Zen and the Art of Vampires (29 page)

“I told you that she was tainted,” the woman in question said to the man behind her, giving me another shove. “She's a Beloved!”

“Hey, watch it! I almost fell! You could have broken my neck!”

Behind me, Kristjana snorted. “A Beloved is immortal.”

I flared my nostrils at her. “Look, I don't know what sort of relationship you think that Kristoff and I have, but we're not dating, much less in love,” I told her as I stumbled on the last step. “And I'm certainly not immortal.”

“Not him, the other one,” she answered.

“Alec? Is he here? Is he all right?” I stopped, refusing to go any farther. “If you've hurt him—”

“Stop treating us as if we are fools,” Kristjana interrupted. “Yes, your Dark One is here.” A slow smile crept across her face. It wasn't particularly nice. “He has not been cleansed . . . yet. But I very much look forward to watching him embrace the light.”

“If you strike us down, you will simply bring more of the council upon your heads,” Kristoff said, breaking his silence. “We do not act alone. Nor will we tolerate your persecution.”

Kristjana spat at him, literally spat at him, moving around him but being careful, I was interested to note, to stay just out of his reach. “We will purge the earth of your kind just as the light was purged of darkness.”

“Rhetorical gibberish,” Kristoff said, and probably would have continued if Mattias hadn't slammed his head into the wall.

“Stop that!” I yelled, starting toward them, but Kristjana jerked me back.

A moment of sadness gripped me as her face lit with a pleasure bordering on the fanatical. I wondered if she was mentally stable, or if her belief in the Brotherhood had consumed her past the point of reason. “You will watch when the light cleanses your Dark One. You will see as I have seen how the darkness can be stripped from them.”

That pretty much answered the question. I kept my voice calm and soothing as I said, “I understand why you think they are evil, but I assure you, Alec and Kristoff are not. You might have good intentions, but where they concern these two men, you're way off base. If you would untie us, I'd be happy to sit down and explain everything to you.”

“The time for talk is past,” Kristjana said with dismissive self-righteousness. “Now is the time for action. We will be conducting three cleansings tonight?”

The question was asked of Frederic.

“Who do you expect will conduct the ceremony?” Frederic asked in his soft, French-accented voice. “You just declared the Zorya tainted.”

“And you cannot deny that!” Kristjana cried. “You can't deny that she was unsuitable for the job from the very beginning. Look at how she's deceived us! By the light, Frederic, she's a Beloved!”

Frederic said nothing as he strolled down the last of the stairs, merely nodding toward a door. Mattias shoved Kristoff up against the wall, whipping out a set of keys to unlock the door.

“I told you that I'm not dating anyone—” I started to correct Kristjana.

She spun around. “Oh, shut up, you ignorant fool. A Beloved is not a girlfriend, it is a so-called savior of Dark Ones, not that they can be saved by anything but the purity of the light.”

I decided the best defense was a good offense, and whirled away from her, taking an assertive stance in the middle of the room. “You will not talk to me that way! I am the Zorya, not you, and you will treat me with the respect and honor due someone in my position!”

Kristjana slapped me. She just reached right out and smacked me smartly across the left cheek. “How dare you! You pollute the very air we breathe, and you expect us to treat you with respect? You, who have betrayed everything we stand for. You, who have aided the Dark One we hold by promising him salvation. Well, we shall see that he has it—but it will be true salvation, not the farce you call redemption.”

Kristoff made a low, growling noise. “Hypocritical diatribe. You murder my people, then claim to save them, hiding your true intentions behind a cloak of righteousness, but not even your precious light can hide the truth about your actions. You deal in death, not divinity; torture, not salvation.”

“I will enjoy watching you cleansed, too,” Kristjana said, her face as rigid as a mask. “But I think you should be given the chance to see the truth when your friend receives the light first.”

I stared at her in horror, the zeal in her voice raising goose bumps on my back as I had a mental image of the sort of light Alec would be forced to endure. “Please, listen to me. I swore to Anniki that I would right the injustices done her, and I am trying to do that. But she was wrong—you're wrong—about Alec and Kristoff. If they were what you say they are, I'd do everything in my power to help you, but you're damning them without reason.”

She straightened up, clearly about to launch another physical attack, but Frederic's soft voice stopped her. “That will be enough, sister. You will not strike Zorya Pia again.”

“She is not worthy of the name Zorya,” Kristjana spat.

“That has yet to be determined,” Frederic said, eyeing me. “We will leave that to the Zenith to decide.”

I turned to him as a bastion of sanity. “May I see Alec, please? I'd like to make sure he's all right, then I would like to explain to you what's been going on.”

Frederic looked thoughtful for a moment, then nodded toward Mattias.

Mattias shoved Kristoff through the door he'd unlocked and slammed it shut, locking it before he marched over to the door on the opposite side of the room, quickly opening it.

A maw of darkness gaped open before me as he flung open the door.

“Alec?” I said, taking a hesitant step toward it.

“Pia?” From the obsidian depths a shadow appeared, stumbling out. “Love, is that you?”

“
Love
,” Kristjana said, her voice dripping with scorn.

“Are you hurt?” I hurried over to him, but Mattias leaped in front of me, his normally placid face hard and unyielding. “Mattias, please.”

His eyes narrowed on me. “You marry me, but you are
his
Beloved? I did not believe that of you, Pia.”

“I'm sorry about that, but there were . . . reasons . . .”

“I'm all right, just a bit bruised,” Alec said as I stopped. He peered over Mattias's shoulder at me. Like Kristoff, he'd been handcuffed, although his hands were bound in front of him. “I'm sorry I didn't give you enough time to get away, however.”

“I did. We came to rescue you,” I said with a wry smile.

“We?”

“Kristoff is here, too.”

“He always did have more brawn than brain,” Alec said, his gaze warm on me despite the circumstances. He turned to consider Frederic. “I take it you have plans to use Pia to destroy Kristoff and me?”

Kristjana started to answer, but Frederic held up a hand to stop her. “You are Dark Ones. We are obliged to purify you. However, the Zorya has asked for a chance to speak, assumedly in your behalf.”

“Yes, I would like to do that.” A tiny little flicker of hope rose despite the situation. “I think if you could get to know them as I do, you will see that they are not the murderous, vengeful monsters you paint them.”

“Just yesterday two of our brothers were injured, and a third killed. By all accounts, the murderer was the Dark One you name as friend.”

“There were extenuating circumstances,” I said, licking my dried lips. “Your people attacked Kristoff and me without provocation. The man who was killed held a knife to me and threatened to kill—”

Frederic raised his hand again. “We will save this discussion for the Zenith to hear.”

“You're not going to let her go?” Kristjana asked in outrage.

He looked thoughtful for a moment. “I believe that would not be wise. However, we will allow you to have your say, Zorya Pia. As you know, the liturgy of light is to be held tonight, to endow you with the powers of Midnight Zorya. We will hold a convocation then to bear witness to all you wish to say. Following that . . .” His gaze went to Alec, who glared back at him. “We shall see.”

“I'm glad someone is willing to listen,” I said, holding up my hands, which, unlike those of the two men, had been bound together with duct tape. “I'd appreciate it if you could take this off me. It's beginning to chafe.”

Kristjana looked like she wanted to chafe the rest of me, most likely with a chainsaw or large tub of explosives, but Frederic simply gestured toward Mattias.

“Love, don't let them—” Alec's voice was cut off as he was shoved back into his hellhole, the door slammed after him.

“Is that really necessary?” I asked Frederic as Mattias flicked open a penknife and cut through the tape on my wrists. I peeled off the grey wad and absently rubbed my tender flesh. “Couldn't you at least give him a light and something to read?”

He ignored my comment, still watching me with an impassive gaze. “You will understand that we cannot allow you to roam freely until the convocation and the liturgy have been conducted.”

“I don't understand, but I have resolved myself to confinement,” I said loftily.

“We only have two secure cells,” Kristjana said, her expression doubtful as she looked at Frederic. “You do not intend to leave her with her Dark One. The two of them together . . . they could be dangerous.”

“I am not so convinced of that as you are,” Frederic answered slowly. “But I agree that it would be unwise to leave them together.”

“I'm perfectly happy staying in a hotel room,” I said with only a little nudge of my conscience about leaving Kristoff and Alec behind. “Or I could—”

“Place her with the other one,” Frederic pronounced before turning and starting up the stairs.

“What? No, wait—”

Before I could rally a protest, Mattias grabbed my arm, unlocked Kristoff's door, shoved me inside, and slammed the door closed behind me.

“Hey! I'm the Zorya, remember?” I threw myself back into the door and pounded on it. “Mattias, let me out! I promise I won't run away or marry anyone else, OK? Mattias? Hello?”

“Perhaps you shouldn't make such hasty promises,” Kristoff's deep, rich voice rolled around in the darkness of the room. “You never know when you might wish to take a third husband.”

“Oh, be quiet, you. Mattias? Damn.” I turned to face the room but saw nothing. There was no light in the room, not one tiny little smidgen peeking in from outside, which meant either there weren't any windows, or they were boarded up tightly. There was a smell, however, an earthy, slightly musty scent that must have been what Ingveldur had picked up on when she looked down into the basement. It smelled like a bag of potatoes left sitting in a pantry too long. “Where are you?”

A painful-sounding thud came from a few feet away, followed by a muttered oath and slight scuffling noise that finished with a wooden creak. “On a chair.”

I held out my hands, taking baby steps to avoid running into anything. “Where on a chair? Lovely, now I sound like Dr. Seuss. I don't suppose you can see in the dark, can you?”

Kristoff snorted. “No. Nor can I turn into a bat and escape this prison, or change into a wolf and attack your second husband the moment he opens the door, or even dissolve into a wisp of smoke and slip through the crack under the door. I'm a Dark One, Zorya, not a djinn.”

“I'm having just as bad a day as you are, so you needn't be quite so snarky. I don't know where you are,” I said, taking a few more shuffled steps forward, my hands still reaching into the darkness.

“Why do you care where I am?” he asked sullenly.

“My hands are free. I might be able to get yours free, as well, and then we can do something about this business. Could you talk some more so I can find you?” I shuffled a couple more steps, and suddenly my fingers met something soft and squishy. I jumped back, startled. “Ack! Something else is here!”

“Yes. My eyeball.”

“Oh. Sorry.” I reached out carefully, baby stepping forward until my questing fingers landed on a nose with a little break in the middle. “Did I hurt you?”

“No, but if you don't let go of my nose you'll make me sneeze.”

“Sorry.” I took the last couple of steps forward, feeling my way down to his shoulders, then around to his back where his hands were bound. “I suppose you've tried wiggling your hands out of the handcuffs?”

“Yes. I am not a magician, either.”

I knelt and felt the bindings. They seemed pretty secure, snapped tight around Kristoff's wrists. I sat back on my heels, sighing. “And I do not know how to pick a lock, unfortunately. Well, no use in crying over spilled milk. What else is in here? Nothing we can use as a weapon?”

“I didn't find anything.”

It didn't take me long to examine the room. There were a couple of wooden bins that had evidently been used at one time to hold root vegetables, but all that was left now was a fine dirt at the bottom of the bins, and a couple of shriveled lumps that could only be desiccated potatoes. I searched the last bin, finding nothing but an especially odd-shaped potato. It had sharp little pointy eyes, and a soft coating, as if it had sprouted a growth of fungus.

“Other than what smells like a mummified rat, that is.”

I screamed and dropped the horrible thing my fingers were still examining, and leaped to the side, bashing into Kristoff and knocking him over. As we fell, our heads clunked together painfully.

“Oh my god. Are you hurt?” I hurriedly scrambled to my feet and leaped backward when I stepped on something soft and gooshy. “Eeek! Rats!
Rats!
”