Chapter 34 #3
He turned the page, and Sylvia, even through her haze, understood what he was writing.
It was a Mass Suggestion contract. The kind that only her mother—and her—possessed the ability to write.
A Maroven family blood-heirloom. Now apparently passed on, unwittingly, to the man that was headed for the doorway.
He seemed as if he was about to open it, before his hand stilled on the doorknob.
He frowned, looking at the door frame as if he could see through it, sensing something on the other side.
The staircase in the hallway had begun to rattle, the chandelier above them shaking.
Someone—something—had breached the second floor.
Footsteps landed like shocks of thunder, pound, pound, pound, before all the commotion abruptly stopped—silence hung in the air for a moment—and then, quiet as a mouse, there was a gentle knocking at the door.
Eyebrows furrowed, Vey began to open the door.
“Leonard?” he said. “I just finished up. But you really didn’t make this session very easy, with all that commotion downstairs.”
Sylvia’s breath fell out of her when she saw not Leonard, but Aster walk in the door.
Aster, covered in blood from head to toe, hair matted and wet with sweat like she was fresh from a shower, someone else’s organs dragging around her ankles.
Aster, whose once-beautiful dress suit was torn clean in half, so she was reduced to just a black bra, ripped pants, and bare feet; Aster, who was holding a sparkling, black cane that Sylvia didn’t recognize.
Vey went silent—just stared at her, frowning, his face completely unreadable.
“I see,” he said. “Well then—”
Aster took once glance at him, then once glance at Sylvia, her knees to her chest, her cheeks red with tears, her mouth unspeakably quiet, and made a very easy decision.
She dropped the cane onto the floor, yanked Vey up by the collar, walked him to the window, and smashed his head right through it.
Then she grabbed the handcuffs she’d borrowed from the couple downstairs, looped one around her own wrist, another around Sylvia’s, clicked them, and stared into her eyes in a way that cut through the noise—and made everything come into sharp focus.
“Sylvia,” Aster whispered, touching her wet, bloody hand to Sylvia’s cheek. “What happened?”
And somehow, of all the things Sylvia’s mind could have pinpointed to focus on, she focused on the handcuffs—the cold silver, now linking them together.
“Why… these?” she said, shaking them slightly.
Aster bit her lip, almost shyly.
“I just killed every last man in this building,” she mumbled, like it was embarrassing on the same level as slipping on ice in the winter. “And I’m afraid if I’m not literally linked to your person, I might kill whatever poor uber driver picks us up in twenty minutes.”
Before Sylvia could open her mouth, Aster was extracting a cellphone from her pocket. One that definitely didn’t belong to her, and was as soaked in blood as everything else. On the screen, it blearily stated: “Uber for Leonard Bianchi, expected in 19 minutes.”
Sylvia’s mouth fell open.
For a moment, just looking at Aster’s face, and digesting the fact that she’d completely annihilated—without a thought—the most powerful men on earth, just to protect her, Sylvia felt so much love in her chest that she almost didn’t feel the ache anymore.
Almost.
Because Aster was still a thrall. And Sylvia had made her one.
Because deep down, she knew now, she’d believed her mother.
Sylvia’s throat swelled up, and she took in a shuddering breath as Aster’s hands absentmindedly rubbed her shoulders, her arms. Aster’s perfect brown eyes studied her face like it was the most important canvas on Earth. With complete, undivided devotion.
And Sylvia was about to fall into that pit again, that terrible pit, because her mother was right—no one loved like a thrall loved, no one would love her except someone she commanded into doing it—until she remembered all the times Aster had looked at her like this.
And… Oh.
Six hundred years, and Aster had been staring at her like this the entire time, hadn’t she?
Goosebumps zipped up and down Sylvia’s arms. Aster was currently a servant to the most deadly psychological spell a vampire could endure, and yet she was looking at Sylvia exactly the same way as she had the entire time they’d known each other.
She talked to her the same, touched her the same, with the same care, and attention, and— oh god—
Sylvia was an idiot.
“Ten minutes now,” Aster said, looking down at the phone.
“You’re going to have to give me a command to get us down to the car, by the way.
My mind is pretty much stuck on a murder loop right now.
It’s like kilkillkill over and over like a broken a tape recorder, even though literally there is literally no one left to kill.
I don’t think the whole Thrall thing gels well with my OCD.
Or maybe it gels too well. Kind of unclear.
I should take my medication once we’re back at the hotel.
Shit, did I even bring it? Wait, Sylvia? What’s wrong?”
Sylvia pulled Aster by the handcuffs, laid her hand on her cheek, and brought her into the most desperate, honest kiss she’d ever given anyone.
She nearly died when Aster whimpered into it. She nearly confessed everything when Aster’s hands trembled where they were cupped around her shoulders.
But she wasn’t going to tell a thrall that she loved her.
She was going to tell Aster that.
She could taste her own messy, happy, grief-ridden tears when she whispered against Aster’s lips, “Here’s your command. Get me to the car. Then get me to the hotel. Then get me in the bathtub. In that order, and quickly. Okay?”
Sylvia regretted the ‘and quickly’ when Aster nearly broke both their arms off.
***
The uber driver pulled up to the villa, grunting quietly when he heard the music blaring from inside the yard—Bodies by Drowning Pool, stuck on an endless loop, only bookmarked occasionally by a Spotify ad—playing much too loudly for 3 o’clock in the morning.
“Rich tourists,” he muttered as the car doors swung open, and his clientele slumped in.
He adjusted his rearview mirror just in time to catch two women—one, covered every inch in blood, and the other, a little dazed, clinging to her side with a smirk on her face.
“Is that blood?” he said.
The woman laughed. “Halloween party.”
“Isn’t Halloween in October?”
The blood-covered woman shrugged, and the one next to her just rolled her eyes, picked out a cigarette from her pocket, and placed it between her lips.
“Just drive,” she said, then chuckled. She looked almost sheepish when she added, as a throwaway joke, “Or my wife might eat you.”