The Gates

15

LACRIMOSA

A head rush welcomed me when we landed and more guards joined us, surrounding me with vengeful smiles, taking my arms to usher me forward through the castle doors. The lofty, ancient doors opened up before me, the wooden crevices seeming more jagged and sinister-looking than I remembered. My shoulders knocked from side to side into the guards next to me as I swayed, my hands still bound in shackles in front. The somberness hung in the air like a filmy shroud, tension lending itself to the overshadow of foreboding as we approached the throne room.

I saw his face. Saw him on his knees, his jaw slack and brow weighed down in torment. And there was something else in his eyes, something heartbreaking: defeat. His hazy gaze met mine, confirming these would be our final moments together. I dropped my eyes to the floor while the guards positioned me in front of Samira’s altar, forcing me to turn my back to him. Everything I’d just witnessed—Cecile’s death, the desperate villagers scrambling to reach higher ground to escape the river’s surge, the destruction of the village streets—none of it amounted to what I’d seen in Gavin’s eyes in this room. I’d no idea if Audrey, Josh or Gabe were dead, no idea what had become of the blood supply situation or Gavin’s summoning. All I’d known were Cecile’s final words, and the fate that had brought Gavin and me here, together, at the mercy of Samira’s altar. And that was enough.

Spotting Scarlet near the entry doors, leaning against the wall watching us like some cool, comfortable cougar, only intensified the dread. My journal lay at her feet. Seeing me, she simply smiled the most grotesque smile I’d ever witnessed and waved.

My journal. The windmill. It’s over. I kept my head low, barely able to look up, past the granite steps and toward the invincible vampire queen, who now stood with her back to me, hands placed gracefully on each side of the altar. She didn’t move. A long, thin-velvet drape covered part of the table, just above the rows of dolls. Thankfully, I’d never been near enough to see them up close, but I’d noticed the variety of them, each with distinctive figures and features. Some had faces painted black, others no hair, and the one on the far right, the one Samira slowly reached for, with no feet. I watched her from under my eyelashes while she extended one long fingernail to drag it toward her. Then, with one nimble turn of her wrist, she drew back the velvet cloth and unveiled the altar’s contents. A selection of pins, knives, needles, and all sorts of oils lined the table adjacent to the dolls. My heart lurched in my chest and I didn’t dare turn my head to look at Gavin. This is what it’s all come to. A slow, excruciating death alongside my love.

“Arianna.” Gavin’s voice quivered behind me. “Don’t you want to know about her before you get rid of us?”

Us. I blinked, fixated on the pins she began collecting in her other hand.

“I intend to hear all about her.” At finally speaking, Samira shifted her head to glance over her shoulder, her expression unreadable.

“I can tell you things Scarlet can’t. Things no one else knows.”

“Can you, now.”

“I won’t talk unless you free Camille. Let her free, and I’ll tell you everything.”

She snickered, her back to us, examining her weapons of choice. “I believe I have heard enough. What I do not know cannot hurt me, I am certain of this.”

“You know nothing of her life since Gérard took her from you. But I do. I can tell you. You knew her as a young girl but she grew up, she changed. I know the woman she became—”

“That is enough!” She jerked around, her glacial blue eyes alight with pure, undiluted affliction. I cowered away at her outburst, sinking my head into a protective shell formed by my neck and shoulders.

“Guards!” she shouted, keeping her body still. The grisly vampires all stood to attention and gathered near the rear doors behind the throne. “I shall barricade the castle doors. See to it they stay that way. I won’t need long.”

Grasping for any bravery I had left, I slightly shifted my head to glance back at Gavin, questioning him with my eyes. He gave nothing away; his brown eyes were hard, cold, and distraught. Did this mean our friends were alive? Could they come to help us? I’d seen some of them escaping the river’s flood, but no sign of those I loved most.

Samira closed her eyes, inhaled, and her body began to shake, her hands swaying from side to side in some mystical dance, still holding the pins she’d selected. The castle walls and the ground beneath us shook in unison, mimicking the earthquake that seized her body, causing a rupture of crumbling sounds not far in the distance. The guards looked to the exit behind the throne and waited, fear washing their faces.

“It is done.” She’d stopped shaking and opened her eyes, nodding to them. “The stone and debris will delay them. Now go.” Her watchmen hurried off with their orders while Dali and Akim returned to her side from wherever they’d cowered to. She set her eyes on Gavin again. “You think you can tell me these things and somehow it will make a difference. Somehow it will erase each aching day I crawled on my hands and knees through the castle, unable to stand because my agony forbade it, searching for my one and only daughter, the flesh of my flesh. You think it will erase the nights I spent weeping for the husband who betrayed me and the daughter who returned to me years later, no longer human, only to leave my side once again, this time of her free will.”

The same strange empathy that invaded my thoughts when Vivienne had told me of Samira’s past with Arianna began creeping up on me again at the sound of her desolate voice. Seeing the remnants of loss on her face in person was a sight to behold. I fought to push the image away when Gavin and Vivienne’s warnings came back to scold me, but I then lifted my gaze to look at her, once again involuntarily captivated.

She spoke again. “No, Mr. Devereaux. You can tell me no such thing that will ever erase that level of loss or betrayal.”

“No, but I can give you closure.” Gavin’s voice had regained some of its strength. “Why is it you think I know so much about her—after she was taken from you? Do you have any idea what happened to her?” He attempted to stand again, fighting against knees that were surely wobbly, weak. “You don’t think I’ve experienced the same kind of betrayal?”

Her eyes darted to his as if he’d revealed something to her, then they narrowed in anger. “Betrayal from an enemy is to be expected. Nothing can compare to the kind of betrayal that is dealt from a loved one. Nothing.”

She gripped the footless doll in her hand and positioned a pin between her thumb and index finger. I wasn’t sure what had just passed between them, but at this point I wasn’t sure I wanted to know. She glided down the stairs to stand in front of him, her lips pressed into a thin, cold line, her shoulders stiff with rage. “Before I make you watch me kill every one of your friends, let’s have some fun first, shall we?”

“I beg you, Samira. I beg you, I beg you. Don’t.” His voice was weak again and his eyes bounced between the weapons in her hands and my face. My teeth began to jitter and tremors wracked my body. “Camille, it’s going to be okay. Cam, look at me.”

Scarlet’s laughter echoed through the room as she remained near the entryway, watching. The tremors worsened, and I couldn’t bring myself to keep my eyes on him, only able to carry my gaze to the ground. Samira began chanting in tongues I didn’t understand, each word rolling off her lips with chilling annunciation, each syllable seductive and distinct as she gripped the doll tighter, and tighter still. Her eyelids opened and closed every few seconds, the whites of her eyeballs rolling backward as her chants became heavier, more strangled. I felt my legs stiffen, being anchored to the ground. I grimaced at the restraint and began to panic, fighting to pull my feet and take a step forward, to no avail. Her hand shot forward and hovered over the doll before she drove the pin into its groin.

I barely recognized my own voice when the scream burst from my lips. The top of my body buckled over and I was desperate to drop to the floor, only my feet were firmly planted and the luxury of falling wasn’t possible. Her eyes blazed as she watched me, maneuvering the pin and turning it, achingly slow, before withdrawing it and driving it in again, harder this time. I clutched my stomach and writhed with each attack, Gavin’s cries distant and muffled behind me. The front of my ivory dress dampened, blood soaking through it. Gavin dashed forward and reached for me, but Samira’s magic stopped him in midstride.

“No!” he cried out and she swirled one hand in the air, flinging him up and across the room. I heard his body smack the wall, heard the thud when it landed. Samira stopped chanting and turned to retrieve a long, thin knife. She pinned the doll’s shoulder and mine jerked backward, another cry of agony escaping my throat. She moved from limb to limb and repeated the torture, then resumed her chant. I began to grow faint from the crippling pain and loss of blood, my airflow constricting as she worked the doll with her magic. My torso was half bent over, hanging lifeless on the weight of my hips, and I worked to glide my hands up to my neck, desperate for breath. I clawed at my throat, felt it contract beneath my fingers as I choked. And I knew she was strangling me from the inside out.

“She’s dying, Mr. Devereaux.” Samira had come out of her trance, still holding the doll. “Do you not wish to save her before it is too late?”

I felt the tightness around my throat loosen and immediately gulped up a breath. Samira stretched out her free hand and swished it in the air again, pulling Gavin up from the stone floor. He sailed toward me vertically, the tips of his feet skimming the stones as her magic directed him. She positioned him next to me and stepped forward, placing her face just inches from mine.

“I won’t do this,” Gavin choked out, adamant.

“Oh?” She leaned in closer to examine me, her gaze full of malice and breath hot on my cheek. She took one nail and pressed the tip of it down onto my neck, then began trailing it sideways to draw blood. Her eyes lingered on my necklace for a moment. My body’s reflex told me to squirm under her touch, but my weakness prevailed and I felt my eyelids grow heavy. “Change her.”

“I won’t.”

“Change her or watch her die.”

“Gavin,” I pushed out a soft whimper. “Do it.”

“You’ll kill her anyway.”

“Perhaps. She’s deceived me in my kingdom. The law permits me to do to her whatever I wish. Come now, Gavin. It won’t be long,” Samira singsonged, smearing the trail of blood over my throat. She seized him with her magic and shoved him closer to me, tilting his neck to give him access to mine.

“Please don’t let me die like this,” I whispered, rolling my eyes to meet his. “Hurry. Do it.”

His gaze penetrated mine with unimaginable agony; his face contorted and his jaw set, tears gathering on the edges of his eyelids.

Voices yelling and the crumbling of stone echoed in the distance, and Samira glanced toward the rear doors. “Now,” she breathed as the noises grew louder, ready to lean forward and sentence me herself. Gavin trembled at my neck, couldn’t take his eyes off mine. He was losing all bearing, his composure cracked and shattered into oblivion.

“As you wish.” Samira grabbed my hair and yanked, tilting my head back to move in on my throat.

He beat her to it and sprung his head forward as her head jutted backward to give him room.

“Quickly,” she purred, her lips turned up into a smile.

He angled his lips just below my ear and then peered up. I saw it in his eyes, first—the beginning of the end, the beginning of things to come. The blackest night, his eyes cut into me, paralyzing my trembling body. Not even the gods could sense my fear now, for the celebration of the monsters who’d claimed me drowned out all perception of pain. It was all-powerful, all-knowing, the definition of infinite, an overwhelming possession that consumed every inch of my being. His fangs tore into the tender flesh of my neck, and I knew all I’d never known would now be unveiled to me.

And then came an unfamiliar lust. An intense desire for blood.

Electrifying, the power spread, made its way like a tumultuous river with fierce rapids. Samira’s hold on me dissipated and I dropped to the floor. I could hear Scarlet’s giggling fade into the background. My eyes shot open, my back bent; the crippling force thrust my head backward, harder onto the cold stone ground. All I felt was fire. Pure fire: in my veins, in my throat, in my fingertips. Visions of a blazing furnace invaded my thoughts, complete with echoes of Samira’s rage, bottled up from generations old. Visions of her face danced across my consciousness. She was screaming and flailing around, fighting something or someone, I didn’t know what.

The visions gave way to the sound of a guttural roar, one that escaped her lips and infused me with every inch of her anger, thick and heavy, as if it had been weighed down to some deep, dark place for centuries, only no one ever bothered to lift it up. The visions finally disappeared but the screams remained, and the weight pressed harder on my chest, causing me to wail in pain. “You think you know things,” her silky voice echoed as I slowly slipped away, “but you’re really just asleep.”