The Coldest Girl in Coldtown (37 page)

Leaning against the wall, a shiver rolled through her. Ice crystallizing inside her.

Was Valentina still here? She remembered waking to Valentina’s voice, remembered cold concrete beneath her and steel against her fingertips. A basement, she’d thought. But was that a real memory?

Tana kept moving, stumbling through rooms. There were parlors and toilets, a kitchen with gleaming appliances and a butler’s pantry full of old-fashioned weapons. Then she found an alcove with a door that led to a staircase spiraling downward.

The stone steps were cold on her bare feet. She felt that chill rising up through her legs to freeze her belly, to rime her throat with a frost that would never melt.

She found herself in a vast basement. Wooden racks held bottle after bottle of wine on one wall. On the other were twelve cells. They were large and they smelled of sweat and heat and blood. In them were boys and girls, all of them lovely and none older than twenty.

Most were sleeping on the stone floor, wrapped in blankets, their heads pillowed on rolled-up clothes or backpacks. Some, isolated from the others, wore muzzles. A few had saline drips like the one hanging from a nail in Elisabet’s room, two flights of stairs up. Three girls were awake, one weeping quietly near a makeshift toilet, while another two played dice.

Tana thought of the Cold girls and boys that had been chained to the walls the night before. At first, when she’d seen the kids in the cages, she’d thought they were a fresh batch and the others were dead. But now, she realized Lucien must keep them here for weeks, months, however long he could. Any blood supply was too precious to waste. The infected must be the muzzled ones, drugged into sleeping away each day in restless, red-soaked dreams.

It took a moment to realize that one of the sleeping girls was Valentina.

Tana walked closer. She could almost see the warmth radiating off all of them, shimmering above them the way heat bends the light above a hot stretch of road. The two girls playing dice seemed to have come from the party and still wore their party frocks, but their hair was dull and their eyes were sunken. Both had shunts in their arms, the skin around them dark with bruising. One had a sore nearby, yellow at the center with an outer circle of green and black scabbing. To Tana in that moment, though, they all seemed heart-stoppingly beautiful. The scent of their blood welled up from underneath their skin, making her veins sing with need.

The weeping girl looked up and saw Tana. Her eyes went wide, and she sniffled noisily, wiping her nose on her sleeve. Then she stood and came to the edge of the bars. Up close, Tana could see her long black hair and dark skin. “How did you get away from him?” the girl asked. “He’s got cameras everywhere.”

Tana crossed the room without really deciding to, drawn to the girl. She told herself that she only wanted to free Valentina. She told herself that she would never hurt any of them, while her mind supplied her with images of biting, ripping, rending.

“I was here?” she asked, a little dazed.

The girl nodded, wiping her wet cheeks. “You were so pale, and there was so much blood on your dress that we thought you were done for. Then one of the vampires came for you, and we were
sure
you were done for.”

Tana wondered which one of them it had been. Had Gavriel been down here? “Did something happen? You’re crying.”

“I’m
scared
,” the girl snapped. “Most of them want to be here, but not me. He recruits kids off the street, offers them food and a place to sleep, says they can earn eternal life. My friend Violet went with him a month ago, and I haven’t seen her since. I came to the party to see if there was something on his recordings about what happened to her, but then they caught me in the recording room.”

Which made it seem as if Lucien didn’t usually grab people from his parties. As if he had taken Valentina for a reason—because she’d come in with Tana, who’d murdered a vampire? Because she’d been somewhere she wasn’t supposed to be, like the girl? Tana looked up, into the eye of the lens. Then she turned her back to it, leaning toward the bars.

“Is there a key?” she mouthed. “How can I get you both out?”

The dark-haired girl came closer. One of her cheeks was smudged with dirt. She waved Tana in, whispering so she couldn’t be heard on the recording. “There’s two keys,” she said, her breath warm on Tana’s icy cheek. “One that fits in the lock on the cage and another one that unlocks the hinges so the door swings. But you’re not going to find them in time.”

It would be such a little thing to grab the girl’s wrist and pull it through the bars of her cage. To sink her dull teeth into yielding
flesh. Tana’s fingers gripped the chilled metal, winding around it as if it were what she desired.

“Right,” Tana said, forcing herself to focus. Two locks. Two keys. Eight people locked in a cage. Eighty-eight days of hunger, all of them worse than this. “I’ll be back. I’ll find some way to get you out. I promise. Tell Valentina that I promise.”

At the sound of her name, Valentina stirred, turning in sleep. Tana wasn’t sure what she’d think if she woke, if she’d be angry to find Tana on one side of the cage and herself on the other.

“I don’t know who has them,” the dark-haired girl whispered. “Other than Elisabet. She comes down here sometimes and just looks at us. It’s creepy.”

Tana made herself back away from the cage and the girl, hoping that her expression wasn’t too like Elisabet’s. Creepy. Hungry.

“I hate to say this,” the dark-haired girl told her softly. “But you should get out of her while you can.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Tana said, hoping that would be answer enough.

She thought about going up to Elisabet’s room and searching it for the two keys, but maybe she didn’t need them. Maybe there were bolt cutters. Or maybe there was an ax sharp and sure enough to cut right through the lock. She walked around the basement, finding a door she couldn’t open and then another that led to a closet. Inside were an assortment of moth-eaten blankets, a broken chair, and a few tools. She bent down to take a closer look when someone grabbed her by the arm. She had time to lunge for the handle of a long screwdriver before she was hauled to her feet.

A vampire stood in front of her, his red eyes dim in the gloom. He had on a tuxedo shirt, although the jacket was missing and the bow tie hung loose around his neck, just wrinkled cloth. But even though he was dead, she could smell the blood inside him, magical and strange.

She thought of Midnight, out on the dark lawn.
Tana, is that you?

“How did you get down here?” His nose wrinkled, and he took another look at her, at her neck. “You’re
infected
—you’re not supposed to—”

Tana didn’t wait for him to finish, and she didn’t try to answer. She slammed the screwdriver deep into his chest with all the force she could muster, hoping against hope that she’d be lucky enough to strike his heart. The ferocity of her attack drove him back against the wall with surprise. She ripped free the screwdriver, feeling it drag against the bones of his ribs, and then stabbed him with it again.

This time she stabbed him straight through the throat. He made a choked noise. His hands scrabbled to pull her to him, jaw working to bite the air, the light already going out of his eyes. She had him. She brought down the screwdriver like it was a dagger, over and over, until he stopped moving, until his head was at an odd angle, hanging from flesh, the bones of his throat shattered.

Blood bubbled up, the smell of it entrancing her, even through her panic. She was already operating on instinct, so she barely thought before she brought her head down. Bending over him as if to pray, she knelt and lapped at the pool of red collecting in what was left of the hollow of his throat. Tiny hairs tickled her nose as she bit down. His blood was chill and thick, sliding down her throat like
honey, the taste sparking on her tongue as though she was gulping light.

Her skin felt as if it had caught fire. She’d turned into lit paper, already blistering and about to blaze up into black smoke and ash.

His blood was shady afternoons and metal filings and tears running-thrumming through the fat roots of veins to drip syrup slow, spurting across mouth, teeth, chin.

She licked his skin, bit him, ripped with her blunt teeth, and licked again.

Time passed as if in a dream, moments blurring together. When she came back to herself, the first sound she heard was a gasp from behind her. She turned toward the cage. The people within—Valentina, the dark-haired girl, and most of the others—were huddled together on the far side. Valentina took a half step toward her and then shrank back again, her courage failing.

Tana reached up a sticky hand to touch her face. It was coated with blood, making a half mask.

She must look awful. An animal-girl.

But then Valentina did come forward, walking to the bars, widening her eyes and jerking her chin. It was a subtle but clear signal.
Look over there
, it said.

Tana turned toward the shadows and saw the shine of eyes. She stumbled back, reaching again for the slippery handle of the screwdriver, before she saw it was Gavriel. He was sitting on the floor, legs crossed. She had no idea how long he’d been sitting there, but at her astonished look he raised both eyebrows. An amused smile pulled at his lips.

“I’m a very bad host, forcing you to throw together supper for yourself,” he said, finally. He stood and stuck out a hand, as if to help her to her feet—as if she was some fancy lady who’d fallen from a coach into a mud puddle.

One of her hands reached for the guard’s keys, the other reached up for Gavriel, letting him pull her to her feet.

Her fingers were wet with blood, but he didn’t seem to notice.

She almost laughed, but she couldn’t quite. She didn’t feel enough like herself to trust that she wouldn’t start sobbing instead.

“Were you looking for me?” she asked, to fill the silence.

“I was watching the screens in one of Lucien’s video rooms. So many exits and entrances and a citadel in need of storming. And then you.” She couldn’t put her finger on what was different in his voice, but for the first time she thought that he was being deliberately obscure. His face was placid, though, showing nothing.

“
Tana
,” Valentina whispered, her fingers reaching out through the bars to point. “He’s—”

Looking up, Tana saw Lucien Moreau coming down the stairs. He was dressed all in cream, his jacket the color of ivory. Silver buttons ran over the front and down the cuffs. His shoes came to sharp points. He looked ageless, ancient and youthful in the same moment. His skin was pale, but his mouth was almost a vulgar red. He was beautiful the way the devil might have been, just before he fell.

She was sure he’d looked through one of his cameras as Gavriel had, that he’d overheard what she’d whispered to the girl in the basement and seen her kill yet another vampire. Her heart pounded.

“What have you done?” he demanded, sweeping his arm toward
the body. He wasn’t looking at Tana, though, but rather at Gavriel. His voice was scolding in the manner of someone who discovered their dog chewing up the carpet. “What exactly happened here?”

“Oh, hello,” said Gavriel. “Don’t be angry. So she got hungry and killed someone? The city is full of humans desperate to be turned. Just choose another.”

Tana was horrified by how callous he sounded, even in her defense.

Lucien shook his head. “Don’t be ridiculous. She didn’t kill him. You did.”

A wide grin stretched across Gavriel’s face, making his fangs gleam. “You’re right. I killed him and then I tried to pin it on her, because I thought it would be funny. And it was funny, wasn’t it?”

“Cages and cages full of humans and you kill a vampire,” Lucien said, clearly exasperated. “I guess that’s what you’re used to, but it seems cruel to feed the girl cold blood.” He turned toward Tana. “Come with me, my dear. First, let’s get you cleaned up, and then I think we should talk.”

He looked back at Gavriel. “You don’t mind, do you?”

Gavriel was no longer smiling. “If the enemy of my enemy is my friend, then surely you should be friend to my friend.”

Which didn’t make sense. Not even the odd sense that he usually made, where the words came together like a riddle or a puzzle. Tana frowned. No, this was off, as though he was playacting some exaggerated version of himself.

“He wasn’t always like that,” Lucien rolled his eyes and extended his arm to her. It was a courtly gesture, as though she was used to
Gavriel making it, and it reminded her that they’d been friends once and maybe, despite everything Lucien had done, they’d be friends again. She thought of Elisabet and of Lance’s party and how all those deaths were Lucien’s doing. She put her hand on his arm, smearing sticky, half-dried blood on his shirtsleeve with great satisfaction.

He curled his lip as they went up the stairs together.

“You’re awake early,” Tana said, pointing up at the glass ceiling of the ballroom. The blue sky was turned ashen by the tinted windows, but the glow of the sun was bright enough to make her flinch. She wondered how Lucien stood it, when she longed to cover her eyes. She wondered if the Colder she got, the worse her aversion to sunlight would become.

“I slept restlessly,” he said, surprisingly confessional. “All my dreams were of Elisabet.”

Then he waved over a vampire girl who seemed to be waiting for them by the large wooden staircase to the second floor. She had mahogany brown hair and black leather pants with a deconstructed suit jacket, sections of it sewn inside out with big red stitches. A leather jabot was tied at her throat, and her boots had knives where heels should have been. On her finger was a silver ring with a tooth set in it. As the woman got closer, she wiped the edges of her mouth, bringing up her hand, and Tana saw the tooth was a human molar.

“Marisol,” he said, and the woman nodded slightly in acknowledgment. “Get the girl cleaned up. Then I want you to bring her to me in my sitting room. She can wear anything of
hers
, just make her less ghoulish.”