Of Light and Darkness (21 page)

“Yes. I know.” Charlotte frowned, thinking of Sarah’s vision.

“You have Aiden’s line as well.” A thought flickered through her eyes. She continued. “It crosses directly over Valek’s. But there is something different about Aiden’s line.” She kept Charlotte’s wrist in her hand, but turned her face back down to the book.

“I have never seen that before.”

Charlotte panicked. “What do you mean it looks different?”

“It just looks deeper, somehow.”

***

“It’s more vivid than the other one.” Evangeline was genuinely confused. She could tell it was not a natural line in Charlotte’s hand, but rather a scar purposefully carved there by someone. Aiden made Evangeline aware of most of his plans, but never mentioned anything to her about this. At some point in Charlotte’s life, one of the creatures, perhaps Aiden, scarred her when she must have been too young to remember. It looked to her like he did it by magic. Evangeline even recalled the act being illegal in most Occults. But the fact was, it wasn’t a real fate line at all. It was put there by force.

Evangeline thought of just leaving then. This didn’t seem worth it anymore. She could see now that Aiden and the others were truly the dark ones. He had been planning this for a long time. Perhaps if she hid like the Vampires did, the Regime would forget about her. She looked back up at Charlotte’s fearful eyes and realized she had better calm the expression on her face. “You know what? I think I’m just tired. I think the shadows of the firelight are playing tricks on your hand.” She let Charlotte go.

“So what do you think it means—that I have two fate lines? Sarah said that wasn’t normal.”

Evangeline needed to think of something quick. “I’m not sure. The fates are tricky. It’s beyond me, Lottie.”

“Don’t call me that,” Charlotte said quietly.

“Charlotte.”

Sarah walked back into the room, Edwin in her arms. “Any progress?”

“What is that?” Evangeline looked up at the grotesquely shaped hunk of burlap and yarn.

“
That
would be your friend, Edwin.” Sarah tossed the little pile to the floor beside Evangeline.

A horrible memory flashed before her eyes. It made her soft features twist into something else. “T-there is no w-way for you to fix him though?”

Sarah looked to Charlotte. “We’ll figure out a way.”

The three grew quiet. The two Witches flipped through their books as Charlotte stared into the crackling fire. “I’m glad you are alive, Evangeline,” she whispered.

The Witch stopped reading but did not look up at her. “Me, too.”

“It’s hard to imagine it’s daylight outside right now. There are hardly any windows in this house,” Charlotte mused distantly, balancing her chin on her hand.

Sarah pulled her enchanted needle out of her hair and waved it in the air above Charlotte’s head. To her delight, a small bewitchment mimicking a glowing sun began to grow against the ceiling, casting another warm glow about the room.

“Francis asks for this bewitchment a lot,” Sarah said as she flipped a page.

Still smiling, Charlotte looked again at the little enchanted sun. “Could you leave it here for Valek tonight?”

“Absolutely,” Sarah chimed.

“Well, Sarah. It appears Charlotte is indeed fated to Valek, just as you guessed.”

Evangeline flipped another page in her book.

“I didn’t guess. I knew it.”

“Good. You succeeded. Now tell me what you used to enchant that rusty, little whistle?”

“The warts off your mother’s a—”

“Hey!” Charlotte interjected. “We are never going to get anything done like this.”

“Charlotte’s right.” Sarah stood up again. “I’ll take care of everything. I’m done pretending to like you.” She stormed out.

The study was quiet again. “Evangeline?” Charlotte started again.

“Yes?”

“How did Valek become what he is? How did Francis do it?” she asked.

“Is
that
what you and Valek were arguing about?”

“We weren’t arguing.” Charlotte lifted her eyebrow.

“Please, your aura is putrid.”

“It wasn’t really an argument,” Charlotte huffed and dropped the conversation.

“All I know is Valek was living alone in the Bohemian Occult years before I was alive. Most Vampires are like Francis. They’re moody, overtly sexual, and extremely conceited. Valek was always different. He kept to himself most of the time.”

“So Valek never told you he had a wife?” Charlotte asked.

“No,” Evangeline concluded abruptly and turned another page.

Charlotte gathered up her burlap friend in her arms. “I wish there was a way to save Edwin.” She fiddled with one of his loose button eyes.

Evangeline stayed very quiet. Her eyes shifted along the book in front of her, but she was not reading. She noticed Charlotte yawn. “You don’t need to stay up here with me all day, Charlotte. If you’re tired, why don’t you try and sleep?”

Charlotte got up from the uncomfortable, wooden stool and collapsed into Sarah’s oversized green armchair with Edwin still in her arms. “I’ll be fine. You might need me for something.”

Evangeline snorted. “Like what? You can’t wield magic.”

“Yeah…but what if you need my sacrificial blood for something? Everyone needs my blood around here.” Still holding Edwin as though he were a teddy bear, Charlotte curled up with her knees to her chest and closed her eyes.

Evangeline turned her head back toward the fire. The sweat was cold on her face. The guilt so palpable she could have held it in her hand—a bloody dagger. And Valek was Caesar.

Chapter Twenty-Three

The Fates

When Charlotte opened her eyes again, expecting to find the room as she had left it—Evangeline studying by the fire with books open all around—she saw instead she had, in actuality, slept the whole day away. Evangeline was gone. Instead, Valek stood in her place. He was staring at the small, circular ball of light burning overhead. Just standing there, staring in complete captivation. Charlotte wondered what it must have been like; not to see something he had yearned to see again for such a long time. Something so glorious taken from him. Something, given the choice, he probably wouldn’t have ever given up.

“Breathtaking,” he mused.

Charlotte lifted her head up off of Edwin’s. She had been using him as a pillow. She rubbed the sleep away from her eyes. “Sarah left it there for you to see.”

“I know,” he whispered. “Almost as good as the real thing.” He reached one finger delicately to the ball of light, but upon touching it, the thing shattered into a million crystal pieces, softly fading away to the real cobwebs of the room. “Almost.”

Charlotte pushed up on one side. “Where is everyone?”

“Sarah and Evangeline went out hunting,” he explained. “You were screaming again,” he said sadly.

“I don’t remember my dream.”

“Why must you when it is your reality?”

She changed the subject. “What are they hunting for?”

“For anything that will keep us pacified for the night. Rats. Ravens. Dogs.”

Charlotte shuddered. “They are…all downstairs.” By
they
, she meant the coven.

Valek shoved his hands in his pocket and looked at the floor. “Crowbarred, you might say.” His fangs flashed once in a dark smirk.

Charlotte’s stomach lurched. “What?” She leapt off the couch and ran out of the study.

When she got down the hallway, she saw Valek was already there, leaning against the wall by the trap door. Sure enough, a long, iron crowbar had padlocked the entry from the coven’s basement to the upper floors of the house. She could hear the murmurs of the coven from beneath the hollow under the floorboards.

Valek pushed off the wall and glided over to stand in front of her. “They have become addicted to the taste of warm, human blood now, after not having any for so long. It has made most of them mad this morning.”

Something unseen slammed against the wood just in front of Valek’s feet and howled otherworldly. Charlotte jumped and clung to Valek’s shirt.

“The iron is enchanted,” Valek assured. “Somehow, Sarah knew this would happen. They won’t be able to get through.”

“Will they be okay?”

“Once they drink something, I think they’ll be fine enough not to want to kill you.” He chuckled, though something dark resonated behind it.

Charlotte gulped as the trap door continued to bump and rattle. The awful screeching would not let up either.

“Come back to the study. Standing this close seems rather inhumane.” He pulled Charlotte by the arm in the direction she came.

“Why aren’t you affected like them?”

“I am. But what I want from you isn’t the same as what they want from you. And you are right next to me, so I suppose I’ve already gotten what I wanted.” He flashed a bigger fanged grin at her as he drew her back into the study. He sat in Sarah’s armchair. Charlotte climbed into his lap. “I apologize about earlier.”

“So how did he do it?” she asked again. She was never going to ease up.

He sighed. “It’s a process. I let him drink from me. I was walking home from the hospital one evening in December. It was snowing so hard a man could barely see the street in front of him. I remember how freezing it was. I found Francis then. In the night, he looked like a homeless man in the gutters of the city. But when I drew closer, I saw the truth of him. I recognized the pale skin—mostly the fangs.”

“You weren’t afraid?” Charlotte’s mouth fell open. “But how could you have known what he was if you were mortal?”

“Because back then, there were no such laws as there are now. Monsters ran rampant in mortal cities. Granted, humans didn’t believe we existed then either. But there were a select, very superstitious few, like my father, who did. When I was a boy, he used to put me to bed every night on stories and legends. I cannot fully explain it, but I just knew.”

“What happened then?”

“I approached him. I was very careful. He spoke French to me, but I barely understood a word. You must know he did not carry the gallant image he does now. His black eyes were sunken and hazy. His skin wasn’t pearly, but rather pallid, like an onion. For whatever reason, he had not fed in a very long time. I knew he was starving.

“I sat down next to him on the curb, and rolled up my coat sleeve. I remembered how he looked at me, unsure. But I nodded at him. ‘It is all right,’ I said. ‘Do it.’

“He bit down on my wrist. It felt like shards of glass, ice in my veins, pulling the blood out of me. A few seconds went by, but they felt like hours. I was getting weaker and weaker as I cried out in pain in the street. I tried to fight him off, but it was too late. He had taken too much for me. I was nearly dead.

“Francis panicked. I blacked out after that, but remember waking up in an apartment somewhere. There was a fireplace. I was warm. I was still mortal, but I was so close to death. He was there, hovering over me, speaking in English then. I understood pieces of it. He was asking me a question, giving me a choice. ‘I’m sorry,’ I remember him saying to me most of all. He repeated it over and over.”

“He was giving you a choice to die or be like him,” Charlotte concluded.

His eyes flickered to her face once. “Yes. I was not ready to die. I answered ‘yes’ to whatever he was asking me. Then I remember him slicing open his own neck and having me drink from him. He clutched my head to him as though he were a nursing child.”

Charlotte swallowed. Valek stayed lost in his memories.

“But the process wasn’t complete until I drank from a human. I would be in limbo until I committed the ultimate act.”

“Your wife?”

“No.” Valek’s gaze dropped to the floor. “No, I couldn’t bear it. Of course I wanted her to be with me. I only revisited our apartment, unbeknownst to her. I watched over her. She was in mourning. She thought I was dead. There was no way I could face her as I was. I preferred she thought I was with God, than with Lucifer.”

“You aren’t, Valek.” Charlotte touched his cool cheek. “You are more good than anyone else I know.”

He glanced at her again, a pained smile coloring his features. “Everyone you know is damned just as I am, Lottie. It is the truth. I have come to terms with it.”

Charlotte frowned and rested her head on his collar. “How did she die, Valek?” This woman had existed a little under a century ago, but Charlotte empathized with her more than she had with anyone before.

“She died later that same winter. Pneumonia. I probably could have helped her.” He absentmindedly brought his hand to his chin, eyes swelling a bit. “But it was just easier for me to watch her go. She had no one. Her heart was broken, as mine was. Somehow, it seemed better to just let her go.”

Charlotte clung tightly to him in an effort to remind him she was still there. Valek stroked up and down her arm and kissed the top of her head.

“I am confident her angel sent you to me. The way I found you, all alone in the city. It was similar to the way I found Francis and in turn, my new life. It seemed as though she left you there for me.”

Perhaps, that was true
, Charlotte thought. Human beings could be just as responsible for magical happenings as monsters. They just weren’t always aware of it. “Do you think maybe she is still watching over you, as you watched over her?” Charlotte mused. They had never spoken of guardian angels before. It was something she wanted to start believing in. Something she needed to believe in—especially now.

“Yes,” he said confidently. “And she’ll protect you. She will bring you back safely to me.”

Charlotte found herself extremely comforted by this. She closed her eyes and listened to the air go in and out of his hollow chest. The scar at the side of her neck began to burn again though, and she brought her fingers to it. She winced a little and sat up from Valek’s chest.

He frowned. “It bothers you still?”

Only the tips of his fangs behind his lips caught her eye as he spoke. She didn’t hear completely what he said. Dazed, her vision stayed on his lips, his hand lingering at her neck. She felt something in her throat tighten. Perhaps the Vampires did not have the only addiction in the house.

“Lottie?”

She removed her hand from her neck and with only the tips of her fingers, touched his lower lip. She stayed silent. The mark on her neck was blazing. Her mouth watered.

He wrapped his hand around her wrist, pulling it away slightly. “Charlotte.”

She heard him this time and looked at him. The scar didn’t stop burning. She tried to blink away her dizziness. She still could not remove her eyes from his mouth.

“What is it?” He placed a hand affectionately on one side of her face.

“Are you thirsty?” The question was made of air, as if someone had stolen her voice.

He squinted at her and tried to speak without revealing too much of his teeth. “I can’t. Remember?”

She was finally able to look away from him. Instead she fixed her gaze on her hands in her lap. “Right. How stupid of me.” She flinched when her scar raged again.

Valek put his hands on the sides of her neck “Charlotte, what’s the matter?” He brought his face lower to the scar.

The intense burning began to go away the closer he got. She cried softly. “I don’t know.”

But when he backed away, she cringed worse. “If you don’t tell me exactly what’s hurting, there is nothing I can do.” He kept his hand on her neck as if to extinguish the pain.

She pressed her chin down against her chest, the burning becoming so harsh. Her fist clenched her ear while the other grabbed at the collar of his shirt. “Bite me, Valek. Can you? Please?” The words were hard to get out through her clenched teeth.

He stared as her body balled up tighter. “Lottie, I’m not sure if….”

“Please, Valek! I want you to,” she cried, her nails digging further into her scalp.

***

He quickly lifted her chin, and at a loss, his front canines sank quickly into her artery. He already knew the minute the smell of her blood hit the air, he was going to pay so dearly for that.

Evangeline and Sarah immediately rushed into the room, satchels plummeting at their feet. Sarah gasped and the two rushed over. Valek quickly released Charlotte.

“Valek, what are you doing?” Sarah blanched, trying to become a barricade between them. Evangeline grabbed Charlotte under the arms and pulled her off him and onto the floor.

“No. It isn’t what you think.” He stood from the armchair, wiping the stains away from his chin.

Sarah handed him a handkerchief from her skirt pocket. “What is it, then?” She put her hands on her hips. “The smell could drive everyone down there to kill each other.”

“Sarah, listen to me. There is something medically wrong with her.” He pointed toward Charlotte, recovering on the floor. Her fevered eyes gazed dazedly at him as she leaned back against Evangeline. “She begged me.”

Sarah looked to Charlotte, the dark circles under her eyes. She bent to her knees to appraise the human girl. “What’s the matter, Charlotte?”

She whimpered quietly.

“Is it possible for humans to become addicted to the bite of a Vampire?” Evangeline asked.

“I’ve never heard of that before.” Valek helped Charlotte from the floor. He set her down, alone this time in the armchair. “Are you all right?”

Charlotte looked at him, embarrassed. The burning had finally stopped, however. Sarah was already busy pulling a thick volume off the highest shelf. A fifth generation
Vampire Anatomy
, as Charlotte recognized it, for she had the same one back at home.

“This thing is older than dirt,” Sarah mused as the spine thudded down on the coffee table. She waved the dust cloud out of the air and flipped pages.

Evangeline collapsed onto the wooden stool, folding one leg over the other. “Do you think that information is even still relevant, Sarah?”

“I don’t really see
you
coming up with any bright ideas,” Sarah spat, as one of her bony fingers skimmed a page. She found what she had been looking for. “Ah hah!”

“What?” Evangeline leaned over, her nose in the air.

“It says this sort of thing only happens very seldom.” She eyed Charlotte. “It dates back to the era of the first Vampire, Vlad Dracul. He was in love with a human woman. He fed on her once, and after that, her body craved it. It’s simply called, ‘fixation’. But what is unusual to me is it says it is normally paired with bloodlust. Meaning, if Charlotte is suffering from fixation, then Valek must also be suffering an addiction as well.” She looked at him. “And you’re not, are you?”

Valek looked at Charlotte, his mouth agape, but didn’t say anything.

Sarah continued. “This has a lot to do with that fate line on Charlotte’s palm, too. I think she must be fated to you for this to happen.”

“How is it cured?” Valek asked.

Sarah closed the book with a thump. “It isn’t. You must either fix her addiction or change her.” She got up to put the book away.

“What will happen if I do not?”

“Nothing. She’s going to crave it sometimes. If you let it go on too long without feeding from her, she’ll die. Her heart will give out.” She stretched on her toes and shoved the book against the back wall.

“That’s impossible. Every addiction has a cure,” he argued. “We can wean her off of it.”

Sarah flicked him a glance. “I told you. The cure is to change her.”

“Obstacles at every turn.” Valek rubbed the bridge of his nose and faced away.

“It won’t happen every night,” Sarah explained as she rejoined the group. “It’s a periodic occurrence.” She looked to Charlotte who was now using the limp Edwin as a security blanket again. “Oops…his eye is almost off. Let me fix that.” She searched around for a moment in her pockets. “Damn. My thread is upstairs.” She stuck her sewing needle in her teeth, reached up to pull a few strands of hair from her head, and began threading them through the eye of the needle.