I hated that word, ‘victim’. Some people were victims, yes. But we were here, survivors, and we could at least control the evil that seethed and spread over Wickham. I wanted to ask where Justin took me when he tried to take my soul, but Laertes stood up straight and the dagger stiffened in his hand. I stood up slowly.
‘What are you going to do with that knife?’
‘I’m old. 1,795 years. I don’t love anyone or anything. I’ve hurt enough people.’
‘We can find a way to get you your love back,’ I said, readying to jump on him. ‘There is always a way out of the darkness,’ I said. ‘I found a way, didn’t I? We’ll do it together.’
He lifted the dagger and aimed it at his chest.
‘Soulmates are rare. Rarer than you might think,’ he said. ‘But it might just be the thing.’ He shook his head. ‘Love. After all this.’
Before my hand shot out to stop him, Laertes plunged the dagger into his heart. He crumpled on to the glass-strewn floor. A pulse emanated from him, blowing my hair back from my face. A ripple of energy shot from his body out through the room. A loud pop came from above and the panorama of windows that lined the ceiling exploded littering the auditorium with jagged shards of glass. I fell backwards from the force of the energy and my head smacked the end of a chair.
A ring of black circled my sight and pain pulsed at the back of my head. I reached out, searching for my dagger, but lights flashed in my vision and my strength waned. I reached out again and my fingers ran through the gritty familiar remains of a vampire, this time Laertes. My sight slid to black just as my head found the carpeted floor.
‘Where is your power now?’ I whispered. As my world fell to darkness, a phrase went through my mind.
Flame, flame, flame to live; only to scatter to dust when we die.
There is grass at my feet. It is bright green, surreally so, as if someone has painted it too green and too bright.
And the smell. I draw a deep breath . . . lavender. I blink – just once – and I am no longer in the auditorium. I stand alone in a field. Far in the distance, a familiar stone manor overlooks huge hills of lavender. The sun is high in the sky but its rays don’t seem to touch this field.
Wait . . . I know this place. I turn, taking in the lavender swaying in the breeze.
I have been here before! When Vicken remade me a vampire. But Rhode was here too. I spin, looking for him, but the wind strokes the fields, bringing with it an earthy scent that I love.
Something is moving out there.
I squint.
Someone is there. The figure is getting closer to me. Tall, wide shoulders. A man. The figure comes closer and closer. I bite down on my lip.
The figure is tall with cropped hair. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
I run towards him.
‘Rhode!’
The figure picks up speed.
‘Rhode!’ I cry again. Goose bumps sweep over me. This is our place. Ours.
‘Lenah!’ his voice carries back. It is Rhode. And he knows me. I can tell from his tone. ‘Lenah! I’m coming!’
This place, wherever it is, I could stay here forever. Hadn’t I said that before? I would. Forever.
The fuzzy figure running at me breaks through the ether and comes into full focus. Rhode’s arms pump at his sides as he runs towards me.
Rhode’s smile widens. He is healthy, human and his blue eyes sparkle.
I jump into his arms and wrap my legs around his waist. Rhode kisses me all over until my cheeks are wet with tears. He keeps kissing me. My nose. Lips. Forehead. I can’t get a word in.
‘I love you, do you know that?’ he says softly, but the intensity in his tone nearly shatters me. ‘Do you know how much?’ He holds me up so we are eye to eye. I keep my legs around him.
‘Don’t let go,’ I cry. We hold one another. He doesn’t have to let go, shouldn’t let go. But after a few moments he lowers me down to the grass.
‘I love you,’ I whisper. ‘I’ll do whatever it takes to save you.’
He crouches over me, running his hand over my hair.
‘I’m so worried about you,’ I say, and his mouth is on mine again. ‘What does Justin want?’ I ask when he pulls away. ‘How did this happen?’
‘He believed if he made me a vampire I would remember everything and I could change him into your soulmate instead of me.’
‘But that’s not possible.’
‘He knows that now, and his desires have changed.’
‘To what?’
‘I don’t know.’
Rhode sits up and twists his body in the direction from which he came.
‘What are you looking for? Can Justin find us here? In this place?’ I turn to peer in the same direction as Rhode.
‘I don’t think so. I can sense him back where my body is.’
‘How much time do we have?’ I ask.
‘Moments. As always.’ He turns back to me. ‘Listen, Lenah. This is the place we go. You and me, our souls. It’s why I found you here when Vicken remade you a vampire after the winter prom.’
He tucks my hair behind my ear and brings his soft lips to mine again.
‘I will always find you. Anywhere you go, I go. Never forget that,’ he says.
‘If we have limited time, I must know. In the Hollow Ones’ house – how do I get you out?’
‘It’s very complicated magic,’ he says. ‘Because Justin did not create it, he truly doesn’t have control over it. It’s more powerful than he is. Laertes is missing and he was the one who could control the house. I’m not even sure Justin can fully navigate it.’
‘Laertes is dead. He came to me. And listen, Rhode . . .’ I hate to tell him this. ‘Justin killed Suleen. He died in my arms.’
I want to show him the bloodied bracelet, but in this special, in-between world, I don’t have it.
Rhode bows his head and exhales deeply. ‘The best we can do is succeed,’ he says. ‘You’ll need to keep your wits about you. Those who are unfamiliar with the house’s magic can lose their sanity to its labyrinth of tricks. The more frightened you are, the more complicated the maze will become.’
‘Where can I find you?’
He stands up and pulls me with him. He looks back the way he came again.
‘I’m in the library with Justin. Promise me,’ he says, ‘if you feel yourself losing your sense, you leave me there.’
‘I can’t make that promise.’
‘He is coming. I must go.’ He puts his hands on my shoulders. ‘Justin believes he can siphon out my soul. Every time he’s tried, he’s failed but got closer. I don’t know how much longer I have until he will succeed.’
I clutch him to me again. I want to ask about his memory and how I can make him remember, but there is no time. ‘I love you. I must go,’ he says.
‘I’ll come for you,’ I reply.
‘You must trust yourself, Lenah,’ he says. ‘And remember, evil be he who thinketh evil.’
The sun washes over the field. Rhode backs away from me without breaking eye contact. I want to run after him, but the sun is too bright. I can’t see him.
‘Rhode!’ I cry. ‘Rhode, wait!’
I drew in a breath and blinked away the Hathersage field. I stared up at rain pelting a glass skylight. I inhaled the scent of a strange herb and burning candles. This meant one thing – I was back in Cassius’s house.
CHAPTER 20
‘Tony,’ I whispered. My voice was weak. ‘Are Tony and Tracy all right?’
A warm compress rested on my forehead. I reached my hand up to it, and groaned; the back of my head still ached. My fingers too. I cradled them to stop the throbbing.
‘What are you saying?’
Italian accent. Cassius.
‘Are they safe?’ I said, and tried to sit up but the blood rushed to the sore spot at the back of my head where’d I’d hit the armrest of the chair in the school auditorium. Cassius’s warm hand helped me up.
‘Don’t move too much,’ he said.
‘Tracy and Tony,’ I said. ‘I didn’t see them. What happened?’
Cassius hesitated, his eyes shifted away from me and he said, ‘Tracy was taken, Lenah.’
I jumped in my seat and pain rattled through me all the way to my fingertips. ‘Taken? Where’s Tony?’
‘The other Dems are with him; he’ll be OK for today.’ His silver eyes were swirling again in the grey light.
I cradled my head. ‘But he’s not hurt?’
‘Not physically, no.’
‘Is Tracy dead?’
‘We don’t know. Justin had told the vampires that attacked campus that you have an antidote to vampirism. Absolute fiction,’ Cassius said, nearly spitting the word. ‘That’s why they were so violent.’
‘A good lie,’ I said. I was on the couch in the living room of Cassius’s house. It was so grey here compared to the sunny field in my dream with Rhode. ‘What else would send droves of hungry vampires to find me? But hopefully they won’t kill her,’ I said. ‘They’ll use her as ransom.’
‘They’ll believe anything Justin says,’ Cassius said. He got up and grabbed some alcohol and cotton pads from a nearby table. ‘Once you are back on your feet, I suggest we attack immediately.’
‘But how is he getting his power?’ I wondered angrily. ‘Laertes is dead. He killed himself before my eyes.’
‘You saw Laertes?’ Cassius asked.
I described to Cassius what happened in the auditorium. I explained what I thought must have happened when Justin looked in my eyes.
‘He was getting all his knowledge from Laertes. We might have a chance against Justin now that he’s dead.’
The note from Laertes was still in my pocket and I had to show Cassius, as I didn’t understand the word and had a hunch it was in Linderatu, the vampire language.
‘Let me just finish cleaning your hand,’ Cassius said.
The Hollow Ones, as horrible as they were, had spent lifetimes understanding their magic. Their apprentice had led a coup and now here we were – with all of the Hollow Ones dead. We needed that book.
‘I am sure Micah and Esteban are doing everything they can to get Tracy back,’ Cassius said, and applied alcohol to the cut down my finger. The sting made me hiss. ‘It’s a nasty cut,’ Cassius said, motioning to the jagged wound.
‘Laertes mentioned it too,’ I said. ‘The cut . . .’ My words trailed away.
Cassius’s hand hovered over mine. ‘What about it?’
A thought clicked into place.
‘Wait . . .’ I said, standing slowly. An edge of panic laced my tone.
I brought my finger closer to my eyes. The cut was about four inches long and ran the length of my middle finger to my hand. What could have injured me there, repeatedly in the same spot, in the same design?
Justin had grasped my hand out on Main Street the very first night I’d encountered him, cutting me there. It happened again the night he took Rhode; the wound had burned in the salt water of the bay.
It burned and reopened when he grabbed me in his house too.
‘Something’s continuously cutting me there,’ I said aloud, but I wasn’t speaking to Cassius, I was talking to myself.
‘Renoiera, are you all right?
What was on Justin’s hand that could cut me? A ring? Had I even noticed a ring? Something emerged in my mind very slowly. What ring would Justin have? My thoughts trailed away and I brought my hand over my mouth. I held my breath. I could barely put the thoughts together fast enough.
Oh God . . . could it be possible?
‘Renoiera? Please, your fear is making me uneasy. I don’t like to see you like this.’
Onyx holds people to a world that no longer wants them.
I had been so distracted, so taken by the changes in Justin’s face. I closed my eyes: Justin rushes to me across the lacrosse field, fingers splayed. On the middle finger of his left hand is a silver band.
‘Never wear onyx unless you want or know death. Rhode said that once long ago,’ I said to Cassius.
Three years ago before I returned to the medieval world, I had lost a ring. It had been in the fight with Odette in the Wickham gymnasium. A conversation I had with Rhode replayed in my mind . . .
‘Hey . . .’ Rhode said, his eyebrows narrowing. ‘Where is your onyx ring?’
I held my hands out before me and spread my fingers wide.
My onyx ring – it was gone.
‘It must have fallen off during the fight.’ I glanced towards Hopper building. ‘I’ll go and look for it,’ I said, pushing against the ground to stand up.
‘Ah, let it go. It’s a cursed stone anyway. It makes people linger. Souls too. Connects people to their pasts in a world that may not want them any more.’
‘Your thoughts are confusing, Renoiera. Rhode. Wickham.’
I scrambled to a table and drew a sketch of Rhode’s ring. The one he had worn for hundreds of years, and the one I had worn for hundreds of years after he gave it to me.
‘Have you ever seen this ring?’ I asked.
Cassius turned the paper towards him. ‘Yes,’ he said, and the thrill of his answer made my breath catch. ‘Does this mean something to you?’ he asked.
How could I explain to Cassius? I needed him to see my associations with that ring along with my history wearing it.
‘I have an idea,’ I said. ‘It’s mad, but perhaps it’ll work.’
We faced one another with just a few inches between us.
‘Your powers come from me. Maybe we can reverse them,’ I said.
Cassius’s eyebrows met. ‘Reverse them? I don’t think . . .’
‘Why not? You heard my thoughts when I desired it and even when I didn’t. Grab my forearm,’ I said. ‘Let’s see if you can see my memories. My history.’
Cassius took a step back. ‘I don’t know.’
I extended my sore hand. ‘Come on, Cassius, give it a go.’
He gave me a sidelong glance. ‘All right,’ he said, and extended his arm. This time I thought of specific images and hoped he could see them.
I walk the long hall in my Hathersage home. I enter a dining room, the one with the long black table. Rhode stands before a collection of jewels, all with the same black stone.
‘What are these?’ I ask, admiring necklaces, earrings and rings, all adorned with similar black gems.
Rhode stands beside a tall vampire wearing a top hat. Both of them wear black suits and they peer through a microscope at the jewels.
‘Doesn’t it hurt your eyes?’ I ask.
‘Please see, miss,’ the vampire in the top hat says, standing back and gesturing me to look. When I peer through the microscope, I gasp. Onyx is not black after all but bright diamonds compressed so closely together that they cannot be individually distinguished by the naked eye.
‘The tiny diamonds together capture spells and hold on to them. They just keep sucking the energy,’ the tall vampire says. ‘It’s marvellously powerful. You wear it to enhance your spells.’
‘I have no use for such items,’ I say with a dismissive wave of my hand, though Rhode purchases a ring and slides it on his finger immediately.
‘You be careful with that, lad,’ the vampire says. ‘It is a tricky stone, has a real –’ he chooses his words – ‘personality. It knows blood, so be careful not to bleed on it too often.’
I don’t think much on his words, only that I am hungry and the hour is late.
I made the image shift by recalling a different memory. This time I showed Cassius a selection of images, one after the other. Rhode telling me about the ritual, taking my hibernation in 1910, awaking at Wickham, and meeting Justin in the rain. I followed that with the moment I first tried to die from the ritual. I showed Cassius the onyx ring on my finger. I showed him Vicken and me standing beneath the ceiling in the Hollow Ones’ home.
I show him Justin’s face, happy. Then the fight at the gym. ‘It is a cursed stone,’ Rhode says from underneath the tree. I show him J
ustin happy again: playing lacrosse, holding open a car door, and dancing at the Winter Ball with Tony and Tracy. I ended with more recent memories like Laertes’s death in the auditorium.
When I pulled my hand away, a small light popped from our hands and we both fell back. Cassius immediately turned away from me and faced the window.
‘Did it work?’ I asked.
His rested his hands on another table and cried out in pain. To the living, to cry was a relief. To the vampire, it was a punishment. He gripped the table so hard that I thought the wood might crack.
‘That ring, Cassius, is linking Justin from my past world to this one. He must have found it in the auditorium during the fight with Odette. The power in those stones anchored him to this world.’
The onyx and its connection finally made sense to me!
Cassius turned to me, his face still pained from experiencing my memories.
‘Do you know how many spells, including the ritual, I performed while wearing it? Rhode too? How many times my blood seeped on to that stone? Countless. It’s so clear to me now. The Hollow Ones extracted my blood from that ring and made you.’
Justin had remained in this world wearing that powerful ring, and it not only linked him to the past world where I had been a vampire, but it gave him a power source from all of the spells I performed while wearing the ring. The added bonus, at least for the Hollow Ones, was my blood.
I drew a breath and threw my shoulders back even though my head still ached.
‘But, Renoiera, what about the onyx in their house? It knows all the spells the Hollow Ones have ever performed.’
‘I’m not afraid of that house. Not any more.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I believe I can get Rhode out.’ I shook my head, mostly talking to myself, and continued: ‘I should have known that Fire hadn’t failed me. Justin had to be harnessing his power from somewhere. Magic has to be stored and created, it can’t just be summoned endlessly. The ring is his power source.’
I slid my hand into my pocket, and Laertes’s paper bit at my skin.
Rain lightly smacked the leaves outside.