Blood echo, p.9
Blood Echo, page 9
“He needs a doctor!”
I was shouting at the vampire, but my eyes were still fastened to Joseph’s chest, held there like two magnets. I was appalled, I was repulsed, I was terrified and everything between. Across the bare skin of his chest, in ornate lettering, were the words “Joseph Christ”; they were written without any ink. Some of the letters still wept blood, and I tried to make sense of it all. At first, I thought they were cut into his flesh, but they were so neat. I realized with sickening clarity that he had been branded.
“Still wanting to go work for Scarlett Pearce?”
The vampire holding up Joseph’s ruined form still sneered at me.
“Creative, isn’t she?”
That was all he said before he disappeared with Joe from my line of vision. I heard a body hitting the floor in the cell beside me. Joseph grunted, and that was when I started to fight.
It was the same sensation as when I had tried to save Jade, but less powerful, and somehow this time, it felt natural, as if a part of me had evolved, gained strength enough to do this, rather than something else having twisted its way into my head.
I stomped my feet, I screamed, calling out over and over that he needed a doctor, telling them he would die down there, spitting profanities and threats and anything else I could think of. I called to the vampires until I was hoarse and breathless, until all the anger had simmered back down to a point where I could contain it, and finally, I fell back onto the floor.
Joseph’s whispered prayers were broken with sobs, and so were his words.
“Rayne, if I die, find my family, my sister, Caroline, and tell her I love her… Tell her I’m with Mom and Dad now and we’re watching over her with the Lord.”
“You’re not going to die, Joe, you’re not going to die.” I dragged myself across the floor and pressed my hands against the concrete between us. “Just hold on, they won’t let you die.”
I didn’t know if I was a liar after what I had just seen.
“I’m going to try to sleep for a while, Rayne. You’ll make it out of here, I know you will, someone is watching over you.”
I didn’t know if I should try to stop him. My mind reeled, information about concussions and first aid warring in my head with my compassion—if I had been in that state, all I would have wanted was for sleep to take me away too. So I stayed quiet and let him rest, though I cried, harder than I remembered crying my entire life.
Someone was watching over me. Or at least someone had been. She was beautiful, and she was terrible, terrible beyond my wildest dreams, my worst nightmares; and I had followed her here. She was everything to me somehow still, yet she was so imperfect, always so mysterious, so dangerous, and now she was this… Those words branded into Joseph’s skin, and I didn’t know how to carry on.
The vampire could have lied, but part of me had known before he’d said the words. My eyes had stayed on those brands, not out of macabre curiosity or even concern, but because I felt her, the imprint of her, the echo, locked in that horrific act. Scarlett had done it, I was certain of that.
What scared me the most, more than any of this, was I knew I still loved her. I hated her for what she had done, for not coming for me, but I had tasted her brokenness in my mouth, every dark and ruined and beautiful thing she was, and somehow, I couldn’t deny her, I couldn’t even want to. It tore me into pieces just to try to turn my back on her, because I loved her so fiercely, with more valor and vigor and conviction than I loved anything else in the world; myself included.
Chapter Eight
SOMEWHERE BETWEEN THE sound of Joseph’s sobbing and his prayers, I had fallen asleep, lost to the despair swallowing me, and grateful that I didn’t dream. I had no idea how long I’d been out, no idea if the lights had gone off and come back on or been on this whole time. The sound of someone, or a group of people by their footsteps, moving down the corridor had woken me. Not caring about their presence, I called out softly to Joseph; he didn’t answer.
“Joe… Joseph, are you sleeping?”
I kept on trying, getting louder and louder.
“He’s not sleeping.”
The voice that answered me was the same one that had confirmed everything I knew to be true last night, that Scarlett was the one to blame for Joseph’s injuries…maybe his death.
“Where is he?”
I forced myself not to snap, because as the party came into view, I recognized Riley, another vampire dressed in similar black khakis, and a young man with slicked-back hair and wearing what looked like an expensive suit. This was different, and it felt like a change in the game.
“He was released to his family in the Fringe.”
The words were barely out of Riley’s mouth before the suited man spoke…or was he a boy? He looked to be in his early twenties, though he seemed to dress far too well, too formal, almost in an attempt to seem older, to give himself more gravitas than his skinny form possessed.
“Not that it will do him any good. There’s no nurse in the Fringe now, we all know where she went.”
His tone was simply matter-of-fact, not cruel, though his words dripped with disdain. I was clueless as to what was going on, and so, I kept my mouth shut, rising to my feet because, suddenly, the bars between me and the three of them did not seem like protection enough.
“This is the girl?”
The suited man-boy asked the question and Riley answered.
“That’s right, Mr. Chase. Caught coming in over the wall, brought by Jade Pearce.”
The man he’d called Mr. Chase took a step closer, studying me.
“And she said the girl was for Scarlett?”
My stomach dropped. Maybe he knew Scarlett, maybe he would take me to her.
Those hopes were already ringing false. Something in the way his thin lips wrapped around her name told me it wasn’t going to be the case. Whoever he was, he didn’t feel like an ally.
Riley nodded.
“What would she want with you?”
He asked me the question, and I fixed him with as blank a stare as I could muster. It was a question I’d asked myself perpetually, until some days, I could hardly cling to my belief that she did want me, or at least, she had.
“And why would she send her precious little sister out for you?”
He was talking to the guards more than me now, and I preferred it.
“Scarlett Pearce was caught crossing the wall to leave the city a few weeks ago, sir.”
The other vampire spoke, and I hung on his every word. Just hearing someone, anyone talk about her, it made her real, and every scrap of information on her, any acknowledgment that she existed somewhere outside of just myself, was like gold dust to me now.
“Got into quite the altercation. Six wall guards were ripped to pieces and set on fire, though rumor has it she barely walked away herself.”
This news seemed to please Mr. Chase, though only for a second.
“And yet there was no punishment. Six of our kind dead, and another Delta walking around unscathed.”
He spat violently onto the floor and I jumped. The vampires beside him shared a look. Now I knew he was a vampire like them, though apparently none of them were Delta vampires, and it was obvious he had some serious distaste for the class difference. I tried to sort all this information away, to remember it in case there came a time when I needed it, but all I could think about was Scarlett. I was right about her being hurt that night by the vampires at the wall, and she had been telling the truth when she told me whoever had hurt her was dead.
“I’ll take her. Have her brought to Chase Tower, now.”
My blood ran cold as I realized he was talking about me.
“Evan? Are you almost done with all the macabre in here? I’d like to go home, there’s a rather nice bottle of bourbon waiting for me.”
The suited man, who I had deduced to be Evan Chase, looked back up the corridor, to a place I couldn’t see.
“Nobody asked you to wait, brother.” He snapped the words before taking one last look at me. “Make sure a group of your men bring her to me. I doubt Pearce even remembers she had any interest in her, she’s obsessed with her current pet, but it doesn’t hurt to take precaution.”
With that, he was gone, they were all gone: the guards, Evan Chase, Joseph. I was left alone to wonder, to be tormented by the last sentence the weasel-looking boy had spoken. Had Scarlett forgotten me? The question echoed in my head, but one thing bothered me more. He had mentioned Scarlett’s “current pet,” and a strange discomfort in my stomach told me he wasn’t talking about a dog or a cat, or anything else from the animal kingdom.
WHEN THEY ENTERED my cell, I barely had the time to look at them, to count them, to see any of their faces, before something dark and cotton feeling was pulled over my head. I was half dragged, half carried, bounced from cool body to cool body, though I heard the telltale clink of elevator doors, and I knew, for the first time in what could be days, weeks, I was being taken up.
They dragged me onward and I let them because I couldn’t stand to go back, back to the bunker, my jail cell, the chlorine and rust, the echoes of Joseph’s sobs, and Evan Chase’s words—the place where Scarlett had deserted me.
I tasted the fresh air as it hit me, even through the fabric over my head, and not long after that, the hood was removed. Riley held my arm now; I blinked up groggily at his face, pain bursting behind my eyes from the sudden exposure to bright light, though I was determined to keep them open.
Tall buildings whose tips were almost as high as the clouds surrounded us, and behind them were smaller towers, still impressive. The city was beautiful, and it seemed oddly functional, functioning, and I had no idea what I had expected. The forest had been so bleak, so untouched, yet here, I stood on neatly laid pavement, a road was visible off to my left, and buildings rose up around me. I heard voices calling and the hustle of people talking. Craning my neck to look back through the throng of vampires behind me, I saw what looked like a string of awnings in a marketplace. It was all so surreal.
I walked slowly, drinking everything in and trying to make mental maps and other clever things. Most of all, I looked for her. Every brunette head that passed us made me stall, and each shimmering tower made my heart stop because any of them could be hers.
Evan Chase had seemed afraid she might try to steal me back on this journey, and despite my generously large escort, I desperately hoped for the same thing. We walked, and I lagged as much as I could, my only contribution to her possible rescue mission. As we left the ring of larger towers and began to walk around the ring of smaller ones, my hope was dying. We stopped outside a door too soon, and I looked back frantically, soaking up the last of it, the sun, the breeze, the sounds of some sort of civilization; the last of the chance, the opportunity, for Scarlett to come and save me.
We stepped inside the doors, and it had passed.
The first thing that struck me was the décor. The floors were smooth granite, and the place was oddly light and airy, given the people who resided inside were vampires. I was ushered toward another elevator, and I watched as we waited for it to arrive. Riley’s grip was solid around my arm, and I might as well have been caught in stone. My chance to escape had passed, and I tried not to let myself mourn the fact. I was above ground, and for now, that would have to be enough. Whether or not Scarlett was coming for me, I was one step closer to finding her.
We ascended, so far up that my ears popped uncomfortably. When the doors dinged open, Evan Chase was waiting.
He seemed agitated and anxious, though it obviously wasn’t for my arrival. His gray eyes grazed over my face for barely a second, before they were fixed on Riley, questions heavy in them.
“Well, anything?”
“No, sir. We got here with no problems.”
Riley replied easily, though I heard the boredom in his voice. Maybe he thought Evan’s game, whatever it was, was fickle. I still didn’t understand what exactly was going on around me, and why Evan was so eager for us to run into Scarlett. If he had wanted me brought here, it made no sense that he hoped she would intercept and take me away.
“You didn’t even see her? Or her sister, or her pet—the nurse from the Fringe?”
Evan’s questioning continued, and Riley replied with the negative each time.
I stood there dumbly, my brain caught, glitching, wrapped so hard around a single piece of information that everything else was lost to me. “Her pet—the nurse from the Fringe.” I didn’t know what horrified me more, the fact that Scarlett had a human girl who was described as her pet, or that there was someone else close to her, someone who according to Evan, she was obsessed with.
The more I thought about it, the more it stung, the more I felt like a silly little girl who’d run off into the woods to chase a dream, only to wake up and realize it had been a nightmare. I didn’t want to be Scarlett’s pet, I didn’t know exactly what I did want to be to her, but it wasn’t that. Still, I couldn’t deny I was jealous. She had always been mine, at least to me, and she was something I had never wanted to or planned on sharing with the rest of the world. Now I wondered if she was ever even mine, or if I was always just hers?
Around me, the conversation had continued, and only the tightening of a cold grip on my arm brought me back to the present.
“Take her to the staff quarters on your way out. Ask for Cece and tell her she can stop her insufferable grumbling. She has an assistant.”
Though he issued demands rather than speaking, the same way Scarlett had done, somehow, he lacked the finality, the absoluteness she had possessed, and it showed. He lingered as the party of vampires and I stepped back into the elevator, watching, as if he was waiting to ensure that what he had ordered would be done.
We stepped back out into the lobby on the first floor, though it was as close to leaving the tower as I got. Riley led me to a door off to one side of the high-ceilinged space, and I went because, by now, I knew fighting would be futile. He rapped on the wood once and then flung the door open, pushing me to step inside ahead of him. The lighting was dim, and my eyes took a second to adjust.
Ahead of us was a long corridor lined with doors. A lopsided old camp table was set up at the end and standing behind it was a woman of about thirty. She looked from me to Riley before she spoke. It took me a second to realize she was checking our eyes to see who was human and who wasn’t.
“Yes, sir, what can I do for you?”
“This girl is to be taken to Cece. Mr. Chase says she’ll be her assistant.”
With this, Riley pushed me forward, and then, with a cool gust of air, he was gone in a heartbeat, the door swinging closed behind him.
CECE TURNED OUT to be an older woman, human. She looked me over with equal parts interest and boredom when I arrived at the door on the corridor that was apparently hers.
“I asked for an assistant, and you’re what he sent me? Don’t suppose you’ve ever held a broom, have you, girl? You don’t have a hidden talent for making the silverware sparkle?”
She looked old, maybe sixty, but her eyes were sharp and her words were sharper.
“Never mind that, get in here before we have the rest of them come knocking. Rare to have your own room here, you know… Where did you come from? You’re too clean for the Fringe.”
I looked down at my filthy jeans and my blue jacket that was torn down one arm.
“I came from the bunker, ma’am.”
Politeness seemed like the best way to handle this, and immediately, I was gratified. Cece’s face softened and she rose an inch in height. It was clear she appreciated the address.
“Well, I suppose you’ll do. What’s your name?”
“Rayne.”
I rubbed my cold hands over the dirty denim on my thighs and peered past her—she was barely taller than me. The room we stood in was small, smaller than my room at home. Twin cots were inside, one pushed against each wall. The one to the left had a worn patchwork quilt, extra pillows and shams lined the space where it met the wall, and at the foot and side of it were boxes and belongings; the one to the right was bare mattress except for a cotton sheet. I already knew which one would be mine.
Cece followed my gaze.
“I know what you’re thinking. Our young Master Evan is quite generous. We have real beds here, and it doesn’t get too cold, not even at night.”
I looked at her dumbly—it was freezing on the corridor, and the room was barely better—but I didn’t detect any sarcasm in her voice.
Sharp brown eyes watched me, her gray-streaked amber-colored hair was rolled up into an elaborate twist, and she wore a white apron over her black slacks, her outfit half obscured by a floor-length thick duffel coat.
“Now…”
She wrapped her bony fingers around my arm and led me to the bare bed.
“You’re quite lucky you landed with me. The others are eight to a room.”
She gave me a wry smile, and I tried to return the expression, struggling to keep up, to take in my sudden change in circumstance after endless days in the bunker.
“I’m the head of the maid service…which is composed of me, me, and me… But I have the power to enlist any of the others to help me with odd jobs here and there. It’s my job, and now yours too, to keep the tower looking spick-and-span, for the good Master.”
Sarcasm was definitely present that time.
“I clean every floor of this tower that’s in use by the Chase family, every day, and you’re going to help.”
I nodded stiffly, sensing she was waiting for me to say something.
“How do they…pay us?”
I had a feeling I already knew the answer.
