CHAPTER 25 AILEEN
CHAPTER 25
AILEEN
I woke up in a prison cell.
There was no other way to describe it, really. It was a dark room made of stone—the walls, floor, and ceiling—with slick metal bars and a little dangling lamp. Other than a sink, the room was completely empty. No furniture, no window, not even a sewer opening.
And no way to escape.
Without anything to do, I decided that at the very least, I should get comfortable. Grabbing the hem of my dress, I tore off a wide strip. Then I used the piece of torn cloth as a hair band and pulled my hair into a ponytail. Once I kicked off my heels, I felt much better.
Though not really.
Not after what had happened at the gala.
I had so many questions, starting with a few obvious ones: What were those monsters? Why did they attack us? How did the Bird of the Nile painting disappear? What had that infernal hell been? How did Atalon’s time not stop while it had stopped for everyone else? Why did he knock me out and bring me here like a prisoner?
And what happened to Ragnor? To Cassidy? To everyone else? Were the humans all dead? What the hell was going on?
The sound of a door opening echoed in the stony dungeon, snapping my attention back to the present. I could hear footsteps coming from my right, and I watched unblinkingly until a disgustingly familiar man appeared.
With a dark-purple three-piece suit, a black shirt, a silver tie, and a shiny Rolex, Atalon could’ve passed for either a distinguished young CEO of an up-and-coming high-tech start-up or the head of a mob family. Considering his sinister smile, I was leaning toward the latter.
“I see you’ve made yourself comfortable,” Atalon said as he came to a stop at the bars, hands in the pockets of his trousers. “I must say, incarceration suits you better than I would’ve expected.”
Climbing to my feet, I glared at him. “I think it would suit you much more,” I said in a thankfully steady voice.
He grinned and shook his head. “Well. Good to see you too. Where would you like me to start?”
I leaned against the wall and folded my arms. “I wasn’t aware it was the villain’s monologue time,” I drawled, even though inside I wasn’t as calm as I pretended to be. In fact, my entire body was shivering uncontrollably, and a suffocating feeling clogged my throat.
“It’s going to be more of a dialogue, actually,” Atalon said, chuckling in a way that sent chills down my spine.
Acting as sassy as I could to hide my true emotions, I asked, “Why did you hit me and put me behind bars when I did nothing?”
He shrugged. “It’s more of a precaution, really. You see,” he said, eyes brimming with that shadowy glow, “I couldn’t risk bringing you back to the League without knowing what kind of magic you possess and if it’s going to be a threat.”
The triumphant glint in his eyes didn’t match the words leaving his mouth. Atalon was lying. It reminded me of how my father looked when he was about to head to the basement after acquiring a new little bird. The only thing Atalon lacked was the absolute devotion my father had for his horrible task.
“Now that we established that, tell me, tesoro,” he said, coming closer to the bars. “How come an insignificant little Common vampire not only managed to wrap the oldest Lord in the United States around her finger but also somehow, inexplicably and conveniently, became a Sacred after the Auction?”
I tensed and crossed my arms across my chest. As if I would answer that. It wasn’t like I even could. I had no idea what was happening to me or how or even why. “How about you tell me how long you’ve known I have magic?”
His grin returned. “How about an exchange? A quid pro quo. Answer my question first; then I’ll respond to yours.”
“I know what quid pro quo means,” I snapped, irritated by his condescendingly cheerful voice. Then, seeing as I was in no state to argue, I decided to reply with the truth. “I don’t know. One day, I woke up, and I could use magic.”
Something I couldn’t quite read passed across his eyes, and I had the feeling he didn’t buy my answer. But to my surprise, he moved right to answering my question. And that answer was far more shocking. “I’ve suspected that since the Auction, but tonight confirmed it beyond any doubt.”
My heart boomed in my ears. “Is that why you bought me?”
Atalon smiled. “Indeed. Now tell me about your magic.” He put his arms behind his back and began pacing. “In return, I’ll tell you about mine.”
Everything in me told me not to say anything, but what was the point? He already knew about my magic. He obviously knew its nature to a certain extent, considering the fact he’d managed to somehow negate the effect of my time stopping. So I gave him the truth. “I can stop time for a short period. That’s all there is to it.” I paused. “Now, tell me how you could move when I stopped time, as if it didn’t affect you.”
He smirked and, to my annoyance, ignored my question when he said, “There is no specific term for what my magic is, but I can describe it to you.”
I glowered at him.
His face turned nostalgic. “At first, before I developed my Sacred magic, I was Gifted. Being an exceptionally talented painter in my human life, my talent transformed into a unique Gift that allowed me to not just master every art style but also imitate the styles of any artist I wanted down to the littlest detail.”
He shoved his hands back in his pockets and resumed his pacing. “In the beginning, I’d made quite the business out of my Gift, under the name of my then Lord, Bowman.” His voice took on a tone of fondness I didn’t expect. “Selling copies of famous paintings while claiming them as the originals, so much so that even the greatest art experts couldn’t notice any difference, was thrilling. A few hundred years into my vampirehood, however, my art style began taking an interesting turn.” He paused again, his face filling with almost childlike joy. “It’s as though my own talent was ready to be born after centuries of being dormant. And suddenly, my paintings weren’t just copies. They were mine. And they were the best of all time.”
He might have been speaking arrogantly about it, but I tended to agree. The quality of his paintings was out of this world. Coloring, techniques, the meticulous lines of his brush ... Every painting he drew was a masterpiece.
“But there was a catch to this new talent of mine,” he said, “and that catch was magic.”
He stopped, closed his eyes, and moved his hands as though he was conducting an orchestra. “Every time I sit down to paint, my magic activates,” he said with reverence that gave me the wrong kind of goose bumps. “The paintings are always pictures of either the past, present, or future of other people, and never mine.” He opened his eyes to give me a smug look. “Humans call this kind of magic fortune-telling, only I’m able to enact it through my paintings.”
Putting his hands in his pockets, he said, “Unfortunately, I never know whose fortune I’m telling. The paintings can show an image from the past, present, or future of someone in India for all I know. It’s a very, very rare occasion for me to find out whose fortune I had once painted.”
I remembered staring at the Bird of the Nile and feeling as though I was right there. The bird, a mere black silhouette in the painting, had become vivid, full of color, the longer I’d stared, until it felt like its yellow eyes were about to consume me. The memory made me shudder, an ominous feeling unfolding in the pit of my stomach.
“When you looked at the painting, it must have reacted to you, recognizing you as its owner,” Atalon said now, eerie satisfaction in his voice, “and when you recognized it as yours, too, the painting disappeared, no longer needing to exist now that it found its owner.”
His gaze locked mine now, and there was that gleeful triumph back to his shadowy, glowing eyes. “The moment you absorbed the painting, a bond manifested between the two of us. The painting let me know that it found its owner, you see. But it doesn’t end there.” His smile grew so sinister, it made me jolt. “The bond then showed me the painting’s owner’s entire past, right up to the present.”
At first, his words didn’t compute. I simply stared at him, as if still waiting for the punch line of some sick joke.
It was only when my knees hit the cold stone floor that I realized I was not only shaking uncontrollably but had lost all strength to keep myself standing.
Because he knew. Atalon’s triumphant eyes told me that he knew.
“Now that you know what I’m capable of, I believe it’s time that we start over,” Atalon said, looking at me with a happy gleam in his eyes. “I know exactly when you received your magic. I know exactly what happened between you and Rayne. I know exactly what you did to that poor boy Logan. I know exactly what part you played in your father’s crimes.” He grinned. “So now it’s time I tell you what I’m going to do with you.”
Every word he said was like a kick to my gut. My mouth was dry. My breaths were shallow. My mind was numb. Everything seemed so surreal all of a sudden that I found it hard to concentrate on anything at all.
“There is someone out there who wants and needs you even more than I do,” he said with a smile so happy and cold, all I could do was stare. “You see, the monsters who crashed the gala event are, in fact, the Jinn.”
At this point, nothing could surprise me.
“I decided to strike a deal with the few who survived.”
Or maybe I could still be surprised.
“They might be our natural enemy, but in this case, we have a common interest,” Atalon said with so much satisfaction, my heart sank. “You see, the price they’re willing to pay to rent you out for a few weeks is far too tempting to refuse, Natalia.”