Chapter Twenty
All right, so I lied. There were dreams. And those totally, inexplicably safe feelings? Yeah, they don't last forever.
In the blink of an eye, he was gone. One minute I was looking right at him, and the next he had just disappeared. I whirled about madly, trying to figure out where he had gone. And then I heard a scream. I saw Cassie, eyes bright with fear. Mikhail had ahold of her from behind, pinning her arms and weapons to her sides. She closed her eyes and whimpered as his tongue flicked out, licking up the blood that was oozing out of a cut just above her eye.
"My, my, what shall you do, Kayla?" Mikhail asked in a mocking tone. "Don't move—I'll kill her if you come one step closer. Your student is very pretty. She'd make a beautiful vampire, would she not?"
Cassie's eyes flew open upon hearing she'd make a beautiful vampire. She looked to me with a pleading in her gaze that was so intense, I'm surprised it didn't knock me over. I knew how much Cassie hated vampires--that was the reason she was an orphan. Her parents had been brutally murdered by a group of renegade vampires when she was ten. She had been at a friend's house for the evening; if she had been home, she would have been slaughtered, too. Just because I knew how much she hated vampires didn't mean I was happy with what I saw in her gaze. With just her eyes, she was begging me to kill her. She was begging me to kill her before she was made into the monster she hated the most.
"You're struggling, Kayla," Mikhail's hissing voice broke through my thoughts. He gestured to someone I couldn't see, and a vampire rushed at me before I knew what was happening. The bow was knocked from my hands and skidded across the floor. The vampire gave me a good round-house to the jaw, and I fell sprawled on the floor. Pain exploded in my head like fireworks. I scrambled to my hands and knees, attempting to get back on my feet but failing because I was so dizzy. Mikhail laughed at my efforts.
Mikhail's pale hand trailed its way up Cassie's body in a gesture that was almost purely sexual. Bile rose in my throat. I regained some of my balance back, and made it to my feet before a tall, black-haired vampire grabbed me and pinned me against him. I suddenly realized I was probably better off lying on the floor. Now, pinned against this vampire's body, I had a clear view of everything that Mikhail was doing to Cassie.
Mikhail's hand made its way over Cassie's breast and up to her throat. His fingers curled around her neck and he raked his nails across it, not slitting her throat but drawing blood. She started crying. He turned her so that she was facing him. Since I was at sort of a sideways angle, I could still see everything, but I wished to God I couldn't. Mikhail licked the cut that was producing the most blood. Cassie cringed away from him, but he followed, his tongue lapping up the blood that was running like a waterfall down to her shirt.
It happened too quickly for me to even register it in my mind. One moment Mikhail was lapping up the blood from Cassie's neck like a morbid dog, and the next his fangs were bared and he was sinking them into the front of her throat. He bit as hard as he could and pulled his head back, bringing flesh with him. He ripped Cassie's throat out, and I couldn't help but watch.
I was paralyzed. My brain was telling my body to move, but I couldn't make myself get up off the floor. Mikhail tossed Cassie's body away like it was a broken toy--maybe it was to him, I don't know. The body spasmed on the cold stone before going completely still. My magical training told me it would actually take hours--days even--for Cassie's soul to leave her body, but to me she was already dead. I did the only thing I could do. I screamed. I screamed so loud that if there had been any glass around, it probably would have shattered. I screamed because Cassie was dead, and because I knew I was next.
Suddenly I was on my feet, in Mikhail's arms. He was all that was supporting me so that I didn't fall to the floor. He looked at me in an almost loving manner. He brushed a stray lock of red hair from my eyes. I struggled in his grasp, and he chuckled at my attempts. He seemed to be doing a lot of laughing at me. Was I really that pathetic? "Kayla, Kayla, Kayla..." He was whispering, but it was more for dramatic effect than anything. We both knew that every vampire in the room with us could hear what he was saying. "This could have all been avoided, my love, had you just accepted my proposition in the first place."
"No." The word was out of my mouth before I realize it. He gave me a strange look.
"No?" His blonde eyebrow was raised in an almost delicate fashion.
"I've been here before," I said, and as I spoke I knew each word to be true. "You keep using this memory to get to me, to break me, but that's all it is. Just a memory. This is only a dream, Mikhail."
His pale skin flushed with anger. Whatever blood he had fed on boiled. "Just a memory, a dream?" he asked. "Well tell me, Kayla, can you bleed in your dreams?" He bared his fangs.
"Not this time," I told him, and pushed him away from me. My strength was staggering—but hey, this was a dream. And in dreams, you can do anything you want. Not waiting to see if I had phased him at all, just happy because I had freed myself from his grip, I started to run. He laughed behind me.
"Run all you like, Kayla, but you cannot escape me."
I kept running. I found myself in the dark corridors of concrete beneath the city streets that led to the warehouse. I stumbled in the darkness, but kept going. I nearly fell to my death at the drop, but managed to catch myself before falling to oblivion. I ran and ran until I reached the ladder which would take me to the trapdoor. Hurriedly I climbed up. The ladder was slippery—or maybe it was the sweat off my hands—so I could barely hold on. When I reached the top I pushed the trapdoor open and climbed into the light. I lay on my stomach, my face pressed to the cold concrete, for a few moments, in order to get my bearings. How could you become out of breath in a dream?
I had only been there a few moments when the scene changed. I was no longer in the warehouse. Instead, I was lying on a street. Car horns blared, and I scrambled to my feet just in time to narrowly miss being hit by a pizza delivery car. Safely on the sidewalk, I took in my surroundings. I was still in San Francisco—in fact, I was right on the waterfront. Just across from me was an old abandoned warehouse that looked like it had been out of use for decades. Unquestionably, although I don't know how, I knew that this was what they had all been talking about. The House of Horrors. Looking both ways—I was raised well, all right?—I ran across the street into the parking lot. A single car was there; it too looked like it had not been used in a while. I didn't see how this place could one of the city's hubs of vampire activity—at least Mikhail's lair looked like it was lived in.
Speaking of Mikhail, what had happened to him? Had I left him behind? Was this truly a dream, and not one of his invasions into my mind? I was so confused, but there was nothing to do but press onward. There was no way out of this until I woke up. If I woke up. Now there's a scary thought.
The closer I got to the door, the stranger I felt, like a hundred eyes were watching me. Of course, I was all alone on the parking lot. My breath started catching, too. What was it they had said? The House of Horrors was so evil that it drove humans insane? Was it affecting me? I didn't feel insane. Maybe my small bit of magical ability—all vampire slayers at least needed some—was protecting me. But how long would that last? I reached the door and turned the doorknob. I don't know what I expected, but the door was locked. Was I disappointed? A little. Was I relieved? Most definitely.
"You can't get in that way," a voice said. Giving a little shriek, I turned to find a little girl standing behind me. She looked like she couldn't have been more than seven, but we all know that looks can be deceiving. She wore a white dress under a shorter, light pink pinafore. The theme of white and pink continued all over her outfit—white stockings, pink shoes, and a pink bow in her curly blonde hair. She looked the picture of Victorian innocence.
"You're Claudiana, aren't you?" I asked. She nodded, her blue eyes sparkling.
"You can't get in that way," she repeated. "But if you'll come with me, I can show you another way."
She held out her small hand, and I just stared at her. "Don't you want to come and play with me?" she asked. Looking at my expression, she sighed. "No one ever wants to play with me."
I could see that Claudiana, for all her thousand years, liked to pretend she was still a child. That kind of freaked me out, yet I couldn't help but be drawn in by her. She was just so . . . well, to say she was adorable didn't even begin to cover it. I found myself taking her hand. She smiled at me, and I wondered briefly what I had done. She started to pull me away from the door, and I had no choice but to follow. If it had been my dream before, I certainly wasn't in control now.
Claudiana took me to a door that read SERVICE ENTRY. "This is the only way in," she said, and then looked at me expectantly.
"Do I want to go in there?" I asked, fearing I already knew the answer.
The twinkle was still in her blue eyes as she answered. "No."
I turned back to the door. It looked harmless enough. Right. Freeing my hand from Claudiana's grip, I opened the door while simultaneously reaching for a gun I didn't have.
"It's no use," she said, stepping in around me. "Anything you'd find here can't be killed by a gun, anyway."
I wondered if she meant in dreamland or in reality as I stepped inside. It was dark. I was in an office; all the furniture was covered in a thick layer of dust. I followed Claudiana out of the office into the main warehouse. There was nothing inside. "It's empty," I said, sounding even to myself a little disappointed.
"Of course," Claudiana said, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "The House's power lies in that it takes what you fear most, and turns it against you. That's why it drives humans insane—they can't handle their own fears. The only reason the House hasn't attacked you yet is because I am with you."
Oh, that was comforting.
"Not to mean any disrespect, Claudiana," I said, looking around at the empty warehouse before settling my gaze on the little vampire, "but is this just my overactive imagination, or is this real?"
She smirked at me. "Your mind is pathetically easy to invade, slayer." Her tone was both bored and insulting. I took it to mean this wasn't just my own weird little dream.
"All right," I said. "Well, if this is real, why are you treating me so nicely?"
She laughed, a tinkering sound. "I have no quarrel with you, slayer," she said.
"But—I tried to kill one of your children," I stammered.
She shrugged, her dainty shoulders barely moving. "Some sacrifices one must be willing to make," she said. "Mikhail has always been unpredictable, a wild card. He is hard to control."
The implications of everything hit me at once. "Are you saying you're willing to stand by while I kill him?" I asked.
"Like I said before," she said, "some sacrifices . . ."
"Well, can you tell me where he is?" I asked, barely able to contain my excitement. "Do you know who's hiding him?"
"Of course." She gave me a look that said this was painfully obvious, too. "He is here with me."
"You?" Somehow I wasn't that surprised. "You've been hiding him all this time?"
"Since he came crawling back to me, a broken vampire," Claudiana said. If she was angry at me for "breaking" him, she didn't show it.
"Thank you—" I tried to thank her, but she held up a small hand to stop me.
"Do not thank me just yet," she said. "Come to San Francisco on the night of the Carnival of Nightmares. Bring your master. We will make a night of it."
I didn't like the tone which her voice now held. She had now dropped all pretense of being a child. "Make a night of what?"
She gave another laugh; this laugh was not the tinkering laugh of a small girl, but the low, contralto laugh of a woman. Now that freaked me out. "Of nightmares, of course," she said. Still laughing, she melted into a puddle of blood. The puddle started to spread across the floor at an alarming rate. It was heading straight for my feet. I did not want that blood to touch me; I backed up quickly, and tripped, landing on my back and knocking the breath from myself. I felt the blood, cold and icky, spread beneath me. Claudiana's laugh could still be heard, although quieter, as though coming from the blood, as though she were actually in the blood. I screamed. I flailed about, trying to get out of the blood. It was no use. The puddle got deeper, until it became a sea of blood, and I was fighting not to drown. "Help me!" I cried, though I knew no one was there to hear me. The blood was sucking me under. I could not fight anymore. I took as much of a breath as I could, and then I was under in the red blackness. My lungs seared; how had I run out of hair so quickly? I was going to drown; this was it, the end. I tried to swim up; if I could swim up I could get to the surface. But there was no surface. It seemed as though there was nothing except this vast ocean of red. My brain was screaming, Air! Air!! AIR!!! I couldn't stand it any longer. I opened my mouth. Blood filled my lungs.
"Kayla? Kayla, come on, snap out of it!"
I woke up to find my head in Chase's lap. Not only was his face above mine, but the entire day guard—had dawn come and gone already—was there, too. They all looked at me with worried expressions. Uh-oh.
For some strange reason I was panting, like I couldn't get enough air. But that wasn't possible. It had only been a dream, right? "What happened?" I managed to croak out.
"You tell me," Chase said. "I woke up and you weren't breathing; you were making these choking noises, like you were suffocating on nothing."
I closed my eyes. "I had another dream," I said. "This time, it was about . . ." I let my sentence trail off, not sure if I was able to say her name.
"About who?" Chase asked. "Tell me—Stavros will want to know."
Opening my eyes, I gave him a look that said I was sorry for bringing her up. "About Claudiana. She took me into the House of Horrors. You'll never believe what she told me. Oh, and another thing—" I took off his mother's ring and threw it down on the bed beside me. "This doesn't fucking work."
Later that night I was whisked to Stavros' office. The entire gang was there: Stavros, Winter, Antonio, the works. There was something unusual, though. A woman was sitting between Stavros and Winter. She looked . . . well, she looked like a witch out of one of those cartoon movies, only more. She wore a dress that came down to just below her hips with a tattered hem, stockings that covered her leg from foot to thigh, a long, floor-sweeping robe clasped shut at the neck but open all the way down, and a large hat whose point drooped down behind her head. No introductions were made, so I didn't ask questions. I just did as instructed—I sat down, and began to tell Stavros and everyone else of my dream. "And she told me that she had been hiding Mikhail all this time, and that I was to go to San Francisco on the 'night of the Carnival of Nightmares.' She said to bring my master."
"That settles it," the mysterious Witch said. "You have to go to the House."
"Don't be silly, Helenda," Antonio said.
"But she's right," I said. Everyone turned to stare at me. "What? Obviously Claudiana wants Mikhail dead, too. She's willing to turn him over to me. What's the harm in going?"
"She wants you to go during the Carnival," Antonio said, as if I was supposed to magically know what that meant.
"So?"
"So!" He sounded exasperated. "Do you know what the Carnival of Nightmares is?" I assume from the look on my face he discerned that I didn't, because he started swearing at me in Greek.
The Witch—Helenda—took pity on me. "The Carnival of Nightmares is in five days' time. For as long as Claudiana has been alive, she has held a sort of . . . court on this same night every year. Monsters of all kinds come and revel in the grotesque and macabre. It is a night of blood and torture and death."
"Five days?" I asked. When Helenda, nodded, I scoffed. "You're telling me Claudiana's terrible holiday is on Halloween?"
As Helenda nodded Chase took my hand. "That's not all that happens in five days," he said. It took me a moment to figure out what he was talking about, but then I got it. Five days from now is when Vann was supposed to come for me. And kill me. Great.
Fan-fucking-tastic.
