced my hand, fool. It is Lust who speaks to you.”
I kept struggling with the bar and finally got it up off the latches. I heaved it aside onto the floor. “You’re wrong. You’re dead wrong. My sister’s out there.”
“Your sister is gone,” Mariana said. “Five years gone.”
Now, a whole host of locks greeted me. Six, to be exact.
“No!” I started with the top lock, twisting it back and forth. “She’s out there. You hear her.”
“I hear Sin’s specter. I hear Lust. Her promises are delicious, Patience. Do you not remember?”
Right now, I couldn’t remember anything except this room. This door. The sound of my sister’s little hands rawing themselves on it.
“Shut up,” I bellowed, finally unlocking the top lock. “Just shut up. I have to do this.”
“Help her, Patience,” my mother said behind me. “You have to help her.”
“I will only ask you one more time,” Mariana warned me. “Step away from the door, or you will kill us all. And I will not allow you to be the death of my daughter.”
My hands kept working in a frenzy, pulling the chain on the next lock down. Then I was on to the third lock, turning it. The more locks I undid, the faster I went, until I only had one more left.
Mariana didn’t understand. Nobody in this house understood.
This was my duty. I had one more chance, and I wouldn’t fail in it.
I grabbed the knob to undo the final lock. But instead of twisting, my fingers froze.
I couldn’t move them.
My hands shook as blind fury rose in me. This was Mariana’s doing.
“This is not your decision,” I snarled.
“Do not do this, Patience,” Mariana said. Meanwhile, my fingers went on shaking over the knob; I was just a hair’s breadth away from being able to move them again. I could sense it. “Your family will never come back.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about. Seleema doesn’t know. I’m not the darkness between us. It was you—it was always you.” I paused, my mouth working up to the line it took all my anger to deliver. “You went to hell, Mariana. And you deserved it.”
Then I grabbed the doorknob and turned it.
Chapter 8
An arm wrapped around me, yanked me back from the door.
“Stop, Tara!”
It was Erik.
I kicked out, thrashing. “Get off, Corporal.” I very nearly escaped, but he reeled me back in by grabbing my jacket and then my arm.
“Seleema,” Erik called. “Help me restrain her.”
Meanwhile, Thelma went on pounding and pounding at the door. I could almost see it shaking. “Don’t you hear her? It’s my sister,” I cried.
“It’s Sin,” Erik growled, holding me tighter. “You’re hearing Sin, Tara.”
Wrong. Completely wrong.
I kicked downward, heel-stomping his toes. He groaned, and I managed to escape.
I pelted straight for the door. Just one turn of the knob, and she’d be safe. My sister would be saved, and we would be together again.
Just as my fingers settled over the cool knob for the second time, I was knocked straight off my feet and onto my side. I landed hard on my shoulder, crying out as I did.
Above me, immense weight bore down.
When I turned my face up into the light, Seleema gazed back at me. Her hands went over both my biceps, pinning them to my sides. “Erik,” she said, “please secure the door.”
Above us, Erik redid the locks one by one.
My face contorted up at her, almost without my willing it. In that moment, I hated Seleema. “Get off me,” I snarled.
“No,” she said simply. “I will not. Your soul swirls with lust.”
I struggled against her, but she kept me in a firm straddle, both my arms held tight. “Screw you and your soul talk.”
Her face remained impassive. “I do not wish to fornicate with you, Tara. I apologize.”
“Thelma’s out there,” I shouted, tears sliding down to my hairline. “She’s out there, and she’s just a little girl.”
“Think, Tara,” Seleema said. “I know it is hard, but you must think. Thelma was a little girl five years ago.”
I stared up at her, blinking hard. “So what?”
“She would not be a little girl now. It would be impossible.”
For some reason, I started crying harder. My eyes shut against Seleema’s face and the light, and all I could see was Thelma in the moment before I lost my grip on her hand.
We were in the stands in the circus tent, and then I was knocked back. And that was the last I saw of her.
It was such a quiet, thoughtless goodbye. One minute, our hands touching, and the next … I’d never see her again.
Seleema’s hand stroked my hair back. “It will be all right.”
“No it won’t.” That spiking pain was back, like a migraine. “It won’t be fine.”
I could still hear her. I could still hear her calling for me.
“Come.” Seleema helped me to stand, wrapping her arm around me. “Come sit.”
She guided me into the dining room, my shoulder aching from the blow it’d taken when I’d hit the floor. When she sat me down in one of the high-backed chairs, she knelt beside me. “Do you still hear her?”
I lifted my face a few degrees to meet Seleema’s eyes. “Of course I …” My voice trailed off.
I didn’t hear Thelma.
I glanced back into the foyer. My mother was gone. The pounding on the front door had stopped.
Only Erik stood in the doorway, rubbing at the toes of his boot where I’d hurt him.
I swallowed. “It was Sin.”
Seleema clasped my hand. “It was. And you resisted her.”
I scoffed. “Did you miss the movie, sister? I nearly opened the front door.”
“But you did not. I saw your hesitance. It was that moment of hesitation that allowed Erik to help you.”
Mariana. That had been Mariana stopping me.
“Lust has exceptional power over your nature, Tara,” Seleema went on. “It is a miracle that you were able to hear her voice without being driven to obsession or madness.”
Had I resisted because of Mariana?
If our two essences weren’t intermixed, would Lust have overwhelmed me? My gut wrenched; that was a yes.
Without Mariana, I would have lost everyone.
Erik took the next seat over, looked me up and down. “Are you all right?”
I squeezed my eyes shut, shook my head. “Erik, I’m … I’m so sorry.”
He raised a hand. “I understand. It wasn’t you.”
“But it was me.”
“
No,” Frank said from across the table. He still sat there with his broken lip. “I can say from personal experience, the things Sin does … It wasn’t you acting that way, Tara. It wasn’t you.”
Bootsteps sounded behind me. I turned to find Valdis and two of his men filtering into the room from a door I hadn’t noticed behind Frank.
Seleema and Erik rose.
“Holy hell,” I said, staring at Valdis. “What happened to you?”
The vampire had blood on his hands, his face. His hair was a mess, and he was panting. And he looked … older.
If he was in his early sixties before, he was at least seventy now.
Valdis’s eyes went first to Ariadne, who still sat flanked by two guards at one end of the table. When he saw her safe, he visibly relaxed. Then his eyes found me. “The Soul Hunter.”
“Were you able to restrain him?” Erik asked.
“Only at great expense,” he said, wiping his bloody hands together. And by “expense,” I knew he meant time. “He is enormously powerful.”
“Sin tried to seduce Tara,” Erik said to him.
Valdis’s jaw twitched, eyes surveying me. “Mariana?”
“No such luck,” I shot back. “It’s still your less favorite half of the soul speaking.”
His fingers clenched. “We are losing time. I need her, vessel. You must allow her to the fore.”
“And by ‘fore,’ I take it you mean I should allow her to absorb me completely,” I said.
“Yes.”
My lips pressed hard together. “Why?”
His eyes narrowed on me. “Because soon, she will be the only one left to protect Ariadne.”
Or so he thought.
I pressed a finger to the tabletop. “Sit. We need to talk.”
↔
To my great surprise, Valdis sat down. He took the seat right next to Frank, who leaned away like he radiated evil. And I didn’t blame the guy; he was sitting next to the oldest vampire in the world.
Valdis didn’t notice. He folded his arms, waiting for me to speak.
“Mariana won’t be protecting Ariadne,” I said. “Nor will I. You know why?”
“Enlighten me.”
I raised my forearms, indicating the infected gashes. “Because there’s a demon inside me, and it’s hunting me down. And if it gets me, it gets your snowdrop, too.”