Authors: Heather C. Hudak
“Why, Chaseyn? What’s wrong with the bridge?”
“The bridge isn’t the problem.”
“That’s good because I’m already there,” I whispered weakly.
“Listen to me,” Chaseyn demanded. “Chip isn’t what you think, and whatever Balthazar told you isn’t true. You need to get out of there now.”
He was shouting at me, and I felt like I was being chastised for falling into whatever trap Chip and Balthazar had set. “Do you understand? I need to know.”
I nodded my head, forgetting there was no way for Chaseyn to see the slight movement through the phone. Without uttering a single sound, I turned quickly in a circle to survey my surroundings and realized I was utterly alone. That early in the morning, it was just me and the solemn statues that flanked each side of the gothic bridge. The serenity I had felt only moments ago was quickly replaced by alarm. In the distance, I could see the distinct skip that was inherent in every one of Chip’s steps. The spiky peaks of her boyish chestnut hair juxtaposed against an ultra-feminine swagger offered another unmistakable clue that it was her coming toward me.
Panicked, I weighed my options. One side of the bridge led to the Old Town, which wouldn’t begin buzzing with the likes of locals for a few more hours. Running that way would take me farther from Chip but also farther from potential rescuers. If I ran in the general direction from which she was walking, I had a better chance of finding someone who could help me hide. Memories of my face off with Frost in the fun house back in Amarillo a few months earlier flashed before my eyes, and my head began to spin. I managed to steady myself long enough to alert Chaseyn.
“I can see her. She’s coming back. What should I do ?”
Without hesitation, he made one final demand.
“RUN!”
Chapter 35 - Darkness
The sound of Chaseyn’s haunting scream as he uttered his definitive command was one of the last things I could remember before blacking out. I could also recall putting my legs in motion to make a hasty escape and a hand wrapping around my mouth to muffle my scream. In the ensuing struggle, my phone was knocked from my grip and into the water below.
When I came to--who knows how long later--I was lying on a cold, hard floor. Darkness filled every corner of the room, and no matter how hard I strained my eyes, I couldn’t make out so much as my hand in front of my face. Reaching up to rub the place on my head that was throbbing wickedly, I remembered one more thing--the feel of a hard, blunt object connecting with the back of my head. I had been knocked unconscious before being brought here to this unknown, unidentifiable place.
“Is she awake?” a muffled voice said from someplace nearby.
“Looks that way,” a more familiar voice said.
What was happening here? When would they turn the lights on and tell me what was going on?
“Balthazar? Is that you?,” I asked, my voice weak, my throat scratchy and dry. “Where am I? Can you help me? I need to talk to Chaseyn.”
“Shut up,” a female voice threatened at the same time as a hand connected with my cheek. A sharp pain stabbed at my jaw.
“Chip?” I called. “Balthazar, she’s not what you think. You have to get her out of here.”
“Stupid, stupid girl,” he said. “I know exactly who she is.”
“You do?”
“Of course…she’s a
chip
off the old block,” he said.
It took me a minute to clue in to what he was saying. He was alluding to her nickname, of course, but I had always assumed she had earned it because she was so chipper. It had never occurred to me that there was another reason for the name.
“Who’s the old block?” I asked, confused.
“Dear old daddy,” Chip chimed in.
“Huh?”
“Come on, Cordelia,” Balthazar spit out my name like it was venom. “You’re a smart girl. Figure it out.”
I tried running through the possibilities, but my head hurt so badly, and I was still so astonished by the recent turn of events that I simply couldn’t focus.
“Give up?” Chip asked, but before I could even open my mouth to respond, I could feel her nose pressed against mine, her breath cold on my skin. In a raised voice, she said, “I asked you a question, girl. DO YOU GIVE UP?”
I nodded my head, knowing she could feel the slight movement. Every inch of me was trembling, covered in goose bumps--not from the chill in the cold, dank room, but out of sheer terror.
“I believe you know my dad. He’s real swell,” Chip said in a saccharine voice. “In fact, I think you know a few of my siblings too. Although, it was such a pity that I had to do away with one of them back in Venice. We never got on that well, anyway.”
Frost. Frost was her sister. That meant that Chaseyn was her brother. And…Alexei was her father.
“Oh, no,” I cried. “No. No. No.”
“That’s right, sweetheart. You put the puzzle pieces together,” Balthazar said.
Silence filled the room, as though they were allowing me the time I needed to sort through the details. Suddenly, it occurred to me that there was a way out. The ring. It might be too late by the time Chaseyn found me…the deed might already be done--whatever the deed might be. But, at least he would find me eventually, and, assuming I was still alive--or at least undead--we could make it through this together.
Before anyone could see me fumbling with the object on my left hand, I tore the ring from my finger and smacked it hard against the ground in front of me, breaking the glass that encased Chaseyn’s blood. I raised the broken vial to my lips and was just about to lick away the blood that dripped from it when I felt the slap of a hand across my own. The ring went flying from my grip and with it all hope of Chaseyn ever finding me.
“Nice try, sugar,” Chip laughed.
More silence filled the darkness. After a few moments, I heard the creak of a door opening and then closing again.
“Hello,” I said into the darkness. “Are you there?”
No response. I was alone. And that’s when the floodgates opened.
Chapter 36 - The Plan
Some time had passed--I don’t know how long, but it was quite a while--before I managed to compose myself. At some point, I realized there was no point in crying. It wasn’t going to change my situation. Instead, I began counting. I may not have known how much time had passed up to that moment, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t start keeping track. I crawled around the perimeter of the room and found the remnants of my shattered ring. I slipped it back on my finger, and for every thirty minutes that passed, I used it to etch a line in the wall near the floor beside the door.
It was a fairly large room. I counted about twenty paces from front to back and another 15 from side to side. And, it was completely empty. At first, I thought I might be back in the basement of the London pub where I had first met Balthazar, but something told me I was wrong. That would be too easy. Chaseyn would find me in a heartbeat there.
I also thought about how encouraging Chip had been of Eli’s relationship with Addie. It surprised me when she hadn’t shown any true jealousy toward their relationship--I was sure she had wanted to be the object of Eli’s affections. In hindsight, it made perfect sense. Addie was a distraction for Eli. The more time he spent catering to her whims, the less attention he paid to me. He had been taking for granted lately that Chip would keep a watchful eye on me so that he could spend time alone with Addie. As a result, it could take hours before he even noticed the two of us were missing. He might just think we had decided to give him and Addie some more time alone together while Chip and I explored Prague on our own.
There were seven lines on the wall before I heard the door creaking open. I scurried as far from the door as I could--I didn’t want anyone to know I was documenting my stay there. Three-and-a-half hours. Was that enough time, I wondered? Had Eli grown suspicious yet? I had warned him of my skepticism when it came to Chip, but over the past few days, things had been going so well between the two of us that he might have thought that I had overcome any concerns I had been having.
“Hello,” I said when the dim figure was fully inside the room. My eyes had adjusted somewhat to the darkness, and I was able to make out a silhouette. “The least you can do is get it over with quickly. I mean, we all know how this will end. Why put it off any longer?”
“Is that what you think this is about?” Chip said. “You think I’m here to help my father make you his bride? Just goes to show how naïve you really are.”
“You mean there’s another reason? Are you going to hand me over to the Soldiers of Solace?”
She burst out in uncontrollable laughter. She actually fell to the floor holding her side from laughing so hard.
“You have no idea, do you? There are no ‘Soldiers,’ Lia. That was all part of our little plan,” she said, wiping tears from her eyes. “I can’t take credit, though. It was all Balty. He’s so…amazing. That’s why I love him.”
“Too bad he doesn’t love you in return,” I spat. “You know how he feels about Mina.”
“How dare you,” she seethed. “He hasn’t loved her in a long time.”
“And, don’t forget the way he was all over Sylvie back in Paris. I saw it plain as day, so you must have too.”
“Ha! I took care of that situation,” Chip said chuckling. “Poor thing never saw it coming. And, you thought I had simply gone for a ‘snack’.”
I remembered how Chip had been late for our train in Venice. She had walked Sylvie to her train first, and when she returned, there were a few drops of blood on her shorts.
“What did you do?” I cried out. “Where is she?”
“Don’t pretend you didn’t think about how much better it would be if Sylvie was gone. Now, you don’t have to worry about Chaseyn ever falling for her again. When you think about it, you owe me.”
My stomach lurched, and despite the fact that I hadn’t eaten in hours--vampires tended to forget to feed their human captives--I vomited its contents onto the floor in front of me. There was no ventilation on the room and the stench was immediately overwhelming.
“Disgusting.” Chip said. “I should make you lick it up.”
She left then, and I hoped she would never come back. But, she did. And, she brought a mop and a small lantern.
“Here,” she said, shoving the mop into my hand. I took it and cleaned up the mess.
“Can I have some water?” I asked. “I’m parched.”
“You can drink the mop water when you’re done,” she said. “I shouldn’t be doing you that favor even, so you had better thank me for it.”
“Ah, why so harsh?” a masculine voice said as he made his way through the entry. My eyes had yet to adjust to the brightness of the lantern after having been in the dark for so long. I squinted hard, and finally, I made out the figure of the man who had just entered the room.
Andrien. He was here, and he was kissing Chip. My head was reeling with this new information.
“But, what about Balthazar?” I asked, not realizing I had said the words aloud. I clamped a hand over my mouth, but it was too late.
“Don’t get me wrong, Balty’s a swell guy an all, but he’s a bit too old for me,” Chip said, her arm draped around Andrien’s shoulder. “Besides, we both know he’s still hung up on Mina. In fact, I’ll bet he’s hoping she’ll show up with loverboy when he comes looking for your sorry a--”
“Enough! You’re losing sight of why we’re here,” Balthazar said storming into the room. “I mean, really, Lia, Chip and me. Ridiculous. She served her purpose, but I couldn’t possibly want her for more than that.”
“And, what was her purpose? Why bother with this whole charade if all you were going to do was turn me over to Alexei?” I shouted. “Is he here? Why don’t you just bring him in and get it over with already?”
“You still don’t get it,” Chip laughed, Andrien standing silent at her side. “It’s not you Andrien has been tracking since we left London. Sure, we made it seem that way so that we would have a reason to destroy Frost, but that was just a bonus, really.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Frost was going to finish the deed, bring you into
our
world,” Andrien explained. “And, it was my job to make sure that never happened. I’ve been hanging around that stupid floozy for so long for so long, I wanted to drive a stake through my own heart.”
“So why did you do it? Somebody fill me in, please.”
“I couldn’t let her get to you first. We needed you to lure Alexei to us,” Andrien said. “Then, we can finish him once and for all.”
“What? I’m confused. Why would you want to kill him?”
“He’s created so many ‘newborns’ in his quest to make you his undead bride that there is utter mayhem in some parts of the world,” Balthazar explained. “That part of what I told you is true. And, I personally won’t stand for it any more, isn’t that right, Chip?”
Before Chip could answer, Balthazar unfolded his burly arms to reveal a wooden stake in each of his massive hands. Faster than the blink of an eye, he spun in a quick circle, leg extended to knock Andrien in the head and then, he lurched forward and plunged one of the makeshift weapons into Chip’s chest. A split second later, Andrien lay on the floor next to Chip, the second stake sticking out from his chest.
“Let’s go,” he said, grabbing me by the arm and dragging me from the room. With trembling hands I wiped the tears from my eyes. I was speechless. Utterly speechless. I had no idea where I was going or why. I was completely helpless.