Falling Between (The Vaettir Serial, #1) (2 page)

I looked down at the slowly filling bath. It had an old-fashioned slender faucet that didn't let out a great deal of water at once. I awkwardly undressed, wishing I'd just listened to Sophie the first time. At least that way I wouldn't have had her watching me while I bathed.

I dipped a toe into the bath and quickly added more cold to the water flow so that I wouldn't end up scalding my skin off. Once the temperature was bearable, I lowered myself into the bath.

“What did James do to you?” I asked as I washed myself with a brand new bar of soap that smelled like vanilla. Maybe if I couldn't escape, I could at least befriend one of my captors.

Sophie snorted elegantly. I'd previously thought that snorting elegantly wasn't a thing, but that was exactly what Sophie did. She came to perch on the closed toilet seat before answering, folding her long legs underneath her in a position that didn't look at all comfortable.

“James would never dare touch me,” she explained. “But I've seen what he likes to do to women.” She turned the full power of her dark stare onto me. “The things I've seen would make a nice normal girl like you want to cut out her own eyes, though it wouldn't stop the nightmares.”

I huddled in the warm water. “You'd be surprised at what I've seen.”

She startled as if she'd fallen deep into thought. “I doubt I'd be surprised,” she answered finally. “Your actions have not gone without notice.”

I swallowed past a renewed sense of panic. She couldn't know about Matthew. That event was for my nightmares alone. I flashed on his dead eyes again, eyes that had looked so much like James'. I'd done it to him. I wasn't sure how, but Matthew's death was my fault . . . but Sophie had no way of knowing anything about that.

Sophie smiled knowingly at me. I looked away quickly, suddenly more frightened than I'd been before, if that was even possible.

A
t one point during my bath someone had delivered some clothes for me. Sophie had only opened the door a crack, so I hadn't seen who it was. I was now standing in the middle of the bathroom, dressed in a slim-fitting black dress that encased my legs down to the tops of my knees. Black boots covered my calves and left just a sliver of flesh to be seen of my legs. The boots had much higher heels than I was used to. Ok they were only three inches, but I never wore heels. I got my height early, and therefore have the tall-girl syndrome of not wanting to tower over everyone. In the boots I was 6'.

I stole a glance at myself in the bathroom mirror as Sophie waited by the bathroom door. In addition to the uncomfortable added height, the black made my fair coloring a little too pale. Normally I'd never wear black without a little bit of makeup, or else I looked washed out. At that moment though, my coloring was on the bottom of my list of concerns. The woman standing by the door was somewhere near the top.

“Are you done primping yet?” she snapped. Her earlier show of camaraderie must have been a fluke, as she had already reverted back to the steely bitch persona.

“Where are we going?” I asked, even though I knew my efforts were futile.

“I cannot tell you,” she said tiredly.

“Then tell me why I'm dressed like this,” I prompted.

Sophie crossed her arms and cocked her hip to the side. “The sooner you stop asking questions,” she said. “The sooner you'll find the answers.”

On that cryptic note she opened the door and walked out, expecting me to follow her. Not wanting to risk another run-in with James, or with Alaric for that matter, I did as I was told. Choosing the lesser evil and all that. 

Sophie glided down the hallway with me trailing behind her. Our heels clicked on the stone floor as we headed in the opposite direction from where I'd run. We didn't have to go very far before the hallway ended. Well, it turned into a larger hallway that opened into what I could only think of as a throne room. There was no actual throne, but there was a dais against the far wall that was just begging for a gilded throne. We walked across the room and went through a door where a very, very old man waited.

His long white hair draped across the dark loose clothing he was wearing and continued on to pool on the floor. With his age and hair, it seemed he should have a beard as well, but his face was clean shaven. Upon closer observation, I placed him as slightly younger than I had originally thought. His face was covered in only slight wrinkles that increased a bit around his pale eyes. His eyes seemed to radiate a
knowing
as he looked me up and down. I instantly knew that this was a man that I would never try to fool.

The old man sat at the head of a simple table made of heavy wood. There were enough seats for ten, but no one else sat with the old man. He turned his weighted gaze to Sophie. “Leave us,” he said simply.

With a curt nod Sophie did just as he asked. I watched her go, nervous to be left alone with the man. “Face me, Madeline,” he said softly.

I turned slowly around, somehow more nervous now than I had been since first waking up. Maybe the shock was finally wearing off. Or maybe I was just losing my mind.

“Forgive us for capturing you so abruptly,” he began as I met his gaze. “I would have liked to leave you be, but I am afraid our need is simply too great.”

“W-what need?” I stammered. What could this man possibly need from me? A million thoughts raced through my head, none of them rational.

“What do you know of the Vaettir?” he asked.

“I don't know that term.” I answered cautiously. “Should I?”

The old man smiled patiently, making me feel like a child back in school. “Two more common terms for what we are would be Wiht or Wight.”

“Aren't Wights like, zombies?” I asked, not sure where he was going with this.

“In more common renditions, I suppose,” he answered. “But I assure you, the Vaettir are not undead. Quite the opposite, actually. We are beings of nature.”

I laughed, a sharp bark of sound in the quiet room. The old man's face didn't change. He simply waited for me to speak.

“Wait,” I said finally. “You're trying to tell me that you are this Vaettir thingy?”

The old man nodded, quite serious. “As are you,” he replied simply.

The smile wilted from my face. “You're kidding,  right?” I asked, but his face still didn't change. “Tell me you're not about to reveal that I'm some lost magical princess.”

The thought was absurd. I'd been abducted by a bunch of crazies. I guess crazies are better than rapists and murderers . . . unless they were those things as well.

Finally the old man smiled. “No my dear,” he answered. “You are definitely not our long-lost princess. You're our executioner.”

I started laughing again. I couldn't help it. The old man was obviously serious, but the whole idea was preposterous.

“What do you know of your parents?” he asked me.

So he obviously had done some research on me, and  knew that I grew up in the foster system. “That doesn't mean a thing,” I replied. “Not every abandoned baby ends up being a wizard, or a fairy, or what-have-you.”

“No,” he chuckled. “But in your case . . . ”

I stood, deciding that I'd rather take my chances with James or Alaric than sit there listening to crazy stories. The old man slammed his hand on the table, and my legs collapsed underneath me. I barely managed to grab onto the chair to keep myself off of the ground as I fell. I tried to stand again and didn't even make it halfway out of my seat.

“I apologize,” he said serenely. “This was not how I hoped this meeting would go.”

I looked around the room frantically for some sort of explanation. My legs wouldn't work. This had to be some sort of trick. “What's happening?” I demanded, feeling almost too panicked to breathe.

“If you would stop trying to stand,” the old man said with a friendly smile. “I would not have to force you to sit.”

My eyes widened. He was claiming that he could make me sit . . . with what, his mind? Of course, I was sitting against my will with no other explanation to go off of.

“Who are you?” I asked, forcing myself to breathe evenly.

“My name is Estus,” he replied. “I am Doyen of this clan.”

“Doyen?” I asked. “And clan?”

A hint of impatience flickered across Estus' face. “We should never have left you to the humans for so long,” he sighed.

“So why did you?” I asked, not yet believing him, but interested in his answers none-the-less.

“A clan only needs one executioner,” he explained. “Any others born with the specific . . . qualities of an executioner are exiled.”

“Why?” I asked, finding the idea of exiling a baby more than a little harsh.

“Too many executioners over the centuries have ended up killing each other,” he said with a laugh, though I wasn't sure what was funny about people killing each other. “If we continued to let them live together, we'd end up without any executioners at all. Now, if we send the extras out into the world, we may call them back when we are in need of a replacement.”

I moved my tongue around in my mouth to try and get some saliva going, but it was no use. I swallowed around the lump in my throat. “And you're in need of a replacement?” I asked.  

“Precisely,” he answered, seeming relieved that I understood.

If these crazy people wanted me to be their executioner, that meant that they were going to try keeping me with them. It also likely meant that they were going to expect me to kill people. I could never do that. Someone would have to come looking for me eventually. They had to.

I mean, people don't just disappear without the police being notified. Of course, it might take a while for them to get notified. I had no parents to report me missing, and no spouse. I had a few friends, but the scenario of them not hearing from me for a few weeks wasn't unheard of. I did freelance writing for a living, so there were no coworkers or bosses to report me missing. I had a landlord . . . but seeing as it was only the 8
^th
of the month, he wouldn't be expecting a rent check for a while. I'd never thought that being antisocial would come back to bite me in such a major way.

Estus gave me several minutes to digest everything. I still didn't fully believe him, though the fact that I was quite literally glued to my seat definitely gave me pause. Regardless, that moment wasn't the time for escape. I was better off going along with whatever Estus said until they left me alone again.

“I can see that you are having some trouble believing what I say,” he stated finally.

“No,” I lied. “I understand.”

Some of the smile slipped from Estus' face. “Tell me what happened with Matthew,” he said abruptly, freezing me to the core.

My breath caught in my throat. “How do you know about that?” I croaked.

Estus eyed me steadily. “Just because we left you on your own, does not mean that we let you go. Not entirely. Now tell me.”

“No,” I replied. “That's private.” I gripped the edges of my chair until my hands ached as I tried to push away the memories. That specific story was one I never planned on sharing with anybody.

“It was not your fault,” he consoled. “It is your nature.”

I was beginning to shake as I held back tears, but the memories weren't held back as easily. We'd been in a car accident. Several cars had been involved. Others had died, but we weren't overly hurt. Matthew's wrist was sprained or broken, but that seemed to be the extent of it. Good samaritans had helped us out of our car to wait on the side of the road for the paramedics.

We were sitting in the grass, and it was killing me to see Matthew gritting his teeth against the pain. I'd always been highly affected by the pain of others to an extent that made me avoid hospitals like the plague. I reached out and smoothed my hand across his face, hoping to sooth him just a bit and in effect soothe myself. He looked at me, suddenly not just in pain, but frightened. His fear made my heart hammer in my throat. I felt a rush of energy as it left him, that spark of life. I watched as it left his eyes. I was so shocked as he slumped over that I didn't even scream. Later I would try telling myself that he'd damaged something internally in the accident, but I knew it was a lie. I just stared at him as the paramedics arrived and rushed over to us. 

I rode next to his dead body in the ambulance as they did their best to resuscitate him. I was later told that they could not find the exact cause of death. They wrote it off as a small brain hemorrhage, but I knew otherwise. Some tiny voice screamed in my mind that it was me. I'd killed Matthew. 

“You are probably starving,” he said sympathetically as he watched the emotions play across my face. “Sophie will escort you to the kitchens. We will speak more when you are at full strength.”

As if on cue, Sophie came back into the room. I looked to Estus frantically to see if I was allowed to stand, and he shooed me away. I took a deep breathe and stood without any unseen force impeding me.

I turned and followed Sophie's slim form without another word to Estus. I felt shaky on my feet, but I kept walking. That's all we can ever really do.

We went back through the throne room and down another narrow hallway. I distracted myself by taking in my surroundings, and noticed with a start that I had not seen one single window in any of the thick, stone walls. I looked around for the source of light that illuminated the hall, but I couldn't find one.

I trotted to catch up to Sophie and walk beside her. “Where does the light come from?” I asked.

Sophie rolled her eyes as she walked. “The Salr provides its own light.”

“The sah-what?” I asked.

“Salr,
Sah-lur
,” she sounded out for me. “It is where we live.”

“I don't understand,” I replied. “How can a place provide its own light without any windows?”

Sophie sighed and finally stopped to turn to me. “Estus explained to you what we are, yes?”

“Kind of,” I answered. “But-”

“You still don't believe him,” she finished for me. She gripped me by my shoulders and looked straight into my eyes. “Watch,” she instructed.

Not sure what I was supposed to be watching, I looked into her eyes. As I watched, her dark irises flashed to golden with large flecks of green. Her pupils narrowed until they looked like cat eyes. I tried to jerk away, but her hands held me iron-tight.