Blood Day (31 page)

Sia looked at her, but Mathilde was watching Conrad work the room, a tall, silver-haired woman following him taking notes when he whispered to her. Sia could feel the stakes tucked painfully into her corset. With one wrong move they might snap her ribs. But she felt they might be necessary on this night. A monstrous window, round and as tall and wide as the room itself, opened up to the courtyard and she could see the snow coming down so hard that it was like being behind a waterfall of snow. She could see no more than a few inches outside.
 

Mathilde led her into the ballroom just as the waltz ended and for a moment the silence was so thick that Sia couldn’t breathe. The dancers parted to make a path for Sia and Mathilde. Sia could see that they were all Revs. She was alone in a room full of vampires. All eyes were on her.

After a long moment that seemed to last a lifetime, the silence was broken. Conrad stepped forward, and began to clap. Everyone in the room soon followed until Sia was surrounded by thunderous applause. Mathilde clapped too, and Sia could feel her eyes behind the veil watching her closely.
 

Sia made herself smile, looking around her at all the masked faces. All the Revs in their elegant clothes, trying so hard to human. Trying so hard to be just like them. A waiter put a glass of champagne in her hand and she drained the glass. It was replaced with another as cold, clammy hands reached out to touch her or pat her bare back. She drained the second glass.

“Slow down, Sia,” whispered Mathilde. “You must have your wits about you.”

“Why?” said Sia. “I thought this was a party.”

“Remember where you are,” said Mathilde. “You should not ever forget.”

“You think I would forget?” said Sia, smiling graciously as long fingers caressed her. She fought the urge to vomit.
 

“You act the lamb very well,” whispered Mathilde. “But we both know that you are the wolf. And my brother,
ma belle
?” Sia looked over at Conrad staring at her across the ocean of hands reaching out to touch her. “My brother is the tiger, my love. He could rip us all apart.”

“He doesn’t seem so fierce,” said Sia.

Mathilde was quiet for a long time before she spoke again. “I’m afraid you are mistaken, my sweet.”
 

“My friends, enough!” said Conrad in a jovial voice. “Let the poor woman breathe, all of you. I know you want to show your affection. Perhaps you should show it by dancing with her.” He raised a glass to Sia, but did not drink. He smiled with his gash of a mouth, his teeth seeming whiter and sharper than the other Revs. Sia bowed her head deeply to him, watching him through her cream silk plague doctor mask.
 

And then a pair of fish-belly hands took hers and the music started and she was spinning. Twirling with a pair of gaunt, hungry eyes watching her closely. Sia tried not to look at the teeth, the dribble of saliva running down the Rev’s chin. He panted and his breath was sickly when he told Sia how lovely she looked.

Another pair of hands, another dance. She danced until her feet were sore and her heels had matching blisters. The gas lamps flickered as she wiped a trickle of sweat from her forehead with a silk gloved hand and tried to back away from the dance floor, toward the refreshments. The Revs kept dancing and Sia drank another glass of champagne. Mathilde joined her, and Sia saw that she had exchanged her usual black lace veil for violet. Mathilde was acting even more oddly than usual. Sia looked around the room.

“Why are you being so twitchy? What’s about to happen?” said Sia.
 

“Nothing,” Mathilde said too quickly. “Nothing to worry about.”

“You’re lying.”

“You would know all about that,” said Mathilde.
 

Sia watched as several Rev males filed through a door Sia hadn’t noticed before. It was covered in red fabric like the rest of the room, but Sia saw a latch on the wall, near the corner. She looked up to see another.

“That’s not a wall,” said Sia. “It’s a partition.”

“Sia…” Mathilde said, her voice cracking.

“What’s back there?” said Sia. “Why is there a false wall?”

“Sia, they know about you,” Mathilde said, urgency in her voice.

“What?”

“They know about you and Joshua Flynn,” said Mathilde, her fingers around Sia’s arm like a vice. “You have to go,” said Mathilde. “You have to run. This isn’t a party.”

“Then what is it?” said Sia. She looked around at the eyes staring at her.

“It’s a birth,” said Mathilde. “And a death.” Sia could hear the emotion in her voice. Something she’d never heard before. Grief? Guilt?
 

“What are you talking about?” said Sia. She saw more Revs go through the door set in the partition. They glanced at her before closing the door.

“You are being reborn on this night, Sia,” said Mathilde. “I am forbidden to tell you. But I didn’t know. I didn’t know I would fall in love with you. If you can call him to you, Sia, do it now. Do it before it happens. There’s no time. I thought I could follow orders, but you…” Mathilde shook her head. “I cannot hurt you, Sia.”

Sia stared at her. Her stomach was turning over and she had to close her eyes so as not to gag on her own bile.

“If I’m being reborn,” said Sia slowly, “then who is dying?”

Mathilde squeezed her hand, letting go of her arm.

“I told you I would never leave you, my love,” she whispered. “I meant it.”

Sia shook her head, confused. The dancers were a blur, the music suddenly like raw noise to her. Her head pounded with the beating of her heart, her stomach churning as her pulse climbed. Sia backed away from Mathilde, who let her fingers fall away from Sia’s.
 

“Joshua,” Sia murmured. Remembering her words. Remembering what she told him.

If you come after me, Joshua, I’m going to take a stake and plunge it into your heart.

And his in return:

For you, I would die a thousand times, Sia. If they hurt you, I will tear them all apart.

If they hurt me,
she’d said,
I’ll do it myself.

Why did she agree to attend the party? She thought she knew where to find Ana. She had forbidden Joshua to help her, and yet, he had tried to tell her. He had stood by the trees, the monuments of dead Revs in the courtyard. A forest that grew thicker and thicker as time ran out. Sia put a hand over her mouth. Why had there been so many Revs? Why had he been able to kill so many?

“My dear, you’re positively shaking,” said a friendly voice behind her. She turned to see Ambrose Conrad, his sleek mask wide against his gaunt face. Sia could see up close that it was made up of hundreds of shining black feathers. The old woman who followed him watched her closely. Conrad took Sia’s hand.

“May I have this dance, Ms. Aoki?” he said.
 

Sia nodded dumbly, looking around to find Mathilde, but she wasn’t there.
 

Conrad took her hands and they began to spin. While the other dancers had an odd clumsiness to their steps, like dogs standing on their hind legs, Conrad moved smoothly and easily through the dance, his movements liquid and perfect.

“You dance well, Sia,” he said into her ear. Up close she could see that he wasn’t as pale as he appeared. She could see something on his skin, a telltale line of makeup along his jaw. He had painted his skin to look pale, but Sia could see that the skin on his neck was flushed and pink.

“You’re not like them,” Sia said.

He laughed, deep in his throat. “You are a very perceptive young woman,” said Conrad. “In fact, I think you will find that your Joshua and I are quite alike.”

“Then why?” she demanded. “Why do you not keep the old ways, like Joshua?”

“Because, Sia,” he said, “if I were to live in the shadows, I would be just one vampire among many. But look how weak they are. All of them. I am the most powerful being in the world. Can you see it? I know you of all people should understand that. You of all people know what it is to be strong among the weak. Even if only among humans.”

“I’m not strong,” said Sia.

“Ah, but you are. You would not let my sister see into your head. You came here, alone, vulnerable. You convinced everyone around you that you were pitiful and weak. ”

“But not you,” said Sia.

“No,” said Conrad. “And not my sister either. She loved you for it, you know. Her proclivities always did tend toward the unnatural. Do you know what she was doing, all those times you saw her in the forest?”

“Visiting the children, I assume,” said Sia, watching him. Conrad smiled.

“So you’ve figured it out. Bravo. But if you knew what she really wanted to do to those children... Even I do not feed on children. It is forbidden. She is not who you think she is.”

Sia’s heart beat in her throat.

“You didn’t know?” he said. “Such a mysterious woman, my sister. Do you know what happened to her face?”

“She said it was Joshua.”

“Oh yes, it was,” he said. “It was indeed. You see, it is very sternly frowned upon to take children, even for my kind. Even back when we lived in the shadows. A Revenant could stake another Revenant for the act. And he caught her.”

“With a child,” said Sia.

“Ripped the poor thing’s throat out,” said Conrad, clucking his tongue. “Such a sad state she was in. When I found her, he had ripped out her fangs before driving a stake through her chest. But he was just a little bit off. A mistake I’m sure he regrets. I was able to save my sister, but I had to cut away the Hawthorne that was growing inside her. It was a very ugly affair. She never forgave him.”

Sia felt that she was about to be genuinely sick.

“Why am I here?” said Sia. “What do you really want from me?”

“Why, to kill Joshua Flynn,” he said. “We have always been truthful about that.”

“Why do you think I would do that?” she said. “Now that you know who I am, now that you know that I love him, what would make me want to kill him?”

“Because, Sia,” whispered Conrad, his breath hot in her ear. “We have your daughter.”

He released her then and for a moment, she felt lost. She was dizzy and the room blurred, her body felt light without Conrad gripping it tight, twirling in a dance.

“Who would like to hear Sia play?” Conrad shouted in a loud, good-natured voice. The crowd cheered and she was ushered to the stage, a violin and bow thrust into her hands. She stared at the objects, feeling so much like the girl who had come into the hospital. The recovering addict Sia. The lost Sia. The eager to please Sia. What had happened to the woman of strength and substance? The one who had tasted her dead mother’s blood, who had taken a vampire to her bed, who had reduced Evelyn Hauser to a shell of a woman?

Conrad had Ana. Sia stared at all the expectant Rev faces. Mathilde wasn’t among them. Her eyes fell on Conrad’s face, his smiling eyes. He nodded at her and she knew she would have to obey. She picked up the violin and began to play.

Twenty-Nine

Mike sat on the bed and watched the snow. It swirled outside the window as though the very storm had a life of its own. He hadn’t heard from the guard in a long while, except the occasional snore. Mike was wide awake, though, the pain making him alert, hyper-aware. He heard the squeal of hinges, loud as a scream in the dead of night. The sloppy sound of very wet shoes walking down the hall.

Splat. Splat. Splat.

Mike rose from the bed, flinching from the pain any movement sent up his arm. His hand throbbed and he wondered if it was infected. It felt heavy, as though he had gained appendages rather than lost them.
 

The wet shoes grew louder and stopped nearby.

“Mikey?” came a whispered voice.

“Dez?” said Mike. “Is that you?”

Dez Paine’s face in the window at his door sent a wave of dread crashing over him. Dez grinned.

“Why are you still here?” said Mike. “You were supposed to run. You were supposed to survive.”

“We’re both going to survive,” said Dez.
 

“Get out of here, Dez,” said Mike. “Don’t do this. I can’t run, not like this.” He held up his hand and the smile slid off Dez’s face.

“What did they do to you, Mikey?” he said.

“Cut off my fingers off. And they’ll do worse to you. Now get the hell out of here and save yourself. I’m old, a bitter old man. Just forget about me, kid.”

“Shut up,” said Dez. “I’m going to get you out.”

“And then what?” said Mike. “Joshua Flynn isn’t going to save us, Dez. We can’t outrun the Revs, not for more than a few days. There’s nowhere to run.”

“You haven’t seen what the city’s like,” said Dez. “There’s a revolution, Mike. Because of you. Because of us. We started something, mate. Something that’s going to fix everything.”

“Dez,” said Mike. “I’m not going with you.”

Dez stared at him, a look of confusion on his face.
 

“I found you, Mike. You can’t just decide to lay down and die. You don’t get to choose. Remember? Survival isn’t all there is.”

“I’m not looking to survive, kid,” said Mike. He held up his bandaged hand. “I’m done. I’ll never type again. I’ll never hold a pen. I'm just a broken old man.
 

“You’re my friend and I’m going to help you.” said Dez.
 

“I’m no friend to you, Dez,” said Mike, fighting back the thickness in his throat. “Get out of here, Dez. Please.”

“Bollocks, Mikey.”

Mike closed his eyes and rested his forehead against the bars as he heard Dez slop down to the end of the hall. The longer the kid was here, the more likely he would get caught. Mike had to make him go. It was all over for him, he was old, he might even die from sepsis by morning. But Dez was young, maybe young enough to watch all this blow over. Maybe by the time Dez’s kids were grown, the world would be back to normal. A real life.

“Mikey, what the hell is this place? It smells like rotten meat.”

“I’m pretty sure people they put in these cells aren’t meant to live long, happy lives,” Mike said. He stood up and watched Dez jingle some keys on a large chain. “Where’s the guard?”