The Key (Sanguinem Emere) (21 page)

And she hasn’t said a word.

I try to push her back from me to see her face, to raise her chin, but she resists like an orphan puppy. “Plum, what is it? What’s wrong? Is it Dimitri?”

At the name she moans a keening sound that sinks into me, through me, freezing my blood in my veins. Her face reaches up to nuzzle at me like she can’t get close enough. Like she’s trying to break through my skin, to crawl inside me.

I try to pull away from her instead, to get her at a distance so I can see her face, read the lines in her expression. So I can understand what it is that has so devastated my baby sister. But the reaction is the same. She won’t let go and her grip is vice-like.

She’s always been the weakling, but she hangs onto me as if her life depends on it. And that awful keening, like a wounded animal, of hers continues. One long, unbroken sound like a bell in perpetual ringing.

Panic sets into me and I realise I may just be making matters worse for her. I settle myself, let my body relax into itself, into the bed. Into my sister’s arms, who continues to keen loudly, but quietens down her fighting.

I stroke her hair, frustration forming like a tiny ball in my head. I forget, in my selfishness, that as terrible as I feel, things must be that much worse for my companions. They’ve been here for longer, they’ve had to endure more of this shift in self, of this… Understanding. Difficult to wrap my head around it. And again the thought pesters me. That we should leave.

I shake it away like a dirty word.

She presses up against my nudity once more, moulding herself to me and visibly calming; I can feel it in the way her muscles relax onto my frame. She continues to cry softly, her shoulders still shaking and her face incessantly pressed to my neck.

Her skin is so very cold and… And there’s no warm breath coming from her lips pressed to my neck. No breath. With all her crying, she should be stopping to breathe.

She’s not.

One long stream of moaning without breath.

And then I feel a sharp sting where her lips touch me.

In pain and shock I tug away from her and fall from the edge of the bed, ungracefully dragging the blankets with me as I scramble to look less undignified, dragging myself up and groping for my neck. I stare at my sister in confusion as she sits up on the bed, her legs curled underneath her and to the side, her hair hiding her face from view in the dim moonlight grasping at us from the slit in the curtains.

“Cecily, what the hell?”

My sister doesn’t verbally respond or make any moves to suggest she heard a word of what I said or cares to listen. In the same strangely determined manner she has been exhibiting, Cecily uncurls her legs and lifts herself on her knees, bowing down to her hands as well as she prowls towards me slowly, the keening nothing more now than a quiet plea in the back of her throat, something like a purr.

She inches closer to the edge of the bed and I take a step back, uncertain. I don’t think I want to be here anymore.

But frozen in confusion, I watch as the moonlight bathes over her face in a revealing slit which betrays her mouth, pulled open to reveal her teeth, too sharp and long and pointed, curving over her lower lip which quivers into a cruel smile. The smile does not reach her eyes, one of which is now also revealed as a sickening red, glinting up at me with intent… Intent to continue her path towards my helpless body. The eye is rimmed in shadow as if she hasn’t slept in days, hasn’t eaten in weeks, hasn’t seen sunlight in months.

The one hand supporting her forward-lunged weight on the bed in dark, in the moonlight, is smeared with something that kicks me into action.

I leap for the door to the bedroom, not even aware of my movement until I feel the cool metal of the handle under my palm.

And then my mind reacts.

I scream as my hair is yanked backwards with a force I had not anticipated. Adrenaline pushes me to fortitude as I whip my head out of her grasp, ignoring the agonising sting on my scalp, certain I’ve lost some of my mane to this monstrous thing that looks like my little sister.

Panic bears down on my mind as I mechanically, quickly, pull the handle inward, scrabbling, and slip through the gap offered to me, slamming the door behind me and start to run.

My head autopilots. My body is tired, worn. My heart labours uncontrollably as I thunder down the passageway, only spurred on by the sound of the door crashing behind me and the patter of feet gaining in the race.

With no idea where I might find sanctuary in the dark house I simply press on, begging my exhausted feet not to fail me in the night, praying that I will not find the upturned edge of a rug or the corner of a table.

There is no time for thought, no opportunity for understanding or imagination and my mind screams out the only name I can remember.

Dimitri.

My legs carry me past the staircase down the opposite passage, the furnishings blurring past me as I hear growling right behind me, energising my tired movements, dragging me towards what I hope will be the secure arms of my love.

Something whips through my hair as I run and I squeal in the darkness, racing for the double doors that loom before me, only visible as the last few feet become clear to me, but my panic does not subside. My hammering heart collides inside me as the doors swing inward and the sound of feet behind me peters out, slowing and the stopping. And finally starting again, but the rhythmic beating diminishes as the feet offer up their defeat in a retreat which sings to me like a celestial choir of angels.

A figure stands in the door, its shadow cast over me from the gentle light inside.

I run directly into Dimitri’s arms, letting him stroke my hair soothingly, not saying a word, just pulling me into the sanctity of the room and closing the door behind him.

I’m babbling, I realise, not even sure what I’m saying, but the words are falling from my lips as the panic settles. My body numbs. Things are quiet now. But I can’t look away from the door. Warmth trickles from my eyes, my body unreactive to the orders my mind is giving it.

Show no fear.

It does not respond as I would have hoped.

I find Dimitri’s hand as he comes to stand in front of me and hold tightly to it, clinging desperately.

But this time his presence does not whittle away at my terror, my waxing confusion.

Don’t I recall some argument between Cecily and Levi? Levi working under Dimitri’s orders?

Where was Cecily at her own party?

I pull my hand away as Dimitri’s fingers snake around it, trying to offer me his cold comfort though his eyes do not reflect the protective smile on his lips.

He frowns.

“Eva, my Lamb. What is it?” His voice languishes around me, trying to drown me in that perfumed haze of affection. Of devotion. But even as my heart starts to skip uncontrollably and the familiar flush begins its steady crawl up my neck, the memory of Cecily’s face twisted in monstrosity steels me to the inevitable.

Someone did this to her.

On the night of the wake she disappeared. And now she’s dead. But she’s moving around. Did she even have a pulse? I should have been able to feel it, I’ve held people in shock in my arms before and their pulses always thunder. Hers was still I think. If I try I remember it that way.

My little sister is dead.

But she’s still here?

Should I be crying?

A wake for her.

Dimitri bends to his knees before me, his head inches below mine and his gentle eyes gazing steadily up at me. His eyes, like pools of chocolate in a handsome face that whispers of brash Viking fights in a cultured world. A combination man, bred in privilege, regal, gentlemanly, kneeling before me as though I am the most prominent woman in the world. His lover. Whom he has lavished upon.

His favourite girl.

My Dimitri and yet here I am, laying blame on his shoulders for the monstrosity that my sister has become. I sneer as I think back to June. Think back to that awful pain she visited on me that still blackens me. The pain that only Dimitri has since succeeded in diminishing.

I cringe that my mind could evince such vulgarity towards him.

He presses his forehead against mine in an entreating gesture, “Tell me what has frightened you.”

“Cecily,” I look down from his eyes that bore through me as the name is rattled from my throat.

His responding silence does not ease my uncertainty, but he places my escaping mop of, now tangled, hair from my check and brushes it behind my ear, running his thumb over the place on my neck where my sister bit me. “What about her?”

“I saw her.”

Dimitri stands and turns his back to me to approach one of the many cabinets which grace the vast expanse of walls throughout the house. Familiar clinking gently knocks at my ears as he opens a crystal container and pours something into two crystal tumblers. Familiarity breeds calm in me as I retrace my thoughts. Without his eyes gazing into mine I can now think clearly and the thoughts opening up like blossoming flowers in my mind are not sweet and tender as I would hope to expect towards the man caring for me in my time of need.

For the first time, the clarity of the situation rings true.

She bit me with her teeth. Her teeth. My sister should not have be biting people. But she is. And she bit me. On my neck. A place that, over the last evening has endeared much attention from others. Saskia. And Dimitri. Dimitri who spent most of last night burrowing himself into my neck, amongst other places. Like my thighs.

My dead sister bit me.

Arteries.

Veins. Places where blood flows. Wasn’t there blood on my little sister’s hands?

The chiming of crystal pulls me out of it as he replaces the bottle lid and hands me a tumbler full of that same sweetly spiced perfume he has given me before. The same that Cecily gave me. Monster Cecily. With her monster fangs.

I look up at him and he frowns at me.

“Eva,” His voice is gentle again. Gentle and concerned. Tugging at me, condemning me to guilt. But I fight it off and glower up at him.

Dimitri sighs and lifts my hand, curling my fingers around the tumbler. “Drink it.”

I sneer at him and his toxin, his poison… His-

The word fails me, though I know it. Too dark, like the stains on Cecily’s hand, like the smell in the hallway before Levi caught me disobeying my Master. That word. That smell. This liquid.

The smell has caught me again. I stare into my glass and the familiar desire hangs off of me. I can’t stop it. Anymore than I can stop the night from falling. I lift it to my lips, fully aware of the condemnation I am laying upon my own shoulders.

The liquid burns into me and settles itself inside, coating me and moulding me. Creating of me the Eva I do not want to be.

Didn’t Dracula have slaves?

“Blood.”

“So the drink you and your sister and your friend Delilah were being given was blood?”

I whip my eyes to Doctor Shane. Mockery. Disbelief. Just as I expected.

I scoff and hand him the notes I’ve been rifling through, “Just take them. Read them in your own time, I don’t care.”

Shane ignores my self-pity and takes my hand instead, “You must realise it’s not easy to understand, let alone believe.”

His eyes speak volumes of how much he wants to help me. Even if it is just to rid himself of me as a patient. But…

“I know what you’re thinking, Doctor Shane, but I swear it’s the only logical explanation.”

“Mmhmm.” Shane mutters in a tone worthy of a few bitch-slaps.

“How else do you explain the blind adoration?! I go to sleep at night hoping I’ll see her face, that she’ll take me to him! And every morning when I wake up here, I beg to be given some kind of answer – what did I do to deserve being so miserable without him?!

“You said so yourself, being subservient to a man is not the same as loving him!”

“So you can see that what you feel is not really love, at this point?”

“It feels like love. So, even if it isn’t, shouldn’t I be allowed to feel like it is?”

“Eva, you are arguing yourself into circles. And you still haven’t answered me; what is Dimitri?”

“You know what he is, Doctor.”

Dimitri frowns and then sighs in frustration as he falls to the bed beside me, his shirt pulling up to expose some of that flesh that makes my body moan.

An odd reaction for him to have at a time like this. Like he has heard it all before. Again reminding me of his humanity. But my mind does consider… Does he even know what humanity is?

“You’re not denying it,” I mutter, my thoughts provoked at him lying there, every inch of his clothed body an invitation, his hand a promise.

“I’m tired, Eva. Just tell me what you think you saw.” For a moment the guilt rides me again at the cracks in his voice. He is not seeking out sympathy. He is tired, I can sense it in him, like weight has fallen on him at my cruel, selfish attitude.

I steel my resolve.

“She’s a monster,” I can’t keep the accusation from my tone. The unspoken one that speaks volumes of his blame in what has happened to my sister. The accusation that points out that she is not the only monster.