Infatuate (34 page)

I steadied myself but then, without any setup or strategizing, I just pushed myself right off the ledge. I hit the landing with a thud that seemed far louder than I expected for my weight and it felt as if I might go right through and end up inside the church. I stumbled forward onto my hands and knees, scraping them. My feet and ankles throbbed as though something may have snapped inside, and everything felt banged up but I was too relieved to be too bothered. And I felt manic. I needed to keep going, get inside, get somewhere safe. The narrow sills of the mammoth windows jutted out about three feet up from where I stood. I climbed the big step and stood there, framed by this glass structure and gazing into the mezzanine of the cathedral. No one was there. These windows were for show and not meant to be opened, so there was no easy way in. Too bad. I would simply have to create my own entryway.

I angled my sweater-covered elbow, and, using my other hand to push my arm like a battering ram, plowed it into the glass. Once, twice, three times.
Crack.
The glass buckled, and there were several fault lines etched into it. One more hit and it shattered, raining chunks and shards inside. I fell through onto the pews with a crash. Organ music filled the air, followed by a crush of dissonant, wrong notes and everything went silent, except for a few gasps. I righted myself, scrambling to my feet, and caught sight of the main floor of the church: the pews were nearly full. So many curious, horrified faces looking up at me in the mezzanine. I froze.

And then I ran. Straight down the staircase in the corner, blowing past the ushers and right out the front doors into the pedestrian plaza before Jackson Square, where artists were already setting up their booths and horse-drawn carriages awaited the day’s first passengers. I kept going, so fast that pieces of glass flew off me and I felt the breeze rushing through my clothes. Only then did I realize I was bleeding and my sweater was ripped along the arm and across the back. But I kept on. It was early enough that the streets had yet to awaken, with shopkeepers just beginning to open up and few tourists out and about. But on every block, I encountered the same thing: an area cordoned off with police cars and yellow crime scene tape. I didn’t want to look any closer as I passed, but there was no ignoring the body-bag-shrouded lumps on the ground at each of these locations. It only made me run faster, panting.

Finally I made it to the house, climbing in through the window. My room felt too cozy, like it couldn’t contain me. And my body couldn’t contain this mania; it overwhelmed my system. I hit the floor, and everything went black again.

The voice was familiar. “Haven! Haven!” It got closer, and then it was right over me. “It’s Dante! How long have you been here?” Something tugged on my arm, patted my forehead. Everything sounded like it was happening in another room to someone else. “Wait. Thirty seconds. Okay?
Connor!
” I tuned it out. Outside the window, it was dark now; the day had apparently come and gone. My nerves, my pores, every inch of skin buzzed. A fury rose swirling within me, lifting me up to my feet. It started on my shoulder, where I could feel something foreign sizzling, and it spun out from there, permeating every cell in my body, a wild anger setting my blood aflame, demanding action and movement, like a question in search of an answer. My entire body wrapped itself around this violence to embrace it, and, ultimately, become it.

I flung open the closet door so hard the mirror inside came unstuck on one side, hanging now at an angle. I ripped off my sweater and pulled at the strap of my tank top, looking over my shoulder. I stood so close to the glass of the mirror that its coolness threatened to quell that burning scar. But now as I watched, the intense sharp blade of that pain transformed into a comforting warmth. A fiery fleur-de-lis glowed on my shoulder.

It was beautiful. It belonged there, begging to be admired. I marveled at it, and at the girl in the mirror with the fire in her eyes and that piercing gaze. Look. At. Me. A calm washed over me, mingling with madness; a confluence of adrenaline and peace.

Something else caught my eye in the mirror. Outside in the black of night came that flash, the reflection of the window across the way. That light. It called to me.

I searched through the items hanging in the closet and found it, tugging at it so sharply I broke the hanger in the process. I ripped off my tank top and jeans, pulled off my shoes, and poured myself into the long-neglected dress—the black one I had gotten with Sabine—zipping it up, feeling it cling to my body. I clomped down into the boots I had purchased that same day. I felt ten feet tall.

With a crash, I threw open the door to my room, smashing it into the wall. I felt superhuman. I heard another voice, but I didn’t bother to listen. I kept walking.

“ . . . you’re back. You’re . . . where are you going? . . . Are you . . .” The tall guy followed me, talking to me still. The look of him made me furious. Eyes set straight ahead, my body shot down the hall on automatic pilot, determined to get next door as soon as possible and sweeping aside anything that impeded that progress. He kept talking and trailing me. He seized my arm to stop me. I just swung it up, bucking him off like he was no more than an insect and sending him flying back a few feet. I kept going.

As I turned the corner, more obstacles came at me. I smiled for a moment, then let their faces fall away. I looked through them. All that registered on my radar were stony eyes that seemed intent on stopping me and outstretched arms ready for attack. Only bits of their worthless words reached me, mostly coming at me like static.

“ . . . not what she was wearing a second ago . . .”

“ . . . look like you want to kill someone . . .”

“ . . . Watch out! . . .”

“ . . . need to get her into the room . . .”

They blocked my path but as I neared them, I raised my hands, pushing through them as though they were saloon doors. One fell over. The tall one lunged at me.

“ . . .
not safe to go
. . . want to help . . .” His arms grabbed me from behind. The scream tore out of me, mad and manic. I thought I could rip his flesh off of him with my teeth to get him to let go. I kicked my legs in the air, scissoring wildly, and knocked him off balance. He dropped to his knees, letting go while I whipped around and rammed my fist into his jaw. It was made of stone, but the crunch was so pleasing to my ears, the impact so satisfying against my hand, my lips curled in a smile. That etching on my shoulder rewarded me for my efforts, and I felt my veins being pumped full of euphoria.

My legs took off, carrying me lightning fast to the LaLaurie mansion. I was there before I heard any footsteps, no time for anyone to even see what direction I had headed. I rattled the doorknob with enough force to shake the door right off the frame if I wanted to. It annoyed me, this locked door. This house deserved greater destruction for trying to keep me out. My hands smacked the door, as though I were pushing away some brute. The window. Yes. I wound up my leg, kicking it hard and fast. My chunky heel spiked the glass, shattering it all around me. It was beautiful, all those pieces twinkling to the ground, like a music box. I knocked in a few jagged shards and stepped right inside.

The darkness and the silence surrounded me. Safe. Where I belonged. And then that voice, the one I wanted to hear, filled my head, touched my heart. As the volume turned back up, my entire being registered the shift now to something dreamlike.

“Haven?” Lucian said gently, in disbelief. Then louder. “Haven. What . . . ?” He didn’t finish his thought. He materialized at the top of the staircase, stopping in his tracks.

Again, I launched my body up those stairs, gliding to him, pulled as though by an ocean current on a stormy day. The burn of my shoulder lit a fire, propelling me. He had time only to take one step in my direction before I reached him.

“What are you doing here?” he whispered, smiling. But I leaned into him, pulling him by the collar into a kiss. I wrapped my arms around his neck and we floated, it seemed, up those last few stairs, feverish, collapsing onto a cushy bench near the railing overlooking the foyer.

He pulled away for a moment to say, “I’ve been so worried about you I don’t even know where to start.” Soft beams of milky moonlight filtered in, setting him aglow in the enveloping dimness. “Have you gotten my messages?” He ran his fingers through my hair.

“No, I—” I had trouble assembling my thoughts into sentences.

“I found out you got tagged. I was the last to know. They’re still keeping me in the dark about so much.” He shook his head, regretful. “Are you okay?” The electric currents of blue in his gray eyes lit up, radiating waves of calm that had a hypnotic effect on me.

“I’m fine,” I whispered, pulling him in to kiss him again. “Stop talking.”

“That doesn’t sound like you,” he said softly, sharing the slightest laugh. “Not that I’m necessarily complaining. But . . . what’s all this?” He looked me up and down. “What’s going on with you?” He rested his fingers on my chin for a moment, staring into my eyes, tunneling in for clues. I felt a mischievous smile blossoming. I pulled off that unloosened tie around his neck, held it over the railing, and let go, watching it flutter to the ground. “We don’t have much time. We have to talk about Metamorfosi Day at some point,” he said with a sigh.

“No!” I didn’t want to hear about logistics or planning or what fate had in store for either of us. I was sick of all that. Lucian was talking now, but I wasn’t listening. I lay my head on his shoulder. His voice lapped at me but none of the words stuck. He tucked my hair behind my ear and swept my long locks over one shoulder. Then his hand froze. He jerked away, startling me, and twisted me with force, turning my back toward him.

“What’s this?” he barked, his chilly tone snapping me out of my trance. I sat straight up, shaken by this sudden shift. I could feel his breath on my back as he leaned closer, examining it as if it was alive. I looked over my shoulder and found that marked spot glowing a burnt-orange hue in the darkness. I tried to swivel it away from him.

“You know what it is,” I snapped back. “It’ll go away. Relax.”

“Not if you don’t try to fight it off.” He spat his words. “Didn’t I warn you, you can’t let it take over or it will destroy you?”

“No.” I leaned back against the railing now rolling my eyes, already bored with this talk. I let my head rest against the banister and stared straight up into more darkness. My lids closed, my mind lost in a haze for a moment. Scenes flashed back to me at once, waves of memories I didn’t know I had until right now. Lucian and me, here, talking, just like this, except it had gone so much differently. We had come to some sort of decision that I remember finding comforting. I racked my brain for what it was but hit a wall. “Didn’t we have this talk before?” I asked.

That feeling I remembered so vividly was the same sensation that had enveloped me just a few minutes ago, right until he discovered my marking. It was an ease; I was so infatuated with that feeling, I wanted more. Now. Forever.

“What are you talking about? When would we have discussed this? I haven’t seen you in days.”

“I was here last night. With you.”

“You were not here last night with me.” He made no attempt to mask the anger in his voice.

I was losing patience, that madness rising up again. “No, we
did
talk about this,” I snapped in his direction. The scene played in my mind now, like a movie. “You said I could just stay with you, in your world, find a way to be there that suited us both.”

“Why would I say that?” He sounded offended now. “And why would you ever agree to something like that?”

I leaned back again, a dreaminess setting in, swirling outward from that spot on my shoulder. “It would be so easy.” The words flowed out of me peacefully, like I was channeling someone else. “That’s what you said. ‘Don’t you want something to be easy when everything is always such a fight for you? Aren’t you tired of struggling?’” I quoted him from this memory of mine, my eyes locked somewhere back in this dark abyss as I thought of how he’d looked at me when he had said it. “Yes. I am tired,” I responded to his question and closed my eyes again. “Yes. I want something to be simple, finally.” I felt myself drifting, slipping from the here and now.

“Don’t you get it? This is what they do!” he said. “They prey on every insecurity and desire. That’s how they get you. This”—he touched that marking and it stung, sending a sharp shiver through me—“creates a fantasy for you to hang on to. You weren’t here last night. We didn’t talk. If you fight it, like I told you to, then you’ll learn the truth about your time with the Krewe. I guarantee that whatever really happened with them, it wasn’t anything pleasant. Trust me on that.”

“Trust you. You. Sure,” I sniped.

“Look, we should cool off for a minute.”

“Cool off? I’m still waiting for us to heat up!” I shot back.

He backed away from me on the bench, scowling at me, horrified. “This isn’t even you right now,” he said. “It’s this . . . this corrupted, manipulated version of you. I don’t know who I’m talking to.” He sounded more than just disgusted: he sounded let down. It should have woken me up, but my anger only ignited more.

“Really? Because who you’re talking to is someone who’s pretty sick of being told what ridiculous feats are expected of her. So maybe joining you doesn’t sound as bad as it used to, how about that? When the other option is that I could lose you entirely? And lose you because I have failed you, because I can’t save you? How do I live with that?”

“I thought you could handle this, but maybe I should just forget it,” he said, bitingly. He tugged me by one arm, yanking me off the couch.

“You’re gonna throw me out? You can’t. You need me.”

“Not like this,” he barked, making me shiver. “I can’t talk to you like this, and I won’t talk to you at all until you fight this thing.” He flattened his palm against the fleur-de-lis marking and I felt it sizzle up to meet him, singeing me in the process. He took his hand away again, looking shocked that it had done that. His voice softened: “I’ll send word or a light in a few days, and we’ll try all this again.”