Chapter 6

Confinement

Viktor slid open a small, rectangular opening on the upper part of the door he'd just slammed on my face. His creased, marbled eyes peeked through at me.

"I'm sure you will understand that for the good of the Romanian organization, I need to be absolutely certain that you truly want to be here this time, that there are no…ulterior motives. Please know that you are free to leave at any time. Simply say the word and you will be released. But also know, if you leave again, you will never be able to return."

"How long--" I began before Victor cut me off.

"Uh, uh, uh, Beta. You will not be asking the questions, only answering them," he said then snapped the trap door shut. I couldn't hear his footsteps moving away, because the tiny, dark closet in which I was trapped was completely sound proofed.

Perfect. Wonderful. I was such an idiot.

I couldn't believe that I'd thought it was going to be that easy. Of course Viktor would put me through a test. My last two hundred plus years were wholly unaccounted for. I hadn't exactly been living in the public eye. Viktor had no way of knowing what I'd been up to. For all he knew, I was getting paid to smuggle out information or treasures for any number of covens that would pay for them. In three million years he'd never suspect my real purpose for being here. He'd probably only laugh at me if he did. Still, I couldn't expect his support for my little project, so I had to keep my mouth shut.

I stood – it was really the only position possible in the upright-coffin-like space – and waited. And waited. And waited. Then – I waited some more. Nothing happened. Nothing at all. Nothing, nothing, nothing.

I began to think that maybe I was wrong. Maybe this wasn't a test. Maybe it was a punishment. Maybe Viktor was going to leave me here to rot.

Except I wouldn't rot. I would decline and decline until I was a useless lump on the floor with only my tortured thoughts to keep me company. A slight panic raced across my chest as I flashed back to those unbearable months lying in the field. My eyes rapidly flicked around the small, enclosed space, which restricted my movement and left me entirely alone with my thoughts, and I realized that it was already unbearable. The panic began to burn.

Viktor had said I was free to leave. 'Just say the word.' Was he serious? Surely no one would blame me if I took him up on the offer. I'd tried in my mission, and I'd failed. I could go back to my easy life knowing that I'd done my very best. I paused in this train of thought when I pictured myself telling Father Pawel that I'd given up, imagined the disappointment on his round face. Well, maybe I could continue the mission without the help of the Romanians. I could round up the few veggies I knew and together we could change the world – with little to no real information or credibility to back us up, with little to no reason for anyone to listen to me. I blew out a long, protracted gust of air. To succeed, I needed what B.I.T.E. could give me. I had to stay. If I was ever going to be able to stand to live with myself, I had to stay.

I stood erect and stared at the door. I wasn't waiting any more. I was thinking. I was thinking about Kristoph. I'd managed to amuse myself enough in the last few years to distract from and dull the anguish conjured by these memories. Alone with him in the dark closet, the pain seared stronger than ever. His cries, his struggle, his last breath. Worst of all was the image of his beautiful, living face staring up at me at a quiet, intimate moment, his blue eyes trusting me. Trusting me with everything.

My fists clenched into balls and smashed themselves against opposite walls as the old, familiar scream built up in me. The scream I would never allow myself to release. It compressed and twisted every muscle and clawed its way up my throat. It took all my effort to keep it locked inside.

The trap door slipped open. Eyes so black they were almost purple peered at me. Without even trying, I slid Kristoph to the back of my mind, and my face became a stoic mask.

"My God, Beta, it is you," a familiar voice from the past chirped.

"Martina," I said with false warmth. Martina and I had trained together way back when. "So good to see you. Please, call me Elie."

"Elie? Weird, but okay," she answered with a smile crinkling the corners of her eyes.

"So how've you been?" she asked as if we'd just happened to bump into each other on the street.

"Well, you know, besides being held in captivity, pretty good."

"Yeah," she said uncomfortably. "B--, uh, Elie, what'd you do? You really threw us all when you left. Why'd you do it?"

I shrugged. "I dunno. Adventure, excitement, call of the wild."

"But to just walk away. No warning. No nothing?" Her eyes carried a hurt expression.

Puh-lease. Martina was probably more excited than anyone that I'd left. I'm sure she slithered quite readily into my place at the top of the class.

I shook my head sorrowfully and told her, "I was impulsive, young, stupid. It took me a long time to admit that I was wrong and an even longer time to work up the courage to face you all. But I missed you too much. Missed Romania. This is where I belong. My home. It's worth whatever hoops I have to jump through."

She silently observed me for a few minutes, her eyes steady on me and calculating. When she spoke again, her questions came with great rapidity. She waited only long enough for my faultless answer before firing off another.

"So, tell me about the world, Elie. What did you do out there? Where did you go? Who did you meet? Will you ever go back? Why'd you come back? Why now? What took so long? Who did you meet? Why now?"

Every few days, someone new would come by with another barrage of essentially the same questions. They were looking for a crack in my story, inconsistencies. But my story held strong, always the same answers.

"I was impulsive, young, stupid. I was wrong. This is where I belong. I traveled; I was a nomad. I met various other vampires, but never stayed in one place long, never formed any lasting relationships. This is where I belong. I love Romania. I love Romania."

Sometimes they tempted me with food – an invitation to hunt big game or a fresh bag of blood just outside the door. All I had to do was tell Viktor I wanted to come out. All I had to do was give up any chance at ever re-entering the B.I.T.E. organization. I always politely refused and the burning in my throat began to throb. But I knew that I'd survived starvation before, and I could do it again.

In between visits, my memories haunted me, flooded my brain with room for nothing else, just as it had been in the fields of Poland. But somehow I wasn't consumed with the same despair. There was something else there. Something I didn't have in those months after Kristoph. I had my psalm. I had my psalm which I repeated to myself over and over and over again when the pain threatened to overtake me. I was forgiven. I didn't need to torture myself. I also had Father Pawel, who I knew was praying for me every night. I felt his prayers and they kept me strong, kept me from sinking too low.

I was confident that my interrogators would never shake me. But I worried about who might come next. If B.I.T.E. had accepted an ex-Volturi among their ranks, perhaps the ties between the two organizations were stronger than they'd been when I'd left. I knew they'd never have taken this Gregorio in if they thought it might upset the balance between the two organizations. Perhaps it had fortified it, brought it to a new level. I worried that the New Romanians might relax their guidelines regarding the 'gifted' and invite someone from the Volturi to help them out once in a while. Would I be faced with a mind reader or some other psychic power?

I worked every day, every minute to construct my wall, pushing my secrets behind it so that no one, no one, no one could get back there. I visited behind the wall every day to keep myself grounded, in touch with my true self, but it wasn't always easy. Keeping my secrets separated like that took away the dilution factor of my other thoughts. Whenever I went back there, I was hit full force with every ounce of the pain, the love, the horror, the beauty, and the heartbreak. But I was deft at jumping over the wall in a fraction of a second, so I was ready every time the trap door slid open.

With my thoughts and emotions under absolute control, and my growing hunger sill bearable, my biggest challenge became the boredom. The hours and hours of nothing between the brief visits. Four close walls, darkness and me. Hours and hours of four close walls, darkness and me. It wasn't my tortured memories that were going to get me, it was the boredom. The excruciating boredom.

It became imperative that I find ways to amuse myself. I made a game of literally climbing the walls by pressing my hands and feet against opposite walls and working my way to a scrunched up position at the ceiling and then dropping. I would see how many different positions I could land in. Sometimes I would wait at the top of my cell until a visitor came. Then I would fly down and scare the bejesus out of them.

The game morphed over time, and one day I found myself unexpectedly upside down in the small cubicle. I couldn't figure out how I'd gotten into that impossible position and so had no idea how to get out of it. Just as I put my mind to the task, I was surprised when the trap door suddenly slid open. Caught off guard, my arms buckled under me, and I crumpled. My back was curled onto the small square of floor and my legs were sprawled against the wall. I struggled with my arms to wedge my skirt, which had bunched around my waist, back along my thighs where it belonged.

"Relax," said an arrogant voice with an Italian accent. "Its nothing I haven't seen before."

"Really?" I responded dryly. "Regularly hang out with contortionists, do you?"

Once I had my skirt back in place, I looked up at Gregorio's soft, black eyes, which now shined with curiosity.

"I see you are enjoying yourself. I take it that means you're doing alright?" he asked.

"Yeah, I'm peachy," I grunted as I lifted my right shoulder against a side wall and my left one smashed onto the floor. Both legs fell with a thud against the opposite wall.

I continued struggling and said, "This could take a while, so you may as well get on with it."

"With what?"

"With your questions. Or shall I save you the trouble of asking and just give you the answers?"

"Will they be any different from the answers you've already given?"

"Nope."

"Then what would be the point?"

I blew out a frustrated burst of air as I realized that my shoulder could make no further progress up the wall. My spine simply didn't have that kind of flexibility. I was stuck and had to back track, climbing my legs back up the wall and sliding my shoulders to the floor.

"Right. No point. So, I guess you'll be leaving then. Like I said, this could take a while," I told him.

"Oh, I certainly hope that it does take a while," he said with an inappropriately interested edge to his voice. I looked up again at the small rectangle from the floor and saw his appraising eyes unabashedly scan me from kinked neck to crooked ankles as I wriggled to straighten myself.

"You, sir, are a perverted letch," I told him.

He merely lifted and lowered his eyebrows in a kind of shrug and made no move to avert his gaze.

Despite myself, I laughed and got a new idea.

"Well, as long as you've seen it all before," I said and pointed my legs straight up and pushed off the floor with my arms so that my body was a straight, thin line pressed against the back wall. I slowly bent my knees forward, holding my calves tight to my thighs. I gingery continued tilting them downward until my legs had lowered all the way to my sides. I didn't dare look toward Gregorio's curious eyes as I dexterously manipulated my body. He stayed deadly quiet, which I could only assume meant that he was paying rapt attention to my progress.

I unbent my legs and lowered my calves so that my feet once again rested on the floor. I slowly rounded my spine up until I stood upright with my back to the door. I sighed with satisfaction and turned to face my audience.

"How was that?" I asked him.

"A plus," he said admiringly. His eyes flashed with a bright excitement.

I narrowed my eyes accusingly at him and said, "You knew he was going to do this."

"Yes, I knew," Gregorio admitted, his soft, dark eyes going dim. "Don't underestimate Viktor. He's going to find out your real reason for coming back eventually. He probably already knows and is giving you this chance to tell him on your own, so you can redeem yourself. It will be better for you to come clean now." He stared at me warningly after he'd finished. He was clearly waiting for a response.

"Thanks for the tip," I said casually, as if he'd just relayed something as trivial as a weather forecast. I was fairly certain that he was bluffing.

His eyes hardened.

"Most people would take an indefinite stint in confined solitary at the Romanian compound very seriously," he said.

"I'm not most people," I assured him with my eyes steady on his.

"So I'm learning," he said sourly.

He held my gaze for a few moments, and without another word, slid the trap door shut, and that was the end of that day's entertainment. The next day's entertainment was a bit more…entertaining.

Viktor, himself, came for me this time. He opened the door, and light from the hallway flooded into my small space. I squinted at the shock of it. It took my vision a few minutes to adjust.

"Beta," Viktor said curtly in greeting.

"Viktor," I said equally curtly in response. I couldn't keep the ice out of my tone. I didn't blame him for testing me, but I resented the way he'd tricked me into it. He was my creator and had been my biggest fan. We had a special bond. It seemed like he owed me better.

"Come," he said and stepped aside, motioning for me to step into the hallway.

I stepped out barefoot, because my pumps had been irreparably damaged during one of my games. With a guiding hand at my elbow, he led me down the hall. After a few paces, he spoke again, his voice still reserved.

"You have proven that your mind is strong, Beta. Remarkably strong. Thirty days in confinement and alert as ever."

I could hear his pride in the compliment, but he was holding back. It was like he was intentionally keeping me at an emotional distance in case I didn't make it through the next test. It scared the hell out of me.

As we passed the shiny glass wall of a conference room, I caught a glimpse of my reflection. The hem of my skirt had become tattered and frayed, and my blouse loped halfway out of my waistband. The condition of my hair was the most shocking of all. Apparently I'd been pulling at it during all my deep thoughts, and it stood on end in haphazard clumps. I looked something like a black-haired Einstein. Like a homeless, degenerate version of Einstein.

Viktor opened another door and motioned me through. Without a word, he shut the door behind me, and I was again alone. This time I was left in a large, circular room. I'd guess it was about thirty feet in diameter. The floor was a perfect circle, and the walls were smooth and grey. The walls went straight up for about fifteen feet and then curved gradually inward for another five feet or so. There was a ten foot gap between the top of the walls and an arched, dome ceiling. I heard voices coming from that gap. I realized that there must be some sort of observation deck at the top of the wall. I was being watched.

Viktor's smooth, slippery voice rang through the large room from the gap.

"Now, Beta, let us see if your body is as strong as your mind."

A door-sized portion of the wall opposite me slid open and a haggard-looking man in jeans and a flannel shirt stepped through. He wasn't a vampire.

Oh, God. I hadn't bargained on this. They wanted me to rip this poor man to shreds and drink his blood. And they wanted to watch me do it. Shit! Had the Italian not been bluffing? Had Viktor guessed my secret and now he wanted proof - in front of witnesses? Shit! Merde! Shit! I didn't want to do it. I wasn't even a hundred percent sure that I could do it.

I closed my eyes in silent prayer. Was it okay to kill this one man if his death could potentially lead to the sparing of hundreds, thousands of lives in the future? I had to do it. I had to.

I kept my eyes closed and breathed in. I was starving. Thirty days since I'd last eaten. 'This should be easy,' I thought. 'Just think of him as a bear, a mountain goat, as any other type of prey.' I sucked in air again through my nostrils. The delectable scent would trigger my natural instincts and I could get the whole thing over with before I even had time to think about it. It was strange, though. The human didn't smell good to me. He smelled…nasty. Was my sensibility for my noble purpose already so advanced that humans no longer smelled good to me?

A loud, rumbling noise from above caused my eyes to snap open and upward. The domed ceiling was retreating, revealing a clear, black sky studded with glimmering stars and punctuated by a big, bright, perfectly round moon.

A snarl emitted from across the room at my level. I slowly dropped my gaze to the sound. I saw a werewolf. A full-fledged werewolf. The man was a fricking werewolf! Child of the fricking moon! My worst fricking nightmare.

"Oh, sweet mother…" I murmured aloud and fell silent.

I thought I heard Victor's soft chuckle from above. Without realizing it, I'd leapt halfway up the wall at the furthest point from the monster. The walls weren't totally smooth; they had enough texture for me to grip onto them for a few, brief moments, but I was already slipping.

I'd never come face to face with a werewolf before. I'd had a few lessons on defending myself against them during my training, of course, but I couldn't recall a damn useful thing at the moment. The creature was absolutely hideous. His clothes had burst off at his transformation, and a few scraps of flannel clung to his matted fur. He'd grown at least a foot taller, and his shoulders and arms had tripled in size. His waist and legs remained thin, but looked ready to spring with sharp claws poking out like pitchforks from his huge feet and paw-like hands. Its long, vicious snout contracted into a snarl around his spiked teeth. From his deadly mouth spilled a mass of spit and drool. The smell throughout the room was now rancid.

I continued my slow slide down the wall, and the moment my feet touched the ground, the beast sprung at me. I was already safely across the room before he made it half way to my former spot. He slammed into the wall. He made another charge at me, but again he was no match for my vampiric speed. We continued this way for a long while. It could have potentially gone on forever, except that the werewolf was learning. He knew he wouldn't be able to catch me based on speed alone, so he was watching my responses to his every move and learning to predict my reactions.

I was reacting on pure instinct, so it wasn't like I was going to be able to easily alter my moves. He was going to figure me out eventually. I'd already had a couple of close calls by the time I realized this. I used every bit of my strength to scrabble all the way up one of the walls and make a leap to the inclined top of it. I hung from the top of the wall and struggled to find purchase with my feet. My plan was to climb over the wall to safety. I managed to get one elbow over the wall and saw that there was a small group of nearly ten vampires there. Most of them had taken a step back from the wall as I slung my arm over, but Viktor stepped up to me. He was holding a slender, silver wand sort of thing.

"Uh, uh, uh, Beta. That's cheating," he said and whacked my arm with the instrument.

"Cheating?" I shouted incredulously. Then a crippling pain ripped through my arm where he'd hit me, and I fell to the ground.

I landed on my feet and spun around in time to see the werewolf coming at me. I feinted right and went left, but the second it took me to plan this move cost me, and he clubbed my shoulder with his sharp talons, knocking me off balance. I stumbled but stayed on my feet and continued moving backwards, away from him. I was going to have to try something new.

I made a move he hadn't seen yet – I leapt straight toward him, but a little to the side so that I could swing to his back and avoid his teeth. I scratched his chest on my way around and spurts of blood spattered out of him. I ripped his ear half way off with my other hand and tore a large chunk out of his back with my teeth, spilling more blood. I kept moving and stood with my back against a wall. The puppy whimpered and assessed the damage, the looked back at me with a hate-filled gleam that hadn't been there before. He stalked toward me, half crazed with anger. This meant his reflexes would be off.

I waited until he was close, then I plowed my shoulder into his chest and spun his shoulders with my hands and hurled him into the wall. I'd scraped new, bleeding gauges into him in the process. He smashed into the wall and collapsed, unmoving. I stepped back to the center of the room and watched him. He was a stinking lump of bloody, matted fur. He didn't move. His chest didn't even rise and fall with rattled breathing. He didn't move at all. I stood staring at him for along while. It was over. What was next? I turned my head half way around and looked toward the observation deck, awaiting instructions.

That was my fatal mistake.

A snarl ripped through the room and a powerful thud hit me, blinding me for a second. I felt my body hurl across the room, and I felt a burning pain down my entire left side. Who would have expected a wolf to play opossum? The beast stayed a good distance from me, watching me to see how badly I'd been hurt. I allowed myself a brief glance down and saw that my clothes hung entirely away from my left side and in their place was a deep gash that extended from my rib cage down to my hip, then over and around the muscle of my left thigh. It troubled me that I no longer felt the pain.

I tried to stand, but I couldn't. The muscles of my left leg were torn and useless. I couldn't control my leg at all. I was done for. I had no hope of outrunning the wolf now. He knew it. His black lips pulled back in a hideous smile over his fangs and he moved slowly toward me, relishing my helplessness.

I heard voices raised in argument above me, but in my terror, I couldn't make out a word. There was some sort of clattering and shouts and then silence, as I assume they all trained their eyes on the floor, not wanting to miss a moment of my demise.

I could have closed my eyes and began reciting prayers under my breath. Prayed for salvation of my sorry soul. That wouldn't have been a bad idea, but I preferred to pray in a whole different way. I wasn't giving up this life God had given me without a fight. The idiot wolf paused under the full moon, its silver glow reflecting off his sticky fur, to howl in victory. I launched myself at him with all the power I had left in my right leg and knocked him to the ground. After a stunned second, he easily flipped my crippled body underneath him before I was able to get in a good bite or claw. His foul, slimy mouth slobbered on my throat as he moved in for the final bite that would kill me. Nothing could stop him now.

A loud blast echoed through the room and the wolf's warm, blood- and sweat-drenched body slumped onto me with all of its massive weight. Dead weight. Ding, dong, the wolf was dead. It took me several minutes to register this fact. By that time, the people from the observation deck swarmed around me and had rolled the beast off of me. A burly vampire that I'd know before, Felix, lifted me off the floor. Viktor stood next to him, beaming at me.

"Well done, well done, my girl," he said, sounding utterly tickled.

Behind Viktor stood Gregorio. He was clutching a rifle and was somehow blanched lighter than his normal pallor. He stared blankly ahead with a stricken expression on his face. So, he was the one who'd shot the werewolf and saved me. I watched him curiously as his eyes regained focus and settled on me, lying limp in Felix's bulky arms. Gregorio's eyebrows raised, and he dropped the gun dangerously to the floor and quickly pulled off his suit jacket. He took a step toward me and threw the jacket over my shoulders so that it covered me almost to my knees. I realized with a small amount of embarrassment that with my clothes in shreds, I'd been exposing more than my scar to the room full of people.

"Thank you," I croaked, my voice weak from the trauma.

Gregorio gave a slight nod, still looking inexplicably shell shocked.

"Oh, I'm afraid you're indebted to him for more than a jacket," Viktor chuckled. "He saved your life."

I stiffened. Even in my vulnerable condition, even though I very well should have been torn to tiny bits by then, I balked at the idea of owning anybody anything. Was the Italian going to hang this over my head once he'd recovered from his stupor? I opened my mouth to resentfully thank him again, but he stopped me with a small shake of his head.

He locked his eyes onto mine and said somewhat hoarsely, finding his voice again, "It's a dirty job, but someone's got to do it."

He raised half a lip in a weak smirk. I smiled back. We'd just survived something together, and he wasn't going to make a big deal out of it or hold it over my head.

By the time Felix started moving toward the door to take me to the infirmary, Gregorio seemed fairly well recovered. His head snapped up as if he'd just remembered something, and he fished around in his pocket and pulled out a silvery tube. It looked like it held some sort of ointment.

"Miss Elisabeta," he said, stopping Felix. "Make sure to use this daily on your incision. It's specifically for werewolf injuries and will help you heal more evenly with less scarring."

He came over to tuck it into the pocket of his jacket as it draped over me. While there, he leaned in close to my ear and murmured so low that I was the only who could possibly hear him, "Let me know if you need any help rubbing it in."

Ah yes, the old perverted and over-confident Gregorio was back. I was surprised to find that I much preferred this Gregorio to the blanched and mute one of just a few moments ago.

"Don't make me laugh," I whispered to him. "It hurts too much to laugh."

Our eyes caught on each other mischievously for a second before he stood up and put on his arrogant poker face. What had freaked him out so much? And why was he carrying around werewolf ointment?

"Wait a minute!" I said. "Is that how you got your scar? From a werewolf?"

"No," he said as one corner of his red mouth twitched. "That's not how I got it."