Chapter Eight
The vampire reaches a pale arm through the hole and flicks the lock on the knob. His movements are deliberate and painfully slow as he opens the door, like time has not touched him for so long he's forgotten how to move through it. He's a very old vampire.
His face is all angles and his hair is slicked back off his large forehead. He's dressed in odd robes that resemble a Catholic priest's, but the Roman collar is red instead of white.
"I don't care who the hell you are, yeah? You take one more step and I'll put so much lead down your throat you'll be shitting bullets for a week," Dunn grits out through his teeth.
"Sinner," the vampire says, his accent smooth and unidentifiable, "I give you two choices: repent for your sins or... cooperate."
Dunn doesn't hesitate. I hear the tap of the hammer and the bullet rips through the air, flying through empty space, and lodging itself in the wall opposite the room.
I blink and miss it.
The vampire's hand is coiled around Dunn's neck and in an instant he pulls him over the desk and lifts him into the air. I jump onto the desk, which creaks under the weight of the grizzly I shift into. I'm ready to launch myself at him when suddenly Finn is there, one hand firmly on the vampires shoulder and the other wrapped around my muzzle, keeping it shut.
"Judge," he says, in his polite but persuasive way, "please put my employee down."
I shift back, urging my heart rate to decelerate before it ruptures my veins.
"Mr. Byrom, I suggest you restrain your dogs before I do something irreversible," Judge says. He turns his head in that same impossibly slow manner to look at Finn then releases Dunn, who drops to the floor. His neck is already bruising.
I scramble down from the desk and kneel beside Dunn who is coughing and rubbing at his throat.
"Falon, this man needs to speak with you about this morning's events. He has twenty minutes to do so." Finn smiles, but pronounces each syllable of the last sentence with a sharp tongue, eyes locked on Judge.
I stand and square my body to look at the man. Wolf encourages me to bare my teeth, but I resist. My nostrils flare and my lips close in a tight line. Judge eyes me with something that resembles disgust. His upper lip curls slightly toward his nose and his eyebrows pull toward each other, smushing the skin in between into a crease.
"Don't, Mr. Byrom. Don't let her go with him," Dunn says from the floor. "Stupid bastard thinks he can-"
"Tobias," Finn cautions.
The muscles in Dunn's jaw go taut at the use of his first name. He rises, eyes trained on the ground.
Finn turns to Judge and says, calmly, "We had an agreement. The Order was supposed to leave us be. You may talk to her, but you may not break our deal again." He's telling, not asking.
"Very well. The Order will not forget your cooperation, Mr. Byrom. I assure you she will come to no harm... on this day," Judge says. His gaze flicks to Finn then back at me. "Come with me, binder."
No. Wolf refuses. She cements my feet in place.
There's not enough time to play tug of war with her over my body. I shove her hard, back into my subconscious. But when she's gone I feel alone and vulnerable. I hesitate, looking from Finn to Dunn, neither of whom will look me in the eyes.
"Go, Falon," Finn orders.
He must trust this vampire not to hurt me. But he's wrong to trust me not to hurt him.
Judge turns and heads for the door. Twenty minutes. That's all I have to give him. But this vampire moves so damn slow twenty minutes won't be enough time to accomplish anything.
He leads me into the hallway and I see Hicks leaning against the wall, cradling his arm, which hangs at an odd angle. He's still wearing his trademark sunglasses even though one of the lenses is shattered, and a snapped toothpick hangs from his lips.
Wolf is back, worrying like a mother over him, whining and whimpering. As we walk down the hallway he tries to follow, but Finn is there, catching him by the collar.
"It's okay. We're okay Hicks. See you in a bit." I hope that's enough to set him at ease.
Hicks nods and Finn leads him back into his office, probably to set his arm again.
I turn back around and nearly run into Judge's back. His turtle-like pace makes a vein in my forehead throb and Wolf is urging me to herd him along like a sheep.
We walk by two vampires who fall into step behind us as we pass. Wolf doesn't like having strangers at our back and I have to fight to keep us facing forward. We reach the door to the stairs that leads to the basement area of the warehouse and bile promptly rises in my throat. Judge unlocks the door and, slowly, pushes it open. I freeze, watching him walk down into the darkness. Darkness that still haunts me when I sleep.
I was about seven when I last stood at the top of these stairs. I had stared down into the same darkness in front of me now. The memory is still so vivid. I had gone to look for the tabby cat that Finn would let in for me to play with when he had too much work to do and this door stood slightly ajar. It was never unlocked back then. A low voice had come out of the darkness, asking me to come down stairs, saying that the cat was there and it needed my help, that it was badly hurt and in pain. Even now I can clearly see the tabby with a broken leg at the bottom of the stairs, crying and writhing in my head. Despite Wolf's snarling for me to run away, I had taken two steps down, when Blythe snatched me back out and slammed the door closed.
The tabby had been in one of the upstairs offices the whole time.
One of the vampires behind me shoves my shoulder and I swallow the memory, stepping down into the darkness.
At the bottom of the stairs, Judge is waiting for me. I sniff at the air, half-expecting to catch the scent of the same whatever-it-was that had spoken to me all those years ago. There's nothing but moist concrete and rat droppings.
"I can feel your fear," Judge says. There is piqued interest in his voice, but none of it shows on his face.
"Don't get excited. It's not you I'm scared of," I say, narrowing my eyes. As if I'd give him the satisfaction.
"I suspect you are remembering the monster that was kept down here. Are you interested in the story?"
Of course I am. "No, I'm not. Get to the point," I say, biting back my curiosity. I just want to get out of here.
Judge flips a light switch and the room is illuminated. The entire area is concrete; the walls, the floor, the ceiling. There are Old, burgundy colored stains all over the ground and deep scratches on one of the walls. The darkness lingers in a corner and the light doesn't quite manage to fill it. Hair stands up on the back of my neck.
A metal chair sits in that same space and attached to the walls around it are chains and thick iron handcuffs. Judge walks over to the corner. Slowly.
"Very well. We're pressed for time anyway," he says. He humphs, like being under the constraints of time is beneath him, and then motions to the chair.
Goose bumps travel down my arms. I hesitate, but only for a second. Even if I was too scared to sit in it, Wolf is not okay showing this man any weakness—she would make me sit either way.
The chair squeaks under my weight, like it hasn't been sat in for a very long time. The legs scrub the concrete and the noise aggravates Wolf even more. I have to keep her in check or my tongue is going to be harsher than necessary.
"Do you know of the Eucharist Order, Binder?" Judge asks. He flicks his hand at his two manservants and they both leave, going back up the stairs.
The door at the top closes. I'd feel better having his vampires back down here. Even if they aren't on my side. Anything so I don't have to be stuck alone with this guy.
"Nope." I recline back in the chair, wiggling to get comfortable.
"I see. Mr. Byrom seems content to keep his pet in the dark."
The rebuttal almost leaves my lips, but I bite my tongue.
"We are a sacred order," Judge explains. He paces slowly about the room. "To take blood is our divine right, our divine duty. Mankind is full of sin, you see. We demand their penance and cleanse them of their filth." That explains the robes. "Your Mr. Byrom disagrees. In this modern world, many have taken to disbelief in our greater purpose. Your attackers from this morning are among them."
"So you're God-fearing vampires. Because that's not kooky at all."
"I wouldn't expect a creature of your... transgression to understand," he says, features twisted in that ugly look of disgust again. He leans in so close that I can see the speckling of brown in his eyes. His clothes smell musty and old and I imagine that even in life he smelled that way too.
Bite him, Wolf growls.
"You will tell me everything about the vampire and even more about the werewolf. You will not skip any details and I will not endure your impertinence. Your ongoing existence is tolerated because Mr. Byrom wishes it. And he is important to The Order," he grips my chin and his long fingernails bite into my cheeks. "But not so important that, should you disobey me, I wouldn't end your life without a second thought."
Eye contact. Keep eye contact. Don't blink. If he thinks he can intimidate me, he's got another thing coming. He releases my chin.
"Touch me again and I'll rip you a new one," I spit.
The corners of his mouth twitch almost into a smirk. "Tell me," he says, straightening up.
I yawn and stretch my arms. I could very well just sit here, silent, for the next fifteen minutes. But this man, who literally has all the time in the world, probably has no regard for Finn's time limit. He'll get what he wants.
"There's not much to tell. I was... in the forest and they found me." I leave out the I-almost-died bit.
"Did they speak to you? Mention who sent them? Why they were there?"
I wrack my brain for what they'd said and run into Wolf, who's guarding the memories of the morning with all her might.
I don't want to tell him either, but we have to tell him something or he won't leave!
"Well?" Judge pushes. He leans towards me again and that musty scent fills my nostrils.
I just want him gone, want all of them gone. Let him and his devout manservants worry about it. I push Wolf aside and reach for the memory. "They were going to knock me out and take me somewhere. That's all I know," I say, a bit too quickly.
Judge's eyebrows arch into his forehead. "Why did they want to take you? Where?" he asks, still too close.
"I don't know. Maybe they just wanted to kill me later. Sometimes killing for the sake of killing is reason enough." I exhale out of my nose, trying to get his smell out. "You're a vampire. You know that better than anyone."
Judge shoves the chair backward, sending me sprawling onto the floor. I spring to all fours, skin rippling, as a sharp growl tears from my throat.
"Don't you dare spit your insolence at me!" he shouts, his eyes go completely black and his canines elongate into fangs. "You think us mere murderers? We are the executioners of God. We are His vengeance!" His hair flies around him like a black halo and his fangs are a glowing white against the dimness of the room. "We deliver His judgment on the unworthy!"
It takes every ounce of my restraint to appear calm. Wolf is tearing at my willpower.
Throat, she snarls.
Against all my instincts, I stand, turn my back on the vampire, and casually reset the fallen chair. I sit down and look up at Judge, whose eyes follow my every movement. My hands dive into the pockets of my shorts so he can't see them shaking.
"The vampire said he wanted my blood." My composure is solid.
Judge's eyes and canines return to normal. Smoothing his hair back down, he turns away from me. "Naturally. Your kind smell more appetizing than normal humans," he says, as if his outburst never happened.
"Not to drink," I reply, shrugging.
"Then for what reason?" He turns back toward me, but keeps his distance.
My eyes drift up towards the ceiling, delaying my answer; it's the only kind of payback I'll get for the already scabbing concrete rash on my elbow. Judge clears his throat and takes a step forward.
"I don't know." I meet his widening eyes with my own.
Judge inhales sharply. "Are you certain they were going to take you somewhere? Because of your blood?"
"No, actually. Maybe they were planning on taking me to a freaking tea party," I snap.
"Binder, if you are speaking lies I will slaughter every filthy creature in this building," he declares.
Throat. Rip. It. Out, Wolf snarls.
"I'm not lying," I say through gritted teeth.
"Then I have far more important matters to attend to," Judge says, walking towards the stairs. He pauses and, in that weird slow way, looks back at me. "You are no longer under Mr. Byrom's protection. You are a threat to The Order and will be treated as such, like the rest of your kind." He turns away, "Because you have been useful you may keep your life. When your usefulness runs out, I will come back here to take it from you."
Judge ascends the stairs and slams the door at the top closed.
The room is quiet save for my beating pulse. I slump in the chair and watch as the skin over the veins in my wrist thumps up and down.
It feels like the darkness is creeping back in around me, like a black fog rolling in, dense and dangerous off the sea.
The air is thickening and a sharp and metallic scent fills it. Blood. It's getting stronger. I jump out of the chair and spin, sure the monster from my childhood is behind me. The walls pulsate and the stains on the ground seem to moisten, becoming shining pools of fresh blood again. The air fills my mouth and I can taste it on my tongue. Wolf is frantic. My eyes dart around the room, head filled with the taste and smell of blood. It's too much. Too much.
The door at the top of the stairs creaks open and it's gone. The room returns to normal. My head clears of the smell, but my legs wobble. What the hell is going on?
"Miss Byrom?" It's Blythe.
"Yeah, I'm here." I stand and walk to the bottom of the stairs.
She leans her head to the side and sighs, just looking down at me. "Mr. Byrom is seeing Mr. Judge out. He'll be with you as soon as possible. Please wait in his office." She pauses, continuing to stare.
I nod. "What do they want with my blood, Blythe?"
"To harvest it," she states simply.
"Why?"
"Because it is a commodity. A weapon in endless supply."
She stares at me and I can do nothing but blink stupidly back at her.
"Everything he built is compromised now, you understand? Because of you. Finnegan—Mr. Byrom, has tried too hard to keep you out of this. Now we're all in the middle of it." Her hand tightens around the doorknob, the brass crumpling under her fingers.
Those fingers might as well be gripped around my heart.
"The middle of what?"
"A revolution," she says. She takes off her glasses and rubs her eyes, then puts them back on. "The past will be stirred up by this turn of events. I suggest, young girl, you keep in mind that everyone here has chosen to leave their pasts behind. Don't hold them against us, when the truth comes out." With that she turns and leaves and I'm left staring at an empty doorway.
I chase up after her for answers, for more of an explanation, but when I get to the top of the stairs, she's gone.
I lean against the door. Ramsey and Garrick came here because of me. The Order. Hicks getting hurt. It's all because of me.
Breathe, Wolf says.
What was she talking about? What did she mean by a revolution?
Wolf hesitates. I feel like she knows something she's not telling me.
War coming, she finally answers.
What war? How do you know?
Feel it.
She flees to my subconscious after that, leaving my anger and guilt and confusion to grow heavier and heavier. A great weight on my shoulders.
Finn owes me some answers. All this "pet" talk. Has he been saying that's what I am to him? An exotic pet with a deadly poison just for his kind running through her veins that could kill him? Like when people keep snakes or chimps, knowing full well what these animals are capable of, but taking some kind of perverse delight in thinking they've subdued their dangerous potential.
I stomp up to Finn's office and find the door has been completely removed, but the wood splinters still litter the floor. I return to the sofa and pull my legs up to my chest, clutching them tightly to my body, thinking about all the mean things I'm going to say to Finn for putting me in that situation. For not telling me any of this sooner. For putting us all in so much danger just to try and keep me human.
But when Finn appears in front of me all the words I was going to say vanish with my gasp. His pupils black out his eyes and his fangs are bared, his face still frozen in a snarl. He turns away when he sees the shock on my face. I hear him inhale and exhale and when he turns back, he looks normal.
"Sorry, love. Judge didn't depart on the best of terms." He sits next to me and leans back. "What a bloody mess."
It's hard to give him a moment. I try to keep myself quiet by counting backwards from ten. "Blythe said they want to harvest my blood," I blurt out after five. "For some kind of revolution. Is that true?"
"Yes," he says, closing his eyes.
"A revolution against who?"
"The Order."
"Why?"
"Because they refuse to catch up to the world."
"What do you mean?" I ask, turning my whole body to face him. "Stop with the cryptic, mysterious vampire shit, Finn. I need, I deserve, answers."
He sighs. "The Order has been a ruling force since the beginning of civilized man. They were the first organized group of us, hopped onto the coattails of early Christianity, which was as bloodthirsty as they were. It was a perfect fit."
"Why would vampires turn to religion?"
"If you killed innocent people to survive, you'd look for justification too," he opens one eye to look at me, then closes it again. "For some greater meaning to your life. Christianity gave that to them; a religion with a vengeful God that symbolically drank the blood of Christ, and they took that as a literal justification for what we do. An act glorified by God. It made sense to them. Made sense to most people back then. Then came the age of science."
Wolf and I are engrossed. Questions sit on the tip of my tongue, but I'm afraid to break whatever spell Finn is under. It's not like him to be so forthcoming with information. His eyes open and he stares up at the ceiling. He's far off now, lost in a memory.
"Science changed everything. We discovered that our abilities were not the work of God, but the work of an organism just like us, neither living nor non-living: a virus. A virus that, thousands of years ago, helped us to slowly evolve. As man moved its way up the food chain, nature needed something else to stay ahead and keep mankind's pension for destruction in check. Our need for blood isn't supernatural or divine will; it is simply a transmutation. Something to give humans a natural predator..." he trails off. He looks surprised when he sees I'm still here and tugs at his beard.
"Before now it made sense to me, not to tell ya any of this. But after this morning, I can't remember why it seemed like a good idea," he says.
"To keep my life as normal as possible," I say, now understanding.
I asked him about vampires countless times when I was little. Why I wasn't like them, why I couldn't be like them. But he only told me how their weaknesses. How best to kill them. He made sure that was the only thing he told me about his kind. Now I know why.
The accusations and insults I'd been planning feel like overkill as I look as his face. He knows forcing that ignorance on me was a mistake.
"Didn't work out very well, did it?" he says, finally.
"No, but normal wasn't ever really an option." I tuck my feet underneath me and try to smile. "What's going to happen now?"
"The Order will be back tomorrow with their decision."
"Are they going to kill me?" I ask.
Finn laughs, a deep and throaty sound. "You really think I'd let them do that? No, love, the Order have less power over me than they'd like to think."
"Because you used to work for them?"
"Because I found a way to stop working for them." He grins down at me and smoothes the hair at the top of my head.
"How?"
"It doesn't matter. What matters is that they'll be sending someone to keep an eye on you, to keep track of your movements. And mine. I think they had forgotten about you. Written you off as untouchable, no longer a threat. This attack was a reminder that, as long as you're alive, you'll always be a threat. But they'll be worried I might side with the Transmutationists if they harm you."
"Is that what they're called? The group that Ramsey and Garrick are with? That's a mouth full," I say. "And why would you join with them? They're the bad guys, aren't they?"
"It's two evils against each other, love. There is no good or bad here. Just bad."
"You're not bad," I state, searching his eyes.
"Maybe," he agrees, but his expression says he doesn't quite believe it. He stands.
I stand with him and grab his wrist. "Finn, promise you won't ask me not to shift again. I can't ever keep that promise."
"Then just promise me you won't ever let Wolf out when the Order's around. Don't ever let them see her. Never tell them about her."
"Okay." I let go of his wrist. It's easy to agree. Wolf is everything to me. I don't want them to know about any part of her.
That sounds like a promise we can keep, right?
Yes, Wolf replies.
"Good. I have some arrangements to make, love. Do things normally for now. I'll send the lads to you when Hicks is out of the hospital."
Wolf howls with sorrow.
Stop that. He's fine, I say. Drama queen.
"That's okay. I'll go see them. Wolf won't let me do anything until we do anyways."
I start to walk away, but Finn pulls me into a hug.
"You are my life, Falon. Never forget that, no matter what. Sometimes you have to do bad things to keep the good alive," he repeats. "But don't doubt for a second that I love you."
Finn has never said that before. Not in all the nineteen years I've known him. Not that I've ever doubted it, though maybe sometimes I doubt if vampires can actually love. I think normally I'd be quite glad to hear it, but this all feels like a declaration of guilt. Like he's asking for forgiveness. And I don't know why.