The one on the left is smaller than the other, and Cain doesn’t pay it any attention as he stops between them. His focus is on the larger, grander tomb, with its canopy of stone curtains and twisted vines. The vampire’s hands trace the carved stone sheets as he stares down at the marble likeness of the woman beneath.
“Evelyn,” he whispers.
There’s a reverence to his tone when he says her name. It’s unexpected, given how he’s treated her.
The woman whose lifeless, cold eyes stare back is silent. The gentle waves of her hair are splayed out amongst the vines in an eerily peaceful tableau. The artist carved her with a single tear leaking from the corner of her eye, and my eyes zoom in on that tiny detail as Cain strokes the bridge of her nose.
I look at the three others, then turn back to the first vampire. “Sire, shall we remove her?”
“How stupid would I have to be to bury my greatest weapon in plain sight?” His voice is deceptively light as he shatters the strangely intimate moment by shoving his thumbs into the statue’s eyes, pressing down.
There’s an audible click, then a section of the stone wall behind us pops open, revealing a second chamber.
I exchange a glance with the rest of my pack. We would have wasted so much time if we’d tried to break in by ourselves and broken into an empty coffin, probably destroying the mechanism to open the secret door in the process.
That was Silas’s preferred plan, and he bares his neck in apology, the motion so slight that Cain would have mistaken it for a stretch.
But Cain isn’t focused on us. He’s distant, staring distractedly into the new room. The melancholy expression is unusual on the normally charismatic vampire king, and he hides it quickly as he strides into the second chamber, not waiting for us to follow.
“Once bound to you, she will require a thorough reintroduction to the world. Your pack is to guard her and monitor her closely. If she so much as thinks of betrayal, I want to know.”
“Yes, Sire,” I say, hurrying to catch up with him.
This is less fancy than the other room. Only two stone slabs on the floor indicate that anyone is even buried here.
I head straight for the one marked with her name, but Cain stops me with his arm.
“I swapped them before their burial. One last precaution to make sure no one could ever use her against me again.”
He strides over to the grave marked ‘Imogen’ and waits.
My pack understands the signal, positioning our torches to give us enough light to work by before we bend as one, dig our fingers into the cracks, and lift.
The solid silver coffin beneath burns our fingers, but none of us are stupid enough to make a sound as we manoeuvre the stone aside and rest it against the wall. With the slab gone, only one final obstacle remains between us and the goal we’ve worked toward for years.
Cain crouches and withdraws another silver key, pressing it into the lock at the side of the coffin before flipping open the lid.
Scraps of decaying velvet and silk barely cover the husk inside. Any features the mummified remains might have once had in common with the statue in the other room are gone.
The jaw of the vampire within is forced open around a spiked silver ball gag, and her limbs are bound in heavy silver chains. Inside, it’s little more than a box. There aren’t even any cushions to protect her from the metal of the coffin.
Cain’s favourite daughter has been left in torment; burned by silver in a forgotten hole in the ground for a hundred and eighty-five years. There’s no way she can still be sane after this. In my head, I start rethinking the wisdom of this plan. How much help can she possibly be at this point?
It’s too late to turn back now. It took decades to reach this point.
“Ready yourselves,” Cain demands.
Vane palms a blade silently, taking his place opposite me as he stares down at her corpse. He and Silas are side by side, their sun-streaked, honey-coloured hair the only similarity the brothers share. They’re responsible for the riskiest part of the mission. Each of them carries a tiny capsule made of thin silicone and blended perfectly into their skin by our omega. With the darkness and the long sleeves of their standard issue, black, uniforms, Cain will never know about the tiny samples of blood from our two missing packmates.
On my left, Draven is already holding the blade against his skin. The dark-haired, psycho son of a bitch is probably eager to get to the cutting part.
“Wait for her to open her eyes, then feed her your blood and recite the words of the binding,” Cain instructs, already digging his own fangs into his wrist.
His blood glimmers as it drips down, landing on the gag and rolling in inky rivulets into her mouth. Each drop seems to trace life through her veins.
Her throat swallows convulsively, her body filling out from the hollows and bones it was before.
Her skin turns from a wrinkled, jaundiced mess to an unblemished rose and cream: the colour of a vampire who’s not seen daylight in centuries. The silver chains mar her skin wherever they touch, leaving angry red welts. The gag in her mouth has to be painful, but Cain doesn’t remove it.
