‘Miss me?’ he asked.
‘What did you do with Rhode?’ I demanded.
From behind him, Justin’s vampires ran out of the woods directly at the Italian vampire’s coven.
‘Get them inside the chapel!’ the Italian screamed, and yelled something else in that language I couldn’t understand.
‘I always knew you were feisty, Lenah, but you should probably stop fighting me. Save your strength . . . for later.’
He slapped his hand around my wrist and dragged me across the field, away from the chapel. My knees gave out and I kept tripping over my boots. The tightness of Justin’s grip sent spasms of pain from my shoulders to my hands. The Italian vampire jumped in front of us, swinging his machete at Justin’s chest.
‘You’re completely ineffective, Cassius,’ Justin snarled as he batted the machete aside and yanked me away from the chapel. ‘Why bother?’
Cassius replied to Justin in the mysterious language. I couldn’t tell if Justin understood because he didn’t respond. Cassius retrieved the machete and swung it so Justin had to jump back. In doing so, I was freed from his grasp. I wanted to sink to the ground and hold my arm to my body. The pressure from his grip had been nearly unbearable. Justin and Cassius exchanged blows as I ran towards the chapel. I wasn’t sure how the chapel could protect me, only that Fire’s weapons were on Tracy and Tony and they could immediately put us at an advantage.
One of Cassius’s vampires fell into pace beside me. Ahead, by the golden light of the chapel doorway, Tony helped Tracy inside. The wind rushed above our heads again and I knew Justin was airborne for a second time.
‘Watch it!’ my guard cried out and we slowed to a stop, not sure where Justin was going to land.
Justin’s cloud cover dropped him before me like a finger snap. He wrestled me to the ground with a hard thud. My head pounded and I blinked fast to clear my vision. A flash of metal crossed my eye line. The vampire that had been guarding me sliced through the air holding a sword, but there was a crack.
The crack of bone snapping.
I sat up. The vampire who was trying to help me had collapsed in a heap on the ground, his own sword through his heart.
Cassius appeared seemingly from nowhere and yanked the sword from the dead vampire’s chest. He held the bloodied sword in one hand and his machete in the other.
‘I’m impressed by your passion,’ Justin said to Cassius. ‘But Lenah’s not worth it, I promise.’
The way Justin spoke as a vampire – the cadence and the tone – was so cold and precise.
‘Stay behind me,’ Cassius instructed, but kept his focus on Justin. If I ran, it would cause a diversion, but Justin was entirely too fast and I hated being useless.
Justin cocked his head at Cassius. The machete was high in Cassius’s left hand, the sword in his right. He kept shifting his weight, ready to pounce.
‘I wondered what had happened to you this past year,’ Justin said. ‘I thought you might just be hanging back and letting your special friends do all your dirty work for you.’
‘We’ve thwarted your attacks on Lenah and Wickham campus four times now,’ Cassius spat. ‘Now tell her!’ he shouted, his strong, menacing features contorting. ‘Tell her why we have come to protect her! Why we save her!’
‘Where were you last night when we took her precious Rhode?’ Justin asked.
Cassius growled. ‘You killed our watch. Our best archer. We got there only moments after you left.’
Justin pushed out his palm, and grey polluted air unfurled like a snake around Cassius’s knife and machete. Cassius cried out and fell to his knees. His fangs descended with a hiss and he dropped his weapons on the grass. The grey smoke evaporated, yet Cassius’s hands lay limp in his lap.
‘Stop this,’ I said though I knew it was pointless.
Justin’s cold fingers locked on me again. His icy palm pulled my head towards his face.
Look away. Look away.
But I couldn’t . . .
Our eyes met, and the moon darkened.
There is no sky. No grass. No Wickham. I am no longer standing – there is only endless, infinite space.
My tension dissipates – I can just float here if I want to. I don’t need to worry about Rhode or the fight on the field. Yes, this is right. I want to be here with Justin. I want to be without my body. Why am I even fighting Justin? I should be helping him. I love him. If I stay here, he will find me.
I crumpled to the grass. My forehead smacked the ground, sending a wave of nausea through me. I inhaled the scent of the soil and brought my knees to my chest in a fetal position. I couldn’t fight any more. No more. I am still in my body. That’s what counts. I am safe.
Justin too had hit the ground. He seemed bewildered by the sight of me. He hoisted himself up and backed away.
‘What are you trying to do?’ I croaked, while cradling my head.
‘It’s no use,’ he muttered. ‘That’s twice now. I can’t take you.’
Take me. That’s what he’s doing. Taking me somewhere.
The middle of my forehead throbbed again and again. I could barely lift my neck the ache was so bad.
‘I’ll find a way,’ he said under his breath. And with a burst of cold air, he spread his fingers wide and was gone from the field. He moved too fast for my mind to ascertain which direction he had gone.
CHAPTER 12
I’ll find a way.
I kept repeating it to myself. I’ll find a way.
This was all part of Justin’s plan.
The pain in my head had dulled, but it was still sensitive to touch.
‘Get inside. Get inside,’ Cassius said, leading me into the chapel. When I stepped inside the building, Tracy was sitting in the last pew, holding her wrist close to her body. Tony stood at her side with a hand on her shoulder. A vampire approached Tracy, holding a medical bag. She drew her hand away nervously.
The vampire knelt before Tracy. ‘You should trust me,’ he said. ‘I’ve been a healer for two hundred years.’
My gut wrenched at the discomfort in her eyes. She stretched out her arm and he produced a bandage from the bag.
A chill ran over me and I hugged myself to keep warm. Justin had forced my gaze a few times now. It was purposeful; it wasn’t just to ‘look into my eyes’. He wanted to remove me from my conciousness. Like I was being transported from my body.
I’ll find a way.
To do what? This plan of Justin’s, whatever it was, was much more complicated than I realized. I had been wasting time puzzling it out as if his intent was simply to attack Wickham. I should have been trying to find a way to take him down. If I injured him, I could stop him from gaining any more power. I could try to find the boy I knew and loved inside that vampire shell.
I walked down the aisle of the chapel and sat down in the first row of pews. Behind me, the vampires paced up and down the rows. Two stood by the door keeping watch on the fields.
‘His coven is gone,’ one of the vampires said to Cassius as he followed me up the row.
When Justin takes me, what are the steps? He seemed to have power over my consciousness but couldn’t follow through with it because vampire law prevented him from hurting me.
I shivered.
Wherever he took me, I liked being there. Whatever Justin was capable of doing to me numbed me to reality. My world had become his world.
I’ll find a way . . . to do what exactly? What was the purpose?
Cassius handed me a towel so I could clean my face and hands. The chapel was a large stone room with stained-glass windows high up in the walls. The moon filtered through the decorated glass, casting pearly moonlight on to the pews and pulpit. Vampires had no fear of churches or religious buildings; they held no sway. Yet, in a room such as this, I felt protected.
Tony stood protectively by Tracy’s side watching the vampire care for her injury. A purple bruise blossomed on my wrist. It shone through the fabric of the bloodied bracelet.
‘Renoiera . . .’
There was that word again.
Renoiera . . .
‘OK . . .’ Tony said quietly. ‘What’s Reno-yare-a?’
At the back of the room, at least six vampires stood in a row behind the last pew. When meeting my eyes, they bowed their heads. Cassius was the only one near me and knelt down in the aisle next to my pew.
‘What language are you speaking?’ I asked. ‘It’s not Spanish or French. Nor any romance language I’ve ever heard.’
‘It is our language,’ he said. ‘Called Linderatu.’
‘A vampire language?’ I asked incredulously. I leaned towards him and lifted the pendant from his neck. ‘And what is this symbol?’ I said. He examined my features with such awe that I dropped the pendant.
‘It is your symbol: R for Renoiera.’
‘My symbol?’
‘Renoiera . . .’ He said, rolling the r, like in Spanish. Tony murmured the word behind me.
‘What does it mean?’
‘It means queen,’ Cassius said. ‘For you.’
‘Queen?’ Ridiculous.
Cassius bowed again and the rest of the vampires at the back of the room followed suit.
‘I’m not your queen. You must be mistaken. None of you should have any idea who I am.’
Cassius knelt again. ‘How we know of you is but one of very many questions you will have answered tonight.’
‘Please stand,’ I whispered to Cassius. As I reached down, my fingers grazed his shoulder. I gasped.
‘You’re . . . you’re warm,’ I stammered. ‘No, you’re positively hot. Like a human.’ Another question immediately blossomed in my mind. ‘Is this related to why you can be out during the day?’
My head throbbed and I pressed my fingertips to my temple.
Tell her! Cassius had screamed. Tell her why we have come to protect her. Why we save her.
He hesitated and lifted my arm with his warm fingers.
‘Ah,’ he said. He nodded at the bracelet. I noticed that he wore a patch of bloodied white fabric pinned to his black shirtsleeve. The blood on his shredded cloth was a rust-coloured stain.
I took advantage of the silence and rolled the word ‘Renoiera’ in my mind again. What Suleen had said about the revolution came back to me.
‘If you are here to protect me, why did you run from me all those times?’
‘We thought we might put you in even more danger if Justin saw you associating with us. As you could see from our interaction, we are not his favourite vampires. We wanted to wait until it was most dire to reveal ourselves to you.’
‘But how?’ I asked. ‘How do you know who I am?’
‘There have been whispers of a Vampire Queen who became human throughout the last four hundred years,’ Cassius said. ‘At first they were stories, like fairy tales.’
‘I don’t understand. My past was meant to be erased.’ I had a hunch. It was just an idea but I could put the pieces together easily enough. Justin’s power and his knowledge were beyond his years.
‘The Hollow Ones,’ I said aloud, ‘have something to do with this, don’t they?’
The group of vampires exchanged knowing glances.
‘The Hollow Ones lived in a house of onyx, Renoiera,’ a vampire said from the back of the chapel.
Cassius silenced him with a glare. Clearly the vampire was not supposed to talk. But he had revealed an important clue as to why they were here and why they remembered me. Onyx.
‘Yes, the ceilings,’ I said. In my mind’s eye I saw myself reflected in the onyx foyer of the Hollow Ones’ home. Vicken and I had used the reflection in the onyx ceiling to see our souls. Onyx shows the purity of the soul. At the time, in that life, both my soul and Vicken’s had been grey like old snow.
‘OK, but it doesn’t explain how you remember me when all knowledge of me as a vampire should have been erased.’
‘What started as fairy tales eventually began to circulate as fact. Do you understand?’ Cassius said in his sing-song Italian accent. ‘As time went on, people began to suspect your story was not legend but truth. We had no proof, but three years ago the Hollow Ones, without explaining why, claimed that they had acquired your blood. From that moment on, the rumour became fact.’
‘But how?’ I asked. It is the onyx, the voice of the vampire queen deep inside me whispered. Onyx . . . she whispered again. There were ceilings of onyx in that house. Look to the clues.
The voice of my vampire self was a small part of my conscience, an aspect of my soul that I would never entirely be divorced from; it both helped me and hindered me. It kept me in touch with the supernatural world. At present, I was reminded of times as a vampire when dealing with creatures or vampires that were very powerful. I needed as much information as possible.
‘What are you? Why are your eyes silver? How can you stand to be in the light?’ I asked.
‘The silver is not just the pigmentation of our eye,’ Cassius said, ‘it protects our souls from the sun. Like a shield, though we are not entirely sure of its exact magic. Once we are weakened we turn to ash like any vampire. Stake through the heart, beheading, and sunlight. We are not invincible.’
He reached out for my forearm.
‘We can share each other’s minds. This is one way we transfer information. I can share with you our story.’
‘Through touch?’
I lifted my arm to meet his fingers, and when he wrapped them around my skin his warmth reminded me that these vampires were not normal. Vampires are ice cold, dead. I glanced at Tracy and Tony still sitting in the back pew. Tony mustered a crooked smile but Tracy’s mouth was a firm line, guarded. She didn’t trust them yet.
I gripped on to Cassius’s arm and closed my eyes. Images came to my mind uninvited.
I am in the Hollow Ones’ house. Cassius walks alongside Rayken, a member of the Hollow Ones’ trio. They follow a long line of vampires down a hallway. At the end is a massive door decorated with sculptures of grotesque twisting bodies. Behind it is the library. Cassius looks up at the hallway’s ceiling. Onyx. His soul is reflected in the stone. The hanging orb hovering over his chest is a smoky grey. His soul is not black. Cassius follows Rayken into the library. A quartet plays soft music in the corner of the room.
Rayken, Laertes and Levi, the Hollow Ones, circulate goblets of blood between all the vampires in the room. In the middle, dressed in his crisp black suit, is Justin. He doesn’t take a goblet; he keeps his hands crossed over his chest. Cassius brings the goblet to his nose and sniffs. The blood seems normal.
But he is cautious. Justin catches Cassius as he sniffs the blood a second time. Perhaps it’s sweeter than usual?
‘You’re lucky,’ Justin says to Cassius. ‘Only very few vampires have been invited here. You must have done something right.’
Cassius looks about the room. He recognizes some of the vampires but not all. He knows Liliana, the blonde standing in the corner. Her sister stands by her side; both are very capable archers.
Rayken stands in the centre of the room and raises his glass.
‘A new ritual,’ Rayken says. ‘We wish to expand the confidence of the Hollow Ones. In this ritual, we will share blood together. And in doing so begin a new coven. The strongest coven.’
The vampires in the room bring the goblets to their mouth and drink. The liquid is so sweet, the best Cassius has ever tasted. He finishes his in two gulps.
The image shifts.
Cassius is balled up on the floor. He wants. He wants. He wants. He wants to go back; he wants to take back all he’s done.
‘They weren’t supposed to retain their sanity! What good are they to me now?’ Laertes’s voice echoes through a nearby door.
‘It must be her blood,’ Justin replies.
‘Lenah kept her mind when she was remade a vampire,’ Laertes reasons, calming down. ‘Her blood runs through their veins. We knew it was a risk.’
‘Throw him into the sunlight,’ Rayken says. ‘With h
is mind intact, Cassius is meaningless to me.’
It hurts, Cassius thinks. Don’t throw me into the sunlight!
I inhaled the crisp air inside the chapel. The warmth of Cassius’s hand moved away from my arm.
‘We are called the Demelucrea. It means half-light,’ Cassius said, taking a step back to join the rest of the vampires. ‘We are only part traditional vampire. Our other half is a Demelucrea. The Demelucrea keeps his sanity and the ability to tolerate the sun . . .’
‘Do you drink blood?’ Tony asked.
‘Yes,’ Cassius replied. ‘We get it from blood banks. We try not to kill the living.’
‘Try?’ Tracy squeaked.
‘How did they alter the blood?’ I asked. ‘What did they do to it?’
‘We do not know,’ Cassius answered simply. ‘It was your blood, Renoiera, That is all we do know.’
‘My blood? Impossible.’ But Suleen’s words came back to me.
He has made them from your blood.
‘The Hollow Ones acquired your blood somehow. Through a rip in time, or perhaps the power of the onyx house made it possible.’
There was that word again, onyx. The Hollow Ones had once possessed a vial of my blood. But again, Fire changed history. That event, when I gave my blood to the Hollow Ones, never happened. Just like Tony’s murder never happened! He was alive now because Fire successfully changed history when I went back to the medieval world. Even though I gave my blood to the Hollow Ones in their house of onyx, I had never bled on the stone floors. It was a very clean transaction. They would have been able to extract it from the stone only if I had bled on it, just as with the arrow that pierced Justin that first night out on Main Street.
Ugh. I groaned. The event never happened! It’s just not possible for them to still have my blood.
‘However they acquired it,’ Cassius continued, ‘they used your blood to mix with ours.’
Bile crept up to my throat and I turned from them, trying to steady myself. The cut on my middle finger burned.
‘Who knows the bounds of the Hollow Ones’ knowledge?’ he went on. ‘All I am sure of is that we are vampires who can be out by day.’ He said with emphasis, ‘We are not tortured by the pain of our existence.’