The Coldest Girl in Coldtown (39 page)

“Ah,” said Lucien. “How sweet. I have been terribly curious—how did you manage to catch his eye? Ladies tried, but he was so often distracted, always busy putting down outbreaks and sharpening his knives. All that hunting made him a little jittery, I think.
Rather off-putting for all but the most dauntless ladies. Are you dauntless, my dear?”

Tana did not know what to say to that. “I have no idea.”

It’s all some wicked game to him, she realized. Getting under her skin. Passing on a story to her that might or might not be true, but would rattle her and keep her off balance. Lucien liked to be the endless drip of water wearing on someone’s soul. Lucien liked to watch people snap.

“I suppose it doesn’t matter,” he said, throwing himself into the chair opposite Tana. “What matters is that you managed to make him care about you. And now you’re going to get everything you ever dreamed of—becoming a vampire, becoming famous. Not bad. For an opportunistic little slut, you sure landed in clover.”

Tana flinched the casual way the insult rolled off his tongue.

“Oh, no. I congratulate you. Truly. If I had a drink in my hand, I would toast my admiration.”

“Good thing I don’t have one,” said Tana. “Because I’d throw it in your face.”

He tossed back his head and laughed. “I just love mortals.”

“I bet,” she told him.

He acknowledged her words with a nod. “It’s such a relief not to have to hide anymore. Before the infection spread, we were already known by our mistakes.
Vampyr
in the Netherlands,
upir
in the Ukraine,
vrykolaka
in the Balkan region,
penangglan
on the Malay Peninsula. If we’d been better at hiding, there would have been no words for us, but there is a word for vampire in every corner of the world.”

“And no black cloaks with red linings—well, maybe still those, but definitely not the kind with stand-up collars.” Tana should probably stop talking like that, but she needed to prove to both of them that she wasn’t scared, even if she was.

He ignored her, unwilling to be baited and definitely unsmiling. “And now the world sees our true faces. It is remade by us into something glorious, something where men aspire to be immortal. I like this world and I would keep it moving forward, unlike the ancient vampires. Their dream of returning to the old ways is like the Romanovs’ dream of a return to power. It won’t happen, no matter how much they cackle about it in their crypts and catacombs. But with the Spider nearly to my gates, our interests align.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Whatever the Spider did to Gavriel seems to have unhinged his mind. What they used to call
manie sans délire
—insanity without delusion. He’s broken and we are without the time to put him back together. Help me control him and I will help you. No more making you drink cold, dead blood in front of a cage full of delicious girls and boys. I’ll turn you, Tana. I’ll show you how to be a vampire the likes of which the world has seldom known.”

“You will?” she asked, thinking of her newly sharp teeth, of the way her dizzying hunger had deserted her since she’d fed. Lucien must know what was happening to her, how the vampire’s blood was making her stronger, but he was obviously pretending he didn’t.
Cold, dead, yucky blood, don’t drink any more of that!
Sabotage disguised as kindness.

“In Paris, there was once a legendary delicacy, now outlawed.”
Lucien was saying. “A bird called an ortolan, an unremarkable-looking creature with a grayish-green head and a yellow body, is caught alive and force-fed millet until it grows fat. Then it’s drowned in Armagnac. Finally, the bird is roasted and eaten whole, bones and beak and all, while the diner wears a napkin over his head. Some say that’s to keep in the aroma of the dish; others say it’s to hide the diner’s face—and his shame—from heaven.”

“That’s cruel,” Tana said.

“Yes,” said Lucien. “Truly. And yet even that is nothing to the fineness of human blood. Do you know what it is to drink it down, hot and metallic, pumped into your mouth by the frantic heartbeats of a quivering body? It’s half like spitting in the face of god, half like being him.”

Tana shook her head, hunger rising despite herself. “You make it sound pretty good.”

“Well,” Lucien said, with a smell smile. “If there’s anything that spits in the face of god, I’m generally for it.”

“What do I have to do?” she asked.

“Just make sure Gavriel sticks to the plan—
remembers
the plan, even. Decides he’ll live after all. Continues to recall that the Spider is our enemy and that I am his ally. Do you understand? You may not believe me, but I have loved him in my way. What happened to him is my fault. I bear that responsibility, but it will be easier to bear with the Spider dead. And it will be easier for him to bear what’s happened to him with you at our side. Since I want his happiness, I also must want yours.”

Tana nodded slowly. “I’ll do what I can,” she told him.

He was standing closer than she’d expected; Tana hadn’t heard him move. She shuddered as his hand came up to cup her cheek. His fingers curled against her, tips pressing against the bone hard enough to bruise. “Good, good. We never know what we’re capable of until we try.”

CHAPTER 32

The devil tempts us not; ’tis we who tempt him,

Beckoning his skill with opportunity
.

—George Eliot

E
ight years before, Gavriel came apart.

First, the Spider cut open his belly.

Then he took out his guts and knotted them around the bars of his cage.

Ropy blue garlands.

They gouged out his pomegranate-seed eyes.

They fed him fouled blood and bile and his own skin.

They cut him with knives, flogged him with razor-tipped whips, and drove rusty nails into the soles of his feet.

When he healed, they did it again.

Until everything hurt all the time forever.

Pain so vast and terrible and huge it blotted out thought.

And so when he came back to himself, his memories were disjointed.

He’d ripped out someone’s throat, but he was no longer sure whose.

There’d been blood everywhere; he’d slipped in it, clotted like soured milk.

There was hair, too, a nest of it in a drain.

And he remembered who had urged on his tormentors, the face of the creature who smiled down at him.

I could tell you
, Gavriel thought.
I could give you someone else in my place.

Someone you’d like better.

Someone you’d hurt worse.

But no. They’d taken every other piece of him.

He would hold onto revenge.

It would be his fairy story, his lullaby, sung softly by flayed lips.

Off-key and deranged.

CHAPTER 33

A thinking woman sleeps with monsters.

—Adrienne Rich

T
ana walked down the hallway behind Lucien, past the oil paintings of landscapes in the French countryside and gory handprints. They came to a heavy oaken door. Lucien was reaching for the knob when the door opened wide.

Gavriel was framed in the opening. He had on the black jeans and black shirt he’d worn on their road trip, although they had a softness to them that suggested they’d been freshly laundered. His feet were bare. Stepping back, he waved them inside.

“See, I returned her,” Lucien said, giving Tana a push against the small of her back, so she was forced to stumble into the room. “Unharmed. Undebauched.”

Tana scowled. “You really are from another time, aren’t you?”

Ignoring her, Lucien crossed the threshold, closing the door behind him. “We need to talk, my dear.”

“All three of us?” Gavriel asked archly.

“She’s your guest. We should entertain her—and keep an eye on her. According to you, she’s killed two vampires in the span of a single day. Really, I should never have been left alone with her. She must be very dangerous.” Lucien’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. He drew out from a pocket a folding knife with a handle of bone and began to pick underneath his fingernails with the point, scraping out flakes of dried blood and bits of tissue. She noticed there was something wrong with the way his nails curved, as though his fingers were tapering into claws.

“You’re right. I never should have,” Gavriel said, turning to Tana with a half smile just for her.

More dangerous than daybreak.
She wondered if he remembered that he’d said those words. But right then, she didn’t feel dangerous at all. She felt revolted and very, very afraid.

She looked around the room, trying to get her bearings. The windows were the same gray glass and the sun still blazed outside, making them glow, although she no longer had a sense of time. It might have been late afternoon or early evening. On the floor, beside the bed, was a leather duffel, several knives spilling out of it. She wondered where Gavriel had stashed it before his confrontation with Lucien.

The room was large enough for the four-poster bed at its center and the settee along one wall, its upholstery a shining black patent leather. Above it hung a painting, a meticulous study of a human heart crawling with maggots on a silver plate. It reminded Tana of her art teacher, and she wondered suddenly if it could be one of his pieces.

She should take a picture and text it to Mr. Olson, she thought. But that just made her imagine Lucien and Gavriel posing on either side of it, glowering at each other, and from there, hysteria threatened to crawl up her throat and force a giggle out of her.

That was the worst part. She could plan and she could make herself keep going, but she couldn’t control when her brain overloaded on horror and threatened to shut down spectacularly, in a sputter of hysterical laughter. She felt as if she was teetering at the very edge of what she could handle; and if she started laughing now, she wouldn’t stop.

Lucien crossed the room and flopped down on the settee, sprawling out, showing exactly how comfortable he was in Gavriel’s bedroom. Which made sense, since they were, after all, in his home. He continued carving the underside of his nails with the knife, picking loose the last of what darkened them. The more she looked at him, the more she realized that some of his blond hair was stained with blood, too—toward the back of his head, where he probably couldn’t see it. On the cameras, it would read as nothing, a blur.