I’ve not been this thirsty since I was newly reborn.
After a while, I become numb to everything else. My whole sense of being revolves around the fire in my throat and the empty place in my chest where my thrall bond once lived.
Every now and then, Cain visits me. He feeds me just enough of his powerful blood to stop me starving to the point where my mind could shut off and go into true stasis. After all, punishment has no purpose if the person being punished has no sense of it.
I have no concept of how long it is between his visits. The feeling of being whole that accompanies the blood never lasts, and the madness is always quick to reclaim me until my body is too weak to sustain even crazed thoughts.
Eventually, I give myself over to the thirst willingly. I don’t even struggle against it.
It’s better to feel starvation—to feelsomething—than to be left to stew in my own miserable solitude until my brain shuts down.
No sound travels through the silver and stone of my tomb. It’s as if the world ceases to exist beyond the stench of my own decaying body and the endless darkness.
I lose track of time. I lose myself. I’m nothing.
I’m dead. IwishI were dead.
Why aren’t I?
Chapter Five
Gideon – 2082 – Present Day
The mausoleum is ancient,yet it remains as immaculate as when it was first made. The care and maintenance given to the foreboding structure is odd, considering the crumbling ruins of the great house beyond it.
Marble cupids glower down from around the doorway, their cherubic faces carved into twisted grimaces with fangs. The sculptor’s work is impressive. Every detail, down to the droplets of blood oozing from the briars tangled around the angels’ wings, is astonishingly lifelike.
The building is a tribute of love as much as hate.
Almost as if Cain designed it to mimic the way he felt for the main occupant.
The vampire in question straightens his black jacket and pulls out a single silver key. The metal doesn’t affect him as it does us, and his skin doesn’t even redden as he slips aside the cover of the matching silver lock and opens the door.
The hinges squeal, protesting after years of disuse, revealing the way down into the tomb.
We must be the first people, other than Cain, to see inside in almost two centuries.
“Come.” Cain’s voice is flat, his face inscrutable as he sweeps down into the darkness. Vampire night vision allows him to get ahead as my pack brothers and I waste precious seconds turning on our torches. “She rests at the bottom.”
The tomb is musty and cold. The stale air is difficult to breathe, but my pack and I follow the immaculately dressed vampire down the smooth, spiralling steps without complaint.
This is it. The moment all our planning has led to. Years of subterfuge and careful strategy all comes down to this moment.
“Well, this place is homey,”Finley comments, his tinny voice echoing through the concealed earpiece I’m wearing.“I love the decor. Nothing really says moody, over-dramatic vampire like frescoes of cannibalistic angels.”
I barely resist the urge to roll my eyes. Our tech’s sarcasm has been our constant companion on the hours-long flight to this tomb in the mountains of the Old Country. Having Cain breathing down our necks prevents me from ordering him to knock it off, so I have to settle for tapping the tiny microphone sewn into the collar of our black uniforms. Just hard enough to get the message across.
“Sorry, Alpha.”
He doesn’t mean it. I can hear the unrepentant smirk in his words. But I let him get away with it for now, as I focus on keeping pace with Cain.
The stairs we descend have no railing, which allows the bright beams of our torches to slice through the pitch black gloom, revealing the scope of this massive crypt. Dozens of coffins rest on recesses cut into the walls. The names on them are corroded by time, making them almost completely illegible, but I discreetly turn the pin-sized camera hidden in my jacket button to face them, anyway. Finley will no doubt capture the images and decipher what names he can.
There were so many missing after the massacre. How many of them ended up down here? How many are hidden to keep their families in line? Are all of them likeher? Trapped, still breathing, beneath the stone?
It takes longer than I anticipated to reach the bottom. The scale of Cain’s morbid prison is sobering, but all thoughts of the other residents fall away as we reach the last step.
In the centre are two of the grandest gothic sarcophagi I’ve ever seen. Carved to resemble the women contained within, each of them lying on a bed of roses and thorns.
