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“Absolutely not,” Solon says firmly. “It’s too risky. And Lenore and I are the only ones with magic of our own. You’re going to need all the help you can get if you want them destroyed.”
“You will be noticed,” Bitrus counters.
“We won’t,” Lenore says, sitting up straight. “My cloaking spell will cover us. If Abe waits in the boat as getaway, it will cover him, too.”
“Even with giant demonic plague doctors guarding the water?” Bitrus asks. For a moment I don’t know what he’s talking about, then it all comes flooding back. It’s a risky thing we’re going to do, and despite what Bitrus thinks, I know we need Lenore and Solon’s magic to pull things off. It’s the only way we can defeat Saara and Aleksi. Because Bitrus is right. It’s not just the vampires we have to outsmart, we also have to get around the legion of demons and ghosts and monsters those two have been letting out into the waters of Venice, the same creatures preying on the humans in the town. We’d be foolish to think that we could do this without any magic.
“Her magic is strong,” I manage to say, my eyes flitting briefly to Lenore. She looks both surprised and ashamed at my compliment, no doubt because of the guilt she still carries for Dahlia. “And Solon’s is helpful. We’ll need all the help we can get tonight.”
Nearly everyone looks relieved. Probably because this is the first time I’ve really spoken about tonight, or really anything else for that matter. I see the look in their eyes, that little spark and hope that maybe I’ll be okay, that maybe I’m on the mend, that there is this future where I am back to normal, back to the Valtu that they know, and this grief and sorrow will be past me once again. I’ll get over Dahlia like I had to Lucy and Mina.Oh Valtu, they think,thank god he’s so resilient.
I hate that look. I hate it because it reminds me that my grief makes them uncomfortable. That they would rather pretend it doesn’t exist at all. That I don’t exist at all. Because what am I without grief? There wouldn’t be anything left of me. I would cease to exist. Grief is all I am.
“Then it’s settled,” Van Helsing says. Out of everyone, his expression is one of concern. He’s the one who has been with me through grief before, and he’s seen the animal I have become. I know he’s waiting for the turn, wondering when it will happen. There is no relief in his eyes. “Tonight we’ll head over to the island. Valtu, find some excuse to invite yourself over. If that doesn’t take, we’ll just have to chance it. We’ll all go over on the boat, but only me, Lenore and Solon will be cloaked from the vampires and whatever else they have lurking on that island. We’ll formulate a plan of attack so that they are surrounded. It would be helpful if we had some sort of plan or blueprint of the island.”
“I’ll see what I can come up with,” Bitrus says. “I have a pretty good memory of how it’s all organized. What we saw, at any rate. Since those two have a knack for torturing humans, they might use more sections of the island for it.”
The rest of the afternoon melts into a blur again. There are voices and looks and plans and everything seems foreign to me, even the sun in the sky and the scent of muddied water and fish and oranges, and the taste of wine on my tongue. How quickly one’s universe goes from familiar to foreign when loss has rearranged reality.
When night falls, I’m keeping myself going by focusing on the book. Focusing on Dahlia. I let my need to bring her back feed me, fuel me, until I want to kill Saara and her brother as much as the rest of them do, if only because I know they will never let me have the book willingly. It has corrupted them, and I know it has the power to do the same to me, but I know that once I get that spell I need to bring Dahlia back, I will gladly hand that book over to Solon for safekeeping.
It’s a devilish night for our escapade. The moon is hiding somewhere, the city is strangely quiet and cold. There is fog just like there was fog before, a thick and damp blanket that snakes its hands down the canals. I think it has a few of us on edge, but to me it feels like we’re doing the right thing. That this is an excellent night to kill some vampires, steal a tome of dark magic, and raise the dead.
I’m still nervous, though. Bitrus and I went to the Red Room for a while, to keep up appearances that everything is fine, that everything is normal, should someone wonder why I’ve missed teaching a class, and it was there that I happened upon Saara and basically invited myself over to their island under the guise of wanting a human to feed on and kill. Saara seems adept at reading others and I think I managed to block her from my innermost thoughts while letting her only see the superficial ones, ones I planted in my head as a decoy. It’s not that hard once you learn how to do it, you just have to keep bouncing the same thoughts around inside your head like a ball.
That said, she invited me over with ease, which of course makes me suspicious that she knows something is afoot and this whole thing might be one giant trap. Especially as she was okay with the idea of me and Bitrus taking our own boat over instead of her sending out one of her plague doctors to collect us.
“We have to go into this thinking that they are onto us,” I tell the others as we gather into my motorboat tethered to the canal behind my villa. “If we let our guards down for but a moment, I promise you it will be the end of all of us.”
Solon gives me a funny look, his brows furrowing, perhaps wondering if I cared at all about the end of myself. Wheels are turning behind his stark blue eyes and I fear he may become suspicious of me, wary and watchful of my every move. Out of everyone here, I have the least to lose.
I havenothingto lose.
I stare right back at him, letting him know I’m not to be fucked with. He eventually blinks and looks away, though I feel some trust may have been broken. If not now, later.
I start the engine as Bitrus unties the boat and we motor quietly along the narrowRio Dei Frari, the buildings looming over us like shadowy figures as we pass over the dark depths. I remember the demon in the water when I took Dahlia home after the recital, and even though the memory should have sent a wave of dread and trepidation through me, all it does is make fresh grief twist through my heart.
We are silent during our voyage, all of us scanning the opaque waters, peering through the fog. Even with our vision being better than any humans, the mist is still thick enough to obscure most things. I rely on just the mental map I’d made in my head from the last time I visited.
And then, when I start to fear that perhaps we overshot Lido and are out into the sea, a vision of Dahlia floating beneath the waves making my eyes pinch shut, Bitrus mutters, “There she is.”
I open my eyes to see the faint outline of the island emerging from the fog. It still manages to send a shock of fear through me. Poveglia has so much history, sordid history, like most of the past, an island built on suffering and bones. The ghosts of that suffering still exist, haunting the island. It’s not just the conjured demons and plague doctors that roam here, it’s centuries of pain, humans discarded by their fellow men, isolated then tossed into plague pits to be forgotten. Ghosts have always fascinated vampires, but they terrify me. They’re humans that have their own version of immortality, one locked in pain.
Perhaps they scare me because they remind me of myself.
I’m nothing but a ghost.
“We’re here,” Bitrus says softly, and I bring my attention back to the boat, moments before we nearly crash into the dock. We manage a smooth landing in the end, the waves rocking the boat, and then Saara, Aleksi, and two plague doctors appear out of the mist like shadowy phantoms, eyeing us distrustfully.
Here goes nothing.
Chapter5
Rose
NOW
“So, what does it feel like?” Dylan asks me as he drives his Jeep down the 101 into town, the beach to our right glowing pale while the crests of the waves catch the moonlight. It’s been a few days since I became a vampire and we both learned the truth about our parents. In those few days I’ve done a lot of searching on the internet to find out more about what happened to Valtu, the guild, the vampires, anything. There’s a whole lot of nothing out there, for the most part.
