The Path of Razors (9 page)

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Authors: Chris Marie Green

BOOK: The Path of Razors
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As the word “affection” dissipated in the creature’s mind, he used a nail to cut the village girl’s throat, then offered her to his blood brother to build up his strength yet again.
The other creature ravenously accepted, grabbing the girl and latching his mouth to her young, fresh neck, sucking, sucking until she was drained to a husk.
When he raised his face to the first vampire, his skin was high in color, his gaze flaring.
“What would I do without you?” he asked.
The first vampire did not answer.
He merely stood and left the cottage as he always did after healing his friend, knowing he would come every time the other vampire called....
THE
custode
watched the monitor screen as Della gripped the hotel’s windowsill, her eyes wide and bright, the veins in her throat standing out to such an extent that it seemed the vampire girl might explode altogether.
Were the implanted tales backfiring? the
custode
wondered. 013-41117_ch01_4P.indd 57 5/22/09 12:22:51 PM Perhaps only a member of the Meratoliage family could withstand them....
Or was something else happening with Della?
On another screen or two, the caretaker saw an oddity: ravens gathering.
Still, the caretaker monitored the hotel’s screen while beginning to access earlier film from this same camera.
Violet’s film. And the
custode
would find her, if only to facilitate some trouble for the bitch.
Meanwhile, Della backed away from the window on the telly, her hands covering her mouth as she sank to the floor out of camera range, so the keeper paid due attention to the job at hand, where other screens were showing larger gatherings of ravens heading south of the Thames.
Suddenly, the
custode
had the feeling that perhaps Della had not been undergoing the visions at all. That she was quite busy with another activity ...
But the ravens were only the beginning.
Hours later, the cameras at the Queenshill dorms revealed something equally noteworthy.
The lenses, clouding over, just as they had on Billiter Street one week ago.
SIX
LONDON BABYLON, STILL -TEMPORARY-HAVEN-BOUND
Later
 
 
DELLA had not meant to go so far with the ravens.
Not so far at all, and even hours after it had happened, as a seething dusk enshrouded London, she sat between Polly and Noreen on the hotel’s floor near the beds, wishing she could do something,
anything,
to redeem herself.
Their backs against the wall, they could hear Mrs. Jones talking to Wolfie on her secure mobile phone in the confines of the loo, reporting to the too-distant Wolfie what Della had confessed about Violet and the ravens. Their housematron had discovered it upon returning from Wolfie’s. Bad welcome-back tidings.
Yet there had been no use in hiding it.
Actually, the sooner told the better, because Della was beyond fear now. She had lived so long in a constant state of waiting for reprisal that this last act had finally brought about a protective numbness, and she took a chance on using the mind-link that connected the class of Queenshill girls, even though Polly and Noreen had been staring straight ahead, avoiding her this entire time.
I didn’t mean it,
she apologized once again.
Polly turned her face away a little more, her hands splayed over bent knees that, in her human days, had been constantly scratched by the grass of field sports. Her fingers arched as if she were trying not to claw at Della.
Noreen merely slumped, the legs that she so loved to dance on stretching before her. She resembled a doll with red-thread hair left out willy-nilly after playtime.
You already apologized, Della,
she thought back in response. Drained. Stunned.
Apologized a thousand times.
In sharp contrast, Mrs. Jones’s voice rose and fell from the muffle of the loo as she and Wolfie discussed what should be done about Della now. It didn’t escape Della’s attention that the housematron realized the girls could overhear every syllable, although Wolfie’s sorrowful tones were slightly garbled by the mobile.
She didn’t understand his sadness since Violet had recently fallen out of his highest favor. Still, Della supposed he had loved Violet because she was one of his darlings.
Della wished he were near enough to hear her apologetic thoughts, too.
She shifted on the ground as Mrs. Jones told Wolfie that he was not the only one to have lost quite a bit with the death of Violet.
Della wasn’t exactly certain of what she meant, but the entire conversation was pressing a sense of dread against her chest, and she could hardly concentrate on anything else.
It was the worst form of punishment, this dread. It was torture that all but made her want to hurl herself out the window in an act of redemption. And wouldn’t that be perfect? The slow wait of her broken bones mending, the inability to end her own life so that she would have to endure even more dread from Mrs. Jones’s endless watching ...
Della curled her arms round her bent legs, resting her forehead on her knees, but it did nothing to dash away the memory of what she had done with the ravens.
She had only meant to have them track Violet, to perhaps even scare her into returning by showing that there was no place Violet could ever hide from her pack.
But as the birds had searched the streets, Della’s fear that Violet would do the girls harm had only expanded instead of abated. And by the time she had sensed the birds coming upon her fellow schoolmate—wherever she had been—Delia’s fear had stretched and birthed into something that resembled the viscous dark of justified hate.
Violet
had
to pay for running away from them, had to pay for every time she had made them all feel so small and bullied—
The ravens had responded to Della’s temper in a black cloud of cawing, diving, tearing fervor, and she had not been able to stop them.
Stop ... herself.
The loo door opened, and Mrs. Jones, with her sensible bun, shoes, and skirt, rounded the corner into the main room, snapping shut her mobile.
She crooked her finger at Della.
Come here, little girl.
But a tear of fright kept Della lanced to the ground.
Do you know what’s in store for
you,
little girl?
Della squeezed shut her eyes at the niggle. She dug her fingernails into the carpet, more afraid than she had ever been, even as a human. As a vampire, she had been told she would be improved in many respects, but Della had brought so much emptiness and fear with her into this existence that she hadn’t been able to let go of what had always been so much a part of her.
It was said that the masters were the same, though—they each had varying powers based on personal strengths brought over from humanity. Why shouldn’t she have carried traits with her, too, even if they were more like weaknesses than abilities?
The housematron leveled an impatient glare at Della.
Get up,
Della told herself.
Stand up, as you did last night. You can do it again.
Unsteadily, she did rise, Violet’s death screams coming back to her as a reminder of why she was in this spot.
But, oddly, those screams made Della ... stronger.
Yes.
Much stronger.
On legs that didn’t seem so ready to buckle anymore, she walked to Mrs. Jones, her gaze lowered, mostly because she was wary of the elder vampire entering her mind to see that, deep down, she didn’t regret killing Violet at all.
A moment passed, two moments, as the housematron stared at Della. Then, finally, she said, “I am in a quandary as to how to address this, Miss Bennett.”
“I’m so very sorry, Mrs. Jones.” Sorry a bully such as Violet had not been taken care of sooner, and that was the truth of it.
Masquerading this regret as remorse for Violet’s raven attack, Della opened her mind to her superior.
Just then, the housematron skimmed Della’s thoughts, her head tilting as she narrowed her eyes, then withdrew. Did she believe it?
The older female looked her charge up and down. “My quandary is rather more complicated than your apologies, Della.”
Yes. Yes. “I understand, Mrs. Jones.”
She hefted out a sigh, gracefully resting her hands on her hips. “Violet ran away when staying inside was extremely necessary. You and I know that she was up to no good, and I realize you only wished to stop her before she brought more trouble upon us.”
Della quashed the urge to nod.
Mrs. Jones tapped her fingers against her hips, as if turning a decision over in her mind. Then her fingers stilled. “And this brings us to the bottom of it,” she said. “You stepped over the line, yet you did it out of respect for us. In spite of what happened in the end, you started out by protecting the rest of your group, and I’m sorry Violet never wanted to do that, although we had such hope for her. Loyalty to the unit is valuable to us. Betrayal of the group is not.”
Her statements were like a swirl of letters, separated until they coalesced into actual words for Della as she slowly raised her gaze to find Mrs. Jones frowning, as if torn.
But Della knew the reason for that. On the mobile, she had heard Wolfie defending her, even as he mourned Violet’s passing. He had told Mrs. Jones that, perhaps,
she
would have summoned animals in such a case, too, if she had chosen to take advantage of the talent she—and even he—rarely utilized these days.
All in all, he had made a case for her to show mercy until he could talk with Della himself.
The housematron lowered her voice, her tone like the snap of a whip.
“Wolfie,” she said, “insists that we finally return home. Our new home, where the rest of this will be settled.”
The main Underground?
Joy trembled in Della’s chest, even if she would receive a postponed punishment there. Even if Mrs. Jones was once again employing dread to stretch Della upon a mental rack.
“Thank you, Mrs. Jones,” Della said.
“Your gratefulness is premature.”
A catlike flicker lit her eyes, the pupils clicking to slits, then back again.
Something inexplicable flashed in Della’s mind: two vampires with featureless faces in a cottage in the woods, one healing the other. Somehow she knew they were blood brothers, and they had a blond girl with them, on the floor, her eyes closed....
She remembered all of it, the entire waking dream, and she blinked, raising a hand to her throat. But it was still there, whole.
Mrs. Jones left Della to stand in place, but Della’s mind fuzzed with consequent flashes, mainly of a white ribbon soaked in blood.
Although she blocked her thoughts, both against Mrs. Jones and the assaulting images, the fear rose again to burn like slick black ice in the middle of her chest, causing rationality to slip and slide. But the ice did cool Della as the images faded, then thankfully disappeared altogether.
Behind her, the elder vampire was speaking to all the girls. “Both Wolfie and I feel it’s time to get you to your true home after dusk tonight, mostly so he might have the opportunity to handle Della’s latest issues. Besides, the attackers haven’t shown themselves again, and I’ve started to believe they’re not much more than last night’s nuisance. So it’s full speed ahead, young ladies.”
Noreen asked, “We’re not going to school yet, Mrs. Jones?”
“Not for the time being.”
The idea of the main Underground held such powerful appeal that the two other girls twittered, excited about going back to the main Underground even before promotion, when they would have otherwise been transferred there.
As if she were the lone one who recalled Violet’s death, Della stood rooted to her station. But it was only because she was hoping the images wouldn’t return.
“Ready then?” Mrs. Jones asked Polly and Noreen.
Della could hear her classmates springing to their feet, already gathering their books and rushing to their bags.
They were so busy that they couldn’t have possibly seen Mrs. Jones come back to Della, leaning close to whisper in her ear.
“Ready, my sweet?”
An inner alarm screamed within Della as the housematron backed away, smiling in feline menace.
Then, as Mrs. Jones moved toward the door to wait for her charges, Della’s mind once again flickered on that white ribbon swirling down, down to the ground, where it withered over the hair of a girl who had probably been a lot like her.
SEVEN
THE BLADED TUNNEL

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