Deadly Lovers (The Prussia Series) (17 page)

I jumped, surprised and horrified as Patricia’s heart was hurled at me and landed right in front of my face, splashing blood all over my eyes and into my mouth. I began spitting the blood out as soon as it had touched me. My eyes strayed from Sophea’s fixed gaze on me to Sophea’s arm through Patricia’s chest. I watched as tiny embers emerged from where Sophea had punched a hole through Patricia. Tiny embers began dancing from that giant hole and raced like fireflies over Patricia’s skin. Seconds later Sophea’s hand held nothing but ash and all that remained of Patricia disintegrated onto the floor, dirtying the blood that still trickled drop by drop down the steps.

“Victoria,” said Sophea, still looking at me, “How is that one still alive?”

Victoria looked at me as though I were furniture, uninteresting, just a piece in the room to take up space.

“I told you,” said Victoria, “She’s immortal,”

“Who isn’t?” asked Sophea with a snort, smacking her hands together to dust Patricia off of them.

“No,” said Victoria, “She isn’t Vampyr. We can live forever but we can die. Prussia...she doesn’t have our best attributes but she has the one Patricia’s father always wanted. Prussia will stay young and beautiful forever.”

“How much blood can she lose?” asked Sophea.

I didn’t like where Sophea’s mind was headed. Sophea walked down the steps slowly and looked at me curiously as I lay still on the floor. I flinched as she reached down and pulled me up. I didn’t feel nearly as weak as before but I knew I didn't want Sophea to know or to have her hands on me for that matter. I didn’t want to be anywhere near her. Every bone in my body told me to get away from her as quickly as possible.

“All of it,” said Victoria.

I looked at Victoria with alarm. She hadn’t mentioned anything about how much blood I could or couldn’t lose. Victoria said she had told me all she had known. Obviously, that had been a lie.

“Really?” asked Sophea, looking me over as if I were a snack.

“I wouldn’t,” said Victoria, also recognizing her mother sizing me up as a meal, “We haven’t gotten her entirely figured out but apparently our viruses are not compatible. If you drink too much from her the virus in her blood may attack yours. That or it happens when she gets aggravated, like some form of self defense in her blood. Either way, she doesn't like being bitten so...”

“What are you saying?” asked Sophea, taking a step back from me which made me feel a whole lot better, honestly.

“Too much of Prussia’s blood might destroy your virus and kill you,” said Victoria, “The eternal death,”

Sophea smiled at me sweetly and patted me gently on the shoulder. I felt as if I were the dangerous dog in the room all of a sudden. My brow furrowed. I didn’t like this at all. Victoria helped me to sit on the steps and then began tending to Sebastian’s wounds.

“What about the war?” I asked, my throat hoarse and painful with every word, “Is it over?”

“Is that what you call war these days, Victoria?” laughed Sophea.

That’s when I heard Sebastian. I heard him moan. My heart skipped a beat just hearing him, knowing he might be okay. Victoria smiled at Sophea and they both chuckled.

“The war is over, Prussia,” said Victoria, “Now we claim the spoils,”

I sat there on the steps, looking at the landing below where I had lain soaking in my own blood and wondered where all the blood had come from. My eyes followed the trail behind me, the tiny rivers snaking around me, and my gaze landed on the random streak or two of blood from the adjoining staircases curled on either side of the platform.

“Don’t,” said Victoria.

I looked at Victoria where she knelt beside Sebastian, trying to coax him to sit up but paused, just looking at me now. Sebastian looked up and then quickly looked at me.

“Don’t look up, Prussia,” said Sebastian, with a look of insistence in his eyes. He couldn’t honestly expect me not to look.

And I looked up. My mouth open, my eyes wide in horror, the barbarity of it seeping into my eyes, unable to be unseen. I looked up above this giant pool of blood to find hundreds of bodies strung up high above, above even the chandelier I had barely noticed. Each crystal glowed red with the drops of blood coloring the glinting centerpiece. From their feet were hung both humans and vampires, both innocent bystanders and warriors. My eyes took it all in and I gulped at the air as a fish out of water. They weren’t all dead. Not all of them had died. They were being bled like cattle. I recalled the meat hook I had hung on not long ago, the rows and rows of humans being preserved to be eaten.

“Old habits of war,” Victoria whispered to me, avoiding eye contact with me.

“Waste not, want not…” said Sophea, her voice eerie with delight as she disappeared through the columns surrounding the grand staircase, disappearing from sight.

I looked up at those eyes that looked down at me. The fear, the panic, I could feel it. Not one of them cried out. And as I looked up at them, their droplets of blood trickling down on the curling stairs as they hung just above, neat and orderly, I could see why they didn’t cry out. Some had part of their face missing. Others had entire limbs missing. A few were in half. But all of them had their throats ripped out in a way that I recognized. I reached for my own throat. It had become whole where it had been a gaping shredded hole before.

My body had regenerated faster each time I had taken an injury. My throat healed while theirs had not. I recognized the shredded mess they all had in common because Sophea had done the exact same thing to me. It had taken her moments. And Sophea had strung them all up as though saving them for later.

Their blood continued, slowly, to trickle down those side staircases and stream down the steps I sat on. The blood flowed around me and pooled at the base of the stairs. The way that the marble had been carved, the steps leading to a large smooth surface and then surrounded by a few more steps farther away to lead into the rest of the house, it looked like a Roman bath filled with blood. One big blood bath.

“She will return to her resting place in a few days,” said Victoria, quietly, “My mother prefers the solitude,”

I didn’t look at Victoria. I looked up at the faces that looked down at me, no voice of their own, just watching all that had happened. Some eyes had closed, others expressed panic, but most expressed pain. I could understand that. I had been hung as leftovers before. It has a way of changing a person’s perception of the world.

I had learned that blood, even on skin, was hardest to remove after dry. I started to wonder if it had begun to stain me, having been coated in so much of it so many times. The harder I scrubbed, the harder it seemed to be to remove. My fingers ached as the loofah scratched at my skin, my desperate attempts to clean myself becoming frenzied. As the water streamed over my body so did my tears, blurring my eyes.

A hot shower had been Lydia’s suggestion before she left me and I had welcomed it at first. But as I spent more and more time alone with my thoughts as the steam rose up around me and fogged the bathroom mirror, I began to worry if I should be alone at all right now. Unable to see through my tears, warm on my face and salty as they slid down my cheeks between my parted lips as I sobbed silently, I scrubbed frantically. It wasn’t until fresh drops of blood began to swirl the drain that I blinked back the water and my tears.

Looking down at my arm where I had been scrubbing, I found that the blood was not coming off because I had scrubbed my skin right off. The red of my skin from the scrubbing paled in comparison to the droplets of blood that splashed near my toes. I stopped scrubbing, shocked at what I had done without realizing it with barely a dull ache on my arm, and watched my skin replenish as I stood there with the warm shower running over me. In that moment more than any other I could see the truth for my very own eyes, without the glare of pain and fear clouding my mind. I wasn’t human. I had never been human.

I dropped the loofah and dropped to my knees, placing my arms around myself and letting the water run over my bare back. I hung my head down, shielding my open mouth from the downpour of water as I let my tears blur my sight once again. I crouched on the floor of the shower and let my heart ache at the horrors of what I had witnessed. Images of the dead, their faces, strung up and being bled like cattle that had been slaughtered and seeing the blood rushing down the steps around me like a raging river tormented me. I couldn’t put it out of my mind.

No sooner had I closed my eyes than I was back in the moment. When I opened my eyes I saw blood everywhere even where it was not. I focused intently on my fingers, picking every last drop of dried blood out from under my nails, breaking them if I needed to in order to make them clean, new again. I stayed in that shower for hours before anyone came for me. And when Lydia finally knocked I wore a calm face just shy of a smile. My hair was free of blood, my nails had been cleaned of dead tissue, and my skin had been scrubbed until it was good as new. Because it was new. But no one could tell.

Lydia searched my face as I stood silently, unwavering as her eyes studied my face, and I could see the slightest concern as her brows pulled together for a brief moment. She opened her mouth to speak but stopped. I wasn’t the same. I couldn’t hide it and I couldn’t be expected to be the same. I had been schooled on the reality of monsters.

As soon as Sophea had been unleashed on the castle, on anything living or moving, I had learned what a real monster could look like with a smile. We had won the war and a small part of me was relieved, never having to consider the clash a leash might have with my daily outfit, but in my gut I couldn’t imagine that trading one monster for a worse one was a better situation.

“Sebastian is recovering,” said Lydia after a few moments of silence, going to my bedroom door and closing it.

“Tommy is helping him?” I asked, hope alive in my heart at knowing Sebastian was recovering and that Tommy had made it through the evening.

“No one has seen him around,” said Lydia slowly as she walked back over to where I stood next to my bed, “No one has found Tommy,” she clarified.

My heart dropped as my eyes did, wondering when Tommy’s body might be found among the bodies piled up throughout the castle, or heaven forbid, strung up over the grand staircase. He had been a dear friend. And he had been right, humans in a war of vampires didn’t fair well. I had yet to see any of the faces I normally saw outside of body bags being stacked in the tunnels leading to the dungeon. It had been crowded, almost impassible in the tunnels and catacombs.

The humans that had showed up in the past 12 hours had been
recruited
, it had been explained to me. The terror in their eyes told me the truth about how they had come to be mopping up rivers of blood. I tried not to dwell on it. I tried to focus on the moment I was in, standing in my room, facing Lydia with her look of concern that I wasn’t used to at all. Because if I thought too long on the blood that had soaked into every crevice of the castle, I might have to take another shower.

“Do you need anything?” asked Lydia, taking a step forward and putting a hand up but stopping mid-reach as I flinched slightly, pulling back from her touch, “Are you okay?” her voice became softer, maternal even.

“Sophea,” I said quietly, a hushed whisper with my eyes darting to the bedroom door that remained closed as though the mention of her name, even in a whisper, had the power to summon her with all her brutality worn on her sleeve.

Lydia followed my gaze to the door. I didn’t deny that anything was wrong. But I wasn’t jumping up and down for help either. I still hadn’t come to terms with the horrors playing over and over in my mind. I couldn’t very well begin chatting Lydia with our usual banter. Too much had happened to go back to that. The only person left that I could trust, that I wanted to run to, was Sebastian. And he wasn’t in any condition to see anyone with his back in shreds. I healed much quicker than him and for that I was sorry. I wished I could do more for him.

“I have only heard stories…” began Lydia in a whisper barely audible, her eyes flicking to the closed door for a moment as mine had, “ and I always thought they were just stories but after seeing what she did, what Sophea did…we would both be wise not to test her. Victoria insists that she’ll return to the tomb soon. Everything will go back to the way it all was,”

I couldn’t help but begin to cry, my heart shattering into a million pieces as the faces of humans and vampires alike flashed before my eyes, brutally mauled and tortured, left in bits and parts, and my face contorted with the pain. My hands shook as I reached for Lydia, not sure if I would be able to stand much longer as my body rocked with grief, my knees shaking too much to support my crumbling self.

“It will never,” I said, fighting to say each word as my lungs seized, shallow breaths choking me as tears flooded down my face, “never, ever, be the same,”

Lydia frowned deeply and stepped forward quickly to catch me. As soon as she did, I crumpled to the floor and she let me. Sitting me softly on the rug, she placed her arms around me. She brought her hand up to my hair and stroked it softly. She gently shushed me as if I were a child. And compared to the years I knew she had on me, I was a child.

“We’re not so different,” Lydia whispered, “We try our best to avoid pain and it’s exactly what we get. We dedicate our lives to love and happiness only to have it slip through our fingers at every turn. We’re not so different at all,”

I choked back the tears and tried to fight the crashing, wave after wave, of sadness that attacked my senses. Visions of blood dripped from the ceiling and rained down over Lydia and I. I knew it wasn’t real. I knew if I looked up I would see their faces again even though they were not above us. But I could feel their eyes on me, looking down at me in silent terror, wishing their screams could be heard.

I shook as violently as a leaf in a storm as Lydia continued to stroke my hair.

“It’s not the body that breaks down over time,” whispered Lydia, “It’s the mind that goes. Lucky are the ones that their mind outlasts their body. The worst kind of eternity is one of insanity,”

I looked at Lydia then, the profoundness of her words reaching through the sadness and smacking me across the face, shocking me to my senses. Perhaps we really were alike. I looked at her face, full of surprise at my sudden calm study of her eyes at such a close distance.

“You’ve known it?” I asked, “You’ve felt this sort of madness?”

I held my breath, waiting for Lydia to answer. I needed an answer. If Lydia had gone through this, if she had felt this, and had survived as strong as she had always appeared then so could I. With her help. I waited eagerly as she drew in a breath, becoming tense as we sat there. Answering would mean revealing something personal about herself and Lydia rarely did that. But I needed it. I needed to connect to humanity, to believe in my humanity even if I hadn’t ever really been human. And maybe she needed to connect too.

“I’ve touched madness,” said Lydia, looking away uncomfortably for a moment, “I have seen true madness. I don’t think anyone really knows madness and then comes back to tell of it,”

“I don’t feel pain anymore,” I whispered to Lydia, looking down at the new skin on my arms, the fingernails I had pulled up perfectly healed, without so much as a scratch or scar.

“That sounds like a blessing to me,” muttered Lydia, biting her lip as soon as the words left her mouth as I looked sharply at her.

“What if I’m losing my humanity,” I said, angry, “What am I then? Driven mad, without any sense of pain and unable to die, to find peace? What kind of existence can I hope for?”

“You’re on the brink of madness,” said Lydia, taking one of my hands, “If your mind had consumed you then you wouldn’t be talking like this. You would just be…reacting,”

“How do you know that?” I asked, pulling my hand from hers, “You’ve
touched
madness. How do you know what I’m feeling at all? How do you know this isn’t madness?”

“Because I’ve seen true madness,” said Lydia, standing up slowly, “And you’ve seen the effects of madness,”

Lydia stood over me where I still sat on the floor, unsure of what she meant.

“Before I left the court, one of the reasons Victoria hates me so much,” said Lydia, bitterness in her tone, “I found the Tomb of the King and Queen. I went down there. I met Sophea years ago, just as the madness had started to consume her. What you see now…there is nothing left of the great mother of all vampires. Nothing more than legends remain and now tales of terror,”

Lydia stretched a hand out to me, something she did more often than I realized until this moment as I sat on the floor looking at her hand. Lydia waited, hand outstretched as her words sank in. I felt a spark of hope flicker out of existence when Lydia said that. The humanity in me looking to find something in Lydia’s strength that I could mirror had found more similarity between myself and Sophea, the very reason my mind was breaking at what my reality had become. I looked into Lydia’s face. Her concern was becoming thin as her impatience began to show through and I took her hand, letting her pull me up to standing.

“I can’t be like Sophea,” I said, my heart plummeting into my stomach at the thought of becoming that which I had come to fear most in a matter of less than a day.

“And you won’t,” came a woman’s voice from the doorway, “Not while I’m around,”

Victoria stood in the doorway of my room. Neither Lydia nor I had heard the door open and we both jumped, clutching hands firmly at our conversation having been overheard.

“I…I’m terrified of her,” I stammered out, unsure if my honesty would upset Victoria, “I’m terrified of what she might do, what she’s done,”

“My mother…” Victoria began, pressing her lips in a thin line as she paused and came to stand next to me, a thoughtful expression on her face, “she comes from a time when war, fighting, survival was everything. Sophea comes from a time of true brutality and what my sister did, killing our father, is what broke my mother into madness,”

I nodded but couldn’t really see how Victoria was able to so calmly justify all that had happened. The damage that Sophea had done reached beyond your garden variety brutality. Sophea was downright sadistic. It had been so much more for her. It had been a game to her, one filled with pleasure at each scream.

“Is she really going to go back into the tomb?” asked Lydia, barely above a whisper.

Victoria looked at Lydia a moment and then at me. I was holding my breath again, my fears hanging on whatever words Queen Victoria might choose next.

“Yes,” Victoria finally said as I breathed out in relief, “It might be a few days but I know my mother. She prefers the solitude. She lost joy in the world a long, long time ago when my father died,”