The Rose Ransom (Girls Wearing Black: Book Three)

by Baum, Spencer

Carolyn started rocking back and forth in her chair. “What would I do? What would I do?” she said.

  Jill’s phone buzzed with an incoming text. It was from Mattie, reminding her it was time to go shop for Annika’s birthday present.

  “I have to go,” Jill said.

  “What would I do? What would I do?” With a sudden movement, Carolyn stopped muttering and looked up at Jill. “What would you do?”

  “Me? Mom, I--”

  “Before you leave you must answer that question,” Carolyn said. “Pretend your phone is divided in two. On one partition of the hard drive, you’ve created a decoy operating system where you live out the most boring parts of your life. On another partition, you’ve hidden the rest of your phone, where you have your most secret, secure correspondence. You need to create an encryption routine to hide that secret partition. How would you do it?”

  “I’d do exactly what Renata’s done, Mom. I would create an encryption routine so strong that nobody could hack it.”

  “But how? The encryption code changes every day in no discernible pattern. None of my codebreaking software can figure it out. How do they do it?”

  “Some random number--”

  “No! My software can beat any random number generator! What they are doing with the code is so unpredictable my computers can’t figure it out.”

  “Then it must be manual,” Jill said. “Somehow, Renata must be doing something to that phone every day to manually change the encryption code.”

  “Yes, yes, I think you’re right. I wonder what it is, though. What is she doing?”

  “Chew on it for a while, Mom. I’m going shopping.”

  Chapter 41

  The glass on her prison cell destroyed, Falkon moved Nicky into one of the guest rooms of his house.

  “I trust we won’t have any more incidents,” Falkon said. “Mr. Jenson is still sleeping soundly, but I would be happy to change his circumstances should I have any more trouble from you.”

  “I had nothing to do with what happened,” said Nicky. “You know that, don’t you?”

  “I do,” said Falkon. “Your mother…well, I can see now that putting you in a cell directly underneath hers was a mistake. I was curious to see if you two made a connection. I never would have foreseen that she could break out of her cell.”

  With a double bed, a bathroom, a window, and a bookcase full of classics, the guest room was quite an upgrade from Nicky’s prison cell. Not that she would be awake during her stay. As they entered the room, Nicky saw a member of Falkon’s staff standing in the back, a syringe in his hand.

  “We will do a small dose,” Falkon said. “You will wake up in a few days. We’ll talk then.”

  Nicky lay down in the bed and stretched her hair back over the pillow.

  “Sweet dreams, Nicky,” Falkon said, then the servant injected her with Addonox and she went straight to sleep.

  The nightmare began immediately.

  Nicky, wake up. We’re going for a car ride.

  It was her dad. He looked down on her with a sweet smile on his face.

  “What time is it?” she asked.

  “It’s very early,” he said. “So we have to be extra quiet.”

  “Is Mom home?”

  “Your mother is still working, Sweetie. She’ll meet us on the way out.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “It’s a surprise.”

  Her father drove them to the bottom of the road and turned off the car.

  “We’re going to sit here and wait for your mother. If you want, you could lay down back there and go to sleep.”

  “That’s okay, Dad. I’m not tired anymore.”

  “Alright. Well, your mother should be here in a few minutes.”

  They waited. And waited. A few minutes stretched into an hour. “You just sit tight, Baby,” her dad said. “I’ll go up the road and see if she’s coming. I’ll be back soon.”

  She watched him hike up the road and disappear into the woods. A few minutes passed. Then a few minutes more.

  Nicky decided to get out of the car and follow him.

  At the top of the road, Nicky found her dad standing in the middle of the courtyard. He was next to the sculpture of the silver sphere.

  “Nicky, what are you doing here?” he whispered. “You were supposed to stay in the car.”

  “I was bored!” Nicky said. “When are we leaving?”

  “Shhh! You have to be quiet. Go back to the car.”

  “I don’t want to go back.”

  “Alright then, stay here, but be absolutely silent!”

  Nicky sighed. She walked up to the sculpture. With snow on the ground and a bright moon in the sky, there was enough light in the air to see her reflection. She liked how it warped in the round surface of the sphere.

  Nicky’s mother emerged from the bottom floor of the brick building where she worked.

  “There she is,” her father said. “Okay, Nicky. Let’s get ready to go.”

  Something was wrong. Her mother was running. She looked winded. When she saw Nicky, a look of panic came over her face.

  “Run, Nicky! Fast as you can! Run!”

  And now the creatures came out. A dozen of them, gray-faced and snarling and hard to look at.

  There was one who was smaller than the rest. He was the size of a kid. His body was slim. His face was round.

  He looked at Nicky. Just half a second in time, caught forever in her memory. Nicky was looking at Robin Allen, her big brother.

  Falkon Dillinger leaped up from the shadows below. “Celeste!” he yelled. “What have you done?”

  Nicky’s father reached for her hand. It was time for them to run into the forest. Time for the memory to come to an end. Nicky grabbed onto her father and disappeared into the woods.

  The scene started over again, but now Nicky saw it through a new set of eyes. She was Celeste Amanda Allen, going over the escape plan with her husband.

  “Wake Nicky up at midnight,” she said. “Have the car packed and ready to go. Meet me at the bottom of the hill at twelve-thirty.”

  “Do you think Falkon will notice that we’re leaving?”

  “Falkon will have his hands full.”

  Celeste left the house and headed to the lab.

  Five years after Falkon transformed her son into a feral vampire, Celeste had given up hope of somehow turning him back. She was certain now that there was no path from vampire back to human. The evolution only moved in one direction. Robin had ceased being human. He could either die as a feral vampire, or move up the chain, becoming an immortal like Falkon.

  Celeste and Robin were in agreement about which path was best for him.

  She entered a 6-digit code on a keypad to open a door to the specimen room. Robin sat quietly in the back of his cell. When he saw his mother, he approached and put his hands on the glass.

  She did the same.

  Falkon didn’t know that Celeste could still communicate with her son. To Falkon, Robin and the others were just rabid animals. He never considered that a human might still be buried inside. He never made an effort to look.

  It had become a nightly ritual for Celeste to put her hands on the glass and share her mind with her son. On this night, she told him he was getting out.

  I’m leaving tonight, Robin. You know what you have to do.

  They looked at each other, both of them understanding what happened next. They had planned for this night together.

  Another door and another 6-digit code took her to the computer room. More than a hundred machines networked together, their combined computing power all focused on a single task. The experiments controlled and recorded by these machines were vast and complicated, but the sabotage Celeste had planned was simple.

  One letter. That’s all she needed to change. One letter out of a hundred billion.

  Over the past five years, while Celeste had continued her research under Falkon’s watchful eye, she had also written a back door into the softwar
e that ran these computers. She had given herself access to break deep into the software and do the unthinkable.

  She stood at the terminal and entered a series of commands that gave her access to the genetic sequence stored on these machines. She waited for the entire sequence to appear on her screen. Letters pouring out, faster than the eye could make sense of them. Base pairs of the most complex DNA sequence on earth. The genetic code of a vampire recorded as letters of the alphabet.

  When the entire sequence was there, she moved the cursor over the last letter on the screen, and changed it from a T to an S.

  Alarms began to sound in the lab. Experiments that had been running for years were no longer working. In a matter of seconds, the entire operation ground to a halt.

  Celeste left the computer room and went back to the prison. She stood at the control station in front of the prisoners, looking through the glass cages. One more six digit code, this one typed onto a numeric keypad built into the desk. As she pressed the final digit, the glass doors of every prison cell began to open.

  Now she ran. She ran through the hall on the lower deck, exiting the building at the bottom of the hill.

  “Celeste!”

  The alarms had drawn Falkon out of his home. He came bounding down the side of the mountain. He would be on her in seconds.

  “Celeste! What have you done?”

  And then Celeste saw her, standing at the silver sphere, gazing at her own reflection.

  Living her mother’s memory, Nicky was looking at herself through her mother’s eyes.

  “Run, Nicky! Fast as you can! Run!”

  Celeste barely got the words out before Falkon was on top of her, his face overcome with rage.

  “What have you done?” he shouted. “What have you done?”

  “I’ve ended it,” she said. “Your project is finished.”

  His fangs bared, the anger in his eyes out of control, Falkon looked like he might kill her at that moment. But he didn’t have the chance. With Robin in the lead, a horde of angry monsters descended on Falkon Dillinger. Celeste got caught in the melee. Fangs and claws cut into her skin. She fell to the ground. The final vision Nicky saw through her mother’s eyes was a pack of feral vampires chasing Falkon into the woods.

  The vision ended and started over again at the beginning. Nicky was back at the sphere, looking at her own reflection.

  Nicky resigned herself to going through all of it again. It will be on an endless loop until I wake up, she told herself. I have to be patient. Eventually, it will end.

  In the vision, she turned to see her mother coming out of the building. She waited for her father to arrive.

  “Is this it?” came a familiar voice from behind her. “Is this the truth you came here to seek?”

  She turned away from the sphere and saw Sergio Alonzo standing in the snow.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked.

  “I’ve come to take you home,” he said. “That is, if you’d like to go.”

  “I would love to go home,” Nicky said. “How do we do it? How do I get out of here?”

  “The first step is simple,” Sergio said. “You have to wake up.”

  Nicky opened her eyes. She was back in Falkon’s guest room, her head on a pillow, her body drenched in sweat.

  “Well, that certainly was an interesting dream.”

  She rolled her head toward the voice, and found Sergio Alonzo standing next to the bed, looking down at her.

  “Are you ready to go?” he asked.

  Chapter 42

  The dizziness. The weakness. The desire to inhale deeply and take in his scent. This was her third encounter with Sergio Alonzo, but the first where she was glad to see him.

  She sat up in bed. Her body ached with exhaustion.

  “Have you found what you were looking for?” Sergio said.

  The question took her back to the Date Auction, to the moment when Sergio entered her dressing room. She heard his voice telling her about what he’d seen in her mind.

  The scene of your memory is in the Italian Alps. You are standing in front of a building I know quite well.

  Nicky lifted her legs. They were numb and moved slowly. Gently, Sergio grabbed onto her ankles and helped her move to the edge of the bed.

  “Why…”

  That was all she could get out. Her throat was dry. Her mind was slow. Her own voice sounded foreign to her ears.

  “Why am I here?” Sergio asked. “Curiosity, mostly. I was surprised to see a memory of this place in your mind. How did you ever come to be connected to this dreadful house?”

  Nicky edged forward on the bed, letting her feet touch the floor.

  “It’s a long story,” she said.

  “I look forward to hearing it someday. Come. We must move.”

  Sergio extended his hand. As Nicky grabbed onto it, she felt a surge of energy from his touch, giving her strength to stand.

  “We’ll go out the back door,” Sergio whispered. “This way.”

  “Wait,” Nicky said, holding him in place. “I can’t leave. I made a promise.”

  “A promise?”

  “To my mother.”

  Sergio smiled. “You are such a mystery,” he said.

  “It’s--”

  “A long story, I know,” Sergio said.

  “I have to go to the lab.”

  Sergio looked at her for a second, and she felt naked in his gaze.

  “Alright then,” he said. “Far be it from me to make you break your promise. I will come with you.”

  “This doesn’t concern you,” Nicky said. “But you could help Ryan. He needs someone like you. He’s been commanded to sleep. You could wake him up. We could get--”

  “I am not here to help Mr. Jenson,” Sergio said. “But I am interested to see what Falkon is doing in his laboratory. If you know how to get in there--”

  “I do,” Nicky said. “At least, I think I do.”

  “I enjoy your company, Nicky Bloom. You are full of surprises. Please, lead the way.”

  Nicky closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Her mother’s voice echoed softly in her mind.

  You have to finish, Nicky. You have to finish what I started.

  Nicky looked around her. She didn’t know the way to the lab, but Celeste did. Celeste had many memories of walking down this hall.

  Nicky moved her own thoughts out of the way and let the memory take control. She led Sergio down the hall, to the stairs, down a long corridor, and to a glass door with a numeric keypad on the wall.

  She typed in a 6-digit code and the door opened.

  “You have just made yourself at home here, haven’t you?” Sergio said.

  Nicky ignored him, allowing the memory to carry her further.

  She put her feet on a path her mother had walked many times. Across this corridor, down these stairs, the second door on the left.

  Nicky entered another six-digit code and opened a door to the prison where Falkon had held her for so long. Or, using the name her mother had for the place, the specimen room.

  Even in total darkness, the ferals sensed their presence and began screaming from inside their cages.

  “What a unique and unusual place,” Sergio said. He approached the wall of cages. Nicky tried to tune out the noise and listen to the memory.

  Which way do I go Mom? How do I get to the computer room from here?

  She was searching through the memories when the lights came on. The ferals were furious at the change and began banging against the walls of their cells. Thinking Sergio had done it, Nicky turned back to tell him to turn them off again.

  But Sergio was standing in front of the prison cells, nowhere near a light switch.

  “What a marvelous surprise!” came Falkon’s voice. He was standing at the back wall, a big smile on his face. “Sergio Alonzo, how many years has it been?”

  Sergio cast his eyes in Nicky’s direction. They shared a quick glance, and in that glance he told her to find a place to hi
de.

  “Quite a few years,” Sergio said quietly. “Looks like you’ve been busy.”

  Falkon cupped his hands together and held them in front of his chest. “Indeed I have, my friend. Indeed I have. And I see you have Nicky with you. I’d like to say I’m surprised, but in truth, nothing this girl does surprises me anymore. She’s like her mother that way.”

  “You knew her mother?” Sergio said.

  “It’s a long story,” said Falkon.

  “Funny, those were the same words Nicky used.”

  Nicky was backing away from both of them. She sensed where this was going. There was mounting aggression in every word they spoke.

  “You know, Sergio, my partner and I were speaking about you the other day. We wondered if you had a role to play in this particular drama.”

  “You mean Renata,” said Sergio. “No need to hide her name from me.”

  “So you’ve figured her out?” said Falkon. “We feared that might happen. You knew where I was, you knew Nicky had an interest in this place, you saw that Nicky and Ryan were abducted for the Rose Ransom. Well, it’s pretty obvious what’s going on when you have all the information. Renata was adamant that we had to find a way to kill you. But I told her to relax. I’ve known Sergio for years, I said, and one thing I know about that vampire is that he doesn’t talk. Did you know that, Nicky? Did you know that Daciana was the only vampire Sergio ever spoke with?”

  Nicky said nothing. Her back pressed firmly against the control station, she was trying to keep her mother’s memories from slipping deep in her mind. When these two came to blows, she needed to run to the computer room, and at the moment, she wasn’t entirely certain where it was.

  “Even when he knew that Renata was consorting with the enemy, he said nothing, because he had no one to talk to,” said Falkon. “With Daciana gone, Sergio was all alone in the world. All alone, except for you.”

  Falkon was approaching her with slow, even footsteps. “What do you think it means, Nicky?” he said. “Sergio doesn’t speak to anyone in his clan, but he talks to you.”

  Nicky shook her head. If you’re going to do something, Sergio, she thought, now would be a good time to do it.

  “What do you think it means that your mind is a locked door to me, as it is to Renata and was to Melissa, but when you get close to Sergio, the door starts to open?”