After Daybreak (19 page)

Chapter 24

T
he next morning, I awake in Victor’s bed, his warm body nestled against mine. I feel so incredibly close to him, closer than I’ve ever felt to anyone.

I get up and put on a silk robe, the red double V stitched into it, and a pair of slippers. I leave Victor to rest and head down the hall. Hopefully Eustace will be in the dining room and I can get some breakfast.

The euphoria of last night fades slightly when a cold draft comes down the hall. I quicken my pace, my feet slapping noisily on the tile. I can’t shake the feeling that I’m running from something. Certainly not from Victor, and
certainly
not from last night. But . . .

A sudden fear clenches me and I turn around—but there’s nothing except emptiness. I shake my head, trying to get rid of this strange aura. The hallways seem darker, the statues more looming, the walls moving in. It’s like Murdoch Valentine has reclaimed the manor and transformed it back to what it once was.

Maybe some coffee and juice will help settle me.

I open the door into the dining room. The curtains on the windows are open and light is pouring in. I’ve never seen it like this, so bright and revealed. The colors have changed dramatically under the sun, and artwork on the walls, once entirely hidden in shadows, now dominates.

That’s when I realize why fear is gripping me. It’s too quiet. In fact, it’s dead silent. None of the servants are walking about, completing their daily tasks. No one dusting, no one cleaning up, no one rushing about with laundry. It’s been nothing but the soft sound of my feet on the floor.

I go over and begin shutting the curtains, wondering if the other vampires will praise me for blocking out that dreadful sun.
Ha.
That’s probably the word Eustace will use. “Dreadful.” He’s so cute in a superpolite old-world-servant kind of way. I wonder if he ever—

Crunch.

I stop. There’s broken glass beneath my slippers. Slowly lifting my gaze, I see the window it once belonged to is shattered.

It’s so strange, this tiny destruction in an otherwise perfect room.

I turn around and quickly, very quickly, walk out of the dining room. Something’s not right. I need to talk to Victor. I’m nearly at the end of the hallway when something stops me. A song. A piano playing from the music room. The melody is soft and sad, as if scored on the coffin of a dead loved one.

I creep toward the piano room. The windows on the side of the hallway are wide open, the thick drapes pulled back, and the thin silk curtains waving like ghosts from another plane, reaching out to grab the light as though it may bring them back to life.

The melody is so beautiful, and I’d love to rest my head on the door frame and listen, afraid to disrupt the performer. But when I turn into the room, I truly am sorry that I disrupted him.

The piano player continues striking the notes, playing to his audience of dead servants splayed on the ground with throats gouged out. Some are sitting in chairs like grotesque marionettes, their eyes wide open but not seeing the musician at his keys. Others lie on the floor, their limbs intertwined, placed without care. Eustace is among them, glassy eyes looking at me as though pleading for one last chance to straighten the glassware before finally retiring.

And the music keeps playing. Even as the man turns his head toward me, his fingers never leave the ivory keys, tapping them with an unnatural ease. His eyes are black through and through, and if I look closely, I can see my distorted reflection in them. He smiles, or maybe he can’t help but spread his lips wide because his teeth are so large and fanged.

One of the Chosen. That’s what I’m staring at. Just like my brother, though nothing like him. Whereas good always resided deep in Brady’s heart, there’s nothing like that in this vampire.

He pounds the piano with all his fingers as a final crescendo, then slowly rises.

I run.

I have no idea what he plans; all I know is that if he wanted me dead, I’d already be dead. I can’t fight him. So I just keep running. I take sharp turns, hoping that he’s lost sight of me and knowing that he could easily find himself trapped in this maze of hallways and doors. I climb the stairs, not daring to look behind me because what good would it do if I saw him?

Victor’s door is in sight and I push myself, feeling my feet slamming against the cold-hardened floors but not caring about the pain that sends shocks through my body. I practically break the door in with my shoulder, turning the knob just enough for it to swing open. Once inside, I shut it and lock it.

“Dawn!” Victor says, no grogginess, no sleep in his voice. He’s awake instantly, as though the sun has already set. Instead it still has many hours left in the sky.

“Victor, the Chosen, they’re here!”

His vampire speed carries him to the door in a single blurred motion. He’s pressed against it and I keep quiet while he listens.

“How many?” he asks.

“I just saw one, but, oh God, Victor, all the servants are dead.” Poor Eustace. He didn’t deserve to be slaughtered. None of them did. But I have to hold off mourning until we’re out of here.

Victor gets dressed in jeans and shirt while I watch the door. He places several stakes in his belt, then it’s my turn to change and arm myself. I make it quick.

“Ready?” he asks, leaning against the door.

“Yes.”

He opens it slowly, calmly, and steps outside. I follow right behind him, watching his back as he moves forward. I keep one hand on his shoulder, my head turned, the hallway lengthening behind us.

It takes us several minutes, and every few steps Victor stops to listen. I gain my own courage through his bravery, and we feel like a single unit as we slowly move down the maze of hallways.

“What’s the plan?” I whisper.

“Get out of here. If we can make it to the garage, we can take the car.”

Too bad it’s on the other side of the manor, giving the Chosen plenty of time to spring an attack, which I’m sure is coming. I’m also sure that they’ll take their time, stalk their prey, just like every other vampire. No, worse than the others. The Chosen are battling their own insanity, and every one I’ve seen shares the lust not only for vampire blood, but for the sadism of the hunt as well.

We try to keep our pace slow enough to mask the sound of our feet but eventually give in to a near sprint. We’re on the second floor and begin crossing the great entryway, the massive marbled stairs leading to the front door in sight. But as soon as we enter the threshold of that expansive room, terror strikes.

Victor growls and jumps back, sunlight pouring in across the floor. Our backs against the wall, we look out at the unfamiliar sight. All of the windows, many stretching up from floor to ceiling, have had their drapes slashed and torn down, the glass shattered. The front door itself, once a mighty oaken slab, is torn asunder, resting on the ground in pieces of splintered bark. The great wolf’s-head knocker, the symbol of the Valentine family, lies helplessly in the sun, staring up at the unwelcome guests who have caused all of this.

Three of them. Three Chosen. One in the doorway, his dark silhouette sharpened by the blazing sun. His friends, one in each window, sit and stare like this is some casual gathering and the guests have just arrived. They begin laughing softly.

“You are not welcome in the House of Valentine!” Victor shouts.

“You hear that?” the one in the doorway asks, obviously the leader. “We aren’t welcome. Well, we better make ourselves welcome.”

They all start laughing like hyenas, thoroughly enjoying the strength the sun provides them and the weakness it causes the Old Family Valentine. No doubt in their minds Victor is the symbol of all they hate. Born a powerful vampire, he started the war and caused the deaths of so many. To them, all Old Family deserve to die horribly. All except for their savior: Sin.

“Get to the garage,” Victor whispers to me. “Take the car, I’ll hold them off.”

“Victor, no!”

“Just do it!”

“You might want to rethink that plan, pal,” the Chosen leader says, his vampire ears overhearing even our faintest whispers. “Show him, John.”

John, the Chosen sitting in one of the windowsills, reaches behind him and pulls out a block of machinery, wires and tubes connected to it, and throws it across the room, where it lands with a loud thud, much heavier than it appears.

It’s a part to the car. I’m not sure which one, but looking up at Victor, I can tell it’s vital. Of course they wouldn’t let us escape that easily. The thrill of the hunt. They let me run to him. Why not? They had disabled the car as soon as they arrived, maybe before even dealing with the servants. We were never leaving this place.

“Why are you here?” Victor asks, having retreated away from the direct light of the sun. I can sense his uncomfortable stance, though. He isn’t used to seeing it, and he certainly isn’t used to fighting near it, if this all comes to a clash.

“For Eris,” the Chosen says.

“Then take her and be gone.”

“Ha! We weren’t here to take her. We were here to kill her.”

“Why?” I ask.

“Once she was captured, we knew she’d talk. We were under orders to take her out. So we did. Catching you two here, though, is a bonus.”

“Is Sin not man enough to fight us himself?” I ask. “He has to send his dogs to do it for him?”

They laugh again, deep and demonic, like the world was a cruel joke that they had orchestrated all by themselves.

“Sin wants results,” the leader says. “That’s all. He doesn’t care who kills Victor so long as it gets done. We thought you’d have retreated to the city walls by now. But no, your arrogance knows no bounds. The Day Walkers are here, the Thirst is in your countryside, and still you remain in your stone house that falls so easily in the daylight. Sin will be very pleased to hear of Victor’s death and your capture, Dawn.”

“I’d rather die than go with you!”

“That won’t be a choice you get to make, girl. You may have thought your boyfriend would protect you no matter what. Well, you’re about to see how wrong you are. You will see the true power of the Chosen. You will understand why
we
are the next evolutionary step.”

The Chosen up high in their windows jump down, landing twenty feet below with a loud thud, nothing like the soft landing of most vampires. But they aren’t fazed by their jarring impact, and as they approach, their silhouettes fill out and I see the monsters as they truly are: hideous. Black eyes and jaws lined with asymmetric fangs. No beauty, no subtlety in their movements. Nothing but death and destruction.

They don’t draw their stakes; they have no need for them. Instead, they raise their hands, the fingers having lengthened and the nails becoming like claws. All it would take is a single jab, a quick strike, and one of those claws could puncture a vampire’s heart. Victor’s heart.

“We can’t outrun them,” I say, drawing my stake. Victor does the same. “But maybe we can—”

A blur of motion, black eyes and bloodied fangs moving up the stairs. I can’t tell if it’s one or two or all of them. It’s heading toward me, so I hold out my stake, adrenaline replacing any training that I had. But my stake never connects; rather it’s Victor who appears in front of me, stopping the Chosen with his own strike. I don’t know if it’s fatal or not because the next moment I feel another attack coming.

By the time I turn to face him, it’s too late. The Chosen slams into me and I’m catapulted off my feet and down the stairs. I watch Victor and his quarry grow smaller as I’m carried away from them.

Everything slows down for me, and I hope that this fall is too great for me to survive. I don’t want to be knocked out, I want to be killed. If this is truly it, I’d rather die than see Victor meet the same fate, and I’d rather die than ever see the smile in Sin’s eyes.

When I hit the ground, all the wind escapes from my lungs and I struggle to bring it back in. Short gasps that grab at nothing. I try to get up, and the Chosen, John, helps me by squeezing my neck and lifting me high. My vision is shattered, as though I were looking through shards of glass and mirrors. I want Victor to appear behind John and ram a stake through him, but I can still see him fighting at the top of the stairs, which seem so far away. Especially because we’re separated by a great swath of sunlight. Victor is young enough, strong enough that the sun will burn him slowly as his body continually reheals. But the pain will be debilitating, unimaginable.

John throws me across the room and I hit the far wall, the back of my head slamming brutally against it before my entire body slides to the ground in a heap. My stake is out of my hand, lying somewhere between him and me. I reach for another one, but it feels like all my bones are rebelling, and I’m slow to grab it. When I finally do, I barely have the strength to stand on wobbly legs.

The other two Chosen have tackled Victor and now hold him in the sunlight. Smoke rises from his body, making him look like a demon from hell, his fangs bared, teeth clenched, and anger stretched across his bleeding face. His legs begin to give out on him, his face scorched from the sun, red and splotchy; blood runs across the furrows on his face and chest, the razor claws of the Chosen having cut deep. Then John approaches him and the others let go. With a horrendous sound, he delivers a right hook to Victor’s temple, and the vampire I love falls to the ground.

The Chosen look at us. We must seem so pathetic in our beaten state. I search them, looking for any weakness. I can tell Victor’s done all that he can. Some of them, the leader included, bleed from wounds received, and one yelps as he dislodges a stake deep in his ribs, just below the heart. They’re weaker now, but far too powerful still.

“So this is where it all ends, Victor,” the leader says. “In the sunlight.”

They laugh as one, preparing for their finale—when we all hear it. A roar in the distance. Something coming this way.

I look out the window and see the dust swirling into the air and, against the horizon, a black form taking shape. It’s bulky and cumbersome, flying along as though unsure if all four wheels are supposed to be on the ground.