The Gray Institute (The Gray Institute Trilogy Book 1) (35 page)

'Did you bring me here in the hope you could convince me to change?' She asks. I sigh, annoyed with myself for forgetting that Lorna sees through everything. I decide honesty is the best policy from now on with her.

'The thought had crossed my mind.' I admit, and to my surprise she smiles.

'I admire your determination,' She states. I lean across her to take a cigarette out of my jacket pocket. She reaches in herself to hand me a match and I struggle against the wind to create a spark. 'May I?' She asks, holding the packet and I frown, wrestling with my morals.

'In my country, you're not even old enough.' But she's already taking one from the packet and reaching for the matches.

'I think, when you get changed into an Immortal and taken to an Institute in the middle of fuck knows where, human laws go out the window a bit, don't they?' She asks. She drags greedily on the cigarette and I wince as I hear the wheezing of her lungs, rejecting the toxins.

'If you could hear what I can, you wouldn't smoke.' I state, taking a drag on mine. She doesn't reply and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear.

'Do you wonder why I hate your kind so much?' She asks suddenly. I frown, shaking my head.

'I just assumed it was because an Immortal stole your life and forced you to exist in solitude until you're old enough to be of use to him.' I shrug, and she laughs unexpectedly.

'Well put,' She nods. 'But no. That's not the real reason.' She takes another drag on her cigarette, staring thoughtfully out to sea. She seems to be wrestling with something in her mind so I keep quiet.

'My mother was an Immortal before me.' She says finally. I struggle to hide my surprise. I can't even begin to guess at Lorna's past, but I notice the way she refers to her mother in the past tense. Strange, given the fact that she was Immortal.

'What was her name?' I ask carefully.

'Marcheline,' Lorna smiles, pronouncing the name slowly, like a sweet she's savouring. 'My name is Lorna Beaudreux.'

'French?' I ask, and she nods.

'My father and mother were the Duke and Duchess of Burgundy.' She smiles. I tap my thumbnail against my cigarette thoughtfully.

'So, you're French nobility?' I ask, and she nods again.

'Lady Lorna Beaudreux.' She grins, blushing a little.

'My lady.' I bow my head slightly and she giggles, but then her face turns stony.

'It's been so long since someone called me that,' She sighs. 'My father died when I was ten – lung cancer. I didn't see him for the last two months.' She shakes her head sadly.

'I'm sorry.' I reply automatically. She stops talking and drags her shoe through the damp mud, raking it into a mound and flattening it down with her sole. 

'I don't know of Burgundy.' I say, hoping that talk of her home will perk her up a little.

'It's beautiful,' She smiles nostalgically, looking far out to sea. 'We lived in a big manor in the countryside, and the next residence was miles away. To go into town it took nearly forty minutes in a car. It sounds awkward but I loved it. We owned so much land, I could play where I wanted, ride my horse for miles.'

'What was your horse's name?' I ask.

'Frou Frou,' She laughs. 'I named her that after reading Leo Tolstoy's
Anna Karenina
?' It's a question and I shake my head. Though English was always my strongest subject at school, and I was well read when I was younger, my reading days had significantly petered out – good books replaced by good drugs.

'She was huge, though only a pony when I got her. She was a grey – beautiful.'

'I've never ridden a horse.' I confess, and Lorna raises her eyebrows in surprise.

'Oh, it's amazing. Being in control of such a powerful animal, riding fast through meadows... though admittedly you could probably run faster,' She snorts. 'I don't know what happened to her.' She says sadly and I feel a twisting, uncomfortable sensation in my chest as tears fill her pretty eyes.

'When what?' I ask, hesitantly. 'You don't know what happened to her when what?'

Lorna eyes me suspiciously for a moment, sizing me up, deciding whether or not to trust me. Trusting me with her life is one thing, trusting me with her past is another. I know that better than most.

'When my father died,' She explains. 'My mother brought me up alone. We were both devastated by his death; the cancer was late-stage and we didn't have long before he was gone.

I had a nanny who looked after me while he was alive, but when he passed away my mother dismissed her, deciding that we needed to be stronger together more than ever before. Six months after he died, my mother met Alec.'

I draw a loud, sharp breath which rings out into the distance. Lorna nods gravely.

'I know,' She continues. 'He was on a trip to Burgundy – something to do with the Auctoritas – and he met my mother. He seemed to take a liking to her straight away and she was such a kind, obliging person. When he offered to help her break her new horse in, she didn't think anything of it.

She could have hired a stable hand but instead she allowed Sir Alec into our home.

He didn't tell her who he really was, of course. He made out that he was on a business trip from England and staying a while. He asked her to show him the area and she obliged.

Imagine it, the Duchess of Burgundy showing a tourist around the town,' Lorna laughs. 'But that's the sort of person she was.'

'She sounds lovely.' I smile.

'Anyway, after a while, Alec started coming around more often; my mother was grateful for the company, I think. She needed a man around the house, you know? Not just a butler or a handyman, someone to fill a gap. But she was still desperately sad about my father and Alec preyed on her grief.

Suddenly he started sending flowers and expensive gifts. My mother was shocked. I don't think it had ever crossed her mind that Alec might be interested in her romantically and she certainly hadn't meant to lead him on in any way.

I think she eventually told him that she wasn't interested in anything more than friendship and at first, he pretended to accept it, hoping that he could change her mind. But she kept sending back his gifts and flowers. Then one day, she went into town to pick up a new saddle for my Frou Frou and left me at home with the maid.

She didn't return for five years. When she did, she had changed.'

'He changed her.' I state, and Lorna nods.

'I know now what happened, but at the time, she just disappeared into thin air. The police were called, an investigation was opened, search parties formed but no one could find her. At first they thought it might be an abduction, for a ransom you know?

Then when she didn't return, and no phone calls came from kidnappers, the police decided that it was a ransom situation gone wrong. That perhaps the abductors had killed her accidentally. They closed the case.

My old nanny heard of my mother's disappearance and came back to look after me. We had to move away from the manor. I moved into my nanny's house nearer to town, and she brought me up herself.'

'What really happened?' I ask, engrossed in Lorna's almost unbelievable tale.

'From his account, Alec followed her that day and approached her again, attempting to woo her. When she rejected him yet again, he lost his temper and flew into a frenzy, attacked her, leaving her half-dead. He regretted it instantly – from what he tells me – and changed her without the Auctoritas' permission, bringing her here to the Institute.

He sought out the Auctoritas approval, they granted it on the grounds of her nobility – though they were angry as she'd left many people behind who would miss her – and she served out her five years here as Alec's unwilling wife. The fourth and fifth years knew her, I've heard most of this story from them.

She hated it here, apparently; refused to participate in the lessons, until eventually Alec confined her to his quarters. She was tutored one to one and allowed to speak to nobody but him.

Eventually, when her five years were up, she managed to convince Alec to let her leave the Institute. He tells me it was on the grounds that she always came back to him.

The first thing she did was come to me.' She smiles proudly, hugging her chest, as though it were her mother in her arms.

'I was fifteen when she came back. She didn't stay long, she wanted to make sure I was alive and being looked after. She could have just checked on me and gone undetected but when she saw me, she couldn't bear it and decided to show herself to me, so that I knew she was still alive. I was asleep in my bed when she climbed through my window,' She grins at the memory.

'She shook me awake and hugged me so tight I couldn't breathe. I freaked out – she looked so different – but she told me it was okay, that she was alright but that she couldn't stay – if she did I would be in danger.

She wouldn't tell me anything else, I guess she was trying to protect me. She just told me she loved me and that she would always be looking out for me. Then she left.'

My cigarette has burned down to the end and I throw it over the cliff's edge into the water, not taking my eyes off Lorna.

'Alec tells me she went into hiding for two years, on the run from the Auctoritas and Alec himself. He said he has no idea how she evaded capture for so long.

The Auctoritas instructed Alec to find her and bring her to the Confine. He says he put off looking for her for as long as he could, even swears that he caught her once and deliberately let her go, though I don't know how true that is.

But eventually he had to bring her in, and she was Confined. His next task was to find and kill me; I knew too much and was a threat to their world. I don't know why the Auctoritas allowed me to live for the two years she ran, my only conclusion is that they wanted Alec to carry out both tasks himself, as a punishment for his indiscretion.

Not that I knew enough to expose their precious world. All I knew was that my mother was different, I didn't know how or why and I didn't care so long as she was alive. The thought had crossed my mind that Alec was involved with her disappearance, but I was a kid, no-one listened to me.

The day he came I was outside, pegging out washing in the front garden. I remember clearly setting eyes on him as he strolled confidently up the garden path, his appearance utterly unchanged.

He asked me to accompany him inside and I refused, threatening to shout for Maria – my nanny – though she wasn't even home.

He grabbed my wrist and dragged me inside. His strength was unbelievable and I knew then that something was wrong – call it natural prey instinct.

He made me sit at the dining room table as he paced the room, looking up at me every now and then. He seemed to be struggling with something – I was terrified.

Then, after about ten minutes, he grabbed my wrist again, telling me that if I made a sound he would kill me then and there. I didn't dare as he led me to his car and drove me to the airport.

We got on a plane to St Lucia and there he injected me with something, I blacked out and when I woke up I was here, at the Institute, the rules and regulations being drummed into me.' She shakes her head sadly, glancing around, as if taking in her life for the first time.

I sit quietly beside her, not sure what to say except to apologise with sincerity for all that has happened to her. She stares at me, her gaze clouded, as though she's looking through me.

'Now do you see?' She asks fiercely. 'You see why I hate your kind? That bastard took my mother's life in a fit of rage because she wouldn't give in to him. He had no concern for her dead husband or her grief. He didn't love her, he just wanted to possess her. He'd probably never been rejected until her.

He confined her in his Institute, then Confined her for contacting me. Then, as if that wasn't bad enough, he took her daughter and did exactly the same to her.

It's not just Alec; the Auctoritas are a bunch of corrupt, self-indulgent, paranoid schizophrenics. The tutors are weak, spineless clones of their Government, unable to think for themselves or form opinions of their own.