Chapter 21 #2
The elevator door opened. The hall in front of me was swallowed in darkness.
I dragged myself off, pulling the tank along.
When the elevator doors closed, I was sealed in with the darkness.
My pupils dilated, and I made out a short hall ending in a door.
It was inconspicuous, but I knew how Damien worked.
He’d built Verfallen, and at the bottom of Verfallen was a simple locked hall hiding all his big, sinister secrets.
Proof of where Zero came from. His mate locked in a tank.
A door at the end of a hall, well below ground, was hiding something Damien wanted no one to know about. This was the heart of Supra, the very depth, the ugly secret at the bottom.
Outlines of dusty, forgotten boxes littered the side of the hall, but the walkway was clear.
Someone had been down here. I walked in and opened the door at the end.
On the other side, the only thing I could make out was a table with something on top.
Something vaguely the size of a person. I waited for whatever or whoever it was to make a sound, but there was nothing.
No groan, or plea, no begging, not even breathing. I took a deep breath.
“Hello?” My words slid into the darkness unanswered. My body was shaking with the effort to keep standing. Soon, I was going to need to sit down. I brushed the wall but failed to find a light switch. With a sigh, I went into the shadows towards the table.
“Hello?” I tried again. Ten more feet of shuffling, half blind, I thought I heard something.
“Whose there?” I whispered. The oxygen tank scraped across the floor as I moved forward. That was definitely a person on the table. The tank caught on something and slipped from my fingers. The loud sound of metal hitting stone was like an explosion. I flinched. My heart beat hard in my chest.
The person didn’t move or make a single noise. Chills spread over me. It was the same dread that made me slam Damien’s journal shut before reading what had really happened to him and Levi. Yet, it was like a car crash. I was here, and I couldn’t look away.
I shuffled forward again but swung around in shock when a voice filled the room.
“You’ve wandered far from your room,” Damien said. The sound of a match strike and the flare of fire. Orange light flickered over his features. He looked calm. Right behind me was the person on the table. They didn’t move as I faced them. And now I knew it was because they were dead.
I hadn’t killed Levi. If I had, he wouldn’t be decomposing.
“I believe you’ve met my mate,” D'Bolique said. The match went out. Darkness blinded me. Another scratch and hiss of flame. The flickering flame collected in Levi’s gaunt cheeks.
He was rotting. Despite my close relationship with corpses, I wasn’t well-versed in decomposition rates.
He looked bad. Sunken in all his softest places.
The smell was terrible, like dead fish. Something the oxygen mask could only protect me from so much this close.
Damien walked into the room, and the match burned out.
“Why is he here?” I asked. A scratch and then a new flame. Damien stood right beside me, wearing his own oxygen mask over his face and his round, red glasses.
“The same reason I never let him go free. Because he’s mine,” Damien said.
He walked forward. I felt dizzy as he bent down to Levi, sinking his fingers into the deteriorating skin of his cheeks.
They broke through the skin. Damien pulled his oxygen mask up and kissed him. My throat burned. The match went out.
Hands grabbed my clothes and pulled me from the room, closing the door.
“Why?” I asked through the mask. Damien pressed the elevator button.
“We’re similar, Baz. I was also born a disappointment.
My family didn’t accept me. Threw me out of the house.
” The elevator door opened, and he pulled me in.
“I was born powerless. It’s rare, but sometimes witches are born with no ability to use magic.
So you see, I know how it feels to be rejected by family.
Unwanted.” He pressed the button for my floor.
“What does that have to do with that?” I asked, pointing at the door. Damien watched as my strength finally gave up. I slid to my ass on the floor. My heart was beating hard in my chest.
“What would you give to be a phoenix? For your family to have loved you.”
“Fuck off,” I panted.
“I’m serious, Baz. I bet you’d be willing to give anything. Just like I was.”
“What did you do?” I gripped the bar above my head. I didn’t have the strength to get to my feet.
“Magic costs. I know what happened at Verfallen. Your sister gave up something precious to get Zero free. She gave up you.” He smiled. “There are always ways to get what you want with magic. You just need to bear giving up something equally important.”
“What’s equally important to your powers?” I asked, but I knew. A mate was equally important.
The elevator doors opened. Damien reached over, grabbed my clothes once the door opened, and dragged me into the hall.
“Get off me,” I growled, ripping away from him and stomping to my room. The redhead’s body was missing already. Damien stayed in the hall, circling my bubble like a shark.
“Imagine it, being the phoenix you were supposed to be. Having everything you were supposed to have. Really, I’m thankful for being born powerless.
I’d have never become the man I am today if I hadn’t been forced to research a way to fix that issue.
Once I cured that, I realized I could do more. That’s why I made Supra.”
My head swam as he forced terrible thoughts into my head.
A knife at Bree’s throat, telling her I was sorry before I sliced it.
Her blood spilling on the ground as immortality danced like flames across my skin.
And wasn’t the ultimate prize dashed away from me?
Isn’t it what everyone would kill for? Immortality.
My family would have accepted me. All the previous pain could be washed away. And Bree, dead at my feet.
I stumbled across my room, barely making it to the sink before I threw up.
Damien destroyed everything I was sacrificing myself for. My life would have been worthless, a cold void until I died. But Bree had changed all that. She’d given me everything that had been cruelly denied.
I’d give up everything for Bree, Nemo, and even fucking Orson. Really, I already had, and I would keep doing it. Meanwhile, Damien had destroyed Levi just for fucking power. We weren’t the same at all.
I began ripping the cleanroom suit off me.
Fuck Damien and his Stockholm Syndrome. Whatever mind fuckery he’d been slowly working on had been stripped clean from my mind.
I truly hated him for thinking we were alike.
It made me feel unclean. But also, tongue fucking a rotting corpse didn’t sell the whole “he’s an okay guy, just misunderstood”.
“We’re going to make some changes to your room,” Damien said. The fans kicked on louder than ever. I swiveled around, looking in dread at the oxygen numbers dropping.
“You fucking bastard.” By the last word, I was slurring. I didn’t even get time to lie down. It all went black in an instant, the oxygen so swiftly taken from me that I passed out.
When I woke up, I was in chains.
“Why am I always getting chained up?” I groaned.