Page 58 of The Reveal
It takes me a shockingly long moment or two to understand that I’m looking at some kind of door.
A woman peers out of the opening. She is beautiful, in a harsh and demanding kind of way—all jet-black hair and impossibly smooth skin—that would have made it clear that she’s a vampire even if I didn’t recognize her as one of the minions who ran me off the road.
“All clear, sire,” she says.
Sire,I think, the word landing in me like a hard slap.
I don’t know why it hasn’t occurred to me that just because I’ve been viewing my interactions with the vampire king as a series of sexual co-payments toward a dark insurance that might help Augie, it doesn’t mean that everyone does. And that to some, like all his vampire minions and apparently the whole of the valley, the fact that he’sthe kingisn’t hypothetical.
This makes me feel heavy and weak all at once.
There’s no time to process it, because his hand is on my back and he’s guiding me forward. I can either do as I’m told or turn and run. Screaming.
Shamefully enough, I consider the latter. My mind is spinning out as I try to imagine what it would look like if I really did make a break for it.
But reality asserts itself, as stern and unyielding as that hand on my back.
As that heavy, cold cock against my clit earlier, as hard as the brick wall in front of me.
There’s nowhere to go. If I run, he will catch me, in seconds and without much effort. Even if he doesn’t, I’m weaponless, out in the dark, and the only way to access my vehicle involves crossing a park full of addicts and monsters, then circling a block in the war zone of downtown Medford. I essentially have nowhere to go.
Not if I want to see Augie. In whatever state he might be in, down beneath the earth in the clutches ofvampires.
It’s impossible to imagine what might be happening or what shape he’s in—my mind actually flinches away from such thoughts, and my temples begin to burn again.
The only remedy is to go down into the dark pit, so that’s what I do.
After I ease myself in through the opening and start climbing down the ladder that waits there, I make a command decision not to think too closely about where I’m going. Much less make comparisons to the sewers I’ve seen in movies. The ladder seems to go down and down forever, deep into the earth, where it is already winter, damp and cold.
When I land, I stagger a little, surprised to find ground beneath my feet. I turn and find that cold-faced woman staring right at me.
I glance up at the ladder, but Ariel isn’t there.
“The king has important matters to attend to,” the woman says, in a tone that I can only describe as surpassingly hostile. “Surely you can’t imagine that you, a mere human, should command his attention?”
“I would be delighted to avoid his attention altogether,” I shoot back.
This is probably unwise.
She confirms this by baring her teeth at me. They are all fangs, and it’s beginning to occur to me that this is part of how vampires communicate. The amount of teeth they show at any given moment indicates the truth of things.
Right now, she’s indicating that I should watch myself.
“He used to mark all of his sacrifices,” she tells me, and the tone is vicious. It matches the fangs. “It didn’t save them. It won’t save you.”
I stare back at her, and her terrifyingly beautiful face, and have to come to terms with a number of things. Quickly.
One is that I’m standing deep underground in what is clearly a vampire lair.
Two, she and I are discussing hismark, which is a very fancy way of saying that when he came all over my body he clearly knew that other people—other vampires, certainly—would be able to sense it. Or smell it. Or whatever it is they do.
And three, that I have to suffer this if I want to see my brother.
I do the only thing I can do. I show her my own teeth in what can only loosely be described as a smile. Fangless though it is.
“Are you going to lead me to Augie?” I ask.
The vampire wheels around and starts walking. This is when I realize that instead of being dropped down some deep, dark well, I’m actually in a tunnel. More critically, there is no hint of any light, and she’s not walking slowly as she heads into the maw of darkness before us.
