by Kresley Cole
"I'm amazed, Empress. You do care for another card." He dragged me into a smaller secreted elevator, not much larger than a dumbwaiter. "Vi and I debated if this threat would curb your bloodlust."
He and I ascended--couldn't tell how many floors before we stopped. He hauled me out into a hallway with that same industrial look, those same orange words spray painted.
SMITE STRUCK FALL MAD
His tableau appeared over him, upside down, but crystal clear.
At last, I faced one of the source twins.
Vincent was a far cry from his tall, flawless carnates. His real body was somehow both scrawny and pudgy, his skin jaundiced and slicked with oil. His black hair was matted, his sleeveless T-shirt and jeans bloodstained. Scars and new slices covered his arms--from his bloodletting.
He'd created carnates with his idealized appearance. Vain? Oh yeah.
I couldn't wait to see the real Violet. "Admit it: you Photoshopped your carnates."
"Do you really want to go there about appearances?" Even his voice was higher pitched than his carnates'. "You're covered in blood. Surprisingly it's your own this time."
That was fair. "Where are your sister and Selena?"
"I'm taking you to them." He motioned for me to walk with him.
I did, deciding to play along while I recharged and healed. I would come up with a plan to get that sensor, take out the twins, and get back to Aric and Jack.
Vincent and I strolled side by side down the hall, like we were heading to class. As if I wouldn't kill him at the first opportunity. As if he wasn't imagining how he'd first make me scream.
As if Baggers hadn't just eaten his father.
The calm before the storm. Both Vincent and I knew it.
"Why paint those particular words?" My voice was thick from throwing up and screaming.
"So Violet and I never forget the power we wield."
"And that is?"
"We control the most destructive force in the universe."
I was done hearing that. "I was wrong when I said that about love."
He scowled. "Of course it's the most destructive force--it's our power. Love begets violence, murder, and war. Why else would mortals equate it with such horrible things?"
"What are you talking about?"
"Sunstruck, moonstruck, and lovestruck all mean maddened. We fear storm breaks and heart breaks. We fall blind, fall into a trap, fall sick, fall madly in love. Why not rise in love?"
I had no answer for that. I didn't know exactly how to describe love--just knew his idea of it was perverse.
"If shot through the heart with an arrow, you get lovesick. Sounds painful, doesn't it?" With his free hand, he pulled the collar of his shirt higher, rolling his head on his neck. "And smitten? One touch of the dart, and an invisible affliction smites you down."
"Love hurts. I get it."
He grinned; I grimaced. His yellowed teeth resembled his father's. "You hurt right now, Empress. Your love isn't diluted anymore. It's divided--between the hunter and Death."
Somewhere in this lair, Aric fought tirelessly for me. I did love him. As I loved Jack.
"It's complicated." My answer of the month.
"You broke our rules by bringing Death here. But I'm glad you did. Now we have two beloved to use against you. Perhaps we should take them alive." Vincent's gaze went blank, his irises turning black.
"You're seeing through your carnates' eyes right now."
"We are."
--Sieva, open your mind to me!--
Aric! I'm okay for now. Are you and Jack?
--Engaged at present.--
I'm with Vincent. Can't find Selena or Violet.
--I'm coming for you soon. Hold tight.--
I can stall.
No answer.
Vincent's eyes had cleared. "Have you remembered our history?"
I shook my aching head. "But when Death translates your chronicles, I'll read all about it."
"Our carnates are retrieving our stolen property from your horses as we speak."
"From the Reaper's armored mount?" I had to laugh. "All the best with that." They had better hope they couldn't catch that stallion. Thanatos bench pressed three eighty and made Bagger Spam with his hooves. "Why are those chronicles so important to you?"
"Our earliest memories are of Father reading them to us, each night before we went to sleep." Blood-drenched bedtime stories. "We're sentimental."
Sentimental? "Because of you and your sister, your dad is being digested right now."
He nodded. "Today we loved our father. We loved our mother as we began these new incarnations." Had she died in childbirth?
A suspicion arose. "Vincent, have you ever left this place?"
He blinked. "Why would we?"
At my disbelieving expression, he explained, "Our father bought the Shrine when our mother was pregnant with us--just in case his children would ring in a new game, and a new catastrophe. As soon as he found out we were twins, he knew the game was starting. We've been safe within here since before we were born."
The twins had never felt the sun on their own skin?
He pointed toward a doorway. "In there."
Again, I made the decision to go along with him.
Once we'd crossed the raised threshold, he shut the door behind him. Never taking his finger from the sensor, he locked us in with a combination I didn't see. I was trapped with him?
He was trapped with me.
Come, Lover, touch . . .
He'd taken me to a sizable game room. Against one wall stood a fridge, a microwave station and sink beside it. A trashcan overflowed with frozen food packages and empty potato chip bags. Clothes were wadded up around it.
A hi-tech desk ran the length of another wall, covered with keyboards and video game controllers. Monitors hung above. Different video games had been paused mid-action.
In front of a cushy gamer's chair sat a plate with a half-eaten Hot Pocket beside a can of Coke.
"So this is your dukedom. You sit in here and play?" While everyone else in the world was fighting for survival? How did the least deserving assholes on the planet score these digs?
"We play when we're not practicing our craft. Or being interrupted," he said with an annoyed look at me. Sensor in hand, he dropped into that chair. "In a way, our lives are video games. We send our avatars into the world, and the Shrine is the big boss cave."
Vincent was a monster--and yet he sounded like an excited teenager when he said, "We've turned it into a house of horrors! We've got carnates patrolling every floor and Baggers in the basement to guard our treasure. Congratulations, Empress, you survived our little prank explosion, so you got to this secret bonus level. But you only have one life left." He cast me that vile grin.
Vincent Milovnici had microwave snacks galore but had apparently never seen a toothbrush. I turned from his smile, frowning at those clothes near the trashcan.
Were those Selena's?
Yes, that was her shirt, coat, and boots--to be discarded with the food packaging. Because the twins believed she'd never need them? "Where is Selena? What have you done to her?"
In a perplexed tone, he said, "We loved her."
Fury erupted inside me. "You raped her?"
"Me? Cheat on Vi? Are you crazy?" He was so aghast I believed him.
I never thought I'd be relieved to learn that Vincent was faithful to Violet. "You said you'd take me to see Selena."
He pulled on his collar again. "What's your rush? We have all the time in the world."
"Are you embarrassed for me to see her? To see your sick kicks?"
He grinned again. "Our lovesick kicks."
I cast him my best Selena impression. Really?
His black brows drew together. "We're proud of our work, Empress. We always have been."
Work?
"If you're so eager to be enlightened . . ." He pressed a button on the desk. A wall panel folded back, revealing a torture chamber. The air from within wafted over m
e like a foul breath, and I nearly threw up again.
This area made the Azey South tent look like amateur night. All the devices from before were here, with new ones too. A pillory, a rack, and a reallive guillotine.
Shackles hung from beams. Gore-covered mallets and cleavers lay atop a work bench. A pegboard displayed various metal masks, crank contraptions, hacksaws, and pruning shears.
A large fire burned within a vented pit, a rack of pincers and pokers at the ready.
One corpse rotted on a chair with spikes; a second decomposed in a suspended cage.
"My supply of victims has gotten smaller and smaller." Vincent sighed, as if embarrassed by the lackluster amount of carnage. "But now that you're here, with your regeneration, you'll be like a video game that never ends."
There was a bed with twisted sheets. The twins slept in here, amid the bodies and stench. "Where is Violet?"
"She's always close."
"If you and your sister have Wonder Twin powers, why would you not go everywhere together?"
"Our talents are . . . evolving." He seemed to think that was hilarious.
All the way to my right, I saw a bloody wood stump with an ax embedded. Someone knelt in front of it.
"Selena?"
39
She was motionless, her dark eyes staring blankly.
Her long hair tangled around her face. She wore only her jeans and a bra, and she looked like she'd lost twenty pounds in just days. Every inch of her bared skin was covered in bruises.
"Your arrival interrupted us." Vincent's tone was peevish. "We were just about to take the Archer's hand--"
I ran for her, dropping to my knees beside her. "Selena!" Behind a wicked-looking ax blade, her arm stretched across the surface of the stump.
Oh dear God, they'd hammered a rusty nail through her hand to hold her in place. Was that what sent her over the edge?
I tugged her hair from her face, pulling it over her shoulder. A crusted brand marked her chest, two overlapping triangles, bisected with arrows.
Rage boiled up inside me. Another body vine grew from my neck and split behind me. Not a green aura this time; it felt like a cobra's hood.
Vincent shuddered with disgust. "You can't comprehend how repulsive you are to us." He raised the sensor. "Easy, Empress. Now that we have you, we don't need the Archer as much."
Damn that sensor! I could control my rage. I gritted my teeth, forcing the vine to collapse onto itself.
Gradually it retracted. Once it'd slipped beneath the surface of my skin, I turned back to Selena. "Please say something." She didn't react. "Selena, answer me!" Nothing.
I leveled my gaze on Vincent. "What the hell did you do?"
He sat on a trunk at the foot of the bed. "While we waited for the Archer's arm to heal, we kept her in a standing sweat box with a noose around her neck, forcing her to balance on her toes atop a heating plate." His attitude was as la-di-da as his carnate's had been. "Mortals break after just a couple of hours, but she endured for days, without food or water. She emerged, a blank canvas for us to work with."
If they'd done that to her, what had they done to Jack?
"Today we planned to lop off her fingers one by one, tormenting her with the knowledge that she'd never let sail another arrow. But Vi decided she wanted the Archer's hand in one chop. So naturally, I secured our prisoner and started sharpening my ax." With an exhalation, he said, "Anything for love."
My claws dripped. I ached to plant them into his greasy jowls.
"Right before you arrived here, I hiked the ax above my head, pausing for effect. I expected her to weep and beg--you know, as prisoners do. But the hardhearted Archer couldn't cry, as if the tears had been trained right out of her. She just broke. Vi thinks she was conditioned to turn off her senses in the face of torture. I think the Archer snapped because she beheld my sister for the first time."
Chills skittered up my spine. "Why would that make Selena go catatonic?" Would it make me?
Another grin. "You'll see."
I swallowed.
"With you here, we held off from making the chop, hoping you could snap the Archer out of this daze. She should experience our practice fully. . . ." He trailed off, gazing at something past Selena. "Just a second. We're at a critical period." He rose and shuffled to her other side, to a large pool of blood.
"Is that Selena's?"
In answer, he rolled his pale eyes. With his free hand, he drew a folded straight razor from his jeans pocket, flicking it open. He sliced his arm, groaning with . . . pleasure? Then he stretched the wound--and the sensor--over the pool.
When the first crimson drop hit, the air over the surface blurred, as if with heat. I sensed power, like when Finn spun an illusion. "You're creating a carnate."
Vincent folded the razor, pocketing it. "We hatch them beside prisoners so our children understand the ways of love without delay."
I needed to give Aric and Jack enough time to get to us--which meant engaging this freak in conversation. "Don't you and Violet have to share blood to clone yourselves?"
"Hers is mixed in there."
"How many have you made?"
He puffed out his chest. "Legions. We send them out exploring, all the way to what used to be the Pacific and down to the equator even."
He would've seen everything they'd beheld. "And? What's out there?"
"It's all exactly like it is here, ash and waste over every mile. Oblivion. The world was loved, and now it's destroyed."
He was talking like we'd already come to the end. There had to be something more! A point to all this. A lesson. We just had to discover it. Otherwise, we were simply enduring our remaining years, till the bitter end.
Enduring shit like this.
He tugged on his shirt collar again. "Survivors chase whispers of sanctuary, roaming the ash. But the joke's on them. There's nothing out there."
There could be a Haven.
Maybe the point was to hope against hope--and stay decent. "You and your family could've done so much good in the world. But you chose to become nightmares instead."
"As opposed to you? Face it, Empress, you're evil. All the cards are."
"That's not true. Death isn't evil."
"If you believe that, then you don't know him very well."
"I've known him over lifetimes," I said vaguely, that blood pool calling my attention. Firelight reflected off it, triggering glimmers of a memory.
A summer dawn.
The overwhelming scent of roses.
I'd asked someone, "How fares my flower?"
The memory faded as fingers broke the surface of the blood. I sucked in a breath at the ghastly sight. A carnate was arising!
As if from a grave.
A hand emerged, but blood didn't stick to its porcelain skin. A tattoo appeared, black lettering in that same Goth script. Was it a number? Like a serial number? That couldn't be the accurate tally.
Selena didn't respond even to this . . . birth.
The carnate continued to float up, another hand budding. When I could yank my gaze away, I noticed that Vincent's deadened eyes had grown darker again. Watching the fight? Did that mean he was blind to his own surroundings?
Aric hadn't checked in for a while.
"This battle should be very interesting. Now that Death has realized you're gone, he'll take out the hunter, thinking you won't see."
"Death wouldn't do that to Jack. He has honor. Face it, Vincent, you're going to have to accept that some cards are good. . . ." My gaze slid back to the blood pool. To the Violet creature emerging.
The memory of my past with the Lovers fluttered so close to the surface. I recalled hills of roses, with thorns as big as daggers, and Violet's blood dripping from a height. I'd caught it in my cupped hands like rain.
Why had she been raised above me?
I gasped as the full scene hit me. The room seemed to shrink down on me, my lungs contracting. I'd bound Violet in vine, trapping her to . . . the blade of a windmill
, the fabric-covered sail. Her blood had saturated the white material, dripping down for me to catch.
The structure had groaned under the weight of rose stalks, the Lovers' lands invaded by them. By me.
I'd ordered vines to burrow under her skin--while keeping her alive. As she'd spun round and round, her agonized screams had carried.
She'd looked younger than I was now. My stomach pitched.
The Army grinds on, a windmill spins. I'd believed Matthew had been warning me of the Azey's approach.
Oh, he had been--just not in the way I'd thought.
I'd kept Violet trapped like that for days. Until Vincent had come for her, sacrificing himself.
Come, join her, pay the price. There is no shame in surrender, Lover. I'd parted those thorns, calling him closer. How artfully we beckon. How perfectly we punish.
I'd sliced him to ribbons. I'd choked them both in vine. I'd clawed out their eyes and seeded sprouts in the sockets.
The twins hadn't necessarily been monsters in that life, but I had been, as evil as an invoked red witch.
And Aric wanted me to give her free rein? How could I say I knew Death--when I didn't even know myself?
"You're remembering!" Vincent blinked to clear his eyes. "At least you kept your promise to dispatch us together. But then you desecrated our remains. When my line's chroniclers found us, your hideous roses were flourishing inside our bodies!"
My breaths shallowed until I was on the verge of hyperventilating. Once I got us free of this place, I would take my memories like penance. For now, I had to help Selena.
Vincent said, "In this life, Vi and I will never be parted--never again."
Then where in this hellhole was she?
His eyes flared once more. "We've decided one of your lovers should die today. And it should be your choice. The Reaper? Or the hunter?"
I shook my head hard. "You can't make me choose."
"Then we'll decide for you." He tapped his chin. "The hunter will fall. Our carnates turn on him now."
Aric! Help Jack, please!
--A merry chase, wife.--
Had Selena stiffened? The desperate need to protect Jack filled me; was she feeling it too? Enough to shake this daze?
If anything could break through to her . . .
For Jack, Selena Lua could do anything.
In a taunting tone, Vincent said, "My children never make clean kills. The thieving hunter is about to die--badly."
Okay, Selena had definitely twitched.
When Vincent grew distracted--between creating a clone and communing with the ones fighting--I whispered to her, "J.D. is in danger, Selena. Do you think he knows why you don't have his six?" My God, I was sick. "All your strength and speed, just sitting on the bench while he's under attack."