Chapter Twelve

Safe Haven

Valek careened through the night with such accuracy that the only thing the mortals noticed on the street was a slight breeze ruffling their clothes as he sped past.

Streetlights flickered on the shiny pavement as thunder rolled above them. He reveled in the coolness and clarity of the air as he ran, but was still painfully aware his clock was ticking. He adjusted Charlotte draped motionlessly over his shoulder, his concern growing with each step he took. He knew exactly where he would go. It was their only chance of survival, and he was sure there was no other choice. The Occult would surely be on some sort of a lockdown, guards on high alert for the fugitive that impossibly managed to escape the inescapable. He just prayed the spired house with the indigo rooftops and the lavender walls still stood where he remembered it. Francis had a habit of moving every decade or so, Valek recalled.

“Valek…” Charlotte moaned.

“I know, Lottie. You’re safe.” His crystalline eyes shifted through the night like a jungle cat’s, scanning the street for the white porch steps he used to know so well.

Finally, he found what he was looking for at the end of the long, narrow street in Lesser Town near the banks of the glimmering Vltava. The familiar home loomed over him. Being in the city instantly resurfaced several hundred memories. Valek couldn’t suppress the emerging smile when he thought back to the night he found Charlotte, tucked in those pathetic rags. Those wondrous, curious eyes. She hadn’t changed. Even though she was capable of aging, she would never change.

Valek flew up the polished steps, burst through the front door, and stopped dead in the foyer. The place was dark and forsaken with pealing, lavender wallpaper. A mirror to his right had been smashed, the shiny remnants on the floor. A collapsed, wooden beam blockaded the entryway to the kitchen. Desperation overcame him. He sucked in air through his nose, trying to sense if there were anyone left here. To his solace, the scent he was looking for was very much present.

“Francis!” Valek called out, exhausted and pained.

He swiftly reached over his shoulder, pulled Charlotte in front of him, and carried her in his arms. He saw her eyes closed again, her breathing shallow. Her heart rate was very, very, dangerously slow.

He sucked in air again. “Francis!”

As he called out the name a second time, a Vampire, decadently dressed in white ruffles and tight, black, satiny pants emerged from the shadows of the long, thin hallway just in front of Valek. His long, white, curly hair hung neatly about his carved features like a French fop. He looked like something straight out of the reformation—handsome, young, and effeminate.

“Well, well, well. Who seems to have dropped in to my perfectly, pretty, parlor? Look what the black cat drug in out of the rain.” Francis grinned, flashing his long incisors before appraising Valek’s sopping overcoat and mangy hair. “Filthy, filthy.” He tsked.

“Francis,” Valek breathed. “They did not discover you! How did they not find you? You’re right in the blasted city!”

“Come now, dearest friend. How could they find me?” He chuckled. “Not when my house has been guarded by my indentured Witch.” He revealed a young woman, with tousled, brown curls and a face like a doll. She stepped around from behind him. “Don’t you think I’m aware of everything going on? I’m old enough to catch all of their tricks, my dear Valek.” His expression changed from fabricated joy to immediate disapproval as he lifted an eyebrow at the sight of Charlotte, hanging limply in Valek’s arms. He tsked again at Valek, then shook his head from side to side.

“Please, Francis,” Valek implored, clutching the only thing he still loved about life, slowly turning to death in his arms.

“Oh, Valek. Please! I do not receive a visit from you in almost twenty years and you come back to me…a family man?” Francis chortled like the Cheshire cat. “You’re soft.” He lightly prodded Valek’s chest with a slender, silver finger.

He sashayed over to a small table that held an elegant decanter, filled halfway with deep, red liquid. The black and gold ornate walking stick he clutched made thumping noises on the wooden floor as he stepped.

He slowly approached Valek with a glass half-full, sipping it as he walked. Standing before him, Francis ran the glass underneath Valek’s nose and watched his blue irises sink under the black. He smiled.

“Valek.” He pulled the glass away. “Do you know how many of us have attempted things like this? ” He gestured to Charlotte. “Are you aware of how many of us have experienced this very same situation? Listen to me when I say it is not her you are in love with. It is her mortality. You miss it so much. I can see it in you. That is what you are in love with. The idea.” He sipped at the blood again, swirling it around as though it were a glass of fine merlot.

“Francis, you are ignorant as you have always been,” Valek roared. He had half a mind to knock the glass from Francis’ hand, but he was too exhausted for another confrontation. “Please! I beg you to help us.”

“I am helping you, sweet Valek.” Francis sighed and twirled a strand of his friend's dark hair around his finger. “Which is why I don’t wish to see you hurt.” He turned his gaze on Charlotte again and sighed.

“The only way I would be hurt is if you refused us.” Valek’s voice wavered.

“I am hiding other Vampires here, you know. You are not my only friend. You would be subjecting the child to them, and you know how testy we get when we’re thirsty.” Francis cocked his head. “And she does smell so delicious.”

It wasn’t so much of a threat as it was a legitimate warning. But nothing Francis said was about to sway Valek.

“Surely we can settle on some agreement.” Valek straightened, tightening his jaw.

“Very well.” Francis shrugged. “But of course I have conditions….”

“Of course.…” Valek frowned. He didn’t like the sound of that.

“You see, my Vampires and I—we are living in the lowest form of poverty imaginable. My house Witch steals donated blood from the hospitals in the city, but she always brings it back cold. And sometimes we don’t even get the pleasure of partaking in that. Sometimes…it’s rats.” Francis’ gracefully long eyelashes batted toward Charlotte again.

“No.” Valek hugged the girl closer to his chest. “You’re mad. Absolutely not.”

“We would not be killing her, Valek, I assure you. She would be the most protected thing in this house. But we need fresh blood in order to survive. It is that dire. We have grown weak.”

“I said, no, Francis! This is my whole life I am holding.”

“Then she cannot stay!” Francis whirled around abruptly. “If she is not our blood source, then she is nothing!  My word is final.” The effete Vampire turned on the black toe of his shined, leather boot. “Good luck.”

“Wait.” Valek’s reaction seemed more like a reflex. The world outside the door behind him grew lighter. Charlotte’s heartbeat grew slower. Valek’s choices were now even slimmer.

Francis peered over his pointed shoulder. The Witch grinned.

Valek crumpled. “Fine. But if any of you hurt her at all, I will tear you limb from limb.”

“Well…we can try not to hurt her. We will be taking it straight from the vein, of course.” He smirked.

Valek roared angrily at him.

Francis wagged his finger. “None of that. As I said, you are welcome to decline my offer and leave.”

Valek’s nostrils flared, but he had nowhere else to go. Aiden would surely find her anywhere else. Sadly and finally, he acquiesced.

“It’s good to see you again, my friend. I actually had a feeling I was going to.”

Valek breathed and nodded his halfhearted “thank you”.

“Sarah, show my dearest friend, Valek, and his–er–guest to the basement, won’t you? And then prepare a room upstairs for her.” Francis snapped his fingers once.

The Witch cheerfully gestured for Valek to follow, Francis staying close behind. She led them down the dark, brick hallway decorated with oddly placed oil paintings and flowery pastels—a clear disguise for the unlikely event any human would happen to enter the dingy, seemingly abandoned home. In the floor was a trap door, with only a rope for a handle, though it was so encased with dust, a mortal probably wouldn’t have ever noticed it there.

Sarah yanked it open, murky particles cascading into the dark abyss. Valek peered into it and glanced back at Francis.

“After you.” Francis grinned.

Valek hugged Charlotte closer to him and stepped forward, peering into the blackness. The tunnel was thin and seemed to grow thinner as he peered through it, though he could faintly see where it opened up to a lit room below. He pressed Charlotte even tighter to him and jumped, his shirt billowing up around him as he plummeted.

He landed gracefully, like a cat, feeling the dirt thud beneath his feet. He looked at Charlotte, who was trying to wake up, eyes twitching, small sounds coming from her mouth. He gazed back up into the hole from which he’d plummeted. It seemed like he had been falling for a while.

“Look out below!” Francis’ voice echoed from above.

Valek briskly moved out of the way as Francis landed neatly next to him.

“Well, here you are!”

Valek assessed the room, which was simply a large, dirt-packed basement, perfect for a gaggle of rogue Vampires. The cement walls were cracked where water pipes and tree roots emerged. Coffins lay next to each other in rows, their lids left open. It was dark, wet, and dreary; the faintest glow of orange firelight smoldering in the hearth of a modest fireplace against one of the walls. The only possible way for one to tell if it were daylight outside, were if all of the Vampires in the room stopped moving.

Valek lifted an eyebrow. “Coffins, Francis? That seems a little cliché.”

“Would you rather sleep on packed dirt? And in any case, it’s rather impossible to get a bed down here,” he explained. “Besides, I like cliché.”

The group of Francis’ “friends” sat in chairs around the brick fireplace. Its smokestack must have gone on forever after experiencing how long that tunnel drop had been. They seemed to have been carrying on a conversation until Valek, quite literally, dropped in. They were now all silent, studying.

Francis opened his arms to them. “Friends! This is Valek Ruzik, a medical expert from the Southern Bohemian Occult. He has escaped the walls of the Regime and has come here for salvation! He is one of my oldest and dearest friends, and I trust everyone will show him a…warm…welcome.”

One Vampire stood from his chair, a young man who looked like he was changed at about the age of twenty, with golden curls he tied back with a black ribbon. He was significantly smaller than the others in the group, his frame still boyish, though his face seemed older and wise, somehow, and his eyes seemed to possess an independent life.

“You were captured?” he asked in astonishment, gaping at Valek. “But how could you have possibly escaped the Regime walls?”

Valek’s face remained hard and strained. “It was difficult,” he responded quietly. “I had help.” He saw Aiden’s face in his mind, remembering the fury that seemed to burn through him.

The young Vampire blanched at what he saw in Valek’s head. The other members of the group reacted, too. A few joined in standing.

“Aiden.” One of two females in the group spoke. “Danek Price’s boy. Next in line,” she mused.

“What?” Valek frowned.

“He’s next in line to rule. After Vladislov’s reign has ended, Aiden Price is next in line for the seat of power. The chosen one. He’s supposedly an Elf that has mastered all of the elements. Fire. Earth. Wind. Water. Not to mention, the mind—the sixth element. It’s impossible to understand the multitude of power he possesses,” she said, her lovely, pale features contorted and strained.

Valek thought back to the buttresses in the Regime palace and how Aiden had seemed to manipulate the air around him before extinguishing the fire with water. He wrinkled his forehead. “No. There must be a mistake. He lives in our Occult with his mother. I have known him for years,” Valek countered.

“Apparently not well enough to know who his father is,” the female with the raven hair explained, glancing at the girl in Valek’s arms. Her pin-straight tresses reflected the dim light in tones of blue, like the sky at midnight.

Valek turned to Francis again. “Something happened before the guards ransacked my home. Charlotte had been with Aiden. She came home crying. Something happened between them. I remember seeing a few of her thoughts before the guards came to our door.”

“And what were those thoughts?” Francis asked.

Valek’s face burned when he remembered Aiden kissing her, but now it was trivial compared to what else apparently occurred that night. “There were papers, a list of some sort, I believe. It looked to me like a register of Occult inhabitants employed by the Regime. There was a Lycan guarding our borders, and I think Aiden was trying to confide in her—perhaps to protect her after….” He hesitated to continue, recalling his monstrous behavior that night on the country road. “After there had almost been an attack.”

“You mean an accident,” Francis chastised.

One particularly malefic-looking Vampire with short, black hair and a broken nose rose from his place near the fire. He stood, analyzing Valek and Charlotte. “Well, you shouldn’t have had a human in your possession, anyway,” he chastised. “That’s the problem. The Regime found out you were breaking the law!”

“Lusian, that’s besides the point,” Francis interjected. “Besides, she’ll be a very beneficial little addition to our household.” He grinned and gestured for Valek to continue.

“Then I recall seeing something Aiden’s mother said to Charlotte about me, something that bothered her,” Valek explained.

“I think we should wait until your Charlotte wakes up. It sounds like she has the full story.” The other female spoke calmly, in an airy voice. This one had white, ringlet curls that ran down to the small of her back and surrounded a severely beautiful face. Though she loomed over some of the males, her limbs were delicate, like those of a ballerina. But even as she was beautiful, her features were hard and icy as her gaze touched Charlotte cradled in Valek’s arms.

Everything grew silent again as the group became painfully aware of Charlotte’s mortality. It was the warmest, most evident scent in the room. Valek saw a few of their thoughts as they glanced at her again. His jaw clenched.

“No one will touch her until she is well again. No one will even think about her until I say it is right. Is that understood?” he growled.

They all obliged without argument. Their thoughts told Valek that they kept all the blood they needed in a small freezer that sat against the wall for now. It would suffice until the girl had regained her strength.

“No one will touch her,” the blonde female repeated, assuring him with a soft smile.

Valek looked upon Francis, the concern forming creases in his forehead. “She was attacked by a group of us a little smaller than this one. She needs food and some sort of supplement. Her heart rate continues to decline. They would have drained her if the Regime guards didn’t rip those parasites off her.” His eyes welled up with the memory, the last of his words biting.

Francis only nodded before he looked to Sarah. She smiled, nodding, and flitted back toward the tunnel. She would concoct something to help Charlotte. Valek heard it in her mind when she nodded at him.

Valek turned to find the group still staring at him, some empathetic, some disgusted. But he accepted neither pity nor disapproval. He didn’t need any more friends, especially if they were Vampires. There was nothing he cared more about than what he was holding in his arms.

He walked over to the rows of coffins and turned on the group again, all of them still watching.

“Which is empty?” he asked, coolly.

“None,” the one called Lusian said just as evenly, though he pivoted to snicker with Jorge, the younger-looking male with blond hair pulled back behind his head.

Valek approached the group slowly again, eyeing the one that had just spoken. “We can do this the hard way.” He quickly pulled up his knee and shoved his boot right in the large Vampire’s chest, sending him flying backward, splintering a chair. “I am not here to make friends,” Valek murmured. He looked to the rows of crypts. “I will ask again. Which is empty?”

“The last three.” The female with the dark hair spoke this time as she helped Lusian to his feet.

Valek moved to the one in the center in the last row and kicked the lid off. The inside was superfluous with layers of red silk and lace. When Francis said he liked cliché, it had clearly not been in jest.

“Reckless behavior is not going to help your situation!” Francis sputtered frantically.

Valek ignored him. He crouched and gently placed Charlotte inside—something he did not particularly like doing. He tried to imagine it was just like any other bed. He watched her face, still peaceful, as he removed his torn overcoat and wrapped it around her.

He sat on the ground beside her, one hand holding tightly onto hers. He would continue to stay there until she woke up. He wanted to be the first thing she saw, so she would know she was safe. He thought back to the night the Lycan attacked the human farmer just outside of the Occult again. He thought about the way she’d looked at him with different eyes, as though he were the feared monster under her bed.

About half an hour passed, and Sarah soon returned with canteens of soup, bread, and other things the Witch found in the middle of the night to sustain the human girl. She placed a small chocolate bead in Valek’s hand.

“Have her swallow that. That will help her blood replenish,” she said, before flitting off.

Charlotte had not yet awoken from her sleep, and Valek continued to wait unabatedly by her side, while the others whispered things by the firelight. Valek could hear everything they were saying, and more. They might as well have screamed it out at the top of their lungs.

Disgusting, he heard one of them think. The way he lingers over her as though she were his dying lover.

“I’ve seen this before,” Jorge whispered. “It becomes something like an obsession—the love between mortal and immortal. It’s compulsive—being obsessed with their human lover’s mortality. They fall in love with that which they lost. The warmth, the thriving, living, breathing feeling.” He was explaining to Sasha, a beautiful male with ebony skin. “It is not healthy. And it never ends well.”

“But I thought the girl was something like a child to him.” Sasha’s manicured brow furrowed.

Jorge cocked his head toward Valek. “Well, it certainly doesn’t appear that way anymore.” He murmured as though Valek still couldn’t hear, which made Valek burn even more.

Sasha went on pondering this. Valek snorted in contempt. Idiot, he thought in Jorge’s general direction.

After a while, the blonde came to sit next to him. He didn’t look up from Charlotte’s face. His features strained when he sensed the blonde draw nearer. The Vampire had a full glass in her hand as she lightly tapped Valek’s shoulder.

“What?” he said, without shifting his gaze.

“You’ve been sitting here for hours. The sun’s almost up. You’re thirsty.” She offered him the glass, her voice staying as airy and light as it was before.

Only then did he look at what she was handing him. He hadn’t realized the aching that had begun again in the back of his throat, or the burning he felt in his center until he smelled it in the glass. He gazed at her with completely enveloped irises. The truth was, he forgot completely about what he was, because for those hours he prayed for Charlotte, he was human.

“Take it. If she wakes before the morning, you don’t want her to see you like this.”

Valek apprehensively took the glass from her, searching through her mind, finding nothing cruel or judgmental about him. He sipped and winced as the cold ambrosia ran down his throat. He had never had it cold before. It almost did nothing to satiate him, and he finally understood what Francis had been talking about.

“I know it’s awful. But it’s the best we have right now, until—”

“Please,” he interrupted her. “Don’t mention it.”

There was a moment of silence as they both watched Charlotte’s face.

“She’ll be okay. She’s dreaming,” the blonde said.

“Oh.” Valek stroked Charlotte’s cheek. “That’s good.”

“Don’t you want to know what she’s dreaming about?”

“Yes. More than anything. But I promised her I’d stay out of her head,” he explained with a slight smile when his Lottie sighed.

“I see. I’m Andela.” She offered her hand to him.

“Valek.” He ignored the gesture.

Andela withdrew her hand. “Well, if you or Charlotte need anything, I’ll be here.” She smiled softly. “She will be safe, Valek,” she soothed, and walked back to join the rest of the group.

He studied Charlotte’s sweet face, wanting so much for her eyes to flutter open. He thought back just a couple of nights before, when she had crawled into bed with him—how her face looked then, the way she smiled when she dreamt. He wished he hadn’t reacted the way he did. He would give anything to go back and relive that night. But even with all of the inhumanity he possessed, he could never turn back the hands of time.

He lifted her hand to his face, just so he could feel her warmth again. He closed his eyes, inhaling her scent, allowing himself to be comforted by it, though the guilt continued to twist at his insides.

“Valek….” Her little voice rose from the box beside him.

His eyelids flew open to see her watching him. Valek felt the group of Vampires around the fire grow very still again.

“I’m here, Lottie,” he whispered. Everything else in the room seemed to disappear.

“Valek,” she repeated, her eyes closing and reopening like those of an antique doll.

“Are we safe?”

“For now.” He smiled.

“I’m so sorry,” she murmured.

“For what?”

“For before. For when I stopped trusting you,” she said. “This is my fault.”

“No.” He hushed her. “No. I was very wrong about a lot of things. You had every right to be angry.”

“Not with you.” Her gaze moved from his face to her surroundings—the soft sides of the casket around her. “Am I dead?”

“No.” He chuckled. A few soft laughs resonated from the fireplace, too. “You’re fine. You’re my Lottie. You scared me a little, but you’re safe now.” He ran his fingers through pieces of her hair and began to hum her lullaby.