Chapter Five #2
Van Helsing and Hel stalked into the night, Heathcliff staring back at Sam from Hel’s shoulder as Sam watched them leave, her arms full of Hel’s coat, feeling about as useful as a cracked teacup. Well, she would see what she could do about that last part, at least.
The rooms Mr. Wright had secured for them were every bit as fine as the foyer, with gilt green wallpaper, a crystal chandelier, and a large golden mirror above the fireplace.
A painting of Nimueh trapping Merlin in a hawthorn tree hung on the wall.
Sam’s travel trunk had been placed at the foot of a large feather bed situated next to the oversized window overlooking the green.
Mr. Wright had given Sam and Hel each their own room, presumably so they would be unable to plot against the Crown in secret. There would be no Morse code knocked on the walls between rooms, either, for he’d placed Van Helsing between them.
They would have the darkroom, Sam promised herself. There, at least, they could be themselves.
In the absence of a proper table, Sam tossed Hel’s coat and the file on the bed, only to hear a clink.
The chain. Of course. Hel must have slipped it into the coat. Sam might not have been willing to have a vision in Saint Stephen’s Green, but in her hotel room, there was no one to see her writhe in the grips of whatever monsters answered her call.
No one to stop her if she went too far.
Sam would just have to risk it. Pulling her gloves off with her teeth, she braced herself and brushed her fingers against the cold metal, and . . . nothing. She wrapped her hand around the links, pulled them through her palms. But still, she felt nothing.
Frustration climbed her throat. Why wasn’t it working now, when she would invite a vision?
Perhaps the chain didn’t belong to the Viscount and the Duke after all.
Or perhaps it was because it was iron. Iron was proof against enchantment; that was why it was so useful against the Folk.
But then, the Wolfssegner’s enchanted bread had been baked in an iron oven.
The whims of her visions were strange; Sam couldn’t seem to wrap her mind around their workings.
Every corpse Sam had laced fingers with—the fact that this was a nonzero number was in itself horrifying—had given her one of her feelings.
Only rarely did she get a vision when she touched another living person.
She wouldn’t necessarily get a vision touching a blood-soaked settee, but she might when her fingers closed on the hat pin lost between the cushions.
There had to be a better way to summon one of her feelings, something easier than touching everything and bracing herself. Some method, some means to reach out to the source of her visions, to tap into them, instead of waiting to have them thrust upon her. A way to invite the monsters in.
As if summoned, the song tugged at her again, rooting in the fertile soil of her mind. Not just a song, she understood as it blossomed inside her, but a path.
No sooner had the thought formed than the horror crept in.
What was she doing? This was exactly what led channels down the dark and winding road that turned them monstrous, like her mother’s dearest friend, Lucy.
This was exactly what Van Helsing was afraid of—what everyone was afraid of.
Not that a channel might fall victim to visions, but that she might choose to.
That she might embrace a power that does not come from them, the song murmured, so softly it might have been her own thoughts.
Sam found herself tempted, despite Hel’s warning.
It wasn’t the ceol Sídhe, she didn’t think—after all, wasn’t that supposed to tempt her to dance herself into an early grave, or wander into a bog?
Sam didn’t feel like doing either of those things.
The song wasn’t seductive because of what it told her to do, but what it told her she could do .
. . if only she trusted herself enough to listen.
She knew it wasn’t worth the risk, even if it was safe. Because in the improbable circumstance that it worked, the Viscount and the Duke would turn on her for what she’d done.
If they knew, the song whispered.
With a little cry, Sam shoved the offending chain off the bed and threw herself into her research. She didn’t need the song; she had value outside of her visions. All she had to do was prove it.
Sam startled awake, sprawled amidst her notes, trembling violently. It was pitch dark. The glass rattled in the windows; dogs howled outside loud enough to wake the moon. Her fingers caught the key on her gas lamp, the metal sticky with cold.
The flame flared, illuminating a woman standing in the dark, staring at Sam with half-lidded eyes that were somehow mournful and sensual at once.
Her golden hair haloed around her as if drifting in water, and her ephemeral white nightgown pulled in unseen currents.
But it was her lips that caught Sam’s attention: wicked red and plump and pricked with the points of two white teeth.
No, not teeth. Fangs.
Vampire.
A shriek tore itself from Sam’s throat, her breath frosting the air.
Her mother had warned her this would happen.
Oh, why had she forgotten to place garlic-heads on the windowsill?
She scrambled back on the soft bed, but she was too slow.
The vampire lunged, wrapping fingers like iron cords around Sam’s shoulders, so cold they burned through the flimsy fabric of her nightgown.
She could feel her flesh swelling beneath its touch.
Sam raked at the vampire’s hands on her shoulders—only to go straight through them, as if the vampire weren’t even there. Her hands went numb, the fingers frost kissed and red, and Sam shrieked again, even as her mind spun.
Not a vampire then—a ghost, and an uncommonly powerful one at that.
She should have seen it before. The ice crystalizing up the glass lamp, the wind rattling the windows.
This was almost certainly the same monster that had taken the Viscount and the Duke.
She needed salt, where was her salt? No, wait—the iron chain!
Except they hadn’t worked to save the Viscount and the Duke, had they?
And then there was the fact that she couldn’t feel her hands.
The ghost’s lips moved, as if forming words, but nothing came out. Her face twisted in rage, even as painted Merlin began to cry tears of what looked suspiciously like blood.
Tears pricked in her own eyes only to freeze on her cheeks.
Why was Sam so useless? The iron chain was right there, and still, Sam was unable to protect herself.
She couldn’t even move, didn’t want to find out what would happen if her head went through the ghost and that numbness went through her skull in place of her hands.
The song whispered in Sam’s ears, words unfurling like leaves on the vine.
You don’t have to be
helpless.
Saints help her, but Sam was tempted, despite the dangers of the dark and winding road, the way that kind of temptation broke channels and made them monsters. What was a monster but a predator, and a predator but not prey?
Before she could reach for the song, the door burst open in a shower of splinters. Hel! Sam’s heart surged. But it wasn’t Hel. Bitterness closed its hand around her heart.
“Samantha!” Van Helsing cried. So the man did remember her Christian name. He stood in the door in red-and-white-striped pajamas and a black silken house robe, his revolver in hand, his eyes wide and blue.
The ghost whirled, hissing. Van Helsing slid forward on his knees, his black robe trailing behind him. Scooping up the iron chain, he lashed out, but the apparition was too fast, winking out and reappearing right in front of him. He cursed, dropping the frost-rimmed links, and took to his feet.
“Samantha, get down!” Van Helsing shouted, raising his revolver.
Sam threw herself to the mattress just as a shot rang out.
A bullet whispered past Sam’s shoulder and straight through the apparition.
The ghost’s mouth stretched in a silent scream that hit Sam like a shock wave—gaslights bursting around the room, the window shattering with a great crack—and the ghost snuffed out like a blown candle.
The bullet hole smoked in the headboard.
And then, at last, all was quiet, except for the chattering of Sam’s teeth.
Van Helsing muttered a curse, and a moment later, a flame flickered in the dark—Van Helsing holding a lighter in front of him until he found a candle and transferred the flame, illuminating Sam, who was suddenly aware that she was in her nightclothes.
She simply had to stop getting undressed in front of people—it was getting out of hand.
“Miss Harker,” he said. “Are you all right?”
“Yes, I . . .” Sam said. Her tongue felt thick in her mouth, the words hard to shape. Her saint medal was ice against the hollow of her throat. Her hands like blocks of wood. Sam convulsed. So cold. “No, actually. I—I can’t seem to get warm.”
There was a moment’s hesitation. Then there was the crunching of glass as Van Helsing came over, setting the candle on the nightstand. He tore the blankets off the bed, sending her notes falling everywhere, and held them out to Sam.
Van Helsing frowned. “You’re injured.”
Sam glanced down at her nightgown. The bullet had cut through the flimsy fabric, baring her right shoulder.
Red marks like chilblains scored her flesh in the exact shape of a woman’s hand, along with a shallow cut where the bullet had grazed her, a spatter of her blood across the notes scattered over the floor.
Sam hadn’t even felt it. Because of course she hadn’t; she hadn’t been able to feel anything.
“It’s nothing,” Sam said, pulling her hand up to cover it. It was shallow. A graze only, though it bled freely. Her nightgown might need stitches, but she wouldn’t.