The Path of Razors (19 page)
Read The Path of Razors Online
Authors: Chris Marie Green
She felt something brush against her boots and glanced down to see a gray cat sliding past her.
The room went quiet as the other girls saw the cat, too. When it fixed its ominous gaze on Della, then padded out to the hall, she followed, knowing she had been summoned.
A buzz of conversation swelled in the room behind her as Della tried to keep her feet moving in slow, deliberate progress.
No running away, she thought. She was ready for this talking-to from Wolfie and Mrs. Jones.
Perhaps she even wanted it—the warped attention. The reckoning.
But why would a person
want
a punishment?
want
a punishment?
The thought rooted, but didn’t develop. It didn’t have time to since Della was already trailing the cat back into her own quarters.
Once inside, the creature stretched, undulated, and grew into the figure of a grown woman.
Mrs. Jones.
Without modesty, the housematron remained naked, leaning back against a wall while she looked Della up and down.
Della herself didn’t know where to lay her gaze. Mrs. Jones had always worn clothing in front of the girls, but Della could see the reason she might not wish to. The elder vampire’s body was flushed with gorgeous, smooth skin, her breasts round and beautiful with pink-tipped nipples.
Just as Della was beginning to wonder what turn her newest punishment had taken, Wolfie stepped out from a shadowed corner.
Della held her hand over her chest. She had been too preoccupied to pick up his hair-in-sunshine, leather-clothed scent before, but the sight of his thick, wild brown locks, golden eyes, and wolfish grin slammed into her now.
And not in the usual blood-fluttering way.
A cottage in the woods ...
Her veins twisted as they never had before. Caution.
But why? She loved Wolfie.
Why so frightened?
Mrs. Jones’s voice raked over the room. “Any words for Della,
Mihas?”
Mihas?”
She had dissected his name with her tone, yanking his attention from Della to her. And when Wolfie’s gaze absorbed Mrs. Jones’s bare skin, he looked just as lost as he had been last night, when Della had stumbled upon their rendezvous.
While she stood there, not knowing what to do with herself, Della remembered the night she and her classmates had been turned into vampires. Seven of them, some of whom had left school under odd circumstances. Both Wolfie and Mrs. Jones had bitten them that night, exchanged blood with them, and as a result the girls resembled both superiors when they changed into their vampire forms.
And, even on that night, Della had got the feeling that, perhaps, Mrs. Jones took joy from the girls’ wolf/cat ugliness.
Now, under the glare of her superior’s beauty, Della felt even uglier.
Preening under Wolfie’s lustful scrutiny, Mrs. Jones ultimately seemed content. “You’ll take care of this situation? I must research longer-term arrangements to explain to the school where Violet, Della, Polly, and Noreen have gone.”
“Hurry back then,” Wolfie said, completely under her spell.
Slowly, as Della watched out of the corner of her gaze, Mrs. Jones turned back into her cat form—the one she often used to skulk around and keep tabs on the girls.
Then the housematron departed, her tail high as she slipped through the crack of the door.
The instant she left, Wolfie smiled even wider. But as a haze seemed to lift from him, his eyes focused on Della.
He opened his arms to her, and she found herself running to him and burying her face in his loose white shirt.
“How I’ve missed you!” he said.
She held on, knowing this moment would bend to a worse one at any time.
“Me, too, Wolfie,” she said, smelling the leather of his rock-star-like jacket, trousers, and boots.
When his grip on her loosened, she knew it was over, and sadness closed her throat.
He held her at arm’s length, his gaze just as sorrowful. “What have you done, my darling?”
The question was rhetorical and, out of sheer desperation, she fell against him again, embracing him so tightly that she started to believe that maybe she would not ever have to let go.
He rocked her, petted her hair, the frizzed bunch of it crackling under his touch. “My little love,” he said, all but cooing. “My wayward Della.”
During his rocking, he had moved her in full view of the door, and when she saw the cat’s eyes glowing from the crack, she raised her head from his chest, the constant visions twisting into thoughts as her mind spun:
Blood is youth
...
...
Last night, when Mrs. Jones had suddenly seemed so much younger
...
...
The girl dripping from above the bathtub ...
But before Della could completely reconcile everything, the cat’s eyes were gone.
The urge to run consumed Della because, all of a sudden, Wolfie’s arms didn’t feel so secure.
Without letting him know this, she backed away, her head down.
But why? She was home. She would always be safe with Wolfie here.
He clearly misconstrued her response as fear of punishment, not anything darker or deeper.
“It was on the news,” Wolfie said, referencing Violet’s termination. “The terrible conspiracy of ravens witnessed as they flew early this morning into Southwark. You’re fortunate nothing else has come to light. Very fortunate.”
“I know.”
“Why did you do it?” he asked.
“Because Violet wanted to avenge herself on us.” The truth. Her best hope of ending this quickly. “You know I bested her last night, Wolfie. I humiliated her and brought her down, and she wasn’t about to tolerate being at the bottom. So she told us we would be sorry, then she sneaked out of the hotel.”
He was shaking his head, his shoulders slumped. “Violet.”
A flicker of hope warmed Della. He believed her.
Sighing, he sat on Polly’s bed, among a cheetah stuffed animal and an embroidered pillow featuring a football.
“She was the most difficult of any of you,” Wolfie said. “I held out hope for Violet, yet Mrs. Jones always ...” He trailed off, then recovered. “She always lobbied for her to ... leave.”
Della froze. Leave?
“You mean,” she whispered, “just as Briana and Sharon and Blanche left?”
All members of their small Queenshill vampire class.
All mysteriously run away from the group or taken by estranged parents who hadn’t seemed to care for their child before reclaiming her and never allowing their girl to return to the school.
Here today, gone tomorrow.
Della’s brain flickered.
Young girl dangling over a tub, the vampire with the blurred features beneath, her pores drinking and drinking ...
Slowly, she chanced a look at Wolfie, who had not said anything since Della had mentioned the three other girls.
Wary, she thought. He seemed to be looking at her in a different light now.
If Della had any stones, she would enter his thoughts, as she had done once, yet she knew it would be an unforgivable act this time. Even Wolfie, with his love and tolerance, had his limits.
“Violet,” he said, “has nothing to do with your classmates who have left us, my dear.”
It seemed as if he were about to pat the bed next to him, inviting her to nuzzle up against his chest, but he stopped himself.
He exhaled, planted his hands on his thighs as he engaged her with a serious stare. “You’ve put me in quite a position, you know, with your raven games.”
“Mrs. Jones also said that. Even if Violet required action, I went too far. I did more than track her.”
“I can understand how you might have gone overboard. Mrs. Jones and I were out of range, out of touch, and you had to make decisions on your own. We’ve trained you to realize that a good soldier does that, Della, even while following orders. And I have always attempted to instill the will to fight in you—the urge to win at all costs.”
Perhaps he was not going to terminate her, Della realized. Yet she knew he was hurting from the loss of Violet.
“I’m ready for what’s due,” she said, straightening her posture, exhausted in this waiting and dreading.
A strange smile darkened his eyes. “Just like a good soldier.”
This time, she knew he was not going to be lenient, not as he had been before whenever she had misstepped.
He rose from the mattress, his muscles rolling under his clothing with every footfall as he walked toward the door. “Follow me.”
She obeyed, steadying herself, staying on the lookout for the cat as they took the hallway where the scent of blood traced the air on the way to the common area.
As they passed the recruits’ rooms, Della noticed the silence, the lack of presence from any other girls, and she supposed it was feeding time for one and all.
Except her.
In the near distance, the thin sound of wailing graced the atmosphere—males. Victims.
White ribbons ...
She shuddered at the image, but it had also become colder, dimmer as they rounded a corner and went deeper into the Underground, where the wails defined themselves as weak cries for help. The lovely scent of male flesh, bitten only recently, filled the tunnel.
Yet the blood—and the boys’ faint murmurings—filled her with courage, too, just as the screams had done earlier at the hotel when Della had recalled Violet’s death shrieks in front of Mrs. Jones.
“Wolfie?” she asked softly.
“Yes, my dear.”
She stopped walking, halting him, too.
“Have there been others for you?” she asked, thinking of the tub images, the skin-mouths. “Companions such as Mrs. Jones? Or has she been with you for centuries?”
The question took him aback—she could sense it.
“Well, now. That’s quite the private query.”
She already could guess that he would not answer, at least not at this moment.
But she thought it might be important to know, for some reason she had not fully come to terms with yet.
He pushed against a door, and it moaned open, fully introducing Della to the blood here in the kitchens.
Her sight adjusted to a thicker darkness that barely hid the counters with their pots and pans for mixing flavors. Along the walls, cages dwelled, embracing teenaged boys gone bad, boys who had been tempted down here by all the lovely girls.
Wolfie went to an empty cage, then opened the door.
Without question, Della stepped in, and he shut the bars. Then he went to the enclosure to the right of her, motioning the prey forward with one hypnotic, “Come, boy.”
The prey obeyed, stretching out his arm for Wolfie, who scratched it lightly with his nails—not enough to maim or drain, just enough so Della would suffer the scent in her hungry state.
He did the same with the male in the cage to the left.
She thumped to the padded floor, trying not to sense the immediate blood, to crave it.
But it was already too late.
Shudders began to wrack her body; she had not eaten for over a day.
Wolfie came to stand in front of her cell. “Anyone who visits the kitchens will see you and wonder why you’ve been treated so. You won’t tell them, Della, but Polly and Noreen will know. And although I understand why you did what you did with Violet, you took her from us. From me. That cannot happen again.”
“Yes, Wolfie.”
It seemed as if he wished to say something more, but he instead left the room, the cries of the captives growing in volume once Wolfie had shut the door.
“Mercy,” one teenager said from across the way.
And, in the cage to the right of Della, a young man stuck out a thin bloody arm to her, although she could not even dream of reaching him.
“Mercy,” he said also, and she realized it was because he wanted to be put out of the misery of his own punishment.
His yearning to be sucked.
Della held her hands over her ears, but it did no good, because she could still hear them. Smell them.
And she could still see the formation of yet another vision rotating in the dark of her mind, where all sorts of scattered, formerly unthinkable pieces were beginning to fall into place.
THIRTEEN
THE DEARLY DEPARTED
AT headquarters, a miasma of colors expanded behind Dawn’s eyelids as Jonah continued to draw from her vein, pressing against her, sucking and sucking....
She gripped his shirt, the strength ebbing from her, but it was replaced by the high of weakness and—
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