If I can’t follow her, I’ll find her, anyway. I run along the hallway, back to Ada Astra’s bedroom. The window is still open, the way Penny must have come in. I wipe away tears, but it’s no use. Aliz won’t forgive me for this. Penny hates me. I’ve ruined everything.
I look out, and there, just outside the ballroom, is the maze.
Gustavsson stands at the entrance of it, arms folded, staring up at me with a wide grin, eyes glowing red.
Aliz will let our contract seal, and after midnight, her wishes will become my own. But if there’s one thing I can still do, it’s carve the truth out of that piece of shit.
I jump onto the roof of the ballroom, its thick glass damp. I don’t look down to see if anyone has noticed me above them. I don’t waste time, running across the sloping glass, not letting myself slide off the side. Just as I reach the edge, before I jump, Gustavsson vanishes into the maze.
Chapter
Thirty-Seven
In the dream, I was always the prey. Aliz was always the one huntingme.
Now everything is different. Everything is over. I snap a branch in two, making myself a cross. I stalk through the hedges, ire bubbling in my veins.Don’t follow me.It’s over. Even if I lose my free will tonight, Aliz will never look at me the same again. She’ll never love me again.
I dig my nails into my palms. This is how I was back when I was training. When the wound of my parents’ deaths was still fresh and open. And with every stake, every arrow meeting its target, Penny would say,You’re closer.I rub tears away as I realise that I’ve wasted four years of my life.
And as soon as I got breathing room from Callisto, I started to feel whole again.
“You’re so slow, Rebecca!” the vampire calls, three hedges ahead of me, and I speed up. I know the maze’s path by heart already.
I reach him just as he arrives at the rosebush at the centre, sheltered by four statues. He stops, and I do, too, scared that the wrong move will send him flying off in bat form.
“I usually forget most of the girls I select,” he says, inching behind the rosebush, leaning on one of the sculptures, missing its head. I take a careful step towards him but keep the makeshift cross down at my side. I have a stake tucked behind my costume wings. But I can’t show him my cards yet. “Do you want to know why I remember you?”
“My blood tasted amazing?” I ask. The wind blows at the maze, the drying branches making a rattling sound. The moon’s still high above us. If I were to carve out his heart and eat it alone, would that work?
“Oh, it still tastes good,” he says. “Even better than when you were eighteen.”
My chin trembles, and I try to get the image out of my head. That which I can’t remember. Maybe my mind comes up with something far worse than the truth. Maybe all he did was a small cut. Maybe it was just a small taste. That’s all Gustavsson did, wasn’tit?
“No, Rebecca,” he says, and his eerie grin softens, expression losing tension. “Usually, I don’t get involved with what happens next, and while I wouldn’t have known you were related, your father’s blood smelled exactly like yours. Tasted even better.”
The lines that cross my body burn, digging into me. For once I’m grateful for the pain, because without it, I would have lost my mind.
“Do you work with Callisto?” I say, blinking, trying to detach myself from his words.
“That’s a rather loaded question,” he says, snapping one of the roses from the bush and lifting it to his nose. I could swear that blood drips from the stem. “Sometimes they are running short on hunters, so we point them in the right direction. Most girls I pick are for parties,” he says, inspecting the rose. “Though if I know Callisto is looking for people, I’ll compel my girls to do a little more.”
I dig my nails into my neck, breathing through the pain.
“You, for example. I made you run around the hotel three times. Run up the stairs, and even in high heels, you did an all right job. You showed potential. But the main test was when I compelled you to kill me. Some people are natural-born hunters, and as soon as Isaw that look in your eye, I knew I’d found something special. We had such a wonderful time.”
My fingers shake around my makeshift cross.
“And then you killed my parents?” Somehow, my voice is still steady enough, even though I feel as though every inch of me has cracked.
“It wasn’t me,” he says, lifting his hands up in a mock plea of innocence. The rose falls to the ground. “It was Callisto that ordered it. They had to give you a reason to join them, so they found one for you. I was just there to clean up the mess and have the leftovers. See, Rebecca, if you weren’t about to die, I wouldn’t tell you this. But I can see it in your eyes, you need closure, don’t you?”
I give a small nod.Die?Does he really think he can killme?
“The night your parents died was what we call the Feast of the Parched,” he says. “The parched are quite easy to control, you just give them your blood and send them off to kill whoever you wish, without having to get your hands dirty. We kept fifty newly sired vampires in an old train station, deprived them of blood, and ever so slowly, they transformed. Then we set them free to ravage the city. The vampires who killed your parents had another five targets that night, so don’t feel too special.”
“Who iswe?” I ask, as the massacre he described starts to come into focus. “The Vassals?”
“You’ve heard of us?” He cocks his head. “If only you’d completed your mission correctly, Rebecca,” he chides, “you would have been made a Stake of Callisto, and who knows, we may have wound up working together.”
