Twenty-One
Saben could smell it, smoke, grime and iron seeping through the large windows and deeper beneath that the warm sweet and sour taste of humankind. It was a maddening stench, it called to her, it commanded her appetites even when her mind wandered.
She stood with arms wrapped around herself, watching the spread of the city below from Abberline's pent house.
It was cold, empty, she pushed air from her lungs and it misted before her eyes, a mockery. She didn't need to breath. Didn't need much to survive. Except…except for blood.
"I truly don't understand it." Celsia said her steps slow and deliberate, oozing sexuality and predatory danger. It seemed her natural state, to seduce and deceive because her true desire was to destroy.
Saben lifted her eyes to the vampire's reflection, a ghostly pale image beside her own
She was hypnotised by her snaking hips. "You can no longer conceive, no longer grow old and ugly, no more infections, no more pain...He gave you a gift."
I could have done without his gifts, Saben thought to herself. Even as the words formed in her mind Celsia's hand closed around her throat and she was off balance, leaning on Celsia's lean body. "I should rip your throat out you ungrateful child, put us both out of our misery." She whispered.
Saben shut her eyes, they were both trapped in an impossible situation because Celsia loved Abberline, was blindly devoted to him and had been for centuries but Saben…Saben held his soul in her palms.
Celsia put a hand across her jaw, turning her head to one side to lay a kiss on her mouth. "No more tricks, no more treats Saben Frost." Celsia said releasing her suddenly and heading for the door. "I will not be so merciful next time."
Saben put a hand to her lips, she could still feel the ice of Celsia's mouth.
She listened to the sound of Celsia's heels retreat and moving silently in soft soled Converse Saben slipped onto the narrow balcony to be greeted by the pungent city air.
She descended into the city streets, climbed down the side of the building like an animal and now had her hood pulled up to disguise her face, hands fisted in the bottom of her pockets. She wandered aimlessly, much as she had done a fateful six years before when Abberline had saved her life and in the same instant doomed her for eternity.
The thought of Abberline made her throat go tight. She could not deny the awful swirl of emotion that rose at thoughts of him, but how much were her own and how many spurned by the cord that strangled them both, she did not know.
There was a tightness in her chest, an ache where her heart used to beat, she could feel things that were not her own, these things that would forever twist and knot in her chest. It was a terrible knowledge that she belonged to him utterly.
Say it. Say it.
I belong to you.
Lost in these thoughts she didn't notice the people slither out of the shadows and descend upon her, didn't sense them until she felt them seize her, an iron clamp grip on either arm. A bag was pulled over her face, wool fibres scratching her sensitive skin, blinding her, dulling her senses and she didn't resist.
She was gently guided to a van, she knew it, had spent half her life in them, her skin rumbled with the growl of the engine. She was in the back of the van, in the hollow of the beast, she kicked the side of it and a soft voice advised her to be calm.
Several hours later the van pulled to an abrupt stop, she listened to the soft footfalls outside as others gathered. She was guided outside, surrounded on all sides by strangers, the bag interrupting her senses. She was lead on a complicated series of paths until she was forced to sit and her hands were cuffed to the cool armrests of a steel chair.
The bag was pulled off her face and her vision was filled by the immaculate vision of Blaise Harman. Saben blinked. Expressionless.
She recognised the South Apartments, the bland room with standardised table and two chairs, the faint smell of antiseptic and static of discreet cameras.
Then she was distracted by Blaise's perfume was as toxic as a spell, intimate and sickening. It made her think of Tobias, the lingering stench of Blaise's perfume on his skin, on his mouth in his breath as their lips had met…
"All you had to do was ask." She said around the taste of Blaise in her mouth.
Saben saw for just an instant the crimson flush of her cheeks and flare of her nostrils, Blaise's fury. "Where is he?" The witch asked in a bare whisper.
Saben looked to the blank spaces either side of her and shrugged.
Blaise's grey eyes were intense, her stare unforgiving.
"I don't know what you're talking about." Saben said evenly.
"It's written all over your face."
Saben smiled humourlessly. "I don't know what-"
Blaise slapped her. Hard. Hair had fallen into her eyes and she blinked giving into a sudden and all consuming anger. "I had no choice when he gave my son to you but you will not lay another hand on me. Things are different now, witch and I am not the same little girl you knew."
The emotion moved, a roiling darkness beneath the surface of her eyes. Blaise's face went through a series of emotions that ended in confusion, her lips trembled but they did not form a parting sentence. The witch strode out of the room, slamming the door behind her. Sealing Saben in alone.
Saben looked up at the camera. "Want to tell me what's going on?" She asked.
*
"What do you mean gone?" His tone was extraordinarily light, near expressionless, belying none of the emotion that flared in his eyes, electric blue spirals leading to the abyss of black pupils.
Celsia was poignantly aware of the effort Abberline was exerting but she was furious too. "Gone. I mean she's gone. Jumped out of the damned window."
"I warned you."
"I know."
"Scylla is dead."
Celsia eyebrow rose. "A pity."
"You know what this means." His lips twitched, briefly in a kind of smile and then he turned his eyes on her and Celsia flinched. "Find her."
"I didn't sign on to this House to be a babysitter."
Abberline was suddenly beside her, a hand clamped around her throat and Celsia's fangs touched her bottom lip and her mouth swamped with the taste of imminent violence. "That's exactly what you are and I will hold you personally responsible if anything happens to her."
*
Saben waited in silence. Silence only the dead could bring. She tried not to let her thoughts wander, Abberline's eyes were tattooed on the inside of her eye lids, his voice…punishments for betraying secrets.
Tobias walked in, his expression stern, the same quality of anger exude by Blaise, Blaise's perfume thick on his skin and back in her mouth.
"What-"
"Why, Saben?" He cut her off, his voice trembling with emotion. It struck a chord in her, stirred old feelings, provoked her human concern but she was not human anymore.
"Why is the sky blue, Tobias? Why are we here? Why? Why? Why?"
His hand curled into a fist but he resisted the temptation of violence, the same violent feeling that had caused Blaise to strike her about the face. Instead his fist connected with the table in a startling thud.
"Tell me what's going on." She whispered. Her soft voice slicing through layers of lava-hot grief and oily suspicion. His eyes flicked to hers, tears shivering there.
He licked his lips. "Daniel's gone."
"Gone where?" She asked stupidly.
"Taken, Saben, he was taken." His hands slithered up the table toward her, hesitating - thinking better of it - he took back his hand.
She was frozen. Tobias words gripping her like a great fist. Punishment for telling secrets. She closed her eyes and began to hate the world anew.
"Was it you?" Tobias pressed, trying to be gentle now, trying to coax her to an answer he wanted to hear.
Saben's eyes opened and he found them glowing, filled with a venomous light that made him squint. "How. Dare. You."
"Saben, my son has been taken-"
"He's my son." She hissed, fangs flashing like blades.
Tobias shook his head indeterminably. "Was it you, Saben?"
She was seething, her insides swollen, raw and bleeding. Her voice tumbled soft from her alien mouth. "Let me go, Toby."
He was mesmerised for a moment and shook his head as if to clear the spell she wove with her vampire magic. "I'm afraid I can't do that."
"You mean you won't."
"I'm not going to make the same mistake twice."
"Tobias." She hissed.
"No, Saben. If you had something to do with this, I'll never forgive you." He got up to leave, his features schooled once more to a stern mask.
"What are you going to do with me?" She asked, subtly tugging on the restraints that held her to the chair.
"That's not for me to decide."
"Hand me over to the Day?" She laughed and then with intense seriousness. "I had nothing to do with this, Tobias."
He shook his head sadly. "I'm sorry, I don't believe that."
"He's still my son."
"Not in the eyes of the Day or Night."
Bloody tears flooded her cheeks, the toxic feeling of betrayal hit her squarely and the keen hatred she had felt for Tobias emerged from the silt of her emotions.
Tobias closed the door behind him as he left. Without hesitation and wrenched her wrists from the chair, the cuffs did not break but the steel chair warped and split and she could stand. She headed for the door and collided with Tobias who had returned with a glass of water.
In a tangle of limbs they fell to the ground. "What are you doing?"
He struggled to pin her, to restrain her, to keep her in one place. She didn't have time for the struggle and he was not so very strong. She held him, pacified him, he slipped into unconsciousness before he could utter any damning words.
"I'll find him myself." She whispered to his unconscious body.
She stepped back into the room and stared at the camera with all venom and fury "You said you'd protect him you lying son of a bitch."