Page 33

T hin strips of sunlight pierced the fabric covering the windows, barely enough to see by. The glow burned behind my eyelids, building gradually until I was awake. This time, the ringing in my ears had stopped. My eyes opened without protest, too, the swelling finally down. Fuck, how long had I been unconscious? All I could remember was the petrol smell that had presumably knocked me out.

Tugging again at the zip ties binding my wrists together, the raw, thin scabs broke beneath the plastic. I sucked in a breath through my teeth, ignoring the pain as best I could, pushing and stretching to try and get some give or movement. I knew it was pointless, but there was no chance I was going to sit here and do nothing. Then I remembered Nicholas.

The cupboard door was ajar as before, but I couldn’t make out any movement in the half-light. Straining to hear over the pounding of my heart, my ears picked up voices above me. If I concentrated, I could make out the words.

“She will not co-operate, émilie. She knows Murray too well, now. She was not fooled. ”

I recognised the French accent I’d heard so much about – an older dialect, though, like we’d suspected. And I figured that meant we’d been right about Paris. At least the others would have something to work with – if Adam and Isabel could stop sniping at each other long enough.

“It doesn’t matter. She’ll do as she’s told, Alistair – that’s why he sent me. All I have to do is show her how far we’re willing to go… and she’ll cave.” émilie’s tone was harder than before, though still sickly sweet.

“I disagree. Their relationship has gone too far. Notre ruse aurait d? fonctionner… ” he muttered in French. “They have shared blood already. I’m sure of it. C’est impossible… It is time to re-assess. This must go our way.”

“Just because she slept with Murray doesn’t mean they shared blood.” She was trying to convince him, that much was clear. “And even if they did, she still wouldn’t sacrifice a human life for a vampire life. Murray’s a piece of work – and she’s a hunter. She can’t let him go free. Not in place of her friend.”

“But we do not have that leverage, thanks to you! Tu es inutile !”

“It wasn’t my fault, and you know it. But what does it matter? They were getting close before we took her anyway. He’ll come to us.”

“You do not know him as I do. He is clever. He is manipulative et charmant at once. I would not be surprised if he sent his friends in his place.” The floorboards creaked above my head, and I imagined him pacing.

émilie scoffed. “They’re nothing. Wyatt’s strong, but I have a plan for her. The preening blonde bleeds like any mortal. And the boy… maybe I’ll remove his hand, like for like.” She paused. “He can only hide behind his friends for so long before he has no choice but to show himself – until then, it’s a matter of making sure the hunter knows we’re serious.”

I grinned to myself, desperately holding on to this positive piece of news – Tom, of all people, had taken her down. Jon would have been so damn proud. I was proud. I’d have to remember to congratulate him if I ever got out of here. But fuck, I hoped it had hurt her.

“Ha! She is too arrogant, too involved… a poor excuse for a chasseuse .”

I bristled, the movement causing my plastic bonds to scrape the pipe behind me noisily – even my crappy French was enough to know my hunter skills had just been insulted. The pacing above me stopped.

“She must have awoken. I will speak to her this time.” Alistair’s voice was quieter, and there was a clattering from behind me like something being dragged down a staircase.

“Erin Conrad, at last. Enchanté .”

I twisted around, metal pipe scraping my back, desperate to finally see the face of the man who’d caused all this. He held a simple wooden chair in one hand, and placed it in front of me, sitting and crossing his legs. His face was half-hidden in shadow as his eyes burned into me.

“I can’t say I feel the same way, I’m afraid,” I allowed myself a huge false smile, regretting it instantly as pain shot through my jaw and ear .

He faced me head-on, and my smile vanished.

Where émilie’s resemblance to Isabel had been largely performance, Alistair’s similarity to Nicholas made my blood run cold. This was the killer from my nightmares. They could have been brothers, but everything I loved in Nicholas’s features was twisted into something cruel, here. I wondered whether he, too, had attempted to change his appearance as émilie had – but the resemblance was too uncanny.

Alistair cocked his head to one side, narrowing his eyes at me. As he shifted, the shadows on his face receded, revealing scarring across the side of his neck and jaw: burns that looked as if they’d never healed.

“You are something of a célébrité among the undead here, Erin.” His fingers traced the line of his jaw. “They fear you, and perhaps that is what leads you to think you can speak to me with such disrespect. Ne me sous-estime pas . I am not they,” he said, each word precise and cold.

“I’m not afraid of you, Alistair. You’re another killer, no different to the rest.” I lied, controlling my voice with an effort. “You’re no better or cleverer – you just prefer to play with your food. That’s all.”

His scarred lips twisted in disdain. “You are not my food. If I wished to feed on you, chasseuse , I would have done so. I have another task for you – I think you know this.”

émilie entered the room as he spoke, standing silently in the corner with a look of disapproval on her face. She placed a single taper candle on the cabinet behind her, elongating her shadow to fearful proportions .

“You want me to kill Nicholas,” I murmured. “He must have pissed you off pretty badly to go to all this effort.”

Alistair smiled politely at my feeble attempt to make him angry. “You cannot possibly imagine what he has put me through. You are still so young. So… na?ve .”

“I’ve read his diaries. I have a good idea of what he’s capable of.”

“So you know of his crimes, yes? All of them? The stalking and the manipulations; the elaborate games he has played over the years?” He leaned in, face emotionless. “I think not. I think if you had, your blood would boil as mine does at the thought of him. You would have killed him already.

“I thought you would, after the death of your friend. It was all coming together – I was meticulous. I cannot understand what happened…” He was talking more to himself than to me. “It seems the more you know, the more you go against your nature. You should have listened to Tomal. Perhaps he would be safe now if you had.”

I said nothing. I still didn’t know for certain if they had Tom, but I doubted it. And Nicholas was safe – the figure in the cupboard had been another of their tricks.

“What, no witty comeback?” émilie asked, smirking.

“I’d be going against my nature if I killed someone who was working to redeem themselves,” I snapped. “He’s changed.”

“You lie. You do not know everything about him – there are truths even he could not admit to, in those pages he guards. I am a side note in that history: barely a mention. If he had written it as it happened, you would not trust him so.” Alistair leered at me. “He tells you of the insignificant moments, softens you to the notion he is worth saving.”

I didn’t respond. It was true Nicholas had never mentioned him, even when we’d discussed Paris. Isabel and Adam had never found anything about him in the diaries, as far as I knew, and I’d only begun to learn about Nicholas’s past… but I couldn’t let that change what I knew to be true.

“There’s nothing you can say or do that would make me kill him,” I answered eventually. “Not for you, or anybody. He’s better than you, I know that much. That’s all I need to know.”

With quick, deliberate movements, Alistair stood and unbuttoned his shirt.

“Better, you say? A man that would leave his friend to this is a better man than I?”

Dropping his shirt from his shoulders to the dirty concrete, the full extent of his injuries was revealed in the candlelight. Almost every visible part of his thin, starved body was scarred and malformed. Stark white tissue stretched and contorted his chest, blistered and livid. Whatever had happened to him, his vampire abilities had been unable to heal the injuries. His face showed the least of the damage, but even there I could see thick scarring around his throat, jaw and hairline, stretching toward his eye socket.

As he turned, I noticed how different his movement was – stiff and awkward, nowhere close to the smoothness I’d come to expect from vampires. It was almost as if his skin was too taut for their usual effortless grace.

Though there was nothing but hatred in my heart for the killer before me, I was unable to deny the sickness in my stomach at the sight of him and the suffering he had undoubtedly endured. I could barely look at him.

Alistair laughed shortly, with no real mirth. “You are not the first that cannot stand to see me as I am, alive only through the blood of the other undead. Even dear émilie, though she claims to care… she cannot bear me, in truth. This thing that Nicholas has made me. Do you still say he is better than I?”

“He wouldn’t—” I began, choking on the words I half believed.

Alistair knelt before me, his eyes flat and black. “But he did . The man you love, Erin – he is nothing but un monstre .”

???

“T he sun’s almost down. Shouldn’t they be up by now?” Tom paced the length of the library for what felt like the hundredth time. The sky had deepened to purple between the tall windows, and still, they had nothing to show for the endless day.

Adam didn’t look up from the laptop he had balanced on his knees, his pointed boots resting on the antique desk. “Nick is an early riser, he is mostly likely awake. Isabel… well, if you wish to be the one to go into her private chamber and tell her to hurry, go ahead. But I wouldn’t recommend it,” he drawled, smirking.

“Where do they sleep, anyway?” Tom paused mid-step, the question slipping out before he could stop himself.

Adam glanced up. “Why do you want to know?”

“I’m not going to try to kill them if that’s what you’re worried about.” He rolled his eyes. “I’ve just always wondered. Coffins?” Tom grinned.

“I believe there is an enclosed, coffin-like aspect to it all,” Adam turned back to the screen. “But they sleep in beds, in bedrooms, like any other respectable person. Though Nick once told me Izzie went through a traditional casket phase in the 1890s.”

Tom snorted, about to reply, but at that moment Isabel strode into the room in tailored black trousers and a fitted shirt, annoyingly perfect as always – followed at a distance by a dishevelled Murray; far from his usual self. Tom couldn’t find the energy to be pleased about it.

“Almost always in our own beds, too,” Isabel said. Tom suddenly found the ancient carpet fascinating, the heat creeping up his neck as he caught her wink.

“Yet I’ve been unable to keep a proper housekeeper for decades, thanks to your nighttime antics,” Adam muttered.

“Enough,” Murray cut across them. “We’ve wasted enough time.”

“You didn’t happen to have any ground-breaking revelations while you slept, did you?” Adam asked, pushing the laptop aside as he took in Murray’s unkempt appearance.

Isabel made a disbelieving sound in the back of her throat. “Cole has a notion that – well, you go ahead.”

Murray didn’t look at Isabel but focused his gaze on Tom, who shifted under its intensity.

“My point still stands about the scent. Fresh-turned soil or dirt, which points to somethin’ outdoors. But what’s more interestin’ is the iron. No just any metal – old, rusted iron. That was the most strikin’ thing,” he paused, thinking. “There was a smudge to the ink too, tells me the writer was left-handed – ye can see it in how the letters slant. And the oil left on the paper from their fingers has a faint smell of some plant or flower. I ken I’ve caught that scent before, but I cannae recall the name.”

Adam twitched, frowning.

“I can smell only the dirt and metal – I couldn’t even identify it as iron specifically,” Isabel added.

“Do you think they have her underground?” Tom asked. “That would explain part of it.”

“The metallic scent would be too dispersed in an open space,” Isabel leaned on the desk by Tom and folded her arms. “Even for Nicholas to track. Underground, the air is trapped, stale – scents build up and linger.”

“A storage unit maybe? Or a garage?” Tom suggested.

“It’s a possibility,” Isabel nodded. “Unfortunately, the two scents seem to contradict one another.”

Adam set the laptop aside and caught Tom’s eye. “As it happens, we have a theory too.”

Isabel and Murray regarded him expectantly, but he shook his head.

Adam pocketed the diary and led them from the library. They crossed the hall and climbed the spiralling staircase, emerging through heavy double doors into a bedroom. The faint scent of vanilla and woodsmoke had followed them up from Adam’s kitchen below. Tom glanced at the sewn-shut curtains that blocked what must have been a view of the manor grounds, wondering who slept here .

“Why are we—” Nicholas broke off with a dismissive gesture and dropped into a desk chair.

Adam was already rummaging in a box at the bottom of the oak wardrobe that filled the left wall. He emerged a moment later with a fabric-bound notebook about the size of his hand.

“How did you ken that was there?” Nicholas frowned at him.

“There are no secrets in my house, Nick.” He lay the book on the desk, letting it fall open naturally to the centre page, where the spine had worn through. Pressed into the paper was a stalk of once-purple flowers Tom didn’t recognise. The faded brown ink of the handwriting beneath was too pale to make out, but the distinctive leftward slant matched the note perfectly. He could still smell the faint perfume of the blossom as Adam placed Murray’s diary beside it.

“Who did this book belong to?” Adam asked curtly. “And the flower?”

Murray stared at the book without speaking, his face unyielding.

“Nick?” Isabel asked.

“A comrade,” he answered finally. “But I dinnae see what this has to do with Erin.”

“I think you do. To whom does this belong?” Adam repeated.

“Someone I served with. Another man I couldnae save.”

“Do you keep stuff from all the people you kill, Murray?” Tom asked, inspecting the book.

“I didnae say I killed him,” He shot him a bitter look. “ Though I may as well have.”

Tom snorted but seated himself on the steamer chest at the end of the bed. If Murray was about to start on a long, woeful tale, he may as well be comfortable for it.

“Did you meet him in Paris?” Adam asked quietly.

“On the outskirts, so no really. I spent time with him there, but as I said, he’s dead. He’s been dead since the war, and therefore he’s no relevant.” A shadow crossed his face.

Isabel gave Adam a questioning glance. He gave her a dark smile in return.

“Let me fill you in, Izzie. Nick and I had a bit of a falling out in Paris – perhaps you remember that part? Nick found himself a replacement wingman, if you will, since he needed a lodger. Eventually he… presumably kicked him out of the apartment? Or did he walk out on you, as I did?” He looked to Murray for confirmation, who nodded.

“Move on a few decades, another war breaks out and I refused to enlist – I find the whole thing distasteful, as you know. So, Nicholas reconciles with his old Paris buddy – you didn’t mention Nick: did you turn him or was he already a vampire when you met?” He stopped. “Sorry, irrelevant ,” Adam apologised, his sarcasm evident.

“Then the two vampire war heroes get themselves involved in politics far above either of their heads, is that right?”

“It wisnae like that, Adam,” Murray muttered, grudgingly. “Ye ken what happened. He winnae have joined up if it hadnae been for me. I spent weeks convincin’ him it was a worthy cause, that we could do some good. But they took us prisoner. ”

Tom followed the thread: Paris hunting partner and roommate to war companion to fellow prisoner. No wonder Nicholas had never mentioned him – the guilt of encouraging someone to fight, only to watch them suffer…

Isabel straightened, her eyes widening. “Ah, this was when you were away. When you let—”

“I had naught to do with your husband’s death, Isabel. I didnae let him die,” Murray replied sharply. “But aye, we were imprisoned together. There were… tests,” he paused, remembering.

“I was older. Better at hidin’ my nature than he was…” The temperature seemed to drop with each word. Tom found himself leaning forward despite himself, the leather of the chest creaking beneath him. Even Isabel had gone impossibly still, more statue than vampire. “But there were few of us they couldnae find a use for. Tests for gases, drugs, chemicals… more torment than I care to think on. They didnae intend us to live.”

“What happened to him?” Tom asked as the silence stretched out, his jaw clenching. He didn’t want to feel sorry for Murray – for Nicholas – but…

Nicholas shrugged. “Twas all in the diary. The experiments ended when you werenae useful nae more. I was stronger: my body took the damage better and recovered faster. But toward the end, we were relocated with the rest.” He put his palms together between his knees, staring at the floor.

“When their scientists had learned all they could from us, they sent us on to Auschwitz.” Nicholas’s fingers dug into his knees. “He died: burned, blistered, half-blind and half-mad from the pain and repeated exposure.” A muscle twitched in Isabel’s jaw as she watched him. “I dinnae fully ken how I escaped myself.

“I was thin, I suppose. Starved. I already looked like a corpse. I hid among bodies that had once been people I’d tried to protect. Aye, my low heart rate worked in my favour that time, but barely…” His eyes glazed over, flinching at memories only he could see. “I dream of it, sometimes. Cold hands, searchin’ for a pulse I didnae have.”

Isabel gazed at Nicholas with the most peculiar expression.

“I don’t think he died there, Nick,” Adam said, all irritation gone. “None of this was in the diary.”

Nicholas didn’t seem to be listening. “I – I couldnae go back to check for certain, after the camp was liberated. Mayhap I should have, but I didnae think I needed to.” He swallowed. “He was young, the starvation and the… it took too much from him. There was nothin’ I could’ve done—” For the first time, uncertainty crept into his voice, his accent becoming more pronounced with each word.

“Nick, we don’t blame you. I cannot imagine how hard the idea of going back would have been. But we need to know if this man, this friend of yours – could he be here now?”

Isabel knelt before the broken vampire as he stared into nothingness, hesitating. “If he believes you left him for dead, then…”

“The gas almost took me, that last time,” he said, pleading.

“I know. You do not have to justify yourself to me. I understand— ”

“No, Izzie!” Nicholas burst out, standing up and pushing her away. “You have no idea what it was like in there. No for hundreds of years have you felt genuine fear for your life – if ever! You dinnae ken how hard it was to hold on – they could have exposed us all!” He swallowed loudly. “They werenae above experimentin’ on the dead, and they more than suspected me by then. Even stayin’ out of the sun, weak, unable to feed…” He sat back down, the fight leaving him as swiftly as it had appeared.

“We can’t know,” Tom agreed, staring at him. “But right now, Erin’s a prisoner, like you once were. We don’t know what they’re doing to her. If she’s still alive—” His voice broke, and he began again. “We need to know if there’s the smallest chance this vampire lived. We’ve got nothing else to go on.”

Tom picked up the leather-bound book and showed him the spine, where he’d noticed the newer stitching earlier. “Did you remove these pages or did someone else?”

Nicholas took the diary and examined it for a second, placing it back on the dresser. He glared at Adam, not speaking, his green eyes burning. Tom struggled to keep his breathing calm, unable to pull in enough oxygen as they all awaited an answer; some fragment that might lead them to Erin.

“I didnae remove the pages,” he said finally. “And the flowers – they’re violets, I remember now. His mother’s favourite. He would press them into the letters he wrote to her.

“There were violets where Maggie died – I, uh – I saw the photographs,” Nicholas murmured. “I always left roses. He mayhap didnae ken, so he used his mother’s flowers.” His voice hardened. “I thought it a coincidence. ”

“A fucking coincidence ?” Tom could hardly believe the vampire could have been so blind. “Nothing about this has been anything other than carefully planned, but you didn’t think to mention any of this?”

Nicholas’s shoulders sagged as though under an impossible weight. “Tis my greatest shame.” His voice cracked on the words. “Of all the sins I’ve committed, this one…” He couldn’t finish, and Tom noticed his hands were trembling at his sides. “I thought him dead. That no soul could survive that place. I… cannae imagine how bad the damage must have been, if it truly is Alistair le Normand. If he’s already removed the evidence of our friendship from my diary, then it seems he blames me for what happened.” He sighed. “And I dinnae blame him. We must move quickly.”