Cursed: Brides of the Kindred 13 (46 page)

She was just disappearing into the black doorway when Stavros finally got there. He had dreamed of her slipping out of bed and walking the hallways of the resort alone that night. Had seen her go through the invisible barrier that guarded the Circle of Oneness and watched as she walked around and around the vast golden cylinder at the center.

When he watched Charlotte being confronted by the Joined Ones, he had the uneasy feeling one gets when a perfectly pleasant dream turns suddenly turns dark. And by the time they were marching her through the maze of blue corridors, he knew that this vision was more than just a dream or a nightmare—it was real and really happening. Charlotte was in danger and he had to get to her.

Trying to wake up was like swimming upward through thick, viscous syrup. His sleeping self seemed paralyzed by the power of the dream and for the longest time he couldn’t move though he was trying with all his might.

Charlotte needs me…must go to her. She
needs
me! I must not fail her again!

It was this thought and the overwhelming urgency he felt to protect her that finally broke through the paralysis of deep sleep and allowed him to swim to the surface of consciousness.

When his eyes finally popped open, Stav wasn’t a bit surprise to find Charlotte’s side of the bed empty. Nor did he expect to find her taking a bath or sleeping on the couch. He headed straight out of the door intent on finding her in the place the dream had promised she would be—the Temple of Regret.

And that was why he saw just a hint of her white robe as she disappeared into the black doorway at the end of the dim hallway.

“You bastards!” He rounded on the Joined One who still held the weapon in its hand. “How could you do that—force her to confront her past? You know how she fears it—you must know! Let her out of there now or I swear by the Goddess—”

“You’ll what—kill us with your bare hands?” The female face smiled at him and for the first time, Stavros though that the smile and the look in those was not…quite…sane.

“We think not,” the male voice said coolly. “But as you are so fearful for your mate’s safety, why do you not join her in the Temple?” The Joined One waved the weapon at him again. “Go on. Go. If you hurry you may catch her before too much damage has been done. Though we seriously doubt it.”

Stavros had a silent struggle within himself—part of him wanted to wrap his hands around the Joined One’s freakish throat and throttle the unnatural thing and the other part was desperately afraid for Charlotte and anxious to go after her.

His fear for Charlotte won.

He pointed at the Joined One. “You will be sorry for this. When this is over, I swear the regrets you have will fill this whole damn temple to overflowing.”

Then he turned and ran down the tunnel-corridor, trying to get to Charlotte in time. The Joined One’s mocking laughter—cackling and booming at the same time—followed him until he stepped through the sliding black door. Then stopped at once, as though it had been cut off by a knife.

Stavros looked around—he was within the Temple of Regrets.

But where was Charlotte?

Chapter Thirty

Charlie wandered through the darkness, trying not to jump at every little noise. So far she hadn’t seen anything at all that reminded her of her past—just a lot of blank, black corridors that seemed to lead nowhere.

It reminded her of a haunted house with people waiting around the corners to jump out and scare her. Only she had the feeling that what she was about to see what a hell of a lot worse than any rubber monster mask or fake ghoul dripping with stage blood. A hell of a lot worse and a hell of a lot more personal…

The feeling of dread still hung thick in the air like a low-level poisonous gas she was forced to inhale with every breath. It made her feel dizzy and sick to her stomach with fear though she tried her best to remain strong.

“It’s all right,” she muttered to herself, clenching her fists at her side. “You can get through this, Charlie—everything is going to be all right if you just—”

Her words were cut off by a gasp when she rounded a corner and a room suddenly opened up in front of her. It was a room she recognized—the kitchen from the old house on Baker Street. The pretty yellow butterfly curtains still hung in the windows and there was the fruit bowl with just one brown banana at the bottom. But though she hadn’t seen the room in years, what drew her eyes were her mother and father, standing between the counter and the kitchen table. They were fighting—fighting the same way they had when she was little.

“I saw you with that filthy little whore down at the drugstore,” Momma accused shrilly. “Hanging all over you like the cheap little slut she is—I thought it was your job to arrest prostitutes, not sleep with them!”

“And what if I
did
sleep with her?” Daddy taunted. He hooked his thumbs in the thick black belt that held up his uniform pants and gave Momma that lazy, insolent smile he knew made her crazy. His eyes flashed cruelly. “So what if I did, Lorain? She’s a hell of a lot younger and prettier than your sorry fat ass.”

“You son of a bitch! I never should have married you—
never!
If I hadn’t let you knock me up and saddle me with your two snot-nosed brats I could have made something of myself,” Momma shouted, not caring of Charlie or Missy heard her. “I had a
scholarship.
I could have had a
life.”

“Sure,” Daddy sneered. “Some life, Maureen. You spread your legs so easy back then you would’ve wound up pregnant and dropped out of school in the first semester. Only difference would be that some other poor bastard would be putting up with your shit right now.”

“You fucking asshole!” Momma screamed and threw a plate at his head. Daddy ducked and it busted into a million shards on the wall behind his head.

“Missed me, you
twat,”
he jeered.

Mamma screamed in inarticulate furry and ran at him, her hands outstretched like claws. Daddy caught her by the wrists and laughed in her face. He never hurt her—not physically anyway—but he seemed to find her rage amusing and enjoyed whipping her into a screaming frenzy.

Just as she had when she was a child, Charlie felt the familiar sinking feeling in the pit of her stomach. Momma hated her and Missy for coming along and ruining her life, she knew that well enough. After Daddy was through teasing her, she would come looking for them and take out her rage for the wasted years and her ruined life. Her weapon of choice was usually the old wooden hairbrush but sometimes she cut a switch from the lilac bush outside instead and whipped them until there were bleeding stripes on the backs of their legs. If no switches suited her, a wire coat hanger would do just as well.

But it wasn’t the coming punishment that made Charlie want to run bury her face in her grandma’s quilt and never look up again. It was her Daddy’s next words that did that.

“Someday I’ll have enough of your horseshit and I’ll just up and leave you. Leave you to raise the girls alone—is that what you want, Maureen? You want me to leave and never come back?”

Oh God, no Daddy! Please…please don’t go!
Charlie’s heart thumped painfully in her chest. Despite everything, she loved her dad. He was the one who took her on his knee and read her books at night—if he wasn’t working the night shift, that was.
Or out with one of his whores,
as her mother often said. He was the one who bandaged her cuts and took her out hunting with him during deer season.

Her mother was cold and withdrawn—angry and sullen at the way her life had turned out. But Daddy, though he wasn’t there nearly as often as she would have liked, was affectionate and sweet. He smelled like leather and clean sweat and cigarette smoke and when she climbed in his lap it was the only time Charlie ever felt really safe. The idea that he might leave and never look back terrified her.

In that moment, Charlie was no longer a grown woman with a career and a mind of her own. She was eight all over again, crying and shivering as she watched from behind the upstairs banister as her parents fought and shouted and hated each other below.

“No, Daddy,” she whispered, wrapping her arms around herself to try and still her shaking. “No, Daddy, please don’t leave me…please don’t leave…”

“Hey—its okay. Don’t listen—don’t look.” Suddenly Missy was there—the ten year old Missy who Charlie had loved and looked up to. She put an arm around Charlie’s shoulders and led her away.

“Oh Missy!” Charlie held her sister tight. “I’ve missed you so
much.
You’re the only one I could ever really talk to. I—”

But suddenly Missy melted away, leaving nothing but a blank, black corridor.

Charlie looked around wildly. “Momma? Daddy? Missy?”

Everyone was gone. Did that mean the vision was over? Would she be allowed to leave the Temple of Regrets now?

Charlie started walking again, looking hopefully for the exit.

That
was
a pretty bad memory. Momma and Daddy always fighting all the time…maybe it was bad enough to count as my whole punishment. Maybe…

She turned the corner and found herself in another familiar room—her bedroom.

“Come here, you little brat.” Momma was standing there stone-faced with a long, stingy-looking switch in her hand. “Come here and get what’s coming to you.”

And to her horror, Charlie found she couldn’t say no. Couldn’t do anything but walk towards the switch and the beating that was waiting for her…

“Charlotte? Charlotte, where are you?” Stavros wandered through the maze of black corridors calling and calling for her. He was getting hoarse and yet still he couldn’t find her. Where could she be? He would swear she had been only a minute ahead of him in entering the Temple of Regrets but she was nowhere to be found. How had she gotten so far ahead of him in such a short period of time?

“Charlotte?” he called again. “Char—”

Suddenly he rounded a corner and came to a room he recognized. It was the living area of his childhood domicile back on Tranq Prime. The pale purple stream of super hot water that heated the underground home ran through the channel that subdivided the room and emitted soft clouds of steam.

On one side of the stream his mother was pacing, her long
tharp
dragging the ground. Her lovely ice-blonde hair hung down her back in a river of pale gold and her white-blue eyes flashed dangerously as she looked at his father. When he was a child, Stavros had been convinced his Maman was the most beautiful female in the whole universe and indeed, she was truly lovely—as lovely and untouchable as a statue made of ice.

His Patro was reclining on one of the soft low chairs covered in
vranna
hide. He listened helplessly as Stav’s mother berated him.

“It’s
your
fault,” she said in a low, angry voice not meant to carry past the room. “Your filthy Kindred genes that brought this about! No pureblooded Prime has ever been affected by the Curse! Not a single male in my family has ever been marked. And now, look—our only son,
ruined.
And all because of
you.”

“He isn’t ruined, Landa,” his father protested weakly. “The Curse doesn’t mean immediate death—there are many who can live for years if they just—”

“If they just what? Isolate themselves from everyone?” She gave a bitter laugh. “He’ll have to do that anyway. The other children will
never
accept him. He’ll be an outcast—a
pariah
. And what other mother will want to let him play with their child? He’ll have no friends—
none.”

Watching invisibly from the sidelines, just as he had when he was a child, Stavros recoiled at the tone of bitterness and anger in his beloved mother’s voice. The back of his neck, where the black mark had first started to show, itched and burned. The skin there felt suddenly raw, as it had when he was little and had tried to scrub the blackness off.

He’d scrubbed until he bled and the tears came to his eyes but the mark remained as stubbornly black and ugly as ever. Still, he kept trying. He’d thought that if only he could get rid of it, his Maman might start loving him again. Ever since it had first appeared, she hadn’t been in once to tuck him in and kiss him goodnight. And when he tried to hug her, she pushed him gently but firmly away, keeping him at arm’s length as though he had some sickness that might be catching if she got too close.

“The boy will be all right,” his father said, a little too heartily, Stavros thought. “He might have a hard time of it at first but he’ll learn to live with it—he’ll have to.”

“But what about
us?
What about
me?”
his Maman demanded shrilly. “We’ll be known as the ones who produced a defective child. A
Sin Eater
for the Goddess’s sake! How can we ever live that down? How can I look any of my friends in the eye ever again?”