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I fucking hate that he’s insinuating that I brought the beast upon myself, even though it is true in a way. I mean, I didn’t run when Solon told me to. Instead, I let him keep fucking me. I wanted the beast.
“Heed my words, my child,” he says, holding out his hand for me. “The time of reckoning is coming soon, and it will not happen without you. You are needed for Skarde’s destruction.”
“Why can’t you do it, if you’re best buds with the Dark One and oh so powerful?” I ask, snarky without even meaning to, ignoring his hand.
His look could cut glass. “I’ve tried,” he says carefully. “As you can see, I have not been successful. Skarde is not easy to get to, even for me.”
“And the Dark One?”
Careful, Jeremias’ voice appears inside my head and I see the heavy warning in his obsidian gaze. Wouldn’t want to give him any ideas. This is his show, after all.
What the hell does that mean?
“Now,” Jeremias says, his voice loud and pleasant as he pulls me to my feet, “I think you have healed enough to be on your way.”
“Wait,” I say, feeling a faint twinge of panic, like I’ve barely learned anything, like it’s all happening too fast. “I don’t want…I have to be able to see you again.”
“You will.”
“But I mean, like, I need you to show me what I’m capable of doing,” I tell him, feeling shy all of a sudden. “I’m afraid of what I can do, and also afraid to even try.”
“I know,” he says. “Go to your well and I will be there.”
Yeah, but you’ll be there with all the dark magic flowing through you.
“Dark magic is the best magic there is,” he goes on, with a smirk on his ever-changing façade. “You grew up in a world of light and look at how far that got you.”
“My mother,” I stammer, the words coming out of me. “My mother. Alice. The one I never knew. The vampire.”
He goes still. “Yes?”
“What was she like?”
Jeremias stares at me for a moment before he breathes in deeply through his nose, his chest rising. “She was…a good vampire.”
“I heard she killed my aunt.”
“Well, that’s what vampires do, isn’t it? Kill people.”
“Did you love her?”
He gives me a rueful smile, eyes turning darker. “I did.”
“And did she love you?”
A pause. “I’m sure she did. Deep down, perhaps, even if she never knew it.”
Uh oh. That sounds like borderline incel talk.
I suddenly don’t want to ask any more questions.
A scurrying sound comes from behind me, snatching my attention. I look over my shoulder to see the witchy quadruplets with their white dresses and disheveled black hair coming out of the forest and scattering in different directions, like something spooked them. They dive into the holes in the ground and disappear, their slender pale feet the last traces of them.
“What’s happening?” I ask. “Where are they going?”
“It’s time for you to go,” Jeremias says in a clipped voice. “The slayers are worried. You need to be returned.”
“The slayers?” I repeat.
Then the world is ripped away.
8
Absolon
I wake up to dog breath. A wet tongue licking my face.
I open my eyes, blink, seeing Odin in front of me, his dark eyes searching mine, asking if I’m okay, telling me that he was worried, that he managed to learn how to open doors and I should be proud of him.
I stare at him for a moment, trying to get my bearings, that I’m lying on the floor, absently noticing the open door before I get a look at the rest of the bedroom.
It’s destroyed.
The bed is crooked, the frame broken, the headboard ripped in two.
The mattress has slid onto the floor.
Covered in blood.
No.
No.
I get to my knees, my feet, stagger forward, lean against the slanted bedpost, the only thing keeping me up as I stare down at the sight.
There is blood everywhere.
The room hums with it.
Fresh blood, soaked into the pillow, the sheets, the mattress, the rug. I don’t even have to breathe deep to know whose blood that is.
Lenore’s.
“No,” I croak, falling to my knees, running my hands over it, still feeling damp. There’s so much blood, too much blood.
What have I done?
What have I done to her?
I feel the circuitry of my brain start snapping, wires being cut, everything going loose. My head goes back and I scream at the top of my lungs. A long, deafening, guttural scream that rips from my gut, shreds through my throat, fills the room until all the glass cracks, a symphony of explosions, from the artwork on the walls, to the mirrors in the bathroom, to the glass jar that holds her toothbrush. It all shatters like fireworks, glass raining down.
The memory comes back, all at once. I was fucking her, she was coming…she told me she loved me. Tears in her eyes. I felt all her emotions as if they were stemming from somewhere inside me, my old and weary heart expanding until it was close to bursting, and then I knew I wasn’t in control.
