Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter
Twenty-Five
That night, I don’t dream of the maze.
Instead, I relive one of my earliest, bloodiest missions.
The night I killed Cieri.
Cieri, an Italian vampire who had made a name for himself in London, had organised a party in one of his underground clubs.
He had handpicked fifty human victims, all with interesting blood profiles.
I let myself get captured, just as Penny instructed, and stood in handcuffs, as the other humans were brought out one by one onto a stage for the guests to take their pick of them.
Penny dressed me up the exact way I needed to be in order for Cieri to choose me. White dress, long blond hair. He had a type. She also gave me a needle to prick my skin before he inspected me. It was my first mission working alone—I’d been sent out into the shadows to prove my worth to Callisto.
All I wanted was to save the other humans, but instead, I was forced to look the other way as fangs tore through their flesh, their screams as loud as the music.
I followed Cieri to his private booth. He ran his hands down my white dress, told me my blood was unlike anything he’d smelled before.
He promised he would turn me into a vampire if I asked nicely.
Something possessed me then. Instead of staking him, finishing him fast the way I’d been told to, a twisted part of my mind told me to take my time.
To give him a taste of his own medicine.
See, if you let a vampire bleed out, it won’t kill them.
It will be excruciatingly painful, though, so I slashed his neck, his legs, I near enough carved his heart out of his chest. By the time I finally staked him, my dress was soaked through with his blood, coating me like a second skin.
I threw up next to the dust left by his corpse, and wiped my mouth clean, tasting blood.
I wouldn’t get rid of the taste for days.
When I wake, I can still taste the blood. Stolen blood, from previous victims dragged into his clubs. I pull the covers over my head, trying to breathe. There are careful steps outside my bed, behind the saltward.
Bile burns my throat, and I cover my mouth.
Penny told me to be more careful after that mission.
She’d been disappointed. Disturbed, even, by the mess I’d made.
She’d said: Maybe you aren’t ready. When I was denied my first promotion a year after that mission, she brought up Cieri’s death as one of the reasons, saying I’d acted more like a monster than a hunter, even though it never happened again.
“Cassie?”
I swallow the acid in my throat. I breathe. But I can still feel his blood caking my skin.
“Are you all right?”
I wipe away tears. I don’t want her to see me like this. But the mark, now travelling down past my waist, stings, warning me that we’ve been apart for too long. Telling me it’ll tear me to shreds if I don’t get close to her again.
I open a gap in the curtains. Aliz stands behind the saltward. Her eyes are black. I am the only threat in our room. Concern furrows her brows, and I can’t seem to move my lips, make a single sound, as I step over the ward.
Only when I’ve wrapped my arms around her, pressing myself to her until the ache in my neck returns to a dull itch, do I realise what will happen next.
Every night, every dream I’ve had, has echoed in Aliz’s mind. Every image of awful delight letting her know—letting both of us know—what we can have if we just give in. But that false paradise is gone.
If our dreams are still connected, when she goes to sleep this morning, she will share my dream of Cieri, and see me as I really am.
A monster.
“What happened?” Her voice is small, her hand on the nape of my neck cool, gentle, familiar. I open my mouth. I have to tell her what I saw, what she’ll experience once she goes to sleep, but my lips tremble, my throat seizes. I can’t hide.
I can still feel the blood from my dream sticking to my skin and then spreading, sullying her as well.
“I’ll write it down,” I whisper. I stare at the blank page, then at what I wrote the previous night. The pen nearly slips from my finger as I try to find the words that will save me. Maybe Aliz’s dream won’t change. Maybe she’ll still be in the maze.
My eyes sting, and I copy what I wrote the previous night.
The map is almost complete. Just one hallway left, with a question mark in the middle, and a hexagon hiding what I hope is Ada Astra’s library.
Aliz and I experienced different illusions when we tried to cross the final hallway.
I drowned, while she was consumed by sunlight.
I heard a voice. She didn’t. There must be a way through.
I search for answers in Tynahine’s most eclectic library, the Palau Collection.
I wonder if the alchemist from which it borrowed its name is still alive.
Maybe she’d have a few ideas on how to get through.
But as soon as I sit down with a book, my mind drifts towards something I can’t ignore.
Has Aliz dreamt yet?
Has she seen my true colours?
Aliz is always there for me. But now I’m hiding in a library because I can’t bear it. I chew on my lip till it bleeds, till my eyes sting. My head hurts, and I finally give up, running back to Tynarrich as my skin itches and burns.
I slot my key through the lock, expecting the worst. Aliz, knowing what I am, hating me the way any sensible vampire would.
And when I step in, when she turns to stare at me, I think it’s all over. Her face is pale. Eyes red.
I can explain, I try to say. But I can’t say anything. Aliz rubs her eyes.
“My dream was not the same as yours,” she starts. Her voice trembles. “I don’t—” She looks at her notebook, and her hand shakes as she reaches for it. “But I don’t understand it.”
The room is quiet but for the sound of the wind outside.
“It was more like a memory than a dream,” Aliz whispers.
“Something I’d forgotten.” She rubs her head.
Her voice is tight. “It was just before my seventeenth birthday. My father had a Council meeting, and someone…” Aliz stares right through me, as though she’s still stuck in her dream.
“Someone locked me in my room with no blood supply.”
She touches her throat.
“And what happened next?” I ask. Aliz shakes her head.
“I woke up,” she says. “With the feeling that something terrible was about to happen.”
I should be relieved that we didn’t share the same dream.
But instead all I feel is the need to ease her fear.
“It was just a dream,” I say. I drop my bag next to my bed, and just like I did when I woke from my own nightmare, I get too close to her.
I thread my fingers through her hair, some of it damp with sweat, and draw her close.
She wraps her arms around my back, resting her head on my chest. She sighs and then looks up at me.
“It’s suspicious,” she whispers. Her hand plays with the fabric of my jumper, while her cheek rests against my left breast.
“What is?”
“You being so nice to me.”
I frown at her, my glasses slipping down to my nose.
“I’m always nice,” I say. She looks away, sinking into me.
She sighs again, but she doesn’t sound as scared as she did moments ago.
“But I don’t like what’s happening,” I whisper, running my fingers through her hair. “Our dreams are no longer connected.”
“Isn’t that a good thing?” she asks.
“It just means things are getting more unpredictable,” I say. “And I have a feeling they’re only going to get worse.”
Neither of us says anything after that. Aliz doesn’t move her arms and instead holds me tight against her. So I stay as I am, too, trying to convince myself for the millionth time that I need this proximity only to appease the mark—and not to satisfy something far deeper inside me.