Chapter 31
Chapter
Thirty-One
Valentina's fist catches me in the jaw, snapping my head back.
I roll with the impact, using the momentum to create distance. Blood fills my mouth, my own. I spit it onto the concrete and circle, keeping my maker in my line of sight.
She's smiling. Of course she's smiling. That same cat-with-cream smile she wore the night she turned me, the night she ruined my life and walked away laughing.
"You should have stayed quiet," she says, advancing slowly. "Played the obedient prisoner. Konstantin would have treated you well, you know. He has plans for you."
"I don't care about his plans."
"No. You care about him."
She tilts her head toward where Maximus and Konstantin are fighting, the sounds of their combat echoing through the parking structure. I hear the crash of bodies against concrete, the grunt of impact, the unmistakable rhythm of two predators trying to destroy each other.
Every instinct screams at me to look. To find Maximus, make sure he's still standing, still fighting. But I can't take my eyes off Valentina. Not for a second.
"It's pathetic, really," she continues. "Eight months as a vampire and you've already made the oldest mistake in the book. Falling for someone who can't save you."
I don't respond. I'm watching her feet, her hips, the subtle shifts in her weight that telegraph her next move. Eight months isn't long for a vampire, but it's long enough to learn how to read an opponent. And I was reading opponents for three years before she ever sank her fangs into me.
A particularly loud crash echoes from across the structure. Maximus's voice, raised in fury. My chest tightens.
Valentina lunges, exploiting my distraction.
I sidestep, barely, and rake my nails across her arm as she passes. The wounds are shallow, already healing, but she hisses in annoyance.
"Lucky," she spits.
"Trained."
"And distracted." Her eyes gleam. "He's got you so twisted up you can't even focus on the enemy in front of you. That's exactly what Konstantin wanted, you know. A weakness. A blind spot. Something to make the great Maximus vulnerable."
I force myself to center. To push Maximus to the edge of my awareness, present but not consuming. I can hear him fighting. That has to be enough. If I let myself worry about him, Valentina will kill me. And if I die, I can't help him at all.
"Why me?" The question comes out before I can stop it. "Why go to all this trouble for one fledgling?"
Valentina circles me, predator assessing prey. "Because you were perfect. Konstantin has been searching for decades for someone with the right combination of strength, stubbornness, and fire. Someone who could survive what he needed to do."
"Which was?"
"Make you better." She feints left, strikes right.
I block, but the impact rattles my bones.
"The underground rings were his hunting ground.
He had people at dozens of fights, watching, evaluating.
Most fighters were too weak. Too broken.
Too easily controlled." Her smile widens.
"But you. You beat me that night, remember?
A vampire. You didn't know what I was, and you still won. "
The memory surfaces, the private match, the big payout, the woman who moved wrong and smiled wrong and looked at me like prey. I'd been so focused on the money. So sure of my own skill.
"That's when he knew," Valentina continues. "Watching you take down a vampire with nothing but human strength and sheer determination. He said, 'That one. She's the one.'"
"The one for what?"
"For the program." She circles closer. "He's been building an army, Celeste. Enhanced vampires. Stronger, faster, more resilient than anything that's ever existed. You were supposed to be his masterpiece."
"I'm no one's weapon."
"You already are. You just don't know it yet." She lunges again, and this time her fist catches me in the ribs. I feel something crack. "The turning was just the beginning. After that came the modifications."
"In Rome." The fragments Maximus unlocked flash through my mind, cobblestones, rain, a small dark room. Konstantin in daylight.
"Yes, he mentioned the blocks were failing faster than expected." Valentina circles me, looking amused rather than concerned. "But knowing you were in Rome and understanding what happened there are two very different things."
"The fight was in Atlanta. The underground ring. I remember that clearly." I circle her, keeping my guard up. "So how did I end up in Rome?"
"The transformation takes three days. Your heart stops.
Your brain goes dark. Your body is just meat waiting to be remade.
" She's enjoying this, the confusion on my face, the pieces not fitting together.
"Three days is a long time, Celeste. Long enough to put your corpse on a private jet.
Long enough to fly you across an ocean."
The realization hits like a punch to the gut. "You took me to Rome while I was transforming."
"You woke up there, your first true awakening as a vampire.
Three weeks of modifications followed. Experiments.
Konstantin remaking you cell by cell." Her eyes gleam.
"And when he was finished, we blocked those memories, flew you back to Atlanta, and let you wake up in that warehouse thinking it was your first night.
Thinking only three days had passed since I turned you. "
Three weeks. Not three days.
My real first awakening happened in Rome, and I don't remember any of it. The fragments Maximus unlocked are just slivers of three weeks that were stolen from me.
"The note," I say slowly. "'Welcome to eternity, sweetheart.' You left it to make me think..."
"That I'd turned you and abandoned you on the spot. The confused fledgling narrative." Valentina laughs. "It was important that you believed you'd survived alone from the start. We just... gave you a head start first."
"What did he do to me?"
"Ask yourself why you survived the contaminated blood.
" She circles closer. "A fledgling, eight months old, with no maker to guide her.
Yes, Maximus gave you clean blood, but I've seen vampires twice your age die even with intervention.
The contamination had spread through your entire system.
You should have been too far gone to save. "
I remember those hours. The black veins spreading under my skin. The certainty that I was dying. The clean blood sliding down my throat. And then the recovery, faster than anyone expected.
"The others in his facility," Valentina continues. "The ones who went feral, who couldn't be saved, they had clean blood too. Medical care. Everything Maximus could offer." She smiles. "They still died. But you bounced back in hours. Doesn't that strike you as odd?"
I don't answer. Because I don't have one.
"That wasn't normal," Valentina confirms. "That was the modifications working. Your body adapting, evolving, becoming what Konstantin designed you to be."
"Which is what?"
"A weapon." Her eyes gleam in the darkness. "That was just the beginning. There are other gifts sleeping in your blood, waiting to wake up. Enhanced strength. Accelerated healing. Resistances that no other vampire has." She pauses, savoring the next words. "And a kill switch."
The words land like ice in my veins. "What?"
"You think Konstantin would build a weapon he couldn't control?
" Valentina laughs. "There's a trigger buried in those modifications.
A command phrase, a signal, something. When he activates it, you won't be Celeste anymore.
You'll be exactly what he designed: a perfect killing machine with no will of its own. "
"You're lying."
"Am I?" She tilts her head. "Ask yourself why he let you go.
Why he let you wander Atlanta, let you find your way to Maximus, let you fall in love with his oldest enemy.
" Her smile turns cruel. "Because it doesn't matter.
When the time comes, when you're exactly where he wants you, he'll flip the switch.
And you'll kill Maximus yourself. You won't be able to stop it. You won't even want to."
Across the structure, I hear Maximus roar, a sound of pure rage. The crash of bodies. A pillar cracking.
I take a step toward the sound before I can stop myself.
Valentina moves faster.
Her hand closes around my throat, slamming me back against a concrete pillar. Stars explode across my vision. Her face fills my sight, beautiful and terrible and utterly without mercy.
"He's fine," she says. "Konstantin won't kill him.
Not yet. He wants to break him first, and you can't break someone by killing them quickly.
It's like a game to him, his whole reason for existing.
I guess you get bored when you're over a thousand years old.
" Her grip tightens. "But you… You, I can kill.
And I think I will. You've outlived your usefulness to me. "
"Konstantin won't..."
"Konstantin doesn't control me. Not anymore.
" Something dark flickers in her expression.
"He promised me Atlanta if I delivered you.
Promised me territory, power, everything I've wanted for three centuries.
But watching you now, watching you pine for Maximus when you should be focused on the enemy about to kill you, I think I'd rather just watch you die. "
Her free hand draws back, claws extended, aimed at my chest.
I have maybe half a second.
I use it.
My knee comes up hard, connecting with her stomach. It's not enough to hurt her, not really, but it's enough to loosen her grip. I twist free, gasping, and put distance between us.
"You'll have to do better than that," I manage.
"Oh, I intend to."
We circle each other again. Both wounded now. Both bleeding. The sounds of Maximus's fight continue in the background, crashes and grunts and the occasional word I can't quite make out.
Stay alive, I think at him, knowing he can't hear me. Stay alive for me.