The Soul Trapper Page 16

  Zed shakes his head vehemently. “I can’t let you do that. It’s extremely dangerous.”

  “Then come with me. Help me free her.”

  “That’s easier said than done, Saphira,” Yvette intervenes. “This place is heavily guarded by Inspector Simmons’s officers. It already took effort to get Zed and Joyous in here unnoticed. The bigger the party, the slimmer the chances that you’ll make it out.”

  “I understand, Yvette, but I can’t just leave Vivienne behind knowing that it would mean certain death for her.” An idea hits me. “Look, let’s do it like this: You tell me where to find her, and I go alone. You and Zed wait here, without exposing yourselves.”

  “No way,” Zed reacts. “If anything happens to you, Kieran would face the black monks bare-chested and seeking his own death.”

  The words crush my heart, but this is not about me. I search Zed’s steely eyes that show so much emotion this moment. “You care about him a whole lot, don’t you? It’s not just loyalty and respect.”

  Zed hesitates for a moment or two but then he decides to speak. “Kieran and I first met when our makers teamed us up against a very dangerous oligarch—a man that commanded not only great riches, but also influence to move an army in his own personal interests, and who also had genetically enhanced physical abilities. Taking him down required combat skill, sharp brains and subversive methods. The Marquis was the best of us serpent-killers, and the highest ranked. He was famous among us, and before I met him in person I thought he’d be arrogant and just plain cruel, but he turned out to be very different. The oligarch got me, and Kieran saved my life. He risked his own to do it. He got Joyous out of the bastard’s lab, where Joyous was kept in a steel cage. He’d been bred there and given the name because during the experiments they performed on him his grimace of pain resembled a grin. Kieran’s other men have their own reasons to respect and, yes, love him.”

  He looks down as if in a short moment of meditation, and when he looks at me again emotion shows vivid in his otherwise unreadable face.

  “I’ll go with you to get Vivienne Grant. Then I’ll see you, Yvette and Vivienne out of here unscathed, cost what it may. I won’t risk that Kieran loses his will to live.”

  CHAPTER XXVII

  RUSSIAN ROULETTE

  Kieran Slate, a.k.a. the Marquis de Vandenesse, is a dangerous though honourable man. His people would give their lives for him, and I would as well. My skin is still all pebbles from the story of how he saved Joyous, and of what the ever-present grin on the young man’s face actually stands for.

  I can’t stop thinking about it as we make our way towards poor Vivienne’s cell down the sickly-lit asylum corridors. Yvette made sure the route is safe. She leads the way, her head bobbing as she glances in all directions, while Zed Stone Mask tails behind me.

  I’m only wearing a white gown specific for patients, and I feel as light as the feather coating of a hen, even doubting that my body still has the same consistency from before. Whatever Joyous did with me, it’s downright not of this world. The only familiar sensations are the nervous sweating of my palms, and the bite of the cold floor on the soles of my feet.

  Yvette stretches her arm behind her to stop us as she peeks around a corner. I come to a halt and Zed bumps into me, since his eyes have been scanning the place from above my head for potential danger.

  “There’s a guard at her door,” Yvette whispers. “I’ll distract him, and you get in. It should be unlocked, this is a wing that hasn’t seen the slightest investment in many years, and it’s where they keep the weakest patients that don’t stand a chance of escape.”

  I shudder as I realize what this means for Vivienne, and I barely refrain from rushing Yvette.

  “Then why do they need a guard?” Zed says.

  “There may be no danger of escape from the inside, but Inspector Simmons imagined that Vivienne Grant might get help from the serpents.” She throws a meaningful glance at Zed. “He foresaw a scenario such as this one. But he didn’t foresee my part in it.”

  Yvette doesn’t wait for a reaction from either Zed or me before she dashes around the corner and stalks toward the guard. The clicking of her high heels on the floor draws the man’s attention immediately. There’s something domineering and intimidating about Yvette that has the men in this place tremble. This must’ve pushed Zed’s buttons, I imagine. He’d probably never go for girlish, sweet or vulnerable. Like I said, I’d thought him emotionally crippled, or gay in the best-case scenario, but it turns out he’s just darn hard to impress.

  “Get back,” he whispers, placing a large hand on my shoulder and drawing me backwards. He takes my place by the corner and peeks around it. He moves indeed like a serpent, and I doubt any human could pick up being followed or observed by him.

  “Let’s go,” Yvette’s voice echoes across the corridor as she addresses the guard at Vivienne’s door. “We have a situation at the main entrance. The guys need back-up.”

  “But Miss Danes,” the man replies shyly, “I’m forbidden to leave my position.”

  “You’ll be forbidden your pay check if you go smart-ass on me.”

  “Miss Danes, I have orders from Lord Barkley.”

  “Barkley’s out of town, which means I am ‘Orders’ now. Get moving, there’s crazy ass media at the door, making your peers’ life difficult.”

  My heart races, I’m nervous to a sweat and taken aback by Yvette’s approach. She’d proved there’s a ghetto matron behind the warm accommodating lady when she kicked Lauren’s butt, but still. The guard follows her, I can tell by the fading echo of their steps.

  “Now,” Zed says and dashes around the corner towards Vivienne’s cell. I follow on my tiptoes, my heart beating fast in anticipation of the moment when I will lay eyes on her.

  A bitter moment it is. Zed opens the door, and as it peels off my field of vision it reveals my good Virgin Vivienne lying on a dirty mattress by the grated window. She’s skeletal-thin, the skin glued to her bones, and paper-white. She lies straight like a wooden board, wearing only the sack-like gown that she’s had on as I witnessed her being subjected to electroshocks. She seems dead.

  I hurry over and drop to my knees by her side, caressing her forehead with trembling fingers. Her eyes are closed and her mouth half open, her lips cracked and there’s white foam at the corners. Despite the wretched condition she’s in, her features are still smooth and noble, the face of a true princess.

  She mumbles something very low, as if she’s delirious. I barely manage to keep hysteria at bay as I grab her around her waist with both arms and try to lift her off the bed.

  “Zed, please help me!”

  “Take it easy, Saphira, and keep it low,” he warns in his usual cold, detached voice.

  “Please, do something! She’s in great suffering!”

  “And your pulling and dragging doesn’t make it any better. Step aside.”

  I obey, allowing him to scoop Vivienne up from the bed and take a few long strides to the door, which I open wide, completely forgetting to check the area. I bump into a guard in white blocking our way, glaring over my head at Zed. But before I even get to shriek, Zed leans Vivienne on me—I instinctively support her weight—then twists and breaks the man’s neck right before my eyes. The guard drops dead on the floor, and all I can do is stare in shock at his still open, blank eyes. A second later the alarm starts screaming.

  “Let’s move,” Zed calls over the sharp sound as he picks Vivienne up again. Not a muscle moves on his face, as if taking a life is nothing more than shaving for him. I register what he says but I can’t react, staring at his back taking distance from me on the corridor, Vivienne’s bony legs dangling from the cradle of his arms.

  “Now, Saphira!” He urges, spinning around to look at me. The lights go out frame by frame, turning the corridor into a tunnel of black closing toward Zed. It stirs me from the grip of stun and gets my limbs moving.

  Soon I’m running to Zed, who gets out of the way to
allow that I take the lead, then follows close behind me at a jog, telling me when to turn left or right along a labyrinth of corridors. The place grows more ruinous and desolate as we reach deeper into the old maze of the asylum, the doors we run by rusty, the light bulbs hanging by bare threads, and flickering. This part of the asylum is a dangerous place, humidity having permeated the ceiling and touching the electricity lines. This is a wing where patients are left to die. A living grave.

  “Turn right,” Zed calls again, but the moment I take the turn I realize we’re heading toward a dead-end.

  “We’re trapped!” I shriek.

  “The hatch, lift the hatch!”

  I skid and drop on the floor where I see a rusty trap door, and clasp the grip with both hands. I pull once, twice, three times, but it’s not fast enough. By the time I manage to open it, allowing Zed to jump into the dark abyss beneath it with Vivienne in his arms, the sound of running men chasing us already reaches my ears.

  Scared, I don’t waste another moment and jump after Zed. I sprain my ankle upon landing, but my brain releases endorphins immediately. I’m aware that pain will strike with a vengeance if we get out of this alive, but right now I’m grateful I can keep moving, even though with difficulty.

  A gunshot rips through the dark catacombs and through the sound of my breathing. I stop in place.

  “Keep running!” Zed calls, and for the first time ever he truly sounds desperate. His command gets me back in a strained limp, while he waits with Vivienne in his arms and starts moving only after I’ve taken the lead. I realize he wants to protect me and that he won’t run any faster than I do, which spurs me on to try harder.

  I stumble and fall over something hard and edgy, and as I pat around in the darkness to get up my hands find what feels like dry hay. The smell is foul, and as I begin to make out the contours of corpses I start to scream like crazy. The dry hay was someone’s hair.

  Zed grabs my wrist and lifts me up from the pile of bodies, but I can’t stop screaming. I’m forced to step on them to move forward, stumbling, falling, crying. These are surely dead patients!

  “You’re gonna get us killed!” Zed growls. He doesn’t try to keep it low anymore either.

  As we escape the foul-smelling grave and reach what resembles flat terrain again it feels like being released from shackles. With a yell of effort I force myself to run, focused only on one spot before me—a white circle, literally the light at the end of the tunnel.

  I ignore everything else as I hurry toward it with all I’ve got, and when the light begins to take clear shape my heart rejoices like I didn’t think it still could after everything I’ve been through in this cursed place.

  Kieran steps out of the light to meet me, and I fly right into his open arms. I cry uncontrollably, caressing his marble statue of a face as he kisses my forehead and my hands, his pitch-black eyes searching mine with hunger and pain.

  Another gunshot tears through the background. Then another. Kieran lifts his face to look behind me, and his expression goes steel-sharp. I turn around to see Zed falling to the ground with Vivienne in his arms as Kieran’s men pour behind him to shield him from further bullets before the metal high-tech doors close. I realize they must be marking the borders from where Kieran had secured the catacombs that link to his manor. Still, for Zed, it’s too late.

  He’s on his knees, head bent, still cradling Vivienne on his thighs. There’s blood on her arm. I can’t tell if it’s hers or his, but the man looking closely at Zed’s wounds springs back as if burnt with red iron.

  “Shit, it’s expanding!”

  Kieran hurries over, still holding my hand and therefore pulling me after him. Some kind of pestilence seems to be crawling from under Zed’s black turtleneck up his throat and square jawbone to his stony cheeks, reaching up to his eyes like the dark fingers of a malicious curse. His entire body quivers, his eyeballs roll, and he loses conscience with one single moan.

  “It was the Black Angels!” Men call. They’re restless, and their voices rise with alarm.

  I drop to my knees by Vivienne, grabbing both her arms and straining to get her away from Zed, afraid the pestilence might leak to her as well.

  “No, don’t!” Kieran hunkers down by me. I look at him, at that beautiful marble face that I’d do anything for.

  “What if it spreads to her?” I urge.

  “It won’t. This is a curse of the Black Angels, technically a shot of the same plague they carry around as punishment for their so-called powers. Since the curse was meant at Zed it can’t expand to Vivienne, but his fingers clawed into her flesh at the impact, and we can only separate them very gently. It’s practically surgery, which we need to do ASAP, but we can’t do it here.” He jumps to his feet to help his men balance Zed and Vivienne on their joined arms, and we start down the catacombs toward the manor.

  A number of Kieran’s men fall behind with torches that cast heat and orange light up the chilly, humid walls of the tunnels. They’re probably making sure no one breached through to chase us. Kieran glances back at me often, but I know he’s worried sick about Zed.

  They drop the cargo in the middle of the manor’s entrance hall, on the cold granite floor. Kieran and his men are all over Zed and Vivienne like a squad of surgeons indeed, and one of them runs down the echoing hallway and returns with scissors, chopsticks and other instruments, the use of which they must improvise.

  I approach with small steps and manage to catch a glimpse of Kieran’s marble hands expertly extracting one of Zed’s blackened skeleton fingers from Vivienne’s flesh. It goes slowly and painfully for her. Her blood-smeared thigh quivers in the process, but she’s too drained to scream. It must be true torture. The sound is both crackly and clammy, sending a shudder through me, but I have to be there for Vivienne, so I keep my ground.

  As soon as they’ve separated Zed and Vivienne like mother from new-born, one of the serpents lifts Vivienne in his arms and, following Kieran’s command, starts towards a warm room. Kieran presses a kiss on my lips, and then turns to lead the men carrying Zed down the hall, his sleeves rolled up and his hands bloody, ready to go on working to save Zed.

  I follow the young serpent to a bedroom on the first floor, where he lays Vivienne on a divan by the window. He runs to fetch the one person that can help quickly—Joyous—while I use the scissors on the grey sack covering Virgin Vivienne’s emaciated body to wash her wounds. I also begin to feel the aftershocks of chase and strain myself. The pain in my ankle is a pulsing nag as Vivienne’s pale, skinny, but still beautiful shape reveals itself naked before me. The signs of hurt on her sting my heart.

  The spots where Zed had sunken his fingers in her flesh are black, suppurating holes. They smell rancid but sweet at the same time. She begins moving her head from one side to the other, moaning in growing pain as her flesh starts to tremble. I’m looking around desperately for something when the doors open, and Joyous enters the room.

  I get out of his way as he approaches Vivienne’s divan, thanking God that he exists. He looks down at her with those eerie eyes the colour of honey, his decadent ringlets framing his unnaturally bony face like magical tentacles.

  He puts his hands on her thighs. Her flesh dips as he massages upward toward her hips and ribs and breasts. It looks erotic, but the vibe between them exudes nothing of the kind. There’s an aura of blending between them as Joyous’s strength appears to flow into Vivienne, and regulate her chemicals and vital functions.

  Which is exactly what happens, as he explains when he’s done, lifting his hands from Vivienne’s now still body. There’s an expression of heavenly relief on her face as she lets out quiet sighs, her round breasts rising and falling as she breathes with ease.

  “My body chemicals act like magnets,” Joyous tells me. “Have you heard of Mesmer?”

  “Of course. One of the first hypnotists, very famous. That’s where the word ‘mesmerizing’ comes from.”

  “That’s right. He used to have the same effe
ct on people, but mainstream medicine struck down his talents and gave other explanations for what happened. But there was something very powerful to what he did that they failed to understand. I, for one, can sense where the imbalance lies in someone’s body, I sense the deficits. I sense the diagnosis. Then I use my abilities to restore balance.”

  “Thank you, Joyous. For what you did for her, and for me back at the asylum, we both owe you, big time.” I sit by Vivienne on the divan and cover her nakedness with the remains of her sack-like gown, trying to refrain from asking the question that burns in my head for Joyous, but it flies out of my mouth.

  “Was it the oligarch? The one who forced your abilities on you?” I keep my eyes and hands busy with Vivienne. Joyous has already reached the door, but he stops and turns.

  “Yes,” he replies. “He enhanced my born predispositions.”

  His story runs through my head, the story of his having been subjected to such painful experiments that they punched a permanent grimace of pain into his face, a grimace that gets mistaken for a grin. Zed and the Marquis saved him. Zed! I turn to face the healer.

  “Then you can surely save Zed!”

  Joyous dips his head, his ringlets dangling down his forehead.

  “I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do for him. What the Black Angels do is no wounding I can heal and no disease that I can cure. Ivan Basarab’s armies are well prepared to withstand or counteract most of our lot’s abilities, so they’re well prepared against mine.”

  “But the abilities you guys have are special, not of this world! If you can’t face up to Basarb’s minions, I don’t want to think about what chances normal people stand against them, the people of this town!”

  “Better chances than you imagine, actually. From us Basarab knows what to expect, but not from normal people whose talents have yet to be uncovered and polished.”

  “What are you talking about, Joyous?”

  “All people can become as powerful as us if they unlock their potential. Everyone is born with talents that can be, let’s say, engineered into superpowers. We could actually use fresh additions to our ranks, since Ivan Basarab knows all of our talents, and is well equipped against them.”