6. Valtu
Valtu
THEN
T he mist whips between the vampires as they stare down at us on the dock, showcasing the ruined buildings of Poveglia behind them for a moment before covering them up again, like a sleight of hand magic trick.
“Professor Aminoff,” Saara’s voice comes floating over to us. “Bitrus. So delighted that you two could make it for the feast.”
I nod at them while Bitrus climbs out of the boat and ties it to the dock.
“Thank you for taking us up on such short notice.” I must admit, it’s hard not to look at Solon, Lenore, or Van Helsing perched warily in the boat, cloaked under Lenore’s spell.
I keep my eyes glued to Saara and Aleksi as much as possible and force myself into the role of a hungry vampire in need of real food.
The last thing I want is to tip them off, even though I have to keep myself on guard as if I already have.
What I don’t want to do is act any different toward them. They both know I despise them and what they are. I have to act like I’m here out of desperation and not because I’ve had a change of heart. They’d never believe it.
“I must say,” Saara says as she walks toward us, wearing a black satin gown that’s barely held together by ribbons.
She’s naked underneath and when the mist blows a certain way, she makes sure you can see every inch of her.
“I didn’t think you’d ever come back here.
You seemed so…” she looks to her brother over her shoulder.
“What was the word you used to describe him, Aleksi? Ah yes. Pussy.”
She gives me a cunning smile. “I understood what my brother was trying to say, unfortunately he used a word that doesn’t quite convey that meaning. After all, there’s nothing weak about a pussy. Especially not this one.”
She slides the slit in her dress to the side, giving me and Bitrus (and the invisible three behind us) a show. I can practically feel Lenore rolling her eyes at the scene.
I clear my throat and keep my gaze on Saara’s cold blue eyes. “Definitely nothing weak about a pussy,” I say. “However, I still prefer to feed in a more civilized manner. I figured that we could work something out.”
She exchanges a look with her brother and chuckles as she turns back to me, one brow sharply raised.
“It’s a pity you haven’t seen the way yet.
Don’t forget, you are on my turf here, not yours.
I’m afraid if you want to feed from a human untethered, you must be prepared to do it our way.
The humans never survive at the end. But isn’t that the point of it all? ”
No. That’s not the point. But of course, I don’t vocalize this.
“And you, Bitrus,” Saara says to him. “Are you ready to partake this time?”
He nods determinedly. “Yes. I don’t have the same qualms as Valtu.”
She grins, showing her fangs. “Perfect.”
Then she turns on her heel and crooks her finger over her shoulder at us. “Come along, now.”
We follow her and Aleksi the same way we did before, the mist fogging the path and then lifting as we pass the crumbling building with rusted scaffolding outside, then past the faded sign that reads Psychiatric Department in Italian, until we’re going through the main doors that have been left wide open, a large gaping maw that wants to swallow us whole.
I have no idea where the others have gone, if they’re still on the docks, if they’re following us silently, if they’re going around the building. They could already be inside for all I know. I just hope that whatever they have planned works.
I don’t even know what we have planned. It’s hard to know when Saara and Aleksi are so unpredictable and we’re in a place we can’t control.
I just have to figure out how to get my hands on the book and take it from there.
If I have to kill a few humans to do so, I really don’t care. Just add them to my recent tally.
I’d burn the world down for her if it meant bringing her back.
We step into the cold mouth of the building and follow a familiar path toward a large wooden door guarded by plague doctors on either side.
I shiver despite myself, not quite used to their presence.
I avoid the gaping holes in the mask they wear, not wanting to meet their eyes, though I wonder if that’s really a plague mask at all, or their actual face. That makes it all the more disturbing.
The plague doctors move to the side gracefully and in one wave of Saara’s hand, the door opens and we enter the chapel.
As it was last time, it’s a combination of white walls molding with green, with vines coming in through shattered stained glass windows, broken pews on either side with a few still intact, and a candlelit altar at the very front.
And like last time, there is a victim lying at the foot of the altar.
My heart sinks.
It’s a girl in her early twenties, short blonde hair, brown eyes and a cherubic face. She’s got duct tape over her mouth and her wrists and ankles are bound. She’s been stripped completely nude and there doesn’t seem to be a scratch on her body but that’s not what has my chest going cold.
It’s that I know her.
It’s one of my students, Kate Rutherford, a piano player from England. I know I just said I’d kill whatever humans I had to in order to get my hands on the book, but I can’t do that to someone I actually know.
I glance sharply at Saara. Of course she looks amused at my reaction.
“You did this on purpose,” I sneer, gesturing to the girl. “You knew she was one of my students.”
“Yes, well, rumor is that you’re rather fond of your female students, aren’t you, Professor?”
“Valtu,” Bitrus warns from behind me. “Don’t take the bait.”
But I have to take the bait. She’s talking about Dahlia.
“What do you mean by that?” My hands flex at my sides, a volcano of rage bubbling up beneath the surface, just ready to explode.
She shrugs and I glance at the girl again, Kate, her pleading eyes searing right into me, asking me to help her. I have to look away, back to Saara’s smug face.
“Oh, not much. Just that I know you’ve been fucking one of your students,” Saara says. “Someone beneath you from the sounds of it. A human. A dirty whore .”
“Valtu,” Bitrus warns again but I’m lunging across at Saara in less than a second.
I wind up and deck the vampire right across her pretty face.
There’s a crunch of bone under my fist and I hope I broke her perfect nose, even though it will correct itself in a minute, but god does this violence feel fucking good.
She goes flying to the tile floor, her face deformed and caved-in as she sprawls, broken and bleeding.
“What the fuck?!” she screeches, her words garbled as she presses her fingers to her face. “You fucking hit me!”
“And I’ll fucking do it again!” I snarl at her, about to deliver another blow, maybe punch her head right off, but I’m suddenly held in place.
I feel a heavy pressure around my chest, my arms pressing against me.
It’s like an invisible rope is being wrapped around me and before I have a chance to react I’m being yanked backward through the air.
And right into Aleksi. His arm goes around my throat, pressing in. I’d be able to fight him off but not this magic. “I can’t pretend she didn’t deserve that,” Aleksi chuckles in my ear. “But I’m afraid you’re not the type of person we’d have over at a dinner party.”
“Fuck you.”
“Uh huh. Mind telling us what you’re really doing here?”
I meet Bitrus’s eyes across the chapel, where he’s now kneeling beside a sobbing Kate and quickly untying her bonds to free her. He’s warning me not to say it, to hold up the lie, to keep things going until our backup gets here.
But I can’t.
“The book,” I plead, my voice sounding so desperate it makes me sick. “The Book of Verimagiaa. I need it.”
Aleksi laughs while Saara slowly gets to her feet, leaning against a pew for balance.
“And what makes you think we’d give you the book?” Saara mumbles as she staggers to the next pew. “Especially now.”
“Because you can’t handle the burden of it. The responsibility of it. But I can.”
Saara snorts, then spits out blood onto the floor. “Who are you, Tolkien? The book is no burden. And it belongs to us, fair and square.”
“You stole it,” I tell her. “You have no claim to it.”
Give it to me so that I can bring back my love.
Give it to me so that it’s not abused.
I direct my last though to the book.
Come to me and I’ll swear my loyalty.
Aleksi lets out a dry chuckle and the magic pulls the ropes tighter, until I can barely breathe.
“We’re vampires,” he says. “We can claim what we—”
He’s cut off by the skittering sound of a large, leatherbound book sliding across the tiles toward us. I look over to the shadows where the book came from and see red eyes looking back at me.
The bad thing.
Did a demon just throw the book to me?
I glance back at the book on the floor, right in front of me, and everything else seems to melt away.
I’m immediately enraptured by it, the sight of the strange cover filling me with warmth and need and I find myself promising I’ll do anything for it.
Somewhere in those pages lies the secret to my salvation.
“Then I claim it for myself,” I manage to say, my voice sounding hollow.
The world starts to move.
It shifts, like the whole chapel’s foundation is collapsing, and suddenly the demon, the bad thing, is right in front of me, standing up on two legs. It’s large, its hide so black and fathomless it’s like looking into the abyss and I feel like I’m screaming.
It slides its long, thick leathery tail up the side of me, then along my collarbone and neck.
It wraps around my throat, constricting slightly, and I can’t look away from the void of its body.
I hear Saara yelling something, I hear Bitrus screaming my name, and I’m slowly losing consciousness, being dragged into the depths of the abyss, a world of nothing but death.