Chapter 8: In Your Room
I was a star on the verge of going supernova. The surging force within me pulsed and throbbed, threatening to explode outwards, leaving only torn skin and shredded organs in its wake. I wasn’t simply a conduit for magic anymore; it consumed me from the inside out. That should have terrified me. Garstatt’s words of warning should have been loud in my head: don’t lose yourself to it. But I was already too far gone. The power fed me and fed from me, burning hot and fast. I’d never been more alive – or fearless.
Not so long ago, I’d have been terrified to be alone with three Nosferatu, but now they barely fazed me. One held my feet, while the other positioned himself at my hands. The third walked a few steps ahead of us, unlocking each of the doors our procession came upon, so we could continue through the compound’s maze of featureless grey hallways unhindered. None of these vampires were any match for my sorcerer magic, let alone the burgeoning power from whatever it was that had happened back in the throne room. I was pretty sure they knew it too. After all, I was a legend around here, albeit not a particularly popular one.
Despite that, I couldn’t help but wonder if the drying blood on my neck tempted them. Was their stoic silence masking a desperate attempt to keep their bloodlust in check and their fangs out of my flesh? Keel’s father had trusted no one but Boras to come into contact with me. Had the induction ritual changed my status here that much? Or was it simply that I had magic now? My bald-headed companions offered no clues; their expressionless faces just kept staring ahead, like soldiers on a march, dutifully carrying out their orders.
I almost scrambled out of their grip when I heard a pair of elevator doors slide open in front of us, thinking they were planning on taking me back to that tiny, filthy holding cell among the rest of the human cattle in the bowels of the compound. I’d spent six torturous months stuck in that place, and I wasn’t screaming for a redo. Of course, I realized almost immediately, it didn’t matter where we were going: there was no door or any set of bars here that could hold me anymore. Not unless they’d found some substance that was immune to blood sorcery and bond magic.
A smile crept across my face. Oh, how the tables had turned.
We couldn’t have descended more than a floor or two before coming to a stop. The doors parted with a gentle hiss, and the Nosferatu carried me forward once more. The darkness of the unlit room licked hungrily at the light spilling from the elevator car; what it didn’t consume it held at bay – completely. After twenty or so paces, I was deposited onto something soft and springy. A bed? Definitely not the stained, threadbare mattress of my last stay.
Having dispensed of their cargo, the vampires retreated to the elevator. A moment later, I heard the unmistakable clang and whirr of the metal box carrying them off to another part of the building. Then it got quiet, almost tomb-quiet, aside from my breathing and the persistent hum of the central heating/cooling system cycling air through the compound.
For the first time in sixteen hours, I was alone. But where am I? The sludgy blackness offered no clues.
There had to be a lamp or light switch around somewhere – and in absence of either of those things I could just use magic – but with my limbs heavy from the long journey cooped up in the van and my body still buzzing with the after-effects of the ritual, illumination just didn’t seem that important. Surely the Nosferatu wouldn’t have forced me to participate in the induction ceremony if they intended to dispose of me hours later. They were far too bureaucratic for that.
I closed my eyes and let my body fall limp against the mattress. It was plush, pliant and much more comfortable than the one I had at the apartment back in New York. Real luxury.
Was this what being the Nosferatu’s official sorcerer meant? Fancy accoutrements in exchange for a lifetime of magical servitude? Why, then, had Keel been so angry? Why had he acted like he didn’t trust me, like the earthquake had been my fault? And why did he make like we were nothing to each other at all?
I hadn’t expected him to fall all over me in front of the council, but he’d been downright arctic, as if winter had wrapped its icy tendrils around his soul and frozen his heart in the process. Coldness like that couldn’t be faked, and it gutted me. It was stupid and naïve, but even with everything Arthos had warned me of during the drive, I’d still come looking for old Keel, for my Keel. But he was long gone.
All that remained was this dichotomy. Nature versus the bond. History versus biology.
Vampire versus sorcerer?
Isn’t that what Arthos had said it would be – a battle of wits and wills? God, I didn’t even know where to start with that.
All this magic, all this power, and not a single good idea.
I pushed the heels of my hands into my eye sockets, as if that might shove all my worries deeper into my brain, somewhere I wouldn’t be able to hear them whinge and whine and carry on like insufferable children. As I began to relax, my mind unfurled in new ways, unhinging itself from my anxious thoughts and reaching out, searching. A tiny tickle bloomed in my skull, before growing into a persistent vibration in the frontal lobes of my brain, a sixth sense I didn’t know I had or hadn’t had until this moment. Another gift from the bond? I wondered.
I had no idea what it was looking for until it honed in on its target: Keel. He was a couple floors above me and he was upset. Angry and brooding. The bond was broadcasting his location, his emotions. But why? What purpose did it serve? I considered how the bond worked in human-sorcerer pairings, its normal configuration. What had Bruce said: if Ephraim got injured or was in mortal danger the bond would tell him? This transmitting must be an extension of the same thing: it was telling me what Keel was feeling so I could protect him, because protecting him meant protecting me. It made far more logical sense than it had any right to.
I probably could have gleaned more specifics about Keel’s mood, but my other senses began flexing, drawing me to distraction. I could hear the slow, faint heartbeats of each of the vampires in the compound, as well as the faster, more human ones of the not-yet-transitioned, and far, far beneath me, the actual human ones of the bleeders. If I strained my ears, a few more human heartbeats joined the rhythmic symphony – those of the employees of the self-storage facility topside. Smells came to me too: the tantalizing scent of food being prepared in the compound kitchen for the human prisoners mingled with the acrid tang of disinfectant and old blood and decay. No amount of scrubbing and polishing could wipe away the evidence of the brutalities that had taken place here entirely.
The burst of sensory information was staggering, yet very different from the overwhelming cavalcade of pictures, sounds and smells I’d experienced when Keel had imbued me with a touch of his vampirism while we’d been on the run. This time I was in complete control of the stimuli I was receiving, as if this was no longer a borrowed talent, but rather an indelible part of my being. Was that even possible? Or was I just drunk on vampire blood? Could a sorcerer even become drunk on vampire blood? There was so much I still didn’t know or understand, so much I hadn’t thought to ask Garstatt. Sure I’d been practicing bond magic, but none of that prepared me for this at all. This was next-level stuff.
You’re in control, I reminded myself as I reined my focus back in and the myriad heartbeats faded to silence.
I could still feel Keel though. I tried to dampen my awareness of him, but his presence on the periphery of my senses was constant: a nagging, intrusive reminder we were forever linked, two planets rotating in the same orbit until our mutually assured destruction. He’d ascended a few more floors during the time I’d been distracted by the compound’s other inhabitants. He was now positioned smack dab in the middle of the storage facility – the human storage facility. I shifted my attention back to him, curious to discover the extent of the bond’s locator ability and to find out what was going on. On cue, the invisible tether between us tightened. It tugged at my ribs, as if attempting to pull me up off the mattress and straight to him. I ignored the growing pressure on my chest and focused harder, imploring the bond to spill its secrets and Keel’s, but all I could tell for certain was he was moving back and forth. Pacing. I scrunched my eyelids tight and switched my focus from the tether to my mind, willing the bond to read his mood as it had done earlier. Still agitated, anxious. I prodded at the connection, looking for anything else it might tell me, for instance what he was up to, but it only resulted in a fresh onslaught of troubled feelings. I let out a frustrated groan and released my mental grip. Keel faded back into the background and the tether loosened. The ache in my ribcage dulled then subsided.
Now what?
I opened my eyes and waved a hand in front of my face, but could make out only the faintest hint of movement in the darkness. I was almost certain I hadn’t encountered such pitch blackness in the compound before, unless you counted the duct work we’d traversed during our escape. Not that the lack of light posed much of a problem.
I raised my left hand into the air and shoved my thumbnail deep into the fleshy surface of my forefinger until I felt a trickle of blood bubble up out of my skin. Fi- I thought, issuing the mental command but getting no further than that first syllable before I was enveloped in the sweet, enticing smell of… my own blood? My stomach clenched in a series of gut-churning of hunger spasms and the urge to shove my bleeding hand into my mouth seemed insurmountable. You would taste delicious, some previously silent part of me promised. This wasn’t my usual inner voice: its cajoling bordered on impassioned insistence. I shuddered.
What the hell is happening to me?
I reached up and clasped my wrist with my right hand, as much to stop it from shaking as to prevent it from ending up between my lips. I held it there as seconds stretched into minutes and beyond, all the while that terrible, relentless craving bucked within me, ferocious and unyielding. Just concede, it pleaded, what harm could one little taste do, one little drop? But I didn’t dare. Whatever this was it was much less innocent than the bloodlust back in the school bathroom had been; that hunger had never had a voice, had never made demands. The single-mindedness of this yearning was panic-inducing, barely controllable.
Eventually frustration found a tangible foothold among the cravings and gelid fear, and I thrust both hands out in front of me and thought FIRE. A single towering flame burst forth from the wound, stretching so high it licked the ceiling, blackening it. So much for vampiric attributes blocking my blood magic. If anything, they were now bolstering it. I’d only been attempting to conjure a lighter-sized flame and had somehow willed forth an inferno. Regardless of whether it was the result of the bond itself, Keel’s transition or the events in the throne room, the rules it seemed had been rewritten.
Power. Blood lust. Bond magic. Magic magic. Keel. Nothing was the same.
I reeled the flame back to a more manageable height, then rocked myself up into a sitting position, careful not to set myself or the bed on fire, and took in my surroundings. I recognized the room at once: Keel’s old bedroom. My breath hitched and the fire in my hand flickered, sputtered and went out as I lost my concentration to a raging monsoon of memories. They pounded up against my soul, threatening to pull me under and drown me. All those lazy afternoons spent lounging in this exact spot talking, laughing and acting more like a boy and a girl than a vampire and a sorceress; our first kiss; the way we used to spread the Nosferatu history books out all over the floor then pace up and down the tiny aisles we’d leave between them, searching for information and answers; how we’d unlocked so many secrets of my magic right here. A painful lump took shape at the base of my throat.
I fell back against the mattress, unsure if I wanted to wail or lash out or flee the room in a fit of hysterics. My head reeled between everything that once was and the reality of the here and now. It was like being trapped on some demented carousel ride of the damned, where the ride attendant had dropped dead mid-rotation and there was no escape.
Keel had housed me here on purpose.
“Calm down, Mills,” I whispered to myself, even though those words made me feel anything but calm. I released my hold on my wrist and reached up towards the headboard, snatching the first pillow my hand encountered. I dragged it toward me and buried my face in it. I swore I could still smell old Keel in the fabric. It was comforting and heartbreaking all at once.
The vampire I’d met in the throne room was miles away from who he’d once been. Not that I was the same Mills anymore either, but I didn’t have a painful, weeks-long physical transition to help me square away our history and compartmentalize my emotions. Nor was there anything in my genetic structure that existed to help speed along the process. In that way, I was still painfully human. I had only grief. And nostalgic longing. And a crippling sense of loss. All exasperated by my lodgings.
This place was full of ghosts. The ghosts of us. The ghosts of hope. The ghosts of fleeting happiness where happiness should have never found a foothold in the first place. I could feel them all dancing around me in the darkness, looking for an opportunity to sink their knives in a little deeper, to slice off another pound of flesh.
There are things only time and distance can heal, but I hadn’t been granted the gift of the former and I’d given up the luxury of the latter. Now all my hurt was returning to me like an open, festering wound, ushered in by this bedroom and his smell and the depressing, taunting parade of all our best memories.
I moaned and sank my face deeper into the pillow.
Even there, I couldn’t hide from the one thought that screamed its torment so much louder than the rest: Keel had put me in here on purpose. He had known how this room would make me suffer and he had made it mine anyway.
That was the kind of Nosferatu he’d become. And I’d agreed to come back and swear allegiance to him.
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