City of the Fallen (6 page)

“Yeah. I’m Isabelle.” She extended her hand and the woman shook it.

“Vicki.”

“Where is everybody?”

The woman shrugged. “Oh, here and there.”

Isabelle ran her hand through her hair—her hair that felt soft and smelled better than it had in years.

“I guess I was expecting something different. Fear, maybe. But you seem—”

“Content?” Vicki smiled. “I guess I am. You’ll find some people here who are scared all the time, but most of us are just glad to not have to run anymore.”

“What about them?”

The woman’s eyes moved towards her neck. Looking for bite marks.

“I guess you haven’t been assigned to anybody yet? Most vampires here are what you would call… civilized. They’re not like the ones out on the roads.”

A mix of fear and disgust churned Isabelle’s stomach. All this time, she had expected to find allies inside the compound. People ready to back her up when the time came. She hadn’t considered the possibility that many would be content with their stay there. They had food, they had shelter, they didn’t have to live in fear. She guessed that for some, being a slave wasn’t so bad if it meant being out of hiding.
  

“You haven’t tried to fight back?” she finally asked, even though she knew the answer.

Vicki looked at her like she was crazy. “Fight back? With what? And why? Nobody forced me to come here.”

Isabelle’s eyes flew towards the massive walls and the gate connecting to what she suspected was another courtyard. “So the gates are unlocked?”

“No. But they’ll unlock them for you if you want to leave.”

Isabelle stood still for a second, trying to understand what the woman was saying.

“At night? You can only leave at night?”

The woman’s smile disappeared. “I don’t think you understand. Nobody here wants to leave. The monsters out there are the real monsters.”

~*~

It wasn’t until she got to the kitchen area—after crossing a labyrinth of corridors and smaller courtyards—that she started to realize what the woman had meant. There was food everywhere. Cupboards of everything from cereal to dry fruits to staples ready to be used for cooking. Even more impressive was the fridge, holding not only icy water, but also meats and fruits. She had a million questions as to how those things had gotten there, though she guessed the vampires had their own scavenging parties in order to find food and keep the humans alive. And because they didn’t have to worry about being hunted while on the road, they could stay out for days, reaching farther destinations and discovering better treasures.

She tried all the drawers and couldn’t find a single knife. Forks and spoons were everywhere, but it wasn’t like you could do much damage with either of those. She finally grabbed a couple of fruits and sat down at the kitchen table, trying to figure out what to do next.

Vicki had said there were at least a hundred humans in the compound. Isabelle expected at least some of them to be unhappy about their arrangement—or at least she hoped so. Still, if it came to a fight, she wondered whether the people there would side with her—or with those they thought had the better chance of winning.

The monsters out there are the real monsters
, the woman had said. Was she trying to say that the monsters inside were less than terrible?

Isabelle’s mind flew back to the king, warm and alive against her body. To the world of sensations a simple kiss had awakened. She could feel a ripple separating her body from her mind—one pulling towards him, wanting more, the other reminding her he was the reason humanity was almost gone. The line separating the two was so distinct, so clear, yet she was having trouble staying on the right side of it.

She had been expecting him to come into her bedroom the night before. To get into her bed without a single word, like an animal taking over the very thing he had power over. She had expected pain, blood and violence. But he never came—and part of her had been disappointed. The realization that she wanted him was eerie and more than a little troubling. More so because she knew he hadn’t been able to charm her, which meant that everything she had felt was just hers. No mind tricks, no illusions—just raw sensation spreading through her body like a powerful wave.

It scared her.

The tap of steps behind her caught her by surprise and made her jump.

“Sorry, didn’t mean to scare you,” Vicki said. “You’re still a little jumpy.”

Isabelle nodded. “Living in hiding would do that to you. Where is everybody?”

Vicki grabbed a glass of cold water and sat next to her.

“Sleeping, mostly. After you’ve been here for a while, you start living on their schedule. It just makes more sense.”

Nothing here made sense to her, but she didn’t want to argue. “Why aren’t you?”

“I like the silence of the daytime, so I try to stay awake when I can. Are you waiting to be assigned to somebody?”

Ripples of sensations looped through her body, reaching down to her stomach. “I’m pretty sure I’ve been assigned already.”

Vicki frowned. “They usually bite you on the neck the first time.”

Usually?
She suddenly felt nauseous and pushed the half-eaten apple away from her.

“How is it, when they’re…?”

“Inside you? You’re half asleep by the time they do that. Or maybe asleep is not the right term. You’re just… not really there. The spell or whatever it is they do to you, it puts you in sort of a trance. Makes you mellow and soft. So your body is going through the motions but your mind is not really there.”

Isabelle stirred in the chair.

“Why? I mean, couldn’t they do it without charming you?”

Vicki raised her left arm and pointed to a large bruise.

“Things get… rough sometimes. This is the only way we’re not completely panicking all the time.”

And Isabelle decided she didn’t want to know any more details.

~*~

She spent the next three hours exploring every corner of the complex. Most buildings contained either bedrooms or random rooms that didn’t seem to serve any specific purpose. Some rooms were oddly shaped, as if they were originally meant to have a door or window somewhere—but somebody had decided at the very last minute not to put it there. She guessed the layout would get less confusing after a few days, but it still seemed like an odd design choice.

A lot of the corridors led nowhere and so did many rooms. You would step into a space expecting to reach the room behind it, but there would be no way to move between the two rooms—except to walk outside and around the building to reach another door. It seemed like a very odd architectural choice. The corridors were even stranger. You would exit the last door on the wall and see the corridor continue for twenty feet or more until it reached a dead end. There were no other doors, exits or even objects in the remaining corridor space. Just empty space leading nowhere.

Maybe it was meant to be a metaphor for the humans in there: here’s your freedom, you’re going nowhere anyway.

By late afternoon, she had decided to go back to the building where her bedroom was. It wasn’t only the largest of all the buildings—it was also the only one that had a number of locked doors. In fact, hers was the only room she could access in the entire section of the building. From outside, it seemed like a massive construction. At least two floors and several rooms deep. Her bedroom opened up to the courtyard but so did other rooms—except that all of them were inaccessible. The only other door in her bedroom was also locked. She’d thought that maybe it led to his bedroom, but it could also be a way into the rest of the building. Either way, she couldn’t get through.

She was missing something. She had to be.

As the sun went down, she witnessed the compound rise again. Lights sprang to life here and there, revealing eyes shining from dark corners. Whispers spread through the corridors and the sounds intensified. The human sounds. She could spot the vampires moving around, their eyes glowing in the night, but she never heard them. They moved quietly, graciously, as if the world around them didn’t exist. Or as if they could move without disturbing the air around them.

She talked to a few more people, but decided not to ask any important questions. Too many eyes spying from the darkness, too many questions as to where everybody’s loyalty lay.

The compound was a different world at night, but something still remained true: she wasn’t ready to trust anybody, human or not.

Marcus cursed as he opened the window into the night. He’d been restless all day, unable to sleep. Isabelle had been on his thoughts, flashes of her heartbeat and her lips looping in his mind.

It had been a long time since a woman had kept him awake. Whatever made Isabelle immune to his charming also made her irresistible. His hunger spread, ached inside him. A hunger that was more than just physical. He wanted to possess her, own her. He wondered if that was what Patrick felt when he attacked his victims without charming them. The feeling of victory as you took over and completely owned somebody.

Except that Marcus didn’t want to hurt Isabelle. He wanted to claim her as his, to keep her close.

It was a new and surprising discovery. Humans usually bored him. They were too attached to petty feelings, too scared all the time. When the invasion began, he had expected resistance. Not only from the government and the military—which he’d gotten—but from everyday people as well. Humans who were ready to fight and die to protect their freedom. But except for small pockets of resistance here and there, his army had found little fight in humans. And the lack of a fight had made it easier for vampires like Patrick to go on a killing rampage.

While part of him had been relieved about how quickly they’d been able to take over, there had been a small spark of disappointment in him too. He’d felt robbed. After centuries of seeing the best and the worst of humans, he wanted a fight. He wanted vindication for the years of hunting and persecution. Instead, he’d gotten weakness. Although the military had fought hard, they were unprepared and outnumbered. In the end, surprise had won over brute force. Short of bombing every city, the military had no other weapon against vampires. So he made sure they were disposed of quickly, before they could reassemble their troops somewhere else and try again.

He wondered if Isabelle would have the fire to fight back. She was at the compound, so part of her had given up—or at least appeared to.

But she had also braved the roads on her own to make it there. She had probably even braved the night.

Maybe before he took her to bed, he needed to ask her some questions.

~*~

When Miles first showed up to get her, she had a million questions. It didn’t take long to see he wasn’t going to answer any of them. Part of her wanted to talk about anything, even the weather—just to keep her mind away from the king and what might be waiting for her in his room.