Chapter 10
10
Recovered Journal of Dr. Georgia Clark
June 1, Year 1, Emergence Era
Hope. It’s the one thread I’ve held onto for the past few months. Hope for a cure. Hope that once Juno is in office, things will get better. That we’ll find a way to stop the plague. But every time I think we’re making progress, I realize we aren’t. It isn’t even two steps forward, three back. It’s just three back. The science isn’t getting any clearer, and DC is becoming more dangerous. I don’t know how long we can hold out, or how long I can hold onto hope.
T he door to the elevator corridor is locked. Of course, I assumed Valen wouldn’t leave my only known exit from this buried castle open for me. I simply hoped it might happen. No chance. I forced myself to wait two whole days before trying it—as if Valen would somehow be off his guard since I didn’t jump at the opportunity right away. Silly of me.
I lean against the door and chew the inside of my cheek for a little while before turning back to it. There’s no handle, nothing to indicate a door is even here. Running my hands along the wall, I can barely feel the lines to indicate the opening. The tile inlay is cleverly done to disguise it, the dragon eyes watching me as I attempt to discover its secrets. Then I scour the entire surface with my fingertips until I find what must be the keyhole.
Kneeling, I peer at it, then try to look through it. Only darkness. Damn. Glancing around again to make sure I’m alone, I pull out my stolen knife and jam it into the hole as far as I can, then wiggle it around. Nothing happens. I’m not a cat burglar. It’s not like I have any history of picking locks.
Shit . I sit back on my heels and inspect the door again. The dragon looks back at me, seemingly above it all. I give it the finger. Immature, but also somewhat satisfying.
I need something other than the knife. It’s too big to catch on anything inside the locking mechanism—at least that’s how I think the lock works. Tumblers and all that. What I need is a bobby pin like in movies. Something I can bend to fit whatever shape the tumbler requires to turn. But where the hell can I find one of those?
I climb to the Piano Level and plop onto the deep emerald couch. It gives me a decent view of this floor as well as the stairs going both up and down, so I tend to perch here when I’m in-between searches. The upside-down castle is its own enigma. Why so many rooms when Valen and Melody seem to be the only vampires in residence? How has no one noticed it’s here?
Leaning back, I look up at the black ceiling far overhead. I know that beyond it, the sun is just now rising. I wish I could feel it.
With one more careful look around, I pull my journal from my makeshift tote bag—crafted from a long-sleeve t-shirt I cut with my knife then knotted by hand. It’s not great, but it works. If I find anything of use on my explorations, I’ll have somewhere to store them while I ferret them back to my room.
My most recent journal page bears a list of experiments I conducted while I was still in Austin. They aren’t detailed in my scrawl, but I remember plenty of the particulars of each one. In fact, Austin and everything that happened before we came to DC lives in my mind with relative clarity. It’s when I moved to the CDC lab that things get murky. I know people block out traumatic experiences, that their minds build walls around those memories to keep the person’s psyche safe from additional injury. But how could my mind have blocked out months and months of time, a million details? I don’t think that’s the answer. It’s something Whitbine has done to me, siphoning off my memories while I was strapped to his metal table. But if that’s the case, then why is he still questioning me? What could I possibly have left?
I don’t know, but it all revolves around Juno. Or, I suppose more specifically, Theo’s death, which I only know about from the other captives in the cell. I wasn’t there. I have no idea what happened to him, no matter how many times Whitbine asks. A warning throb pulses through my temples, and I let that train of thought go.
Instead, I continue my list of studies on the plague virus. Then I draw out its structure again. All exercises in futility. I need a lab. I need blood samples. I need a multitude of things that this ancient castle doesn’t have, could never have. Golden tassels? There’s a million of them. Electron microscopes? Shit out of luck.
“Ugh.” I slam my notebook shut and tuck it back into my bag.
I have to get going. Just knowing there’s an elevator is enough to keep me scouring the other levels of this unique hell. If I can access it from some other floor, that’s all I need. I have to keep searching. I’ve gone through every inch of Piano Bay, or at least as far as I can tell. There could be hidden doors like the one to the elevator, so I’ll have to go over it all again with a closer attention to the walls. But not today.
With admittedly shaky resolve, I get to my feet and descend the curving staircase. I quicken my pace as I reach the green flame landing, hurrying past the doorway until I hit the steps going ever downward. The light here is sparse, the sconces spaced farther apart and their glow tantalizingly faint. I can’t see what lies on the lower level, so I go slowly, one hand on the wall.
When I reach the next landing, I keep moving forward to see if there are more stairs winding down into the dark, then curse under my breath when I discover there are. But here there are no lights, no way to keep from breaking my neck, and no way to know what I’m walking into.
I back away until I can feel the stair railing again, a lifeline that leads to the brighter floors above. Swallowing hard, I close my eyes and imagine the layout of the higher floors. This one has to be similar. It holds true on the other levels, so it only makes sense this rotunda is shaped the same. I take careful steps, following the path I’ve tread on Piano Bay dozens, maybe hundreds of times. I take halting steps with my hands out in front of me.
Each step forward feels like five degrees cooler. My skin is pebbled with goosebumps. If I could see better, I’m certain my breath would be puffing out in a steamy cloud. When nothing jumps out, I keep going until I find the familiar corridor opening that leads to whatever rooms have been carved from the rock. Stopping on the threshold, I peer into the gloom. There’s a dull light quite a way down the hall, but at least it seems like a straight shot.
I step inside, the air turning stale and dank. Colder now. I wipe my nose with my sleeve. It takes every bit of resolve I have left, but I force one foot in front of the other. If the layout holds true, the elevator shaft might be down this hall. All I have to do is reach it.
The floor is solid, likely stone, but I can’t tell. I tread carefully, moving slowly with one hand on the wall until I feel the edge of a doorframe.
I freeze.
A sound. Soft. Like someone whispering. Creeping closer, I press my ear to the door.
I can’t make out any words, just a never-ending whisper, as if the person speaking doesn’t take a breath. It raises my hackles, my entire body going tighter than a piano wire. It’s unnatural, the tone of it something between a moan and a cry.
I shouldn’t be here. I know that now. This was a mistake. I have to get out.
When I step back, my hip brushes what must be the door handle. It creaks, the tiny sound loud in the black hallway.
The whispering stops.
I freeze, staring in utter terror at the door I can barely see. Please don’t open. Please, please, please. I’m leaving. I’ll go. I’m not here .
I’d take the whispering over the suffocating silence, over the awareness that flows through the air like an electric current.
The handle squeaks as if someone is slowly turning it.
My eyes widen until they hurt. Backing away, I hear the whisper again, but this time it’s behind me. The way I came. The way out. The scent of rot wafts to me, the scent of the morgue in medical school, the back chiller where they kept the highly decomposed bodies. The sticky ones left out in the Texas heat or bloated on swamp water. Death.
There isn’t a decision. There’s only fear that spurs me to run. I take off toward the pale light, no longer caring where I step. I have to get away from that whisper, from the never-ending hiss of god-knows-what.
By the time I make it to the barely-there sconce, I realize it’s at the very end of the corridor, which stops in a stone wall face. No elevator shaft. Not even a door. Plastering my back to the rock, I stare into the dark.
The whisper has stopped.
With a shaking hand, I wrest the knife from the inside of my waistband and hold it out in front of me. I never should’ve come down here. My breath fogs in the cold, stale air, and I can’t stop my entire body from trembling.
“Looks like you’re trapped.” Gorsky’s voice creeps out of the blackness.
Was it him? The whispers? “Stay away!” I yell.
“ Stay away ,” he mimics.
I strain to see him in the dark, but I can’t. The light is too close to me, too far from him—which means he can see me just fine.
“You really shouldn’t be on this level. It’s not safe.” His taunting voice comes from all around me. “Do you even know where you are?”
“In a dark hall with a fucking nutcase, apparently.” I keep my knife in front of me, ready to swing at him if he appears. “Didn’t Valen tell you to leave me alone?”
“Master said for me to stay out of your room,” he corrects. “Which I’ve done. I don’t disobey.”
“You’re splitting hairs. He wouldn’t want you to hurt me.”
“Don’t think you ever know the mind of our master.” His tone is infused with vitriol. “You have no clue, no fucking speck of thought that could approach what he’s doing or thinking. You don’t deserve to be in the same room with him, much less in his service!”
“Did he feed you his blood or just the Kool-Aid?” My heart rattles against my sternum, beating wildly as Gorsky’s voice gets closer, louder. It’s awful, but at least I know he’s flesh and blood, not a whisper in the dark.
“This floor is quite special.” His tone is back to normal. Only mildly acidic. “Do you know why?”
“I—”
“Rhetorical question,” he snaps. “It’s special,” he says, continuing, “because it’s where the Dragonis lords would keep their pets, the ones they brought over from Europe when they first arrived here.”
I grip the blade so tightly my knuckles ache.
“By pets I mean their blood consorts, of course. Master prefers we stay up top, but before he ruled the castle, all sorts of humans were kept in these rooms. Gregor preferred pretty young females. Sometimes he got carried away and turned them. Do you know what happens to a vampire who’s turned and not allowed to feed?”
Fingernails—or claws—scratch along the rock walls somewhere ahead of me. Somewhere in the dark.
“Rhetorical again,” he singsongs. “They become husks. Not alive. Not dead. Their flesh rots, their eyes sunken and black. Any light hurts them, even artificial. They must remain in the dark, down here in the depths of the castle. Forgotten, I’m certain. Master would have destroyed them if he realized they were still here. But I suppose he’s been too busy wiping the disease of humanity from the face of the earth.”
“Gorsky—”
“I don’t want to hear your fucking voice,” he hisses.
The whispers begin again, more this time, and I swear it sounds as if they’re coming through the stone wall at my back.
“Husks are ravenous. They don’t simply crave blood. They devour . Flesh. Bones. Everything.” His voice fades, getting farther away as the whispers grow. “Enjoy your stay.”
The cold air goes still again, only my breath stirring it. The whispers get louder, a hissing sibilance that sends horror into my veins. My eyes burn from staring into the dark, but I can’t close them.
“Gorsky?” I whisper.
No response.
When something cold and wet touches my cheek, I scream and take off. Running faster than I ever have in my life, I eat up the grim distance, tearing out onto the landing, knowing that at any moment a skeletal hand will clamp around my throat, my hair, my ankle. I run into the bottom step, then fall forward, slamming my cheek against the corner of one of the higher stairs.
The pain is nothing, nothing at all compared to the terror that sends me crawling upward, pushing myself away from whatever lurks below.
I collapse on the Green Flame Landing, gulping in breaths as I lie on my back, my entire body shaking. Turning on my side, I watch the staircase, fully expecting some horrific creature to round the banister and begin its ascent.
For long minutes I wait, just trying to breathe and stay alert. Nothing appears. No rotted hand, no whispering monsters.
Once I catch my breath, I get to my feet and back away slowly.
When I bump into something, I scream and lunge forward.
“Whoa!” a woman yells.
“Melody!” I stumble but manage to get my balance as I press a hand to my chest. “You scared me.”
“What are you doing?” Her lineless face screws up in concern. “Hey, are you all right?” She steps toward me, her hand out. “It’s okay. You’re okay.” Her voice gentles as she moves closer. “Georgia, really, you’re safe.” She pulls me into her arms.
My tears are instant. I don’t remember the last time someone’s touched me with kindness. I break, a sob tearing from my throat as Melody holds me tightly. It’s not lost on me that she reminds me of Juno, and her embrace only adds to the familiarity.
“Shhh,” she says. “It’s all right.”
In that moment, I miss so much. My sister most of all. Juno was the one who always kept me together, protected me. Now she’s lost, and so am I. The bond we had is severed, cut short like the fates with their strings. I’ll never see her again. I’ll never see anyone I loved again.
I yell against Melody’s shoulder, crying and clinging to her. Nothing is right. Nothing .
I cry. Helplessly. Completely. I haven’t let myself have this. Grief. The sort that blurs out everything else except the pain that goes so deep you’ll never find its root. That dark hallway broke me open somehow, gave voice to my victimization. I let it out. Wailing for myself and for whatever cursed creatures lurk beneath my feet. They’re victims, too, after all.
Melody simply holds me, her arms around me as I go to pieces. No judgment, no sound, nothing except her presence. It’s what I need. How does a creature like her know what I need? How can I find comfort in her when her people are wiping mine out? I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore.
It takes longer than it should, but I get myself under control. My tears slow, and I’m finally able to catch my breath beyond gut-wrenching sobs.
Putting a bit of distance between us, I look up at Melody. The kindness in her ethereal eyes threatens to pull more tears from me, so I drop my gaze.
“Can I do anything to help?” she asks softly.
“Let me out of here?” I sniffle.
“That’s not within my power.”
I feel like an ass for even asking her, which is insane because, when all is considered, she’s just another one of my captors, albeit a nicer one.
“But I can make you some tea?” she offers. “If you’d like?”
I prefer coffee, but I’m not going to turn down any offer that involves caffeine. “Please.”
“Sure. This way.” She leads me up to Piano Bay, then back through the halls.
When she stops at a wall and pushes it open, my heart sinks. I’ve been all over this level and never knew there was a door here. What else have I missed?
We pass into a small kitchen with an antique-looking stove and fireplace blackened from use. “Is this … Do you …” I look around at the neat space, the clean counters. “I’ve been wondering where my food comes from. You aren’t the one who makes it, right? I figured you had, I don’t know, like servants that I haven’t seen?”
“We used to have a larger staff, but Valen sent most of them away prior to your arrival. In any case, I’m the only cook.” She opens a drawer and pulls out the tea, then lights a fire in the stove with rapidity borne of frequent use. After grabbing a kettle at the copper sink, she sets it on the burner.
“You’ve been feeding me.” I look at her with new appreciation. “I wouldn’t think you’d do that.”
“Why?” she seems genuinely puzzled, her dark eyebrows rising.
“Because you’re … you’re Lady Dragonis, Valen’s?—”
She laughs, a beautiful sound I realize I’ve never heard. It’s full-throated and tickles like cinnamon. “‘Lady Dragonis’? Where did you get that?”
“I don’t know.” My face heats as I feel myself wading deeper into my own mistaken assumptions. “I thought you and Valen were?—”
“Valen is my sire. That’s all.” She’s still smiling, and it gives her a much more human appearance. “He turned me, but I’m not with him in that way.” She makes a face. “That would be—no, I won’t even think about it.”
“I’m sorry.” I lean against the counter behind me. “I didn’t realize.”
“It’s all right. I certainly would’ve disabused you of that notion sooner had I known.” She plucks the kettle from the fire right as it begins to sing. “Valen will have a good laugh when I tell him.”
“Valen laughs? Is that just when he’s kicking puppies or?—”
She giggles. “He told me you were funny.”
“He did?” Now I’m curious.
She looks at me as she pours the hot water with utter precision. “I suppose it’s fair to say we don’t know him in the same way. I should probably leave it at that.”
She’s deft at avoiding my questions. I have to give her that.
“If you won’t tell me about him, tell me about you.”
“Milk, sugar, honey?” she asks.
“Yes?”
She cocks her head to the side in question.
“I’m not super familiar with all the ways of tea. Just fix it how you like it.” I wince. “I mean, how you used to like it, I guess.”
With preternatural quickness, she prepares the tea, then pushes through a door at the rear of the kitchen that leads to another hall—yet another area I don’t recall from my exploration. What the hell else have I missed?
She turns left into a doorway.
I follow her inside to find a cozy sitting area, and another door leads to what’s clearly a bedroom toward the back. “What’s this?”
“My apartments. I hope you don’t mind.” She places my full-to-the-brim teacup—of which she hasn’t spilled a drop—onto the table in front of a deep mauve sofa.
“Thanks.” I sit on the sofa and appreciate the room. It’s feminine, soft and warm with florals and a coat of white paint that obscures the black stone ceiling. If I didn’t know better, I’d think I was sitting in a pretty Victorian house about to have a nice catch-up session with a girlfriend. But this couldn’t be farther from the truth.
I know Melody’s never been anything but kind to me, but I still don’t trust her. I can’t. Not when I’m a prisoner here.
She settles beside me, her lavender dress fanning out around her.
“You always dress so nice,” I blurt.
“How kind.” She glances down. “When Valen said we were moving in here, I told him in no uncertain terms that my entire wardrobe would be coming, or I would quit his company.”
I can’t imagine anyone giving Valen an ultimatum. He’s cold, dead inside. He’s a remorseless murderer, but she speaks of him almost fondly. It doesn’t match at all with the monster who holds me captive.
“You can always borrow anything you like,” she adds.
“Oh, no.” There’s no way in hell I could wear anything of hers. The colors, the form fitting tops and flowing skirts. I’m about five inches shorter than she is, not to mention I can’t match her ample curves. “But thank you.”
“If there’s anything you’d like to add to your closet, you can tell me. I did a little research on you—photos from before—and chose comfortable things,” she says without the slightest hint of reproach.
“I’m good.” I look at her with new appreciation—both because she seems to have stalked me and also because she picked out decently comfy clothes for me. “You’ve done a lot for me, and I’ve never thanked you.”
“You don’t have to thank me. I know the situation isn’t exactly ideal.” She sighs and settles back against the cushion.
“That’s putting it mildly.” I take the teacup, spilling a little into the saucer as I bring it to my mouth. Sipping slowly, I appreciate the sweetness of the honey and the brightness of the tea.
“Do you want to talk about what happened?” she asks gently. “What had you so spooked?”
I don’t want to tell her about my exploration of the lower levels, not if it means she’ll restrict me from looking any further. “Nothing. Just, um, this whole place isn’t exactly home sweet home.” The cup rattles against the saucer as I return it to the table. “But I will tell you one thing: Gorsky needs to back the fuck off.”
Her eyes sharpen, and I realize all over again that she’s a predator, same as Valen. “Did he harm you?”
“No.” I don’t know what to tell her. Do I want Gorsky to stay the fuck away from me? Yes. But he didn’t touch me, didn’t do anything to me, not really. And what will she do to him ? Kill him?
“I’ll speak to him.”
“No.” That’s the last thing I need. I have to stand up to him myself. It’s the only way to deal with a bully. “It’s fine. I’m good.”
She doesn’t seem the least bit convinced, her lips pressed into a firm line.
“Seriously.”
After a slight staring match, she relents. “All right, but you tell me right away if he’s a problem. He’ll be dealt with.”
The way she says it—it sounds final. Like final final. I don’t want Gorsky anywhere near me, but I don’t think I want him all the way dead, either.
“Can you tell me about you?” I do my best to change the subject. “I don’t know anything. You’ve been here taking care of me, and all I really know is your name.”
“What would you like to know?” she asks, her expression unguarded.
“Where are you from? How did you meet Valen? Why did he turn you? How? When?” A lifetime of questions sits waiting on my tongue.
“Your tea is getting cold.” She glances at the cup.
“Sorry.” I take it again.
“There’s not much to tell. I met Valen in London in 1744. I worked as a cook for Lord Bowlingbroke.” Her face remains unchanged, but her eyes seem to darken slightly. “A slave, I’d been born in 1717 to my mother, a 12-year-old girl who’d been stolen from her home in Nigeria. She died as I was born. Lord Bowlingbroke was my father.”
I don’t have the words. Her lived experience encompasses an entire world of injustice. Pain. Suffering. A living history of sorrow and unwilling servitude.
Setting down my teacup, I hesitantly reach out and take her hand. “I’m so sorry.”
She gives me a tight smile. “It was a long time ago.”
“Long story short, Valen had business with the lord and was staying at the London house where I worked. On his second night there, he heard me scream.” She looks straight ahead now, no emotion on her face. “You see, Lord Bowlingbroke had come to my room—not the first occasion—and I fought him. I didn’t win. He beat me to the point I lost consciousness. I was dying when Valen found me. After that, he?—”
A bell rings somewhere nearby.
She snaps her gaze to mine, her eyes even starker, and squeezes my hand. “You must return to your room and ready yourself. Whitbine is here.”