What Lies Inside (A Blood Bound Novel, Book 1) (45 page)

A footstep sounded, followed by another and another as a tall man stepped into the light. My heart skipped a beat and my eyes grew wide. “Caius?” Had he intercepted Marcus? Was he here to save me? Words tumbled from my mouth in a barely audible babble. “You’re okay? He didn’t hurt you?” My eyes scoured over my uncle. His ash-gray suit was stained and speckled by damp patches. Dried blood flaked from his wrinkled forehead—the only remnants of my wrongful attack. Apart from that, he appeared completely unharmed. “What happened? Where are we?” I tried to raise my cuffed wrists, but they barely budged. “Can you break these?”

Caius made no attempt to answer my questions. He just stood there, his face shadowed and lined in an unreadable expression. A deep unsettling twisted through my gut. The throbbing pain inside my skull sent a shockwave down my spine, causing me to wince. Where is Marcus?

“Best we get this done,” Caius said with a smile. His lips parted just enough to reveal the point of extended fangs. “Before anyone notices you missing.”

The hair across the back of my neck prickled. “What are you talking about? Get what done?”

Caius chuckled, shaking his head. “I guess there is no harm in revealing the truth to you now… It’s not like you will live to
tell
anyone.”

Ice grew within my chest, snaking out in tendrils that brought a traveling shiver to my entire body. Won’t live? I shook my head. I’d heard him wrong, I must have. But Caius’s face—lit by a disturbing smile—did not placate the nervous tension growing inside of me. The black of his pupils shimmered. His expression looked so alien compared to the uncle I had grown up with, the one I trusted and loved. Any hint of caring was lost behind predatory eyes. Fear coiled through my heart “
You…
” My blood ran cold and I choked on my next words. “
You
did this?”

I shifted, cowering. Something pressed against my backside. I didn’t take notice. My eyes were already scanning for a weapon, an escape, anything to release me from these chains. There was a burlap sack crumbled on the ground, well out of reach. There was only one door, wooden and iron-braced. And just as in my dream, it was shut. Was it locked? It didn’t really matter. Not yet. Not while chains imprisoned me.

Despair gripped my heart. Another set of shackles hung from the opposing wall. Apart from that, the room was empty. Just me and the man I had loved as my uncle.

Caius stepped forward, clasping his hands before him. “This day has been a long time coming. I have waited patiently all these years for you to come of age, so to speak. You see, my dear…”

The use of his loving name for me brought bile to the back of my throat. I fought the urge to cough and groaned, struggling to pull my knees up to my chest. Absently I noticed how damp and stained my purple-laced Vans were. I’d never wear those again…if I lived. And there it was again, the feel of something digging into my backside. What am I sitting on? Then it dawned on me. A lifeline!

“I had to wait for your blood to complete the transformation.” Caius turned and began pacing. His eyes became distant while he continued his story.

It was the distraction I needed. Focused only on the task and knowing it was my only chance, I made my move. The lack of function in my limbs made my arms trembled with strain. I reached behind my back and winced. The chains rattled like an alarm going off.

But my uncle was lost in thought, recalling events that seemed to bring him satisfaction. “…to turn into a fully-fledged vampire, before I could put my plan into action,” he was saying.

Then my fingers grazed the smooth rectangular disc hidden inside the damp back pocket of my jeans. My iPhone! The reprieve I experienced was short lived. Getting hold of the phone unnoticed had been my first goal, but what now? Kendrick might be the only person I could still trust, my last hope,
if
he was free of compulsion. I needed to send out an SOS. The dank space reminded me of the cells Caius had shown me during his guided tour. Except there was a distinct difference. Those chambers had barred doors, not solid ones. And the cries of imprisoned beings had filled the air there. Not here. The air was deathly quiet. Defeat dampened my mind and soul. I had no idea where I was. Don’t give up, my internal voice challenged. If you do, you’re dead. With renewed desperation I tried to spot any clue that could reveal my location.

Caius’s direct tone drew my eye. “The stories you were told of how you were saved and created are not entirely accurate.” He was staring down at me with a look of anticipation. “Your mother had to be on the brink of death before I could infect her.”

Infect her? I remembered Mom’s explanation of how we were all turned. She had been heavily pregnant when the rogue vampire attacked, and our father had died protecting us. She would have died too, “
if not for Caius,”
she had said. “
He gave us new life when the only alternative was death.”

The truth of our past hit me like a blast of icy water. “There was no rogue vampire,” my voice quavered. The hand that shielded my iPhone behind my back began to shake violently. “It was you.”

Caius nodded with eyes almost solemn. “Though this is not how I had planned for all of this to play out. You see, my dear, taking your life had not always been my intention.” For a moment he appeared angry. Then his expression seemed to drop with a look of regret. “If you had only remained compliant and non-rebellious, a seed I could mold as my own to continue my legacy, well, then this would not have been an inevitability. I gave you many last chances, but in the end you acted too late. You are not the asset I once saw you as. You are a liability.” The regret striking his expression shifted with sound resolution. “In any case, it was the only way.”

Anger spiked my blood as I glared. The monster in front of me had orchestrated the attack on my family. The man I had accepted as my uncle had been the one to turn us all. He had damned us to life as vampires, and he had murdered my father. And we had all trusted him, seen him as our savior. My blood boiled, ice instantly turning to fire.

“Oh, don’t look so appalled, Amelia,” Caius spoke as though I were an unruly child. “You should be thanking me. Your mother was never part of my plan. I could have let her bleed out. Yet I didn’t. I showed her mercy and allowed her to live, allowed
you
to have a mother to grow up with.”

Insolence blemished my tone. “You want me to thank you?” Tearing my eyes away, I fought the urge to crush my iPhone in my still obscured hand. iPhone! Caius’s revelation had shaken me and re-written the past. It had distracted me when I needed to figure out where I was. “Where the hell are we?”

Caius shrugged. “Does it matter?”

Of course he wouldn’t tell me. Why would he? I shook my head, thinking to the last moments I could remember before waking in this dank cell. Caius’s office. He had lured me down there with lies and pretense. Why had he taken me there? For the life of me I couldn’t remember leaving, just wanting to, expecting Marcus to blaze into the room at any second. Everything, from the stacked piles of papers littering Caius’s desk, to the bookshelves and grandfather clock, had all appeared as usual. There hadn’t been a single thing out of place. I probed harder into my memories which were still swarming with too many images to comprehend. Then I saw it. On entering Caius’s office I’d fallen without the support of his arm, tripping on the rug before his desk. A split second glance I had disregarded at the time glowed behind my eyes. The desk lamp’s light had caught on something brass which had shone beneath the edge of the lifted rug. A latch… We never even left his office. We moved below it. I wasn’t at all certain that my hunch was right, but it was all I had to go on.

I forced my gaze up to Caius who was watching me with narrowed eyes. “You said it was the only way?” I hoped encouraging him to talk would distract him enough for me to send out my SOS. “The only way to what?”

Caius bent down, causing me to flinch. The dim light cast a glow around him, but left his face hardened by shadows. With a single finger he forced my chin up. My skin crawled, disgusted by his touch, and I tried to jerk back. “It was the only way to create a vampire whose blood would hold the key,” he said, then paused. His eyes became thoughtful as though he were choosing his next words carefully. “…to immortality.”

Immortality?
The word rippled through my entire body, shocking, intriguing, and utterly
what the hell?
The elixir Caius had given us had done a lot more than hold off our transformation into vampires. It had started the groundwork for Caius’s plan. With a throat-squeezing gulp, I forced my wide eyes up. “Does that mean…”

Caius’s sharp laugh stole me words. “That
you
are immortal? That you could live forever? Perhaps…” He shook his head, rising from his crouched position and turned away with a sigh. “But now we will never know.”

With the split second opportunity, I began keying a text. My hands shook and I winced at the clang of my chains.
‘Mortal danger. Trapped below…’

Caius turned back at the noise of my restrains. His eyes zeroed in on the iPhone in my hands. Then he lunged forward. My thumb hit the send button just as he snatched the phone from my grasp.

“Stupid girl,” Caius spat. “What have you done?” He glanced down, thumb traveling over the face of the phone. Fangs glinted through his split lips with an amused smile. A look of intention shimmered through his eyes. “He will never find you,” he said. Then with a belting force, he hurled my iPhone at the stone wall. It connected with a crunch and burst into shattered pieces.

An acidic lump crawled up my throat and I swallowed, feeling like I was drowning. The text was too vague and unfinished. Caius was right. Kendrick would never find me. “What are you going to do to me?”

Ignoring my question, Caius knelt and dug into the burlap sack. “Enough stalling…”

He pulled a glass jar from the bag and flipped the latched lid open. It was filled with a thick, dark-red liquid. Blood. It wasn’t human. It was something else, something peppery and metallic, a royal’s pure blood. For a moment I wondered if it was Marcus’s. It was a strong possibility, but I still didn’t understand what his part in all this had been. Why had Marcus helped Caius? What was he getting out of this? Inside I felt hollow and betrayed. Even more than that, I felt pissed. Pissed at my own naive trust of a boy I hardly knew, and of the uncle I had always loved.

Caius smeared blood in a wide circle before me, and began scribing a symbol into its center. It was a sort of jagged bolt with a line through the middle.

A knot of cold unfurled within my chest. I needed to know what Marcus’s involvement had been in all of this, and why. I needed to understand. But fear of what was to come formed a question on my lips. “What are you going to do to me?”

Caius smeared his blood-caked hands across his gray pants, moving toward me. Then with little effort he cradled my body, lifting me off the dank ground. I tried to struggle against his grasp, but he was so strong, and my body was still so weak. The chains clanked, dragging along the stone ground, long enough to reach the spot where Caius paused. He lowered my body to the middle of the blood-painted circle. His hungry eyes traveled from my face and down my neck. “I am going to…”

A crash beyond the solid door caused me to jump. Caius’s words died on his tongue.

Kendrick
, was my first thought. Only it couldn’t be him. If he had even received my text, he could never have found me in this expansive castle. He didn’t know who had trapped me. He had nothing. No clues to go on.

“Looks like we have a visitor,” Caius said. He didn’t look at all surprised, only expectant and in total control.

The cold knot within my chest grew, sending ice shards through my bones.
Marcus.

Caius moved, stepping back into the shadows and leaving a clear path between me and the doorway. What was he doing? Had I been wrong, again? Was Marcus the one calling the shots?

There was sloshing and splashes, footsteps drawing nearer and nearer. My slow-beating heart, still restrained by poison, sank with total despair. There was one set of footsteps, one person approaching.

The latch bolted to the door lifted with a creak and the solid door flung open. My breath caught in my throat as someone leaped into the light, arms outstretched toward me. No, no, no!

“Amelia!” Kendrick cried. His hair was plastered with sweat to his forehead and his soggy jeans clung to his shins. His panicked eyes registered only me.

Caius moved from the shadows in a blur of ashen gray, porcelain, and red to collide with Kendrick’s side. My best friend stumbled, the wind crushed from his lungs. He never reached the ground. Caius already had him by the throat and was driving him back against the wall. A
thwack
sounded with the connection. Kendrick’s eyes grew wide, glimpsing his attacker.

It was the only hesitation Caius needed. He lifted Kendrick off the ground, eyes locking on his prey. “Do not move, or speak.” The intensity of his silvery eyes was like an impressive electrical storm, alive and commanding.

Torment contorted Kendrick’s face, but he didn’t move or speak. Deathly shivers cascaded down my spine. I wanted to scream, to cry out. But I couldn’t. Fear drained my mouth of all moisture, leaving it as dry as sandpaper.

Caius slowly lowered my best friend’s feet to the ground, and released his clenched fingers from his shoulders. “It did not have to end this way,” he said shaking his head. “But now that you are here…” With a pin-centered spin Caius turned. A smug smile curved his thin lips. “It may intrigue you to know, my dear, that Kendrick has been helping me all this time, reporting back to me with your developmental progress.” His chuckle was dry and goose-bump raising. “It was his interference alone that brought you to me.”

The last part I already knew from Kendrick’s confession. Still my eyes shifted to my best friend, desperate for him to negate the other allegation. His face was set in a torturous grimace. But he couldn’t respond. As I watched him, clouds shifted from my mind. I remembered the strange call Kendrick had received at the psychic and arts fair back home. He had been talking to Caius. More lies… A tiny part of me wanted to hate Kendrick, to blame him for everything. But I couldn’t. He was my best friend and I loved him. I would
always
love him, no matter what he did to me, knowingly or not. And really, no matter what Caius claimed, it was my own actions that had delivered me into harm’s way, no one else’s.