Page 93 of A Heart Of Bitter Poison
“I remember that hunt. I totally killed that stag. Vlad was so loaded he fell off his horse.” I take one last look before I pull the whole thing down from the wall to reveal an iron door hidden behind it, yanking at the fabric despite Eryx’s dramatic gasp and protest about it being some priceless historical work of art. “Whatever, Mr. Art Historian Angel. You didn’t even know the difference between Mistoffelees and Aristophanes two days ago, so, I love you dearly, but shut the fuck up.”
Ediye cackles and takes aim at the handle of the door with her outstretched hands, killing the spell that seals it with a blast of her more powerful magic. We step onto the landing of a tight spiral staircase that descends below the fortress. I flick on a light switch to my right and caged utility lights burn and hum.
“She’s down here,” I say as Ashen steps to my side. The flame roars to life across his blade.
“Keep your promise, vampire. If I tell you to run,run.”
There’s a moment where everything and everyone else stops existing. A moment where Ashen looks into my eyes with that liquid crimson flame and I feel my mark sing to his. I reach out to his chest and run my fingers across it, feeling the heat of it tingle in my skin.I live there, I think to myself, and a sense of peace washes over me. I’ll always live there, and he’ll live within me, and we’ll never die alone. After all these centuries of loneliness, I finally belong to someone, and he belongs to me.
And fuck if I’m going to run and not fight for it.
A slow smile spreads on my face. Ashen rolls his eyes.
“You’re not going to run, are you.”
I shake my head.
“Figures. Just… try not to stab me today, would you? It’s getting old.”
“Itnevergets old,” I say, and Ashen smiles before stealing a heated kiss from my lips. When he pulls back he looks at me for one last, long moment, then leads the way down the stairs.
We head deeper into the bowels of the building, the humidity rising around us. I smell the sweaty rock and the damp dirt of the floor as we reach the catacombs. The stairway opens to a small room and a long hallway, the one from my vision within Leander’s mind.
“She’s there. So is Florin. I know it,” I say as Ashen turns back to me with a dark look of concern. He shifts his gaze to Ediye and nods.
I watch as Ediye’s steps into the mouth of the corridor. She pulls a sachet from her pocket and pours some of the contents into her hand, then faces the door. “Akbuus gallaai,” she whispers into the powder, then blows it toward the hallway. A wave of her voice cascades off her hand, blasting the door off its hinges and into the next room. She turns back to me and smiles.
“Badass bitch,” I say, and she winks before striding down the hall with the rest of us following her lead.
The dust is still clouding the end of the hallway when we step onto the fallen door and into a cavernous room.
“Holy fucking shit,” Cole whispers as he stops next to me. “Did you see this in Leander’s mind?”
I swallow a thick knot of dread in my throat. “No. He wouldn’t let me in this far.”
“I can see why,” Cole replies, and takes a step forward. To our immediate left is a small, open medical suite. There’s a metal exam table with silver shackles lying open on its polished surface. Behind it are shelves stocked with vials of serum and syringes. To our right are security glass cells that house rows and rows of people. People who look as shocked by our presence as we are of theirs. Some of them pound on the glass. Some pace by their locked glass doors. The occasional one sits on their cot and draws their knees to their chest, regarding us with suspicion and fear.
One is familiar. She presses her hands to the glass with tears in her eyes.
Valentina.
We rush to her cell. There are tiny holes in her door for communication through the glass and she presses her face to them.
“Help me, please.Please. I need you to get him out,please,” she says as the tears flow across her skin. She points to a cell that’s behind hers where a man stands not next to the door, but next to the transparent wall that divides them. Florin.
“How? Where are the keys?” Cole asks as Ashen moves to Florin’s door. He tries the thick, bolted handle before he starts smashing it with the butt of his sword. It’s not giving way.
“I don’t know. There’s some kind of control panel that opens them. Please, we have to get out before the werewolves return.”
“Are you a hybrid?” I ask.
Valentina looks at me with desperation and guilt in her face. She seems so much warmer and more vulnerable than the version that Mila tried to imitate, and my heart breaks for her, stuck in this prison next to her mate.
“No. But Abdulov… he used me to make them. He forced me to turn them all into vampires. And then he made them into hybrids,” she says as she gestures down the row of people in cells that span the length of the room and three deep. There are at least thirty cells, potentially more if there are other chambers beneath the house. I turn my eyes back to Valentina’s. Her shoulders shake with helplessness and regret. “I didn’t want to do it. I didn’t. But he threatened Florin. He… he used the witch to torture him with magic. We tried but we couldn’t hold out.”
“It’s all right, Valentina. We’ll find a way to free you.” I glance over at Ashen who continues to smash at the door with no discernible progress. “Ediye, do you have anything?”
“I just might,” she says, and I see the spark of an idea alight in her eyes. “Eryx, how much heat can your feathers take?”
