Chapter Twenty-Two

The world came back in splotches of color and indiscernible sound. Scent and taste came back a few seconds after. I smelled rot, tasted dirt and copper in my mouth. The floor was hard and uncomfortable beneath me. What happened? Groaning, aware of the vibrating in my chest, I tried to straighten myself out when the ache in my skull sharpened.

My stomach rolled, and bile filled up the back of my mouth. I turned my head to spit up, orange points of light flickering in and out of my vision. Where the hell was I? I kept my cheek to the cool floor, willing the room to come into focus. That was my first mistake. I slammed my eyes shut, horror recoiling through my body. Grave! We're in a grave! My mind howled, loosening painfully around the edges.

It was a crypt. The dirt in my mouth was grave dirt. The hard floor was poured marble slab. The rot was—my stomach cramped. Don't think about it! I shut my eyes tighter, tears burning behind my lids. I'd been kidnapped and tossed in a crypt. The reality of it sent a spasm of adrenaline and terror through me. I don't want to die. The thought surged from the back of my mind. I prayed the angels and saints could still hear me. Even here.

"It's awake."

I slit my eyes open. The light came closer, flickering as the sconces in this section of the crypt were lit. Even though the dim firelight needled at the ache in my head, I ignored it, and tried to focus on the voice. It was familiar, swimming just on the tip of my tongue. L said it would be time to kill Le Mangeur soon. Dark shapes floated into my vision.

"What are you doing here?" I mumbled, the words slurring in my mouth, as they finally came into focus. Confusion and biting clarity divided me. Of course, it would be you.

"Surprised?" Bianca pressed her lips into a pout before she dug the plateau of her heel into my sternum and shoved me onto my back. "You've met Sabella and Lian, yes?"

My eyes flickered between the three of them. The similarities between them now that they were standing next to each other was startling. In another life, we might have been sisters. In the haze of my mind, a voice asked what is he looking for? Charlemagne had a type. A peculiar appetite for brunettes with dark eyes. "Lian." I mumbled, her name slotting into Gemma's journal. "Gemma?"

Lian cocked her head to the side. "Who? Oh, your pathetic, little friend." She murmured, bringing her hand up to check her nails—to check her fucking nails. "She was ready to believe everything I told her. Vampires were real. There was one preying on girls here in Bonne Chance. You were in danger of being his next victim." She dropped her hand to look down at me. "Her blood tasted like black cherries."

I stared at her. Her carelessness needled at me. Gemma had been nothing to her. A means to an end. "Why her?" I croaked, but I knew. I knew. Because of me. Because in another life, we'd known each other. We should have been friends. "She didn't deserve that." I mumbled, voice cracking.

"Does anyone?" Sabella tutted at me. "Are you going to cry now?" She pressed her lips into a mocking pout. "Cry, little human." She said, lifting her foot to press the sharp edge of her heel into the soft flesh of my thigh.

Pain lanced through me, sharp and full of teeth. I jerked, knocking my aching head back against the floor, teeth bared. "Stop, stop, stop—" I choked out, tears slipping down the sides of my face. I curled towards her, hands slapping uselessly at her ankle. "Please."

Bianca touched her arm and she let up. Warmth blossomed against my pantleg; she'd broken the skin. I slid my fingers over my thigh, pulling them back coated in warm, fresh blood. Another cramp put me back on the floor. The last thing I needed was to be incapacitated and bleeding in a crypt with Dracula's brides.

Swallowing hard, I forced a breath through my nose and curled my fingers against my chest. Bracing myself, I twisted onto my side and managed to push myself up onto my hands. I was at least going to be sitting up. Expelling a shaky breath, I looked up at them. They'd been watching me. In the flickering light, their eyes had blackened. As if I needed more reminders that they weren't human.

"You smell like Charlemagne." Bianca murmured, shadow draping across her face as she took a small step forward. "Even your blood smells like roses."

My throat spasmed as I tried to swallow again. My chest tightened. "This is all for him, isn't it?" I mumbled, hardly aware anymore of the tears slipping down my face. "Le Mangeur de Coeur."

"For him, to him, yes." Bianca murmured, points of light flickering in the depths of her black eyes as she lowered herself into a crouch in front of me. "What does he see in you?" She bared her teeth, the sight of her fangs sending a ripple of unease through my stomach.

"He… he loves me." I mumbled, bunching up my shoulders around my neck. "I—"

Bianca stood suddenly, moving faster than my eyes could register. "Love?" She barked a sharp, bitter laugh. "Stupid girl, Charlemagne loves everyone. He loves constantly. He loved me, and her, and her." She bared her teeth in a cruel smile. "This is not about love. You know nothing about love. This is something entirely different. There is something about you, something I do not understand, that has made him kind. It is deeper than love, he has given you, his heart."

"Do you have any idea what it's like to love someone and be thrown away?" Lian said softly, dragging my gaze to her. Half in shadow, her black eyes glowed in their sockets, radiating something deeper than the darkness around us. "We've all played the doll for him. Worn the dresses and the heels."

"Been the perfect, little whores." Sabella muttered, taking a slow step towards me, "And he tossed us away like garbage." She lowered herself in front of me, reaching out to take a strand of my hair between her fingers. "But not you."

"He was soft with you." Bianca muttered, turning her back on us to wander through the shadows of the crypt. "I was with him for decades, but he was soft with you."

My chest tightened. I was aware of Sabella's closeness. Of the fetid scent of old blood under her fingernails, the slight pressure on my scalp from how she held my hair between her fingers. Listening to them was like swallowing glass. Each word was painful. A reflection of my deepest fears. That there would come a night when Charlemagne was no longer soft with me. When he left me bitter and heartless.

If they wanted to know what made me special, so did I. But I loved him. Even in this dark, damp crypt I loved him. I'd love him for the rest of my life. However short it was. "You want him to kill me?" I blinked tears out of my eyes. "That's why you poisoned him?"

Bianca tilted her head from side to side. "If you had simply left on your own, so much of this whole ugly thing could have been avoided. You just had to stay away. Break his heart but stay away." She wandered further into the dark, her fingers skirting the edge of a raised coffin. "Sabella."

At the sound of her name, Sabella yanked. Sharp pain rippled through my scalp, strands coming loose in her cruel fingers as she tugged my head to the side, baring my neck. I hadn't even seen Lian move until she was in my peripheral, and her fangs were in my throat. The pain was sharp and sudden, licking along my nerve endings.

I tried to squirm, but I was locked in the grip of her teeth. Sabella kept one hand in my hair and reached for my wrist with her free hand. She tore the flesh open with her teeth and drank deeply. My lips parted, but only a strangled croak came out. I was helpless. The throbbing beat of my heart only pressed more blood into their mouths. In the dark haze clouding my vision, Bianca dug her nails beneath the coffin lid's seam.

"Trusting fool." Her voice came from far away, half-lost to the shadows. "He never even considered that I could hurt him too." She jerked her hand up, the sound of the coffin wood cracking as it flew up into the air and hit the stone floor. "Dead man's blood and a little more vervain."

Lian let up suddenly, her tongue slithering out of her mouth to roll across her lips. "Enough." She hissed at Sabella. "We don't want to drain her."

Sabella raised her head, my blood dripping down her chin. Why? Why don't they want to drain me? The question bubbled up from the back of my mind, but I was already falling. My head bounced off the stone floor, but I didn't feel it. Cold was spreading along my limbs, and the darkness was growing thicker. I was too tired to be afraid, to be anything. Why don't they want to drain me?

My eyes rolled in my skull. The coffin. The coffin. Who's in the coffin? But somewhere, below my ribs, I knew. They needed it to be him. Maybe that would be okay. I wanted—needed—to see his face one last time. I swallowed against the tightness in my throat and focused what was left of my energy on watching the coffin. Time slowed to a crawl.

A choked sound escaped me, starting from deep in my belly and forcing its way out. When he rose from the coffin, he wasn't my Charlemagne. They'd poisoned my Charlemagne. Dead man's blood and a little more vervain. Pale, nearly translucent, and gaunt. The angles of his face had sharpened, his eyes were black pits in their bruised sockets. He seemed longer, thinner, crueler. Here was the Mangeur de Coeur. The Heart-Eater.

My heart skipped and thumped in my chest. I wanted to shut my eyes on him, but I couldn't. Terror wouldn't let me. If I was being hunted, I needed to see it. You don't close your eyes on a predator. A surprised wheeze escaped me, in the seconds it'd taken my eyes to flutter, Charlemagne had appeared on the ceiling of the crypt. His movements were disjointed, fast and jerky.

My breath came harsher and harsher, eyes tracking his movement as much as they could. Vampires are so fucking fast. My throat spasmed as I tried to swallow, tried to make my mouth say his name. A tremor had started deep in my body, my stomach squicked and rolled. "Ch-Cha—"

He twisted around, dropping from the ceiling to land over me. Charlemagne dropped his weight against my body, and finally, briefly, I slammed my eyes shut. His nose brushed along my skin. From temple to chin. He inhaled. I forced my eyes open to look at his face. I wanted to find my vampire there. I wanted it more than my next breath. "Char?" I whispered, aware again of the tears on my face.

Charlemagne lifted his head, there was no recognition in his eyes. They were shark eyes. Hungry eyes. I wasn't any more human to him than he was to me. "Char?" I tried again, wanting to touch him, to do something, but I couldn't lift my arms. There was only this. "Char, I love you." I whispered, "Je t'aime, Je t'aime, Je t'aime." A sob shuddered through me, bending my words in half. "It's okay, it'll be okay—"

But nothing would ever be okay again. He would kill me and destroy himself. Blonde haired death has marked you for his own. Terror iced through me. A sudden burst of energy made me jerk beneath him. I didn't want to die. I didn't want my love to kill me. The struggle was born more out of instinct than any idea that I would actually get away from him.

He dropped his weight on top of me, forcing the air out of my lungs with a harsh grunt. I struggled for my next breath. "Ch-Cha—" My teeth clacked together in a grimace.

One of his hands fisted in my hair, keeping me still, as Charlemagne shifted his head to press his face into my neck. His tongue was cool as it slid along the wound Lian's careless teeth had made. A purr vibrated through him and into my body. "Hush, mon coeur," He whispered into my ear, his voice so low it was barely audible even to me. "I'm going to give you my blood. Just enough to get you on your feet. I'm going to set you into motion, and you're going to run. You will not stop. You will not look back."

Charlemagne? I was suspended between dream and reality. Had he come back to me, or had my mind conjured up this one last gift before he killed me. He shifted slightly on top of me, and I forced my eyes open. In the black of his eyes there was a thin, blue ring. Recognition. He slit open his tongue before pressing his mouth over mine, forcing it between my lips.

My stomach spasmed at the first taste of blood, but as he pressed more into my mouth, a strange hunger woke inside me. Sour around the edges, not as sweet as the first time he gave me blood, but still… delicious. Still everything. My lids fluttered as I sucked gently at his tongue. Calm spread through my limbs. My throbbing heart eased.

More, I sucked hard, I wanted more, more, more—

Charlemagne jerked up suddenly, propelling me upward, he shoved me forward. "Run!"

I stumbled, but I ran.

You will not look back. Keeping my gaze ahead, I ran hard. I felt the scrape of nails along my arm only once before there was a terrible rumbling sound. Charlemagne. I tilted forward, running full out. The torches flickered out behind me, drowning me in total darkness. Willpower alone kept me upright. Adrenaline pumped through me, knocking my heart into my ribs.

A scream raised the hair along the back of my neck, and I stumbled again, but I didn't stop. I couldn't stop. The darkness felt complete, like I would be running into it forever. Or at least until my heart stopped. My adrenaline was starting to waver, my legs turning to rubber beneath my weight. This crypt had to end, didn't it?

The darkness began to take shape. Pale light filled the edges, coating a small set of stairs. I barreled into them, slamming bodily into the crypt door, the hinges shuttered and broke open. When I stumbled this time, I hit the ground and rolled, landing with a hard thump on my back on a set of mausoleum stairs.

The stars spun in my vision, and for the second time that night, the world went dark.