The Heart's Ashes (66 page)

“
It needs no justification, Ara. We do this because we can,
because you don’t belong in this world. You were never supposed to
exist. I’m just doing my job.”

“
Choice,” I said, throwing the full weight of definition
behind it.

He smiled simply. “Yes. I was given a choice. I chose to do
this. I
chose
to
be your torturer.”

The orange
glow of light flickered across the room, making dancing shadows on
the round roof. I looked to the stairs, knowing that, through the
arch, up, all the way up, they led to another world; bright, airy,
open, free. I imagined myself breaking the cuffs, stowing my sore
hand against my chest as I scampered up those stairs—away. Away
from all this.

“
Is that the worst?” I asked.

“
What?”

“
Is that...the worst pain?”

He laughed.
“Oh, Ara. So naive.” Jason dropped my hand, and the burn in my
finger eased. “No. It’s not. I have tests to perform. They will
hurt. And when I’m done with you, the Council gets to play with you
for a while. Once they finish—you go to Drake.”

Dread
tightened my chest. “Will he really use that thing on me?”

Jason looked
down at me. Despite him being the enemy, despite his hatred for me,
I still knew him and he still knew me. Familiarity was safe in this
room. I could pretend, as we talked, that he still cared. Pretend,
if nothing else.

“
I don’t know what he’ll do to you, Ara.” There was something
hidden in his tone, a kind of softness, pity maybe. “I only go on
experience and stories. And we all know what rumours are
like.”

I smiled
incredulously. “Well, I really don’t think he’ll be sitting down to
have a cup of frickin tea with me.”

Jason nodded,
the sympathy I thought I heard in his voice showing in his eyes. He
patted my hand and wandered away. “Okay. Let’s get things
started.”

I relaxed
back, forced by exhaustion. Seconds spread out to minutes. I
counted in my head when it felt like he’d been gone for too long,
doing who knows what behind me. But each shift or clank of a tool
was only a few seconds apart, despite feeling longer.

I closed my eyes. Cold. So cold. Like opening a freezer and
digging around to get the ice-cream at the back. The frost is
something that stays with you your whole life. That first time you
went to the snow, or the coldest winter day you can remember. But
when you look back, think about the icy chill around your knees and
the way the air made your cheeks even
feel
pink, you can smile. It was
good to remember being cold, to remember the feeling of going home
and putting on dry socks or pulling my hair off my face and
snuggling up somewhere comfy. Good memories.

At only
seventeen, I had already made more bad memories than good. Two
years later, that hadn’t changed. It seemed almost as if my mind
were designed to focus on things that, when I looked back, only
brought a pang of dread or that wake-in-the night feeling of being
trapped, unable to escape.

When I look
back on my first day in the snow, I see my dad and my mum. I see
them carefully sliding my blue glove off my pink little hand. They
placed a small ball of hard, icy, wet stuff there, and stood back
to watch my face. I hated it. I dropped it and wiped my hand on my
leg. Good memory.

But as soon as
a smile entered, Dad and Mum fizzled away, and the cold crept up,
causing goosebumps I didn’t want, forcing me to remember where I
was and how the cold got so bitter my body actually gave up shaking
for periods of time, too tired to even save its own life.

The squeaky,
rickety wobbling of a wheel rolled across stone, and a sound like
pebbles on a tin roof rattled as Jason positioned a table beside
me. My eyes shifted first, then my head, to look at it.

Oh God. I
looked away, shutting my eyes instantly.

A knot twisted
from my leg to my stomach, as a flash image remained; all I
recognised on that tray of sharp, twisty objects were scissors, a
scalpel and a needle. The rest, I’d never seen before, but had a
sickening feeling I’d find out exactly what they all do.

“
Jase?”

“
Stop talking.”

I fought for
my breath, keeping my eyes closed. “I know you hate me. But surely,
after all the time we spent together, surely you don’t want to do
this. Surely—” I looked back over the memory of soft Jason, his
kind touch, his lips, his kiss. “Surely you had to have felt
something for me.”

“
I said stop talking.”

The odd tone
in his voice forced my eyes open. “Jase?”

He sighed and
placed his hands on the sides of the cart, rolling it closer to the
chair. My heart broke at the sight of the smooth skin, golden,
covering fingertips that had gently tickled my spine, tracing over
my collarbones, smoothing over my hips as his lips, his teeth,
gently caressed my neck, kissing me in curved lines around my face.
My betrayal to David went so much deeper than just the actions I
took with this man, because in those dreams, despite denying it, I
felt for him—felt for Jason, and I know, I just know he felt for
me.

I looked up
from the cart into Jason’s tightly-shut eyes. He turned his head
away, his brow furrowed so deeply.

“
Jase?” I said again, hope filling my voice.

His eyes
flashed open, the bright colour I love faded away to a dense, murky
green.

“
Please? Just tell me it’s not true. Tell me you weren’t
pretending the whole time.” I watched him move back to the tray. “I
promise, I won’t scream if you tell me the truth.”

“
You won’t scream.” He smiled coldly. “Because I’ll cut out
your voice box if you do.”

“
What are you doing with that?” I watched him wipe an old,
rusted syringe—the needle as long as a finger.

“
It will do no good to ask questions, my dear.” He sighed.
“Now,” he said right into my face, pushing my forehead back with
his hand. “This is going to hurt—just a bit.”

I shook my
head, muttering a long-sounding “No” through pursed lips.

“
Don’t make this harder, Ara.” He slipped a cold, stiff finger
between my teeth and forced them apart, quickly jamming a block as
a wedge to keep my mouth open.

Tremors rose
up from my elbows with voiceless panic and shook my jaw as the big
needle disappeared from my line of sight, headed right toward my
lips. “Ah.” I thrust my arms against the cuffs when a bone
crunching pop jolted into the deepest cavity of my skull; my gum
feeling pushed and bunched.

“
Stop wriggling.” He held my head with one hand. “Goddamn it,
Ara, if you don’t stop I’ll have to do this all over
again.”

As a flowing,
cold sensation flooded from deep within my gum, like sipping iced
water through a thin straw, I cried out, finding my voice further
under the drowning, sludgy liquid in my throat; my nails
burned—digging into the splintering wood of the chair, but I did
not still. I couldn’t hold still. What a stupid thing to ask of
me.

“
Quiet down.” Jason gripped my cheeks firmly, stopping my cry,
leaving the needle flailing around between my lips. “Those who can
hear you scream will not help you; and those who would help you,
cannot hear you scream.”

Someone will
hear me. Someone will help me.

Hot tears
cascaded down the sides of my face.

Jason. Please
stop? Please? You loved me. Just love me again like you did that
night. Please.

“
It’s okay, Ara,” Jason said as he slid the needle in one
slow, grinding movement from my mouth; my skull seemed unwilling to
release, giving a small pop as it scraped out past my teeth. “Only
three more to go.”

“
Isn’t there another way?” I took a breath, running my tongue
over the empty swelling in my gum. “Like they do with snakes?
Please? I’ll
give
you the venom—just—just don’t hurt me anymore.”

“
This is the only way to extract vampire venom, Ara. If there
was another way—” He shook his head, closing his eyes. “This is the
ruling of the king,” he yelled. “Now be quiet, or he will order
much worse for you.”

“
No—no. No!” I screamed again as he walked toward me with
another needle.

Chapter
22

A nagging ache
in the back of my neck, resonating from within the deepest cavity
of my jaw, pulsed, waking my mind with every beat. Somewhere on the
other side of the darkness, a constant drip, like an
artificially-generated water drop, stirred dormant irritation.
“David?” I said, too heavy to move. “The tap.”

He didn’t
answer.

“
David? I’m so tired. Please can you—” I tensed, white shock
melting through me, becoming dread as I tried to roll over and felt
the pull of metal against my raw wrists.

It wasn’t a
dream. None of it. It’s real. I’m here. I’m cuffed, aching. Oh,
God. I closed my eyes, rolling my head back a little, as if to send
my tears to the heavens.

David’s not
here. He’s not here.

My plan to
roll over and snuggle into his chest, feel his fingers in my hair
as I recalled my dream, suddenly fell away, leaving me with only
jagged sniffles, too deep to become tears. But all self-pity
stopped, like a door being slammed shut, when something tickly,
small as the head of a dried flower, crawled into the cup of my
palm. I held a tight breath, my eyes slowly growing larger when the
crawly thing showed itself, scampering purposefully across my
elbow, up my arm, into the dip of my armpit; its fat black body
then disappearing.

My tummy
muscles and spine fought back—stiff and sore, trying to keep me
flat—but I rolled my neck up, searching my torso for the creepy
little bugger. My hands had been locked up so tight for so long
that the pulsing and gathering of blood around the muscle under the
thumb made it completely numb, the numbness tightening with the
pressure of my arching body.

When the
spider finally re-emerged, rising to the ceiling on an invisible
string, I flopped back, laughing breathily.

As soon as I
get my hands free, the first thing I’m gonna do is wrap them around
Jason’s neck—after I scratch my lip...and maybe my knee, and my
nose.

I wriggled my
nose, shifting my lips one side to the other to make it move, but
the itch stayed fast on my skin.

Above me, my
wriggly friend showed himself again, probably planning to spin a
web on my immobile body. In the dark, I could only see him every
few seconds when his abdomen turned against the dim red glow of the
torch across the room. I wondered if he had friends—if there could
be more like him scuttling around on me. Maybe I could get him to
crawl onto my nose and scratch it.

As my eyes
adjusted to the darkness, I breathed out slowly, making soft, foggy
clouds of frost in the air above my lips. It was like someone had
left a door open somewhere, letting the chill in, or as if someone
had died in here and their ghost was haunting the air. Although it
was a kind of fresh cool, it also made me even more exhausted, my
lungs strained to draw a full breath and my blood felt like honey,
thick and sludgy. But the bangle of dried blood and grated skin
under my cuffs, where I’d tugged so hard to get away, hurt like ice
on a scratch, dragging my attention to the imagery—the red ring of
chafing, flaking skin. I closed my eyes again and focused on the
tingling in my lips.

“
Need a bathroom break?”

“
God, yes,” I said and sat up, swinging my legs fast over the
side of the chair.

I ran to the
white door beside me and shut my eyes tight as bright sunlight
burst through the window. All I could make out through the tears
was a polished porcelain throne, waiting in the middle of the room.
I lifted my dress and sat down, feeling instant relief.

But when I
looked for the toilet paper, found only cuffs on the walls—my hands
suddenly bound, leaving me exposed, half bare on a toilet seat, my
knees slightly apart.

Screaming out,
I tried to break free, but darkness overtook again and my eyes
flashed open to the fat body of the spider, spinning his web over
my body.

I rocked my
ankles, taking shallow breaths, tightening the muscles in my legs
to stop my bladder spilling out all over the chair. Across the
room, the white door I ran through was gone—or it was never there
in the first place, and the urge to pee burned so bad I’d soon
willingly relieve my bladder. But not yet. Not just yet.

Even though
the room was dark, I could still see the scary fixtures on the
walls. I closed my eyes and tried to pretend it was just a friend’s
basement, overstuffed with cheap decorations for Halloween. I’ll
wake up tomorrow, go home, and think of this sometimes, cry about
it, maybe, but mostly, believe it was a terrible nightmare; the
kind that, when you wake up, you suddenly appreciate everything in
your life—even the bad things.

But the lonely
skeletons of terrors past smiled down at me with gaping jaws, their
hollow eyes sardonic, greeting me to the gateway of their eternal
loneliness—infecting my hopes with truth…truth that this is no
basement. This is it for me. This is my life now until I join them.
I’ll lay here, alone, until Jason comes back to finish his
list—then, he’ll hand me over to the Council and they will…they
will…

My brow folded
tight in the middle, liquid pooling along the outer corners of my
eyes.

David must be
so worried—then again, he probably thinks Jason saved me. He’ll
never know what happened; he can only imagine what Jason’s done to
me, and I know his mind, for all the masochistic things he’s done
in his own life, will imagine much worse than has already
happened.