Chapter 48

Her arm matted with blood nearly past her elbow, she withdrew the organ and held it up before him. He had already let go of her throat, and his face slackened with horror as he looked back at his own heart.

Seraph fell to the floor, his eyes wide. As he died, his body went through one last transformation. It was slow and almost fascinating to watch. As his beast melted back into him, it left his golden-haired corpse on the ground at her feet.

Rory dropped his heart next to him and sagged to the floor. She shook, tremors of adrenaline ripping through her muscles. Seraph had been another hybrid, like her, and yet he had died so easily.

Her own shift began, and she shivered when she was returned to her human form. On her hands and knees, she reached deep inside of her for the energy to summon a flame atronach.

When the fire-woman curled from the orb near her, she pointed down the tunnel with a shaky finger. The atronach obeyed her and gracefully swept down the corridor, lighting the path with her body.

Squinting, it was possible for Rory to make out a thick metal door at the very end of the tunnel. Even from here, she spotted the chains and the massive lock in the center. She looked down at Seraph, and then where his pants had ended up behind him.

Staggering like a drunk, she hauled herself up and made it to his pants. With shaking hands, she poked around in his pockets. She fully expected to find nothing, but in the second one her fingers hit a cold, hard object. A simple key glittered in the light of the solitary torch in the wall when she pulled it out.

She blinked in confusion when she realized her vision was still blurred. Looking down at her body, she searched for a wound, but found none. Then she felt the wetness on her face.

Tears. They were hot on her fingers. They curved down her cheeks with a feather-light touch, dripping to her jaw and tracing her throat. She sucked in a steadying breath, but it immediately betrayed her by turning into a sob.

Rory walked over to Seraph's body. He had told her so many things, and none of it ever answered the only question that mattered: why?

For power, a voice whispered.

"That's not good enough for me," she whispered back.

She stared down at the bloody hole in his middle, remembering the way her arm had felt inside of him.

The atronach approached her slowly, almost gently, as if the daedra could sense her emotion. It spun and twirled while it waited for her instruction. Rory looked up at the door at the end of the tunnel.

"One foot in front of the other." She shook. "Find Aldric."

Unsteadily, she began to make her way to the door, gripping the key in her hand so hard that it began to hurt. She almost stumbled, and she yelled in frustration. What was wrong with her? She had worked through grief like this before.

"Weak," she snarled to herself. "Pathetic."

The atronach flipped in response.

When she was thirty feet from the door, she heard a sharp snap. Disbelieving, she looked down at the floor.

Another tripwire.

She whirled around when she heard the unmistakable sound of another gate descending from above, somewhere behind her. Running back, past Amon and Seraph's bodies, she was just able to see the gate cutting her off from the hallway that returned to Kyrr's quarters.

Almost at the same time that the gate settled into the floor, another noise sounded. She peered down the return tunnel, but the effort was futile. It was pitch-black.

Stone grated on stone—a scraping sound that went on for only a small amount of time. The sound was too loud to be anything other than something large moving.

With a crackling sound, the atronach making its way toward her fizzled and plunged her into darkness. She raised her hand to summon another, when she heard something else.

A wet, rasping noise was making its way toward her, from halfway down the tunnel. Her scalp prickled with alarm as she listened harder. There was a heavy, thumping, dragging noise accompanying it.

Seconds later, she realized what it was. Some kind of creature had been unleashed. She turned her head uselessly toward Seraph's corpse—he'd rigged some kind of trap in the event of his death.

The rasping noise came closer, and she identified it as breathing. The creature sucked air into its mouth noisily, and each breath was an effort. She could almost hear its lungs pressing together. It was crawling and heaving itself, unmistakably, toward her.

She felt the gate between her and the creature. It was very sturdy, but it wouldn't be impossible to break down if the thing was determined enough. Trying to control her rapidly accelerating heartbeat, she stepped a pace away from the gate as she waited.

When the creature had gotten close enough, she brought another atronach forth. Light burst into the space around her, and she winced at the temporary blindness. There was a tiny hiss as the creature on the other side of the gate recoiled from the bright flames.

The gate's bars were spaced widely enough to allow the light from the atronach through to the other side, revealing the being that crouched before her. She gasped in shock.

It was something she had never before seen in person, but had been described to her only once. Nevertheless, it was immediately recognizable to her, because there was nothing else it could be.

It was a vampire that had been starved of blood over an extended period of time. The person strained away from the light of the atronach, a skeletal arm raised up over its face in defense.

Time had stripped the vampire's body of nearly all substance. Its skin, sickly pale and somehow slick in the light, clung to limbs that were almost entirely made up of thin bones. Its flesh draped awkwardly and horrifically in other areas, making Rory's stomach clench.

Under the shadow of its hand, she could barely make out its face. The signs of healthy vampires that had merely abstained from blood for a few days were much more pronounced—its nose had been shortened drastically, as if it had begun the process of retreating upward into the skull, and its lips stretched tight and nearly split in half over fangs that had grown dramatically.

Peppered over the vampire's skin were old and new marks. Its body was covered in scars of every kind—slash marks, burns, clumsily stitched wounds that looked to have been quite large. Her eyes picked out everything. This person had been mutilated, over and over again, and still they lived.

Dark, stringy hair clung to its head, patchy and falling out. The telltale glowing orange eyes peered out at her. As she stared into its eyes, she could see that no one was within them. No personality filled the shell of what had once been a person.

Subconsciously, she had risen her left hand to the gate, and the creature rushed forward, snapping its jaws, ignoring the light. She jumped and pulled back, realizing that it had scented the blood covering her arm.

She knew that vampires that had been subjected to this kind of torture did not die. It took many, many years for their bodies to fade and wither until they appeared to be dead, but a simple infusion of blood would restore them. Their bodies, anyhow—whether or not their minds would return to health was something that depended on the person.

Once the vampire had the scent of Seraph's blood, it lost all hesitance. It fought against the gate, pushing an arm through the bars, screeching at her. Spittle flew from its jaws as it gnashed its mouth furiously at her.

Watching the display in quiet horror, Rory remembered something else—starved vampires were extremely dangerous. The conscious part of their minds had faded into something that was wholly animal. They would fight well past the instinct that compelled sane people to stop when their bodies began to feel pain. Vampires like the one before her would tear themselves apart for a drop of blood.

She neared the gate, reluctantly feeling pity for the person in front of her. The atronach moved in behind her, and something stilled her as she looked into its face. There was something about the shape of its eyes…

Her head filled with an odd buzzing sound. She had never fainted, but she wondered if this was how it felt right before one lost consciousness.

"Father?"

At the sound of her voice, the vampire ceased its crazed motions. It blinked up at her through the gate. Rory knew it was impossible, but she wanted to believe some tiny part of him, deep down, recognized his daughter's voice.

The more she looked at him, the more certain she grew. Seraph had told her—he hadn't killed him. Not dead. His words echoed in her mind.

"Well, I would not say he's alive…"

"Father, can you hear me?" she whispered.

He stared at her, his eyes moving all over her face.

"It's Rory," she encouraged him. Her face was damp again, but she ignored the tears. "Can you hear me?"

The second atronach fizzled abruptly. Just as she was about to summon another, she heard a distant voice from behind her father. Then faint lights appeared.

Fear lurched in her chest. Her father would slaughter every living creature that approached him, and he may not stop even after his hunger for blood was sated. If she had any hope of reviving him, it had to be done in a safe and controlled way, and there was no chance of that happening if he began to kill people.

She moved to her right quickly, and her father followed her movement. Rory thought desperately of how she could warn the people behind him against coming into the tunnel, without alerting her father to their presence.

His head cocked slightly, and he began to look over his should. Panic flaring through her, she jumped up and down. When he turned back to her, she pressed her still-bloody hand to the gate. He lunged forward, and she barely pulled her arm back in time. Snarling and growling, he licked at the miniscule smear of blood she'd left behind on the metal.

She slapped the gate to get his attention, and he reared back in surprise before throwing himself at her again. Her heart beat frantically in her chest—she could not force her mind to think of a solution.

Rory looked behind her father, and the blood in her veins seemed to freeze. Aldric was quickly approaching, holding a torch. Kyrr and some others were behind him, lighting the dormant braziers that dotted the tunnel as they went.

She summoned another atronach. Her mate paused in surprise as he saw her form, lit from behind. Terror pulsed behind her eyes when he slowly registered what was crouched in front of her, on his side of the gate.

He dropped the torch, and yelled a warning to the people behind him. They looked ahead and saw her father, and began to back away. The chatter of multiple voices, tinged with alarm and fear, trickled down the tunnel to her ears.

The commotion was finally enough to draw her father's attention from her. He turned, sniffing the air curiously. Rory clapped her hands together, hissed at him, but he turned his back on her. Someone else was getting closer, and he was a much more tempting prospect.

Aldric drew his greatsword.

"No!" she yelled suddenly. "Aldric! No! Listen to me! Stop!"

Her father's legs tensed as he prepared to spring.

"NO!"