“Are you completely off your trolley?!” Nakano shouted back.
Imogene was furious that Nakano was ruining her excursion. When Brania had raised her hand to slap her, Imogene took the opportunity to fade out of that claustrophobic cave and fade into one of the places that had brought her so much joy when she was alive: St. Sebastian's.
“Nobody can see me unless I'm in that bloody cave!” she yelled. “And if somebody does ... well, I'll just tell them I've decided to come back to school.”
The verdict was in, and the jury had found Imogene to be insane. Crouching behind some wild brush so he wouldn't be seen, Nakano tried to empathize with her plight and calmly talk sense into the girl, but failed miserably. “You're a walking corpse! A bloody ghost girl!” he shouted. “If you
can
be seen, you can't just tell people you got bored and decided to come back to school!”
“And you can't tell me what to do!”
The second Nakano ran forward, he knew what was going to happen, but he had no choice. Imogene wasn't listening to him, and it was clear that she wasn't going to take cover, move out of the line of vision of everyone in St. Sebastian's on her own. If she hung around in front of the windows much longer, there was a chance that someone would see her, and there was no way she was going to explain her whereabouts the past year or why she had chosen to return without winding up in a loony bin somewhere. Or worse, exposing the countless secrets she knew. No, Nakano had one choice: to grab her and drag her back to the cave. Unfortunately, when he ran toward Imogene, she had a foolproof defense. She disappeared.
Despite her unique talent, Imogene was predictable, and it didn't take a genius to figure out that she would return to the cave. She could only disappear when she felt frightened, she could wander around a bit on her own, but inevitably she would have to return home, to the cave. When Nakano burst into the hidden enclave, Imogene sounded anything but peaceful.
Standing in the center of her coffin, Imogene screamed, “When are we going to explore the world like you promised?!”
He almost didn't see Brania because she was sitting in the far corner on the floor, her legs crossed in a meditative position. Her weary expression made Nakano think she wished she possessed Imogene's migratory skills so she could evaporate and reappear anywhere else but here. “We
are
going to travel, Imogene,” Brania said, her voice brimming with exasperation. “But not until our work is done.”
“I don't have any work to do!” Imogene shouted as she began to pace the length of the casket, back and forth, back and forth, stomp, stomp, stomp. “All I do is sing! Well, I'm tired of singing, and I'm tired of listening to you!”
“Looks like shacking up in a cave ain't all it's cracked up to be,” Kano joked. He was sitting on one of the largest boulders in the room, leaning forward, his chin resting in his palms as if he were watching the final scene in a riveting play. “How will it all end? Will the ghost girl disappear for parts unknown or will vampire lady be able to restore peace to her rocky kingdom?”
Nakano was so amused with himself he didn't even care that Brania looked like she wanted to tear his throat apart with her bare fangs. “Rocky! Get it?” he asked.
Ignoring Nakano, Brania walked toward the coffin, smiling compassionately. When she spoke Nakano realized she had decided to play the role of doting mother. “You don't have to listen to me, Imogene,” Brania said softly. “But I wish you would.”
Instead of being soothed by Brania's placation, the girl was incensed, stopping in mid-pace to whirl around and hurl an ultimatum at her keeper. “I will if you stop seeing that red-haired girl. She was my friend first!”
Brania gripped the side of the casket and felt the metal rim cut into her flesh. How dare someone as lowly as Imogene give her an order? Imogene was her subject, not the other way around. This was what happened when you showed someone tenderness, sympathy, and love. They turned on you and used your feelings to their advantage. If that's the game Imogene wanted to play, then she should be prepared to lose, because no one was a better manipulator than Brania. “Imogene, darling, there's no reason for you to be jealous of Ruby,” Brania said. “You're my firstborn, my dearest, and that will never, ever change.”
One layer of armor fell from Imogene's slender frame, and the girl's features softened, her entire body relaxed. “You promise you're telling me the truth?”
Climbing inside the coffin so she could hold Imogene close to her heart, Brania replied, “Of course it's the truth. A mother would never lie to her child.”
Nakano only clapped his hands twice in applause before Brania's stare made him stop. She needed Imogene to be obedient in order for her plan to find the location of The Well to succeed, so she had to assuage her ruffled feathers. Nakano, while useful, wasn't vital, so she could pluck out his feathers one vindictive yank at a time. “Why don't you keep your hair short Nakano?” Brania suggested. “You really don't have the bone structure to wear it long.”
Bitch! Why do I fall for it every time? Why do I always think that she's my friend and that I can trust her and then have to listen to her make a nasty comment? Wasn't I the one who found that idiot near the gym? Wasn't I the one who tried to get Imogene off of public display? When is somebody going to thank me instead of giving me grief all the time?!
Thought after thought, rant after rant, bounced around Nakano's head. David, Jean-Paul, Brania, Imogene, he was done with all of them. They could burn in hell for all he cared!
The enthralling smell of blood and rotting flesh distracted him for a second, intoxicated him, and set him running off in the opposite direction, away from Double A and further into the dense, rarely traveled portion of The Forest. The smell was making him hungry, so why not feed early. Who needs to wait until sundown? He could make his own rules and explore new territory at the same time. Take that, Imogene!
The delicious scent was getting more pungent with each step he took. He breathed in deeper, deeper, deeper as he ran until the bouquet of decay mixed with blood consumed his lungs. He had no idea what he was going to find to be the source of the aroma; he didn't even waste the energy to speculate, because whatever it was, it was making him weak. So weak that when he reached Diego's corpse, he fell to his knees.
Half of his classmate's face was gone, eaten, devoured by the hordes of hungry animals that populated this area of The Forest, revealing bits of skull and mutilated muscle that were now a playground for maggots. The other half was eerily undamaged as if left there as a reminder of what the boy had once looked like. Nakano had never noticed that Diego had a birthmark below his right eye that looked very much like a six-pointed star. The rest of his body was twisted into odd, inhuman positions, and Nakano didn't know if that was the result of the initial struggle that killed him or from being out here exposed to the elements and vulnerable to predators. Diego had last been seen in November, so he had been lying here for at least three months. Nakano hoped that he had spent most all of that time dead.
Instinctively, Kano looked at Diego's neck for signs that he had been the victim of a vampire killing, but the portion of his neck that hadn't been eaten away was unbruised. He thought there might be the possibility that Diego had been killed by less supernatural means until he saw his fingers.
What remained of his left arm was outstretched, and the two fingers that were still attached to his badly decomposed hand were lying in a pool of blood surrounded by dirt and snow. Leaning forward on his hands and knees, Nakano saw that within the concoction of natural elements was a wordâ
theâ
that he imagined Diego had written as a message while he lay dying. But
the
what? What in the world could it mean? If he was going to try and communicate from beyond the grave, why would he choose such a common word? Why not write something specific, something that had meaning? Nakano gasped out loud when the inspiration came to him. If the word didn't hold any meaning, perhaps the blood that wrote the word did.
Lowering his body so his face was inches from Diego's blood-encrypted message, Nakano opened his mouth and traced the letters with his long, slender tongue. By the time his tongue rounded the curve in the letter
e,
Nakano realized his inspiration had real consequence. He was no longer living in the present, but was hurtled back in time and was witnessing Diego's death.
It was as if he were within Diego's body, traveling as a passenger, as the boy ran wildly into the thick brush, tripping over unearthed rocks and running into low-hanging branches, his breath coming in quick, fearful gasps. When Diego turned around to look behind him, face whatever was running after him, hunting him down, Nakano understood what word Diego had been trying to convey. His message wasn't complete; he died before he finished it. He didn't want to use his blood to trace the word
the.
He was trying to spell out
theology.
As if looking out from behind Diego's panicked eyes, Nakano saw Professor Joubert and Jean-Paul racing after him, their faces transformed, fangs displayed, and gaining speed with every step. They had no intention of letting their prey get away. But why were they chasing after him in the first place? What could Diego have possibly done to provoke such an attack?
When Diego's body tumbled, Nakano felt as if his own bones hit the earth. He wasn't certain if he was in the past or the present until he felt a hand turn him over violently and he was staring up at Jean-Paul's face. “That weel teach you not to spy on your professors.”
“I ... I wa-wasn't sp-spying,” Diego stuttered, fear making him incapable of speaking clearly. “I ... I ... j-just wa-wanted to sp-speak t-t-to Professor Jou-Jou-Joubert.”
Jean-Paul pressed his knees harder into Diego's shoulders, and Nakano felt the pain. “Then thees eez your lucky day,” Jean-Paul declared. “Because Professor Jou-Jou-Joubert eez right 'ere.”
Nakano had to look hard to connect the face he was staring at with the face that he saw every day in Theology class. Very little was the same. But when he looked into the professor's eyes, even though they were glassy and tinged with a yellow hue, they were filled with pity. Whatever he was about to do, he was going to do it reluctantly. “Diego, you shouldn't have followed me,” he said. “You shouldn't have come upon us when we were feeding.”
The vision started to blur when the tears escaped from Diego's eyes. “P-p-please, sir,” was all Diego could say until he could catch his breath. And then he begged. “Please don't hurt me.”
There was silence, not a sound was heard. It was as if the entire world were waiting to hear how Professor Joubert would respond. Even Nakano, who knew the outcome, knew how the scene inevitably played out, held his breath hoping that the past could be rewritten. It couldn't. “I'm sorry, Diego,” Joubert replied, his voice filled with as much kindness as possible. “I can't let you live after what you've seen.”
“You c-c-an make me l-l-like you,” Diego said.
In spite of what he knew, Nakano was filled with a ray of hope and even pride. Fuente wasn't as dumb as he had always thought. Pinned to the ground, looking up into the face of a vampire, an extraordinary creature he had probably never imagined truly existed, Diego had the quick sense to bargain for his life. Joubert looked impressed as well and, yes, thankful that his student had given him an option to avoid outright murder. But Jean-Paul thought differently.
“Gwendal,” Jean-Paul said, pushing the professor aside. “Look at heem. We do not need a fat, ugly peeg to join our ranks.”
It was at that moment that Diego knew his life was over. Nakano's body twisted as Diego tried to free himself from underneath the weight of the two men. He tried to form words, attempt another tactic, but each time he seemed to give up before he began. After a few seconds, Diego had given up all hope. His body stopped moving, and something died within Nakano's heart. He couldn't believe how palpable the fear was that was consuming Diego, and he couldn't believe how evil the hatred was that flowed through Jean-Paul's veins.
“Let's use theese fat peeg for dessert,” Jean-Paul said, his voice erupting into a cruel laugh, which only ended when he buried his fangs into Diego's neck and took every drop of blood his body could digest.
Somehow Diego clung onto life as he watched the two men walk away, Jean-Paul strutting off as if he had just bedded another conquest, Joubert's tall frame hunched over, moving like a man who had given in to a vice he so desperately tried to resist. Nakano wanted the vision to stop; he had seen enough. But Diego was still alive, still trying to communicate with whoever would find his body. Nakano thought he felt his own tears race down his cheeks when he realized Diego was acting the same way he always did in class, refusing to give up. Which is exactly what the boy had done until all life drifted from him.
Diego's soul floated up and through Nakano's body. It was like feeling goodness, but not being able to hold onto it. Nakano knew that sensation, and the vision would haunt him forever. Not only had he witnessed a senseless murder, not only had he seen how evil the man he had once loved could actually be, but he finally understood what he had done to Penry. And he knew because of that one horrific, misguided act, he would never be worthy of forgiveness.