“Open his mouth,” the vampire said. I pushed Bram’s cheeks together, popping his lips apart, and pulling his jaw down. The man grimaced and wedged his wrist between Bram’s teeth, pushing upward into his canines until they drew blood on their own. We stared at him for a long moment.
“I don’t think,” I said before Bram’s eyes suddenly snapped open.
His jaw instantly clamped down hard on the vampire’s wrist and he began to drink, almost violently, his throat convulsing with each swallow. Bram’s eyes were very black, swirling with a haphazard color between darkness and sunlight, like a shadow with a cataract. His hands latched onto the vampire’s wrist and he leaned forward, sucking in the air through his nose, dragging his teeth across the man’s bones—I could hear the sharp scraping, which sounded almost metallic.
“Easy,” said the man, perfectly calm, and growing more annoyed than anything else. He grabbed Bram by the throat and squeezed hard enough to break his skin, and Bram’s mouth popped open. Bram slumped back against the wall, his mouth agape, blood trailing down his chin like drool. His chest heaved with breaths he didn’t need—and the blackness gradually drained from his eyes.
The vampire dried his hand on his shirt, leaving a bright smear of red across his stomach. “You’re welcome.”
Bram blinked. His pupils dilated and contracted. He was trying to figure out the light situation in the tiny room. Eventually, he focused on me.
“Knightley,” he murmured.
“Yeah,” I said, lacking anything else to say. Bram and I were the furthest thing in the universe from being friends, but as of many days ago, we no longer considered each other archenemies. Reluctant allies, I guess, since we were both bound by Dulcie and our dual need to keep her safe—although nothing else. The urge to comfort him in his pain or punch him in the face, just on principle, tugged at me with equal strength.
“You …” Bram squinted. “You are naked.”
The vampire sighed. “Well done! Yes, he is.”
“Long story,” I said before Bram could ask where my clothes were.
He smacked his lips thoughtfully. “Where … where is Dulcie?” he asked, reaching up and touching his lip before he examined the little, red speck on his finger.
“Downstairs,” the vampire answered, “along with seventy-six temperamental house heads from across the Netherworld.”
Bram’s face twisted into a scowl. “Oh.” He looked at me—specifically, at the sheen of black goop on my stomach and face. “What …” He smacked his lips, suddenly lost.
“Thralls,” I answered. “Big ones.”
“Ah.” At last, he turned to the vampire, and his face drooped into something less friendly than a scowl. “You.”
“Me,” the vampire agreed.
“You know him?” I asked. Bram made a point to avoid most other vampires—he always said it was because he disliked their company, and for the same reasons most of us disliked his company. Now I wondered if he’d been avoiding one in particular. Not Meg, since he thought she was dead, but someone he might have known in another lifetime. Someone like this guy.
Bram didn’t answer me. “Why …” Bram lurched forward, gritting his teeth, suddenly seized by a bout of pain in his stomach. “Why … are you … here?”
“I was invited to the party,” the vampire said dismissively. “Most of them are drunken out of their skins, so we shouldn’t have a hard time escaping.”
“Who are you?” I demanded from the stranger.
“Ah, yes, our introductions,” he answered with a strange smile. “Ezra Grant, at your service.”
His name was unfamiliar to me, but that didn’t mean anything.
Bram tried to roll forward, maybe in his attempt to get onto his feet, but he collapsed sideways almost immediately. I caught him and propped him back up, but he frowned at me. “We need to get away from him at once,” Bram gargled out.
“In case you both hadn’t noticed, I’m helping you escape,” Ezra replied with annoyance. “And in our behest for timeliness, it would be wiser for you both to stop doubting my intentions at once and simply accept me as your loyal ally.”
I blinked at him but didn’t say anything. Bram did the same.
“You do not trust me,” Ezra said to me.
“No,” I said, “I don’t.”
“Nor should you,” added Bram.
“I appreciate your confidence,” Ezra announced. “You are more than welcome to try and escape on your own. You’ll never make it, but it might be fun for me to watch you try.”
“I’m not leaving without Dulcie,” I announced. “So unless she is part of your plan, I’m not budging.”
Ezra nodded and sighed. “She is part of my plan, but, unfortunately, I cannot abscond with her just yet.”
“And why is that?” I demanded, but I already knew the answer.
“She is under the influence of Meg and, therefore, she doesn’t know her own self. She is currently one of Meg’s minions and following her orders,” Ezra explained. “It is my absolute intention to release the beautiful lady, but that must wait. For the time being, I must first release the two of you.”
Bram and I looked at each other, both of us clearly loath to trust him. He was just as likely to lead us into another nightmarish trap as deliver us out outside, but … hell, he could have done that by now. I was inside Meg’s house, with nowhere to run or hide, and no reason to be lured anywhere. He might be waiting to trick us—maybe to satisfy some sadistic urge, but I couldn’t think of why.
And as far as Dulcie went, he was right. And so was Hades. Dulcie lacked her own mind, and if we tried to release her, she would certainly fight us tooth and nail. That much I knew.
“Fine,” I said. “But if you try anything funny—”
“Yes, yes, I know … you’ll kill me,” Ezra said, waving me off. “I would expect nothing less.”
I hooked Bram’s arm over my neck and stood up. He was surprisingly light when he wasn’t full of blood.
“No, no,” said Ezra. “Put him down.”
“What?” I asked with Bram still hanging off my shoulders.
“I can’t just waltz out of here with the pair of you on my tail,” Ezra answered dryly. “Bram is no more capable than a vegetable right now, and you, sir, are still naked and covered in the blood of two substantial security thralls. Besides, there is something else in the house that both of you must see in order to fully understand just what is going on here.”
I let Bram slide to the ground and looked at the window and then at Ezra, crossing my arms. “Something else in the house?” I asked warily.
“Easier to explain once we’re there.”
“Where exactly is there?” I demanded.
“A room Meg locks herself in when she’s feeling particularly … nostalgic.”
“Nostalgic?” I repeated flatly.
“Nostalgic,” said Ezra. “Mr. Vander, I assure you, if I wanted to kill you, or maim you, or drop you into a room filled with very hungry werewolves, I would have been strong and fast enough to accomplish any of that without you ever having seen my face. And contrary to what you insist on believing about me, purely based on my progeny, I have better things to do than to scare you for kicks.”
I didn’t respond. Ezra’s smile curled into an impish grin. He opened his coat and retrieved a small folded square, which he tossed up in the air and caught. However, it was no longer a small square, but a sizeable, black briefcase with an open zipper.
Bram squinted at it. “A …” he coughed, “a briefcase?”
“A briefcase,” Ezra confirmed.
I blinked at it. “Um,” I said. “Okay. And … what’s it for?”
“You,” said Ezra.
“Me?”
“Yes,” said Ezra. “And him,” he motioned to Bram.
Bram and I exchanged a look.
I blinked at Ezra. “You want to put us in a briefcase?” I asked lamely, bemoaning my accompanying concern that Ezra was not the ally I o
riginally thought he might be. Unfortunately for us, he was clearly insane.
Ezra nodded. “A magic briefcase, my dear sirs.”
“Magic? How?” Bram asked.
“It is larger on the inside, actually much more so than it appears.” He smirked—the smug look of a man with a very small, and definitely non-magical, briefcase into which he intended to hide two fully grown men.
Bram grimaced. “And there is … no chance … that once we are inside your … magical briefcase … that you might just … drop us out … a window?”
Ezra shook his head. “The entire house is warded except for the main entrance and several of the back doors, all of which still require us to walk past some portion of Meg’s little get-together. And I’m sure Mr. Vander can tell you exactly how unpleasant these wards can be.”
“Fiery,” I said when Bram looked at me for an explanation. “Really hot fire.”
Bram nodded and turned back to Ezra. “So … you propose …”
“To put you and your friend inside this briefcase,” Ezra finished, holding it out again, just in case we’d forgotten which briefcase he was referring to. “Then I shall formally dismiss myself from the party and abscond with my pilfered captives into the night.”
I twitched a little at the phrase, “pilfered captives,” but saw no better way out. Actually, scratch that, I didn’t see any other way out period.
I looked at Ezra and sighed deeply. “Okay, so … what’s the plan, exactly?”
“To walk out of here with the pair of you under my arm like a stack of stolen books,” said Ezra, placing the case on the ground. “Get in.”
###
There’s no comfortable way to ride in a briefcase beside a vampire.
Bram and I were squished together in all the worst ways. His knee was against my face, and his hands pressed into my stomach, while my foot was on his throat, and my dick somewhere I really didn’t want to think about … We kept getting jostled as Ezra walked, swinging the outside of the magical briefcase.
“Vander?” Bram muttered.
“What?” I hissed back.
“What … in the hell … is that putrid smell?”
It was probably a combination of sweat, fear, and liquid irritation draining from my ears, but I decided not to respond.
“Quiet,” Ezra whispered. “We’re about to walk through the party.”
Ezra walked down the stairs with us underneath his shoulder, and the sounds of a party rocking on its heels swept in from the den. I heard lots of talking and laughing, punctuated by ringing of glasses as they clinked together in arbitrary toasts to Meg and the Netherworld or whatever else they thought was important. The sounds included hisses, growls, and sneers of wolves, drakes, and vampires. I also identified the slither and creaking of the wooden skin of Mother Dryads, along with the muttering of promises and deals. There was lots of talk about something called the “Resurrected Order,” which was definitely a bad thing.
But as soon as the sounds became audible, they were gone again, disappearing as we rounded a corner or traversed a long hallway. The cheers and conversations became an unidentifiable burble of words that faded to a hush no stronger than a soft wind. Then the sound vanished entirely, and Ezra chuckled.
“Checkmate, my darling,” he said, although there was no one but us he could have been talking to.
A door opened, and a door closed. The house was silent here, the only noise being the quiet hum of the ventilation. I heard a hiss like someone inhaling, and a pop; then the soft squeak of a door swinging open. Ezra took two steps forward and stopped.
“Ah,” he said quietly.
I felt him placing the briefcase on the ground, and dull, greyish light flooded the inside when he unzipped it. He gave us a grim look. “Here we are.”
We unfolded our contorted selves from the briefcase and stood up.
“Prepare yourself,” said Ezra. “It is rather unpleasant.”
We looked around.
“Oh, my,” Bram said. We almost said it as one, but I couldn’t find my voice.
The room was small, barely larger than a closet, and lit by a series of desk lamps. A table was pushed up against the far wall, laden with scrapbooks, binders, photo albums, glue, glitter, and decoupage hearts. Notebooks full of chicken scratches, smeared black ink, smiley faces, and words and names, which were circled over and over again cluttered the tables. Calligraphic Ds were sewn into their covers, carved into the plastic, burned into wood, or woven into leather, they were all labeled beneath to identify the years and years and years. Ledgers of a lifetime, singular accounts from a singular person. I could see some of the sentences beneath the covers, words too sweet for the monster writing them, and too close, and much too personal. None of them were complete, however, trailing off into hearts and squiggles and dots.
And pictures. Floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall, in an endless collage. Nothing but Dulcie, Dulcie, Dulcie. Dulcie in uniform, Dulcie on her motorcycle, Dulcie posing with her gun and her badge at her Academy graduation, Dulcie on her couch as seen through a window, Dulcie more than half-naked in bed …
Dulcie with me. Her hair a tangled, blond mess of sweat and wind, staring at me, lying underneath me, and on a blanket above a cliff. Naked, both of us. My face, however, was scratched out.
“What?” I swallowed to conceal the tremor in my voice and said again, “What … the hell … is this?”
“I am not entirely certain,” Ezra answered, drawing his finger along the edge of the table. “But it appears to be a sort of … living diary, I suppose? Like you might see with a conspiracy theorist or someone caught deep inside a delusion.”
“Delusion?” I repeated, but Ezra didn’t elaborate. Not right away, at least—he was looking keenly at the wall, examining the less scandalous pictures of Dulcie. And admiring them, it seemed, with sad eyes and a strange smile.
Bram, clutching his stomach and squinting at everything with the almond-grey eyes that characterized the vampire’s near-death experience, stumbled forward to examine everything. He picked up a different journal, a black leather cover with a golden D stitched into it. It was less worn than the others, still slightly shiny, and the spine was not yet bent from a hundred thousand openings. He touched it and recoiled, like it was an open flame.
“What?” I said.
“That …” Bram shook his head, uncertainty playing tricks with the color of his eyes—but before he could explain himself, he found something else. His eyes suddenly widened, darkening to an angry red. “Oh,” he murmured.
“Oh?” I took a few steps forward toward Bram and followed his gaze to a picture frame standing at an angle on the desk. “Oh.”
The frame was gilded wood, hand-carved, and intricate as all hell—but that wasn’t the important bit. The part that caught both of our attentions was the picture it surrounded, the yellowed Polaroid of three people. Meg was smiling, standing next to an elf with disturbingly familiar summer-green eyes. And between them was a child. Young, too young to know what was happening, much less to remember the picture being taken.
“Dulcie?” I said. Bram pursed his lips. I turned to Ezra. “Why are you showing us this?”
“Because you deserve to know,” said Ezra, “what Meg has done, and why Dulcie did all that she has done. I have spent too many years with unanswerable questions about the intentions of people who were once close to me. Constantly wondering if it were something I did, or said, or didn’t do. I would not condemn that agony on my worst enemy—let alone, a slightly irritating officer of the law and his friend.”
“Friend is a strong word,” I said, unsure if I should have demanded a less convoluted answer or just thanked him.
“And what exactly …” Bram said slowly, leaning heavily against a blank expanse of wall by the door. “What, may I ask, exactly has Dulcie become?”
Ezra stared at the photographs. He remained silent, as lifeless as marble.
“Ezra,” Bram said. “I realize …” He lurched fo
rward and began gasping—his body clinging to the human instinct to breathe. “We are short on time … but if you know … something … about this, I suggest … that you begin explaining. Now.” His voice was flat and empty of ire.
“You said it was a delusion,” I replied. “A living diary.”
Ezra nodded stiffly as he looked between Bram and me, deciding how much to tell us.
“Obsession,” he said, after a long, unnecessary pause. He crossed his arms as he surveyed the room, biting his lip.
“Obsession?” I repeated blankly, but Bram’s posture shifted—like he knew what it meant.
Ezra touched the wall, running his hand along the edge of another picture of me with my face scratched into oblivion. With a slow nod, he picked up a leather journal, flinching at its touch before flipping idly through it. “It’s rare, but not unheard of for a vampire to become overly attached to their offspring.” He frowned at the book and sighed.
I felt like I’d been sucker-punched. “What? Offspring?”
Ezra turned to me, also looking surprised. He closed the book and set it down. For a long time, he said absolutely nothing.
My hand curled into a fist at my side. “What do you mean offspring?” I asked, seething.
Ezra looked from me to the pictures, and back to me again, then to the portrait of Meg and Melchior and little Dulcie. “I mean that Dulcie …” He frowned, unsure of how to continue. “Meg has altered her. For lack of a better word.”
“Altered?” I repeated blankly. “What do you mean?”
“He means Dulcie has somehow become a vampire,” said Bram, sounding wholly unamused.
“Dulcie,” I said through my gritted teeth, “is not a vampire!”
Ezra shrugged. “No,” he said, “she isn’t. At least, not like any vampire I have ever seen. She ages, she walks in sunlight without burning, and her eyes maintain their color … or at least they do right now. But um …” He looked down. His affected air disappeared, sloughing onto the floor like an old coat, and he seemed almost visibly uncomfortable. “Mr. Vander, Meg has done something to Dulcie. It began, as you can see, a long while ago. A vile project she began with Melchior when Dulcie was very young and, judging by Dulcie’s latest progression, Meg must have resumed it very recently. I’m not certain what it is, or was.”