by Ash Krafton
Relief flooded the poor guy's face. "Thanks so much, Miss..." He trailed off. Still being nice about my first-class name tag.
"Galen," I supplied. "Sophie Galen, at your service."
He smiled. "Well, follow me, Sophie Galen. The man who wants you is right downstairs."
I slid the row of bags off my finger and dumped them back into the box, not concerned that some of them spilled their contents. We took a service elevator to the first level of the garage, where a van marked East Coast Media Services waited at the loading dock.
An impatient man in gray coveralls waited at the back of the open vehicle, hollering into a walkie-talkie and preparing to stow some machine and its cabinet in the bay. When he spotted us, he shook his fist. "You really know how to keep a guy waiting."
He didn't sound like he was joking. Too bad.
I smiled a bright and annoying smile. "Fashionably late as usual. Where do I sign?"
"Nowhere." Mr. Carey stepped behind me and grabbed my arms, his grasp icy and solid.
"Hey!" I braced my feet and tried to twist loose but he lifted me off the ground. "Let me go!"
"Zip-tie her legs," Mr. Carey said. "Someone might detect a compulsion." The driver didn't waste a second. He threaded the plastic and yanked it tight enough to dig into my flesh.
"Help me!" I screamed.
A hand, then tape went over my mouth. They pushed me into the van and I landed on the floor with a thud, pushing the filthy carpet up in a bunch beneath my face. Something hard dug into my shoulder and the impact brought sharp instant pain. I screamed against the tape.
Hotel Guy held me down with one knee in the middle of my back, tying my wrists behind me while Coveralls slammed the vehicle into drive, throwing us back. I looked up as high as my position would allow me and I saw the glint of bright eyes spark briefly in the rear-view mirror.
The van sped out of the garage and raced through the streets. We squealed around a corner before panic set in. I'd been stolen, vanished without a trace.
I gave up trying to walk and submitted to being dragged between them. They seemed intent on it anyway, the jerks. Their grips were cold and unbreakable and they had little regard for what the dragging did to my legs.
Alternatively, I cursed myself for getting nicked by these two, for going downstairs with Hotel Guy—hell, for going to the Expo in the first place.
And for wearing a skirt with heels. I'd always known pride goes before a fall but apparently vanity goes before a tremendous dragging.
All but a small part of my brain was ransacked with terror. The little piece of my personality that survived my abduction chattered away like an ass. For instance, I thought: look what these assholes are doing to my shoes. I can't walk home with a broken heel.
Real helpful. You'd think logic and cunning would be hard at work, trying to devise a way out. Wasn't I the Sophia? The Embodiment of Wisdom? But no, only my sarcasm had survived.
Shortly I found out it wasn't a good thing, either. When I thought these assholes, Hotel Guy shot out a slap, smacking the impudence out of me. Rotten bastards could read minds, too.
Down, down, down we went. Stone steps, dank walls, musty dead smells—the whole decor screamed lair. I gave up on rallying my brain and let it sink back into terrified mush. The small perky part quietly continued to think hopeful thoughts. I might figure out a way to escape from two vampires. Marek might find me. Hopefully there'd be an elevator.
Gut instinct and Sophia alike kept quiet and tried not to attract attention. The less competent I looked, the better my chances to fool them.
For the duration of our descent, my companions remained ominously silent, their holds on my arms unrelenting. The only indication they acknowledged me came in the form of a mean squeeze or two when I inadvertently thought of something particularly uncomplimentary.
The steps ended long after I lost count and the bottom of the stairwell ended bluntly with a tremendous stone wall. That was all. Just dirty, dank wall. Coveralls raised his free hand and tapped it once before pushing it out of the way, swinging it open to reveal what I presumed would be the actual lair.
And not just any old lair. My eyes widened. This was no hole in the ground. This was opulence to extreme.
We stood in the rectangular foyer of a manor that rivaled the palaces of Old Europe, a vault of marble and silk and gold. Two staircases swept up and out to the sides, and the second level formed a balcony, lined with closed doors. The lower level, completely tiled in rose marble, seeped outward to touch the three walls, each bearing a massive door.
A tremendous chandelier was suspended over the center of the room, a glittering mass of crystal and candlelight that cast a deceivingly warm glow onto the surfaces beneath. The light echoed in dozens of sconces circling the room on each floor, and although we were countless stories underground, it was as bright as July sunshine.
Simple combustion couldn't create this light; it was power. Someone's power.
I felt that someone as my captors resumed hauling me toward the center door, dragging me through the light pooling on the cold marble floor. I felt that someone the way one felt a lover at night, even if they didn't talk or touch. It was the way I had come to feel Marek, as if my body acknowledged him in a way separate from my conscious mind.
An even colder dread began to mist over me, soaking me to the core. This someone wouldn't be a lover, not like any I'd ever wanted. Like a rabbit in a snare, I instinctively struggled against my captors. Struggling pulled the snare tighter around my throat.
One of the bullies barked out a short command. When the door drifted open, the presence I'd felt in the foyer grew. Dread seeped like fog through my body, winding into every corner.
"You will kneel in the presence of the Master." Hotel Guy had long abandoned his phony polite voice. He'd also abandoned his phony polite human face. The bones had shifted, eye brows and cheekbones and chin becoming sharper, more pronounced. The skin looked thinner, stretched tightly over the protruding ridges. More primitive. More dead.
I had a memory flash of the rooftop vampire who started my entire journey to this terrifying end and jerked my eyes away. Hotel Guy shook me, interpreting my fear as refusal. "If you have difficulty, I will assist you."
He didn't mean I will ease you to your sore, battered knees. He meant I'll break your legs.
I hung my head in unequivocal submission.
Marek had told me about Masters and the battles they waged in their lust for power, the tales sounding tall and mythic. I expected to find the Master seated upon a throne in a massive audience chamber, some haggard battle-scarred monster, like a Dark Ages king.
When the lights rose around us in response to some unspoken command, what I saw was nothing like what I expected. In fact, it was all the more terrifying in its normalcy.
No throne room littered with empty corpses, no dungeon or dais surrounded by old bones. We stood in an office. It made the threat more relatable, more immediate. Absolutely real.
My escorts dumped me in a boneless pile in the center of the room, ripping my blazer off. The sudden bareness increased my sense of vulnerability. The dark carpet was deep and plush, its luxuriousness making every scratch and scrape on my bare legs scream. The room smelled like dry soil and stale breath, despite the new appearance of the carpet.
Although we were too far below the ground for any actual windows, long velvety draperies hung upon the walls like window dressings. Rows of books with leather and gilded covers stacked from floor to ceiling. The entire room boasted of money and comfort and luxury, all of which would have appealed to my truest hedonist self had I not been brought here to die.
I took a deep breath, swallowed the greasy metallic taste coating the inside of my mouth, and pushed myself to my protesting feet, using the pain to focus.
The vamps growled with displeasure and I expected to be knocked down once more. Instead of hitting me, they backed off into the shadows behind me, necks painfully bent, chins to chests.
He stepped out of the shadows and the light clung to him, slender and pale like a streak of frozen lightning. His clothing seemed spun of actual silver, an odd mix of robe and trouser. Blond hair, braided, beaded and nearly translucent, flowed down his shoulders like a veil. Bright lavender eyes alighted with mild amusement as he appraised me. They would have been beautiful eyes had they not been rimmed with red. He looked like a Nordic god with a hangover.
Again a hand shot out, this time so forcibly my head rocked back with the blow. Dazed, I wiped at my nose. My fingers came away sticky with blood. My brain buzzed: pain fear hate
"Stop." The white man's voice was mild, a quiet sound that carried on a wave of power. "You're wasting it."
I realized he referred to me and the seriousness of my situation, the hopelessness and the inevitable pain.
Genially he smiled, knowing what I knew and pronouncing my plight insignificant. His eyes glittered, neon bouncing off ice, heating with a silver-white glow.
"I am known as the Still-Heart." His voice was liquid rabbit fur rubbing the insides of my head, muffling the sounds of my thoughts. All I heard was his voice. All that mattered was his voice. I stared, enraptured, swayed by his compulsion and infatuated with his deadly temptation. "Welcome to your death, sweet one."
My mind chased after his beautiful voice and I smiled.
The two vamps dipped curt nods and hauled me out. I clawed my mental way out the compulsion that had cocooned itself around my will. I didn't resist their rough handling, too preoccupied with clearing my head. They hustled me backwards out of the room and dragged me through a new set of doors.
The new scenery was even more unlikely than the office. As I finally dispelled the fog of Still-Heart's voice, I saw we stood in a massive stone-walled cathedral.
A church? A vampire had a church in his evil lair?
As my eyes adjusted to the torch light, I realized it was merely a caricature of a church. No saints, no crosses, no redemption—only arches and high ceilings and an inauspicious-looking altar. The shadowed walls bore Egyptian symbols, and the painted pictures triggered a recollection of one of Marek's vampire lessons.
Ancient Egyptians had been buried with their coffins in one room and a chapel in another, which provided a dwelling place for the soulless body. The survivors would bring offerings of food and drink to the chapel so the deceased could be sustained in death.
Sustained. Oh shit, I'm the offering.
Still-Heart mounted the maroon steps at the front of the obscene chapel and draped himself over a high-backed chair. At least he had the decency to fulfill one of my stereotypical expectations. Torches in sconces and rows of candles caused chaotic shadows to twist upon the walls, hinting at deeper shadows in the alcoves perforating the perimeter.
Some alcoves showed the bright white eyes of silent figures hiding, watching, waiting. Some contained things that scratched at the walls or rattled heavy-sounding chains. One dark space issued the low rumble of a large animal that sounded as if it had grown rather intolerant of its surroundings and wanted to be unleashed. All bad sounds.
The stone floor bore an uneven wash of reds and browns as if painted by a careless artist. Steel loops were embedded in the floor. I refused to speculate what purpose they served. Jared's church didn't have steel floor loops.
At the foot of the steps, the vamps tossed me onto the floor. I landed on my side, my leg bent beneath. My elbow took the brunt of the blow and a current of electric pain shot down though my fingers. My position forced me to look up at the unmoving figure, subservient to him.
"What do you want with me?" Screaming against tape had roughened my voice, and even quiet speaking hurt. "I've done nothing to you. I can't do anything for you..."
Still-Heart lifted his eyes as if exasperated. It would have been a human gesture if he wasn't a corpse. "This isn't about you. You're almost as worthless as you claim to be."
"Hey, that's not what I meant!"
He waved a slender hand at me, white leather glove fitting like second skin. "Be silent."
The invisible fingers of a compulsion closed around my throat like a fist, crushing my voice. I glared at him. If looks could kill, he'd be even more dead.
"I'm not concerned with you. Only him." He smirked and gestured eloquently toward the nearest alcove. As Still-Heart's words bled into echoes and faded away, a pale light grew in one of the alcoves, illuminating the object within. I saw what had made the terrible beast-like sound, the animal at the end of its patience.
Marek.
Bound and chained, hair in matted snarls around his face, clothes bloodied and torn, Marek looked as if he'd been dragged through the woods and buried alive. I couldn't fathom the damage they'd done to him if he'd become this tattered in such a short amount of time. We'd been together less than twelve hours ago.
As the light grew around him, Marek opened his eyes, slowly rousing.
A wave of power flooded the room with a resounding crash. I tasted utter annihilation riding upon it and knew it was his. The force blasted like the heat wave of an explosion, solid and destructive, pressing me down. My head scraped against the floor.
Marek's assault cut off abruptly and I lifted my head. Still-Heart stood with one arm outstretched toward Marek, hand clenched in a fist, face twisted with the effort to quell Marek's outburst. Marek locked eyes with him, promising death and rage with his glare.
Marek flagged in his restraints, his head hanging slightly. It was the most defeat would ever dare countenance itself upon him. His eyes never left the vampire. They seeped a gleam of sickly green from behind thick locks of hair.
Seeing Marek in such a state almost unhinged me, but instinct kept me focused. I concentrated on the pain in my legs, the chill of the floor, the surrounding threat.
Still-Heart turned, a sinister smile playing upon his bloodless lips.
"Almost. He's almost mine. Did you feel his power, human?" Stepping down from the dais, he spared me a glance. "Of course you did. Crushed beneath it like an insect."
Before, his voice had been mesmerizing, beckoning me to follow and drawing me deeper into my head. At first, I'd chased it, a child after a butterfly. All I'd felt was the touch of his voice, running over my thoughts like fingers. The sound and the feel of his voice, all the things it promised. It was all I wanted, all I noticed.
As I struggled to focus, the Sophia crept forth and reclaimed my attention. It remained unaffected by the sweet lies Still-Heart poured into me, oil and honey, fur and pleasure. The Sophia could not be fooled by vampire illusions and it grabbed me, shaking me and freeing me from the compulsion before it took hold again. It delivered a resounding mental slap, the kind one gave a hysterical person.
I'd been set back to rights, my mind cleared. Scared but cleared. Focused.
I couldn't bear to look away from Marek. He was oblivious to anyone but the Master. I had to do something, to snap him out of his trance, to give him a mental slap, too.
The vampire whirled on me. "And what would you do, human? Fight me? My legions? Tear the shackles from the walls and save your beloved?"
Still-Heart sauntered down the steps and crouched before me, pulling my chin toward him, tearing my eyes from his prisoner. He stroked my face with his elegant fingers and the sensation of a fire's comforting glow oozed in slow trails down my skin.
"You are too puny, too weak, too stupid to realize..." He smiled as he scoffed at me, his mouth twisted in a teasing smirk. "He'll kill you when he gets the chance. He's mine."
His hatred leaked through the disguise of his smile, turning the warm lazy touches into pricks of pain. Wide-eyed, I shook my head. Never. Marek would die first.
"He certainly will." He gleaned my thoughts as effortlessly as spoken conversation. "And then at last, Marek, the warrior, will be mine. Mine to control. Mine to command. Mine to
wield. As vampire, he will be second to no one, save myself."
Stalking toward Marek, he spread his arms wide as if proudly showing off a prized possession. "I've hunted him for ages. The bounty that had been placed upon him was too tempting to pass up. Now, I realize he'd make a more splendid prize."
Still-Heart tapped a lone finger to the side of his mouth. "He'll be nearly invincible. All I need to do is help him to cast off his soul. He's been rather stubborn about keeping it."
He remembered me, turning to look down his slender nose as I huddled on my knees, scraping at the invisible fingers still clutching my throat. "You won't want to miss this, darling."
With a flick of his hand, the constriction on my throat eased, his compulsion lifted. I rubbed the spots where bruises would likely bloom. "Of course," he said. "I wouldn't want to miss out on your screams. I've heard they are quite lovely."
Closing the distance between us in a matter of moments, Still-Heart drew me to my feet with the invisible fingers of his will and lifted me from the ground, my back arched and bent like a string puppet.
He insinuated himself along my twisted body, mimicking a dancer's pose. Pressing his body against mine, he slid an arm around my waist and pushed my shoulder back. Without his power seducing my brain with imagined sensation, the embrace felt like I'd become bound by living stone, his body bearing the coldness of a chilly waterbed. For a moment, I wondered what it might feel like had I still been under the power of his mind-spell.
Should I let his compulsion soften the dead reality? If I opened myself up a tiny bit, could I get through this? Would I be damned?
Still-Heart caressed the skin of my throat, my bared shoulders, the lacy top of my camisole. The amulet Marek had given me lay in the well of my throat. Still-Heart smirked and hooked a finger under the fine chain.
With a hiss, he ripped it off and flung it aside. Satisfied, he raked a wicked scratch across the top of my breast, smiling like a raptor at the hot streak of blood. The wound was the thinnest of scratches but it burned like acid.