The Bonding Ritual (Girls Wearing Black: Book Four) (2 page)

But that was the old Kim, the one who thought she would be immortal someday. The new Kim was going to have to learn respect for her elders. She would have to play the game the way everyone else in town played it. Phony smiles, fake laughs, soft handshakes,
oh-don’t-you-look-nice-today-I-could-just-murder-you-you-fucking-bag-of-bones-but-instead-I’ll-smile-and-laugh-ha-ha-ha-ha.

“It’s nice to be here,” Kim said, quietly.

“Shall we begin the tour?” said Edith.

“I can hardly wait,” said Kim.

Edith led them to the living room, where the walls were covered in oil paintings that showed dead bodies lying in pools of blood.

“The Purgatory House had once been a residence for honored guests at Thorndike,” Edith said. “As you know, a school like this receives many visitors. Lecturers from other institutions, dignitaries from overseas, guests of Daciana and the clan…”

Edith’s high-pitched voice, coming from her rail-thin body, made Kim think of a squeaky oboe. She had to walk away from Edith and get some space between her ears and that voice. While Edith talked, Kim ambled along the perimeter of the room, looking at the paintings.

“Guests of the clan needed a place to stay when they came to town, and a quaint house on the Thorndike campus was just perfect,” Edith continued.

Kim didn’t shy away from the violence in the paintings, much as she wanted to. She wouldn’t give her father the satisfaction of seeing her weak again. She would stare down these portraits as if the events at Renata’s house had never happened. As if she was still in charge.

Every
painting showed an eighteen-year-old girl in a white dress. The girls were on their backs, the top halves of their dresses soaked in blood, their necks torn open.

Underneath each painting was a placard listing the girl and the vampire who killed her.

Melanie Efram, killed by Lena Trang, 1984.

Jacqueline Harri
s, killed by Melissa Mayhew, 1958.

Veronica Smith,
killed by Bernadette Paiz, 1970.

“In fact, until 1954,” Edith went on, “if you asked a Thorndike Student to name this building where you now stand, they would have called this place, ‘The Guest House.’ It wasn’t until the strange ending of Coronation in 1953 that Daciana decided to repurpose this home and christen it with its marvelous name. Please, come this way and have a look at the painting over the fireplace.”

Kim did as Edith asked, ambling to the rear wall and the painting hanging front and center. The placard under that painting said,
Donna Stallworth, killed by Steffy Esparza, 1953.

“Like all the ladies in these portraits,” Edith said, “Donna Stallworth was a Coronation contestant, meaning she danced…well, you understand what that means better than I.”

“Yes, I do,” said Kim. Edith was about to describe how, at the Homecoming Masquerade, every girl wearing black dances with Sergio, and he persuades her to see the contest through to the very end.

Never once will you have any doubts about seeing this contest through to the end, no matter the outcome
, Sergio had said to Kim that night. It was such a simple conversation. He spoke the truth so clearly, with so much strength. There was no fighting it. It made Kim want immortality for herself all the more.
You will now make a promise to me
, Sergio had said.
If you happen to lose this contest, you will do so with grace and dignity. You will abide all the traditions of Coronation, including the walk into the cage, should that walk be yours to make. Do you make this promise to me tonight?

I do
, Kim said to him, and she had the sense that never before or again would she speak words with such power. It was a promise that could not be broken, that would not be broken, no matter what.

“Once she lost the Coronation contest, Donna Stallworth knew exactly what she had to do and accepted her fate, but, sadly, her mother did not,” Edith said.

“I know the story,” said Kim.

Edith let out a little chuckle. “You’ll have to forgive me. You know, I give this tour every fall to the new politicians in town, but of course you are more aware of the history of Coronation than they are.”

“She has been taught,” said Galen. “And I think it would be good if she told the story to us. Go ahead, Kim. Tell us what happened the night Donna Stallworth died.”

Kim bit down on her tongue. Her father was making her so angry. He was doing it on purpose.
He’s trying to get a rise out of me so he can tear me down again. I won’t give him the satisfaction.

Calmly, she said, “Donna’s mother tied her up, put her in the back seat of their car, and made a run for Canada. They were all the way to Niagara Falls when Do
nna slipped loose from the rope holding her wrists. From the back seat, Donna used the rope to strangle her mother. She left her mother’s corpse on the side of the road and drove all the way back to Potomac to go to prom. She walked into the cage and bared her neck for Steffy Esparza, who killed her.”

“That was a lovely retelling of an important piece of our history,” said Edith. “If I may, I’d like to add one detail. Donna was twenty minutes late to prom that night. For a short time, it appeared there would be no victim for the new immortal. Daciana found it to be incredibly distasteful. New immortals are so very hungry after they are first made. Daciana swore that never again would the Coronation winner have to wait. And that is why we have the Purgatory House. Beginning the year after Donna Stallworth’s tardy arrival to prom, and continuing every year since, the loser of Coronation comes here as soon as the results are final.
The Purgatory House is a place where the new immortal’s first meal is kept safe and secure, and is a retreat where a girl facing her final day on this earth can rest and reflect.”

Edith’s words hung in the air for a minute,
then she said in a chipper voice, “Shall we continue the tour?”

For the next hour, Kim suffered through Edith’s nasal, squawking voice as she explained all the traditions of
the Purgatory House. Like everything else about Coronation, the final hours of the loser’s life were governed by rituals that had developed over the decades, like the white dress she wore when she died, one that contrasted the black of her immortal killer, and also turned bright red with her own blood. Or the adornments on her outfit when she died—items the girl hand-picked to honor the contest, the school, and the clan.

Edith was full of stories about the odd eccentricities of these girls in their final hours. Many of them demanded (and received) conjugal visits from the boys they were dating. Others made lavish requests for final meals, and Thorndike worked hard to provide them with whatever they wanted. “Turkey dinners, leg of lamb, birthday cake…” Edith had a huge menu of final meals in her memory. “Last year’s loser asked for mincemeat pie. The year before the girl wanted a salami sandwich.”

“What would you ask for, Kim?” said Galen. “For your final meal.”

“Nothing,” Kim said. “I’d go hungry.”

“Not an unpopular choice,” said Edith. “Many girls refuse their last meal.”

“Are we done here?” said Kim.

“Not until we’ve looked outside and spoken about the walk,” said Galen.

“Yes, of course,” said Edith. “Follow me.”

She took them back across the living room and into the back bedroom of the house, showing them to a door that led outside.

“The girl knows implicitly when it’s time for her to begin the walk,” Edith said. “It never ceases to amaze me. At precisely
ten-fifty-nine, the girl walks through this door.”

Edith pulled on the flower-covered door, which opened to a narrow garden pathway, with shrubbery on both sides and a vine-covered trellis overhead.

“In May, this pathway becomes one of the most beautiful places on earth,” Edith said. “Flowers in bloom on all sides of you, the moon twinkling down through the vines above. All by herself, with no one telling her what to do or where to go, the victim walks along this path and pulls open the door on the other side.”

On the other side was the back entrance to Thorndike’s old gymnasium, which remained standing for a single purpose. Thorndike no longer had a basketball or volleyball team, and there was no P.E. requirement at the school.

Always and forever, an integral part of the school’s most important tradition, the old gym at Thorndike remained standing because that was where prom was held. Where prom had always been held.

“Shall we make the walk?” Edith said. “It’s part of your tour package.”

“No,” said Galen. “Let’s just stand here and allow Kim to imagine what it would be like to take those final steps, knowing that on the other side, she’s about to become food for one of her classmates.”

Kim closed her eyes and crunched down the anger raging inside her. She felt like this morning’s events would permanently change the relationship with her father. The fact that he took her here, subjected her to this—she would never forgive him.

“Think about it, Kim,” Galen said. “You walk along this path, and at the other end, you open the door and look in at the cage.”

Kim was trying with all her might not to imagine it, and failing. She could see the cage. She knew the cage. Two carpet walkways leading into it. The victim walks a purple carpet into one side of the cage. The immortal walks a red carpet into the other. Her eyes closed, Kim found herself lost in this vision she wanted so desperately not to see. She was there, in the moment, looking up at Samantha Kwan, newly immortal, fangs bared,
drool coming out of her mouth.

“I smell smoke,” she said.

“I’m sorry, what?” said Edith.

“Smoke,” said Kim. She opened her eyes, which burned with irritation. “Something’s burning.”

It was like a campfire, or maybe a wood-burning stove. She was glad for it, whatever it was. The smell had tickled her nostrils, irritated her eyes, and yanked her right out of the horrid vision of the cage at prom.

“I smell it too,” said Galen.

He stepped down onto the grass pathway and began looking around.

“Over there,” he said, pointing westward, where a gray plume was rising above the tree line.

“Oh my, would you look at that?” said Edith. “I hope everyone’s okay.”

“Probably just a big burnout,” Galen said. “How many immortals were at the party last night?”

“Just Renata,” said Kim.

“Maybe more of them gathered after the rest of you went home,” said Galen. “I bet they piled all their kills into the cremation furnace at once.”

“You think so?” said Edith.

“Has to be,” said Galen. “That’s a lot of smoke, and Renata’s house
is the only thing over there.”

After helping her kill Falkon Dillinger, Sergio Alonzo led Daciana Samarin out of the abandoned mineshaft where she had been held prisoner for months. They emerged in a moonlit mountain forest. Daciana took a tentative step onto the snow-covered ground. She was disoriented. Sergio saw it in her face. She had no idea where she was or how she arrived here.

“You’re in the Italian Alps,” Sergio said. “We’re not far from Falkon’s villa.”

He took her hand and started down the mountainside. He thought about the hours before daylight, the servants still in Falkon’s home, many of them ripe. Daciana could eat, regain her stamina, and tomorrow night, they could fly back to America.

He hadn’t given the slightest thought to the question Daciana was bound to ask. When it came, it caught him completely by surprise.

“How did you know to look for me way out here?”

The answer to this question came quickly to his mind, where it froze in place, making no effort to push its way out through his lips.

I didn’t know to look for you in the mountains. In fact, I wasn’t looking for you at at all. I was looking for Nicky Bloom. I k
new she would be here because she shared her memory with me and I saw a vision of a mountain villa you and I visited two hundred and fifty years ago.

“I became suspicious of Renata,” he said. “I followed her. She led me here.”

And just like that, Sergio broke a five-centuries-long streak of total honesty with Daciana Samarin.

It was thrilling, maybe
even a bit gut wrenching, to lie to her. His maker, his friend, the woman who tried to bond with him once and failed, who was meant to kill him when she made him immortal and their bond didn’t take, who took pity on him instead, the woman who took him into her care, much in the way a human might take a pet, who allowed him to tag along with her for centuries, who allowed him to be “the third wheel” when she bonded with others, who took him to America and made him the centerpiece of a plan to create the largest, most powerful vampire clan on earth—this woman heard the words come out of his mouth and she believed them. With just a few sentences, Sergio had created an alternate reality for his maker, one he would almost certainly be required to nurture and maintain with more lies in the future.

But it had to be this way, didn’t it? Daciana couldn’t know
that it was Nicky who drew him here. She wouldn’t understand why Sergio was so interested in the girl.