City of the Fallen (16 page)

The second she stepped into his room, however, the air was different. He turned to look at her and his whole expression was darker than usual. Still, at the sight of her, his body relaxed, the ripples of his muscles easing down as she moved closer. He still looked massive and no doubt intimidating to anybody else, but she was beginning to understand the subtleties of his movements. To learn when the king had things weighing on his mind.

All of a sudden, she felt an unbearable urge to hold him and that set alarms off in both her mind and her body. It was a visceral reaction to his discomfort and one she could neither control nor deny. She wanted to comfort him, take the worry away. Comfort the monster. Comfort
her
monster, her mind corrected, and her heart went into a race.

He noticed right away, his eyes moving to her chest to trace the source of the sound. Then they immediately softened and his breath changed cadence to match the beating of her heart.

“Can you keep a secret, Belle?”

She froze, her body suddenly on edge. A secret.
Another secret
. For a second, she wanted to say no.
Don’t tell me your secrets, Marcus. I’m the enemy.
Then she remembered her brother and the people back at the house.

“Of course,” she replied, hoping he wouldn’t notice the slight wavering in her voice.

He hesitated for a fraction of a second. Just a slight flicker of apprehension while his eyes probed hers. Never had she been more glad she couldn’t be charmed. What kind of information would he have been able to get out of her if she’d been under his spell? Everything? Then he headed towards the door, his perfect form filling the room as he walked away from her.

“Follow me.”

And Belle had a fleeting thought: she was almost sure she’d follow him to the end of the world.

~*~

This time she stayed close to him as they walked down the tunnels. She still couldn’t see anything and twice she tripped and ended up crashing against his massive back. The tunnels had obviously not been constructed with humans in mind, as they were pitch black. Darkness down there not only looked thick, it also smelled thick. She had the distinct feeling that if she stretched her arms to the sides, she would be able to actually touch the shadows.

There was also a sort of murmuring quality to the tunnels. At first she’d thought it was her ears playing tricks on her, but after a couple of minutes, she realized the sounds were real, even though she couldn’t quite place them. It was like the tunnels were breathing all around her, whistling a tune of dense obscurity into her ears.

“Are we alone down here?”

Marcus continued walking in front of her and at first she thought maybe he was ignoring her question. The silence stretched out for seconds, as the whispering of the tunnels seemed to grow more intense.

“In a way,” he finally responded.

What the hell does that mean, in a way?
She sighed and then quickly turned around when she felt something moving in the distance. It disoriented her for a second and she lost track of which way was forward until he spoke again.

“What is it?” he asked.

She swallowed hard and the sound bounced off the walls and intensified before fading off, as if devoured by the darkness.

“I swear this place feels alive,” she finally said, moving closer to him. “Are you sure nobody is watching?”

She could almost hear his smile forming. “I didn’t say nobody’s watching. They’re just not watching from
right here
.”

“What does that even mean, not from right here? Are there peepholes in the walls?” And as if it made sense, she actually extended her hand and touched the walls, searching for tiny holes. The walls felt dry and softly crumbled under her fingers. She moved her hand away with a cry of surprise.

“Relax, Belle. There are doors along the way, like the one to the room you used last night.” He reached for her and grabbed her hand. “We’re almost there.”

The touch felt electric. So warm and
oh-so-right
. Screams started to rise from inside her, telling her to let go, to not enjoy his fingers interlacing with hers in a firm grip. But she closed her eyes for a second, trying to silence them. She could convince herself he was the enemy most of the time, but when they touched, the buzzing of electricity between them was impossible to ignore and it made his all-encompassing, powerful presence almost too real to handle.

It also made the darkness a lot more bearable.

~*~

Letting Belle into his secrets was becoming some sort of a routine. This time, at least, was to his benefit. Or at least he was hoping it would be.

Her hand wiggled softly in his and instinctively, he squeezed just a little harder. To him, the tunnels were peaceful. A cry away from the sounds of the night and the whispering of danger outside the walls. When he had them built, he’d specifically requested that they kept them as close as possible to their natural state—crumbling earth rather than perfectly smooth walls. It made the tunnels and the darkness feel welcoming—and he liked it.

Of course, he could also see in the dark, so maybe the tunnels didn’t feel as welcoming for mortals walking blindly through them.

Belle’s heart was thundering. It was a sound he spent hours listening to while she slept. Although vampires had a heartbeat, it was a very different kind. His heart beat softly, sleepily. The kind of sound you expected from somebody ancient and immune to disease or stress—which he certainly was. Belle’s heart rate was very much different. It had a mind of its own, spiking up and softening down depending on her mood and—much to his satisfaction—also depending on how close he was to her.

Right now, her heart rate had been jumping up every time it caught a creak or a shred of movement. But the second his hand touched hers, it went into a race. Her blood sped up and the echoing of the thumps against her chest became all the more clear. It was such an enticing sound, it instantly awoke his hunger. It took a near unbearable effort to push the animal down and keep walking. For a second, he was too distracted to even answer back when she asked a question. Something about the whispering of the tunnels around them.

The smell of her blood blended in with the wildness of the earth around them. It was an exquisite mix and he wished he could turn around and take her right there. Every hunter cell in his body was fighting to take over and he found himself struggling to push them down.

When he saw the blackness ahead slowly melting into grey, he was just glad the walk was almost over.

“There.” He pointed it out to her.

After a few more seconds, the corridors started to become lighter, as if a grey sunset was slowly moving in towards them. It took several more steps before they arrived to the small entry hall and stopped right in front of a metal door.

This was it. Once he opened the door and they stepped in, there was no turning back.
Too late to change your mind
,
Marcus
, he told himself, and pushed the door open.

~*~

Seeing the tunnels get lighter had prompted her to sigh in relief. Marcus seemed at ease in the tunnels, but to her, they were just frightening. Complete darkness was a scary place to be—you couldn’t anticipate what was coming at you and from where. And after years of being afraid of the dark, being devoured by it was probably one of the most terrifying things she could think of. Her mind kept playing tricks on her, screaming for her to be afraid of the monsters hiding in the dark. It was almost easy to forget that she was holding the hand of the biggest monster of all—and feeling safe because of the warm electric charge surging between them.

She wasn’t sure what to expect at the end of the tunnel, but it certainly wasn’t the bluish metal door that was waiting for them. Maybe because all the other doors seemed to be so secrete, so I’m-here-but-I’m not, that this one seemed out of place—and somehow more frightening than all the other ones she couldn’t see.

Marcus said nothing as he pushed the door open, and her whole body tensed up in expectation. She held her breath and got closer to him, using him as a shield.

The world on the other side of the door stopped as the king stepped in. The brightness of the room attacked her eyes without mercy. She blinked twice, then closed her eyes for a few seconds to fight the tears forming.
Breathe
, she told herself,
just breathe
. When she opened them again and was able to focus, she gasped.

She was looking at one of the most advanced laboratories she had ever seen outside of a hospital. The room from the night before was nothing compared to the giant space opening up before her.

Only after she had absorbed every little detail in the lab did she notice the vampires dressed in white coats and staring at her.

“My Lord, we weren’t expecting you here,” one of them said to the king, although his eyes were locked on Isabelle.

She was just as fascinated with the view in front of her as they seemed to be with her. Why did he have a medical setup under the compound? Obviously the room she’d used the other night had been just a tiny part of something much bigger. Something beyond her wildest expectations.

“Cyrus, this is Belle,” Marcus said, cocking his head slightly to the side, towards her. As if there was any doubt of who or what she was.

The vampire drifted his whole body slightly forward, and the skin on her arms quivered in response. The vampires here had a different air about them, one she didn’t quite like. The white coats didn’t help, either. She felt like an intruder snooping into a secret testing facility.

She looked around, searching for test tubes and blood-testing machinery. Lancets, tourniquets, and test stripes were spread around the room, sitting on tables and neatly organized on the shelves. Machines hummed in the background: a lab centrifuge,
electrosurgery
generators, cryosurgical systems. All you needed if you were playing around with blood.

Her heart hammered faster in her chest. Was that what they were doing?

“Belle?”

Was he testing her? Trying to see how much she could figure out before he actually explained what the hell was going on?

Her mind was spinning when she turned around to look at him. “What kind of blood are you testing?”

Marcus’ eyes flickered for a quick second. They got slightly darker, then back to light again. “Fake blood,” he said.

She shook her head slightly, as if that could help make her mind clearer. “What do you mean, fake blood? You mean a blood substitute?”

The vampire in the white coat searched for the answer in the king’s eyes. When Marcus nodded, he shook his head. “No, we’re working on artificial blood.”

It took a second for the information to click, but when it did, her heart skipped a beat. “Artificial blood?” Her mind was buzzing with questions and trying to pick which one to ask first was giving her a headache. “As in, to completely replace human blood?”

“That’s right,” the vampire confirmed.
 

It didn’t make any sense. The compound was full of people and she didn’t expect any of the vampires up there to be truly hungry. Unless he had something bigger in mind.