Legacies unmasked, p.45
Legacies Unmasked, page 45
“Albert can’t sire.”
“That is surely a joke.”
“I mean he can’t sire vampires. You would’ve awoken after forty days. That’s the natural way of bloodborns. Fane raised you too early.”
“He raised me too late.”
My forehead burns beneath the shifting rope when I frown. “That’s what he told you?”
“It’s the truth,” he says simply. It doesn’t even look like a lie.
“Everyone knows Fane is a liar. Even you.”
“He is my saviour.”
“He’s the reason you burn beneath your skin,” I grit out.
The ropes binding me fall away, and the floor rises to meet me. I sail through the air, arms and legs flailing. A jolt in my stomach wakes my natural defences. When I should’ve hit the floor, I bounce on air and land on my feet. I impress even myself. But I can’t stay standing. My blood reroutes itself to all the wrong places, leaving my legs jellified. The Lion claps at my gymnastic feat seconds before I hit the floor.
He lies beside me, staring up at the belly of the ship suspended above us. He twists his finger between the strands of cord on my bracelet. “Where did you get this?”
“Albert gave it to me.”
“He gave one just like this to me once.” He holds my wrist above his face to inspect the stone. “Then he tore it from my neck as I bled onto the battlefield.”
“Then this is rightfully yours,” I tell him. “He only had two. He must’ve loved you very much to give this to you.”
I pick at the knots, but Oskar lays his hand over mine. “It’s not the same one. In any case, I don’t want it. If he loved me, he wouldn’t have left me to die.”
“He had no way of knowing you would be reborn.”
“Yet Fane did?”
“Yes,” I blurt. “You must know what he does. He collects information on everything. He makes predictions about who will become a bloodborn, so he can use them for his own amusement and whatever other selfish purposes he can think of. You know this because you collect them for him.”
“He is not required to inform me of such things. It is my job to serve, not to ask questions.”
“I was told you weren’t like the other Interrupted.”
“Why do you call us Interrupted?”
“What do you call yourselves? The ones forced awake from the grave?”
“Bloodborn apostles.”
“The Bishop knows bloodborns are more obedient and loyal if he raises them early. That’s why he does it. That’s why he claims he raised you too late, because he knows the only reason you are loyal and obedient is because you choose to be. For the others, it’s not a choice. If he had raised you after forty nights, your soul would be intact. Like Tabby’s, like Radnor Harding’s, like Sean Morrigan’s. And you wouldn’t need to cover your face.”
“I don’t need to cover my face. I choose to.”
“You’re not…?”
“Disfigured? Not as badly as the others. Fane stopped it getting worse.”
I raise an eyebrow. “How?”
“He’s a powerful man.”
“He’s full of shit.”
He gives me a sceptical look. “It would be a pleasure to hear your theory.”
“Bloodborns should be buried for forty nights. Those brought up early will decompose until the forty nights have passed, eventually shedding their soul. Most of the Interrupted were brought up between eighteen and twenty-four nights after burial. You were brought up after thirty-four nights, so your disfigurement is not as severe.”
“How do you know this?”
“I read about you. Did it really not occur to you that people would have you watched? That they’d be watching Fane? We know what he does to manipulate his bloodborns.”
Oskar laughs. “This is what you believe?”
When did I start thinking of him as Oskar? When he started behaving like a human. A flawed, manipulated, clueless human.
“It’s knowledge from the archives of the Bloodborn Brotherhood. Knowledge Fane keeps from you. Not that he knows it all himself. After all, he doesn’t have access to the archive.”
“And you do?”
“I don’t have access to the archive, but then I’m not a megalomaniac with pretensions of world domination. If Fane had the power required to save your face, he wouldn’t use it. Instead, he pretended to diminish your scars. Why do you think he’d do that?”
“I don’t think he’s done that.” Oskar turns towards me, and I see the truth in his face belying his words. “You do.”
“I’m more familiar with your eyes than you can possibly know,” I tell him. “I watched that one land, Oskar.”
He sucks in a breath. “Land where? What do you mean?”
“You recognised the truth in what I told you. I have no reason to lie, especially when I’m at your mercy and every truth just makes you more annoyed with me.”
“I’m not annoyed.”
“Why do you do Fane’s dirty work?”
“I owe a life debt. And it’s not dirty. It’s noble work.”
“You’re an assassin.”
“Tell me, Violet, are you dead?”
“No, because you just wanted to talk. I’m sure assassins are allowed a social life.”
“A social life?”
“Yeah. Chats with friends. Dancing, drinking, eating your own bodyweight in kebab meat.”
“I don’t do those things. I’m a monster. Monsters don’t have friends. I don’t have chats.”
“This is a chat.”
“You’re not my friend. And I’m currently banished, so I no longer work for the Bishop. He’s testing me. I’ve only ever given him cause to test me once before.”
“What sort of test? Is that why you were at Maggie’s? And why did you kidnap Will Gantry?”
He raises his eyebrows. “I was at Maggie’s hoping my presence would cause you and my father to investigate, and I kidnapped Will Gantry because stealing my robes is a punishable offence.”
“Why do you hate Albert so much? Surely, you know he bit you because he thought it was the only way he could save you… to keep you by his side.”
“To have a life such as his? Full of secrets. Why do you think he didn’t tell you about me?”
“He did tell me. He told me about the son he loved. The son who was kept from him as a boy. The son who was told his father was dead.”
“But not that his son lived. Not that I became a soulless monster. He didn’t tell you he bartered your blood and his own for my freedom. Freedom I never asked for.”
“That’s why he let the Bishop take me? For your freedom?”
Everything shifts inside my mind, like one of those puzzles where you slide the little squares around, trying to get it to make sense. Nothing makes sense because I’m looking at a different picture. One where Albert schemed his way into the Bishop’s palace and used me as bait to free his son. Used himself. He was the one who was tortured. He was the one prepared to submit his body to Fane and the triblade.
“You’re very noisy when you’re quiet,” Oskar says.
“How can you hate Albert for giving you freedom?”
“Don’t you?”
“I don’t know yet. You know how difficult it is to condemn someone you love, don’t you? You know it as well as I do.”
It’s a gamble, but I know I’m not wrong. I’m looking at the reason Albert was General Scarth’s ghost in the mirror. I’m looking at a bloodstained portrait with roughened skin. I don’t expect him to admit the truth, but I want his secrets more than anything. I want them because I’ve seen monsters become human, and I see the human between the cracks in Oskar’s mask.
“I know it,” he says. “Their hands were clean… would’ve stayed clean if I hadn’t brought them into this world. Into this abominable life.”
“You sired them yourself?”
“Yes, and I regret it every day. Every drop of blood they’ve spilled is on my hands.”
“Fane’s hands,” I correct. “He did this to both of you. But it’s not too late.”
“It is. You’re a romantic. I wouldn’t expect you to understand.”
“Why did you sire him?”
“He was cursed to a fate worse than death.”
“You loved him enough to save him from this curse, but let me guess… you didn’t want to dirty him with your hands. He was too young and innocent, but he loved you anyway, even though you distanced yourself and took away his choices.”
“Lucky guesses.”
I laugh. “You’re a lot more like Albert than you think you are.”
“You know nothing about me.”
“I know you tampered with his memories.”
“Whose? My father’s?”
“Did you know that when Fane locked me up, the man you love made me draw pictures of you?”
His stuttered breath hangs in the silence of the cavernous room.
“I didn’t realise it at the time,” I tell him. “He told me he didn’t remember his childhood.”
“He is better off not remembering.”
“Shouldn’t he get to decide that? He is an adult. What other memories did you protect him from?” I continue when Oskar remains silent. “Can you give them back?”
He laughs, but it’s just as hollow as his last. “I can implant anything I desire. I can make you remember an entirely different conversation if I choose to.”
“Will you?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
I inhale sharply, releasing a shaky breath. He won’t let me keep this memory if he’s sending me home, but if he goes to the trouble of implanting a new conversation… Why would he do that if he’s planning to kill me?
“Will you give his memories back?” I ask.
“So he can remember in vibrant glory the moment I failed him? So he can see how I failed to stop him becoming a monster?”
“He deserves to remember you loved him. He deserves to feel loved.”
“Do I?”
“Yes.”
“Are you trying to tame a lion, Violet?”
I frown at the flash of memory. Serpent tames Lion. Lion tames wolf. Rock. Paper. Scissors.
“You are naive,” he says.
“You’re jaded.”
“I’m realistic.”
“You’re defeatist.”
He sighs. “I’ve been around for almost six centuries. Let us assume I know a lost cause when I see one.”
“So do I. No lost causes detected.”
“You’re infuriating.”
“I’ve heard this.”
He raises his eyebrows. “And wrong.”
“No. You just don’t like the truth. Because you know you’ve been living a lie all these years. And who are you without the lies you’ve been conditioned to swallow? A soldier who died in his father’s arms… loved.” My eyeballs prickle, and two familiar dents appear between Oskar’s eyebrows. “Falsehood has no feet. She has only tongues.”
Michael’s words just fall out of me, and I silently beg Oskar to understand what I’m saying because his eyes… God, his eyes wear a look I’ve seen in Albert’s only once in real life—at the watermill when he was drowning. The crash of the coffin hitting the water explodes in my mind, and my own sobs burst into the dim room.
“What?” he whispers. “Only tongues?”
“Lies. They’re left behind the minute you stop believing. They can’t follow you. Truth doesn’t care whether you believe it. It just is. And I know you feel it, because that’s not the devil on your tail, Oskar. It’s the truth.”
“Veritas,” he whispers.
I nod but can’t speak. I know Veritas is Latin for truth, but there is so much weight in that one word. I can’t stop watching the truth crash over him, one epiphany at a time. He’s reframing, and I might survive this.
I know I’ve celebrated too soon because his eyes are blank when he turns to look at me.
“Fane hasn’t given up on you,” Oskar says. “He is committed to his destiny, which allows him to have faith in yours. He lives by an old code, a game plan set in motion long ago. Only when he has collected all the other pieces will he come for his queen.”
A wash of relief floods through me. “You’re not taking me to him?”
“No.”
And he won’t hurt me if Fane’s coming for me, so why all this? “You want to hurt Albert through me.”
His eyes smile. “You can’t deny it will be effective.”
“You didn’t listen to a word I said,” I mutter.
“I will have revenge for this life.”
“He didn’t give you this life.”
“Do you know that bloodborns buried on the battleground are infected with the souls of dead men?” he asks. “That the screaming never stops?”
“I’m sorry that happened to you.” I press my nose to his cheek, nuzzling him like he did me. “But I promise you, Oskar… This was always going to happen to you… with or without Albert.”
He closes his eyes. “Your father abandoned you.”
“I forgave him.”
“And just like me, you killed your mother when you entered the world. I was born with the stain of my mother’s blood on my skin, searing into my soul, tainting it.”
“Babies don’t kill their mothers.”
“That is not what I was told as a boy.”
“Your family let you believe your father was dead and that you killed your mother? That’s not what good families do.”
“I have a different family now.”
“That’s not a family either. It’s a cult.”
“Outsiders always say that about families they don’t understand.”
“Sounds like something a cult would say.” I sigh. “I know you’re too intelligent to believe that. I don’t know why any of you take him seriously. He’s nothing without you and his other minions. You all let him scam his way into collecting life debts from you, and what is he really? A little old man.”
“Your friend’s father is little. You take him seriously.”
“War’s not what he seems.”
“And Magnus Penhaligon… could he not make a frail old man of himself? Would he be any less fearful? Fane is not what he seems either. None of us are.”
“I don’t think you really want to hurt Albert, or you would’ve…”
“I don’t need to kill you to hurt Albert. He’s more than capable of tearing himself apart.”
“Will you send Bethany home?”
“I’ll think about it.”
“How did you get into the warehouse?”
“I didn’t.”
“I was in there with you.”
“You were there with the human essence of me. Every bit of me not contaminated with vampirism.”
“How is that possible?”
“The Bishop can do wondrous things with blood.”
“And you still don’t want freedom?”
“I’ll return when he allows me to. Five years of exile is nothing to me.” He scans the darkest corners of the building. “Maurice Harvey is looking out for you again. I don’t suppose you remember—”
“I remember.” I reach out and touch his mask, soft beneath my fingertips. His breath warms my thumb through the leather. Darkness probes the outer edges of my vision. “It’s okay. I know I’m not going home, but please don’t hurt Bethany. She’s just a kid, and she can’t help who she is or where she comes from.”
The room is invaded by soft, quick footsteps and shadows.
“Will I see you when I wake up?” I ask, knowing sleep is coming.
“Every day,” he whispers.
Every scrap of air is stale and used up. I put my arm around the cold lump beside me. There’s nobody here but the two of us—me and Bethany. The growl of an engine and the bounce of a rutted road beneath us are the only signs we’re in transit. We’re in a pitch-black box.
A box in a van in the middle of who knows where.
“Bethany,” I whisper, giving her a shake.
She whimpers but doesn’t wake.
My body aches all over, and I can only imagine the bands of bruises from all the ropes. There’s a nasty rope burn around my right wrist. I touch it gently to see how badly the skin is scraped but find a bandage beneath my fingers.
The last time I woke up with a bandage, someone had implanted a dampener beneath my skin. Whatever the hell this is, I’ll cut it out as soon as I’m able.
I echo Daniel, convinced that wherever the Lion is taking us, he’ll have made it echo proof, but it seems stupid not to try. I’m not skilled enough to translocate out of the box without becoming roadkill, and there’s no way I’m leaving Bethany behind. I pull my own jacket more tightly around me, surprised to find my phone stashed in my pocket. No signal. It’s 5:40 a.m. I angle my phone to Bethany’s face. She looks unharmed but cold.
I take my jacket off and drape it over the blanket swaddling her. “I’ll get you out of here, I promise.”
I have no idea how. No amount of pressure will force the walls of the box to collapse. I’m giving myself a headache trying to manipulate what little air the box contains.
It’s just gone six when the vehicle takes a hard-right turn, causing us to tip slightly. Tree branches scrape the metal roof, and the road beneath us grows bumpier. The vehicle slows a little to accommodate the rougher ground. After a minute or two, the road gets even worse, and we bounce inside our box. Something louder than raindrops patters on the roof. Conkers.
I struggle to get enough air into my lungs. My throat is sore, my lungs burning.
The vehicle swings to the left, slowing to a crawl, and the road surface changes again—smooth now with ruts at regular intervals. When the sound of tyres on gravel reaches my ears, hope and fear settle uncomfortably side by side in my stomach.
A pair of feet hit the gravel, and the box rocks when the door slams. The footsteps crunch lightly. My breaths get shallower and shallower.
Someone drags the box we’re trapped in across the floor of the vehicle. Angry voices rise outside, and a body hits the side of the van.
The last of the sour air creeps down my windpipe.
38
Charmed
