Chapter Twenty-Two

Promises Unkept

The rest of the coven lingered around the fireplace. Some of them silently watched it die out. Some of them chattered out loud about what they had seen and talked about, all the while glancing in the direction of the south wall of the basement, where Valek and Charlotte sat close together, their fingers intertwined.

“I know you’re scared,” he admitted.

“I am. But I would do anything to make your world safe again.”

“Our world.”

“You know what I mean.” She put her forehead against Valek’s cheek. Her face lit up. “I get to stay with you tonight!”

Valek didn’t say anything in response. He smiled.

“Unless Francis will make you stay with him,” she continued.

He looked down at her and stopped smiling. “How intuitive you are.”

“Will he?” she asked.

“We are changing the subject.” Valek pulled his face away from hers.

She looked down and started to fiddle with the hem of her dress. “Do you like the clothes Sarah has given me?”

“Yes. Very much,” he answered, but did not look at her.

“How long do I have with you before they make me leave?”

Valek sighed and pulled her by the waist onto his lap to face him, like he used to when she was a child. Only this time it made the muscles in his middle tighten. “I don’t know, Lottie. As long as it takes Evangeline and Sarah to come up with a way to make sure you will be protected.”

“Sarah doesn’t trust her,” Charlotte divulged.

Valek looked at her, surprised. “Are you mind-reading now as well?”

She smiled, nervously straightening his tattered ascot. “No. Call it women’s intuition. It doesn’t take immortal powers to sense that.” She looked at him. “Do you trust her?”

“She has no devious thoughts. For me, there is no reason to not trust her.” He thought for a moment. “I will keep my distance, however.” He chuckled.

Charlotte did not find this funny. She let her hands collapse in front of her. The scar Valek had left from that first night started to ache faintly on the side of her neck. She winced as she brought her hand to it.

“What is it?” he asked, worried. He pushed her hand aside to examine it.

“Nothing. It just burns sometimes,” she admitted.

Valek frowned. He had never heard of that before. “Burns?”

“Just a little. Very lightly, and only once in a while.” She smiled at him. “I like it. It makes me think of you.”

“Tell me if it gets worse.”

She leaned in to kiss him. But he didn’t kiss her back this time. She looked at him expectantly.

“It feels inappropriate, Lottie.” He glanced toward the gaggle at the fireplace.

She accepted this and leaned in again, only to put her cheek on his shoulder this time. Her nose brushed against the cool skin on his neck. “You’re my hero, Valek.”

“And you are mine.”

She could feel Francis’ stare burning into the back of her head still. She only glanced for a moment over her shoulder before cradling Valek’s cheek in her hand. “Tell me about it. How did it happen?”

Valek frowned and delicately removed her hand. “It is a very long story.”

“Tell me the short version, then.”

He sighed, a small smile returning to his lips. Francis continued to listen from the distant corner. “It was the beginning of World War One. Czechoslovakia was a cultural wasteland heavily oppressed under the weight of the Iron Curtain. Our language—our very national identity was on its deathbed with the start of the First World War.

“I had just moved to the city from a small village in Eastern Moravia with my young wife. We were very poor. There were more opportunities in Prague for a doctor.”

His eyes were distant and foggy. Charlotte could tell he wasn’t in the room with her anymore. “She didn’t want to move.” He laughed, but there was an immense sadness that underscored it. “She told me life would be more difficult in the city away from her parents. But I was young and stupid. I was excited to begin my life and to establish who I was. But the winter was very cold that year….” His sentence trailed off and he stopped talking altogether.

Charlotte lowered her eyes and climbed off him. She stayed next to him, his hand in hers, and waited for him to continue.

“I didn’t know what else to do, so I continued to work and live in the city. What else should I have done?” The glaze in his eyes disappeared and he locked his gaze with Francis. He stood up in blazing fury.

Francis stood at the far end of the basement also, smiling however. “I wish you would stop whining, Valek. I handed you the world on a plate.”

In a blind instant, Valek was in front of Francis, his fangs bared. He slashed the side of his creator’s face with his claws, but Francis only continued to chuckle as the wounds healed instantaneously.

“You’ve always been so angry Valek,” Francis taunted.

“You give me good reason,” Valek seethed. “I have had very few regrets.” He turned on the rest of the coven. “I do regret what I am.” He looked at Francis. “I do not regret doing what I did for you. Since I saved you from starving to death in this city of gutters, you have done nothing but try and cage me. If there’s any chance of redemption for our kind, I at least know that might be a possibility for me. But not for you. I should make you suffer in turn for making her suffer….” He reached back and ripped a wooden arm from the nearest chair. He set flame to the thing from the fireplace before holding it against Francis’ throat.

Charlotte leapt up and raced to intercept them. Grabbing Valek’s arm and with a hand outstretched to Francis, she yelled, “Stop! You don’t want to do this.”

Francis began laughing again. “You wanted me to do it, Valek. I saw it in your mind. The curiosity was so thick, I tasted it when I drank from you.”

“My wife perished for what you did.” Valek’s jaws clenched together.

“No, dear Valek. She died because of your neglect. That’s the thing. You do have regrets. Many of them. I was just the catalyst.”

Valek dropped the stake, the flames extinguished in the moist dirt. “Either way, you owe me happiness with Charlotte,” he said quietly. “My wife’s death was partially your fault. If I never met you—”

Francis interrupted. “If you’d never met me, you would be dead, and Charlotte would have in all probability grown up in an orphanage, unbeknownst to any of this.”

“In return for saving your life, you will release me from this cage and let me have happiness. I’ve finally found a source of it in her in this miserable reality. After all of this is over and the Regime is overthrown, you will let me go and let me live out the rest of this damned existence as I wish. I’ll follow your idiotic rules under your roof, but I can promise you I won’t be here forever.”

Francis ruefully folded his arms and smirked. He shrugged his shoulders. “You may have her when you leave. But we made a promise to each other. Until this is over, you are mine.”

Charlotte thought for a minute and turned her head to look up toward the thin shafts of light falling from the tunnel. “It’s almost time. Can we continue this argument a different evening?”

Valek stiffened. He and Francis stayed glaring at each other like two titan statues. The firelight glinted off the garnet brooch at the base of Francis’ pearly throat. The idea of decapitating him was extremely appealing to Charlotte in that moment.

“Take me back up to the house.” Charlotte tugged softly on Valek’s shirt.

Francis walked away, yawning. He made his way to one of the coffins on the other side of the basement, and with one last, evil glare toward Charlotte, he closed it with a thump. The rest of the coven averted their attention away also. The excitement was over.

“He wants me dead. He will kill me,” she whispered.

“No, Lottie, he won’t.” Valek turned her gaze back to him again. “He knows I cannot stay away from you as a beloved no more than I can stay away from you as a life source.” He leaned in so his nose brushed at the tip of her neck.

“You’re torturing yourself, you know,” she said.

He sighed, pulling away, his eyes black. Charlotte frowned.

“Shall I take you up then?” he asked sadly.

“Hold on.”

He leaned back on his heels and waited.

“What happened?” she asked. “You did not…finish the story.” She treated her words like stepping stones atop delicate ice.

He opened his mouth to answer and then shut it.

“How did you save a Vampire’s life, when you were only human?”

Valek moved forward and traced her spine with his finger. “The same way you did. I allowed him to feed on me so he would not starve.”

She frowned. That wasn’t the answer she expected. “Is that how you became one?”

He smiled darkly. “No.” He fell silent then and stepped back from her. He playfully held out his hand. “Shall we?”

“Valek?”

He stayed silent, his arm out to her, waiting. When she stubbornly refused to take it, he began to walk in the direction of the tunnel, anyway.

“That’s all you have to say?” she pried, following him.

“Yes,” he answered. She could see the muscles in his neck tense as his hands wound into fists. His nostrils flared and she could tell he stopped breathing, probably in pain from the onslaught of the coming morning.

“Valek, why won’t you answer me?”

His lips peeled back over the tops of his incisors, which instantly made her recoil away from him. He wrapped his arm tightly around her middle, leapt up the thin, dark shaft of dirt and exploded to the main floor of the house. The hallway was empty. He quickly pulled away from her.

She grimaced at him. “Dobrou noc.” Her “good night” was sour.

“Dobry den,” he offered back to her, a loving and light “good morning”. He gazed at her a few moments longer and grabbed her shoulders, but only kissed her very lightly. “Do not be angry with me,” he acknowledged finally, before jumping back down to the basement, leaving her standing there alone.

Too late, she thought toward the basement below.

The dust in the white morning light settled across the lavender shadows on the floorboards behind her. She turned. Light. Warmth. Her fingers itched to grab the brass doorknob, to let it in the house, and on her skin. She hadn’t seen it in days. She walked slowly toward the frosted door window that made the morning light look like it was in a foggy dream—as if it wasn’t really there. She pressed her right hand up to the glass, feeling it just on the other side. But winter was nearing. And the warmth she thought might have been there was not.

“What are you doing up here?” A small, irritated voice chirped from behind her.

Charlotte jumped and spun around to see Sarah standing there. The Witch’s shoes hadn’t made a sound on the dusty wood of the enchanted house hiding in plain sight in the middle of the mortal city. “Where’s Evangeline?”

“In the study. She has not shut up all morning!” Sarah leaned on one hip, clearly frazzled. Her bun, which was still intact, had small frizzing wisps flying out from the sides of it.

“Apparently my housekeeping skills—or any other skill of mine for that matter—do not keep up with her ridiculous standards.” Sarah leaned closer to Charlotte and whispered, “She complains about everything!” She grabbed tightly at Charlotte’s hand and pulled her quickly down the hallway to the study, grumbling things like, “At least you’re here now. You can deal with her while I focus.”

In the den, Evangeline sat cross-legged in front of the fire. Various volumes of spells surrounded her on the floor. She kept one of them in her lap. “Sarah, how do you even practice at all? These grimoires are five generations old at least!” She thumbed through the pages.

“Evangeline….” Sarah sputtered and shoved Charlotte out in front of her. “Charlotte is here. She wants to help.”

Evangeline turned and lifted an eyebrow at Sarah. “And what will you be doing?”

“I just need to run a few errands for Master Francis.” She grinned sarcastically and spun on her heels. “And I need to get away from you,” she muttered, and trotted back to the other parts of the house.

“Dobry den, Charlotte,” Evangeline grumbled into her book.

“Good morning,” Charlotte said quietly from where she stood, eyeing her.

Evangeline turned once more. Charlotte was still lingering at the edge of the study. “What are you doing? Come in!” She waved her hand at one of the small, wooden stools in the corner and the thing came alive before Charlotte’s eyes. The legs of it ran over behind her, scooping her up in an instant and bringing her over directly next to where the Witch sat. “So, you want to help.” Evangeline licked her index finger and flipped another page.

“In any way that I can,” Charlotte responded gingerly. She wasn’t letting her guard down just yet.

“And what way is that?” Evangeline squinted at her.

“Well, you tell me.”

Evangeline looked up from her book. “It is not what I can tell you. It is what you can tell me.” The Witch grabbed Charlotte’s left hand and held it out in front of her face. “What of these spectacular lines I’ve been hearing so much about?”

Charlotte tried to pull her hand back. “Why do they matter to you?”

Evangeline smiled when she found what she was looking for. “Ah. Valek’s line. There it is.” She picked up an already inked quill at her side and scribbled something down in one of Sarah’s texts.

Charlotte ignored the thought that Sarah probably wouldn’t like Evangeline writing in her books and asked, “What’s the big deal?”

“Well, don’t you already know? It says you are Valek’s soul mate.”

Charlotte smiled. She couldn’t help it. “I know.”

“It is significant to know when I’m making spells to protect you once you are inside the Regime walls.” She eyed the whistle around Charlotte’s neck. “That little thing will hardly accomplish anything.” She grew silent for a minute. “But wait….” Evangeline caught sight of something else on Charlotte’s palm. “There is another line here.”

“Yes. I know.” Charlotte frowned, thinking of Sarah’s vision.

“You have Aiden’s line as well.” A thought flickered through her eyes. She continued. “It crosses directly over Valek’s. But there is something different about Aiden’s line.” She kept Charlotte’s wrist in her hand, but turned her face back down to the book.

“I have never seen that before.”

Charlotte panicked. “What do you mean it looks different?”

“It just looks deeper, somehow.”

***

“It’s more vivid than the other one.” Evangeline was genuinely confused. She could tell it was not a natural line in Charlotte’s hand, but rather a scar purposefully carved there by someone. Aiden made Evangeline aware of most of his plans, but never mentioned anything to her about this. At some point in Charlotte’s life, one of the creatures, perhaps Aiden, scarred her when she must have been too young to remember. It looked to her like he did it by magic. Evangeline even recalled the act being illegal in most Occults. But the fact was, it wasn’t a real fate line at all. It was put there by force.

Evangeline thought of just leaving then. This didn’t seem worth it anymore. She could see now that Aiden and the others were truly the dark ones. He had been planning this for a long time. Perhaps if she hid like the Vampires did, the Regime would forget about her. She looked back up at Charlotte’s fearful eyes and realized she had better calm the expression on her face. “You know what? I think I’m just tired. I think the shadows of the firelight are playing tricks on your hand.” She let Charlotte go.

“So what do you think it means—that I have two fate lines? Sarah said that wasn’t normal.”

Evangeline needed to think of something quick. “I’m not sure. The fates are tricky. It’s beyond me, Lottie.”

“Don’t call me that,” Charlotte said quietly.

“Charlotte.”

Sarah walked back into the room, Edwin in her arms. “Any progress?”

“What is that?” Evangeline looked up at the grotesquely shaped hunk of burlap and yarn.

“That would be your friend, Edwin.” Sarah tossed the little pile to the floor beside Evangeline.

A horrible memory flashed before her eyes. It made her soft features twist into something else. “T-there is no w-way for you to fix him though?”

Sarah looked to Charlotte. “We’ll figure out a way.”

The three grew quiet. The two Witches flipped through their books as Charlotte stared into the crackling fire. “I’m glad you are alive, Evangeline,” she whispered.

The Witch stopped reading but did not look up at her. “Me, too.”

“It’s hard to imagine it’s daylight outside right now. There are hardly any windows in this house,” Charlotte mused distantly, balancing her chin on her hand.

Sarah pulled her enchanted needle out of her hair and waved it in the air above Charlotte’s head. To her delight, a small bewitchment mimicking a glowing sun began to grow against the ceiling, casting another warm glow about the room.

“Francis asks for this bewitchment a lot,” Sarah said as she flipped a page.

Still smiling, Charlotte looked again at the little enchanted sun. “Could you leave it here for Valek tonight?”

“Absolutely,” Sarah chimed.

“Well, Sarah. It appears Charlotte is indeed fated to Valek, just as you guessed.”

Evangeline flipped another page in her book.

“I didn’t guess. I knew it.”

“Good. You succeeded. Now tell me what you used to enchant that rusty, little whistle?”

“The warts off your mother’s a—”

“Hey!” Charlotte interjected. “We are never going to get anything done like this.”

“Charlotte’s right.” Sarah stood up again. “I’ll take care of everything. I’m done pretending to like you.” She stormed out.

The study was quiet again. “Evangeline?” Charlotte started again.

“Yes?”

“How did Valek become what he is? How did Francis do it?” she asked.

“Is that what you and Valek were arguing about?”

“We weren’t arguing.” Charlotte lifted her eyebrow.

“Please, your aura is putrid.”

“It wasn’t really an argument,” Charlotte huffed and dropped the conversation.

“All I know is Valek was living alone in the Bohemian Occult years before I was alive. Most Vampires are like Francis. They’re moody, overtly sexual, and extremely conceited. Valek was always different. He kept to himself most of the time.”

“So Valek never told you he had a wife?” Charlotte asked.

“No,” Evangeline concluded abruptly and turned another page.

Charlotte gathered up her burlap friend in her arms. “I wish there was a way to save Edwin.” She fiddled with one of his loose button eyes.

Evangeline stayed very quiet. Her eyes shifted along the book in front of her, but she was not reading. She noticed Charlotte yawn. “You don’t need to stay up here with me all day, Charlotte. If you’re tired, why don’t you try and sleep?”

Charlotte got up from the uncomfortable, wooden stool and collapsed into Sarah’s oversized green armchair with Edwin still in her arms. “I’ll be fine. You might need me for something.”

Evangeline snorted. “Like what? You can’t wield magic.”

“Yeah…but what if you need my sacrificial blood for something? Everyone needs my blood around here.” Still holding Edwin as though he were a teddy bear, Charlotte curled up with her knees to her chest and closed her eyes.

Evangeline turned her head back toward the fire. The sweat was cold on her face. The guilt so palpable she could have held it in her hand—a bloody dagger. And Valek was Caesar.