Secret Worlds (67 page)

I shook my head. In the human world, genocide wasn’t acceptable. In the world I knew, people at least felt bad for hurting others or feared repercussions.

But not here.

***

SOMEONE LAUGHED outside my cell door, and I shuddered. Marcus. I’d spent the last few hours sinking into the recesses of my mind. Already dead. With him near, the elemental thoughts quieted, no longer accessible.
Damn disabler.
There had to be some way around his gift-thwarting ability.

He unlocked the chamber and strolled in. “I sensed something about you that night at Club Flesh,” he said casually. “Not quite human…and yet, not quite one of us.”

I flinched one shoulder in a defensive shrug.

“Now I know what it is. Your soul doesn’t belong to you. You’ve merely
inherited
it. How easy then to sacrifice it for something more.” He paused a moment, then added in awe, “A forever girl. Yes, the Queen has told us all about you. I’m always telling her what a shame it is we don’t keep more Strigoi with us, if for nothing other than reading auras on our behalf. We would have invited you here sooner, had we known.”

When I didn’t respond, he pulled from his pocket the matchbox Thalia had taken from me earlier. “You like fire?”

I pressed my lips together.

“That’s okay. I don’t mind doing the talking.” He flipped my box of matches in his hand. “Did you know, in some parts of the world, they used to burn witches?”

He looked at me, as if expecting a response. Or maybe my silence was all he expected.

“Yep, burned them.” He drew his eyebrows together, glanced up, and tapped his index finger against his cheek. The gesture looked rehearsed, as though all this was a game to him. My stomach churned.

“Canada. That’s it,” he said, nodding. “They definitely burned witches in Canada.”

“Idiot,” I rasped.

Suddenly, he was crouched at my side, lifting a cup of water to my mouth and helping me take a sip. “There she is.” He patted my cheek a couple times before standing up again. “Denmark.”

I swallowed. Why was he telling me all this?

“I was there,” he said, his interest returning to the matches in hand. “In Denmark, I mean. I was there when they burned the witches. Have you ever smelled the burning flesh of a human?” He laughed. “They thought they were burning witches, anyway. Thought they were burning the Strigoi and Cruor and all other elemental beings. But here we are. It was only the innocent who died. This is why we need our wars. This is why Callista needs you. You wouldn’t want any more innocents to die, would you?”

“Innocents
are
dying.” Did he really not get this? “Your Maltorim is the one killing them.”

He set the box of matches on the floor. I didn’t need to read his mind to know he was mocking me.

“See you soon, Sophia,” he sang as he left the room.

***

MARCUS RETURNED what might have been days later. The ropes were digging valleys into my chest, arms, wrists, shins, and ankles. I gritted my teeth against the dull, never-ending ache around the edges of the rope where my skin had swelled. My dried tears stiffened on my face, and snot ran down to my lips. I hated how pathetic I must have looked.

He pulled a table and chair into the room and sat with a plate of food. He cut a piece of steak and bit it off the fork.

“You like steak?” he asked, chewing.

I didn’t reply.

He spit out the steak and jumped to his feet, toppling the table over. The plate shattered by my feet, startling me. “Do. You. Like. Steak?”

My heart rate ratcheted up, and I couldn’t stop shaking.

Immediately, he calmed. “Forget it. I used to like steak.” He clasped his hands behind his back and paced the room. Then he was kneeling in front of me again, shards of the broken plate cutting into his knees. “Life as a Cruor is not so bad.” He grinned. “Kind of fun.”

I tried to appear unaffected but likely failed to grand proportions. “These killings won’t help your cause.”

“Won’t it, though? Tell me: would you give up America?”

“I don’t see what—”

“Do you know
nothing
of history?” He was up, pacing again. “Your kind killed the Indians so you could have your country. Your freedom. We kill the dual-natured so we can have our lives. You are asking us to give up our very existence.” He stopped, snapping his glare toward me. “You think we haven’t tried another way? What do you suggest?”

He didn’t wait for me to respond—just resumed pacing. “Do you not realize that many of the humans killed over the years were killed
because of
the dual-breeds? Should we allow them to expose our kind—destroy the perfect balance and risk the lives of humans and Earth itself?”

“This has nothing to do with
Earth
,” I said.

These people were all brainwashed. Humans hadn’t been killed because of the dual-breeds. How could the Maltorim know so much about science, and still be blind to basic scientific truths? Had no one told them correlation doesn’t equal causation? Had they not been able to figure that out for themselves?

“You may not see now,” Marcus said, “but this is an absolute truth. It’s everywhere, all the time. Your ability to understand is irrelevant.”

“Steven Robiner,” I whispered. I was fairly certain this wasn’t what Mr. Robiner had in mind when he was discussing his philosophy.

“So you are familiar?”

“Hardly with your understanding.”

Marcus smirked. “Given your
situation
, we will have to agree to disagree.” He turned to stare at the wall.

Desperately, I pushed for access to his mind, but he’d completely disabled my ability.

“I was trying to…what’s the word? Relate?” He walked up beside me and caressed my cheek with the crook of his finger, his skin cold and abrasive. From someone else, the gesture might have been soothing, but from him it was repulsive. “Callista wants to turn you. This will be much easier if you agree.”

“No.”

“I figured you’d say that. I might be able to help you, though.” He lit a match and grasped my wrist. “If you want to be turned, I can give you some anesthetics for this part.”

This couldn’t be happening
.

“Since you’ll no longer age, it helps to remove fingerprints first.” Still holding the match between his forefinger and thumb, he fanned three of his fingers—no prints. “See? Smooth as silk. Humans cannot track us.”

Maybe I could distract him.
“Oh?” My voice cracked. “I didn’t know that.”

He smiled. “Stumbled on the idea by accident. Two birds, one stone.”

“Why don’t you tell me more about it?”

“Sure.”

I breathed out a slow, heavy breath as the match burned down to his fingers. He tossed it to the ground. Sulfur rose from the concrete in a meandering stream of smoke.

He lit another. “I’ll tell you while we finish up here.”

His words sucked away my hope, and I gasped, the air in the room sharp at the bottom of my lungs. The fire seared my fingertips, and I screamed. I screamed and I heard myself screaming, but there was only blinding pain. I tried to summon my power, tried to focus my energy on reversing the fire, to use it against him. But I had nothing left.

MY BURNT FINGERTIPS still seared with pain, but I had no tears left to cry. A chalky, sour film coated my lips and tongue, and vomit drenched the front of my shirt. Marcus had set the rope on fire earlier, letting it burn my flesh before dousing and retying me, but now I needed to summon my strength.

Maybe if I accepted their offer—if I joined them—I would be close enough to show them another way, show them they didn’t need these genocides.

How many of my thoughts were born from logic and how many from fear? Where did my beliefs lay? Was I just as bad as the Maltorim—just as bad as everything I’d ever hated?

Whatever you do, fight
.

How I hated that sentiment right now. I didn’t feel like fighting, but I didn’t feel like dying, either.

With a deep breath to steel myself against the pain, I fought against the rope. I whimpered through my teeth as I wriggled one of my hands free.

Marcus would be returning to burn an answer out of me. Quickly I worked to free my other hand, certain I couldn’t take any more. I had to at least fight back, at least try to stop him.

As the rope fell away, I eased to my feet. Clothing, seared straight through in parts and stuck to the pus of my wounds in others, pulled away from my skin as I moved. I gritted my teeth to keep silent, but a pained hiss still escaped.

Damn it
.

I tried the door first, not that I was expecting it to fly right open for me. And it didn’t. I turned around and surveyed the room. The word ‘disgusting’ summed up the cell pretty well. I began feeling around the walls for some kind of special stone like what Ivory had used at Club Flesh or what Adrian had used outside the Maltorim’s walls. No luck there.

I leaned against the back wall, pulling in some slow breaths as I attempted to slow my heart rate and clear my mind. That didn’t work out so great either.

As I pushed away from the wall, something shifted, and I nearly lost my balance. I looked back at the wall only to see a small crack between the stones. It’d slid open.

I pushed again, but it budged only enough to show some kind of latch holding the passageway shut. I didn’t have time for this. I grabbed the chair I’d been bound to only moments before and jammed one of the legs in the opening, then thrust the chair sideways. The sliding door budged a little more. The latch had ripped out of the crumbling concrete, but the top portion still held fast.

When I rammed the chair again, the latch broke off completely and the door slid open enough for me to squeeze my way out. I had limped halfway down the hall when a hand clasped over my mouth. My eyes went wide.

“Quiet, now,” said a female voice. Though her voice was soft and warm, I remained guarded and unsure. “We don’t have time for your efforts. Ye must get out of ‘ere immediately, and I’ll see to it. But please,
keep quiet
.”

Everything about this woman was petite except for her large, ice-blue eyes. Black hair swept down to the middle of her back, and she smelled of rain and strawberries. She looked no older than sixteen, freckles spotted over the bridge of her nose and fronts of her cheekbones. But her voice sounded older, matured, and from another time and place entirely.

“We’ve little time. Can ye walk?”

“I…think so.” The words scraped my throat.

The young woman draped my arm over her shoulder and led me to a dark closet down the hall. She bit into her wrist and held it to my mouth.

“Drink.”

The warmth of her blood surprised me. She didn’t seem to be in any pain as I fed from her, but she must have been a Cruor, because my pain quickly ebbed. There was some kind of marking on her neck, peeking out from the collar of her dress top. A tattoo?

“We’ve been waiting for ye,” she said. She handed me clothes. “Change quickly.”

I peeled the old clothes off the rapidly healing burn wounds and hurriedly dressed. “Why are you helping me?”

“The children will explain,” she said, already pushing me back into the hall. “Now, please, ‘urry.”

The children?

Blood and mucus seeped from the thick, rope-shaped valleys on my arms, chest, and shins, sticking against the otherwise soothing clean clothes. With each step, the wounds contracted.

“What about—”

“Shhh. Listen carefully. My name is Ophelia. Things are not as they seem; I am not truly aligned with the Maltorim. I was sent ‘ere for ye, many, many years ago. Things are amiss. Ye will fix that, but not today. For now, we must get ye away.”

Ophelia? Hadn’t that been the name of the young woman Ivory had turned in exchange for the Ankou magic that would protect her from the sun?

“You know Ivory?” I asked, though I was almost certain.

Her brow furrowed. “Who?”

“Lenore—her name was Lenore when you knew her,” I said, thinking to the memories I’d stolen from my once-friend.

Ophelia nodded. “Now, please, we must move along.”

She stopped short and slid open another section of wall, revealing Charles and Adrian. My heart fell, and I started to run toward Charles, but Ophelia grasped my shoulder, holding me back until the men stepped into the hallway.

“You’re alive,” Charles said, his voice barely a whisper.

Adrian closed the cell’s back entrance. When Ophelia released me, I ran to Charles and hugged him, sinking into his arms.

“You shouldn’t have come,” he murmured against my hair. “Are you all right?”

I nodded, but I didn’t know if or when I’d be right again. I just wanted to go home.

He held me at arm’s length, his dark eyes brimming with regret. “We need to leave.”

I followed his gaze to the end of the passage, where Ophelia stood between two children, waving for us to follow.

The children were almost identical, save for their opposing genders. Both were no older than six or seven, with the same black hair—the girl’s long, and the boy’s short—and the same pale skin. Their black button eyes fixated on me. I tried not to stare as we hurried to the Liettes’ cell.

“Go without us,” Charles’ mom said when we arrived. “Protect the children.”

Charles shook his head. “We didn’t go through all this to leave you two behind.”

Henry dipped his head forward to look past his wife. “Son, listen to your mother. We’ll never make it—not now.”

Charles stormed into the room and lifted Valeria. She looked even younger tonight, a tiny slip of a woman draped over her son’s arms. He glared at Adrian. “Are you going to help, or not?”

Henry waved his hand, as if to ward off any help, and wobbled to his feet.

Valeria’s darkly-tanned skin had paled, and her auburn hair had lost all its bounce and luster. Henry’s skin had turned sallow. Almost translucent.

We wove through the passage until we reached a stairway leading up to a set of double doors.

“I can guide ye no further,” Ophelia said. “There’ll be a car waiting outside the cemetery walls.”

“Thank you,” I whispered.