Blood Life (29 page)

“Evil requires the sanction of the victim.”

–Ayn Rand

Forty One

Bound by hands and feet, and gagged with a dirty chiffon scarf, Alethea looked around the blackness of the room. She was suspended in midair, in a throne, unable to move and wide awake with fear.

A spotlight came on, blinding her. After a few moments, the light moved from her direct vision. When she regained focus, she noticed Lokee hovering in the air 20 feet ahead with his back facing her. The spotlight crawled around the space until it reached his lingering form, bathing it in illumination, making him appear holy and pure.

Alethea struggled to breathe under the tight gag. As Lokee turned to face her, she kicked and wiggled around, desperately trying to free herself from the restraints so that she could force herself at him and tear at his flesh with her fangs and nails. She would kill him. She felt the rage surging inside her like a tidal wave begging to be set free of its ocean prison.

Lokee chuckled under his breath. Realizing she had no hope of getting free, she gave up, weeping in spite of her efforts, coming to terms with her ongoing weakness.

Breaking his hollow silence, Lokee declared with the utmost sincerity marking his voice: “Welcome, Alethea.” He waved his hands around to display the emptiness of the room. She looked down to find that her throne drifted slowly toward a wooden floor with loose, rotting boards. “Welcome to my lair,” he continued, stifling his excitement.

Alethea studied her surroundings. They were in an enormous room. The walls and windows were painted black. Although the color was wrong, she recognized the room. The faint smell of women’s perfume made her head swim. It was Elizabeth’s scent. The room began to spin around her. Voices filled her head, memories of her life as Alexandria played out like a movie on a projector screen in her mind.

Lokee raised his arm toward the large window before him. Obeying his command, the window trembled, then opened slowly to display impeccable beauty. Through the window, Alethea could see what he was so excited about. The beauty told her she was in Aqua. This was the Morgan Castle. She was taken to Alexandria’s room, Alexandria’s time!

Lokee took her back in time. As the realization hit her, the room began to rebuild itself. Slowly, it became exactly as Alexandria had left it centuries ago. She felt the familiarity of it; the odd sense of being “home” swept over her.

She panicked, and in trying to calm the look of a wild beast in her eyes, Alethea lost control completely. She groaned, ripped her arms free and then immediately untied her legs. Lokee watched curiously as she ripped the gag from her mouth and screamed as loud as her lungs could handle. Her roar rattled its way up and out of her lungs and esophagus to wrap itself against the walls that confined her.

When she was finished, she fell over without control onto the castle hard floor.

“You don’t really think I simply tied you up, do you?” he asked, indicating the cord he had tied around the hem of the freshly cleaned nightgown he placed on her. When he changed her clothing, she did not know. Things moved at an odd pace; she was missing pockets of time.

“Of course, I knew you would find the strength to unleash yourself sooner or later. That is, once you discovered where you actually were.” He turned his back to her again, musing at her attempts to defy him only to fail miserably. He turned and walked toward the open window. He took in a deep, refreshing breath, before closing it tight. Turning to face her again, he smiled sadistically and walked forward to help her resettle into her throne. Again, she was bound as before, only this time the gag was an apple.

She hated apples.

“I know it,” he said, unable to contain his laughter. “Especially the red ones; ‘they’re too mushy,’ ” he mimicked in a girlish voice. He reached over to her mouth and removed the apple to take a bite out of it.

Alethea spit at him.

Lokee looked down at the spot where her spit landed next to his shoe and inhaled deeply. He shoved the apple back into her mouth, busting her lip with the force. “I do hope you enjoy yourself here with me. I know I’ll enjoy you.”

She mumbled.

“You know I can’t understand you with that apple in your mouth. Why don’t you try to use your mind magic?”

She mumbled again, the vein in her forehead growing dangerously large as the rage surged.

“What’s that?” he asked, moving closer to her face. “I can’t understand you; you’ll need to concentrate har—”

She stopped mumbling.

“Oh, yes. I almost forgot.” He slapped his forehead sarcastically. “You can’t use that magic either, can you? Forgive me. Let me remove that gag so you can converse more clearly with me.”

As soon as he removed the apple, she spit at him again, only this time at close range. It went right in his face. “That was charming, my dear, really.” He licked her saliva from his upper lip, his fangs protruding angrily. “Rude, but charming. You ought to learn a little respect. Respect of a captor would be wise, wouldn’t you think? Not spitting at him could buy you favors.”

Alethea held his eyes locked to hers. She did not speak. She did not want to waste her breath on him.

Dismissing the intensity of her stare, he mused, “Once we do away with Roman and Devendra, things will change. You only need a little time to adjust, that’s all. And with my coaxing, time will fly for you, Alethea.” He leaned close to her ear, and as if to stir some lost, forbidding passion inside of her, he whispered as tenderly as he could, “Trust me.”

The hot air from his breath clung to her earlobe, staining it with deception.

Unable to contain her tongue any longer, she burst out: “No! I will never trust you.”

Lokee’s lips curved in a wicked smile.

“Roman and Devendra will save me, I promise you that. Then you can adjust in death!” she snapped, as hard as she could, trying to sound confident in herself, in her words. She looked around again and felt Roman’s warmth around her. He was already searching high and low for her. “I am here, my love. Here,” she mumbled, half-heartedly, trying to send the message to Roman, trying to use her mind magic.

“Yes, my dear, you most certainly are here. I skipped the dream bullshit and reached for the core,” Lokee claimed, thrusting his fist in the air. “You are finally here, and taking you was easier than I had anticipated. Those two idiots will take weeks, even months to find you, if they do at all.”

He looked at her closely, noticing the warmth around her like a mist. “That mist is not Roman’s essence,” he implored, pointing at it. “You are only thinking of him,” he said, walking closer to her and placing his hands on the arms of the throne he had her bound to, leaning in, “that’s all. What you see there is fog from outside, condensation. Nothing more!”

“Liar! Every word that falls from your lips is a lie. You don’t have the strength or mental ability to deceive Devendra. She is much older than you are. And she has the help of our Mother.”

“Sorry, darling, but you are mistaken. I was taught by Devendra when she played mother to me.” He plopped down on the floor at her feet. “She shared all her dark secrets with me. And get this,” he looked around as if someone might be listening, “so did Lillith. She’s playing us both.”

He broke off in laughter, picking himself up from the floor and leaving the room.

“This above all, to refuse to be a victim.”

–Margaret Atwood

Forty Two

Alethea thought a few weeks passed, although it felt like years. She was unbound and waiting for a chance to escape, but where could she go—she was lost in time, her magic was weak. It was beginning to become clear that, as Lokee said, Roman and Devendra may have given up on rescuing her.

Lokee’s hiding place was clever, after all. Probably frustrating to them. Would they feel that way about her? That she was frustrating? Were they not true to her in their hearts?

Lokee pushed the idea that they had rediscovered their love and found it stronger than Alethea’s bond with Roman. At first, she hissed and spit in his face, vowing never to believe his lies. But there remained a faint glimmer in her heart that tested her ultimate fear—that Lokee spoke the truth. She reluctantly began to let her mind run wild with his acerbic suggestions. She became smothered in the guilt of realization—she might have nowhere else to turn.

Alethea woke to catch the last rays of sunlight dancing across the sky. In the cloud cover, she saw what she thought resembled an angel, filling her with renewed hope. Just as she started calling to Roman and Devendra for the hundredth thousandth time, Lokee barged into her quarters with a look of fury on his face.

“What?” Alethea asked, sharply, trying her best to sound firm and unafraid.

“You accuse me with such a tone? I haven’t even said ‘good morning’ yet, my dear counterpart,” he said in his defense.

She scowled at him. “I will never treat you as you wish me to. Can you not see by now that I despise you with every fiber of my being? You are sick! You repulse me!” She turned her face from him, her eyes searching desperately for her angel in the sky. Help me through this, she begged of the apparition.

This maddened him even more than the other countless times she had sputtered the very same words to him. Sensing impending danger, she turned her head slowly from the window and gazed into his face. She rose to face him. As he advanced on her, she slowly backed away, searching with her peripheral vision for something, anything, to fend him off with.

He struck her. The sting settled into numbness across her cheekbone, reverberating in her ear, causing it to hum in resistance. In the flash the strike sent through her sight, she was reminded of an assault given to Alexandria in the same manner by her father. Alethea lifted her hand to the spot, rubbing it tenderly, fighting to regain focus. She stumbled backwards, clumsily, looking for something sharp, something capable of inflicting a return flash of pain, even if only for an instant.

She wanted so badly to hurt the man before her, to see his face bend in the twisted frame of agony as hers had before him only a moment ago.

“How can you say such hateful things to me?” he prodded. “Don’t you understand I saved you? Your precious Roman made his decision,” he offered a dramatic pause, “and it wasn’t you.” He stood there glaring at her, letting the words sink in. “Get over it and thank me!”

His face was flushed and she could hear his heart thumping wildly. It pounded with the deafening beat of a thousand horses galloping across hard terrain, beating in her ears so loudly that she had to cover them with her hands.