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Kaleid then picks me up in his arms and carries me down the stairs.
But the Dark Order stands in our way. The stench of chaos and death filling my nose as my head lolls to the side.
Kaleid’s grip around me tightens and I can hear his heart rate increasing.
He’s scared of the Dark Order.
He has no control over them.
“Let them pass!” Jeremias booms, and suddenly the red sea of cloaks start to part, creating a path out of the door.
Kaleid takes in a deep breath and walks forward.
Hundreds of whispering voices fill my head as we pass. I can’t tell what they’re saying, if it’s even a language known on earth, but they hiss and they whisper and they chant and each sound is dripping with malevolency. I know Kaleid feels it too, because his pace picks up as we pass through them, until we’re finally out of the palace and in the snow.
“I can’t wait until they’re under my control,” Kaleid mumbles to himself as he walks toward the crimson ocean.
“Where are you taking me?” I ask, raising my head for a moment. We’re alone out here, the Dark Order and Jeremias having stayed behind in the ruins. It’s just me and Kaleid and the raging sea and the red lighting above.
“I’m easily inspired,” he says, glancing down at me. “My brother inspired me in some ways, your father has inspired me too. See, I don’t like the idea of killing you, Lenore. Believe it or not, that’s not how I operate. I have some morals. But I do have to get rid of you, so there was always a bit of a conundrum on how to do that.”
He places me down on my feet and I realize we’re both standing on top of a short pier that juts out into the waves. At the end of the pier is a cage, a gold one, like it’s made for a giant parrot.
“See that? That was my solution. My father liked to do this too, when he wasn’t taking heads off. He had this specifically built for this sort of thing. See, I’ll put you in the cage, throw you over the edge, you’ll sink to the bottom. I guess no one really knows what it takes to kill you yet, so if you’re really built like a vampire, then you’ll be stuck in that cage, at the bottom of the sea, for all eternity. Forever alive, forever drowning. Going mad. Just as Solon will be doing the same.” He laughs. “Kind of romantic, isn’t it? To know you’ll spend the rest of your long lives going through it together?”
“You’re insane,” I manage to eke out.
“Not insane,” he says, grabbing me and dragging me along the dock until I’m being shoved helplessly into the cage. “Just creative.”
I grasp the bars as the cage door locks me, staring at Kaleid with wide, pleading eyes as the horror takes hold of me. “Don’t do this, Kaleid. This is something your father did, and you said you didn’t want to be like him.”
“I’m not like him,” he snaps. “There’s a chance I might have a change of heart and come get you out, if you’re not dead. But for now, I need you out of our way. I need you out of my way. Once I kill Jeremias, then I’ll have time to think.”
He shuffles the cage back until I’m hanging off the edge of the dock, the waves licking my feet. “Send my regards to the deep,” he says.
Then he kicks the cage off the pier.
And I plunge into the depths.
19
Lenore
I manage to keep my mouth closed as I sink, not willing to let any of the red ocean water inside me, but I’m still screaming in my head.
My fingers are pulling on the bars of the cage with all the strength that I can muster, sinking down, down, down. It feels like I’m falling forever in this icy prison, and then I’m struck with the fear that there is no bottom in this ocean because this ocean is not from my world. That I’ll just fall like this forever, for all eternity, stuck in this loop of endless torture and agony until my mind scatters into a million pieces.
With any luck, I’ll die. I don’t know if I can live forever, I certainly don’t know if I can grow gills and breathe underwater. How long do I have before my heart gives out? How long can the vampire blood inside of me keep me alive?
Please let it be swift, I find myself praying to no one in particular. Maybe the same god that Absolon worshipped before he was turned, when his life was stolen from him. Then again, that god didn’t help him much either.
Actually, it’s kind of amazing that Solon turned out the way he did. He doesn’t even remember his life before, that it was good and happy, that he was a man of god. All he knows is that Skarde turned him into a monster, half-vampire, half-beast, a product of tainted, evil blood. Solon spent centuries as a killing machine, as remorseless as his father, and then, eventually, he stopped. He lost the madness and fought hard against it. He buried the beast as much as he could. He stepped away from his family, he went off on his own. And while I have no doubt Solon has done countless awful and immoral things in his life, even after parting from the dark side, he’s constantly striving to be better. He’s trying to take back the humanity that was stolen from him so long ago.
