Текст книги "Six Scorched Roses"

Автор книги: Carissa Broadbent

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CHAPTER FOUR

Vale’s blood was beautiful. There was no other way to describe it—it was as undeniably aesthetically pleasing as a field of flowers.

It was almost dawn by the time I returned home that night. I wasn’t tired, though—no, far from it. I was literally shaking with excitement, my mind running over every moment of that visit over and over and over again, burning it to memory. I hugged my pack to my chest for most of the walk, as if to shield it from the world. It was contraband, after all.

When I got home, I went straight to my office and bolted the door behind me. I didn’t need Mina knowing what I was up to, both for her sake and mine. The less I involved her in my blasphemous little scheme, the better.

But there were no footsteps in the house yet. Mina was still fast asleep. I pulled out my instruments, messing up everything I had been so careful to neaten before my departure. I dragged a side table to the center of the floor, setting my seeing lens atop it—a device comprised of many brass rings stacked on top of each other, the top one on hinges and covered in glass so that it could be positioned upright. Runes and sigils had been carved into each ring of metal, and when I touched it, I could feel the magic pulsing from it. I grabbed my ink and stuck my finger into it, drawing a series of marks around the outermost circle of the device.

I didn’t have a shred of magic myself, of course, nor did I especially want any—I’d seen many times how it could lead to ruin. But the tools magic could produce were undeniably useful. This one had been created by a priestess of Srana, the Goddess of Seeing and Knowing. I did like to see things, so at least I could be grateful to Srana for that.

I finished the runes, placed my vial at the center of the device, and blew out the candles. The uppermost ring of copper glowed with steady warmth, and when I adjusted the hinge, a ring of light was cast upon the wall.

Within that ring was Vale’s blood—his blood at its most base level, the tiniest particles of life within him. They looked like a field of red-black flower petals across the plaster, moving in slow constellations like the stars across the sky.

Sometimes people talked of vampires as if they were living death, nothing more than animated corpses. One look at Vale told me that wasn’t true. Still, I knew that vampires had a closer relationship to death than humans did, so perhaps I might have expected to see some of it in the makeup of Vale’s body.

No. None of this was death. It was beauty and life and an astounding miracle. He was hundreds of years old and yet his blood was healthy and thriving. It was graceful, elegant. It looked so different from human blood, and I was certain that it would react differently to every test. And yet, there was something so familiar in it too, as if we had been the originals and he had been the improvement.

Maybe the vampires’ heretic goddess had been onto something, after all.

I stared for far too long, transfixed.

My instrument had been created with the magic of Srana, a goddess of the White Pantheon—the White Pantheon that despised Nyaxia, the mother of vampires, which meant I had to be very careful with the instruments I used around this blood.

Even the fact that I had it at all… here, in a town that worshipped Vitarus…

I blinked and saw my father kneeling in that field of death, knuckles trembling around a fistful of doom, ready to spite a god that would happily spite him back.

I pushed the thought away and quickly broke down the instrument, tucking Vale’s blood into a drawer.

Still, I couldn’t help but take it out every few hours to peer at it, even if only for seconds at a time. I told myself it was for work—and it mostly was, because I didn’t stop working for more than ten minutes at a time those next few days—but really, I was… well, a little transfixed by it. Every time those splotches of black lit up my wall, I released an exhale of awe.

“What’s that?”

I spun around. Mina stood in the doorway. For a moment, in contrast to the elegant vitality of Vale’s blood, the sheer withering mortality of her shocked me. Darkness ringed her eyes and dusted the deepening hollows of her cheeks. Once, she had been a strikingly beautiful girl—and she still was, but now hauntingly so, like the face of a stone goddess at a grave site. I glanced down. How long had she been here? I wasn’t sure which answer was worse. Longer, and she saw more of what I was doing. Less, and I could be more concerned about the distinct layer of dusted skin that already coated the floor around her feet.

“What’s that?” she asked, again.

“Nothing,” I said, even though my sister knew me well enough to know when nothing meant everything.

I thrust the vials and my lens into my bag, buttoned it, and rose.

“I have to go,” I said. “I’m visiting Farrow. Rosa will be by with dinner for you, and—”

I stepped past her, but Mina barely moved aside. When I brushed by her, I tried not to notice the faint fall of fine dust to the floor, steady as seconds ticking by.

“Lilith, wait—” she said.

I stopped, but did not turn back.

“What?”

I sounded colder than I wished I did. I wished I could be warm like Mina was. Like our mother had been. Our father. In a family of warmth, I was the strange, cold one—the one who could decipher textbooks and equations but struggled to decipher the exact cadence of a voice that made a name a term of endearment, nor the pattern of a touch that made it a caress.

“Stay with me today,” she said. “We can take a walk.”

“I wish I could. But I have too much work to do.”

Even I knew how to recognize the frustration in her voice when she said, “Why?”

I knew what she meant: What could be more important?

Growing up, people would always ask me, Why do you work so hard? They would always ask in the same tone of voice—confused, pitying—the kind of tone that told me they were asking me a different question than their words alone conveyed. In that tone, I heard all the implications. The implication that I was wasting my life. I had so little of it, after all. Why spend it toiling away?

I heard that in Mina’s voice now. That same judgment, same confusion. Except now she was the one whose time was running out, begging me to take some of it from her.

And that, in the end, was the answer.

Why was I working so hard? I was working so hard because none of it would ever be enough. I would continue until I had nothing left to give. Force myself through the grinding machinery of the mind.

Better this than to spend time making it harder for her to say goodbye to me one day. My love gave my sister nothing. But my work gave her a chance.

“I have to go,” I said again, and left Mina in the hall, watching after me.

She wouldn’t understand if I tried to explain it to her. She didn’t know death like I did. After all, she was never the sister who was supposed to die.

CHAPTER FIVE

I walked to the outskirts of town, where I could catch a boat out to Baszia. On my way through the city streets, I passed a congregation of Vitarus’s acolytes kneeling in the streets, praying over piles of burning leaves. At their front was Thomassen, Adcova’s head priest and devoted follower of Vitarus—a tall, thin man in his mid-fifties with kind eyes. He was the same age my parents had been, but looked much older these last few years. It must take a toll, spending all this time trying to understand why your god turned against you.

He gave me a faint smile as I passed, which I returned with a curt nod.

He had been good friends with my father, once, so he had always been kind to Mina and I. Pitied us, maybe. Funny, because I certainly pitied him, kneeling in the ashes he fed his god, while his god only gave him more ashes in return.

I continued to the outskirts of town, where I found a ship headed across the channel to the city. The journey took hours, and my stomach had become unaccustomed to sea travel, but when I stepped foot on the docks it was all worth it.

I inhaled a great deep breath of the city air—air that seemed to smell of books and excitement and knowledge… mixed, maybe, with just a hint of piss. I’d spent six years here, studying at universities and libraries. Right now, it struck me with staggering force just how much I had missed it. Even the buildings, tall and majestic, spoke of history—many of them had been erected a thousand years ago.

Farrow was, as I knew he would be—as he always was—in his study, a little room tucked in the back of the university archives. And, as I knew he would be, he was happy to see me. The brightness of his grin when he looked up to see me lit a little spark of guilt in my chest.

I shouldn’t be doing this. Shouldn’t be putting him in danger.

But he was one of the most intelligent people I knew, and I needed help.

Farrow was tall and slender, with ash-blond hair that he constantly had to push out of his eyes and silver glasses that were always a little broken. He had a way of bending his whole body up with interest in whatever he was working on, and that was exactly what he did as I set up my lens in the center of the room, folded over at the very edge of his chair as I projected those beautiful blood flower petals onto his chalk-smeared wall.

His eyes widened, and he crept a little out of his chair to look closer. He barely even breathed.

I did always so appreciate that about Farrow—his unabashed amazement at the world around him. When I first met him, as a young student, I had loved that he embodied what I myself so wanted to express but couldn’t. Men from upper-class families were welcome to be openly delighted by their craft. It made them interesting and eccentric, committed and passionate. When women did it, it made us vapid.

I had seen Farrow amazed many, many times. But never so much as he was now. He rose, circled the room, squinted at the blood, then eventually returned to his chair and sagged into it, running his hands through his hair as he peered at me from behind askew glasses.

“Great gods, Lilith, what is this? What am I looking at?”

I swallowed. I didn’t want to say the word, not aloud. It would only put Farrow at risk—more than I already had by coming here. There was a reason I had brought it here, rather than asking him to come visit our cursed town.

Selfish of me. I knew that.

“If I could distill this somehow,” I said, “how would I do that? This property?”

“You would need magic, probably.”

“What if I couldn’t do that?”

Farrow frowned. “Why would you not be able to do that?”

I eyed my lens. The projection had been up for longer than I’d ever allowed myself to look at the samples at home. I feared that at any moment, the magic would recognize the nature of what it analyzed. Magic was fickle and temperamental, just like the gods.

“Could there be a way to do it without?” I asked. “By scientific rather than magical means?”

Farrow seemed confused, which was reasonable. Science and magic were often two parts of the same whole—each complemented the other, their methods often inextricable.

“It would be… it would be hard. Maybe impossible. Bring it to one of Srana’s temples. See what the priestesses have to say about it.”

“I can’t.”

A wrinkle formed between his brows. His amazement had faded. “Why, Lilith?”

My teeth ground. I swept the runes from the table in one abrupt movement just as the lens began to smell faintly of smoke. The room went dark as the projection flickered away. Even in the dark, I could feel Farrow’s stare, hard and piercing. Gone was his childlike amazement. Now he seemed only concerned.

Of course he was. I had come here because he was one of the smartest men I knew. Could I really expect that he wouldn’t figure out what was sitting right in front of him?

“Thank you, Farrow,” I said. “I appreciate your—”

I turned to the door, but he caught my arm, gripping it tight.

I looked down at his long fingers around my forearm. Then up at his face. His concern now overtook his expression with the same enthusiastic verve that his joy had minutes ago.

That was Farrow, of course. Feeling everything. Showing everything.

“Tell me what this is,” he said.

I shook my head, and that was answer enough for him.

“It’s one of them, isn’t it? Alive and dead at once. I thought it at first but then I thought—you couldn’t have—” He swallowed, his fingers tightening. “Tell me I’m wrong.”

I couldn’t. I had always been such a bad liar.

His expression sank with realization. He went pale. “What are you doing, Lilith?”

I pulled away, his judgment burying deep in my gut. “I’m doing what I have to.”

But with Farrow, once questions started, they never stopped. “How did you get this? How—” Another wave of realization. “Him? You went to visit him? By yourself?”

“I did what I had to do,” I hissed, again. I struggled to hide my annoyance.

Did he think I didn’t know that it was stupid? That it was dangerous?

He whispered, “You want to inject people with vampire blood?”

I spun around. “Sh.”

His mouth snapped closed. Our eyes both flicked to the ceiling—to the sky beyond. The gods, after all, were always listening.

I drew in a deep breath and let it out.

“It won’t be that anymore by the time I’m done with it,” I said quietly. “I’ll make it into something different. Into medicine.”

He shook his head sadly.

“This is dangerous.”

“I will make sure it doesn’t hurt them.”

“Them? What about you?”

I couldn’t dampen my frustration. “So what?” I snapped. “We’ve prayed. We’ve used the arts of the White Pantheon. We’ve given Vitarus every offering for ten gods-damned years. We have listened to the scholars and the priests and the acolytes and the sorcerers. We have tried the magic of every god, including the one that damned us. What the hell else can we do?”

“I’m worried about you, Lilith,” he said, softly, and I wanted to laugh at him at first, because what good was worrying about me and my pitiful remaining months of life compared to the fate of an entire city?

He drew a little closer, close enough that I could feel the warmth of his skin, our faces now just a couple of inches apart.

“I’m worried about you,” he said again, more softly—more tenderly. “Stay. We’ll figure something else out together.”

Stay. It wasn’t the first time he had asked me that, the first time he’d offered me that word with his breath close enough to warm my mouth. Stay.

And just like the last time he’d said it, I was tempted. There was a certain comfort in Farrow. I liked him. I trusted him. I knew how he kissed, how he touched, how he felt within me. I spent so much time thinking about every muscle in my body, my face, figuring out how to present them appropriately to the world. Despite all that effort, most people still didn’t like me much, but Farrow always had. And when he told me, We can figure it out together, I didn’t believe him, but he made me want to. And that counted for something, didn’t it?

But it was unfair to Farrow to let him love me the way he wanted to, or to let myself love him with the fractured pieces I could offer him. He always wanted more than I could or wanted to give him. It is, after all, a waste to love a thing that will soon be gone.

I pulled away from him and picked up my bag. Farrow looked at it, and I knew he saw how well packed it was—packed enough for a much longer journey than the one back home.

“Are you going there now?” he asked, alarmed.

“Yes.”

“Lilith.” He sounded hopeless, broken. I didn’t want to turn back, but I did anyway.

“Stay,” he said again. “Please.”

“What are you afraid of?” I said. “That I’ll fall into the darkness? We’re already there. We’ve been there for years, and we’re only falling deeper.”

I did not add: And I’ve been there since the day I was born.

I shook my head. “It’s too late, Farrow. It’s too late.”

CHAPTER SIX

It was long past midnight by the time I reached Vale’s mansion. It was drizzly and cold, as it often was this time of year. I knocked on the door and received no answer.

I was tired and damp, uncomfortable and oddly on-edge after my encounter with Farrow. I was in no mood for games.

I pounded hard on the door, five six seven eight nine times, and when there was still no answer, I opened the door myself. Vale still didn’t lock his door. Why would he?

“Lord Vale?” I called out into the cavernous darkness as I closed the door behind me. I heard nothing, saw no movement. Perhaps Vale had decided he was tired of me, and he’d ignore me until I went away. Or maybe he’d lure me in and wait until he could grab me and devour me.

I wandered through the master hallway, and when I found nothing, decided, after a moment of hesitation, to climb the stairs.

I told myself that I was simply accomplishing a task—but if I was honest with myself, I’d acknowledge the little trill of delight that ran up my spine.

My mother used to say that I enjoyed the sciences because I was a naturally nosy person. She was probably right. She had always known me better than anyone.

I collected facts the way other people collected jewels, and Vale’s home was overflowing with them—both facts and jewels. The stairs led to a long hallway, just as cluttered and architecturally dissonant as every other part of the house that I’d seen so far. The walls were lined with artwork, most of it depicting vampires with feathered wings gutting, stabbing, burning, and otherwise brutally killing their victims—most often vampires with bat-like wings. But these halls also held other artifacts, too. One stretch displayed a set of grand wing bones, which unfolded along the peeling gilded wallpaper. I had to pause to stare at them in awe.

Incredible.

I’d never seen such a work of biological art. Each wing was longer than I was tall, the bones a delicate gleaming ivory. But despite their light elegance, they were also clearly powerful—even without muscle, I could see that.

I must have been right about Vale. He must be a Nightborn vampire from the House of Night—the kingdom of the only winged vampires.

What did his wings look like?

A distant voice jerked me from my thoughts. I tensed, face snapping to the end of the hall.

The sound had come from around the corner, and it came again. A voice, I realized after a moment—though too high to be Vale’s, and wordless. A cry. Pain?

My heart quickened a beat.

I hadn’t thought much about whether Vale did indeed eat humans. And if, when he did so, he dragged them back here to do it.

I probably should have run. But there was no use fighting nature, and I was a curious creature. So I went not away from the sound but closer, creeping down the hall and around the corner, where cool lantern light spilled from an open door at the end of the corridor.

The sounds grew louder, closer.

And a flush rose to my face when, a few steps away from the door, I realized that what I was hearing were not cries of pain. Very much the opposite, actually.

The moans rose to a crescendo.

No, Vale was not alone. And whoever he was with was having a wonderful time.

The door was wide open. Who could blame me for looking?

I peered around the frame. It was Vale’s bedchamber, a grand room covered in silks and art, with messy trinkets strewn over each surface. A large bed with a carved frame sat in the center of the room. Fine bedsheets were mussed and tangled over it.

And tangled over it, too, were two figures so entwined I wasn’t sure where one of them ended and the other began.

She was beneath him, an expanse of golden skin gleaming beneath the messy curls of red hair, and he leaned over her and clutched her hips from behind. I mostly saw his back and her tangles of hair, her arms splayed and gripping the bedsheets to brace herself as he drove into her viciously. With every thrust, his muscles flexed beneath his skin, rippling over the broad expanse of his back, the curve of his backside, the lean muscle of his upper thighs.

He looked as majestic and beautiful as those wings had. I imagined that perhaps, covered in muscle and skin, they might look almost—almost—as beautiful as he did now.

My face was very hot.

I couldn’t look away. I really did mean to announce myself, or back away, but I found myself frozen.

The woman bent down against the bed, the pillow slightly—but only slightly—muffling her rising cries of pleasure. Vale’s movements grew faster, harder, flesh slapping against flesh, leaning against her and falling over her back.

I watched, unblinking, as he held her down, mouth going to her shoulder as they came together. He made a sound only then, a rough exhale that made the hairs rise on my arms, and I had to strain hard to hear it over the sound of her.

They collapsed together, and with their breath, I let out my own. My fingers loosened around the doorframe. I hadn’t realized I’d been clutching it.

Vale whipped around.

“Lilith.”

For just a split second, he actually looked shocked. Frazzled.

Then his face hardened, going smooth and angry. He turned his back to me and rose from the bed, yanking a crumbled-up pile of fabric from the floor and giving me another distracting view of his backside.

“What,” he snapped, “are you doing here?”

“You didn’t answer the door.”

My voice sounded a little weaker than I would have preferred.

The woman made no attempt to cover herself. She rolled over and stretched. I realized that she was covered in blood, especially around her throat—the dark color of the bedsheets had hidden that from me before. She smiled, revealing pointed teeth.

“You invited a human friend, Vale?” she said, with a deep inhale that had me stepping backwards.

Vale shot her a warning glance that made her smile disappear.

“A mouse,” he sneered. “No, a rat. An uninvited pest.”

He shook out the robe he’d picked up with a single violent movement, then threw it over his shoulders.

“I knocked,” I said. “You didn’t answer. I came when I said I would.”

“Oh, so did I,” the woman said, laughing softly to herself, and Vale shot her another unamused stare.

“What?” she said. “You don’t want to share?”

“Let’s not make any more a mess of my home than we already have. Can you give us a moment?”

She sighed, then sprang from the bed, lithe as a cat. She grabbed a piece of fabric from the bedside table and wiped the blood from her chest and throat. “I should be going, anyway. Thank you for the hospitality, as always, Vale.”

She threw on a plain black shirt and trousers, which had been sitting on the ground, then strolled past me with nothing more than another long, curious stare, which started at my feet and ended at my face.

Vale stared out the window, silent, until her footsteps had long since disappeared. Then, finally, he turned. He now wore a dark red, velvety robe, which he had loosely tied around his waist, so it revealed a long strip of his chest—covered in curly black hair—but, almost disappointingly, nothing below his waist.

My lips pressed together.

The robe was so…

“What?” he snapped.

“What?”

“You’re laughing at me.”

“I’m not laughing at you. I’m laughing at—”

I closed my mouth. Telling people that I was laughing at their clothing, I realized, was probably not very polite.

“What?” he bit out, irritated.

“The robe. It’s just… it’s very vampiric.”

His lips went thin. “Yes, well. I am a vampire. So I see now why you’re at the top of your field.”

I stifled my laughter.

Right. Work.

“I’m here for your blood. It’s been a month, as we agreed.”

“And payment?”

I reached into my bag and withdrew a rose, carefully wrapped so not a single petal was bent or crushed. He outstretched his hand, and I hesitated, to which he heaved an irritated sigh.

“What? Now I scare you?”

He didn’t scare me. It just smelled like sex in here. I crossed the room, eyeing the bloody, rumpled sheets as I passed. Vale took the rose and stared at it, unimpressed.

“The one you gave me last time seems to be totally unremarkable,” he said.

“You’ll have to be patient.”

“I’m not a very patient man.”

“I don’t lie, Lord Vale. They’re special. I promise.”

“You can just call me Vale,” he grumbled. “I suppose that once someone has seen my bare ass, we can drop the titles.”

He dropped heavily into a velvet chair next to the window. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Here?”

“Yes, here. Is that a problem?”

I glanced again to the bed, and he let out a low, silken chuckle.

“What? Are you really so distracted by sex?”

It was distracting, but I wasn’t about to admit that. I dropped to my knees before him and withdrew my equipment from my bag. When I took his arm to guide the needle into his veins, I was acutely conscious of every patch of my flesh that touched his.

He laughed again as I thrust the needle through the resistance of his skin.

“I can hear your heartbeat. Is that nervousness or excitement?”

I could hear my own heartbeat, too, and I wished it would calm down. Even I wasn’t sure which it was, but neither was welcome.

“I think it’s amusing that you wandered into my house without a care in the world,” he said, “but the sight of fifteen seconds of sex triggers your nerves. I will never understand humans.”

“I’ve had plenty of sex.” And the minute I said it, I cursed myself for it—why in the gods names did I just say that?

Vale now looked very, very amused, and I absolutely despised it.

“Have you, now? Did some gawky farm boy from next door take you for a ride?”

My lips thinned.

Eron had been gawky, and he was a farm boy, and that summer when I had been sixteen and curious, we had indeed explored each other in the deserted moments behind the barn, when no one else was around. I didn’t want to die a virgin. I was certain, then, that I wouldn’t live to see the winter, so I saw all of Eron instead.

But fifteen years later, I was still here, and six months ago, I swept Eron off the church floor after his funeral, when his mother was too hysterical to do it.

“You know, I did wonder at first,” I said, “why you didn’t kill me when I came into your house. Now I understand it’s because you’re a bored, lonely man, desperate for any kind of company.”

I didn’t look away from the vial, his blood dripping and rolling against the glass. But I felt his stare, and in the moment of silence, I wondered if I’d hit my mark.

“As you just witnessed,” he said, coolly, “I can get all the company I want.”

“Company that got what she wanted from you and then left without saying goodbye.”

“We got what we wanted from each other. It wasn’t conversation that I was looking for.”

And yet… he was sitting here talking to me.

“What do you need this for?” he asked. “The blood?”

“As I told you—”

“My blood isn’t a cure for anything, I promise you that.”

“It appears, L—” I caught myself. “Vale, to be a cure for death.”

He scoffed. “No human encounter with vampire blood has ended particularly well.”

That tone piqued my curiosity almost enough to make me forget my irritation at his insults. I peered up at him. He was looking out the window now, the cold moonlight tracing the outline of his jawbone, especially strong from this angle.

“Were you Born or Turned?” I asked.

There were two ways to make a vampire. Some were birthed, just like the rest of us. But more interesting was Turning—the process of drinking a human’s blood, and offering theirs, to create a new vampire.

I’d thought a lot about it these last few weeks. What that must be like. What other animal could do that? It was a transformation as impressive as a caterpillar becoming a butterfly.

His gaze shot to me, insulted. “Born. Obviously.”

“Why is that obvious?”

“Being Turned is… undesirable.”

I knew only a little about vampire anatomy. It was difficult to study them when they were so reclusive. And when so many of the humans who went to Obitraes never returned.

“Turning is dangerous, isn’t it?” I asked.

“Yes. The majority die during the process.”

“But if someone survives it and becomes a vampire, they’re considered… undesirable?”

“Part human. Part vampire. Their blood will always hold the taint of humanity.” His nose wrinkled. “Less pure.”

“But if they survived such a dangerous thing, doesn’t that make them the strongest among you?”

Vale opened his mouth as if to argue with this, then shut it. He looked conflicted, like he’d never thought of it that way.

“It’s just not how it is,” he said, at last.

The first vial was full. I switched to the next.

“Why did you leave Obitraes?” I asked.

“And I thought you were nosy last time.”

“Most humans never get to speak to a vampire. I should take advantage of it, shouldn’t I?”

“Aren’t you so very lucky.”

A few seconds passed. I thought he didn’t want to answer, but then he said, “I wanted a change.”

“Why?”

“Why not? Have you always lived in that little town?”

“I studied in Baszia.”

He scoffed. “A whole ten miles away from home. How exotic.”

I did despise that he was so judgmental, and I despised even more that his sneers prodded at a selfish little wound I tried to ignore. I would never get to see the world—but that didn’t mean I didn’t want to.

“Not all of us have the resources to travel,” I said.

“Humans and your money.”

“I didn’t say money. I said resources.”

He glanced at me in confusion. I gave him a grim smile.

“Time, Vale,” I said. “Time is the most valuable resource of all, and some of us are perpetually short.”