Solace & Grief (24 page)

Solace breathed in and out, a quiet sigh. There was nothing unusual in the sound, but little as it was, it seemed to fill the pipe with increasingly eerie echoes, as though the air breathed with her. ‘Rage and sorrowing,’ she whispered. ‘All an act.’

Instantly, Harper felt nervous. From the house upstairs, he thought he heard someone shout – Laine, was it? – but couldn't be certain. Solace's lips were parted as she read, her tongue venturing out to wet them. He noticed how dream-like her movements had become, the pendulous way in which she raised a hand to the wall and once more traced the words. The upstairs noise, whatever it was, sounded again, louder, accompanied by the unmistakable crash of someone or something tumbling downstairs. Before Harper could say or do anything, however, Solace's head snapped around, her black eyes pinning him more effectively and more forcefully than iron bars ever could.

‘Harper,’ she said silkily – and lunged. Faster than a lightning strike, she gripped his shoulder and pulled his head aside, transformed into a wicked thing by the firelight on her face. And then, in the final moments before consciousness was extinguished, he saw three strangers running through the pipe toward them, feral, strange and deadly – unseen before now, but nonetheless unmistakable.

‘Bloodkin!’ he croaked.

Pain blossomed in his neck.

The fire winked out.

‘S
he's coming to.’

‘Great.
Now
I feel safe.’

‘Shut up, Paige.’

‘You want to tell me I was the only one thinking it?’

‘
Yes
.’

‘But you can't, though. Can you.’ It wasn't a question.

A short pause.

‘No.’

Groggily, Solace stirred. Her body felt curiously light, as if she were floating, or as if her skin had begun to interact strangely with the air. Apparently, she had been lying down. Swaying upwards to a kneeling slouch, she felt like a marionette with strings attached to her elbows, neck and body; or, again, as if pillows of air were supporting and guiding her movements. The feeling was so foreign that she couldn't decide which analogy suited it better. As she pondered this, a tiny part of her brain was screaming that something important was going on, something in the conversation, but the very act of moving her fingers somehow seemed far more significant than listening, and the voice was drowned out.

It occurred to Solace to open her eyes. She did so, but the resultant effect was so startling that she almost closed them again. Instead, she blinked once, slowly. At the edges of her sight, the world was
rippling
. Purring, somehow, or shivering. Everything seemed brighter. Her teeth felt strong, hard, and prominent. The more she woke up, the more her skin tingled, leaving her with the peculiar sensation of having been limned in ice. Holding up her hand to see if there were any physical change, she noticed for the first time that a thick, metal shackle bound her left wrist. Curious, she pawed at it, looking up in frustration only when it became apparent that the metal was fixed beyond her ability to remove it.

Only now did she notice her friends. ‘Hello?’ she asked, uncertainly.

Five faces – Harper, Manx, Evan, Paige and Laine – looked back at her. They, too, were manacled to the opposite wall, although so much of Solace's consciousness was intent on these strange, new sensations that she derived almost no significance from the observation. In a more normal state, she might have asked questions, demanded to know if everyone was all right. Instead, she merely smiled and licked her lips, the corners of which were still smeared with – she licked again – a salty, coppery substance.

It tasted
good
.

‘She's mad,’ Paige whispered.

‘Not quite,’ murmured Laine. Her pale blue eyes were closed. ‘She's, there's no denying it's had an effect on her, but –’

‘You're saying it'll wear off?’

‘Perhaps,’ said Laine, after a moment's silence. ‘I think.’

‘I'm more concerned with why she did in the first place,’ Evan muttered darkly.

‘The writing –’ Harper said faintly. He was lying full stretch on the floor, his head in Laine's lap, one manacled arm pulled incongruously out to the side. The Goth girl's hands were clasped tightly about a wound on his neck, and several thin trickles of blood had made henna-red lines around and over her fingers.

‘Bullshit –’ Paige began, angrily, but a glare from Manx cut her off. For the first time, Solace thought to wonder why it was that her five friends were so tense; and, indeed, why
they
were all manacled to one wall while
she
was alone on another. Around her, the world paused in its humming as if taking a breath, and then slid sideways again.

‘Don't,’ Manx snapped. ‘It was the writing. It's a better damn theory than you've got, Paige, and it's the only one that makes any sense. If the wording was – I don't know,
compelled
, somehow, it might've affected her. Harper said it looked like the scratches were marked with blood, and the Bloodkin knew those pipes.’

‘Still, though,’ said Evan, a troubled look on his face. When everyone looked at him for elaboration, he simply shook his head.

‘I guess now we know what happened to whoever used to live in that house,’ Laine murmured.

Time passed, and Solace grew more lucid. Staring across the unfamiliar, windowless stone room, she realised with a jolt that neither Jess nor Electra were present. A cold feeling began to settle in the pit of her stomach, and she wondered what was wrong with her, that she hadn't noticed this sooner.

‘Where are they?’ she asked. Silence. Her friends only stared at her. Her head still felt muzzy, but she forced herself to speak again. ‘Jess and Electra. Where are they?’

‘There's a bloody good question.’ Evan's voice was bitter. ‘They vanished. Or so Paige says.’

‘They
did
!’ Paige yelled. ‘One minute, they were lying there on the mattress with that stupid cat, and the next – pop!’ She slapped her hand down on the stone floor, hard. ‘They were gone. Just. Like.
That
.’

Without meaning to, Solace found herself focusing intently on Harper, particularly the wound on his neck. Reflexively, she licked her lips once more, and then stopped, horrified. Eyes wide, she clapped her free hand to her mouth. As she stared mutely at her friends for confirmation, only Laine could meet her gaze.

‘Yes,’ Laine whispered. ‘It was you.’ She paused. ‘I don't think you remember how we got here. There were Bloodkin in the tunnel. I felt them coming – I tried to call out, but by the time anyone realised what I was talking about, they'd taken Manx and Evan. I fell down the steps – tripped over my own feet, actually, and just about broke my neck in the process. One of them grabbed me, and another ran upstairs. But when he only came back with Paige…’ Her voice tapered off. ‘We didn't have time to talk until we got here. They roped us together, marched us through the pipes – Harper was pretty much dragged – and they walked you away from us. You were very out of it. Laughing. Singing. And you
talked
to them. And they laughed, too. We didn't know what had happened.’ She swallowed. ‘We thought they'd killed Jess and Electra.’

Solace was breathing heavily. Her vision was blurry, still purring and rippling, but she was fighting it now, straining and stretching her consciousness in order to fully comprehend what was being said. Using them as an anchor, Solace fixed her gaze on Laine's blue eyes, feeling (or imagining she felt) the barest brush of her friend's Trick against her thoughts, like a feather's edge.

‘You're calmer now,’ Laine continued, her face unreadable, ‘but Solace, you've
got
to stay with us. Jess and Electra are gone. Harper's –’ She looked down at his head in her lap. With a short cough, Harper rolled his neck around and blinked at his assailant.

‘I've been better,’ he croaked, and Solace felt her throat tighten.

‘Harper's wounded,’ she corrected, bluntly. ‘We're somewhere unfamiliar, underground, we're chained to a wall, and if it wasn't for what you and Evan and Sharpsoft told us yesterday none of us would have a single clue as to
why
.’

‘The key,’ Manx asked, suddenly urgent. ‘Do you still have the key to Starveldt?’

In a moment of panic, Solace plunged her free hand into the pocket of her coat, breathing a sigh of relief when her fingers brushed the cool, familiar metal.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘But I think…’ As the world buzzed and subsided, she closed her eyes, plucked out the key and threw it to Evan, who caught it automatically, one-handed.

‘Hide it,’ she told him. ‘If I go bad again, or maybe it might help.’

Evan looked at her for a moment and then nodded, stowing the key in his pants pocket. Almost as if this had been a signal of some sort, everyone breathed a sigh of relief; all except Paige, who had fallen eerily still and silent, her head turned side-on and down, as if she couldn't bear to look at any of them.

‘I hope Jess and Electra are safe,’ said Evan, into the silence.

‘I wish
we
were safe,’ said Manx.

It's all my fault
, thought Solace, but didn't speak.

For a while, the silence returned, broken only by Harper's laboured breathing, and once, a sob that Paige couldn't quite stifle. Manx, who was closest, reached out a hand in comfort, but she batted him away angrily and turned her face back to the stone.

After an agonising wait, the door creaked open. Solace didn't recognise the grinning, pale-faced man who entered, but the reactions of her friends were evidence enough: this, then, was one of the Bloodkin. Silently, the others watched as he walked over to Solace and undid the manacle from her left wrist. With lightning savagery, he grabbed her by the arm and hauled her up, so suddenly that she cried out.

‘No disobedience, now.’ His voice was low and dry, and when he laughed it was like he'd forgotten how to long ago, the flat utterance sticking in his throat. ‘Your friends, as you've discovered, are quite… attractive.’

As he pushed Solace from the room, she couldn't meet even Laine's eyes.

Beyond the confines of the cell was a long stone corridor, lit on either side by flickering torches. The naked flames blurred and shivered in her vision. She shuddered. It was almost like tripwalking, she realised, which made a twisted kind of sense. If human blood was addictive to her kind, why shouldn't it also have a drug-like effect? She stumbled as a particularly strong pulse of dizziness shook her. Unsympathetically, the anonymous Bloodkin gripped her wrists behind her back, shoving her onwards.

‘Hurry up,’ he rasped. ‘She doesn't like to be kept waiting.’

She
?

Another wave of iciness washed over her skin, but this time it was impossible to tell if it was the result of the blood she'd consumed, or a consequence of fear. Surely, there was only one
she
to whom her captor could be referring.

Sanguisidera. The Bloody Star.

Solace's heart began to beat faster. As the corridor turned and opened up into a massive, cavernous chamber, all she could think of was her idiocy in not only losing her mother's book to Glide, but in failing to read more of it while there'd still been time. She knew too little of Sanguisidera to confront her now, let alone be confronted herself. According to Sharpsoft, this was the woman who'd orchestrated the burning of the warehouse; who'd gutted her family home; whose violence and strength had led to the necessity of Solace's creation. A small part of her knew that these thoughts weren't helping, and so forced her attention elsewhere, to her surroundings. Under different circumstances, Solace might have been awed; instead, she found herself growing angry. It was a poor substitute for level-headedness, but a vast improvement on fear and self-recrimination. Thus steadied, she looked about, and was startled to find herself in the foyer of a different world.

Where under Sydney they were – if, indeed, they weren't in a different realm altogether – was impossible to tell. The cavern was larger than a cathedral by far, a space so enormous that its size was only magnified by the eventual limits imposed on it. High overhead in all directions, the ceiling was swathed in deep darkness, Stygian and unreachable, making it seem that anyone who went near enough would wake a horrendous cloud of bats. The same pattern of lit torches illuminated the lower parts of the walls, while ornate candelabra lined an avenue through the massive chamber. On either side of this promenade, arranged about the floor or draped over higher protrusions – for the floor here was bare, uneven rock, like the walls themselves – were hundreds of lounges, rugs, cushions, chaise longue suites, carved wooden chairs, settees and ottomans, all slightly faded with use but nonetheless beautiful and clearly antique. The colour-theme was red, marked here and there with gold, mulberry, green, brown and blue in the various weavings and fabrics, but dominated overall by crimson, scarlet, vermilion, burgundy. Some walls were even hung with tapestries between the torches, depicting scenes which Solace couldn't make out, and in any case had no heart to; for the room was far from empty.

At a glance, it was impossible to tell whether the myriad occupants of Sanguisidera's hall were exclusively Bloodkin, or if some other Rare filled the throng. Every item of furniture which could be sat upon or lounged against was, and in between lurked others, slouched on the floor or leaning against the wall, talking among themselves, dozing, sleeping, laughing, drinking. To the effect of this last, there were many decanters in evidence, wrought finely of crystal, metal and glass, which were passed around and drunk from, and as soon as she had noticed this, the overpowering, copper-salt smell of their contents rushed straight to Solace's head, and a new wave of hallucinogenic splendour assailed her senses. For an instant it seemed that every single being in the room looked her way, blinked, stared, and
smiled
in a piercing moment of utter silence. Then the world flooded back to normal; the noise resumed, and Solace was left feeling dwarfed by the comparison. In reality, nobody was paying her any mind – for those assembled, it might have been any other day, and probably was. But Solace's attention soon became fixed on a distant, vital point – a raised promontory of rock jutting outwards and upwards from the cavern floor like the horn of a submerged behemoth, and she knew, without needing to see, who sat enthroned at the summit.

‘That's her, all right,’ the Bloodkin behind her whispered malevolently. ‘And
she
has been waiting to
meet
you.’