CHAPTER 22

 

 

Ariadne felt as if she had jumped off a skyscraper. These were the moments of freefall, wherein she had time to contemplate the inevitable finish with grim detachment. Roarke was alone. He had no posse, no visible soldiers save the ones she and Bourne had already dispatched. But the tree canopy, while browned and yellowed and missing half its leaves, remained thick. It hid them from the world beyond; who knew how many soldiers it could be hiding now?

Ariadne kept trying to look anywhere but at the wreck of the car. If Andrei was still alive in the back seat, she didn’t want Roarke getting ideas.

Roarke walked at a leisurely pace out to Ariadne, his feet crunching on the frosty ground. The power that radiated from him hit her like a wavefront announcing his physical presence, casting an invisible shadow over her.

“If’n I remember rightly—” he took off his hat, reshaping it slowly, menacingly against his waist “—last time we met, you were busy tellin’ me I was a traitor and I needed to die. Seems like you’ve grown up a bit since then. Maybe done some foolin’ around of your own. The world still seem as black and white to you now?”

Did he know about Andrei? Did anyone not know about Andrei?

Roarke’s hand reached out tentatively. Ariadne brought her blade to bear behind her, took up the ready posture. “Stay back.”

Roarke’s deep brown eyes studied her face intently. That was not where his eyes should have been. Ariadne knew she should seize the opportunity, make an attack or a feint so she could flee, or . . . something! The rational part of her mind insisted that if Roarke made any threatening move, she could respond in kind. But the rogue Seneschal just kept staring unnervingly at her face.

His voice rumbled gently, “It’s a sad thing, Ariadne, when a man’s business keeps him from payin’ attention to what he should be payin’ attention to. I reckon I haven’t looked closely at you nearly enough.”

“You’re getting cocky, Roarke.” Ariadne heard Bourne’s voice from near the car, where Andrei lay vulnerable. Damn Bourne, drawing attention to the car! Couldn’t he do anything that didn’t hurt her?

Bourne kept talking. “Just ’cause you’ve scored that hit on Archie, you think Liliane doesn’t have your number? You think you’re safe coming out here like this?”

Roarke kept his eyes on Ariadne. “Did I hear me the gruntin’ of Silas’s pet pig?”

“Oink oink oink,” Bourne sneered. “Sticks and stones, boyo. Just keep letting those seconds tick by. Any moment now, this place is going to be crawling with our people.”

“A bluff?” Roarke raised an eyebrow. “Land sakes, Bourne, I expected better from you.” A pause. “Actually, I reckon I expected worse. My first guess was you’d beg and offer to spill your guts to keep me from spilling them for you, if you know what I mean.”

Hearing him say it made Ariadne realize that she had thought the same thing.

“You never did give me enough credit,” said Bourne. “But then, I was never a part of your little frat party. Must have failed some test. You know—to ride, you have to be taller than this bar?”

Roarke turned, crossed the grass between him and the car with an easy, mellow strut, as if he were enjoying a lazy spring day on a ranch. Ariadne stayed rooted, watching him. Then, with a move so fast even Ariadne’s eyes couldn’t follow it, Roarke punched Bourne in the gut.

Coughing, Bourne spilled over into Roarke’s arms. As if the portly man weighed nothing, Roarke picked him up and savagely slammed him, spine first, into the car hood. The impact drove Bourne right through the metal into the engine inside. Fluids sprayed everywhere—oil, coolant, blood. If Bourne screamed, the screech of metal hid it.

“Pardon that.” Roarke turned back to Ariadne. “Seems some folk just need to be taught some manners.”

The shattering of metal, the sight of Bourne savagely attacked, snapped Ariadne out of whatever trance she had been in. The battle had to move away from the car, as far away from Andrei as possible.

She jogged forward but to the right, blade flashing, trying to draw Roarke off.

“Oh, darlin’, this again?” Roarke’s voice was easy and light.

Ariadne remembered their last fight, remembered Roarke’s preternatural speed. She approached with caution, keeping as much distance as she could. She had beaten him twice before. She could certainly do it again.

Come on, move in. Take the bait. Follow me.

He remained still. “You ready yet to listen to my side of the story?”

“Roarke,” Ariadne said honestly, “I don’t care what your side of the story is. This war has to end.”

“The war’s over. And in another way, it ain’t even begun yet. I’m tryin’ to prevent it.”

Ariadne heard his words, but the din in her mind kept them from entering. Move . . . away . . . from the car.

“All right.” She backed up, still trying to draw him. “Let’s say I hear you out. Show me a gesture of good faith, too. Send your men away.”

“What men? You done gone and killed my very last ones.”

“I’m supposed to believe that?”

“It’s the truth.”

Ariadne paused and took in her surroundings, stretching her senses, reading the landscape with her warrior’s skill. The night air was cold and stale, full of car exhaust. There seemed to be no one else lurking, no other minions waiting to support Roarke. Car noises sped by, muffled by the trees. She hadn’t been driving fast enough to leave tire marks to indicate the crash. Unless someone looked very carefully, they could be alone for a very long time.

“Well?”

“No one I can sense.”

“No one there at all. Like I said, it’s just down to me.”

“Good.” Ariadne charged forward, blade swinging, dead set on Roarke’s neck. The driving arc was perfect, the speed lightning-fast. Even he could not dodge or duck away.

“Stop.”

Her sword-arm faltered. She stumbled, off balance, wondering why she had been so hell-bent on striking him a moment ago.

Roarke moved his hand up to the blade, took it in hand, and squeezed. When he removed his hand, the tip was bent in on itself, fused and melted into the beginnings of a small ball.

Ariadne blinked, trying to make sense of it all.

Hand still on Ariadne’s sword, Roarke swung a wide backhand. Ariadne finally managed to jar her mind back to the fight just in time to duck. Releasing her grip on her now-useless sword, Ariadne lashed out with a hand to chop Roarke’s stomach. He doubled over. Still, her hand felt as if it had smacked iron. A shaking, rattling pain radiated up her arm to her elbow.

She followed up with a kick to his chin that snapped his neck back in a way that would have instantly killed a living man. Roarke staggered, grunting, and Ariadne followed up with another kick to his chest.

The former Seneschal, unshaken, grabbed Ariadne’s sore arm and lifted her up by it. She felt the world pull away beneath her, watched a swirl of images pass her eyes. She was flying. Then a terrible impact, explosions in her back and at the base of her skull.

A tree. Had he slammed her into a tree? She managed to stagger forward and collapse to the ground. Her senses failed her. She had no idea how much time passed between that moment and when Roarke was kneeling over her.

“Enough, little Sheriff.”

Half-insensate, Ariadne thrust her arms upward, claws extended. Roarke was faster, seizing her wrists, squeezing so hard she lost all feeling in her fingers. She pushed with all her might, kept waiting for the inevitable “give” that never came. She was met only with irresistible force.

“Stop moving.”

Just like that, Ariadne’s body became a prone statue on the grass. Roarke leaned in over her, knees on top of her thighs, a mountainous weight.

As Ariadne’s mind faded away, something else took over. She growled, fangs extended and gnashing. She twisted her waist and stomach muscles uselessly, the Beast in her desperate to rise. Everything bled away—Liliane, Andrei, even who Roarke was—save that he was a predator, and she was a predator, and this was the jungle.

He locked eyes with her: “Listen to me, girl.”

The word invaded her mind like a rainstorm through a screen door, pouring in past her defenses and cooling her inside.

“I could kill you real easy now. You know that. You’ve always known that.”

The Beast didn’t understand the words, but the intentions were clear. Roarke was in control.

“I need you to think again, Ariadne. Calm.”

Again, the word was spoken, and so it came into being. Ariadne calmed. The Beast growled in irritation, tucking its tail, licking its wounds and biding its time until it could once again break its leash. Ariadne slowly remembered herself, as if waking from a dream.

“You got guts and a whole lot of fire in your belly, I’ll give you that.” Roarke’s tone relaxed, but his grip on her limbs remained tight, painful, unbreakable. “I wouldn’t expect any different. Fact is, I’m proud of you. Times were when I didn’t reckon you’d ever survive Liliane’s initiation. Yet here you are, a Sheriff.”

“Seneschal,” Ariadne mumbled defiantly, lips and tongue sluggish, as if trying to speak from deep within a dream.

“Ah, don’t be too keen on that title.” Roarke’s eyes turned downward. “State o’ things bein’ what they are, you see things as Seneschal that you ain’t never wanted to see. That’s why I left. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.”

Ariadne gave a tentative test of Roarke’s grip. Her arms responded at a tenth their normal speed. It was an effort to remember why she was angry with Roarke in the first place. She listened to see if Bourne was up and about yet, but she couldn’t hear anything—sense anything—that would tell her one way or the other.

Fine. She would listen.

“What you’ve got, girl, it’s more than just a mean right hook or a flashy swing of the sword. You’ve got fire. That’s rare in these parts, among folks like us. You wouldn’t know it from my dashin’ good looks, darlin’, but I’m getting nigh on nine score and ten years old. Stick around as long as I have and you see folk just kind of . . . sink. Fall in on themselves. Do and say the same thing over and over again, getting more and more ’fraid of anything changing. ’Fraid, no matter how much power they get, to step outside those comfortable little shoes they done built for themselves.

“But you, Ariadne. You still care. ’Bout New Jerusalem, ’bout this mortal you’ve been courtin’. You still try and do things right, even if maybe you’re startin’ to forget why. So I’m here to help.”

“I don’t do things right.” Ariadne surprised herself as she spoke. “I just kill people. That’s the whole reason I exist.” Maybe she had been stupid to think otherwise.

“No. Killin’ is all Liliane taught you you were good for. But you can be more. Deep inside, there’s a part of you that knows it, that’s fightin’ tooth and claw to show itself.”

I was never brave, Ariadne wanted to say. I just didn’t care if I lived or died. Except, now, that didn’t seem true.

A month ago, before she’d met Andrei again, she wouldn’t have cared if Roarke ended her life right here. She wouldn’t have sought destruction out, of course, and she would have fought to her last, just like she had been prepared to do the night Roarke first broke away. Hers was but to serve New Jerusalem, with her very existence if necessary. Other than that, her unlife, her final death, simply wouldn’t have mattered to her.

But that had changed.

“You’re searching,” said Roarke. “You’re confused an’ you’re searching. I remember what those days were like. They fade, eventually, once you find a little rut to spin it. Less’n you get really lucky, or unlucky, like I did not too long ago.”

“When you turned traitor?”

“Come on, Ariadne. You know now that when some things call out to you, you can’t turn away.”

“So you and Nadine were like me and Andrei? I don’t buy it. I tried to balance it all—Andrei and New Jerusalem. I screwed up, but at least I tried. You and Nadine, you . . . you messed around with things you shouldn’t have. You were warned, and when Nadine was destroyed, you took arms against your Prince. We’re nothing alike.”

Ariadne remembered Marie’s words, the night she and the young wizard had met at the banks of the Charles. Marie had said Kindred couldn’t learn magic from any books.

Ariadne’s eyes narrowed. “Just how did you learn to do magic, Roarke? Did Nadine and her book really teach you?”

Roarke sighed. For the first time, his gaze wandered away from her.

“How I learned what I learned ain’t important,” he said, his voice suddenly brittle. Recovering, he began again. “Now, Nadine. Can’t say I didn’t care for her. But no, she wouldn’t have been worth doin’ what I did. Much as I miss her, she wasn’t what called me.”

“What called you? Was it the thing that gave you your powers?”

“Stop askin’ how, girl, and focus on the why.”

“Why’s simple. If it wasn’t for love of Nadine, then it was for love of power.”

“Really?” asked Roarke. “If a fellah’s gonna betray his Prince for power, you think he’d end up in a better spot than me. It warn’t love, it warn’t power, and I’d never been noble enough to do anything out of some higher principle. Know what that leaves?”

Ariadne stared daggers at him.

“Fear,” he said softly. “I done what I done because I got scared. I realized if I didn’t nip somethin’ in the bud, I wouldn’t ever be able to stop it.”

Was Ariadne’s brain still rattled by Roarke imposing his will on her? His words weren’t making any sense. And where the hell was Bourne in all of this? Had the coward run off? Had he killed Andrei while she was distracted over here? Ariadne needed to break free. But she still couldn’t move.

Roarke kept speaking. “On some days . . . bad days . . . I c’n still remember the War between the States. I remember all the fine folk who turned their pretty little necks and kept on pretendin’ all that fiery talk warn’t gonna lead to a whole lotta people dyin’. Maybe if more of Dixie’d really believed it was coming and made some better preparations, things mighta turned out differently.”

“What the hell are you talking about?”

“Forgive an old man’s ramblin’.” Roarke shrugged, and with a hideous crack his neck finally snapped back into its proper place from where Ariadne had broken it. “There’re times when I lose track of things. Past ’n’ present, they kind of bleed. Sometimes that’s not so bad a thing. But so long as you can remember your mistakes, you gotta learn from them. Speak up a lot sooner when you see somethin’ that ’frights you. Might cost more in the short run, but save more in the long term.”

“You’re saying this is like the Civil War all over again?”

“In a way. But Liliane’s got something much scarier up her sleeve than Old Dishonest Abe ever dreamed of.”

“It doesn’t matter what Liliane’s plans are. New Jerusalem is worth it.”

“Used t’think that myself,” said Roarke. “Maybe you will, too, even after you see what I saw. But I at least want to give you that choice.”

With that, he finally relaxed his grip, rising slowly off her. Ariadne rolled out from under him, her body sluggish, a pounding ache in her legs and arms. She struggled to rise, to spring up, but her mind was still too addled.

“Here.”

Roarke, after rummaging inside the pockets of his trousers, produced an old brass key with an ornate head, the kind Ariadne had only seen in movies. He tossed it to her. She let it thunk to the ground at her feet. She refused to take her eyes off him.

“You go to Liliane’s sanctum. Pull aside the small bookcase. There’s a door behind it. You go there, use this key to get in. An’, yes, you have to use the key—door’s bewitched. Thing won’t break, and all the heavin’ and strainin’ in the world won’t do no good otherwise.”

“You want me to betray my Prince. Outright. Just like you did.”

“Not yet. Just snoop around without her knowin’.”

“I’ve already done enough to harm her, thank you very much.”

“Not nearly. You’ll need to do more. Once you see what’s there, once you look inside yourself and figure out what to do, I’ll know you’re ready.”

“Ready?” Ariadne felt her control returning and pulled herself up to a crouch. “You had me. You could have just destroyed me. Why didn’t you? You can’t possibly expect me to join you.”

“Wouldn’tve thunk it—” Roarke retrieved his hat from where he’d left it on the ground “—but somehow even all these decades o’ bein’ a deader haven’t beaten all the fool’s hope out of me. That’s all I got left, little Sheriff. Fool’s hope. A hope that you’ll open your eyes and make your own decisions.”

“Fool’s hope, and sorcery. Which you still never told me how you manage. You’re asking a lot of me without giving me anything in return.”

“Aside from your pretty head on your shoulders?” Roarke shrugged. “Fine. There’s this, and you can go smoke on it. A long time ago, somethin’ called out to me, offered me a deal. Sounded wonderful at first, but in the end, it didn’t work out like I planned.”

“Devil took your soul, Roarke?” Ariadne said with mock sympathy.

He stared at her, then laughed a thunderous, belly-shaking laugh. “Not quite. More like he would have, ’cept I couldn’t quite keep up my end of the bargain. No fault of my own. And I got some lovely consolation prizes. But they ain’t enough. I need you.”

“Me?”

Roarke nodded. “Without you, I’m gonna lose this one. An’ if I lose, we all lose. You. Me. Every soul, both quick and dead, in these here parts, and who knows where else.”

“You mean when the wizards finally step in? Or the Council? Now that you’ve killed Archibald and forced the matter?”

Roarke replaced his hat on his head. “You’re not gettin’ it, girl, but I don’t fault you. You’re young. Use the key. Use what’s inside you. I can’t say any more or it won’t be no good. I got faith in ya.”

With that, he turned his back on her. Almost any other vampire in the city, even Silas, would have been thought mad to turn his back on the Silent Knife. But Roarke just strode off into the shadows, whistling a sad country melody. The night wind shook the tree branches as he stepped between them. Then his sad whistling faded away.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 23

 

 

Ariadne stood, dizzy and in pain, staring at the key by her feet. Wordlessly, she picked it up, turned it over briefly in her hands, then put it in her jacket pocket. Retrieving her mangled sword, she walked to the car.

A Bourne-shaped sinkhole dominated the hood, but the man who made it seemed to have completely vanished. Ariadne sniffed the air, but couldn’t pick up a trace of Bourne. Which of the many stories he had told her had been the truth? Was he really trying to protect her from Silas out of some bizarre affection for her, or was he at this moment on his way back to his sire with videotape in hand?

One thing at a time. Ariadne looked in on the back seat, found it empty, the door ajar.

She followed the trail of blood and found Andrei huddled in the cold at the base of a tree, still half-insensate.

“Dre.” The dread in Ariadne’s heart fought to break through the cloud cover of fatigue. “It’s all right now. We’re going to get you help.”

She helped him pull himself up, supported him on her shoulder. She stared at the sword in her other hand. It was beyond repair. She had already declared it lost once, after the golem fight, but to lose it a second time pained her all over again.

And lose it she would have to. Even bent and broken, it would raise too many questions at the hospital. Sighing, she set it inside the car, noting the swiftly decaying bodies of Roarke’s last three soldiers. An abandoned, wrecked car with a bent sword inside would raise questions. Ariadne had no idea how well Bourne or Silas had obscured the car’s ownership. Archibald knew how to take care of these things, but Archibald was gone.

Ariadne found a book of matches inside the glove box. As she hobbled away with Andrei, she lit one and tossed it onto the upholstery, waiting until she saw the flames begin to spread, then moving well away before the gasoline caught. She had no idea if a forensic specialist could still find identifying marks on a burned-out car, but it was the best she could think of.

The events of the next few hours blurred. Somehow, she brought Andrei to the emergency room at Brigham and Women’s. As she paced the blue-and-white waiting area, bright lights stinging her eyes, she watched the faces of the hopeless, the terrified, and the bored. They wrung their hands, shook in drug withdrawal, cradled screaming toddlers, withdrew into their iPods with glazed-over expressions. All the many flavors of the Damned who never even had to taste blood.

Flashes of another, very different hospital overlayed Ariadne’s vision:

The waiting room walls lined with designed-to-be-inoffensive photos of various white middle-aged couples standing in front of their gardens, hoes in hand and goony smiles on their faces, some flanked by the occasional child or golden retriever. Ariadne isn’t watching; she is sitting with fingers interlaced, rocking back and forth, waiting for the doctor to report on her mother’s condition.

Andrei has taken a cab all the way out into the suburbs to be here with her, even though she told him not to. He cradles her in his arms, never judging. She feels more embarrassment than concern when the doctor reports that her mother is okay, that the cuts on her wrists weren’t nearly as deep as last time. Andrei doesn’t judge, doesn’t say a word, just strokes her hair and holds her. . . .

Here, no one paid Ariadne much heed. Hair tousled and matted, clothing stained and torn, pacing a hole in the grimy linoleum floor, Ariadne was just one more lost soul among many.

Her attention snapped to when a gurney slid to a halt alongside her, its steward suddenly called over to deal with another matter. The body beneath the sheet was a young man, rigor mortis preserving the tautness of his skin, the set of his jaw. But his skin was scorched with black, festering sores, crumbling to a charcoal-like ash.

Ariadne had seen this before. Hera’s body. The urns that Liliane’s house-steward had spilled. Archibald.

Looking left and right, Ariadne swooped in to examine the body. The man wasn’t Kindred. He was just a normal, run-of-the-mill dead human being. Yet here his body was starting to decompose into the same charcoal dust that she had been seeing throughout the war.

Quickly, Ariadne seized the handles and wheeled the gurney down a hall, dragged the body off and into a stairwell, stuffed it in the nearest trash receptacle. With luck, it would decompose entirely before someone noticed.

It was fortunate that she had been around to dispose of it, but how many other human corpses were out there, turning to black ash, waiting for some idiot mortal to discover them? And why were they turning to black ash to begin with? Was this Roarke’s doing? Some wizard’s experiment? Without Archibald around, how long before the Masquerade shattered entirely? Maybe Liliane knew about this. Maybe that was why she was so eager to pack up and leave; she wanted out before the storm hit.

But if that were the case, why wouldn’t Liliane tell her? Bourne and Roarke had both impugned the Prince’s honor, had both accused her of some sort of deception. Ariadne absent-mindedly fingered the key Roarke had given her, took it out to study it.

“Excuse me, miss?”

Ariadne swiveled around, hands raised in a fighting stance. The portly, middle-aged nurse’s aide flinched.

“Um, sorry.” Ariadne dropped her arms. “Long night.”

“For all of us,” said the nurse’s aide. She smiled, but Ariadne noticed how she kept her distance. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you. The man you brought just came out of surgery. You can visit him.”

Before the nurse could notice the empty gurney inexplicably placed by the stairwell, Ariadne had vanished.

She found Andrei, his right hand in a cast, his eyes surrounded by rings of red and purple but fixed on her as she entered. Ariadne smiled half-heartedly, then checked his chart. It made little sense to her, but one item stood out loud and clear.

“I’m sorry they couldn’t re-attach your finger.”

Andrei stared at her. Stared in fear, in accusation. The dried remnants of a trickle of blood could be seen leading from the bandage on his forehead down to his puffy right eye.

“I’m sorry,” she said again.

“Ari.” It sounded like a frog croak. “What the hell is going on? Who are these people? The mob? Drug lords?”

“I told you that you didn’t want to know.”

Ariadne was unable to meet his gaze. When she’d brought Andrei in, she’d claimed to be a good Samaritan who’d found him on the street. She wondered what Andrei had told the doctors, if anything. She didn’t want to know.

“I’m sorry,” she said one more time. “For everything. I’ll be going now. You won’t have to see me again.”

Like the drop in one’s stomach when an elevator rises, Ariadne had expected this, but had still not fully prepared herself. She could see his fear written across his features. She thought for a moment she could even smell it, rising above the stench of antisepsis. No, she had to leave. From now on there would only be Liliane, New Jerusalem, the Silent Knife. It had been enough for her before. It would have to be enough again.

“Ari, wait!”

She turned her head, not her body.

Andrei struggled to rise up out of bed, sat dizzily on the edge. “I can’t just leave you on your own like this.”

“Why not?” she said before she could stop herself. “You did before.”

Andrei opened his mouth, then closed it. Ariadne decided to spare him the tedium of creating false apologies.

“Andrei, I understand. It’s dangerous to be around me. You can see that now, obviously. I’ve screwed up yet again.” She drew closer, lowered her voice. The curtains that partitioned off Andrei’s bed weren’t nearly thick enough to block out sound.

“You can’t stay in Boston,” she said in a low voice. “You’d better go to that apartment you mentioned, or even farther. If you stay, someone may try to hurt you to get to me . . . and . . .”

“Ari.” She could feel his voice sinking into “lecture” mode, even here, amidst what to him had to seem like pure insanity. “I’m not going to abandon you. I’ve walked out on too many of my responsibilities.”

“I’m not your responsibility. I ceased being that the day you decided you were done with me.”

Andrei grimaced. It was not the grimace of a child who had swallowed medicine. It was the grimace of an adult, ailing and full of the knowledge that no medicine could help.

“So now we get to it. Okay, fine. Have it out.”

“Have it—what?”

Didn’t he realize he had been mauled? That he was missing a finger—a finger that, unlike hers, wouldn’t grow back?

“This isn’t the best place for this conversation.”

“Well, this is where we are.” He shrugged, pulling the IV taut as he did so. “I said I’d made a mistake when I left you back in college. I don’t know what else you’re expecting.”

“The mistake was in ever being near me to begin with, Dre. Back in school, you told me I was just an obstacle to your plans. Well, I’m no different now, except this time I’m a deadly obstacle.”

“Will you stop it?” he cried out. Ariadne looked around guiltily, but the staff seemed far too busy to notice.

“Look,” said Andrei, “is there anything I can say that will make that breakup make sense? I mean, seriously? Are you looking for some kind of closure? Well, you’re not going to find it. I learned that a long time ago with Sarah. Shit happens, and you just accept it, and get back on the horse, and . . . and . . .”

Andrei’s breath began to fail him. Blood was seeping out from the bandage again, running into his puffy eye. “At this point, you are my plans. You and Cassie. If you’re still willing, I’ll take you to meet her. We can still do everything like we said. We’ll go far, just the three of us, out of the country if we have to, where no one can find us.”

“Out of the country?” Ariadne couldn’t fight back a bitter, gallows laugh. “With what money? And I lost my passport eons ago. Listen to yourself. You’re half-crazy from shock—”

“No,” he said, with all of the confidence and firmness that she had swooned over back in college. “No, I’m saner now, at this moment, than I’ve ever been in my life.”

Ariadne opened her mouth to speak, but he interrupted her.

“I spent my whole life working so hard, building something, and the wind knocked it down. Okay. Lesson learned. But I also proved to myself I could do it. I can do it again, I know I can.”

“Andrei, I—”

“We’re going to be together, Ariadne. Whatever I’ve got left, I’m going to spend it helping you with this mess you’ve fallen into. I’ve already lost everything. Tonight was the final step, the final test. Nothing can hurt me now. We’re going to be together.”

His eyes started to soften. “If . . . if that’s what you want, that is.”

There it was again. Andrei placing himself in her hands.

He was still trying to save her, but he needed her to agree to the arrangement. It was finally starting to make sense to Ariadne. Liliane’s training, becoming the Silent Knife—it had been all Ariadne could cling to in order to stay sane in the world into which she had awakened. She defended New Jerusalem because any other raison d’etre wouldn’t have been sustainable for her. For Andrei, taking care of her was the only center he could find.

The damndest thing was, she wanted it, too.

She felt as if Roarke were back on top of her again, his weight bearing hard upon her limbs, his power gripping her like an invisible squeezing hand.

Ariadne is in college, walking along the grass, hand held in Andrei’s, and in that small warm press of flesh resides the anchor that keeps her from floating in all directions at once, from breaking up into a thousand miniature component Ariadnes that all want to drink in life in different ways. She feels the warm rush of the night air invade her lungs, hears the chorus call of the stars, and feels she will shatter from the rush of possibility, from the beautiful, terrible promise of her burgeoning adulthood . . . except for that hand. She cannot imagine how she will find her way without it to steer her.

Is this love, she wonders? Is it weakness? What would it mean to be strong? What terrible responsibilities would it bring?

Ariadne looked down at the hospital floor, centered herself in the present. What would saying “yes” to him mean? She wasn’t the one in need of caretaking. She needed to protect him from those who would use him to hurt her or even Liliane. Tonight, Ariadne hadn’t even been able to protect herself from Roarke. She had never been this helpless before Andrei came around. Even now, when she was so much and he was so little. Or was it the other way around?

Ariadne put her fingers to her temples, walked out from behind the curtains and into the bathroom beside the nurse’s station. Everything was happening so fast, and she couldn’t think when Andrei was nearby.

Dawn was coming soon. Ariadne could feel it in her blood without even looking at the clock. She needed a safe haven, and Eagle Hill was her only real option. When she’d walked out of Liliane’s sanctum earlier this evening, the Prince hadn’t known about her plan to leave with Andrei. But Silas and Bourne clearly knew about Andrei’s existence. They would reveal her to Liliane soon enough. If Ariadne ever wanted to be able to set foot in Eagle Hill again, she would need to show up and defend herself.

Of course, Liliane was planning on evacuating from East Boston.

But even if Liliane was leaving for parts unknown, even if Ariadne was leaving with Andrei, it just made good sense not to burn bridges if she didn’t have to.

Her nails, caressing her scalp, began digging in. Leave with Andrei? She had deceived herself earlier into believing it would be possible, that she could somehow keep her unlife hidden from him. But tonight had shattered that myth. Andrei, for all his bravado, had no idea what he was getting into.

Ariadne opened the door a crack, peeked out at the pain and suffering of the people on their cots. She listened to their groans, smelled their waste and their wounds. It was a strange time to wish she were human again. Then she could run off with Andrei. But she couldn’t become human again. There was one other thing, though, that she could change.

“Andrei.” She pulled the curtain aside, saw his face brighten up at her return. “Do you love me?”

“Yes.”

She stared him in the eyes. “If you’re serious . . . if you’re truly serious, then call me at this number the moment you get out of here.” She wrote it down on his admission bracelet. “Call me and we’ll meet up after nightfall. Back on campus.”

“Campus? Where on campus?”

“You know where.”

“Oh. The covered bridge.”

“The covered bridge.”

Full circle.

Andrei nodded, unhesitatingly. Would he be so confident if he knew what Ariadne was planning?

“You have to trust me from here on in,” she said. “No matter what happens. I have some loose ends to tie up, and you have some healing to do. You have to trust me. Do you understand?”

Of course he didn’t. But he said he did. That was Andrei.

Would he be the same, after the Embrace? After she turned him into the same thing she had become?

Of course not. Ariadne certainly wasn’t the same as she’d once been. But she could not go on like this, with each of them a frozen, twisted reflection of what they used to be, ten years ago, with one another.

Ariadne was going to do this the right way. She would formally petition Liliane, make Andrei a proper childe, remove any leverage Bourne or Silas or anyone else would have on her. Then they would leave East Boston together. Either with Liliane, or on their own. She just hoped that Liliane was willing to be her benefactor one last time.

Then she remembered Bourne’s words, and Roarke’s. Each had told her that Liliane wasn’t to be trusted. Roarke’s key had been slowly burning questions into her thoughts all night long, and as she walked out into the night she could no longer ignore them.

She would figure this all out. She was the Silent Knife.

The rising sun began to stretch its rays, mocking her confidence as she ran back to the house on Eagle Hill.

 

 

 

 

CHAPTER 24

 

 

By the following nightfall, the house on Eagle Hill stood as silent as ever—on the outside. Inside and underground, all the fancy furniture had been overturned to make room for ammunition piles. Coats and boots lay scattered everywhere. Motor oil and blood stained the carpeting. Po-Mo and his gang had removed the chandelier and had strung a corpse up instead, mutilated beyond recognition, from which blood still dripped in fits and spurts. Mouths open, they shoved and jockeyed for position, trying to catch the drops, all while the television blared that the night's football game had entered sudden death.

A few of them looked up guiltily as Ariadne left her cell and walked past, but most paid her no notice. Why would they have? Who among them knew about how, last night, she had planned to leave them all forever? Ariadne had pushed aside her slab upon waking to find her sword waiting patiently, as if it had somehow known she wouldn’t have been able to leave it. Liliane and New Jerusalem had been the sum of her existence for so long. How foolish to think she could have shucked them off in a single night.

Yet to Po-Mo, standing atop a beer keg and presiding over his court, Liliane seemed now to be only a name. He had not escaped this world, but he had reshaped it to his own liking while Ariadne had been distracted. She pressed her fingers to her temples, a disturbing new habit she had acquired, willing such thoughts to go back into hiding.

She stepped over the unconscious body of one of the house-ghouls. One by one, the servants had been vanishing. She heard some of Po-Mo’s thugs boasting about the beating he had given one of them the other day.

The words of a poem came to her, unbidden: “Turning and turning in the widening gyre. The falcon cannot hear the falconer. Things fall apart, the centre cannot hold . . . the blood-dimmed tide is loosed . . .”

Ariadne moved toward the center. She knocked on the door to Liliane’s study. Hearing no answer, she did what no other Kindred in Eagle Hill would dare to do: open the door and enter.

Liliane’s study didn’t seem like it belonged in the same house. With the door closed again behind her, Ariadne could not hear the ravings outside. Her eyes could not detect even the slightest smudge in the carpeting or the barest veneer of dust on the books or the artfully placed antiques.

The room with its small library looked innocent enough, fully recovered from the fight with Mr. Rose so many nights ago. Ariadne was tense, combat ready, as she edged over to the tiny bookcase, pulling it aside to find the secret door she half-hoped wouldn’t exist. She turned they key she half-hoped wouldn’t fit the lock.

A voice inside her warned her of her mistake. Silas was trying to turn Liliane against her, and by snooping around she would only help his plans. But surely the Prince’s Hand had free reign of the sanctuary. . . .

The gaslights in the room made even the dull brass of the key sparkle when turned just right. The door, with some resistence, pulled aside to reveal a passage just tall enough for a stooped-over person to move through. Ariadne pocketed the key and tiptoed down a cold stone path through the darkness, her heightened senses only producing a heightened state of paranoia. Liliane was not a forgiving woman. If Ariadne were overstepping her bounds, there would be hell to pay.

Ariadne wondered just how far down this tunnel extended. She walked for long, long minutes the ceiling growing higher, the walls turning from cement to packed earth to carved stone. Every step she took pulled her down, down, deeper into the blackness.

The corridor started to feel cold and musty, a skin-prickling kind of physical cold that Ariadne shouldn’t have been able to feel. Then the path dropped away, and Ariadne, so sure-footed, nearly tripped.

Her hands skidded across the wall before she secured herself. Her fingers brushed a light switch. For some reason, Ariadne’s senses weren’t helping her much. Something about this darkness seemed peculiarly impenetrable. Her hand hovered over the switch, hesitant.

She could sense no heat sources in the room. Still, the switch might send a signal that she was down here. Fortunately, she had prepared for this possibility. Ariadne reached into her pocket and pulled out a small flashlight. Under its beam, parts of the room sprang into sharp relief. Piles of cardboard boxes lay stacked everywhere, caked in cobwebs and reeking of mildew.

Ariadne drew near and reached her free hand out, pausing above the top box. She could still turn around, go back, erase the signs of her presence. She could still just ask Liliane for permission to Embrace Andrei with a relatively clear conscience.

“Be wary of Roarke,” Liliane had told her. “He is a great deceiver, and the power of his blood is matched only by the power of his lies. If he cannot break your bones, he will try to break your mind.”

What if Roarke had set a trap here for her?

Enough. There was only one way to find out. Ariadne ripped the top off the box in one swift gesture. Tossing it aside, Ariadne gazed down to see ledgers.

Rotting, smelly, yellowed and browned paper. Gingerly picking up a few sheets, she saw they were old financial records, receipts for furniture ordered, construction bills for renovations to the house. Ariadne dug and found more of the same.

Nothing incriminating. Nothing out of the ordinary. Nothing more than the mundane minutiae of maintaining the house on Eagle Hill.

Satisfied? Ariadne asked the doubting voice in her mind. The answer, clearly, was no.

Liliane wasn’t stupid. She certainly wouldn’t leave any terrifying secrets lying in the open. Ariadne hefted the box up and opened the one beneath it.

Decades-old tax returns. Liliane paid taxes? Apparently so. At least, several front organizations she had created paid taxes. But since becoming the Prince’s Hand Ariadne had become dimly aware of the existence of these holdings, of the financial deals the Prince staged in order to secure and maintain capital. Andrei had, in fact, helped her to make use of them during the war. While Ariadne was hardly an expert in finance, these looked utterly ordinary and consistent with what she knew of Liliane’s plans.

Damn Roarke! Would it have killed him to be a little more specific? Or perhaps that was his plan: to plant seeds of paranoia. To make Ariadne think the surest proof of ill-doings was the fact that she couldn’t easily find proof at all.

Ariadne opened another box: Technical manuals for the television, the security system, the dishwasher. All covered in dead spiders.

Another box: rusted-out silverware.

With a cry of frustration, Ariadne tore through the room, upending boxes, throwing their contents out onto the dusty floor. Bills, records, maps, worn-out appliances. A century’s accumulation of the most ordinary detritus, compulsively categorized and maintained and then just left to rot, utterly absent any file folder marked deep dark secrets.

With all the boxes emptied, Ariadne scoured the floor for cracks, the walls for hidden levers. She kicked the surface at random points, stomped on the floor in every pattern she could think of, waved her hands through the air.

Nothing.

With a resigned shrug, she flipped the light switch. It was all she had left. A lightbulb dangling from a cord above her flickered and went dark.

Ariadne no longer felt physical fatigue except during daylight hours, but her mind felt sluggish as she spent long minutes reassembling the storeroom into something approaching its previous state of order. She cursed the loss of valuable time, time that Bourne and Silas were probably using to try to smear her good name with Liliane. She crept cautiously back into Liliane’s study, thanking God that it was still empty, and replaced the bookcase over the door.

Damn them. Damn Roarke. Maybe damn Liliane, too, but who knew? At this point, Ariadne just needed to get the Prince’s permission to sire. Then she could leave this whole world of schemes and secrets to fend for itself.

She climbed up onto the roof of the house on Eagle Hill, gripped the key, and with a savage motion, reeled back her arm and hurled it out into the city, where it landed silently in the waiting clutches of oblivion.

 

 




 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 

 

DAVID NURENBERG, PhD, is a teacher, freelance writer, and social activist who lives in the Boston area. His credits with White Wolf include writing for the Vampire: The Requiem, Scion, and Exalted lines. His nonfiction has appeared in the Boston Globe, Newsweek, USA Today, and Multicultural Review, as well as many lesser-known papers, ’zines, and blogs. Silent Knife is his first novel published by a major press. His favorite animal is the wombat.